In the past, the whole click-to-call thing seemed more like a fad and not a very usable feature. I figured most people were browsing the web or buying things online because it was so efficient and prone to fewer errors when compared to the additional human factor that comes into play when placing a phone order. And besides that, why would I interrupt the browsing session on my computer to make a phone call?

This morning, I was eating a quick breakfast before I headed out the door. I was sitting at the kitchen table, looking up some info for a wireless card for my Palm Tungsten E2. Naturally, I Googled for “tungsten e2 wifi” and here’s what came up as the result:

This is the first ad I’ve seen when searching Google on my Palm. I didn’t click on either ad link, but if I had clicked on the “Call:” link, I’m willing to bet that my mobile phone would have been connecting me to that number. (I have my Palm and mobile phone tightly interlinked through bluetooth.) Now, imagine finding a link like that while browsing the web on your mobile phone. It would be much more appealing to me to click and call someone, since that’s the primary function of that device.

I find browsing the web on my moble phone awkward, my Palm is less awkward, but I still prefer a full-fledged browser on a real computer. If I’m wrong about the functionality of clicking on a link and having the phone dial a number, it is functionality that Google and the other search engines should add.

This answered my question as to why click-to-call is around and why anybody would want to advertise with it. With approximately 40.8 million mobile phones in North America and a 12% growth rate this last year, it’s kind of exciting to think about the potential for growth that exists.

So click-to-call finally “Clicked” for me. I know I’m slow to catch on to things, but oh well, I’ve learned to deal with it.

This post by Uncle Jesse was brought to my attention today. He says that he found an article that suggested “moving the router away from the modem, and that line noise can cause significant slowdowns.” I’m going to have to give it a shot when I get home tonight and see if it helps me out. I’ll post my test results here later…

I recently acquired a Digital Rebel XTi. After patiently waiting for it to arrive, (I’ve been wanting a camera like this since Canon came out with the Digital Rebel years ago) I was a bit surprised to find that it is quite thicker than my Canon Rebel 2000 (35mm) camera. Oh well, I’m just happy I can snap away at my heart’s content and not worry about the costs of developing film.

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A link to this was posted to slashdot this morning. It’s a pretty interesting/entertaining map to read. It shows allocations of IP addresses across the IPv4 internet with unallocated blocks illustrated as grassy areas. For example, this server’s address (66.180.172.237) is in the “U.S.A” block, because it begins with a “66″.

http://xkcd.com/c195.html

When I moused over the image, it says, “For the IPv6 map just imagine the XP default desktop picture.” Which interpreted, means that much of the IPv6 address space is currently unclaimed.

On a more technical note, IPv4 uses 32 bit addresses, IPv6 uses 128 bit addresses. Here is an example of what each looks like, IPv4 - 192.168.1.101 (that address should probably look familiar), IPv6 - 30ac:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334 (this looks scary to me!) The IPv4 address space contains 4,294,967,296 addresses but the IPv6 contains 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456.

I’ve had a few people asking me about cookies recently, so I thought I’d do a quick entry here to get some answers out there.

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