August 2007

Laptop Magazine in the US recently published its annual Ultimate Mobility supplement, and sure enough it noted a bunch of Skype products that can help advance your own personal ‘ultimate mobility’ with Skype. It’s not the greatest scan (PDF here), but these pages highlight 5 Skype Certified products and a few other products that aren’t Skype Certified.

LAPTOP named the Phillips 8411B (aka VOIP841, review here, store here) its Ultimate Choice 2007 for VOIP phones, saying “VOIP phones don’t come any slicker or more versatile.” The article also mentions the Netgear SPH200D (my personal fav, review here, store here), the Linksys CIT400 (review here, store here), and the Logitech Cordless Internet Handset, which I haven’t had the chance to review yet but looks pretty slick.

The article also names the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium USB stick (store here) as its Ultimate Choice 2007 for USB memory drives. It uses SanDisk’s U3 technology to let you run Skype and other programs in a convenient self-contained environment. We’ve mentioned it on the blog before here. I actually have one of these drives on my keychain, the SanDisk Cruzer Micro (not Titanium, sadly) and I love it especially for its design—it’s small and the USB jack slides in and out easily so you don’t damage it when it’s in your pocket or have a cap to lose.

Check out the full Skype coverage in the Ultimate Mobility section here.

While the majority of recent Skype news has been about a more serious topic, there have been several stories related to Skype Gear in school, work, home and software contexts over the past few days that are worth sharing.

1. Skype at School: Language Learning
2. Skype at Work: Business Traveller
3. Skype at Home: Video Roundup
4. Skype with Software: Mashable Enhancement Roundup

Continue reading "Skypegear News Roundup" »

Last week Skype 3.5 for Windows came out—one of the neat features it adds is better integration with video. You can share videos from Dailymotion and Metacafe in your mood message and in text chats, and they’ll play back in the Skype client. This is great, but sometimes the videos you want to share aren’t on either of those services. If that’s the case, I’d like to share a work-around you might want to check out.

Continue reading "Tip: Share Video in Skype 3.5 From Any Site" »

It’s been thoroughly covered around the web, but is certainly worth mentioning here—this week the American Federal Communications Commission set its rules for the upcoming auction of 700 MHz radio space in the US, which can be used for wireless data and voice. The FCC decided that open devices and open applications are a requirement on the network (as long as bidding for the space goes above $4.6 billion dollars). This means that the winner of the auction cannot mandate which devices are allowed to use the network and which applications are allowed to run on those devices.

This will hopefully mean that when these devices emerge (it will be a while; the auction doesn’t start until January 2008), they can run Skype—certainly an exciting development. Skype has been advocating open applications and access on the wireless internet since this past February when it filed a petition with the FCC to to confirm a consumer’s right to use Internet communications software and attach whatever devices he or she wants to wireless networks.

While the decision isn’t a complete win for champions of openness (it doesn’t require that third parties get access to the networks at fair wholesale rates, which gives incumbent telecom companies motivation to bid high to keep newcomers—like Google—out), it is certainly a step in the right direction for getting Skype wherever and whenever you want it in the US. You can read official statements from Skype and eBay here on Skype Journal.