Monday, January 30, 2006

Skype, Warner Reach Ringtone Deal

from today's WSJ [premium content], FT.com, News.com, Silicon.com and Red Herring

"The new deal provides a blanket license for the entire catalog of songs that Warner, the world's fourth-largest music company by revenue, makes available as ringtones for mobile phones. Skype will initially promote Madonna as a "featured artist," giving ringtones from her most recent album prominent placement on its online store."

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Why Spot Runner May Be Revolutionary

"This is the new outfit, still in beta, that lets local businesses buy generic but easily customizable ads to run in very targeted local TV markets."

nice to see Rob Hof and BusinessWeek starting to home in on Spot Runner - not sure I agree that letting anyone create, book and buy ads on TV for under $1k isn't revolutionary enough

also interesting post from Pete Cashmore

Perplexcity leaderboard tops 14k players












The momentum is starting to build in the Perplexcity as players all round the world start solving the cards.

The cards are even starting to create an interesting marketplace on eBay.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Skype keeps tracking ahead of VoIP


Skype is still a stronger term in the blogosphere than VoIP - good to see people follow brands over acronyms.

Niklas on Davos panel with Gates, Schmidt & Chambers

watch the webcast and see what they have to say, the topic on WEF site is

"New technology designs are enabling a wide range of consumer and business products while creating the foundation for tomorrow's 'disruptive' forces."

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Skype Kicks Off Chinese New Year by Offering Free Calls to China's Global Ex-pat Community














"Skype and Chinagate, the world's largest overseas Chinese community portal, today announced an agreement that will enable Chinagate members to connect with overseas friends and relatives for free using Skype's Internet calling software. The new offering will be made available through the new co-branded Web site skype.chinagate.com."

ScreenSelect offers cinema bookings












"ScreenSelect has started offering its members a cinema booking service through existing partner Vue Cinemas."

Great integration of services to help people find local movies to go to watch as well as reserving the DVD when it comes out for rental. See press release on Video Island corporate site.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Skype launched with 3 in Sweden

Another great mobile operator partners with Skype to offer mobile broadband package

Monday, January 23, 2006

Skype breaks 5m simultaneous callers online

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Skype 3rd in global brand poll -- ahead of Nokia and SONY

From the readers of Brandchannel.com




















"Internet search engine Google has retaken first place in the 2005 global poll of the world's most influential brands, while the eBay-owned web phone service Skype makes its debut at No. 3."

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Netflix Hires Former U.S. Postmaster General as COO

from Hacking Netflix - given how critical postal operations are in this business this looks like a great hire.

"Netflix has hired former U.S. Postmaster General William J. Henderson as chief operations officer, effective January 23rd.

Tom Dillon, who joined Netflix in 1999 and built the logistics and distribution systems at Netflix, will be retiring in April."

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Skype Journal's on the track of SkypeWeb

We're in the very early stages of testing SkypeWeb - and looking forward to slowly rolling it out further in coming weeks. Looks like our friends at Skype Journal have eagle eyes - great catch, I wouldn't call it a pre-announcement, more a little personal roadtest :)

"The long awaited Skype Web feature is close; for some like Saul Klein the Skype VP of marketing it is here. My Skype buddy and blogger Anders Jacobsen in London brought me this news which he got from Saul's blog."

If you're interested - Skype me or send mail to skypeweb@skype.com and we'll add you to the early testing list.



Spotrunner launches to bring SMB ads to TV from the Web


This is going to be such an exicting business - combining the power of the Web with the reach of TV to small businesses. Very cool, especially when you consider the power of TV compared to where Google is just starting to look with radio. Either way, this is a great emerging trend and indicates how the web is beginning to change the offline world.

"Spot Runner’s web-based service allows businesses to air personalized, high-quality television ads in their local markets. Spot Runner offers a full-service package – commercial production, media planning and ad time – for a fraction of the cost and time of traditional broadcast advertising. A complete campaign can be purchased for as little as $500. In contrast, traditional methods can take weeks and cost tens of thousand of dollars to produce a commercial of comparable quality."

Thursday, January 05, 2006

The New Yorker talks about Skype

Small piece on how some US college journalists are using Skype to interview people in Iraq.

"“We thought we were at a disadvantage not being on the ground in Iraq,” Eva Barboni, a junior poli-sci major, said. “But when you hear from reporters there that they can’t even leave their hotels you start to think.” The sound quality afforded by Skype, it turns out, is often better than what can be achieved over the weak landlines in the Green Zone."

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Philips announces cordless Skype phone

More from CES - a new cordless phone from Philips which has dual functionality so people can make free Skype calls, as well as ordinary landline calls.

'The introduction of Skype compatibility to our devices is great news for consumers, enabling them to communicate in new ways with friends and family far away,' said Nick Dosanjh, vice president and general manager, Philips Home Communication. "

NETGEAR announces first Skype Wifi phone

"The NETGEAR WiFi phone will make mobile Internet telephony a reality for Skype users. Unlike other devices that must connect with a PC, NETGEAR's Skype WiFi phone will work wherever a consumer is connected to a wireless Internet access point -- be that in a home, office, cafe, open public hotspot, or any open municipal wireless access point being deployed worldwide"

Coverage from TheStreet

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Skype's Busy Day of Partner Announcements at CES

Skype kicks off 2006 at CES showcasing the fast growing ecosystem with announcement of 7 new partnerships with Creative, D-Link, IPEVO, Kodak, Netgear, Panasonic, and VTech.

see Om and also.... D-Link, Panasonic and Kodak

Skype keeps outpacing VoIP



unsurprisingly skype keeps outpacing the generic term, VoIP, and is significantly ahead of google talk. didn't people learn from WAP and 3G, people request brands not acronyms.

Monday, January 02, 2006

eBay.co.uk: Own The Last 1,000 Pixels on MillionDollarHomepage.com

An incredible story of a very smart UK student who has earned $1m by understanding both the psychology and monetization potential of the web - an now to cap it off with an eBay auction - superb.... Check out the blog

"Alexa.com ranks my site 127th out of ALL websites on the internet. This is your last chance to literally own a piece of 'internet history'!

The winning bidder will not only win last 1,000 pixels on the homepage, they will also receive a huge amount of publicity associated with winning this eBay auction and my site finally reaching the million dollar mark. I will also mention the winning bidder on my blog, which is read by tens of thousands of people every day. This truely is a unique, one-off, hugely valuable marketing opportunity. Happy bidding!"