David Davies' Weblog

Well whadya know, Apple's second European AppleStore opens in my home town at 6pm on April 29th, timed to coincide with the release of Tiger. Thanks to another new release in the UK, Google maps, here's how to find the new Apple store. Just so that you'll recognise the Bullring when you get to Birmingham, here's the Flickr Bullring picture gallery.

Seems I share my 40th birthday with Moore's Law. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore wrote in a 1965 article that the number of transistors on a chip (i.e computing power) would double every 24 months. Any similarity between that and my weight doubling every 24 months now I'm officially middle-aged is purely coincidental.

The BBC has a nice web site 'On this day' listing significant events on any particular date. Although according to the BBC April 19th marks the anniversary of some unfortunate events the New York Times cheered me up by reminding me I share a birthday with Jayne Mansfield. Well there's a couple of reasons to be cheerful anyway :)

Happy birthday to everyone else who's celebrating today!

Ok, so only a few more hours when I can say I'm still in my 30's. Tomorrow I hit the big 40. How do I feel? Fine. Why shouldn't I be, it's only another birthday :)

So how come I've only just found out how insanely great Skype is? Sure, I've known about it for a while but have never properly checked it out. So today I got the latest Mac OS X client, set up SkypeIn (€30pa), added some credit to my SkypeOut account (€10 gets me 500 minutes to the UK or US) and away I go! I can call just about anywhere for €0.02 per minute and anyone with a regular phone can call me! Better still, computer to computer calls are completely free. Having just got back from the States and after racking up a huge mobile phone bill, I could have really done with Skype last week. The quality is terrific, better than most regular phone calls.

My Skype ID is 'daviesda'. I have no idea if the callto://username/ URL is legit but it works for me. If you know me, Skype me and I'll give you my Skype phone number.

If you're heading out to Baltimore for the MedBiquitous Annual Conference let me know. I'm heading off there first thing. I'm giving two presentations, one in the Virtual Patients session and a second in the Content Collaboratives session.