The Nokia N900 has Skype built-in – it’s totally integrated into the phone’s Maemo operating system, with no extra downloads required. You can make free Skype-to-Skype calls and IM on 3G or WiFi, and call phones abroad at great, low rates.

Mark Douglas, our product manager for the N900 here at Skype, reveals all in the video above. To get your hands on one today, head over to the Skype store.

At Skype, we aim to build software for everyone, no matter where they are or what language they speak. Our new Arabic website takes us a bit closer to that goal.

The investor group is led by Silver Lake, and includes Andreessen Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Joltid Limited and our founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis.

The deal valued Skype at $2.75B US, with eBay retaining approximately 30% of Skype, and the investor group led by Silver Lake controlling the remaining 70%.

Our journey continues: say hello to the future!

But big numbers are hard to get our heads around – what does 20 million actually mean? We can think about it in terms of the number of families kept closer together, or the number of businesses saving money and staying ahead of the competition. Right now. The number of new babies being shown off to adoring grandparents, or the number of romances being kept alive. Right now.

In fact, in the 30 seconds since you started reading this, those 20 million people have made around 1,600 hours of free Skype-to-Skype calls and 200 hours of calls to landlines and mobiles. That’s a lot of people talking. Right now.

There is nothing better than spending time with family and friends during the holidays. This year, to bring holiday cheer to deployed US servicemen and women and their families, we’re delighted to kick off the Holiday Military Connection, a partnership with the USO which will connect US military personnel in the Pacific region with their families stateside.

On Thanksgiving Eve, Skype and the USO will host transcontinental holiday dinners via Skype video call. Dinner attendees will be able to see and hear each other, share a priceless holiday meal, laughs and even tears in real-time. Imagine watching your mom or dad carve the Thanksgiving turkey from across the globe

In addition to the dinners, troops and their families can make memories all season long via free calls made possible through the donation of our Unlimited World calling subscriptions to the 18 USO centers in the Pacific region.

We are so happy to work with the USO to bring the comforts of home to these extraordinary men and women. To learn more about the program, see how military families are using Skype to say connected or submit your own Skype story, visit the USO pages on the Skype website.

Skype already employs some of the industry's leading engineers and technologists. Now, we are privileged to add Dr Jonathan Rosenberg, a telecom industry veteran and the co-author of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), as Skype's as Chief Technology Strategist. In this role, he will report to Skype's Chief Technology Officer, Daniel Berg, and will work with Skype's engineering teams worldwide.

Dr Rosenberg's leadership and expertise will help guide Skype's future technology strategies and architecture, an area where we're continuing to invest heavily.

Please join us in welcoming Jonathan to Skype

• We will now have ownership of the software previously licensed from Joltid, so we’ll be in control of our technology future.
• All litigation against eBay, Skype and the investor group ends, so we’ll be free to concentrate all of our efforts on building the world’s greatest communications software.
• Joltid and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis will join the investor group and the Skype board with a 14% share in exchange for providing Joltid software and a significant capital investment, so we’ll benefit from their expertise, vision and continued commitment to making Skype a long-term success.

This is fantastic news for us, clearing the road ahead and making what was shaping up to be an exciting journey, an unbelievable journey.

Onwards!

More financial details in the press release.

A sneak peek at the ad – if you’re reading this post in an RSS reader, click through to skype.com/magic to see it in all its glory.

You may remember that we announced our partnership with CNN back in September - well, the second of our ads has now started appearing.

It’s the perfect way to introduce friends and family to the world of Skype on mobile phones. Just point them to skype.com/magic to find out more.

You can also follow @skypemobile on Twitter to catch up on all of the latest news from our mobile team. See you there

Take advantage of our super-low rates: from just €1.80/$2.62/£1.64 per minute.

If you have loved ones stationed on ships or oil platforms, Skype can make it just that little bit easier to stay in touch. By making calls more affordable, you can spend that little bit longer catching up, sharing news and telling bedtime stories.

You can even call satellite phones from your mobile phone using a Skype To Go number - meaning that you can say goodnight to your partner while you're doing the grocery shopping, or just have a chat with them from a park bench on a sunny afternoon.

You'll need to buy Skype Credit to get started - you can pay for it using credit or debit cards, PayPal, bank transfers and vouchers from supermarkets and convenience stores, depending on where you live.

Let us know how you get on

A small connection fee applies to all calls to satellite phones.

Just watched this great video about intimacy in online conversations - Stefana Broadbent finds that on mobiles, 80% of a typical person's calls are made to 4 or 5 people; on Skype, they're to just two people.

She also talks about the way that video calls connect families; how else do you have dinner with your family back in Sao Paulo when you're in Italy?

Well worth watching

Just think - without an open Internet, the millions of hours of free voice and video conversations which have already happened today between people using Skype, simply might not have been possible at all.

After the US FCC, Canada, Google and Verizon speaking in favour of the open Internet, the EU needs to commit through action

At the beginning of last week, the CEOs of Skype, Sony Electronics, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet, telecommunications and media firms published an open letter to the US Federal Communications Commission to support the proposal to introduce rules to protect the open Internet, i.e. users’ right to access and use what they want online, which we applauded earlier.

Also, in a joint blog posting released late Wednesday, US network operator Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam and Google CEO Eric Schmidt said they think it’s important for the Internet to remain an unrestricted and open platform.

On Wednesday the Canadian authorities issued a framework by which they will judge whether Internet service providers are discriminating against certain kinds of traffic and content. Then on Thursday, the FCC voted 3 to 2 in favour of developing into formal rules a set of six Internet Principles, designed to safeguard the open Internet.

And in Europe? Well, Skype is of course still arbitrarily blocked by a number of mobile operators, across several EU countries. So are thousands of VoIP and Peer-to-Peer applications. We hear however that the European Commission has circulated a draft declaration on net Neutrality which mentions the ‘high importance’ it attaches to ‘preserving the open and neutral character of the Internet, taking full account of the will of the co-legislators now to enshrine net neutrality as a policy objective and regulatory principle’. The Commission goes on to promise a review of the problem will be carried out, with recommendations made to the European Parliament by late 2010, monitoring the market in the meantime and stamping out on abuses using its existing powers. This act of faith by the EU for an open Internet is welcome.

But so far, we’ve seen no action by the European authorities to stamp out these blatant abuses of what Internet users can do online. The excuse that ‘net neutrality is an American problem’ just doesn’t wash anymore; it’s too convenient and simply not true, as millions of users and thousands of VoIP, peer-to-peer or video streaming innovators can attest because they are blocked or their traffic degraded by operators throughout Europe, just like Skype. The fact that politicians haven’t heard about their problems is because these guys are just too small – they don’t have armies of lobbyists like the big operators do.

The thousands of innovators that depend on an open Internet to continue to innovate and put their products, applications, services and content online cannot wait years for lengthy political debates to take place, or for the market to ‘correct itself’ – they’ll have gone bankrupt before then. Users cannot wait either, before they can freely use what they have paid for – full Internet access, whether it’s fixed or mobile.

People started complaining about high costs of calling from abroad on mobile phones in the late 1990s – it took 10 years and the market didn’t correct itself so we ended up with the so-called Roaming Regulation to force prices down. Now, with the threat to the open Internet that is on our hands, we cannot wait: the European Commission should be bold and use any of its powers (such as the new Roaming Regulation or its mandate to preserve the functioning of the internal European market), to stamp out abuse, at the earliest opportunity. If it needs more powers, then the Commission should make legislative proposals to get them, urgently.

And remember: you can sign the open Internet petition for Europe, and feel free to talk to your parliamentarians and write to your regulators to protect Your Internet.

• @skype — news and updates
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• @skypejapan – news and updates in Japanese

As part of the program, for the first time, Skype is collaborating with Ustream to enable video calls about global poverty between world leaders, celebrities, and citizens globally to be broadcast on the internet live via Ustream's interactive video broadcasting platform. The Skype calls will be broadcast on both the Stand Up Take Action! page on Facebook and Ustream's web site.

Those participating in the Skype video calls include former Irish President Mary Robinson, as well as African entertainers Femi Kuti and Angelique Kidjo. The calls will take place throughout this week, leading up to the "Stand Up and Take Action!" weekend on October 16-18 when millions of citizens will take part in activities demanding that world leaders keep their promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

We hope you will join us to stand up to poverty by engaging in your own dialogues about this global crisis and what can be done to eradicate it. To find out how to get involved in "Stand Up and Take Action" events happening across the globe, please visit www.standagainstpoverty.org.

This is an incredible personal honour for Sten and we are humbled to have such an individual as a key part of our team here at Skype.

As an Estonian, I'm proud of the country's achievements in the area of technology innovation and the impact it has had on the society. I'm sure there are many more novel ideas coming to life in and from our small country.

As a Skype employee, I am excited to see that world leaders have recognized the innovative spirit that lives within our organization and that they are now turning to our six-year-old company for advice in these areas.

As someone who has known Sten for years, I know that he is up for this challenge, which will call upon his skills as a communicator and entrepreneur, as well as his passion for all things innovative. We wish him well, knowing that he will work hard to ensure that both Estonia and Skype retain their places at the technology innovation table.

Oh and by the way, this new advisory role doesn't mean Sten will be leaving Skype!

Congratulations and well done Sten! (Or 'Hästi tehtud, Sten!' as I would write on our Estonian blog)