Influential Wall Street Journal personal tech columnist Walt Mossberg has been testing Skype’s new revision, Skype 2.0, along with some nifty sounding handsets designed to help Skype work just like a regular phone. His verdict:
Despite some flaws, this new combination of hardware and software generally worked well, and I believe it stands a chance of propelling Skype into the mainstream.
The new version features video-calling, among other upgrades, and will be accompanied by a Skype campaign to get microphones onto the desks of computer users, a strangely rare occurence, particularly in the U.S.
Mossberg waxed most enthusiastically regarding a new Linksys phone, the CIT200, which sells for $100 and works just like a cordless phone. Users plug the phone into a wireless base station and then can use either free Skype or modestly priced premium Skype Out anywhere in the range of the router.
I tested the phone by calling both Skype users and non-Skype users, and it worked great everywhere in and around my home — upstairs, downstairs, even outside in the yard.
Update: Skype Journal also has a glowing review here. And the official press release is here.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:32 PM | Print | Comments (0)Even if it’s headed for some kind of come-uppance, Google is a cool company right now. Perhaps because it purchased Blogger, or perhaps it’s just the corporate culture, but Google really does corporate blogging well. The latest evidence: the company has started a blog on its GoogleTalk service. The launch coincides with a new release of the VoIP application, and probably hints at bigger things ahead.
Despite the highly publicized recent rounds of layoffs and shrinking circulation, print newspapers aren’t suffering from a terminal illness, Newspaper Association of America CEO John Sturm said in a speech today at The Media Institute. But there is a “full scale reordering of the media universe,” he said, and “the definition of our business has to expand from ‘newspaper company’ to ‘information company’.”
Sturm said the traditional metrics of measuring newspaper readership no longer apply given that many newspapers are passed from reader to reader. The Internet has also given newspapers a new lease on life. “Newspapers have the number one local website in almost all local markets,” Sturm said, with visitors spending more time on newspaper websites than on any other sites. And the rise of free tabloids like The Examiner and The Washington Post’s Express publication “are evidence that the term ‘newspaper’ is undergoing a redefinition.”
Still, newspaper companies aren’t necessarily reaping the financial benefits of this new diversification and “need to create better ways to measure value to the advertising community.”
Given the policy-making audience, however, Sturm focused most intently on the need to eliminate the FCC’s cross-ownership rules that ban a newspaper from owning a broadcast station in its market. “Newspapers are the only medium banned by the federal government from owning local broadcast stations in the same market,” he said, a concept that “very legitimate…if you were living 30 years ago.”
“There are only half a dozen people in the world who think newspapers are the dominant medium in the local market and unfortunately, two of them are at the FCC,” Sturm said, speaking of the “intractable” problem of getting rid of those rules. However, he expects that FCC Chairman Martin will put an examination of the newspaper-TV station cross-ownership ban at the top of his agenda once he’s had a chance to focus on it.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:38 PM | Print | Comments (0)John Battelle has a first-rate essay today on whether Google is headed for a fall. He draws parallels between Microsoft’s top-dog status in 1997 and Google’s current awe-inspiring role as cultural arbiter, technorati exemplar and powerful gateway to the world’s information.
Google is coming close to a “worm turning” moment - a moment when the world realizes that the company is *too powerful* and its ambitions are *too great.* When such a genie arrives, it is very, very hard to put back in the bottle. The one all encompassing difference, of course, is that Google has real competition - Microsoft in 1997 did not - but regardless, the cultural vibe is striking in its similarity.
Battelle doesn’t draw any hard and fast conclusions that Google will without a doubt experience the same fate as Microsoft, but he does wonder whether the go-it-alone mentality that made Google so great will stand the test of time.
To me it’s not so much the go-it-alone mentality that threatens Google as much as it is the inherent and inescapable truth behind Lord Acton’s aphorism that power corrupts but absolutely power corrupts absolutely. It’s hard to see how the Googlers, whose average age falls well under 30, can maintain their original, relatively pure visions of innovation in the face of crushing adoration and fear, not to mention great sudden wealth.
Battelle describes a meeting with former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold in 1997 during which Myhrvold boasted and bragged about how Microsoft would own a slice of all ecommerce transactions on the web. That was a signal that Microsoft, also staffed by young, suddenly rich employees, was out-of-touch with the sustainability of its own power, and we all know that it was downhill from there.
If Google can escape the pitfalls of unbelievable success, then it might pull off an amazing trick by rising above basic human nature.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:36 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Intel, which was instrumental in making Wi-Fi a universal broadband platform, is now eyeing the video sector. The company is slated to announce today a spate of media deals for its new technology Viiv. With Viiv-enabled PCs, TVs, DVD players, DVRs and other devices, consumers can download video from the Internet that will be automatically configured to provide the best viewing experience on big screen TVs.
Among the media companies that have agreed to offer Viiv-supported content are Movielink, BSkyB, Canal+, Japanese TV network NEC, Telecom Italia, and TiVo. While Viiv’s greatest utility is for web-based video, which doesn’t display well on TV screens, it also enhances other forms of media content including music and games. Music and game companies Napster, Square Enix and Ubisoft are among the Viiv supporters Intel has garnered.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:37 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
