Now you can make a clickable Skype link in Second Life. TDavid of TD Scripts saw my latest Second Life post and whipped up a little service. Form a URL with your Skype name using this format:

http://tduri.com/s-SKYPENAME

That page turns it into a skype:SKYPENAME link that tells your Skype to call that link. Your browser sees a skype:SKYPENAME URL.

So, for me, that's

http://tduri.com/s-evanwolf

You can now create a Skype Me link if you're in Second Life or anywhere else that doesn't know Skype tags from shinola.

Variations:

• sa- add
• st- text
• su- user info

Bonus #1: Promoting a Skype 3.0 public chat? Give an invitation in Second Life by using the "Promote Your Public Chat" link with TDavid's script. Just copy from the promotional link everything after the skype: and paste it in TDavid's script where you'd put your Skype name. I did that to create the url in this link: The Skype 3.0 discussion.

Are you a mobile phone software developer? I've been going to MobileMonday events for a long time, mostly in the Bay Area, always great demos, active vendor participation, tasty schmooze. Stuart John, Skype's mobile product manager, is hosting the London MoMo 11 December at Skype's offices. 2 Stephen Street, W1T 1AN (map). The theme this month is mobile community, specifically mobile social networks. Should be hot, especially with the announcement of YouTube for mobile.

Don't get me wrong, I love Skype. It's saved me a fortune, and is way more convenient than the alternatives.

But sometimes it lets me down. Yesterday, I was expecting an important SkypeIn call at 4pm. Never came. I was online, for sure. Finished work after 5pm.

This morning when I log on at 3am (hello jetlag), I get the voicemail from that person -- timed at 4.15pm yesterday. So it never rang, and I didn't get notification of the voicemail. Annoying.

I've also had problems with conference call quality at times. SkypeOut isn't as good as BT's VoIP voice quality. SkypeIn is generally pretty good though.

What this is telling me is that the field is wide open for competition in the small-medium business space. And a telco brand could be just as good as an Internet one. I don't mind paying for business-class quality -- I just need something that works at a reasonable price. There are additional feature like web conferencing (synchronised Powerpoint, desktop sharing) that need to be in there too.

PS - Downloaded Sightspeed this morning. Looks like a nice product, but they make the users jump through far too many hoops to get going.

You can miss Martin just as often at the Telepocalypse.

by Jean Mercier, Skype Numerology Blog.

It has been a "very very old complaint" on the Skype Forum that Skype placed some folders in the "My Documents" folder (Windows XP version), without a gentle way to move them to another place!

And version 3.0 is even worse! I am angry too :-(

But the "My Documents" folder isn't the only place where you find Skype folders: i noticed - excluding multiple Skype accounts - 4 main places. You can probably reduce it to 3 main places if you have only one Windows XP user account!

I counted 31 folders in total, excluding the 250 folders in the "chatsync" folder! Therefore, total number of folders in my case: 281! Pfewwww!!!!! And again: this without counting the other Skype accounts folders!

Some comments on some selected folders:

1. This is a new folder with version 3.0 :-(
2. An old one, I always delete the bunch of ugly Skype avatars after the installation of a new version
3. Also an old one: I store all my Skype related stuff there
4. A new one, that i deleted, but Skype created it again, without recreating the deleted wallpapers
5. The first (1) folder with the name "Skype"
6. Plugins, also new since 3.0 i guess
7. Ooh no ...I thought Skype was used mainly by business people!
8. Second (2) folder with the name "Skype"
9. A user account I never use
10. my main user account
11. I didn't want to show the content of this folder: it contains in my case exactly 250 subfolders, i guess with my chat history in it!
12. folders of spare accounts or folders of other people who used their Skype account on my computer (this happens!)
13. third (3) folder with the name "Skype"
14. ooooh, here all the ugly Skype avatars, that i usually try to delete, are stored again!
15. and here again the wallpapers!
16. new since 3.0
17. new since 3.0 i guess

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If you're using the 3.0 Beta for Win, get today's version 3.0.0.137. Lots of bugfixes, no new features. Still 19 MB. Changelog. Once you're running 3, join public chats about it in the Skype English Blog Chat and Skype Journal's Skype 3.0 discussion.

This is the third of three posts discussing Skype's PR management with the aim of improving the PR relationships associated with the launch of new Skype software and associated services. In the first post I outlined the problem; in the second post I proposed a proven solution; in this third post I want to review the recent Skype beta releases (3.0 for WIndows, 2.5 for Mac) and Skype's 3 Group partnering activity with respect to the proposed solution.

If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness? .... Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, 1964

One primary objective of public relations is to leverage media reporters, including bloggers, to provide an outside perspective on the subject matter of press releases, product announcements and corporate presentations at, say, industry events and to propagate corporate awareness through corporate interviews.  In turn, media reporters want to feel both sufficiently informed and experienced to have the background for providing objective, accurate and complete coverage while making assessments of the impact of a story.

Personally I prefer to report based on exposure to a product, not just a press release. I have also found interviews with senior executives (usually the CEO, one of whose roles is to be the Chief Company Salesperson) an opportunity to flesh out details that can make a more viable and credible story. I have also had a couple of executives point out that I have brought to their attention issues that they subsequently realized should be addressed in their public announcement.

Over the past two weeks we have seen four major press releases involving Skype: Skype 3.0 for Windows Beta Launch, Skype for  Windows - Business version, Skype for Mac 2.5 beta launch and Skype's participation in 3Groups' new X-Series program. The result has left behind a very mixed image of what Skype is offering and the direction it is taking. The first post in this series exposes some of this confusion; the second post proposes a cost effective solution that can help narrow, or even avoid, the confusion..

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Technology and Products

1. MobiGater GSM-to-Skype gateway, plugs into your PC, passes Skype calls to your mobile phone. Also lets you speed dial your Skype buddies from your mobile, ringing them on Skype. From Bulgaria to 20 countries

2. Accessing Skype APIs with Ruby. Pretty easy, if you know the Ruby programming language.

3. Moodgeist pinger for Linux. The better to let the universe know how you're feeling. Even if you're using Linux.

4. 10 Things to Know About Skype Ap2Ap Programming. Read this before you code. Adrian Cockroft.

5. Skype on Solaris. More Sun bloggers spread the word.

6. US Robotics' webcam. Is the 9640 cheaper (at $40) and smaller than the Logitech Fusion?

Advanced topics

1. Project San Dimas, an experimental eBay desktop, built on the Adobe Apollo platform using web services. Congrats to eBay's Alan Lewis.

2. Nokia: Hyperlinking Reality via Phones. "Nokia researchers are working on a system that allows physical objects to be identified and connected to the Internet through mobile-phone screens."

3. MashupU. Anyone from the Skype developer community available to teach at MIT, 15-16 January 2007?

4. Everything is Miscellaneous lecture. David Weinberger's speech mp3 (46:53, 22.5 MB) at the Scottish Learning Festival.

5. Cooperation Commons. Research project by the Institute for the Future and Howard Rheingold to study cooperation and collective action.

6. A Voluntarily Loosely Organized Organization. How does Skype support emergent management practices?

Business

1. Boom when UAE's Etisalat opens up to Skype? Skype Wi-Fi phone vendor Belkin is hoping UAE lifts Skype ban sooner than later.

2. Death of the phone company: "There will be a custom communications experience generated dynamically for every context, and it may be personalised for the individual communicators."

3. Death of Skype: Australian ISP: "Skype packets, in the world that we are heading to, will be able to be seen by all telcos and all telcos will have the capacity to prioritise or de-prioritise those packets."

4. ISP Xtra: No Skype shaping. Computerworld: Despite terms of service which allow it,

   Telecom's retail ISP Xtra says there is no rate-limiting for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications, contrary to reports in the media and complaints in web and Usenet forums. "Applications such as Skype can be used," Xtra spokeswoman Lenska Papich says. No traffic management is applied to Skype, she adds.

5. The future is bright .. The future is 3 .. How 3's switch to flat rates for mobile data unleashes explosive growth. Great essay, by Ajit Jaokar, about taking down the "walled garden" (controlling everything in the ecosystem) in favor of an Open Garden. via John Furrier.

6. WordPress follows SixApart and SocialText into Corporate IT. SixApart needs this: one enterprise vendor is a novelty, four is a market. See also Traction and Blogtronix. Skype may benefit from enterprise adoption of other social media like blogs and wikis if they jump on the knowledge management and collaboration memes, and further integrate Skype into blogs.

7. Ten Worst Internet Acquisitions Ever. Skype is number 9. Others: Hotmail, MySimon, BlueMountain, Lycos, Netscape, GeoCities, Excite, AOL, and Broadcast.com. A hard meme to kill.

8. The Peanut Butter Manifesto. Yahoo!'s Brad Garlinghouse rocks. Messenger's executive sponsor bets his career on focusing Yahoo!

Just off the phone (21 November 2006) with Jeff Black, ceo of TalkPlus and star of the demo I posted 13 November 2006: calling from a mobile to echo123 without a Skype client anywhere in the loop.

He confirmed:

1. TalkPlus does not use SkypeIn.
2. TalkPlus does not use SkypeOut.
3. TalkPlus does not use the Skype-operated SIP gateways now.
4. TalkPlus conversations going from a mobile to a Skype user are only encrypted in the usual Skype way from TalkPlus's servers to the Skype client.

Black said he's been to Skype's London's headquarters several times, most recently about 30 days ago. He said they fully shared what TalkPlus does and how it does it to Skype's management and technical people, right down to engineering diagrams. They continue friendly discussions. He said TalkPlus filed multiple patents which predate Skype on mobiles.

Black declined comment when asked if TalkPlus was building something for Skype.

If you'd like to chat about this, join the Skype 3.0 discussion. You can view the video of the demonstration on Revver, Vox, and Google Video.

Skype 3.0 brings a few new terms to our VoIM glossary.

In this edition: extra, extras gallery, extras manager, plug-in manager, plug-in publishing studio, pxml, call transfer.

Extra. Skype's term for software or other products that work with Skype.

Extras Gallery. Skype's web directory of third party products. Skype is moving the Gallery from Paul's developer relations team to Skype's online store ecommerce team. 

Extras Manager. Skype 3.0 for Windows Beta client's view of a selected short list of extras. Extras in the Extras Manager may or may not be in the Gallery. Extras Manager extras may or may not be Skype Certified or even Skype Compatible. The Extras Manager is a retail zone, designed to sell stuff, and some vendors pay fees and commissions to Skype.

Plug-In Manager. New software that comes with Skype. It runs in the background as skypePM.exe. Programmers talk to it through an API. Users talk to it through the Extras Manager. At the moment, there is no user option for not automatically launching the Extras Manager or the Plug-In Manager.

Plug-In Publishing Studio. A tool that helps programmers package their extras for the Plug-In Manager. If you have C++ or java code laying around, the studio wraps it up properly with a "pxml" file for distribution by Skype. Not available for public download.

PXML. The Plug-In Manager reads this XML file format (example) to learn which text and pictures to show. After developers use the Plug-In Studio to describe their products, Skype writes the entries into a bigger pxml file with everything you'll see in the Manager. Skype is batch updating the clients weekly with a new pxml file, refreshing what Skypers see and where.

Call Transfer. This 3.0 feature is only available to programmers at the moment. This lets programs redirect a call to another Skype user or to a pool of Skype users. If to a pool, the first one to pick up gets the call. When a third party picks up the call, the transferrer is dropped from the call.

CaptainAmerica Maverick gave me a bracelet tonight. A Skype presence bracelet. It shows my Skype availability when I wear it in Second Life. And if you're in 2L with me, you can use it to Skype me (I'm "Phil Arrow").

Stephen "CaptainAmerica" Klosky is using Skype's "SkypeWeb", a web service that takes a Skype username and returns that user's public status.

Web services are the life blood of Web 2.0, published protocols that open a company's software engines to programmers. SkypeWeb is Skype's only public protocol.

Skype must do more to empower developers who want to blend Skype into the rest of cyberspace. On Skype Journal's short list:

1. Turn the Skype client messaging APIs into web services. All of them.
2. Skype user authentication as a web service.
3. Directory service for public chats, public conference calls, and open contact groups.

Offering a "Naked Skype," (Skype devzone wiki, Skype issue database) a bundle of protocols to the cloud, would let developers blend Skype with any service, including email (like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo!).

Skype is in an earnest race. (Skype management has not acknowledged this.) The company wins who publishes the most complete, friendly web services for live communication. The measure of success: developers everywhere mashing up your communications with their social networks, mashing up your social network with their services. Skype's performance so far: not in the game.

Today, for example, I must use the unscalable Skype client on projects to: 

• Write a web page that shows a Google map of the locations of a logged-in visitor's contacts, colored by contact group, indications of when they are likely to be online.
• Build a web based feed aggregator that crawls urls mentioned in buddy profiles, showing updated web pages and blog posts.
• Run gateways between the Skype network and SIP services.

In the Skype 3.0 public chat, Julian Bond said Skype's new Skype4com ActiveX wrapper gets us partway there. I suppose it does, if all you care about is embedding a Skype widget in web pages or rich clients. So much more is needed.

Web services will unleash the power of Skype's

• communication infrastructures,
• identity infrastructures,
• social infrastructures and collective social capital, and
• commercial infrastructures.

Web services open new markets, attract new customers, reinforce your value propositions.

In Second Life, web services literally open up new worlds. Skype's rivals get it and are acting now. Where is Skype's leadership in this race?

... in a game where, as in golf, the lowest number of strokes wins! Google announced a Click-to-Call feature for Google Maps yesterday. So I go to Google Maps, select Businesses, enter "restaurants" into the Type of Business box and "Mississauga {Home Postal Code}" into the "Where" box. And I get:

Click on B for Golden View Restaurants (where we obtain our annual New Year's Eve party food) and I get the pop-up below on the left. Click on Send to Phone and I get the pop-up asking for my phone number and my carrier -- except there are only U.S. carriers listed (and all Telco 1.0)! 3 clicks plus 10 characters (to enter your phone number). Except I live in Canada ....hmmm ....

Or, since I have installed the Skype 3.0 Beta with its Click-to-Call feature, I can simply pick up my UConnect-enabled Nortel phone, dial **, (or pick up a USB-connected VoIPvoice Cyberphone) and click on the Skypified link under the restaurant's listing on the left:. I then click OK on the "Start SkypeOut" confirmation window. Call initiated; no Telco 1.0 carrier designation required! (And note that Skype 3.0's Click-to-Call recognizes that it is a Canadian phone number.) One click to place the call; one to acknowledge that there could be a charge involved.

A simple example of what Martin is talking about in his Telco 2.0 "Death of the Phone Company" post.

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.. in the UK at least. Today, as one partner participating in the 3 X-Series service announcement by Hutchison Whampoa's 3 Group, Skype has announced its first truly mobile offering where Skype users can make "free" Skype-to-Skype calls on a mobile phone. Starting December 1, 3 Group will launch a new flat fee mobile broadband Internet service in the UK. In the press release related to this announcement Skype CEO Niklas Zennström said:

With 3, I am very proud to say that for the first time, our users can now try out making Skype calls on the move using a mobile phone. We always want to delight our users by letting them try out new ways of keeping in touch. This is a real milestone for Skype because now you can use Skype beyond the PC, no matter where you happen to be.

CIO Now has an excellent detailed description of the impact for Skype; the key points being:

• 3 Group will launch the new X-Series service December 1 in the U.K. and roll it out to the other countries in which 3 Group operates (including Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Australia and Hong Kong) in early 2007.
• While it will be a flat-fee mobile broadband Internet service, no pricing has yet been announced.

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This is the second of three posts discussing Skype's PR management with the aim of improving the PR relationships associated with the launch of new Skype software and associated services. In the first post I outlined the problem; in this second post I am proposing a proven solution; in the third post I want to review the Skype 3.0 beta release activity with respect to the proposed solution.

Drawing from my management experience over the past couple of decades involving business public relations activities, from both a marketing and investor communications perspective, I think Skype can enhance both its market awareness and usage leveraging the enthusiasm, interests and various perspectives bloggers have the power to introduce into the market.  I have had employers who tried to ignore the need for PR (and dealt with the fallout) and others who were viewed as overly aggressive in their PR activities. But the one constant, both prior to and following the Internet's evolution as a business communications medium is that PR is about building relationships -- not only with your customers and users but also with those who have the potential to propagate the message, whether through traditional media or web-based media, such as blogging.

First three general comments:

• In the pre-Internet days, for every major software product launch at one of my previous employers, we sent out a team of product managers, executives and PR personnel to conduct individual press interviews. This took significant resources out of the office for up to two weeks. And then we had the overhead of delivering and supporting pre-release software prior to the launch such that reporters could write up their impressions based on actual experience. With VoIP and Internet-based real time communications, software distribution and feedback tools all such costs and overhead effectively go away.

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Download 2.5.038. Lots of bug fixes, a few new features, and many usability improvements.

Just for those following along, Skype 2.5 Beta for Windows shipped in early May 2006, five and a half months ago. Hat tip to John Maas.

From the change log:

New features:

• SMS
• improved history list in main window
• ripple animation effects (Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) only)
• ringing device selection to audio preferences

Changes:

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This is the first of three posts discussing Skype's PR management with the aim of improving the PR relationships associated with the launch of new Skype software and associated services. In this post I want to outline the problem; in the second to propose a proven solution:in the third post I want to review the Skype 3.0 beta release activity with respect to the proposed solution. .

If you follow the VoIP blogosphere at all, you may notice that certain products and services, when introduced, get a lot of coverage such that readers can quickly assess if there could be followup interest.  SightSpeed and TalkPlus, whose beta program launches today, are two examples; this did not happen by accident. In both cases, while bloggers are open to make their own observations there is an underlying consistency of message as to what the service provides and what are the key features. SightSpeed focuses on high quality realtime and asynchronous video communications while TalkPlus focuses on delivering a means to manage your phone number infrastructure in a manner that protects individual privacy while providing helpful business and social networking tools.

On the other hand I have done a review of various blogger posts on the Skype 3.0 Beta launch; here is the original press release and a sampling of the initial "first impressions" posts (Ed: with my bolds):

Gizomodo:

The big new feature is browser extensions for IE and Firefox that let you embed SkypeOut links into web pages. ... The re-designed toolbar, contacts and call tabs look much easier to use. And Skype also added moderated public chat features, which makes me all wistful for IRC.

Skype Numerology

Nov. 9: Skype 3.0 beta released. And indeed, the differences between the previous version 2.6.0.105 and the 3.0.0.106 are (from my point of view) quite small, see the change log.

Nov. 11: Mea Culpa: My mistake (see my post below), Skype 3.0 has indeed quite some new features, as explained on the Skype website and in Skype Journal.

Tech Crunch UK

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Over the past several years I have owned Nokia phones, the last one being the (tri-band) Nokia 6310i. However, I was always finding blind spots in my coverage.  Would be half a kilometer along the drive out of my subdivision and having to apologize for phone calls cutting out over the next kilometer or so.. I was also aware of some coverage gaps along the 401 freeway connecting Toronto to Montreal and Ottawa. This continued to be my experience with the Nokia N70 and N91 which were so-called quad band phones but supporting GSM/GPRS only at 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz while having UMTS at 2100 MHz as its "fourth" band.. While obtaining some parameters last summer to allow web browser operation on the N70 and N91, I was advised by a Rogers network engineer that all new towers installed in Canada in the previous two years were 850 MHz for both capacity and coverage range reasons

On the other hand my Blackberry 8700 supports true quad band, including 850MHz, along with the EDGE enhancement on GPRS. Recently I received for evaluation the new N73 and N93 --- a quint (five) band phone (no WiFi) and a quad band phone (plus WiFi) respectively. I moved my  primary SIM chip to the Blackberry about six weeks ago and instantly found I have better coverage not only as I drive out of my subdivision but also within the Scotiabank Centre, home of the recent Voice 2.0 conference. A couple of trips along the 401 have also demonstrated significantly improved coverage as well as a tourist area where I have previously received marginal coverage. When I received the Nokia N73 last week I moved a second SIM chip into it and immediately found that gap near my home had disappeared. Phone Boy reports similar experiences trying out the N93 on Cingular and T-Mobile in the U.S.

Bottom line is that, if you want to have full coverage in North America you need a quint band "world" phone covering 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz for GSM/GPRS/EDGE plus 2100 UMTS for any forthcoming UMTS deployment. As an indication of the presence of the 850MHz channel, on the N73 I see an "E" above the traditional Nokia data service symbol, as well as a much stronger signal level indicator; also the downloads are significantly faster. On the Blackberry 8700, as shown above, you see the word "edge" associated with the signal strength indicator. This recommendation applies to both all purchases of wireless GSM phones for residents of North America and those residents of Europe and Asia who may be traveling to North America and want full wireless (GSM) phone coverage.

Something to think about as we await the Skype Client for Symbian, apparently to be released next month (I assume, initially as a beta). As indicated in a previous post, fast networks are required for adequate IM and VoIP operation over wireless networks. Alec Saunders talks about some of the battery limitation potential for these phones when running a VoIP client while he attempts to configure the N93's WiFi connection. 

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I shot this demonstration on Halloween, 31 October 2006, in the offices of TalkPlus in San Mateo, California. The video is uncut, no editing at all, including about five seconds in the beginning of Jeff Black, TalkPlus CEO and founder, warming up. The call is from an unaltered mobile phone. You will see the Jeff send a text message and automatically download a Java program. That app shows his Skype address book, and he clicks on Skype's echo123 acount. For those who don't know it, echo123 is one of Skype's first test accounts. It doesn't have a SkypeIn number, so you couldn't fake access by dialing a PSTN number that forwards to echo123. TalkPlus doesn't have any access to Skype's private SIP gateways. So this demo shows that TalkPlus customers can dial any Skype user by their Skype name.

It also shows that TalkPlus has engineered a server without Skype components that talks to the Skype network as if it were a Skype client using Skype's own language. It will scale to thousands of simultaneous sessions. TalkPlus has no plans to license this technology or turn it into a product. They built it to solve their customers' need to talk with millions of Skype users.

Jeff demonstrates that Skype's protocols have been reverse engineered, and shows unmet demand for a high performance, highly scalable, "headless" or "naked" Skype server.

1. Skypest.com is a market for buying/selling Skype names. Like trading in domain names. Hmmm. Check your wallet. And start ego surfing.

2. Google added Skype to the free Google Pack. Excellent distribution partner. Also explains why the Google toolbar comes with the free Skype toolbar bundle.

3. Skype's Firefox toolbar catching some users by surprise. They're surprised because they don't notice toolbars installing with Skype 3.0 beta for Windows. (just click next.) They are happily surprised: they like the phone number hotlinking. I've been doing this since the summer of 2005 using the Skypelinkify script.

4. How to use a hex editor to tweak Skype. Now if I only didn't have to use a hex editor.

5. Debian and ubuntu linux users have a simple Skype install now. Love those .deb packages.

6. Business 2.0 profiles a software trainer who uses Skype. The shot of Bill Lewis Skyping his students from the Puerto Vallarta beach in his shorts. Classic. The story says entrepreneurs have new opportunities when phone service is free/cheap. Good one for Skype's PR team.

7. The Skypecasts service graduated from Preview to Beta. When?

8. SPIM (spam over instant messaging) causes Skypers to shut down calls from strangers. Can you imagine only getting email from people you already know? Phone calls? Maybe it's time to start white/grey/black lists, like for email?

9. PhoneBoy picks SightSpeed video over Skype 3.0. Just one data point, right?

10. Will Skype continue free SkypeOut calls in the US, Canada, and elsewhere in 2007? Millions want to know. A few, so they can top up their Skype accounts. Others, so they can start shopping.

11. Waiting for Skype to pay off for eBay. A what-happened-in-the-year-since-eBay-bought-Skype story by the International Herald Tribune's Kevin J. O'Brien. I liked Martin's quote: "Skype is in danger of becoming the Netscape of voice over Internet protocol phone companies... Skype may prove that you can be the first to innovate a piece of software but the last to find a way to make money from it." Typical Geddes, and everyone else pretty much said what you'd expect them to say.

Last month I came across my mother's stash of "we're having a be-in party" stationary, left over from the early 1970s. Those cards were a carry over from the 1940s and 1950s when my mother grew up. The formal etiquette of mailing and invite and RSVPing became kitsch before it became corny then classic then retro. 

danah boyd: what i mean when i say "email is dead" in reference to teens.

"I'm part of the generation caught between email and IM where IM feels more natural but most of the folks just a little older than me refuse to use IM so i'm stuck dealing with email. Today's teens are stuck between IM, MySpace/Facebook, and SMS. There's another transition going on which is why there's no clean one place. IM replaced email for quite a few years but now things are in flux again. Still, no matter what, email is not regaining beloved ground."

Young people are more flexible in learning, and older people more easily adopt the tools and norms that feel familiar from their youth. There's more than one reason why computers have QWERTY keyboards; they made transferring skills from typewriters to computers feel familiar.

People also follow their cohort's lead when it comes to building social capital. Aren't most of your friends around your age? That's just the way social networks usually expand. So you're going to use the conversation and social coordination tools that dominate your social network, and your cohort.

Skype is riding this wave, of course. So it's interesting to watch Skype's founders stick a toe into another wave, social video, with The Venice Project. Are you too old to ride it?

Skype 3.0 Dev Notes including one element I advocated and requested many times over. Call Transfer is finally here in the Skype 3.0 API. That's a big deal and will grow Skype's appeal with developers who now have all sorts of call routing options. At a meeting in Estonia just over a year ago (that happened as the eBay sale was going through) a group long term adovacates put the case for it. I'm very pleased to see it has finally happened. I'll have some other comments on Skype 3.0 although I want to share them in a broader competitive context. My buddies at Skype Journal are writing plenty on the new public chat feature. See Phil and Jim.

See Alec's comment. Skype Dev Zone (lots re extras), Antoine's Dev blog:

Skype 3.0 introduces the long-awaited interface to enable call transfer. Call transfer is being phased in over two releases, and won't be exposed to users until the 3.5 release. The reason for this phased release is to ensure substantial penetration of Skype 3.0 among users, because call transfer requires that all parties are running Skype 3.0 or higher. Our goal is to enable you to start building and testing great new apps now which will be ready to blow peoples' minds away when we release 3.5 next year. No more playing catch up with the client!

Don't miss this TechCrunch post. Important to understanding the changing competitive landscape. TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Skype 3.0 (beta) starts the communication platform wars [with the release of Skype4Java,  Skype4COM, and XPCOM wrappers].

Yesterday Skype released its initial Skype for Windows 3.0 beta with several new features. However, the press release does not really show the entire picture and, in fact, two of the four features mentioned were available in the previous 2.6 beta - namely, Click-to-Call and Skypecasts Live. Click-to-Call is simply an embedding of the previously available Skype for Web Toolbars supported by the Phone Number Recognition COM-component. It is a very handy feature that I have been using for some time.

But the other two -- Public Chats and a User Interface refresh -- bring some significant changes:

Public Chats -- my first activity was to walk through the Public Chat setup wizard. But I quickly realized it should be called the Skype Watercooler. The algorithm allows you to control who will participate; you can invite via emails, chat session or via a web page. You can control if a participant is active (able to contribute to the discussion) or passive (can only read the discussion). Lots of flexibility here. Whereas Skypecasts are publicly exposed such that anyone can join, the level of participation here is determined by the level of exposure you provide for your invitation.

But most interesting is to get the experience that comes from the persistence of a public chat. Yesterday I joined the Skype 3.0 Public Chat started by Phil; this morning when I came to my PC I could quickly review all the conversation that had occurred overnight (hey, those Europeans start their day early). Skype's Public Chat will become an interesting tool within the social networking landscape but Skype Marketing needs to look at a more definitive, attention grabbing name for the service. Let me say it again: Skype Watercooler.

User Interface: Lots to talk about here but I will just highlight some features:

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First, download Skype 3.0 Beta for Windows.

1. Open the Skype main window. If it's closed, you can double-click on the Skype icon in the system tray.

2. Pick the command: Tools | Start Public Chat

This launches the Public Chat Wizard

3. Describe your chat.

Create a chat topic. This will show up at the top of the chat and in any web html you post on a blog.

Optional: pick a picture for the chat. This will also show up at the top of your chat dialog.

Think of both of these as semi-public information.

Press the Next button in the bottom right corner of the wizard.

4. Set your moderation rules.

You have three host control options.

The default is an open forum: "Anyone can post messages".

A little more restrictive is "Participants need permission to start posting." While the public can lurk about and watch the conversation, if they want to join in they must get permission first. This is great for panel sessions with guest speakers, or if you are holding forth before taking questions.

Control freak is the third option: publicly listed but private. "Participants need permission to start reading and posting."

If you have directions you want people to always see in the chat window, you can write "Community Guidelines." My generic one is "Be kind to each other and stay on topic" but suggestions are always welcome.  

Click Next to continue.

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After living in process-server exile for years, it must feel good to be free to travel stateside again.

• Elinor Mills (closest to a transcript): 'Skypecasts' coming to your blog soon
• Dan Farber: More from the Web 2.0 Summit.
• Alec Saunders: Skype 3.0: Transfer or no?
• Reuters: Skype tests new features in bid to diversify sales
• Doug Dockery: Skypecasts (Or Who Needs A Phone?)
• 21talks: Soon, more Skype to come
• Bobbie Johnson: Web 2.0: Niklas Zennstrom, Skype
• Eric Savitz: Niklas Zenstrom Gets A Big Laugh.

"An audience member asks, with an ironic tone, why Zenstrom, who has a tendency to spurn convention and do what he wants to do with out regard for conventional business practices - thus his creation of both Skype and Kazaa - decided to sell his company to eBay (EBAY) last year.

Zenstrom: "It was a great fit."

Audience of hundreds of Web investors and entrepreneurs: Peels of hearty laughter.

by Hudson Barton

Skype's concurrent users online just hit 8 million. We can therefore expect to see breathless reports about the number of days it took to get another million and how long it is going to take to get another. But these are not useful measurements of Skype's success. Skype doesn't give us much information, but there are better ways of interpreting the data we have than looking at the peak of the graph.

Skype usage at the peak time (around 16 GMT) is a combination mainly of European users and users in the eastern half of America. These are two of Skype's largest populations and they are online concurrently. Measuring at this peak has become the standard measurement of Skype growth, but it is not very useful. I prefer to measure at other times.

Skype usage in Europe (and Africa) is best reflected with data sampled at 11-12 GMT, before America's work day starts. American (North and South) usage is seen most accurately at 19-20 GMT. Asian (and Pacific) data should be sampled at 2-3 GMT. At each of these three points in time, the influence of one continent is maximized while the influence of the other two continents is minimized. Of course, Skype usage on the three continents is not perfectly segregated by this method (because some users stay online for extended periods), but it is segregated enough to use for comparison purposes.

This method of measurement permits one to analyze Skype growth in ways that are not possible when one looks only at the peak number. One can see for example a difference in growth rates between the continents. Or by comparing the rates of growth on specific weekdays and weekend days one can discern whether growth on each continent is being driven by business usage or non-business usage.

I have been measuring Skype usage in this way for about a month (my historical data is supplied by Jean Mercier, "The Skype Numerologist."). In a few more months of detailed daily measurement, we will be able to conclude much more than we can presently.

So what can we conclude from the data so far? On this day of surpassing the meaningless waypoint of 8 million concurrent users online, let's just say this: Historically, Skype usage in Europe has slightly underpaced that of America and Asia. In more recent months, this trend has continued and perhaps accelerated.

Note: Two factors are at play in the data; the actual number of active users and the user's average time online. It is difficult to distinguish which factor is driving "concurrent users online".

Download Skype 3.0. Then join me for a group chat.

Coming up:

• Skypecast: Global Connect 2006 Election Night Coverage. Today.

• ETel '07 registration is open. See you innovators there.

User stories and practices:

• "Mobile Skype Really Sucks," refers to the Pocket PC version.

• "SkypeIn not in right now. Incoming calls routed nowhere." UK.

• "We hate to bring bad news but..." Skype Journalist Jan loses his Skype credits.

• The Giant Petroleum Company is Relying on Skype for Communication. Works even when mobile networks fail.

• Why SkypeCasts Transcription? Advice from an experienced podcaster.

Products:

• Skype Recorder v1.2 for Windows released.

• New Lie Detector for Skype Phones. KishKish's Skype Answering Machine now includes a Voice Stress Analyzer.

• Adobe's Acrobat Connect Professional (deserving its own story) includes server-driven audio and video conferencing. Starting next year.  

• eWeek reviews: Wi-Fi Skype Phones Disappoint. "Devices lack adequate roaming and battery life capabilities." Skype Speakerphone Is Conference Pro. "The Communicator's reception was excellent when used for Skype calls in tests." 

Industry News:

• eWeek: IT Managers Can't Afford to Ignore Skype. "Like all viral technologies, Skype ultimately will not be stopped at the enterprise door." Enterprises Need to Deal with Skype Boom. "Five things Skype should do to be more enterprise-friendly:
  1. Make deployment easier.
  2. Make management easier.
  3. Lock out the supernode.
  4. Improve documentation.
  5. Add an optional enterprise element to the Skype certification process."

• Kazaa Settles with Music Trade Association for $10 Million. Good for Sharman, one more step toward survival after the travesty of MGM v. Grokster. via BetaNews.

As mentioned elsewhere I have had significant exposure to a variety of phones that have been designed to work with Skype, either as the primary purpose of the device (Skype WiFi phones, Skype Cordless phones) or as an application within a more versatile mobile "personal assistant" platform (Windows Mobile platforms and, by year end, Symbian platforms such as the Nokia N-series). In addition I have now had the opportunity to work with a few wireless phones made by Nokia and Research in Motion (Blackberry). A few comments that could help Skype ecosystem product managers going forward:

Battery life: many of these phones have a battery life of four to six hours idle time. Probably best to license RIM's Blackberry power management -- I can get four to five days of idle time on my 8700. Any device that will have a hope of broad market acceptance should have at least two days idle time.

DTMF tones: This is a fairly basic and widely deployed feature of the Voice 1.0 phone infrastructure; yet I am constantly amazed at the cavalier approach taken to making sure "TouchTones" work with any Skype client, whether a softphone or a hardware device. Here are some of my experiences:

• Skype itself would not work reliably with DTMF tones prior to version 2.0; that issue has been resolved at this point (within the Skype client's "Dial" tab).
• The Skype WiFi phones do not support DTMF; therefore they limit the usefulness of SkypeOut when calling businesses that use IVR systems or other services, such as voice mail systems, that require a DTMF response. I have also experienced USB phones with the same issue.
• At the other extreme the RTX Dualphone and VoIPvoice Cyberphones do provide the appropriate support; the Sony Mylo aslo supports DTMF but you have to remember to put their unique keyboard in NUM mode to enter the tones.

Chat: I view Skype as having two primary features: Instant Messaging (presence and chat) and Voice. For USB phones, the IM activity remains on the host PC; however, for PC-independent devices there are issues:

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"When you go online,
you can see the world.
Richard Pombo hates that.
So he's selling control over which sites you visit
to strangers,
gatekeepers to the Internet.
People who get to choose for you.
Pombo is selling your freedom for cash.
The freedom to read what you want,
to say what you want,
on the Internet.
Fight for your Freedom of Speech.
Save your Free Internet.
Fire Pombo."

You haven't seen ads like that in this campaign. Not on TV, radio or the web.

Because Net Neutrality never cost anyone an election. And NN advocates aren't peppering the Internet or the airwaves with independent advertising for/against candidates.

Russell Shaw doesn't expect Tuesday's US election to remove Republican control of the Senate, so doesn't expect a shift in Congress's net neutrality stance.

I'll go further.

Even if the Dems win both houses of Congress, it will not matter.

Since nobody will win on a "net neutrality" platform, no political capital will be earned for NN. So NN won't be a priority in the 2008 election. It's not like anyone tied NN to big issues like jobs, the war in Iraq, political corruption, or public morals.

And nobody raised a million dollars to advocate for net neutrality.

I've been in a prolonged fight with a friend over some serious, high-stakes differences. We never seemed to get far, or even get worse. But over the last two weeks I tried to move the conversation from live talk to text chat. And it really helped. Among other things it slowed things down, giving both of us more chances to think and observe the conversation instead of reacting reflexively.

So moving down the ladder of mode intensity and intimacy was more useful than climbing up in this case.

There's a growing body of knowledge about making more out of those situations. The most popular seems to be Crucial Conversations, from the book of that name. Anna Liu graduated from a Crucial Conversations workshop, blogging some of her lessons learned, starting with:

"Get Unstuck: how to spot the conversations that are keeping us from results, and get unstuck with not only changing the content, but also address the recurring problem pattern and work on the relationship."

There's always more to learn from master communicators.

I'd love to see tools that work with Skype to improve the quality of my dialog.

1. A wizard that gathers my talking points and helps me keep my focus?
2. A stress analyzer prompting me to take a breath and slow down?
3. A talking vs. listening meter?
4. A notetaking tool that keeps my notes with the call history? That timestamps each line, like in a chat, but the notes are just for me?
5. A wizard that debriefs me after a call? Asking for promises made and received, follow-up calls or other action needed, loops to close? That invites me to add metadata, like tags or project names, to the call record?

Will there be anything like this showing at Monday's WidgetsLive event?

eBay North America expands Skype buttons in seven more categories, for a total of 24 catgories.

"AuctionBytes has not seen signs of wide adoption of Skype click-to-call buttons in eBay listings."

Money talks. And eBay sellers listen.

Most I've met love being able to squeeze all their customer encounters into email and eBay forms; they really hate interruptions or wasted time. I wouldn't go so far as to call them antisocial... Most, especially those who sell part time, need to fit eBay into the rest of a busy life.

The eBay forums for Skype switched from overwhelming doubt last summer (should we or shouldn't we?) to demands for access and questions about using Skype buttons to drive sales.

As more powersellers stand up and testify that Skype buttons means cash, Skype will continue to spread at a natural, unhurried pace. It feels really slow to me, but unforced and comfortable. This may improve retention as those that adopt Skype buy-in and stick with it.

Tim Berners-Lee's Web Science Initiative is important. Tim's starting academic research to create a scientific discipline that studies human behavior and the systems that support it. Like people talking to each other over the Internet. There are already two academic conferences

Let's start a contract research team. Call me if you're interested. I have a domain and am putting together a discussion forum. We should put together a list of proposals and potential sponsors and see if we can get this off the ground.

Topics that come to mind in the last five minutes:

• How do effective people switch from talk to action?
• What are the cues for mode switching (e.g. switching from IM to voice) or blending within a conversation? Within a relationship? When and how do they work?
• How do people think about the privacy of their calls? How does this vary from culture to culture? What are the effects of those perceptions on choice of communication channels?
• Where are the tipping points for social network migration, where you and your buddies flee one network for another? Are there leading indicators? What strategies might preserve a network's critical mass?
• Can occasional random calls among workplace strangers (in a large organization) improve knowledge work and organizational effectiveness? Might this compensate for not bumping into colleagues at the corridor?
• How does IM change the relationship between supervisors and knowledge workers?
• Which behaviors improve social capital? What metrics and other cues best drive those behaviors?
• How is the psychology of persuasion altered by the social proximity of strangers?
• How long do people talk about different topics? Do those talks have common templates, narrative structures?

If you're a behavioral scientist or market researcher, please ping me. Do you sense the time is right for this area?

p.s. For fun, try this University of South Florida Skype User Satisfaction Survey.

Researchers show hurtful relationship between long cell phone use and sperm health. Really. The study, eWeek's Wayne Rash explains, and David Berlind says what you can do about it. Fertility! Yet another reason to recommend Skype to your parents.

Skype's CEO is speaking at Europe's largest blogger conference, 11-12 December. I'm sure he'll demo Skype 3.0's one blogging feature. It's nice, but neither jaw dropping or disruptive, especially given this crowd's sophistication.

Blogpulse tracks how much the blogosphere mentions a topic or brand. The unit of measure is percent of blogs that mention the keywords or an url. Nielsen BuzzMetric's blogpulse is slightly biased toward English language blogs although many blogs in other languages are represented.

In October 2004, Skype was mentioned in .015 to .020 percent of blogs.

In March 2005, Skype buzz was in the .045 range, doubling in six months.

Now Skype is in the .07 to .08 range, doubled in 18 months, with frequent spikes over .09 percent.

The chart above shows Skype's modest growth over the last six months. The bottom curve is "VoIP". When I first started looking at both of them, they overlapped. They used VoIP to explain Skype. Now they are mostly separate; Skype has its own identity independent of VoIP.

Just for comparison: Paris Hilton (.075), Harry Potter (.2), iPod (.5), election (.65), Iraq (.7) and sex (1.4%). From a marketing perspective, the new blogging service Vox is stable at .1 after launching its preview in August; Coke (.225, including all uses of the term) and Pepsi (.1).

GigaOM today reported on Vonage's latest results: new subscribers down, churn is up, ARPU is down, subscriber acquisition costs up.  All indicators going in the wrong direction; in fact, one could say that Vonage continues to dig its own hole (as predicted here and here).

Maybe Vonage's board could use Vonage's latest service announced yesterday: calling 811 for assistance in digging holes. Hat tip to Garrett Smith at VoIP Supply for digging up this story.

Questions this raises:

• Should not the FCC be developing e811 regulations? From the press release:
  • Note that 811 access depends on its availability within your area. States set their own timelines and procedures on when to call. In some states it is the law to call before you dig. Subscribers should check with their state and local governments for further information.
• Is there a Vonage VP who became totally confused when he heard about Digg.com as a "user driven social content website"?

But we'll all know when Skype is getting desperate - when they start stating: "Skype is not a telephony replacement service and cannot be used to dial 811 or other hole digging assistance phone numbers".

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Get the newest WLM release. Microsoft improved a few of the identity bits so your presence shares more of your profile with Microsoft sites if you like. They've tweaked a bunch of small things and - wait for it - if you sign up for Verizon Web Calling, you can make two free three-minute calls to nearly anywhere. I wonder if that promotion will work. Meanwhile, I still groove on their "shared folders" feature, perfect for team collaboration.

TalkPlus today announced plans to revolutionize the way people use mobile phones by offering new and innovative Voice 2.0 calling services that work with existing mobile phones globally. Under development for more than two years, TalkPlus' patent-pending technology will provide customers a wide array of new and advanced calling services previously unavailable from mobile phone carriers.

First Offering: A Second Number That Works on Your Mobile Phone

With an additional phone number from TalkPlus, mobile users can now take advantage of having two numbers on their mobile phone. This additional mobile number is fully functional and unique; it works just like a mobile number issued by a carrier. By having a separate number to both place and receive calls on the same phone, subscribers get greater convenience and flexibility, as well as the benefit of an additional layer of privacy. With a second number, TalkPlus subscribers will be able to easily manage personal and work lives, while carrying only one mobile phone.

Subscribers will also benefit from an online management center, where they can easily control the TalkPlus Number's advanced call screening, voicemail, and contact management features.

Incorporated into the "Second Number" feature set will be an independent voice mailbox, a rules based engine for call management, bidirectional calling (in and out) such that a user can, say, separate her personal and business life, while using one phone handset with one carrier account. If you want to apply these management features to your original (well publicized) mobile number, you can port that number to the TalkPlus service and have a new (probably unpublicized) number applied to your basic carrier service.

But the calling support services go beyond capturing voice mail. Here are a couple of  examples:

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I am always happy that I did not buy anything (that was tough) last year. Or should I say the past 6 months... I am going to wait till one of those PDA/Smart phones states that it has been Skype certified and that it comes with Skype Out credit. As a gift... Or maybe I should just buy something now. Some remarks :

• no 3G support (no UMTS, no HSDPA)
• has EDGE (fast GPRS)
• has 802.11g (fast Wi-FI)
• has built-in GPS receiver
• has Bluetooth 2.0!
• very thin and small
• fast 400 Samsung MHz processor

Now that configuration will do for Skype VoIP communications, so why not buy something now and start saving on the phone-bill. It does do browser based authentication, yes? X500 Product Page.

No test report yet by Skype-gadgets.com. In mean time read this one.

Initiated when Andy invited me to participate in the Nokia blogger program back in June, I have now had the opportunity to work with several mobile platforms and, over time, made several attempts to work with programs that access Skype from the mobile phone. I've also been following the Skype perspective on mobile here, here and here where expectations are set for processor power (minimum 400 MHz on Skype for Mobile), wireless access requirements (WiFi and/or 3G) and other operational limitations on a mobile platform.

As a guideline for user simplicity, I look for an experience where I can (i) easily "ping" a contact and enter text for a chat session and (ii) simply access a (Skype) Contact or dial a number to make a voice call - an experience that has a minimal installation and learning curve for the user public; an experience that will readily gain broad market acceptance. For the record the platforms I have worked with include:

* also accepts SMS messages

At the moment the best platform on which to experience Skype on a mobile device is the Sony Mylo with its embedded Skype client. It has both the standard Skype IM and Voice functionality (as well as supporting file transfer). It does not require any special setup other than to use the embedded Opera browser to log onto fee-based WiFi Hotspot services. Of course its other limitation is the availability of WiFi connectivity although Jon Arnold is already proclaiming 2007 as the Year of WiFi. The Mylo does present the most authentic and most complete Skype user experience. Skype-to-Skype calls are straight forward. Calling any PSTN number worldwide, provided you have SkypeOut access to the dialed number, is a simple matter of going to the Skype Dial menu, entering the PSTN number (with +Country Code) and clicking. Finally, as noted by both myself and others, the Mylo has superior voice quality due to its embedded VeriCall voice engine. One minor shortcoming is the lack of Outlook Contact synchronization; but this is not necessary given the overall intended Mylo experience as a personal communicator and not primarily a wireless phone.

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VoIP Now wrote yesterday that "Skype's closed protocol seems to be ruffling feathers everywhere" as he mentioned Jordan's brief Skype ban.

It's a question of whose feathers are ruffled, I think.

First, you have those protecting economic interests, like phone companies and those who tax long distance calls. They'll get over it when they bring their own rival solutions to market or when consumer demand is overwhelming.

Second, you have those opposed to encryption (and secret speech) in the public's hands, like law enforcement, intelligence and internal security agencies. If they can't kill Skype when it's small, they'll wait for a monsterous event they can blame on Skype's security.

Third, there are people paid to be control freaks who run private networks. It's their job to be skeptical about new things, to protect and nurture their information and communications infrastructure. They get over their anxieties as the true nature of useful tools becomes clear and they learn to bring deployment of new tools under daily and lifecycle management.

For all of these "hostile" parties, Skype's biggest enemies are the apathetic, the millions of people who're saturated to the point they don't want to try new channels of communication.

This is Skype's breakaway marketing challenge in every market. Yes, Skype will compete against other VoIM products, but that's straightforward and more of the same. The real challenge will be getting those who live offline to come online, joining the 21st Century's social fabric, using Skype as they come online. And to convince mobile lifestylers to blend Skype into their communication habits. Both are very hard marketing challenges, like getting tea drinkers to switch to coffee, or futbol fans to embrace chess. Skype is doing its bit with free trials, but it's a long game, just beginning.

Today Skype released Skype for Pocket PC 2.1, a release whose accompanying documentation reflects the reality of the limited resources of handheld mobile devices. A full list of new features is available here; however, key items include:

• A new multi-chat interface which supports chats with several participants.
• Skype Launcher, a small 'launcher" application that checks available memory and verifies that Skype is installed correctly. (Hopefully this will avoid the situation I previously encountered where sometimes I had to reboot a Windows Mobile device before Skype for Pocket PC would start if other programs, such as SliingBox Mobile, were running.)
• Built-in call management that detects incoming mobile calls (via your normal mobile service) during a Skype call and offers the user the choice to hang up or ignore the call. You can switch to Skype calls when in a mobile call.
• Detailed contact search including specification of country, city and language as options.

However, buried in the details are the following that reflect a more realistic approach to Mobile Skype:

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by guest blogger David M. DeBartolo

I would like to update you and your readers on the situation of Skype in Jordan. As you reported, the Jordanian Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) recently reversed its decision to block Skype in Jordan, and Skype is back online. On Oct. 17, I had the opportunity to meet with the Jordanian Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Eng. Omar A. Alkurdi, who shed some light on the situation.

Minister Alkurdi, a Skype user himself, stressed that he and the Jordanian government are committed to an open, competitive and transparent telecommunications environment. He stated that the telecom market is practically fully liberalized, and that the government looks at the telecom sector as a main contributor to national GDP and as a major enabler of further economic growth.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission does not resort to blocking services, Minister Alkurdi said, unless there is a genuine security justification and all other options to address the issue have been tried. In this case, the minister said, Skype had been blocked by the TRC because of legitimate security concerns relating to its codes and protocols. He noted that similar steps had been taken in the United Arab Emirates, and perhaps soon in Egypt. He added that the government will address these issues by approaching Skype directly, and he said that he sincerely hopes Skype will be able to remain online.

Minister Alkurdi also emphasized that the TRC is an independent regulatory body and that its decision was based upon security concerns alone. The minister said that when he was notified of the TRC's decision, he immediately asked for written justification. After investigating the issue, he said he wrote a letter to the prime minister, and within a week the issue had been resolved and Skype was back online in Jordan.

As a dedicated Skype user here in Jordan, I very much appreciate the government's expeditious investigation and resolution of this situation in accordance with its principles of openness and competitiveness. Jordan's initiatives fostering a free and transparent telecommunications environment, in addition to Jordan's welcoming people and sublime natural beauty, make Jordan an attractive place for Americans like me to live and work.

Sincerely,
David M. DeBartolo
Fulbright Researcher, Jordan, 2006-2007

Last May Skype announced their first "free" SkypeOut promotion -namely all SkypeOut calls within North America would be free until Dec. 31, 2006. In early September Skype announced a similar program covering France. Basically, if you were not already a Skype user, you simply sign up for Skype, and all your SkypeOut calls within the designated territory are free; however, you pay normal SkypeOut rates for calls outside the designated region. And the promotions expire in just over two months, Dec. 31.

Last week Skype UK announced Talk for Britain, a new promotion that probably gives a hint of what will happen to these earlier promotions after December 31. Talk for Britain involves :

• Purchase £10 of Skype credit using PayPal or a UK-issued credit card
• Wait for up to 72 hours to confirm eligibility
• Free SkypeOut calling within UK for the subsequent six months.
• Program expires Dec. 31 for acquiring the six months free SkypeOut credit. (If you buy Dec. 31, you have free calling to June 30, 2007)
• Call Forwarded calls are not included in the promotion.

Over the past few weeks I have had several queries as the what will happen to these promotions after Dec. 31. Does Talk for Britain start to provide some clues?

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In the file sharing world of Kazaa and bittorrents, members of a network share two things: the files, and offers/bids for those files. More specifically, they ask for or offer little chunks of files ignoring the chunks' order in the file. You pass along what chunks you have and grab the chunks you need and, eventually, getting little bits from many sources, you have all the parts you need to assemble a copy of the whole file.

But what do you do with a live event, like a news broadcast or a university lecture? How do you get the benefits of scale-free p2p distribution while keeping all the viewers in sync? How do you accommodate people tuning in and tuning out during the event?

Skype conference calling goes part way. It distributes little bits to/from the conferenced people in streamed order. To keep a conversation rolling it will tolerate dropped chunks and accommodate resource challenges like poor CPU power.

The Company That Will Soon Be Formerly Known As The Venice Project promises to extend this to sharing your bits with strangers. Like bittorrent, you're giving the network a little control over distribution of the bits. You shouldn't mind sharing a little upstream bandwidth with the community since you're sipping from the same stream. Part of their art will be a balance of:

1. Centrally managing the publishing and initiation of streams (think YouTube),
2. Peer to peer distribution of those streams (like bittorrent, but first-bits-first), and
3. Playing on a rich client (like Skype).

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Naked Conversations co-author (with Robert Scoble) Shel Israel and American-converted-to-Canadian VC and blogger Rick Segal (and our former Microsoft evangelist when I was at Quarterdeck) are currently traveling through Europe. With an objective of learning about Europeans who have been bitten by the technology development bug, as well as about the integration of technology into European societies,. Shel is planning to write another book, Global Neighborhoods, while Rick may be seeking out new ventures that would complement current ones funded by  J.L.Albright Venture Partners.

Yesterday they met with Sten Tamkivi, Skype's 28-year-old COO learning about Skype's strategy, vision and operations.

The core of that strategy, according to Sten, is Skype 's intention to increasingly derive revenue from non-telephony services such as text, SMS and video.

"Very few VOIP services do not compare themselves to Skype." That means they are positioned to follow not lead. "Skype is more focused on staying ahead by focusing on its own opportunities," he told us..

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Last week's Voice 2.0 Conference in Ottawa exposed examples across the entire range of infrastructure and services that lead to voice-related applications. Martin Geddes led off with a keynote asking What's telephone for? What's the unmet user need? Where's the money and What's next? Sam Aparicio of  Angel.com provides an excellent commentary on Martin's presentation ending with Martin's economic model for Voice 2.0 telephony:

• Martin talks about an inversion of the model. While most of the money was being made once the call was connected, now most of the money is to be made pre- and post-talk.
• Before talking you have devices, connectivity, privacy, presence, availability, directory and integration
• After the call, social networking.
• Google managed to create $400B of market value by exploiting digital social gestures around hyperlinks, but Telcos still fail to see how CDRs are a goldmine.
• Some of the growth areas: B2C (I'm soo glad he mentioned this...), C2B -- whenever you cross the trust of a social boundary. An example: In Finland, some people organized a grassroots, non-official Voice Idol type system, creating tons of value for the carriers without much of their involvement.
• Some examples of new thinking: considering a cell phone as a retail outlet you get to carry with you wherever you go.
• In the end, whoever controls the context in which conversations happen. (Following the Starbucks model, where they get to capture the bulk of the value generated by the chain starting at the bush of Juan Valdes). He mentioned how, in the future, when in a hotel, options for room service will be in a buddy list.

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Some more random thoughts on how our minds have been poisoned by 100+ years of Bell (or was it Meuccian?) telephony.

The signalling system in the analogue era was very simple. I want to talk, your phone rings, you pick up. We then enter a manual signalling exchange. "Hello, this is Mary." Confirms I got through to the right number and callee. "Hi Mary, this is Kevin calling. Is this a good time for a chat about next week's meeting?". Identity, availability.

Now imagine a system where we could press the green "call" button on our mobiles either once or twice. Pressing once would just request a call with the person. They would then have a queue of "people who want to talk to you", and those present/online would appear in that queue in time order. I could even, if calling from a PC or other rich UI, suggest times to call back. My phone would have a special ring for returned calls.

Alternatively, press the green button twice and make a normal interruptive "ring now!" call.

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How does Skype fit into the mix of other social media? If you recall, Lilia Efimova started using the ULRTMT - Universal Language Real-Time Message Translator this summer. Lilia and her online friend Andrea Ben Lassoued wrote "Weblog-mediated relationship: a co-constructed narrative" and it's being included as a chapter in a new textbook.

Their essay documents their professional relationship's evolution. The chart, at left, has three columns: Lilia's blog on the left, Andrea's blog on the right, and mutual territory in middle. The top of the chart is 2003 and the bottom is April 2006. They discovered each other in the blogosphere, reading each others' posts. After a while, they commented on each others' blogs, bookmarked each others' posts on del.icio.us, and swapped the occasional email. After a few months of more intense intercourse, they escalated to Skype conversations.

It is a solid ethnographic case study by professional social scientists. It spans a long time and covers multiple media channels (how we really interact with each other online). In this case, discovery and low level interaction earned (banked) a small amount of trust.

I'd love to see this analysis of online relationship-building extended to other groups and situations. How do entrepreneurs find each other? How do job seekers discover potential employers and choose media during job search? How do new project teams negotiate the fit of modes to communication tasks? How long do some patterns persist, and do people repeat them across different relationships? How effective is shifting into work/task mode before fully establishing lower levels of trust?

I'd also like to see the end of a relationship. Can you salvage a fading relationship by experimenting with other communication channels? What are the textual or other early warnings indicators that a person is fading from "friend" to "former friend" or "contact"? How much asymetric communication can most people tollerate?

Which behaviors affecting user adoption and migration: What factors affect the success rate in dragging your (family, friends, work colleagues) into new channels? Are social network hubs more able to migrate their networks? Or do hubs who switch lose their power and start from scratch?

The ability to create great experiences comes from deep understanding of human nature. If you'd like to fund a more exhaustive study, let me know. I'm organizing research proposals.

This morning Skype announced the gold release of Skype for Mac 2.0; finally a released Skype for the Mac with video support. Just in time to take advantage of all those iSight cameras built into more recent models such as MacBook Pro and MacBook. And, of course, one can now hold two party cross-platform video calls between Mac and Windows versions of Skype.

We would appreciate receiving your feedback via comments on your experiences using this much requested and long awaited version. I am working with one test case to check out this statement:

We've improved the video quality and made changes so that video calling can now work on older systems allowing more of our Mac community can use it.

The next challenge for Skype is to develop video conference calling similar to that already available with SightSpeed.

We look forward to hearing your feedback. It gives us an incentive to get the handling of Skype Journal's Comments fixed asap.

Update re Test Case: My acquaintance had attempted to use the beta Skype for Mac with his G4 800 MHz Mac - now the minimum requirement for Skype for Mac 2.0. He had reported problems with the beta version; however, on downloading the released version, we were able to establish a cross-platform Windows-to-Mac video session this afternoon with no problems - backing up Skype's statement quoted above. The biggest issue was that his three year old Mac's video camera does not provide the sharpest quality but it certainly delivered an acceptable quality for a video conversation. [As an aside, this G4 800MHz Mac does not meet minimum specs for use of SightSpeed on the Mac. On the other hand, SightSpeed's ability to do a three party conference with his two daughters in two different cities has become one inducement to upgrade to a new Mac soon.]

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I could do a long critique of every softphone out there, and there's plenty to pick apart. I thought I'd just select one little detail to show why the portal IM clients and Skype remain top dog: they just deliver what the user wants, no hassles.

Every time I log in to Windows I get this:

Go away! Shoo! Don't irritate me with unnecessary login screens. Fade into the background. I don't want to think about you until you're needed. (If the wireless Internet connection comes up too slowly, it also tends to crash.)

I suppose I should also point out some of the other usability issues. As Amazon long-ago discovered, the way you present the login/new user screen makes a big difference. If it's confusing (high cognitive load) people bail out, probably (rightfully) assuming the rest of the experience inside will be equally bad.

Gizmo fluffs this with a strange radio button layout. In the user's mind, registering is a different process from logging in, even if the information requested is identical. The drop-down text entry box is the wrong cue for creating an account name, because it implies a selection of existing data. (Yahoo is superb at managing this process in a crowded namespace.) Gizmo operates from the perspective of the programmer, not the user. Contrast with Skype:

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I just want to acknowledge that I have had a few reports this week to the effect that Comments are not appearing or, in some cases, have been reported as "not allowed". Rest assured that both Phil and I are disciples of Shel Israel's and Robert Scoble's book, Naked Conversations.  We want and appreciate your comments; we want Skype Journal to be a conversation amongst both Skype enthusiasts and Skype users.

Both Phil and I have been taken away on family matters this week; however, I took a few minutes this evening to check out these reports.  There are some problems which only Phil can address as he is the only one who has experience with managing and supporting our Movable Type platform. He will look into them on his return next Monday; in the meantime you can find the comments (to all posts in chronological order going backwards) at http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/recentcomments.html.

I have seen the three comments about the Skype and US Traction story; they are much appreciated. Thanks... and thanks to all who have commented such as to create a constructive conversation about any post.

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One of the "joys" of being a US-controlled public company is that SEC requires the breakout of International from domestic sales. So today's 3rd quarter report from eBay provides some information that allows us to look at Skype registrations coming from the U.S.

With over double the registrations from two quarters ago, it certainly demonstrates that the free SkypeOut within North America is probably helping to build some traction but Skype remains essentially a non-US business with over 84% of registrants outside the US. This is corroborated when you compare the % revenue increase with the % user increase; certainly some of the difference can be attributed to absence of revenue for SkypeOut calls within US/Canada.

The results are even more impressive when you consider there has been very limited marketing of Skype within North America - Phil has noticed some media ads in the Bay Area; there are some Skype ads on the eBay website.

These results also reveal some other interesting information:

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"WAP is Crap!"

Well, in fact it was quite good given the technology constraints it had to work within. As an implementation of the wired Web on mobile devices, it was well thought through, surprisingly effectively implemented, and funded to the gunnels.

The difficulty was that it was in general a solution to a problem the users didn't have. The power of the wired Web is the hyperlink and browsing of information. Users spend a lot of time "transaction hunting", where you decide where to put your money and attention. The wired Web is about bubbling up of important, interesting and useful information. This doesn't match the use case of the wireless Web, which is about quick hits with sites where you already have a relationship.

All this is well documented. So it's rather sad that the industry is about to go through the same harrowing learning process all over again with mobile instant messaging.

Once more, there's a well-established and successful model from the wired Internet. "Presence" as it is usually constituted grew up from the always-off world of dial-up Internet. Online rendezvous was hard, presence solved that problem. For the first time, you could have multiple conversations on the go at once. Distance didn't matter, a novelty for those separated by countries and continents. Parents and partners were excluded from this private chat world.

Mobile IM is also the solution to a crisis the user doesn't have. The buddy list reflects a closed world that doesn't match the openness of the actual tools the users prefer, namely SMS and voice. We already have a universal identifier system, the phone number. Users already manage multi-threaded conversations using SMS. The idea of the "chat window" doesn't make sense on mobile. The interruption model doesn't match, either. A new IM whilst you're browsing the web means a flashing taskbar icon and minor context change from one app to another. Mobile interruptions mean suspending real life. That's why you ask the sender to stump up a few cents to demonstrate the value of the interruption.

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I'm on holiday, but I'll post more from last week's Internet Telephony Conference and Expo. The photo in the masthead is of a mad rush into the exhibit hall's opening night.

It was bizarre for me, all VoIP but almost no Skype in the hall, and none in the official program. This conference brings VoIP resellers and enterprise buyers (seen above) to the exhibitors, corporate VoIP toolmakers. Skype, as far as these folks are concerned, is in another industry, consumer VoIP, and not their business. Mostly, the exhibitors and speakers don't even mention Skype because their clients haven't bought or sold millions of dollars of Skype products.

The funny part: a number of vendors are pitching Skype-like functionality. Centralized and well domesticated, of course, but some blend of presence, IM, voice, video, and other collaboration. But few in the room (or with checkbooks) seem to buy value-added-VoIP. Most see VoIP as long distance bypass and little more.

And most don't know that VoIM is being smuggled into their workplaces by team leaders and expatriots and the adventurous. By parents with kids and lovers who want privacy. Skype is spreading in typical disruptor style like faxes and personal computers. If this conference is any indication, this wave of new behavior is well below the radar of nearly all IT and telephony vendors.

Thursday I received, as an evaluation unit, a Sony Mylo via the folks at Trinity Convergence whose voice engine software is embedded in the device. The Mylo has turned out to be an interesting personal companion and nothing has changed my opinion that this could be for Sony in the 2000's what the Walkman was for them in the late 80's.

The Mylo merges personal entertainment and personal communications  into one device. I expect I will be learning its many features over the next couple of weeks but a few initial comments:

• That blue ring around the right side is not an illusion; it indicates that it has an active WiFi connection.
• It is a device through which a group of friends can maintain ongoing remote contact, whenever they are in WiFi range, sharing (but not swapping) music, pictures and video, talking and IM'ing. (The agreement with T-Mobile in the U.S. is an ingenious piece of marketing.)
• On our first Mylo-to-Mylo call this evening with Andy Abramson, who bought one today, we both remarked it had the best Skype voice quality either of us has experienced. Suffice it to say that, remotely, Andy got right inside my head! (I have yet to decide if that is good or bad <gr>.)
• The Skype experience on a stand alone WiFi device has been all positive. The user interface and Skype feature set is much more intuitive and feature rich than on those Skype WiFi phones. It reinforces my recommendation that Skype move beyond the simple Skype WiFi phones, especially given that the Mylo can handle the full combination of voice communications, instant messaging and file transfer inherent to legacy Skype.
• Is there some irony that you can only IM with the embedded GTalk capability? (Same for the Yahoo Messenger)

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On Wednesday I was asked to moderate a second panel at the Voice 2.0 conference in Ottawa on Alternative Networks. Having spoken with a couple of the speakers this session is going to provide an update on what amounts to further unbundling and disintermediation in the voice communications infrastructure space. These developments, which include demonstrated profitable business models, are resulting in the separation of network access, service provisioning and content delivery required to achieve not only net neutrality but lower costs of Internet participation.

The conference is filling up; however, there's still time to register here. See you Monday.

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Just over a week ago Phil reported that Jordan's telecom regulator had ordered that Skype be blocked. It was a short-lived blockade; the decision has been reversed. According to a report from Middle East North Africa Financial News:

Director of the commission's regulatory department, Al Ansari Al Mashaqbah, confirmed yesterday that the recent decision to block Skype had been reversed.

The official told The Jordan Times that the security issues, cited as the reason for the block, had been resolved.

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I have just been asked to moderate a Round Table at the Voice 2.0 conference in Ottawa next Monday; Topic: the Future Visions for Telecom. Recently there have appeared three posts that provide a foundation for discussion of the subject:

First, James Enck, a highly respected telecom analyst and blogger, based in London, posted details of his keynote presentation last week, Ten Things I Hate About You, at Telco 2.0 in London  James has developed a strategic framework around which he sees the future of telecom:

• Telcos have lost control of their core product
• Voice is becoming a feature, not a service
• Telcos can't grasp that consumers may not want what they're being sold
• Telcos thrive on scarcity - future value will be built around abundance
• Command and control culture is dead, open API's rule
• Telco DNA is fundamentally unsuited to the current dynamics of content
• Telcos expand their footprints physically, not virtually
• Telcos can't innovate
• Telcos shouldn't try to innovate
• Maybe the entire foundation is wrong

Definitely a landmark post. So what should the foundation of telecom become? Alec Saunders presents a first anniversary update on his Voice 2.0 Manifesto:

The customer experience predicted by the Voice 2.0 Manifesto is not of a single carrier, but rather of three classes of entities - access, directory, and applications.  As a customer, you'll pay to be part of the network, you may pay for an identity (and this is an idea who's time will come, although it's hard to see today), and you'll pay for applications that that help you communicate in a diverse number of ways.  This is a very different model from the traditional, vertically integrated, communications network.

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(The second of three posts on the newly released Skylook 2.0.)

Two legacy features carried over from earlier versions are the Skylook Answering Machine and Skylook Recording, both of which recorded Skype voice mail messages and calls as MP3 files.. Building on the experience with handling audio in developing these features, Skylook 2 has been enhanced such that voice mails can be incorporated into business processes for timely follow up and retrieval while Skylook Recording is an ideal solution for recording podcasts. The new features include:

• Recording in multiple formats: MP3, PCM, etc.
• Record the caller side or both sides of the call
• Split the recording of each side of a call as "raw PCM audio" into separate WAV files; this facilitates later editing of recordings as podcasts.
• Store audio files either in Outlook or in any Windows folder. This allows call centers to store files in Public folders accessible to all members of a call center
• In the Skylook Call Monitor window you can also store (free text) Notes to associate with the recording. These notes, which can be made either during or after the call, become searchable tags that facilitate later retrieval of audio files.
• When deploying Skype Answering Machine a voice mail (optionally from designated callers) can be automatically forwarded to any designated email address as an attached MP3 file.

As with earlier versions of Skylook all Answering Machine and Recording activity is archived within Outlook.

If you are looking for more than simply receiving voice mail and want to not only have several recording options but also have all your call activity archived for later search retrieval, Skylook 2 offers some interesting value-add features, especially for call centers, customer support operations and podcast producers.

First Post: Skylook 2 - Building Business Processes Around Skype

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Marcelo Rodriguez rounded up five products that connect Skype and SIP products in his post, Is a Skype-SIP Peace At Hand? 

• VoSky Exchange
• Skype2PBX
• Uplink
• ChanSkype 
• Pika Connect for Skype

We all want interop, and these products are gaining loyal followings. They build audio pipes between SIP and Skype voice callers. We've been calling these Level Three Skype integration in our Skype Journal Connectivity Maturity Model. 

Skype Journal Connectivity Maturity Model

Level 0. No connection.
What's VoIP? What's Skype?

Level 1. Skype indifferent.
Devices doing nothing but input or output like the most basic of USB phones. On the software side, the only software is Skype.

Level 2. Skype aware.
Configurations are Skype-aware or Skype-smart devices, like the Kensington Vo300, the YapperNut YapperBox.

Level 3. Skype conversant.
Level 2, plus audio pipes between apps, especially across the SIP barrier. You call with your SIP phone, something happens in between, and my Skype phone answers.

The move from Skype to SIP at Level 3 costs you all the benefits of rich conversation. You lose:

• Availability and geopresence
• Mood messages
• Caller authentication
• Access to caller profiles
• Launching text chat or video in the same call
• File transfer and folder sharing
• Voice messaging
• Access to Skype voicemail
• Skype multichat and conferencing
• Broadband audio quality 
• End-to-end encryption
• Chat/call permalinks 
  (e.g. skype:?chat&id=%23leedryburgh%2F%24evanwolf%3Bd5b446f89da627a3)

Level 4. Skype equivalent.
Level 3, plus restoring most of the missing elements. 

Does this model work for you? What's Level 5? What do you call it when the other system has capabilities beyond or different from Skype and you can't translate them?  

Jan in Malaysia teases: Russian engineers reverse engineer Skype.

VoIP Hacks by MacVoIP's Ted Wallingford is shipping. It's a must-have if it's half as good as Ted's blog, or the other Hacks books.

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Incident Commander looks so cool. Sim City for crisis training. Can't wait to try it, to check out the multiplayer communication and collaboration. Any VoIP inside?

Stop Conflict Before It Starts. Temporary foreign aid that targets sharp drops in income may stave off civil unrest, says a Berkeley economist. imho, MetroFi and secure Skype should be part of aid packages that prevent crises.

Slideshare.net is kinda brilliant. Elegant, simple to use. I don't know how much knowledge (ignorance?) is trapped in slide shows, but people have been using PowerPoint for a generation. Can't wait to see how they pitched invasions to presidents, disastrous mergers to CEOs, disruptive startups (Skype) on the demise of the disruptees. Slideshare is history by bullet point. The social media elements aren't bad either: blog-like and YouTube elements are familiar.

eWeek compared three "conference" systems this summer. Elluminate Live, Interwise, and Sonexis. The cheapest is $100 per seat. How does that compare with Skype, Unyte desktop sharing and freeware?

Vishing. Phishing by VoIP. As if Spit, spam via internet telephony, wasn't bad enough.

Tracks in the Snow. Three measures of success come long after IT projects are deployed. Professor Nelson says key success measures include usage, value to the organization, and building an org's knowledge capacity.

Those handsome guys at the big CES booth in the Skype Journal banner are from a startup called YapperNut. I coulda sworn I wrote them up last January but a quick search didn't pull it up. Fresh out of Stanford engineering (some of them not even out of school), they started YapperNut to create products for Skype.

First came Amy, one of the first answering machines for Skype, and still a very nice and free program. It was the first add-in to screen incoming calls based on the caller's social proximity, leading Iotum by more than a year. Amy offered voice messaging before Skype's. Skype still doesn't have scheduled voice transmissions or office hours that direct calls to voice mail when you're sleeping, a feature Skype still doesn't have.

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One of the toughest challenges I encountered in managing the Canadian operations of a PC hardware and, later, PC software vendor was to ensure that customer support flows seamlessly between the resellers and the vendor. It is the responsibility of the vendor to set up training and support programs that provide appropriate tools for the reseller but it is also the responsibility of the reseller to ensure that all its support employees get the proper training and support policies in place such that problems can be either resolved or elevated appropriately in a timely manner. Now I know the reseller support people take pride in their ability to solve a problem; however, when the going gets tough they need to understand when to elevate a problem beyond their experience and resources. And to a large degree it is the responsibility of the reseller's management to define that line within their support policies and then to communicate it effectively to their support reps.

The same applies when it comes to mobile devices sold through the wireless carriers. Andy Abramson (VoIP Watch) seems to have encountered a situation where a T-Mobile carrier rep just did not know when to escalate and persisted in tying up Andy's time when in fact the problem was beyond her/his skills and resources. So he spends almost three hours on a Saturday morning talking with a T-Mobile support rep trying to restore his Blackberry into service when after fifteen to twenty minutes it would have been obvious, in this case, to escalate the problem back to a RIM support person.

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The new Skype API command "SET SILENT_MODE {ON |OFF}" is only a baby step toward the idea of a "headless" or "naked" client. Silent mode tells Skype to turn off its user display and alerts. They are still there, just not seen, a programmatic parlor trick. A high tech version of Peek-a-boo! I see you! with the same old software.

This is progress, of course. All the app's user messaging is now under the control of fewer pieces of logic, a simplified design you need before allowing alternate user experiences.

Since the UI is only hidden instead of omitted, the operating system must have all the parts to run a full windowing interface. Linux servers, for example, often dispense with a display or presentation system to save computer resources and avoid bugs. Asterisk experts, for example, write that display overhead is contraindicated for Asterisk installations on Linux. So "silence" doesn't help service-oriented developers much.

Also missing: Skype hasn't brought all the client's UI functionality into the API. So there are still things you can only do in the UI. Nor does the client support multiple user accounts simultaneously. So servers need to make and run a separate copy of Skype for each user. And a web interface to admin the Skype service. All things you need for a server-friendly, scalable, extensible developer platform.

Skype has a long way to go if they want to offer a GUI-free server client or create an ultra-light client like Adobe or publish a naked API library like LibJingle. Those would open up new levels of integration and interoperability, new markets, new industries. Peek-a-boo is a game for babies or adults. I voted for the full featured adult version.

Earlier this week Skype announced a new Skype 2.6 beta release for Windows.  Two new features:

• Skypecasts controls are now directly available within the Skype client
• A bandwidth indicator is enabled via the Advanced Options (Tools|Optiions|Advanced)

However, the most interesting for partners is this line in the announcement:

For developers, there's a feature here that has been requested a lot: you can turn off the visible Skype UI through the API now. For more info on this, please stay tuned for updates on our developer zone and the developer blog.

As Alec Saunders points out, this is Silent Skype where developers can turn off the visible Skype UI.. Is this on the path to the long requested Naked Skype where developers can build around a core Skype engine?

Skype's Developer Program has launched a developer newsletter. But it begs the question as to why it is simply a traditional web page as opposed to being published with RSS feeds for those who want automatic updates and all the other benefits of RSS use.

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Not much to do with Skype but I have just watched (via my Slingbox) the press conference where it was announced officially that Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of Research in Motion, has signed an agreement to purchase the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins. Jim's comments were interrupted at one point as his Blackberry phone rang (even in Silent mode mics will pick up the rf signal coming in and "buzz" nearby speakers). At the end photographers were taking pics of him holding his Blackberry with a Penguins logo on the display. (He spent most of the press conference saying he was committed to the previous owners' commitments to a new arena in Pittsburgh.)

I have been lucky enough to have had some behind the scenes exposure to hockey as a business (my neighbor's son plays for the Boston Bruins); as a RIM shareholder for the past eight years I have been watching Jim (along with Mike Lazaradis, Co-CEO) demonstrate how to build and operate a very successful high tech business.  (Who else can take a patent settlement and get more marketing buzz than any traditional marketing campaign costing the same amount?) It will be interesting to observe how Jim adapts to the professional sports culture and what contribution he can bring to professional sports in terms of business expertise and acumen. Jim has always been approachable and has integrity beyond reproach. (Maybe HP should recruit him to restore their image?) At this year's annual meeting he took time to give me a personal demonstration of the new Blackberry Maps GPS-based navigation feature that will be available this fall (yes, it will retrofit to more recent older models). His enthusiasm is infectious.

While most of the local press will speculate on whether he will move the Penguins to Hamilton, Ontario (it won't happen -- remember I said Jim has good business acumen), I wonder how long it will be before Penguins games become available on your Blackberry. Now there would be a revenue generator for the service providers and RIM gets some fraction of all that service provider revenue. And if they got to the Stanley Cup finals, the traffic demand could bring down the (at least Canadian) wireless networks! (I did watch one period of last spring's finals via my Slingbox during an intermission at a theatrical performance.)

And, let's face it, Jim is living the Canadian dream. How often will we find high tech entrepreneurs who can build their business virtually from scratch  to a level where they can own their own NHL franchise?

Now if we could just get a Skype client onto the Blackberry!

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Last weekend Netralia launched Version 2 of Skylook - a tool that links Skype to that ubiquitous contact management and email tool, Outlook 2000/XP/2003, and extends facets of the Skype experience to your mobile phone. In an interview with Jeremy Hague, Skylook's CEO, I learned that Skylook is rapidly becoming a key business tool for that 30% of users who use Skype in business. Key points include:

• over 60% (and rising) of Skylook licenses are known to be for business use;
• its major appeal is to hard core Skype users
• its business users have as many as 15,000 contacts in Outlook
• its US$99.95 per year per user price tag includes a 12 months 24 hour response time support warranty as well as all updates during this period

While working with Outlook, Skylook 2 also introduces audio technology for several key features, incorporates enhanced SMS messaging into Skype's Instant Messaging features and uses Skype's API's to forward voice and email messages to your mobile phone. In the image above I have "wrapped' the toolbar to show all its features. Skylook 2 offers six key functions:

• Communicate with Outlook Contacts: for instance, you can even send an SMS message to any Outlook contact, including those who do not have a Skype account, provided they have a mobile phone
• Record Skype calls (with several new features in Skylook 2.0 - the subject of a separate post - ideal for creating podcasts using Skype)
• Alerts and Forwarding: a totally new feature that will be the subject of a separate post.
• Answering Machine provides full voice mail functionality
• Archiving and organizing all your communications: emails, IM sessions, SMS activity and voice mails.
• Synchronize your Outlook and Skype Contacts.

Skylook has a more detailed outline of its functions on its web site along with links to examples of how several features work.

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By now you've read the BusinessWeek interview with Janus Friis and Om Malik's interview with Friis. The Venice Project is Friis and Zenstrom's video play. We still can't believe eBay let them build this outside of Skype. As I wrote in July, The Venice Project steals an opportunity from SkypeBay by not building video distribution into Skype's network. The whole point of Skypenomics was to bring eBay (c2c cash-for-atoms) into the intangibles economy.

21talks sees the problem when asking: "Does it mean that sharing TV content could be already available through Skype and its video functionality? At an average quality and requiring a small to medium size bandwidth. Is their next move to combine the Skype's, Kazaa's and Venice Project's networks to enhance the general quality of service of the service?" Sorry, but the few indications say no.

They are designing this new network to follow the money, fitting its rules and architecture to the special needs of the content producers and advertisers. I'm sure they won't have any problem lining up anchor tenants like television channels and movie archives for their DRM'd TV streaming network. If you want a taste of the TVP experience, sign up for a very limited Beta Test of the client.

I can only hope eBay owns a little of Baaima N.V., the Netherlands Antilles limited company doing business as The Venice Project.