Browsing"Productivity"

Vancouver 2010 Olympics – as mind map

Jan 25, 2010 by     7 Comments    Posted under: News, Productivity

Culling through listings of which Olympic events are happening when can be a bit tedious. To this end, I created this mind map to illustrate the flexibility of MindMeister‘s mind mapping solution.

I’ll be keeping the schedule up to date and including a listing of winners, as well as any relevant/newsworthy notes. Let the Games begin!

How to fix the exhausted memory error in WordPress

Aug 12, 2009 by     13 Comments    Posted under: Productivity, Technology

Today, like any other day a wordpress update comes out, is a relatively painless procedure thanks to Keith Dsouza of Techie Buzz’s awesome WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. If you don’t already have this one installed in your arsenal, stop reading this and go grab it. This is perhaps the best plugin for wordpress by far, as it saves countless headaches of backing up the db, exporting, installing the new wp version, etc. etc. Thanks Keith!

October 13, 2010 Update: This article specifically applies to WordPress 2.x and lower, but the methodology still functions in WordPress 3.x. To fix the exhausted memory error in WordPress 3.x, follow the steps below, but this time, you’ll be modifying the wp-config file.

Open this file in your editor of choice (I use Dreamweaver)

Just after the < ? php tag, and before the / / **MySQL settings ** / / text insert:

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

Obviously, you can change this ’64M’ to any variable of 8 you’d like.

Right. Now that you’ve got Keith’s plugin installed, and upgrading you wordpress install is literally as easy as 6 or so clicks, you may or may not receive the dreaded ‘memory exhausted on line xyz…bla bla bla’ error. The error may refer to the kses.php file, class-simplepie.php file or any number of other variables. In your dashboard, you’ll most likely see something like this:

Oh Noes!

Yikes! That looks pretty nasty. But fear not, Captain O’ WordPress, it’s a relatively easy fix. Basically what’s going on here is that the server your blog is hosted on isn’t giving you enough juice to power everything that’s going on in your dashboard. Or rather, I should say, your wordpress installation isn’t telling the server to give you the required juice to make everything play nicey nice. Let’s go ahead and fix that bugger, shall we?

To fix the exhausted memory error:

1. Log in to your FTP client. I use Cyberduck to manage mine, but any FTP client will do the trick.

2. Locate the wp-settings.php file. In my installation, it’s hanging out in the main directory.

wp-settings

3. Download this file to your desktop, or anywhere else you want to store it, just remember where you’ve put it.

4. Open your code editor. I use dreamweaver, but as with the FTP client, any text editing software (even the one included with your OS) will do the trick.

5. On line 13 (shown below), you should see the text – define (‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’ , ‘32M’ ). Ah ha! Exhausted memory, memory limit….see where we’re headed with this?

32M-limit

6. Change this variable to anything higher than 32mb. I like to be on the safe side, and ask the server for double what the standard wordpress install calls for, and up it to 64mb.

64M-limit

7. Save the file

8. Upload the file back to its initial location

Click that dashboard button again inside your wordpress installation, et viola! Pretty text and all other goodies returned.

If you’re still having the exhausted memory error after following the procedures above, try upping the memory limit to 128mb. However, keep in mind, with 128mb you’re really pushing the limit on what your host will deem as ‘acceptable’ behavior from the one of perhaps hundreds of sites that are sharing the server with you. I’d recommend testing with 128mb, and upon ensuring this memory allocation solves your problem, try backing the usage down until you get the error again. If problems persist, you might want to open a support ticket with your host.

Problems or questions? Leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help!

Snow Leopard: What to expect

Jul 21, 2009 by     No Comments    Posted under: Productivity, Technology

When the news of an OS update for Mac users hit the streets, many users (myself included) got pretty jazzed – only to find out that we were going to have to wait quite a while to get our hands on Apple’s newest creation. Dubbed Snow Leopard, a clear indication that this is more of an expansion pack for Leopard, rather than a whole new version, this OS upgrade release date is set for September. Planned improvements include speed and performance, as well as improvements to the architecture our beloved Mac apps run on, and improved Exchange support (I can haz Mac now, boss?).

snowleopard

Again, as this is more of an expansion pack rather than a completely new OS, Snow Leopard will be Apple’s cheapest OS upgrade to date – priced at around $29. And frankly, at that price, I’d be hard pressed to see why anyone wouldn’t want this update. The exhaustive list of planned features is available from Apple, but for this article, I’d like to present the highlights that do it for me.

Dock Exposé

dockI arrived to the Mac world with a fresh copy of Leopard in my hands, but I have worked on Tiger, and rapidly discovered the benefits of Exposé. Spaces, I’m not that much of a fan of, but Exposé provides a number of productivity benefits, as well as the occasional…wait, which window was that yadda yadda in, answer. Snow Leopard is bringing exposé to a dock near you. Personally, I use hot corners and mouse shortcuts to access my exposé goodies, but Snow Leopard will now offer users the option to place an icon on the dock. Clicking and holding this dock icon will arrange all open windows in a far more organized manner, aligning themselves to a grid.

QuickTime X

quicktimexOh QuickTime, how I love to hate you most times. I’m pretty certain I’m not the only one on this trip (think VLC development community), and it looks like Apple’s noticed. Other than the addition of the H.264 codec in Leopard, not much has changed with QuickTime for quite a while. In addition to a new icon to be used, QuickTime X includes a number of interface enhancements including improved streaming video ability, speed increases, and last but not least, a gorgeous border-less display window (finally!). Oh, and did I mention screen recording? Seeya iShowU.

Stacks

stacksStick ‘em up buddy! Stacks first appeared in the Mac catalogue with Leopard, and personally, I love them. The idea is simple enough, one way to navigate through entire folder contents directly from the dock. And while highly functional, one of my major gripes is that you only were able to access the top level of this folder structure. Snow Leopard addresses this and allows you to drill down through folders while still in stack mode. Sft+cmd+a is looking further and further away.

Install Speed and Space

freespaceIf the niceties above didn’t make you smile, perhaps improved system speed, and a bit more HDD real estate will. According to Apple, Snow Leopard will reduce the time spent installing the OS by up to 45%! Granted, this is a (hopefully) one time only deal, but shaving the install time in half? Well done Cupertino. And how about some extra storage space? Snow Leopard is touted to free up to 6GB of space!!! Granted, both of these claims come with fine print, but heck…even if I got only 3GB back, my iTunes collection would be mighty thankful.

The Architecture

If you’re a developer, Snow Leopard is either going to cause you a bushel full of woes, or make your life much easier. Either way you look at it, Apple is fundamentally changing the way things work under the hood. If you’re not a dev (I assume a majority of my readers full into this category), you’ll probably only notice the changes via improved speed, security, and system stability/reliability.

64 Bit Speed

All the latest Intel Macs ship with 64 Bit processors and are capable of performing at much higher speeds. Leopard has taken advantage of this technology, to an extent, but Snow Leopard will really saddle this pony and take it out for a ride. The OS update includes a number of re-writes for system applications that should make things noticeably faster.

These re-writes will also reduce the amount of memory that can be handled by any given application, thereby (theoretically) allowing for a maximum of 16 billion gigabytes of memory!

These leaps in speed aren’t going to melt your face off, but they should provide a noticeable snappier Mac (provided you’re running on a 64 bit system).

faster

Do More with Core Duo

grandcentralIf you’re running a Mac with Intel Core Duo technology, Snow Leopard’s addition of Grand Central Dispatch will offer even more speed. Preliminary research of how GCD works caused a mild headache, so I’ll leave it at this: It makes things go faster.

OpenCL

Chances are the graphics on your Mac are already pretty darn impressive. With the addition of the new OpenCL architecture, your graphics processor will be able to handle a wider range of tasks. Hailing from the gaming world, this new technology will stand by waiting to assist and increase the speed of your every day use tasks.

Exchange Support

exchangeEven the most die-hard Mac offices have to interface with the outside world, and their non-Mac toting counterparts. To this end, Snow Leopard represents Apple’s first steps in making Macs better suited to the suited world. The new Exchange support features will integrate MS features into local OSX applications including Mail, iCal, and Address Book.

Again, a full list of Snow Leopard’s features are available directly from Apple, and I’d suggest you take a look at it to get the full lowdown. The above represent the ones that get me jazzed, but there are sections I didn’t even get to (i.e. if you’re using a Time Capsule for Time Machine backups, you’ll be delighted to discover the process should be up to 50 percent faster).

With that said, my top 5 reasons for upgrading ASAP are:

  • Price – $29? Seriously? For that price, heck, I’d buy two if it’d quadruple my speed increases.
  • Speed – anytime someone says to me, “Hey, I’ve got something here that’ll make your machine run faster” I’m generally all ears. Knowing that it’s coming out of Cupertino directly from Mac engineers, call me sold.
  • 6GB of free space – for $29 and most probably half an hour of my time to install the upgrade, and I get speed and space? Hmmm…what to do with 6 extra GB? iTunes what?
  • 64 Bit optimization – perhaps falling under the speed category, but re-writing how the OS accesses and handles key hardware components is nothing short of brilliant.
  • The Future – Obviously any time Apple makes a significant OS change, application developers scramble to get the very best out of their current product to take advantage of these features. I’m quite excited to see what type of updates/changes some of my favorites make to meet the new limitations of OS X Snow Leopard

So from where I’m sitting, September looks only a mere 41 days away. Apple’s not given a definitive date for release, but chances are, I’ll be lined up at 9am at the shop to get my hands on Snow Leopard. Will you be upgrading? Leave a comment below.

The Power of Three

Jun 21, 2009 by     No Comments    Posted under: Productivity

I caught this video the other day via a mention on twitter.  Naturally, I had a good laugh and that moment of ‘that’s awesome!’-ness, but then filed it and moved on to the regular day’s activities.  Later that night I sent it over to a few friends, and watched it again.  Again a smile came to my face, but something else happened.  I started thinking about group dynamics, and how this example could apply to the marketplace.

At 20 seconds in, the guy in the green t-shirt joins (possibly crazy) guy number one, and we’re not quite certain if he’s a 100% participant, or a 99.44% mocker.  My guess is that we’re probably a bit closer to option 2 than 1.  At 54 seconds in, guy number three enters the picture and joins the dance.  He’s our key figure here.  Notice that it only takes another 15 seconds for not just one, but two additional participants to join the what will soon become an all hillside dance party.  For the next two minutes festival goers continue to add to the frenzy, until just about everyone in the shot is dancing like it’s 1999.

While dancer number one may have started the craze, and dancer number two’s commitment is questionable at best, it’s dancer number three that started the tipping point here.  He’s the guy that was clearly not mocking, saw something that he liked or enjoyed, and decided to unabashedly commit to it.  Couldn’t we draw the same parallels between your product or marketing message?  You would be dancer number one (again, possibly crazy), dancer number two may represent your competition, naysayers, the popular media, etc., but  dancer number three is the one that you need to be on the lookout for. He’s the one that received the message, and made it ok for everyone else to join in as well.

Naturally, it’s scary and challenging being the leader, the initiator.  It’s not quite as scary to have dancer number three’s role, but that doesn’t make it any less important.  A good lesson to be learned in the seemingly comic video.

Always be on the look out for dancer number three.

Now that’s one BIG monitor you’ve got there

Jun 18, 2009 by     2 Comments    Posted under: Productivity, Technology, Video

Every once in a while, someone brings a product to market that just makes me think – why?  Naturally, my second reaction is – ooo…can I get one?  Such is the case with NEC’s CRV43 ultra-widescreen curved monitor.  Essentially, what we’ve got here Bob (watch This Old House, and insert Norm Abram‘s accent here), is four DLP (digital light processing) screens stitched together with some fancy LED backlighting to deliver a whopping 2880×900 double WXGA native resolution, 0.02 second response time, 200 cd/m2 brightness and 10,000:1 contrast ratio.

nec-crv43-curved-displayNow settle down there Skippy.  I know what you’re thinking…I thought the same thing – OMGZ!! games are gonna be unbelieveable with this thing.  Not so much.  This Enterprise bridge like display has a highly unusual 32:10 aspect ratio (standard widescreen is 16:9 or 16:10).  Rather, NEC says that this monolith is targeted at high end users in the simulation, digital imaging as well as the command and control industries, which require lightning-fast response times, a broad field of view, greater dynamic range, wide color gamut and employ multiple monitor set-ups.  In other words, not your typical home office setup.

Since this big ol’ monitor is DLP, it’s not exactly svelt in the dimensions department.  Weighing in at 52.5 pounds, she’s not exactly going to get carried to the next LAN party.  Have a look at the side views in the images below to get a better idea of just how wide and deep those hips run.

The users taskbar extends across the entire width of the monitor, which according to NEC increases productivity and lowers frustration by eliminating the bezel and screen gap issues that occur with multiple monitor setups.  That, and it just looks really f@(*%#ing cool!  Windows users, might not get the whole panache, but my mac peeps – imagine your bottom task bar just wrapped all the way around.  Oh dear god…I can plz haz?

One input setup may be achieved thanks to a single DVI-D and HDMI 1.3 input connects.  And while it should go without mentioning, Big Bertha also comes with usb 2.0 connectivity.  The LED backlighting provides for a wide color gamut with 100 percent coverage of sRGB and 99.3% coverage of Adobe RGB.

Originally unveiled at the 2008 CES, NEC plans on bringing this behemoth to market new month.  Bragging rights are going to set you back a bit though.  At $7999, Bertha isn’t exactly cheap, and not the most cost effective multi-monitor solution, but seriously…just look at this thing.

nec-crv43-curved-display-1 nec-crv43-curved-display-2 nec-crv43-curved-display-7

Reinstalling Mac OS X without a DVD Drive – Target Disk Mode

Jun 14, 2009 by     23 Comments    Posted under: Productivity, Technology

One of the primary reasons that I switched to mac just over a year ago was the stability of the Operating System. While my mac’s been fine, and would most probably have kept on working just fine, I guess there’s still a bit of my windows mentality lurking around, as when I started noticing some, ‘huh? what’s that all about?’ errors over the past few weeks, I guess I naturally reverted to the be all, end all solution – reinstall the OS. Fine and dandy, I’m quite familiar with the process via windows, so how hard could redoing the Mac OS X really be?

It’s quite easy – provided your DVD optical drive still works.

I had the lucky happenstance to find out that mine is dead. I’m probably not going to have it fixed, as I’ve read estimates anywhere from $380 – $466, and to be honest, I rarely every use it. However, this does bring up an interesting quandary; how to reinstall the mac os x with a dead optical drive? Apple provides you with a copy of the OS on two DVDs. Ok, first thought – see if I can’t copy these DVD’s using my old PC, and then just use the .dmg’s directly from an external USB drive. Great. But hold up there bucko, as it turns out, Apple Macintosh computers, both laptops and desktops can only boot from firewire drives. Hmmm. Personally, I don’t own any firewire external harddrives, they’re all USB based. So there goes that solution out the window. So here I am thinking that I’m really screwed, and either going to have to pull the main harddrive and plunk it into a friends mac, and do the reinstall that way (a major pain in the ass as far as I see it), until I did a bit of further digging.

Target Disk Mode

target_disk_mode_firewire

Now while I don’t have a firewire drive handy, I did have a 6-pin firewire cable lying around that I use with an external soundcard. As it turns out, you can use a firewire cable to connect two macs, and it’s quite simple at that. Here’s how.

For the purpose of this example, and for simplicity, I’m going to call the MacBook (to be used as the target disk) Black, and the MacBook Pro (where we’ll be installing the new OS) Silver.

  1. Make sure that Black is turned off, attached to the power supply, and all external devices are unplugged.
  2. Connect the 6-pin Firewire cable to black. Silver does not need to be turned off.
  3. Boot Black, and immediately hold down the T key. After a few seconds, you should see a large Firewire icon floating around the screen.
  4. Black should now appear as an additional disk on Silver. If you’re like me and do NOT have harddrives displayed on the desktop, press cmd+shft+c to bring up you list of available disks.

Et voila! Black, just became the words most expensive external harddrive/cd/dvd burner/reader combo drive known to man. So far so good, however, we’ve not yet installed the OS. From here, things should be pretty straight forward, however I did have one minor, ‘will that work?’ moment which I’ll describe below.

Upon popping the OS X installation disk in, you’ll get an auto prompt asking what you want to do with it. Select install OSX. The computer (Silver) will then ask you to reboot to begin.

Leave the firewire cables connected, and upon reboot, Black should remain in target disk mode, while Silver will now pick up the install straight from Black. If all goes well, everything should proceed as if you’ve inserted the disk directly into Silver (and the drive works).

So we’re all set, right? Yes and No. If you take a look at that DVD package that came with your computer from Apple, you’ll notice that there are 2 disks. Everything is cooking along, the OS is pretty much installed, but now you’ve reached that crucial moment of ‘Please insert disk two’. Ok, no problem, I’ll just eject the disk from Black and carry on. Hold on there partner, as Black is now in target mode – how ya gonna eject that disk? Can’t do it from the OS, and the hardware button no longer functions. Remember, when in target disk mode, Black ceases to be a fully functional machine, but again, a rather expensive external HDD/DVD drive.

To solve this problem, I took a round about way of solving this, and since I couldn’t find this info anywhere else, I took my own guess at it. Throughout this entire process, DO NOT remove the 6 pin firewire cable.

  1. Press and hold down the power button on Black until it shuts down
  2. Press the power button again, and immediately press the eject button. This should pop the DVD out before target disk mode launches.
  3. Press and hold the power button down again, until Black shuts down again.
  4. Press the power button down again, and now quickly slip disk two into the dvd drive.

This will handle the problem of inserting disk two.

As much as I’d like to have a functioning DVD drive, from what I’ve read this isn’t an uncommon problem for MacBook’s, both standard and pro. I tend to leave my machine on 24/7, and reboot it generally once a week. It has occurred to me that the additional heat generated by this prolonged usage may have not been the best thing for an optical drive (some parts are made of plastic).

If you’ve fried, or in my case, melted your DVD optical drive, if you’ve got another mac handy, hopefully this guide has walked you through the steps of using it in target disk mode to regain the features/functions lost. Any questions? Leave ‘em in the comments below and I’ll respond ASAP.

Burton Group Survey: Enterprise not quite grasping Social Networking

Apr 3, 2009 by     2 Comments    Posted under: Productivity, Social Media, Technology

In a recent report published by the Burton Group, analysts’ found that attempts to replicate social networking (facebook) and their associated tools (twitter) aren’t really taking off within the corporate structure.

The report, social networking in the enterprise is based on detailed interviews with 21 companies spanning a wide variety of industries including utilities, consumer goods, technology, and finance.

With the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston bearing down on us, this report from Burton couldn’t have come at a better time, as businesses are struggling to not only understand, but utilize and maximize the technologies potential.  The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is a gathering of tech vendors that create social applications similar to facebook, twitter, etc., but specifically tailored for business usage.  In addition to the old standbys such as IBM (Lotus Connections) and Microsoft (SharePoint), new players including Socialtext, Jive, and Six Apart are slated to be in attendance.

But according to Mike Gotta, a principal analyst with the Burton Group, it’s not a problem with vendors’ product offerings that are the stumbling stone, but rather the corporate culture itself.  Gotta says that the challenge is in addressing specific generational differences, and getting them all on the same page.  Specifically Baby Boomers have demonstrated that they’re not inclined to embrace social technologies in the workplace (although they’re flocking to them from a consumer perspective).

According the Burton survey, the problem may not lie with the Boomers, but rather in how their employer presenting the tools to them.  Many companies have used social networking tools to share expertise, collaborate, and connect with others, especially in multi-location global enterprises.

“Some vendors are saying employees will go in and naturally fill these enterprise social networking profiles out, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” Gotta says. “If you’re an employee, you have questions. Why should you maintain it? What are you going to do with it? Those questions still need to answered.”

What else does Gotta see holding corporation adoption back?

  • Creating a business case is difficult for people who don’t understand the technologies or have rigid ways of defining their success. Your CFO might want hard ROI, which social tools have a difficult time showing because they aren’t necessarily replacement tools. So, for instance, if people begin trading information on a wiki, that maintains a document’s changes in real-time. This is generally better than sending around reply-all e-mails with messy attachments. But while you know the wiki has helped your collaboration efforts, it might be hard to figure an exact dollar amount in savings since e-mail isn’t being replaced. “For that person that who wants blood on paper ROI , it’s a hard conversation,” Gotta says.
  • Getting the proper players involved. Gotta says it’s essential to have a presence from HR in getting these technologies off the ground. If, for instance, you want to turn your corporate intranet into a social network with employee profile pages, you need to help people feel comfortable to share and know the ground rules. If people feel awkward about inputting information, it’s as good as dead. In addition, stakeholders (often department heads) must show they believe in the adoption of the technology by using it themselves and encouraging adoption. If they use it, it’s not guaranteed their employees will use it, but it’s more likely.
  • Traditional corporate communications structures and etiquette. More old, conservative organizations communicate in a top-down fashion, which runs counter to social networks, where people collectively weigh in and discuss issues. Burton quoted one participant who noted the following: “We have a classic company — we communicate ‘at’ people rather than ‘with’ them.” On the upside, the proponents of enterprise social networking say that the technologies, if used effectively, can uproot that type of communications model.
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Skype for iPhone review

Mar 31, 2009 by     7 Comments    Posted under: News, Productivity, Technology

Both the iPhone and non-iPhone world was abuzz yesterday (or today, depending on which time zone you’re in) about the confirmed announcement of skype for iPhone launching today.  Living in Europe, I’m up +6 hours ahead of the east coast – bonus!

My thoughts have echoed so many other iPhone owners, “Hey, where’s my skype application?” and I’d tried a number of work arounds, but nothing that delivered voip.  Fring is a great app for iPhone that will handle all your IM programs (think Adium for iPhone), including skype, but again, no voice features.  So you can imagine my excitement when the news broke like wildfire across the net yesterday when rumors were confirmed and skype would be made available (for free no less) today.

To my surprise, upon entering the app store via iTunes, skype is not (yet) the top free app, and I had to do a little searching.  Needless to say, there’s quite a few mentions of skype in the search results, but here’s the direct link to the skype app for iPhone.

Note: I am currently running the 3.0 firmware on my (obviously) jailed iPhone.

img_0066

Installation

As with any iPhone application, installation is a breeze, literally a click and a password (if you have this option selected) away.  A quick install and eject later, I fired up my shiny new skype for iPhone application.  Sadly, I wasn’t able to grab a screenshot of the entry screen, but the folks at skype thoughtfully repeated their message about skype not being a replacement for a regular phone, and that emergency calls may not be made with skype (or any other voip service, for that matter).  Not necessary, but a nice thing to do.

Setup

The skype for iPhone setup is very familiar to any user of the desktop version, and is appropriately styled the same way.  Simply enter your user name and password, and you’re off to the races.  No ‘unknown error’s thus far.  Nothing but smooth sailing.

Use

If you’ve used any other type of IM service on your iPhone, and/or are fairly familiar with the way iPhone lays out lists (think of your contacts book), the UI is instantly recognizable.  Contacts are displayed alphabetically, and you have the option to display all contacts, or only those currently online.  As with the desktop version, contacts’ display icons appear next to their name, along with their status.

img_0067

As with any new toy, I wanted to really test just how far this tiny little app will take me.  A quick view of my contacts list revealed that my friend Bree in Hawaii was still awake and online.  Hawaii?  Sure, I think that’s approximately half way around the world from where I am – looks like a suitable test location.  And here’s where things started to get a bit rocky.  First, Bree didn’t show up as online on the iPhone, but did show up on the desktop version.  I sent her a message via the desktop, and her response showed both on the desktop version and the iPhone.  Needless to say, the minute I got a response, poof!  Bree’s now online.  Perhaps I was a bit impatient, and didn’t give the system the proper amount of time to load all the data.

My initial call to Bree went through (technically), but I could not hear her, nor could she hear me.  At this point the application froze, and I had to ‘home’ button, close and relaunch.  Fair enough, it’s a first release; I’m willing to cut the Swedes some slack.

Our second attempt at a call can only be described by Borat as, “Great Success!”  Voice quality was just as good if not better than the desktop version, and on par with actual phone call quality.  We talked for about 5 minutes, all the while me moving about the house, closer and further away from the router.  All good.  As a point of comparison, I decided to hang up and call her back, but only using the 3G network this time.  Third attempt worked like a charm.  No lag, no dropped call, semi-instant connection.  I’d almost go so far to say that skype for iPhone performed better on 3G than over my wireless connection.  Although, to be fair, perhaps the application was suffering from stage fright, and that first misfire was the one and only bobble I’ll ever have (crossing fingers).

img_0068

Just to put the distance question to the test, I gave a call to my buddy Olivier here in town, and low and behold, no misfires, instant connection, perfect voice quality.  So maybe there is something to routing a call 10,000 miles away vs. 3.  Either way, the application met my expectations.

Conclusion

Other than the first misfire while calling Hawaii, the skype for iPhone application works, and works quite well.  Is it perfect?  Yes/No.  I’d love to give the application 5 stars, but the first bobble knocks off half a star.  Given that the application is free and there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already got skype running on your desktop,  there’s absolutely no reason this little app shouldn’t be sitting on the front page of your iPhone.

Kudos skype – it’s been a long time coming.  Welcome to my phone.

Update: According to TechCrunch, within three short days, the skype for iPhone application has been downloaded over 1 million times.

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