Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Dan York: Skype's 5 Years of Disruption
OK, so it's the fourth post this week where I've referenced Dan York. But over the two years I have known Dan I have to say he is, in my view, one of the most respected authorities on the technology behind today's communications revolution. Yet he also understands the value of the user experience.
In celebration of Skype's fifth birthday Dan has written the most thorough post yet on Skype's accomplishments and how it has changed not only his life but also the communications market space he works in. He starts out with a personal reminder (along the lines of many of the "What Skype Means to Me" posts that Phil has been coordinating):
I had a personal reminder of that the other day when I wound up in a video chat with one of my closest friends who was my best man at my wedding 12 years ago. Although we have spoken in the intervening years, we had not actually seen each other in probably most of 10 years due to living far apart. He and his wife emailed a group of folks that they now had a Skype ID. I added them as a contact, opened an IM chat and wound up calling them... and then moving into video and seeing them both. It was a powerful moment - and a great reminder of the power of Skype to easily connect people.Articulating his contribution to our Skype discussion on yesterday's SquawkBox, Dan then goes on to talk about the many unique aspects of Skype:
- How Skype Disrupted Technology
- Skype "Just Worked"
- Wideband Audio
- Secure VoIP
- P2P VoIP
- Voice First
- Multi-Modal Communication
- PSTN Interconnection
- Cheap Calls
- Challenging SIP and Open Standards
- Persistent Chat - with History
Last week at Rogers' Blackberry Bold launch, RIM's Director of PR pointed out how, during the famous patent lawsuit, settled over two years ago, enterprise IT managers were seeking out alternatives to the Blackberry, should a court injunction force disruption of the Blackberry service in the U.S. This turned out to be one of the best "zero cost" marketing tools RIM has ever had. The IT managers could all report back that the only total solution to their mobile communications needs was indeed Blackberry. (And will remain so, in spite of iPhone's success.)
So show me another multi-modal, secure, archiving, interconnected conversation platform that provides all the features above in a user-friendly means and that can deliver all the user experiences posted on Skype Journal over the past few days and I'll stop being a Skype Cheerleader. (But, going forward, the Skype team still has to earn their way ... and will.) Yet I'll also be a cheerleader for anyone else who delivers beneficial user experiences with access to over 40 million ongoing users.
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Labels: Blackberry, design, events, jcourtney, mobile, skype, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Cyprien Lomas: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Cyprien Lomas is the Director of The Learning Centre in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. I first met Cyprien at the annual Northern Voice blogging conference held in Vancouver.
Skype is the communication application that is most likely to work. It is a star behind the types of firewalls that I encounter in schools and other semi-hostile environments on the road. Skype seems to be able to punch through and connect to the net where other chat apps are unable to.
Skype also promotes that serendipitous contact with long lost friends, relations and enemies - no matter where they have ended up. I love Skype because it is the best tool to connect with people on other continents.
Happy Birthday Skype!
tags: skype, cyprienlomas, stories, life, whatskypemeanstome
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Labels: life, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
SquawkBox Discusses Skype's Fifth Anniversary
Over the past few months I have been a frequent participant on Alec Saunders' daily SquawkBox conference call where several of those involved in following today's communications and web developments will discuss topics of the day. Subjects for yesterday's call were the impact of the Internet on this years U.S. President campaign and Skype's fifth anniversary today. Participants included Dan York of Voxeo, James Body of Truphone, William Volk of MyNumo (one of the more successful iPhone Apps developers) and Jonathan Jensen amongst others. The Saunderslog post is here.The Skype discussion commences about half-way through the call. The one universal agreement was that Skype has succeeded because of the user experience. You can build all the communications technology you want but unless people can get all the way through the setup and readily make a call, people will not use it routinely. And the discussion highlights the importance of getting the Skype 4.0 user interface right but starting with some experimentation that challenges all of us to think through how to set up and manage a multi-modal conversation experience.. Some comments from the SquawkBox discussion:
- James Body: participating in a discussion at a smoke-filled bar in London with Nicklas just after Skype launched: "this proprietary thing will never work because it does not use SIP". James then goes on to point out that if Skype had not had the success it has achieved, Truphone may never have been funded to the level they have obtained.
- Alec Saunders: basically it was the first VoIP-based service that "just worked".
- I then discussed my memories of watching the Quarterdeck team develop WebTalk back in 1995 - and how our CEO of the day drove the engineers to make it work on 50MHz (not 50 GHz - a slip of the tongue) Pentium PC's and over 14.4 kbps modems. But the overall infrastructure was just not there to let it become viable as a consumer in the 1996 time frame.Yes, having widely deployed broadband was one major contributor to the timing element that helped achieve Skype's immediate success. (I did have WebTalk running over a 56kbps modem on a 100MHz Pentium but it was challenging to carry on a conversation. Yet a few small businesses did adopt it.)
- William talked about the importance of usability. "Just because it - VoIP - works is not enough. Users are fickle. You will lose a significant number of users at each step where the process of installing and completing a call may fail. The user experience is everything."
- Dan York the security expert amongst us, got into a discussion of how Skype worked when offerings such as NetMeeting and CU CMe just did not get significant traction. Firewall traveral across NAT - a major failing of SIP, the first true high quality wideband codec, and Skype's inherent security are all features that impressed Dan.
And Happy Fifth Anniversary to Skype from all of us on the call! There are many challenges ahead as Skype liquifies communications - we look forward to the next generation of Skype under its new executive team. And thanks to the iotum team and SquawkBox producer Alec Saunders for making such a conversation feasible
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Labels: AlecSaunders, apple, canada, codecs, design, events, iotum, iPhone, jcourtney, mobile, skype, Truphone, Voxeo, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Letter to the Editor - Reconsider Skypecasts
August 27, 2008.
To whom it may concern.
It appears Skype has decided to end all SkypeCast as of September 1, 2008.
Skype we believe is an International Company owned by EBay.
We your clients, and supporters of your company, are devastated by your decision to stop SkypeCasts.
This action, has been a decision that will affect your standing in the industry; simply put it is a terrible decision that affects millions.
Letters are already being sent to the International Press and Television stations and Radio stations.
We your supporters and clients feel very strongly about this terrible decision.
In USA we the people are contacting our Congressman and our Senators, this decision by your company has affected millions of people in this country, and many other countries.
Your supporters feel this action, is one which should be reconsidered by your board of directors and your President and CEO.
Your Skype published statement, makes a comment, that you are sorry for this inconvenience, that this may cause your clients using SkypeCast.
Surely there must have been an error in judgment in contemplating this action.
Inconvenience is not the description that should have been used; this is a disaster of international importance.
Many students as of this moment are using SkypeCast to teach the skill of English reading and speaking.
We have listed some of the countries from which our students have come to participate in this project.
More than 50 different countries supply students for this particular project.
Algeria, France, Germany, Spain, Columbia, Mexico, Albania, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Ukraine, Russia, Africa, Finland, Denmark, Morocco, Holland, Australia, Austria, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Albania, Turkey, Philippines, China, Moldavia, Egypt, Poland, South Korea, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Thailand, Canada, Indonesia, Belgium, Peru, Libya, Vietnam, Hungary, Taiwan, Switzerland, Venezuela, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Qatar, United Kingdom.
Personally as an English Teacher I and other co-teachers have instructed 651 students in a SkypeCast called English Lessons.
Involved in this English Lessons project which started in January 2008 and involved five hours of instruction every day.
Thanks to the dedication of many people, which included a host from Indonesia , teachers from Brazil , Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, China, United Kingdom, Poland, U.S.A., Bavaria, Germany, Greece, Australia.
Our project and the people involved are devastated.
Sincerely
English Lessons jwhite6787@msn.com
See also:
- Skypecasts home page
- Goodnight Skypecasts, Peter Parkes, 26 August 2008
- Some more on Skypecasts, Peter Parkes, 28 August 2008
- Alternatives to Skypecasts, Jim Courtney, 29 August 2008
tags: skype, skypecasts, skypecasting, skypecast, community
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Labels: australia, business, canada, china, ebay, life, skype, skypecasts, Taiwan
Josh Silverman on Skype's next five years
Skype CEO Josh Silverman wrote Five Years of Wow, 
reflections on Skype's history and promise. About the future...
When I think of the future, I think of Skype as liquid communication. Instead of being condemned to a frozen shape like the telephone, it will flow into any device whenever you want and wherever you are. And, like water can turn into ice or steam, Skype can shift its form to match what you need at the moment: from voice to video to IM to SMS to filesharing.
Skype blurs the line between the real and the virtual. It bends space and cuts through time. Today, when a conversation wants to be had, technology is not the bottleneck. But technology isn't the goal either. There's no question in my mind about what stands at the heart of the communication revolution. So, as we celebrate the first five years of Skype, let's raise a toast to the human desire to connect.
tags: skype, josh, silverman, joshsilverman, liquid communication, future
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Labels: JoshSilverman, skype, strategy, technology, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Michael Bartlett: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Mike Bartlett is Skype's Director of Windows Product Management, working from London.
Having worked at Skype for over 3 years, sometimes you forget the human power of communication. I had a powerful reminder of it a few months ago.
My girlfriend's father moved to Australia last year and she had not seen him since. I gave her a webcam and told her all about video calling. She was sceptical. She thought it would be weird. Well… she was, quite literally, in tears after her first call with him. Her two sisters down in Cornwall (which is on the south coast of England) actually got a broadband subscription just to make video calls after hearing about it.
So I was sitting in their lounge, it was quite late at night (those pesky time zones) and there were the three daughters kneeling on the floor huddled, around the laptop in their dressing gowns having a video conversation with their father and their two half-sisters who were getting ready to go to school in Australia. If you could see the smiles on their faces and hear the laughter, the giggling and the excitement then you'd know how amazing I felt sitting on the sofa watching this, knowing that I've played a part in bringing these emotions to millions of people around the World every day.
I can picture that scene clear as day, and that is what Skype means to me.
tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome, stories, australia
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Labels: australia, family, life, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Alternatives to Skypecasts
While there has been lots of dismay about the discontinuation of Skypecasts (Skype's blog posts: here and here), it had appeared for the past several months that the service just did not have the robustness to provide the reliability and quality of service that users would expect. Being a free service, it was obviously placing resource demands with zero revenue potential on Skype developer and support personnel that hopefully can be diverted to bringing feature equality to Skype's basic service, whether on Windows, Mac or Linux.
There are alternatives; in fact, this decision provides a unique opportunity for two third party conference calling services:
1. Skype Multi-Party Calling:
For up to 25 participants on a call, Skype has recently expanded its multi-party calling capacity. The caveat here is that the host must use a multi-core Windows PC and a reliable broadband internet connection (preferably cable). Participants can be on any version of Skype or be accessed via SkypeOut. In this case the host must set up the call and call out to all the participants. More details here. A unique feature of Skype's multi-party calling is its ability to show which participant is actually speaking at any given time. But keep in mind Skype really offers multi-party calling, not a full conferencing service.
2. iotum CalliFloweriotum's CalliFlower has the benefit of no charge other than whatever it costs to make the connection to one of their access points. I often participate in their daily SquawkBox call via my SkypeOut account; the recent availability of SkypeOut CallerID, displaying my mobile phone number when I make a SkypeOut call, has allowed me to participate in these calls within my SkypeOut subscription without even using the provided password for each call. In fact, there are four options for accessing these calls:
- Truphone VoIP: A PC, a headset and an internet connection puts you one click away from your conference call.
- Phone: Dial from anywhere in the world to one of our U.S. or French dial-in numbers to get connected.
- Skype: Call our U.S. dial-in number from within the Skype network, and get high quality audio.
- Sitofono call back: Enter your phone number and get called back for free in more than 12 countries
3. HiDef ConferencingVapps' HiDef Conferencing (formerly HiSpeedConferencing) provides high definition (HD) voice quality calls for participants accessing via Skype. Their business grade service involves fixed rate monthly hosting subscriptions involving unlimited Skype access, dial-in to specific numbers in several countries and toll-free numbers. Obviously this involves some ongoing expense to the host but their infrastructure supports providing the best possible voice quality, depending on access mode. The host uses their web controls to set up calls, manage call participants as well as record and archive calls.
Looking at the options it appears the best conference experience comes when:
- hosts are able to setup and fully manage the calls, including an open access invitation;
- users can participate through a web-based experience not only via voice but also via chat.
Tags: Skype, Skypecast, iotum, CalliFlower, Hi Def Conferencing, CalliFlower Communique, Vapps, multi-party calling, Alan Hunkin
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Labels: AlecSaunders, asterisk, business, CalliFlower, canada, collaboration, conferencing, design, HDVoice, iotum, jcourtney, mobile, skype, skypecasts, Truphone
Three big milestones in Skype's fifth year
Skype's fifth birthday is 29 August. As we count down, two huge milestones changed Skype's future in the last twelve months.
The bad one happened last month.
29 July 2008
BT buys Ribbit
natural monopoly
talk for all onlives
1. BT purchased Ribbit.
Ribbit is the platform play Skype might have been. They are ready to start scaling. And now they have the money, customer base, telecom core, and international operations to reach their potential.
Ribbit seeks to become a natural monopoly for the web's talkification.
Like Skype, Ribbit 
worked for years to build a software and network infrastructure that combines user computers, phone networks, commerce, social networks, and the Internet.
Skype treats voice like an application, where you control the user experience to control the end-customer relationship.
Unlike Skype, Ribbit thinks of voice as a feature. Features belong in other applications. Developed by the six million people who design and code software. People who solve problems in every country, in every culture, for every situation.
And those people don't work for Ribbit.
Or BT.
They are in the wild. Out of control.
Both BT and Ribbit are happy with that.
Happy not to control the user experience.
Happy not to control the customer relationship.
Once upon a time (a few world wars' ago) the phone company provided your phone. One model. And it was black.
Then the phone company became a carrier. And you could use whatever phone you liked. Even pink ones for princesses.
Today you can get your Skype any way you like it, so long as it is Skype's user interface.
Ribbit will let you get your phone any way you like it. Period.
Made by anyone who can code.
That's what it means to have a public platform culture.
And Ribbit is bringing that culture to BT. And BT is grooving on it.
The race to add talk everywhere heated up.
The frog is no further ahead in the race, but Ribbit now has the fuel to execute on its vision.
And Skype is catching up but remains far behind.
Ribbit/BT is far from the only company building and selling web talkification infrastructure, but they are one of the few with customers, with funding, and a with a compelling architecture.
Exactly how many talkification infrastructure APIs will programmers learn? That's how much room there is in the market.
3 March 2008
"Thank God for Skype!"
-- Oprah Winfrey
2. Skype Sponsors Oprah's "A New Earth" Web Event.
Some people are more influential than others. And then there's Oprah Winfrey.
"Thank God for Skype!"
You can't believe what Oprah's unpaid endorsement and personal enthusiasm has meant to Skype in the United States. 
Name recognition is up.
Anxiety is down.
Use is up.
Producers Skype speakers into the studio.
Reporters Skype from the field, including the Democratic and Republican conventions.
People drag their social networks onto Skype. Friends and family and workplaces don't want to be left out.
No mention of VoIP, not even of voice, just video calls. Video became the reason you use Skype.
This was a breakthrough moment in Skype's last hold-out market. The ice has been broken.
How will Skype continue the conversation with the United States and Canadian publics that Oprah started?
1 October 2007
free from buyout cuffs
visionaries innovate
skype breathes free again
3. Niklas Zennstrom Steps Down as CEO of Skype.
This was a great thing for Skype.
It broke the bonds eBay put on Skype.
They didn't mean to, but when eBay offered Skype's founders US$1.7 billion if they hit sales and census targets, eBay forced a myopic tunnel vision on the company.
Any new hire, new feature, new product, new partnership needed to advance sales, to advance user adoption. Any new idea or opportunity, no matter how strategic, that didn't meet that payout test starved for management attention and resources.
So the Skype products didn't change much for two years.
eBay paying off the founders and writing down the purchase left Skype with a fresh start. Free to innovate and reengineer. Free to respond to competitive threats from phone companies (like BT). Free to experiment and examine Skype's underlying purpose and value.
Proof?
Look at the new Skype directory. Hybrid web service and rich client.
Look at how the new Skype 4 beta client is running on top of a Skype for Windows 3.8 engine, further separating UI from services, the way you must to deliver talk via browser.
Look at Skype hiring leaders from outside the phone carriers with street cred at Evite and Motorola.
Look at the coming Skypecasts service retirement.
Each of these decisions speak to a company liberated. A company becoming decisive and thoughtful in its direction.
Very good for Skype.
To recap:
A bad day: Skype isn't even in the paradigm-shifting race to talkify the web
A good day: Skype's US and Canadian markets are warming nicely in Oprah's glow
A great day: Skype freed from golden shackles.
Doesn't year six look interesting?
See also:
- Video of Ribbit's Crick Waters describing the Ribbit platform ("the voiceware economy") at the Emerging Communications Conference earlier this year. 20 minutes.
- Video of Trevor Baca of Jaduka at eComm. Jaduka offers much of the same infrastructure.
- CNN Joins Oprah; Puts Skype in the Picture
tags: skype, ribbit, ebay, voiceware, bt, telephony, voip
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Labels: architecture, competition, design, ebay, ecomm, oprah, people, skype, strategy, technology, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Weekend reading
Skype for email? - can the p2p architecture that works for Skype be applied to email?
Skype Emoticons Club - drawing tool for emoticon art.
Evoca drops free service. For an annual fee, add Evoca to a Skype conference call and it will record the call, up to 180 minutes. You can download the mp3 or order transcripts.
C-SPAN reporters used Skype video to cover spots in and around the Pepsi Center at the Democratic National Convention this week. Jerky video (low frame rate) but added coverage.
Skype alumni are funding Inkspin1, bringing Skype calls onto your home television screen. Hat tip to Ray Crowley.
Skype turning off Skypecasts 1 September 2008. Fantastic long comment list. And a follow up from Skype.
tags: skype, news, roundup, evoca, linkspin1, skypecasts, emoticons, emoticon, emoticonart
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Labels: architecture, emoticons, news, skype
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Ellen Sander: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Ellen Sander is a screenwriter and music journalist.
Skype has for years been an important connection in my life.
When I lived in China, it was my line to the outside world. Today in business, my colleagues across the U.S. and I can have conference calls with attendees in excess of what our respective telephone services allow.
But most importantly, I can video chat with my two year old grandson, who lives 500 miles away. I heard him say "Gamma" for the first time on Skype. This helps keep our family in touch and together.
I can have total freedom of communication...for free. How wonderful is that? Around the world, or around the corner, Skype keeps me connected. Thank you, Skype.
Happy Birthday!
tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome
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Labels: china, family, freedom, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Blogger interviews Julien Decot, Skype's director of strategy
This is a candid interview of Julien Decot by Jeremy Berrebi. Here are the questions, with some help from Google French-to-English translation.
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What's the secret to your success in working at the world's leading net jobs?
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Some figures on Skype?
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Version 4.0 has been released. What are the main objectives?
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What about the quality of Skype? Is it possible to further improve the quality of voice and video?
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How will Skype be in 3 years?
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What is the main competitor of Skype? Which one can take more shade to Skype in the coming years?
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What is happening with Skype on mobile? Will you offer a Skype application on iPhone?
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Do you think cell phones will be integrated into VOIP offers from three major french operators in one year? If so, obviously must we expect a minor webmobile revolution, be it in Blackberry or other iPhone?
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If I remember rightly, one of the objectives of the acquisition of Skype by eBay was the integration of Skype on eBay ads and using Skype as a means of payment for small transactions. What about these two projects excited you at the time?
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What's up with the payment between accounts via PayPal? Is this function properly used?
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When will you be creating Skype shops powered by Zlio [an ecommerce service]?
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Is there an advantage for Skype to be part of a group like eBay?
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Is the future of Skype in the enterprise?
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When will we see premium services such as "Call Management Center" in Skype?
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Why does Skype not open its source code? (thus easing integration with professional CRM applications)
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In newer versions, can a company deploy Skype without risk of using its full bandwidth (supernode)?
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Why is Skype green?
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Is Skype is ready to sponsor "blog words" podcasts by Presse-Citron made via Skype conference?
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My feeling (purely an impression, I do not know the facts) is that Skype cruised for a number of years now, especially with the democratization of the "box" (that Free pioneered). Is the company aware of this phenomenon and how to account react? What is the future, what are the new challenges for VoIP?
-
Why not integrate (stop me if I say silly things if it is already) a function of recording audio conversations directly in the software without needing to use plugins (paying…). To make Interviews, for example, I remember having encountered this problem some time ago. Is this a legislative problem?
-
What is the real business model and how does Skype think it will monetize these future products / services?
-
The turnover of Skype must move from 60 to 200 million dollars [quarterly] (says the press). What areas of development have you chosen to achieve them?
-
Will Skype move to "free" calls to fixed lines (in France, Europe and other countries) as the free ISPs currently offer Skype with 60 minutes free per month? SkypeIn free?
-
What do you think of Loîc Lemeur's Seesmic project and do you see an advantage? an opening?
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What's going on with the integration of video platforms into Skype?
-
Will we soon be able to post a video conversation on YouTube immediately with a single click?
Just a select few answers.
Stats...
It was officially 338 million users around the world.
The last quarter, about 29 million people across the world opened a Skype account.It represents more than 5% of any long-distance communications throughout the world
Last year it made income of approximately $ 400 million. The last quarter, our turnover has increased by 51% over the same quarter in 2007 while generating a double-digit profitability.
Good to be in eBay?
Absolutely. Skype is now much more professional thanks to its integration into eBay. And at multiple levels: IT, Systems, HR, Legal, Finance, eBay has enabled Skype has become a global company with process, a world level team, while retaining the agility of a large startup. For example, PayPal has been a crucial partner to help us improve our system of payment on a global scale. In the same way, eBay has enabled us to attract top level talent at all levels. Our CEO is from eBay, for example, as are many members of the team Skype at all levels. Finally, and most importantly for us, eBay provides us with its unwavering support in this period of expansion and investment that we live at this time.
About Skype and enterprise bandwidth...
I can tell you that we have deployed Skype through eBay, or about 17000 employees throughout the world. At Skype, we rely almost 100% of our communications on Skype. From this point of view, we think Skype can already apply in the field of business, it's so secure. Each day we learn that large new accounts seek to deploy Skype on a large scale.
Competition...
We think firstly that the growth of Broadband is a good thing for us. From a strategic point of view, the rise of "triple and quadruple plays" will also push us to differentiate ourselves faster and not content ourselves to be less expensive. Hence the importance of video in our strategy, and to provide Skype beyond the computer on the mobile and other platforms. For example, we are already integrated on the Sony PSP and we are working with Intel in their Mobile Internet Device (IMD) platform.
My questions, following up...
-
How do you reinvigorate Skype's five-year-old brand?
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How has Skype changed as a company since the founders left?
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What capabilities might Skype buy through M&A?
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How do you frame the opportunities for cooperating with legacy telcos (like the Skypephone alliance with Hutchinson/3) vs. competing with them (like US telcos lobbying congress for protection against Skype)?
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Skype's technology architecture has built-in strengths and weaknesses which let it grow to this stage. What technologies must change for Skype to grow ten times in active users and usage?
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What is Skype doing to talkify the web?
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Are Skype's underlying technology prerequisites for (midband access, fast cpu, multicore cpu, desktop OSs that reserve resources for media apps, high end webcams, consumer routers that enable vs. hinder Skype) growing fast enough to support growth?
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How are web services and platforming (think Ribbit) changing consumer VoIP?
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Enterprise IT has a long checklist of features they demand, features they see in Cisco/WebEx and Microsoft products. Will Skype comply, increasing product complexity, integrating into enterprise telephone, billing, and identity systems? Or will Skype remain a team-level product?
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Skype rose to fame on an instant messaging design. Which post-IM UI metaphors make sense? How many designs can one team support?
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Human customer service is expensive. Does Skype have a paying customer service problem?
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If Skype picked up 29 million new users in the last quarter, how many existing users stopped using Skype last quarter? Beyond the 29 million, how many people used Skype in the last quarter?
tags: skype, juliendecot, strategy
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Labels: apple, architecture, Blackberry, business, ebay, identity, iPhone, microsoft, mobile, paypal, skype, strategy
Brough Turner: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Brough Turner is CTO of NMS Communications. In the 1990s, Brough was a leader in PC-based telephony and contributed to the emergence of VoIP technologies, products, and standards.
Skype was a revelation – now love and disappointment.
When I first tried Skype in early September 2003, it was a revelation. First it just worked! I don’t mean it installed and executed properly – many software packages do that. With Skype, I could make voice connections through our corporate firewall, despite our IT department blocking all UDP traffic. Now that was a breakthrough.
Next it combined IM and voice in a useful fashion, something no one else had done at that time.
Finally, it used wideband audio! Skype connections were better than “toll quality.” Assuming adequate broadband, Skype audio beat anything else. I recall an early conversation with a friend in Tokyo. There was music playing in their apartment and it felt like I was in the room with them.
Today I use Skype on a daily basis for business and with friends, but almost always with people in Europe or Asia. It seems Skype’s adoption rate in the US is much lower. Also, mobility trumps presence. For US associates, I can use whatever IM reaches the desired party and then call them on my mobile. There’s no per minute charge for mobile calls (within the US), so all that matters is what IM the other party is using.
I continue to love Skype’s voice quality, especially given the diverse accents of some of my friends and associates. J and I routinely use SkypeOut and Skype voice mail.
The disappointment? They stumbled. The eBay acquisition meant a nice chunk of cash for the founders and early staffers, but no synergies, and in due course the founders were gone.
Communications services need critical mass. But other instant messengers have grown their user bases more rapidly – certainly QQ and likely Windows Live Messenger. This afternoon, there were 11-12 million Skype users on-line (10.5 million right now) while QQ had 37-40M (admittedly mostly Chinese) users simultaneously on-line. Skype is not enough for my IM needs. To see status for the people I communicate with, I have to run four IM clients at once.
Looking back, initiatives to increase their user base or wrap other instant messengers might have been better than the focus on video (which I seldom use). Looking forward, I dream of the day I get integrated mobile IM and voice that just works, everywhere.
For now, I’m encouraged that current Skype management seems to have their eye back on the ball. And I still love and use Skype with those friends (disproportionately European and Asian) who are routinely available on-line.
tags: skype, stories, whatskypemeanstome, strategy, qq, wlm
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Labels: business, china, collaboration, competition, design, ebay, mobile, skype, strategy, technology, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Recent Skype Executive Interviews
A couple of recent interviews on other weblogs - one in English, one in French
Jonathan Christensen, GM for Video and Audio, is slated to be a keynote speaker at IT Expo in two weeks. As a leadup Rich Tehrani, President and Editor-in-Chief at ITExpo organizer, TMCnet, interviewed Jonathan. Nothing earthshaking but includes some views on the overall communications market evolution, especially the role of mobile phones:
RT: How do you see the communications market evolving?Julien Decot, who came to Skype as Director of Strategy from eBay back in March, originally comes from France and has given an interview, in French, to Jeremie Berrebi, an Israeli entrepreneur and French language blogger whose current startup, Zlio, is financed in part by Skype's pioneering financier, Mangrove Partners. The Google translation here provides the flavor of the interview; but "chat" should remain the same (it's been mistranslated as the French word for "cat") and "voix" should translate to "voice", not "vote". As I said the Google translation gives the "flavor"; there are a few other questionable but amusing translations.
JC: Communications is rapidly shifting from “hard-wired / hardware” to software-centric experiences. Communications is moving from dedicated devices on circuit switched networks (i.e., landline, GSM, Fax, etc.) to IP-connected multi-purpose computing platforms (i.e., PCs, iPhones, etc.).
Labels: business, ebay, events, israel, jcourtney, mobile, people, skype, strategy
Bruce Wang: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Bruce Wang blogs from Shanghai, China, on content syndication, instant messaging, digital ID, and social media technologies.
Skype is a daily tool I can't live without.
Skype is a perfect way to share ideas with a group of friends instantly, no matter where they are.
I use it at my office with my colleagues,
with my friends at NPO groups/conference,
with my wife when we live in different cities 3000km away
Thank you Skype and happy birthday!
tags: skype, stories, work, life, whatskypemeanstome
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Labels: china, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Alexander Hager: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Alex Hager is a law student and amateur photographer in Vienna, Austria.
Skype helps me to stay in touch with friends and family, no matter where I am, whether I travel or stay at home. Besides enabling me to hear and see loved ones, I use it to practice different language skills.
I still am euphoric about the fact that I can reach my contacts from everywhere, using some Internet café and my thumbdrive or my own laptop, and all of this (nearly) for free. In my eyes, Skype is best when it comes to online community, friendships and family.
Happy birthday, Skype! Go on like this!!
tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome, travel, family, at, austria, wien
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Labels: family, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Petr Silon: What Skype Means To Me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Petr Silon is Managing Director at xTel Ltd which runs Skype Hardware shop in the Czech Republic.
Opportunity. My Business. New friends. Everyday communication tool. Cool thing.
I use Skype daily nearly for five years. I started with Skype 0.8 beta version and shortly afterwards I first translated Skype's user interface into the Czech language. I became a volunteer translator for Skype for Windows. I’m helping people use Skype and I’m happy that the Skype family is growing. I started to sell Skype hardware and accessories also and this became my full-time job. I enjoy it.
Thank you Skype!
In Czech:
Petr Silon je ředitel společnosti xTel s.r.o., která provozuje obchod Skype Hardware shop v České Republice.
Příležitost. Moje podnikání. Noví známí. Každodenní prostředek komunikace. Bezva věc.
Skype používám skoro denně už 5 let. Začal jsem s verzí 0.8 beta a brzy jsem začal dělat český překlad Skype po Windows. Stal jsem se dobrovolným Skype překladatelem. Pomáhám lidem používat Skype a mám radost, že Skype používá čím dál více lidí. Začal jsem taky prodávat Skype techniku a příslušenství a stala se z toho moje práce na plný úvazek. Baví mě to.
Děkuji Ti Skype!
tags: skype, translation, localization, xtel, hardware, cz, czech, whatskypemeanstome
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Labels: business, design, family, language, life, skype, translation, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Alex Kazim: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Alex Kazim, former President of Skype, is now CEO of Tokoni, a true life storytelling community.
Skype changed my world.
I was involved in the acquisition of the company and its management. But I worked through Skype. We used it extensively to manage Skype's offices in Tallinn, Luxembourg, London, Stockholm and San Jose. And I lived through Skype. I used it to spend time with my young kids every night, to see with my own eyes how much they changed each and every day as I commuted around the world.
I've since moved on from both Skype and eBay, but it's still very much part of my world. I use it to see my family when I travel. And we use it exclusively for Tokoni, my new startup, connecting our employees in the Bay Area, Seattle and Austin and even our testers in China.
But Skype changed a lot of people's worlds.
I still remember the South African mother who told me how thrilled she was to be able to see her grandkids after her daughter had moved to Australia. I remember coming home one day and having my young daughter look at me and the computer and wonder why I wasn't still in the little box. And I remember the story about how a mission in Africa was able to participate in the funeral of their Father in Atlanta. Live. As if they were there.
Because that's really what Skype is all about. It brings us together. It keeps us connected. Even when we're worlds apart.
tags: skype, tokoni, life, whatskypemeanstome
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Labels: australia, china, ebay, family, life, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
IPEVO will give away a Solo Skype desk phone for Skype's birthday
Tomorrow, Skype will celebrate the launch of the first public beta five years' ago.
Honoring this, IPEVO is gifting a lovely Skype desk phone to one of the people who wrote a "What Skype Means To Me" essay for Skype Journal.
| Deadline: | Midnight Pacific Thursday night, Friday Morning |
| Judgment: | We'll pick a name randomly from those who submitted entries to Skype Journal. Employees of IPEVO are not eligible. |
| How to enter: | Please email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com. Be sure to tell us how you'd like to be credited. While we don't take anonymous submissions, if you tell us who you are Skype Journal can publish your entry anonymously or pseudonymously. |
| Prize: | An IPEVO SO10 Skype Desktop Phone. |
tags: skype, ipevo, whatskypemeanstome, phone, solo
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Labels: events, fun, ipevo, skype, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Daksh Sharma: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Daksh Sharma is an executive for online strategies at an IT consulting firm in New Delhi, India. Daksh follows social-media and web2.0 trends on The Marketing Blog.
"Common you don't know about Skype ? Are you kidding me mate?" That is my common reaction if I come across people who have not heard about Skype. Talk about ‘Voice’ and Skype is the first thing that comes to your mind.
The thing that I really like about is not that its free but the fact that its voice-quality is unbeatable. I am aware of multiple VOIP clients which have come and gone, however none has matched Skype.
As time has evolved, Skype’s feature set has quadrupled. We’re now witnessing different upgrades in Skype for e.g. group conference, video preview etc. Several third party applications are also extending Skype’s functionality. I can now access Skype on the go, thanks to fring mobile application. I can even access Skype through web-applications like imo.im which is really cool.
"Think Voice – Think Skype" that's the mantra of life for all of net-users out there.
tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome, stories, voip, voice, marketing
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Labels: Fring, mobile, skype, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Wesley Fryer: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Wesley Fryer is an educator, a digital storyteller, a technologist, and an innovator in bringing the three together. He is an alumnus of AT&T, lives in Oklahoma City, and is completing his doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction at Texas Tech University. Wes started Moving at the Speed of Creativity, his edutech blog, the month before Skype's second birthday in 2005.
Skype is one of the most valuable communication tools I have. Every week I now meet with different educators around the United States, and sometimes in different parts of the world, using Skype. As a co-convener for the free K-12 Online Conference it is impossible to imagine my life without Skype. Skype is the lifeline which connects us as conveners for our weekly meetings as well as many others in our K12Online learning communities.
In addition to these professional uses of Skype, I frequently use it to videochat with my family when I am traveling, and to connect my own children with their grandparents who live in other states.
Skype is one of the most powerful, transformative technology tools I've ever used. I can't imagine living my life and doing my work now without Skype.
tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome, oklahoma, ok, us, edutech, education, k12online, community
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Labels: community, education, events, family, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Midweek Skypeland news roundup
Expressivo text-to-speech reader plug-in for Skype. $49. Comes in female US-English, male and female Polish, and female Romanian.
Kara DioGuardi, new American Idol judge
Howard Greenfield interviewed me for ZDNet Asia on The Talkification of the Web. (Should I trademark "talkification"?)
UAE ISP du still blocks Skype, writes PC Magazine's Midddle and Near East edition. The Emirates has an effective duopoly with Etisalat the other ISP. Both du and Etisalat now block Skype as mandated by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, per Gulfnews.
The Yahoo! Messenger team hosted their first open chat workshop with users, part of a monthly educational Q&A series.
LinkedIn's company directory is up and running. White and yellow pages meet social proximity. Now add talk.
Jaxtr is promoting their low international rates. Using public data, Jaxtr says they are cheaper than Jajah, EQO, Mig33, SkypeOut, Truphone, and Rebtel in calls to the UK, Indonesia, Germany, Canada, Mexico, China, France and Pakistan. Often 10% to 50% less. Not sure how this compares to Skype's global or regional flat rates.
Marc Andreesen funds Qik. Qik streams live video from mobile phones to the web.
Music composers talk with concert performers and audience via Skype video.
Off topic: Kara DioGuardi to judge American Idol. Barack Obama's Daughters Wanted Jonas Brothers, Not Their Dad, Onstage At DNC. And the Red Sox acquire Kotsay from Braves.
tags: skype, expressivo, uae, du, etisalat, blocking, censorship, privacy, freedom, TRA, yahoo, yahoomessenger, linkedin, whitepages, yellowpages, directories, jaxtr, prices, rates, competition, qik, video, music, education, americanidol, barakobama, jonasbrothers, redsox
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Labels: business, canada, china, competition, design, education, family, freedom, mobile, news, skype, stories, technology, Truphone, video, yahoo
Calley Nye: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Calley Nye is a social media entrepreneur, a viral marketing expert, social media marketing consultant, marketing strategist, and recovering fashion model. Her blog, Silicon Calley, and her twitter stream capture the vibrant Los Angeles tech scene and Calley's adventures in startup life.
Hm, I have to admit that it was hard for me to answer this question. In a short time, Skype has made itself an integral part of my daily life. So I had to think about what my life would be like without it. Only then did I realize how important it has been to me in business, and with my family and friends.
I've only been on Skype for a couple months, since May, I think. The first time I used Skype was when a friend invited me into a chat with several friends. So I downloaded Skype, joined the chat, and met everyone. That chat is what made me start blogging. So, it's easy to say that were it not for Skype, I would not be where I am today.
Skype has been an amazing tool for business, helping me communicate with the community in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, from the comfort of my own home in Los Angeles. In that sense, it has opened me up to many opportunities that would not have been possible otherwise. Similarly, it has proven itself to be an amazing way to stay in touch with my family back in Connecticut. Sometimes I get really homesick, and talking to my family through Skype video makes me feel like I'm not missing so much.
tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome, work, homesick, siliconcalley, calleynye
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Labels: business, family, life, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Evgeny Gorbarsky: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Evgeny Gorbarsky is my counterpart at Skypeclub.ru, Russia's top, independent, Skype portal.
Skype means a lot in my life these days. Since skypeclub.ru was opened, Skype became not only my job, but the best hobby. It's great that our news and reviews help thousands of Russian Internet users get to know Skype and its potential.
The most pleasant part is to hear thanks from people that now can call their friends in other cities and abroad, from businessmen that can cut phone expenses and implement new means of communication at their enterprises.
I like to watch the development of Skype and watch new gadgets appear.
I like to test any Skype-device in my lab and present the results on my personal blog.
My partners and I do our best to deliver the most popular Skype accessories to the Russian users.
In Russian, Евгений Горбарский says:
Сегодня Skype играет в моей жизни огромную роль. Со времени создания skypeclub.ru, он стал не просто моей работой, но и лучшим увлечением.
Я рад, что ежедневно наши новости и обзоры помогают тысячам российских пользователей узнать о программе Skype и всех ее возможностях.
Особенно приятно слышать слова благодарности от людей, которые, благодаря Skype и моей помощи, смогли свободно общаться со своими близкими за рубежом или в других городах, от бизнесменов, сэкономивших средства на телефонных звонках и внедривших новые схемы связи на предприятиях.
Мне нравится следить за развитием Skype, за появлением нового интересного оборудования.
Нравится испытывать Skype устройства в моей лаборатории, и рассказывать о результатах на страницах личного блога.
Я и мои партнеры постарались сделать все, чтобы российским пользователям стали доступны самые популярные Skype аксессуары со всего мира.
Labels: business, community, mobile, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Dimitry Korolkov: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Dimitry Korolkov works in marketing for Program-Ace LLC, a software house in Kharkiv City, Ukraine.
Skype is an ultimate excitement, which not only erases the borders and brings the whole world touch-close to you, it is an incarnation of the completely new reality of communications in a digital century. Universal, many-sided, friendly and really FUN!!!
For business, Skype opens doors and hearts of customers and partners around the globe and, at the same time, offers an incomparable variety of options and features, which “surprisingly” meet the expectations of users and the market in the most exact way. And sometimes, the product goes ahead of the needs and creates new possibilities.
In two words: Skype ROCKS!!! ;-)
tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome, stories, business
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Labels: business, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Dmitrii: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Dmitrii is a psychology student at a Bulgarian university, sells advertising for a British newspaper, and is soon to be a father.
So, for me Skype is something very very special. It is the easiest way to talk with friends. For example, you are working all day and you don't have the possibility to go out with friends, but you are interested in what they are doing and how they are, you use Skype. You talk with them for free, you can see them, it's virtual of course, but it's not a big deal. :)
With Skype we can send and receive everything that you imagine: photos, files, music, film, everything. On Skype you can play some very funny games. In only two days, I was able to send fax by Skype.
And one of the privileges of Skype is that this is the best way to make business, the best program for companies. And nothing can be lost in Skype, because all the chat conversations are written because there is chronology.
tags: skype, whatskypemeanstome, bulgaria, bg, friends, memory
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Labels: advertising, community, fun, life, marketing, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
New Sony PSP adds mic for Skype
The Sony PSP-3000 will come with a built-in microphone 15 October 2008, Sony announced this weekend. So you won't need to carry headphones to talk. Small improvement, but a barrier to Skype adoption for many users.
From the news release:
To enjoy Skype on PSP, users will require
- a Skype account,
- Memory Stick Duo(TM),
- a wireless Internet connection and
- a Headphone with Remote Control (PSP-S140) or Skype-compatible headphones.
Users are recommended to speak closely to the microphone (approx. 10cm from the microphone).
tags: skype, sony, psp, psp3000, psp-3000, microphone, october
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Labels: design, mobile, skype, technology
Maren Hogan: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Maren K. Hogan is managing partner at HCI, Capital Management, for Humans.
Skype should be called Bridge, although that's not as compelling as the cool name SKYPE. But that's what it is.
It's a bridge from my children to their grandfather in New York, from my husband to his sisters and their families in Minnesota and from me to my clients around the world.
Skype creates connections between people who haven't yet met, forming bonds through facial expressions, shared chats and calls that don't break the bank. Skype also help people identify themselves as current, accessible and friendly, which is a lot for simply signing up through a service!
tags: skype, life, whatskypemeanstome
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Labels: business, family, humancapital, life, skype, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Ashim Roy: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Dr. Ashim Roy is India Country Head for Stoke Networks, providing local support to network operators in the region. Dr. Roy sent this post called "Skyping at Stoke - Keeping the fire alive."
While happily Skyping away, we often forget to thank the team that created Skype. Some good things in life are still free.
I am heading a small energetic band 20+ networking professionals and we are developing a product to enable better quality of service in broadband networks. My team is in Bangalore, India and the other team is in Santa Clara, CA. Skype has become lifeline for us as we are using Skype extensively for better communications between the team members and that too at no cost. I still have a cell phone and I am certain that within next couple of years I will be using voice Skyping over my cell phone. I am sure you have heard of all this before so it may not be very exciting. However, let me tell you a story which will give you a feel for why we love Skype.
About 3 weeks ago, our equipment was in Japan for an equipment trial. We had one engineer in Tokyo and rest of the team was spread between Santa Clara and Bangalore. Time difference between Santa Clara and Bangalore is 11.5 hours and time difference between Tokyo and Bangalore is 3.5 hours.
Anyway, I received a Skype message around noon in Tokyo (night time in CA) that the software had some problems. We had a Skype session set up between our engineer at customer site in Tokyo and our engineers in Bangalore, who started looking at the error messages (which were cut-n-pasted) into the Skype chat session with a simultaneous Skype voice call. The problem was that we did not have any equipment in Bangalore to replicate the problem so we needed someone to transfer messages showing up on the screen in Tokyo site.
In the mean time, we woke up one of the engineers in CA and included him in the chat session. In about 3 hours we were able to figure out the problem and 2 more hours later we had a patch sent to the engineer in Tokyo before the end of the day. Customer was really blown away by the global cooperation and speed of execution. That evening, I took the team out for a drink and I toasted “Skype” for the success.
Thanks for best communications tool to date.
tags: skype, ashimroy, stoke, globalization, collaboration, communication, whatskypemeanstome
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Labels: business, collaboration, conferencing, mobile, skype, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
MeBeam: 16 person video chat, no download
Phweet demonstrates the power of talk without downloads. Phweet triggers voice conference calls through twitter.
Now see MeBeam, multiparty video conferencing, all in-browser, triggered from Skype.
- Add mebeam to your Skype contacts list. skype:mebeam?add
(you may have to do this manually in Skype 4b) - "Send contacts" to mebeam. This invites them to the call.
- MeBeam Skypes you the link to a web page where you can all talk and see each other.
Free. Pretty easy. Download-free. Live since May 2008. Up to 16 people at once. Son of the WigiWigi project.
Wish Skype could do this.
tags: skype, mebeam, video, conferencing, conference call
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Labels: business, collaboration, conferencing, skype, technology, video
Howard Wolinsky: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Howard Wolinsky covered high tech and health care for 26 years from Chicagoland (Barack Obama is his Senator) before writing Skype's U.S. blog.
Back in late 1995, I was new on the tech beat at the Chicago Sun-Times.
I asked to cover the Net because I was tired of the medical beat. My bosses knew I was an early Net adopter so they set me loose to cover the emerging tech. I covered the pre-boom Internet, the dot-com boom and the dot-bomb, and then on to Web 2 and beyond before I left the paper in January.
Voice on the Net was among the technologies that intrigued me back then and does to this day, both personally and as Skype's US blogger.
The problem back in those days was you couldn't easily connect with friends and family. It was a bit like ham radio.
I remember using some early tech and speaking with a guy who claimed to be on a hammock on a Hawaiian beach. Another guy claimed to be in Austria. So they said.
Then, new tech came along, with an interface resembling a cell phone, that enabled you to put your IP address in as a substitute for a phone number.
It was a step in the right direction. But it was hard to get those friends and family on the line unless they were nerds.
There were always problems with sound quality. Echo. Echo. We were still on dial-ups modems in those days.
The big breakthrough came with broadband service. And of course Skype arrived five years ago and changed the game.
Regular audio calling is a great leap forward with Skype, with hi-fi sound quality. You can use cordless Wi-Fi phones so you don't even need your computer on to make a call. And you can make Skype calls over a regular phone; so you don't have to use headsets (though personally I prefer them).
Plus, you can use SkypeOut to connect at reasonable rates with people on old-fashioned phones. Video Calling on Skype will expand horizons further as people become accustomed to seeing the people with whom they are speaking.
Skype, with its low rates, has expanded my world, enabling me to do interviews with sources around the world for international and domestic publications. If I had to pay standard phone rates, I wouldn't be able to afford to do some of the work I do, interviewing people in Europe, Africa, South America, Australia and Asia.
Skype, which on August 29th is five years old, has changed my world — and I hope yours — for the better over the past five years.
The barriers of cost that once made global calling prohibitive are falling in the Skype world.
Thanks to Skype calling and IM, I am in touch with friends and family in Western and Eastern Europe, Australia and the Middle East. While in Peru earlier this summer, I helped new friends call their families back in the US; they were thrilled, grinning ear to ear.
As I rode on a bus to Stonehenge recently, I was chatting on a 3 Skypephone to a friend in Tucson. In London, I talked on the wireless phone to a friend back in Chicago. I hope this will come to the USA, along with other mobile technologies
More changes will be coming as the technology expands and improves.
Happy Fifth Birthday, Skype. Many happy returns.
tags: skype, life, reporting, journalism, What skype means to me, voip, howardwolinsky
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Labels: australia, business, family, life, mobile, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Blackberry: The Smartphone for Wilderness Survival
Several years ago, while skiing at Whistler, a member of our party broke her leg in the most remote (but still in-bounds) glacier (Blackcomb Glacier) with only one route in and out. Having cell phone access resulted in having the ski patrol on the scene within about five minutes and timely removal from the mountain to the hospital. It was critical that the cell phone rf sensitivity in this somewhat remote location was sufficient to make a call.
The past couple of weekends has found me in Ontario's summer cottage areas north of Toronto where distance, remoteness and low population density can provide significant challenges to a mobile phone's usefulness and service availability in emergencies. With no landline Internet connections available I left my laptop at home and tested the bounds of what I could follow simply using mobile devices. Amongst the issues I encountered were:
- Battery: how long is battery life and how easily can you replace a battery?
- Rf sensitivity: can I make a phone call with weak connectivity (<1 bar)?
- Real time navigation: can I follow my progress in a boat as the boat moves along?
- Battery Life: the Blackberry was the clear winner requiring much less frequent charging (if at all) in a 2- to 3-day trip. But Blackberry is reknown for its battery management features; if desired as backup, you can take along charged replacement batteries.
- Rf sensitivity: this one really surprised me but also says a lot about the iPhone 3G connection problems being reported. I was at a location on a small lake 6 km by air southwest of Gravenhurst, Ontario (location of the nearest tower) with less that one bar of reception and attempted to make phone calls. The iPhone came up with a screen announcing that it could not make a voice call while, sitting in the same seat, the Blackberry had no problems making a voice call - all over the same Rogers network via the same Rogers cell tower. Amongst the group I was visiting two other Verizon-enabled Blackberries could make calls through the local equidistant Telus cell tower while another person with an iPhone also could not make calls through the Rogers tower. As further affirmation of the Blackberry's superior rf sensitivity, when I drove into this location, the Blackberry was receiving updated Google Maps data (over EDGE) right up until I reached my destination.
Real time marine navigation: We also experienced some boat trips on Muskoka Lake, which is laden with many islands, bays and inlets, both large and small. On this popular lake with many cottagers there is good-to-excellent Rogers 3G coverage. Let's just say that on our first trip the boat's driver did not know the exact location of a marina we were seeking out. What I found was that while the satellite view of Google Maps on the Blackberry could provide very helpful location and direction information in real time, Google Maps on the iPhone could only provide occasional "static" information but not effectively track one's progress. On the other hand it has been known that iPhone is not capable of the real time navigation critical to the resolution of our situation. Asking a local cottager got us headed in the right direction towards the location of the marina but having real time navigation in Google Maps made it a significantly easier to reach our destination. As would be expected Google Maps does not provide complete marine navigation information such as depth isobars, underwater rock locations, etc. but, knowing the main channels, it became a critical support tool as we found our way.
- The 3G connectivity issues being reported for the iPhone probably involve both the rf sensitivity issue I experienced as well as carrier issues. By maintaining internal design control of the Blackberry's rf circuitry, RIM has brought into play 11 years of experience in developing wireless products. Contrary to other reports that attempt to lay the blame for iPhone 3G connectivity problems solely on the networks, the iPhone's device engineering, reportedly using a third party 3G chip, is a contributing issue to the problem. (During my time as a research physicist involving the design of rf detection circuitry, the rf sensitivity issue was a critical factor in detecting 13C signals using magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the molecular structure of drugs and other chemical formulations.)
- Real time navigation is just not viable on the iPhone. Pretty Google Maps but if they cannot track your progress in real time, not a big help. Especially when you're lost on a lake with as many islands and inlets as Muskoka Lake. iPhone's GPS can find me the nearest five Tim Hortons locations but combine my boating experience with the repeatedly reported inability of the iPhone to multi-task effectively and you have to come to the conclusion the iPhone is simply lacking in processing speed to perform true on-the-go navigation.
- And on long trips, away from a source for recharging, take along a couple of spare batteries.
Bottom line: everybody worries about 911 access for providing emergency communications. But when you travel into more remote, weakly serviced areas you want the most robust mobile device for maintaining reliably effective voice and data communications when emergencies arise. In this case I want a Blackberry, thank you.
(Note: Nokia N95 testing is yet to occur due to limitations on the number of SIM's immediately available.)
Tags: Blackberry, iPhone, 3G, Rogers, Telus, Verizon, Research in Motion
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Labels: apple, Blackberry, canada, google, iPhone, jcourtney, mobile, skype, toolbar, verizon
VoIP Blocking Explained
Dan York, Director of Emerging Communication Technology at Voxeo, but also on the Board of the Voice over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) has written two excellent pieces in another of his blogs, Voice of VoIPSA, discussing the blocking of VoIP calls by Aircell. The first explains how they can block Skype calls, even though they are encrypted while the second goes on to explain why Andy Abramson could make a VoIP call using Phweet.
1. How Aircell is (probably) blocking VoIP phone calls on planes (hint… VoIP Whack-A-Mole)
There it is… all in UDP… and coming in at about 100 packets per second. And if I look at the actual Wireshark traces, I can see that these 100 packets per second are all very tiny sizes. Many of them are between 37 and 50 bytes.2. The reason why (probably) you can use Phweet on a plane when Skype is blocked
And this is an encrypted Skype call!
No need to decrypt it. Just see that it’s a steady stream of 100 very small packets per second (50 packets per second each way) all over UDP.
Kill the stream. Block it. Conversation dead. No more VoIP on the plane.
It’s basically the network security version of Whack-A-Mole. See a VoIP stream start up… block it. See another one… block it. See yet another… block it. Whenever anything pops up that meets the profile, stomp on it.
This explains, too, why people could talk for a few seconds and then had their conversations terminated. The pattern has to appear in the network monitoring software. The software has to be sure it’s a VoIP stream and not something else… and then the software can block it.
Now I don’t know for a fact that this is how Aircell is blocking VoIP, but it would be easy enough to do it this way.
And there you go… one very possible reason why Phweet may work and Skype, SightSpeed and others were blocked is simply this:Read the entire posts for the details of Dan's assumptions and explanations. One of Dan's writing strengths is his ability to make technology understandable to the lay person.
The Tringme Flash-based softphone is sending audio over TCP and Aircell is not recognizing and blocking VoIP calls over TCP.Or at least Aircell wasn’t blocking TCP. (They probably are by now or will be soon.)
Now to be fair, if Aircell isn’t blocking TCP, this was probably a decent assumption to make. I mean, the typical mindset to date has been… who in their right mind would send audio streams over TCP?
In all the VoIP systems I’ve worked with, I can’t think offhand of any other systems that send audio over TCP. As part of its range of tricks to get through firewalls, I understand that Skype can use TCP if it is unable to send over UDP, but I’ve never captured it doing so. The IP-PBXs I’m familiar with, both commercial and open source, all send RTP over UDP.
As for not wanting to have voice calls available in flight I would soften my stand if human nature would change. Over the weekend I was reading a book on the history of one of our rural independent telephone companies where they were providing anecdotes about early usage of the operator-serviced telephones:
Mrs. Alice Cooley's brother, Billy Huang, Tiverton, used the phone for the first time to call his chum a few houses down the street. Alice and some others were out in the garden and they heard Billy shouting loudly on the phone. He thought he had to shout to be heard. Some people never did get over the idea that they had to shout on the phone.
From "Bruce Municipal Telephone System - A Long Line of History 1910 - 1994" by Anne Duke Judd.
Enough said. Thanks, Dan for taking time to put up these explanations.Tags: Dan York, Aircell, Skype, GoGo, Andy Abramson, TringMe, Phweet
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Skype stops selling flat-rate all-Taiwan and all-Asia plans in Taiwan
Taiwan probably has the highest per-capita Skype adoption of any country. Politicians pose for Skype photo-ops. Their top portal drives Skype traffic. They invent the most stylish of USB and PC-free Skype phones. So I was surprised when Jan Geirnaert tipped me to Skype partner PChome backing off of some flat rate services as published in this DigiTimes story.
Skype's deal of a cheap flat rate to landlines in all of Taiwan and most of Asia was so good that some customers maxed out their accounts. They shared their accounts with friends and family. Some even set up shop selling access to their Skype accounts.
Skype continues to offer the all world rate, but the Go Taiwan and Go Asia rates are not for sale or renewal at PChome.com. New pricing plans will replace Go Taiwan and Go Asia as soon as they can be defined and built. The new subscriptions "will better suit the calling patterns and price points for users in Taiwan" said a Skype spokesperson.
Large economic forces are in tension. The demand to talk still fuels a multi-trillion dollar industry. Skype serves five percent of long distance calls on Earth, yet unmet demand is enormous. As we've seen here, small changes in pricing dramatically change product adoption, calling behavior, and consumer psychology. It's still early and new skills, beyond simple market arbitrage, will become important to Skype's prosperity and success.
Dear XYZ,
Thank your kindly for supporting PChome and Skype for a long time.
We regret to notify you that we will stop the auto-renewal function of Unlimited Taiwan and Asia 200 starting 8/21/2008. It means you can not extend the subscription of these packages by paying with Skype Credits in your Skype account anymore. However, you can keep using active Unlimited Taiwan and Asia 200 until the expiration date.
PChome always tries to keep our users satisfied by offering the Skype Internet communication service with excellent quality and reasonable price. The new subscriptions are very popular. However as several months passed, we found some users abused the service, and the misuse made a serious impact on regular users. Therefore, we have to stop the auto-renewal of the service. We are quite sorry about the inconvenience.
Please notice that after the auto-renewal stops, you can still use SkypeOut to call the whole world and don't forget the chat, calls and video calls of Skype to Skype are completely free. Besides, we will release alternative monthly subscription packages that match users' requests as soon as possible.
Once again, sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for understanding.
Sincerely,
PChome
Fons Tuinstra: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me". You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Fons Tuinstra is a journalist, Internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and China-consultant in Brasschaat, Shanghai. Fons writes the China Herald and is a principal of the China Speakers Bureau, the leading speakers' agency for Greater China.
On my social networks: In the past months I have used and dumped MSN, Yahoo, QQ, LinkedIn, Seesmic, twhirl and indenti.ca. I'm still on twitter, FriendFeed, facebook, gtalk and use ping.fm. My phone numbers tend to change each six months. The only stable force over the past dynamic years has been Skype. It keeps on humming in the background, while I subscribe to other social networks and related tools. And dump them again, of course.
tags: skype, stories, whatskypemeanstome, china, fonstuinstra, chinaspeakersbureau, socialnetworks, journalism, reporting
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Labels: business, china, humancapital, mobile, skype, stories, video, WhatSkypeMeansToMe, yahoo
3 and Skype to interchange minutes, unify calling experience
In Olga Kharif's VoIP Goes Mobile in today's BusinessWeek [emphasis mine]:
Skype, the eBay (EBAY)-owned service used by more than 338 million people to make free PC-to-PC calls, later this year plans to release a new product called "Skype for your mobile" that will let customers use local wireless minutes to make international calls.
And later in the story...
Later this year, Skype will launch its Skype Out service, letting 3's Skype customers make calls to home and wireless phone numbers of non-Skype users. "I think we are seeing a real change in operator approaches to Skype," explains Tony Saigh, who heads business development for mobile at Skype. "There's a realization that providing customers with additional modes of communications is good. The real battle is how do you keep your customers engaged."
Update: "When this feature does launch, 3 Skypephone users will only be allowed to call international numbers using Skype Credit; they won’t be allowed to make domestic calls using Skype" said a Skype representative.
So you'll be able to make SkypeOut calls with your voice going
- over the mobile carrier's voice network
- to the iSkoot PSTN-to-Skype gateway,
- where Skype's SkypeOut network carries your call over the Internet
- to Skype's Skype-to-PSTN SkypeOut gateway and then
- to your destination phone number.
Quality. Is the operator content to have Skype take responsibility for the VoIP side of call quality on SkypeOut calls? You could look at the millions of SkypeOut minutes Skype serves now.
Sales. The operator still gets their minutes used, even if they route the call over Skype's network. Could our five hour Skype calls drive the sales of higher minute plans? Do freakishly long Skype calls make up for so many of those calls being free/in-network?
Experience. Will the consumer gets a unified calling and billing system (Skype's)? A more completely Skype/iSkoot experience? Seems so.
Rates. Do mobile operators consider Skype's wholesale SkypeOut costs for long distance and international calls competitive? They are not the cheapest on Earth, but still cheaper than typical astronomical international rates.
If Skype has a few hundred thousand Skypephone users by the end of 2009, what could this do to Skype's 2009 SkypeOut revenue?
tags: skype, skypeout, iskoot, 3, skypephone, 3skyephone, voip, hutch, hutchison, Hutchison Whampoa Limited, HWL
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Dean McGuire Jr: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me". You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Dean McGuire Jr. lives in Bangkok.
It's a true gift for me because I am an American who now lives in Thailand. I have four kids back in the U.S. It gives me a chance to talk and look at my kids every day and that is worth more to me than another program or email out there!!
Thank you Skype. You are truly Love. 
tags: skype, stories, what skype means to me, human capital, staffing, recruiting, career, video call, video, interviews, vlog, vlogging, videointerviews, podcasting, jobs, small business
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Labels: life, skype, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Monday, August 25, 2008
Voxeo: A Textbook Case Study for Voice 2.0 and Telecom Partnering
When fellow blogger Dan York joined Voxeo Corporation last October, very few of us in the IP-based communications blogging space had heard of this rapidly growing service provider. Over the next few months, sometimes with Dan's assistance, Voxeo has become a familiar name identified with a self-financed startup, a profitable business and a very large enterprise customer base focused on supporting voice applications through third party development activity. Revenue generation comes solely from their "cloud" hosting and VoIP/SIP communications server software business. Last week, in following up on a couple of press releases, I had the opportunity to interview Voxeo's CEO, Jonathan Taylor, and to learn much more about their success story.Fundamentally Voxeo provides hosting environments for telephony applications, whether hosted on their in-house server "cloud" or on a customer's premise-based servers. Developers write applications to their Prophecy platform creating XML files and SIP connections that are understood by the Prophecy-enabled servers. The Prophecy 9 client used by developers to create and manage these applications is now available for Mac OS X and Linux in addition to their legacy availability for Windows. Originally Voxeo only offered a hosted service but two years ago, in response to customer demand, they also provided the capability to support customers' premise-based servers. Key elements of their program that have led to their success (and profitability) include:
- No charge for downloading, and use of, their software
- A focus on ease of development and deployment
- Charging customers only when a service is launched and providing business value
- Option to use either Voxeo's hosting "cloud" or customers' premise-based servers (usually based on the overall business case for supporting the application)
- Licensing based on a "per port" or "per minute" business model, as appropriate
- Providing Prophecy as a suite of components for SIP implementations
- A platform based entirely on open standards
- Including solutions for supporting conferencing, voice mail, call recording, speech recognition and auto-attendant requirements
- A strong channel and developer focus recognizing the role of third party professional developers as their key to implementing their enterprise customers' services
- Lowering their customer support requirements through innovation in their software.
- Launch of Prophecy 9, providing support for OS X and Linux clients to their platform as well as a new management console that not only reduces the complexity of development and associated deployment costs but also provides increased scalability.
- Acquisition of Beijing, China-based Micromethod, not only complementing Voxeo's Prophecy suite of modules with their SIP-focused products but also providing a base for expanding Voxeo into serving the Asia-Pacific markets.
- Intelligent call routing (using their call control features)
- Voice mashups providing access to, say, email or Google Calendar
- Emergency notification services due to weather or business disruption
- Anonymous calling services
- Facilitating calling services for children's websites such as Nickelodeon.
Last Wednesday Voxeo issued a third press release discussing some of their business success with revenue growth of 99.7% (no rounding allowed - who would believe 100%, they say), 18 successive profitable quarters and a very high customer retention rate. Not being a public company they do not need to release any detailed financials. But building and supporting a community of 31,000 developers probably says it all.
In conclusion, Voxeo's business represents a practical, successful and profitable implementation of Alec Saunders Voice 2.0 Manifesto, emphasizing that the value-add for voice conversations going forward lies in the applications.
Note 1: Tomorrow morning (August 26) Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor will be the guest for Alec Saunders' daily Squawkbox conference call. Dan York provides more details on how to participate. Update: If you missed the call, you can hear the recording posted on SaundersLog.com.
Note 2: Voxeo's hosted "cloud" also supports connectivity to Skype for inbound calls.
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Labels: AlecSaunders, canada, china, jcourtney, SIP, skype, technology, Voxeo
Skype Video Not Dog Ready
This test of Skype's Canine Compatibility shows a confusing user interface. Is a person really there if you can't smell them (an odorama plugin?) or see them? Dogs have red/green blindness and see less detail. Cognitively, can dogs understand a computer monitor as a window to someplace else? Let's watch:
It's been five years (35 years in dog or Internet years). Does Skype have a task force working to strengthen the bonds between pets and their families? Bark-to-speech translation?
tags: skype, dogs, CCI, canine computer interface, pooch, video, audio spatialization, vision, design
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Ben Metcalfe: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me". You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Skype is the text book example of the mixed fortune that can come from using 'closed source' software. By building their own proprietary VoIP protocol, Skype have been able to create a product with practically zero configuration that almost always works, even within the toughest environments (strict firewalls, multi-NAT'd routers, etc).
However development and innovation has been stifled by the fact that only Skype, and their parent company eBay, can move the product along - no one from the community is really able to bring new direction to the product. With eBay's lack of vision for the product, users have been left with a service that has barely changed in the last two years, and looks unlikely to receive a significant revamp whilst it remains under the auspices of the auction house.
Ben Metcalfe explores the intersections of social media, Web2.0 projects in the enterprise, grassroots media/blogging, online media, platforms & API's, and disruptive technologies. I know Ben from his activity at the Spring 2008 Data Sharing Summit and several DataPortability.org meetings. You may see him speak at SxSW 2009 on Taking Platforms to the Next Level or Puppets, Theatre and the Conflation of ’Successful’ with ‘Popular’.
tags: skype, stories, what skype means to me, open, closed source, ebay, innovation, change, vision
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Labels: architecture, ebay, skype, stories, technology, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Bill Vick: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me". You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Bill Vick is an authority on finding talent for employers. Bill is a co-author of LinkedIn for Recruiting, wrote Big Billers, and is a sought after speaker in human capital circles.
Skype changed my business and opened up new worlds to me and the many others I network with. A few months ago I started using Skype Video to conduct video interviews with thought leaders in the recruiting, staffing and human resources area. So far I have over 60 interviews posted on my web site and most of those I interviewed had never used Skype video before our interview. Without exception they are all incorporating Skype video into their business model. Some of the videos I recorded have generated thousands of views and are featured at XtremeRecruiting.tv.
tags: skype, stories, what skype means to me, human capital, staffing, recruiting, career, video call, video, interviews, vlog, vlogging, videointerviews, podcasting, jobs, small business
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Labels: business, skype, stories, video, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Andrew Y Ng: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype's fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me". You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com.
Andrew Y Ng writes:
I started using Skype when my girlfriend was living in London for a summer, I tried various ways to call her and Skype offered high voice quality, ease of use, and was cost effective. After that I kept using Skype mostly as an IM client as it provides encryption under the hood. And then I discovered the greatness of Skype's group chat feature when a number of friends and forum members at SuperFuture started using it for group and voice chat. I was amazed how I could get to know someone across the globe so well via Skype.
I changed careers and got into the "web 2.0" business and was the VP of Technology of OnMyList.com, I suggested using Skype group chat to collaborate among the 4 people we had in the company. It worked extremely well and it was paramount to our communication. When I joined another startup I got them to use Skype as well for collaboration.
I am now working as a freelance consultant on Ruby on Rails sites, Facbeook, and other social applications, my partner and I communicate exclusively via Skype. We created Dealistic.com while he lives in DC and I am in San Francisco, 70% of the work done together via Skype voice chat and iChat screen sharing. We would have Skype voice chats for over 12 hours and it works flawlessly.
So what Skype means to me? It means staying closer to my closest friends and family, it means saving cost while running my own consulting practice, it means getting things done and collaborating effectively.
tags: skype, stories, life, love, relationships, superfuture, onmylist, collaboration, dealistic, ichat, what skype means to me
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Labels: business, collaboration, family, life, skype, stories, WhatSkypeMeansToMe
Creative leader leaves Skype
Malthe Sigurdsson was the design force behind Skype's playful, cute, and colorful visual identity. It's rare when the emotions, the times, the technology, and the user experience meet well. Skype's form and function, and visual iconography surrounding it, defined Skype.
Before Skype's message of "it just works" could be accepted, people had to trust Skype. At a glance, people believed it was possible. One look and they believed turning their PC into a magic Internet telephone was easy, simple, painless, fun, exciting, safe, immediate.
Malthe instigated one of the most effective and enduring global brands of the decade.
From a 2006 recruiting post...
The coolest thing about being at Skype is that I'm helping to give away this fantastic thing of people in separate corners of the world, the country, the city or indeed just the house, being able to talk to each other... for free.
I'm in charge of design and branding at Skype, and since the above is our core product, I have a really easy job: do the opposite of what every big, boring, customer-unfriendly corporation in the world would do, and make sure that every single little task is done with the millions of people using Skype in mind. If it's not good for them, it's bad for Skype.
Having been here since forever, since we were me sitting in my apartment in Paris, some guys in London and a small office in Tallinn, it's tremendously cool to still be sitting here, now in London, and with offices on most continents and users in even more places, seeing it all grow so much, so fast, so well.
In closing: Please come work with us. It's fun, it absolutely makes a difference, and you and the hundreds of other smart people working here will do great stuff.
Take a look at Malthe's slides from Reboot 7 in 2005 and Stuart Henshall's thoughts on Skype's brand two years in.
And then read through Malthe's July 2005 essay, A new face, for a walkthrough of the Skype's language and visual elements.
The Sigurdssons are now on Project Hector. Congratulations!
tags: skype, creative, brand, design, people, dk, marketing, identity, emotion, malthe, sigurdsson, malthesigurdsson
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Friday, August 22, 2008
Phweet bypasses airline VoIP blockade
I want to build on Jim Courtney's post about Phweet on an airplane. Two social observations, a societal one, and a strategic one. But first,
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Air Skype, Skype Journal, April 2005. Skype on a transatlantic flight, with voice. Skyping to the International Space Station.
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Skype Air Heads, Skype Journal, June 2005. Plane-to-plane Skyping.
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Stratosphere Puffery, Skype Journal, July 2005. Boeing shows off their Connexion service. (RIP Connexion).
Bah. Humbug.
Hububaphobia (a fear of other people talking) is an anxiety not rooted in reality. Volume's not a problem if people talk to each other on the plane/train, so talking to someone who's not there shouldn't add to noise.
There is no social obligation for silence waiting in line. Don't hold up the line when you get to the front and you'd done your part.
The same is true on transport: don't interfere with our collective purpose by making us wait for you to stow your electronics before taking off or landing. This shouldn't be confused with talking around such events.
Excessively loud talking is transitional; we'll adjust our expectations and our headphones. Don't be afraid of talk.
Airlines should encourage inflight talk.
Talking to other passengers rocks. Well seated strangers who share travels in the spirit of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Heck, partner with matching sites so we can go speed dating for social, political, sports, and other mutual interests to find seat partners.
Talking to people who aren't on the plane has value too.
- It shares the flight experience with people who aren't there.
- It sates passengers who need to feel productive.
- It lets people coordinate their next steps without the "radio silence followed by a burst of catching up upon landing" now imposed on most flights.
- It keeps people connected to those they leave behind at a time of stress and separation.
As the world enters a state of default connectedness, the airline is breaking a social norm when they force disconnection.
Don't Muzzle Me
Disrupting my ability to talk is hurtful.
Technology and safety aside, this is a censorship, blocking, and net neutrality issue. Once you open the digital speech floodgates, be neutral with regard to software, modes of communication, and end points.
Like air, we need connectivity, and all our modes of talk to survive.
Depriving us of access to air? Waterboarding.
Phweet breaks through
The real story: Skype was blocked. Five years' old, with millions of users, millions in cumulative revenue, advanced p2p, networking, and video technologies, hundreds of engineers.
Meanwhile, Phweet just worked. A ruthlessly simple, two person, few months' old, browser-to-browser, flash voice-only, moderate audio quality app.
All the hallmarks of disruption. And a strong signal that download-free talk, web-centered talk, over-the-top talk is a sweet spot.
tags: skype, flight, airplane, boeing, airline, connexion, aircel, phweet, voip, voice, blocking, censorship, fear, anxiety, talk
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Labels: community, freedom, skype, technology
Occasional Blogging at GigaOm
Last winter, after Om Malik suffered at heart attack at New Year's, I authored a couple of guest posts for GigaOm discussing the challenges and reality of Skype on mobile devices (here and here). Recently I was asked to provide occasional (probably bi-weekly) posts for GigaOm on a regular basis.The first post, Rogers Launches Blackberry Bold: More Anticipated Than the iPhone, Eh?, results from my attendance yesterday at the North American launch for the new Blackberry Bold. I'll have more to say about my personal iPhone experience as well as Blackberry experiences in future Skype Journal posts.
To his credit, Om has stopped smoking, implemented a fitness routine and changed his diet. But has he really, as claimed, been able to reduce his work hours? It is a credit to his team is that they can publish so profusely while keeping Om on a healthy regimen.
Skype on the Airplane: Chat But No Voice
I'm constantly amazed at how some inconsiderate mobile phone users insist on having their cell phone conversation take priority over social niceties such as paying attention to the cashier at a store checkout, yakking out loud in an airport (or doctor's) waiting room, or worse still, due to the implicit safety issue, holding the phone on the shoulder while trying to drive with her head sideways. Dan York
got to listen to one side of a few conversations during his train trip home to New Hampshire from New York yesterday. Basically I consider these people to be inconsiderate and rude.I also find that over 85% of my Skype activity involves chat; it's unobtrusive, relatively private with respect to people around you and provides a simple, effective and much less annoying means of communicating with remote work colleagues and friends.
So it's no surprise that AirCell, who is installing Internet access on several U.S. airlines' aircraft, is allowing passengers to use Skype for chat but not voice during a flight. I have to go along with their excuse for not allowing voice: "the consideration for passengers who want peace and quiet". My hope is that we never see in-flight (cellular or VoIP) phone use allowed.
However, Andy reports on an experience where Phweet may provide a path for voice conversations using a Flash player. American Airlines passenger and Laptop Magazine reporter Joanna Stern, with whom Andy completed the "in-flight" Phweet call, also comments in her very detailed log of her AirCell in-flight Internet experience:
I couldn’t agree more. I was getting stares right and left in the 5 minutes I was talking to Andy and I don’t blame the passengers of American Airlines at all. Granted I was talking really loudly without a headset, but loud talkers on a plane (and in general) are annoying. The poor girl next to me was trying to sleep. Other than the call, I haven’t bothered her once. Though, she thinks I am a total geek.On the other hand she was chatting with Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein via Skype throughout the flight.
As for the the restriction on VoIP he says, “Fundamentally it is a reaction to widespread passenger aversion to the idea of many people talking loudly on flights (as we’ve all often experienced before take-off or while landing).”So will AirCell figure out a way to avoid VoIP over Flash without cutting off all otherwise acceptable Flash traffic?
(And, as for those "Skyphones/Airphones" that we used to see on aircraft - at some exorbitant cost of several dollars per minute - they got little use and calls were quite brief. In the year I flew over 150,000 kilometers on Air Canada I used them once due to a rerouted landing caused by last minute weather conditions at the destination airport.)
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OneWebDay: Giving back to the web
The web has its own holiday: OneWebDay, Monday Sep 22 2008, 30 days from today. Like Earth Day, OneWebDay's theme is we all live here and should take care of the web. We celebrate OWD through projects that help the web.
OWD's founder, Susan Crawford, posted Ten Ways To Help The Web. In short:
- Use a standards-compliant Web browser and validate your sites.
- Edit a Wikipedia article.
- Learn about an Internet policy issue and teach five other people about it.
- Take steps to ensure that your computer can’t be treated like a zombie.
- Join an Internet rights advocacy group.
- Help promote public Internet access.
- Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Donate a computer.
- Write your OneWebDay story.
- Show up on September 22 and participate.
Invent your own way to leave the Internet better than you found it. Sign up for the low volume announcement mailing list and twitter channel.
tags: onewebday, owd, susancrawford, events, community, one, web, day, one web day
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Thursday, August 21, 2008
4b Wishlist: Do more with contacts in multichat
The new Skype for Windows 4 beta consolidates all the elements of a chat into one vertical pane on the right side of the main Skype window.
The upper half shows an alphabetic list of participants in a multiparty chat or conference call. People in the room. What else can we know or do with people in a room?
You can hide the list, but what else could you do with that space?
Sorting compares/contrasts people in the room. Sort by:
- Most recently contributed to the chat/call
- Freshness/aging by participation
- Mutual Availability
- Of the times I'm online, what percentage is this other person also online?
- Time zone, relative to yours
- When are the Australians waking up, rejoining the conversation?
- Contacts vs. strangers
- Which of these people have I yet to befriend?
- Provocateurs, Amplifiers, Lurkers
- Who triggers threads vs. who jumps in? Look at Marc A. Smith's research on mining Usenet for social network and relationship data. You can look at time gaps in conversation, followed by responses.
- Visualize participation volume
- Who has been most/least active? Show a chart (pie chart?) or meter of the number of words contributed to the chat or seconds spoken in the conference call. Acknowledge contribution, encourage the quiet to jump in.
- Other profiled demographics: country, age, gender.
What other info would be useful if I move my mouse over someone's name in the panel? Hover information:
- Faces
- Mood text
- Last text contribution to the chat
- Show the contextual menu now shown by option/right-mouse clicks.
Other options:
- Slide show of profiles, rotating through the participants
- Highlight the last contributor
- Animated moodgeist of those in the room
- Highlight people who contributed recently in other chats in which we are both members
Help those in the room make the most of being in that room. Help us with the metawork of scheduling, the facilitation and moderation of the conversation, launching sidebar talk, building reputation through social grooming and participation.
Thanks.
P.S. I miss drag and drop in 4b.
tags: skype, technology, wishlist, collaboration, im, 4b, beta, moodgeist
Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Labels: 4, 4b, australia, beta, collaboration, design, skype, technology, wishlist
Digital ID Wishlist: Skype name authentication service
You use your Skype name and password to login into Skype corporate web sites, like their forums, shops, and for account management.
This means Skype operates an authentication service between those applications and their central login servers. For example, Skype has a MovableType plug-in (for internal use) called skypeid-comments that lets Skype's blog commenters use their existing Skype name, without creating a new ID for the blogs.
I'd like Skype to further strengthen the authentication service, then open it up to non-Skype sites with OpenID. 
OpenID lets you log into a third party site using the URL provided by a trusted service. This improves privacy (you are logging into your trusted service, and they tell the third party that you are who you say you are) and is more convenient (you don't have to create/remember accounts for the the many sites you use). AOL, Google's Blogger, Japan's LiveDoor, and Yahoo! offer OpenIDs to their customers. For example, openid.aol.com/screenname is how you'd log into a site that accepts OpenID logins if you're an AOL customer.
OpenID shows having a Skype name can be valuable outside of Skypeland. Low hanging fruit?
Labels: architecture, identity, skype, technology, yahoo
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Skypephone 2 Out in the UK
Andy at VoIP Watch, who makes good use of the Skypephone when in the U.K., reports on the launch of the Skypephone 2 in the U.K. with some very interesting usage plans.
And it was launched on the announced date.
I'm off to the North American Blackberry Bold launch at Rogers tomorrow morning. Seems like RIM has sorted out the 3G network issues that delayed its launch.
Labels: 3, Blackberry, jcourtney, mobile, skype, Skypephone
Catching Up: Mobivox - Launching Voice-Enabled Conversations.
About three weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Mobivox's new CEO Peter Diedrich, a telecom industry veteran who brings both telecom executive and VC-funded startup experience to the table. Mobivox has traditionally provided a low cost worldwide calling service, including free calls to Skype contacts. Key features included (i) no client downloads, (ii) launch a voice call from any telephone handset and (iii) access via over 340 points-of-presence in 40 countries. However, unpublicized has been that they also provide a platform for voice enabling the user interface to many other potential communications service partners.Historically, Peter sums up Mobivox as having proven they can provide and host a simple service with a voice-enabled user interface; their primary challenge is to determine what should be free. The gems he sees in the current platform include:
- a voice user interface, incorporating VoxGirl, with support for many languages
- a team experienced in voice recognition and management technology
- web-based calling from a (user generated) address book
- the ability to set up and manage contacts via a voice recognition engine (and to include voice tags for each contact)
- an little publicized ability to send email and SMS messages via voice
- make the user experience dead simple
- determine what we do vs what we don't do
- easiest to just tell customers what they do
- most important for "hands-free" requirements
- no client download
- making the address book their stickiest asset
- seamlessly import Outlook/Gmail/etc.
- obtain access to mobile device address book
- create contact voice tags
- provide an access number directory "download" to mobile devices
- make the service "from anywhere at anytime on any device"
Their final challenge is to improve monetization; reversing a pre-appointment decision to make all but calls to Skype contacts chargeable, Peter sees the need to develop both a retail and partner customer base.
- member-to-member calls remaining free (within the scope of a fair use policy)
- pricing packages incorporating modified PSTN access "minute buckets"
- text messaging services with, say, the first five messages free, then pay
- study customer demand and usage; tailor packages to customer needs
- agreements with service providers
Tags: Mobivox, Peter Diedrich, Skype, Jajah
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Language Skypenomics: Myngle is a market for students and teachers
Myngle picked up €800k in first round funding last week. Language teachers offer their services through the site, students shop for teachers, they pay through Myngle, study through Skype. Co-founders include alumni of eBay, Berlitz, Razorfish and Proctor & Gamble.
Teachers set market prices, publish hours when they are available (Myngle takes care of time zone arithmetic). Students shop and sign up for lessons.
Myngle augments instruction. Teachers can use a whiteboard during a class. They can record podcasts for students to study before or after class. And they can design quizzes to warm up or reinforce a lesson.
Teachers can share curriculum and best practices within Myngle. A touch of community.
Language schools can also sign up, selling their service through Myngle. Sales and fees are administered through the school instead of the instructor.
It's not free. "Myngle charges 18% commission per lesson when you start teaching. This fee is charged for use of Myngle's platform and services, PayPal fees and includes VAT." Payment is immediate. Contrast this with Skype's Prime terms (30% commission, 15% VAT, 120 days to get paid, $30/hour minimum bill rate).
So, just to be clear, Myngle and the instructors are making the market, use free Skype to deliver service, and pay via PayPal. Skype is free.
Language and culture are the ultimate barriers to online communication. Solving those problems is a massive opportunity, with many competitors.
tags: skype, myngle, language, prime, elearning, learning, education, training, tutoring, school, schools, instruction, skypenomics
Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Labels: ebay, education, language, paypal, skype, skypenomics
Personal Technology at the Beijing Olympics
Reports are surfacing that Skype has been playing a significant role for many of the Olympic athletes.
Canadians have the option of watching Olympic activities during 18 hours of the day (from 6:00 p.m. to noon the following day - EDT or GMT-4) over two major networks: CBC and TSN. Canada had a dearth of medal action for the first week - causing a national angst in the mainstream Canadian media. Our two man rowing team came through with a first medal last Saturday morning and the medals have flowed to the point of winning 13 medals over the past four days.
Sunday was a big day for the Men's Eight rowing team; having won gold at Sydney (2000), they had a major letdown by placing fifth at Athens (2004). Sunday that team, with five holdovers from 2004, won gold; it instantly became a very emotional experience for the members. During the subsequent CBC interview (unfortunately web streaming is limited to Canadians), one member mentioned how a pair of roommates had a reputation for spending a lot of time using Skype and email as their "common bond".
Rohit Bhargava, a senior VP at Ogilvy 360, has been blogging at the games on his Influential Marketing Blog. He is in Beijing on behalf of Lenovo who is providing assistance to about 100 athlete bloggers at Voice of the Olympic Games. In the course of following the athletes' blogging activity at the games, he interviewed three of them about their blogging experience. "Along the way in this event and through other conversations I've had with athletes, I picked up on several observations that only an athlete would know." The main outcomes:
The entire post makes for interesting reading; Olympic athletes (with the exception of Canada's 61-year-old, 9-time Olympian Ian Miller who finally won a silver medal in equestrian) are in the prime demographic of Internet savvy users. Being world travelers to participate in all their competitions has driven them to strongly adopt Internet technology, including Skype, as their primary communications tool.
- Technology is a big topic of discussion - If you are a tech geek like me, then you probably saw the Fast Company cover article on how technology is changing the Olympics. What you might not realize is just how big of a topic of conversation this is among most athletes.
- Blogs get you interviews - Of the athletes that I spoke to with blogs, they raved about how much media the blog manages to get for them and their sport.
- Skype is the killer app - Lenovo may be the ones providing the iLounge and access to the Internet, but it is Skype that is keeping athletes connected with their families back home.
- Travelling is a pain in the *ss - For many athletes, the gear they need to carry makes life in airports and on the road really tough.
And a final recommendation: read Rohit's other posts on the Games; they make for an interesting background on how to survive in Beijing during the Games. And he has a most interesting post on how to make your "exclusive" Olympic sponsorship backfire. In the Canadian scene, Visa continues to run an ad about an athlete for whom there were medal expectations and, unfortunately the event got to him - he did not even advance from his event's initial heat.
Labels: canada, china, family, jcourtney, mobile, skype, stories
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Bear With Us - It's Moving Time
For the next few days you will only see new posts for Skype Journal. Let's just say that we found it necessary to move off of Yahoo's hosting service and are setting up (with an update to Movable Type 4.2) at a new hosting service recommended to us by some who already use this service.
Fortunately we do have access to all our content, including comments, and are having that reformatted and reorganized for incorporating into the new location. (Our goal is such that the only content not being moved comprises over 300,000 spam comments; fortunately MT 4.2 has improved comment spam filtering and management.)
In the meantime we have set up this interim blog location to allow us to continue to post in what has turned out to be a very active summer in both the IP-based communications and mobile smartphone spaces. The graphics may not be pretty; the comment river is not here but we'll worry about being pretty once we have the content under full control and available again.
You will also notice that we have been able to maintain access to our archives by month; however, currently it is not searchable (and we cannot make any edits to the posts but then, other than to correct typos or change factually incorrect information, we don't edit them anyway.)
Note: if you access Skype Journal via an RSS feed reader, you do not need to make any changes as our RSS feed comes via FeedBurner.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Hello world
Technical stuff interfered with Skype Journal running properly this year. So we're moving to a new host, upgrading our software, and using Blogger as our interim service.
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