Google said users of Gmail will now be able to call telephones directly from their email, putting it in direct competition with Web calling service Skype and more traditional telcos.

hile Google had already offered computer-to-computer voice and video chat services, it said that starting on Wednesday it will now allow calls to home phones and mobile phones directly from Gmail for the first time.

Google promised free calls to U.S. and Canadian phones from Gmail for the rest of this year and said it would charge low rates for calls made to other countries.

For example it said calls to Britain, France, Germany, China and Japan would be as low as 2 cents per minute.

Analysts said the service would likely be a bigger competitive threat to services like Skype’s than to traditional phone companies, which have already been cutting their call prices in recent years in response to stiff competition.

“This is a risk to Skype. It’s a competitor with a pretty good brand name,” said Hudson Square analyst Todd Rethemeier.

Skype, which owned by private equity firms and eBay Inc and planning a US$100 million initial public offering, has long allowed consumers to make calls from computers to phones.

Skype became popular by first offering free computer-to-computer voice and video services.

Like Skype, Rethemeier said the Google service will likely be much more popular among U.S. consumers making international calls, than among people calling friends inside the country.

“Calling is so cheap already that I don’t think it will attract a huge amount of domestic calling. It could take some of the international market,” he said.

Another analyst, Steve Clement from Pacific Crest, said that anybody who is tempted by Internet calling services has likely already disconnected their home phone.

“The type of person who would use a service like that isn’t the type of customer who still has a landline,” Clement said.

Google said making a call through its service works like a normal phone in that a user could click on the “call phone” option in their chat buddy list in Gmail and type in the number or enter a contact’s name.

Calls that cost money will be charged from an online account that users can top up with a credit card, Google said. The service will not be available for making outgoing calls on cell phones because other Google apps already cater to that market, the company added.

Among the many exciting features of Apple’s version-4 iPhone OS is the long-awaited ability to sync to multiple Exchange ActiveSync servers. The new software, now dubbed iOS 4, can synchronize mail, contacts, and calendars between many different services that use Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync protocol, including Microsoft Exchange 2003, 2007, and 2010 and Google’s Gmail service.

Who Needs Multiple Exchange Servers?

You may be wondering if you need this capability. After all, only business people commonly use Microsoft’s corporate Exchange email server, and they tend to only have a single account. But Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync protocol is widespread: It is supported by Google Gmail, Microsoft Live Hotmail, and many other services. Contrary to expectations, most people actually do have an Exchange ActiveSync account, and many have more than one!

I currently use no less than five Exchange ActiveSync accounts, and I’m very pleased to have all of them successfully synchronized with my iPhone. I use Google’s Gmail service for personal mail as well as two Google Apps domains (GestaltIT.com and Fosketts.net). I also have two genuine Microsoft Exchange server accounts belonging to corporate clients. It’s amazing to have all of these up and running on the iPhone!

How To Set Up Multiple Exchange ActiveSync Accounts

It’s really quite simple to set up multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts in iOS 4: You just do it. Where the old iPhone OS would complain if you tried to enter a second Exchange ActiveSync account, iOS 4 happily accepts them.

ISP TPG has joined iiNet and iPrimus in offering a “terabyte” of broadband quota to consumer users.

The ISP revealed its intentions on the broadband forum Whirlpool.

Although it was the third to launch ISP to launch a so-called “terabyte” plan this week, it planned to undercut the first two ISPs significantly on price.

But the plan appeared limited in its availability to new and existing TPG customers compared to the other “terabyte” plans in the market.

Australia has started down the long road to a safer internet, as the domain name regulator kicked off a plan today to secure online communications at their bedrock.

Next month, regulator auDA (the .au Domain Administration) and its wholesale domain name provider AusRegistry will phase in the Domain Name Security (DNSSEC) protocol across Australian domain names such as those ending in com.au and net.au.

The regulator said the five-stage process will gradually bring domain name owners into the fold as it tests systems over coming months, before rolling out the technology to the mass market.

DNSSEC helps computers on the internet determine if a communication is going to the right place, essential to thwart hackers who trick devices into sending data to compromised or unauthorised locations.

It was designed to work with the domain name system, the internet’s phone book, which matches internet protocol numbers such as 192.168.1.1 with easily understood names such as www.mycomputer.com.

“When the internet was first developed, it was designed to be massively scalable, not inherently secure,” said regulator chief executive officer Chris Disspain.

“DNSSEC can provide an extra level of security to help ensure that Australian Internet users will be directed to the website or service they expect when they enter a domain name into their browser.”

Disspain warned that the security precaution was only as strong as its weakest link.

“It will be most effective once every element between the internet’s core infrastructure and the end user is DNSSEC-enabled,” he said.

Disspain said the final stage of the plan would require Australia’s ISPs and domain name owners, many of whom are big businesses, to accept the scheme even though there were “no immediate commercial incentives” beyond the comfort of more secure online communications.

“It will be up to ISPs, registrars and corporate entities with a significant web presence to extend the reach of DNSSEC to the end user,” he said.

The regulator looked to the Australian Government to “play an important role in helping to deliver the message about the importance of DNSSEC for the security of Australia’s internet infrastructure”, he said.

The iPad’s status as a serious tool for creative professionals was given a boost with today’s release by Adobe of Photoshop Express.

Formerly known as Photoshop.com Mobile, Photoshop Express purports to give your iPad the ability to crop, adjust and apply effects to the photos you sync to your iPad or capture using one of Apple’s camera kit attachments.

iTNews downloaded this new free app to give a test run but it crashed.

A quick look at the iTunes App Store ratings found that many users were suffering from the same issue.

When the app launches, it automatically tries to open a stock image with some instructions.

However, on our iPad, and those of many other users according to reviews on the App Store, the image opens in one of the other apps on our system and Photoshop Express crashes.

After a restart, the problem seemed to be resolved and the expected image manipulations were available.

However, Photoshop Express didn’t allow us to open PSD files as there was no easy way to send them to the app from our desktop system.

Only images in the iPad’s photo library could be edited.

Photoshop Express is definitely an app worth keeping an eye on as once the rough edges are smoothed it will be useful.

But until then there are other, more reliable options.

Telstra won’t enact a proposal to cut off smartphone users’ internet access before they run up huge mobile data bills without first floating the idea past its customer base.

A report by News.com.au said Telstra would apply the cap to about 1.6 million iPhone and BlackBerry users on its network, barring them from accessing the web if they exceeded their quota limits and overspent.

The measure was said to be in response to $90 million in bad debts incurred by Telstra when customers had bill shock and didn’t end up paying.

A Telstra spokesman told iTnews that the capping option was “something… we may look to introduce in the future once we’ve consulted with our customers.

“It’s early days – we’re looking at a range of options that give people better certainty and control over what they spend on phone services,” the spokesman said.

“As smartphone’s become more popular, customers are learning what services are available, and we are learning how best to help them manage their usage and spend.”

It was unclear from statistics discussed at Telstra’s full year results yesterday just how many smartphone customers were reneging on paying the larger-than-expected bills.

However, it appeared only a small number could potentially be affected by a cap decision with the average iPhone user failing to get near their quota limit, according to Telstra chief executive David Thodey.

“In terms of wireless data usage, interestingly, the average use on an iPhone is around 200 to 400 megabytes per month, nowhere near what people are actually acquiring on their cap,” Thodey said.

Data use, however, now dominated Telstra’s Next G network, he said.

“When you look at the wireless network… less than 10 percent [of traffic] now is voice, 90 percent is all IP packets of data.

“So that is where the growth is, and if you are profiling any network, it is definitely around the data.”

Bad debts caused by bill shock contributed to a worse-than-expected results announcement by Telstra.

Shareholders saw Telstra’s stock value slide almost 10 percent in the hours following the financial announcement.