05.10.11

Microsoft gets Skype!

Posted in Home, Work at 3:10 pm by JohnB

So it’s definite then.. Here’s the MS PR..

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/may11/05-10CorpNewsPR.mspx

I thought I’d share my initial gut thoughts on this.

  1. There’s an existing revenue stream within Skype – I pay for one of the subscription services for free UK calls and there’s an option for free worldwide too at £7.99 pm – this has got to be better than Messenger or Communicator has ever produced!
  2. This smells like the creeping death of MSN… We’ve seen the the live services starting to being aggregated into O365 and there was never any money in there.
  3. There are now another set of MS partners who will be ticked off, the Telcos. It seems that the previous fear of anything PSTN related has now evaporated in Redmond. Stand by for the anti-compete suits.
  4. I tweeted this news and one of the immediate responses I got from a colleague on the games site I write for was “That could be pretty awesome if they manage to fully integrate it with things like XBL friends lists and parties.” so there’s immediate market.
  5. The client is available EVERYWHERE. And it works consistently, effectively and simply. There’s lessons to be learned there.

Interesting times.

05.07.11

River Song – a theory of identity.

Posted in Home at 3:33 pm by JohnB

This came to me this morning in the shower. I’m not sure why or where the leap will take me – and of course I could be completely wrong, but it’s here anyway.

Here’s what we know:

  1. River is in jail for killing someone “very important”
  2. River is a time traveller, she uses technology to assist but so does The Doctor
  3. River has a very well developed grasp of time-spaces, probably more than we’ve seen any other character bar known Time Lords

Here’re my theory based on what we’ve seen so far in this season.

The “very important” person River killed is indeed The Doctor, this event happened by the side of a lake as River was in the space-suit.

Amy Pond is pregnant and the child WILL be affected by exposure to time fluxes from the Tardis. We saw part of this in evidence as the child is pictured with Amy and then is seen to ‘die’ and regenerate in the back alley. My theory is that this child is, or becomes, River Song. There is the quirk that River dies in the Library but we know that she’s actually downloaded into the core so maybe that negates the regeneration process, or perhaps River’s current form is actually her final regeneration.

There are holes of course – why has the doctor not come across this time traveller in any of her previous incarnations – but it’s a big universe! Then there is the issue of ‘The Doctors Daughter” – the genetic clone of the Doctor who’s set out on her own adventures. Again it’s a big universe.

I guess time (no pun intended) will tell, but the River Song / Doctor / Amy story arc is getting more and more interesting!