In this history of operating system UIs, you even get to see that the GUI for the Apple Lisa was pretty bad, but the pukalicious colors in Windows 1.0 show why graphic designers are so important if you want to sell your software.

Windows 1.0

Normally, I try to use Skype to make international calls, but that doesn’t work if I don’t have my laptop with me. Technically, you can now use Skype on an iPhone, but you really need access to wifi to use that, so it’s not much better. This is where Rebtel comes in. It has local phone numbers around the world that you can call on your cell phone that can be connected to an international phone number at a rate which is comparable to Skype. At first, this may sound a lot like using a calling card, but it actually can be much easier for numbers you call all the time, and it will let people call you back through Rebtel. To use Rebtel, you have to map each international phone number you want to call to a local number. You also have to tell Rebtell which phones you will be calling from, since another customer would have that same local number mapped to a different international number. You can map these phone numbers via their website or by calling the Rebtel operator. You can also use Rebtel to call back to your home country when you are abroad, but this means you either need a SIM card or a prepaid phone in that country, so that you won’t pay huge roaming fees.

I recently tried this out on a trip to Berlin by buying a Vodafone prepaid phone, since it would be cheaper and less scary than jailbreaking my iPhone to use a different SIM card. The Rebtel service worked as expected, but the prepaid phone was a headache. First, I got a broken phone, then my new phone took two days to activate. For this trip, I didn’t really save that much money, since I was able to use Skype from my hotel room to minimize roaming fees on my cell phone. On a previous trip, the wifi was too flaky in my room to use Skype, so it would have been much more beneficial. Unfortunately, prepaid cell phones in most European countries cost about $0.20/minute for local calls, so Skype will be cheaper as long as your Internet access is cheap.

This is on Thursday, April 9.

http://www.c4workspace.com/2009/04/c4-workspace-open-house-thursday-april-9-4-6-pm/

This  is a very cool idea for solving the huge problem of testing javascript on a plethora of browser versions.
http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-testing-does-not-scale/