Eideard

Turns out we aren’t that different from other apes after all. Our primate cousins at a handful of zoos love to use iPads to combat boredom just as much as humans. Zookeepers say that the device is perfect for orangutans, and many have been taking part in guided touchscreen interactions with all sorts of apps, including music, games, movies, cartoons, art, painting, drawing, photos and videos.

The orangutans have been playing with the iPads for the past several months, and now a U.S. charity is hoping to round up more of the tablets so the apes can Skype with orangutans at other zoos.

“They like many of the free apps that I think children would like – they like the free apps where you can fingerpaint, they like the apps where you can use the drums,” says Trish Khan, Milwaukee County Zoo’s orangutan keeper. The iPads help provide a little extra enrichment, physical and mental stimulation for the apes living in captivity….

The group’s Richard Zimmerman told the BBC they’re not yet comfortable just handing the tablets over to the apes, even with a protective cover. “As soon as we hand them over to the orangutans, we figure the lifespan could be as little as 15 seconds – whether they meticulously take them apart or just snap them in half.”

Some possible solutions include developing a new protective case or affixing the iPad to a wall – the image from the tablet could then be projected elsewhere for zoo visitors to watch.

Orangutan Outreach is accepting donations of cash or gently used iPads to get more tablets in the hands of apes and their zookeepers.

The event reminder on Melissa Weinblatt’s iPhone buzzed: 15 minutes till her shrink appointment.

She mixed herself a mojito, added a sprig of mint, put on her sunglasses and headed outside to her friend’s pool. Settling into a lounge chair, she tapped the Skype app on her phone. Hundreds of miles away, her face popped up on her therapist’s computer monitor; he smiled back on her phone’s screen.

She took a sip of her cocktail. The session began.

Ms. Weinblatt, a 30-year-old high school teacher in Oregon, used to be in treatment the conventional way — with face-to-face office appointments. Now, with her new doctor, she said: “I can have a Skype therapy session with my morning coffee or before a night on the town with the girls. I can take a break from shopping for a session. I took my doctor with me through three states this summer..!”

Since telepsychiatry was introduced decades ago, video conferencing has been an increasingly accepted way to reach patients in hospitals, prisons, veterans’ health care facilities and rural clinics — all supervised sites.

But today Skype, and encrypted digital software through third-party sites like CaliforniaLiveVisit.com, have made online private practice accessible for a broader swath of patients, including those who shun office treatment or who simply like the convenience of therapy on the fly…

Still, opportunities for exploitation, especially by those with sketchy credentials, are rife. Solo providers who hang out virtual shingles are a growing phenomenon…

Other questions abound. How should insurance reimburse online therapy? Is the therapist complying with licensing laws that govern practice in different states? Are videoconferencing sessions recorded? Hack-proof?

Another draw and danger of online therapy: anonymity. Many people avoid treatment for reasons of shame or privacy. Some online therapists do not require patients to fully identify themselves. What if those patients have breakdowns? How can the therapist get emergency help to an anonymous patient? “A lot of patients start therapy and feel worse before they feel better,” noted Marlene M. Maheu, founder of the TeleMental Health Institute, which trains providers and who has served on task forces to address these questions. “It’s more complex than people imagine. A provider’s Web site may say, ‘I won’t deal with patients who are feeling suicidal.’ But it’s our job to assess patients, not to ask them to self-diagnose.” She practices online therapy, but advocates consumer protections and rigorous training of therapists.

RTFA. Some of it is hilarious. Yes, I realize we’re discussing mostly legitimate needs and mostly legitimate practices designed to sort them.

If I didn’t have so much fun blogging I might wander into the shrink-wrapped Skype therapy trade. Though I’d hate the record-keeping required to keep the IRS and insurance companies happy.

Britain’s most senior family judge has overturned a man’s attempts to stop his children emigrating to Australia with their mother – saything they can keep in touch by Skype.

Sir Nicholas Wall, President of the High Court Family Division, refused to block plans by the man’s former lover to start a new life on the other side of the world saying it was in her two young children’s “best interests”.

He heard how the woman, who cannot be identified, had become “isolated, trapped and depressed” in Britain and that the children were keen to go with her.

But the children’s father argued that their departure would destroy the “embryonic” relationship he has with them.

Whilst accepting that the man’s objections “came from the heart”, Sir Nicholas said it would be “plainly wrong” to block the woman’s chance of a new life.

Although he “did not minimise” the man’s objections, he added that the age of instant online communication including Skype – the voice and video call software – meant that the children’s move did not mean the end of the relationship with their father…

Har! Modern reality offers an alternative direction to jurisprudence.

I wonder what other decisions might be affected in this manner?

You’ve heard of a long distance relationship but what about a long distance marriage? And by marriage, we mean the ceremony, not the subsequent relationship.

We all know how useful Skype can be for maintaining relationships that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. However, a couple in Texas took things to the next level by getting married over Skype. Though a Skype wedding is pretty remarkable in itself, there’s something else extraordinary about this marriage ceremony: It is the first legal same-sex wedding in Texas.

Mark Reed and Dante Walkup had been together ten years when they decided it was high time they tied the knot. Unfortunately, though they wanted nothing more than to get married in their native Texas, theirs is a state that does not legally allow same-sex couples to marry. However, Reed and Walkup were not to be deterred and the two came up with a way to have a legal wedding without flying family and friends to another state.

Jay Morris writes that the couple traveled to Washington D.C. back in May to receive their certificate of marriage. Fast forward five months and the two were married in Texas, with a D.C. official (accompanied by several witnesses) marrying them via Skype.

Bravo, Mark and Dante.

Take it one more step around the nutball reactionaries and the homophobic government of Texas.

A Muslim man who told his wife “I divorce thee” three times in an online Skype messenger conversation has been told the separation stands.

The ruling, made in an online fatwa by the Darul Uloom Deobandi seminary in northern India, regarded as one of Islam’s leading authorities on religious law said that the woman would have to first marry another man before she could remarry her first husband.

The man, from Qatar, wrote to the seminary following his Skype joke to seek clarification.

“Jokingly typed ‘talak, talak, talak’ (I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee) to my wife on Skype chat. I don’t understand Islam very much and did not know about how talaq works. We love each other very much and want to be together but right now [we are] caught in this thing. Want to know a way out,” he wrote.

His hopes of a “way out” were dashed when the seminary issued a fatwa confirming his wife must first remarry another man, consummate the marriage, and then divorce him before she could be allowed to remarry her first husband.

“When you gave three talaqs, your wife became “haram” (forbidden) for you. Neither you have the right to take her back nor solemnise a new “nikah” (marriage) without a valid “halalah” (second marriage). After the completion of “iddah” (a three month waiting period following a divorce), the woman can marry whomever she wishes except you,” the fatwa stated.

Har! Or he could just tell the Imam and his Fatwa to screw off – and live a perfectly happy life.

I know, I know. He isn’t any more likely to do that than an Orthodox Jew or a Catholic.

Previous studies have found that the vast majority of published psychological research in the United States is based on American samples and excludes 95 percent of the world’s population. Yet, these results are often generalized and taken as universal.

When University of Missouri doctoral student Reid Trotter examined perfectionism and coping methods in Taiwanese culture for his dissertation, he decided to collaborate with a graduate student in Taiwan. From their collaboration, they found that models of perfectionism and coping were not universal. Trotter hopes his experience will encourage more researchers to develop cross-cultural relationships.

“In general, there has been very little cross-cultural research in the United States,” Trotter said. “This has resulted in an insufficient understanding of the psychological functioning of the human species. Cross-cultural research requires developing a relationship with a member of the culture in which you plan to study. This relationship will help researchers address possible cultural blind spots that may unintentionally weaken the study.”

Previously, geographical barriers limited researchers’ ability to develop these relationships. Now, technology, such as Skype, can help scholars facilitate communication and work through possible cultural misunderstandings.

“Cross-cultural relationships require trust and respect and should be collaborative instead of hierarchical,” said Puncky Heppner, professor of educational, school and counseling psychology in the MU College of Education. “Researchers need to be aware if they are coming across as condescending in another culture and realize they are examining a culture with their own glasses that may tint a situation blue, whereas other glasses may tint a situation yellow.”

Overdue.

American researchers face a horde of parochial fences of their own creation, limitations built into systems by funding, departmental competition, scholarly history.

Skype has forged deals with consumer electronics makers LG Electronics and Panasonic in a bid to move its Internet video service beyond the desktop computer to the living room TV.

The service, which includes free video calls between Skype members, will compete with consumer video conference services being developed by bigger companies such as networking giant Cisco Systems Inc and Polycom Inc, which plans to develop consumer video services with International Business Machines Corp.

Skype…said both LG and Panasonic will have high-definition TVs supporting its service around mid-year.

Both television makers will embed the Skype technology in television models with Internet connections and will sell separate Web cameras that have built in microphones for television viewers who want to use Skype…

Skype also plans to announce support for high-definition video services on computers at the technology show, including partnerships with makers of high-definition Web camera suppliers faceVsion and In Store Solutions. High-definition Skype services will work on computers with a 1.8 Gigahertz processor and a high-speed broadband connection of about 1 megabits per second upward, Skype said.

We have pretty regular conversations via Skype video, already. I must admit it would be pretty cool to turn to the TV set in the living room and have it call my father-in-law on the road somewhere around the country in his 5th-wheeler.

I just hope the tech is rolling out at the consumer end early enough. I plan on buying a new TV set by the time of the World Cup.

Still have a landline at the White House?

The percentage of cell phone-only households has hit 20.2 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pushing past the percentage of homes that are only connected by landlines for the first time.

The results, part of the CDC’s semi-annual health survey, reflect the rise of cell phone use and the growing pattern of “cord-cutting” by residential home phone users. Wireless-only homes have grown from 7.3 percent in the first half of 2005 to just over 20 percent in the second half of 2008. From the previous survey, that figure jumped 2.7 percentage points, the largest 6-month increase since the survey started in 2003.

Another 14.5 percent or one of every seven American homes, received all or almost all calls on their cell phones even though they have a landline at home. That means more than 1/3 of people rely almost entirely on cell phones.

But while cell phones are increasingly the way people call from home, even when they have a landline, the venerable landline keeps dying. Landline-only homes have slipped from 34.4 percent in the first half of 2005 to 17.4 percent now.

I imagine a number of those leaving landlines have added VOIP either through their computers or directly to their broadband connection.

My wife and I both have pay-as-you-go cell phones to handle situations where one of us might not have VOIP access.

IPhone users will be able to make free phone calls from today as Skype becomes available for the first time on the popular Apple gadget.

Skype, the internet telephone unit of eBay, has more than 450 million registered users. It has been pushing to make its service available on “smart-phones” – such as the iPhone – rather than only desktop computers. As with the Skype service on PCs, phone calls will be free between Skype users and calls to other landlines and mobiles will cost less than normal network rates.

Scott Durchslag, Skype’s chief operating officer, said: “There’s a pent-up demand. Skype software for the iPhone has been the No 1 request among our users.”

Skype also said that its service would be available on millions of BlackBerry phones in May. It has already announced Skype for Nokia phones, as well as handsets that run on Google’s “Android” software for mobiles such as the T-Mobile G1, and Windows Mobile phones.

Telephone companies continue their death spiral. They deserve it.

If you’ve ever seen a Mafia movie, you know that playing nice with the mob is like having the tiger by the tail. It is no different for companies who do business in China, whether on their own or through partnerships. The latest one to experience the downside of this is eBay’s Skype, which has been taking some flack for privacy breaches in the region.

Citizen Lab, an Internet research group at the University of Toronto, released a report that shows text messages of Chinese Skype users were monitored and their messages blocked if they included political words such as the Chinese Communist Party, the Falun Gong, Tibet, and the great milk scandal. As a quick background, Skype and TOM teamed up in 2004 and in 2005 released a special software version, TOM-Skype. Since then Chinese users — some 69 million of them — have become a major part, roughly 20 percent, of Skype’s total install base of 338 million.

The report got so much attention that last evening Skype decided to respond. In a blog post, Josh Silverman (Check out my interview with Josh) tries to defend Skype and downplay its role in the China fracas:

Read the details of Om’s analysis. It ain’t long. It is cogent.

Seriously guys, these compromises are routine and will likely be commonplace. For for-profit entities (despite their slogans), China is a big, growth market and the promise of millions in future profits keeps them from making the right decisions for their shareholders. Sad, but true!

As political as I am, commerce is part of a whole equation involving nations and governments. History is another factor that I’m certain is automatic on Om’s part – as it is mine. Some cultures, many individuals, grow and learn to account for every reason why policies are what they are – and will change.

Whining isn’t good enough.