RE: Skype Wi-Fi phones to eliminate PC dependency

As someone in the connectivity and convergence businesses I'd be curious to see how reliably it actually connects to various WiFi hotspots: - made by different manufacturers - with different log in sequences and re-direct screens that make you accept terms and conditions etc. - with different authentication methods (enterprises with 802.1x enabled, e.g.) - with link security enabled (WEP, WPA etc.) - how do you enter the alphanumeric key on the handset?

There's a lot more to it than they probably realize... C>

==========================

I have been happily using the Linksys Skype wireless phone, but it needs Skype to be logged in and a base station attached to a PC. This sounds even better - any WiFi hotspot and go. _______________________________________________________________

Today's focus: Skype Wi-Fi phones to eliminate PC dependency

By Joanie Wexler

In a move that could slowly suck the life out of the cellular carriers' voice cash cow, Skype last week said its popular VoIP software will be available bundled with several standalone Wi-Fi handsets in the third quarter. The setup eliminates the need for connections to a computer to make free Internet phone calls.

Four handset partners will be assembling the devices, which will be available directly from the Skype online store. The hardware partners are Belkin, Edge-Core, NetGear, and SMC.

Skype said the devices will be usable with any personal, business or free public Wi-Fi access point that does not require browser authentication. The key point here is that you can make free calls Internet-to-Internet (or very inexpensive ones to those that terminate on the PSTN) without having to be tied to a computer. If the devices are popular, the cellular carriers (and landline telephony providers, too) will be facing further erosion of their significant revenues derived from voice minutes.

Granted, Wi-Fi coverage isn't nearly as pervasive as cellular coverage. And so far, the devices sound like they will be fairly expensive (about $250 to $300). Still, depending on your users' business habits, the capital investment could quickly be recouped in discarded fee-based cellular minutes.

The announcement adds yet another dimension to the evolving and converging world of telephone calling in which, for example:

* Carriers are considering dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular handsets and associated services. When you roam onto your company's own wireless LAN, you switch over to a less expensive per-minute rate.

* RIM, whose forte historically has been messaging handsets with cellular connections, introduced the Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry 7270 last year. The 7270 ties to your corporate WLAN and your IP PBX (via the SIP protocol), throwing some competition at the likes of Wi-Fi handset makers SpectraLink and Cisco. To date, however, none of these vendors' devices work with any old "open" Wi-Fi network; they must be used locally on your business campus in conjunction with your organization's own access points.

* Mobility server companies, such as Ascendent (purchased earlier this year by RIM), extend PBX capabilities to cellular phones and allow cellular users to leverage their business's dial plans, PBX features, and calling rates when connected to cellular networks.

Amid this evolving telephony landscape, will you consider using a Skype Wi-Fi handset? Why or why not? How might such a device fit into your company's wired/wireless/voice/data convergence plans? Enquiring minds want to know, so please send me a message with your thoughts.

Long live V3RT!

All the Good Ones Have Been Taken -- In Domain Names, Too It's hardly secret knowledge, though perhaps only Dennis Forbes has seen it in all its glory. There are roughly 47 million domain names that end with ".com," making that space the biggest and most prestigious piece of real estate on the Internet. Getting a URL listed as a dot-com involves, ultimately, checking in with a database at Verisign, the Mountain View, Calif., company that keeps tabs on the dot-com world, the way your state's DMV knows about which cars have which license plates. If you know who at Verisign to ask, you can get the complete dot-com list. Mr. Forbes, an analyst at Vastardis Capital Services, a New York mutual-fund service company, got it and has since made a hobby of studying the list, something he does in his spare time. He has, in the process, become the world's pre-eminent domainologist. His findings ought to be relevant to aspiring Web entrepreneurs everywhere. For the rest of us, they are an amusement. (Registering a dot-com domain costs around $9 a year. After the initial registration period is purchased, you have to re-register the name or risk losing it to someone else.) Most people trying to do business online will tell you that the good domain names are already taken. Mr. Forbes's research proves them out. For example, for every possible two-character and three-character combination -- including both letters and numbers -- all possible domains are taken. Virtually all English words with four letters are claimed; those that aren't are usually contractions, and Web rules don't allow apostrophes. All of the 1,000 most common English words have been snatched up. The word "a" appears more than any other, though most of the time, of course, it's just a letter in a longer word. The least-used common word is "consonant," Mr. Forbes says, which is in just 42 domains, including "consonantpain.com," which isn't a misspelling but a word game. Mr. Forbes checked the U.S. Census Bureau's 1,219 most-common male names, the 2,841 most-common female names and the 10,000 most-common surnames; all were booked. Not only that, but when you link the top 300 first names with the top 300 last names, 89% of the resulting combinations are taken for male names and 84% for female ones. Beyond single-letter words like "a," it's hard to say what is the most common word in all the URLs. It's the same for all short words that tend to be portions of other words. The most common word four letters or longer, though, is "home"; 719,000 domains have some sort of home in them. Given the economics of the Web, chances are that many of those involve refinancing: 114,700 URLs mention "mortgage," which is more than discuss "science," "nature" or "children." Because you might be curious, "sex" appears in 257,000 domains. It may be tied to one of the most popular uses of the Web, but the word itself is only the 89th most-popular in dot-com domains. Incidentally, what is perhaps the naughtiest English word -- the one with four letters -- appears nearly 38,000 times. So smutty is so much of the Web, that often the best way to figure out what a certain word might be doing in a domain is to think of the most indecent activity you could possibly imagine associated with that word. The word "imagine," for instance, appears in 3,700 URLs, one of which asks us to imagine a certain actress without her clothes. Half of all domains are between nine and 15 characters long; the average length is 13. A domain can have, at most, 63 characters, and there are 550 such domains. In fact, some people have made a haiku-like art out of 63-character domain names. "I hope you have a pen and paper handy cause this is a crazy long domain name man," says one. (Spaces have been added in the interest of readability.) "Did you know that you can only have sixty-three characters in a domain name?" asks another. There are other oddities in this fringe world of hyperlong domains. For example, each of the 26 letters of the alphabet has a domain in which the letter is repeated 63 times until there is no room left. While much has been made of domain names like business.com being bought and sold for millions of dollars, Mr. Forbes is dubious about the value of expensive domains. Most people now search for Web sites using a descriptive word or phrase, or else are introduced to a site by a friend or colleague who emails the URL. So, domains don't need to be short and snappy the way they had to be in the earliest days of the Web. A large percentage of these domains don't even have working Web sites attached to them. So why do people bother to register them? Besides whimsy, Mr. Forbes credits a lingering spirit of bubble-era speculation -- however improbable it may be. "Someone out there," he said, "is still hoping that someone will come along and form a corporation called uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.com, and when that happens, they will be sitting on a gold mine and will reap the rewards." Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com1 URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115326960876810574.html Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) mailto:lee.gomes@wsj.com