Accused murderer George Zimmerman's college criminal justice professor was testifying in his trial over Skype today, providing a nice object lesson in why Skype testimony for nationally televised trials is probably not a good idea.

"Hello, This is Dog" gets a very necessary 21st century update thanks to Ali Wasel, who found a canine buddy for her wire fox terrier Gaytor to chat with on Skype.

Rising Cornell sophomore Cristina Lara wants her school to abolish its 50GB/month student bandwidth limit. (To use more, students have to pay.) "Internet usage is free in virtually every college and university in the country," Cristina writes in a petition, "and it's also free among all 7 other institutions in the Ivy…

These candid portraits of powerful corporate executives, taken this weekend at the private investment firm Allen & Company's annual media and technology conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, intrigued us for reasons we can't fully explain. Maybe it's because some of these rich guys seem so damned miserable?

Facebook just introduced a powerful new way for you to avoid doing your work: video chat built by Skype. It should be no surprise this comes as Google Plus gets rave reviews for its own video chat feature, Hangouts. [Gizmodo]

That's the word on the street! The deal would include the assumption of Skype's $686 million debt, and will be made public at 5 AM Pacific time, according to NYT. If it happens, it'll be Microsoft's biggest acquisition ever.

Trying to convince their clients that "everything ages fast," Brazilian ad agency Moma mocked up some hilarious vintage 1960s-style ads for Facebook, YouTube, and Skype. (Including charmingly broken Brazilian English.) Yes, there's even a Keyboard Cat cameo.

You'd think tech bloggers would learn from the peacemaking founders of Skype, who just dropped lawsuits holding back the $2.8 billion sale of their former company. Instead the writers are calling one another inaccurate, spineless "toddlers."

How did a group of private investors snag Skype for $2 billion+ when big public corporations like Google were too scared to bid, thanks to lawsuits? With stolen computer nerd sorcery, allegedly.

Look at eBay's books and it wouldn't seem to have money problems. But it's running a garage, unloading would-be Digg competitor StumbleUpon, and hopes to sell Internet phone service Skype. Why?

Jason Calacanis, the mop-haired founder of Mahalo, an overfunded Web directory, is musing on Twitter about "tickers and rallies past" — a Proustian substitution of stock markets for madeleines. But what, exactly, does he have to be nostalgic for?

You rarely see a photo of John Donahoe, eBay's Dennis-the-Menace lookalike CEO. But today's a good day to pull him out from under Meg Whitman's shadow. The auction deathstar's Q3 net income was $492.2 million, or 38 cents a share. Much better than last year, when chirpy little upstart Skype — a Whitman acquisition —…

A tipster writes us to complain about eBay subsidiaries Skype and PayPal's response to identity theft. Reading his letter, which we've copied below, you'll see the problem is not so much that Skype and PayPal wouldn't refund the money the thief spent using our tipster's account. Rather, it's how inefficiently the…

At Skandia Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight, Niklas Zennström's racing yacht Ran won five of seven races amongst the largest class of boats, and won the overall title without having to race on the final day. Zennström joined the competitive yachting class after successfully suckering eBay into buying Skype. His…

The acquisition of Skype has been something of an albatross around eBay's neck — what, exactly, does an auction site need voice-over-IP and chat software for? With the new release, it's starting to make a bit more sense. Not as a chat client for early-adopter technology fetishists, but as a telemarketing tool.…