Here's three Skype products that aim to enhance your Skypeing experience that leaves me questioning exactly what I'm buying with Skype Certified. The three products are the VoSky Chatterbox, Jawbone Headset and the Motorola Wireless Interenet Calling Kit. Each provide a different angle on bettering the standard Skyper's headset and as you might expect each has their pro's and con's.

VoSky Chatterbox.

This simple USB device provides an easily portable plug and play speakerphone for Skype. It's simple to use and requires no additional software to be loaded. It has a volume and mute button on top and works probably as expected, as a low cost speakerphone. I'd liken it to the solution we had as kids when we could finally plug in a speakerphone box between the old phone and the whole family sat around. In principle great, in practice it left something to be desired. The Chatterbox is a little like this. It works. It's also no substitute for a decent headset. The caller on the other end of the line will know and possibly complain. Handsfree solutions curently work better with a good set of speakers and a proper stand mic. Locate them correctly and the caller won't get a any feedback. Many laptops work as good as the Chatterbox. If you feel the need try it. Just don't expect it to be a Polycom and ready for the office. For kids it may be more robust than a headset - read youngsters talking to Grandma.

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Deal done. Retail VOIP in the offing? Views later.

eBay has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration.

Skype generated approximately $7 million in revenues in 2004, and the company anticipates that it will generate an estimated $60 million in revenues in 2005 and more than $200 million in 2006. For Q4-05, eBay expects the acquisition to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.01 and $0.04 respectively. For the full year 2006, eBay expects the transaction to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.04 and $0.12 respectively, with breakeven on a pro forma basis expected in the fourth quarter of 2006. On a long-term basis, eBay expects Skype operating margins could be in the range of 20% to 25%.

The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005.

Full text of news release...

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By Jean Mercier, Ghent, Belgium, Monday June 1, 2005

Some weeks ago I searched a way to record the users on-line without staying awake the whole night. Perhaps this is possible with the Skype API and some programming, but I am not a programmer anymore! But I found a trick ... View image

Some time ago I found also interesting data concerning the Skype Users by Country.
Of course Users on-line peak around 17h GMT+1 (means 16h GMT), because according to the Skype statistics more than 42% of the users are Europeans located in the GMT 0, GMT+1 and GMT+2 time zones. At the same moment the USA, Brazil and Canada and some other American countries are starting to work!

There is also a "dip" in the curve between 12h and 14h GMT+1! Could it be because a lot of Europeans are leaving the office to lunch, and log-off their Skype? And could it be that the other "dip" in the curve (around 6 AM) has something to do with the Americans (South and North) going out to lunch? Pure speculation, but if somebody has another explanation, I am willing to discuss it.

My curiosity did not

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Moments ago Skype passed another threshold. 7:30 AM in British Columbia Canada, 8 PM in Bangalore, India according to Vir Bhanu of Knowledge Systems who gave me the heads up.

Here was the world at that moment in time compliments of here:

If you follow Voice on the Net this is an important moment. About 8.5 percent of the Skype User community is online at one time.

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