January 2008

Our friends over at 3mobilebuzz continue to scour the web for great news and reviews of the 3 Skypephone. (I’m still loving mine, by the way—porting my mobile number over to 3 was quite painless and now I’m using my 3 Skypephone exclusively, which is great). Anyways, until the end of this month 3mobilebuzz are running another competition in the UK, this time through Facebook. They’re looking for people who have racked up big phone bills from making international calls from their mobiles. The person who made the most expensive call last year is the winner, and gets £500 to pay off the bill. He or she also gets a pair of 3 Skypephones, so calls like that will never have to happen again. (Three runners-up also get a pair of phones.)

All the relevant details (including terms and conditions) are on the Facebook page. Head on over, become a fan and share your story on the wall. There are some great ones on there already…

We talked about the IPEVO Solo, another great desktop internet phone for Skype, last June when it came out. At CES this year, IPEVO announced a new wireless adapter for the Solo, so if your router or ethernet port isn’t near your desk, you can now use your wireless network to make Skype calls on the phone. The company was also running a neat promotion—visitors who stopped by the IPEVO booth could use a Solo to call anyone in the world they wanted—Skype users as well as people with landlines and mobile phones (via SkypeOut). Very cool. You can learn more about the Solo on IPEVO’s website here—the new wireless adapter for the phone will be available soon.

UPDATE: Nafcom from Nafcom’s Crap Blog! has helpfully figured out that this IPEVO wireless adapter is actually already available in Taiwan and the USA, and won’t be available elsewhere. It’s also worth noting that while the phone is Skype Certified, the wireless adapter isn’t.

Another neat product announced at CES (and becoming available this March in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia) is the Belkin Desktop Internet Phone for Skype—it plugs directly into your router or a live ethernet port so you can make and receive Skype (and SkypeOut/SkypeIn) calls without needing the computer on. It has all the features you’d want in a phone on your desk (like speakerphone, hold, mute, and redial) as well as an LCD screen to view your contact list (making it really easy to reach friends, family and colleagues) and access device settings. See the press release here—more on this one (hopefully with a Roadtest) when it’s out in March.

Skype on the go was a major theme of this year’s CES. Another cool Skype-related announcement was the Sony mylo (“my life online”) COM-2. It’s a small internet device with a touchscreen and keyboard that supports Skype out of the box and improves upon a lot of the features of the original mylo.

The Skype integration is great—it means you can make and receive free Skype calls and instant messages (as well as make SkypeOut calls and receive SkypeIn calls) from anywhere you have internet access via WiFi. One nice thing for American mylo COM-2 users: WiFi access on the Wayport network is free until the end of 2010.

There’s also a lot to do with the mylo when you’re not Skyping…

Continue reading "CES Spotlight: Sony Mylo COM-2" »

So as many of the slightly geekier readers of this blog may be aware, this past week was the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada USA. Skype was out there (though I didn’t get to go ) and announced / showed off several new things. One of the coolest is that Skype will be making its way onto a new series of mobile internet devices based on Intel mobile processors and chipsets called (wait for it) MIDs (as in Mobile Internet Devices).

The specs on these MIDs will vary by manufacturer (though they’ll all have Intel chips), but it’s safe to say they’ll have touchscreen LCDs, WiFi or WiMax, and will run Mobile Internet Linux. Skype will be preinstalled, so free calls, instant messaging and group chats can be made from the get-go. And some MIDs will have cameras for video calls on Skype—pretty cool.

If these seem a bit similar to UMPCs, another Intel-based small form-factor mobile computing platform, you’re right, though the major difference is that MIDs are smaller and run Linux rather than Windows. Engadget as done a nice post noting all the differences, which you can check out here.

Intel MIDs running Skype on Mobile Internet Linux should be available during the first half of 2008. You can learn more about the MID platform here.

Ahh, wireless headsets. For the longest time they’ve been great in theory but sometimes are difficult to use in practice. Bluetooth headsets are small and can work with your mobile along with your computer (if both have bluetooth), but pairing a headset with a computer and having it always ready to use can be difficult to set up. And only having one ear for audio doesn’t exactly make for great sound quality when listening to music.

But now FREETALK has come along with a new solution: its new Stereo Wireless Headset takes a great pair of stereo headphones and adds an easy-to-use microphone and a simple USB interface for charging and wireless connectivity. The result is a great way to use Skype (and really anything involved with audio on your computer) without any tangled cables. I’ve had the chance to try out a FREETALK Stereo Wireless Headset for the past few days and I’ve got to say, it’s quite a liberating experience indeed. Read on for my full review.

Continue reading "Skypegear Roadtest: FREETALK Stereo Wireless Headset" »