The next phase of instant messaging.

I came across an article about a website called Meebo.com, and it’s a website for instant messaging from anywhere. It’s like an Instant messenger with all the possible instant messaging programs out there combine in one place. Just log into Meebo.com and you can see all your buddies from AIM, Yahoo, and MSN etc from anywhere, there is no downloads or installs required to run it. The founders started this website in 2005 and as of today, an average of 700,000 users logins per day, and an average of 69 hours staying online for each user.

I would say that Meebo.com would become a competitor with Myspace. If they issue stock, I would buy from them because they are like Google when it first started. The founders said that there will be plenty of ways to make money from Meebo, but it hasn’t been their focus just yet; probably because they are trying to make it looks more professional, or getting more users and then start putting ads and other features up.

Making online calls private.

An article in the Mercury News on Sunday discussed about the use of VoIP (voice-over-the-Internet phone), an instrument that renders any of our calls completely private. People like hacker or even the FBI will not be able to tap our wire and listen to your conversation. The article has an interview dialog with the creator of VoIP that discussed about the advantages and disadvantages before and after 9/11.

I find that it is quite interesting about this article because it showed a controversy between privacy rights and national security. VoIP seems to be a well privacy protector, but it also can be a communication tool for terrorists. I do not know if people would value their privacy more than the lives of many people, supposed that the government find out where the terrorists will attack. In my opinion, VoIP should be put in use to secure our calls privacy from unauthorized people, but the government should get some kind of decryption software from the VoIP developer so that the government can monitor incoming and outgoing calls. I do not find it bothers me knowing that the government is listening to my calls, unless I have something to hide from them.

My vacation for the upcoming summer.

I'm so excited about my up coming vacation for summer. I'm going to Germany to attend my grandparents' 60 years of marriage anniversary. It was something I really looking forward to since the last time I visited them was 4 years ago. The air ticket is really expensive, consider that I am buying it now and it's still around $2400 for each person and we got 5 in our family. I wouldn't want to imagine how much it would be if we have to buy it on the last day. But I really can't miss my grandparents' anniversary so I'm going to go for it.