Technically Speaking

LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg, Aug. 9, 2010 — Skype S.A., a global technology leader that enables real-time communications over the Internet, today announced that it has filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its ordinary shares. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined.

Goldman, Sachs & Co., J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. and Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated will be the joint global coordinators as well as joint book-running managers for the offering. BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. will also be acting as joint book-running managers. Lazard Capital Markets LLC, RBC Capital Markets Corporation and UBS Securities LLC will be acting as joint lead co-managers; Allen & Company LLC and Evercore Group LLC will be acting as co-managers for the offering.

When available, a copy of the preliminary prospectus may be obtained from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, via telephone: +1 866 471 2526, via facsimile: +1 212 902 9316, or by e-mail: prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com; from J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.; c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, Attn: Prospectus Department, or by telephone +1 866 803 9204; from Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated Attention: Prospectus Department, via telephone: +1 866 718 1649, 180 Varick Street, Second Floor, New York, NY 10014, or by e-mail: prospectus@morganstanley.com.

A registration statement relating to the securities has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. The securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of, the securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction.

For one month Skype is offering free phone calls to these countries:

• 60 minutes free calls to landlines in Algeria for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Argentina for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Australia for a month
• 400 minutes free calls to landlines in Brazil for a month
• 60 minutes free calls to landlines in Cameroon for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Chile for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Denmark for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in France for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Germany for a month
• 60 minutes free calls to landlines in Ghana for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Greece for a month
• 60 minutes free calls to landlines and mobiles in Honduras
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Italy for a month
• 60 minutes free calls to landlines and mobiles in Japan for a month
• 120 minutes free calls to landlines in Mexico for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in the Netherlands for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in New Zealand for a month
• 120 minutes free calls to landlines in Nigeria for a month
• 60 minutes free calls to landlines in Paraguay for a month
• 60 minutes free calls to landlines in Serbia for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Portugal for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Slovakia for a month
• 120 minutes free calls to landlines in Slovenia for a month
• 120 minutes free calls to landlines in South Africa for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in South Korea for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in Spain for a month
• 120 minutes free calls to landlines in Switzerland for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines in the UK for a month
• 60 minutes free calls to landlines in Uruguay for a month
• Unlimited free calls to landlines and mobiles in the USA for a month

Time to chat it up with other folks about the world cup.

Here is the blog post

“Cisco Systems Inc. on Friday announced Quad, which integrates voice, video and social networking into one workspace.

San Jose-based Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) said Quad will be available later this year via iPad and iPhone applications.

I was hoping that when Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Response Point they would open source the code.  There must be a lot of code that they were licensing that did not allow them to do that.  Response Point had great functionality and was very easy to set up.

“It looks like Response Point is officially kaput.

This morning Aastra telecom announced their first software to take your existing Aastra Response Point phones from their proprietary protocol (that only works with Microsoft Response Point systems) to an open SIP-Standards based platform. This will allow your Aastra RP Phones to communicate with any SIP based platforms such as Broadsoft and Asterisk.

The new firmware applies for all Aastra “RP” phones including the 6751i RP, 6753i RP, and 6757i CT RP models and is available for download here.”

More to the article here

Sean Fox has a great article about video phone sales should increase rapidly in the next two years.  From dropping costs, increased functionality, to lower bandwidth needs video calling is becoming a reality.

In my opinion the question will become, ‘Do I need a dedicated piece of equipment for video calling?’  We are seeing new televisions with Ethernet ports, Wifi, Skype clients and HD cameras built into the set.  Every new laptop, even $299 net books, have a camera built in and can do high quality video calling.

Why would someone pay $200 for something that is already in their TV.  I remember the first time I saw a TV/VCR combo, it didn’t make sense because VCR technology was advancing so fast, you couldn’t upgrade the VCR.

Here are some of the things I think TV’s of the future will be able to do:

• Have a built in hard drive to let you
  • Rip your CD’s
  • Copy your DVD’s without violating the DCMA
  • Function as your DVR
• Wirelessly copy your music and videos to your car’s multimedia system
• Stream music and videos to all your computers
• Make and receive video calls
• 3-D pictures without the need for glasses
• Have access to rich online content like youtube and Hulu
• Speech recognition for remote-less control
• Become a game platform
• Rent movies and games from an online store
• Did I miss anything?

All of these options will be integrated into the system seamlessly.

I always thought this is what products like the AppleTV would become.  If the past has taught us anything, it is that things get smaller and two devices that work together become one.

Here is the link to Sean’s post.

“The Senate passed legislation Monday that would make it easier for federal workers to work from home.”

“This winter’s snowstorms highlighted the need to develop flexible work arrangements to make sure the government can function during disruptive events,” Akaka said.

This is great news for Federal workers.  We don’t have to worry about snowstorms but we do have tsunamis!

Read more here

One billion users sounds like  a bit much.  The back end database for that many users would rival Google.

“Skype Technologies SA, the largest provider of international calling, said the number of registered users will nearly double to 1 billion by 2015.

Half of Skype’s registered users by that time will be business customers, who bring in 20 percent to 30 percent more revenue on average than consumers, said David Gurle, a Skype vice president.”

Read the rest here

In case you can’t wait, here is the end of the review:

“Let us be crystal clear: we love this phone. Nay, we adore it. But the fact remains that it’s still very much an Android device — which means that if you don’t like Android now, odds are good that even Android executed on the most amazing hardware to date won’t do much to change your opinion of it. You’ve also got to be concerned about upgradeability; Froyo is almost certainly around the corner now, and HTC hasn’t done anything to suggest it’s able to push Sense-powered updates in a timely fashion.

That said, this is truly one of the best smartphones ever made, and even spotty 4G — a reality of a young technology that’s going to take years to properly build out — probably won’t do much to hamper your enjoyment of this thing. It’s reasonable to assume that phones like the EVO will ultimately come to every carrier over the next few months… but hey, if you jumped ship for Sprint to pick up this monster, we wouldn’t be able blame you.”

You can read the entire review here

I guess this means that VoIP is here to stay!

“Estimated 2,660 billion minutes of VoIP traffic was carried by service providers worldwide during the year 2009. Of these minutes, 842 billion was local call volume, 1,727 billion was national long distance (NLD) call volume, and 90.7 billion was the international long distance (ILD) call volume. If double counted traffic is included, we are looking at an overall traffic of 2,870 billion minutes during 2009.”

Read the rest here

This is a great video from The Onion about Google subsidized phones.  Google listens to your conversations and inserts audio ads relevant to the conversation.  Talking to a friend about where to go to dinner, Google will tell you real time.  Check out the video, very funny.

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users’ Ears