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Yesterday was a bad day for Skype. The peer-to-peer voice over Internet protocol and messaging service experienced a massive failure across multiple regions, leaving millions without service. I follow a lot of tech podcasts and shows — many of these rely almost exclusively on Skype to connect hosts with guests and record content. Without Skype, they were left scrambling to do things the old-fashioned way, either by connecting by phone or relying on creating content in a physical studio.
Now that eBay has reached a settlement with Joltid over the Global Index Software peer-to-peer technology that powers Skype, Skype won’t need VoIP provider Gizmo5 to fall back on. And that’s lucky, since according to the rumor mill, Gizmo5 now belongs to Google, for the tidy sum of $30 million. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch broke the story yesterday.
Three men busted in slots scheme at Meadows Racetrack & Casino – “State police Tuesday arrested three men — including a former Swissvale police officer — in connection with a heist that Washington County District Attorney Steven Toprani called “one of the single largest casino machine thefts in American history.”” Surgeons offer eyesight tailored to [...]
Things are about to get a lot more interesting in the mobile phone business, and I don’t think the carriers are going to like how this one turns out. I was just reading an article in BusinessWeek by Olga Kharif, who said that in a hearing yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski called for comments from smartphone developers. The question is this: Are mobile phone carriers inhibiting smartphone application development?
That may seem frivolous to you. Why should the FCC get involved with smartphone applications? For years people have been complaining about wanting this or that cool phone that’s only available at another carrier. The ability to switch carriers and port your number over was one concession, but it’s very difficult for anyone to prove that just because the, oh, I don’t know, let’s say iPhone for example, is only available through AT&T, that the exclusive contract is anticompetitive.
All right, gather ’round and I’ll spin you a tale of wheeling, dealing and licensing disputes. Trust me, you’re going to want to hear this one.
In 2003, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis founded a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) company in Luxembourg called Skype. The two had previously co-founded the file-sharing site Kazaa. Skype used a peer-to-peer architecture to route VoIP calls between users — a different approach than most server-client VoIP services use.
Skype lets people make phone calls from their computers to just about any phone. It’s not available everywhere but it’s very popular in the countries that allow it. In the United States, several companies depend upon Skype to arrange conference calls. Podcasts like Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech use Skype to allow featured guests to call in to the show. The service has proven very useful over the years.
This week in the TechStuff podcast, Chris and I tackled cell phone technology and the way 9-1-1 calls work. I guess we had phones on our minds.
Monday’s episode focused on the differences between the 2G, 3G and eagerly-anticipated 4G cellular phone networks. We explain the basics of the technology and attempt to clear up some of the confusion about why the iPhone 3G is actually a second-generation iPhone. We also complain about how the United States lags behind other countries when it comes to cell phone technology.
In Wednesday’s podcast, we discuss what happens when you dial 9-1-1. If you’re using a landline, it’s a fairly straightforward process. But now that many people rely solely upon cell phones or even VoIP phones, the process is a little more complicated. We talk about the challenges cell phone service carriers face when they need to implement a 9-1-1 strategy.
The 9-1-1 emergency system seems pretty straightforward — you dial 9-1-1 and rescue teams are dispatched. But as the TechStuff guys reveal in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com, there’s a lot of technology behind the curtain.
Hey iPhone users, if you’ve been waiting for your very own copy of Skype, you don’t have much longer to wait. Jessica Dolcourt of CNET’s CTIA blog wrote Sunday that the Skype application promised at CES 2009 will be available on March 31. Unless someone’s gotten his or her calendar mixed up, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.
The application works very much like Skype‘s regular computer-based application, Dolcourt said, with some notable exceptions. For one, it looks more like an iPhone app than it does Skype’s normal appearance.
So you might say, “why on Earth would Apple permit the Skype application on the iPhone? Doesn’t it conflict with their customers using the AT&T network?” Well, sort of. But not really. To use iPhone Skype, you have to be within range of a WiFi network. VoIP doesn’t work over the AT&T network, which would sort of defeat the purpose anyhow.
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