1. To use Skype, you must be connected to a wi-fi hotspot. It will not work over AT&T’s data network. That limits its usefulness, and limits your mobility. People want the calling feature on their phone to just work, 100% of the time. That’s not this.
2. You can’t receive calls to your main number via Skype. Sure, you could potentially do a trick with Google Voice, where you get people to call a different number that rings both places. But that’s another Internet service to rely on, another potential point of failure, and more inconvenience.
3. You can’t receive calls on Skype unless the Skype app is open. That’s because iPhone apps do not run in the background — they’re only useful when they’re open. That means you have to message or talk with someone before they call you, and open your Skype app. Hardly as convenient as using a phone. You also can’t pop open another app, like the address book or calendar, to check on something — it’ll disconnect your Skype call.
4. You still have to pay your phone bill! For the iPhone, that’s a minimum $70 per month. ($40 for voice minutes and $30 for data.) Even if you cut back to the $70 plan from a more expensive plan, that’s still 40% more than the average AT&T subscriber spends on wireless service per month. Factor in $5 to $15 per month on text messaging, and you’re 50% to 60% above the average. And if you don’t use the minutes you pay for, that’s more profit for AT&T.

A tipster — a very reliable one — tells me that Skype is almost ready to launch that iPhone version, perhaps as soon as next week. CTIA Wireless, a large mobile industry trade event, kicks off in Las Vegas next Wednesday, so perhaps the announcement will be made there. I am working on getting more details, as well as screenshots of the service.

The biggest clue about Skype’s pending iPhone launch came when iSkoot decided to move on from its Skype-centric strategy. The company had been offering a client that allowed cell phone users to use Skype services. Skype already offers a Windows Mobile version of its client.

Source

It seems that a cover story on the business-famous FastCompany magazine is what has kept Chris Hughes off the media as he undertook a self-imposed moratorium to stay away from the press while the man he backed and helped become the president took center stage in Washington.

That seems pretty strange for a young man who is pretty used to being in the spotlight by co-founding the largest and the most popular social networking site on the planet and then going on to unleash the web-built base for the most extensive and captivating presidential campaign in US history.

Under the headline The Kid Who Made Obama President; How Facebook Cofounder Chris Hughes Unleaded Barack’s Base- and Changed Politics and Marketing Forever, the cover story reveals a bit more info about Facebook’s co-founder from a personal standpoint. Starting from coming out of the closet when in boarding school, to how touched his parents were when Obama acknowledged his efforts.

Now we wonder, how being Chris Hughes would be like … [via Gawker]

In order to keep iPhone and iPod Touch Free from bugs, improve performance, add new features, resolve speed issues and patch any known exploit used to jailbreak and unlock iPhone and iPod touch, apple is continuously keeping its Firmware updated. From iPhone and iPod touch firmware 1.0 to 2.2.1 many new features got added for e.g iPhone firmware 2.0 got app store support.

Apple iPhone firmware 3.0 which was unveiled at Macworld Expo 2009 on March 17.

iPhone official Firmware 3.0 Features

• In-App Commerce: Developers can sell their applications partially instead of selling the whole package
• Accessories: Control and communicate with external hardware devices through Dock connector or Bluetooth
• Peer to Peer: Protocol that allows an iPhone to find other local devices within the vicinity using Bluetooth
• Push Notification
• Landscape mode: Landscape mode keyboard works in all apps including mail!
• Copy, Cut and Paste
• Forward / Delete: Support for message forwarding and deleting individual messages in a conversation
• Spotlight: Search virtually everything including apps, text, messages or simply anything
• Multimedia messaging: Sending photos or audio files through messages

The upgrade will come free for the iPhone users. Unfortunately iPod Touch users will have to pay $10 in order to get their devices upgraded. Currently, iPhone 3.0 SDK is available for developers and will be ready for public download in summer.

After hearing that Toshiba selected Nimbuzz for the TG01 mobile phone, more good news came our way. Apparently one of the most comprehensive and useful iPhone/iPod VoIP application in the Apple store, Nimbuzz promises to allow you to make Wi-Fi calls to instant messaging buddies on your iPhone and also extend the calling services for VoIP calls to landlines and mobile phones with Skype Out. How? By using 10 VoIP partners that include famous providers like Gizmo5, Vyke, SIPgate and A1.

The 3G-enabled service not only offers greater connectivity for your iPhone, but brings in calling options for iPod users and even extends it those that do not have an access to Wi-Fi networks. Because Nimbuzz is smart! If you happen to be outside the signal coverage the app still allows you to make cheap local and international calls– using Nimbuzz’s Dial-Up VoIP in over 50 countries.

And since Nimbuzz already has the iPhone and iPod users elated on this one, you can also receive Twitter feed updates from your IMs and also chat on sites like Facebook and MySpace

Since there are many people that couldn’t imagine a day without checking their mail accounts on google, the fact that Gmail is becoming more and more popular, doesn’t come as a surprise.

Significant as they indicate the “weight” of some of the most popular websites, reports showed that in the last few weeks, Americans have accessed Gmail more than before. Much more! Actually, the popular mail service made it to the top10 list by demoting YouTube. The market share of visits to Gmail has increased 70% by March 7, 2009, compared to the same time last year– while YouTube has seen a relatively low growth of just 16% in the same period.

Gmail holds 0.92% of the dynamic market share currently, while close on its heel is YouTube at the 11th spot with 0.87% of the share.

With most referrers from Google (48.83%), Faceboook (4.37%) and Yahoo! Mail (4.29%) and with the fast growing of other social networks (smells like Twitter), Gmail is expected to settle the YouTube war in a matter of a weeks and plans to take on its next rivals, MSN & Yahoo! Search.

Are you surprised?

The global economic meltdown has hit hard everyone and it seems that even the biggest tech tycoons in the world are finally feeling the pinch of the difficult times.

Image by Joi

Some would argue that the $40 billion that Bill Gates potentially owns is still no joke, but just the fact that it could have been a lot more and could end up being a lot less in the next couple of years is a clear sign that the rich are not getting richer that easily anymore! The list of world’s leading billionaires recently published by Forbes (cut down to 793 from 1125 the previous year) gives an indication as to how the tech tycoons have lost tons of cash and could be heading in the wrong direction…

The 40 tech and media moguls had a cumulative loss of around $ 81.5 billion in the last year alone and have seen their collective wealth drop to $ 203.4 billion. Although it sounds small compared to the whooping $1.4 trillion that left the billionaire club when compared with 2008.

While Bill gates sits on top of the tech giants list and gained a couple of spots, it is only because others have also lost huge. Gates lost a staggering $18 billion while Sergey Brin of Google parted with over $6 billion. With Michael Bloomberg the only one gaining ($5 billion), numbers are further expected to take a hit in the billionaire club.

That’s how nice the financial world is …

No?

If you develop apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, you can now start making those apps more social. With just a few lines of Objective-C code, your users can log in to Facebook from within your app, find their friends, then share what they do in your app back on Facebook, which opens up exciting new opportunities for your users.

Now your iPhone apps can enjoy the benefits that Facebook Connect sites and Facebook Platform apps already enjoy, including:

* Making API calls so your app can access users’ profiles and share information on Facebook.
* Publishing to Facebook via Feed forms.
* Asking users for extended permissions, like offline access, so you can still interact with their data when they’re offline.

To get started, download the Facebook Connect for iPhone code, read the documentation, and start coding!