Perceived Security Threat Has Indian Government Concerned About RIM, Google, And Skype

With all of the concerns recently expressed by Middle Eastern nations about the Blackberry and it's use by spies and terrorists, India has added Google and Skype to the discussions by asking the companies to set up servers in India and allow access to web data, citing fears that the voip services could be misused by militants. Though Google has said it has not been contacted.

"India’s Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said RIM had begun giving India access to its secure data from Wednesday.

“Discussions for technical solutions for further access are continuing and the matter will be reviewed within 60 days,” Chidambaram said in a statement."

A Google spokeswoman based in India said: “We have not received any communication on this issue from the government. If and when we do, we will review and respond.”

According to The Globe and Mail.

Google Takes On Skype

The Official Google Blog has announced a new service within gmail that will allow you to make free gmail to telephone calls to Canadian and US numbers and low rate calls to other nations. The service is said to be offered only to gmail users in the US, but the CBC reported yesterday that if you are a Canadian with a gmail account and have your language setting tweaked to English (US) then the service will also be available to you. The roll out is happening over the next few days, so don't panic if you don't see the option just yet. You will need to install the video and voice chat add-on to enable the functionality but it's a quick and painless install. According to the blog post the service will remain free at least for the remainder of the year, similar to Skype's roll-out of Skype Out a few years back. I don't make a lot of phone calls, but I'm bound to be making Google my choice of carrier at least until 2011.

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Nokia and Skype Strike Deal

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is about to get a big boost into the world of cellphones. Starting with the release of the N97 in June, Nokia is going to embed Skype into it's devices allowing users to make VoIP calls either on a 3G network or while connected to WiFi. According to Cnet's Marguerite Reardon "Adding Skype to smartphones is a great benefit for consumers, especially people who travel internationally or have friends and family overseas. While pricing on domestic voice services has been dropping like a brick from a third-story window, international rates have remained high."

China Monitoring Skype Messages

Citizen Lab, a research group based at the University of Toronto, says its found a database of thousands of politically sensitive words which have been blocked by the Chinese government. "These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are stored on insecure publicly accessible web servers," said Citizen Lab's report, entitled "Breaching Trust". The database contains in excess of 150,000 messages which included words such as "democracy" and "Tibet" and phrases associated with the Falun Gong a spiritual movement considered banned by China. Skype president Josh Silverman said China's monitoring was "common knowledge" and that Tom Online, Skype's Chinese partner, had "established procedures to meet local laws and regulations". "These regulations include the requirement to monitor and block instant messages containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities," he said. While I'm sure most of us are not surprised at the Chinese Governments monitoring of communications by it's citizens, making such information public opens up a whole new debate. BBC News story here.

Is Google after Skype?

According to The Guardian Google is in talks with eBay to buy Skype! Well, that's what the rumors circulating London say... and according to OM Malik the Skype spokespeople are not commenting. I guess with all of the interest in telephony these days at Google it's not a big stretch of the imagination to speculate on this deal, and they do have the cash to make such a purchase happen. Can Google succeed where eBay has failed? Time may tell...

Public curtain raised on Joost

Joost, the video dream site of Skype's Janus Friis and Kazaa's Niklas Zennström opened it's doors to everyone today, shedding it's beta status. Up until now the free, advertising supported, site was available only to those who could score a private invite. With content providers like Viacom, who brings MTV, BET, Comedy Central, and a limited selection of movies from Paramount, and CNN and MLB on board there is content worth looking at. ars technica's Jacqui Cheng thinks they have a challenge on their hands, particularly in signing on more content providers and finding a hardware partner to move the shows to the TV. This may be true, but it seems to me that the folks who know the television model will be all over this as it's virtually what they have now... easier for them to wrap their heads around than many of the newer ad models.

Skype pointing finger at Microsoft and me?

While the folks at Skype do admit to finding a previously unknown bug in their software as the result of last weeks outage, the bulk of the blame seems to be pointed directly at Microsoft and Windows users. In their Skype blog post, What happened on August 16, the company states "On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update." Shame on us all for wanting to apply those critical updates!

Skype blackout

ars technica is reporting a major Skype outage that has been acknowledged by Skype in a statement "Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours." Skype has also temporarily suspended the download of the Skype client. They also say that if you leave your client running you will be automatically logged in when the outage is resolved.

That thumb drive speaks volumes!

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider Vonage has introduced the V-phone, a bright orange 256 MB thumb drive complete with Vonage Talk Software pre-loaded, a detachable stereo earpiece/microphone, and your own Vonage phone number. The beauty of this little device is that there is no need to install the software on your PC, or restart your machine to use it. Just plug the device into any available USB port, assuming the PC being plugged into has a high speed connection, and start calling! Considering I paid $99 as an upgrade to my Dell PC a couple of years ago for my 64 MB USB drive, the $29.99 (ca) price tag seems reasonable. There is of course a requirement to subscribe to a Vonage service plan, which start at $19.99 (ca). You can compare that to your current phone service and make your own decision whether or not it's worth the expense, and of course there are other VoIP services such as Skype to consider but this little device does have it's merits. If nothing else, there are 250 MB's of free space to store your MP3's on...

Sounds like a great solution for road warriors and students wanting to stay in touch with home, at $20 a month for 500 minutes the return on investment should be decent..."Dad, my marks are good. Can you send money?"