November 2007

Skype Gear has been all over the news during the past week. Here are some highlights from a few reviews and articles (as well as a video):

Martin Brown from Computerworld wrote about his experience of using two Skype cordless phones at the same time (well, one at home and one at the office) for six months here. He was using the RTX DUALphone 3088 (which just won the Danish Product Award 2007; review here, shop here) at work and the Netgear SPH200D at home (review here, shop here). Both connect directly to your router so you don’t need to have a computer on to use them. Martin noted the aspects he preferred on each phone (he preferred the interface on the DUALphone 3088 but the handset design of the SPH200D) and also a few shortcomings (the selection of ringtones on the SPH200D, and the lack of a ‘favorites’ system in the contacts of both phones for easier dialing)—though overall he’s “very satisfied” with the phones. My parents have a Netgear SPH200D at their house, and I have to agree that it’s a nice way to have Skype at home away from your computer (BTW, it’s especially good now that’s I’ve got a 3 Skypephone, as they can reach me whenever and it’s free for both of us).

Continue reading "Gear News Roundup" »

RTX has been making cordless phones that combine Skype and landline calls for quite a while now. Today the company has a new feather for its cap: its DUALphone 3088 has won the Danish Product Award 2007 from Ingeniøren, a Danish weekly newspaper that specializes in engineering topics. The award goes to “the very best Danish technological innovations and products developed for the worldwide market,” so it’s quite cool that a Skype product was chosen.

The DUALphone 3088, which incidentally we reviewed on the blog exactly one year ago today, is a cordless Skype phone that lets you make Skype calls and landline calls from the same handset without the need for a computer running, because the DUALphone’s base station plugs directly into your router. It also has (one of my favorite things) automatic firmware updates, so the latest features and bug fixes get installed to the phone automatically.

To learn more about the award, check out the press release on RTX’s website here (or if you can read Danish, See Ingeniøren’s site here). The DUALphone 3088 is also available at the Skype shop, for £85 in the UK or €129 in the rest of Europe.

Yesterday Skype 3.6 went gold (hooray!), which means lovely High Quality Video will now work without any bugs (fingers crossed) for people who have the right setup (which means having Skype 3.6, one of three Logitech cameras, the QuickCam driver 11.5, a dual core processor and 384 kbps broadband).

Will this higher quality make you try out a webcam if you haven’t before? If so check out these tips from a while back and these from this week for videoconferencing in a business setting so you’ll look and sound your best. And if you’re already a webcam user, I’ve got a question for you…

Continue reading "Skype 3.6 and a question for webcammers" »

News on the 3 Skypephone continues to tear up the blogosphere—and the team at 3mobilebuzz have been doing a great job of collecting it all: reviews, forum discussions, blog posts, competitions—there’s a lot there. After a week of 3 Skypephone availability in stores, here are a few more highlights they’ve spotted:

The TFTS Hands On Review:

Of course, a great deal of this is down to Skype being so intuitive to set up and use in the first place, but where 3 have to be wholly commended is that, in bringing the service to a mobile device they have not, in any way, placed any barrier in the way of usability. This phone, then, positively oozes the very spirit of Skype – and that is to bring crystal clear VOIP technology to the masses - in a package that is as simple as dialling from a landline (if not simpler).

3 Skypephone as a video player:

Fresh Plastic has noted a program (SUPER) and some good settings for converting videos you’ve downloaded to play on the 3 Skypephone. The 3 Skypephone has a nice interface for YouTube built in, but if you want to save YouTube videos to watch whenever you want, you can use Zamzar (and convert them to 3gp for the phone in the process).

More applications for the 3 Skypephone:

Gerrymoth found (and put together in a single download) a bunch of java applications that work on the 3 Skypephone, including mWallet, GoDiary and Wikipedia. I haven’t tried them all (I’m still enamoured with java Google Mail and Maps, which work great), but it’s pretty neat that the phone is so expandable.

Speaking of Java apps, I’ve got a a highlight of my own for the 3 Skypephone. This week Opera Mini 4 came out of beta—it’s a java-based browser that renders whole web pages with a neat zoom feature; it works well on the 3 Skypephone. Opera Mini 4 also has support for RSS feeds and synching bookmarks with the desktop version of Opera. The browser built in to the 3 Skypephone is perfectly fine, but the Opera Mini zoom feature really puts the whole internet in your pocket—it goes well with the Skype that’s always in your pocket. You can get more information (or download it onto your handset using the 3 Skypephone browser) by going to operamini.com.

A webcam is just a webcam, right? I’ve been living in the UK away from family in the US for over 3 years now, so I’ve been using webcams for a reasonably long time to stay in touch. For the longest time I did think a webcam was just a webcam—it’d have clunky drivers (that I’d prefer not to install when I could because they didn’t seem to do much) and the picture quality would be mediocre but you’d deal because it’s better than just talking. But with the recent release of some new webcams from Logitech, combined with the new Skype 3.6 Beta, I’m changing my tune. High Quality Video on Skype is here, and it really does make a difference. I’ve been able to test out a Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks for the past few days and I’m pretty impressed.

Continue reading "Skypegear Roadtest: Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks" »

Have you seen 3mobilebuzz yet? It’s a new site from 3 “bringing you all the buzz about 3’s mobiles, price plans, products and services.” It just launched and so far it’s been focusing on the 3 Skypephone, chronicling (in impressive detail) reactions from journalists and bloggers (including yours truly) to the new phone.

It already has a ton of great content; I’ve got a few favorite posts which include:

• This set of PowerPoint slides showing off the phone’s features
• This podcast between John Penberthy-Smith (3’s marketing director) and influential blogger and podcaster Neville Hobson
• This post noting blogger Dale Lane’s reaction about the good (and bad) aspects of the phone
• This post linking to blogger Dan York’s photos (mine certainly did not turn out that well—I think I need a better camera!)

Posts on the site are going up like wildfire—it’s becoming a fantastic resource. Check it out here.

I’ve made a little video on the 3 Skypephone, showing off the Skype interface, mobile TV / media player, camera, settings, and Java on the phone:

This is my first video for the blog, so (be gentle!) apologies that the audio levels are a bit wonky. Any other features you want to see or learn more about? Let me know in the comments.