![]() Matt Crocker (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – spent a couple of years developing software for Pioneers of the Inevitable, the startup behind customizable open-source music player Songbird. His recruitment (Feb 2009) suggests Rdio won’t exclusively run on desktops but also inside browsers. ![]() Manish Singh (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – once a senior member of Oracle’s technical staff, Singh was hired by social browser startup Flock in September 2005, where he held a number of technical roles before becoming the company’s Director of Technology. It’s fun looking at his Twitter account, where he recently proclaimed open source media software sucks. At imeem, he seemingly kept busy with ‘scaling, new feature data-model designs and micro-payments’ according to his LinkedIn profile. Craig Kimerer (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – also an ex-employee of music startup imeem, where he worked as Software Engineer. During his tenure at imeem, Berman undoubtedly learned a lot about what it takes to distribute music on the web and scale the service for a large user base. Todd Berman (VP of Engineering, Rdio) – first hired as Software Engineer at imeem in 2005, Berman served as VP of Technology at the venture-backed social music startup until switching to Rdio back in August 2008. His recruitment seems to suggest that the Rdio service will not be exclusively browser-based. ![]() Carter Adamson (COO, Rdio) – former General Manager of Desktop Products at Skype and prior to that Director, Product Strategy/Business Developement at AOL and before that Senior Program Manager at ICQ. Today, that same search on the business social network yields more results: I’ve been keeping busy this weekend doing some very basic research – I love you, Internet – about Rdio and discovered a couple of interesting details that have emerged on the Web since the stealth startup got its first dose of media attention.įirst of all, a search on LinkedIn used to surface only Malthe Sigurdsson, a London-based designer who used to be Creative Director at Skype, as one of the people hired by Rdio – as VP of Design. The yet-to-launch digital music startup was first talked about publicly a couple of weeks ago in a New York Times article but we haven’t heard any further information about the startup. The Skype test operator is awaiting your call.Now that they got what they wanted – a renewed stake and board representation in the Skype that will be spun off eBay soon – the Scandinavian duo Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis can divert more of their attention again to the latest Internet venture they’re putting their weight behind: Rdio. Download it and check it out if you haven't already. As a result of some bugs and problems with how the app interacts with the iPhone OS, though, users will probably want to avoid using the app for business calls. Its familiar UI makes it easy to use, and audio quality is usually great. Overall, Skype works quite well on the iPhone. AT&T is planning to offer their own MicroCell service for home network connectivity, and ISPs have been experimenting with pricey tiered service plans. Of course, money is at the root of both these concerns. First, why won't AT&T allow third party VoIP services to skim a little bandwidth off the top of their 3G cell network? Second, while 10 kb/s isn't much, it could add up to gigabytes monthly for heavy users, which might exceed the lowest bandwidth caps. There is intermittent clipping or dropout, but in testing, it never made conversation impossible. In call options are similar to iPhone's native phone app.Īt only about 10 kb/s, the audio quality is generally pretty solid, even on slower 802.11b networks. The updated app also more reliably initializes and routes calls. This was a major flaw in version 1.0, one which honestly made the first million apps shipped a little useless. Chief among them, country codes are now automatically added to numbers from the user's address book. This latest update to the Skype app makes several significant improvements. It's a good deal, but does the iPhone app deliver? Useful Updates +1 iPhone users could save about $53/month by dropping down to the lowest plan AT&T offers ($40/month for 450 minutes) and relying on Skype's unlimited calling plans, online number and voicemail services instead (about $7/month). The Skype app for iPhone and iPod Touch makes Skype's VoIP network and reasonable national and international calling rates available anywhere a user receives a wifi signal. Users can save more than $50/month by utilizing Skype's unlimited calling plans, but are the application and service reliable enough to substitute for your mobile minutes? With a few UI tweaks and fixes, the newest version of the Skype application for iPhone and iPod Touch is worth downloading.
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