A list of my 329,001 fellow IBM employees.

Alphabetically.

By first name.

"How do we scale up the number of quality human relationships one person can sustain by many orders of magnitude? In an increasingly connected world, how does one person interact with a hundred thousand, a million or even a billion people?"

Adrian Scott on Edge.org

Useful? No.... ... continue reading.....

Skype $3 billion dollar sellout? Is there a real story here? Robert X. Cringely adds to the rumor mill by reporting that Skype was almost sold last week for $3 billion to Rupert Murdoch who just bought MySpace for an extraordinary sum. Was that the reason for Tim's exuberant chatter at AlwaysOn?

Some facts and figures in this piece are clearly wrong to Skype... ... continue reading.....

Had a late night call (late for me, anyway) with Jan Geirnaert, an entrepreneurial sysadmin who blogs about Skype from Malaysia. Jan is helping companies deploy Skype internally. Once upon a time he'd ask, what's your fax bill? Then sell email. Now he asks: what's your phone bill? Skype follows naturally.

... continue reading.....

Skype, hype and smiles...

From somewhere off the Internet or maybe from CNN...

After digging to a depth of 100 meters last year, Russian scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years, and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network one thousand years ago.

So, not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, American scientists dug 200 meters and headlines in the US papers read: "US scientists... ... continue reading.....

"How the hell can you make money with a system that is for free?" , asks Skype Forum member, tropicaljantie, the real-life Belgian Jan Geirnaert, residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

That's a good question Jan. The big travesty in the growing Skype Ecosystem, Skype Developers Program, and the API is the lack of thought by Skype staff about how developers will make money.

We have had some feedback in the Skype... ... continue reading.....

We have Podcasting, Skypecasting and perhaps this community variant is buddycasting. While you can't have it today this mock-up from Uri Levanon displays the kind of thinking required to take the IM client to the next level. It also enables behavior similiar to what's seen on Live Journal, Xanga, MySpace etc.

Here is Uri's example.... ... continue reading.....

Now anyone can make free international calls using SkypeOut even if they don't have SkypeOut as an added value service!

Free SkypeOut was announced by Jaanus Kase an hour ago in the Share Skype blog.

This is for calling typically toll free numbers such as 800, 866, 888. My Skype reporter in Gdansk, Poland, Tomasz Tybulewicz, and I tested out this service by calling +48800656666 a... ... continue reading.....

"Since July, the 27th Skype Global Rate will also cover Poland, China, Greece, Taiwan, Hong-Kong and Switzerland. Other prices are also being lowered, although not to the SkypeOut Global Rate, in the Czech Republic (mobiles), Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia and Finland."

"27th July is the first anniversary of SkypeOut. This is a reason to lower the price to 0.017 Euro per minute."

This is my rough translation of news from Dziennik Internautów, Internauts Daily, reported... ... continue reading.....

by John Sjolund, Cape Town South Africa

Having been a very early user of Skype I have tirelessly crusaded to get my friends onboard to what I consider a telecommunications revolution. Having grown up in two countries, having two brothers in two continents Skype has needless to say been great for me. However, getting friends to switch from other instant messaging programs has been difficult and at times frustrating. This has now changed.

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From China Tech News:

China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) reiterated that it still has not formulated guidelines concerning VoIP businesses and that many current VoIP businesses could potentially be illegal.

Companies like Netease (NTES), Tom Online (TOMO), Skype, and Tencent have all started VoIP services in China. And the 263 Group and HL95 have also recently entered the...

I'm really unhappy with the information architectures we adopt to display presence information. Many of you will be familiar with the work of Edward Tufte and his innovative displays of multidimensional and fluid data on 2-dimensional static paper.

We need to do better with presence data, because that data is going be become a lot richer. So, inspired by Tufte, let's see what we can do. I'd like to introduce to you my... ... continue reading.....

Have you Skyped because Skype is more private than most IMs and telephones?

Are you Skype-enabling your web site?

Are you using Skype in your curriculum?

If you answer Yes to any of these questions, please share your story with me for articles on Skype Journal and other publications. Confidences respected. Skype Phil Wolff at evanwolf.

Here is my pick of five SkypeAPI enabled products that can really change how Skype works for you. Better call answering, new call forwarding and video solutions. Plus enhanced collaborative desktop sharing and a way to silence your iTunes.

I apologize in advance to Mac users. This really is a Windows list.

Five Software Winners:

1. Pamela-Systems Pro

This is the Swiss...

I can recommend this short but thought-provoking article over at The Mobile Technology weblog.

In essence, it critiques mobile J2ME and BREW because they're denied access to the communications-centric functions of the mobile handset.

I've long thought the same thing. What I'd like to see is these environments deploy "opaque objects." This means that they would be able to query and manipulate things like your address book, but without actually seeing the... ... continue reading.....

Taiwan market: Skype subscriptions exceed the two million mark in July. Subscriptions for the PChome-Skype peer-to-peer (P2P) voice over IP (VoIP) application surpassed two million earlier this month. In addition, the number of paid user subscriptions for the SkypeOut service is close to 150,000.

[DigiTimes]

How good is good? Whose opinion is best? When is bad simply due to poor lighting, a cheap camera, or a camera that is not adjusted correctly?

In the Tim and Niklas Fireside Chat presentation shown at AlwaysOn conference showing off the new Skype Video Application (watch it here ) was the wash out of Niklas due to his wearing a... ... continue reading.....

Wow first time I've been called a "Skype Head" and now I have my very own technorati tag. Thanks to Stowe who again confronts the which IM sytems should I be on challenge from a Mac users perspective. He asks if there's "An End In Skype"?

.....one outcome of that battle is likely to be consolidation of the fragmented instant messaging world. If and when someone wins that battle I believe it will...

Frustrated by not being able to share your online presence at your favorite social networking site? Want to add your Skype presence information and contact details to Typepad or Yahoo360 (not on Yahoo360!)? Perhaps even a business or calling card to your website or blog. Or include your contact information and online status as part of your signature in a forum or on an email.

About a year ago I wrote... ... continue reading.....

What made my video buddy Michael speechless for the second time in one video call? It was the ability to deliver content; not the exchange of lip-sync perfect mug shots. Check out this screenshot...

This screenshot is a short movie clip of an elephant playing soccer delivered via the Spontania Video4IM Client.

I'm at Always-On Tim Draper and Niklas are beaming in via Skype's new video client. This is the first public demonstration. The interviewers are Bambi Francisco MarketWatch and Tony Perkins of AlwaysOn. Tim and Niklas are in Estonia. The talk content has not been memorable. Surprisingly the commentators never asked one question about the... ... continue reading.....

Boeing shows off their Connexion capability by putting Bloggers in the Stratosphere. I Skyped with Buzz this afternoon while he was flying over Washington state. Robert and Eric were up there too. Cost for PR one flight, few drinks by the sound of it and lots n lots of Wi-Fi.

Oh the connection. It was clear. Quality was better on Skype to Skype than SkypeOut to Vonage. More latency on... ... continue reading.....

Last night Michael and I shared "an ultimate Skype video experience." He was on his laptop; in a hotel; a 1000 miles from home. A Yank in the land of "eh?" (Canada.) He is on a consulting gig and staying at The Calgary Marriott. Michael was speechless. You've got to know Michael to know just how big an event this must have been. (grin)... ... continue reading.....

A picture can do what a 1000 words can not. Re-thinking teleconomics a self-described brain fart by Martin Geddes. Read his post.

The quickest way to create more value is to enable more successful conversations. Presence helps curtail playing phone-tag and voicemail ping-pong. Vendors and operators who fail to align their products with what the customers value are less likely to prosper.

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These are examples of Jyve's new website tags. Jyve Tags enable you to add all sorts of new contact methods to your web and blog pages. For example you can only get IM messages off your blog pages. Similarly you could enable a Voice Message function. Thus anyone that has Skype and Jyve installed can send an IM or VM that is launched just by clicking on the page. This functionality even extends... ... continue reading.....

Ever miss an important Skype call? Want to forward your inbound Skype Calls to your mobile phone and are willing to spend a few SkypeOut minutes to do it? Jyve offers a quick and easy solution to make it happen. More importantly you can forward calls from specified buddies or anyone.

To add call forwarding... ... continue reading.....

Broadcast your online presence. Forward Skype calls. Share web pages and more. Jyve reinvented is ready for download. Jyve's a small Skype plug-in program that enables you to enhance your Skype experience. It's the first really effective personal presence server for Skype. It allows you to share your "presence" status (online, away, offline etc.) on your blog, in corporate directories, on a forum etc.