10 years of Skype: your stories | Technology | theguardian.com

10 years of Skype: your stories | Technology | theguardian.com


Have been using skype myself since 2005....first to keep in contact with parents, chat messages with friends in other countries (before facebook, googlechat!), then for kids with grandparents, meant could have a great relationship with them, when meet in person seems like afetr a few days break instead of a few months...

Favourite skype moment - watching live rugby matches with my father another country...

most unusual usage - live video feed from LEGO mindstorms robot being controlled remotely...

Making the best of a bad job

Interesting analysis program on the denigration of lower paid jobs. An interesting point about increased social mobility is that it increases the stigma of those who don't move up, and that for 'good' jobs to be promoted (e.g. for macro policy reasons) then there need to be 'bad' jobs to contrast with. If everyone should strive to be above average, what does that mean for the other 49%?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qlmlg
David Goodhart considers whether the declining status of basic jobs can be halted and even reversed.

Successive governments have prioritised widening access to higher education to try to drive social mobility, without giving much thought to the impact this has on the expectations of young people who, for whatever reason, are not going to take that path.
But even in a knowledge-based economy, the most basic jobs survive. Offices still need to be cleaned, supermarket shelves stacked, and care home residents looked after.
The best employers know how to design these jobs to make them more satisfying. Are politicians finally waking up to the problem?

Gestalt Shift

Gestalt Shift

We can see the two-dimensional figure below as a [three-dimensional] cube. There are [at least] two ways to do this, and the switch between the two is called a 'Gestalt shift'. It is not a voluntary shift, although one can try to bring it about.