Skype has launched a beta of Skype 3.0 for Windows Mobile. As expected, the new client has two major new features: SMS and file transfer.

The file transfer feature lets you swap files with any other Skype member, whether they're using a mobile or desktop client. With the SMS function, you can send domestic or international text messages at Skype rates, which in many cases are lower than the rates you'd pay to send international SMS over a wireless carrier. You can send or receive files or text messages over a 3G or WiFi connection.

Google Voice, or the service formerly known as GrandCentral, assigns users a single phone number that you can give out to friends, colleagues, enemies, or just about anybody else. You can then link that number to your existing phone lines so that when a user calls it will ring your home, work, and/or cellphone. You can set permissions so that calls from some numbers will always go straight to voicemail. And you can get text transcriptions of voicemails emailed to you.

There's just one problem - you have to give everybody a new phone number. To date there's been no way to make your current number the primary number for Google Voice or GrandCentral. But it looks like that feature could be coming soon.

In the Google Voice help section, there's an area labeled "Porting your number." Unfortunately, right now the page says that you can't actually do this... yet. But it does state that Google is looking into this option and the company is asking for feedback. So if you like the idea of using Google Voice but don't like the idea of reprinting your business cards, go ahead and send Googel a note to let them know what you think.

[via Lifehacker]

Skype has launched a new beta service that allows businesses using SIP telephone systems to make and receive Skype calls on their regular telephones. No headphone and computer needed.

Skype for SIP beta works a lot like Skype, in that you can call and receive calls from other Skype users for free, and pay Skype rates to make calls to domestic and international land lines or cellphones. Customers can also purchase Skype phone numbers that people can use to call in from traditional phones.

The service is aimed at medium to large sized businesses tht use PBX phone systems with Session Initiation Protocal, or SIP. Because the service hooks right into the PBX, users will be able to use their phone hardware to do things like route calls, engage in conference calls, record calls, and record voicemail.

Nearly two years after acquiring "one telephone for life" service GrandCentral, Google is finally preparing to relaunch the service with new features. GrandCentral has been in private beta for the last two years. Over the next few days Google will be prompting existing beta users to upgrade to Google Voice before rolling out the service to new users in a few weeks.

GrandCentral lets you set up a single phone number that you can give out to anyone. When they call that number, it will ring any phone number you've linked to the account. So you can print a single number on your business card, and people will be able to reach you on your home, work, and cellphones. The service also lets you record phone calls, screen calls, create rules for calls coming from specific numbers, and receive email notifications of voicemail messages.

Google Voice has all those features, plus a few new ones, like the ability to make free calls to US numbers and cheap calls to other numbers, make conference calls, and send, receive, store, and search SMS messages.

You'll also get transcripts of all your voicemail messages. That alone is pretty cool. Google will use an automated method to convert speech to text - a service other companies are charging for. Why? My guess is because Google wants to monetize GrandCentral the same way it has Gmail: With contextually relevant ads that will show up in your sidebar. And in order to determine what ads are relevant, Google needs to translate speech to text.

The company admits that the automated transcripts won't be perfect. But the company has been fine tuning its speech recognition software for the last year or two with the Goog-411 service.

You can find a more complete list of Google Voice features at the Google Voice homepage.

VoIP service Skype gives you the ability to make cheap phone calls from your computer. Users can either pay by the minute or sign up for subscription plans that offer unlimited calling. But there's unlimited, and then there's unlimited.

Skype actually limits the unlimited plans to 10,000 minutes per month and 6 hours a day. You're also not supposed to dial more than 50 phone numbers in a single day. If you exceed those limits, you'll have to pay normal SkypeOut rates.

But while the Skype client shows pay per minute customers exactly how much money is left in their accounts, there's no clear indicator to let monthly subscribers know if they're close to reaching the limits. That's where Subscription Monitor for Skype comes in. This free third party app can track your daily and monthly usage, as well as the number of phone numbers you've called.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Voice over IP company Skype is known for a couple things. One of them is annoying the #@&! out of telephone companies by offering cheap or free voice and video calls over the internet. But another thing that Skype does well is offer users the ability to communicate across long distances with excellent sound quality (assuming you've got an excellent microphone plugged into your computer).

That's because typically telephones only transfers audio signals in a limited frequency range (from around 400Hz to 3.4kHz.. Skype, on the other hand, uses technology that can transmit audio up to 12kHz, which is higher than most of the frequencies in the human voice. In other words, if you're using decent audio equipment you'll sound like you're in the same room.

The problem is it takes internet bandwidth to deliver that kind of voice quality. Skype uses a codec in Skype 4 for Windows called SILK to deliver high quality audio even over low bandwidth internet connections. And now Skype is making that codec available for other companies to use, with no royalties.

According to the company, SILK users 50% less bandwidth than other codecs. It can be scaled in real-time to adjust to network conditions. So what's in it for Skype? The company wants its codec to be adopted as a standard that could be used in applications, electronic devices, and even phones.

Skype is launching a new feature that will let users convert voicemail messages to text which you can have sent to your phone via SMS. The company is working with SpinVox to offer the service.

The service will cost you. Prices run 25 cents per conversion in the US, which is about .20 Euros or £0.17 in the UK. And that doesn't include the cost of sending the SMS.

Long messages won't be fully converted. Instead you'll receive a text message with the first part of the voicemail transcribed, and a note suggesting you login to Skype to listen to the full message. SpinVox can handle translations in English, French, German and Spanish.

Honestly, I'm not convinced I would pay for this service, but I'm also not often away from my computer for extended periods of time. So I can usually just login and check my voicemail if I miss a call. What do you think? Would you pay $0.25 per message to have your Skype voicemail transcribed and sent to your mobile phone?

Skype To Go is a service that lets you make cheap phone calls over Skype from a regular phone. Here's how it works. You sign up for a Skype To Go phone number that's linked to your Skype account. You can then dial that number from any phone to initiate a phone call to another phone at the same rates that you would pay if you were using Skype on your computer. In other words, if your mobile carrier charges $.99 per minute to call New Zealand and Skype charges $.02, you can just call a local number and pay the Skype rate.

Skype has been offering this service for a few years, but it was previously part of the Skype Pro plan. Now Skype is making Skype To Go available as a free service for all paying users. OK, I guess that means it's not technically free. But if you already have some credit in your account for making long distance phone calls, you can sign up for a Skype To Go number for no additional cost.

Skype lets you make cheap or free voice or video calls on computers running Windows, OS X, or Linux. There are even mobile clients available that let you make calls using your smartphone from a WiFi hotspot. But there's no official portable version of Skype that you can run from a USB stick.

It turns out though, that it's pretty trivial to convince Skype for Windows to run properly from a USB stick, which means you can save the program to a flash drive and carry it with you in your pocket. All of your settings and preferences will be saved to the USB stick, so your username, password, and other data won't be stored on your work computer, friend's computer, or other unsecure computer where you use the program.

Here's all you have to do:

1. Install Skype on your PC and then find the installation folder. It's probably something like "C:\Program Files\Skype." Copy the Skype.exe file to a folder on your USB flash drive.
   
2. In that same folder on your flash drive, create a subfolder called "data."
3. Create a new text file called "Skype.bat" or Skype Portable.bat" or whatever you like.
4. Open your new file using Notepad or another text editor and write "skype.exe /datapath:"data" /removable" (without the quotes).
5. Save and close your file

When you click Skype.bat, Skype should launch and all of your settings will be saved in the data folder. Although these instructions were designed for older versions of Skype and Windows, I just tested them with Wndows 7 an Skype 4.0 and everything works perfectly.

via The Portable Freeware Collection and ReadWriteWeb

Skype rolled out the gold version of Skype 2.5 for Windows Mobile today. The latest version of Skype's VoIP and chat client for Windows Mobile has been in beta for a few months, and adds improved voice call quality when you're initiating a call from a WiFi connection.

Next up? Skype 3.0. The Skype team isn't ready to release a beta just yet, but one should be ready by March. But an early build of Skype 3.0 for Windows Mobile is being demoed today at Mobile World Congress in Spain. The update will bring support for text messages and file transfers.

Honestly, I'm not that excited about the text message feature. Most mobile phones let you send SMS text messages. And the rates on my current carrier are cheaper than sending a text to a US phone number using Skype, although I suppose this could save me some money if I needed to text someone in Vietnam.

But the mobile file transfer capabilities sound pretty nice. I can imagine snapping a photo with a cameraphone and shooting the image to a friend using Skype on a computer.

If you thought that Skype was a disruptive technology because it allows users to make free or cheap voice and video calls around the world, then you ain't seen nothing yet. Because Gizmo5 just launched OpenSky, a service which lets you connect with Skype from virtually any web browser, computer, or mobile phone,.

Here's how it works. Basically OpenSky creates an alias for every Skype user. So if you want to call Skype user "echo123" (the Skype test call number), all you have to do is dial "echo123@opensky.gizmo5.com" from any SIP aware device. Want to give it a try without installing or purchasing anything? Just visit the GizmoCall web site where you can dial a number from the web using a Flash interface.

Now here's the really cool thing. Once you're signed up for a Gizmo5 account, you can also use any mobile phone to communicate with Skype users. All you have to do is send a text message to 1-941-421-9832 and start the message with the Skype user you want to send a message to. Your SMS message will show up in their chat window. If you want to make a voice call, just enter the recipient's Skype name and leave out the text message. Your phone will ring and once you pick up, you'll be connected for a voice call.

You can make OpenSky calls of up to 5 minutes for free. For $20 a year you can make calls of up to 2 hours.

[via GigaOM]

Skype 4.0 for Windows has been available as a public beta for over half a year. But now the Skype team has pulled the trigger and replaced Skype 3.8 with the new version of the chat, video chat, and VoIP client.

The most noticable change in Skype 4.0 is the fact that the desktop client takes up a lot more space. The call window and the contact list are built into a single screen, while earlier versions of Skype had two separate windows, much like your typical instant messaging client. This change didn't sit too well with early beta testers and Skype 4.0 now gives you the option of viewing the "default" window mode or a "compact" mode which looks more like earlier versions of Skype.

Skype 4.0 also includes higher quality video calling for users with 400 Kb/S or higher connections and high quality video cameras. The new client also features improvements in the audio quality due to a new bandwidth manager.

If you're a Mac-using fan of Skype you'll probably be quite excited about version 2.8 beta of their ubiquitous Voice over IP application. Bringing in a raft of new features, the beta includes the ability to screenshare between machines - a feature not currently available in the Windows version of the client, bucking the trend of features appearing in the Windows client first.

Whilst chatting with Skype out here in San Francisco in the build up to Macworld Expo, they've also announced a new partnership with WiFi specialists Boingo for 'Skype Access'. The feature allows Skype customers to use Boingo hotspots without a Boingo account, and use their Skype credit to pay by the minute for the WiFi access ($0.19 per minute on top of the cost of the call).

Other new features in the Beta include the quick-adding of contacts, contact notes, larger profile photos and chat priorities to help you organise instant-messages. The beta is available now from the Skype website.

The folks behind VoIP application Gizmo have rolled out a new Flash-based application that lets you make calls to other Gizmo users or to telephones using your web browser. You'll still need a Gizmo account to use GizmoCall, but you can call other Gizmo users or 1-800 numbers for free. And you can purchase credit to make calls to land lines or cellphones.

GizmoCall offers decent audio quality, although I did notice a few glitches when making a test call from my browser. The software did a pretty good job of detecting the default microphone plugged into my computer. If you're signed into your account you can also receive calls. That wouldn't be a very useful feature if you had to leave the GizmoCall web page open all day to receive calls, but there's embed code you can use to add the widget to your homepage, blog, or other web site.

Gizmo also offers a desktop client for Windows, Mac, Linux, or Nokia Tablet users. And there's a mobile version that runs on a variety of cellphones including BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices.

There's a new beta version of Skype available for Windows users. Skype 4 beta 3 looks a lot like Skype 4 beta 2, but it packs a few new features, including:

• Bandwidth manager that should improve call quality
• Full history feature that lets you search and browser past calls and conversations
• Abuse reporting feature that lets you report users you block to Skype
• Support for Microsoft Outlook contacts
• Return of the call quality feedback area

There have also been some visual tweaks. No word on when we'll see these changes rolled out to the Linux or OS X versions of Skype.