• Charles Carleton on Skype virtual call centre opens web to Katrina refugees

  You're right Dina, I did not catch that. interesting. I wonder if you can daisy chain a few call forwarding Skype accounts to build a large pool off of one number
  1>3>9>27... In theory they should all ring off of one number. First one to pick up gets the call.
  I've not tried this so not sure if it works.

  4 Skype accounts could forward to 27 numbers this way. Formula:

  Total of forwarding numbers = 3 ^(# Skype clients -1)

  Charles

• dina mehta on Skype virtual call centre opens web to Katrina refugees

  Charles, its not just me, but the Katrinahelp.info team that has set up this experiment, with the SkypeJournal team, Kevin from Khaos, Skype's support, and Connectotel's Skype-sms beta :).

  What we have done is got a SkypeIn number in Tulane USA, which we have put onto the katrinahelp.info website. Most calls we are receiving are to the SkypeIn account and not Skype-Skype calls. People are able to call us from landlines and cell phones thus. And leave voice messages too.

  This way, we have taken it off the internet so-to-speak, for those in need. They don't need to know whether the call is being picked up via VOIP or whether we are calling them back via a computer. For them its a connection they can easily make, as easy as picking up a phone and calling. The challenge is how can this work when landlines are down, when cell phones dont work. We found in the case of Tsunamis and Katrina that sms/texting was possible. So that would be an essential feature in this model i would imagine.

• Julian Bond on Skype virtual call centre opens web to Katrina refugees

  I'm not the first to say this, but there's a major opportunity here. Skype needs to put a few more features in to support this. And one of the key ones is to find a way of doing premium rate numbers and number pooling.

  I have this vision of a pool of people spread all round the world and working on flexitime from home. When *they* feel like it, they fire up Skype and go online. The system distributes incoming call centre calls around the pool of people who's presence shows they are available. And they get rewarded according to time online and/or calls taken.

• Charles Carleton on Skype virtual call centre opens web to Katrina refugees

  Kudos to Dina, Skype Journal and Khaos Labs for taking the initiative and building this proof of concept of "Decentralized emergency call centers" This should spark a lot more ideas and development for the future.
  It has sparked some ideas for me.

  Now that it is possible to mobilize people over Skype like this to offer help in emergency situations, I see the next challenge, or bottle neck, being making victims (or the people in need of these call centers) aware that these services exist. To take the Katrina issue as an example, a lot of them do not have internet access right now, let alone would know how to find a Skype enabled call center.

  I’m not sure what the solution is here. I’m just raising a point for discussion.

  Charles
  Jyve

• Marc Dangeard on Skype virtual call centre opens web to Katrina refugees

  This is huge indeed. Now think how it would be if you could do the same to deliver Linux support services (or many other possible things actually), and get paid for it too. Flexible hours, good pay. We are talking about another major step forward, and I don't think it will be long before we get to it...

• continued in the Skype Journal Comment River: 200 fresh comments

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