[Correction] Sean Egan leads the Google Talk Libjingle program. Before Google he led the GAIM open IM project. He talks of an API that is running ahead of client development. Great for developers.

(Note, this was recorded on my iPod with iTalk, it is not meant to be IT Conversations. In a few weeks I'm sure many of these will be available there)

First, the product is in beta testing. I like it, but it will be a different product when it comes out-of-beta and adds online payments to the user experience. How promptly will the alterred product be retested? How extensive is Skype's still new software testing? Who signs off on it? Was this waived for WebDialogs to be in time for CES?

WebDialogs aside, Skype's certification results remain a black hole; transparency is called for. To start: create a web page for every product certified, listing the tests passed and describing the specific release/version of the product tested, and provide a facility for voting/rating and other customer feedback on products. Then list all those certificates on a master page. This will help consumers verify product certification, promote recertification, clarify what specific certs stand for, and deter pirates.

Second, Skype made a big stink in the recent past about third party software changing Skype's GUI. They threatened small developers who'd added "V for video" or other buttons, bringing in lawyers before even Skyping these registered Skype partners. (EULA section 3.3.2: "You will not remove, overtake, hide or otherwise make the UI inaccessible for end users".) Skype Journal repeatedly called for UI APIs, but Skype hasn't published any. Unyte adds a "Share" button to Skype's main navigation bar. And Skype certified the product. Either:

1. Skype bizdev gave Unyte a pass on the terms of service,
2. Skype testing failed to notice a whopping big change to the UI,
3. Skype has a secret, for-very-special-friends GUI API that they shared with Unyte but keep hidden from the rest of the Skype developer ecosystem.

I suspect (1) and (3), both of which are piss poor business practices.

Skype's future depends less on blockbuster software alliances and more on creating a trusted environment where tens of thousands of firms and programmers know they are treated well, fairly, and consistently. I'm not picking on WebDialogs here; they did no wrong. Skype, on the other hand, should decide whether bizdev deadlines and public validation are worth breaking faith with an entire community of developers.

When at Sprint, myself and David used to run around doing exec presentations on how the Sprint diamond logo (RIP) should be a trust mark, and that Sprint could add value as an intermediaryby making people’s (wireless) web browsing experience safer and more convenient. We even filed a patent, whereby the operator logo on the handset would light up when showing operator-provided interstitial advice pages.

Anyhow, we used to get a lot of blank stares, and telcoheads looking at us like we’d just come back from vacation on planet Zog.

I don’t think we’d get that reaction now. Just take a look at this:

This is the fire-up splash page from their new anti-phishing plug-in for Firefox. Google is the Web’s new trustmark. Can you imagine any telco positioning themselves in this way? Every intermediation of a telco is regarded with distrust and suspicion. Nobody sees a telco trademark and thinks (however naively): “these guys are on our side”. Google have to follow “don’t be evil”, not because they’re nice, but because the privacy effects of theis business give them no choice.

PS - Notice Amazon/Alexa’s new service where they are offering web crawling APIs (for a fee)? We argued that Sprint was in a good position to become the champion of commercial web services APIs, where people assembled applications from lots of component services, but where money was also due to flow between those parties. The idea was to leverage Sprint’s natural advantage in providing an in-house selection of web services (messaging, profile, identity, etc.) into a wider sphere. Needless to say, those ideas got killed, and Sprint remains a capital-bound midwestern telco, and not a cash-machine virtual enterprise like Google.

Martin peers suspiciously from his Telepocalypse weblog.

My parents are kleptomaniacs. Just don’t tell them I told you. The garden shed is bursting with stuff. The loft is full of old boxes. The shelves teem with ornaments. (eBay will have a good fiscal quarter the sad day they shuffle off this mortal coil.) And the drawers under the bed are stuffed with toys from our childhood.

Which turns out to be quite useful when you yourself have kids and an endless supply of goodies starts to emerge for free from Nana and Grandad. I’ve been reading this picture book to my older daughter, where a little boy hunts around for his lost pet froggie.

Very cute.

Speaking of which, I think we all know of a very cute voice application that’s currently hiding behind a log and looking a bit lost. Whatever happened to Skype’s mojo? Why wasn’t Skype 2.0’s arrival a case for dancing in the streets?

I can forgive the ringing noise being replaced by an extract from the opera Ode to a Kathmandu Stomach Upset. (Believe me, the full work is quite an experience. I’ve been there.) As a customer, I’m not too fussed whether video is a plug-in or comes out of the box. Tweaks in colour schemes and icons don’t impress me. (I’m male. It’s the way we are. I think my mum is still hoping I’ll notice when they’ve redecorated without having to prompt me first.)

No, what’s important is this. Make it work. And make it easy.

Let’s take the former one first. I bought a Plantronics DSP-400 USB headset a while back. It came “Skype certified” together with a small SkypeOut credit. I’m still happy with it. But it’s also very annoying to use. Because I like to listen to music from my laptop with real, quality headphones. Sometimes I unplug the headset when I move my laptop about, or want to use it on another PC, and Windows takes note and resets my audio devices to point to the built-in stuff. No matter how often I set my preferences in Skype to “Plantronics headset”, it keeps being turned back to Windows default each time I unplug. This is, needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), not a good experience.

It’s a design snafu in Skype. The actual requirement isn’t to select one device from the list, but I should be able to select the preferred order for audio devices it has seen. If the headset is plugged in, use that. Otherwise, revert to the next preference.

My laptop doesn’t have a built-in microphone, and I never plug one into the microphone jack. I should be able to de-select that as an input. Which means anyone calling me when I have no headset plugged in needs to be warned “Martin doesn’t have a microphone plugged in yet”. This case should be handled intelligently.

Perhaps USB headset owners are too small a minority to make this a priority. But then don’t waste your brand karma on declaring it Skype approved.

Another example is the new video chat. I’m pretty convinced that the video degrades the audio quality. My in-laws have low-speed DSL (256k down/128k up). Just audio is fine; add in the video and the sound gets choppy. This is bad, bad, bad. I can guess what’s happening. Skype uses an audio codec supplied by GIPS. The video is probably a separate thing, and not integrated. Asking GIPS to create an integrated codec that prioritises voice to maintain a minimum bit rate will cost Skype Inc mucho dolula. The audio codec API probably doesn’t make it easy to manage the bandwidth use. So we get a kludge, and the “integrated” product isn’t any better than the third-party plugs-ins. It’s more “overlayed” than “integrated”.

Sadly, Skype’s also having a mid-life attack of feeping creaturism. In the rush to add more feature tick-box items, usability and simplicity is being sacrificed. I think I’d find grouping of contact quite useful. But the user interface is just too ugly and obscure. Hint to Skype UI designers: screens are 2-dimensional. There are information architectures other than “list”! (As I’ve whined on previous occasions.)

And why have my SkypeOut contacts suddenly been elevated into the middle of my Skype contacts? This is a case of the product turning against me. Every time you call someone more than once it asks if you want to name and remember that number. Was a useful and harmless feature as long as the list of remembered numbers kept out of sight. But believe me, the UK Passport Office isn’t one of my buddies. And I’ve only just finished successfully suing Expedia in the small claims court after a car rental screw-up last summer. They’re not my friends, either.

I can only imagine the stress and turmoil the development team are going through as the eBay deal sinks in. But these problems smack of leadership issues, where priorities are not clearly being spelled out, and strategic alignment is being lost. If I were in charge right now, the edict would be “no new features!”. Let the API do the work for you. Focus on making what exists even easier. Make every use case or problem be handled ever smarter. The only exception to the rule is anything that integrates eBay merchants and transactions into telephony.

We’ve already got plenty of VoIP tools that kinda work, sort of, as long as you don’t hit any snags or unusual situations. Skype’s positioning is around simplicity, reliability and ease of use. Lose sight of that, and your cute frog will be forever lost.

Martin reads to us from his Telepocalypse weblog.

Guest post by Hans Blaauw, The Skypeteer

[Editor: I'm sooooo sorry for spelling your name wrong, Hans. Corrected.]

UPDATE 13 December 2005: the download is temporary offline. Download Mood O Matic

With the introduction of the Skype mood field in version 2.0, I have come to the conclusion that this Mood field can be used for much more dynamic information to show to the world.

After enabling my Mood O Matic i immediately received a few people interested in it. This proofs that information in the mood field can be very powerful. (by the way, the odd looking dude on the picture is me the bluedude).

That's why I created the Mood O Matic. This software does dynamic mood by using Moodies.
Moodies are code snippets that update the Mood in Skype with interactive information. Information can be:

- items from a RSS feed;
- highest auction bid on a product you sell;
- output from a brainscanner :-) (Thanks Mat);
- information from a database;
- anything else...

The script Moodie can update the mood field by getting information from scripts:

Below you find some sample URL's to use:

http://www.skypeteer.com/moodies/stock.asp
http://www.skypeteer.com/moodies/skypestat.asp
http://www.skypeteer.com/moodies/cnn.asp

For developers
Developers can develop new moodies that are configurable through the main Mood O Matic interface. Besides that developers can write scripts that produce dynamic information.

Checkout the readme file in the VB6 moodie sample directory.

Help me talk better.

There is no way I'm going to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's crazy. Nevertheless, National Novel Writing Month is in November this year. Hundreds of "winners" cross the finish line through the power of a clear goal (50k words), lowered expectations (this is a rough draft; quality follows quantity), and a deadline.

Many of my conversations would benefit from a deadline.

1. I'd waste less time.
2. Through an ounce of planning, everyone would get what they need from the chat or call.
3. The conversation would be less likely to spill over into the rest of my schedule.
4. It sets expectations for conversation style: short, pointed, transactional, focused.

Two kinds of deadlines:

1. The call. We promise to start this call by 11:01 and end by 11:14.
2. The agenda. Time boxes for talking points.
   • Review/change topics for this call (11:01-11:02)
   • Check in on health, happiness, social lives (11:02-11:04)
   • College update (11:04-11:07)
   • How's the family (11:07-11:10)
   • Send money (11:10-11:13)
   • Schedule next call (11:13-11:14)

This is standard stuff on running better meetings.

I want Skype to help by being more aware of time. For example:

• Launch conversations (voice and chat) from a calendar automatically.
• Remind me of my call/meeting schedule
• Offer to help set up an agenda for the meeting.
• Ping everyone in a conversation with a beep and a private text message about pending deadlines (this topic called "treasurer's report" ends in 1 minute, next topic: "membership report")
• Let us change/revise the agenda in mid-call
• Show a countdown clock in the conversation window with both the big countdown (end of call) and the smaller one (end of topic)

I can start an egg timer or download a software timer. But those are both out of context and not part of the collaboration. Time boxing within the user interface, preserving the visual and cognitive framework of the call/chat will improve the success of the conversation.

Help users and developers build this

This is exactly the kind of value-add I'd like users and developers to build. However today's license, terms of service, and API are hostile to UI changes.

You can see that Skype's design has been amazing about getting users into a conversation, and the hard work of keeping the technical quality high. Now it's time to go inside the call: Help our many styles of conversation be more effective.

I don't expect Skype to help me organize a party, plan a wedding, play a game, hold a quality circle meeting, answer a bomb threat, or talk about my car with a potential bidder. I do want Skype (sometime in 2006, please) to let me use, create and share "conversation helpers" the way I use, create and share templates in PowerPoint and Word. Let the power of millions of users shape conversation to their ends.

Have better conversations with Skype

As with PowerPoint templates, most conversations guides will be free and a few worth money. Please don't think of this as a ringtone opportunity. Think of this as (a) part of Skype's platforming strategy, (b) making Skype more social (as we share conversation helpers), (c) making Skype conversations more productive than conversations in other media.

So often you just reach out and touch someone, a personal connection. But then...

How much do you talk on purpose?

p.s. I'm enjoying No Plot? No Problem! right now. Tips on prepping for and surviving your four week novel writing.

p.p.s Congrats to Hyland Baron for joining the NaNoWriMo team. Hyland makes projects more fun and effective.