Google's new Gmail phone-calling service presents a challenge to Skype, as well as Gmail's e-mail competitors. Google has been making aggressive plays in the VOIP market. - Google is rolling out a service that makes phone calls through Gmail. Calls to the United States and Canada will be free through at least January 2011, with international calls ranging between 2 cents and nearly $5 a minute. That presents a challenge not only to Google's e-mail competitors, b...

Skype's low-cost calling service may soon find its way onto a consumer electronic device near you. On June 23, Skype unveiled a feature that makes it easier for developers to weave its communications tools into such devices as picture frames and TVs.

The company rolled out its SkypeKit, which is a set of tools needed to integrate Skype into various devices. Initially, access to SkypeKit will be available by invitation only.

Until now, hardware manufacturers have had to ask Skype whether they can integrate its service into its devices. Skype would provide its approved partners with the software code necessary to build the feature in. Partners Panasonic and Samsung have already integrated Skype into their Web-enabled TV

Now, Skype is opening up this special code to anybody. Any maker of consumer electronics can take this code and integrate it into its gadgets. That should make Skype available on many more devices.

But there are drawbacks to this move as well. With the release of SkypeKit, Skype is relinquishing some control over the Skype experience. It will be up to hardware makers to make sure Skype users have no problems using the software. Poor implementations could, potentially, affect Skype's brand.

The upside could be substantial, however. The number of Web-connected devices that could, potentially, use Skype, is on the rise. Gearmaker Ericsson recently predicted there will be 50 billion Web-connected devices by 2020. "Our goal is to expand Skype across multiple platforms and empower third-party device makers and desktop software developers to embed Skype into consumer electronics devices and desktop applications," Jonathan Christensen, general manager for platform at Skype says in an e-mail. "This can go as far as the imaginations of our developers."

On April 14, Spring Design will start shipping Alex, yet another new e-reader to compete with current market leader, Amazon’s Kindle line. Alex offers access to more than 1 million books and allows for Web browsing and even using e-mail. Unlike the Kindle, it can also access and run apps. Unlike the Kindle, it has a full-color touch screen. Unlike the Kindle, it allows users to store content on a removable SD card.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Spring Design may be a start-up, but it has some formidable backers. Co-founder Albert Teng was a general manager at chipmaker Intel. Co-founder Jack Yuan previously co-founded storage maker SanDisk. Its partners include search giant Google and software maker Adobe. Because Alex can read digital books published in so-called ePub format, users will be able to download books from Google Books, which offers free public-domain older books and magazines.

Alex is entering a market crowded with offerings from giants, such as Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble. Apple’s iPad tablet, and other upcoming tablets and netbook computers could compete head-to-head with e-readers as well.

Alex is yet another device adding to the pressure for Amazon to innovate, and to add more features to the Kindle, which is increasingly beginning to look less capable than rival offerings.

On April 14, Spring Design will start shipping Alex, yet another new e-reader to compete with current market leader, Amazon’s Kindle line. Alex offers access to more than 1 million books and allows for Web browsing and even using e-mail. Unlike the Kindle, it can also access and run apps. Unlike the Kindle, it has a full-color touch screen. Unlike the Kindle, it allows users to store content on a removable SD card.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Spring Design may be a start-up, but it has some formidable backers. Co-founder Albert Teng was a general manager at chipmaker Intel. Co-founder Jack Yuan previously co-founded storage maker SanDisk. Its partners include search giant Google and software maker Adobe. Because Alex can read digital books published in so-called ePub format, users will be able to download books from Google Books, which offers free public-domain older books and magazines.

Alex is entering a market crowded with offerings from giants, such as Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble. Apple’s iPad tablet, and other upcoming tablets and netbook computers could compete head-to-head with e-readers as well.

Alex is yet another device adding to the pressure for Amazon to innovate, and to add more features to the Kindle, which is increasingly beginning to look less capable than rival offerings.

Qwest is offering a hosted UC platform that gives enterprises and smaller businesses alike a way to take advantage of a unified communications environment without having to worry about the cost or complexity associated with in-house offerings. Qwest joins a growing group of vendors, including Nortel, Cisco, NEC and BT, in developing hosted UC platforms. - Qwest Communications is the latest company to offer a hosted unified communications platform. Qwest on April 7 unveiled its iQ HUCS (Hosted Unified Communications Service) to help businesses bring together the various pieces of their communications infrastructure from voice and video to e-mail, ...

VoxOx has baked a Universal Translator directly into is Web communications platform, providing foreign language messaging translation for text messages, instant messaging, e-mail and messaging communications via Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The neat trick here is that only one person need be using VoxOx to have a conversation that is translated between two parties, making it a boon for efficiency. Such translation capabilities should help VoxOx pick up a number of users, which is important for a product competing with Skype, Google Voice (which will likely offer Web calling capabilities this year) and other VOIP solutions such as BT's Ribbit.
- VoxOx, which fancies itself as an alternative to Skype and Google Voice by letting users make phone calls via the Web, has integrated a language translation capability directly into its service. VoxOx gives users a dedicated number and lets them make calls from PC to PC, as well as from PCs to...

Snow Leopard, the new version of Apple's Mac operating system, is sufficiently short on new user features that Apple wouldn't have hidden one of the more significant additions. But that's exactly what they've done, presumably because it conflicts with the company's marketing message.

Snow Leopard contains a component that checks for the "signatures" of known malware alerts users when a Web download, e-mail attachment, iChat instant message contains code that the system thinks is malicious. This File Quarantine feature is not mentioned in the Snow Leopard Reviewers' Guide nor could I find any reference to it in the discussion of Snow Leopard on the Apple Web site. It was discovered by testers putting the released version of Snow Leopard through is paces and officially acknowledged by Apple on Aug. 26 as an extension of technology first introduced in Tiger (OS X 10.4).

I just received an e-mail invitation to a Sept. 10 Motorola event in San Francisco. The invite provides no details on the mysterious event, but it features the fun little robot that represents Android, which is software for mobile phones created by a coalition of companies led by Google.

Clearly, it's not a stretch to call this invite what it is: An invitation to the launch of Motorola's first Android-based phone.

This launch is a huge deal. The ailing handset maker, whose market share has dwindled precipitously in recent years on failure to come up with best-selling products, has effectively bet the company on the success of its new line of Android-based devices. Its first phone's design and capabilities will offer a glimpse at whether Moto has succeeded or failed in that mission.

Blogs are already full of pictures of the phone Moto will supposedly announce; here's a link to one of the more credible ones. Is this phone for real? Will it impress analysts, carriers and consumers alike? We'll have to wait until Sept. 10 to find out.

Starting on Sept. 6, AT&T will require all new smartphone users to subscribe to the carrier's wireless data plans, the company confirms to BusinessWeek.com.

Today, some of AT&T's smartphone customers can chose not to buy a data plan, or they can subscribe to MEdia Net, a cheaper service that offers wireless e-mail and news access for as little as $2 per Megabyte. Currently, AT&T's data plans range from $5 to $60 a month.

While I suspect that most people who buy smartphones subscribe to data plans already, there's probably a hefty percentage that get smartphones for voice calls and good looks. They figure they might use them for data later. That's the category of users AT&T is now hoping to rope into buying more services. And the move likely means increases in data revenues for the carrier -- and slower sales growth for smartphone vendors.

Heavier monthly charges could deter some people from buying smartphones. For AT&T, that's no great loss. The carrier spends a lot of money on subsidizing handsets so consumers get them at a lower price; and those subsidies may not pay off when expensive, feature-rich smartphones are not being used for data services, as intended.

The move, which is likely to be copied by other U.S. carriers, could slow down smartphone sales, however. So far this year, handset makers Apple, Research in Motion and others have booked double-digit revenue growth on smartphone sales. Well, that sales growth should come down as service plan prices go up, and consumers that only want the handsets for voice may opt for a cheaper option: a feature phone.

When eBay bought Internet calling service Skype in 2005, Jeff Bonforte believed the company had made a serious oversight. The entrepreneur, who at the time was president of voice-over-Internet startup SIPphone, noticed that the $2.6 billion deal did not give eBay ownership of the core, peer-to-peer technology that makes Skype work so efficiently.

“’Insane’ was the word I used,” says Bonforte, who is now CEO of e-mail startup Xobni. Should the day come when eBay lost its ability to license the peer-to-peer technology, he predicted the company would face vast difficulties replacing it.

That day may soon be upon us. In a 10-Q regulatory filing on July 29, eBay disclosed that it’s in the process of building a replacement – an admission, many interpreted, that the company may lose its right to license the original technology in an ongoing court battle with Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. EBay has sued their company, Joltid, to prevent them from ending the licensing arrangement.

So with a planned public offering for Skype in 2010, lots of people want to know: How hard would it be to rewire the entire service?

“The complexity of the change is hard to overestimate,” Bonforte says. “They could just screw it up – which is completely likely.”

If you're an e-mail pack rat like me, you let your inbox fill up with thousands of messages of varying degrees of importance knowing you will need to refer to some old conversation or contact at some point down the road. The problem is, the e-mail client used by a vast majority of businesses, Microsoft Outlook, does a poor job of managing all that mail.

In May 2008, San Francisco startup Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards) released a free add-on for Outlook that indexes e-mail messages for speedy searches. I'm one of the two million people who have downloaded it, and it's proven so useful that I wouldn't think of launching Outlook without it. Companies, executives, co-workers, topics, attachments -- anything that's passed through my e-mail is all there for me to pull up with a nearly-instant search.

On Wednesday, Xobni announced a premium version of the software that adds extra features, like the ability to fine-tune searches, search through calendar appointments, and to include Xobni's automatic suggestions when you're typing the names of e-mail recipients. The company is charging a one-time fee of $29.99.

This is not likely to catapult the company into profitability any time soon, since co-founder Matt Brezina says he would be happy if more than 4% of existing users signed up for the premium version. But he tells me that this is the first of several revenue sources Xobni hopes to draw from in the future. The company will release a version of Xobni for Research in Motion's Blackberry some time in the near future. Brezina says he's also interested in exploring web-based mail.

Cisco IronPort has partnered with RSA to integrate its e-mail gateways with data loss prevention technologies to prevent critical information from being lost in transit.

Google is rolling Google Voice out to users who signed up for the service. The VOIP management system assigns users one number to ring their home, work and cell phones. Though not to be confused with Skype's universal VOIP platform, analysts praise the service. Is number portability on the way?
- Google is opening up its Google Voice VOIP management service to more invitees June 25. Users who requested an invitation on the Google Voice site or previously on GrandCentral can expect invitations via e-mail, according to this post from Google Voice product managers Craig Walker and Vincent ...

A new survey shows that a lot of consumers who buy netbooks may be dissatisfied with their purchases. In late spring, consultant NPD surveyed 600 online consumers to gage their impressions of the popular mini-laptops called netbooks.

The survey yielded some suprizing results: Sixty percent of consumers thought that netbooks would function exactly like regular laptops. As a result, only 58% of consumers who purchased a netbook instead of a laptop were satisfied with their purchase (as a point of reference, about 70% of regular laptop buyers were satisfied with their purchases).

One of the reasons is, consumers aren't using their netbooks as intended, for light Web browsing and e-mail via Wi-Fi or 3G wireless networks outside the home. Some 60% of the netbooks purchased never leave the house, according to NPD. After making their purchase, many users realize the netbooks' chips aren't as fast and capable as those of laptops, and don't support video as well.

Clearly, PC makers and retailers need to do a better job explaining the differences in capabilities between netbooks and regular laptops to consumers. After having played with an HP Mini netbook for the past couple of months, I can attest to the fact that netbooks are great -- if used for what they were intended. I loved using mine to quickly check Hotmail or to watch a video off of YouTube. But try multitasking, such as downloading a photo or a document while streaming a video off of YouTube, and their performance falls off the cliff. Consumers need to be made aware of this before they make their purchases.