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Yahoo has launched the beta for its SIP-based Yahoo! Messenger for Voice VOIP Service in the US. The service features phone-in ($2.99 a month, or $29.90 a year) and phone-out capabilities to allow users to make and receive calls from landlines. Pricing for calling out is apparently very aggressive - 20-30% below Skype - USD 2 cents a minute or less to the top 30 national phone markets.

See Yahoo Voice.

From Reuters via Engadget

Techdirt has a nice posting about the liability of wireless access point owners for illegal or infringing conduct carried out by other people accessing the Internet through their access point. Seems that some individuals may be purposely leaving their access point open (in other words, leaving encryption turned off) so that they could (1) cast doubt that infringing activity conducted using their Internet connection was conducted by them and (2) assert the benefit of “common carrier” defenses available to ISPs and other telecom companies for infringing content transferred over their network. Could it be that we’ll all end up with free wi-fi everywhere we go because people open up their wi-fi routers in the belief that it will help protect them from lawsuits filed by the recording industry? Of course, sharing or reselling Internet connectivity may be a breach of a user’s terms of service from their upstream ISP. But that may or may not be determinative of the potential defense. In any event, an interesting argument.

One of Linksys’ most successful products has been WRT54G/GS/GL. Some would say this is because the router (well, at least the original versions and the current GL version) software was based on open source and a large community of third party developers has been developing new applications for the box. Two popular sources of replacement firmware for the WRT54 have been OpenWRT and Sveasoft. However, the two are now engaged in a fight and OpenWRT (whose software is licensed under the GNU General Public License) recently terminated Sveasoft’s license to use any component of OpenWRT.

From DailyWireless. If you are interested in purchasing a model of the WRT54 that can still be reflashed with OpenWRT or Sveasoft software, consult the chart at Wikipedia.

KinderStart.com, a Norwalk-based Web site devoted to information about children, filed a civil complaint in U.S. District Court in San Jose seeking to be certified as a class action representing the owners of all Web sites blacklisted by Google’s Internet-leading search engine since January 2001.

Google’s search system attempts to elevate the positioning in search results of Web sites with content most relevant to a particular search. Because of the large proportion of searches handled by Google as compared to rival search engines, sites without a well known domain name that are assigned a low ranking by Google can loose the majority of their traffic. Somes sites therefore try to optimize their content so as to increase their rankings - however, if discovered by Google, such sites can be artificially penalized (or sent to “the sandbox” for the equivalent of a children’s time out).

From SiliconValley.com via Techdirt.

PhoneBoy and Alec Saunders are writing about PhoneGnome’s newly announced API. I think this is wonderful and have even taken the time to try out one of the user contributed applications that can be used to initiate a call from the PhoneGnome to a designated phone number (such as a cell phone number) and then to a number listed in the user’s phone book - an ideal application for users that have cell phones with unlimited incoming minutes (or who buy local GSM Sims while traveling) or who want to call long distance at VOIP rates. The PhoneGnome product has such great potential, in my view, and hopefully this API initiative will allow it to really take off.

Tired of paying for 411 service? A number of companies are offering free directory assistance free of charge, though users have to listen to advertisements - 800-FREE-411 and 800-411-METRO. According to 800-Free-411, operated by Jingle Networks Inc., phone carriers such as MCI can charge up to $3.49 for a similar service, while SBC and Sprint charge up to $2.49. Unfortunately, both services are limited to the US.

I came across an advertisement for Kanguru’s BioSTOR, a USB 2.0 hard drive with built-in finger print reader that is used to provide access to the encrypted drive. According to Kanguru, there is no software to install (all the software is contained in the drive) and the data on the hard drive is encrypted and so remains protected even if the hard drive is removed from the device. Sounds like a great product, especially for a road warrior that needs to carry a lot of sensitive data around - except for one thing - according to TigerDirect’s website description, the encryption strength is only 40 bits. So what’s the point?

Last month I blogged about Zfone. The Mac version is now out for public beta. A Windows version is expected for mid-April. Some aspects remind me of the PGPfone product of the last decade but updated to support the now common SIP protocol used by VOIP applications. However, unlike PGPfone, Zfone is not a standalone client but rather middleware that runs along side, and adds encryption capabilities, to a user’s already existing SIP softphone client.

In a related story, the VOIP and Gadgets Blog reports that Counterpath is set to release version 1.5 of its EyeBeam VOIP and video conferencing client - and one of the features is support for Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) streams to secure the voice and video connections. While it is still extremely difficult to find a VOIP service provider that supports SRTP encryption, hopefully making the capability available to a wide group of potential users will generate demand and lead to the wider availability of more secure VOIP services.