Skype as iPod?

It's Jeff Pulver's first WiFi air journey: on his way to Von Europe 2005 he blogged his trip from 35,000 feet.  I t seems to have gone to his head: he kicked off his keynote to the convention by calling for Niklas Zennstrom to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize.

This was a political speech; Pulver promoted the Global IP Alliance as a force for freedom, denounced the trends opposing disruption (e-911 regulation of voice over net in the US) and offered Skype as a role model for industry generally.

No, he wasn't kidding. He really wants you to write to the Nobel prize committee and offer the founders of the SIP protocol, and Zennstrom too, as candidates. "The more we can communicate, the less risk there is of conflict," he said.

Skype, he added, "has reached that moment where it is the voice equivalent of the iPod - something as geeky as voice over IP has become 'consumerable' to the point that people who don't understand it, use it."

Feel some sympathy for his fellow-passengers, trying to catch some kip on the SAS flight, as Pulver enthusiastically prowled the aisles, using Skype over WiFi over Satellite to talk to people who were still enjoying day-time in America, and demonstrating the wonders of this to people he'd never met before.

I gather the ideal noise reduction device is a Bose headset which listens to the ambient noise, and generates an inverse signal.