Cordless VoIP phones for Skpye

By Vivek Puri | August 31st, 2006 at 07:03 pm ET         

Skype announced that it is introducing new cordless phones that will not require a running computer. The new class of phone will enable used to make and receive calls over PC and PSTN/POTS (landline phones). The first series of products to be launched in this class are the Philips VOIP841 cordless phone and NETGEAR�s cordless phone for Skype. This development was long expected from Skype, and is definitely good news for skype users, and ebay, and not so good for vonage where problems never seem to end.

�We are broadening our reach to mass consumers by offering them the opportunity to communicate via Skype without having to be tied to the computer,� said Stefan �berg, general manager, desktop and hardware at Skype. �Skype has already introduced Wi-Fi phones and Skype for PocketPC wireless. Now Skype is taking the next step and working together with Philips and NETGEAR to introduce PC-free cordless phones. The cordless phones for Skype launched today, give Skype users the flexibility to enjoy free Skype to Skype calls and inexpensive calls to ordinary and mobile phones anywhere in the house, at any time without a running computer.�

Skype users will be able to sing into their account from the phones itself and download their contacts. Users will be able search contacts on their phone, which will be able to support an integrated contact list of skype contacts and traditional phone numbers.

Each of these cordless phones will have a remote DECT base station, which can be plugged into both the broadband connection and the traditional phone lines. The system will handle both Skype and ordinary calls in one phone, presented through an easy-to-use, user interface. Both the Philips and NETGEAR cordless phones boast a full color graphic display, simplified calling features with an integrated contact list, and an enhanced speakerphone with great voice clarity.

Premium Skype features, including SkypeOutTM for inexpensive international calls to traditional landlines and mobile phones, SkypeInTM to receive calls from landline or mobile phones on Skype, and Skype Voicemail will all be easily accessible through the phone.

The Skype Certified Philips VoIP841 cordless phone will be available for the 2006 holiday season.

Wikigenia gets $1.5M funding

By Vivek Puri | August 31st, 2006 at 02:43 pm ET     2 Comments »    

David Sacks, former COO of Paypal and Alan Braverman Xoom co-founder have secured $1.5M funding for their new venture Wikigenia. Wikigenia is a West Hollywood, CA-based genealogy website. Wikigenia aims at providing wiki based platform in a area dominated by Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com. This a Series A round for Wikigenia funded by the Founders Fund. No updates on the actual site url, and wikigenia.com shows a godaddy landing page.

Sports Social Networking at Tired & Tested

By Vivek Puri | August 31st, 2006 at 02:24 pm ET     4 Comments »    

Another day, another social networking site but with a twist. This time around, UK based Tired & Tested (T&T) wants to network people interested in Sports. T&T provides extensive avenues for users to network, gather information, follow their teams and clubs, search for events and leagues, and much more.

Features: Site features are well thought of and provide good functionality. After you register you can add sports, clubs, and events to your profile. On your homepage you have modules for your profile, news from your network, buddies and competitors, fansites, sports news which can sorted by categories, leagues and events. Most of the modules are customizable where you can add and remove buddies, events, categories, leagues, and fansites. As expected T&T has section called Scrapbook where you can keep all your sports photos & blogs and share them with buddies. User can create blog posts though the editor is not feature rich. There is no wysiwyg or textile support, and no support for permalinks or posting blog posts to your personal blogs. However other user can post comments to your blog entries. Another feature of T&T is Agent(under development as of now) - which is supposed to help you find sponsors, sell your unwanted gear, raise money for charity (see, not all agents are dodgy) and maximize all those deals you’ll have to sign before you make some cash out of your ‘pro’ sporting activities. You can view discussion forums for the clubs you play for and the sports you play, watch or manage. All these forums keep you up to date with the latest thoughts of friends and team mates. You also get a mailbox where you can send and receive messages from others in you network.

Technical/UI: Site design very functional for a beta release but most of web 2.0 features are missing including dragging and droppings photos or external video support or template customization by users. Also there is lot of emphasis on text being in red color which, I think, should be toned down.

Suggestions: One of the features that can be added is to have an area where users can set personal goals, training plans, add achievements(something like Traineo), and related things. This feature can be shared with other members in the network, which will enhance collaboration. Another potential issue is what if a Sports Pro(like David Beckham) joins T&T. As expected there will be fan site for him already out there. Is there a way to connect both or add some value due to his presence on the site? Also the difference between fansites and clubs seems ambiguous ’cause both of them have similar URL(http://www.tiredandtested.com/fansite/xxxxx). It will be better to different URL segment(/club/ or /fansite/) so that it can be monetized upon later. Also support for external video from youtube and Google video will be great add-on. It will be great if RSS feeds are provided for blogs, events, photos, forums, news and related thingy. Please make the URL’s color as blue otherwise it is not intuitive whether it’s plain text or an url.

Revenue: There are no charges for registering and also no advertising on the site. One potential source of revenue can be where T&T sells the club homepages to actual clubs as the site grows or charge for new clubs to be created at later stage, since clubs will like to control their profile and provide publicize.

Future: Tired & Tested is aiming at a very lucrative market which has not been tried before in the field of social networking. If they can expand their platform in a global way, they have good chances of survival.

Links:
Tired & Tested
Why the name?

Cheapest travel deals from cFare

By Vivek Puri | August 31st, 2006 at 10:48 am ET     4 Comments »    

cFares latest entrant in the online travel booking market, claiming to provide you the inside connection for travel. In order to do so, cFares has established exclusive relationships with travel wholesalers to provide lowest fares. It’s good to see that innovation keeps continuing in the online travel area with recent startups like Farecast also providing new ways to get best travel deals. cFares is founded by the serial entrepreneur Vajid Jafri and is located in Redwood Shores, CA.

Features: Site is pretty straightforward where you can search for Fights, Hotels, and Cars. A quick search for various flights on cFare, Farecast, Orbitz revealed that cFare does seem to have the lowest ticket prices with few exceptions. Following is the search for tickets with Departure on 18th Sep and Return on 24th Sep for various origin and destinations:

cFares also has priceline like feature of being able to name your price for a ticket. When users search for a ticket and think they can find a better fare for the trip, they can click cFares’s cAgent. Here you can name you international itinerary and the price you are willing to pay. cFare proprietary search agents process this information, check cFare databases for up to a week and find the lowest ticket price for you. cFare gives you 24 hour seat and price guarantee so that you have time to decide. After all said and done, remember that cAgent searches are currently only for international travel.Plan: cFare has 2 types of membership - Platinum or Gold. Gold membership is free, and for Platinum there is a $50 annual fee (sounds like Sams Club or Costco). The lowest fares offered by cFare are only for Platinum members. I don�t really know how many people will go for the Platinum membership, which can make cFare a difficult sell.

Technical/UI: Site is very basic as of now with lot of work required on the UI side. I got couple of errors while registering for the membership. There are no RSS feeds in any of the areas. Besides cFares does not have a company blog as of now to keep their users informed about new offerings.

Future: cFares faces stiff competition from well established players in the market like Orbitz, Expedia and well funded startups like Farecast. If cFare is consistently able to provide the lowest fares, it shouldn’t have problems getting the initial traction in the market

Links:
cFare

Swap your books at Bookmooch

By Vivek Puri | August 30th, 2006 at 11:34 pm ET     2 Comments »    

Bookmooch is a community built around sharing off used books. At Bookmooch you can give and recieve books for free. You dont need to return any books and there is no cost of joining. Bookmooch is the creation of John Buchman, who also runs the record label Magnature, and has previous experience running several other websites with his wife Jan.

Features: Users have 2 basic set of lists - Inventory, Wishlist. Any book you want to give away to others has to be added to Inventory. Books you are looking for are in the wishlist. Books from your wish list will automatically arrive to you when you have the points and/or the book becomes available in our catalog. Bookmooch also has area Pending transactions where you can find out about books you’re currently sending or receiving. You can also request and send books from/to other countries, in other languages.

Point based system:
Earn- If you enter a new book in your inventory you get tenth-of-a-point. Every time you give someone a book, you earn 1 point and 3 points when you send a book out of your country. If you acknowledge receiving a book you mooched you get tenth-of-a-point.
Spend- If you remove a book from your inventory you loose tenth-of-a-point. Every time you get a book, you loose 1 point. It costs the moocher 2 points to get the book from other countries.
Additional Rules: Users need to send out at least 1 book for every 5 you receive. Every user will have a Feedback score given by the reciever. If you keep your feedback score up, people are most likely to help you out when you ask for a book. There is also limit to number of books reported as lost in mail by a user.

Technology/UI: Bookmooch is well laid out site with a good UI. Doesn’t have any RSS feeds for any of the modules. Relies heavily against the Amazon API.

Revenue: Bookmooch hooks up with the Amazon’s book database, and if you follow an Amazon link from the site, Bookmooch receives a commission from Amazon if you buy that book instead of getting it free from BookMooch.

Overall its a great idea if it gets off the ground. One of obvious issue is, what will prevent a user to sell the books he gets from Bookmooch from selling on ebay? All the books have variable selling price, but Bookmooch gives you the same 1 point for any book. People trying to manipulate the system will try to give out low-end books and try getting those with slightly better market value and put them on ebay or Half.com. Nothing can really stop them from doing this. Another issue is from the legal side. I remember in India, every book used to have a clause stating that we cannot export the book outside country. So what happens users trying to send books from such countries.

Competitior:
Paperbackswap

Links:
Bookmooch
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