Meg Whitman, former chief executive officer of eBay,  defended her decision to buy Skype in a radio interview with KTKZ’s Capitol Hour featuring Eric Hogue. Whitman is running for the office of the Governor of California on a Republican ticket, and is currently leading in the Republican primaries. Here is what she had to say on the show.

Hogue noted that “one of your opponents, Steve Poizner, referred to the fact that it was you as CEO of eBay that spent $2.1 billion on Skype, and that didn’t work, and he’s drawing the comparison here. Is that a fair or unfair comparison here, Meg?” She answered:

You know, we made so many acquisitions at eBay, so many of which were absolutely terrific. PayPal, a lot of our classified sites. And actually I think Skype will prove to be a good acquisition for eBay. You probably read that the company just sold about two-thirds of the interest in Skype to an investor group, kept a portion, and got almost all the money back, and I think Skype will be very effective. So I am very proud of my tenure at eBay. You know we took eBay from 30 individuals, 30 employees to 15,000, from $4.7 million in revenues to nearly $8 billion in revenues. So I’m very proud of the record and proud of the acquisition record.

I commend her for riding the eBay rocket ship, but when it comes to Skype, we all know she blew it. And once again, she dodged the question. How can she defend overlooking and not buying the JoltID technology from Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis? That decision cost eBay another 5 percent of Skype when the auction giant had to settle with the two co-founders.

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  12 Comments
Tags: eBay, meg whitman, skype, VoIP

As a longtime Skype user who never felt that the service fit with eBay, I was thrilled to hear that it’s being spun off. And now I have some thoughts on how it can quickly and easily become an equally successful social network.

In some respects, Skype already is the world’s largest social network, with hundreds of millions of users. And as a peer-to-peer system that generates revenue primarily through outbound phone minutes, Skype doesn’t need to sell advertising, which means that it doesn’t need to infringe on users’ privacy by turning their personal information into a salable commodity for advertisers — in my mind the fundamental flaw of web-based social networks. In other words, Skype has in place a well-established foundation for a social networking system based on privacy and trust. So what might a social Skype look like?

Skype already has a great client for real-time communication: a social graph of people its users know and call. It’s available for every major platform, and given Skype’s popularity, there are a large number of people online at any one time. Each Skype client could serve a XML file with the user’s current status, media files, link feeds and so forth, and to obtain a real-time view of what’s happening with other users, it could call around to folks in a user’s Skype list to get the latest updates. Such a system could be highly decentralized, with most content served directly from one user to another, and largely self-hosted, which means the infrastructure costs would be much lower than a centrally run web service.

The user experience would be effortless. Users would simply see more social features appear in upgrades to the Skype client, with, for example, Twitter-like functionality to broadcast to friends and followers in one panel, a link/news-sharing interface in another. By moving this functionality into the client, apart from a caching mechanism to temporarily store content for users while they’re offline, the need for a centralized web-based infrastructure is greatly reduced.

Apart from poking Facebook in the eye, why should Skype become a social network? Because it would drive phone minutes and SMS messages between friends, which drives revenues — which makes it a smart business decision. Besides, I’ve never bought the idea that a dominant position in a market guarantees long-term success. Skype took out a whole slew of early VoIP networks to become the world’s phone company — it could quickly and easily become the world’s social network, too.

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Posted by Brian McConnell on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  36 Comments
Tags: skype, social networks

Gizmo5 founder Michael Robertson

Given that most of Google’s customers are also likely Skype users (aka web workers), it makes perfect sense for it to buy Gizmo5. The San Diego-based company recently developed OpenSky, a gateway that allows you to call Skype from any VoIP-based phone/application. As founder Michael Robertson told us at the time:

What we’ve done is create a SIP alias for every Skype user. So if you want to call a Skype user named echo123 you simply dial echo123@opensky.gizmo5.com from any SIP-aware device (which is just about every piece of VOIP equipment). Users can even have any SIP call forwarded to their Skype address using my.gizmo5.com.

This application could come in handy for Google to capture some of the Skype magic as it tries to expand into the enterprise and increase its collaboration offerings. Gizmo5 could also help Google extend its reach on mobiles and bring much-needed expertise for soft clients for voice calls.

Gizmo5 says it has 6 million users; that number is unverified. If the deal is indeed true, Robertson, who been desperately looking for an encore since his first company, MP3.com, must be thrilled. Gizmo5 has raised closed to $20 million, a majority of it coming from Robertson.

P.S.: I want to apologize to readers for writing the original post outlining that Skype had bought Gizmo5. I guess the rumors of Skype buying Gizmo5 were still swirling in my head.

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  26 Comments
Tags: gizmo5, google, skype, VoIP

Yesterday I called my dad on my cell phone (neither of us have landlines) to tell him about something his granddaughter did, and a few minutes into the conversation he asked if I were near my computer. If I was, couldn’t we Skype instead? In my home Skype is both the P2P telephony program and a verb for video chat. My dad now prefers to Skype with me rather than talk on the phone, a tipping point of sorts in the way we communicate. He said he grew up watching cartoons where folks like the Jetsons talked via videophone, and since the possibility is here today he wants to use it.

In this multimodal communications world, the phone companies, which still rely on voice for both wired and about a quarter of their wireless revenue, should be worried. Voice revenue isn’t growing in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t if carriers got a bit more creative. So far, data is helping phone companies that have wireless networks as well as those that are providing Ethernet backhaul for anticipated growth in data.

However, the real focus at carriers should be about getting beyond merely providing the pipe in this multimodal world. Check out what BT is doing with its Ribbit acquisition, as an example.

Skype CEO Josh Silverman would certainly be thrilled to hear about my dad’s preferred form of communication, as would the Telepresence folks at Cisco hoping to get the same thing happening in the business world. Silverman told Om in September:

“We are pretty big on video calling,” Silverman told me. The company is putting a lot of resources into building a better video conferencing experience, he said, because he believes that person-to-person video calling is going to be as big as video. That absolutely makes sense because today the definition of communication is constantly changing. In the past, the world was all about voice, then instant messages and now video calling. People are sending messages and status updates via Twitter and Facebook. The communications are now multimodal.

Perhaps in the not-too-distant future my phone calls with be less about voice and more about video, voice, link sharing, and even media sharing all within the context of a television or PC screen. I can turn parts of it on or off as needed. It’s like the vision for social TV that Liz outlined back on March (subscription required) rather than the Jetsons-style videophone that my dad is so excited about right now. The carriers are implementing on this social vision for television, but they should be thinking about adding this to voice as well.

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  7 Comments
Tags: Cisco, FiOS, skype, Verizon

Skype has hired well-known VoIP expert Jonathan Rosenberg as its chief technology strategist, the company announced today. Rosenberg was highlighted as one of the Cisco executives Index Ventures’ Michael Volpi would bring over to Skype in order to help the company figure out a way around the JoltId stranglehold. As you might know, Skype and Joltid, the company that owns the technology used by Skype (and controlled by founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis), settled with the company last week.

Rosenberg is well-regarded in SIP circles and his hiring means that Skype is making a stronger push into the enterprise. Rosenberg was a Cisco Fellow at Cisco Systems, where he directed technology strategy for its enterprise voice product portfolio. When I last spoke to Skype CEO Josh Silverman, he was pretty clear about his desire to turn Skype into a major enterprise voice and collaboration player. Rosenberg’s hiring is a smart step by Skype. (Related post: How Skype Plans to Dominate Business Telephony.)

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  4 Comments
Tags: skype, VoIP

Earlier today in response to my post about Nimbuzz, a good pal emailed to find out why the service didn’t work over the iPhone’s 3G connection. After all, a few weeks ago AT&T announced support for VoIP over 3G with much fanfare, a move that was widely applauded, including kudos from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

A month has passed since the decision was announced, and there is still no support for VoIP over 3G. “Apple actually did not approve the 3G calling — so they completely broke their promise of allowing VoIP calls on 3G,” a Nimbuzz spokesperson said.

Even Skype doesn’t work over 3G (see attached screenshot). Truphone is not working either, much like Fring. I am not sure if these services work over 3G data connections in Europe and other parts of the world, but it looks like Apple is the one putting in the roadblock here.

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  41 Comments
Tags: Apple, iPhone, nimbuzz, skype, VoIP

Nimbuzz, a Netherlands-based VoIP and messaging startup, is introducing a premium calling service called NimbuzzOut. This service is available via an upgrade of its mobile client, which is currently available from the iPhone’s iTunes Apps Store, the Ovi Store and GetJar. So far, Nimbuzz has offered a meta-client that works on PCs, Macs, Symbian, Android and the iPhone and allows you to sign into any IM service including Skype. NimbuzzOut is the first step toward revenue for the company, which has pulled in an undisclosed amount of funding from Mangrove Capital Partners, original backers of Skype. In addition to Skype, Truphone and Fring are two other competitors for this fast-growing service. Nimbuzz has been adding about 40,000 users a day, or about a million new registrations every month, and now has a total of over 10 million registered consumers. The company says nearly 30 percent of those registered are regular users.

Nimbuzz has certainly come a long way. At the time of its launch, almost three years ago, we were pretty critical of the VoIP-on-mobile service because it was a me-too offering that was quite a pain to use. A year-and-a-half later, Nimbuzz introduced a new meta client for the Symbian phones. It allowed you to sign into various IM clients. In addition, it allowed some basic VoIP calling, but it wasn’t really until they introduced the new iPhone client that Nimbuzz started to see some serious traction. My previous post gives a good overview of the Nimbuzz feature set.

The company just announced a super communication client for the iPhone that allows you to communicate in many different ways. For instance, you can make free calls over Wi-Fi to your IM buddies. You can also call folks on their landlines and mobile phones with SkypeOut using any one of Nimbuzz’s 10 VoIP partners including Gizmo5, Vyke, sipgate and A1 and, of course, Skype. This is a new feature in the service, and makes Skype In/Out Services more valuable. These services also work over 3G and are described as “Nimbuzz Dial-Up VoIP” which essentially makes it possible to call others by dialing a local access number which then connects to anywhere in the world via Nimbuzz VoIP servers.

For the past month, I have been using the pre-release of NimbuzzOut on the iPhone to place calls to my far-flung group of friends and family. The calling prices are pretty good– about 8 cents a minute to India, 2 cents to the U.S., and 3 cents to the UK. If you look around, that is pretty much what you pay with most services — Skype is a bit more expensive.

The voice call quality is on par with Skype, which is still my communication method of choice for work-related calls. NimbuzzOut is dead simple to place calls: Just hit the call button, and you are good to go. You can, of course, use other calling services, but I don’t see any reason why considering Nimbuzz is offering good rates.

NimbuzzOut has a few features I personally like — you can natively use the phone client to buy additional minutes. I also like the fact that the client uses the native address book and doesn’t create a duplicate contact list. The Symbian client actually lets you edit, add and delete contacts from your address book.

There are a few things I don’t like: If you leave the notifications on, the client will run down your battery and leave the phone pretty useless. If you are using it on an iPhone, then you have to use the Wi-Fi connection, which makes me a tad upset because you can make Skype calls over 3G. You can make NimbuzzOut calls via 3G on Symbian phones, however.

Bottom line: If you are looking for a well-designed, easy-to-use, all-in-one messaging client that also makes cheap long-distance calls, then you don’t need to look any further than Nimbuzz. I have no qualms in recommending NimbuzzOut.

P.S. There is a reward for those who read the complete post. If you are among the first 50 people who send their name and Nimbuzz username to gigaom@nimbuzz.com, the company will give you a $25 NimbuzzOut credit.

Update: This offer is now closed. Thanks for participating.

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  16 Comments
Tags: Fring, nimbuzz, nimbuzzout, skype, Truphone, VoIP

The final results are in: eBay and private investors led by Silver Lake Partners have struck a deal with Skype founders and JoltID, the technology company controlled by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. They are also transferring the ownership of intellectual property needed to make sure that Skype works as an Internet telephony service. More than 500 million Skype subscribers can breathe a sigh of relief. Skype founders will be making an investment in the new entity and will get a 14 percent stake in the company. The deal is likely to close in the fourth quarter. Those are the facts. Below the fold you can read my winner-and-loser scorecard on this deal.

Found Money: Zennström and Friis are the real winners here. For a few hundred thousand in legal bills, they have not only managed to wipe out an investor competitor, they have shifted the focus away from the ignominious failure that was Joost. They have turned their ownership of a P2P technology into yet another payday and, most importantly, they are now sitting in the catbird seat to reap the rewards of Skype again. Verdict: Winners

Double-Dipped: In order to get the deal done, both the investors and eBay took a haircut. Investors now control 56 percent of Skype while eBay’s stake is down 5 percent to 30 percent of the new Skype. There is a lot of spin in the press release issued by Skype, but the fact remains as I pointed out on the day this deal was announced, Zennström and Friis had them by the curlies. It was clear that this deal wasn’t going to get done without their blessing.

“Skype will be well positioned to move forward under new owners with ownership and control over its core technology,” said eBay President and CEO John Donahoe. “At the same time, eBay continues to retain a significant stake in Skype and will benefit from its continued growth. We look forward to closing the deal and focusing on growing our core e-commerce and payments businesses.”

Poor John is stuck being the mop-up man. eBay, thanks to the stellar work of its previous management team including Meg Whitman, currently running for governor of California, is paying twice for its mistakes. If my previous employer, Business 2.0, was still publishing the 101 Dumbest Things list, I would make eBay’s original Skype deal as the No. 1 dumbest thing…ever! Verdict: Losers.

Index-ed to Nothing: Now let’s look at this great spin quote:

The investor group will no longer include Index Ventures, which has withdrawn from participation. Commenting on its decision to withdraw, Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, said: “We are pleased that Skype will now be able to put litigation behind it, and we wish Josh Silverman, his team and the Skype investors well in continuing to grow a great business. Although Skype has the potential to be a great investment, the deal terms changed for Index such that it no longer matches our investment criteria and thus we have decided not to participate in the transaction.”

Index Ventures and Mike Volpi were the architects of the deal from day one, and so no, they didn’t opt out of the agreement. No one opts out of a deal for which they are happy to bend a few rules. What it means is that they were hustled out, and that tells me two things: This was way, way personal. I have heard it from my sources that there is no love lost between the various entities involved and the lawsuits just brought the hostilities out in the open. Verdict: Losers

Making a Marc: Earlier this morning I spoke with Marc Andreeseen of Andreessen Horowitz and asked him about the deal. “We wouldn’t go through this for just a company, but this is Skype, so from our standpoint it was worth going through,” he said. He pointed out that his firm is all about founders and “we like founders being part of the company.” He added that there is “no emotional baggage and we didn’t take this personally.”

This was a high-profile deal for a new fund. Given that Andreessen Horowitz bet so much of their fund’s total money on this deal ($60$50 million of $300 million), any successful conclusion is a win. Verdict: Winners

Silver Lake Partners: The rest of the investors can breathe easy that this got through. Those personal emails didn’t make pretty reading. The fact that they don’t have to deal with Volpi and Index might be a blessing in disguise. Verdict: Winners

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board: Are they still there…oh cool! Verdict: Meh!

No Silver Lining?: One person who I totally feel for is Silverman, the current CEO of Skype. He gets to run a company which will have the looming presence of its founders.

Whatever the press spin might say, the new investor group is like a poisoned well. It will be a polarized group, always looking over their shoulders. Silverman is going to need to keep a lot of people happy, and those board meetings with nearly two-dozen people aren’t going to be fun, either. But as Biggie Small once said:

“It’s like the more money we come across, the more problems we see.”

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  7 Comments
Tags: skype

The great Skype legal mess is about to come to an end, thanks to a settlement between  eBay — and private investors led by Silver Lake Partners — and Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. As part of the deal, the two Skype founders will get 10 percent of the company in exchange for allowing it to use the Global Index technology from their IP company, JoltID. They have an option to pay $83 million for another 3 percent of the new Skype. They will have two board seats on the 23-person board. These details were reported by Kara Swisher on her blog last night. I reported the news of a settlement this past weekend. Since then, more details have emerged that Index Ventures and Michael Volpi were both out of the deal.

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  4 Comments
Tags: eBay, JoltID, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Silver Lake Partners, skype

There is a good likelihood that Skype; its founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis; and a group of private equity investors led by Silver Lake Partners are close to settling their legal disputes, allowing eBay to sell 65 percent of Skype for about $2 billion. I had first reported the news this past weekend. As part of the settlement, Zennstrom and Friis are likely to get a board representation, and there is some talk of Index Ventures being out of the deal as well.

Zennstrom and Friis have been locked in a bitter dispute over the use of the Global Index, a key technology owned by JoltID, a company jointly controlled by the Skype founders. eBay, in a stunning breach of fiduciary duty, didn’t buy this technology when it acquired Skype four years ago.

From the way it is understood, Zennstrom and Friis will have a board seat on the newly independent Skype, which would be allowed to use JoltID’s technology. In addition, there is a good chance that Index Ventures, one of the primary architects of the buyout, will not be part of the new deal. Mike Volpi, former CEO of Joost, isn’t likely to be part of the new enterprise.

I am not surprised that Index and Volpi have been left out in the cold. There’s no love lost between Skype co-founders and the Index group. If you read through some of the emails that were submitted along with legal documents filed in support of Joost’s case against Volpi and Index, then you know why.

Some details of the story were reported by the New York Times today. Please check out my previous report on the Skype’s legal fracas, as well, which includes a timeline of events.

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  14 Comments
Tags: eBay, Index Ventures, Mike Volpi, skype, VoIP

Digg and Slashdot were abuzz earlier this morning with the news that Skype was going to go open source. The buzz was based on a post on a French blog by Olivier Faurax. The news is true and false at the same time. “It is our intention to make Skype for Linux an open source app in the near future and make the UI source code available to the community at large. This should help to speed up the development process and enhance support for the myriad of Linux distros,” a spokesperson told us.

On the Skype blog, a spokesperson writes:

Yes, there’s an open source version of Linux client being developed. This will be a part of larger offering, but we can’t tell you much more about that right now. Having an open source UI will help us get adopted in the “multicultural” land of Linux distributions, as well as on other platforms and will speed up further development. We will update you once more details are available.

What that means is that the core protocol will not be open sourced and will remain closed. I think the point here is clear; a majority of the underlying technology for Skype service is owned by JoltID, a company controlled by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Skype and its founders are locked in a legal battle over the use of this technology.

It doesn’t look like Skype is going to open source its other clients. I think the ramifications of the Linux version being open sourced are pretty huge. An open source version of the client could lead to Skype being embedded in non-PC devices. One of the best examples of this marriage of Linux and Skype is the new Nokia N900 which uses the Maemo variant of Linux. Skype could be embedded in different Internet devices such as tablets that are being developed by various companies. In addition, it could also help Skype be prepared for new Linux-based OS variants such as Google Chrome OS.

All in all, it seems like a very smart move: the only question that remains is when will Skype actually do something?

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  3 Comments
Tags: JoltID, Linux, Open Source, opensource, skype

The ongoing legal scuffle between Skype, a division of eBay, and its founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, may soon see a resolution, according to someone familiar with the situation. The parties are in discussions to resolve the various issues. The talks are described to be at a sensitive stage and can break down without any conclusion. If the founders and the company can come to an agreement, Skype will be able continue to use JoltID’s technology to power Skype and not disrupt the service that is currently used by hundreds of millions consumers.

I have some further information on the talks, but I am currently trying to pin down the details, as well as waiting to hear back from Skype and other parties involved in the deal, including the Skype co-founders.  It was pretty evident from the get-go that Skype didn’t have any other option but to come to some sort of an understanding with the founders.

About two months ago, eBay announced that it was spinning out Skype, and the deal valued the Internet telephony division at $2.75 billion. Skype founders had been trying to find a way to buy back their startup, but instead, eBay decided to sell 65 percent of the company for nearly $2 billion to a group of investors led by Silver Lake Partners, Canada Pension Plan, Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. (Marc Andreessen declined to comment on the deal.)

Skype’s co-founders sued eBay, Skype, and pending investors for using Global Index, a core technology held by their company, JoltID. eBay, at the time it purchased Skype, didn’t buy the JoltID technology and instead opted for a long-term contract. The end of that contract has led to the current legal mess of suits and countersuits between eBay, new investors and Skype founders.

One of the key people in this deal was Mike Volpi, once regarded as the heir apparent at Cisco Systems. In his column today, San Jose Mercury News’ Chris O’Brien has more details about Volpi’s current spate of legal troubles. Volpi helped put together a deal that essentially made Skype founders sue him and the venture firm he joined in July of 2009, Index Ventures. If you read through the various emails exchanged between Volpi and Danny Rimer, a principal at Index Ventures, you can understand why the Skype founders are angry, especially since he was the CEO of Joost, a failed video startup founded by Skype’s  co-founders. Volpi was sued by Joost because, he “learned how to modify JoltID’s proprietary software to run on the web without the aid of a peer-to-peer software when he was transitioning Joost from a peer-to-peer service to a web-based Hulu clone.”

In October 2009, the two co-founders filed an injunction that made it virtually impossible for Skype to continue its spin-out. Stacey summed it up nicely:

In addition to preventing Volpi and Index from using confidential information in general, the injunction specifically asks that the judge keep Volpi and Index from using such information to operate Skype or engage in any strategic planning for the service; from talking about that info with the other members attempting to purchase Skype from eBay; from soliciting employees of Joost and Joltid with offers to join Skype; from communicating with current or former employees of Joost or Joltid regarding the companies’ confidential information; and from further participating in the Skype acquisition or assuming any position with Skype until a final adjudication of the merits of the case.

What that means is that in order for Skype to exist it had two options: Do a deal with the Skype founders, or switch to SIP-based architecture. The latter may be an expensive and difficult option. Skype faces various challenges if it tries to switch to using a SIP-based architecture, Ian Bell outlined in his post earlier today. Jeff Bonforte, former CEO of Gizmo5, disagrees and believes that challenges are not unsurmountable, as he outlines in a comment to Ian’s post.

I guess Skype’s buyers and current management might be going with option No. 1. I will be back with more details soon.

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  27 Comments
Tags: Danny Rimer, eBay, Index Ventures, Janus Friis, Niklas Zennstrom, skype

Sure, you’re up on Android smartphones and perhaps other Linux-based phone platforms, but the freewheeling world of open source includes many hugely useful telephony applications and platforms that are more unusual. There are useful offerings for businesses and consumers, and you can download and start using many of them for free. Here are eight flexible choices, including several brand new ones.

Birthing Voice Mashups — Jaduka, which has been an influential young company in the VoIP arena, offers open APIs that facilitate many of the “voice mashups” — voice, data and applications that are combined to create new services — appearing on the web. You can find out more about Jaduka here.

Android On the Desktop — Check out Cloud Telecomputers’ desktop VoIP phone based on the open-source Android OS. The touchscreen device runs on an open development platform called Glass, which former Motorola CEO Ed Zander has said “all business phones will look like” in 3-5 years — with Android at the core. Cloud Telecomputers is targeting OEMs that want to design around its hardware and software platform.

Central Communications Hub — Asterisk is an extremely powerful open-source telephony engine and platform that is especially popular with small businesses trying to keep communication costs down. It’s a full-blown PBX that includes call waiting, caller ID, distinctive ring, text-to-speech recognition and more. Businesses can also get subscription support for it.

Skype Meets Asterisk — Speaking of Asterisk, Digium, the company behind it, recently announced the availability of Skype for Asterisk. With the new download, Asterisk users can call landlines, cellular devices and other Skype users, right from any Asterisk-based phone. Cool, and another example of Skype’s focus on all aspects of business telephony.

See Me, Hear Me — Linphone is a free VoIP app for Windows and Linux that includes instant messaging capabilities and works with almost any web camera for either audio or video conferencing. It complies with the SIP protocol, an open standard for online telephony, and interoperates with most SIP-compatible phones and proxies.

Kissing Cousins — Open-Xchange and Racksoft recently announced a partnership that combines Open-Xchange’s open-source groupware with Racksoft’s telephony products. The combined solutions they’re working on could make conference calls, desktop calendars and mobile calendars work together seamlessly.

A Small Fox — Fennec, Mozilla’s mobile version of the open-source browser Firefox , is now out in an advanced beta that works on several platforms, and is native in Nokia’s new N900 device. Fennec is loaded with numerous imaginative user interface implementations, and is slated to work with many of the more useful Firefox extensions. Download it for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux here.

No Name, No Trail — Many people use the open-source application Tor on the desktop for anonymous browsing sessions. Thanks to a grant from the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge and the people behind The Guardian Project, now Android mobile phone owners can use it to do the same.  You can find the links you need to get going here.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

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Posted by Sebastian Rupley on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  5 Comments
Tags: Asterisk, Cloud Telecomputers, Fennec, jaduka, Mozilla, skype

Skype, the Internet telephony business of eBay that is in the process of being sold to private investors for about $2 billion, is going to be making a debut on the forthcoming Nokia N900 device powered by the Finnish company’s Maemo operating system.

This should come as good news for Nokia fans –- whom I affectionately refer to as Nokheads -– who are eagerly awaiting this multitasking phone-puter. Skype launched a version of its client for the Maemo platform in 2007. The Nokia N800 was the only device that supported Skype at the time.

A spokesperson on behalf of the Skype mobile team has confirmed that Skype for the N900 will be available by the end of October in North America and Europe when the N900 ships to the consumers. The software is integrated with the instant messaging software along side other services such as Google Talk. I just got it working on my loaner device that is using alpha-version of the Maemo OS.

Skype, thanks to its 450 million subscribers, is fast becoming a must-have application for any successful mobile platform. It’s among the most-downloaded apps on the iPhone platform. But Skype says it has no plans for launching a version of its software for the Palm Pre.

Related Post:  You can read my review of Nokia N900, where I give it 6 out of 10. And no, I don’t use an iPhone. Instead, the BlackBerry Tour is my device of choice for now.

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  20 Comments
Tags: N900, Nokheads, Nokia, skype

I just learned that Apple has approved yet another VoIP application, this time from Stockholm-based company Rebtel. You can download it from the iTunes Store. The service also works over AT&T’s 3G network, making it less necessary to have a Wi-Fi connection. But in my experience, WiFi-based calling is always better. AT&T announced earlier this year that it was going to permit VoIP calls over its 3G data network.

Rebtel joins a growing rank of Internet telephony applications including Skype, Truphone, Nimbuzz, Fring and Vonage. Given that Apple and AT&T are giving the nod to almost all VoIP applications, I wonder why exactly Google Voice isn’t getting the go-ahead? Any theories, people? (Press release from Rebtel below the fold.)

It took nine months but Rebtel’s iPhone application for making ultra-cheap or free international calls around the world is finally out of AT&T jail. “We’ve been waiting on this one a long time – but as they say, the best things in life are worth waiting for,” said Andreas Bernström, CEO of Rebtel, which pioneered mobile VoIP calling in 2006. “We were thrilled when we got the email from the iTunes Store with the subject: Your Application is Ready for Sale. Our app is free, of course, but we couldn’t be happier.” On October 6, AT&T reversed course and said that it will allow Internet phone software applications on the iPhone. AT&T had previously prevented iPhone Internet phone apps from using its wireless network. Rebtel’s app allows iPhone owners to make calls to anywhere in the world for just pennies per minute without having to search for a WiFi hot spot. And free calls are possible between any of the 50 countries where Rebtel is available. Using the new Rebtel iPhone app is super easy and fast. Just open the app, select the phone number of an international friend from the onboard address book or type in their number, tap the Call with Rebtel button, and Rebtel takes over from there to connect the call straight away. “The lowest calling rates in the world, no cards, PINs or hassles, you only pay for the time you talk, and great sound quality – it doesn’t get any better than Rebtel for international calling,” said Bernström. “Try it. You’ll like it. Everybody gets a free test call to get started.”

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  20 Comments
Tags: Apple, AT&T, Google Voice, iPhone, Rebtel, skype, VoIP

I first started seriously writing about voice delivered over the Internet almost 10 years ago. I’ve written about the meteoric rise and ignominious fall of Vonage, the fabulous sale of Skype, and the deaths of countless wannabe VoIP service providers. Despite the story lines, there was one constant in every conversation I had with wildly optimistic VoIP entrepreneurs: Voice will eventually be free.

The voice bits will ride the IP network much like data streams created by Internet applications such as the browser and email. Of course, free is a relative term, but we do seem to have come to a point where voice is nothing but yet another application on the Internet. I think we are getting closer to that vision of the future, thanks to some developments last week:

1. Verizon teamed up with Google and will offer Android OS-powered phones. It will also allow for normal functioning of Google Voice over its networks. Eventually, Google Voice will work over its 3G data channels. (Related report from GigaOM Pro, subcription required: “AT&T, Verizon Grudgingly Move Toward Openness“)

2. AT&T said it will allow Internet voice services such as Skype to run over its 3G networks, even though it will significantly impact its long-distance revenue.

Both those moves showed that even the descendants of Ma Bell are ready to face the facts: Voice is dead (old-fashioned voice, anyway). Verizon made its decision by starting to sell off its landlines. The company still has over 17 million subscribers of its old-fashioned voice service, but it is a fast-declining base.

Old voice got another hit in its solar plexus today, thanks to Sprint, which has set up a new Partner Interexchange Network (PIN) that is essentially a peering service for VoIP providers.

“Operators are searching for alternatives for how to deliver voice and data traffic,” said Dan Dooley, president of Sprint Wholesale Solutions. “At Sprint, we are seeing greater demand for voice over IP services. As more companies adopt VoIP and migrate away from traditional TDM voice services, there is a definite need for affordable, scalable technologies to securely exchange voice traffic. This is what PIN provides.”

For a long time, VoIP providers have had to use the old-fashioned voice networks as a bridge to other VoIP services — and this costs money. Now, the direct peering of VoIP services means that companies can offer ever cheaper flat-rate voice plans because they can save on settlement costs with the old-style companies. This kind of peering is standard practice for large Internet service providers such as Level 3, Comcast, Cogent and, of course, Google.

Sprint’s new exchange is just a reflection of the new reality. As voice over the Internet becomes more pervasive, we are going see prices plummet but usage increase. As our friend Andy Abramson points out, we are finally entering the era of the voice API, where voice is just a feature of many applications.

This past Friday, Stacey wrote that broadband isn’t just the web, but is our future. And that includes voice and voice-rich applications and services. She put it nicely when she wrote: “Broadband, from the last mile that connects our homes to the long-haul networks that move the traffic around the world, is our voice, our video, our web and our connection to one other.”

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

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Desert Bus For Hope Rides Again for the Third Year NewTeeVee – by Liz Shannon Miller "; Smartbook No More — What Should We Call Them? jkOnTheRun – by James Kendrick "; Dealing With the Avalanches In Life and Business WebWorkerDaily – by Amber Riviere "; Inbrics Android MID with QWERTY Slider Coming to CES jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  13 Comments
Tags: AT&T, google, skype, VoIP