Apple's Cool New Devices

I highly doubt it, but if you have not already heard about the latest Apple products, here are the links to iPhone and Apple TV.
Apple TV seems to be okay, as most of the functionality that it offers is already available by one way or another (Media center laptop and other products). Of course, it is way cooler with its sleek appearance, small footprint, and a tiny (and cute) remote :-). Right now, it is priced at $299, which seems pretty appropriate to me (compared to the prices of the LCD TVs, home theater systems, and other home entertainment stuff).
However, iPhone is truly revolutionary. Apple has really put in a lot of effort. As always, Apple has thought out of the box, and kept each and every comfort of the user in the mind. NO BUTTONS ON A PHONE! Yeah, that will qualify as revolutionary :-). The whole phone is just a LCD screen, and is the slimmest phone to date (yeah, even slimmer than Razr). Among many other cool new functionalities (it has supposedly 200+ patents), it can detect when you rotate the phone from portrait to landscape mode. It also detects when you are moving the phone close to your ear so that it can make the LCD insensitive. They have even put Google Maps over there! I can just go on and on.
I have read some people questioning if the price tag of $499 is too high. I don't think so. There are already phones out there which are pretty close in price, but nowhere close to functionality. And, with time, I am sure Cingular (participating network) will provide more rebates to bring the price down and entice new customers.
The only thing I am curious about is what Apple has in mind about handling the lawsuit from Linksys as they already have a phone out there by the name of iPhone, and have already sued Apple.

Using Skype to make international calls (using your existing phone)

For the past few months, I have been using AU-600 to place and receive international calls through Skype. It is a USB device about the size of a deck of cards. The USB cable, of course, plugs into your PC running the Skype. Apart from that, it has two telephone (RJ11) jacks. The first one takes the telephone cable coming from the wall, and the second one goes out to your telephone.
With this setup, whenever somebody calls you on Skype, the installed software hijacks the call, and rings your phone instead. You can also initiate Skype calls from your phone using some prefixes (default is ##).
Other useful features include call forwarding (for example, to your cellphone), conference call, among others. I have been using it for around 3 months, and have been very happy with it. I have installed it on both ends (caller and callee). It frees you up from the PC (as long as you have a cordless phone, but who doesn't).
The only factor for some people might be that you have to have your PC on all the time. This was not a problem for me, as one of them is on all the time anyway.