A long-overdue update on Talkr

My apologies to folks that use (or are simply interested in) Talkr. Over the past two months, the service has had several outages, and has provided a complete lack of new functionality. I'd like to make a confession in this post, and then give you a general update on the site.

First, the confession -- if you envision Talkr as a hip, venture-backed Silicon Valley startup, complete with chefs, foozball and offices, you will probably be sorely disappointed. (Don't get me wrong, of course, Talkr _is_ hip.) ;-) Talkr has to this point been the work of one person (me), plus some paid and unpaid consultants. Talkr is really a "virtual" company. Our entire office fits inside the knapsack that I wore today, and physically consists of two laptops, a surge protector and a microphone / headset to allow Skype calls.

The service itself has been spotty because, over the past two months, my family and I have prepared for (and now largely completed) a move from Durham, NH in the USA to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. We are now living where the jungle meets the Caribbean beach, where the vast majority of people don't have computers, and people look at you kind of blankly when you ask about a "fast" internet connection. (Thanks to the wonders of satellite internet connections, I have now found a provider, "Jungle Internet" which can provide me with a 128 kbps wifi connection.) This is a really exciting opportunity for my family -- three of our four children are now attending a Spanish-only school here, and this is going to be quite a formative experience for all of us.

So, what does this mean for Talkr? First, I should have more time in the coming weeks to make sure that the existing service is actually available. My most sincere apologies to people that have signed up for Talkr, but been unable to use it. In addition to my own time, I'm also hoping to announce some additional help in the near future. That help will allow us to begin to roll out a host of requested features that I will write about soon.

So, thank you for your patience, and please don't hesitate to write (cbrooks@talkr.com) if you have any questions or suggestions.