Today was a happy day for the Internet.

Skype for iPhone was released today.

When I first heard the rumors last week, I didn’t really believe them. But I was ready to be surprised in a positive way. And Skype followed through, with the download really being available Monday night in the US, ahead of the Tuesday launch.

I have many thoughts about the software itself, but I’ll let those bubble around a bit and do a post series, rather than try to vomit everything into a big post right away. But what I can say is this: Skype for iPhone is definitely more interesting than, say, Skype 4 for Windows. Not only because I will myself use it daily, but Skype is really breaking some new territory here and upping the ante in the open mobile platforms struggle.

When one app lists unrelated apps in its description, I can only conclude that it’s spam.

Just watched the iPhone OS 3.0 announcement event. Lots of good stuff. I’m looking forward to it becoming available.

The piece I found most interesting was about accessories. Namely, that you will be able to control any kind of hardware (assuming the hardware provider provides an iPhone app), either wirelessly via Bluetooth or through the Dock connector.

I sometimes stream stuff from my Apple TV through my actual TV, having the TV speakers off and listening to stuff by my wireless headphones, so I can walk around my place and still listen to a podcast or something. And I can control the playback with Apple Remote app from iPhone. It was initially weird to wrap my head around this concept, but it works totally great.

So now this accessories piece generalizes this functionality, letting iPhone become a central control device for everything in the living room and kitchen and other places in your home. I would welcome being able to control my cable box from iPhone instead of using the bad remote and ugly onscreen menus that they have.

I also found it interesting that they demonstrated an insulin reader device that plugs in to your iPhone. Traditionally consumer electronics has steered clear of medical and other critical applications, although consumer-class hardware is nevertheless used a lot in medicine (with most of it being Microsoft/Windows territory). This shift into actual health applications — not just reference encyclopedias or such, but actually interacting with your body — was an interesting move.

It was also interesting to watch the insulin reader demo because it’s a very clear example of persona- and scenario-driven design. They presented an actual persona profile and their daily scenario on the stage, which of course made me as interaction designer jump with joy because I could identify with that design method.

I’m currently working with a video camera that has FireWire output and FireWire 400 cable. But let’s say your computer only has FireWire 800 like the new Macs. And you still need to connect the camera to computer. I can haz? How?

One option is to look for new cables. But assuming you already have a spare FW800 cable that’s just sitting around, and FW400 cable that connects to camera, this would be a waste of money.

Option #2 is to realize that FireWire is a serial bus, which means you can daisy chain devices. And maybe you have something like a LaCie portable hard drive sitting around, which has both FW400 and FW800 connectors.

So what you do then, is connect your camera to hard drive, and hard drive to computer, like this:

Mac <-- FW800 --> hard drive <-- FW400 --> camera

A bit unorthodox, but does not require any extra cables and money, and works great for me.

Bruce Schneier links to an interesting paper discussing ID cards in common law countries, and why they are often perceived as negative. Summary quote:

This chapter suggests that the U.S. hostility to ID cards is based on a romantic vision of free movement, and that the English view is tied to a related concept of “the rights of Englishmen.” I then suggest that these views distract from the real issues raised by contemporary national ID plans in the common and civil-law worlds.

As the chapter elaborates, ID cards are often seen as a risk to free movement, and some people believe it leads to a police society where anyone may be stopped any time without probable cause and arrested if they don’t carry an ID.

Now, it is true that in the modern society, there is a disbalance of government and individual. The government has more resources and is more powerful, and the individual is always at a disadvantage. The above suggests that ID cards will further deepen that imbalance and give the government more control. Free movement is, of course, important, but in my view this debate misses most of the opportunities. Instead, I’d like to turn the argument on its head and ask the opposite question: could it be possible that ID cards are instead a mechanism to empower the citizens in the digital age so that they can regain some of the control they have lost?