Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

It seems like everyone and their sister is coming out with Skype-compatible phones these days. And taking a page out of the handheld barcode scanner design playbook, Keyspan wants a piece of the VoIP pie too. Its new $79 model, imaginatively called the “Cordless VoIP Phone”, has 15 hours of talk time, 1200 hours of standby time, USB/AAA power, and it’s Mac and PC friendly, a’course. However, Keyspan doesn’t list where you can buy this handset, or when it will be available. That aside, if another company (besides FiWin) really wanted to make the real-deal ultimate killer handset, they’d make a phone that was Gizmo/Zfone and Skype-friendly — we’d definitely be interested. But apparently Skype doesn’t like to play nice with SIP phones or any other kind of VoIP, which is a real shame because there’s such a great marketing opportunity here — they could call it SIPpe, like “sippy”, as in the cup. Whaddya say?

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Skype ruffled some feathers in the internet telephony world earlier this year when they announced they’d be offering free SkypeOut calls to the US and Canada for the rest of 2006. We weren’t too interested since it came off as little more than a promotion, and we typically skip over promos (for obvious reason). But we’re kind of left wondering how Skype — deep eBay pockets and all — intends to compete with archrival Gizmo Project‘s latest tactic: free Gizmo-to-landline calls anywhere, anytime, any amount, forever. We’ll probably be spending a while trying to make heads from tails of their business plan which pretty much totally gives away the shop, but who’s really going to be reeling here is the rest of the VoIP telephony industry that’s currently clawing desperately to monetize on landline phone replacements. Not everything’s free with Gizmo Project, however; even though you can all over Europe, Asia, and the Americas (to 60 countries and counting), if you want your pals to call you on Gizmo from their landlines, you’re going to have to buy a Call In number. (Fret not though, since those cost as little as $3 a month.) What started with Captain Crunch’s 2600Hz whistle may now end with Gizmo Project’s capture of the biggest voice trunk of all time; if this is any sign of things to come, we’d say the free voice revolution may finally have a proper flagbearer. So let the free phone wars begin.

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Filed under: Handhelds

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