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.

Jordanians have been using Skype without problems for years. Until now. For example, JRBT wrote "My ISP is Batelco and it does appear to be blocked. I am unable to gain credit for skype out from Jordan I have to get a friend in uk to get it for me."

Researcher David DeBartolo confirms that Batelco blocks Skype as directed by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission. Presumably for "security." Here's the letter from DeBartolo and the fax from the ISP.

Dear Philip,

My name is David DeBartolo, and I am an American working in Amman, Jordan. I am the chair of a nonprofit organization with colleagues in Washington, London, and Cairo. I have been using Skype to keep in touch with all of them, and it has been tremendously useful -- until two weeks ago.

At that time, I started to have severe interruptions to my Skype service here in Jordan. It is forbidden to access the Skype website, and I have even been unable to make regular Skype-to-Skype or SkypeOut calls. Other colleagues of mine in Jordan have reported similar problems. The problems abated for the last week, but have now returned.

I inquired with our ISP in Jordan, named "Batelco," and they claim that the Jordanian Telecommunications Regulatory Commission has required them to ban access to Skype's website and to its authentication server. As proof they sent me the attached fax that they received.

I called the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, and they confirmed that they had ordered it banned, for "security reasons" responding to concerns of the government of Jordan. Most folks here don't believe this ridiculous justification; they believe that the state communications companies are upset about losing long-distance customers to Skype.

I've been told that complaints should be directed to the director of regulatory department of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, Dr. Al-Ansari. His email address is alansari.almashagbah@trc.gov.jo. The contact information for the commission is on the attached fax; Dr. Al-Ansari's extension is 2300.

I wanted to let you know about this issue because I am furious at the Jordanian government's self-serving decision. I hope that you will get a good blog post out of this, and that you may be able to mobilize Skype executives to officially protest the commission's decision. Jordan has a very close relationship to the US, and if they believe that Americans are upset at the decision, or that international investment will be jeopardized, they may be persuaded to change course. I also hope that you may be able to get Skype technicians working to counter whatever obstacles they have created to using Skype in Jordan.

Thank you for your time and please do not hesitate to contact me if you need any additional information.

Sincerely,

David M. DeBartolo
Fulbright Researcher, Jordan, 2006-2007
Binational Fulbright Commission
Amman, 11185
Jordan

Are you having difficulty with Skype and your ISP? Do you believe the "security" reason for blocking Skype.com?

I like the new USB speakerphone for Skype Kensington is shipping the United States. The Kensington Vo300 USB Internet Speakerphone (product code K33378US) is small, unassuming, very fast to set up, and tightly integrated with Skype for Windows XP, release 2.6 or later, MSRP $89.99.

Designed for laptop users so it emphasizes mobility. Just for scale, I took a snapshot of it on my stove (left). It's 5 inches wide (13 cm), 4-3/8 inch high(11 cm), and less than an inch thick (2.25 cm).

Kensington's distribution muscle will make this one of the most visible products in consumer electronics. Now at Amazon ($70), soon at Office Depot ($76) and Best Buy.

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While well-known as Canada's capital and, for hockey fans, as home of the NHL's Ottawa Senators, the Ottawa region has transformed itself over the past quarter century into Canada's high tech capital (dare I say Silicon Valley North?). Ottawa is headquarters for Mitel, Corel, and Versatel Networks (amongst others), hosts significant facilities for Nortel, JDS Uniphase (the JDS part), Alcatel (formerly Newbridge Networks) and a major Dell support center, and is a breeding ground for many high tech startups, especially in the telecommunications sector. Under the sponsorship of OCRI,  Ottawa is the site of a new conference - Voice 2.0: beyond telecom - a week from Monday (October 16).

"There is a great need for a venue where practitioners at the forefront of building next-generation communications networks and applications can get a broad perspective on the changes in telecom," said Ross MacLeod, Voice 2.0's conference host. "Voice 2.0 will provide an environment where attendees can share experiences that will speed the adoption of leading technologies and practices in the sector."

As one primer check out Alec Saunders post: Voice 2.0 A Year Later.

Skype Journal will be there and reporting on the activities. Check out the agenda. If you are interested in attending you can register via their website. (Hint: check out Terry Matthews' Brookstreet Hotel. They serve a great Sunday brunch if you arrive a day early and want to work in some pre-conference golf.)

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During Canada's Centennial Year (1967) I was host for a student exchange with Finnish students; we have kept up contact over the past 39 years. Last week I asked one of them if s/he could translate the actual Helsingin Sanomat article reporting on their interview with Niklas Zennström (registration required) or at least give me the gist of it. Below (with minimal editorial correction of spelling and grammar)  is what my friend calls her/his "amateur translation".

The interview certainly goes well beyond the content of the Reuters summary report. (On the other hand there is nothing there that is going to impact eBay's stock price!) Note that, while my friend has been using English in both personal and business activities all these years, Skype Journal is not responsible for any mistranslation.

Of note in Niklas' comments:

• Niklas sees the future for wireless as being in WiFi (and WiMax) networks once they become more ubiquitous and more easily accessible. (reinforcing Ted Wallingford's recent comments on WiFi as the primary VoIP wireless medium)
• The issues with developing Skype for GSM or other wireless mobile phones relate to both processing power and memory issues (which translate into latency issues discussed in a post last weekend).
• He sees current rates for calls to wired lines as being the lowest we will see as someone has to pay for at least the connection.
• He only sees an explosion of mobile VoIP only once there are unlimited use fixed rate data plans available.
• The path to Skype as a ubiquitous mobile platform may be through "rebel" or "challenger" mobile operators who want to challenge the larger legacy service providers. But this is along the lines of what Andy was concluding in his recent "Being on the Inside" post.

A summary translation paragraph by paragraph goes as follows:

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[Yes, I know it's Sunday! But I started to write this up Friday.]

The past couple of weeks has seen much higher visibility for attempts to duplicate the landline long distance calling revolution generated by VoIP technology in the wireless space.

First Jajah launched Jajah Mobile at DEMO Fall 2006, where a Jajah client on your mobile phone redirects any calls starting with, say, "+" or "00" via a VoIP-enabled  backend. Your cell phone sends dialing instructions via either a SMS message or a GPRS over-the-air data service to trigger calls which bridge your phone and the called party. The beauty of this plan is that it does allow you to continue using the standard dialing algorithm; however, there can be a 20 to 30 second pause while the bridge is established. Almost simple but not all the way there. Alec Saunders provides a more detailed discussion; Russell Shaw has nine reasons why it is not a threat to neither mobile carriers nor VoIP service providers; Luca agrees; Alec rebuts.

In a trial using my Jajah-supported Nokia N70, I found that the GPRS/EDGE/3G connection worked whereas via the SMS service it did not perform satisfactorily. It does have a problem recognizing that long distance calls to within North America ("+1") should be handled via Jajah.  They have assumed a U.S.-centric model where it is probably just as cost effective to use the various fixed monthly rate all-you-can-use plans available through U.S. mobile carriers; the Canadian mobile space is one where we still pay 10 to 25 cents per minute for long distance calls outside a local calling area. With their primary focus on the U.S. market Jajah Mobile sends all North American calls via the underlying wireless service, not the Jajah Mobile backend. To correct this they need to differentiate between US and Canadian phone numbers.  (This is easily done; Skype users may note that flags associated with "+1" phone numbers differentiate between Canadian and US area codes.) Calls using the SMS connection need some more work by the Jajah people to get the software right; Alec tells me they are aware of the issue and working on it.

Another service introduced at DEMO Fall 2006, Grand Central, offers "One Number for Life" designed to aggregate all your phone activities, including voice mail, ring tones, call blocking, call redirection and call recording. Unfortunately since it's only available in certain area codes in the U.S. the economic argument only works in the U.S. However, to get two sides of the picture read the comments by Alec Saunders, Andy Abramson who thinks "it rocks"; Ken Camp and Ted Wallingford who basically remind us not to forget the basics of consumer telephony and the potential of Voice 2.0 for the sustainability of its value-add. Ted sums it up with:

We need to focus on increasing ACTUAL functionality and lose the obsession with placing band-aids on the infrastructure of yesterday in order to save a half-cent a minute, which is the basis of these firms' business models. When clients ask me about VoIP, they always bring up carrier cost savings. That may've been the case in 2001, but it's getting tougher and tougher to make that case. So I switch them off of cost savings and turn them on to new ways of thinking about communications.

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Guest post by Hans Blaauw

Many many months ago I wrote a Skype plugin called Mood-o-Matic. It could retreive information from external databases and publish it in your mood. It was limited because Skype did not support clickable mood messages. Now they do!

There seems to be nothing in the EULA about what you are allowed to put in the Mood message (I just checked with some Skypers).

So in theory I could recruit 10000 popular people that are willing to display ads in their Moodmessage when they are away or busy. Imagine, each of these 10000 highly popular people have 25 other people in their list. That would make a interesting audience for advertising.

What if you would have the possibility to get free credits if you would put these ads in your Mood message, interesting?

It seems to me the Mood message can be used for many more things. What if it would support widgets from Widgetbox?

Just got home from the opening day of Yahoo!'s first open Hack Day. I thought it might be useful to contrast it with eBay's DevCon.

tags: skype, skypejournal, yahoo, hackday06, hackday, hack or die, yahoohackday06, ebaydevcon, ebay inc

Messagr launched yesterday to help you find other people to talk to. Messagr is a new presence-based search engine. Register yourself, describe topics that interest you, and give your Skype name. When you want to discuss rugby with someone right now, messagr shows people both interested in those topics and available to talk. 

Messagr gets that value is rapidly shifting from the metered call to everything surrounding the call. In this case, bringing callers together. Unlike Jyve's focus on expert answers and consulting services, messagr aspires to all topics for everyone, a general hub for social, business, academic, and other conversation.

I like the collective interest tag cloud, updated as members change their Skype presence. Reminds me of the moodgeist experiment that aggregates Skype moodie messages. There are other sites where you tag yourself for more specific purposes. Like Ziki, where you tag yourself to manage your professional network, jobster to find work, or Consumating to "find people who don't suck." Skype Ltd. tags job postings too.  

Joel Selvadurai built messagr, now in beta, with java and jsp and the SkypeWeb presence service. A recent computer science grad from Durham University in Newcastle, Joel and his laptop can be found in the cafe of the British Library many days.

tags: skype, startup, london, uk, messagr, searchengine, search, ebay inc., skypejournal

I just reinstalled SightSpeed on my "rebuilt" laptop and am always impressed with the video quality. It is reminiscent of the days about 25 years ago when the first color monitors became available for the mini-computer-based instrumentation I was selling at the time. My budget-limited customers (mostly university based researchers) thought they could get away with budgeting for a black and white monitor until they actually saw the color monitor ... it took all of two minutes to change their mind once they realized the features color added. Somehow the additional funds for color magically appeared quite quickly. (I won't mention the price they paid for simple monitors at that time!) When you see a SightSpeed video its quality just hits you instantly as being the benchmark for video communications.  And this week PC Magazine thought so also.

While it is a challenge to market in a space containing the GYMAS-five, SightSpeed CEO Peter Csathy and hist team seem to be ringing up the wins by working with partners who can take advantage of SightSpeed's video messaging functionality.  Two of note: a deal with MTV who is using SightSpeed on their Total Request Live offering to bring viewers into the show; SightSpeed is also making its debut in politics as a campaigning tool. Would be interesting to see if my university colleagues Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae start to use SightSpeed in their tight run for the leadership of Canada's Liberal party this fall where they need to approach 4500 delegates spread across 4,000 miles.

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Niklas Zennström chalks up two year delay to "technical hurdles and a lack of suitable handsets" in a Reuters summary of a Helsingin Sanomat interview (registration required). Duh.

Absent any immediate threats, and after Monday's conference call with eBay's government affairs people, San Jose State University's University Computing and Telecommunications department (SJSU UCAT) said they will not ban Skype. [correction: it was Skype's government affairs person, not eBay's, on the conference call.]

I wasn't there, but if I were briefing them, I'd be telling them about:

• Skype's value to the University's academic mission. Bringing distant guest lecturers into the classroom, helping students collaborate on projects, improving language study, helping faculty to perform research and develop curriculum, curriculum delivery, sustaining family and social ties that support students far from home.
• Skype's popularity. It's great to make people happy. Skype is a small but growing hit with both SJSU faculty and students. The UCAT office had many calls after the student newspaper's first article. And there's overwhelming popularity and demand for Skype worldwide.
• Little budget effect. Nice that it's free to get and use. Support costs are unknown. No known revenue impact (selling SkypeOut credit at the campus bookstore?)
• Configuring Skype to run through your proxy service to get through the firewall. So Skype clients deal with the firewall in a known and managed way. And so Skype's activity and effect on the network may be monitored. Or shut down, if needed. Linux FAQ. Network administrator's guide (PDF).
• Intel's pilot of an IT-friendly release of Skype. It lets the IT department create a locked-down version of the Skype client. So they could turn off the ability to use Skype's file transfer feature, for example. Or configure all Skype clients to use a campus proxy server. A promise of things to come, and a gesture that Skype is listening to enterprise network managers.

This all happened in public, with lots of nasty name calling and bother. But UCAT's initial choice may not have been reconsidered without all the attention drawn to the decision.

Yesterday Andy posted a reference to an article in today's San Jose Mercury News about various new "mobile lifestyle" companies that want to change the way we are using phones. But Michael Arrington has made an excellent point in stating that:

A bunch of VOIP services have launched to help people make cheaper calls from normal phones. None of them are compelling for the mass market.

The question any VC's need to ask when considering funding of any of these startups is "How do you intend to readily migrate these services into the mass market?".  This is a market that fundamentally picks up a handset, "dials" a number (or looks it up in an embedded directory to dial) and makes contact with the called party. Unless it can perform this basic simple algorithm for establishing a voice connection, additional services and features become technology showcases without hope for any mass adoption (and all the associated revenue opportunities).

Over the past three months I have had the opportunity to use the VoIPVoice UConnect when in my office and their CyberSpeaker W Skype phone when on the road. (Both use the same driver software and start with a standard telephone keypad user interface.) Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to preview what is coming out this fall in cordless phones. As mentioned previously I am evaluating some relatively new wireless devices. Over the past year I have not had to pay more than 3 cents a minute for any landline long distance calls whether at home or on the road beyond any basic service fees (and since mid-May that has gone to zero for SkypeOut calls within North America).

The combined experiences have helped me establish a base line for the level of simplicity I would expect as we see the emergence of both cordless phones and wireless mobile devices that use or access Skype (and/or other VoIP-based services) while serving as a standard telephone handset:

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You invite some friends to a party at your home. While at the party, they sublet your home to strangers. You learn this after the strangers are throwing their own parties in your home and moving in, eating your food, dating your wife.

Although the plot is straight out of Madhouse (1990), I'm really talking about San José State University's network managers facing the reality of Skype adoption. In this metaphor:

• the student Skypers are the friends,

• the sublease is the Skype EULA,

• the strangers are the members of the Skype network,

• and side effects are:

  • a new thing to support without any planned budget,

  • unanticipated use of your networks,

  • unknown exposure to various risks on your master list.

This gets trickier when Skype's architecture (a blend of p2p and centralized services) isn't well understood beforehand.

Don Baker and Bob Neal are resisting proven defensive instincts. Before tossing out the scoundrels and locking the doors, they're inviting comment from campus stakeholders and building expertise by bringing an eBay/Skype person to a closed briefing on Tuesday. All the public attention doesn't make it easier to take a measured approach, so these SJSU University Computing and Telecom (UCAT) execs are showing great discipline.

If you want to learn more, and share your thoughts, Steve Sloan is hosting a discussion, open to the public, on Skype in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications (JMC). We'll be Skypecasting it too. I'll see you there.

Never wonder about the power of telephone companies. A few weeks ago Wessel van der Vyfer spoke for Telecom Namibia at the Telecoms World Africa conference on "The future prospects of the African telecoms market.. new players ... the latest strategies."

This week The Namibian's Christof Maletsky reports van der Vyfer's Telecom Namibia arranged the arrest and arraignment of five people for selling unlicensed telecom service, in this case Internet phone calls. They were operating out of three storefronts in the port city of Walvis Bay.

Jan in Malaysia comments "It makes you realise how lightly Skype got off in South Korea after it was discovered it had set up shop and was providing VoIP services without the proper licence."

Namibia's six telephones per 100 people leaves them at a competitive disadvantage. Mike at TechDirt says small countries protect their tiny telco monopolies at the expense of economic prosperity. It must be hard to trade proven cash flow for theoretical growth.

After a lunch today at the Metreon entertainment complex's food court in San Francisco, Phil and I walked into the Sony store and found the new Mylo available for purchase. Yesterday was the launch day.

While we did not have an environment for any full testing (and the WiFi access was a bit flaky) three comments:

• Phil was able to call his mobile phone from the Mylo's Skype client
• I was able to access my Skype account from the Mylo's web service
• My first impression -- this may be for Sony in this decade what the Walkman was for them in the 1980's. Web access, photos, videos, WiFi connectivity, media player -- they were all there in a device smaller than the original Walkman.

An evaluation unit is en route; we will provide a more complete report once we have had a chance to work with it for a couple of weeks.

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How do you voice enable the whole web? With Adobe Flash. My host walks me into his tiny war room at Adobe North. The tables strewn with copies of VON magazine, and Sinnreich's Internet Communications Using SIP. The white board has an architectural map on the left, laying out the technologies he'll need to build, buy or partner, and revenue models for each. On the right he's listing interconnect standards for call termination.

The goal is audacious. Outside of Microsoft, however, Adobe may be the only place on the planet with a hope of making VoIP ubiquitous. My host, an Adobe entrepreneur in residence, is building a startup to "just add voice." And video. And conferencing. You know, voice 2.0.

He assumes Adobe makes platforms for developers, not end products. So he's looking at companies like Skype and Yahoo! as potential customers, not rivals. He wants to help them build applications without worrying about the telecom plumbing.

• The MySpaces of the world should be able to call their own directory services from Flash but let Flash make the connection.

• The Salesforce.coms should be able to design a video customer service widget without worrying about the cameras or the codecs.

• Amazons could create live chat rooms for clusters of related books without invading customer privacy or setting up data centers.

These businesses add value with their social networks, their workflows, and rapport with their communities. They don't want to be in the "Skype" business, just their own. Among other things, this means Adobe doesn't need to convince every user on Earth to get an Adobe ID; people will use existing namespaces.

Adobe builds on others' value by creating baseline, ubiquitous infrastructure. Making commodity features from expensive, risky, perishable, complex systems. It's a platforming strategy. If Adobe's growing voice team (open Senior Product Manager and Computer Scientist - VoIP) can make coding for calls simple and elegant, a million flash designers and developers will add it to their toolkits. Contrast that with the hundreds actively developing for the Skype API.

Adobe is already active in the telecom industry. They license flash to mobile phone manufacturers, promoting the Flash developer channel's flash apps to carriers. Some of the most compelling mobile experiences are courtesy of Flash designers. About 70 million devices have Flash embedded.

Flash is also important to the advertising industry. 77% of banner ads are in Flash, says Adobe. If you think click-to-call advertising has a future, wait until you have click-to-talk-with-a-satisfied-customer or click-to-join-the-concert-in-progress.

If the Masked Entrepreneur can make it work and sell it to his internal stakeholders, it will be part of the next major release of Flash in 18 months or so. Adobe says the "Flash player is installed on nearly 98% of Internet-connected desktops."

That's a short window for Skype and Microsoft to respond. Skype product management has pretty much deprioritized developer requests since Summer 2005 to plug into the Skype cloud via a "Naked Skype", "headless Skype" or "Skypenet." Skype could be offering web services and server software that cleanly plugs other systems into the Skype cloud. They aren't working on it according to several sources within Skype's development team. Will Adobe's signaling wake up Skype to the industry power of being not just a social network but the leading infrastructure provider? Skype management didn't return calls by post time.

Since its inception the secret sauce that results in the excellent voice quality of Skype-to-Skype calls and facilitates quality in Skype-to/from_SkypeIn/Out calls has been the Voice Engine for PC and Voice Engine for (Windows) Mobile licensed by Skype from Global  IP Sound (often referred to as "GIPS"). Monday came the announcement that Skype has licensed a second player for voice engine software in embedded, PC-free consumer devices, namely, Trinity Convergence. Trinity's VeriCall Edge^TM software  brings their many years of silicon-device independent software development into the Skype stand-alone PC-free device space.

The agreement benefits hardware manufacturers by providing a software bundle that allows them to efficiently and cost-effectively design Internet calling and the Skype user experience into devices such as wired phones, WiFi phones and multi-function personal communication devices. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) will leverage the software bundle to shorten product development cycles and accelerate their time-to-market.

The first device to employ Trinity Convergence's software will be the forthcoming Sony Mylo which should be available later this month. Additional devices under development include a Skype phone from Universal Scientific Industrial, a Taipei-based ODM (prototype in the photo) and a currently anonymous dual mode WiFi-GSM phone.

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My take:

1. Everyone is doing the right thing. Students sharing how they are using Skype now. IT managers learning everything they can about the technology, its risks, and opportunities. Faculty and staff researching best practices and comparing notes.
2. Ubiquity matters. The size of the Skype network should earn it a hearing. Telling people to use other "VoIP" products like Wengo or Gizmo, as UCSB did, is like trying to convince everyone to speak in Esperanto to protect the network. As Skype rolls into 200 million users next year, you have a good shot at finding people on the network.
3. Skype builds campus Social Capital and Capacity. A university education, if you do it right, builds social skills you need as a student and depend on in the workplace. Skype is the live, real-time counterpart to blogs, wikis, email, and other social media. Skype is becoming the way to "get things done" with others, the tool of choice for communication, collaboration, and coordination. And with Skype's cumulative history of your contacts and conversations, the more you use Skype, the more effective you are at team building and putting your social networks to use. The choice isn't whether or not to use VoIM on campus; it's mastering how to make the most of it.
4. The rationale against doesn't hold water. You might make effective cases against Skype, but the three points in the proposed policy misapply the University's regulations and policies and misinterpret Skype's license and the way the technology really works.

Five updates to our Monday story by Steve Sloan:

SJSU to grill Skype Security on Tuesday. Bob Neal (the Sr. Director in charge of the networks at SJSU) wrote to a San Jose State University (SJSU) student (who promptly blogged it, of course):

Andrew, we will be having discussions with EBAY (Skype) next week. Network security is not a debatable issue. If EBAY can not resolve our issues, Skype will be banned. Several other universities, including UCSB have already banned Skype. There are several alternative VOIP systems that comply with the Universities security policies ........bob neal

SJSU ban modeled on the UC Santa Barbara Skype ban. Here's the "Skype Prohibited at UCSB" policy (modified 1/30/2006) via the UCSB Office of Information Technology Network Policy and Procedures page. The language from SJSU's proposed policy ("UCAT Operating Practices document describing the reasons and details for blocking Skype," pdf) is lifted directly from UCSB's policy.

Student calls for student action. Andrew Venegas blogs for students to call Bob Neal, passing out his campus email and direct phone number.

"Here is where I am stumped... if network security is not a debatable issue, why are any P2P applications allowed on the networks at all? It would be rather easy to transfer viruses from computer to computer across such open networks. So why ban Skype without debate on the topic? Secondly, why would the University not want student input? After all, aren't they technically student networks?"

Making the case for Skype as Instructional Technology. "Save Skype at SJSU : This is a letter to my colleagues at SJSU." Steve Sloan's points:

1. Skype and podcasting are both useful and popular.
2. Bringing guest speakers and faculty into the classroom.
3. International research and study.
4. Language learning.
5. Keeping foreign students connected with their families.

Sloan frames this choice in terms of the University's educational mission. "In my opinion this will result in our being at a competitive (not to mention technological) disadvantage compared to other institutions of higher learning when it comes to emerging technology, research and collaboration. This act has potential high visibility, given our campus's geography, with potential negative publicity, exposure and fallout. It can affect our relations with our neighbors and potential business partners in a very negative way."

Mainstream Media Catching the Story. Reporter Elise Ackerman of the Mercury News newspaper would like to speak with international students using Skype. Call her via Skype, via email, or by phone at (408) 271-3774.

tags: skype, skypejournal, sjsu, calstate, california, sanjose, sanjosestateuniversity, banning, enterprise, csu, security, web2.0, voip, voim, policy, stevesloan, soapboxprophet, andrewvenegas, blocking, education, distancelearning

Seems that the discussion of the merits of email and (Skype) Chat are warming up again:

• Andy highlights the delays in knowing who is really online in Skype; he also mentions he has been receiving some chat spam.
• Jaanus admits that, despite claiming Skype chat to have many advantages over email fifteen months, ago he is still a heavy user of email.
• Rachel needs Skype presence to work in real time to effectively operate her MusicIP activities. She did at least get a personal response from Skype Customer Support.

Today at 2:46 a.m. I received an email from Andy; being an occasional nighthawk I responded to it immediately as I thought he wanted me to do an interview with one of his clients later in the day.  Andy comes back (at 3:13 a.m.) with: "I just received this reply to a message from September 6th !!!!".  I looked again at the original and sure enough, the email was originally sent Sept. 6 as stated within the message. My network tells me I am not the only one to receive e-mails from Andy today (Sept. 20) that were sent Sept. 6.  I guess it's Andy's snail-based communications system working its way across North America. (SMTP: Snail Message Transport Protocol?)

Anyway, it's a great example for putting some perspective on the two nines (99%) reliability of the Internet. At least I seem to get most of my Skype chat messages within a few hours (minutes?) of their being sent.

May the debate continue!

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Jean Mercier is our Skype Numerologist.

Skype was - in the past - proud of its viral growth. But business is business, and they try to attract people by gifts and promotions, hoping to generate more revenue through SkypeOut, SkypeIn and Skype certified products. The last two promotions in September were:

1. Free SkypeOut for France in France
2. September Giveaway for USA and Canada

For the time being this has been unsuccessful IMHO! See the graph below:

Even if MuppetMaster pretends downloads isn't a measure of the growth of Skype (and I partially agree with this), the number of downloads should have shown some acceleration if these Skype Marketing campaigns mentioned above had been successful. Indeed, a bunch of new users downloading Skype should show a change in pattern in the download curve, as it was some months ago when they launched the free SkypeOut in Canada and the USA. It doesn't: almost straight line growth since several months.

September Giveaway was targeting mainly students, and this (probably) proves again that the Skype Users are mainly adult professional users.

Skype Users seem to be also quite often small businesses. But French small business mainly have their customers in France (France is a big country), and phone calls inside France are not free but quite cheap. Belgian small business (as an example), because of the tiny size of the country, do more business abroad (in France for instance), therefore they are more interested in reducing their phone call bills.

So? Why trying to force Viral Growth? Let it grow the usual way, by improving mainly quality, reliability and services.

One of my new "Skype Customers" told me: Skype to Skype has a fantastic quality, but SkypeOut isn't that good, but it is much cheaper indeed! She phones to her family in Algeria, and lives in Belgium! Improving quality will attract more Small Businesses!

Actiontec announces a Reseller Program for the VoSky Exchange This looks like a good opportunity to make money in Skypeland. The timing is good too. We will probably see some exciting new initiatives from Skype for the Small, Medium Business segment in the next six months.

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During VON Fall 2006 I did two podcasts with Jon Arnold on some aspects of the show:

• Tuesday: Discussing the morning's two keynotes (Jeff Pulver and Ted Leonsis) as well as the IM session the previous afternoon.
• Wednesday: A discussion of Canadian companies participating at VON Fall.

Also Jon and I were both individually interviewed by TechNewsWorld about the implications of Skype's announcement of the Skype 2.0 beta with video.

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Skype DevZone's Triona Carey wrote about the Tallinn Beta Tester Days just completed (we're eager for Bill Campbell's comprehensive report). She lists the topics ("roadmaps, the forthcoming plug-in framework, Skype for Business, components, and the Skype4Java API.") without actually transferring that knowledge.

And then she does something smart and nice (which is not unusal for Triona). She writes:

International gatherings cost time and money - for attendants and for Skype. None of us can afford to have as many of them as we'd like. We are working on other ways to enrich communication in our community - newsletter coming soon, Skypecasts, conference calls, wiki.

If you can suggest useful ways to enrich networking in our community, please let us know.

Hi, Triona. I wish I'd been there.

You're on the right track. I'd urge the Skype team to look to the needs of the people outside the room. For every attendee, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, who would be there if they could. Four stages for addressing this:

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Guest blog by Steve Sloan, Information Technology Consultant, San Jose State University.

UPDATE: At the moment, Skype's status remains undetermined and unblocked on the SJSU campus. A UCAT Operating Practices document describing the reasons and details for blocking Skype. (pdf)

Skype is a peer-to-peer (p2p) voice communications, instant message and file sharing program. The recent decision to pull the plug on Skype at SJSU (has it been implemented?) may be a classic example of command and control (Web 1.0 thinking) versus collaborate and communicate (Web 2.0) technologies and principles. According to one person I spoke with in the networking department of the university's computer center, "the issue that caused the decision to kill Skype is that Skype communications are encrypted." But, other protocols like SSL, SFTP and SSH are allowed and are encrypted. These protocols could be also used to do evil things. There is no discussion I know of to block these communications and they are used a lot on our university's network. Also IPSec and Kerberos are protocols used used on the SJSU network. These protocols are also encrypted and supported by SJSU. Should we also kill them? Do we want to have to make credit card transactions in clear text?

Yes, there have been past concerns about Skype. But, these concerns may be over blown. Oxford University, which had banned Skype, in fact recently lifted its ban on Skype.

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