It's a Phone. It is a Skype Phone! It comes from ASUS, a PC motherboard manufacturer. But most interesting is the fact that the ASUS AiGuru S2 has native SideShow support. This is a yet another unexpected use for SideShow technology. While the voice transmission protocols are still pure VOIP over WIFI, this phone can access a wealth information via standard SideShow gadgets. While this phone is mainly advertising Skype functionality, this phone can access virtually any information that can be rendered by Sideshow (email, calendar, stocks, etc). Despite the fact that the phone is WIFI enabled, the SidewShow communication is not done over TCP/IP over WIFI, you will rather need a USB dongle in order to exchange SideShow information with our PC.

This is probably due to the fact that is still rather difficult to access your PC over NAT networks, etc. Details are still unclear, will post more when information will be availabe. Unfortunately, in the offcial data sheet, ASUS mentions only "Supports Vista SideShow".

This is a picture I tool at CES, the ASUS AIGuru Skype phone, red version, also available in black.

The Asus AiGuru S2 supports IEEE 802.11b+g, with Auto-Fallback and Auto-Channel-Selection, and it has a 128X128 Dot Matrix CSTN-LCD Display. It works with Skype, SkypeIn, SkypeOut, Skype Conference modes.

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