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I've been playing with it for a week, when I've had the time, and I've discovered a few things: (a) Despite me having a fairly large email address book, hardly anyone I know actually has it. (Or at least, hardly anyone I know is 'findable' via the email address I have for them, anyway.)
(b) Those that do are rarely, if ever, online at the same time as me.
(c) It's not a bad IM format, but again, see (a) and (b)
(d) erm, that's it. So, if you're not someone who's glued to the phone once home in the evening, what is so wonderful about it? I'm supposed to report back to them next week, and so far about the only thing I can tell them apart from the above is to ask... "why does anyone use it once the novelty's worn off?") Edit to add: My Skype id is budgie_uk, if anyone's interested. Edit to add: I forgot to say that it took less than 48 hours for me to get 'spammed' by an 18 yr old girl from the US who wanted to know if I webcammed... and access to her website doesn't cost that much apparent. [sigh]
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Interesting snippet in the Guardian's technology pages today: Is a phone sold when it's on a boat? Or does it have to be in a customer's hand? With the iPhone 3G, perhaps either counts.
July 15, 2008 3:14 PM
As the Fortune 2.0 blog notes,In a report to clients issued a few hours before Apple’s announcement, [Gene] Munster [of analysts Piper Jaffray, who follows Apple closely] had estimated that Apple had sold about 425,000 iPhones worldwide and that it would take Apple at least 17 days to hit the one million mark. But instead the magic number came up in just three days. How's that happen, then?One explanation for the discrepancy may have to do with how Apple counts sales. Sales at Apple Stores are recorded at the register. But sales to its partners — in this case, AT&T and the overseas carriers — are recorded when the devices leave the loading docks in Asia. In other words, some of those 1 million iPhones recorded as sold by Apple (AAPL) may still be in transit.
Indeed, Munster makes the same point in a revised report issued to clients later Monday morning. But certainly Apple's sales were gigantically faster this time round, as Munster explained: "The improvement is driven by two key factors: 1) international availablilty in 21 countries, and 2) a 60% lower entry-level price point." No argument there. But we'd really like to see some solid numbers from O2 and other partners. I'm particularly interested to know how many were supplied to (and sold in) the UK. The web seems fairly unsure about it; I've seen numbers as low as 18,000 supplied for the launch (including Carphone Warehouse stores) and numbers as high as 78,000. Certainly, however, no more than 40% of the number that expressed interest via the O2 website weeks in advance of the launch. I've actually now had a chance to play on one, by the way - one of my colleagues at work got one on the launch date; found out yesterday and had a play on it for ten minutes... It's very nice, and despite the stories about lousy battery life (my colleague said he's found it no worse than the previous model) and lack of facilities like no MMS and not that good a camera... I want one so bad it's not true.
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So yesterday, both Chip Zdarsky and ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) si_fuller pointed me to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) scans_daily where a story from a comic they've got scanned in is from... X-Men Unlimited #4. No, not the train wreck that was:  an issue that even the writer trashed later, describing it thus: "I will go on record as saying X-MEN UNLIMITED 4 may have been my worst issue ever." No, the scans_daily crowd are quite enjoying (if my reading of the comments is right) a story from this book:  about which the writer said: "I had an absolute blast writing it..." One thing that they're querying is the last panel of the story. I said in that thread that without going into too many details, the panel wasn't entirely my idea, nor was it entirely the artist's - the incredibly talented Travel Foreman, who made my writing look good. I didn't want to say any more without getting Travel's permission. Well, that permission gained, here's the truth behind the panel... When I got the pencils through, from Marvel, there were individual panels where I was grinning like a loon. Not only because of the quality of the art, and how Travel had precisely got what I'd intended to convey when writing the script, but also because he'd drawn some additional things into the panel, things that were so obviously gags that they would be (and were) removed when it was inked and coloured: the occasional humorous word balloon, for example. The reason I know they were removed was because they were, in both the inked and coloured pages I saw. And one of the 'gags' was a sparkly heart behind the final panel, which was a shot of a handshake between Scott Summers and Cain Marko. Here's the unlettered, but inked and coloured panel, as sent to me by Stephanie Moore:  So all was well and good. And then the comic came out... and the final panel, as it saw print?  Hrm. Yes. Neither Travel nor I were, as you'll appreciate, overjoyed at the "re"-appearance of that damned heart.... And more than one reviewer said that they loved the story, but ug, that last panel... In the interests of fairness, though, I have to say that Stephanie Moore, the editor on that book, was a delight to work with throughout and I can only imagine that she or someone else in production had a complete brainfart when she put that damned heart back in… You know, I don't have many "behind the scenes" stories about my short career in comics (for obvious reasons), but I think you'll agree that's a doozy... By the way, for those who don't know, in deference to the 'budgie' name, there's always a budgie somewhere in the comics stories I wrote. Feel free - if you don't know already - to try and spot it. There's another story behind that appearance, one that speaks better of Stephanie. (As for why they are shaking with their left hands, well, that's partly mine, and partly Travel's fault. The panel description was ambiguous at best, as I recall, and Travel drew it with them shaking hands right-handed. it was only afterwards that we realised that the panel had to be flipped in order for the word balloons to be able to be read in the right order...)
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OK, well, this is novel... I've never been paid to test software before. OK, it's not a lot. I'm serious - it's not a lot, but I do end up with spiffy new headphones and a shiny nice new webcam out of the deal. (Since the laptop has a webcam anyway, I suspect that the one I got given is destined for Phil, who's been asking for one for a while...) But yeah, I got called by a friend of mine to take part in some market research for Skype. Now I know that several friends of mine (probably including people who read this) are using it, but I've never really looked at it. I've no idea how much I'll use it, but as of this evening, I'm on Skype. The user id won't come as a huge surprise to anyone, since it's my standby if "budgie" is taken, and lo and behold, it was. (And yes, I am bitter and twisted that budgie is taken, although it's not been updated in a couple of years...) Two weeks playing with it, and then I'm back to talk to them about my experiences using the application. Any hints or tips about using Skype would be appreciated, by the way... Oh, and the download site for the beta version I'm using (Windows only, I'm afraid) is here.
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