The dedicated Skype section will feature handsets, headsets and webcams designed to work with Skype, a provider of free and very cheap long-distance calls, including to phone numbers abroad. Wal-Mart will also sell the first prepaid cards for Skype calls to be sold in this country, the companies were announcing Monday.

The new section at more than half of Wal-Mart’s roughly 3,300 U.S. stores will feature Skype-compatible gear made by Motorola Inc., Plantronics Inc., Logitech International SA, Royal Philips Electronics NV and others.

“Among the Bennett Media original productions to be featured in HD on Zudeo include Bikini Destinations, The Wild Side, The Extremists, Xotic Xtreme and Snowology. Bennett Media content will be available on Azureus later this year.”

No word yet on the costs of the content. The shows are pretty much the same ones that were licensed to Guba.com for distribution “on a pay-per-view, download-to-own and ad-supported basis” late last year, so that might be an indicator for what Azureus could do with them.

Obviously paying for a show like Bikini Destinations might not be that compelling to the average Azureus user. After all, there is lots of this stuff available for free on your average porn tracker sites like Mariposahd.tv.

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the two Scandinavian entrepreneurs behind KaZaA and Skype, which shook up the music and telephone industry respectively, have formally launched their latest salvo at the television industry.

Previously known under the code name "The Venice Project," today it has been revealed that it’s official name will be "Joost." The announcement marks the formal launching of the new on-demand broadband television service

As previously described, "Joost", as it is now called, enables users to watch content whenever and wherever they want, giving people complete viewing freedom and control.

Powered by a secure, efficient, piracy-proof internet platform, Joost enables a high-quality video experience based on premium content, while guaranteeing copyright protection for content owners and creators.

"People are looking for increased choice and flexibility in their TV experience, while the entertainment industry needs to retain control over their content," said Fredrik de Wahl, chief executive officer of Joost. "With Joost, we’ve married that consumer desire with the industry’s interests."

Joost is the first global TV distribution platform, bringing together advertisers, content owners and viewers in an interactive, community-driven environment. Joost can be accessed with a broadband Internet connection and offers broadcast-quality content to viewers for free.

"We’ve received positive and constructive feedback from our early beta-testers and are now at a stage where we’re ready to reveal our true brand," said de Wahl. "The Joost name has global appeal, embodies fun and energy, and will come to define the ‘best of TV and the best of the Internet."

Here’s some more screenshots.

"Joost" still isn’t available to the public but, you can sign up to be a BETA tester and get a chance to take a look at it sooner rather than later.

Looking for more stuff to read, watch or download?
"The Venice Project:" a sneak peek with a BETA tester
TVU, Free P2P Cable TV
Watch The Simpsons, The Office, Jackass, South Park, Lost, X-Men, and More On-Demand For Free
vNES: play Nintendo games in your internet browser
BitTorrent torrent sites & search engines
Watch Tons of Your Favorite Movies On-Demand for FREE
Azureus – A Beginner’s Guide to BitTorrent Downloading
uTorrent – A Beginner’s guide to BitTorrent downloading

SOULXTC: "walkin’ the streets of P2P"

At the Consumer Electronics Show here, Skype, a unit of online auctioneer eBay Inc., said it was introducing 12 new phones and related phone accessories in conjunction with telecommunications equipment suppliers.

The models include a dual-mode phone from Netgear Inc., the SPH200D, which enables users to place and receive both traditional phone calls and Skype Internet calls from a single cordless handset. The device connects both to a standard telephone wall jack and a broadband Internet router.

Unlike many existing Skype-ready phones that need to be tethered to a personal computer, the new model requires only the phone and broadband cable connection.

The company’s most recent 3.0 version of its software allows system administrators to configure and control Skype use across an enterprise and Skype will build on that. Its software provides Internet telephony service as well as messaging, video conferencing, and file transfer.
Skype for Business

In the short to medium term, Skype will rely on the growth of an "ecosystem" of third parties to adapt and integrate Skype for specific enterprise uses, executives said. "My opinion is that it is better to provide good information and let [other] people build the Skype ecosystem," said Chief Security Officer Kurt Sauer, adding that "the best ideas are somewhere else."

Vice President, Mobile & Telecom Services Michael Jackson joked that "we will not, in the short-term, be having installers in Skype trucks visiting businesses," but added that independent "Skype integrators may come along."

Skype and KaZaA co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are at it again. After first shaking up the the music and telephone industries, the pair is taking on the television networks with their latest creation, “The Venice Project.”

The fact that you watch clips at your own pace and your own discretion is what sets it apart from current streaming platforms like TVUPlayer, or sites like TVLinks and Pick and Watch. The only drawback is that the content right now is for the most part lame and limited in variety and selection.

It’s mainly music oriented, and has no well-known or popular content, the “World’s Strongest Man” of ESPN fame and the old-school black and white “Lassie” being the only ones I had ever even heard of before.

After agreeing to the usual stuff………

“She” loads up and starts playing one of the channels at random.

Here’s a shot of the “Fifth Gear” channel, which caters to fans of sports cars, speed, and racing.

To get an idea of what the controls are like, you can see them here in the image below. Starting on the upper left, you have, in order: minimize, full-screen vs half-screen toggle, and main menu.

The arrows that you see on the bottom left-hand side allow you to scroll through and within channels.

Every couple of show or so that you watch bring up a quick commercial advertisement to watch. They’re not too bad and only last about 5 seconds.

Going to the main menu, we’ll take a look at some of the channels available to watch.

As you can see, yes that’s right, they have a “Paris Hilton channel.”

To get a better look, by selecting the channel you can get up close and personal with this lady of partying and video fame. Here’s a view from a clip called “Making the Album.” So for those of you who bought her album and couldn’t get enough, here’s the “backstory” behind it.

So what are all the channels available you ask?

• Here’s a rundown of them all”
• Fifth Gear
• Warner Bros. Records
• Green Day
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Paris Hilton
• Explora Channel
• MTV Staying Alive
• World Strongest Man
• Jizzy TV
• What’s Popular
• The Roger Sisters
• VOY TV
• Critical Shorts
• BoomChicago
• Off the Fence – Docs on Demand
• Lazy TV
• Havoc Action Sports TV
• Wildlight
• Beyond the Pit
• The Diddy Channel
• Atlantic Street
• MusicNation
• Live @ Muc
• Hot & Wet
• Nettwerk
• Lassie

The “Hot & Wet” channel is one of the more interesting ones, offering “water-balloon dodgeball matches” and “beach hot-bod bikini contests.”

As for the “Diddy Channel,” I think the name says it all.

Overall, The Venice Project is pretty cool, though the content offerings were kind of a disappointment. But, considering it’s still in BETA and the fact that it could potentially change the face of television, they get a lot of leeway in my book with these first few baby steps.

I think in the future that content production companies will see the potential of a platform that can carry their programming straight to the consumer without any of the associated payments for distribution, region rights, etc.. Perhaps even shows that may otherwise have never made the cut in the cutthroat world of Primetime TV could find a home here. Revenues could be derived from commercial and the chance for advertisers to reach a larger or otherwise untapped audience.

The Venice Project. Are we seeing the dawn of a new era for TV viewing? Time will tell, but so far it looks quite promising.

Looking for more stuff to read, watch or download?
TVU, Free P2P Cable TV
vNES: play Nintendo games in your internet browser
BitTorrent torrent sites & search engines
Watch Tons of Your Favorite Movies On-Demand for FREE
Azureus – A Beginner’s Guide to BitTorrent Downloading
uTorrent – A Beginner’s guide to BitTorrent downloading

SOULXTC: “walkin’ the streets of P2P”

The new annual fee for unlimited calling, while still nominal compared with other Internet calling plans, is part of a broader strategy by eBay to expand Skype’s product offerings and revenue.

EBay, the online auction giant, paid $2.5 billion for Skype in October 2005, prompting criticism from some analysts that it had overpaid for a start-up company focused on a different market and technology.

EBay executives assert that Skype can help it by allowing low-cost voice and video communication between its buyers and sellers. In addition, eBay wants to capitalize on Skype’s base of 136 million registered users.

As a promotion, Skype began allowing its users to place free domestic “SkypeOut” calls from their computers to traditional and mobile phones last May. At the time, the company said the promotion would extend only through year’s end. The company is offering a half-price subscription to those who sign up before Jan. 31. Calls from one computer to another have been and will continue to be free.

In October 2006, data was collected in a survey of more than 1,100 employees (end users) and IT managers to determine the impact that greynet applications have on enterprises, small and medium sized businesses. Greynets — real-time communications applications that are often introduced by end users and use highly evasive techniques to traverse the network — pose myriad network and information security risks because they provide vectors for malware, intellectual property loss, identity theft and compliance risks.

While some greynets such as Web conferencing, Web browsing, IM and Skype(TM) have legitimate business uses, IT needs visibility and control to ensure their safe and productive use. Still others such as P2P file sharing, video streaming, and anonymizers can pose further consequences to the organization. All these new, real-time collaborative applications can be evasive on the network, often circumventing traditional security infrastructure that was designed for email and standard Web traffic.

Results of the survey show that more users are adopting greynet applications while, at the same time, little progress has been made toward combating greynet-related attacks. Eighty one percent of IT managers reported greynet-related attacks within the last six months, about the same rate as one year ago. The most common attacks continue to be from spyware and adware (75 percent), viruses and worms (57 percent), other malware (22 percent) and rootkits and keyloggers (22 percent). Further, the required repair and remediation as a result of these attacks is costly. A typical organization is estimated to spend nearly $130,000 per year on average to repair damage from greynet-related attacks, while the largest companies are estimated to spend upwards of $350,000 per year repairing damage from greynet-related attacks due to higher incident rates.

Skype 3.0 BETA has so many new features that you can tell somebody’s been burning the midnight oil to bring Skype squarely into the world of Web 2.0.

Believe it or not it now has everything from “skypecasts” to chinese checkers to a shared “whiteboard.” It truly has progressed by leaps and bounds.

The first new feature I took a look is Skypecast. It’s basically a public chat session that users can either set up on their own or simply jump into others that are already created. With a few simple steps users can easily set up new chat sessions which others can then select and join. You can also scroll through the list of preexisting sessions and enter the one of your choice.

In the pictures below you can see the Skypecast, “ZeroPaid in the Morning,” that I created. You first have to log in with your Skype username and password, then simply select the “Create Skypecast” link on the top right-hand part of the page.

From there just choose a name for your Skypecast, write a brief description,and then choose when you want the Skypecast to begin.

You’ll then see the Skypecast you created, which will include a link to join in.

Here is what the Skypecast session looks like. Users are separated into 3 sections: talking, waiting, and listening.When you first join a chat you have the option of being a voyeur and merely listening to the discussion. When the Skypecast fills up with users they are pushed to the waiting section until space is available. In the meantime, the “host,” or MOD, can bump people from “listening” to “talking” or vice versa. This was crucial when I had people with poor microphones or feedback chime in and interfere with a coherent discussion, and to bump down the occasional flamers and fanboys who were getting out of hand.

Skypecast is a pretty cool concept, as it allows people a quick way to set up chat rooms and then use its link as an easy to click method for others to join in. You can put the link in your MySpace page, blog, etc. with which others can then easily click and begin talking with with one another, be it friends, family, or strangers.

The only drawback is that you can’t make the Skypecast user specific or private. Any and everybody can join in and potentially muck up a honest or civilized conversation. The “host” has to stay on top of things. But, I do think the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

Another cool feature is the whiteboard. You select with whom you wish to “draw with” and then you can see and share notes or diagrams in real time. To get started “right-click” one of your contacts, scroll down to “Do More,” and then select “whiteboard.”

Below you can see the real piece of art that “evilmegaman” and I created. Watch out da Vinci!

Checkers, backgammon and all the other games are just as easy and fun to play. Again, simply “right-click” the desired contact, and choose the game of your choice.

There’s so many other new features that it’s almost impossible to list them all but, there’s one more that’s worth mentioning. The Universal Chat add-on is an upgrade definitely worth having. It’s a universal speech and translation tool that makes communicating with the rest of the world easier (especially we Americans:P).

The first part of it allows you to have all the text chats verbalized and also even translated to other languages. All you have to do is install a language plugin per the language of your choice and presto chango the words will be spoken in your native tongue.

The other part of the translator allows you to translate text into again the language of your choice. Here in the picture below I translated some text chat into arabic. Now I can practice my arabic.

Moreover, Skype’s BETA 3.0 is head and shoulders above all the other IM programs out there. With all the new expanded features and functions the world just got a whole lot smaller. Now I can practice my Chinese Checkers game with people in Bulgaria.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD SKYPE 3.0 BETA (WINDOWS ONLY)

SOULXTC: “walkin’ the streets of P2P”

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are combining professionally produced TV and videos with the Internet and have even launched their own site with regards to the project.

They do not plan to keep the current code name as the name. To further the project, they are trying to gain the approval from small to large media companies and encourage them to produce shows on the Internet. They do say that anyone will be able to post on this network the are creating, but they want hype and with hype also comes monetary issues.

Advertising is being sought out as the primary focus of earning. Many worried when YouTube was sold that it would become too commercial. With Internet TV being something many would use, why not profit from it and bring commercials from televsion to Internet television?

I personally would rather see options (I love my DVR/TIVO setup so that I can skip commercials) or maybe subscription levels so that commercials could be avoided. Watch the site listed above for more information on the release date and formal network name.

http://www.theveniceproject.com