Skype now available on iPhone

Skype, the popular voice over Internet phone service, is about to land on the iPhone today, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Skype, a unit of eBay, is set to announce the availability of its service on the iPhone platform at a press conference at the CTIA Wireless show, in Las Vegas.

Users of the iPhone and the iPod Touch will be able to download the Skype app through Apple's iTunes store. Calls to other Skype users will be free, while calls to landlines and mobile phones can be made through Skype's SkypeOut paid service. All calls will need to be made over WiFi and not over AT&T's cellular network.

Consumers save their e-mail and documents on Google's data centres, put their photos on Flickr and store their social lives on Facebook. Now companies such as Amazon and Microsoft want government agencies to similarly house data on their servers as a way to cut costs and boost efficiency, says The Washington Post.

But federal officials say it is one thing to file away e-mailed jokes from friends, and another to store government data on public servers that could be vulnerable to security breaches.

The push toward "cloud computing", so named because data and software is housed in remote data centres rather than on-site servers, is the latest consumer technology to migrate to the ranks of government.

Businesses can make use of Twitter as a public relations channel, but they need to be aware of security when sharing ideas, Gartner has said, reports PC World.

The social networking site allows users to post short messages, or microblogs. Gartner predicts that, by 2011, enterprise microblogging will be a standard feature of 80% of social software platforms, even though most are currently consumer-oriented.

Many businesses are using Twitter as a public relations and marketing channel, Gartner said. Businesses are "tweeting" about corporate accomplishments, distributing links to press releases, and responding to other Twitterers' comments about their brand.

Walt Disney, seeking to broaden the audience for its broadcast and cable shows on the Internet's most popular video site, has struck a deal with Google's YouTube to distribute short-form content from ESPN and ABC, states Los Angeles Times.

The agreement would extend the Internet reach for ESPN's sports highlights and ABC News updates and provide another outlet for video snippets taken from the ABC broadcast network and ABC Family cable channel shows.

Disney hopes the arrangement will bring its advertisers to YouTube, a site that has 100 million monthly visitors, but has had difficulty making money off "user-generated content”. Disney would keep the majority of the proceeds, YouTube said.