Guest post by Hans Blaauw, The Skypeteer

[Editor: I'm sooooo sorry for spelling your name wrong, Hans. Corrected.]

UPDATE 13 December 2005: the download is temporary offline. Download Mood O Matic

With the introduction of the Skype mood field in version 2.0, I have come to the conclusion that this Mood field can be used for much more dynamic information to show to the world.

After enabling my Mood O Matic i immediately received a few people interested in it. This proofs that information in the mood field can be very powerful. (by the way, the odd looking dude on the picture is me the bluedude).

That's why I created the Mood O Matic. This software does dynamic mood by using Moodies.
Moodies are code snippets that update the Mood in Skype with interactive information. Information can be:

- items from a RSS feed;
- highest auction bid on a product you sell;
- output from a brainscanner :-) (Thanks Mat);
- information from a database;
- anything else...

The script Moodie can update the mood field by getting information from scripts:

Below you find some sample URL's to use:

http://www.skypeteer.com/moodies/stock.asp
http://www.skypeteer.com/moodies/skypestat.asp
http://www.skypeteer.com/moodies/cnn.asp

For developers
Developers can develop new moodies that are configurable through the main Mood O Matic interface. Besides that developers can write scripts that produce dynamic information.

Checkout the readme file in the VB6 moodie sample directory.

Is a little competition still a good thing?

Both Microsoft and Yahoo are deploying dial-out services in their Messenger clients. How do you compete when it comes to call termination? Four points:

1. Rates (converging to flat and free)
2. Reach (going worldwide)
3. Quality (expectations raised by GIPS audio quality)
4. Everything else

It's the everything else that'll matter. Bundling, niching, creative use of call metadata, convenience, caller ID pass through; they and the rest are secondary to making your softphone start up with Windows and be the conversation tool of choice.

Susan Mernit

"One of the ways Yahoo can compete with Google, IMHO, isn't to try to match then in product sets and feature to feature upgrades but to figure out what they can do differently--and do it amazingly well--and integration of tools across media and life management platforms seems like one smart way to go in this regard."

Q. Did the Microsoft-Yahoo IM interoperability agreement include voice calls?

Planck, Henshall, Shapiro, Udell, Hammersley

14 December - Quantum Physics Day. "-- the anniversary of the day in 1901 that Max Planck created the concept -- and the word -- of "quanta" and launched the revolution that has taken over the world." We've all been waiting for Heisenberg ring tones: they tell you who is calling or when, but not both.

Stuart Henshall Resurfaces (Stowe Boyd)

How Skype might help bring Network Neutrality (Mitch Shapiro via Isen. Can you blame poor Skype call quality on your ISP or other pipe-owners? If so, grounds for a consumer fight for customer choice, competition, and for no-filtering rules. David Isenberg: "We can do our part by expressing our outrage when they're outrageous. Early. And often."

Jon Udell appeals for unification of voice and data channels. (InfoWorld) Amen, Jon.

HorsePigCow restates The Madenning Octet, 8 truths driving today's changing Internet:

1. Information wants to be free
2. Zero distance
3. Mass amateurisation
4. More is much more
5. True names
6. Viral behaviour
7. Everything is personal
8. Ubiquitouos computer

This is what is going to disrupt everything you hold dear in the years to come....work with it or perish...

The Enemy (you know who you are)

1. Copyright
2. Borders
3. Censorship
4. Network blocking
5. Identity cards and databases
6. More network blocking
7. Everything is trackable
8. No privacy

(I would add that anybody unwilling to change or open up or collaborate will perish as well)

From the brilliant Ben Hammersley

Syndication, Structured blogging, and the Adaptive Blogosphere

One of the two new ideas in syndication this year: SSE, making RSS bidirectional so you can post back to an RSS publisher. The other, structured blogging, lets you add forms to blog posts and to news readers. Structured blogging is something I wrote a lot about starting three years ago on my a klog apart blog and as proposals to the first Atom specifications for Semantic Component Blogging leading to an Adaptive Blogosphere where your newsreader learns new form types from feeds, and then trains your blogging tools to support those forms, so your blogging tools become smarter over time and the blogosphere shares more structured data. See also: about my liver's weblog.

The Syndicate 2005 conference starts in two weeks. Skype isn't officially on the agenda (why not?) but it's on everyone's minds. Call recorders are one of the most popular add-ons to Skype. Thousands of people are recording podcasts and vlogs, with Skype helping them bridge distance and multiple parties. When Skype 2 matures, videophony may become as commonplace as phone calls. How will people discover, distribute, and pay for edge-created content? That's the conversation at Syndicate.