A View on View :: Cisco-Skype Strike a Pose; eBay Makes Another (Better) Deal

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Cisco-Skype Strike a Pose; eBay Makes Another (Better) Deal

by Mark Evans on Wed 12 Oct 2005 07:43 AM EDT | Permanent Link

Cisco and Skype are joining forces to sell a new Skype-enabled phone. Cisco's $129.99 CIT200, manufactured by Richmond, B.C.-based Ascalade Communications, will be available Oct. 17.
(PriceWaterhouseCoopers has a nice look at the pros and cons while Tom Keating offers an extensive user review.) Speaking of Skype, I had lunch with a telecom analyst yesterday who's still stumped why eBay bought Skype and paid as much as $4.1-billion for it. Any way you want to break down the deal, he said, it doesn't make sense financially. A more logical deal is eBay's purchase yesterday of Verisign's payment processing business for $370 million. eBay will merge the business with its PayPal division. VeriSign’s software connects online businesses with payment processors run by major banks.
Now that a few weeks has pasted since the eBay-Skype deal, has anyone figured it out yet?

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Comments

Re: Cisco-Skype Strike a Pose; eBay Makes Another (Better) Deal

by bsharwood on Wed 12 Oct 2005 09:05 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Mark,

It's all about the micropayments. Don't think of eBay as eBay, but think of it as Paypal.

Re: Cisco-Skype Strike a Pose; eBay Makes Another (Better) Deal

by Rob Hyndman on Wed 12 Oct 2005 10:59 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Mark,

No.

:)

Rob

Re: Cisco-Skype Strike a Pose; eBay Makes Another (Better) Deal

by Simon Perry on Thu 20 Oct 2005 09:39 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

There's three states of thinking about eBay/Skype - Boo, Wow, and What?

I've now moved both of my feet into the Wow camp, with my reasons layed out in The Genius of eBay Buying Skype.

Does that encourage you over too?

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\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
\n"; $this->_updateAdFileParameters($AdFilePath, $new_ad_params); #echo "Returning updated parameters
\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>