Belkin now possesses Linksys routers and other Smart Wi-Fi products. They will be managed as a separate brand and product portfolio.

Belkin CEO Chet Pipkin had this to say: “Linksys has a rich heritage, a passionate customer base and a wide product line, all of which fueled our decision to acquire the company and our plan to maintain the Linksys brand. The Linksys portfolio will continue to exist and evolve to include even richer user experiences and network management functionality. Smart Wi-Fi is an innovative and easy way for consumers to stay connected to their home network and we look to continue investing in it by adding more features and products.”

“A lot of exciting things are happening in today’s connected lifestyle segment, and we are honored to continue the Linksys brand and enable new connected experiences,” said Pipkin. “Linksys and Belkin are now one team. We are ready to do fantastic things as a team and deliver products that delight consumers and support the increasingly connected, mobile world.”

Customers can expect more Linksys-branded products coming out of the pipeline, and support for existing products will continue through the existing channels.

Terms of the deal were never disclosed.

Cisco VP, Head of Corporate Business Development, Hilton Romanski writes:

Linksys is a strong and enduring brand with a talented team that has helped revolutionize the way we experience the world from our homes through a wide range of home routing and networking solutions with innovative software features that enable anytime, anywhere access and control of the home network and its connected devices.

Combined, Belkin and Linksys will create a world-class consumer networking technology provider with complementary innovation and engineering strategies. Linksys will enhance Belkin’s capabilities to meet the needs of OEMs, as well as provide access to a large user base. Belkin and Cisco intend to pursue a strategic relationship focused on a variety of initiatives including retail distribution, strategic marketing and products for the service provider market.

Belkin shortly thereafter put out a press release announcing the acquisition intent, but did not disclose the terms.

Belkin CEO Chet Pipkin says, “We’re very excited about this announcement. Our two organizations share many core beliefs – we have similar beginnings and share a passion for meeting the real needs of our customers through the strengths of an entrepreneurial culture. Belkin’s ultimate goal is to be the global leader in the connected home and wireless networking space and this acquisition is an important step to realizing that vision.”

Cisco announced its own intent to acquire Intucell earlier this week.

Help Net Security reports that a zero-day exploit has been found in Linksys routers that allows a hacker to gain remote root access to the device. It has the potential to be devastating to the millions of Linksys router owners around the world. The good news is that a fix is already on the way.

The original team who found the exploit, DefenseCode, alerted Cisco to the Linksys vulnerability after finding it during a product security evaluation. It took the team only 12 days to develop an exploit that could be used by hackers to take control of a person’s wireless router and hijack all the information being processed through it.

With all that being said, it doesn’t look like Linksys router owners will have to worry about anything. There’s no mention of hackers using the exploit out in the wild just yet. Cisco is also working on a fix that should be available within the next 10 days. After that, DefenseCode will release the details of the exploit to the public for further study.

You can check out the exploit in action below:

GigaOM’s Katie Fehrenbacher posed that question to start off her article on the subject. “If it is up to consumers and brand recognition alone, the company could easily dominate many of the world’s mobile search markets,” she notes.

But “carriers, and handset makers, still dominate the mobile deck,” Fehrenbacher continued (as Yahoo fans pointed towards the Linksys CIT310). “Yeah, mobile web users can just type in any web site in a mobile browser, but the deck still dominates mobile eyeballs and some carriers don’t want to do a deal with such a dominant search brand like Google.”

Vodafone was more than happy to arrange for a strategic alliance with Yahoo last week, though, and Sprint and Microsoft worked out a similar deal. Fehrenbacher constructed a timeline of “Google’s mobile search deals with advertisers” for comparison, and the company seemed to come up a little short.

Google’s five most recent deals were with Leap Wireless, SK Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, Celecom, and Optus – names that simply don’t carry a lot of weight. Fehrenbacher concluded her article by polling her readers about their mobile search habits, however, and as she predicted at the beginning of the piece, the numbers clearly favor Google.

50% of respondents chose the Mountain View-based company. The only other answer with comparable numbers was “You can search on mobile phones?” with 30% of the vote.

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The Linksys CIT310 is probably only a “must-have” for Yahoo messenger fanatics who are in need of a new phone, though. Randy Savicky describes it as “a tempting home phone system replacement,” but raises a couple of issues in his “Room for Improvement” section.” Our own Joe Lewis compares this arrangement to the Skype service.

Linksys seems quite proud of its new phone, regardless. “The CIT310 is our first product to couple the Yahoo! Messenger with Voice experience and access to Internet services like Yahoo! Local Search,” noted Tarun Loomba, a senior director of product marketing for Linksys, in an official statement.

“We share the same vision with Yahoo! of not just improving the experience of internet phone calling, but also offering a valuable combination of internet-enabled features and services that customers will use and really want,” he added.

Jeff Bonforte, senior director of Yahoo’s Real Time Communications, was proud of one feature in particular, saying, “The CIT310 cordless phone is also embedded with the industry-leading Yahoo! Local Search service, to provide consumers with an easy way to find local restaurants and businesses and quickly make a call with one touch.”

The CIT310 is available on Amazon.com, where the current first and last tags for it are “voip” and “cool,” respectively. Yahoo and Linksys have to be happy about that.

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Bill Campbell lists them all. The one I’ve set up straightaway is being able to send SMS messages from Skype to mobile phones which your friends or colleagues can then respond to – and you receive their messages on your mobile phone, not in Skype.

Setup is a simple procedure involving getting a verification code for your mobile phone from Skype which sends it as an SMS message:

Works great based on an SMS I sent to my wife. The cost is the same (0.10 in The Netherlands) as if you had sent the SMS directly from your mobile phone.

It would be neat if you could also receive any SMS reply message in Skype if you wanted to.

Another feature that I will definitely try out is the Skypecasting service:

[] Skypecasts are large, hosted calls on Skype. Let your opinion be heard on subjects close to your heart in groups of up to 100 people participating from anywhere in the world.

I plan to get to that one soon.

Overall, I’m pleased that this Skype beta works seamlessly with my Linksys Skype phone, a really useful device that is my primary means of using Skype for making and receiving calls. Then I noticed a link in Bill’s post to the Polycom Communicator speakerphone for Skype.

Not yet available in The Netherlands, more’s the pity

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This is a phone that works with the Skype internet phone service which you use to make and receive phone calls via Skype as you would make and receive calls with a normal cordless phone. The contact list in the phone replicates the contact list in the Skype application that runs on your computer. So, as with a normal phone, you select a contact, hit the call’ button and make your call. Dead easy.

Not only that:

[] The Handset supports SkypeOut dialing as well as your Skype contact list. It rings when you have a Skype or SkypeIn call coming in, and shows the caller’s ID on the screen. The Handset also supports call waiting and Skype’s optional Voicemail service. When you’re on a call, you can hit the Mute button for privacy, or use the speakerphone function to let everyone join in. You can even use the phone as an intercom – each Base Station supports up to four Handsets.

This phone is also sold here in The Netherlands, but the price is quite a bit more than in the US – for instance, Dixons has it on sale for 140 ($167) versus $130 in the US ($140 including California sales tax).

The only negative was that, after buying it, I discovered that the power supply for the charging unit was US voltage only. You would have thought that it would have been universal to work in any country. But a $10 purchase at Fry’s got me a step-down voltage converter which works fine. Adding that purchase, the total cost is still less than if I had bought the phone here.

Very neat.

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The plug-in, called Linksys Wireless-G Music Bridge, connects via standard cables to a home stereo to receive signals from the home computer.

Yahoo! offers a free Music Engine that has been configured to broadcast music through the wireless device. The Music Engine allows users the ability to play and save songs, share music using Yahoo! Messenger, transfer music to compatible portable devices, access pre-programmed radio stations, burn CDS, and create playlists.

A survey from In-Stat revealed that more than sixty percent of respondents expressed that they were at least somewhat interested in connecting their PC to a stereo system to listen to digital audio files.

“Sending audio from a PC to a home entertainment center was the top response in our study as to what type of media consumers wanted to stream using a home network. The Linksys and Yahoo! relationship should help make customers even more aware of what they can do with their music services and where they can access them,” said In-Stat analyst Joyce Putscher.

The Wireless-G Music Bridge is expected to sell for around $100.

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The highly portable 3G / UMTS Router is supposed to be very secure, with Wi- Fi Protected Internet and network Access and powerful SPI firewall protection, even when using the wireless connection.

With the router, up to five people can use the wireless LAN capability that’s already in most laptops, to access high speed mobile data services provided by the Vodafone 3G network.

The 3G/UMTS WLAN Router combines the Linksys WRT54G3G Wireless-G Router, which provides Wireless LAN coverage for users, and the Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G/GPRS data card.

“The 3G/UMTS Router makes it even easier and more cost effective for teams on the move to work anywhere as though they were in the office.” said Vodafone Chief Marketing Officer Peter Bamford.

In addition to providing instant group access to networks, email and the Internet the 3G / UMTS Router allows additional devices, such as printers, to be easily connected using Ethernet or 802.11g wireless connections.

The router is first being launched in Spain today and then will be launched in Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden and the UK over the next few weeks. More countries will follow.

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The deal becomes the second one made for Linksys by Cisco; the company acquired Internet phone maker Sipura Technology in April.

But this deal poises Linksys, known for its home consumer networking products like wireless routers, more deeply in the consumer entertainment market. According to a press release, KiSS makes DVD players and recorders capable of being a conduit for video on demand.

The concept has consumers buying a networked device for their home, and then purchasing a either a monthly subscription to bring content to that device for playback at home, or buying a single movie at a time.

Recently, Intel announced a partnership with Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman to provide first-run movies via digital delivery over the Internet. Perhaps Cisco sees a need to compete with Intel on future demand for online video content.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.