D-Link recently came out with a Wi-Fi Phone. Now Belkin is joining the Wi-Fi phone market with the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype. With it, you can make free, unlimited domestic and International calls to other Skype users without the use of a computer. And just like D-Link's model, you can make calls to landline phones worldwide.

Making a call is just like using Skype: use the menu to find your contact and view your online availability. It also features WPA and WPA2 with PSK support for secure calls and 802.11b/g compatibility.

The Wi-Fi Phone will ship in North America in August 2006 and will sell for $149.99. You can preorder it now on Amazon.com.

It launches in Asia, Europe, and Australia soon after.

[via Belkin press release]

The nation's biggest cell-phone carrier, Cingular has had a tough time the past few years. They're

like the snake that swallowed the rhino - trying to absorb AT&T Wireless caused some severe

indigestion, including billing problems, dropped calls and annoying customer service issues.

But according to a conference call they had today, things are getting better. They added 1.5 million

customers in the past quarter, and lowered their "churn" -- the number reflecting how many people

leave Cingular -- to 1.7% from 2.2% a year ago. Only 12% of Cingular's network remains to be

integrated, combining the old "orange" and "blue" networks. This is important because integrated sites

have a 40% lower rate of blocked calls and a 20% lower rate of dropped calls than non-integrated

locations. If your bad memories of Cingular are more than a few months old, they'd also like you to know

they've integrated 28% of their network just in the past six months.

Integration also covers Cingular's billing systems; running 80 different billing systems has been a

big headache for both the carrier and its customers. That project is 96% done, Cingular says, with

only 2.1 million GSM customers remaining on old billing computers.

Cingular's making strides to get rid of the old TDMA system, too. A legacy of the 90s, TDMA is

crowding up spectrum that Cingular needs for high-speed wireless, but a lot of big corporate

customers were on TDMA, so Cingular needed to go a bit gently. Only 8% of their subscribers are still

on TDMA, which says they'll hopefully be able to free up some airwaves for better GSM and high-speed

signals.

Speaking of high-speed, Big Orange is way behind Verizon and Sprint in ramping up broadband wireless

networks. Where VZW and Sprint both cover more than a hundred US cities with their EV-DO networks,

Cingular's only barely hit two dozen, and that's with some creativity (like calling Phoenix and

Scottsdale separate cities. They ain't.) On the call, they announced their newest high-speed market --

Tucson, AZ -- and repeated that they'll cover "most major markets" by the end of this year, which

they've been saying for a while. We'll see.

If you want to read more from Cingular's presentation, you can see it on their Web site. Have things been getting better for you on Cingular? Tell us here.

Smile! It's the second best thing you can do with your lips. What's the first? Kissing of course!! But we all know that it sucks to kiss someone with bad breath. You don't want to be mean to your lover by not kissing him or her, but bad breath is just nasty.

Thankfully, SEJU Engineering developed the Kiss Me Meter: a personal bad breath detector. (Yes, things like this DO exist!) It uses an MEMS gas sensor, equipped with a re-calibration function, to detect 5 levels of mouth smell and displays those levels in different colors on the LED display.

The site doesn't say much more about it, but judging by the photos, it looks like it may hook up to your cell phone in order to view your readings. Stay tuned because I'm going to track down this Kiss Me Meter and use it on my boyfriend (sorry hun, sometimes your breath stinks).

The Kiss Me Meter sells for $39.95. Or, you can go the non-tech route and just pop a Life Saver.

[via TechieDivas]

Can there really be more to Spam than just processed food in a can or an inbox-clogger?

I do like the idea of "found art" evidenced by the spam clock (left) that sits on my desk. Some resourceful artist took an old spam can, added a battery and three hands, and voila: a fun and practical conversation starter.

But I never would have dreamed an artist would find a way to make e-mail spam into art. After all, it's one of the worst annoyances facing office workers, aside from soda machines that don't stock Dr. Pepper.

Artist Alex Dragulescu looks at it a different way. He uses algorithms to generate complex images based on spam content. (See image on right) "I have certain key words controlling, for example, the size. . .Like how many times is 'Viagra' in the text, and maybe it will control the size of the petals," he told the Christian Science Monitor recently.

It all started when he was in grad school--he and his friend used spam to create full multimedia presentations. He's currently at the Experimental Game Lab at the University of California, San Diego, where he continues to use spam as an artistic expression. Genius!

Sometimes commercials are more entertaining than TV shows these days. If you haven't seen "The Computer is Personal Again" HP campaigns yet, check them out. Each commercial features Mark Cuban, Shaun White, Jay-Z, and Mark Burnett in their own personal digital world.

My favorite HP Personal Again TV commercial is the one with Jay-Z. Noted as the CEO of hip-hop, he says that he likes playing chess online and taking photos you won't see in the tabloids (I'm assuming the "private" ones with Beyonce). As a bonus, if you go to the HP site and watch each ad, you can then view the celebrity's "personal desktop icons". On Jay-Z's, you'll find vacation pix, rocawear fall 2006 photos, best chess moves, and his resume. Holla!

HP's new ad spots show the roles a PC plays in each of their professional and personal lives (but I doubt they have the time to use them!). The interesting thing about these HP commercials is that you never see the spokeperson's face. C'mon, they're not that geeky-looking! (Unless the company was going for a more "Charlie Brown's teacher" touch.)

If you're a fan of Pharrell Williams (how can you not love that song, "Beautiful"), then you already know his new album, "In My Mind," will be released on July 25. As if he needs the publicity, he's also going to debut in the "The Computer is Personal" ad campaign. The commercial will be broadcasted at Vibe.com on Monday, July 24 and on TV Wednesday, July 26.

[via Vibe]