Bear Flag Republic Radio Weblog

iChat, Skype, Saving $$$ and More. Having dinged Apple in the item below, I want to note with pleasure the excellent performance of iChat AV and the iSight camera, Apple's IP video conferencing package. I used it last evening with my students at the University of Hong Kong. We chatted with my co-lecturer, Andrew Lih, who was in Shanghai meeting with some bloggers. The students were able to quiz the bloggers about their citizen-media efforts, and everything worked nicely.

Meanwhile, I've been using Skype more and more often for international calls. It just works.

Both save money. I can't imagine what it would cost to do a "normal" video conference between here and China. Skype even lets you connect from your computer to a land line or mobile phone, at a tiny additional cost -- far, far less than it would cost to call the old-fashioned way.

Apple has a not-invented-here problem, but it should consider adopting the audio technology Skype uses. I'm referring to Global IP Sound, which I wrote about earlier this year. Skype's audio quality is far superior.

Skype's bigger advantage is end-to-end encryption, which works with the instant-messaging and file-transfer systems as well as the voice calls. I spend a lot of time on wireless networks, and don't especially want people eavesdropping on my messages. Apple does no crypto in iChat, which is a big drawback. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
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Unemployed engineers in India? According to the Hindustan Times, 20% of engineers are unemployed in India. Says India doubled its engineering workforce from under 6 million to about 12 million from 1993 up to the present.

Another report, though, says India is sucking up so much outsourcing work that they do not have enough IT workers to keep salaries low. (Keep in mind that young people aged 20 to 29 in India outnumber the same group in the U.S., five to one.) Claims that rapid growth of the IT industry in India will soon result in such high salaries that India's comparative advantage of low wages, will be "cut in half" by 2007. (Funny that low wages are India's advantage - since U.S. CEOs and politicians say offshoring has nothing to do with wages - its all about "global sourcing" and finding the best talent available.)

Finally, only about 20% of U.S. jobs actually require the skills of a 4-year degree holder, according to this article. Yet according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 32% of all adults between the ages of 25 and 29 now have a 4-year degree (my own research). The thrust of the above article is that we over educating our workforce - or not putting all that education to productive use. Which means we are wasting our resources. What is needed, instead, is good quality 2-year training programs (such as those provided by community colleges), says the article. That is also the recommendation of the U.S. Department of Labor (my research).

(The linked stories originally appeared in the 11/10/04 Wall Street Journal.)
[Edward Mitchell: Common Sense Technology]
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"unlimited, low cost human resources". How India plans to "offshore" to China. [Edward Mitchell: Common Sense Technology]
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Painted Bytes offers custom iBook cases [The Macintosh News Network]
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