All we ask is that it's true, it's your own story, and in your own words. Winners will be selected randomly because, frankly, we thought we'd get into lots of trouble picking the most romantic, sexiest, most embarrassing, best use of a webcam, or funniest confessions.
American wireless companies are control freaks when it comes to configuring the mobiles they sell. They limit hardware features, choose applications, and otherwise protect their walled gardens.
The software that comes on PCs is usually determined by the manufacturer and the operating system. Skype comes on some netbooks via Linux, on some PCs via manufacturers. Will AT&T and others use their power to add Skype to netbooks? Or will they keep Skype off of netbooks?
Should netbook+wireless proves popular, Skype will want this desktop real estate. Trial and adoption rates are much higher with the trust that comes from being preinstalled.
Skype revenue growth is flattening. It increased only by 1.2% in $US, and about 3.7% in Euros. In the eBay slides they say “On an fx neutral basis Skype revenue accelerated 5 pts” (fx neutral means “foreign currency neutral basis”). Considering the economic crisis, this isn’t too bad.
I am however surprised about the weak revenue increase, because SkypeOut minutes rose by 18%. And SkypeOut minutes means revenue. If most people were still calling (like I do) on a “per minute” cost, revenue should have risen proportionally. Therefore, this probably means that most people call through a fixed price “calling plan.” Could it be that, from an economical point of view, this is a "too low" margin product?
More spectacular is the growth of the Skype to Skype minutes: this rose by 28%. The economic crisis could have helped to obtain this, because this is completely free, including webcam calling!
One could, however, expect some revenue increase from Skype certified products (headphones, webcams, etc.). Personally I think this is a dying revenue stream because, certified or not, most webcams and headphones and other devices work with Skype! Why should a manufacturer therefore transfer part of its income to Skype?
User accounts continue to show a quite linear growth. I would have expected a stronger growth last quarter, for the same “economy crisis” reason.
Revenue per user account (or should I say username?) shows a decaying tendency. But, as I said in the past, this is a very misleading metric, because it includes all usernames created from the beginning, including “dead” accounts and multiple accounts of one user. Pity that Skype doesn’t publish the number of active accounts!
Next quarter could be better, because I see a quite spectacular increase of concurrent users online, and this will for sure influence indirectly the revenue stream.
15,996,686 is the highest number of logged in Skype users. Ever. 3314 short of the 16 million mark. It was reported about 10:58AM Pacific time, Monday, 26 January 2009. Skype hit the 15.5 million mark 12 January. Just for those who drink a shot of millimallikas every time Skype reaches another million.
Hat tip to Jim Courtney for turning in the top number.
... your partner fails to provide an obvious path to download and install your software.
In early July last year I wrote about the launch of Dell Video Chat, based on a newly announced agreement between Dell and SightSpeed to use SightSpeed's video services. The bottom line was that Dell Video Chat would become available on an expanding range of Dell PC's.What follows is a story about what turns users away from Windows PC's and why Apple is doing so well with its iMac's and MacBooks these days. But it also has to be an embarrassment to Dell.
As background I should say that recently I have watched as two non-tech persons have started up their MacBooks for the first time. Turn it on, asks for your name and contact information, upgrades the software, takes your photograph with the built-in webcam, finds the WiFi, connects to the Internet (and finds other PC's on your LAN). In about 20 to 30 minutes you're up and running. No hassles, no new software to install; it just happens!. And subsequently these people do not come back to me for technical support, especially on security, operating system upgrade and new software installation issues.
This weekend I am helping an acquaintance getting transitioned to a new Dell Vostro 220 desktop PC. Due to one critical business application that only supports a Windows installation this person could not change to a Mac. In the course of starting it up I found there was a webcam embedded onto the monitor and installed the appropriate webcam software. (No, Dell did not pre-install it even though a monitor with embedded webcam was included in the initial order.) Ran a client called Dell Webcam Central. You could take photos or record video while seated in front of the monitor.
Then I noticed in the upper right hand corner an option to "Switch to video chat". Recalling that I had written about Dell Video Chat last summer I clicked on the link. And got a dialogue box stating: "You have not installed the video chat application 'Dell Video Chat'. Do you want to download now?" Clicked on the "Yes" button.
This took me to a Dell web page that asked for my Dell Service Tag. Entered it and ended up on the standard page of driver downloads for the Vostro PC. Looked through the various categories (after identifying my OS as Windows XP) and could not find Dell Video Chat software anywhere. No application downloads. Nothing about it listed in a sidebar on the same page. Nada, Did a search. No luck.
So, at this point, not being sure if I had installed Dell's webcam software properly I installed Skype on this PC and found it recognized my webcam, including its associated microphone, with no problem. Dell had failed to provide any means (let alone a user-friendly means) to download and install the Dell Video Chat software.
Sort of defeats the purpose of having this SightSpeed-Dell agreement and the associated easy access to the relevant software somehow. It actually turned out to be easier for me to download and install Skype (and have ready access to voice and/or chat conversations with the huge Skype user base).
A couple of points made in posts since my initial one about the arrangement between Dell and SightSpeed have happened since last summer:
Aside from Dell's obvious quality assurance problem described above, the sceptic in me might ask:
Did Logitech's acquisition of SightSpeed somehow sour the Dell relationship with SightSpeed
If it's all but impossible for a somewhat technically savvy person to find and install Dell Video Chat, is there any Dell Video Chat user registered out there with whom a user could have a conversation?
Has SightSpeed been tracking any metrics on Dell Video Chat adoption?
Is there an opportunity here for Skype to leverage a Skype executive's previous relationship with a current Dell executive to initiate discussions about having Dell provide Skype with all its PC's?
Will "Skype Everywhere" include Dell PC users when they want to hold voice, chat and video conversations simply by default? "No biz dev required."
Just wondering .....Where's the value in a Dell partnership? It's all about execution!
In spite of being a 14-year purchaser of Dell PC's, it's one more nail in the Dell/Microsoft coffin as I contemplate a transition to a MacBook for my next laptop purchase.
And, in case anyone was wondering about what Steve Jobs brought to the table at Apple: a discipline within Apple's corporate culture that focuses on a friction-free and overwhelmingly successful user experience. In spite of Steve's current absence that corporate culture is not going away anytime soon.
Josh Silverman joined Skype as President early in the spring of 2008; since then he has been reviewing Skype's opportunities and building a team of experienced executives who can bring to Skype the products, programs and team building expertise required to operate a business with a run rate of $600MM per year, 20% contribution margins to eBay and growing at 380,000 new account registrations per day (with "real user" growth also increasing significantly).
Summarizing the past executive appointment announcements we can clearly start to see the evolution of a business structure, along with each unit's responsibilities:
Operations: Product, Marketing, Customer Care, Support
Technology: Engineering, Platform, Development Community
During our interview at CES 2009 with Skype COO Scott Durschlag, he outlined details of his restructuring of Skype's Operations team along two axes: product and geography under the mantra of providing "Skype Everywhere".
Global product offerings will encompass three divisions: consumer, business and mobile, each responsible for developing products. Each of these groups will be interacting with members of CTO Daniel Berg's technology teams to convert their technology developments into marketable global product offerings and to adapt the technology to meet product marketing needs.
Consumer will involve the current Skype client desktop offerings along with hardware, such as Skype phones.
Business starts with the current Skype Business Control Panel but intends to expand well beyond this starting point into a range of offerings, such as Skype for Asterisk and the recently announced IBM LotusLive developments, addressing the small-to-medium business market.
Mobile involves current products such as Skype for Windows Mobile, Skypephone (in conjunction with iSkoot), the recently launched Skype Lite (including Skype for Android) as well as any upcoming offerings for the iPhone and BlackBerry
In addition each of these divisions will be responsible for developing appropriate customer care and support programs appropriate to market demands. For instance, the business unit will come up with ongoing support programs relevant to supporting sustainable business operations of its products' users. Ideally these programs would follow the model of Red Hat for Linux or Digium for Asterisk and build up a network of resellers and VARS who would provide relevant and timely end user support. While Dan Berg's technology team will be responsible for third party developer partner support, an additional challenge for the Business products group will be to assist with marketing of business applications offered by these developer partners.
While Skype veteran Stefan Oberg is heading up the Business unit, announcements re appointments to head up Consumer and Mobile are pending.
Along the geography axis is a recognition that, while the Products divisions have a global mandate, there are different market needs within different regions of the world. For instance, in many Asian market wireless carriers do not subsidize mobile phones as is the North American practice. This requires a differentiated approach to these markets with respect to how easily innovations, especially around reduced calling costs, can be introduced to these markets.
The geographical market responsibilities are:
Americas: Don Albert becomes General Manager, Americas. Don has had North America responsibility for a couple of years and will now be responsible for both North and South America. With respect to the latter he is looking forward to building on all the Skype activity in Brazil, for instance. (And, yes, once again at CES Don was made aware we are awaiting SkypeIn and a Skype Store for Canada)
Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA): appointment pending
Level 1: Static Storing Skype names and Skype-linking Phone Numbers
Storing and linking people’s Skype names is one part. The other is to offer SkypeOut links for PSTN phone numbers.
Tech: Skype’s “skype:” html protocol to launch Skype from a browser link.
Level 2: Dynamic Integrating Skype Presence
Is this person available for a call now? You can show a person’s Skype presence in a web page.
You can also use presence information to inform other site behavior. For example, you might aggregate presence data for a team to create collective presence scores.
Tech: Polling Skype’s web presence services
Level 3: Peering Syncing Skype Profile, Social Graph, and History Data
Skype clients are information rich. You can use that data to enrich profiles, enhance your site’s social graph (who knows whom, how, and how they interact), collect communication histories (who talked to whom, when, for how long), and import chat archives.
You can keep your site's data synced with Skype's by refreshing active connections with your Skype client.
Tech: Using Skype’s client APIs to log in on behalf of a user. With that access you can both read and write to the client, and trigger conversations. At large scale, you will need to operate a Skype client farm.
Skype offers some access to its payment services. PamFax is an example of this, where customers pay with Skype credits for sent faxes.
Tech: Skype publishing and DRM client and web service APIs.
The LotusLive product falls smack dab into Level 1: Static. Just to be clear, although you can associate a Skype name with a colleague, partner, or customer within LotusLive, and while you can launch a Skype call from a LotusLive web page, LotusLive and Skype are not integrated. Repeat: Not Integrated.
The Skype call happens outside of LotusLive.
You cannot add people to an ongoing call from LotusLive.
You cannot trigger a LotusLive session from within a Skype call.
You cannot mix LotusLive callers and Skype callers.
If you want a Skype call, all users must have downloaded Skype, created Skype accounts (not the same as your LotusLive account), and be logged in to the Skype network.
You cannot use LotusLive media assets (presentations, documents) within a Skype call.
LotusLive has no record that the conversation occurred. No institutional memory, unlike conversations that use LotusLive tools and channels.
It is excellent that you can launch a Skype call or conference call from a LotusLive web page. That's enormously useful, a great first step. But that click passes call-starting data to desktop Skype clients; it's a one way trigger.
We'll have to rewrite the model to include new capabilities Skype Journal expects to emerge from the Skype platform by 2010 year end, including elements of the Social Stack.
Login Interop. So you can log in to LotusLive using your Skype ID/password (think OpenID).
IM and file transfer Gateways. So you can participate in a Skype chat even if you don't have Skype installed.
Voice Gateway – Low Def and Hi Def. So Skype users can talk with non-Skype users.
Voice Conferencing Gateway – Low Def and Hi Def. Multiparty, using Skype and non-Skype experiences
Video Conferencing Gateway. So Skype users can join video conferences with people using LotusLive.
Video Messaging Interop. So you can use Skype video to record messages to people in a LotusLive directory.
Contact (address book) data sharing, syncing, creation - bidirectional
Contact Group (team list) data sharing, syncing, creation – bidirectional
Calendar/Schedule Sync.
The SJ SSMM helps us assess current Skype readiness and plan a Skype strategic roadmap for our consulting clients.
Lotusphere 2009 Foreshadows the Death of Telephony. Zeus Kerravala, The Yankee Group: "While some of you may read "the death of telephony" and disagree, I do believe that telephony, as we know it, needs to die in its current form to accelerate UC and CEBP adoption"
Question: with IBM pursuing excellence on a service that comprises voice, video, chat and file transfer in a secure, encrypted environment, and with the stated goals of "working with their partners", would this not result in a situation where IBM would be licensing Skype technology to provide a comprehensive real time multi-media communications infrastructure?
With announcements this week, including some at IBM's annual Lotusphere 2009 event in Orlando, FL, it seems like that question is starting to get some answers..
.... it will integrate Skype™ functionality with LotusLive (www.lotuslive.com), IBM’s new cloud services which are designed to help individuals build communities to work smarter, more effectively and more efficiently across and beyond their own companies. Skype’s voice and video calling will add rich, real-time communications capabilities to LotusLive, making it even easier for enterprises to collaborate in the cloud.
At Lotusphere 2009, IBM demonstrated the new Skype integration into LotusLive Engage, "an integrated suite of tools that combines your network [of contacts] with Web conferencing and collaboration capabilities like file storing and sharing, instant messaging and chart creation."
Today we interviewed Peter Kalmstrom, Skype's Program Manager for Toolbars, who had been attending Lotusphere to assist with the demonstrations. Peter made several points:
This announcement covers only the first step of what will be a series of Skype integrations into the LotusLive offerings.
The integration into LotusLive Engage is targeted at "businesses looking to collaborate inside and outside the organization to easily expand their networks..." In other words for businesses that need to include, say, sub-contractors, third party consultants, suppliers and buyers within their business operation processes.
Within a LotusLive Engage contact profile, "Skype" fields have been added such that when a user clicks on a a name to bring up a profile card, the user can launch a Skype conversation and transfer files with a single click.
The only additional requirement for engaging in a Skype conversation is that the initiating user must have a Skype client open.
In addition to Skype-to-Skype calls, SkypeOut calls can also be made.
Where several contact profile cards have been opened, a user can launch a Skype multi-party call to host a conferencing session.
Due to the nature of LotusLive Engage's web architecture, the resulting Skype access is cross-platform; it does NOT require that the user have a Skype web (FF or IE) toolbar installed.
A session can then also launch a Lotus Web Meeting (also known as a Lotus SameTime Unyte meeting).
Sounds like the Lotusphere demonstrations got the brainstorming going between Skype and IBM. In a concluding statement Peter said:
"We are enthusiastic about the partnership with IBM and we see a lot of areas where we can collaborate and help each other improve our services. We met with a series of executives at IBM during Lotusphere and the general feeling was highly positive."
With the IBM offering, we are seeing one more example of "Skype Everywhere", in this case, being embedded into an offering that is key to IBM's future success in delivering cloud-based outsourced business services.
Phil will have some comments on the technical aspects of this integration along with where he feels there are "deeper" integration opportunities.
eBay Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:EBAY) reported Skype's financials today. eBay CEO Donohoe was pleased with Skype's management and Skype's performance but still didn't see synergies with the rest of the eBay portfolio.
2008Q4 revenue was $145 million, up 26% from the year before, and a run rate of roughly $600 million annually. Revenue growth is substantial but flattening out.
Skype pulled in 35 million new users in Q4, an enthusiasm not seen since the same quarter in 2006.
While Skype has 405 million user accounts on the books, we don't know how many are active. We look to Skype calling and Skype dial-tone for clues.
The Skype community spent 23 billion minutes voice and video calling. Skype-to-Skype minutes: 20.5 billion in Q4, up from 16 billion in Q3. SkypeOut minutes grew 200 million in Q4, from 2.2 to 2.6 billion minutes. That's 44 person-years per quarter.
You can't make or answer Skype calls without your Skype "dial tone" (your Skype client is turned on and you're logged in). Skype estimates the number of people connected to the Skype cloud. One statistic, Daily Peak Simultaneous Online, flirted with 16 million this week, a new high. We'll let you know when Skype crosses that line.
See also:
Douglas A. McIntyre: "Skype added 35 million new users during the quarter and ended the period with more than 405 million registered users. Since most Skype customers use the service for free, all those extra people represent more cost than revenue opportunity."
Doug Caverly: "Donahoe, who hasn't quite completed his first year on the job, might consider making some drastic changes unless he wants eBay's shareholders to start eyeballing him the same way Yahoo's investors looked at Jerry Yang."
Eric Savitz: "After hours eBay shares are down 75 cents, or 5.7%, to $12.53."
Anthony Ha: "Growth in these divisions [PayPal, Skype] can’t make up for the big decline in the marketplaces, and eBay lowered its predictions for the first quarter of 2009 to between $1.80 and $2.05 billion."
Elise Ackerman: "Donahoe said he is "confident that the synergies between Skype and other parts of our portfolio are minimal," and that he is pleased with Skype's momentum. "It is not a distraction," he said."
At CES 2009 COO Scott Durschlag spoke about "liquid communications" and "Skype Wherever, Whenever". InnerPass has developed a business-class hosted document management system; they have been marketing it via private label to over 3000 businesses or project teams on several continents. Over the past year the InnerPass team has developed a Skype Extra application that introduces real time communications, and serves as an interface, into this system. From their website:
InnerPass helps companies control their business critical files from anywhere and anytime. Our applications are delivered thru various Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings that are entirely web-based. InnerPass primarily offers its applications to end users through a network of partners who can private label and embed the software service into their own solutions or provide as a stand alone service.
InnerPass starts out its communications enhanced service, called InnerPass Share and Collaborate, by building persistent document "meeting rooms" that store mission critical documents such as FDA filings, engineering and architectural drawings, legal agreements, real estate papers and other business documents which require:
access across a geographically dispersed team of project stakeholders
persistent storage for asynchronous 24/7/365 access
version management
amongst other features. InnerPass has taken their document management service experience and gone a step further to support file sharing, collaboration and real time communications. They embed, within their own Skype Extra client, the ability to launch and hold real time voice and/or chat conversations, whether informal ad hoc sessions or scheduled conference calls, to discuss the underlying projects, sales meetings or other business team activity.
Using InnerPass Share and Collaborate, a user can set up a "meeting room", store documents, launch conversations and share a designated screen for presentations or demonstrations. The room's host can designate and invite team members from amongst his/her Skype contact list, grant permission to their team members to contribute or modify room content. From anywhere in the client, any team member has the ability to schedule and launch conference calls or group chats using the integrated Skype services.
InnerPass offers four levels of their collaboration service. A free service supports up to 5 meeting rooms with a maximum of 5 participants and 15 days of file storage. Offering perpetual file storage, the Professional Plan at $4.95/month supports 10 meeting rooms and up to 10 participants in each. The Workgroup plan, at $12.95/month, allows up to 20 rooms and 20 people per room. Their last plan, launching in March, is designed for the SMB (Small to Medium Size Business) will offer additional features including access to their hosted full document management service.
Over the past few weeks I have experienced a few sessions using InnerPass; the InnerPass team has been very responsive to suggestions made for improvements, especially with respect to some speed issues that are now resolved. It now works reliably with both Skype 3.8 (still Skype's latest release for general use) and Skype 4.0 Beta 3.
Since obtaining Skype Certification and its subsequent launch last fall, InnerPass has registered over 270,000 users (as shown in the graphic) growing virally amongst Skype users with little publicity. You can download via Tools | Do More | Get Skype Extras using Skype 3.8 or Tools | Extras | Get Skype Extras under Skype 4.0 for Windows beta 3. Normally it should show up as "InnerPass Share and Collaborate" under the "Sharing" category but until a bug is resolved by the Skype Extras team, you may find it as "Share, Collaborate, Communicate".
As mentioned at the beginning, InnerPass's Share and Collaborate service is a representative example of making Skype available anywhere there is an opportunity to benefit from real time conversations. Skype has enabled InnerPass to offer real time conversations to virtual meeting rooms incorporating file and desktop (or screen) sharing. And it brings large enterprise services down to a cost level such that any individual, mobile professional or small business can afford to benefit from a collaborative document management service.
A friend asked me if I know any programmers good with VoIP, that can be trusted with a confidential project. Ping me on tips@skypejournal.com if you're interested. Free agents only. Project starts soon. Thanks.
About 1 minute 40 seconds into this bit on Monday's Oprah show. Asked how it felt to win the election…
Dr. Jill Biden: It was so bittersweet for me just because I was so happy that we had won the election. Our son was in Iraq. Behind the stage we were holding up a computer and we had our bow on -
The U.S. cell phone industry is asking its customers to only text during the inauguration ceremonies tomorrow. From the New York Times:
The largest cellphone carriers, fearful that a communicative citizenry will overwhelm their networks, have taken the unusual step of asking people to limit their phone calls and to delay sending photos. The carriers are also spending millions of dollars to temporarily and substantially upgrade their networks in Washington.
And the article goes on to request that customers delay sending photographs; they warn of delayed text messages and difficulty getting onto the (mobile) Internet.
James Kendrick talks about his problems in San Francisco with AT&T; I experienced similar problems roaming on AT&T in Las Vegas at CES 2009 and in California back in September. At CES this was resolved only by setting my BlackBerry Bold to use just the "2G" network on the advice of an employee of a company who really would know; that tip resulted in a more stable and reliable operation. For those U.S. friends who want to experience a robust, reliable 3G GSM/HSDPA network, I invite you to move to Canada to be on Rogers. Rates may be a bit higher, but it's always there, robust and reliable, in the advertised regions. Best proof: handling SlingPlayer for BlackBerry when driving along the 401 freeway at 100 km/hour.
Online gamers have to give real names (China Daily), eroding the privacy that comes with anonymity and pseudonymity. How long until TOM-Skype is required to compel its users to give up their identities too?
Anonymous communication is a right. It allows political free speech. It protects people who blow the whistle on evil. It lets people call for help without retribution. It empowers people to explore their wild sides. Privately.
So anonymity in Skype is important. Skype users can be anonymous on Skype up to the point they spend money. Will Skype comply when China asks for your real name? Will Skype require TOM-Skype users to give real names too?
During our conversations with Skype COO Scott Durschlag last week at CES, Scott outlined Skype' criteria for its software development going forward.
First was the emphasis on "liquid communications" through statements such as "Skype Whenever, Wherever". Just as today you can pick up any PC or mobile platform and find all the Google Tools (Search, Maps, News, Reader, etc.). Skype wants to be on virtually any platform or device.
Pick up a smartphone, find the Skype button. Turn on the TV, find a Skype button, have a conversation. Open a web browser; start a Skype session. All this to complement Skype on the desktop. Today, besides on the desktop, you can find Skype on over 200 mobile phone handsets, several (Sony) mobile devices, Skypephone and Apple TV. But Scott emphasized, this is only the beginning. It will only start to get real when we see Skype on higher profile devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry or when we start to see Skype seriously back into the hardware device business with vendors such as Philips and iPevo.
Then Scott outlined four benchmark criteria that every implementation of a Skype on any platform or device must meet:
A key reason for Skype's rapid and widespread adoption has been associated with its ease-of-use. Yet Scott says the Skype conversation user experience needs to be even easier to encourage adoption by a broader user base. Developing a more effective user interface has certainly been a focus of the Skype for Windows 4 beta program. At the Skype CES press conference Scott reported that, in a recent survey of users, 88% preferred the new UI to the previous Skype for Windows 3.8. But I'm still wondering if the Skype for Windows team could take a look at Skype for Mac and implement a "drawer" type interface to manage and select the active conversation. For the longer term evolution of Skype clients hopefully Skype also has a look at Dan York's post on Skype's fragmented product strategy.
Security is an issue that I'll leave to Dan York and others who are able to cover this issue more knowledgeably and effectively. Suffice it to say that we would expect security to continue to be a feature of all Skype products, including those that use the mobile voice channel for placing calls from mobile phones.
Two take-aways from these statements:
Fundamentally we should expect Skype, going forward, to be a provider of real time conversation-enabling software on desktop, web, TV and mobile platforms. To use an old telegraphy term: Full Stop! For instance, rather than developing their own social network, we should expect Skype to seek out agreements with other social network service providers, such as the MySpace agreement. Skype is an enabler of real time conversations; it is not in the community building or social networking business. Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, amongst others have already captured that space and done an excellent job at it.
These benchmarks also provide a basis not only for deciding what product offerings Skype will develop but also when they are in a position to release a product.
The new Skype executive team is finally starting to set some benchmarks and guidelines against which we can not only measure executed performance but also have a better understanding of where Skype wants to go.
The power landlords have over tenants is overwhelming, unless restricted by law. The argument: if they want to shut down a service, essentially evicting users, they should be required to give notice and keep things running for a year.
This would allow people to safely migrate their digital objects like photos and videos and blog posts, renew relationships with people in their contacts and agree on where to move, file change of address notices for their businesses, and otherwise minimize the logistical, economic, political, emotional, and familial havoc forcible ejection can create.
Death and Taxes
Should Terms of Service (TOS) defend a user from data loss? from identity nullification? from contact list deletion? from history erasure?
The closure of the Skypecasts service is the example from Skype history that comes to mind. Skype could have given more notice, preserved the site for archival purposes, turned off commenting and new sessions, allowed people to extract contact lists.
Might Skype have designed Skypecasts services with "graceful exit" in mind?
Everything dies. Plants, animals, families, civilizations. Even businesses and web sites.
It's wise to acknowledge mortality and plan for service end-of-life. And it's prudent to build societal safeguards outside of company-issued boilerplate.
From a company's view, it's like setting aside resources for taxes you know you must pay later. Or contingency funds in a project budget.
Maybe this is green service design. Designing web products for recycling and reuse.
It was time for Skypecasts 1.0 to die. What was the right way for Skype to retire the service? How could they have preserved user equity in data and the social capital created through use of the Skypecasts services?
What is the moral thing to do?
The question is broader than the one product.
It goes to the tension between consumer rights, enterprise service rights, and the health of our society. For example, if a province decides to demolish your building, you have many rights under law to contest that decision. In the US, many cities have laws about protecting historic landmark buildings.
In my case, as a user of Google mail, I have no power over Google. If they decide to cancel my account, delete my email or spam all my contacts, that's within their power. They don't need to give notice, or offer me a chance to back everything up. Nobody outside Google will hear my appeal or listen to my concerns.
Societies, civilization and economies have an interest in protecting and preserving the intellectual work of individuals. Even family photos, business blogs, and the most idiotic of forums have value. Value to their creators, value as history, value even as part of the creative commons.
Action.
So what can be done to redress this imbalance of power? I'll suggest six things, by no means a complete or even feasible list.
First, intervene.ArchiveTeam.org is a rapid response team. They will respond to a pending shutdown by backing up as much as they can. They are a volunteer team but just starting. I can easily imagine this being a not-for-profit or a government agency.
Second, prevent. Promote exit strategies in project and product design. This is an education program for product managers. Knowledge about the issues, checklists for planning and conducting a graceful exit, forums for getting help, directories of certified Graceful Exit professionals.
Third, commit. Write model language for EULAs and TOSs. After a company implements preventive measures, give them the language for making promises legally. Plain language, lawyer approved. Even a badge to show at registration to give that safe, comfortable feeling.
Fourth, insure. Create a mutual insurance fund. Put money into a pool to pay for recovery and distribution of digital assets if you should shut down a service. Coverage is proportional to the number of clients and the size of their assets. Risk factors include the health and activity of your business, how well you've engineered preventive measures (discounts for readiness). Money may be paid to outfits like ArchiveTeam.org. Insurance spreads risk, but proper tweaking of rates can incent better behavior; fire insurance led to fire codes (prevention) and fire departments (remediation).
Fifth, advocate. The cause needs a forceful voice for consumers. When companies, large or small, threaten to willfully destroy their customer's digital works, they should be educated, persuaded, and publically shamed as needed. I'm thinking some cross between Electronic Frontier Foundation and Consumers Union.
Sixth, enforce. Teeth, if you will. I want laws that enshrine cherished principles and adapt to changing times and fluid technologies. Injunctive relief is a powerful incentive to do the right thing. Class actions in the public interest might convince the reluctant to do the right thing.
P.S. Dave Winer was the first person to bring this issue to my attention, eight or nine years' ago. His response was to create a specification to hold your structured data from his manila blogging services and features that let you backup your blog in one step. Thanks, Dave.
"With Splashtop, you can access the Internet and your favorite applications seconds after turning on your PC."
"Be online seconds after you turn on your PC. Why wait for Windows to load when you could be surfing the web right away!"
Whether it's Windows 7 or Android, people launch Skype on startup. Connecting to the network gets you "Skype dial tone," so you can make and take Skype calls and chats and sync your history. I want Splashtop on my next laptop.
There's a "new sheriff in town" when it come to running Skype; CES 2009 was a "coming out" event for the new executive team.
CES 2009 provided an opportunity to catch up personally with many of the vendors we have covered in Skype Journal including Skype, Truphone, SlingMedia, Philips and Research in Motion (BlackBerry). I also had a chance to attend a most informative afternoon session of Jeff Pulver's Social Meia Jungle event. Unfortunately Palm closed their suite after only two days of CES; thus, I missed an opportunity to learn more about the Palm Pre on Saturday. As Palm had just been awarded a CES "Best of Show" award, that was a "Huh?" moment when there was only a security guard at the suite's door.. I also wanted to catch iPevo and Nokia but did not have time to get to their booths.
With respect to Skype we had three activities: the Skype press conference, an interview with new COO Scott Durschlag and Skype's first reception event Friday evening. It was our first opportunity to observe the new Skype executive team in action. While I will be providing some more detailed posts, here are a few observations:
For the first time, a senior C-level Skype executive personally acknowledged Skype Journal's participation as a playing a significant role in the Skype ecosystem. Scott thanked us for our loyalty to Skype through all the challenges of the past two years. (That does not mean we'll always be cheerleaders; it's important that we maintain a skeptical and critical viewpoint within the context of the overall IP-based communications space.)
While we have had co-operation in the past, usually via Skype's public relations agency, from many Skype employees at an operating level, it's important for the media to be able to communicate regularly and openly with those at the C-level who are providing overall direction and developing high level strategy. Josh has initiated such openness through his blogging and interviews; now we are seeing it on a person-to-person basis.
On the other hand many times, last week in both the press conference and our discussions, Scott acknowledged the existence of several previous controversial issues, such as technical support, platform development, the role of partners and internal management structure issues as requiring attention by the new management team. The newly recruited management team will be introducing a new level of experience and maturity to address these issues; execution over the next few months now becomes critical.
One future post will cover Skype's new operating and management structure focused on products and geographical markets.
Another will cover Skype's overall focus as a software platform developer and the standards being set for these developments. Within this context I'll provide my perspective on what is meant by "liquid communications".
We'll soon have a follow up post about our discussion with Scott of what Skype's new executive team learned from the TOM-Skype privacy breach last fall and how it became a bonding exercise within Skype as well as establishing some new operating parameters to avoid a repeat.
Most of all, Skype is not sitting back. The are pushing the envelope, but at the same time sending mixed messages externally to partners and developers. But that too will change. Some recent hires have brought maturity to the table.
Finally, for the first time since I have been writing about Skype, we can see some well-articulated high level vision for where Skype is heading, where they need to focus and how they want to play in the real time communications market space at a strategic level.
Looking forward to writing about the evolution of Skype as it grows from a $500MM per year operation with 500 employees into a business with a revenue level and valuation that finally justifies eBay's initial investment in Skype.
Here's Mr. Lund speaking at Le Web 3 in Paris in December 2008. He explains how it feels to lose everything. It's part of a larger presentation on risk, entrepreneurship, the downturn, vision vs. hallucination, timing, selling, strategy, and action.
Usually i am the first or second to blog about it. Today, two other fanatic Skypers warned me that I should blog. I was aware, but too busy. 15 million concurrent users online today, congratulations Skype and its users!
So, what is exceptional about this? Not that million added of course, not the 84 days it took to reach the 15 million, but it could be that we add another million before the end of June. In that case it will be the first time in Skype history that we cross 4 times a million milestone in one Northern Hemisphere “school year.”
Anyway, Skype shows a quite strong growth the last months!
This is the worst CES in decades, according to some who've been exhibiting that long. Vast sections of the floor were unsold. You could walk without getting crushed. There were few traffic jams. Shorter lines for food. And easy parking. Attendance was down. Those who came left early and spent less.
So I'm looking at all these exhibiting factories, brand name manufacturers, wholesalers, and the retailers shopping for products to put into their sales pipeline.
The retailers are playing it safe, cutting back on the number of SKUs and how much they're ordering. The ones they're buying from are over capacity and starved for cash. That's bad during a credit crisis.
Strapped manufacturers can't count on loans they once got to afford the months of delay between order and payment. Some are giving up equity for working capital. Others are paying higher rates with harsh terms.
Say you're Wal-Mart, sitting on billions in cash. How many of your suppliers will run out of cash before delivering product? Or will be unable to replenish your inventory when their products sell well? You will start to demand cash flow statements from your suppliers. Favored suppliers may get better terms like faster payment or less agonizing returns policies. You may even offer select suppliers bridge or inventory financing loans.
In the post-credit era, those with cash are kings.
Maybe you're Skype. You have hardware partners who make phones with Skype embedded or pre-loaded, webcams and headphones that bundle Skype. Firms like Vosky that build telecom gateways. What can you do in this environment to support those suppliers?
Low hanging fruit:
Suspend your five-percent-of-retail logo license fee, cut it dramatically, or rebate it through a cooperative advertising program. I talked to name brand headset and webcam vendors who dropped out of the Skype co-brand program because five percent of retail income (10-20% of wholesale) doesn't pay.
Help manufacturers of high-end gear craft value offerings that still exploit Skype's high quality audio and video.
Bring gear partners together for joint marketing to retailers. Skype's Wal-Mart model is one approach.
Share in-depth market research and consumer behavior insights so designers can make products Skype users will buy.
Remodel your online store and create a process for ongoing innovation in driving the right Skype users at the right time to the right products. Perhaps even making the store more social. And don't forget the department for Skype at Work buyers.
CES 2009 is over. Taxi rides and shoe shines are half of CES 2008. Liquidity trumps innovation in 2009 as sectors consolidate and power changes hands in consumer electronics.
Skype announced Skype Access for the Mac last week. It is a new feature that lets you know when you can buy Wi-Fi time, connects you, and pays by the minute with your Skype credits.
Boingo is Skype's first Wi-Fi partner. However it seems other aggregators would like to be available through Skype Access.
The art on the left is a mockup of what Skype Access might look like with multiple suppliers. (credit: Whisher) You can see multiple hotspots, different rates, including free ones, if a password is required, and whether you can pay with your Skype account.
He helped invent blogging as a new writing form. He defined science writing in the blogosphere; an intriguing mix of facts, analysis, explanation and context. He also was one of the first to model bilingual blogging, using English or French to fit each topic. He had a joyous enthusiasm for science news storytelling and shared it abundantly on Slashdot.
At a Skype's CES 2009 press conference today recently appointed COO Scott Durschlag provided the first hints of a vision statement for Skype under its new executive team along with some initial software offerings that hint at the direction Skype is taking towards "liquid communications" or "Skype Whenever, Wherever".
In leading up to the new software announcements, Scott made a few points about Skype's recent accomplishments and focus going forward:
Skype now delivers 8% of the world's telecom minutes through clients that now support 28 languages
New software will drive a liquid experience on the desktop, web, TV and mobile devices
A key goal is to liberate the Skype experience from a captive device (desktop) to more user aware devices (mobile, TV as well as embedded into appliances)
41% of Skype calls on Christmas day involved video, only to be surpassed at 47% on New Years day.
New software offerings have to pass a bar of four basic criteria:
high call quality
super simple user interface
sensitivity to power management issues
security
He then went on to talk about new software offerings:
Release of Skype Lite, a thin client for Java-enabled mobile phones with Skype for Android to be available within a few days on Android Market on T-Mobile's G1TM and Skype Lite general availability in the U.S. (in addition to several countries previously announced) resulting in Skype availability on over 100 mobile smartphones.
Internally developed new Skype "SILK" audio codec which is twice as efficient with respect to bandwidth requirements for the audio and video experience.
Skype for Mac 3.0 to be available by year end with the feature set of Skype 4.0 for Windows.
This afternoon Phil and I spent an hour with Scott discussing the restructuring, support issues, the TOM Skype Breach and how Skype will work with its developer partners to provide a win-win direction for the development and marketing of partner applications. These topics will be the subject of future posts over the next week.
First impression: it's the first event where a senior Skype executive has provided in a public forum an outline of its vision, guidelines for achieving that vision and how it wants to work in the real time communication and IP-based conversation space. The real challenge now lies in the execution.
Skype in Schools is a directory of teacher and educational technologists, their want-ads to find other schools to talk with over Skype, and shared experiences about using Skype in schools. It's becoming a great resource. Is your school Skyping yet?
This is our second in-house built audio codec especially designed for calls over the internet with superb quality. The Super Wideband Audio codec will help you most on lousy network conditions and when you have lower bandwidth available, although it also improves quality in normal conditions too.
In the Skype 4.x Discussion Public Chat Raul Liive goes on to say: "it's superior over SVOPC in every usage area, but it comes best out in the low bw or loose internet conenction cases". However, the legacy SVOPC codec remains available to address backward compatibility requirements.
Other new features include;
MySpaceIM with Skype (functionality carried over from 3.8)
Option to disable uPnP and Nat-PMP
eBay browser highlighter bundled
Added Philips SPC 1330 NC as High Quality Video camera
along with an improvement in the Instant Messaging layout and numerous bug fixes listed in the release notes.
As I am at CES where my laptop still has the last released version 3.8 of Skype for Windows in order to access features such as Public Chat creation, I will not be able to try this hotfix out until I return home this weekend (where my desktop has the 4.0 beta 3). But if you have a PC running the beta version, it's definitely worth checking out this hotfix. I am curious to see if they also fixed the "flashing technical call info" problem.
Obviously feedback about :"hidden mysteries" should go back to Skype's forum for reporting issues; however, if you have experience with the new codec, tell us about it in the Comments.
Working to confirm Skype’s Skype Lite will be available for the Android mobile operating system.
UPDATE: TechChuck seems to be quoting an embargoed CNET story no longer online:
"Skype announced on Wednesday the forthcoming release of Skype Lite for Google Android and other Java-enabled phones. Skype Lite marks the communication company's first native VoIP client for Java. Skype is submitting the app to Google's Android Market on Thursday morning, though it could take Google a few days to offer it for download."
Screen sharing is a feature, not a collaboration service. Skype has left the door open for all its developer partners to continue to build their businesses with Skype embedded into their offering, especially when it comes to fully featured collaboration services.
When you come from a technical background it's easy to confuse features with a complete business offering. For instance, "screen sharing" or "desktop sharing" is a feature appearing in many Web 2.0/Voice 2.0 communications applications and services. But a full collaboration offering for a business environment involves bringing together several features that deliver a significant ROI to the customers.
Just to recall my own career history, working with Quarterdeck we did have some "utility" products that initially generated revenues of up to $50MM per year. But eventually they became features within a larger business offering - in this case the operating system itself. Memory management and multi-tasking were not always easy sells but had a market at the time. Today these features are hidden within Windows. It took Microsoft about six versions of Windows to get multi-tasking and memory management right. We also had the same experience developing a web browser; Microsoft eventually incorporated web browsing into the operating system as a feature.
I have also been close to the collaboration market for many years. In fact Webex is an outgrowth of a whiteboarding service that Quarterdeck had acquired. When Quarterdeck evaporated (was sold to Symantec for remnants of software intellectual property), the team with whiteboarding experience went on to found Webex. Recently acquired by Cisco, Webex is now a major player in large enterprise collaboration activities, including desktop or screen sharing. It requires an entirely different underlying robust and scalable infrastructure to meet large and medium enterprise collaboration needs
Yesterday Skype added a screen sharing feature to Skype for Mac. We can expect it to show up in Skype for Windows in the near future. But, as I mentioned in my post about Skype for Mac, it is a feature, not a full collaboration environment. There are several Skype Partners who offer a full business collaboration environment; they are not threatened by Skype's screen sharing feature. In fact, they may make Skype users more aware of desktop sharing and start looking for a more complete collaboration environment.
What is in a fully featured collaboration environment?
A common feature for all is that they support real time collaboration sessions for as many as 500 participants. That's not going to happen in any basic Skype client.
Secondly Skype for Mac's screen sharing involves turning the user's desktop into a virtual webcam that goes through the Skype video channel. In other words you can do screen sharing or Skype video calling but not both concurrently. With the offerings mentioned below, the desktop sharing and other collaboration activity is via TCP/IP channels that are independent of the Skype video channel
Take the recently launched Skype Extra "InnerPass File Sharing and Collaboration". Here is an enterprise document management company that has found a way to add Skype features that ride on top of their document management infrastructure. That infrastructure supports engineering drawings, FDA records, and business contracts amongst other document-intensive, mission critical documentation. As a result they have developed a Skype Extra that creates persistent "document rooms" which business teams may access for real time conferencing sessions. But the document rooms can be accessed by individual team members between these team conferencing sessions. Version tracking is an important feature here. (A more detailed post on InnerPass's offering is coming soon.)
Yugma provides the ability to collaborate across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. There are session moderator features to switch presenter, start and stop recording, manage participants' role as active or passive, etc. It's a complete collaboration environment where the voice channel could be Skype's multi-party calling or, for more robust voice conferencing, use HiDef Conferencing.
Lotus Sametime Unyte has been the poster child for an entrepreneurial Skype partner. Now within the IBM fold, it is being targeted to IBM's enterprise customers within a larger role of collaboration that was pioneered by Lotus Notes.
No, Skype is not going after Webex or Yugma's or InnerPass's or the Lotus Sametime markets. Skype's screen sharing is another feature that's a peer with file sharing, video calling, IM/chat or SMS messaging. It's a person-to-person calling complement; it's not for highly robust, readily scalable business grade collaboration services.
Phil, I'm sorry but Skype for Mac's screen sharing, to which I had access about a week before yesterday's announcement, is a feature not a collaboration service. Let my repeat my statement in my initial post on Skype for Mac:
Skype for Mac's screen sharing feature is sufficient to support discussion issues as a complement to a voice and/or chat conversation; it is NOT by any means a replacement for fully featured desktop or application sharing offerings such as Yugma, Inner Pass or IBM's Lotus Sametime Unyte. It's "just" screen sharing. In fact, it is one of two options on the Skype for Mac's "Share" button, the other being file sharing/transfer.
Bottom line: There are lots of opportunities for independent developers who want to develop a complete offering that makes an independent business.
Update: Alec Saunders, who as Microsoft's original Internet Explorer product manager, led the effort to make MSIE a feature within the operating system - and effectively killed Quarterdeck's web browser, has his comments on this situation. Bottom line here is that Inner Pass and IBM are embedding Skype into other services they already offer.
Skype's bundling free screen sharing into Skype's software will popularize the feature to hundreds of millions of people. This makes the market for online conferencing bigger.
The bundling will also kill the freemium business model (try our free version, upgrade to our posh version) conferencing companies use to get customers. This will hurt the following Skype developers directly:
Back in mid-2005, Bill Campbell asked "Does Skype eat its children?" when Skype competed with presence developers with Skypeweb. Those developers abandoned Skype. Since then Skype competed with video developers, who've abandoned Skype. And with Outlook integration developers. And with Salesforce integration developers. And with mobile developers.
Skype's ecosystem is littered with the bleached bones of third-party software developers. They filled gaps in Skype's product line. They made Skype's network more valuable. They bet their jobs on Skype's partner program being safe from Skype itself.
Clearly, a bad bet.
Skype desktop sharing will be wildly successful. Building it into Skype clients and putting it one or two clicks to add sharing to a call makes it 10 to 100 times more convenient than other systems. Ubiquity will change the way people think about desktop sharing the way ubiquity is changing how people think about video calling.
WebEx-style meeting, sales, training, tech-support, and webinar services comprise a multibillion dollar industry. Skype desktop sharing will be disruptive to the industry: vastly cheaper, more convenient, more social. We'll hunt for market share stats this year.
So while this announcement is great for Skype, the choice will chill investment by software development partners. Platforms must be safe, trusted, with manageable risk. And platforms must foster creativity, innovation, and opportunity.
Skype's choice subverts developer trust. That's one hell of a brand note.
Tonight out at the "ShowStoppers" event at MacWorld in San Francisco, Skype announced the new 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X. The new version will apparently be available for download tomorrow, January 6, 2009, from Skype's website. [NOTE: I will update this post with the download link when it becomes available.]
Continuing Skype's rather fragmented product strategy, they have rolled out some new features in this 2.8 beta release that will at least stop us Mac users from whining about Windows users always getting the good stuff first. Here's the quick list of what Skype notes is in this release:
Skype Access
Screen Sharing
Improved chat management: ability to sort chats in the drawer and set priorities to chats
Quick Add: much easier to add people to chats
Mood message chat: mood message updates from your friends as chat messages
Large avatars: 256x256 pixels
Hidden avatars in incoming contact requests
Ability to add your own notes to contacts
Courtesy of Skype's PR team, I've had a chance to play with the 2.8 beta for a couple of weeks and have these thoughts below...
SKYPE ACCESS
Probably the largest "new" feature is "Skype Access", a service that lets you go to any of the 100,000 Boingo Wi-Fi hotspots and - using Skype - connect to the Boingo hotspot. When you connect, you pay on a per-minute basis and the fee (roughly 20 cents per minute) is deducted from your Skype Credit. You do not have to pay the Boingo monthly fee. You do not have to pay any hourly or daily fees.
Judging from the news release and pre-release info, Skype is immensely proud of this feature but I will be honest and say it does little for me. I just don't use Wi-Fi hotspots as much while traveling (especially now that I'm paying for a wireless broadband adapter). However, I can see how this could be of value. If all you wanted to do was crack open your Mac and send some email, this gives you a great way to do that on a per-minute basis. If I were a heavy user of Wi-Fi hotspots, I'd want to do the math to figure out if it would just be cheaper to buy a monthly Boingo access.
Regardless, it's an interesting move for Skype to get into the business of connecting you to Internet access.
SCREEN SHARING
The coolest feature of the 2.8 beta is a "screensharing" feature where you can share either your entire screen or just a portion of your screen with the Skype user on the other end. Now, this works with all other versions of Skype because it replaces your video stream with the screen sharing. So a Mac Skype user can share their screen with Windows and Linux users.... which is pretty cool.
It's hard to show in a blog post, but if you watch my screencast about the 2.8 beta, you can see it in action:
You can share either your entire desktop or just a section of your screen. You can also resize the section you are sharing while you are in the middle of sharing. When you stop sharing, you just flip back to showing your video.
CHAT PRIORITIZATION
By far the most useful feature I've found in the 2.8 beta is the ability to set the "priority" of a chat session - and then sort your chat sessions by priority in the Mac's "drawer" way of displaying chat sessions. I can just control-click a chat (either a private or public chat) and then go down to the "Set Priority" menu choice:
You can then sort the chats based on their priority using the drop-down menu at the top of the "drawer":
You can also sort based on title or date. Personally I've found the Sort by Priority to be very useful when you have, as I do, a zillion chats open at any one time. (And yes, I report to RJ, our CTO, so his chat gets the highest priority! ;-) )
MOOD MESSAGE CHAT - AND FOLLOWING (like Twitter)
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the 2.8 beta is the new "Mood Messages" pseudo-chat that you can enable in the Advanced part of the Skype Preferences:
Once you enable the "Mood Message Chat", you get a new chat window that opens up that shows you the mood messages of all of your contacts:
It also very nicely lets you set your mood message simply by typing in the window as you would to any other chat window. This is quite nice for someone like me who almost never changes my mood message in the regular window.
This actually makes Skype mood messages useful to me.
However, because of that other option that says "Show iTunes song in my mood message", you rapidly wind up seeing that a whole lot of people have that option checked and your Mood Message Chat rapidly fills with updates of music people listen to. What if you don't want to see their updates? Well, Skype has made it so that you can "follow" updates from your contacts through a simple menu choice:
The down side here is that if you enable the Mood Message Chat, you are following all your contacts by default and have to go through and "unfollow" (i.e. uncheck the menu choice) people you don't want to follow. It would be great if Skype had a "follow by default" or a "stop following all contacts" choice... something along those lines to let you control who you are following.
The intriguing aspect here is that this enables you to turn Skype mood messages into the kind of status updates that you typically have in Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other zillion services offering status updates. The great thing here is that it is simply another Skype chat window like all your other chats. (Of course, you can get a Skype chat for Twitter using "twitter4skype", but this is now with Skype mood messages.)
I think, though, for it to reach any kind of real usage, you need more people to enable this feature (it is off by default) and actually start using it - and for that it also needs to be on more platforms.
[As a tease, I'll mention that there is a way to integrate this mood message chat with Twitter, so anything I type there also shows up in my Twitter stream... but I'll write about that in a separate blog post as it's not directly tied to the 2.8 beta release. Soon...]
QUICK ADD
Another nice feature is the ability to quickly add someone to a chat through a button at the top of the chat window. You click on the window and start typing in a contact's name:
Before you could always drag-and-drop a contact from your main Skype window into a chat, but now you can use this quick add button. It is particularly useful if you have a large number of Skype contacts.
NOTES ON CONTACTS
Another useful feature is the ability to add private notes to each of your Contacts. So you could store information about how you know the person... their interests... basically anything you want as it is a free-form text field:
What's not yet clear to me is where these notes are stored. Are they accessible through multiple Skype clients if you were logged in on multiple machines? Or are they tied to the machine where you create the Notes? I'm guessing that they are stored with the local client like chat histories are.... but I'd need to have multiple installations of the 2.8 beta to really know this.
OTHER FEATURES
Skype also added a few other features:
New set of icons
Large avatars: You can now have images up to 256x256 pixels in size.
Hidden avatars in incoming contact requests - so you aren't exposed to images that might be offensive.
There are undoubtedly other features that we'll find as we work with it more.
CONCLUSION
So with this 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X, Skype provides some interesting new capabilities. I can see the screen sharing being quite useful to show people what's on my screen. The chat prioritization is great for heavy chat users like me. The possibilities of actually making the Mood Messages useful intrigue me. Frequent Wi-Fi hotspot users may find the Skype Access feature useful and economical.
All in all, it's a great evolution of the Skype client for Mac OS X.
I do wish, though, as I've discussed before, that Skype's product strategy weren't so fragmented. Sure, as a Mac user, it's fun for a few minutes to have some features that Windows users don't have... but that fun rapidly fades when I can share my desktop with a Windows user but they can't share their's. And they almost never use the Mood Messages because it's not convenient to do so.
Perhaps most annoyingly, I am currently in a position where I am helping some Windows users get started with Skype and so I'm trying to help them with their Skype client... when mine is markedly different. It's a frustrating experience. I do hope Skype's new management can help converge the product streams so that the user experience (and technical support experience) is closer between platforms (while, yes, acknowledging that platforms have UI/behavior differences). We'll see.
In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy using this new beta on my Mac and seeing what else might be inside the release.
Again, Skype indicates that the 2.8 beta will be available tomorrow, January 6, 2009, for download for Mac OS X users.
I'll look forward to reading what you all think...
At MacWorld's Showstoppers event this evening Skype announced Skype for Mac 2.8 beta, with two major new features as well as several minor ones. Screen Sharing
The most impressive feature is a form of basic screen sharing. Either a segment of your screen or the full screen is converted into a virtual webcam such that the screen can be viewed in any Skype client via the Skype video channel. While only a Mac can currently be a source for this screen sharing it can be viewed on any Windows, Mac or Linux client as video.
Skype for Mac's screen sharing feature is sufficient to support discussion issues as a complement to a voice and/or chat conversation; it is NOT by any means a replacement for fully featured desktop or application sharing offerings such as Yugma, InnerPass or IBM's Lotus Sametime Unyte. It's "just" screen sharing. In fact, it is one of two options on the Skype for Mac's "Share" button, the other being file sharing/transfer.
Below is an example of a full screen image of a shared MacBook screen as seen in a detached Skype video window on my Windows laptop.
Skype Access
The second major feature, Skype Access, provides WiFi access for your MacBook or MacBook Pro via any Boingo access point. While I'm told it has been tested at many of the over 100,000 Boingo hotspots worldwide, I could not get it to work at a local Canadian Starbucks listed as a Boingo hotspot location. But then, this is still beta (and the problem may be with Boingo's interface with Bell Mobility).
More importantly is to look at the "use case" for Skype Access. Cost for using Skype Access over Boingo is US$0.22/€0.16/C$0.23 per minute using Skype credits.
Within a user's home country, Skype Access is probably more expensive than local alternatives; this is certainly the case in Canada. However, I can see the value if I am outside the home country and wanting to make Skype/SkypeOut calls, check email or do some web browsing at airports, restaurants, coffee shops and other Boingo hotspots as an alternative to much higher cost roaming wireless calls (for instance roaming U.S. to Canada on Rogers runs at $1.75 per minute) or $40 per day Internet access charges at some European hotels.
With unlimited use Boingo subscriptions at $21.95/month for North America or $59/month Global, Skype Access is more appropriate for the occasional traveler as opposed to the hardened road warrior.
It reminds me of the use case for PamFax where you can send faxes directly from, say, your hotel room for about $0.20 per page while avoiding a hotel's much higher $1.00/page charge for faxing. One other common feature between Skype Access and PamFax: both use Skype credits as the primary currency. Other features in Skype for Mac 2.8 beta:
Skype for Mac 2.8 continues the use of a "drawer" attached to a Skype chat window; from the list of active chat sessions shown in the drawer you can select which session you want to view. But now there are three levels of prioritization available for those chat sessions. In addition chats can be sorted by name or date/time.
The process for adding contacts to a chat session now simply involves clicking the "Add a Contact" button and entering the added contact's name.
Your Contacts' Mood Messages can be tracked via a "Mood Message" chat session. While this can currently only be initiated on Skype for Mac 2.8, your mood message chat session will show up as a chat session on, say, a Windows client logged into the same account. Neat for keeping up-to-date on mood message changes, especially when a mood message provides location or reference URL information; it provides a Twitter-like experience.
Add notes to contacts: when you go into a Contact's profile there is a separate tab for entering personal notes about that contact.
Dan York, with a lot more Skype for Mac experience than I have had (I just acquired a MacBook ten days ago), has provided a much more detailed review of all the new features He has also produced an excellent You Tube video for his Emerging Tech Talk series:
Over the past few years we have seen the evolution of several conversation communities, some simply employing instant messaging; others employing both instant messaging and voice. Skype is the primary example with its support of IM, voice and video as well as auxiliary features such as file sharing (and, as announced tonight, basic screen sharing) but we are also seeing these services diffuse into Google, via GTalk's voice and chat capability, MSN Live via Live Messenger, and, in spite of its trying to define who they are, Yahoo.
Truphone is a mobile voice calling service that I have used for a couple of years from a Nokia N95-1; it became critical in a situation I encountered in Germany two years ago. I have liked both the quality of the voice calls as well as the user interface, especially its use of the device's native address book for initiating a call. While they have had some hiccups with their recent product launches, Truphone has become the leader in providing low cost calling from the iPhone while breaking the carrier barrier via Apple's App Store. I will soon be reporting on Truphone Anywhere for BlackBerry. Now, under recently appointed CEO Geraldine Wilson, Truphone is making a move to grow their user base rapidly by leveraging the user bases of other services.
This evening at the MacWorld Showstoppers event Truphone announced an enhanced Truphone for iPhone providing connectivity to these four conversation communities. Supporting both instant messaging and voice conversations, voice calls to, say, Skype contacts are free provided they go over a WiFi connection. Calls to these communities can also be made over a carrier's 3G network, usually at the cost of a local call. In addition Truphone is providing access to Twitter as one additional messaging service accessible via Truphone's iPhone application.
In my interview this evening with new Truphone CEO Geraldine Wilson, she pointed out:
Using Skype as an example, Truphone's enhancements set up an appropriate Skype client on a Truphone gateway and complete the call to the Skype contact, taking advantage of Skype's peer-to-peer architecture such that there are no resulting termination charges.
By introducing instant messaging, Truphone is recognizing the key role IM is taking on in IP-based conversations where a conversation may start over a chat session and migrate to a voice session if deemed appropriate.
Truphone sees the introduction of these enhancements as a key to building the Truphone user community; Truphone generates revenue through offering low cost calling to/from the landline and mobile PSTN network.
Truphone is looking at adding BlackBerry and Android to their supported platforms for this service over the next few months. Key here are devices that support an application store in order to make user access to these services simple and trivial.
To avoid high roaming charges it is recommended that Truphone for iPhone be used either over a WiFi connection anywhere worldwide but only over a user's home country 3G carrier.
These new features go live on next Monday, January 12.
Some outstanding questions:
Given that the Truphone application needs to be active for conversations, how will this work when other applications are open? Currently if I have Truphone as the open application on my iPhone, I can receive free Truphone calls and my presence will be indicated to other Truphone for iPhone users if I am in their "Favorites" tab. However, if I am in another iPhone application, I cannot receive "free" Truphone calls over WiFi; nor is my presence indicated to others. I look forward to seeing how the enhanced Truphone handles Instant Messaging when Truphone is not the "open" application on the iPhone. This is where BlackBerry's full multi-tasking capability is a major advantage over the iPhone.
Calling Skype contacts involves providing your SkypeID and password. What security is in place to maintain the confidentiality of this information. What other security aspects are compromised as a result of placing the calls via a connection to a gateway that supports the caller's Skype client.
What is Skype's reaction to having Truphone siphon off what could otherwise potentially be SkypeOut revenues while leveraging the Skype user base and using the "free" aspect of Skype? We know Skype is working to launch mobile phone applications, probably this week at CES. With iSkoot and the Skypephone on 3's networks, as we learned at last year's eComm 2008 iSkoot presentation, a portion of carrier revenues are shared between Skype and iSkoot.
A major step forward in making low cost calls worldwide, Truphone's moves once again emphasize that WiFi is becoming an ever growing alternative connection option to making wireless calls. At the same time it will be interesting to see how the business model plays out in a world where the cost of voice calling continues to move towards zero.
Unconfirmed, coming out of MacWorld today. This is different from the Skype-Boingo 2005 co-marketing agreement for Skype Zones. Not sure if the Boingo iPhone app (news release) is related. More detail soon.
Jim Courtney and I are heading to Las Vegas for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. We'll cover Skype's press conference and see what interviews we can arrange. We'll also look for members of the Skype ecosystem to show us their latest. And for close-ups with innovators and Skype's rivals.
I'm also going to the "Jobless" MacWorld Expo in San Francisco Tuesday morning.
Please share your tips with us. Email, twitter, or Skype Me. Love to see you there.
Gear to pack for CES:
Digital camera, Digital camera, Flip MinoHD, desk tripod, monopod, batteries, audio recorder, iPod, iPod cable, iPod earbuds, usb cable extender, Ethernet cable extender, power squid, laptop, laptop power brick, laptop headset, webcam, mouse, memory stick, usb hub, n800, n800 power, mobile phone, mobile power, ziplock bags.
OnState's Virtual PBX incorporates Skype as a contributor to lower cost, yet more productive, small business communications management activities.
A mainstay for communications in any office with at least a few employees is the need to accept incoming calls, determine who is calling, what is their general need and getting the call to the right employee. In the interest of effective and productive customer and supplier relations, calls need an automated way to reach sales personnel, customer care, accounting or technical support or "the boss". Preferably this call management should be handled without any human intervention; over the past twenty or more years this has resulted in the evolution of increasingly effective Private Branch Exchange ("PBX") offerings from telecomm equipment suppliers. And it traditionally required a reasonably demanding capital expense, from $15,000 up.
The basic functions of a PBX include:
Receiving and answering a call from an external caller
Offering a menu of options to determine to whom the call should be connected
Transferring the call in response to answers provided either by entering alphanumeric or dialpad information or by using speech recognition.
Accepting, recording and managing voice mails if nobody is available to take a call
Ability to make a subsequent call transfer if deemed necessary
However, IP-based communications technology along with web 2.0 tools provide opportunities for enhancing the PBX to build more productive and effective business processes when it comes to managing relationships with both suppliers and customers. For instance:
An individual agent portal for overall conversation management
Intelligent call queuing would permit an "occupied" employee to either put a caller into a queue for answering when available or transfer a caller to another employee with the skills to handle the call
Chat sessions can be offered as either an alternative or complement to voice conversations
Building a searchable call archive integrated into an email system such as GMail.
Making call transfer destinations independent of the recipient's geographical location, whether "in the office", at a home office or out "on the road".
Reducing and minimizing the costs associated with various PBX services.
Building on its Call Center experience OnState has launched its Virtual PBX which provides all this functionality as well as:
Receives calls via Skype, SkypeIn as well as Local DID numbers and toll free numbers in over 20 countries
Call transfer to employees, agents and other designated recipients on their Skype-enabled PC, landline phones or mobile independent of geographical location
An extension-based agent/employee/representative portal for managing incoming calls, including call waiting notification, queuing and redirection
Bottom line; for as little as $15 per month per seat and no capital investment, small to medium enterprises and organizations as well can establish an enhanced PBX capability to facilitate both more productive business processes as well as more cost effective communications.
In my early 50's youth when I was delivering afternoon newspapers in somewhat remote Saskatoon, Saskatchewan I always tried to be at one customer's home at 4:30. Why? At that time the only television viewable came via high rooftop antennae from transmitters far away (~400 miles) near Minot, North Dakota. If atmospheric conditions were favorable my customer would let me watch half an hour of a kid's program (probably Howdy Doody); most of the time we got to watch it masked by a snowy blizzard of faint reception. Getting any type of television reception at that time and location was, at best, a challenge and an adventure.
Fast forward 55 years to this past week's 2009 New Years day afternoon. While riding as a passenger in our car, we sped along Ontario's main 401 freeway as I watched the CBC Sports color telecast of the third period of the NHL Winter Hockey Classic (live from Wrigley Field) on my BlackBerry Bold. It was one more test to carry out during the public beta of SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry.
I viewed all the action in full color; equally as impressive was the quality of the stereo sound (which "swells" out well beyond the device). The only frame freezing probably occurred as my BlackBerry switched between cell tower sites. Otherwise I was experiencing a crisp picture with sharp colors and clear sound coming from my home cable TV box. Talk about convergence - a Rogers cable TV signal being transmitted back out over Rogers High Speed Internet to a BlackBerry Bold via Rogers 3G wireless.
I have provided the detailed basic requirements for using SlingPlayer for BlackBerry Mobile on my recent Web Worker Daily post: "A New BlackBerry Experience Goes Beta: SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry" along with a history of SlingMedia's hardware and software products. Note especially that it requires a version 4.5 firmware upgrade of any BlackBerry 8x20. While it works via a WiFi connection on all supported devices, over a 3G HSDPA network (Rogers, AT&T and T-Mobile in North America) it only works currently on the BlackBerry Bold.
Over the past 15 months I have been using SlingPlayer Mobile for Symbian on a Nokia N95-1 over WiFi connections. It has been a consistently reliable experience over that period; it also provided me with some benchmarks for testing the BlackBerry version's user interface and video/audio quality. Here are some of the experiences I have had with SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry on my BlackBerry Bold 9000 over the past few days of beta trials:
a rock concert on HDNet where percussion, guitar chords and voice cover a wide audio frequency range
a rebroadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas eve concert on PBS where over 200 voices, soloists and the orchestra provide an excellent source for testing the clarity of audio as well as the resolution of the video
several sports events, including fast moving football and hockey action as a test for shadowing and pixelation
Oprah Winfrey making Skype High Quality Video calls
In all cases the experience on the Bold took full advantage of the Bold's processor power, network speed, native stereo audio and its widely acclaimed "stunning" color display. Simply stated, I became immersed in the programs I was watching to the point where the experience was transparent to the underlying technology. My only negative was more physiological than technical: I found full "playing surface" views of sports events could cause a bit of dizziness due to focusing on all the action within the Bold's display size; holding the device further away from my eyes addressed this issue.
While I had some excellent viewing and listening experiences, a few comments:
instead of a full visual representation of the cable box remote control, the remote control buttons are represented on a menu bar across the bottom of the screen. Note that in addition to the icons on the menu bar, one can "fast-track" to an item using the keyboard (for instance, M=Menu, O=Power On/Off, etc.)
scrolling across any of the three menu bars is done via the BlackBerry's trackball.
audio comes out by default over the Bold's speakers without the need to click on the "speaker" button
the "Favorites" menu bar picks up your "Favorites" channels stored via SlingPlayer for Windows1
changing channels may cause a video freeze up for 10-20 seconds; this is an issue SlingMedia is trying to minimize.
no apparent viewing experience difference whether using either a WiFi or 3G connection
needs a bar to display volume level when using the BlackBerry's volume +/- buttons
switches readily between a full screen video and a display that incorporates one of three menu bars
needs to "reconnect" if you switch to another BlackBerry application while viewing (SlingPlayer application remains open in background but disconnects from the source); the "reconnect" time is 5 to 15 seconds.
battery life on the Bold for continuous reception of a broadcast via WiFi is about 2-1/2 to 3 hours.; it's probably shorter on other 8xx0 models.
I have also been able to get SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry beta working on a BlackBerry 8820 over WiFi where, once again, it provided an excellent true reproduction of the video signal within the limitations of the 8820's video and audio hardware.
it can also be used to operate the PVR on my cable TV set-top box.
latency: at midnight New Year's Eve, SlingPlayer for BlackBerry Mobile rang in the new year seven seconds after the broadcast version directly connected to a cable service.
you can almost read those real time scoreboard bars that appear across the top of the screen during football and hockey broadcasts.
And, for now for those not able to take advantage of SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry due to its current specifications:
it works over a GSM/EDGE connection on unsupported BlackBerry 8xx0 devices; however, SlingMedia does not guarantee the resulting performance. This is really an application for 3G or faster wireless networks only; an attempt to connect my Bold in a rural area where there was only EDGE wireless failed.
once SlingMedia releases this HSDPA version of SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry they will look at doing a version that runs over Verizon's, Bell Mobility's and Telus's 3G EV-DO network
A suggestion for RIM: SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry demonstrates the full potential of the Bold's and 8900 Curve's 480x320/360 video display. Let's hope that newer versions of their firmware can achieve the same level of high quality video on the YouTube player and other video applications supported by these devices.
If you have both a SlingBox and one of the supported BlackBerries, upgrade your firmware (where necessary) and give SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry a try (U.S., Canada, U.K.). Sling Media is now looking for feedback from its targeted user public.
With over 500 channels to choose from, at any location worldwide where I can find a WiFi or (unlimited data plan) 3G HSDPA connection, television broadcast viewing has come a long way from having, in a fixed location, a single channel available only when atmospheric conditions permit.
SlingPlayer for BlackBerry has significant potential for business road warriors; in addition to the entertainment aspect, it also provides immediate access to "breaking news" and business broadcasts from taxis, airports, coffee shops, restaurants (mind your etiquette, however). For those states considering legislation prohibiting texting while driving, they may also want to include viewing videos as a potential distraction.
(I would have put up a screen capture; however, the video does not make it to the BlackBerry screen capture programs I employ, including PC desktop programs.)
1SlingMedia's remotely stored "Favorites" feature will be supported by a future version of SlingPlayer for Mac.
I've been wracking my brain for the defining Skype moments of 2008.
It comes down to Skype's identity. The marketing, psychology, defining oneself sense; not the login, badge sense.
Brand marketers may talk of lovemarks, but trust comes before love. We trust Coke products to be Coke-like in taste, feel, fragrance, color, and packaging, for example. We trust products not to hurt or endanger us (unless you're into that kind of thing). We trust brands to keep their promises.
Would you trust Skype's technology and Skype's business with your vote?
If you asked me in 2007, I'd have said yes. Skype's brand promises privacy and safety. Outside security experts applauded Skype's authentication, strong encryption, and ability to bypass most obstacles. Skype is an eBay company (though few people know this) and borrows some of our trust of eBay and PayPal.
I'm unsure now, as 2009 starts.
Skype's technology is strong but incomplete. Skype's encryption is end-to-end, from Skype client to Skype client. Nobody can listen in. So the weak points are the end points: a user's PC or Skype-enabled device and the gateway to the the voting system. Secure those end points and you'd have a pretty secure system.
We don't know how many people, including TOM-Skype former employees, contractors, and members of Chinese security services, have access to that code. (Hypothetically, if I offer a $1000 bounty, would someone sell me a copy?) Many people have the means to interfere with an election conducted through Skype. Given time, we know a way finds itself in the hands of those with a will.
Speaking of intent, let's return to the joint venture. Skype's founding executives traded code for access to China. China is now Skype's largest market. The new executive team tightened up operational security, minimizing unauthorized access to log files, surveillance, and source code.
Despite Skype's 2008 policy review, the original deal stands:
TOM-Skype gets a copy of Skype's source code with each major release,
TOM-Skype modifies the Skype software to comply with China's government agencies,
TOM-Skype shares data collected with users with Chinese agencies,
TOM-Skype does not disclose that privacy breach to customer before or after sharing.
Skyper's talking with a TOM-Skype users are surveilled like TOM-Skype users
This is the arrangement we know of. We don't know if Skype agreed to similar arrangements with, for example, EU law enforcement or USA intelligence agencies.
Landline and mobile phone companies have long given keys to their networks to law enforcement and communications intelligence agencies. We're accustomed to the rule of law applying to our phones. We hope, we assume, we believe, perhaps naïvely, that our phone company keeps our secrets.
It is sad to let go of those illusions regarding Skype.
File transfer is a feature of Yahoo! Messenger but it seems Ashlyn, Mischa and Val don't use it. Despite using Yahoo! Mail. Is Yahoo! converting its mail users to Messenger faster than they're switching to Skype?
Kids will learn geography, and maybe a little more about people, using Skype this year. Silvia Tolisano's Around The World with 80 Schools project will help her primary school visit briefly with other schools around the globe over Skype. Short calls to say hello and introduce yourselves. Your school can sign up on the Langwitches blog.
Such a great way to learn it's a big world, people are different and the same, it's a flat world with access only a click away, not everyone speaks English, languages are barriers you must overcome to be a part of the world, time zones matter in a flat world, and seasons differ.
Amidst all the macro economic turmoil of 2008, there are businesses that have stuck to their knitting and had a quite successful year. Pioneer Skype Partner PamConsult recently reported on their 2008 achievements where they have both built out their product line and provided consulting services that have resulted in a stronger development team and enhanced product offerings.
PamConsult comprises two business divisions: Scendix for software product offerings, such as their widely accepted Pamela utility for Skype (the first Skype Extra going back to 2005) and PamFax, and PamConsult for development consulting where, for instance, they developed Skype for Salesforce.com under a contract with Skype. Some highlights:
A major accomplishment has been the ongoing growth of PamFax. During the year they built out the infrastructure to provide the robustness and scalability such that PamFax now supports over 130,000 registered users. They have announced plans for a fax-in service as well as Mac support in 2009.
Pamela has now had over 5 million downloads; early in 2009 they expect to release version 4.5; mcePhone, their Skype integration tool for Windows Media Center, will soon see version 3.
Finally, PamConsult continues to provide eBay offerings, including the eBay Skype tabs licensed to eBay Germany, eBay France and eBay UK. At last year's eBay Live event, PamConsult won an eBay Star Developer award for their Jaast for Wii, which brings eBay to your TV via Nintendo's Wii console.
It will be interesting to see how PamConsult's Skype partnership evolves in 2009 as the new executive team introduces a comprehensive technology roadmap and revamped partnering programs.
Online social proximity leads to social intimacy, but one size doesn't fit all. Faceted identity and faceted presence adjust what we share according to our relationships.
Skype brings back Skypecasts with a new feature: with one click, introduce spammers, con artists, and sexy webcam girls to each other.
Skype for Neocortex. Mood based on serotonin levels. Very high quality audio and video by tapping directly into the optic nerve and auditory system. Some side effects.
Skype for Lovers. Extension of Skype 4.1. Just one buddy to dial. No interruptions. Ultrasimple UI: click the heart.
Skype's new platforms have more active developers than BT Ribbit. More than Google Android. Fewer than Apple iPhone.
Litigation. 1530 sleep deprived patients sue Skype for keeping them up late.
Google Central will be exciting.
Google Video Talk adds multiparty video.
The Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) will sell out.
Yahoo! fires thousands of people. Decimates the messenger team. Hires a new executive team. Reorganizes. Again.
Skype introduces multiparty video. The kids love it. WebEx hates it.
Skype for Asterisk gets video call support. Dating sites love it.
Skype for WoW builds on Skype for Asterisk. The raiders love it.
Skypephone comes to the Americas via partnership with with US mobile carriers. Wal-Mart will carry it. Nothing for Canada.
3 INQ1 sales will cut into 3 Skypephone sales in the UK.
U.S. Mobile Carterfone rules (to free mobile phones from carrier contracts) will be considered by the FCC.
VoIP falls from telecom jargon. Even VoIP bloggers stop using the term. The public starts using Skype as a generic name for internet talk.
eBay's auction businesses will do well in tough times, better in the second half of the year.
Skype will make $630 million in FY2009.
Peak Skype usage will top 18 million simultaneous users.
"Millionaire has teamed up with Skype for "Ask The Expert," one of our most fun and innovative lifelines!"
From an August 2008 ABC press release: "Contestants are invited to ask an expert's advice on any question beyond the $1,000 level. Experts appear via a live face-to-face Skype video call and will include newsmakers, journalists, former "Millionaire" contestants, politicians, doctors, professors and trivia champs, among others. Bill Nye appears during the show's first week, airing September 8-12, and Ogi Ogas, a former "Millionaire" contestant who won $500,000, appears during week two, airing September 15-19."
This version of Millionaire is in syndication in the US. It hasn't made Nielsen's top-twenty-most-popular-syndicated-shows lately, but it is seen by millions of households every week.
Experts Skype in to the television studio. In this clip, Will Shortz, editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, calls in from Pleasantville, New York.
See the little white mark in the upper left corner? He's using Skype's High Quality (640x480@30fps) video.
The expert is shown on a large screen in the studio, exposing him to the in-studio experience and letting the contestant get a feel for how much to trust the expert with a lifeline.
When called on, the expert and the contestant talk to each other and the production team shows them side-by-side to the audience. The expert's reactions to being right, wrong, or not knowing add to the drama.
On the web side of the business, this is the Millionaire home page. See the Skype artwork (bottom middle with the rainbow)?
The Skype badge takes you to the "Ask an Expert" landing page. It encourages you to download Skype. "It's free, easy and quick to get on Skype so check out all the great information below on how you can use Skype to connect with family and friends!"
Emerging Communications' Lee Dryburgh interviewed Richard Whitt, Google's Washington telecom and media counsel. 
American wireless companies are control freaks when it comes to configuring the mobiles they sell. They limit hardware features, choose applications, and otherwise protect their walled gardens. 
Josh Silverman joined Skype as President early in the spring of 2008; since then he has been reviewing Skype's opportunities and building a team of experienced executives who can bring to Skype the products, programs and team building expertise required to operate a business with a run rate of $600MM per year, 20% contribution margins to eBay and growing at 380,000 new account registrations per day (with 
Skype should be treated like landlords.
Tonight out at the "ShowStoppers" event at MacWorld in San Francisco, Skype announced the new 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X. The new version will apparently be available for download tomorrow, January 6, 2009, from Skype's website. [NOTE: I will update this post with the download link when it becomes available.] 
Over the past few years we have seen the evolution of several conversation communities, some simply employing instant messaging; others employing both instant messaging and voice. Skype is the primary example with its support of IM, voice and video as well as auxiliary features such as file sharing (and, as announced tonight, basic screen sharing) but we are also seeing these services diffuse into Google, via GTalk's voice and chat capability, MSN Live via Live Messenger, and, in spite of its trying to define who they are, Yahoo.
coming out of 
We'll cover 
We trust Coke products to be Coke-like in taste, feel, fragrance, color, and packaging, for example. We trust products not to hurt or endanger us (unless you're into that kind of thing). We trust brands to keep their promises. 
Join the Skype 5.X Text Chat Room
