The Last 48h

Stuff I found of particular interest this weekend:

  • People who want to get some perspective on the phone market (and get a real feel for the 's claimed target of ten million units) would do well to look at Nokia's quarterly figures. They estimate a 36% overall market quota and shipped 105.5 million devices in Q4'06 alone, which is... sobering. Then again, their average price is Eur.89 (I couldn't find figures for volumes of the pricier N-series devices).
  • The "hackintosh" community is alive, well and keeps doing stuff like porting Wi-Fi drivers for standard PC hardware, which is... interesting.
  • I kind of lost track of the /Pidgin controversy, but reading up on it I have to say it's kind of bizarre. Anyway, I've found to be a bit unstable on of late, mostly due to MSN users' propensity to use those awfully annoying nudges and animated images - so I've started using Windows Live Messenger at work, and it isn't half bad once you decrapify it. No tabbed windows, though, which is a pain.
  • I find Drobo very interesting (even if pricey), since I'm now replacing another Maxtor drive (with a case of the clacks) with another Toshiba drive (I don't need massive capacity, but having two identical disks means I have two identical PSUs, some redundancy, etc.). Having something I can just add/swap any disk to (regardless of size) without any hassle seems very nice indeed - time will tell if it's worth it.
  • On the apps front, I've come across , , and , set up the new Skype beta and bought myself a license for (heartily recommended).