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The world may indeed be flat, and we all might be competing in a global village. But that doesn't mean we here in the small-biz world can make a cheap, reliable international phone call.
First it was instant messaging during office hours that gave us the thrill of passing notes in class. Then it was ogling ourselves on Web cams, ranting our minds on blogs, uploading our baby photos on Flickr and poking each other on Facebook. These days, as corporate records show, we choose to spend our lunch breaks watching YouTube, if not chatting over Skype.
The actress will appear in a live class with the talk-show host and A New Earth author
Nokia isn't foolish enough to think that its line of Internet Tablets is going to attract everyone. The company has readily admitted that it's for a certain audience--gadget lovers and early adopters--and we certainly agree with that statement.
The consumer electronics industry has for many years now tried to shoe-horn a game (some would say game-like) experience on the mobile phone device, but this year, Sony swims upstream in the same waters. It has taken the PSP handheld game platform and turned it into a mobile phone -- albeit with limitations. But the value proposition for consumers is win-win.
If you're among those frequent travelers whose growing gadgetry collections occasionally make you suspect that technology does not, in fact, simplify your life, you're not alone. Take recent reports by new AT&T iPhone customers of roaming charges in the thousands of dollars and novel-length bills in the mail (customer Justine Ezarik posted a YouTube video of herself opening a 300-page bill that AT&T sent to her in a box).
While most of us here on planet small business have been sweating fancy productivity tools such as remote e-mail and the broadband Internet, old-school conference calling has quietly undergone a revolution. New online conferencing tools are cheaper and more powerful than ever. And they can add real value to your business.
I work for a very small company, where one of my co-workers is my boss' son. I've only been here for about four months, and in that time, the son has shown up at work maybe half the days. He took three weeks off to go for a sailing trip for example, and hasn't been in yet this week (today is Thursday) because he had an argument with his girlfriend.
The Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 is nearly identical to the QuickCam Pro for Notebooks Webcam, except for the fact that it's a better fit for laptops. This $99 desktop Webcam is larger than its laptop sibling, but its flexible, two-hinged stand works equally well resting directly on your desk or atop your desktop's LCD or your laptop's screen.
As an online marketing entrepreneur, I'm always looking for cheaper and better communications. Skype's Internet telephony service is one of the hottest things on the Web today, slashing phone bills for more than 75 million users worldwide.
The world may indeed be flat, and we all might be competing in a global village. But that doesn't mean we here in the small-biz world can make a cheap, reliable international phone call.
First it was instant messaging during office hours that gave us the thrill of passing notes in class. Then it was ogling ourselves on Web cams, ranting our minds on blogs, uploading our baby photos on Flickr and poking each other on Facebook. These days, as corporate records show, we choose to spend our lunch breaks watching YouTube, if not chatting over Skype.
The actress will appear in a live class with the talk-show host and A New Earth author
Nokia isn't foolish enough to think that its line of Internet Tablets is going to attract everyone. The company has readily admitted that it's for a certain audience--gadget lovers and early adopters--and we certainly agree with that statement.
The consumer electronics industry has for many years now tried to shoe-horn a game (some would say game-like) experience on the mobile phone device, but this year, Sony swims upstream in the same waters. It has taken the PSP handheld game platform and turned it into a mobile phone -- albeit with limitations. But the value proposition for consumers is win-win.
If you're among those frequent travelers whose growing gadgetry collections occasionally make you suspect that technology does not, in fact, simplify your life, you're not alone. Take recent reports by new AT&T iPhone customers of roaming charges in the thousands of dollars and novel-length bills in the mail (customer Justine Ezarik posted a YouTube video of herself opening a 300-page bill that AT&T sent to her in a box).
While most of us here on planet small business have been sweating fancy productivity tools such as remote e-mail and the broadband Internet, old-school conference calling has quietly undergone a revolution. New online conferencing tools are cheaper and more powerful than ever. And they can add real value to your business.
I work for a very small company, where one of my co-workers is my boss' son. I've only been here for about four months, and in that time, the son has shown up at work maybe half the days. He took three weeks off to go for a sailing trip for example, and hasn't been in yet this week (today is Thursday) because he had an argument with his girlfriend.
The Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 is nearly identical to the QuickCam Pro for Notebooks Webcam, except for the fact that it's a better fit for laptops. This $99 desktop Webcam is larger than its laptop sibling, but its flexible, two-hinged stand works equally well resting directly on your desk or atop your desktop's LCD or your laptop's screen.
As an online marketing entrepreneur, I'm always looking for cheaper and better communications. Skype's Internet telephony service is one of the hottest things on the Web today, slashing phone bills for more than 75 million users worldwide.
It's not a social networking site and it no longer gets the buzz of, say, Google, but eBay has quietly grown to become a giant.
What's more creepily brilliant than ads that follow you around the Web? How about a Skype-like online phone service that listens in on your conversations and serves up ads based on what you say?
Skype never emerged as the cash cow eBay had hoped for when it paid a jaw-dropping $2.6 billion to acquire the Internet phone startup in 2005. Now eBay's announcement Monday that it will write off $1.4 billion in charges related to Skype has analysts and investors questioning whether the Internet phone business - known as voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) - has any commercial potential at all.
Where's the Geek Terminal in this city?
Q: I'm told that it can cost $200,000 to $500,000 to open up a foreign office. Is there a cheaper way to set up shop with only a sales rep or two, if you just want to test the market? -- Scot Wingo, CEO, ChannelAdvisor
Skype, the popular computer program that lets its users make long-distance phone calls over the Internet, said Thursday that software problems have left many of its millions of users without service worldwide
At first blush, telecom flameouts SunRocket and Amp'd don't have a lot in common. (SunRocket shut down early last week; Amp'd's Web site says the company is "potentially suspending" U.S. operations July 31.) Amp'd is a wireless operator that targets teens and young adults, SunRocket delivered phone calls using Internet Protocol (IP) technology. Its intended audience: Bargain seekers who wanted the cost savings of VOIP service without the perceived complexities of a service such as Skype.
In preparation for the iMeme: The Thinkers of Tech conference, Fortune asked dozens of technology gurus the following question: What, for you, has been the most surprising infectious idea of the past year? Click on the names to read how Esther Dyson, Bill Joy, Jonathan Schwartz, among others, answered, or simply scroll down.
It's not easy to find love in a conservative Muslim country torn by war. Here's how some young Iraqis are trying
What do you need to start a business? Enough Mountain Dew to guzzle through the night and a few buddies willing to work for equity. Or that's how you'll remember it. For now let these online tools ease the way.
What do you need to start a business? Enough Mountain Dew to guzzle through the night and a few buddies willing to work for equity. Or that's how you'll remember it. For now let these online tools ease the way.
Business 2.0 Magazine invites you to vote for the businesspeople who inspire, inform and infuriate you, from CEOs to entrepreneurs to media stars.
Business travel can wear anyone down.
While most of us here on planet small business have been sweating fancy productivity tools such as remote e-mail and the broadband Internet, old-school conference calling has quietly undergone a re...
Welcome to the world of the 3.5G phones which promise fast wireless access to the Internet, plus streaming of music videos and live television through your handset.
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis aren't used to competition like this. The maverick duo that rocked the telecom and music industries with their Internet startups Skype and Kazaa are now trying to s...
For the first six years of the century, the dream of building a technology company and taking it public was out of reach for all but a few lucky entrepreneurs.
Check out these key sites to get up to speed.
Once upon a time, in the bad old days of business, giving away a product without charge was unheard of. Sure, Estée Lauder gave samples to celebrities and Gillette sold its razors cheap and made mo...
Free Internet phone service was always likely to change the world - but until recently we had no idea how. A little more than a year after eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion, the service has become...
Worldly Wanderer
These perpetrators of dumbest moments past may be out of the spotlight, but check out what they're up to now.
Online auction site eBay reported earnings that rose 24 percent from the year-ago quarter, beating analysts' estimates.
The business tools you can't work without
Online auctioneer eBay is starting to face some criticism from Wall Street as its growth rate cools off and competition from the likes of Google and Yahoo! increases.
Meg Whitman is waiting in her personal meeting room at eBay's headquarters in San Jose, otherwise known as the Blondie room. It is eBay's corny tradition for a top manager's peers, or, in her case,...
As an online marketing entrepreneur, I'm always looking for cheaper and better communications. Skype's Internet telephony service is one of the hottest things on the Web today, slashing phone bills...
The Disruptor: Jajah
Like the pioneering voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phone service on which it is based, Vonage's new V-Phone is a bit quirky.
Niklas Zennstrom is a populist Web hero. The 40-year-old Swede has twice co-founded companies that rattled powerful industries by giving away important things to consumers.
When working in the tropical sun becomes too much for Ivko Maksimovic, the lanky Serbian heads to one of the Dominican Republic's pristine white-sand beaches. He first gathers up a black hat, mosqu...
Around and around the media merger merry-go-round goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.
eBay may need to put in a bid on a new successor for chief executive officer Meg Whitman.
It seemed like a routine marketing ploy when Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia trumpeted a global survey in early June showing that two-thirds of handset users think music-playing phones will replac...
It seemed like a routine marketing ploy when Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia trumpeted a global survey in early June showing that two-thirds of handset users think music-playing phones will replace standalone MP3 devices like Apple's iPod. After all, Nokia is hoping for a high-margin revenue stream from new computer-like telephony devices.
All Web sites are alike. Regardless of their owners, they can all do the same set of things. In that fact lies the profound crisis facing all aspects of the media industry.
The security line feels like a maze, the legroom in coach reminds you of the time your son talked you into climbing into his crib, and it looks as if you'll have to circle over O'Hare a few more ti...
A prototype is where the rubber starts to hit the road: It's the first physical embodiment of your business idea, and a tool you'll use to attract the resources you need to grow. Don't confuse a prototype with the final product -- a distracting and potentially fatal mistake. Pretty looks aren't important. A good prototype is just a working demonstration that showcases what your product will do.
AOL is struggling to break out of a prolonged slump. But will rolling out new-and-improved versions of other companies' innovative ideas be enough?
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - For millions of users, voice over Internet protocol, or VOIP, is lowering phone bills for calls they make from their PC or land-line phone. But soon VOIP could cut cell-phone bills, too -- most of all for international users.
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - Thanks to record-label lawsuits and spyware scares, file-sharing has a bad reputation among consumers. But three startups are nevertheless betting that they can harness the technology to solve a growing problem: Conveniently sharing photos and home videos with friends and family.
Alltel, the fifth-largest U.S. wireless carrier, is loudly proclaiming itself "America's largest network." That bit of braggadocio has gotten Engadget Mobile blogger Ryan Block curious enough to quiz some PR reps and download coverage maps. It turns out that Alltel is basing its claim on the square footage covered by its network. But a close look at Alltel's wireless network, which covers entire states, shows a surprising lack of detail compared to maps from competitors like Verizon and Sprint Nextel. Block points out that unlike most carriers, Alltel doesn't distinguish between regions that have current or planned coverage. That means there's no way of knowing if its map truly indicates where you can get a cell-phone signal, or just where Alltel owns rights to wireless spectrum. Says Block: "Alltel has some explaining to do." One clear signal: Wireless users lose out when carriers spend more time arguing about who's got the bigger network than building more cell-phone towers.
PortalPlayer built its business supplying chips for Apple's iPod -- but now, Apple has informed PortalPlayer that its newest chip isn't going into new models of the iPod Nano. Shares plummeted 42 percent on Thursday and continued to drop Friday morning.
Online auctioneer eBay Inc. posted lower quarterly earnings Wednesday, sending shares down 5 percent in after-hours trading.
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0) - Google may be the most recognized new 21st century brand in the West. But in China, its name was a dog. Surfers had been pronouncing the unfamiliar "Google" as "gougou" or "gugou," among other variants - meaning "doggy" and "old hound." An easier-to-pronounce name is just one of the reasons why rival Baidu has been eating Google's lunch in China. That's why the company tweaked its iconic name yesterday as it opened a new engineering center in Beijing. Google renamed itself "Gu Ge" (pronounced "goo-guh"), which China Daily elaborately translates as "song of the harvest of grain." Google officials said the new name projected "the sense of a fruitful and productive search experience, in a poetic Chinese way."
StreamCast Networks, the maker of Morpheus file-sharing software, is suing Internet telephone company Skype, claiming that Skype is using peer-to-peer technology that StreamCast says it owns. Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis also created the technology behind Kazaa, a popular file-sharing network which had battled over technology licensing with StreamCast in the past. If the allegations are valid, the lawsuit could pose a big threat to Skype, which was acquired by eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005. One of the things that makes Skype better than the competition is its use of the peer-to-peer technology: Skype takes advantage of its users' computers and Internet connections to efficiently connect and transmit calls.
NBC is getting the Internet in a big way. Spurred by a prime-time ratings boost that followed the sale of episodes of "The Office" on iTunes, the network now plans to stream 10 original, Web-only episodes of the hit show this summer. The move comes after NBC Universal Television Group CEO Jeffrey Zucker told producers to come up with pitches for shows that included Internet components.
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - The venture capitalists behind Skype are placing a new bet on AllPeers, a startup based in Oxford, England.
For nearly a century, the phone, and voice as we know it, have existed largely in the confines of a thin copper wire. But now service providers can convert voice calls into tiny Internet packets and let them loose on fast connections, thus mimicking the traditional voice experience without spending hundreds of millions on infrastructure.
Are children too young to learn to be entrepreneurs?
Much to the telephone company's chagrin, there are now plenty of ways to get phone service for a fraction of the price you're used to. The cable industry is one new competitor, but the cheapest alt...
VOIP With Benefits Ipevo Free.1 Skype USB phone; $30; www.ipevo.com
For nearly a century, the phone, and voice as we know it, have existed largely in the confines of a thin copper wire. But now service providers can convert voice calls into tiny Internet packets an...
America Online is set to roll out major new services in the coming months that include a new video search offering and a "voice platform" for its popular instant-messaging service, AIM, according to a published report Monday.
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 20) -GigaOm and Venkatesh note that Google seems to be testing it's click-to-call program, which connects web surfers and advertisers by phone. Searching for "hotels, New York," Venkatesh got an ad with a little green phone icon. Clicking on the icon prompted him to enter his phone number, which Google says it will use to connect a regular telephone call from the advertiser to the customer (without revealing the customer's number to the advertiser). AOL, a unit of Time Warner, started running its own pay-per-call ad program last year. The advantage of these ads: Advertisers pay Internet outfits much higher fees for pay-per-call ads than for the traditional pay-per-click ads, because they are more likely to lead to sales. But Venkatesh feels Google's technology is lacking. Clicking on the ads, he noted, did not yet yield any further information about the advertiser, unlike in AOL's system, which sends surfers to a "landing page" that gives surfers details about the business they're ...
Aiming to increase access to the Internet, particularly for people away from home, Google, Skype and other leading Internet investors Sunday announced a $21.5 million investment in an innovative new Internet access network called Fon.
Smartest CEO: ROBERT IGER
Eric Pooley reports: If a session at Davos isn't absolutely great I start to wish I was up on the mountain instead of down in the Congress Center. Right now all thoughts of skiing have been banished: Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, John Chambers and Niklas Zennstrom are talking about the next phase in the tech revolution, and how they're making it pay.
Lawyers from the Justice Department are seeking records of Google searches, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The request for the data comes in an effort to revive a child-pornography law struck down by the Supreme Court in 2004. A Google lawyer says the company will fight the subpoena.
If you are a consumer shopping for VOIP, welcome to the land of confusion.
EBay hopes the merchants who peddle their wares on its Web site will embrace Skype, the online calling service it bought recently, but some of the auction site's top merchants say they have no plans to use it as a sales tool.
Tech-savvy business travelers are forcing a rethink on how hotels charge for long-distance communications, meaning that exorbitant phone bills on the road could soon be a thing of the past.
ONE OF THE MOST difficult choices I've made was whether to buy Skype. I met [Skype co-founder] Niklas Zennström in May. He gave me some statistics--like 100,000 new registered Skype users per day--...
For the global road warrior, staying in touch with the office usually means tapping lengthy calling card numbers or typing late-night e-mail exchanges. It would be nice if wireless carriers and Int...
A new technology boom of potentially unprecedented power and durability is spawning in all of the nation's tech centers from Palo Alto to Seattle to Austin to New York.
Shares of eBay tumbled about 6 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday after the online auction site reported third-quarter results in line with forecasts but issued guidance for the current quarter that disappointed Wall Street.
THERE ARE ALL SORTS OF APPROACHESto the venture capital game. Some investors study one area so deeply they become experts. Others simply back the best entrepreneurs. A third type invests only in co...
EVEN FOR A BUSINESS BUILT AROUND oddball purchases, the decision by eBay to acquire the free voice-over-Internet company Skype--for as much as $4.1 billion--in mid-September appears at first to be ...
Eriksen Translations employs some 5,000 freelancers all over the world to translate documents in 75 languages for business clients. Eager to trim its exorbitant overseas phone bills, the Brooklyn-b...
eBay hopes to dial up a new round of growth but many investors are skeptical.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Round and round the Internet merger wheel goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.
Stocks were slightly higher Monday morning as investors eyed a trio of mergers and geared up for a week heavy with economic news.
Skype, a company that makes software allowing users to call each other over the Internet at no charge, features warm and fuzzy language on its Web site about how it just wants to give away software.
Stock markets opened lower Thursday as unemployment claims came in higher than expected and traders awaited the first oil and gas inventory reported to show the full disruption from Hurricane Katrina.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is understood to have held talks with Skype to buy the Internet telecoms software provider for around $3 billion, but the talks broke down, the British newspaper The Independent reported Sunday.
Call it Skype envy or the inevitable search for the next killer app on the Internet.
Rick Rashid makes his living staring off into the distance. He's head of Microsoft Research, the software giant's R&D arm, and it's his job to peer far over the horizon to divine where technology i...
If Michael Robertson has his way, every major website on the planet will be lining up to become your next phone-service provider. In early July, SIP-phone, the latest startup from the man behind MP...
Internet services company Yahoo Inc. is looking to boost its business in the Internet's next big growth area -- voice communications.
Upstarts like Vonage and Skype are bringing voice-over-IP to the masses. But a bigger opportunity lurks in the $2 billion corporate phone market. Now, New York-based startup Popular Telephony is of...
Swedish software guru Niklas Zennstrom co-founded Skype, a pioneering voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) company. Here he talks to CNN's Charles Hodson about his software, which allows Internet users to make free PC-to-PC phone calls to anyone in the world.
Near the center of the walled medieval district of Estonia's capital, Tallinn, sits the NoKu bar. It's almost impossible to find, on a cobblestone street behind a pair of old, unmarked wooden doors...
The great bandwidth investment boom of the late 1990s is finally paying dividends--in the form of less expensive phone calls. VOIP technology transmits voice signals over high-bandwidth networks us...
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