Weekend Reading

Nokia and Verizon set up JoinStarfleetAcademy.com. Nokia bought some nice product placement in the first 15 minutes of the film.

Skyping doctors on Good Morning America television show. Return of the house call?

Wiley publishing Skype's authors into bookstores for video readings. From home in New Jersey to an in-store audience in Cincinnati. via Nettie Hartsock.

China: One more reason why Skype needs to separate personas from Skype names: What's up with Chinese people having English names? - By Huan Hsu - Slate Magazine.

WSJ: eBay's Donohoe says US$2 billion "is low" to buy Skype.

Globetrotting investor Joi Ito describes his VoIP setup.

CNET: US Congress hearings may make use of Skype IM, Skype file sharing, Skype p2p criminal.

Hudson Barton points out Skype isn't reporting everything it should to create a clear picture of its business. I agree: Skype doesn't reveal active users or users becoming inactive (so we understand churn), revenue/cost/activity by line of business (so we understand the product portfolio), revenue/cost/activity by market (so we understand regional sources of growth and opportunity), headcount by role (so we understand efficiencies and returns on human/intellectual capital), and risks (although the annual SEC filing does an OK job of listing potential threats).

 

Interview with BT/Ribbit's Ray Lee on their platforming strategy.

Chinese are jumping on the Internet faster than Skype's growth. 162 million in 2009Q1. Are they choosing Skype over QQ?

The Equal Access Principal. "The principal, simply put, asks protocol designers not to be snobs."

The new Kantara Initiative tries to bring some consumer juice to bigco digital identity.

Kantara Initiative from nethawk interactive on Vimeo.

We caught up with Brett McDowell at the RSA Conference to talk about the Kantara Initiative, the new identity organization that seeks to to create interoperability between identity efforts: SAML, OpenId and information cards. A key driver is fast adoption of consumer technologies and how that intersects with the enterprise. What is the Kantara Initiative and why is it needed? Brett gives us some answers.

Jim Courtney digs into the new, webbier Tungle. I tried the first version, which Jim also reviewed last year. It was useful then; much more so now.

Belize's BTL is still blocking Skype. You might want to try a personal VPN like E-Tunnels which claims to get around blocking if you use Skype on PCs or mobiles. Or not.