Frank Maulit

This is for Barcelona? - Paul Denlinger

Yes, Barcelona. - Robert Scoble

Just look at the Container Ship Time Charter Assessment Index. It's down from 1 022 points in February to 416 points. - Marcel Janus

If I may be honest, I'm sick of reading how bad economy is. Heck, what is the economy? Isn't it but the sum of single business and their relations? If a single business is in trouble, then likely because it isn't producing something useful, isn't able to sell it or doesn't have the funding and the stamina to survive the dip. Maybe on the big scale it isn't that different. Maybe we weren't producing the things that we needed. Maybe we didn't build good, strong relationships. Maybe we, as a society, have become crybabies and simple lack the stamina to push through this. - Dushan Wegner

The guy at dinner that Robert mentions was Jordi Soler (@jordisoler). He's really remarkable. He's running a family-owned business that trucks containers around Europe, and is totally plugged into the web tech scene, reading all sorts of blogs, signed up to lots of services, etc. And a really nice guy. - Terry Jones

I'm the guy working at the docks. The Tweetup was excellent and I learned a lot about startups with you guys. As to the economic situation, yes, here in Barcelona times are pretty rough right now. I'm still holding up because I have a little family business, but right now big companies are suffering a lot and firing workers. Business is clearly slowing down and we can only hope that the situation recovers soon. - Jordi Soler

company I work for had a round of layoffs.. thankfully they can't trim the IT dept down any further since there's only 2 of us providing support for our global operations! - alphaxion

Ever ask someone you don't know really well - how's business? I stopped asking because the vast majority of the time all I've heard is "not bad" or "good". All around me I see signs that things aren't good. - Wayne Schulz

PeopleBrowsr FTW, that's for sure - Sociosophy Reviews via twhirl

now we need a peoplebrowsr desktop client! - sixbit

Lol Bob i dont think Larry & Sergey will be sleeping like babys...the N97 seems good competition for android in my opinion - Eldon via twhirl

Eldon, there is no, and there will be no competition in near future for Android. If you want functionality, a open world of apps, there is no alternative. When you want to have a lifestyle gadget get an iPhone. Android (which is a whole platform, not a single device) is for tech guys and Google users, not for snobs. If there are some who can sleep like a baby, it's the one from Google. There will be new Android phones, when the iPhone is already history. - Ryo

@Scobleizer I have a "disagreement" in point of view, to me, S60 application development is up to Symbian not Nokia, at least that's my take on it. Nokia develops it's own software, but they're not in the same "genre" (bad word choice) as Apple... - Sociosophy Reviews via twhirl

Sociosophy: Nokia owns Symbian now and is open sourcing it too. - Robert Scoble

Holy moly! That's huge news to me... Nokia owns Symbian? I had to jump to Google News just to verify that's so awesome. Ok, yea - Nokia needs to step their friggin game up on dev now for sure then... That's... I'm excited - Enrique Gutierrez via twhirl

@robert; But there are serious differences. Android is a real open system, a nice gui and infinite possibilities. The iPhone is a closed, very cool gui for snobs, running from a insane genius with a lot of disciples. And Symbian is simply a pile of shit. - Ryo

Androids short comings are the fact that the phone feels like a pile of under developed garbage. The iPhone has a large dev base, but once Adobe releases mobile Flash & god forbid AIR, that game is up. Symbian needs work, but if anyone can make an improvement, it's Nokia - Enrique Gutierrez via twhirl

Aren't we all too focused on the US? Mobile phones are fast proliferating in other parts of the world where Nokia has a strong base and market share.I believe that means a strong Symbian developer base too? Thinking aloud... - kamla bhatt

Kamla: It's been that way forever too. Back in the early 2000's GSM was all the rage with 140+ countries adopting the technology, partly due to poor land line services. Nokia's been ahead of the curve (globally) for ages. - Sociosophy Reviews via twhirl

It's true Nokia has a massive footprint. But many people who have even the S60 smartphones don't even know how to install apps, and you can forget about the S40 users :-). - sixbit

sixbit: I'm assuming you've never used the Nokia Application Installer via PC Suite or Ovi? It's mindless and fast. Also, apps can be installed from the phone-based browser. - Sociosophy Reviews

@ryo I couldn't agree more with you. Apple has done a great job with making apps available but Apple's characteristics limitations restrict it from achieving it's true potential. Android on the other hand has limitless possibilities which will only truly be displayed from 2010 onwards when a lot more devices start coming out without necessarily outdating current gen Android devices. - Bhavishya Kanjhan

Pogue also posted an update about reader response (can't paste the link from my iPhone...). He prints lots of comments from readers who agree with his review, none from those who don't, then uses a few crackpot comments to make a "BlackBerry nuts" jibe. Seems like he has an axe to grind... - Jules

I think he's got a point though - Have both? Cup of drink in one hand, which can you pick out a single song from a list of hundreds quicker on with the other hand? Wheel or touch? - Chris Weiss via twhirl

If there's one thing Pogue hates, it's criticism. No one likes it, but he goes to great lengths to refute it. - Veronica

Chris, frankly the scroll wheel tires the heck out of my thumb. I've found that I can find songs faster on the touch/iPhone. - Veronica

I was surprised to see that the readers agreed with Pogue about his review. As soon as I saw Gruber's post, I thought there would be a RIM riot, but nope. - Larry Hudson

I'm sure the ones he picked were a little skewed. - Veronica

It probably has to do with enclosures in the RSS feed. - Jason Huebel

I'd like to know also, if you get a chance - Tom Mack

If the audio is in the feed, FF will put the player in itself. I have my Utterz feed listed in FF, and when I leave an audio post FF puts that little player in too. - Ciaoenrico

Please change "Steve Gibson's comments" to "Steve Gillmor's comments" on the description page for this episode. :) - Dr. Apps via twhirl

Rest in peace Pownce... - Kyle DeFacis

Really nce discussion of Friend Feed - Nice Fish Films

Google Reader got an interface update too. Its like Christmas on the internet. - Nathan Gilmer

Sweet, that must mean that version 2.7 is imminent. - Mark Krynsky

Played around with 2.7 a bit on WP.com and really looking forward to the WP.org release. Nervous about upgrading though with all the plugins and all. - Graham English

They had a countdown to roll-out, too! Hey Robert. :) - Mona N.

I'm also really looking forward to the 2.7 release on WP.org. Ditto the concerns of Graham on upgrading though especially since the Podpress plugin already doesn't really support the current version. - Phill Ramey