Over the years Skype has become one of the best known internet telephony services, offering free Skype-to-Skype calls, video chat and instant messaging (IM) services but also has the ability to call landlines and mobiles for the price of local calls. It’s very easy to set up and use and the quality of the service is always improving. It is for this reason that they have become so popular, with similar applications to come.

How long will this last with the latest offering from the ever-growing online empire of Google? Google has just released a free voice and video chat application which is designed to work as an extension of it’s already popular email service - Gmail. One of the key factors here is that if you use Gmail as your primary email, it’s likely you will always have it open. Because of this you would have little need to open up a separate application to have a text, voice, or video chat unlike other applications like Skype.

OK, at the moment you can only contact other Gmail users, and even then only if they are online so from this perspective Skype doesn’t need to be too concerned as yet. But as Google grows and its applications develop who knows how long it will be before Skype becomes yesterdays technology.

To try it out for yourself you can download the plugin here.

Internet crime is an ever growing criminal activity which includes financial scams, hacking, harassment and identity theft. The flourish of crime in these areas can be linked with the economic crisis - as it worsens more and more people resort to illegal activities.

According to the 2007 annual report from The Internet Crime Complaint Center - after the United States, [...] Continue Reading…