Yahoo blocked third party instant messenger applications from using their network yet again, something that all three of the locked-in networks seem to do with monotonous regularity and futility.

As Jeremy Zawodny (a Yahoo employee) pointed out this is a fundamentally pointless exercise, with significant echos of the major failings of DRM, in that the blockage gets worked around quickly and the temporary inconvience also actively encourages people to leave Yahoo as their IM of choice. In fact, Trillian users can already get around the block by getting a new patched version of the popular client. Neil Turner reports that the Gaim client and Jabber gateways were also not significantly inconvenienced by the blocking. It makes you wonder why Yahoo bothered with the exercise.

So I was reading Nokia: The Inside Story on the train this morning - an interesting but rather dry account of Nokia's history - when at the top of page 129 I saw:

On July 1, 1991 Europe's first GSM network, supplied by Nokia, will be inaugurated.

Thirteen years is a long time in technology terms, during which GSM phones have gone from suitcase sized to shirt pocketable. In this period over 1 billion people have become GSM users and 700 networks provide them with telephony. Truly a revolution.

The first 3G networks went live almost two years ago, so arguably we have another 3-4 years before they become as ubiquitous as GSM and 8-9 before they start looking old hat, or do we?

I've written more about GSM's birthday on Mobitopia - thanks to Glass for the Finnish translation of Happy Birthday GSM to the formidable Hyvää Syntymäpäivää GSM!