In case you haven’t heard of me, my name’s Kevin Delaney. I’m the co-founder and head of project management at KhaosLabs and an occasional author over here at Skype Journal. I’m really excited to announce a new product that my team has been working on for the last little while. MapMe for Skype is a free plugin that connects your Skype contact list with technology from Google Maps. You can

• calculate distances between your contacts,
• map incoming SkypeIn calls,
• find users in your area and much more.

We’re looking for 50-100 testers for our initial closed Beta program. Please sign up for the Beta if you:

• Use any version of Skype since 1.1
• Use Windows 2000 or XP
• have the Microsoft .NET Framework v1.1 (we can help you get it)
• Decent technical knowledge
• Live in the USA or Canada

We are not able to extend MapMe for Skype outside of Canada and the US due to technical limits. More countries will be seen soon. If you’re still interested, but live in other parts of the world, sign up for notification.

If you have suggestions or comments for us, please email info@khaoslabs.com.

Congratulations to the Jyve team who submitted a personal presence server with browsing and call forwarding to win the Skype Developer Competition. Full kudos to them. All the details can be found on the Skype site here. I certainly enjoyed supporting them during testing and constantly asking for more. Well done guys! Some of the others won't come as any surprise to Skype Journal readers, you have already read about them on these pages. Certainly shows the inventiveness and in some cases playful nature of Skype Developers.

Some of the other entrants. The only one I'm yet to try is the Dial MP3.

• Jybe, a simple and easy to use tool for sharing office documents and enabling real time collaboration over the web with Skype contacts.
• Dial Mp3, which allows you to listen to any mp3 in your collection on your phone.
• Pamela Basic, a personal assistant for Skype that answers calls and chats for you in 32 languages when you are away.
• Gizmoz, which lets all Skype users communicate with animated, 3D talking headz. :
• YapperNut Answer Machine for Skype ("Amy"), which offers voicemail, delayed messaging and allows you to receive and send messages when away from the computer.
• Spontania Video4IM, a high-quality video solution

Commercial Mentions:

• KhaosLabs - Free ActiveS COM wrapper.
  
• Columbus CRM (Skype integration with CRM solution)


• ISkoot (free call forwarding)


• Audiomatic (voice activated macros including Skype commands)


• SalesForce CRM integration