Is technology still moving forward?

One can find these signs in various locations throught Norwalk, CT. Every time I see one of these signs, I wonder who these kids are. My guess is that they're old enough to understand the concept of driving but are too young to have their drivers license. Once you get that little piece of identification in your hand, any protest you have against speeding goes right out the window.


Let's talk about Google Talk. Did we really need this? Is there not enough instant messaging service out there? Was there a demographic whose IMing needs were not being met by the likes of AIM and Yahoo Messenger? What ever happened to progress? Where's my Google jet pack? Now there would have been cause for celebration.

Don't get me wrong. I think Google is awesome. I LOVE my gmail. Hold on. Let me see how much memory I'm up to... 2.528 GIGS. Of that amount of space, I'm using 236 megs. I never knew the day would come when I would realize this but it turns out I'm a gluton for megabytes. Whoopi.

So google is wonderful but I think they're running out of ideas. We didn't need a new IM service. However, I must admit that I have used it now. My two mac geek buddies, Tim & Matt, both asked me if I was on it in the last 2 days so I connected to it.

First of all, you can only use google talk if you have a gmail account. If you're using a pc, you can go here and download the google talk program. If you're on a mac like me, you can't do this because google has not yet created their messenger program to work with the mac. However, you can use Mac's iChat program to connect to google's talk service using Jabber. For those of you wanting to know what Jabber is, feel free to google it. I don't know what Jabber is and as I'm a man of 32 years, I'm convinced it will never add any significant value to my life to make it worth finding out. What I will tell you is that because of Jabber, I was able to add another instant messaging service to my computer that I did not need. Whoopi. (I seem to be big on the "whoopis" today. Just to be clear, I'm pronouncing it Whoo - pi and not Whoop - i like you would say Whoopi Goldberg)

So anyway, I have used the Google Talk service using iChat and it seems to work fine. Your gmail account is your screen name. It's fairly seemless but it seems to be a little tricky when you add someone to your buddy list for the first time. Apparently, the person you want to add to your buddy list is required to authorize you. Just so you know, Matt and I did video chat using iChat and it worked just as well as if we were using AIMs service inside of iChat.

Now that I think about it, I guess this new google service serves a purpose. Should AOL's servers die tomorrow, I would still be able to video chat with a guy who lives 15 minutes away. For that, I say thank you google.

So that's it. I thought I had a couple other examples of how technology is not moving forward but I can't remember what they were. Me and the misses are off to play a little tennis. See you later.

Dave