The latest version of Skype for Mac has just been released and supports OS X Mountain Lion. By releasing the new Skype in advance of Apple’s own OS release, scheduled for next month, it’s clear Skype remains committed to supporting the service for Mac users. Read more »
Rebtel, which calls itself the biggest mobile VoIP company after Skype, is expanding its emphasis on mobile with the launch of its first iPad app. The company is looking to ride the growth of tablets and get even more people on to its cost calling service. Read more »
Video is becoming more of a casual form of communication, with people leaving video chat services like OoVoo on in the background for hours on end. Video sharing is becoming more immediate with more live broadcasting of your life. Read more »
Oovoo, the video conferencing service popular with the young set, is helping Facebook get some Google Hangout-like coolness with a new Facebook app that offers 12-person video chats. The Facebook app is part of an overhaul for Oovoo’s product line-up including a redesigned iPad app. Read more »
Niklas Zennstrom, the founder of Skype and Kazaa and the founding partner of investment firm Atomico, tells me that he’s been spending a significant amount of time in Brazil looking for and meeting with Brazilian entrepreneurs. Read more »
A new deal between independent e-bookstore Diesel eBooks and rewards points company Koinz Media lets people redeem their bank and hotel rewards points and airline miles for e-books. But Kindle e-reader owners won’t benefit. Read more at paidContent »
Skype may be blocked for use by a wireless provider in the very country one of Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennström, is from. Sweden’s Telia is reportedly considering a block on Skype’s mobile video and VoIP services later this year unless customers pay an additional usage charge. Read more »
Symform, a company that brings peer-to-peer technology to bear on the cloud storage problem, netted $11 million in a new Series B investment round led by WestRiver Capital and including OVP and Longworth Venture Partners. Erik Anderson of WestRiver Capital joins the Symform Board of Directors. Read more »
Video chat startup Tango has raised another big round of funding, bringing in $40 million in Series C financing led by Qualcomm Ventures and Access Industries. That comes on the heels of impressive growth, with more than 45 million users signed up in just 18 months. Read more »
The recruiting ecosystem is changing, led by professional social networks like LinkedIn and Viadeo and companies like Jobvite and BranchOut, which are building Facebook apps for hiring and career development. The bottom line is that technology enables the recruiting process to be more streamlined, scientific and democratic. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Computing in the business market will change radically in the coming years thanks to mobility, apps and a shift toward tablets. Here we gather a survey of GigaOM Pro readers to examine the future of enterprise mobility. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
It is easy to get caught up in the drama around iPad sales, the death of the laptop or Apple’s tussle with Google’s Android. However, once I handed an iPad to my mom, and after her FaceTime-ing with her grandkids, none of the drama mattered. Read more »
London-based peer to peer currency exchange Transferwise has passed €10 million in transactions, saving customers nearly half a million Euros in fees that would have otherwise landed in the hands of the banking industry. Read more »
Nine months after purchasing Skype for $8.5 billion, Microsoft Windows Phone handsets have a beta version of the audio and video chat service. There are some notable limitations in this first release, but as the software gets refined and integrated, Microsoft’s platform could gain more momentum. Read more »
Voice-over-Wi-Fi pioneer Kineto Wireless is trying to convince operators that if they can’t beat the over-the-top VoIP challengers, they might as well join them. Kineto is selling VoIP software to operators that would allow them to bypass their own voice networks and offer cheap VoIP calling. Read more »
European Union’s decision to approve the Microsoft & Skype merger without any objection isn’t sitting well with Cisco, the unified communications giant who is worried that Microsoft will use Skype to dominate the video calling industry. Sour grapes for a company caught in it own business-model. Read more »
FreedomPop plans to give away mobile data access to most of its customers for free, charging only premium users a monthly fee. If can it can make the math work, it could potentially shake up the wireless market, extending mobile data to broad swathes of the population. Read more »
It was only a matter of time before a major operator abandoned its territorial notions about mobile voice and adopted a true ‘softphone’ service, and that operator appears to be Rogers Communications. It’s severing the bond between the mobile phone number and the mobile phone. Read more »
Mobile VoIP provider Rebtel crossed key milestones on Friday, indicating that the VoIP market is growing. Rebtel, which offers low-cost and free calls over 3G and Wi-Fi, cracked the 15 million user mark and claims its average revenue per user is three times greater than Skype’s. Read more »
The challenge is getting the best video quality possible, as well as making the call as convenient to manage as possible. And believe it or not, the trick is to use a smartphone car mount with a hand mirror. That’s right, a common household hand mirror. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Skype, which is now part of Microsoft has lost one of its key executives. Jonathan Christensen has left the company and has not disclosed his plans on what he will do next. Christensen till recently the vice president of emerging opportunities at Skype . Read more »
Cloud storage vendor Symform netted $2 million in venture funding from new backer Westfield Capital, which joined existing investors OVP Venture Partners and Longworth Venture Partners to bring total funding for this Series A round to $7.5 million. Read more »
Skype is killing long-distance phone calls, minutes at a time. In fact, the growing popularity of the service has seen it steal minutes away from the phone companies. And for consumers that is good news. What’s more, the idea of free voice is only gaining traction. Read more »
The next big thing in collaboration is crowds, not social. We still struggle with silos of collaboration in most enterprises today. By adding social tools we have accelerated communication but not necessarily increased the overall level of collaboration and action in the enterprise. That’s where crowds ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Previously, we told you how you can use your iPad as a telephone. Using a Bluetooth headset with your iPad makes that idea even more practical. The Jawbone ERA is the one I happen to use, but others should work just as well. Read more »
Travelers are getting a welcome gift from Skype in the form of free Wi-Fi access at more than 50 U.S. airports to place voice or video calls over Skype’s service on PCs, Macs, or iOS devices. The year-end promotion runs from Dec. 21 through Dec. 27. Read more »
London startup Transferwise wants to be the Skype of currency exchange, disrupting existing services that charge customers heavily for moving their money. But can its low-cost, peer-to-peer approach really succeed? Read more »
The Carrier IQ scandal is still unfolding, and all parties involved are trying to spin their side of the story pretty heavily. Meanwhile, the software, which monitors users’ keystrokes and text messages and can see passwords and other vulnerable information, is said to be on more than 141 million devices. So it’s worth looking at the various players to understand who is hurt and who is helped by the kerfuffle around surreptitious smartphone data collection. This brief research note tackles the question of what the Carrier IQ case means for consumers, device makers and, perhaps most important, the operators. Companies mentioned include AT&T, Research in Motion and Sprint. For a full list of companies, and to read the full research note, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The future of work is already here. It is just already distributed, one might say. The freelance economy, microtasking, mobile workers, coworking spaces, crowdsourcing: All of these point to how work is increasingly shifting from the twentieth-century model of Taylorism (think scientific management applied to labor processes such as assembly-line production and fixed workplaces) to a more flexible, hyperspecialized and connected workforce. This report examines the new world of work, from the devices and software services we use to the growing role of social media, the importance of a group-centric mentality and how the roles of employees, managers and organizations are evolving. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apps such as InstantMeeting, Expensify and yes, Siri are taking mundane tasks that top managers might have hired an assistant to handle and makes delegating them affordable for all. This is a welcome break for time-strapped workers called on to do more. Read more »
Skype released new beta clients for both Windows and Mac on Thursday that introduce the ability to make video calls to your Facebook friends from within Skype itself. We went hands-on with the new feature using Skype for Mac 5.4 Beta to see how it handles. Read more »
Many mainstream consumers were introduced to mobile video chat via Apple’s FaceTime service, but video calling from phones has been around for a while and works on regular cellular networks. Now that we have a number of mobile video chat services, which are you using? Read more »
Comcast announced earlier this year that it would soon introduce Skype to its subscribers, with an easy-to-use kit that will allow users to quickly turn up video chat services on their TVs. We got a sneak peek at the offering at Comcast headquarters last week. Read more »
From the perspective of an ISP, making Skype calls on your iPad is far better than doing so on a MacBook Pro, while making calls via an Android handset falls in the middle when it comes to adding to the congestion of the overall network. Read more »
The carrier cash cow of SMS text messaging is on the wane, driven by third-party messaging apps that include BlackBerry Messenger, iMessage, Skype and others. So what will carriers do to replace it? Look for pricing changes and a focus on M2M. Read more »
When Tim Berners-Lee invited newsgroup users to the World Wide Web with the invitation “collaborators welcome,” he never could have expected how completely that concept would fundamentally transform work. Here, Huddle’s Andy McLoughlin shows the timeline of that transformation. Read more »
Just how will Microsoft make money off Skype? It’s too early to say since the deal closed just last week, said Microsoft CFO Peter Klein. But he gave some broad-brush hints about plans for the VoIP fan favorite on Microsoft’s first-quarter earnings call Thursday night. Read more »
Tango is used to seeing a bump in registrations whenever a new smartphone is released. But last week’s launch of the iPhone 4S gave it an even bigger lift than usual, with record registration numbers that were up 35 percent higher than usual. Read more »
Juniper Research of the U.K. released a report that shows that by 2016 nearly four-fifths of 640 million mobile VoIP users will be making calls through apps downloaded on their smartphones, while the rest of the calls could be over phone company networks. Read more »
