• Skype on your TV. mcePhone brings Pamela and Skype to the Windows Media Center Edition. Screenshots. 
• Clarification: France's ban of Skype in the university system "only applies to university research centers and laboratories, and not to the general student and faculty population.."
• The Unwired: Skype for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs moves from 1.2 to 2.0 beta "without adding v2 features." No video. Still No Symbian (Symbian runs on CPUs too slow for Skype, or Skype not optimized for cheaper CPUs?). 
• Communications Research Network: Hackers can hypothetically use programmable VoIP to jam servers, PCs, and phone lines. A distributed denial of service attack. The only thing new is an attacker may be harder to trace.
• Vonage starts a SkypeIn service for some Western European countries.
• BT to sell a videophone to its broadband customers for £180 (steep). £6 to £9 an hour for the call. Skype seems an attractive choice.
• Davos:
• Niklas empanelled with Gates, Chambers, Schmidt.
• Eric Pooley: Niklas says Skype has 75 million users. Gates smacks him down (How many are paying?) and Schmidt backs Niklas up (building a brand leads to selling ads or enhanced services.
• Panel highlights podcast.
• Geoff Moore blogs it now comes down to three principles:  1. The core enabling resources of IT are free. 2. Expect digitization of everything. 3. Expect the value proposition of IT to migrate from enabling transactions to enabling interactions.
• Red Herring: "Niklas Zennström, co-founder and chief executive of Skype, said he had meetings planned with incumbent European telecom operators in between conference sessions."
• Niklas goes to the Silicon Valley-meets-Davos party. Also there: Motorola, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, Salesforce.com CEOs, and Laura D. Tyson, dean of the London Business School.
• Loic Le Meur interviews Niklas: podcast.
• 2528 Brandchannel.com readers vote Skype #3 brand in the world. First time nominated.

In a few hours the Skype Day in Japan begins.

Some people started the party early. Lenn Pryor who leads Skype's Developer Program is in Japan for Skype Day celebrated his birthday. Hosted by Skype International Marketing Manager Melany Libraro and Shinici Iwata who leads the Skype Developer Program in Japan. Lenn's gift, an iDog.

"Happy Birthday, Lenn", from Skype Journal.

Thanks to Iwata-san who shared his pics with me of the birthday party.

I just realized something. The three top guys in Skype's Developer Relations Program, Lenn, Iwata-san and Lester Madden, all hail from Microsoft.

Robert Hernandez, International Alliance Manager for Columbus CRM is attending with his wife Dian. He promised to get some photos for our Skype Journal readers. Robert and his wife hail from Prague, Czech Republic.

Of course Dick Schiferli and Robert also spent time working for the beats in Redmond, Washington.

Another attendee will be Robert Lo, COO of PChome and IPEVO the developers of a family of Skype Certified USB handsets.

Looks like an exciting event. It is billed as a Global Partner and Developer Conference. A similar event is scheduled for London on November 30.

More from Japan later today...

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