Archives: December 2006

VoIP: Not The Cheapest Calling Option?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on December 26, Categories: VOIP

Traditional telcos can often offer better rates to call Israel than Skype, Web-calling expert Jon Arnold writes in his blog. I have found the same to be true when calling Russia. What this means: Migration from landline to VoIP could slow down.

Startups and Second Chances: The Jawbone Story

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on December 21, Categories:

Products from startups that aren't hits out of the box don;t often get second chances. But every once in a while, there's a happy exception. The Jawbone headset from...

How Can This Happen?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on December 19, Categories: tech's future

Portland police recently beat up an autistic 15-year-old boy whom they've taken to be a drug addict. Why isn't there some sort of a technology in place that can prevent such horrible incidents from happenings?

eBay's China Challenge

Posted by: Rob Hof on December 19, Categories: eBay

Why can't U.S. Web companies make it in China on their own? Assuming the reports are true, it looks like eBay will soon be joining a number of U.S. firms...

Time's Person of the Year: You, Us or Me?

Posted by: Rob Hof on December 19, Categories: Power of Us

I'd vote for "us," rather than "you," as Time did on its latest cover, but at least it's interesting to see the magazine pick up on the empowering nature of...

Huh? No DSL in Palo Alto??

Posted by: Rob Hof on December 15, Categories: broadband

I've been a pretty happy DSL customer through Earthlink (which resells AT&T DSL service) for years now in my home in Palo Alto, Calif. Now I'm moving literally about two...

Celery for old folks?

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on December 14, Categories: Gadgets

Since my column, For Puzzled Seniors Only, appeared, a couple of readers have written me about what they think is a better e-mail solution than the Printing Mailbox from Hewlett-Packard...

Al Shugart, RIP

Posted by: Rob Hof on December 14, Categories: storage

So sorry to see Al Shugart passed away. He was one of the icons of the old Silicon Valley, the guys like Andy Grove and Charlie Sporck who would tell...

Brown Is Not the new White

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on December 07, Categories: Digital Music

A story by my colleague Jay Greene describes Microsoft execs' happiness with the initial sales of the Zune handheld media player. But I suspect the sound out of Redmond is...

What Should Terry Semel Do Now?

Posted by: Rob Hof on December 07, Categories: Yahoo

Here's what else the folks I talked to think Yahoo's CEO should do, now that he's laid the foundation with a management shakeup and reorganization. But what do you think?...

Yahoo!'s Big Shakeup

Posted by: Rob Hof on December 06, Categories: Google, Yahoo

Here's the story. (And here's Terry Semel himself on a Yahoo blog, a little more real than the jargon-filled press release.) I don't know if all these moves will do...

Click Fraud's Secret Problem

Posted by: Rob Hof on December 05, Categories: Google

My colleague Ben Elgin has an interesting story about why it's so hard to fight click fraud: Battling it in court means companies such as Google would have to reveal...