Startups and disruptors (yes, Google) seek to rethink voice calling.

Andy Jagoe is zigging while the rest of the mobile world zags. Let everyone else chase the next hot iPhone app. He’s betting the next big thing is a twist on the same old thing: making calls.

He may be right. Jagoe, CEO and co-founder of startup 3jam, is one of several Silicon Valley dreamers who thinks he can reinvent the phone call. And really, let’s admit it’s in need of some Internet-style innovation. We’re in 2009, for crying out loud. Why isn’t call forwarding as easy as e-mail forwarding? Why don’t your voicemails live in a nifty little online inbox?

Remember web 2.0? It’s time for phone 2.0. More

Box.net CEO Aaron Levie. Photo: Box.net.

Cost-conscious businesses are looking online for IT

By Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder, Box.net

Something is clearly happening in the cloud. Two major juggernauts – the government and Microsoft – have both recently made cloud-related announcements. The government (hardly ever considered an early adopter) is planning to launch a cloud computing ‘Storefront’ to ease the federal deployment of these online services, with the ultimate goal of streamlining operations and saving money. Microsoft has finally detailed its plans to launch a web-based version of Office, albeit not until next year. More

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said two months ago that Microsoft would have to cough up “boatloads of money” to get Yahoo’s search business. In the end, it took nothing of the sort.

Apparently, all Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer had to do was let Yahoo (YHOO) take the lead in selling search to premium advertisers, and promise to supply Microsoft’s Bing search technology on the cheap. Under the terms of a 10-year deal announced Wednesday, the software giant will take a slim 12% cut of the search revenue Yahoo makes from its huge network of sites. More

Jon Fortt of Fortune, Jon Swartz of USA Today and Scott McGrew of NBC chat with Mozilla CEO John Lilly about the future of Firefox. (AAPL) (GOOG) (MSFT)

The last version of Office didn't include a free online version. The next one will. Image: Microsoft

It’s too early to say Microsoft has checkmated Google in online documents – the latest version of Office hasn’t shipped yet. But the sleeping giant in Redmond has clearly woken up to the Internet threat.

Get this: Microsoft – the king of paid software – will announce today that it is going to give a version of Office away for free online. Both the online and desktop versions are scheduled to arrive in the first half of next year. Yes, you read that right. The latest version of its ubiquitous productivity software, dubbed Office 2010, will come as both a piece of software you can buy for your computer, and as a service you can access in your browser. [UPDATE: Microsoft says it will support the Firefox and Safari browsers as well as IE.] More

(AAPL) (GOOG) (T) (YHOO) (RIMM)

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says she'll sell, but there's more to it than that. Photo: Yahoo

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, not one for mincing words, took the stage at the D7 conference in Carlsbad, Calif. on Wednesday and said yes, she is willing to sell Yahoo's (YHOO) search business or all of Yahoo – for "boatloads" or "big boatloads" of money, respectively.

As always, the tech press ate this up.  TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld, a smart guy and a former colleague, called it "a softening of her public stance," since when she arrived in January she said Yahoo was not for sale. While he's technically right – she even said she had softened her position – I see something different in her comments.

I say Bartz still doesn't plan on selling Yahoo, or even the search business. Why? In reporting on Bartz for a recent feature in Fortune, I got a sense of how pragmatic she is. When Bartz arrived in January, she knew she had to announce that she was there to run the company, not to break it up and sell it, as a way of defining Wall Street's expectations. But Bartz is also a veteran executive who knows how this game is played. The truth is that in a well-managed public company, shareholders expect that everything will be for sale at a price. So her statement is probably more a statement of her philosophy than a shift in perspective.

Then there's the matter of how she phrased this. "Boatloads" of money? Come on. That's not the language of someone who's looking to make a deal during a global economic bust.

Even though Microsoft (MSFT), the only likely buyer of anything Yahoo's selling, is a very wealthy company by any standard, it's in no position to blithely spend boatloads of money on anything these days. When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer first offered a $45 billion boatload of money for Yahoo many moons ago, he planned to take on debt and mortgage his future profits to finance the deal. Today, with Windows and Office sales struggling in a recession, Microsoft is slashing jobs to boost a sagging stock price and praying that its upcoming Windows 7 operating system gives the company a boost. He's looking to do a search deal with Yahoo that makes him look thrifty, not generous.

If you have any lingering doubts left about Bartz's intentions, look at the conditions she set on any sale of Yahoo's search business. Not only would she require boatloads of money, but also continuing access to all search-related data and the right technology. In other words she wants to "sell" it, but maintain access to the most valuable parts.

This is a great idea for more than just search, actually. It works just as well for real estate. In fact, I would like to sell my home for boatloads of money, so long as the buyer does some renovations and lets me continue to live in it. Any takers? (GOOG)

A sign of things to come? In its Atlanta stores, AT&T is selling the Acer Aspire One for $49 with a 2-year wireless data plan and DSL signup. Image: Acer

PC retail is in rough shape again, and it's about to get rougher.

Evidence of hardship is everywhere. Hewett-Packard (HPQ), the world's largest computer maker, says it's selling about the same number of computers as a year ago, but getting a lot less money for them – sales dropped 19% in the most recent quarter. When Apple (AAPL) reports earnings in July, analysts expect Mac sales to be off as well. And while Intel (INTC) says it's hopeful that its chip sales are bottoming out, chip revenues are lower than they have been in years.

Why are things so bad? The easy answer is that PCs cost hundreds of dollars, and consumers don't have a lot of extra cash floating around these days. Unless your computer has been struck by lightning and given up the ghost, chances are you're holding off on purchasing a new one. One tech industry executive recently confided to me that it's not just U.S. consumers thinking this way – the entire global PC market headed off a cliff at roughly the same time late last year, forcing computer makers to cut workers and rethink their strategies.

In the midst of all that, wireless carriers are poised to shake up PC retail. AT&T (T) announced this week that beginning this summer, it will begin selling small, low-cost Windows XP netbooks from Acer, Dell (DELL), LG and Lenovo in all 2,200 of its U.S. stores. (In case you're counting, that's about twice as many locations as Best Buy (BBY) has.) Rival Verizon (VZ) has already begun selling an HP netbook.

Why buy a computer from a phone company? Price, of course. Sign a two-year wireless data contract with AT&T, for example, and you get $50 knocked off the price of a netbook. Get home DSL service too and save $100. In Atlanta, where AT&T has been testing the deals, the cheapest Acer netbook sells for $49 after rebates.

Sales there have been brisk enough that AT&T execs are confident that cheap laptops will lure customers nationwide the same way cheap phones have in the past. And the deals will only get better: It's easy to imagine that in a year or two, customers who sign up for two years of voice and data service (at a cost north of $100 per month) will leave a store with both a "free" phone and a "free" computer. Exciting, huh?

While this is great news for netbook-loving consumers, it's a downright scary prospect for PC makers. If the phone business is any guide, carriers will fuel demand for the cheapest and least profitable computers out there, and put pressure on traditional PC stores to sell low-price PCs. And that will force tech companies to work harder to lure shoppers toward more powerful (and more expensive) hardware.

That's not an impossible upsell, as the iPhone and BlackBerry (RIMM) have proven in the phone business. But it's yet another challenge the PC gang doesn't exactly need right now.

Cisco CEO John Chambers doesn't just talk a good game about telepresence, the videoconferencing technology that creates the illusion you're in a room with someone who's actually thousands of miles away. He's planning to install his company's high-end system in his Silicon Valley home, provided he and his wife can agree on a spot for it. "I figured we could convert one of the kids' old bedrooms," since they've grown up and left the house," he says. "She told me, 'You do that and you'll be sleeping in there.'"

Though he's not done negotiating the location, one thing that Chambers doesn't have to worry about is cost. ­As longtime chief at the networking giant, he can surely afford the installation, which can easily run north of $150,000 per room.

But can his customers? Even as Chambers and rivals such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500), Polycom (PLCM) and Tandberg tout telepresence as the perfect tech tool to reduce travel costs and boost productivity, observers have their doubts. Sure, telepresence enables meetings on three or more huge screens, in high definition with pristine audio quality. (CSCO) (HPQ) (PLCM) (T)

Full story