Globalisation of Plaxo

30% of Plaxo members are outside the US. In order of size, the countries with the most members are: United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Brazil, South Africa.

Plaxo are also localising their service - no dates yet though.

Plaxo adds Jajah into PC Application & Online

OK, this IS significant. Our friends at Plaxo have added calling features ('Plaxo Click to Call') via Jajah, by embedding phone icons into your MS Outlook Contact list. Here's their blog entry on it.

Plaxo adds Calendar application to armoury

Plaxo has acquired HipCal - here's their logic on their blog - make sense.

Everyone is signing city-wide Wi-Fi deals

BT has signed deals with 12 city councils (with 'many more' in the pipeline) to provide mass wi-fi access. No surprises though: it won't be free - PAYG + subscription options.

Separately, the Cloud is doing the same for 9 cities, including London, Manchester and Birmingham. See article.

MiCircles lookalike raises $500k

3jam has a group text messaging service that looks like ol' MiCircles. They have raised $500k of a $1m Series A round from New Enterprise Associatess, according to this article.

Skype offers free calls to North American landlines & mobiles

Blimey, what an offer. Can't call INTO to US & Canada, but free to call any landline or mobile if the caller is in the US. Competitors, be frightened....

New Opera Mobile 8.6

Downloaded yesterday - lovin' it!! (Only for Series 60 however)

Soonr - make Skype call from mobile remotely

SoonR (standard version) enables standard mobile phones to use the applications on PCs in an optimized way. Desktop Search, Outlook, Skype, and the files on desktop computer(s) are made available anywhere you are and even when your computer is turned off (require premium service - no surprise!)

New Skype Feature: Users simply click on the buddy they wish to talk with and SoonR Talk tells their PC to call their mobile phone using SkypeOut, then instructs Skype to call the buddy and places the user into a conference.

Nice mashup.

Skype 2.5 (Beta) with SMS + Skypecast

Skype 2.5 Beta is out. They are making a lot of fuss about sending SMSs (but they have done this before, by chatting at a contact called 'SMS Gateway' - this service was free and didn't work). This implementation looks MUCH better.

Some interesting points though:

• You can change the 'FROM' number from your mobile number to your Skype name.
  
• They actually notified the sender when the SMS is actually delivered to the recipient's phone (niiiice!)

Other newbies:
Share Contacts

• when you join a pre-established group of contacts, the group members are added your Skype contacts.

Skypecasts - pre-scheduled group chats.

• What's so special about this? Is it the fact that they are open for anyone to join in?? Consumer webinars??
  
• Update: the picture of whoever is speaking in a conference call lights up - useful in anything larger than a four person conference call.
  
• Nice viral feature, has some podcasting angles (everyone say "oooh, PODcasting"), but doesn't appear to be exploited - perhaps that will come.
• I'm still on the fence on this - guess this is a feature whose use(s) will appear over time.