I’ve finally dipped my toes into a couple of much-hyped social web services: MySpace, and Skype. Actually I’ve had a MySpace account for several months but haven’t really used it because, frankly, I have little use for what seems like a service that recreates the high school cliques experience in an online format. Now that I have managed to configure my account in a way that’s more to my liking, plus now that I’ve found that not everyone using this service is a party-animal-obsessed teenager or college student, I may make more use of it. We’ll see.

I’m much more impressed with Skype. I know, I know, that’s been around for forever. I just hadn’t investigated it before. Even I can get techno-overload, you know Anyway, after a student in my class mentioned that he uses it, I decided to give it a try. As I already stated, it is impressive. I’ve managed to call land line phones with little problem and have also used it to talk with my brother, Dan. It’s far from perfect in terms of sound quality and clarity but hey, it’s free! I am particularly thinking of using it to talk with my sister and her family in New Zealand. Using Skype, that phone conversation would only cost $.02 per minute, which is incredible. When we move to our new house (hopefully next week some time — we were supposed to have moved already by now but that’s a long story for another time…) we may not request land line phone service. Instead we may rely on our cell phones plus Skype.

If you read this blog and use either or both of these services, contact me and I’d be happy to add you into my list of contacts!