If you didn't get enough Skype news yesterday, Niklas Zennstrom said Skype Video will go into beta testing this summer and could be launched later this year. Skype is also focusing its growth on China through a partnership with Tom.com, and the U.S. Tom.com is already doing aggressive marketing - large billboards in Shanghai, for example, while Skype will try to seed other markets by letting people pay for premium services in their native currency rather than forcing them to use the Euro. Skype Journal, meanwhile, continues its path to be the external voice with more than 1 million hits a month. Not bad for a new entity that started as a personal blog.
I moderated a panel looking at Wi-Fi and Wi-Max. It was interesting to see several service providers in the audience, which suggests the market could be poised for growth. There was a lot of talk about multi-protocol phones and whether device makers would come out with something, for example, that could handle GSM and Wi-Fi. My session took place at the same time as a panel on how broadband service providers such as Comwave, Vonage and AOL Canada are moving into voice so I suspect a lot of people attended.