Skype Journal: Recording Skype Users Online: the “trick”
June 9, 2005 10:11 AMBy Jean Mercier, Ghent, Belgium, Wednesday June 7, 2005
Bill (Campbell, not Gates) asked me about my “trick” to record the Users Online “without having to stay awake the whole night”, see the blog posted about two weeks ago here:
Here comes the explanation …
After some trial and error with “automatic” freeware screen capture software and some freezing of my computer and other hassle due to large amounts of Mbytes saved, I downloaded the nice CamStudio software. “CamStudio records screen activity from your Windows Desktop into standard AVI movie files.”
First I changed some options: I asked CamStudio to record one frame every ten minutes, and to play it back at a speed of 1 frame per second.
Next I placed my Skype Windows in such a position that the Users Online number showed right above the clock on my computer.
Then I configured CamStudio to record only the small rectangle in the lower right part of my screen showing both the clock and the Users Online.
And there we go … I recorded hours and hours of screen activity. Every day or so, I stopped the recording and started a new recording. And I played back the saved video file, see picture below:
Each time I saw a change in the Users Online, I paused the video and recorded the data in an Excel Sheet. Next, I made my graphs.
Rather time consuming, but I enjoy graphs: they tell us much more than words or bare numbers.
Perhaps somebody can take over my “Skype Grapher” job?
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Comments (3)
Wooow!
It's a huge amount of work...
Maybe some OCR will do?
Posted by: Tomasz Tybulewicz at June 9, 2005 11:24 AM
You can get a feed from http://share.skype.com/stats_rss.xml which gives you downloads, users online and minutes served. I used it in combination with Sparklines to put a graphical representation of Skype usage on my site.
Posted by: Richard at June 10, 2005 10:32 AM
i am the most happy man on earth the day i used skpe to talk it was like a drea m i am very greatfull for taht opportunity thank u
Posted by: osuwa hafiz at September 24, 2006 7:31 AM