I once considered AOL a relic, a doddering giant foundering without direction and burdened with legacy ideas and technology.

Not any more. 

Start with the AOL People Connection, where naturally evolving blogging, dating, and image sharing communities become formalized and juiced with extra resources. Or the Calcanis project reshaping continue reading.....

About a month ago a visiting friend told us that she was traveling to Mexico City the following weekend for her son's wedding. Her son lives in Minneapolis where he is involved in sales and servicing of mining equipment with lots of travel to southeast Asia and Australia; the bride was studying medicine in Houston. His mother started explaining to us how this was a match facilitated by Skype. So I followed up with Eric... ... continue reading.....

Bill Campbell's post about Wall Street is baloney, of course. Kent says it well.

You state "Wall Street frowns on the eBay/Skype side of the partnership according to the New York Times." I read the article you linked ... it makes absolutely NO mention of the market's (i.e. Wall Street's) view of the Google/eBay/Skype collaboration.

The share prices are "factually" listed at the end of the article (without comment) ... as is...

Hi. Just wanted to bring you up to speed and keep up our transparency. Let me tell you about Stuart, our independence, some policies, keeping secrets, reviewing, and ask for your help.

First, one of our owners and founders, Stuart Henshall, left the building earlier this year. He's still an owner but is happily working full time in an executive role at a stealth start-up. I've been asked not to say what his firm... ... continue reading.....

Jon Arnold is a Toronto-based communications consultant and IP blogger who does a weekly podcast on the Pulvermedia Podcasting Network with IP industry players. Jon and I also share in interest in the Boston Bruins, largely because he originally came from Boston and because my neighbor's son was one of the high points of what was a "down" season for the Bruins last winter. However while Jon is a dyed-in-the-wool Red... ... continue reading.....

Jaanus has pointed out that today, for the first time, over 7,000,000 users were on Skype earlier today.  I usually find Skype peaks at some time between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. EDT. And this benchmark is reached on Skype's third birthday.

Now if Skype would fix the bug whereby presence information is not always current in version 2.5, we could get back to saying Skype is a real time communications service. I... ... continue reading.....

Skype is three years old today! As a special gift they also had 7 million concurrent users online. Wow!

Well done Skype.

For more on the story check out Jean Mercier's blog. and of course the Skype blog by Jaanus.

Thanks to Tony in Austria for the pic.

The early results are in. Wall Street frowns on the eBay/Skype side of the partnership according to the New York Times.

"Google's shares rose $7.69 yesterday, to close at $380.95, while eBay's shares rose 49 cents, to $25.79."

I think they got it wrong. But you can do the math!

What do you think? Are Skype users into family-friend communication and social networking or are Skype users a bunch of capitialist commercial buyers... ... continue reading.....

Skype gets hooked on Google. What's all this mean?

As Jaanus Kase of Skype puts it, "What does all this mean in detail? We'll see next year, as testing of all these new joint initiatives is said to begin in early 2007. For now, one thing is sure -- great companies working together is always exciting news."

Yes, the Google-Skype story feels very upbeat. It is a tremendous opportunity to monetize their huge customer... ... continue reading.....

In a press release issued this morning, Google and eBay announced an agreement which comprises "two primary components involving text-based advertising and "click-to-call" advertising functionality";.In the course of the press release there are several implications for Skype; however, let me draw attention to where Skype already has incorporated Google searches, namely, as an option in the search icon of the Skype Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Skype... ... continue reading.....

Google and eBay are swapping spit over ex-US advertising inventory, toolbar buttons, and click-to-call ads. Maybe even bring GTalk and Skype. We'll have exclusive interviews and more later today. News releases follow, but first impressions...

• Search Engine Watch: Click to Call is U.S. only and mid-2007.
• Blogging Stocks: Google eBay deal is much ado about nothing. A promise to do something sometime ain't worth much.
• Media Buyer...

This is the first in a series going deeper into the "softer" business case for using Skype in the workplace. The series' launching point is the Squidoo Lens 8 More Reasons For You To Pick Skype At Work.

People ask "Why did Skype take off?" One reason: fabulous user experience. The time from click-to-download to your first conversation is short. And Skype outperforms expectations for ease of use and sound quality.... ... continue reading.....

Jaanus Kase. Skype's Chief Blogging Officer who visited Phil in Oakland, is also the Chief Skype Forum Officer and has recently completed leading the transition of Skype's Forums to a new platform that provides both visible and backend improvements resulting in a much more resilient and secure forum ecosystem. Key issues included login protocol, security and anti-spam measures. So what's changed? From Jaanus' Announcement: Welcome to the new Skype Forums post:

Here...

You may have noticed the new banner. My photo is from Skype blogger in chief Jaanus Kase's side trip to Oakland, California, earlier this year. Jaanus and I had lunch at Everett & Jones near the water. I wasn't impressed by the barbeque that time but it was great to finally meet Jaanus... ... continue reading.....

Jaanus, the blog marketing face of Skype, has posted details of a contest to celebrate Skype's third birthday along with some brief historia about the launch of Skype on August 29, 2003 and their efforts to get the first 100 registered users..

If you want to celebrate our 3rd birthday with us, you don't have to send us expensive gifts or flowers. But you can...

The secret sauce used by Skype that results in the excellent voice quality of Skype-to-Skype calls and facilitates quality in Skype-to-SkypeIn/Out calls is the Voice Engine for PC and Voice Engine for (Windows) Mobile licensed by Skype from Global IP Sound ("GIPS"). Combining codecs, echo cancellation technology and other voice and packet management features the various GIPS Voice Engines eliminate or minimize the impact of inherent (wired or WiFi) network problems and deficiencies introduced... ... continue reading.....

In a post this morning, Alec Saunders has introduced Hullo, a new calling service that allows you to control not only to which phone your calls will both originate and be received but even seamlessly hand off calls to another phone as you go from, say, your home to your car. While Alec's post provides much more detail, two key points:

hullo bills itself as a personal call manager.  The promise is that...

• Hello Kitty Headphones and Microphone. Can't wait to find these in the Skype store or in starter packs, although I'm more of a Badtz-Maru boy. long way round via shiny shiny, via spacedim, via Gizmodo.

• SKY-click's web based call center went livecontinue reading.....

Microsoft Live Contacts offers developers 400+ million active users with 12 billion contact records. That's more than Earth's population, so should we assume a bit of duplication among the 30 contacts per active user?

A peak of 20 million simultaneous online (8.7% of the Live Messenger population, or 1 in 12) is 2 to 3 times more than Skype's reported raw peak usage.

Microsoft says Messenger users make about 10 million daily video calls. Skype's decentralized conversation... ... continue reading.....

During trip earlier this month to Nova Scotia, I visited Baddeck, Alexander Graham Bell's summer refuge from the heat and humidity of Washington, DC for the last 37 years of his life. Interestingly the estate is still (privately) occupied by descendants, including his 101-year old granddaughter. However, the highlight was to visit the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, a Parks Canada museum of his trials and experimentation.

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Om says all the money in VoIP will go to device makers. Aswath agrees, saying the VoIP carriers and directories will be frozen out of value adds. Andy Abramson says "it's in add on applications and new services. The infrastructure costs have to be revenue neutral. Look to areas like access, identity/directory and... ... continue reading.....

I'm at a business mixer when a guy comes up to me, sees my Skype Journal name tag and introduces himself. Hey, he says, did you hear that Skype's founders made Skype by accident? After Kazaa, Janus... ... continue reading.....