Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
The first IMOCA Open 60 to celebrate crossing the Transat Jacques Vabre (TJV) finish line in Costa Rica was the French yacht Safran, raced by co-skippers Marc Guillemot and Charles Caudrelier-Benac.
At 0852:10 (0252:10 local time Tuesday, 24 November) after 15 days, 19 hours, 22 minutes and 10 seconds on course, Safran, co-skippered by France’s Guillemot and Caudrelier crossed the finish line off Puerto Limon, Costa Rica.
Guillemot and Caudrelier have therefore won the 14 boat IMOCA Open 60 Class in the TJV transatlantic race which started on Sunday, 8 November from Le Havre.
Safran sailed 5,263 miles at an average speed of 12.46 knots.
Line honours had already been taken, however, just hours before by Crêpes Whaou! from the Multi 50 Class.
After 15 days, 15 hours, 31 minutes and 50 seconds at 0431 on Tuesday, 24 November (2231 local time Monday, 23 November), Franck-Yves Escoffier and Erwan Le Roux on the Multi 50 Crêpes Whaou! broke the finish line off Puerto Limon, Costa Rica to take line honours in the ninth edition of the TJV transatlantic race from Le Havre.
For the 5,805 miles sailed their average speed was 13.41 knots.
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Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) – Costa Rica’s sole provider of cellular service – said on Friday that it was having problems with the text messaging platform. The problem continues still today.
However, since the announcement, thousands of complaints have been reported of users not being able to text. Some users of the older technology, TDMA, have also reported experiencing some texting problems.
The problem has affected some 1 million users, according to ICE, which is working on resolving the problem.
Many in Costa Rica prefer to send a text message or SMS (Short Message Service ) to another telephone rather than make a call. An SMS message costs ¢0.06 colones while a minimum one minute telephone call costs ¢0.23 to 0.30 colones (off peak and peak times), perhaps the main reason for preferring texting, however, it could me of a social change in people’s habits and the way they communicate with others.
In terms of traffic, in 2008 more than than 4 trillion text messages were sent globally, in an industry that is valued at tens of billions of dollars annually.
Throughout history technology has always modified consumer behaviour, because it makes out lives fulfilling and more time to do other things. The cellular phone is one of those. Can you imagine yourself without a cellular phone?
Moving quickly ahead from the beginning of the cellular phone revolution, although voice is the primary method of communication, text messaging is now the preferred method.
A text message can be informative and means “optional participation”. A text message can be used to schedule or change a meeting, share a thought, an idea or it can be used to communicate without someone without interaction.
Smart phones offer even more flexibility in texting. An iPhone, for instance, will treat the exchange of text messaging as a conversation, keeping each sides of the conversation in a different colored bubble and in chronological order.
Smartphones all have a full keyboard, some with physical keys, while others offering a digital keyboard, eliminating the pecking of a,b,c to get to the b and so on.
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