Item 2: Only 2 weeks after its release, Windows 7 has the same market share (4%) that Vista had after 7 months. These numbers are based upon Web usage statistics, but they seem to confirm what everyone already knows: after a dog like Vista, anything else will look good by comparison.

Item 3: Google has expanded its free holiday wifi offer to 47 airports. And, of course, Philly International isn’t. On. The. List.

One of my favorites involves my dad. I use him whenever I discuss the Hidden Web, which is the term used to describe content that Google can’t index. My dad died in 1971, two decades before the Web was invented. A Google search for his name retrieves nothing about him. But it makes sense that he’s not in Google’s index, right? Wrong. There are at least 4 publicly-accessible databases containing info on my dad, one of which is the Ellis Island Records site. I often show students how much genealogical data I can acquire about him from just this one source.

Recently I realized that I had been focusing for years on the mechanics of finding that data, but had never seriously bothered to analyze it. His record (registration required) says that 16 year-old Domenico Giancaterino arrived in the U.S. from Penne, Italy on January 26, 1916. That was about a month before his 17th birthday, I think. (I never got a straight answer from anyone about how old he really was, so I’ll take the government’s word for it.) And that makes me wonder: did his family ship him over here to spare him from the Italian Front? I’ll never know for sure. The people who could have told me have all died. But this could be my own personal butterfly effect. If not for the First World War, Domenico might never have crossed the Atlantic in order to become Dominick. And where would that have left me?

And so it goes …

• The new owners will acquire 56% of Skype, with eBay retaining 30%. The original founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, will get  14%, plus 2 board seats for giving up the core technology behind Skype.

• Skype is valued at $2.75 billion.

• EBay will get about $2 billion from the sale when it closes sometime at the end of this year.

• One of the partners to the sale, Index Ventures, has been shoved out of the deal because of bad blood between partner Mike Volpi and Zennstrom and Friis.

The NY Times is pondering the 3 lessons from the Skype War:

1. When you buy a company, buy all of the underlying technology.
2. Litigation can create valuable leverage in deals, even if its merits are questionable.
3. Silicon Valley is a small place. Watch out for conflicts of interest (and claims of conflicts).

To which I’d add, given the sort of hardball that Zennstrom and Friis like to play, “Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.”

I love it when the plane says, “You’re gonna fit right in here,” then falls over and goes splat in the snow.

(Via Engadget.)

But we’ve ultimately learned nothing. Within a year, we plunged into the new world order of the Gulf War. Then Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans, the Second Intifada, 9/11, and the War on Terror. (What have I forgotten?)

Perhaps we should simply just enjoy the musical memories, courtesy of Jesus Jones.

This book takes a methodical and thorough approach, with step-by-step instructions and advice to fix even the worst credit record in the shortest possible time. If you have serious credit problems, you need this book.

But it looks like staff will be using iPod Touches as checkout devices. Regarding the following quote:

“Until now, the Apple Stores have used Windows CE-based handheld computers to check out your purchases. The convenience of not having to queue at a counter to pay meant that Steve Jobs has doubtless spent the last few years squirming that his company relied on a Microsoft product. Store staff weren’t too happy either. According to Apple Insider, ‘the system has drawn complaints from employees about software crashes, sluggish operation and the need to frequently reboot’.”

I concur. The last 2 times I bought something at the Ardmore Apple Store the handheld crapped out and I had to go to the register anyway. Much eye-rolling from the Apple associates as well. It was like the only thing in the store that wasn’t sleek and efficient.