Skydeck

What if instead of just looking like a van, the Honda Insight actually was a van? That's the general idea that I'm getting from the Honda Skydeck, a minivan concept that will debut at the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show.

In so many words, the Skydeck looks like the CR-Z concept ate a current-gen Honda Odyssey. The face has the same, futuristic large mouthed bass look of the CR-Z, but the form factor is all van.

However, the aesthetic isn't all that the Skydeck borrows from Honda's hybrids, as a large "Hybrid" badge lets us … Read more

In the tech world, if you can't beat 'em, you can always join 'em, or at least integrate their service into yours. This is the approach that mobile phone manager Skydeck is taking with Google Voice, and it's a good one.

When we demoed Skydeck in April, it struck us as a useful service for managing your contacts, calls, and voicemail online as you would your e-mail. Never mind that its online interface isn't as slick or easy to use as competitors' services (like RocketVox or Dashwire). And like its technological cohort, we figured Skydeck was surely … Read more

The universal mobile communications in-box is emerging as a trend at CTIA 2009 in Las Vegas. Variations on the theme combine visual voicemail, text messages, e-mail, calling, and call forwarding in one online deck that's as easy to manage as your e-mail in-box.

Skydeck (Skydeck review) has a traditional e-mail layout that does calls, voicemail, text, visual voicemail, and call control for a fee. RocketVox is a great-looking private beta that manages e-mail from multiple accounts (including Gmail), IM, SMS, voice-to-text, VoIP calling, visual voicemail, faxing, conference calls, calendars, and screen sharing with a vague social networking angle. RocketVox … Read more

Skydeck is a useful-looking mobile message management service that creates a comfortable way to read and respond to phones calls, voicemail, and text messages from the Web. It differs from similar offerings by providing a classic in-box interface online, complete with a reading pane, folders, annotation abilities, and tagging. Skydeck also builds in a visual voicemail service operated by SpinVox so you can read your inbound messages in addition to listening to them. A search bar at the top of the page that helps you quickly find phrases and messages--including content from those transcribed voicemails.

If you have a headset, … Read more

On Thursday, I attended MobileBeat 2008, a new conference here in Silicon Valley focused primarily on cell phones broad enough to encompass closely related gizmos like Apple's iPod Touch and--at least in theory--mobile Internet devices.

The event was hosted by VentureBeat, where a great many blog posts can be found that go through all the sessions and significant announcements from the conference. (My thanks to VentureBeat writer Dean Takahashi, who invited me to the conference.)

… Read more

Skydeck makes a very cool product, but it is destined for smallness.

The product: It's a service the mobile phone carriers can use to make their Web pages actually useful for their customers. Instead of just showing a bunch of marketing pitches and the minutiae of the customer's bill, a Skydeck-powered site shows phone users who they talk to, either in chronological order or by frequency, and in an extremely comprehensible format. For users whose phones have the necessary software enabled (SyncML), it will also let them manage their phone address books.

Add-ons for social-network sites let users … Read more