Microsoft demoed Windows Live Messenger (WLM) beta on the show floor. (Snapshots coming soon.) Better looking than MSN Messenger 7.5 (lots of cutesy user interface removed, panes better organized) but it's a small point. One rep claimed the Messenger Beta is better than Skype because:

• audio quality ("we played with the codecs"),
  
• integration of identity and contacts across the Live family (hotmail/live mail),
  
• third party apps delivered through the system, and
  
• having more users (about 200 million) than anyone else.

By Torben Nyhuus, Aalborg, Denmark

The contest to acquire market shares on the growing VoIP market is at full pace. The market is;

• the VoIP calls,
• the internet access,
• the devices.

VoIP calls:

Skype is reaching out to new customer segments. With Jubii and Skype in new cooperation!

(Jubii was the first and is the most successful web portal in Denmark, visited by 2.5 mill users monthly. DK has 5 million inhabitants.)

The Danish internet portal Jubii has commenced a cooperation with the world's most popular provider of IP-telephony, Skype. The new cooperation is a cobranding strategy, which shall broaden the knowledge of Skype in Denmark, and in return be a new source of income to Jubii.

The idea is to get Skype out to Ms. and Mr. Smith, using Jubii to reach them and fight the somewhat nerdish stamp on Skype. Skype can now be downloaded from on Jubii and Skype is expecting a Danish success making telephony free. In return for this exposure Jubii gets a part of the SkypeOut revenue generated.

Microsoft building our VoIP backbone!

Microsoft bought Teleo and is now co-operating with MCI to let users, as a start, make calls from PC to fixed line and the mobile/cellular net.

Google, Yahoo, and AOL have been on VoIP for a while.

Access:

Old and now privatised Telco’s: Broadband access is still being sold at too high prices; you still must pay for a phone line to be 'allowed' to pay for ADSL/DSL, that’s even with a three-party ISP, double charging. The privatised Telco’s and governments are still happily milking the cow together! Did they make a secret agreement? For how long? Was this international, European/EU wide? The necessary legislation is postponed (Government/MP’s claim further examination needed) to the fourth quarter 2006 in Denmark, this on an already five year old issue. No wonder that TDC can keep a 70% market share on broadband.

Mobile prices:
Are mobile prices being squished from 3G (UMTS) and the lowered fixed line prices?

In the mobile area, discount sales of cards are now starting in the Aldi shops in Germany. Aldi is a low price supermarket chain spread out over Europe with 4000+ shops alone in Germany. This is a big stick in TDC’s discount EasyMobile (purely internet based), launched 4 months ago, gaining 15,000 customers. EasyMobile has already lowered their price from 16 -14 € cent as a response to Aldi's 15 € cent.

Deutsche Telekom, Europe's largest telephony company, responded with a full page ad to counter Aldi, which began its service on Thursday. … T-Mobile will have to provide something to keep customers. Aldi has been one of the driving forces behind retail change in Europe's largest economy.

by TMCnet

Aldi is also selling IT hardware, recently a Wi-Fi SIP phone (200+ €) for Hotspots and your other access points.

Devices:

Kirk and RTX companies are joining up to get global market shares together on both Wi-Fi and DECT.

Kirk Telecom, who already has an 8% market share in North America on 2.4/5 GHz DECT products and a 100+ years of telephony history behind it is being sold to US SpectraLink, known for its Wi-Fi Netlink products.

RTX and Kirk Telecom are long term co-operators, both Danish companies. All three are VoIP ‘players’, more on this Monday.

And when are we going to see new Skype devices? The long promised Wi-Fi phone is not yet seen. Accton and Skype and their WIFI phone -Skype Journal.

The WiFi phone prototype. Share Skype, the Skype blog, lists 34 preferred partners but Accton is not among them!?

RTX is soon launching a VoIP standalone SIP phone before a Skype one. Is the eBay takeover delaying Skype getting the certification process going on new (kind of) products and making better room for non-Skype ones? Is Skype on public Wi-Fi hotspots not significant?

Which new players will join in, will they be late? Will even new IP markets be opening during the next year?

• Tom Online comes to Skype's aid in China (ChinaTechNews.com). Skype's closest partner in China is negotiating with China's telcom operators on Skype's behalf.
• US Verso Tech confirms sale of Skype-blocking software in China (Forbes). How do you say "negotiating power" in Mandarin?
• Microsoft roars into VoIP market (Computerworld). "Industry observers say the catalyst for this is Skype..."
• Radio Shack to offer a range of Skype-related Products (The New York Times). Skype to be featured in holiday catalogs and displayed in stores with special "kiosks."
• ETel: Makers Wanted! (O'Reilly Radar Blog) "...looking for participants in the ETel Fair at our Emerging Telephony conference (conference is Jan 24-26, San Francisco; Fair is the evening of the 25th)".

Thanks to contributor Rick Hultz,a telecom and technology analyst who has followed Skype since it's beginning.

There's a new calendar+groupware in town for Skypers and it brings some slick new features with it. I met yesterday with the management team at Airena who took me through the paces on their Airset - Skype integrated solution for group management. AirSet software allows users to manage all their groups - family, work, social - in one place using a free Web-based service that includes calendars, address books, to-do lists and blogs. It's an interesting product and I've extended my testing to a group calendar for the Skype Journal and another for the family.

Airset was described to me as a "Lifeware" product for the small companies, and individuals that want control of their life but don't have access to MS Exchange servers and the complex systems that groupware traditionally requires. The more I've played with it the more it makes sense to me. I'm not part of a large company and yet I do need to coordinate calendars, and updates with others. Similarly, many social networking services for me are simply 'broken" as they don't integrate effectively with the events in my life. It's also responds quickly as a result of being "Ajax-enabled". I'll leave that to the real techies.

I'm pleased to see Airset incorporate Skype. By using Skype presence information and adding easy calling it provides a whole new dimension to managing events. It's also yet another illustration of where communications is going.

Thinking about setting an appointment for the group; Skype makes it easy to check online; potentially reducing time and adding productivity. By adding Skype, now voice services are integrated so instant conference calls or mulit-chats can help with what were once logistical nightmares. Airset is also demonstrating what "mashups" are all about. If you look deeper they are also hooking into Google Maps and tying mapping information to contact details. Thus uploading your contacts means you now have a map at a click for everyone.

A point worth remembering is you can manage your groups, (eg a groups calendar) and never ever have any of your contacts join up and be Airset members. AirSet will still send them messages and reminders. For those wanting to augment email reminders with mobile updates then Arena has a premium service which I'm sure is going to evolve to add a lot more. Updates are sent by email and SMS is ready to integrate with your mobile phone. Overall it synched quickly and easily with my Outlook contacts and calendar system. I even feel happier that I now have a backup for that part of my life!

There are other Skype related groupware products in the works. However, this is a strong signal (even late!) that companies providing other core services (eg an accounting package) should be racing to add VoIP functionality to their solutions. Another thing to keep in mind. Airena like others should be complemented for testing and moving forward with Skype and Google Maps API integrations. However, soon we are going to see IM agnostic solutions. Airset could just as easily cross connect different IM systems or turn their learnings to Google Talk or Gizmo.

So whats your Calendar solution? Does it integrate with Skype? Can you access it anywhere?

For the last few days I've been trying out Skylook an Outlook integration that works with Skype. It's an effective integration, enabling easy chat and voice calling from Outlook while adding additional features not seen with other Outlook plugins for Skype. Eg Look2Skype, and Skype's own Outlook solution.

The benefits:

Archiving:
Skylook will automatically archive your chats into Outlook. It creates a folder Skype conversations and then records each session separately. I had hoped this would then be picked up by Google desktop search, however so far I've not been able to search them. Still the archiving feature is important. The downside - there are no real archiving controls. Topics, folders by person, etc. Additional work is also required for formatting.

Recording:
Skylook enables full recording and thus archiving of all conversations again into Outlook. The recording is effective and archived as an MP3. Skylook doesn't act as an answer machine, and while it provides warning when setting it to record all calls, you cannot control this on a record by record basis.

Message Forwarding:
Having the Skype records in Outlook makes forwarding a chat conversation or call easy. Simply forward as you would any email.

Presence:
Connecting to another Skyper is simple with click to call and chat options. Current online status is visible.

This product has not been Skype certified.

Overall an effective integration that goes further than others I've seen. Also a plus - it hasn't yet crashed my Outlook. On the reservations side I didn't like the privacy and profiling information that I viewed when I downloaded it. It said too much about cookies and gathering information for me to be comfortable. So while I've tested it, I'm uncomfortable about the data it said it may be collecting. So after testing it for one more day I'm going to restore my sytem to an earlier time. It doesn't yet have my trust. It will cost you money after 14 days.