A SkypeIn account includes up to three phone numbers with different area codes in the subscriber's home country, plus voice mail. Folks who call those numbers pay whatever long-distance fees their own phone carriers charge, even if the recipient takes the call on a laptop one or two continents away.
To date, Luxembourg-based Skype has been known mostly for enabling computer-to-computer calls, a free service that requires use of the company's Internet calling software at both ends. It also offers a paid service called SkypeOut that lets people place calls from computers to regular phones.
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Transcript: .com's Leslie Walker hosted a live Web chat with Udi Manber, CEO of Amazon's A9.com search engine. They discussed the future of Web search.
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Skype has long been popular with international callers who talk frequently to people in other countries and want to cut their bills.
www.skype.com
Opera 8 Takes the Web Stage
People fed up with Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser have a new option -- an updated version of the Opera Web browser, long admired by power users but considered too complicated by some Web novices.
The latest version, released Tuesday, offers tighter security and a simplified interface, although users can still customize Opera to take advantage of its many hidden features. Opera 8, developed by the Oslo company of the same name, also adds a new voice-browsing feature that can read aloud the text on Web pages.
Opera is free if people are willing to have ads displayed in the browser window; an ad-free version costs $39.
www.opera.com
E-mail Leslie Walker at walkerl@washpost.com.
