This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways: texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don’t just have more options than we used to. We have better ones: These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die.

At Wired, Clive Thompson offers a post on something that's probably inevitable, the death of the phone call. It's amazing to think of all the ingrained habits that are being replaced. Wanna go to the record store?

MUMBAI, India — Faced with stricter Internet security measures, some spammers have begun borrowing a page from corporate America’s playbook: they are outsourcing.

Sophisticated spammers are paying people in India, Bangladesh, China and other developing countries to tackle the simple tests known as captchas, which ask Web users to type in a string of semiobscured characters to prove they are human beings and not spam-generating robots.

The going rate for the work ranges from 80 cents to $1.20 for each 1,000 deciphered boxes, according to online exchanges like Freelancer.com, where dozens of such projects are bid on every week.

It figures.

If you attend a lot of online or phone-based meetings, chances are you may love Ketchup, a snappy web-based meeting-notes manager that keeps track of agendas, attendees, action items, who said what, and more.

Ketchup seriously couldn't be any simpler to use. It takes seconds to register for a free account, then you're up and running. Just give your meeting a name, record who's invited or attended, drop in any agenda items and you're done.

There's plenty of room for copious notes, and each meeting record can be easily printed out in a couple of clicks. If you want to make your notes public, just tick the box at the top of the page and your notes will be assigned their own unique URL.

Since it's still under development, Ketchup is currently free. Although its creator says paid versions are in the works, Ketchup will always offer a free version for light users.

Ketchup is a pretty bare bones affair and doesn't have a zillion features, but that's part of its charm. When you need an easy and basic way to track the activity at your next meeting, Ketchup could be just the ticket. What features do you look for in a meeting note manager? Talk about it in the comments.

Ketchup [via Download Squad]

Could come in handy for a lot of folks. And a couple of hours later I saw this notice of Timebridge integration with Evernote. Think of how useful it would be to have searchable and universal access to your meeting notes.

JARON LANIER: Oh, I think this is going to be so fun.

If you think about the "Avatar" movie, which many people are enjoying, imagine, in 10 years, that you will be able to make up stuff at that level of intensity yourself. And I think, in 10 years, no kid who can't make up something like "Avatar" in an afternoon is going to be able to get a date. And I think that is going to be just great.

The NewsHour put together an incredibly interesting program yesterday, closing with an interview with Esther Dyson, Paul Saffo, and Jaron Lanier on the future of technology. I think Lanier best captured the enthusiasm and the excitement and the promise that technology holds (as well as the obligation and the responsibility to learn it and use it well). Click through for video and transcript of what I think was a remarkable session. Google phone today, CES not too far away, and an Apple announcement later this month--it is going to be a lot of fun.