February 17th, 2010 9:39 PM | by Christen da Costa
Hello Nelly! Verizon Wireless is opening up their data network to VoIP calls. Okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement. VZW has formed a strategic relationship with Skype and will now let users call any where in the world using their Skype account while connected to 3G (read: not WiFi). Initially Skype will be available on the following VZW handsets: BlackBerry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and Tour 9630 smartphones, as well as DROID by Motorola, DROID ERIS by HTC and Motorola DEVOUR. Well folks, it looks like were hitting the point where ‘any time minutes’ will begin to cease to exist. What date Skype will roll out on Verizon has yet to be announced, but I’d probably expect it to happen sometime by the end of February or early March.
Anyone familiar with microphones will instantly recognize the Blue Microphone logo. The Snowflake USB microphone by Blue is USB 1.0 and 2.0 compatible and will work on your Mac or PC like that.
Perfect for a myriad of activities including: VOIP, podcasting, and recording, this little mic is capable of lying on a flat surface or hanging onto the top of your laptop screen. With no drivers to install, the Snowflake USB Mic is absolutely plug-n-play and ideal for those on the go.
Snom kicked out an all new VoIP phone today that includes a 4.3-inch touchscreen and a wide array of connectivity options. Built upon what appears to be a custom OS, users can drag and drop contacts into conference calls, and access external USB cameras or even stock reports via the built-in XML mini browser.
Hardware wise they’ve included a few USB ports that can facilitate your Internet connection over WLAN or you can just plug in an Ethernet cord, which if you’ve got the setup can also provide the phone’s power. Lastly, if you’re looking for true synergy you can synchronize the Snom 870 with MS Office, that is of course assuming you have a Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.
The Snom 870 is available now at select retailers for $349.
There’s certainly no shortage of Skype phone accessories and adding to the long and lustrous list is the Skype Travel Mouse. Yup, it doubles as a VoIP phone and you can peep whose calling via the built-in LCD screen before you pickup. To make a call just slide out the keypad, dial and press the mouse to your face or use the speaker phone function. In case you’re wondering it has an 800 dpi optical sensor and appears to be Windows only compatible. Yours for $34.69.
Oregon Scientific is a name that is synonymous with weather gadgets, not phones. But contrary to popular belief, the company has unveiled a Dect 6.0 compatible phone called the Photo-Touch Phone. At the core of the device is a 7-inch 480×234 LCD screen that can display up to 200 photos from its built-in memory and includes an SD, XD, MMC, MS card reader. Surprisingly, it can only store up to 50 contacts and to further sour things, the screen isn’t touchscreen, but at least the keypad is ‘touch sensing’. No word on a US release date, but you can preorder it from Oregon Scientific’s Hong Kong website for about $260.
It wasn’t too long ago that iPevo launched their latest Skype handset, the SO-10W. I managed to get my hands on one and give it a once over. It’s a straight forward Skype only phone that enables you to make and receive both Skype and Skype Out calls. It features a 2-inch LCD and a set of relatively large buttons to navigate the exact same menus found in the Skype PC application.
The iPevo SO-10W can be connected to your network via Ethernet or WiFi. WiFi is not built directly to the phone, so iPevo has included a small, but somewhat cumbersome wireless dongle. The wireless dongle plugs into the handset via USB and draws its power from the phone, which is powered by an AC plug. Setting up the wireless dongle proved to be the most challenging aspect of the device. First, you’ll need to plug the dongle into the handset to be able access the appropriate menus. Simple enough, but that’s where the simplicity ends. Since the iPevo lacks a QWERTY keyboard, punching in any security information can be a timely process. Fortunately, you’ll only need to do it once since the phone will remember it. After entering in all the necessary network info I found myself tapping my foot. In other words, the SO-10W isn’t exactly expeditious when it comes to connecting to a wireless network. In fact, the SO-10W seem to take minutes, not seconds as one would expect, to join the network. Furthermore, it actually took me a few attempts to join my home’s network before the SO-10W would accept it. Fortunately, everything following that was as simple as logging into my Skype account and dialing as normal. …Continue reading: iPevo SO-10W Skype Phone Review
In recent land line phones have taken a serious back seat to cell phones. That is until now. The Alessi Cordless DECT Telephone is a complete beauty and sports a 65k color OLED screen and polyphonic ringtones by musician Gak Sato (no clue who that is). Available now for about $175.
Generally speaking I turn a blind eye to late night infomercials and products that make guarantees that are just too good to be true. Magic Jack appeared to be one of those products, but apparently the company has turned itself around since launch and sold over 3 million devices.
If you’re not familiar with Magicjack it’s a small device that lets you place VoIP (like Skype) calls from a regular landline phone through your computer’s broadband connection. It plugs into your computer’s USB port and for $40 includes unlimited calls to the US and CA with no monthly charges or minutes for up to 1 year. After that it’s just $20 a year.
Now the company has plans to expand and perhaps even take on the big guys, such as AT&T. Arriving sometime between Q3 of 2009 and Q1 of 2010 the company will introduce a femtocell product that lets you wirelessly reroute your cell phone calls through the MagicJack. Apparently, the Femtocell MagicJack will be slightly larger than the current device and cost only a few dollars more. AT&T and others carrier have plans to roll out a femtocell device sometime later this year (Verizon already released theirs), but their devices are said to be retardedly expensive but lack a monthly fee.
You can also expect the company to roll out number porting in the next 60 days, which will enable consumers to port preexisting numbers over to the MagicJack. They’ve also got plans make the MagicJack Linux compatible by Q3 of this year and possibly roll out a mobile phone application similar to Skype that appeared on the iPhone recently.
Out with the old, in with the new. Today iPevo launched their Skype friendly phone. It’s not exactly a revolution in communication, but since the SO-10W meshes new tech with an old form factor it might just appeal to the baby boomer crowd, such as my Mom. It’s got built-in WiFi so no need to string an Ethernet cord across the kitchen and although there is a 2.4-inch tilting LCD screen, it lacks a camera for video chats. It’s yours for $169.99.
Skype for the iPhone hit the App store last week and it has become a massive success with over 1 million downloads since its launch. As expected, the Skype service, which traditionally makes calls over a data connection from a computer, has been restricted on the iPhone so that consumers can’t make VoIP calls over AT&T’s 3G network. Clearly, from a business logic this makes sense since consumers pay a monthly data fee with their iPhone service and if allowed could make unlimited calls with no restrictions on minutes, which in turn would heavily tax the carrier and contradict their business model.
But would it really? At this point carriers, at least from my understanding make most of their money off data plans and text messages, with the latter being a God send since each message requires so little data usage it’s practically free for them to transmit and that means massive profits. But one consumer group, Free Press, isn’t happy about the current Skype calling restriction on the iPhone and has requested that the Federal Communications Commission to investigate if Apple and AT&T are contradicting federal guidelines by preventing VoIP application from accessing the carrier’s 3G network. Until an answer has been provided Skype iPhone users will be restricted to making calls over WiFi, which is free to all AT&T iPhone customers for free at hundred of Starbucks locations.
