skype

Samsung announces the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and Note that blur the line between smartphone and tablet, George Lucas has made more changes to the original Star Wars trilogy for release on Blu-ray, and Apple loses yet another prototype iPhone at a bar.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Skype just got so easy your great-grandmother could use it without having to know anything about a sound card or any other input/output doohickeys that are more convoluted than President Harding and his confounding Teapot Dome scandal! (Look it up, millennials...)

Actually, there is one doohickey, but once it's all hooked up it looks an awful lot like a regular old cordless phone--with VoIP hidden inside. (No need to tell great-grandma about that last part, it will only confuse her--apologies to all technologically astute great-grandmothers out there, BTW.) It's the Freetalk ConnectMe home phone adapter for Skype, which connects to any regular old home phone.

You'll need to connect your PC to set things up the first time, but after that, Skype says you'll just need to make sure your broadband connection and phone are hooked into the adapter. If you keep your landline, you'll want to hook that in too, because the adapter allows you to switch back and forth between Skype and a regular phone line.… Read more

The Sri Lankan branch of Anonymous claims to have hacked into the DNS servers of Symantec, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and several other large organizations over the past few days.

Posting the news and records of its exploits on Pastebin, the group is taking credit for launching "DNS Cache Snoop Poisoning" attacks against its victims.

DNS cache snooping is the process whereby hackers can query a DNS server to find out which domain names are being resolved into IP addresses.

DNS cache poisoning is a method through which hackers are able to insert malicious and fake records into the … Read more

Skype has launched its own app store, offering third-party apps that can integrate with the company's online calling and messaging service.

Third-party apps have been available through Skype in the past, but its App Directory is the company's first effort to host a more official place where people can search for, browse, and download the software they want. The store officially opened Wednesday.

Skype users can browse a list of all apps; the store offers … Read more

In an unsurprising but still shocking move, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs resigns as CEO but remains with the company as chairman. Tim Cook is promoted from chief operating officer to chief executive officer.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Back in May, Microsoft teased that the Windows Phone Mango update would bring more than 500 new features to the mobile operating system. We've already seen more of the major changes during our Windows Phone 7.5 preview, but it looks like more goodies are to come, including support for front-facing cameras and Internet sharing.

According to the site Windows Phone NZ, which also tweeted the news, Microsoft confirmed at the Tech Ed conference that Mango will support front-facing cameras and also integrate Skype. It's not clear, however, whether Microsoft will make this a hardware requirement on all … Read more

HP has a winner on its hands, now that it's killed off that particular winner. The Internetorati clamor to buy discounted TouchPads, while HP's stock plummets 20 percent to a six-year low. So, Apotheker, who's right? You or the geeks? Also, Facebook finds out once again that censorship is hard, and the real reason aliens want to kill us: we'll ruin the entire galaxy if we get off this rock!

Google rolls out verified profiles for Google+, Skype buys GroupMe messaging service, and HP liquidates its stock of tablets.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Do you use more than one Skype account? One developer grew frustrated with the limitations of trying to use his multiple Skype accounts on one machine in one session, so he wrote Skype Launcher, a simple piece of freeware that automatically signs in to multiple Skype accounts with a single click. It automatically detects accounts that are already signed in to Skype and only launches offline accounts.

Skype Launcher opened with the Skype Launcher Configuration utility, to which we added our Skype accounts by entering each account's name and password in a pop-up. A check box let us choose … Read more