Information Research Weblog

Managing the Internet

Why am I not surprised that the commission set up by the UN to enquire into managing the Internet has come up not with one solution, but four?

Skype killers

With Skype so successful (at any one time, when I use it, there are more than 2.5 million other people using it) it seems inevitable that there will be competition. Two have recently been launched:

The Gizmo Project

This looks very much like a Skype copycat - even the layout of the interface is broadly similar and In and Out services are provided (i.e., you can call out to land lines and have a land line number that others can use to call in to you). I'm in the process of trying to test this one and will let you know what happens.

VoIPBuster

This one didn't get as far as testing! For several days I tried to register but kept getting a message to the effect that 'an unexpected problem' was preventing registration and 'try again later'. Well, there's only so much I'm prepared to put up with and I gave up on it. Others may have more success. [Just in case things had been resolved, I've just tried again, with the same result.]

Google in the dock

Thanks to Charles Knight for drawing my attention to this one. This is a rather complicated story which hinges upon the Internet Wayback Machine archive and a law case in which old Web pages were proving embarrassing. Mmm. You can shred old documents, but when you've put them in the public arena on the Web, that's a little difficult. It will be interesting to see what the Canadian legislators come up with. Of course, it all relates to corporate greed and misdoings—when things go wrong companies will always try suppression and if they can get the legislators to help them, they're laughing and the rest of us are weeping. But aren't parliamentarians supposed to be the representatives of the people? Ha, ha!