Just got off the phone with my old friend Buzz, who calls me up whenever he needs to show off the wonders of Skype or Google Talk. But I noticed something that might be worth bearing in mind: Should the connection fail at any point, and you have voicemail activated on Skype, chances are whatever … Read more
I feel I need to add a footnote to my outburst about the difficulties of buying Skype credits in far-flung countries which may not have great reputations for handling fraud but which do maintain impressively high international call charges. One reader in the Philippines, John Richards, told me he’d had success using Moneybookers by transferring money … Read more
InformationWeek quotes AP as saying that Microsoft and Yahoo “Reach Instant Messaging Deal”: Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc have agreed to make their two instant-messaging programs work together, a partnership that could threaten market leader America Online, people familiar with the situation said. The deal was expected to be announced early Wednesday, these people … Read more
I love Skype and I write about it a lot, because I think it’s a great tool, especially for people in places where phone calls cost a lot. But those places tend to be developing countries where monopolies are powerful. Just those kind of places where credit card fraud is a problem. Like, say, Indonesia. … Read more
Who actually pays for Skype? How about the network operators, who have to put up with all the extra traffic? And what are they doing about it? A piece from VOIP Planet, Keeping Skype @Bay, points to the arrival of products specifically designed to block Skype (and other p2p traffic) from their networks: Skype is … Read more