Televersa started the first WiMAX network offering in Germany. The service covers 95% of east Bavaria where DSL only comes to 60%. The name of the service is "Flying-DSL" obviously making clear what service they intend to provide/replace.

Service offering is:

• 1024, 2048 und 6144 kbps down, 256, 384 und 512 kbps up
• Flat pricing bundle for DSL and VoIP: 42, 45 or 49 Euro

The news that the Skype protocol has been hacked by Chinese engineers appeared yesterday.

I heard it first in TechCrunch but the guy who published it (smart looking Charlie Paglee) has its own blog site, is running a VoIP startup and surprise-surprise has NOT posted anything on his blog site for several months and now this Skype news! Yeah yeah, fool who does not smell here what 's going on. I very much suspect that they are working with the Chinese engineers (and if only on the "PR" side), and who knows who else is sponsoring it? There are many VoIP would-like-to-make-money folks out there who hate Skype and the fact that they will probably remain the only ones who made big bucks just before VoIP becomes a commodity.

Techcrunch suggests that Skype opens their protocol and probably actually makes all the other VoIP guys pretty much obsolete. The other reaction could be more telco style: change the protocol every 30 seconds or so (as one Techcrunch comment suggests). You would need more than all of China's SW engineers to counteract that. Ok, let's see what's coming. A third one could of course be to do nothing at all if the whole story was fake in the first place, or if Skype does not see much threat. Their first reaction was modest as to be expected:

Skype is aware of the claim made by a small group of Chinese engineers that they have reverse engineered Skype software. We have no evidence to suggest that this is true. Even if it was possible to do this, the software code would lack the feature set and reliability of Skype which is enjoyed by over 100m users today. Moreover, no amount of reverse engineering would threaten Skype’s cryptographic security or integrity.

German startup Who-R-You simply connects your e-mail address with a (your) picture.

As Techcrunch points out:

Who-R-You may be online dating in its simplist form, as people peruse the pictures and contact users that they find attractive.

What you can also see is how many people have clicked on a picture. Now if you want to play a little fun game with your friends, why not ask them whom they think got the most clicks - and the least.

I like the fact that it is simple, but of course that will at the same time mean it is very easy to copy. Let's hope that they are also fast in getting the buzz going before some US sites roll over them.