Free as in Free Beer for the next two weeks

Sawdays Pubs & Inns of England & Wales will be free to access for a couple of weeks. That means you can browse it and search it as much as you like, just as though you had bought it, until August 24th.

This is one of the easiest and cheapest ways of getting the full flavour of Exact Editions on the iPhone. And The Fox and Hounds at Christmas Commons has my personal recommendation.

If you have telephone access from your browser (perhaps through SkypeOut on your laptop or from the iPhone) you will be able to call the pubs directly by clicking on their phone numbers. Please no random phone calls!

Will Digital Books and Magazines Have Skype Conversations in Them?

Sure, it is already happening. Today I followed a link from Om Malik, where he was talking about movie clips popping up within Skype conversations (apparently that is coming -- and I totally agree that Skype video calls work very well, so why not include video in the conversation?). Anyway, Om was citing the way that TV shows are now using Skype interviews, here is a link to Oprah doing it. Well that is interesting, and the Skype conversation banner is carrying an ad for Borders, and when I take a closer look at the TV show, I realise that it is actually being replayed on the People magazine web site. So here we have a Skype conversation, carrying a Borders ad, taking place on a TV show, with a recording of a live interview promoting the sale of a book on spiritual well being, distributed on a magazine's web site. And not forgetting that we accessed all that from a blog.

I lost track of the number of media channels covered by that description, but does anybody doubt that the web is leading us to multimedia engagement with our audiences?

Opera and Google Documents

Opera, the browser, continues to impress. As does Google Docs. But there are one or two issues to think about before you chuck out Firefox and ceremonially burn your .doc documents.

First off, Google Docs does not support Opera. On the Google Docs systems requirements page they say "Google Docs is not supported, and probably won't run on (Opera)." Well it sort of runs on Opera on my Mac but only in a 'view' mode. I guess this may change now that Google is (probably) paying money to Opera for prime position on the Opera mobile platform.

Before you get too committed to Google Docs you may want to think about just how good it is as a collaborative environment. Its really, really good at this; much more straightforward and intuitive than MS Office. Last week we were having a good discussion with some potential partners about the comparative merits of our platform. They had fielded an excellent set of questions for us and forwarded them as a link to a Google spreadsheets document, which we were sharing online in a Skype conference call. Before the Skype call, we tracked back through the revisions to the document and found some benchmarks that they had established with a competitor. The revisions had not locked out the previous column of tests and I am (fairly) sure that we were not meant to see the comparisons that were unearthed. Collaborative tools may be more collaborative than intended. I like a partner who is prepared to share their evaluation with us, especially when they appear to have looked at the opposition, but "open-ness" has its limits.

Intelligent Life and Bright Paper

The Economist -- which may be the most valuable and interesting magazine on the planet -- is about to launch a new magazine called Intelligent Life.

I am such a fan of The Economist that I will be pleased to be proved wrong, but the announcement gives me a sinking feeling. There is surely some hubris in launching a magazine with this title. The web site gives nothing a way (that is not a good sign -- the web site for a magazine which is going to be launched in less than a month should give a lot away).

The current edition of the parent magazine has a fascinating piece on how a cellulose, paper-like, substance can store electricity as a capacitor and as a battery. If you need to know more, I refer you to Professor Ajayan's web page. He has done the research. Who knows, in a few years time we may be reading newspapers and books on a paperlike substance, like a large pocket handkerchief, which holds its own electricity and navigates us to any web page. By then the web will be a superset of all printed literature.

Since the alarms of last week, Skype has returned in a reliable form. In fact, it seems to be a lot clearer. No background muzziness. Have we been palmed off with a phony explanation. Were Skype surreptitiously improving their network software whilst appearing to heal a bug?...... I am also relieved to hear that its not Microsoft's fault. Though the first Skype explanation did sound a little bit as though it was.... ("those dunderheads in Redmond with their routine patches" did appear to be the subtext).

Skype and the challenges of 24/7

Yesterday Skype had a major software failure across its network. It seems to be persisting today. I had not realised how much I now use Skype, and quite how much I depend on it. I am not in the mood for complaining, even though I am a paying Skype user (Skype Out is a great aspect to the service). I just hope that they come back on line soon and that there is no deep flaw in the code. That would be a nightmare!

Any business that runs a 24/7 service will have sympathy for the engineers in Luxembourg.

Why do I use Skype so much? The first reason is that because its a VOIP system and completely web-based, every name and phone number on our wonderful CRM system is a click a way from a phone call. Since I have never been good at managing Address Books, this is a great boon. I can also note the phone call on the integral Wiki within the CRM. This home-brewed CRM -- fondly known as Crumb -- is even more integral to my daily work than Skype.

The second reason is that Skype is extremely easy for conference calls (and if you have Skype Out you can run the conference and bring in participants who will not realise that they are being Skyped). The third reason is that Skype links beautifully from the links on our digital magazines. Here is a page with lots of live phone numbers -- but please only try them if you really need to ring up!