NY Times: The two founders of Kazaa sold the company to Sharman Networks last year. But they have since hatched a plan that has a chance at causing another, potentially bigger uproar. They’ve reunited with the same team of Estonian programmers who wrote the code for Kazaa and have created a way to allow people to make high-quality phone calls over the Internet without having to pay a penny.
On Aug. 29, their new company, called Skype, released a preliminary version of the program. Already, more than a million people have downloaded it, the company’s Web site says.
It is “a real opportunity to do something that is disruptive in a very positive way,” Mr. Zennstrom said. “We have a big ambition with Skype: it is to make it the global telephone company.”
Skype, which rhymes with “hype” and has no particular meaning, allows free calls between any two users who have downloaded the software. It is simple to use and provides clear connections to anyone with a broadband connection and a basic headset.
The program relies on VoIP. I’ll be talking about my own experiment with VoIP on Packet8 later this week, when the transition to TypePad and GoDaddy is complete.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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