Engadget Mobile

iSkoot links cellphones with Skype

by Collin Kemble posted Feb 18th 2006 at 3:30PM

Don't have a WiFi enabled phone and feeling left out of the whole VoIP telephony thing? Well, if you're a Cingular customer and have a Series 60 phone, today might just be your lucky day. iSkoot's announced a new service that will allow Cingular customers to use Skype without using any kind of data connection. Once you install iSkoot's app on your phone, you can use your existing voice connection to connect to their gateway, which in turn links you in to Skype. We know this may sound complicated but it's actually pretty straight forward; if you notice the diagram, you'll see that all of these connections are made by utilizing the latest in smoke-cloud-and-arrow technology. With plans of releasing this software for more platforms (Series 40, RAZR, and Treo at first) and adding support for more services like Google Talk, we can see iSkoot's products becoming very useful -- who couldn't use a break in their international long distance bills?

[Via Personal Tech Pipeline]

Barablu, the "first" free VoIP mobile-to-mobile calls over WiFi

by Collin Kemble posted Feb 17th 2006 at 3:38PM

Barablu announced a new VoIP app this week that they claim is the first to let users make free mobile-to-mobile VoIP calls over WiFi. Ok, while that may sound good, we're going to have to call shenanigans on this one; if Barablu wants to claim that they were the first, they're going to need to travel back in time and release this before, say, Skype released on PPC. Barablu users will be able to make and receive calls within Barablu's network for free, but unlike Skype, users are going to need an existing phone number to receive calls from the outside world. Barablu's site offers up their software for Series 80 and Smartphone devices though, so if you want to give it a go, be our guests; we think we'll stick with Skype for a little while longer, though, thanks.

Easy moblogging with ShoZu

by Collin Kemble posted Feb 17th 2006 at 12:17PM

Tired of not being able to fully manage from your phone all those photos of your cat and what you ordered for dinner? Then ShoZu might be the app you've been looking for, with versions for both Windows Mobile and Symbian (Series 60 and UIQ) so you can fully manage your moblog from your phone. ShoZu will send all of your masterpiece photos and videos to your moblog, allow you to edit tags and descriptions, and even displays comments. Supporting Flickr, Buzznet, and Webshots, among other services, ShoZu shows some real promise, and the best thing about this software is the price: free.

[Via: Shiny Shiny]

Japanese companies to create new dual-mode 3G platform

by Collin Kemble posted Feb 17th 2006 at 11:14AM

The worldwide adoption of 3G networks has gone at, shall we say, a mind-numbingly slow pace (especially for those of us in the States), but in an effort to fix this problem, NTT DoCoMo, Renesas Technology, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, and Sharp have announced that they will jointly develop a new dual-mode cellphone platform, which will support both HSDPA / W-CDMA and GSM / GPRS / EDGE in a single chip. The goal, of course, is to increase features while cutting power, cost, and space, but their new platform probably won't see the light of day until the summer of 2007. But the day it's finally released, it should make a bit of improvement in the lives of many a globe-trotting playboys and international businessmen extraordinaire.