There’s nothing inherently historic about Skype being available on phones–it’s on the iPhone (albeit over Wi-Fi only right now) and I first used the service on a Windows Mobile handset years ago. (Only briefly, though–it taxed the phone to the breaking point, and voice quality was pretty miserable.)

But a major carrier such as Verizon not only grudgingly permitting Skype but buddying up with it as a selling point for its phones is an interesting twist. I look forward to trying Skype Mobile on my Droid when it’s available. And I have a few questions in the meantime…

Is there any integration with the phones’ standard phone features? Say, access to the phone address book from within Skype? Or–dare I wish for it–the ability to route all calls through Skype, as Google’s Google Voice app permits on BlackBerry and Android handsets? (Yes, I know that Google Voice isn’t comparable to Skype–it uses phone minutes, and Skype doesn’t)

How well does it work for incoming calls? Skype Mobile can run in the background, and I presume that you can use a Skypein phone number to permit people to dial a standard phone number and reach you in Skype. But does all this work smoothly enough that you could comfortably use Skype to take calls rather than the phone’s standard phone features?

How’s the quality? As good as a standard cell call? Better?

Are there any gotchas? On paper, this whole deal sounds…suspiciously enticing. The better Skype Mobile works, the more likely it is that lots of Verizon customers will do most (or all?) of their calling using it. Even if Skype cut Verizon in on any revenue it made, that couldn’t be good for Verizon’s bottom line.

More thoughts once the app’s available.

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Mobile carriers have generally pushed back in allowing Skype usage on their phones, fearing consumers would use the service to save money by negating the need for more minutes in their voice plans. Even AT&T up until the most recent SDK for the iPhone was giving the VoIP provider the cold shoulder. However, with consumers increasingly using their data side of their plans over the voice side, now may be the time to relax these restrictions in favor of generating more revenue.

The first carrier to allow Skype onto its phones was Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, whose 3 subsidiary began adding Skype in 2007. The addition of Skype has been said to have attracted “hundreds of thousands” of new customers to the service.

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eBay rids itself of Skype.

Windows 6.5 phones: October 6th.

Are these Chrome OS screens?

Nokia music service launch delayed.

IE’s loss is Firefox’s gain.

Sony bundles Chrome on PCs.

Chrome gets desktop notification system.

Psystar sues Apple (yes, again).

Snow Leopard, in amazing depth.

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Oprah’s show does use Skype on certain occassions to interview guests and the company is a sponsor, but producers stress that had nothing to do with Oprah selecting the technology to cover in a show.

Instead, “the idea originated from our producers who wanted to see what extreme places they could Skype into and also how they could use this far-reaching technology to surprise viewers,” a Harpo spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.

Some of the spots Oprah will be interviewing guests from are a Canadian town near the North Pole, a submarine, and a Wi-Fi equipped Virgin America plane. It should be mentioned that Virgin actually forbids Skype video chats typically in flights, but I guess Mr. Branson is making an exception for the Queen of All Media.

I don’t think Skype will get the boost that Kindle did from its Oprah debut as the technology is much more established. However it certainly won’t hurt either.

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More about Zune HD. Maybe.

eBay: we’re spinning off Skype.

Net neutrality? Now now, please!

Amazon.com: a third of e-commerce.

AT&T wants more iPhone exclusivity.

Microsoft patches up Office holes.

Philips: Two dimensions are enough.

I’m afraid to use ATMs.

Miss Circuit City? Just wait.

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Meet Twitter-annoying teen Mikeyy.

Prince’s $2100 purple iPod Touch.

Amazon: hiding gay-themed books?

Skype should sell to founders.

Vizio may face import ban.

iPod Shuffle is 72% profit.

Palm readying inductive-charging accessories?

Two potential Pre shipping dates.

Windows 7: securest operating system?

Microsoft kills on-campus bar.

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Skype for iPhone now available.

Google gets into venture capital.

American Airlines: Wi-Fi almost everywhere.

Sorry, no Android tethering, please.

Microsoft announces Windows Phone partners.

Ahoy, matey: iPhone app pirates.

Lauren: happy PC? Can’t say!

Shure’s new headphones: they rock.

A cheaper PS2. Starting tomorrow.

Firefox is top European browser.

Netflix raises price for Blu-Ray.

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In defense of Facebook’s redesign.

Dell’s working on smaller devices.

Google Street View: Kill it!

A cloud-based game console.

Skype: biggest long-distance carrier.

A botnet that attacks Linux.

Warner’s made-to-order DVDs.

iPhone keyboard, no jailbreaking required.

Peek’s new not-a-phone.

Voice-driven Eee PCs soon?

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Facebook: Users control their info.

Pirate Bay escapes some charges.

One charger for every phone.

Nokia puts Skype on phones.

Satellite radio may sidestep bankruptcy.

Card counting’s easier with iPhone.

Toshiba buys Fujitsu drive business.

Canon sues over fake blogger.

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For a dozen years or so now, the Internet has been a mainstream communications medium, and its history has been pockmarked with examples of big-time services choking for extended periods–often a lot longer than today’s Gmail blip. The most famous examples of unplanned downtime have a lot in common: They usually last longer than anyone expected and get blamed on cryptic technical glitches. Almost always, angry consumers announce they’re done with the service in question; almost always, the service eventually recovers.

Oh, and one more thing: The biggest and most embarrassing failures all seem to happen during the summer months. Maybe technology, like human beings, just doesn’t work quite as hard when the weather’s hot and there are distractions like baseball games, picnics, and vacations to contemplate.

Now that Gmail’s back, it’s worth recapping a few other outages that made headlines when they happened–and since the ones that follow are in alphabetical order, they begin with maybe the most famous one of all (hint: it involved a company whose initials are A.O.L.)…

Who? America Online, the company that was synonymous with online services in the mid-1990s.
When? August 1996.
How long? 19 hours.
Why? AOL CEO Steve case blamed it on problems with the installation of “”high capacity switches within the local area network.“
Upshot? The service’s 6.3 million users received refunds for the downtime.
Saving grace? Steve Case’s artful and honest work as chief apologist made him even more famous as AOL’s public face.
Any other problems? AOL suffered multiple embarrassing outages in the era (here’s another one), then pretty much got over having ‘em–though a 5-hour e-mail meltdown in 2006 felt like old times all over again.

Who? eBay, then as now the world’s biggest auction site.
When? June 1998.
How long? Almost a day–reportedly the biggest outage in online history at the time.

Why? “[The] problem resulted from a failure in the software that was used to list items for sale and update bids. He insisted it was not a problem with the site being strained to capacity and said it was not clear why it had failed.” Matters were complicated further by the fact that eBay hadn’t quite finished implementing a backup system.
Upshot? eBay lost an estimated $3-$5 million in sales and was forced to offer refunds, extend auctions, and waive fees by way of apology to sellers whose auctions were affected.
Saving grace? Some eBay users who had bid early on items in auctions that were scheduled to end during the time the service turned out to be down got bargains.
Any other problems? This outage was one of several catastrophic ones that eBay suffered in 1998 and 1999.

Who? MobileMe, Apple’s brand-new service for synching information on iPhones, Macs, and PCs.
When? July 2008
How long? Several weeks of at least sporadic issues for some users.
Why? Apple’s MobileMe blog mentioned multiple technical gremlins, including “a lot more traffic to our servers than we anticipated,” a bug “that was preventing MobileMe IMAP mail folders from syncing correctly between the web app and Mac OS X Mail or Outlook,” and “a serious problem with one of our mail servers.”
Upshot? Apple extended all MobileMe accounts by a month; Steve Jobs said that the MobileMe launch wasn’t “up to Apple’s standards” in a widely-published internal memo and put a new Apple exec in charge of the service.
Saving grace? None to date, although it’s been a rare opportunity to see Apple eat crow.
Any other problems? As I write this, it appears that the worst of MobileMe’s woes may behind it, but grumbling continues; on June 29th, an Apple blog post promised an update later in the week, but none have been published.

Who? MSN Messenger, the instant-messaging service from the world’s largest software company.
When? July 2001.
How long? For some users, about a week.
Why? “[An] extremely rare set of circumstances occurred when one of our database servers had a disc controller fail.“
Upshot? Some unhappy users decamped to AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and other IM services.
Saving grace? The outage didn’t help people feel better about Microsoft’s scary HailStorm initiative for serving as a one-stop repository for all of consumers’ data and probably helped to kill it.
Any other problems? MSN Messenger also went down in 2003 and 2005.

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