E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Competition Is a Good Thing, Is It Not? Continued

(Migrated weblog post from LSR)

A couple of days ago I created a weblog entry talking about how Skype was starting to have some serious competition in the area of Instant Messaging and VoIP by mentioning two different new applications that have become available: VoipBuster and jajah. Well, it looks like there is now a new application that is supposed to provide the same kind of functionality as Skype and it is called Gizmo.

This new application is just a 3.4 MB download and is supposed to provide you free calls to all Gizmo users, it has got both a free Voicemail and conference calls service and is supposed to have an amazing quality. And all of that Freeware, of course. While I have been checking out the web site itself it looks like it also allows you to call landlines at very inexpensive rates. But I think I am not going to go too much into detail with it since there is a very good review of how it works over at Michael Robertson’s web site: Skype Bad, Gizmo Good. You can find all the different details about it over there including the following comparison between Gizmo and Skype which you can see by clicking here, as a screen shot.

So if you are looking for an alternative to Skype certainly Gizmo looks like a good start. I have got yet to try out its many features but from what I have seen already it is more or less at the same level of Skype, if not better, since it looks like it is offering all those really good features but being an Open Source project, which makes it even more interesting. Isn’t competition a wonderful thing ? You bet !

Google Earth – The Price of Being Far Too Popular … Again!

(Migrated weblog post from LSR)

Yes, indeed, it is not the first time that we see great applications coming up from Google which are stopped from downloads just after a little while due to the huge popularity of everything Google does at the moment. And it was before with Google Desktop Search, amongst others, and this time it seems to be the turn from Google Earth.

It has been all over the place. Google Earth is supposed to be the latest Beta available gadget from Google and it will provide you this time with all the great capabilities from its search engine and different satellite images into a three-dimensional view of your favourite places on Earth, even your home. It is like doing worldwide sightseeing with a mouse click. And boy, does it work or what ?

However, folks who may not have been able to play around with it already would probably have to wait a little bit to test it out. At least, that is what is coming out of Google Earth‘s web site:

“Google Earth downloads temporarily delayed

Thanks for your interest in Google Earth, but we’re sorry we can’t offer you a download right now. As you know, Google Earth is in beta, and we’re still building out our ability to take on new users. We’re making good progress, and expect to be able to accept new downloads shortly, so we recommend you check back daily at earth.google.com. We hope to be able to welcome you and other new planet surfers soon.

We appreciate your patience,

The Google Earth Team”

However, it seems that I have been quick enough to grab a copy a play around with it and all I can see is that I am speechless. It is way cool to be able to just key in a few words and find some incredible 3D images of the places you always wanted to check out or visit for a while, even your own home town. I have given it a try with a couple of colleagues at work and we have been getting some incredible screen shots of the place where I live: Gran Canaria. I still need to get comfortable with all the different options and all, but after I get used to it I am going to share some of the screen shots that will give you a good idea of the kind of place where I live and how amazing those 3D images are. You will see what I mean when I said that I was speechless when I first used it. So if you care to find out a bit more of your favourite places or even your own home town, stay tuned for Google Earth to become available again for download and enjoy the experience ! I bet that from now on, if it didn’t happen before already with Google Maps, people would be looking a whole lot different to geography than ever before. And if not time will tell.

Now it is time to enjoy grabbing some more screen shots of my favourite places all around. So let’s keep digging !

Jardin Canario – Nature At Its Best

(Migrated weblog post from LSR)

I am not sure if you have been able to check out some of the pictures I have shared this week but one thing for sure is that this week’s (some of them) are just special. Indeed, over the weekend I went to one of the most beautiful places I have seen in the island: Jardin Canario. This is the largest botanic garden of the island and it has got some of the most beautiful flowers, plants and trees I have seen in a long while. It also features some of the most popular endemic species of the island (even from the entire Canary Islands) and it was a great pleasure to walk about for a bit over two hours. I just didn’t cover half of it, so you bet I am coming back for more one of these days or wait even till the winter time when everything will be at a much more impressive splendour still.

As I said I have already shared a number of pictures from the whole lot I took over at my Flickr account and you can also see a number of thumbnails as part of the LSR weblog template but I thought I would also share some of them here in this particular category because I do not think there is anything else so beautiful that could compete with what I saw over the weekend and if not check them out for yourself and let me know what you think:

As I go along and over the course of the next couple of weeks I will be sharing some more as well so that you get to see what wonders there are in this beautiful and relatively small island. But what a treat, eh?