A review of Twitter by Paul Constant done 140 characters at a time. What I noticed most was that each “paragraph” was quotable, free of verbage and build-up. One can see the gears working that built-up to the 140 characters but in the end you get all of that in one short-burst. Information dense. §

Tropo.com makes programming telephony applications dead simple. I may have spent the last 3 years in a telecommunications research center but I still find telecoms and telcos mind-numbling dense and complex. At heart I am a web guy. I don’t want to have to ask for permission to host and run a script or provide a service. Tropo fits my needs very well. You can programme it in JavaScript or Ruby (and many other languages), you sign-up on the web, upload files over the web and test your applications over the web. You get free, and immediate, Skype numbers for your applications. You can edit your application and debug in seconds, no waiting for provisioning or telco approval. Want to see it in action? This 11 line Ruby script I wrote is hosted on Tropo. It returns my latest Twitter message over a voice-call. The simplest way to test it is to Skype this number: +99000936 9991429117

(Thanks to Shane Dempsey for linking me to Tropo.) §

Twitter explains itself to businesses. Good guide. §

Gizmodo lists why I think 1979 was an important year and seems to crop up in articles, books and conversations more than other seemingly mundane years. I mentioned this to @sdempsey but concluded we notice our birth-year more than others. §

Google Latitude finally gets iPhone support. I’m on it with my main paul@paulmwatson.com email address. §

Revisited Etherpad and it has undergone a radical improvement. One click to start a new collaborative document and a simple URL to share with anyone. I tested it with the fianceé and it was dead fast. §

Gerard Degroot’s Dark Side of the Moon belabors a nevertheless interesting and timely point as Obama looks to set economies right and get man back on course to the Moon. Without realising the timing I began reading the book a week before the 40th anniversary of the Moon landings and finished the day after. I lapped up the nostalgia even as Degroot pounded page after page of fact and opinion on the worthless nature of the manned space race into my head. The book could be summed up in a short 10 page thesis and would probably be the better for it save that Degroot wouldn’t have been able to sell it for anything. Other reviews have pointed out some factual errors which while poor for an academic like Degroot do not take away from the facts that manned space flight inflated costs and return little scientific or even technological value. Even the prestige of reaching the Moon first is debatable, the Russians were never in the race to begin with. I was amazed to read how little JFK cared about space beyond the value it brought to his political ambitions. I do think man needs to achieve reliable and cheap manned space flight but it should be balanced better with automated space exploration. At the end of it Degroot’s book seems to be more a general call to solve humanities problems on earth first before wasting time and money on space. I think Degroot is naive to think social problems can be solved by redirecting NASA budget. Money solves technological problems, it doesn’t solve social ones (see aid in Africa.) In the end Dark Side of the Moon is worth reading for dreamers like me but be prepared for a belaboring. §

€509 for an unlocked HTC Hero on Expansys. When my expensive O2 iPhone contract runs out I’ll have to give it a think. Palm Pre, pre-pay iPhone 3G or a HTC Hero. §

If you thought your tech project was a bit fucked up, don’t worry. §

Chill out. §