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.

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

continue reading.....

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..

continue reading.....

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.

Powered by Qumana

.. 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.

continue reading.....

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.

continue reading.....

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:

continue reading.....

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

continue reading.....

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. 

Powered by Qumana

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.