Skype Woos SMBs with new Deal
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Skype has launched a package for small businesses that bundles up the company&#39;s software with call credits and subscriptions for multiple users.
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A major outage is affecting many Skype users' ability to log on to the network and send IMs. The company is mum, but some pin the blame on a series of Microsoft updates released yesterday.
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The founders of Skype, an online  telephone business sold last year to eBay Inc. for $2.6  billion, are testing a broadband television service for  computer screens, the founders' spokesman said on Monday.
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New service will feature SkypePlus voicemail and expanded conference calling, as well as let users get calls from the traditional phone network.
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THE latest version of the controversial Kazaa peer-to-peer file swapping platform has appeared with an integrated Skype voice over IP internet phone application, promising free calls between its users.
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Skype, the company behind the flourishing Internet telephony network, has begun to experiment with a voicemail service, hoping to introduce new paid offerings to capitalize on its success.
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Internet telephony provider Skype Technologies has released a final version of its peer-to-peer (define) VoIP (define) software for Wi-Fi-enabled Pocket PC devices.
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(InfoWorld) - Nearly one year after Skype stole the headlines at the 3GSM World Congress with itsÂ plans to offer a mobile versionÂ of its Internet phone, a couple of nimble startups -- and not the Net telephony pioneer itself -- appear to have found a way to make this type of service work, both technically and commercially. Earlier this week, JajahÂ announced aÂ new mobile VOIPÂ serviceÂ that allows smart-phone users to make low-cost and, in some cases, free international calls. Customers simply enter Jajah's mobile Web portal through their handset's browser, enter their user name and password and then make a either a free or low-cost call. The launch of Jajah Mobile Web comes on the heals of a mobile VOIP (voice over IP) offering by Fring, which, unlike Jajah, requires users to download software and install it in their Internet-enabled handsets. The Fring service gives mobile users access to P-to-P (peer-to-peer) VOIP offerings such as Skype and Google Talk. Microsoft appears to have its finger on the pulse of mobile VOIP, too. Next week in Barcelona, the U.S. software giant will unwrap aÂ new version of its Windows Mobile OSÂ that will supposedly enable carriers and device maker to add VOIP functionality to Windows Mobile devices. All these announcements -- and the many more expected at this year's 3GSM World Congress -- come as Skype, which essentially stunned the mobile phone industry last year with its VOIP plans, acknowledges technical and commercial hurdles. In a recent interview in Finnish newspaper, Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas ZennstrÃ¶m spoke of "technical obstacles" and conceded that efforts to make Skype work had been taking "much longer than expected." At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, Eric Lagier, Skype director of business development for hardware and mobile, called the lack of attractive flat-rate fees for most mobile phone services a key commercial hurdle to mobile VOIP usage. He said the company didn't want to be in a position of claiming that its service is free, but facing users who at the end of the month are docked with a huge broadband usage fee. At last year's 3GSM World Congress, Skype and the Hutchison 3 Group (Hutchison 3G)Â announced a partnershipÂ to provide what they had hoped to become the world's first commercial VOIP service for mobile phones. Hutchison 3G, which operates IP-based mobile broadband networks in several European markets, was one of the first mobile phone operators to embrace VOIP, a technology many in the industry view as a major threat to their cash-cow voice business. But industry experts admit that challenges remain.Â One hurdle in providing quality VOIP serviceÂ over mobile handsets is the uplink, which is currently too slow to support quality voice calls, John Giere, chief marketing officer at Alcatel-Lucent, said in an earlier interview. To increase uplink speeds, operators of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks, which dominate Europe and many parts of Asia and Latin America, will need to upgrade their networks with HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) technology, which will give operators "the bidirectional capability they need to run real VOIP," he said. The high-speed technology is not expected to become commercially available in volume until the latter part of 2007 or early 2008. Operators are presently busy rolling out the downlink counterpart HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).
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(InfoWorld) - Next month, FaceTime Communications plans to release new software that will make Skype a little easier to manage. The company is readying a version 3.5 release of its Greynet Enterprise Manager (GEM) software that, for the first time, will allow IT administrators to do things like turn off Skype files-haring, network wide. GEM is a component of the FaceTime Internet Security Edition product. FaceTime's software already can be used to manage instant messaging and peer-to-peer software, but the company has been working with eBay Inc.'s Skype subsidiary for the past few months to develop these new management capabilities. The FaceTime enhancements were built using APIs (application programming interfaces) that Skype released with version 3.0 of its VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) software. These APIs let vendors like FaceTime manage the Skype client, mainly by enabling or disabling Skype's features said Kurt Sauer, Skype's chief security officer. "Most of what we've opened up at this time are a set of 'on/off' switches in the client," he said. Sauer said other companies have now started using the new APIs to manage Skype, but he declined to name any of them. Although about one-third of Skype's North American users have downloaded the software for business purposes, it has raised red flags with IT administrators who see it as a possible security risk and who are nervous about some Skype features like file-sharing. In the past, the only way to prohibit a Skype feature was to block the Skype client outright. "The choice in the past has always been permit or deny," Sauer said. "That has not been a particularly useful choice." FaceTime's GEM 3.5 upgrade will be available next month to FaceTime Internet Security Edition users, at no extra charge.
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A beta of a new service launched by Skype Wednesday night will allow any user with the most current version of the popular communications client charge for voice and video calls placed to their account.
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Skype Technologies has launched Skype for Pocket PC Version 1.0, which allows users to make Skype voice calls for free using Wi-Fi wireless networking.
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VoIP provider Skype has teamed up with Siemens Communications to offer cordless phones in a move that gives Skype users the ability to drop their headsets and use Siemens phones for free Web telephoning.
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Skype Technologies, a firm that offers subscribers free phone calls over the internet, agrees a partnership with Hutchison Global Communications.
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When the Internet phone company Skype went offline for nearly two days last week, Tim Legrand was frustrated and inconvenienced. But he has no plans to switch back to a traditional telephone line.
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Live Meeting update will add media sharing, simultaneous VOIP and landline phone access, and a new interface.
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Skype on Wednesday introduced a new product called Skype Pro across Europe, which combines discounts on Skype hardware and products with free domestic calling and features.
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(InfoWorld) - A new variant ofÂ the Stration worm, which has been plaguing Windows users for the past year, has made the jump from Skype to the ICQ and MSN Messenger networks. This latest variant popped up earlier this week, according to Chris Boyd, a researcher at FaceTime Communications, who blogs under the pseudonym "Paperghost." "They're using Skype as a jump off into other more established networks," Boyd said. "The infection will go looking for other instant messaging clients that are on the PC and then attempt to send the infection message that it initially sends through Skype through these other chat systems." For a computer to be infected, a user must first click on a link and then agree to download an executable file. In one sample provided by Boyd, the malicious link is listed below the instant message, "Check this out. Give me your opinion." Once installed, the worm will gradually start to send out messages to the victim's contacts, Boyd said. Instant message worms have spread from network-to-network in the past, but this is the first time Boyd has seen a worm jump from Skype to another network. "It's an odd system to make, because these guys have a foot in the door [in the Skype network]," he said. "You think they'd focus all their energies onto exploiting Skype." Stration is not widespread and is considered to be a low-risk infection, but it has been a tough worm to fight for some security vendors. Over the past year it has morphed into hundreds of variants, and antivirus companies have been having a hard time keeping track of its many iterations. Stration has also been called "Warezov" and "Stratio." Nobody knows who is behind the worm, but the domains that host the malicious code are registered through a Chinese Internet company, Boyd said. Â