Big Blog

The President of the United States George W. Bush visited Estonia for a bit less than a day. It’s a great honour to our country, as there are many other countries where the U.S. Presidents have never got and never might.

He’s sitting here with the Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip (right), Condoleezza Rice and other officials, discussing state matters.

As it happens on such visits, diplomats and officials exchange gifts. And while they are often just nice decorative memorabilia, Estonia decided to give President Bush a Skype phone well, he got a beautiful glass sculpture too. Ansip is holding the phone in his hand if you look really carefully. And on the other picture, you see Bush holding the gift box.

The phone in question was Philips VOIP841 cordless Skype phone that plugs straight to your Internet router, so that you can make Skype calls without ever turning a computer on. You’ll have to take my word on this one, as the exact model is not visible on the photos, but I know that was the one

I think it’s a nice symbol about the significance of Skype to Estonia. As for Bush himself, I’m not sure how badly he needs the phone. If you look at the Skype search results, he could easily be a Skype veteran. Which of them, though, is the question.

]]>And here’s today’s joke that has absolutely nothing to do with Bush but does have a lot to do with the “phone” theme

> After having dug to a depth of 100 metres last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 1000 years ago.
Not to be outdone by the Scots, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug to a depth of 200 metres and shortly after headlines in the newspapers read; English archaeologists have found traces of 2000 year old fibre-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the Scots.
One week later, Estonian newspapers reported the following:
After digging as deep as 500 Metres in Narva, Estonian scientists have found absolutely nothing. They, therefore, have concluded that 5000 years ago, Estonia’s inhabitants were already using wireless technology.