As a network that links many private buyers and sellers around the world, eBay already acts as a giant communications company, handling millions of emails a day, though it does not have a real-time communications network to let its users contact each other to agree deals or settle disputes immediately.
However, Skype’s business is far less developed than PayPal was at the time it was bought. PayPal had already gone public and was generating around $200m in annual revenue when eBay bought it.
Rajiv Dutta, eBay’s chief financial officer, said that Skype’s early success had exceeded even that of eBay and PayPal, both of which had been slower to turn their early users into fee-paying customers.
He added that eBay had assessed the purchase price based on a number of factors, including the expected future earnings from Skype, the valuation of other internet acquisitions and number of Skype users. Some 54m people have downloaded Skype’s software, making the price that eBay has paid for each user lower than the amount it paid for PayPal, Mr Dutta said.
General
12
Sep 05
Ebay officially buys Skype
11
Sep 05
Get board monkeys to write your book
I was at Border’s today and investigated this book, “The Real Meaning of Life”, and I was surprised to discover that the content of the book was entirely created by respondents to a post on a message board inquiring into the meaning of life. Since everyone has their own view on this the book wrote itself. Could this be a cheap way to produce a light read?
11
Sep 05
Amazing life
BBC: Tongue-eating bug found in fish:
A gross creature which gobbles up a fish’s tongue and then replaces it with its own body has been found in Britain for the first time.
The bug – which has the scientific name cymothoa exigua – was discovered inside the mouth of a red snapper bought from a London fishmonger.
The 3.5cm creature had grabbed onto the fish’s tongue and slowly ate away at it until only a stub was left.
It then latched onto the stub and became the fish’s “replacement tongue”.
08
Sep 05
Widespread mental health issues largely manageable?
An interesting article, Study: Routine Eases Bipolar Disorder:
Using what researchers dubbed interpersonal and social rhythm therapy, patients were taught how to keep to normal sleeping, eating and other daily routines. They also were shown how to anticipate and cope with stress just as a diabetic who would be taught, for example, how to cook and eat differently. …
Frank, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, said doctors for years have counseled bipolar sufferers about managing their lives but no one had ever systematically put that information together. She said social rhythm therapy does that, and also teaches patients to identify the triggers in their relationships with other people that can cause relapses. …
Dr. Gail Edelsohn, an associate professor of psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, said sleep, especially, has a huge effect on those with mood disorders.
06
Sep 05
Grading Google Desktop: B+
After using it for a couple weeks, I have found the latest iteration of Google Desktop to be moderately useful, but not essential by any means. It doesn’t wow like gmail. Considering that I use the search functionality infrequently Google Desktop must actually be useful for me to run it all the time since it is a resource hog. At this very moment, its components are sucking precious resources doing things of questionable value. GoogleDesktopDisplay.exe is using 76.5 MB of RAM, GoogleDesktopCrawl.exe is using 5.3 MB, GoogleDesktop.exe is using 1.7 MB, GoogleDesktopMail.exe is using 5 MB, and GoogleDesktopCrawl.exe is using 5.3 MB for a total of 93.8 MB of total RAM usage. Is that really necessary or does it have a memory leak? Here’s a rundown of the sidebar features:
- Docking – the sidebar docks to one side of your desktop. I liked this at first, but unless you use the sidebar a lot you’ll be tempted to shut it off.
- Gmail notification – This is somewhat useful except that there are Firefox extensions, Trillian plugins, and standalone Google apps that do the same thing.
- Web clips – I have yet to use this feature. I still don’t understand where or how it determines what to put in there.
- Todo list – This is a good idea, except in practice I put a few todos and then they just sit there. I use Outlook for task tracking if I use any software.
- Scratch pad – I still use paper to take little notes, but the Google Scratch Pad has the nice ability to save to a file. I have the same problem with this as with the todo list. I make notes then never do anything with them.
- Quick view – I have yet to make good use of this.
- News – Sage for news, so no chance to put this to good use.
- Photos – Very neat. Useful maybe.
- Stock ticker – Very useful. Nice and simple.
- Weather – Useful, but you could use the Weatherfox Firefox plugin to do the same thing.
The best part about the sidebar is that they have adopted the Firefox / Trillian model of opening up the plugin architecture so that end-users can develop their own extensions and plugins. The integration with Desktop search is a bonus.
06
Sep 05
Notes on male / female identity
In researching some ideas I had about rebelliousness (especially political) and father-absence I came across several provocative ideas related to the formation of male / female identity. In a review of THE CHURCH IMPOTENT: THE FEMINIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY by Leon J. Podles:
06
Sep 05
Politics: It’s not worth talking about
Political discussions generally have little value. In fact, they are usually tiresome. On one side you have knee-jerk Conservative-hating snobs and on the other side you have knee-jerk Liberal-hating flag-wavers. These two sides have more in common than they fully realize, namely they’re both convinced of their own certainty. In the words of Rodney King, “Why can’t we all just get along?”
My view on politics has changed over the years such that I don’t even like talking about it. It makes me instantly uncomfortable. The only thing that matters is what you can change, and that doesn’t mean protesting abortion clinics or Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. What anyone else “thinks” or “believes” does not matter. It doesn’t matter to me, and it shouldn’t matter to you. Here’s why: Imagine two people in a political discussion, if both people agree then there’s no need for either of them to talk about it. If both people disagree with one another fundamentally, then no amount of argument is going to sway the opposing party. Politics is all about personal world-view. This is why there is so little compromise. Everyone is busying themselves with questions of abstraction and ideology. Questions of responsibility, obligation, rights, fairness, etc. Questions that have no clear objective answers. People see what they want to see, ultimately. This is why some people look at the Katrina disaster and interpret it as George Bush neglecting the poor, largely African-American population, while others look at it and blame the victims for not evacuating. You know what, sometimes bad stuff just happens. Sometimes the government is not as all-powerful as it likes to appear. Likewise, sometimes people can’t evacuate or choose not to for legitimate reasons. But instead of focusing on how to fix all the problems that comprise this new reality, many people just point fingers and throw out their opinions.
This is the main problem with modern political discussion. In this country alone, we have 270 million different and valid points of view. One for each person in this country. We are absolutely paralyzed by cause when we should be worrying about effect. An unending chorus with little to show for it.
06
Sep 05
Online Gaming Matures With World of Warcraft
The competition is going to need to invest a lot more money and talent in the arena Blizzard has now dominated. Conqueror in a War of Virtual Worlds:
Since November, World of Warcraft has signed up more than four million subscribers worldwide, making for an annual revenue stream of more than $700 million. About a million of those subscribers are in the United States (with more than half a million copies sold this year) and another 1.5 million are in China, where the game was introduced just three months ago. By contrast, EverQuest II now has between 450,000 and 500,000 subscribers worldwide, with about 80 percent in the United States.
Just a year ago, numbers like that would have classed EverQuest II as a big hit. The original EverQuest topped out at around a half-million players, and many, if not most, game executives came to believe that the pool of people willing to pay $15 a month to play a video game had been exhausted. The conventional wisdom in the industry then was that there could not possibly be more than a million people who would pay to play a massively multiplayer online game.
Now, World of Warcraft has shattered earlier assumptions about the potential size of the market.
Some business analysts see WoW more as an exceptional anomaly rather than a representation of growth in the online gaming market.
“I don’t think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month,” said Michael Pachter, a research analyst for Wedbush Morgan, a securities firm. “World of Warcraft is such an exception. I frankly think it’s the buzz factor, and eventually it will come back to the mean, maybe a million subscribers.”
“It may continue to grow in China,” Mr. Pachter added, “but not in Europe or the U.S. We don’t need the imaginary outlet to feel a sense of accomplishment here. It just doesn’t work in the U.S. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
02
Sep 05
New Skype Call Forwarding
With the introduction of Skype 1.4, which is currently in beta, you can have calls to your SkypeIn number forwarded while you are not online. For example, you could set it up where your SkypeIn number forwards calls to your cell phone if you are offline. This is very cool. The only downside I see is that forwarded calls still use your SkypeOut minutes. On the other hand, that is still super cheap telephony since anyone in the world with Skype can now reach you on your cellphone without costing them a thing.