cool article on TRN about using IM and your social network as a knowledge/expertise base. personally, i’d love such a thing. most folks will understand the importance of network/s/ing but move to a different country (or 2) and you REALLY begin to understand their importance. Unfortunately, folks in australia generally have a negative opinion of the word (and deed) and not many of them seem to use IM.
when i lived in london, i remember people saying how they were 2 years behind the usa internet wise. at that point i would have said maybe a year behind.
here it’s a bizarre mix. home broadband isn’t all that uncommon (though behind usa usage) but there’s not much listed on e-bay, a netflix copy has only started, there’s no last minute flight deals via email, and i can’t name one single book seller in australia that has a nice site you can order from (a la amazon). in some ways (probably b/c of the lack of population) it’s like 1996 here….