Skype founders name new video start-up Joost

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the duo that brought the world Skype and Kazaa, have chosen a name for their new online-video start-up.

The two Danes want people hungry for Internet entertainment to roost at Joost.

Company executives had referred to the new company for months by the codename "The Venice Project." They chose Joost because they like the ring of it, according to a spokeswoman. The word doesn't have any meaning in Danish.

The plan, according to Joost CEO Fredrik de Wahl, is to offer studios, cable stations and anyone else who wants to distribute high-quality video over the Internet, a fast, efficient and cheap distribution method. To do this, the company will rely on the peer-to-peer technology that helped Friis and Zennstrom build Skype and Kazaa.

Their sparkling track record of creating hit companies aside, Friis and Zennstrom face a crowded field of competitors, such as YouTube and Apple, which are already well on their way to establishing themselves as video-distribution platforms.

Most importantly, Joost has yet to strike any marquee partnerships with top film or TV producers. Without them, their challenge is a tough one: convincing studio executives and the like to turn over their content to Joost when the company has yet to attract a big audience.

BitTorrent, the San Francisco-based distributor of a competing peer-to-peer company is also vying to license technology to Internet video companies. Another threat could come from the growing number of sites that offer top cable and movie channels without permission. One such company, TVU Networks, made a splash last summer by offering soccer fans the ability to watch World Cup matches on their PC. For a while, TVU Networks was offering HBO, CNN, the Disney Channel and NBAtv before many of the companies forced it to pull their shows down.

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What Joost has going for it is that the software replicates the TV-viewing experience better than many of the other companies trying to wed TV to the PC. And this is a time when Hollywood is experimenting with the Internet. During the past year, Warner Bros. cut distribution deals with Guba, a little-known video-sharing site, and BitTorrent, a company that many consider to be synonymous with digital piracy.

Joost's nifty technology may be enough to sway the entertainment industry to place a bet on proven winners in Friis and Zennstrom.

A menu allows users to switch channels with a click of a link. Users will also have TiVo-like control of the content and access to any show offered regardless of time of day. They can also move forward or backward within a show.

The Luxembourg-based company will support itself with advertising, specifically Internet ads that behave just TV commercials.

"These are the kind of ads that the TV industry and viewers understand," de Wahl said.

India Bans Skype, Other VoIP Providers

Pesky upstarts such as Skype will no longer be able to offer VoIP service in India, because they were apparently not giving the Indian government a slice of the pie. Such unlicensed providers weren't paying the 12% service tax and 6% VoIP revenue sharing fee. Elsewhere, outfits like Skype and Net2phone compete with government-run incumbents. Lebanon tackled this problem by passing a law stating that no broadband provider could offer upstream speeds faster than 32kbps. Banning Skype via network hardware is also a big business, and companies such as Verso are happy to oblige.

Skype Software Upgraded to Version 3.0-What things have been added and now its expenisve

On the heels of yesterday's announcement that SkypeOut to the US and Canada won't be free starting in January, the company now released version 3.0 of its free Skype internet phone-calling software, now available for download. We downloaded the new version and it does have a spruced up interface, adding a tab for public chats that hopefully makes that easier to accomplish. There's also a new click-to-call feature that lets you click a number on a webpage to dial it.

This Skype service just gets better and better, and maybe it is worth that $29.95 annual price ($14.95 until February 1). Another great deal is international calling, where you can buy SkypeOut minutes and it's cheap as dirt. Notice that $8.08 of Skype Credit remaining on the top right of my screen shot? On a recent trip to India I thought I'd need $10 worth of SkypeOut minutes, but it only cost me $1.92 for hours upon hours of gabbing half-way around the world. Great deal, especially since Skype-to-Skype calling will still be free. – Charlie White
GiZmodo

Skype unveils yearly long distance package

When Skype announced free long distance Skype-to-phone calls for the US and Canada in May of this year, the result was an explosion of new Skype users. Even though the promotion would end at the end of the calendar year, seven months of free long distance was enough to entice scores of people to sign up.

Now Skype hopes to turn those users into paying customers, as the company has now announced its intention to sell long distance packages for a yearly rate. When the free long distance hangs up on Near Year's Day, Skype will begin a month-long promotion: $14.95 for one year of long distance. The promotion will also include 100 minutes of SkypeOut for International calls and over $50 worth of coupons for purchasing Skype-certified hardware products. After January 31, the yearly fee will increase to $29.95.

"The new Skype Unlimited Calling Plan is an affordable option that will save consumers hundreds of dollars compared to high rates charged by traditional phone companies," said Don Albert, North America General Manager for Skype. "We want to give Skype customers convenient options of choosing either an unlimited calling plan with a flat annual rate and or staying with our standard pay-per-minute offering."

Does Vonage have anything to fear? Maybe, maybe not. Skype requires a PC to use, and as of yet there have been no solutions for tying a home's existing POTS infrastructure to Skype (although I know of at least one company that wants to try). But the quality is outstanding and some of the of nicer Skype phones (which we recently reviewed) are finally coming down in price.

Disclosure: I have nothing to disclose about Skype, other than the fact that I really like the service. At $1.25/month, I can tell you right now that I'm signing up. When calling family in Ireland, it simply cannot be beat. Heck, even calling back to Chi-town and Indy is great, because the sound quality is so outstanding. I can only thank eBay for spending $2.5 billion on Skype. We're still not sure why they did it, but what's that about virtual gift horses?