Skype hacks and Soonr

Microsoft buying Yahoo, ebay bought Skype, the world looks to be getting smaller by the day. And with less choice comes less chance to fight the rules of the big boys.

For instance, did you know that Skype users have to agree to let Skype piggy back off of their computer to route other users’ calls around the internet? The Internet Patrol read all the small print that us normal folks don’t take any notice of, and unearthed that gem.

Don’t despair, this universal interconnectivity has its advantages. It is probably very hard to break into the Skype network per se, so you can’t really over hear any wildly interesting phone conversations, but it offers some interesting possibilities. For instance, you can use conventional methods to hack into your geeky neighbor’s computer, and to find out what files really matter to them, sit quietly and wait for them to access their computer from their mobile phone via a Skype plug-in called Soonr.

There are plenty of other Skype hacks here, if you are wired that way, but beware, Skype could really screw with you and enable millions to listen in.

More from Ed about Soonr and hacking and Skype

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Microsoft to buy out Yahoo – Microhoo?

The last post was a quickie about javascript ratings scripts. After reading the rumors at eWeek that Microsoft are considering a buy out of Yahoo, I would have to rate MSFT management a big sub zero.

Microsoft is rapidly losing the search engine battle with Google and despite humungous viral and trojan marketing tactics, organic growth is not going to help them close the gap. Therefore, the only way to pay catch-up is by big check acquisitions. Enter stage left, Yahoo, number 2.0 in the search engine field.

Buying up Yahoo, numero dos in the industry, may sound like a great idea for Microsoft, but they should not go ahead with this crazy merger. The last time I looked at my stats for The Pisstakers (my main site), Yahoo provides at best one quarter the volume of Google search engine traffic. 50% of that 25% is mainly irrelevant and the 25 percentage points are dropping by the week. As my site is obviously a barometer for the whole internet, any merger, (to create Microhoo), would give MSFT an underwhelming, diminishing 30% share of the search engine market, with 10% of that producing crap results.

When you lay it out like that, paying $100bn for such mediocrity sounds like a typical MSFT investment! 100% chance it will probably happen.

If MSFT were wise, for once in their monopolistic lives, they will take the $100bn and invest $1bn in me and give the rest to charity. I will write a killer tech blog, draw a modest $50k weekly wage, and I won’t plaster Google Adsense left and right. Melinda and Bill can use their $99bn to save the world, and we will all say whatever MSFT want us to say, with a clear heart.

I got to writing this post after reading a spoof email from a guy called Andy who claimed to run MSN. He said he was closing MSN down and I needed to tell all my friends! I know, I nearly fell for it, till I realised it was probably from the guy Andy who runs Yahoo.

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