In a county where wireless internet is becoming ever more popular, it seems like the obvious step would be to move towards technologies which take advantage of this widespread coverage. The most obvious benefit to me appears to be the use of voice over IP (VoIP).

Using handheld devices which are WiFi enabled, voice calls could easily and cheaply be routed over the internet resulting in significant savings in comparison to current mobile phone technologies. For example, in the center of Manchester wireless broadband coverage is close to 100%, and at a cost of only £10 per month would enable the subscriber to make calls for next to nothing over services such as Skype. Furthermore, as more people utilized this approach, the greater the saving as many of these services offer free VoIP to VoIP calls.

So, it sounds like the way forwards? Right? Well yes but will it happen? Probably not! Phone companies have an obvious interest in keeping mobile users on mobile telephones. The majority of handsets currently on the market do not have WiFi capabilities, or if they do often do not have the processing power to allow them to run VoIP software. Or even worse, if they do have WiFi and enough processing power, are massive and too large to be comfortably carried around.

I noticed the new Apple iPhone had WiFi capabilities and thought great, the ideas discussed above could easily be achieved… but no, unfortunately it is really quite difficult and solutions are inelegant! Shame, we could all have saved some money!

I used to love facebook; it was simple and practical. It had none of the rubbish cluttering up similar social networking sites like MySpace but now it has all gone terribly wrong.

When I logged in the other day for the first time in a couple of weeks I had about 30 requests for applications. I used to login and get one or two requests and now that is ruined by the new clutter of applications, which are pointless and are just annoying. I’m am seriously considering leaving the site completely and would think other people feel the same!

Facebook… sort it out!!!

I often travel on the M6, at least twice a month. The M6 constantly has roadworks in which they impose a speed limit of 40 mph, and is monitored by average speed checks.
I’m always amazed when I travel through these sections of roadworks by the number of people who do not understand the word “Average”. Loads of drivers acknowledge the speed cameras and slow down for just the section in which the camera is, however the average speed checks do exactly what it says on the tin!

How it works is, CCTV cameras monitoring the traffic recognise your numberplate as your enter the speed check zone and record it along with the time. Further along the route other CCTV cameras repeat this operation producing a list of times for each vehicle at each camera. The computer controlling the CCTV cameras knows the distance between each camera, and therefore can easily calculate your average speed.
So, if you enter the zone at 12.00 and leave the zone at 12.01 and the distance between each point is 1 mile, you have an average speed of 60mph.

A common misconception is that each camera takes your speed and then an average of the two is taken. This is wrong, it doesn’t matter how fast you pass the cameras. For example, you could be going at 60mph as you enter the zone and continue at this speed for 30 seconds, then drive at 20mph for 30 seconds and your average speed would still only be 40mph.

There really is no way of cheating these cameras!