TechCrunch recently wrote about a site called Skydeck, calling it “a very basic service that marries your address book to your cell phone bill so you can see your real social network based on who you call the most”.

Their article goes into other topics such as APIs, but I was mainly interested in the core service itself (for now - I always seem to get occupied by APIs). As it was a closed beta, I had to sign up and wait for an invite code. Thankfully they seem eager to get more people using it, as I had one the next day.

Once I was registered on their site and provided the details on how to access my cell phone’s online account (that data is stored in your browser and never given to Skydeck directly), the service began importing all of my wireless phone bills through a add-on I had to install in Firefox. Due to a glitch with the add-on, I was able to watch it go to each wireless bill and open it for reading and importing. While that was not their intention, it was interesting to see.

The add-on Skydeck installs is a toolbar. I was initially not happy about having another toolbar thrown in my face, but the data it provides could be potentially useful for the heavy cell phone users. I’ll never have a use for it since my cell phone tends to see more data useage, but here is a screenshot of my toolbar:

Skydeck's Firefox Addon Toolbar

After all my wireless data was loaded, I was presented with a screen listing nearly every phone call I’ve ever made with my cell phone provider. According to them, I’ve spent a total of 8,192 minutes talking on the phone. I’m sure that’s a small number compared to cell phone addicts (like my sister).

I was also presented with a really nice search feature — something you don’t get from your wireless provider. Using their advanced search, I am able to query my call logs in a very precise manner ranging from name, incoming/outgoing call, call/sms, number dialed, date range, what bill it was on, call duration, and call charge. Doesn’t sound like they missed a thing.

Another extremely useful feature is the Address Book. If you don’t have one already on your computer or at another website (such as Plaxo), this will take time to build up. Thankfully I have the Address Book that my iPhone syncs to the OS X Address Book, so I just had to export that data as a vCard and import it directly into Skydeck. Their system automatically linked my incoming/outgoing calls with data from the address book I provided them and gave me additional data such as call volume to a specific number, whether you or your contact calls more often, and who you call the most often. Now I am not a heavy user of my cell phone, so my records indicate that I tend to call family most often, followed by my close friends. Below is a screenshot of call statistics for one of my contacts:

Sample Skydeck Stats

With all of the features that Skydeck provides, I can’t see this not taking off. There are other aspects to it that I haven’t had a chance to use yet such as the social networking portion, but I’m honestly content with what they have provided me so far!

By the way: I am interested in finding some people to test out the social network portion of Skydeck with. I appear to have the ability to send out invites to friends and family, so e-mail me: skyinvites at bradbutner dot net

Until recently I have had a switch feeding my Windows computer and Aastra VoIP phone into the back of my iMac, which would then send the data to my router over the 802.11n connection. This was a really bad way of doing things, since my Trixbox server (running on the Windows computer) lost all connections when my iMac went to sleep.

Why was I doing it this way? Because my router is on the other side of the apartment by my cable modem, and there is no cable connection in my office area. I could have run an ugly wire over to the router, but I wasn’t really interested in a blue wire going across the apartment.

Now I have had other choices to create an 802.11g connection using what companies call a “Gaming Bridge” which allows you to link two ethernet ports over a wireless connection, but I have had bad luck with those in the past and I really wanted to stay on my primary 802.11n connection.

A few days ago Apple answered my request. They have released an 802.11n version of the AirPort Express and it works just like their original 802.11g device did (before it burnt out on me in a puff of smoke). All I had to do was tell the device to connect to my .11n network and allow computers to use the connection over the built in ethernet port. I then hooked that ethernet port into a switch that feeds my Windows box and Aastra phone. That’s all it took to get them on the network!

So if you’re running an 802.11n network in the 5GHz range and want to provide network access to a room without running a bunch of wires through walls (or can’t because you’re in an apartment like me), this is a logical choice at a price of $99.

However if you are not keen on Apple products, Netgear also has a product that can perform similar actions for a slightly higher cost. The one drawback with the Netgear product is that you won’t get the same additional features (like AirTunes and USB Printer Sharing) as you will get with the AirPort Express.

If you have tested the latest addition to the labs (see: New lab added: Live Mail), you would have noticed that there is a captcha (human verification) used to protect against bots creating e-mail addresses for worldwide domination. I could have created my own captcha in PHP, but I decided to use reCAPTCHA.

What’s so special about reCAPTCHA? Well in addition to protecting your registration, comments page, e-mail address, or wiki, it also helps the Internet Archive with it’s project of scanning old books for reading and archiving. Every time you use reCAPTCHA for verification, you’re helping to correct a word that was scanned into a computer but could not be read correctly by that system’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software.

If you’re interested in helping out a great site like the Internet Archive, I’d suggest checking this out. reCAPTCHA is compatible with various development languages and web applications such as WordPress.

So the new Knight Rider movie was on last night, and I was looking forward to seeing some good action and watch KITT use some of his classic (and new) technology as he helped to take down the villian. I had accepted that they would be going away from the classic Trans Am and using Val Kilmer (odd choice) as the voice of KITT. What I didn’t expect, though I really should have, is that this was a terrible 2 hour commercial.

Ford Motor Company was the sponsor of this movie and apparently had a lot of input when it came to the cars used and the commercial break times. Not only was KITT a Ford Mustang (an extremely nice one, that is) which had the ability to morph into a cheaper silver model that fooled the bad guys every time, but the villain vehicle was a Ford Edge. Now tell me this: Why do military-like folk drive around in an Edge? If I worked for a military contractor company out to steal secrets, I’d at least be driving around in a Hummer. Cliché, but it makes more sense.

And when it came to the commercials, I almost lost it. I found myself counting the time it took to get through a commercial break and how long the movie scene lasted before the next commercial break. The worst spot was around the 1 hour mark where there was a 5 minute commercial break followed by 5 minutes of the movie. Are you kidding me? I’m not even going to touch the topic of those Ford commercials that aired right as they went into each commercial break.

Now lets turn our attention to the car itself. I will agree that the design was great they really pulled off that self healing nano-technology off, but where were the missile launchers, turbo jump, and other things that made the original KITT so awesome? All we got to see this car do was morph, heal, and go really fast. You guys underused the car, and the show is all about the car. Nice touch on the Apple keyboard in the glove compartment, though.

While this next point is really meaningless, there wasn’t enough Hoff. Sure he’s old now and has the America’s Got Talent show, but he really made that show what it was all those years ago. Do I think this commercial movie would have been better with the Hoff in more than just the final 5 minutes? Yes, I think it would have helped…as long has he didn’t take out a microphone and started singing.

Would I want to see them try and revive the series? I’d like to see them attempt, but they’d have to do a lot better than what we had last night. I do thank Ford for giving this movie a chance to be broadcast, as I’m sure it probably would have never made it without their financial backing.

And for your attempted enjoyment, but likely retreat, I present to you: Knight Rider, the movie.

Courtesy of hulu. (I have 10 invites to give away. Leave a comment with your e-mail address and I’ll send you one)

So right now there is the big news that Microsoft (MSFT) wants to buy out Yahoo (YHOO) for an unthinkable about of money. While this unholy alliance of power could tip the balance of power scales in favor of Microsoft over Google, what would become of services such as Flickr? I, along with various friends and family, rely on Flickr for off-site storage and sharing memories with each-other.

So if the merger happened, how bad could it be? Here are some possible outcomes:

• Nothing. Microsoft lets Yahoo run as they are. No end user impact.
• Login services are merged with Microsoft’s Live service and we all have to change our Flickr usernames (again).
• Yahoo is absorbed into Microsoft completely. All search, mail, and identity services become Microsoft. Yahoo Mail gets a Live Maul UI, IM services inter-operate with Live Messenger, Search functions merge into Live Search, and Flickr becomes Live Images (!).

Whatever the outcome is to this event that had all the local news channels running endless looping “reports” about Microsoft’s bid, Flickr better be left alone.