I took part in a podcast discussion programme on Friday. It’s quite a slick affair, and well worth a listen. Called Litopia After Dark, it’s on writing, hosted by literary agent Peter Cox. If you’re interested, this week’s discussion topics included whether social networking sites were any use to book publishers (and how publishers use their own sites), attempts by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling to block the publication of a fan-written encylopedia of her work, and whether complaints about sneaky religious bias (pro or anti) of movies and books for children like The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and The Golden Compass/Northern Lights ahould be taken seriously.

Apart from the lively discussion, what particularly caught my attention was the technology used. There were six of us taking part in the discussion, four in the UK and two in the US. We were connected on a (free) conference call using the Skype internet phone system. It worked wonderfully. There were occasional ‘after you… no, after you’ moments, but the sound was clear, headphones worked much better than a conventional phone, and there was the added benefit when you didn’t know all the speakers, that Skype highlights who is speaking at any one time.

Not what Skype was devised for, but a superb example of how this kind of technology can do much more than originally planned.

For anyone following my previous post about temporarily losing my mains electricity, I had a not too encouraging start when the engineers knocked on the door to say they couldn’t make the generator work. This is not what you want to hear about the kit that is going to keep you powered for the next two weeks. I am waiting nervously for further developments.