Hasta La Gadget!

Believe it or not, prepaid cards are indeed a thing south of the US border. In fact, the majority of folks in Mexico often choose to go this route rather than sticking with some sort of monthly contract. Not surprisingly, Skype’s done its homework and has taken note of this situation, as the Microsoft-owned service has announced its plans to start selling a couple of prepaid card options in Mexico. For starters, there’s a 100 pesos (around $8) per-month deal which offers an unlimited calling plan to both mobile and landlines in the US, while the the pay-as-you-go sheet costs 150 pesos but charges by the minute at a modest 30 cents and includes calls to more than 170 countries. According to Skype, these cards will be available at multiple stores all over Mexico, such as Best Buy, Radio Shack, 7 Eleven and El Palacio de Hierro.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Internet

Skype now selling prepaid cards in Mexico, makes it easier to get unlimited calling plans originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some of us absolutely love our furry friends, which is a good thing. There needs to be more love after all, and we have seen our fair share of animal cruelty in the past. Having said that, those of us who own dogs and cats find it rather difficult to plan our holidays, especially when we need to take into consideration their needs when we are not around. Having a friend or another family member around to help out is great, but what happens when no one else is around? A boarding house would be the ideal solution, and Petropolis offers more than just a place for your pet to stay. Petropolis Pet Resort will now carry Skype communication capability so that you need not miss your pet that much.

It is Kevin Brackett’s brainchild to equip Petropolis Pet Resort with Skype connectivity, allowing you to see your pet and make sure that he or she is in the pink of health. Granted, I think your pet would be freaked out to see you suddenly shrunk down to a small display somewhere in the middle of their cage or playpen, but your voice might just cause an extra swagger in that tail wag.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Microsoft commits to WebRTC to bring plug-in free video chatting in browsers, Skype plays Big Brother on your conversations?,

Microsoft has officially announced its proposal to bring plugin-free real time video/audio chatting to web browsers today. They decided to contribute to W3C WebRTC working group, who is working on a universal API for voice/video chat between web browsers. Microsoft’s contribution is labeled as “Customizable, Ubiquitous Real Time Communication over the Web,” or CU-RTC-Web.
(more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Skype boosts Xbox division quarter by 20%, Job listing hints at deep Skype integration for the Xbox,

Microsoft is busy fettling Skype for in-browser use, following Google’s experiments with WebRTC with a contribution of its own to the new standard. WebRTC is a new standard for open, real-time voice and video chat, using HTML and JavaScript to embed audio and video conferencing into the browser; that’s great, Microsoft says, but the current proposal “falls short” of meeting what it believes is demanded of it, and so the company has come up with its own version.

Among those demands are an adherence to “stateless interactions” – i.e. where there’s no obligation from any user’s system to remember the state of another – along with a dynamic reaction to network conditions and interoperability with existing standards. It must also support multiple codecs in case of future changes.

Unfortunately, Microsoft points out, WebRTC in its current form doesn’t meet with all those demands. There is, for instance, no ubiquitous deployability, with the standard today showing “no signs of offering real world interoperability with existing VoIP phones, and mobile phones, from behind firewalls and across routers and instead focuses on video communication between web browsers under ideal conditions.”

It also builds on the legacy of SIP, Microsoft argues, which doesn’t make for a stateless system. Applications would be forced “to resort to trial-and-error and/or browser-specific code” Microsoft says.

The company’s solution is CU-RTC-Web, freshly submitted to the W3 organization, adding a real-time, peer-to-peer transport layer, and building on the existing W3C getUserMedia API – something that Microsoft has already been playing with for integrating video authoring and voice commands to HTML5 apps.

Part of Microsoft’s motivation may well be Outlook.com, a preview of which recently launched to replace Hotmail. Although not currently functional, part of the Outlook.com promise is in-browser Skype support with no local install required.

Microsoft challenges Google’s WebRTC work for in-browser Skype is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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If Cisco’s ill-fated Umi video conferencing system had been more like this, would it have survived? Logitech is about to find out, one way or the other, once its TV Cam HD — recently spotted at the FCC — arrives in the US this month. The $199.99 device hooks up to your TV and contains all the processing power needed to run Skype and transmit wide-angle, 720p footage of your couch over WiFi or Ethernet. Unlike the previous TV Cam, there’s no need for a Viera Connect HDTV — anything with HDMI-in will do. The company is banking on the notion that families will forgo the use of their existing mobile devices and laptops in favour of an always-on dedicated system with incoming call alerts, four noise-cancelling mics and a Carl Zeiss lens that “gets the whole family in the video call, so everyone from grandparents to grandchildren can move around naturally.” If you’re tempted, the publicity video after the break gives a decent overview of the product in action.

Continue reading Logitech launches TV Cam HD for living room video chats: built-in Skype, 720p, $200

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Peripherals, Networking

Logitech launches TV Cam HD for living room video chats: built-in Skype, 720p, $200 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 04:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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