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

Habit Jam Is about to Get Started – Are You Ready ?

Well, here we are, folks. Just a bit under one hour one of the biggest online shows starts: The Habitat Jam. And the main key question is that although few people have been weblogging about the event itself would you still be there to help make a difference ? I know that we are all busy with both our work and personal lives but it wouldn’t harm, I would think, to spend a few minutes every day, during the course of the event, sharing your thoughts and your ideas on ways to improve the cities we live in. Not just for now but for the near (And long term) future.

Thus if you have got a few minutes or if you think you have that brilliant idea you would want to share with the whole world, by all means, go and share it with everyone ! After all you would be contributing to the well being of our homes, our communities and, most importantly, ourselves. It is just up to us, folks.

Let’s make it happen ! See you then !

Technorati Tags : Habitat+Jam, IBM, WorldJam

New Look and Feel

As I have mentioned a couple of days back, where I stated there were going to be some changes on the way, I am happy to announce that those changes have now been completed and elsua has eventually got a new look and feel ! I got some great feedback from you folks indicating how it was becoming increasingly more difficult to load and navigate through the web site as the background would get in the way and would not allow for faster rendering of the content. So that is why I have switched from the previous WordPress theme Spirit to Journalized Sand by Mike Little.

I am now done with the customisation of the weblog itself as you will be able to see on either column (Thanks, Mike, for those tips !) and as far as I can see we are back in business. At least, I do not plan any other major change over the next few weeks. So far the feedback I have been receiving from you has been very positive and therefore will leave things as is. I may go ahead and revisit it in about 6 months time or so but as far as I can see things are back to normal.

I only have got to finish off with that validating of elsua and from there move on. But don’t worry, because I am planning to continue posting content as I may go through with that validation. Thanks much for your patience and your support while these changes have been taking place. Hopefully, they will all be for the better.

Technorati Tags : Metablogging, WordPress, Journalized+Sand

Skype 2.0 First Beta Now Available for Download

I am sure you have noticed it already, as every year the same thing seems to happen over and over again. There seems to be a tendency to go crazy and release new applications or new versions of already existing applications on a very regular basis towards year end and if in the past few days we have seen the latest version of Opera (And the Opera 9 first Preview), or FireFox (With the 1.5 release just made available yesterday) and IE 7 Beta 1 just around the corner (See /.’s article on the subject) the turn now is for Skype.

I have already upgraded both of my browsers, Opera and FireFox and have been working with them quite happily so far (Maybe I will share a couple of thoughts some time later on after I have played around with them for a little while). Just this morning, though, it was the turn for Skype, which now has got the first public Beta of Skype 2.0 (See change log over here).

There are lots of things that have changed and improved with this new Beta release but you would have to agree with me that the killer feature of them all is the one that us, Skype end-users, have been asking for quite some time now; and that is, videoconferencing, perhaps one of the most powerful collaborative environments for those folks working remotely and who would need to have a number of different remote events with other people in order to get their jobs done. Of course, I had to try it out since it has been made available for free, so I got it installed and after the initial install and basic testing of the webcam settings within a minute I was up and running ! The quality of both the video and the audio is just outstanding, as usual, and the ease of use has been improved tremendously by polishing some of the already existing features. And it is stable. For sure, highly recommended to upgrade, specially if you are looking for a much more powerful collaboration environment than just IM and VoIP.

You would remember how not so long ago I created a weblog post about Giving up on Instant Messaging, well, with this new release from Skype that is just about to become a reality because instead of having to install other plugins like Festoon or Video4IM and whatever other IM clients I got everything in one single client: Skype 2.0.

Let’s see how long before my other VoIP clients, Google Talk and Damaka, along with Gizmo Project, provide a similar kind of functionality without having to make use of third party plugins.

Technorati Tags : Instant+Messaging, VoIP, Damaka, Skype, Skype2.0, Google+Talk