Gillian Shaw had a great article today in the Vancouver Sun about what it means to unplug nowadays. I think as the penetration of computers, especially mobile internet, continues to spread, it's going to be more and more relevant. Without a doubt, I think people spend way too much time online these days. In fact, if anyone is guilty of that, it's me. I was recently trying to think of memories from before the Twitter and Facebook eras, trying to remember what I used to spend most of my time doing. I remember having a lot of nice dinners with my ex, and also going for long walks from time to time. ...

Boris tipped me off on Twitter to a few articles about VoIP to ring in the new year. Here are a few: 2008, The Year That VOIP Died VoIP is not dead ...

This next post hits pretty close to home. I work in the field of voice over IP. I write software for my day job that allows people to talk to each other using two computers. A popular manifestation of the technology I work with everyday is Skype, which many people use to communicate with each other. One of the benefits of Skype is that the entire conversation is automatically encrypted. In theory, this should mean that nobody, not even the government, would be able to listen in on your phone calls. However, a recent article speculates that there may be a backdoor in Skype that would allow governments ...