Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Ooma Launches Free Consumer Phone Service — An ambitious and long awaited new consumer VOIP startup - Ooma - launches on Thursday morning. Much like Vonage and the ill-fated SunRocket, Ooma allows consumers to use their normal phones to make and receive telephone calls, but at drastically reduced prices.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, MobileCrunch, CrunchGear, Podcasting News, IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband and robhyndman.com
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
Ooma wants voice to be free — Voice over the Internet, so far, has been a game of cheap minutes, shoddy quality, and unreliable connections. It's also been a money-losing proposition. The promise of voice being free has remained just that - a promise. Palo Alto-based startup Ooma promises …
Walt Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Ooma Puts Out a Call to Ditch Landlines for Web-Based Service — It has been possible for several years now for Americans to dump their landline phone companies and pay much less with services that route calls over the Internet instead of over the regular phone network.
Discussion:
Engadget
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
VoIP goes Hollywood — What do Ashton Kutcher and voice over IP technology have in common? — Kutcher, best known for his role on That '70s Show and MTV's reality show Punk'd, is "creative director" for a Silicon Valley start-up called Ooma, which has developed a device that will allow users …
Discussion:
New York Times
CNNMoney.com:
Senate looking at Google-DoubleClick — Executives from search engine firm, its target DoubleClick, and competitors expected to appear at antitrust hearing. — WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Lawmakers in Congress plan to hold hearings to air concerns about Google Inc.'s proposed acquisition of Web advertising supplier DoubleClick Inc.
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Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Congress to Examine Google-DoubleClick Deal — Google executives are expected to be called to testify before House and Senate subcommittees about the company's planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, a deal that is already facing close scrutiny from federal antitrust regulators.
Business Wire:
Sprint Nextel and Clearwire to Partner to Accelerate and Expand the Deployment of the First Nationwide Mobile Broadband Network Using WiMAX Technology — Consumers, Businesses and Public Safety Agencies to Benefit from More Coverage Sooner and Enhanced Network Capabilities
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
WiMax goes mainstream: Sprint, Clearwire to build national network — Sprint and Clearwire are pooling resources in a venture that could take WiMax nationwide. — The two companies said Thursday that they plan to build a national WiMax (4G) network. The partnership, which is a 20-year agreement …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Skype losing its voice? — eBay just reported its second quarter (Q2) 2007 earnings, and we are going to get to the details later, but lets just focus on Skype, that strangely seems to be making money even as it usage is flattening. — New Registered Users, an ambiguous number at best …
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Tony Smith / The Register:
The IBM ThinkPad: 15 years old today — Receive the day's biggest stories by email, sign up here — Forgotten Tech The ThinkPad is 15 today. Sort of. Launched by IBM and now made by Lenovo, the black-clad laptop family quickly established itself as an icon, in many ways re-establishing …
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun
Josh / Windows Connected:
No Public Windows Vista SP1 This Week — If you were hoping to see a public beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 this week then this news won't make you too happy. Microsoft has asked us to inform everyone the following: … Apperantly only a small "select" group of testers will be getting …
Techdirt:
MPAA Math: 40% Plus 70% Equals? — Ah, the MPAA and its ability to simply make up numbers continues. Last week, we noted that the MPAA was claiming that New York City was where 40% of camcorded movies came from, following earlier claims that 50% came from Canada.
Discussion:
TorrentFreak
Rafat Ali / paidContent.org:
Scripps Buys User-Gen Recipes Site Recipezaar; Reportedly Around $25 Million — Scripps Networks, which has been looking at bulking up its online effort with acquisitions, has made one: it has bought Recipezaar, a Seattle-area based online recipe site. It was started in 1999 under …
Peter Grant / Wall Street Journal:
NHL to Add Webcasts in Bid to Broaden Reach — The National Hockey League, which has been aggressively using Internet video to try to make up for the sport's dwindling U.S. television audience, cut a deal with technology start-up NeuLion Inc. to make live games available on the Web starting next season.
