After accidentally being released a day early (and subsequently pulled), Skype’s iPad app is now available in the App Store for real. The release ends a long wait for those looking to Skype on their tablets: Skype with video on the iPhone has been available since the beginning of the year, and the iOS app itself for much longer than that.

Skype is playing up the benefits of video chatting on the big screen of the iPad, and I have to agree. While it’s nice to video chat from your phone, I’ve always thought video conferencing does better on bigger screened devices.

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At last, Skype’s Android app supports video calling, but it’s only available on four phones for now.

Video calling works over Wi-Fi and 3G, and is supported on the HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro and Google Nexus S. The common thread among these phones is that they all run Android 2.3, but a Skype representative told me that the company’s working to make video chat available on a wider range of devices shortly after launch.

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To celebrate Father’s Day, Google inserted a line underneath the Google Voice calling feature in Gmail’s Chat feature: “Reminder: Call dad.” Sounds innocuous, huh?

Well, no. Some people who don’t have dads were understandably upset by the note. Eventually, most of us won’t have a dad to call; I’m surprised that nobody at Google figured out that the message would be at best irrelevant and at worst an unhappy little moment for a meaningful percentage of Gmail users.

Companies like Hallmark and 1-800-Flowers presumably don’t worry much about Father’s Day and Mother’s Day advertising hurting anyone’s feelings. But Google’s “reminder,” while promotional in nature, was presented as a task-like item within a piece of Web-based productivity software. That made it feel more personal. It also involved Google futzing around with an application used by millions of people. Microsoft wouldn’t insert a Father’s Day requirement reminder into Outlook–and even though Outlook is a paid product and Gmail isn’t, Google crossed a boundary which it apparently didn’t realize existed.

It’s a safe bet that Google won’t commemorate Father’s Day or Mother’s Day in this particular way again. But I hope it comes away from this with another lesson: it needs to tread gingerly when it comes to messing around with Gmail and other apps for any reason except making them better. And sometimes even then.

The more phones you have in your life, the more you might be interested in Plantronics’ Savi 700 series of wireless headsets, which the company announced today. Unlike most headsets, the new Savis are designed to be used with mobile phones (via Bluetooth), work landlines, and PC-based VoIP services–and to let you roam between them, with a range of up to 350 feet.

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Wireless carrier T-Mobile is no stranger to VoIP, having experimented with it for a time through its now defunct Hotspot@Home service, which ended last year. Well, it’s trying again, but this time bringing the technology to social networking site Facebook.

Called Bobsled by T-Mobile (don’t ask, I have no clue why they settled on this name), the application for both PC and Mac gives users the capability to place free VoIP calls between Facebook friends, including integration with the Facebook chat system. The application is free to all Facebook users and is not exclusive to subscriber’s of T-Mobile’s wireless services.

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Skype is adding (relatively unobtrusive) banner advertising–a move it’s kind of surprising it didn’t make years ago with its free version.

Well, looky here–the iPhone version of Skype we wanted all along is finally here: one that does video calls. It works on the iPhone 4, current iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS, and iPad (although you really want the front-facing camera which the 3GS and iPad lack) and permits calls over both 3G and Wi-Fi. And judging from my very brief time with it so far, the quality seems quite good.

Apple’s own FaceTime set the standard for simple video calling from a phone, and other options such as Tango are already thriving. but if you’re a Skype user calling another Skype user, the new iPhone app couldn’t be much simpler–and you can make calls to Windows users, something that’s still not possible with FaceTime. (You can’t, however, make video calls to Android users–but you gotta think that a video-capable version for Android will come along before too long.)

If you give the new app a try, let us know what you think. Me, I think I’ll use it calling my three-year-old nephew and two-year-0ld niece–neither of who own an iPhone 4, oddly enough…

Skype’s CIO has blogged a detailed explanation of why the service was down for 24 hours last week. Like the even longer Skype outage of 2007, this one was an interesting reminder that a service that relies on peer-to-peer technologies rather than centralized servers can still be crippled if large quantities of those peers run into trouble all at once.

Skype may indeed be “returning to normal,” but it’s not happening particularly quickly.

Skype says that it’s “returning to normal” after today’s major outage. From what we can tell from here, th0ugh, the service is still feeling sickly.

The ability to place free calls to (and receive calls from) landlines via Google Voice from within Gmail is one of Google’s least flashy but most useful offerings. (The quality is spectacular–I never bother with a headphone, and nobody’s ever asked me “Hey, am I on speaker?”). And now Google says this service will remain free through the end of next year.

I do have a request, though–one I suspect Google will eventually address: I’d like to be able to place and make calls from within Google Voice itself, not just Gmail.

A couple of months ago, Laura Locke told us about a new smartphone video-calling app called Tango. Now it’s available in a version for the current, camera-equipped version of the iPod Touch. And the Android version uses the OS’s new background notifications to dramatically reduce the impact on battery life.

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Ooma Telo

Price: $249.99

Ooma may be a VoIP system, but it’s got a spin that doesn’t bear much resemblance to something like MagicJack. It’s built around a classy-looking box which you plug into a telephone and your home network. Calls are in what the Ooma folks call “high definition” quality. Once you’ve paid for the device, US calling is free (a $9.99/month upgrade, Ooma Premier, adds features such as call forwarding, simultaneous ringing, and a second line). And options let you use your cell phone with the Ooma box or use your iPhone with an Ooma number over any 3G or Wi-Fi network.

Other VoIP options such as Vonage don’t involve a big-ticket piece of hardware, but do require monthly charges–Vonage is $25.99 a month. The Ooma folks are hoping that you’ll do the math and decide it makes sense to pay up front for the hardware. Is anyone reading this an Ooma customer?

It’s become a bizarre rite of passage: Interesting apps for the iPhone and iPad keep appearing, getting attention, and then being literally overwhelmed by consumer response.

The latest example: Skyfire, the smartphone browser that lets you watch some Flash videos on an iPhone. It hit the App Store on Wednesday. Then throngs of people read about it and downloaded it. The app, which is as much a service as a piece of software–it relies servers which translate Flash video into an iPhone-friendly format on the fly–stopped working in any sort of satisfactory way, and its creators yanked it from the App Store.

Now it’s back, sort of –they’re letting in new users in drips and drabs by putting Skyfire on the App Store and then taking it down and then putting it up again. (It seems to be up at the moment.)

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A beta of Skype 5.0 for Mac is out, and looks promising.