Yesterday's Second Life client update improved in-world instant messaging and presence. From the change log:  

• Added: a new Profile tab shows a web page of the profile owner's choice without launching a browser. (more than Skype)
• URLs in chat and IM are now clickable links. Supports http://, https://, secondlife:// (hmmm, wish skype: links were clickable in 2L)
• Log IMs and/or chat (hmmm. Are my Skype moods and presence logged?)
• Permit friends to see you online/on the map (Presence, availability and location. I'd like that, maybe let GPS or cellular tower codes update Skype via SMS/texting?)
• Conference IM multiple friends by multi-selecting in the Friends list (multichat! only one step to conference calls.)
• See who granted you permission to modify their objects in the Friends list. (this personalized presence is almost relationship brokering: who can see and do what with me when, where and in what ways.)
• Set whether you show as online in Search (Spreads your presence data, making people-search more actionable.)

2L's on a great trajectory: 

• it's matching features with the popular IM clients,
• expanding presence depth and accessibility, and 
• making it slightly easier to blend the outside world into the 2L experience.    

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

by Jean Mercier, Skype Numerology Blog.

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

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

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

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

Some comments on some selected folders:

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

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Technology and Products

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advanced topics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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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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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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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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?  

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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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?

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.

I was being interviewed for a podcast last night. As always, the purpose of the "stupid network" is to enable crazy new things, not connectivity arbitrage. The setup was that I'm in my hotel room using the woefully over-contended in-room Internet access. The caller could only record calls made using his landline phone, so he called me on my SkypeIn number.

The audio experience was OK, but about that of a typical cellular call. Not ideal for a podcast.

This does, however, provide great fodder for a "Voice 2.0"-ish story. Normally, VoIP uses the UDP protocol for media transmission. If the packet doesn't get there within 300ms, or whatever, forget it. No point in asking for reliability and re-transmission of lost data. The TCP protocol is used for signalling and other purposes where a reliable, in-sequence connection is required.

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I'd like to send my wife an SMS. In Skype I've got a group called "Family", which includes her entry. However, she hasn't filled in her mobile number in her profile, because that means exposing it to anyone she adds to her buddy list.

I can instead create a new entry for her mobile, or enter it directly, so this isn't a massive deal. I could even hand some bonus money to a telco and SMS her from my mobile. It does serve to illustrate a bigger point, though, on how different communications systems can create value by managing privacy differently.

There are several ways of technically resolving the situation. A simple one is that I have a local copy of her profile that I can extend and annotate -- a proper object inheritance mechanism. Another is that I can request her number off her.

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Google UK ads were discovered with little green phones. I walk you through the experience (it works). This is a grand way to get your feet wet in the click-to-call business. You'll learn things. Like what happens to an advertiser when the phone rings off the hook ("all operators are busy"). Customer privacy concerns. Keeping it simple. 

Offering Skype and GoogleTalk options should cut down operations costs, compared to ringback services; you don't pay for two long distance calls.

Click-to-call's live interaction may be one of the biggest business challenges for advertisers. The skills for running a call center are very different from mastering a shopping site. And converting customers in a conversation is different than pulling through your site's shopping cart.

For example, there's often a gap between customer and advertiser time zones and hours of operation. Scheduling a call back should improve response rates, not to mention avoid waking small business people at 2am. Letting callers choose "Please call me around 9am tomorrow" is another. Click-to-voicemail during off hours or when overloaded is another.  SalesBuilder's Call Me Now is a great example of the state of the market.

Other coverage:

• Search Engine Watch Forums thread
• Search Engine Roundtable: Google Launches Click to Call in UK
• Googlified: Google UK Lauched Click-to-Call
• TechCrunch UK: Google launches click-to-call in UK
• Unofficial SEO Blog: Google Click To Call Launched In UK
• Greg Sterling: Google PPCall in UK

The walkthrough...

1. Go to Google.co.uk

2. Search for jet2

You might see search results like this. See the ads on the right?

3. Click on the ad with the phone.

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Skylook 2.0 for Skype and Outlook is coming next month, beefs up sophisticated alerting and remote controls. The coolest thing is it uses Skype to bring live activity in Outlook to your mobile phone when you're away from your desktop. If you live in Outlook, take a look at their preview page for screenshots and a 10% discount coupon.

15 Apps for Recording Skype Conversations. I think this is the most complete list at the moment. Good job, Andy Boyd. 10 for Windows, 5 for Mac. I'd add YapperNut's Amy recorder for Windows, free download, and bundled with the YapperMouse mouse+phone for Skype. Any recorders for Linux or Skype mobile? For Skype video calls?

Transcribe your Skype conversations. Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 for Windows is out, $99 upgrade. This should be built-in functionality for enterprise versions of Skype. One of the ways you add value is convert Skype calls to text, and post them to team blogs as meeting minutes.

Skype for Windows Beta Preview updated today. The latest version 2.6.0.74, a hefty 12 Mb, takes care of a few rare but nasty bugs and adds a Google toolbar for Internet Explorer with a Skype button on it. (I'm waiting for a Firefox googlebar, please.) The Help | Check for update menu command won't tell you there's this newer version.

Keynoter simulSkypecast from South African conference today. Stephen Downes on learning objects. Downes almost always make me angry when he talks, because he rudely challenges my worldview with facts and logic. And then, maybe minutes or days later, it sinks in and I get it. This was a fast and free way to bring the world into a conference, hopefully others will take note.

FireOlive.com is a Google News + Skype mashup. Call in with Skype or phone, record your thoughts on a news topic, and your message goes live on the site within 2 - 5 minutes. It's blindingly simple, and addictive. I can't wait for this to become a common feature on other news sites like digg or slashdot.

Skype developers can win $2,000. Funambol put a Skype PIM Plug-in on its hit list of extensions with open bounties. They want to sync a user's Skype data with the Funambol mobile app.

China to be First Internet Nation next year. More broadband users than US, fertile ground for consumer VoIP and net television, say two research firms. As important as North America is to eBay this year, I'll bet China takes on new importance for both eBay and Skype next year. vnunet article.

Got a tip? Leave a note!

Ken Camp makes a call to Women in VoIP to gripe about the few females at internet telephony conferences like those run by Jeff Pulver and Rich Tehrani and Tim O'Reilly.

In the last episode, the Office 2.0 conference had 53 men and 1 woman speaking. Gender imbalance? The organizer invited friends and strangers and that's how his personal network fell out. Reactions include asking speakers to step down, boycotts, the F-word. And building lists of women.

At least in the United States, women start more small businesses than men and are graduating at higher rates from high schools and engineering schools. So there is a vast pool to draw from. So if that's not the problem...

It's not about finding women speakers. It's about

• making it easy
• to find smart people
• with experience as speakers
• on a given topic,
• in a time frame,
• for a budget,
• outside your social network's event horizon,
• and selecting or deselecting for personal and professional characteristics, like religion, gender, ethnicity, and culture. (BlogHer clearly wasn't shooting for gender balance.)

Essentially, discovering the right strangers to invite to a conversation.

The world of matchmaking.

Of dating.

Of job search and recruiting.

Of Skype's people search.

They are markets of individual conversations. People offering a service and wanting a service, sharing a market. (Remind me sometime to talk about micromarket asymetry, where power is unequally shared among those who have and those who want.)

Conventions collect conversations into packages. Even open space and unconference events, where speakers are selected last minute by the attendees, fit this definition.

Secondary markets come in several forms. Convention programmers make markets for their conversation bundles (called conferences). Others show up as media, like podcasts of interviews or talk radio.

Systems which make matches efficiently (like the Monster.coms of the world) are often ineffective, making good matches. That's why some sites at least try to wrap the match in magic (Dr. Phil's advice to the lovelorn) or science (Ph.D. verified psychometric tests).

Back to women...

Diversity of thought and experience keeps markets, and conferences, vigorous. Balance proven relevance with serendipity, assuring somebody challenges your worldviews and assumptions. My favorite events leave me unsettled; perturbed from my usual orbit.

For example, I went to Blogher, a blogging conference for women (mostly). I'm in the red shirt in Hollyster's The Men of Blogher flickr set. Among other things, I was an obvious minority among 500 women, at a gathering where women's subcultures so clearly ruled. Speakers made meaning differently. It was less about painting a vision, than about sharing stories. Not so much sharing facts and observations as it was about bringing facts into the context of life experience. Not necessarily the way I blog or speak.

I'm looking forward to the Office 2.0 discussions, not this metathread about gender. More on how Skype fits into the Office 2.0 context soon.

Skype did a great job packaging Skype into the new Mylo. And I'm desparate for a device like this that lets me carry Skype around. But Sony's Mylo doesn't deserve this moment of love. Like the T-Mobile Sidekick, Mylo:

• is a closed device and platform when we need open platforms;
• only has Wi-Fi when we need the ubiquity of wireless edge networks; and
• lacks authoring tools when everyone creates, mashes up, and publishes photos, sound, and video.

Definitely not for the MySpace generation, despite the great job at embedding Skype, Yahoo! and Google IM clients.

Save Mylo, Sony.

1. Add a good still and video camera. We're sharing our work and our lives. I want this to replace my mobile camera phone, but you are betting it won't, at least for now. Please try! 
2. Add audio, video and photo recording software. Surely Adobe is ready to come out with pocket versions of ImageReady, Audition and Premiere.
3. Add authoring (or at least uploading) tools for blogs, vlogs and podcasts. A browser can only do so much, even with Web 2.0 goodies.
4. Publish developer tools and seed an open ecosystem. I want to code rich clients (feedreader, please) to run on Mylo, especially apps that work offline.
5. Open the device to third-party apps, without prior Sony approval. So I can buy Mylo editions of Quicken, Flight Simulator, QQ, and embedded Firefox (with extensions). It's much easier to be closed, but a Sony bizdev tax is a barrier to user adoption.
6. Add AIM. Still being used by millions, even adults.
7. Let me use Skype without a plug-in earbud (built in noise-cancelling microphone). Just one thing to carry, please.
8. Support the U3 flashdrive standard for better desktop integration.
9. Bundle more memory. 1 GB is too small to do the job needed, and an insult at this price point.
10. Support IMAP and POP3 email servers. How can Sony segment work from life when work and life are blended for most people?
11. Talk through GSM and EDGE data networks. Wi-Fi-only is premature in most places for most people.
12. Add bluetooth. The better to play with desktops, cameras, and mobile phone.
13. Lose the big orange and blue lights (or at least make them optional). Nobody around me needs to know when I'm using Mylo or I'm online.
14. Add batteries. So you can do all that and sustain the long battery life you offer now.

Mylo represents a great stab in the right direction. Product managers trade off time, features, cost, quality, risk and prices. Here's hoping Mylo continues to evolve and expand into a development platform to rival the Playstation, Windows Mobile, the Palm OS, and Symbian.

P.S. Good luck to the musician Mylo, who's had no Google juice competition until now.

Sony saves Skype users who feel tethered to their PC. Sony announced an agreement with Skype to integrate Skype software into Sony's first WiFi broadband communication and entertainment device, the mylo (My Life Online) personal communicator.

It looks like an awe-inspiring product. I can't wait to test drive it.

The mylo personal communicator will offer a rich array of Skype features, including

• Skype to Skype, SkypeOut, and SkypeIn calling
  
• Call history and voicemail
  
• Skype chat and multi chat with animated emoticons
  
• Contact add and search
  
• Full profile viewing and automatic Skype sign-in

The Skype Certified Sony mylo personal communicator will be available in September at Sony Style stores, sonystyle.com and at retail outlets across the United States. Price point is about $350. Read more about it here.

• Slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
• Large 2.4 LCD colour screen
• Internet Browser and e-mail client (Opera)
• Three-hours continuous talk time on Skype
• Small: Approx. 4 7/8 × 31/32 × 2 1/2 inches (123 × 23.9 × 63 mm)

"The mylo personal communicator puts the fun parts of a computer in the palm of your hand,"

The Sony mylo ranks as a "must have product"!

Last night I ordered a whole bunch of components to upgrade our main PC and satisfy my wife's Warcraft addiction. Today I got a text message as follows:

There is a problem authorising the payment for your order E123456 . Please ring us on 0870 0123 4567 to resolve this. Thank you for your custom.

Of course, you call the number and have to re-dictate your order code to the agent.

There was also an email with the same message. Now, with a URL, you can add in parameters at the end. Just tag on "?param=value". But the telephone system doesn't understand URLs, and there's no standard way of encoding phone numbers in SMS messages and emails to be able to extend the system just in case you do have a click-to-call capability. (Yes, I know about SIP URIs. The potential is there; a standardised deployed system is not.) There's no way of me pressing the "call" button on my mobile and the order code being passed straight back to their system.

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"Skype video is fantastic. I had three video IP surveillance cameras installed in my retail store to monitor the cash counter and they just did not have a useful frame rate. I need Skype. It will work great but I need it to operate without popping up when I call the remote Skype Client. What can I do?"

I understood this man's problem instantly. I met a woman who ran a cappuccino shop a few years back who was losing a ton of money by staff pocketing the money instead of ringing it in the cash register. Her profit was back the moment she installed a video cam surveillance unit.

However, you cannot eliminate the pop up of the Skype Application when the call comes in. So how did this man solve his problem and get Skype working in stealth mode?

Easy. Set the Skype Application to run under another account in XP while the computer runs in the normal log-in account. Do not use the "Right Click and select, Run As... to set up the second Skype Client. Insead set up the surveillance Skype Client using "Log-in" command at the Start Menu.

Skype now has a happy retailer somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean.

I was recently provided with a Nokia N70, which I've been watching my wife play with. (You're only getting my N90 out of my sweaty hands by swapping it for one of these.) [Disclosure: Riddled with conflict. Get over it.]

Firstly, some unexpected praise. Since the included manuals were encrypted in Finnish, I downloaded the N70 PDF manual off the Web. I'd really urge all tech writers to drop what they're doing and go take a look. It's stunning. The shortcuts and stuff you really need are all at the front. It's based around the user and their scenarios ("how do I..."), not the phone and its menus and navigation structure. The layout is crystal clear. The language is simple. The corporate BS is hidden near the back. The important bits use bold and colour to let your eye flit about and find the facts you want. Someone's put as much -- if not more -- effort into this than has gone into the phone UI. Bravo!

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Rick and his family operate one of the most prestigious home furniture stores in Australia. They have been using Skype in their business since almost day one. (Reminder: Skype's 3rd birthday is less than 27 days away... what gift will you give Skype?) Rick buys everything Skype so I value his feedback on the new SMC Networks Wi-Fi Phone and asked him to share his experience with our Skype Journal readers. Here is what he had to say...

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True or false? You decide.

There will be three desktop clients through which you conduct your life. Browser wars ("Episode 1" ... or was that 4?) was only the beginning.

• The browser. "Their stuff" -- your lens on the outside world -- discover, read, and transact.
• The messenger. "Our stuff" -- your lens into your social world -- connect and converse.
• The manager. "My stuff" -- your lens onto your own digital artifacts -- search, edit and view.

Skype is/was the "new Netscape". Perhaps a few billion dollars was cheap...

Having played with Nokia Lifeblog 2.0 for a while, I think this is kind of a transformative moment for how we interact with the last category. It's still at the Mosaic-like stage of development (go read your browser wars history), but it's useable. I look forward to the Windows Explorer paradigm going the way of MS-DOS.

No time to blog further on this one. Time to let the idea stew and simmer.

Stew and simmer through the telepocalypse.

I had a quick conversation earlier today with a vendor who was sitting in the departure lounge at SFO airport waiting for a flight. He is based in the UK, and this is roaming on a US network.

Here's how the sequence of interactions went.

1. He calls my SkypeIn number.
2. I get an incoming call from a UK cellular number. Assume a UK-based caller.
3. I don't have my headset plugged in, or Skype set up to use my USB headset instead of default Windows settings. Scabble around to retrieve headset, plug in, configure.
4. I call his number back, it goes to voicemail. He hasn't answered me.
5. A minute later, I've got a new voicemail in Skype from him. He gives his context and contact details.
6. I call him back, he answers.

There are lots of places here where the telephony user experience broke.

Firstly, Skype's device management is a total mess. I need to be able to tell Skype my #1 preference is for my USB headset, second choice is the USB handset I'm trying out. I want to set the PC built-in microphone to "never", as I don't have any such device; and my laptop doesn't have a built-in microphone.

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by: Julian Bond.

Julian is CTO of Ecademy, an online network "connecting business people." He Skype-enabled the Ecademy website to facilitate communications amongst members. The following is a post he made on the Ecademy Skype Directory Club forum in a discussion of the "code cracking" news.

Here's some ways to think about this. The first point is to understand what interop means. There are 3 ways of linking IM/Audio/Video networks.

1. At the network level. Transparently route chat, voice and video by linking the networks. Skype can't do that because there is no central network. MSN, YM! and AIM have a big centrally controlled part of the system even though a lot of the communication is P2P so they can link, at the cost of running that big central system.
2. At the server level. This is what some Jabber servers do. Because all communications go partly through a server they can be switched. It's the same as 1) except that anyone can run a Jabber server.
3. At the client. GAIM, Trillian and others let you have one client that speaks multiple protocols. You need an official account with any system you want to talk to but it blurs the differences between them.

So if there's a library that can be built into client code that duplicates the Skype protocols, 3) can be built. And 2) can be built where it's appropriate (eg Asterisk PBX).

Then look at two conversations that are happening on the Skype forums already: (i) Building audio/video stream access into the Skype API and (ii) release of a Naked Skype which is a library that provides the API without having to have the Client.

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The VoIPWiki Blog reports a Chinese firm reverse engineered Skype's communications protocol. It allows Skype-to-compatible softphone calls.This is credible; I've talked with a member of the team that built a Skype-compatible softphone. They hope to go public by month end. We're eager to discover if they will publish the protocols, offer Skype-compatible consumer software, offer Skype-compatible engineering products to other developers, sell their firm to a bigger company, or simply offer consulting services.

I've also used a demo version of software that crawls the Skype cloud, downloading profile data. From another group. This is not "the Skype database" but the natural white-page listing that all users put in their public profile. Skype's servers, and the financial data kept there, are not touched by this system. Screenshots:

Both systems build on detailed knowledge of Skype network parts not on Skype's servers.To build a Skype-compatible client, they had to figure out:

• how to see and navigate through the Skype cloud, to find a Skype client.
• publish their own client's profile into the Skype cloud, so a Skype client could find them
• negotiate starting the call session, including encryption and

Publishing the Skype calling protocol would create new opportunities for products and developers:

1. Third parties can build Skype connectivity into their own software, no longer requiring an official Skype client.
2. It may open up creation of Skype-compatible server software. So your salesforce system could IM you.
3. It could open up Skype to PBX integration. So you might preserve Skype identity, authentication, encryption, and presence while routed through an Asterisk server.

The profile probe is a slightly different issue. In this case, software that mines the Skype cloud for profile data is working with "dirty data." The collection is unverified, often clearly faked (an unbelievable number of people live in Antarctica), old, and incomplete. It does have some gems. Correction: The cloud has email addresses, hidden in the Skype user interface but used to locate friends. The cloud has email addresses, but they are hashed and not human readable. 

I'm not sitting at the management table, but Skype has several choices.

Open. They're already on the path to opening up more of their apps at the API level. Skype could embrace this at the protocol level too. This is the hardest thing to do, but may pay off in the long run. Exposing these protocols is the only way for the Skype network to become an industry standard. And it would put Skype in a position of leadership the way Microsoft is for dot net, Sun is for Java, and Adobe is for Flash.

Switch. Skype could change the protocols, breaking the new software. This is a costly and temporary solution; tricky but doable. Replacing Skype clients for updates is hard enough; getting everyone to migrate could kill the brand love. It won't be long until the Chinese engineers figure out how to get in again.

Quash. Skype might try to blow out the startup's fire. eBay has a powerful combination of PR, lobbyists, litigators, and business allies. Even in China. Skype could try to accuse the startup of piracy. My guess is Skype will tread litely. These tactics rarely work in China and often tarnish the reputation of the outsider applying the pressure.

Ignore. Skype has enough to do. Wait and see.

Invest. Buy the team, put them to work. 

Jim Courtney says technology does not a brand make. It takes quality control, aesthetics, user experience, customer services, an ecosystem of ancillary products, and integration with other systems. Skype's and eBay's marketing are a higher barrier to entry than technology.

Skype personnel were not available for comment. Hat tips to 9Skype, Jan Geirnaert in Malaysia and Lee Dryburgh in Austria.

Technorati Tags: skype, ebay, skypejournal, security, privacy, compatibility, ecosystem

In case you've ever wondered if there's any scope for innovation in telephony (geddit?), here's some points to ponder.

First, check out this post by Douglas Galbi, in particular:

Good sensory design of communication services requires understanding behavioral goals. Consider, for example, voice quality. High voice quality might mean transmitting the full audible range of a person's voice, and nothing else (no "noise"). Research indicates, however, that persons are able to identify locations based on their acoustic qualities. If the goal of a voice conversation is to transmit specific information in speech, then ambient sound is "noise". But if the goal of a voice conversation is to make sense of the other's circumstances, then ambient sound might enhance communication, particularly for a mobile device.

So, what about the pre-call context exchange?

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The eBay Live press room computers featured a version of Skype just for eBay users, release 2.0.41.107, no beta version yet. Its eBay tab is new, and points to the same kind of eBay-via-browser-in-rich-client experience you can find in Windows Live Messenger, Google Desktop, and AT&T Yahoo! Messenger with Voice Beta (version 8). This Skype client for Windows is just available from the eBay site, not yet part of the standard distribution.

Can you tell who put out this blurb?

eBay Plug-In: The eBay plug-in gives people direct and timely access to the eBay marketplace. It provides the ability to track watched eBay listings, monitor bidding activity, and view items recently won. People can effortlessly stay on top of all their eBay activity from within [insert downloaded software here]. The eBay plug-in was developed using eBay's open APIs through the eBay Developers Program.

From a Yahoo! news release, but it describes pretty much what everyone else is doing. Mashups across sites, using multiple APIs to deliver services through rich clients. So Web 2.0.

You know the difference between Skype and all the rest? The rest have open plug-in architectures including support for web apps and web protocols. And Skype doesn't. It's almost a year since Skype promised such support, so we take renewals of those vows with a huge grain of salt.

eBay likes to deploy in small, measured steps, adjusting along the way. Let us know what you think.

Technorati Tags: skype, skypejournal, api, plugins, plugin, technology, architecture, tab, tabs, ebay, paypal

Many people have commented on how Vonage is pimping its IPO to its own customers by sending them a voicemail.

This voicemail doesn't make their phone ring. I'm not sure if they receive any notification of it. In all, it's fairly unobtrusive.

Anyhow, I'm currently completing a questionnaire from my business bank: "Which of the following types of communications do you recall ever receiving (from us): ... [ ] Courtesy phone calls from our Call Centre". There then follows: "Which is your preferred method of contact..." and the predictable list of existing channels.

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by Steve Smith, Lavalife Chief Scientist

I'm a huge user of Skype, as my friends and colleagues know. I've helped shift the management of several companies over to Skype as a productivity tool. One of the main reasons I use to promote Skype is the value of the seamless pyramid of communication: presence ⇒ IM ⇒ Voice. However, some factors are interfering with this value, and I think there's a paradox in the direction Skype is taking.

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I warned you not to ignore Skype and its cousins in my first post. In my second, I explained that Skypers are experiencing today the "communications of the future" you promised generations ago. eBay's building on this to create a new intangibles market. As I pack for my trip to the Telecommunications Association of Michigan's Politech conference, let me tell you something else you may not know.

Skype and its cousins are social media. The calls they support may be transactional but are just as often threads in longer conversations, moments in a relationship timeline. So Skype builds in features that transcend the call and focus on the people and organizations in your life.

Users have buddy lists, the kind of speed dial that's alive and updated every minute, that keeps friends and colleagues and sales prospects close to each other and engaged. eBay says about a third of Skypers use it in the workplace. So project and process communication, small team coordination, collaboration even in the same office, are big applications. And it's not because Skype is free. It's because Skype builds social capital.

It helps people stay in touch through "presence." Before you call you want to know availability. And not just what someone's calendar says, you want to know what they're up to and where they are. Skype's simple moodies ("what I'm up to these days") and geopresence (My Skype should be saying I'm temporarily in Lansing but that my home time zone is Pacific) signal status.

Not all conversations are the same, obviously. So Skypers tune levels of intimacy for each call. They start with chat and if they need more can switch to voice or to video with one button. Like a good Leatherman multipurpose tool, people mix the blend of modes to the person, the topic, their sense of urgency, how well they know each other, how prepared they are at this moment for this level of intimacy (nothing like getting a video call when you are in your pajamas). 

After the calls, Skype keeps a history on my PC. All chats can be archived. All conversations are logged. I can see my own call patterns, who I talk with most. I can read what I promised in chat. With permission I can record calls and play them back when I'm less emotional, or for a coworker taking over an account. All of this makes me smarter about cultivating my relationships.

And all of this is so 2005. Watch for companies like iotum to run apps that help Skypers better manage my attention in the context of my many conversations and relationships. Watch for tools to analyze my social networks and map the social proximity of strangers, and friends of friends.

By the way, we haven't talked about lock-in. I know you're used to contractual terms that meet your every need. But real lock-in is in friends. What does it mean to Skype to have a human hub bring her rolodex into the network? To really exploit all these features to manage these precious connections? To leave the network, you have to take your friends, and they have to bring their friends, and so on. Switching costs become a matter of losing your buddy list, losing your conversational history, being less capable of sustaining those relationships. Social capital lock-in is one of the strongest barriers to switching you may ever experience.

So Skype puts all of these relationship tools in your customers' hands. And makes it simple. And fun.

What do you do as a Michigan phone company?

You have my phone bills, but when was the last time your robot called and suggested adding a frequent caller to my speed dial? Or letting me know that I haven't talked to someone this week that I usually talk with every Monday? You have the data. Do you expose it in anything but a billing context? 

You don't.

You force people to write down their contacts on paper. At a time when we have more contacts to administer, and information overload threatens our competence, let alone our sanity. In perilous economic times, who you know can be the difference between employment and bankruptcy. And as our population ages, those with friends live better, live longer, stay healthier. Yet POTS makes us keep precioius relationship data in our heads.

It's no wonder that people are bringing their friends into Skype's social network. Skype makes those relationships easier to care for, to attend, to garden.

As we measure our wealth in friendships and family, Skype makes us wealthier.

What do you do?

by Stephen Klosky, Director, Federal Systems Engineering, Dataline, Inc.

I often demonstrate Skype and its capabilities to business associates. Crowding around a monitor is sometimes awkward. At my desk, I have a laptop, a docking station, and a second monitor which works well for me and one or two guests. For larger groups, I needed a better setup, so I decided to "Skypify" the nearby conference room.

Before

The typical setup in conference room before the upgrade was to take a portable LCD projector and connect it to any of the laptops in the office. The projector pointed at a whiteboard or a blank wall. This setup was functional, but had some drawbacks. Cords ran across walkways, image quality took some time to tune and setup correctly, there was no audio support, and there was no pc based VTC support.

I did have some gear available for the project. The IT department had purchased a Polycom ViewStation H.323 station with a TV for a monitor. This setup was on an A/V cart. This was attractive because the remote controllable camera could be used for the video part of Skype. Also, the mic pod could be used for the Skype microphone.

View Stephen's complete photo set on flickr as a slide show.

Shopping on a $510 budget

So, there were definitely some areas for improvement. My plan was to add a stereo for sound reinforcement, a USB video capture device for the video support, a ceiling mount kit for the projector, a wireless keyboard and mouse setup, a ceiling mount kit for the stereo speakers, a manual pull down screen for the projector, cables, mounting hardware and power strips.

I was on a non-existent / small budget, so, after a brief eBay session, I found the items I needed. Fortunately for me, I work for an office with quick approval processing and was able to get the upgrade approved in about an hour or so. After getting the approval, I went back to eBay and ordered up the gear. Here is a spreadsheet I used to track the gear.

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Here's three Skype products that aim to enhance your Skypeing experience that leaves me questioning exactly what I'm buying with Skype Certified. The three products are the VoSky Chatterbox, Jawbone Headset and the Motorola Wireless Interenet Calling Kit. Each provide a different angle on bettering the standard Skyper's headset and as you might expect each has their pro's and con's.

VoSky Chatterbox.

This simple USB device provides an easily portable plug and play speakerphone for Skype. It's simple to use and requires no additional software to be loaded. It has a volume and mute button on top and works probably as expected, as a low cost speakerphone. I'd liken it to the solution we had as kids when we could finally plug in a speakerphone box between the old phone and the whole family sat around. In principle great, in practice it left something to be desired. The Chatterbox is a little like this. It works. It's also no substitute for a decent headset. The caller on the other end of the line will know and possibly complain. Handsfree solutions curently work better with a good set of speakers and a proper stand mic. Locate them correctly and the caller won't get a any feedback. Many laptops work as good as the Chatterbox. If you feel the need try it. Just don't expect it to be a Polycom and ready for the office. For kids it may be more robust than a headset - read youngsters talking to Grandma.

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An interesting panel on design and usability. Most interesting is BJ Fogg sharing his useablity thoughts behind YackPack. This is really a neat application. I'd heard about it but not followed it up in the past. In his case he's actually subscri bed to twenty six packs right now. The interface is very simple. He keep reinforcing taking things out that people aren't using. Basically Yack Pack is a fun method for broadcast audio messaging. Both voice and text are available. Check out the explanatory video. It's intriguing. Here's an example of how to send an audio blast to a group of friends or pack.

It's a great example, with the use of pictures, the simple click, record and send. In many ways not all that different to the voice message feature in Skype. YackPack certainly illustrates where Skype could go with audio / video blasts. There's no reason this couldn't be developed and copied in Skype particularly now that SkypeWeb exists. Is it a priority at Skype? Probably not. Should it be? It's an example of a feature that is "new" thus Skype had the opportunity to innovate in this space and hasn't. When video blasts are restricted to your buddylist "spam" is not a problem. Similarly, additional groups that you might subscribe your SkypeID to would be a value added service. Note that networking groups would probably pay the subscription. Enough said.

Tag : etel

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

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

Very cute.

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

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

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

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

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Uri Levanon visualized what I wrote about in my Skype as Personal Memory and Skype as Collective Memory posts. His designs highlight alerting.

This diagram shows a reminder in the Skype contacts tab tying a to do list and tags to a contact.

This mockup shows the same reminder but in your Outlook Inbox.

When we talk about the value of social capital, alerting like this helps us exercise our relationships and do the most we can for our friends, families, and colleagues. You really must see all of Uri's visualizations and his walkthrough of this user experience.

Excellent service deserves some praise. I needed a new transformer for our low-voltage kitchen light, because the old one was cutting out. Big bad vibes to manufacturer Brilliant whose customer service was worse than useless. Our plumber (another story - leaky shower, insurance claim, big hassle) recommended Edmundson Electrical for getting a part. They were superb — the guy helped me find the right part, called me back after checking with a colleague, and the price was good too. I’m pleased to have done business with them.

But go take a look at their web site. Now, I’ve upgraded my Flash player this evening because of a security alert. But when I went to view their site in the old version of Flash using Firefox, it didn’t work at all. Usual moral of story, don’t use Flash unless it adds value. I had to load it in another browser, and even then because of the Flash I couldn’t just cut’n’paste their phone number into Skype to check their opening times (not on the web site - duh!) and whether the part was in stock. (There’s a Flash-free version, too — hope your auto-detection works better than it did for me.)

With the release of the Skype browser toolbars, now is a VERY good time for merchants to go and take a look at their web sites and re-think their customer contact strategy. These toolbars are going to change how people use telephony.

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What’s wrong with video conferencing?

The usual answer is that we don’t have our makeup on straight and pick our noses during conference calls, and don’t want this stuff broadcast and recorded.

I think the answer is simpler. There’s nothing to point at!

Without having something to gesticulate at — other participants, a diagram, the window — you’re left limp and lifeless. So perhaps there’s a Superman-style blue backdrop screen type of technology that can re-insert those elements.

Whatever it is, it’ll have to be pretty clever to do it.

Posted by Martin via Telepocalpyse.net

I just got off the phone with two teenagers from Brooklyn, New York. Gamers, both, who wanted to check that I was really from Skype Journal. It wasn't enough looking at the Skype Journal web site, they wanted to hear me talk, to say aloud "hey, I'm real and I'm the editor here."

There's a lot of getting-to-know-each-other going on in agoras. It is a practical, personal thing. It improves decision making because so much of our trust metrics are based on first impressions. I'm reading Blink now, because it is so on-topic.

Most of Skype's users have been individuals and their friends. And when used in businesses, they have, mostly, been small or home businesses. Skype just hasn't had the plumbing needed to do large scale or complex organizational telephony.

That changed Monday.

eBay directed Skype's management to continue undermining telcos everywhere. But they also added a charter: Skypify eBay. And that makes eBay Skype's first enterprise customer.

We'll be covering and analyzing this, but I see several excellent outcomes for Skype's ecosystem of users, developers, portal partners, and hardware vendors.

1. Skype will have specific problems to solve with measurable results. A year from now eBay will be getting a report that says "18% of Elvis Figurine auctions started a Skype call; 83% of those resulted in a sale." Focus on user behavior is a killer app. Skype can learn to listen differently and more. Cross-fertilization ahead.

2. Skype will address scale and complexity. How do you let 5000 people into a conference call for a hot auction? How do you extend the Skype names and profiles to work with eBay's more detailed and commerce-focused user identities? How can I dial a "room", like a product or a market category, instead of a person? The solutions should look good for all users, especially as they are rolled out in software, public APIs, specifications, and protocols.

3. Skype will open the client to eBay's developers. There is too much to do and everyone will want to expose their own parts of eBay through the Skype client. Remember, Skype is eBay's live, in-the-now, Offical eBay Time desktop presence. Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL, and every other portal are busy packing the best of their web sites into their clients. As Skype opens up their UI to eBay's internal developers, they will open it up to the independent developer community too.

4. Skype will professionalize its operations. Skype hires brilliant designers and programmers. To Skypify eBay, Skype must shift being a garage band to becoming a symphony, from hand crafting code to becoming a sophisticated design studio and software engineering factory. The alternative is for execution to stifle innovation. As Tallin's agility embraces engineering discipline, everyone will see a new flowering of volume, speed and creativity in Skype's products and platforms.

5. Skype will mobilize eBay. As Skype's software continues to migrate to phone and PDA devices, eBay features will come too. You won't have to be at your computer to follow an auction, to bid, to browse Craigslist, or pay your bookie (you use PayPal for that, don't you?)
   
6. A house of repute. They will work out how to blend reputation derived from social relationships (Skype), transactional behavior (eBay), and institutional certification (PayPal).