linking back to last year’s Brandchannel survey, the results from this year are in. Skype is seventh globally and second in Europe only after Ikea. There were 3,625 respondents to the survey globally, so this isn’t really serious science, but still nice to know.

A federal judge has thrown out an antitrust lawsuit filed by the distributor of Morpheus file-sharing software against Internet-phone-service provider Skype Technologies SA, eBay Inc. (EBAY) and other defendants.

StreamCast Networks Inc. had sought more than $4.1 billion in unspecified damages and a court order blocking eBay from selling Skype services. StreamCast claimed the founders of Skype broke an agreement to give StreamCast the right of first refusal for the technology behind Skype’s voice over Internet protocol, or VOIP, service.

In her ruling Thursday on a motion for dismissal, U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper concluded that StreamCast failed to make its case for relief under federal antitrust laws and dismissed all claims against Skype, eBay and more than a dozen other defendants. Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago, almost everyone involved in the digital economy-from CEOs to Web designers to secretaries-had dreams of instant riches as they leafed through BMW and Lexus brochures, ready to trade in their junkers as soon as they could exercise their options.

Companies like Agency.com-which closed at $76 and a market cap of $2.55 billion the day of its IPO-were soaring out of sight, while many traditional VARs who specialized in making businesses work were watching with envy from the sidelines.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the Beemer showroom. On April 14, 2000, Nasdaq suffered its biggest point loss in history, and the bad news for the stocks of e-businesses and those who once hoped to get rich servicing them has continued ever since.

Businesses that provide services to the digital economy are laying off employees, waving goodbye to CEOs, watching customers disappear and seeing their market capitalization shrink to a tenth of what their companies were worth a year ago.

Only a handful of the fittest will survive in the Darwinian world of e-services, says Terrence P. Tierney, vice president and senior research analyst for U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, New York. And the ones that survive will be the companies that do what VARs have done all along-help the economy operate more efficiently, as opposed to helping a whole new economy invent itself.

Those who believed in a limitless future of dot-com companies-and the dot-com arms of brick-and-mortar companies-have received a frightening dose of reality: “It’s the end of the dot-com world and the beginning of the next phase of development for Internet technology development firms,” Tierney says. Just what that next phase will entail is somewhat unclear, but it will be much more back-end focused and infrastructure-focused than a lot of e-business service providers were predicting a year ago.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written about the creep up of VoIP calling rates before. But here’s another piece of evidence that this is happening: On Jan. 18, Skype unveiled a slew of new calling plans. Called Skype Pro, these plans, which have just debuted in Europe and will be rolled out worldwide this year, allow users to make unlimited calls to domestic phones for a fixed monthly charge. People who sign up won’t have to pay per-minute fees for SkypeOut, and will also enjoy lower international calling fees (yup, Skype Pro users will still have to pay international calling rates, in addition to purchasing the plan).

What I find difficult to believe is that a lot of people will want to take advantage of this. Today, an average Skype user only spends a few bucks a month on SkypeOut, if that. Would users want to pay the expected $6-7 monthly charge? And, on top of that, pay for international calling and for connection fees? Honestly, I think it would be cheaper for people to just buy traditional calling cards. Read the rest of this entry »

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, the duo that brought the world Skype and Kazaa, have chosen a name for their new online-video start-up. The two want people hungry for Internet entertainment to roost at Joost.

Company executives had referred to the new company for months by the codename “The Venice Project.” They chose Joost because they like the ring of it, according to a spokeswoman. The word doesn’t have any meaning in Danish or Swedish–Friis’ and Zennström’s respective native tongues.

The plan, according to Joost CEO Fredrik de Wahl, is to offer studios, cable stations and anyone else who wants to distribute high-quality video over the Internet, a fast, efficient and cheap distribution method. To do this, the company will rely on the peer-to-peer technology that helped Friis and Zennström build Skype and Kazaa.

Their sparkling track record of creating hit companies aside, Friis and Zennström face a crowded field of competitors, such as YouTube and Apple, which are already well on their way to establishing themselves as video-distribution platforms.

Source : [CNet News]

Nokia says it is co-operating with a leading provider of Internet-based phone services to enable cellphone users to make wireless calls without using precious paid minutes.

The world’s largest mobile-phone maker has also announced new models at the International Consumer Electronics Show, which started yesterday in Las Vegas, and claimed a lead in the market for smart phones with 40 million units sold last year.

Nokia said its new N800 Internet Tablet will permit wireless phone connections through eBay Inc.’s Skype service. The model is available immediately in the United States and selected European countries. The Skype features will be available for download by June, Nokia added.

“Working with the leading mobile-handset manufacturer puts us in a unique position to get Skype to the mobile masses,” said Eric Lagier, head of Skype’s business development in hardware and mobile operations.

Skype is among several Internet-based phone services that work by splitting voice conversations into data packets just like email and web pages. The packets are then sent over the Internet, in this case using a wireless Wi-Fi connection. The packets are reassembled at the destination.

Voice calls over Wi-Fi networks are far cheaper than minutes on cellular networks because they use free radio spectrum and the Internet and do not require large cell towers.

Source : [TheStar]

We’ve read stories of other people using Skype for various home monitoring needs, but I usually haven’t known these people. But here’s a cool story from Ryan a Skype user. Check out how skype user is using Skype video to keep an eye on his buddy Baxter