Ideas

why google earth IF you can put your emaillist as link to tel numbers too? You know whenyour openng your messanger or gmail...instead of opening another window for Google earth...simply click the name list... at least they know they are under your list. If you mean random selection on goodle earth that anyone can dial...i can see some security and privacy issue. Imagine if one is not listed and got a ramdom call in the wee hours of the night?

PeteC, the thing that I missed when I first read this idea was the fact (I think) that GoogleEarth displays an irritating amount of clutter unless you turn that feature off. I think that's where the phone numbers are, and I don't see them because I don't want to.

Having said that, I think I understand your idea now. The autodial seems like a smart idea, though % of people using skype is probably still pretty small? Still, a potentially expanding market.

Just like a Contact hyperlink which automatically opens an email window, only for phones.

Maybe you could have an app which gives the user a choice of emailing or phoning. Then you are on the ground running with people using the email version while you wait for the skype user base to grow.

Now how do you wrest this away from google? Seems you would have to create your own database instead of using their maps??? But I could be wrong about that, people seem to be able to freely use google stuff, I "think".

If you could address that last para I would understand your commercial proposition better. Thx.

I don't dislike the idea. It doesn't seem like something difficult in a tech sense, but boy you have WEIRD dreams :-)
Tommy

I like the idea of a 'hyperlink' system that recognises any phone number and allows you to autodial it more than I like the idea of tying yourself down to Google Maps, but with that it's a good idea!

Is this not pretty much implemented with the callto: html tag?

ahhh, I am so lazy that I can't even dial the numbers of the people I am calling.....My fingers must hurt so much from all the time I spend online....

i would do it at the OS level rather than trying to constrain it through the browser. Check out a program called "anagram" for windows- it's a useful add-on that lets you scrape contact info from a block of text and turn it into a contact or event for use in Outlook/Palm Desktop. they handle this at the OS level though so it work in any program (word, text pad, etc).

sean