Mobile

You may have already heard about the Skype Nomad—intrepid Australian Rebecca Campbell is travelling the world for 33 days, only sleeping while on the move, blogging about her trip, and raising money for charity (Motivation). She’s using Skype to stay in touch and plan parts of her trip (you can send her recommendations and tips—she’s ‘theskypenomad’).

In addition to all her travelling and photo-taking and blog writing, Rebecca’s been writing a column in the UK’s Telegraph. But one thing that she hasn’t mentioned yet is the full list of gear she’s carrying. There are tons of ways to use Skype on the go, but Rebecca is perhaps taking it to the extreme—when you’re constantly on the move, light gear is of utmost importance.

Here’s her full list:

• 3 Skypephone
• Nokia N810 Internet Tablet
• Nokia N95 8GB (for Skype for your mobile)
• PSP and headset
• Macbook Air (with 3 USB broadband dongle)
• Solar powered battery charger
• Panasonic HD Video camera
• Canon IXUS 70 (SD1000) Digital camera

She’s got some neat stuff with her—and with the 3 Skypephone and 3 broadband dongle she can get online really easily whenever she’s in a 3 territory. Still, she’s already found that WiFi isn’t exactly ubiquitous and you can’t always be connected.

Rebecca’s going to be passing through the UK later on her trip, and I’m going to try to be one of the many meeting up with her when she’s stopping at Skype’s office in London. Do you have any questions you’d like me to ask Rebecca? Leave ‘em in the comments.

Here’s a video of Skype for your mobile running on a Nokia N95 8GB. You can learn more about Skype for your mobile from my full post about it and you can download it for your phone here. Don’t forget that it’s beta software: known bugs are here, and you can report any you find here.

Whoa whoa whoa! Hot on the heels of Skype’s new global calling plans comes (in my geeky opinion) some even more exciting news—the release of Skype for your mobile beta!

So what is it and what can you do with it?

Skype for your mobile (beta) is a ‘thin’ client for Skype that works on Java-enabled mobile phones. It lets you use many of Skype’s features on the phone you already have. On the main information page (here), you can get instructions for how to install it on your phone and you can see a list of phones that Skype for your mobile has been tested on (though it may work even if your phone isn’t listed, the phone needs to be Java-enabled).

Using Skype for your mobile beta, you can

• Make Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls
• Receive calls from Skype contacts and from people calling your online number (SkypeIn)
• Send and receive instant messages (including group chats)
• See whether your contacts are online
• Set your online presence
• Adjust your account settings

There are a couple things to be aware of though:

Continue reading "Hello, Skype for your mobile!" »

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.

Several interesting bits of Skype Gear-related news from the blogosphere recently, on a variety of devices that show off many of the different ways you can use Skype.

• Video: great story about usage and a Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF review
• Mobile: Results to 3mobilebuzz’s recent contest: Why I need a 3 Skypephone
• WiFi phone: Netgear SPH200W one of Time’s top 10 gadgets of 2007
• Headsets: A look at the FREETALK Stereo Wireless Headset

My full take after the jump…

Continue reading "Gear News Roundup: A little bit of everything" »

You may recall the great fanfare with which I welcomed Skype on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet last summer. Well, now the N800 has a new sibling—the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet—and it also runs Skype. It’s now shipping in the US and will be available very soon in Europe.

I think it’s fair to call the N810 a sibling to the N800. The insides of both are nearly the same: they have the same processor, screen, connectivity through WiFi and bluetooth, amount of RAM and battery life. The main difference is that the N810 adds a slide-out keyboard and GPS receiver. The N810 also has a fixed camera on the front where the N800 has a pop-out camera that rotates, and the N810 has 2GB of memory built in (but only one SD slot where the N800 has two). Look here for a nice comparison.

The Nokia N810 runs OS2008, Nokia’s Linux-based operating system for its Internet Tablets, and in mid-December (according to this page) a final version of OS2008 will be available for N800 users, bringing many new features to the older tablet (I love a good firmware update!).

Last week I was able to play around with a pre-release Nokia N810 and was quite impressed. I’m not prepared to give it a full review (as it was beta hardware), but I have a few observations…

Continue reading "Nokia N810 Internet Tablet (with Skype) is out!" »

It hasn’t exactly been a secret, but today is a big day for the Skype team. It’s the launch of the 3 Skypephone!

It’s Skype in your pocket, wherever you go. It works with 3, the mobile provider in the UK (and Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau and Sweden) that’s already providing Skype on its compatible handsets (through its X-Series internet offering and more recently on all its Mix & Match tariffs if the phone supports it).

The 3 Skypephone does work as a regular mobile phone (on 3 pay as you go or pay monthly), but as you might have guessed from the name, it’s the first phone to build Skype functionality into the core of the device. You can import your Skype contacts into the phone’s contact list and there’s a single call history list for Skype and regular mobile calls. You can always broadcast your Skype status and make unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls wherever you go (subject to a very reasonable fair use policy).

It’s also a pretty slick piece of kit: it’s a 3G phone with a 2 megapixel camera, bluetooth, a 2” 220 x 176 screen, and a microSD slot to add up to 1 GB of memory. It has an internet browser (with 3’s Launcher for easy access to popular sites like eBay, Facebook and YouTube), a music player, and it runs Java applications and games. And did I mention you can make unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls? All in all it’s pretty awesome.

The 3 Skypephone will be available at 3 stores in the UK for £49.99 on pay as you go and for free on pay monthly from this Friday, November 2 (it’ll also be available in the Skype Store in the UK before Christmas). So over the course of this week I’ll be going in depth on the 3 Skypephone—showing off its functions and talking to some of the people who put it together about what it means for Skype, 3 and the mobile internet. I’m excited, I hope you are too.

Check out Villu’s post about it on the main blog, and the press release for more information.

It’s been promised for quite a while and now it’s finally here—Skype is running on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. I’ve been testing out a unit with Skype for about a week now and in a nutshell I think it’s a great addition that really increases the functionality of the device. Read on for my full review.

Continue reading "Skypegear Roadtest: Skype on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet" »

Big announcement from Skypeland today: if you have Skype Pro (available in these countries), now you have a new feature—the ability to call internationally from your mobile using your SkypeOut credit. Skype calling on the mobile you have now? How does it work? Read on.

Continue reading "Skype To Go: call internationally from your mobile at low SkypeOut rates" »