My bet, though, is that even in 2020, 10 years after this writing, the poor – even the mobile-owning, Internet-surfing, technology-savvy poor – will still be with us. Mobile phone owners won’t be much better off than they were before, and owning a mobile phone, however fancy and Internet-enabled, won’t do squat for helping a person … Read more
Skype is a powerful tool because it’s found its way into the hands of people who need it most — ordinary folk. Now it and the companies that make devices to use Skype on need to understand that it’s not about telephony anymore, if it ever was. It’s about two or more people sharing each … Read more
A provocative (or is it prophetic?) piece from The Register’s Andrew Orlowski who sees the end of Skype and VoIP: It’s small, it’s boring and won’t turn any heads – but it probably spells the end of the road for Skype, Vonage and any other hopeful independent VoIP companies. It’s Nokia’s 6136 phone, which allows … 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
Here’s another interesting phone-over-Internet approach that also works over existing telephone lines: the PhoneGnome. This is how it works: A user connects the PhoneGnome via an ethernet cable to his of her home network, and to a PSTN wall jack using a standard telephone cable. When the PhoneGnome powers up, it automatically reports in to … Read more