Just received my Logitech QuickCam Fusion, now happily hanging like a lizard off the top of my laptop display. I am soooo ready for Skype video. engadget first look; Dark Vision Hardware description; buy Logitech QuickCam Fusion on Amazon, on Froogle.

National Public Radio's Larry Abramson did a segment on Internet Telephony Attracting Mainstream Users for All Things Considered, October 12, 2005. "Internet telephony, known as 'voice over Internet protocol' or VOIP, has grown to be a mainstream application that could someday replace traditional phone service. The market for VOIP is broadening to include regular households who don't care how it works but are attracted by the low cost." Features our own Kevin Delaney.

Luleå University isn't ready for Skype voice, let alone video. From a post by Peter Parnes, PhD, Chief Scientist, to the Skype Forum: "Skype has been forbidden at the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden for a while as well." Kevin Tolly's column, Can Skype be a good corporate citizen? in Network World last month, argues for Skype to make the effects of its use transparent and easily understood by enterprise network admins and IT managers. This gives them more choices than allowing/disallowing Skype at work.

Wired: Furor Grows Over Internet Bugging. Skype appears subject to US CALEA wiretap law, meaning it must make all calls tappable on demand by police. Any lawyers who can clarify the questions of jurisdiction?

• an eBay be held accountable for Skype, now that they own it? or does that exposure end at the Luxembourg border?
• Does CALEA apply to my employer if I'm using Skype at work?
• Does CALEA apply to Skype if they don't run any of the hardware or networks over which my voice travels?

Is this law enforcement or Big Brother? Next thing you know, they'll want to build a breathalyzer phone into Skype. (Good advice: Don't Drink and Skype.)

Unanswered security questions from Damien Miller about the Tom Berson Skype Security Evaluation.

Weekend projects:

• Big picture reading for the weekend: danah boyd's Why Web2.0 Matters: Preparing for Glocalization - Part 1 and
  Part 2. Does Skype fit into Web 2.0? How about into Microsoft's "Live" vision of application and communication services?
  
• Om Malik on the attitude change from supporting each other in a p2p community of Skype users vs. supporting eBay's stockholders. A question of brand? Buzz Machine follows up by saying those who build businesses on the contributions (words, pictures, bandwidth) of participants merely rent them.
  
• The most threatening meme for Skype: "Skype versus Gizmo Project. Its like IE versus Firefox." from the This Week in VoIP podcast.
  
• The wikipedia entry for Skype Technologies S.A. needs updating. Just dive in and add updates.
  
• O'Reilly updated Glenn Fleishman's How to Record a Podcast Interview on the Macintosh. A classic.

Ebay

First off, Ebay finished buying Skype last week. Skype Technologies, S.A., is still a stand alone company, but Ebay owns all the stock. Just over a month from the announcement; speedy, neh?

Steve Dzemidzenka tips us to an ISP-Planet interview with a company that offers pay-per-call advertising on Ebay (vs. pay-per-click); a great read and with one or two insights into models Skype may enable. A related AP story: Online ads urge surfers to pick up the telephone.

Some folks don't like Skype

Skype is still banned on university campuses in France. (Thanks, Alain.) Verso is still selling a filter to block Skype traffic. (Thanks, Mr. Harvey.) Qatar is still blocking Skype software downloads and Skype purchases. (Thanks, Jeff) Can you suggest a reliable way to tell if my Skype traffic is blocked?

From the Skype Ecology

Ipevo launched a family of Skype Certified phones last week, shortly after Linksys and Skype announced a co-branded Skype-only mobile handset and base station. While Skype says the Linksys is certified (via SparkPR), you wouldn't know it by reading the Linksys product literature, the Skype news release, or the product page on Amazon. Everyone else pays dearly for the Skype Certification and brags about it mercilessly; why not Linksys?

Look2Skype, the Outlook plug-in, is upgraded.

Maintaining the key benefit of Look2Skype which is the minimal inteference with Outlook, whereby it doesn't cause it to crash, or slow it down. Some of the new features are:

1. Instant access to all skype contacts from Outlook.
2. Extract callto:// signatures from e-mail.
3. Auto-recognise of skype contacts from e-mails.
4. Free text entry of phone numbers or skype names for contacting. Stewart Bissett

Recovery 2.0

This disaster is in a war zone.

• Families in Kashmir prevailed upon Indian authorities' better natures to open up cross-border phone service, normally carefully scheduled and monitored for security reasons.
• Volunteers are setting up a QuakeHelp Relief Hotline using SMS. Skype was unable to help with a voice line this time (they helped in Katrina relief) because they don't have SkypeIn services in India. Good sources: QuakeHelp and the QuakeHelp blog.
• Pakistan banned public access to satellite imagery of the disaster zone. Security. In a fight-or-flight, clench or relax, response, one or the other response is better. Restricting geo information breaks the decentralized operation of the Internet. You want to open up resources and remove obstacles for the many thousands of online volunteers who can put that data to work. Fortunately, relief workers voices persuaded the UN to re-publish much of the imagery and data. A win for emergent organization.
• The term "Recovery 2.0" is a flexible set of online tools and behaviors that can help invidividuals and groups organize themselves around any crisis. I've proposed a few possible projects on the wiki (feel free to register and add your own):
  • Phone Bank Network; the telephone remains the dominant way people communicate. We need tools to deploy volunteer phone banks that scale rapidly and cheaply.
  • Emergent Relay Service; provide a framework for live interpretation for cross-language and cross-mode communications.
  • Wish I could take credit: Mesh-Networking Cellphones; Why aren't there ad-hoc battery-powered "cell towers in a barrel" that could be "bombed" or floated into disaster zones to turn the thousands of useless cell phones in people's pockets into a crisis mesh network?

Skype at Work

Enterprise Skype isn't even vaporware, but the need is real. For example:

I was wondering if there exists a Skype Proxy server for enterprise use? Essentially, all Skype traffic would flow through this edge device, but would also allow for Skype-to-Skype traffic to stay internal to an organization without having to contact SuperNodes. HTTPS Proxies don't really provide any control of Skype traffic since they blindly pass all traffic since it's so volitile.

Also, is there a product that will allow multiple Skype clients to connect to a PBX simultaneously? Thus, be able to make calls from a Skype client to any phone on the PBX. I've seen some hardware solutions, but they seem primitive and only allow 1:1 communication. I'm looking for large scale many:many.

Thanks, Joe Schwendt

Another case:

Hi guys, I run a 450 person company's IT department. Yesterday Verizon had a man-hole fire and cut our lines completely, so we were phone-less for the whole day. We're a financial services company so you can imagine how freaked out everyone was.

What I was thinking last night is, what if Skype had a great enterprise version, that we could purchase 50 accounts for, and get them set up, distribute mics to our top 50 offices and have a back-up plan immediately in effect

Help Wanted:

We're always glad to post job listings of interest to the Skype Journal community.

Hi. We are currently looking for an Asterisk developer who has experience in integrating Skype to an Asterisk-powered IVR.

Skype me and I'll pass along your interest.