Ultralab have a group of students in the lab each Wednesday from King Edward VI Grammar School. These students, from the sixth form centre spend their time at Ultralab looking at new and emerging technologies and software. Yesterday we explored Plone, the free open source content management software framework.

I got talking to Dan about Skype, the free IP telephone service which allows computer (hooked up to the Internet) to call for free other internet connected computers for free voice calls.

Skype has the capabilities to allow a user of its service to telephone a standard telephone or mobile phone on the world telephone network by buying talktime credit from Skype. If I was to call a house in India Skype would route as much of the call as it can through the Internet, and then route the rest of the call through the Indian telephone network, so basically I end up paying local call rates for making an international call. Skype to Skype calls remain free.

So, Skype is great, but what about if Auntie Jenny who’s 87 living in a bungalow in Skegness wants to call her internet ready Grandson Melvin logged in and ready on Skype in Stoke? Basically, she cant. Melvin can phone Granny, but Granny cant phone Melvin (unless she dials telephone to telephone).

Getting back to what Dan showed me yesterday, there is now a new free service which when you sign up you are allocated a telephone number of your area code choice.

This now means that Granny can telephone Melvin, and Melvin’s computer can answer the call.

Melvin can also phone Granny, buying 1000 minutes of talktime for about £5.

But, the best bit about it is that Melvin can request a telephone number in the same region his Gran lives. This means that when Granny phones Melvin, or Melvin phones Granny, it only costs local rate.

I’ve signed up, and my new telephone number to telephone my computer is …. 01376 388014 - go on, pick up the phone, dial it, you’ll get through to my Apple Powerbook, wherever I am in the world! - Don’t forget that you’ll be paying the call, not me!

Effectively this now means that wherever I am in the world, this telephone number will come with me, and will only cost a local call rate for my family to call me!

Oh, and did I mention that it is free to be allocated a number, and no line rental!

….and that you can get a number for many countries around the world….so if you live in England and your family are in Australia, you could get yourself an Australian number, and the family would only pay local call rates to call you.

Is this the start of the end of telephone call costs on the standard phone network? Will Skype offer a similar service soon? I hope so! My diagram (above, left) demonstrates how my telephone number can follow me with my computer, and integrate with the rest of the worlds telephone network.

To sign up, go to: Sipgate and once logged in you need to download X-Lite within the Sipgate site.

And when you’ve done, give me a call, leave a message on my answerphone, which I’m still trying to work out how it works….

01376 388014

===UPDATE

Pete Bradshaw just phoned my computer from a mobile phone, and it was very crackly, but I could clearly hear what he was saying, I’d be interested in anyones opinions on Sipgate and especially the quality of the sound you are experiencing.

X-lite software has big HCI issues - and needs to integrate with Apple Address Book, but it does not. I get frustrated at having no clear way of storing the number of someone who has just phoned me.

02 Mobile Phones do not seem to be able to call the number of my computer.

Malcolm Moss phoned from Skype using his Skype credit, it was clearer than talking to Pete earlier, who was on a mobile telephone.

As I head into week number 10, I’ve lost just 1lb during the past seven days of the “I’m not on a diet” weight-loss programme. I weighed myself yesterday, so this is Monday’s weight. See my weight-loss chart.

In the past seven days I’ve been REALLY bad, but I’ve still lost a pound, which is great!

Here is what I burnt in the gym in the last week:

• Wednesday: 656 Calories (45 mins) - Crosstrek Machine
• Friday: 918 Calories (65 mins) - Crosstrek Machine
• Sunday 0 Calories (0 mins) - Went out for the day

Thursday evening we went out for a meal at ‘The Harvester’ in Chelmsford and I had chicken, sticky ribs and chips. On Saturday night I ate a huge plate of Chinese and on Sunday at my cousins farm in Suffolk, I had a massive lamb dinner followed by a huge portion of toffee cheesecake.

Sins over, it was Easter weekend, with three Birthdays! Back to the plan…..

I’ve been playing with .mac from Apple. I’m a heavy Mac user and was keen to explore the extra features .mac customer have when opening a £69 a year .mac account. I’ve signed up for the trial and am exploring the features, I’ think it is pretty good, but I also think that it is overpriced and I doubt I will actually go ahead with the membership. If .mac cost £29 a year, then I’d sign up.

One great thing about .mac is its integration with iMovie and iPhoto. From the iMovie and iPhoto applications you are able at the click of a button to send your movie or photo’s straight to your server space at .mac. Here is a export I made from my version of iPhoto to my demo space on .mac: The Day it Snowed at Ultralab (.mac). If nothing happened when you clicked the link then the chances are my 60 days .mac membership have expired and Apple have cleared my stuff from the server, this also means that I did not sign up for .mac.
So I’ve been looking for alternatives to .mac and I’ve come up with some ideas.

I’m lucky to have a server on my desk at Ultralab called ‘Captain Birdseye’. The server is called ‘Captain Birdseye’ because it hosts the Lifeboats.TV website for the RNLI.

This Weblog is run off of the ‘Captain Birdseye’ server too.

I’m effectively able to connect to ‘Captain Birdseye’ from my PowerBook computer and transfer information in the same way as I would in connecting to Apple and accessing my webspace on .mac

So, I can backup to ‘Birdseye’, so I’m not needing the 250meg’s of space .mac offers me.

I guess I could also move my photo’s onto ‘Birdseye’ after exporting from iPhoto? Well I could, but I hate the default export to website template offered by iPhoto, I’m sure it is boring in order for people to take up .mac membership and enjoy a load of great templates from .mac?

So what I now need is a programme or application which works with iPhoto in order to deliver my photographs to a webpate in an interesting way which is better than the default template set as standard within iPhoto.

Ultralab’s Technical Genius, Neil Boughen showed me today an application called Galerie. Galerie is a fantastic free application which does exactly what I need it to do. The application works with iPhoto, meaning any photo’s I select in my iPhoto window, Galerie will work with to make into an interesting series of webpages.

Here is a screengrab of Galerie in action:

But this is of course no help to someone without a server at work. .mac rocks and if I had a spare £69 I’d buy a iShuffle. Come on Apple, lower the price!

Of course, I conclude that .mac is the simple and easy option, fast, clean and effective, but the price still puts me off.
I love Galerie, cheers for showing it to us Neil. Here is what it did with my snow pictures!.

….seem to not check very hard.

Read and enjoy the following articles:

The Credit Card Prank

The Credit Card Prank Part II

Excellent - I should try that before chip and pin comes out

Extract: Since my local supermarket had one of these electronic screens, it was the easiest place to try my experiments. First, I had to see if the cashier was even watching, so I signed it “My butt.”

Turnpike is another excellent experiment carried out by the same author.

Today I was part of a Skype IP telephone conference with Ultralab’s Malcolm Moss, Graham Hart and Hal MacLean on future marketing tools for Ultraversity, our radical new online degree for people fully occupied by full time employment.

Skype allows us to make a telephone call through the Internet for free.

While talking together we also all connected to a document in SubEthaEdit.

The result was 4 people talking together through Skype (running in the background) over the Internet while editing a document together (in the foreground). I’ve blurred what we were writing together in the following picture, but you can see the different colours demonstrate the different editors of the document:

We see every key-press live as it is typed by any of the users.

I think this is a great combination for two excellent applications. A brainy person at Skype or SubEthaEdit would arrange a meeting with their equivalent at Skype or SubEthaEdit to organise the integration of these products.

Skype is cross platform and SubEthaEdit works on the Mac only, another great reason to put that PC in a skip and go buy a Mac mini.

As I head into week 9, I’ve lost 3 and a 1/2 lb during the past seven days of the “I’m not on a diet” weight-loss programme. See my weight-loss chart.

I’ve not eaten anything I should not have eaten in the past week, and I’ve been drinking lots and lots of water. In week 7 I failed to drink enough water and only lost 1lb.

Here is what I burnt in the gym in the last week:

• Wednesday: 550 Calories (35 mins)
• Friday: 517 Calories (35 mins)
• Sunday 1100 Calories (70 mins)

Last Thursday I drank a medium sized Banana Milkshake from McDonald’s - and still lost weight. So it is OK to sometimes break the rules, but only a little bit, and at irregular times.

Diets do not work, I’m not on a diet. 19 and a 1/2 lb lost in 8 weeks leaving a remaining target of 8 and a 1/2lb to lose by July.

Being a Friday I headed down to Subway Sandwich Bar in Chelmsford. I’ve had a subway in Canada, New Zealand and the States and was very pleased when Subway opened in Chelmsford.

Today I had my best Subway in the world ever.

The staff were all very friendly, the service was very fast and the sandwich was totally and utterly excellent (they are doing buy one get one free today!). Always loads of filling, all the stuff is fresh, it looks good, it tastes great!

I’ve eaten at a lot of sandwich shops over the past eight years in Chelmsford, and although I was not a fan of Subway Chelmsford (in comparison with Subway’s in New Zealand/Canada) when they first opened….I’ve got to shout out at just how good that branch is now! I’m going to say Best sandwich in Chelmsford!.

So, Subway Chelmsford, happy birthday and keep up the excellent lunch, I’m a loyal and hungry fan.

Subway Chelmsford Website.

Today Gordon Brown announced the new national budget, two months before the UK General Election, which could result in a change in Government.

Read the BBC Report (Brown targets OAPs and homebuyers).

I’ve been listening to the report via the BBC News website as it went out live.

I’m a non home owner. In the past two years I’ve watched the prices of houses in the town I live, nearly double. As you will understand, my vote will be for any party that does what it can to lower the prices of UK housing to match against annual income. I’m not interested in the silly part ownership schemes the Government keep coming up with.

I want to buy a house, but prices are well out of my reach, unless I want a one bedroom tiny property for about £100,000. Sorry, no I don’t, especially as prices will continue to rise, and if there was a price crash, I’d be stuck in a small place, paying a high mortgage in a position where it would be impossible to sell, and if I did, I’d be paying off for something I do not own.

Gordon Brown has altered Stamp Duty charges on properties up to the value of £120,000 - the charge is waved up to this figure. The figure was previously £60,000. Not enough.

Houses in Essex start at about £140,000 for a good sized 2 bedroom property. Great, so this new budget change is no good to me then! - Unless of course the house prices close to the £120,000 mark are lowered to £120,000 to target buyers like me. Sadly greedy estate agents are not budging on the lower of prices, and greedy money lenders are not pushing for an increase in interest rates.

I could not believe it when the The AA telephoned me yesterday to ask if I wanted to borrow money from them.

So why are interest rates and stamp duties not charged regionally? My nextdoor neighbour (roughly my age) has moved away 100 miles into a region where house prices are affordable for her. She has had to move her job, leave her family and start life a long way from home. Some might say this is a good thing, but if we all migrate North, will there be enough jobs for us there?

Labour do not do enough for first time buyers in the Eastern Region.

What it needs if for First Time buyers to stop buying altogether and stop taking the silly offers of 20% ownership, and 80% rent on properties.

This is my own personal opinio

At Ultralab we’ve been working together to test Marratech.

We’ve had 8 people online today.

The software is very good, although I think the price is its only major downfall. As a not-for-profit organisation, doing common good work to improve education through new and emerging technologies, we would not be able to justify the high implementation cost for this software.

We had eight people comfortably using the software, two in Scotland, six in Essex.

Read my earlier review of Marratech here.

As I head into week 8, I’ve only lost 1lb during the past seven days of the “I’m not on a diet” weight-loss programme. See my weight-loss chart.

I’ve not eaten anything I should not have eaten for two weeks now, but I’ve not been drinking the 2 litres of water everyday, since Tesco has stopped the buy 1 get 1 free offer on Danone water.

Here is what I burnt in the last week:

• Wednesday: 500 Calories (35 mins)
• Friday: 500 Calories (35 mins)
• Sunday 1000 Calories (65 mins)

So has the weight-loss slowed down? I’m going to go out and buy some water!

Diets do not work, I’m not on a diet. 16lb lost, 12lb to go.