As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’ve started using Skype a lot more frequently in the last few months. Thus, I’ve been wearing headphones a lot more. Headphones are no longer a necessity for using Skype, by the way; it works perfectly well with the Macbook’s built-in microphone. The feedback that used to plague Skype (and similar systems) in the past has been corrected by newer, more sophisticated software.
There’s still a reason to use headphones, however. First, they keep your conversation from being broadcast to everyone around you; specifically, to my co-workers. Second, they block out external noise sources so that you can focus on the caller.
In my humble opinion, the criteria for an audio/telephony headset is very different from headphones intended for music. Because the voice bandwidth transmitted is much narrower than the music that comes from a CD or an MP3, audio headsets do not need to have the frequency range of headphones for music. Because people’s voices do not go from extremely loud to extremely soft, the dynamic range of the headset does not have to be as large as that of a device intended for listening to music. Instead, what matters most for audio/voice use is clarity: can you distinguish every work in the normal, mid-range frequencies used by the human voice?
The second major criteria for judging a headset, after audio quality, is comfort. After all, you’re going to be wearing these things, sometimes for hours at a time, and they need to be comfortable.
Amazon announced the 
today; it’s a 9.7-inch (diagonal) version of their existing Kindle 2 (their second-generation eBook reader).
I lost my job for the first time in June, 2001, when the startup company I was working for at the time ceased operations. Then came 9/11, and the horrendous impact to the US economy that followed. In December, 2001, however, I was lucky enough to find a job—working on a consulting engagement in Victoria, British Columbia. At the time, I was grateful just to be getting paid, and traveling back and forth to Canada every week was a minor annoyance.
I have an 