One of our much-loved tools, Skype, has been down for over 24 hours.

Clearly, we’re not the only ones feeling a tad lost without it. Reports of team members rediscovering their vocal cords and others having to dig up friends’ email addresses have been flooding in. Some call centres have also come to a standstill due to the lack of Skype connectivity.

So what happens when you’re relying heavily on a tool to go about your business? What would happen if, for example, mobiles phones or search engines disappeared for a day?

We’ve taken mobile phones for granted in recent years, failing to make definitive plans when meeting up with friends, opting for the “Let’s wing it… I’ll call you when I get nearby” alternative. Texting friends throughout the day is like a lifeline for younger mobile users, and making calls while on the road are the norm for business users (with handsfree kit of course!) I mean, really… What else do you do when you’re on the train home and you find yourself at a standstill for an hour? Text your mates, call your mum or browse the web on your phone to pass the time.

As for search engines, as a blogger and hopelessly curious reader, I dare not imagine what a day would be without Google, Technorati or Wikipedia (or Wapedia often in my case!) I realise that it’s a luxury that such extensive indexes of knowledge even exist, and that I would continue to breathe and live without them, but they’ve grown to become a part of my routine. Losing this ability to find out inane trivia while on my mobile at the pub or having to use the paper classified listings to find a local plumber just wouldn’t brighten my day the way search engines do!

Maybe I’m too connected for my own good – my dad regularly says I need to go camping in the Canadian wilderness for a while to detox from technology. He does make a point, seeing as I can probably count the computer-free days of the past 10 years of my life on my fingers and toes, but some of us really love technology, gadgets and winning pub quizzes due to our infallible general knowledge of complete rubbish!

So why not dedicate your first Friday evening drink to the wonderful technologies we take for granted? And to the Skype team who probably haven’t slept much in the past 24 hours!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Mobile devices, On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.