According to Reuters and the Danish TV news, Skype will be taken over by eBay, making it possible for buyers and sellers to connect via VoIP telephony. EBay already bought PayPal, and this merging of services and tools sounds intriguing - of course you could get in touch by voice instead of email, but somehow I don't know if I wish to give up my personal Skype id, just for buying or selling a silly gadget (which I would probably not do anyway). Somehow even though spam has become an everyday triviality, I would worry more about being disrupted by unwanted, intrusive voice callers on my PC?

This is derived from my personal considerations about internet privacy versus internet presence.

Another thing is that by now, Skype has become so popular because it is free, with additional sevices such as SkypeOut (for calling regular phone lines) and Voicemail - I hope they will keep the basic call, text messenger and video conference free of charge. We tested the beta vSkype video conference last week, and the voice quality was good, webcams for those who had any also showing up nicely on most participants' screen. Evil tongues say that eBay stock owners have reason to fear the future as this venture may not be profitable enough - the sum they mention for this is huge, possibly 4 billion dollars...

Podcasts make an interesting material for getting to know another language by listening, as well as being updated if you already understand this language. As I've been living in Stockholm when I was 20, I feel this is perhaps the most beautiful language I know, especially when they are singing it :-)<br /> <br /> If you wish to know what's happening in the Swedish podcasting corner, here's a list to explore<br /> <br /> <a href="http://podcasting.se/podcasting.se/</>