OT: May be interesting? Skype
no66y©
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http://www.skype.com/
2,690,333 downloads and counting...
http://www.skype.com/download.html
System Requirements
In order to use Skype software, your computer
must meet the following minimum system requirements:
PC running Windows 2000 or XP
400 Mhz processor
128 Mb RAM
10 MB free disk space on your hard drive
Sound Card, speakers and microphone
Dial-up Internet connection (minimum 33.6 Kbps modem)
http://www.skype.com/download.html
This is a new peer-to-peer Internet phone hack form the KaaZaa folks.
Over 2 mil downloads in a couple of months.
Posted on Sat, Nov. 15, 2003
How cheap can phone calls get? Answer: Free
TALKING OVER THE INTERNET MAY BE WAVE OF THE FUTURE
By Peter J. Howe - Boston Globe
Forget low-cost phone service. Michael Cohen and Robert La Ferla are
going for no- cost phone service.
Cohen, a law school student in Toronto, and La Ferla, a software
engineer from Cambridge, Mass., are among those who have flocked to an
explosively popular free service called Skype that allows users to make
totally free computer-to-computer phone calls carried over the
Internet. Unlike some Net-based services, Skype -- which rhymes with
``hype'' -- requires no extra devices beyond the speakers and
microphone built in to most newer computers. Just 10 weeks after it was
launched, Skype has attracted nearly 2.6 million users.
Skype, developed by the same Swedish team that pioneered the online
music-piracy service Kazaa, is already perceived as a major new threat
to the reeling Baby Bells, AT&T, and MCI, which have seen their
industry implode over the last three years as more and more phone
communications move to wireless and Internet services or are replaced
by e-mail and instant messaging. Daiwa Securities stock analysts
recently described Skype as ``a giant meteor hurtling on a collision
course'' toward the incumbent phone giants.
``The sound quality is amazing, like the person you're speaking with is
sitting right next to you,'' said Cohen, 25, a second-year student at
the University of Toronto law school who got his Boston-area father to
download Skype so he could cut his cost per minute for calling home
from 5 cents to nothing. ``You can hear so much more than you can get
through a phone,'' Cohen said.
La Ferla, 36, said he started using Skype about two weeks ago to talk
with his wife, who works in Japan. Although the computer connections
have not been reliable, La Ferla said, as an alternative to paying 12
to 35 cents a minute to call Tokyo, ``the savings for us could be
substantial.''
Data packets
Services such as Skype, Vonage, Net2Phone and Packet8 carry calls over
the Net by breaking them down into the kinds of small data packets
that form an e-mail or Web page, then reassembling them in
milliseconds to create continuous Bell System-like sound. Phone
companies such as Verizon and AT&T also are transmitting more of their
long-distance and international calls as Voice over Internet protocol
to slash network operating costs.
Most industry analysts estimate that only about 1 million Americans now
regularly use all-Internet voice calling services, although
In-Stat/MDR, an Arizona research firm, forecasts that 5 million will by
2007.
The key difference between Skype and other so-called VoIp services is
that Skype does not rely on -- and therefore does not have to charge
for -- any of its own computers to complete calls. Rather, calls are
made and received using so-called peer-to-peer software that sends
bits back and forth between two Skype users' computers, in the same
way a Kazaa user would download a digital song from another Kazaa
user's PC.
A limitation
The major limitation of Skype today is that users can make calls only to
other people who have downloaded Skype, and then only from computer to
computer. However, the company says it is months away from developing
a paid service that would complete calls to conventional phones.
Skype does not make money now, but the company is hoping that enhanced
services, like the ability to call people on regular phones, will
eventually bring in enough revenues to sustain a business. In the
future, Skype for-pay ``premium services'' may grow to include voice
mail, call waiting, and multiple lines.
Today, however, setting up a call on Skype is similar to instant
messaging. First, a user checks to see whether the person he wants to
call is online; then the caller clicks a button that starts a call,
triggering the sound of a ringing phone on the PC at the other end of
the call.
Vonage spokeswoman Brooke Schulz called Skype ``interesting'' but added,
``It is a walled garden, and until the traditional phone network becomes
completely obsolete in 20 years, you're still going to need to call
Grandma on Sundays and chances are she's not on Skype.''
--
No66y© the Ice Weasel
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