VOIP

A new law in Europe protects all citizens from the evils of cookies. Instead of relying on people to operate their own browsers, Europe now requires all Web sites to notify users that they will set cookies. That certainly sounds annoying. Come on over to our freedom-loving U.S. sites, y'all! We also check in on Motorola Droid sales and find out that the Milestone kicks the Droid in the butt. And Google has a holiday present for you. And it's free!

Sure, Google Voice is cool, but it's not necessarily the best Web-meets-phone service one can imagine, is it? The field is still open, and switchboard-in-the-cloud company Ribbit (a division of BT) will stir things up when users get their hands on Ribbit Mobile, a new telephony service for consumers.

Like Google Voice as of last week, Ribbit Mobile adds services to your existing mobile phone number, using a standard telephone company service called Conditional Call Forwarding. You set up your phone service to route to the service when you don't pick up the phone, and it gives you all its features on the calls it then grabs: voicemail, forwarding, routing, and so on.

Ribbit Mobile isn't purely a mobile app, name notwithstanding. Rather, the "Mobile" means that your phone number becomes nomadic, moving to and temporarily setting up residence on whatever voice platform you want to use at any moment, be it a mobile number, a landline, or a VoIP system. Users set up their Ribbit Mobile features on a Flash-based Web site. Smartphone apps are coming, as is, most likely, another Apple app store approval drama.

Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs doesn't seem to want Ribbit compared directly to Google Voice, since Ribbit is a telephony platform company with ambitions well beyond the consumer app. Ribbit's revenues to date have come from its platform business. But Ribbit Mobile will be compared with Google Voice, and it's a fair and interesting battle.

Ribbit Mobile bests Google Voice in a few key ways. Its voicemail transcription feature will be better, although users won't get that feature for nothing. Free users will get machine speech-to-text, with likely the same quality of amusing and borderline-useless transcriptions as in Google Voice. But paid users will also have the option of using human-assisted transcription so their voicemail-to-text messages are actually sensible and useful.

Ribbit can also connect to VoIP services like Skype or SIP phones (Google works with phone-company phones and SIP, but not directly with Skype), as well as voice-chat features in some IM services, and you can transfer calls between phones while you're talking.

… Read more

Using VoIP-based mobile devices over Wi-Fi or IP video phones? Be careful.

Researchers plan to demonstrate this weekend how they can eavesdrop on voice over IP conversations made using an iPhone over a Wi-Fi network and snoop on video and audio communications between IP video phones.

These types of man-in-the-middle eavesdropping attacks aren't new, however these could be the first public demonstrations of them on these particular platforms.

In the VoIP demo at ToorCon in San Diego on Saturday, Jason Ostrom, director of Viper Lab at Sipera Systems will listen to the conversation of someone talking on an iPhone … Read more

Rafe wonders what could possibly go wrong with Comcast monitoring its users to protect them from malware. In the process, Rafe makes a few comments that have us wondering whether he'll return home to any Internet service at all. Barnes and Noble is rumored to be rolling out an Android e-book reader, while Steve Ballmer claims that the PC is the best e-book reader.

B&N e-book reader reportedly in the works http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10371468-93.html

PCs are … Read more

There's a little panic over the fact that Bing's market share dropped last month, but you have to remember, folks, Bing is young. Rafe puts it in perspective for us. Also, Kindle gets a price cut and goes worldwide, yo. That's big. What is also big is the keylogger network that's hijacking everyone's Web mail accounts. We can help you out with that, a bit.

Another Kindle price cut…and it goes wireless internationally http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/10/06/financial/f210208D88.DTL&tsp=1 … Read more

AT&T on Tuesday said it has made the necessary changes to enable voice over IP iPhone apps to run on its wireless network.

Before Tuesday, VoIP apps would only work over a Wi-Fi network. In other words, if you wanted to use Skype to call a friend, you had to be connected to a regular Internet wireless network. Once you were out of range of that network, the call would end.

AT&T said it informed Apple and the Federal Communications Commission of its decision Tuesday afternoon. For its part, Apple was quick to react and make … Read more

You probably don't remember it, but way back in January, at CES, a little company called Ooma unveiled its next-generation phone system, the Telo, which combines DECT 6.0 cordless-phone technology with Internet-based (VoIP) calling. Well, after nearly 10 months of waiting, the Telo is finally landing in stores and is available for $249.99.

Ooma's claim to fame is that it sells VoIP phone systems that let you make free domestic U.S. calls and low-priced international calls. To help drive home the point that you don't have to pay for phone service, Amazon labeled Ooma's first product, which remains on sale, the Ooma Core VoIP Phone System with No Monthly Phone Service Bills.

Once you shell out the $250 for the Telo, you can make unlimited domestic calls for free, and such features as caller ID and access to online call logs are included at no additional charge. If you want to port your existing number, that will cost you $39.99, but if you want a brand-new number, you don't have to pay anything.

From a design standpoint, the Telo is sexier-looking than its predecessor and more importantly, improves on the feature set, as well as on the call quality.… Read more

Twitter users on Thursday will, for the first time, be able to make voice calls directly to each other through the microblogging service.

A new third-party offering from Jajah known as Jajah@call is expected to go into beta Thursday morning that will allow Twitter users to initiate a two-way voice chat with other users by typing "@call @username"--where "username" is someone's Twitter ID--into any Twitter client. During the beta period, the company said, the calls will be limited to two minutes, but the company will evaluate that length during beta. However, it sees … Read more

Along with keyloggers that track what you type, now we have to worry about malicious software that listens in on our voice over Internet Protocol conversations.

A Symantec security blog on Thursday disclosed a new Trojan horse, Tojan.Peskyspy "that records VoIP communications, specifically targeting Skype." The posting, based on analysis from Symantec's Karthik Selvaraj, pointed out that "its existence isn't due to any problems with Skype itself" but that Skype may have been targeted "simply because it has such a large install base."

Gerry Egan, Symantec's director of security response, … Read more