Skype

In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Skype open up its fancy new voice encoding technology. Not to mention London Underground: run by people, not androids...

In today's podcast: European law enforcement to make tapping Skype easier; most iPhone apps don't pass test of time; and Microsoft planning Facebook-like Windows feature.

In today's podcast: New Adobe flaw reported; EU moves to tap Skype calls; and Conficker variant B++ makes the rounds.

In today's podcast: Huawei launches Android phone; Acer jumps into smartphone market; and Skype works with top-line Nokia phone.

eBay needs to set Skype free to fulfill its business mission of enabling the world to communicate

In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings stands open-mouthed at eBay's Chinese security-censorship-surveillance PR faux pas. Not to mention Mister Lucas's weird imaginings of amazing, other-worldly conflicts...

China and Skype cooperate in a massive surveillance system that in just two months spied on millions of people, and censored more than 166,000 messages from 44,000 users, reports the New York Times. Yet even though John McCain has spoken out against U.S. corporations helping China with surveillance and censorship in the past, he's silent now, possibly because one of his key advisors is Meg Whitman, a current director and former President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay, which owns Skype and is a key partner in the surveillance.

Macintosh is high end. I know this. I think they are far better than PCs in most respects. But little things keep annoying me that I just can't understand. Maybe I am being dense or lacking some foresight.

For instance, I hated the lack of a 2 button mouse on the MacBooks since forever but since multitouch, I think I am a little more speedy because of it.

This month's installment is the lack of a microphone-in port.....

In today's podcast: Microsoft board meets to discuss Yahoo bid; Skype releases an update; and HP develops new memory circuit prototype.

In today's podcast: Microsoft mistakes Skype for adware; Google Street View cars spotted in Italy; and Apple reports strong second-quarter earnings.

One of the holy grails of communications has just happened. Fring is on the iPhone. I just made my first Skype call on my iPhone (over WiFi). It sounded great. I am waiting for a Google Talk friend to come online to try that....

Apple has not taken a stand on VOIP. Sure they let Skype run on their desktop platform, but a long term strategy hasn't been announced. What will they do about this must-have technology?

I've been using two different types of dedicated Skype phones for the last six months. The DUALphone 3088 has been my main business phone, while a multi-handset Netgear SPH-200D (with three additional SPH150D handsets) has been the main home phone.

On the whole I'm very satisfied. What's good with the DUALphone 3088:

• Sound quality is good, and in fact generally better than the Netgear units. I've also had better experiences with this phone when making Skype->PSTN calls and Skype-to-Skype calls.
• Using touchtone services works much better with this phone
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I have four Skype accounts that I use regularly and I manage all of them through the Skype Control panel, all of them are configured to automatically have credit applied from the pool of credit.

But out of the accounts, only one of them auto-updates the credit. One of them is a SkypePro account, and I fully accept that there is an issue there. But the other three are standard accounts with nothing special on them, so why doesn't it work?

The fact that it doesn't auto update causes some problems. I've run out of credit a couple of times now, fortunately not mid-way through a call, but it kind of defeats the purpose of auto-credit.

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The headline says it all: here is a four-part YouTube video of computer legend Chuck Peddle, speaking at VCF East back in June, remotely from Sri Lanka to New Jersey via Skype.  The receiving PC with Skype crashes at the end, which is sort of poetic... Grab some popcorn and enjoy!  (Note: Chuck's lecture begins around 15 or 16 minutes into the video.)