Users: Outage no reason to abandon Skype
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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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Cordless VoIP calls Review The time will surely come when someone ships a really sexy Skype-friendly handset. Until then we'll have to make do with gadgets like TrendNet's ClearSky. But what this device lacks in looks it makes up for in functionality: not only good integration with the Skype service itself but also a Bluetooth wireless connection for cordless calls...â¦
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User's PC stops communicating with the network, so this support pilot fish is called in to get things working again -- and since the PC is only months old, a hardware problem isn't his first thought.
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By Leslie Cauley  NEW YORK -- Skype, which helped make free PC-to-PC calling a global phenomenon, today will announce $29.95-a-year service offering unlimited calls to wireless and traditional landline phones.
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The beta VoIP service is easy to set up and works well--but how long will the company be able to give away long-distance phone service?
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Are we ever sick of talking on the phone. (Sorry, Mom!) After trying out six VoIP services on both cable and DSL lines, on workdays and weekends, while surfing the Web or staring at the
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A version of Skype made for mobile phones and networks is far from complete due to a lack of compatible handsets and technical issues, its CEO says. Originally, a mobile version for Nokia handsets was due to appear in 2005.
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Underlying weakness nixed Skype has fixed a cross-zone scripting weakness in its voice over IP client software which spawned a couple of security bugs over recent weeks.â¦
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Some Rhapsody users are huffing and puffing but the service won't let them in. Second outage since March blocks an unknown number of customers and some are frustrated that the company doesn't know when it will be fixed.
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U.K. mobile phone operator Hutchison 3G UK on Monday rolled out the Skypephone, a handset designed to simplify use of the Skype VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) application.Hutchison 3G, branded as &quot;3&quot; in the U.K., is offering free calls between Skype users through the 3G mobile phone, which goes on sale Friday in the U.K. The Skypephone will be released by the end of the year in Australia, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau, and Sweden.Some mobile phones already support Skype, but volume-based data usage charges typically make the service expensive to use. Skype recommends using its mobile application with unlimited 3G data plans or Wi-Fi.Hutchison 3 has been offering unlimited Skype calls on its pricier X-Series phones, but the Skypephone is simpler and aimed at the mass market, according to a company spokesman. The phone has a large button with Skype&#39;s logo that&#39;s used to launch calls and IMs.Hutchison 3 is not charging for the cost of Skype calls on its network, although it does limit the service to about 4,000 minutes per month. Hutchison 3 will then suspend outgoing Skype calls but allow incoming ones.If a user is outside of Hutchison 3&#39;s network, roaming charges apply, which can be pricey despite a rate drop from operators after warnings from the European Commission earlier this year. The Skypephone is dual-band and won&#39;t work in the U.S.Hutchison 3&#39;s Skypephone allows free calls between registered Skype users, but the SkypeOut service that allows PC users to call regular telephone numbers using Skype is not available. Those must be dialed as regular calls charged for by Hutchison 3.The candy-bar style handset , which comes in white and black, was developed by Huchison 3 and Qualcomm. It has a 2-megapixel camera, MPHutchison 3 player, Bluetooth connectivity, 16MB of internal memory that can be expanded to 1GB with a Micro SD memory card.In the U.K., the handset costs &#163;49.99 ($102) for customers who prepay their service. The phone is free for those on a contract with Huchison 3, which start around &#163;12 per month.Skype, which is owned by eBay, and Hutchison 3, agreed in 2006 to work on a mobile VOIP phone. Hutchison 3 is the smallest U.K. operator and has shown less aversion to shaking up the market, particularly with VOIP, which threatens operators&#39; revenue, wrote John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum.&quot;The bigger operators, such as Vodafone, T-Mobile, and Orange, have all taken flak recently for alleged hostility towards customers using VOIP on their networks,&quot; Delaney wrote. &quot;Now here comes Hutchison 3, not only encouraging its customers to use VOIP, but bending over backwards to make it easy for them.&quot;&#160;
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Opinion: SIPphone&#39;s one good point is that Vonage-only router/terminal adapters must say Vonage on the boxâand Vonage seems to be hurrying to do that consistently.
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There's a big yellow bar on the Twitter home page today saying it will be down for maintenence betw 10AM and 10PM today. I haven't heard any grumbling about this, but it's worth a bit of a grumble. What other basic form of communication goes down for 12 hours at a time? What if the web went offline for 12 hours at a time? It's unthinkable, because the web is built on the Internet and is decentralized and redundant. A single router or server can go down for a few hours, days or forever, and the web keeps on tickin.  Same with email. If Gmail started having twelve-hour planned outages, as much as I like Gmail, I'd switch. I can't be without email for any extended period of time.  Okay, let's give the guys at Twitter credit -- they stopped being flip about Twitter taking naps or showers. No one likes jokes when a line of communication is down. Now I'd like them to take another step. Assuming these long outages are really necessary, explain to us what they're for. I can take a guess -- something about their database needs changing, and all the data in all the files must be processed to implement the change. Any updates made while such a process is running would be lost, so the server must be shut off. But this is just a guess.  Another guess -- maybe they've hired a scaling expert who needs to make one final major adjustment before these outages are a thing of the past? No one would want to make such a promise, that's offering too much temptation to Dr Murphy, but that would be good news. Maybe Twitter is getting on to solid ground, finally.  It's fairly amazing that there isn't a viable Twitter clone out there yet. I'd also like to see something much more decentralized, based on static files, available to any Twitter-like system. It doesn't seem that far out of reach. With all the scaling troubles Twitter has had it's surprising that there haven't yet been any entrepreneurs willing to enter the space as competition to Twitter.  Users and developers are learning first-hand why centralized systems are so fragile. I'm sure they're doing a heroic job at Twitter, the best they can with what they have, but it's not good enough when the service takes a 12-hour break while many of the humans that depend on it are awake and working.
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NEW YORK -- Skype is introducing a $30 annual subscription to make unlimited calls with the Internet-based telephone service to any regular or mobile phone number within the United States and Canada.
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More and more third-party vendors are offering Skype-compatible phones that allow you to roam around your house -- or in some cases, even further -- while still talking up a storm.
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Handset allows Skype users to make free Internet calls and send IM messages to each other while on the move.
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Skype warns users password-stealing Trojan horse is making the rounds, disguised as a Skype security plug-in
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NEW YORK -  Skype, which helped make free PC-to-PC calling a global phenomenon, will announce Wednesday a $29.95-a-year service offering unlimited calls to wireless and traditional landline phones.  Skype's Unlimited Calling subscription moves the company toward the mainstream of phone services and poses a significant challenge on price to many VoIP services - short for Voice over Internet Protocol - that can cost $300 to $400 per year.