The day after Christmas I was driving south from central Oregon on my way to Mount Shasta...

I stopped by the Klamath Falls RadioShack store. K Falls is a small community of about 20 thousand people just north of the California-Oregon border. They only have one RadioShack store but eight people in different parts of town were able to point me in the right direction.

I asked the friendly staff if they had any Skype stuff. I had to spell it ("s-k-y-p-e") and they looked it up on the computer, pointing to a U.S. Cellular display on the right.

Looking a little closer, wading through mobiles and accessories, ...

I found five shiny foil bags.

No other Skype merchandise with the Skype gift packs, now back up to their MSRP of US$9.99. Was told there was a phone that worked with Skype over in the networking section...

with the LAN and wifi gear.

It was the VoIP Voice CyberphoneK, decorated with the Skype Certified logo. Just one of the four Skype cobranded products stocked by RadioShack.

I've had similar experiences in smaller and larger RadioShack stores in California. It's hard to launch a new category and brand, especially with seasonal staff and the holiday sales frenzy. Two months in, most RadioShack employees don't have much (any?) Skype brand awareness, talking points, or merchandising direction. Assuming sales were adequate this month, Skype wil stick around and this will change.

RadioShack is a great place for Skype to start retailing in the United States. Only Wal-Mart sells more (38% of "mobile phones sold in major U.S. retail outlets and consumer electronic stories in the last six months") than RadioShack (28%). While the carrier-owned stores sell nearly half of all mobile phones, their customer satisfaction is horrible (24% positive). Good experiences at RadioShack should make it easier for Skype to open doors at other retailers, all of whom will be at CES next week. See you there.

Niklas Zennström speaks on intellectual property rights. (Tony Hallet, Silicon.com) "Software patents are hindering innovation. Patents should be granted when there is real innovation and real investment in innovation." "We allow third-party developers to develop on our platform. It's a great way to do it. We are helping them be successful. But there is a mental threshold you have to go through. People [at Skype] say 'Maybe we could have done that'."

EULAscan about Skype: customer written EULA reviews. My line-by-line review of the Skype Terms of Service.

Wael Ghandour's Guide to blocking Skype Blocking Skype Using Squid and OpenBSD (Help Net Security). Instructions for network admins.

Macromedia and Jabber make secure IM a selling point to the US Government. (Les perles du chat). Whereas Skype's secure messaging gets it banned? the news release. Government is a largely untapped market for Skype.

overview of the vTraveller USB handset (Gadget Spy). Skype Certified. Dial by saying the names of people in your address book. From VoIP Voice.

Skype + Trillian = SkyLlian (Hesspoint). SkyLlian brings your Skype contacts into Trillian.

Torcamp Rocked! (Alec Saunders) Bohemian 2.0?

Don't Buy DSL From This Man ... If You Can Help It (Tom Evslin). "Ed Whitacre is CEO of SBC, the huge local telecom monopoly which is about to swallow AT&T. The excitement of the progeny buying the former parent may be going to his head." Whitacre is dangerous to Skype. He thinks users and Skype should pay SBC/AT&T for Skype traffic over the DSL or cable line you're already renting.

Popular Post: Bluetooth & Skype (Skype Journal, February 2005).

Do you want to make internet telephony easier to use and more accessible? Do you want the option of taking Skype calls on your home cordless phone (or any phone)? In my case I want the family to make cheap calls to New Zealand without messing with my PC and yet having simple access to SkypeOut.

Perhaps you are not yet ready to splurge on a DUALphone, although those SkypeOut minutes to global destinations are saving you a bundle.

Introducing UConnect, another great product from VoIPVoice. Now one device brings all the features of Skype and Internet telephony into the cordless phone you have on your desktop. UConnect brings all the neat features VoIPVoice has programmed to work with the CyberPhoneK and lets you use them on your cordless phone.

If you have a recent cordless phone with an LCD, UConnect will enable:

• Skype Caller ID for inbound calls for phones with an LCD.
  
• Easy access to both Landline or SkypeOut or easy dialing out.
  
• Easy buddylist dialing with voice activated confirmation
  
• Voice announcements of who's calling optional.
  
• Skype voice mail notification
  
• Second or third line (or more) with SkypeIn numbers.

UConnect is one of those devices that you look at and say... that's different. There's some sense to the design with its integrated USB connector (also comes with an extension cable) which makes it easy to travel with (use those non digital phones where still available in hotels) or simply press it into the back of a desktop PC. UConnect will work in both USB mode connected to Skype and or just connected to your landline.

Your computer has to be running for Skype to function. Don't expect the sound quality to be Skype headset like. This is not the fault of the device rather dependent on your cordless phone. However, PSTN quality (what your handset was designed for) will be perfectly adequate for the times you want to move and sit out on the deck talking.

UConnect is on the first Skype certified products. That means it meets Skype's quality charter and has met the requirements of Skype's certification program.

UConnect will be released shortly, at a price of US$59.99 which is competitive with competing devices which currently don't offer the same slick Skype feature integration. Watch the VoIPVoice store for more details.

Reader Jim Courtney referred me to Tom's Networking which reports on a new Cisco phone for Skype. Mark Evans obviously like the Canadian input too. We shouldn't be too surprised Mike Volpi of Cisco sits on Skype's board. Tom's suggest the retail price will be south of $100. That seems a reasonable guess. More importantly the connective wireless hardware is labeled with VoIPVoice. They are the ones behind the neat CyberphoneK Skype integration. My guess is we will see some surprises when this product releases in user functionality.