Videophone

A correction was made to this story. Read below for details. PALO ALTO, Calif.--Internet telephony operator Skype has tens of millions of users but envisions attracting billions with the help of video phones, says the man who co-founded the company. Niklas Zennström, who also serves as the company's CEO, demonstrated a beta video version of Skype during his keynote at the AlwaysOn conference at Stanford University. The application is a plug-in based on Skype's core telecommunications technology and is being tested internally. Speaking from his office in Estonia, the executive did not say when the product would be ready for release. Flanked by Tim Draper of investment firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (Skype's largest investor, to the tune of $10 million), Zennström said his goal is to use innovations from developers and outside partners to help build his business to a level that could rival Google and Yahoo. ***

Gadgets kingpin Sony entered the $1 billion-a-year Internet video telephone market Wednesday with a new service aimed, for now, mainly at businesses. Called Instant Video Everywhere, or IVE, the service initially will be offered to businesses in a premium version with broadcast-quality video. The service will cost $500 a month. Next week Sony will debut a mobile version, which can be used at any broadband connection, that costs $35 a month with a one-year service contract, $45 a month without a contract. IVE is a product of Sony's partnership with Glowpoint, a Hillside, N.J.-based video-phone service provider known for its "All You Can See" unlimited video dialing plans and easy-to-use, cutting-edge services such as live video operators and video-call mailboxes. ***

It's $500 and only works with other phones like it, but Packet8 is selling a Net-based videophone to supplement its ordinary Net telephone service. The company offers very helpful "videophone etiquette" to avoid misunderstandings. So remember, never call before 10 am or after 10 pm (except on Christmas, of course), never wear stripes or white, and be sure to introduce everyone that's in the room with you. David Foster Wallace told the best future history of videophones' rise and fall in Infinite Jest. ***

From amid the rubble in lower Manhattan on Wednesday, CNN reporter Gary Tuchman used a videophone to relay exclusive interviews of emergency staffers searching for survivors of the previous day's carnage. And only hours after the collapse of the World Trade Center on Tuesday, CNN also used a videophone to transmit an interview with the Taliban's leaders in Afghanistan as they sought to allay suspicions that Saudi exile Osama bin Laden was involved in the unprecedented terrorist attacks. These were just two marks of a crisis brought viscerally close to home, boosted by the media's use of satellite communications technology that continues to stretch and speed reporters' reach. ***

NEC's computer systems division announced today a new model in its Ready series of home PCs, offering videophone capabilities along with either an MMX-enabled Intel 166-MHz Pentium or a 233-MHz Pentium II processor. More computer systems are including videophone capabilities, but Internet telephony technology is in its infancy. Video telephones such as Intel's Video Phone, VDOnet's VDOPhone, and White Pine's CU-SeeMe have yet to become commonly used communication tools because transmission quality is still hampered by slow Internet connection speeds. NEC has included a 56-kbps modem from U.S. Robotics to address the need for more bandwidth. ***