geekosystem

Bitcoin is all the rage right now, with the price hitting above $100 and people with a background in economics and finance taking it a bit more seriously, so it's only natural that folks would look to capitalize on its current prominence. Those that are looking to get rich quick are even getting inventive, going so far as to create a new form of malware propagating through Skype that turns the host computer into a Bitcoin-mining slave.

If you don't want people to be able to suss out your IP at will, you might want to be careful how you use popular VOIP service Skype. A recently uncovered exploit makes it possible -- and pretty easy -- to figure out the IP of any given Skype user so long as you know their user name and so long as they're currently logged on to the service. While your IP address isn't quite the same as, say, your address or pictures of you in your underwear or something, it can be used to track you  -- and you specifically -- down. Of course, if you ask the RIAA, you can always just argue that your IP isn't really you.

Jordan Correa and his wife had a problem. Because they both worked full-time jobs, they weren't able to spend time at home during the day with their new dog Darwin. Instead of painfully readjusting their lives, Correa did what any man with training in robotics and engineering would do: He built a telepresence robot surrogate that he could control from work to play with his dog. You know, the obvious solution.

When done right, nothing is more instantly recognizable and associable as a catchy sound bite. Once upon a time, instantly recognizable jingles were the backbone of the advertising industry. Today,  audio clips are a little more pervasive, considering our seeming dependence on electronic devices. Receive a phone call? Catchy audio clip. Get an email? Catchy sound bite. Turn on just about any modern electronic device? Memorable tune. We're living in a world where companies and devices need to differentiate themselves from the competition as much as possible, and an instantly recognizable sound bite is a three-to-ten second mean to that end. So, come with us as we check out some of the most instantly recognizable, brand differentiating, nostalgia inducing sound bites in tech.

Yesterday, Skype announced that it is acquiring group messaging service GroupMe. Though the terms of the deal were not made public, AllThingsD reports that Skype will pay in the ballpark of 85 million bucks for GroupMe, a company that was founded only around one year ago in 2010. GroupMe allows users to create phone groups with other people and send text messages throughout the group, so the acquisition makes sense for Skype, a service that has been recently focused on video-based services, but with the acquisition of GroupMe, can now shore up its text-based services.

So, Facebook has Skype chat now. Surprised? Yeah, neither am I. Ever since Google+ was announced and was trotting around its Hangouts+ show horse, it became only a matter of time until Facebook announced similar functionality, Video Calling, and as of today, it's both official and live. Soon, when you look at a friend's profile page on Facebook, you'll be able to simply click the call button to launch a Skype-based, in-browser video chat, no Skype account or third-party software necessary (except for a small plugin, but that doesn't count). All that being said, it looks like things will ultimately come down to a one-to-one comparison of Facebook Video Calling and Google+ Hangouts, a one-to-one comparison that is practically impossible to make at the moment. For example, Video Calling is only one-on-one. Bummer, right? Hangouts has multi-chat, but then again, I don't have a Google+ account, and even if I did, the chances I would have multiple friends, who knew each other, who I wanted to talk with, with Google+ accounts, logged on simultaneously is slim-to-none. On the other hand, the chances that would happen with just one friend who is on Facebook is higher, but still not significant because those are the kind of people I tend to see in real life. As always, we'll have to wait to see how things play out. Facebook video chat may not be the revolutionary concept needed to blow Google+ completely out of the water, but it has the distinct advantage of being on a social networking site that is already established. How long that remains an advantage that is exclusively theirs is anybody's guess. (via TechCrunch)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has taken his lumps over Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype. One widely-read recent essay, The Ballmer Days Are Over," the slant of which can be inferred from its title, takes the Skype deal as evidence that Ballmer is the un-techy, unimaginative, hidebound CEO that his detractors have accused him of being all along. In advocating for Ballmer's replacement, author Ben Brooks writes: "Any new CEO should love technology and that will begin to show at Microsoft like it did when Gates was still at the helm if the right person is hired. Ballmer seems to care more about being the biggest thing on the market instead of the products his company creates." Time will tell whether Brooks' read on Ballmer's tenure as Microsoft CEO is correct, but as applied to the Skype deal, it's confounded by one newly revealed fact: Bill Gates himself strongly pushed for Microsoft to acquire Skype, Gates revealed in a recent BBC interview.

With the famous video-phone service Skype now in the hands of Microsoft, you might be wondering about its origins and how it came to be worth nearly $9 billion in the eight years since its creation. This infographic covers the history of the company, and the software, that has let people from around the world talk to each other face to face and took phone sex to a whole new level. Read on after the break for the jumbo-sized full version.

If the business press is to be believed, VoIP and video-chat service Skype's fortunes have taken an interesting turn since the rumors just a few days ago that Facebook or Google might, just might buy it for 3 or 4 billion dollars, but were more likely to enter into a major partnership with it. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is in advanced negotiations to buy Skype for "between $7 billion and $8 billion," with a deal possibly to be announced "as early as Tuesday." But why? Update, 5/10/11, 7:53am ET: According to Forbes, this deal is happening for $8.5 billion, and we should expect confirmation within the hour. Update2, 8:20am: It's official: Microsoft has confirmed the deal.

As the online arena becomes increasingly consolidated, the word from Reuters is that two of its biggest players are competing to secure an alliance with the dominant VoIP and video chat service. Earlier this year, it was reported that Skype had pushed back its initial public offering to the second half of 2011. While the word at the time had it that Skype was doing this to shore up numbers and get its new CEO acclimated to the company, Reuters says that Facebook and Google have taken the opportunity of the delay to court Skype, most likely for a joint venture but possibly even for an acquisition.

If you pulled your hair out over Skype requiring a paid account for group chats, than you'll simply love this news: the VoIP company announced that they will be bringing advertising to their service. Starting this week, ads will appear on the home-tab for windows users. No word yet as to other operating systems, though they are sure to follow in short order. Thankfully, the Skype developers are well aware that this has the potential to blow up in their faces. They promise that the ads will be useful, unobstrusive, and apparently also infrequent. From their blog:

You may only see ads occasionally. Our initial plan is to show an ad from one brand per day in each of the markets where advertising is being sold.

And although the ads may involve an exchange of "non-personally identifiable demographic data," they are providing tools to let you opt out of such exchanges. After years of ad-free, unlimited use from Skype, it's very hard not to scowl at the recent changes. But to stay relevant, Skype will need money. Hopefully they'll continue to keep their focus on providing the service so many users have become reliant on, while working towards profitability. (via Geek.com, Skype)

In its never-ending struggle to completely control what its citizens can and can't see on the internet, China has now banned all internet phone calls not made over one of two state-owned telecom networks.  According to The Telegraph, China is the world's largest market for internet phone calls, so the loss of the market for all other internet phone calls is not trivial.  Does this really specifically connect to Skype, though? Yeah, according to the state owned newspaper The People's Daily:

[This] is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country.

In what's likely being caused by a holiday-related wave of data-gobbling video calls crashing into a rocky shore of technical issues, Internet phone and video chat service Skype has been having outage issues throughout the afternoon, affecting millions of users. Speaking to the BBC, Skype CEO Tony Bates apologized for a state of affairs in which "clients are coming on and offline and sometimes they are crashing in the middle of calls." The Skype blog explains the outages in further detail (supernodes!), and warns that fixing them "may take a few hours":

>>>Update: Check out our roundup of changes to Facebook that were announced today.

Watch as a hardworking young man's webcam call from the office to his girlfriend takes an embarrassing turn for the worse in just 23 seconds. Former Geekosystem intern Michael Suen tells us this video/possible ad-for-who-knows-what has been "going viral on various Chinese social networks," but no knowledge of Chinese is required.