Vitaly Repin of Ice Brains Software (Russia) has launched Bombino, a smart variation on a Skype call forwarding plug-in. With Bombino you connect your mobile to Skype and use it to call your buddies or even create conference calls. In some countries this strategy wil work well with a prepaid mobile account. Thus it has some similarities to what Jyve and iSkoot offer. However, Vitaly goes further in integrating it with SMS. He's creatively used the SMS Gateway from Connectotel. All you have to do is SMS Bombino to launch your call or conference. This will only works with GSM phones. Bombino is available for Windows and Linux. Bombino has a 10 day trial period. After that it is 10 Euros.

Further details are described in the Bombino Manual. Comands are simple and described there. Vitaly has also built in additional security measures so no one can hijack your Bombino. Who knows, this almost looks like a service opportunity.

Just received my Logitech QuickCam Fusion, now happily hanging like a lizard off the top of my laptop display. I am soooo ready for Skype video. engadget first look; Dark Vision Hardware description; buy Logitech QuickCam Fusion on Amazon, on Froogle.

National Public Radio's Larry Abramson did a segment on Internet Telephony Attracting Mainstream Users for All Things Considered, October 12, 2005. "Internet telephony, known as 'voice over Internet protocol' or VOIP, has grown to be a mainstream application that could someday replace traditional phone service. The market for VOIP is broadening to include regular households who don't care how it works but are attracted by the low cost." Features our own Kevin Delaney.

Luleå University isn't ready for Skype voice, let alone video. From a post by Peter Parnes, PhD, Chief Scientist, to the Skype Forum: "Skype has been forbidden at the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden for a while as well." Kevin Tolly's column, Can Skype be a good corporate citizen? in Network World last month, argues for Skype to make the effects of its use transparent and easily understood by enterprise network admins and IT managers. This gives them more choices than allowing/disallowing Skype at work.

Wired: Furor Grows Over Internet Bugging. Skype appears subject to US CALEA wiretap law, meaning it must make all calls tappable on demand by police. Any lawyers who can clarify the questions of jurisdiction?

• an eBay be held accountable for Skype, now that they own it? or does that exposure end at the Luxembourg border?
• Does CALEA apply to my employer if I'm using Skype at work?
• Does CALEA apply to Skype if they don't run any of the hardware or networks over which my voice travels?

Is this law enforcement or Big Brother? Next thing you know, they'll want to build a breathalyzer phone into Skype. (Good advice: Don't Drink and Skype.)

Unanswered security questions from Damien Miller about the Tom Berson Skype Security Evaluation.

Weekend projects:

• Big picture reading for the weekend: danah boyd's Why Web2.0 Matters: Preparing for Glocalization - Part 1 and
  Part 2. Does Skype fit into Web 2.0? How about into Microsoft's "Live" vision of application and communication services?
  
• Om Malik on the attitude change from supporting each other in a p2p community of Skype users vs. supporting eBay's stockholders. A question of brand? Buzz Machine follows up by saying those who build businesses on the contributions (words, pictures, bandwidth) of participants merely rent them.
  
• The most threatening meme for Skype: "Skype versus Gizmo Project. Its like IE versus Firefox." from the This Week in VoIP podcast.
  
• The wikipedia entry for Skype Technologies S.A. needs updating. Just dive in and add updates.
  
• O'Reilly updated Glenn Fleishman's How to Record a Podcast Interview on the Macintosh. A classic.

This new speaker phone "Chatterbox" from VoSKY – Actiontec’s new brand for its emerging family of Skype products- passes the technical bar for suberb audio quality.

The great sound quality is a result of VoSKY's use of DSP-enhanced sound quality with 16 bit DSP Voice Processing!

Other features include:

Microphone range 3-5 meters (10 to 16 feet)
Full duplex with volume control and mute
Plug and Play

An inside View image">view.

By Jim Courtney, Toronto, Canada

Two weeks ago Skype released version 1.0 of its Skype for Outlook Toolbar, which had been available in beta versions over the previous three months.

From the Skype website:

“This toolbar brings all your Skype and MS Outlook contacts together in one handy place. That means you’ll be able to call Skype contacts who email you and make SkypeOut calls to your Outlook contacts who aren’t on Skype yet, all through the toolbar.”

Effectively Skype for Outlook Toolbar introduces the communications functionality of the Skype client into Outlook such that all your Skype communications activities can be managed from Outlook. It mines your Outlook for contact information, incorporates Skype Usernames and results in a Toolbar from which you can launch all communication via Skype, SkypeOut or Skype Chat. At a more abstract level, Skype for Outlook is an implementation of two of the building blocks of Voice 2.0 with its ability to combine both presence and directory information with single click access to trigger a communication session.

A detailed review of Skype for Outlook Toolbar can be downloaded here Download file

It covers all aspects of the Skype for Outlook Toolbar including installation, configuration, incorporation of Skype Usernames, presence information, e-mail integration, use with Outlook Contacts, launching conference calls and Outlook Journal entries. As an example, using all the recipient names in an email one can launch a conference call from a single window via the “Start conference call…” command:

From the conclusion:

Skype for Outlook Toolbar allows Outlook to incorporate Skype presence and contact information; it converts Outlook into a full service personal communications management platform. It gives you the opportunity to gain practical experience with two primary building blocks of Voice 2.0: presence and directories. You can even become your own conference call operator.

I have found Skype for Outlook most useful when travelling. Find a hotel offering high speed Internet, connect your PC, launch Skype and go to Outlook to launch all your phone calls, bypassing costly hotel switchboards and eliminating the need for calling cards. It was also very useful for me when recently doing a demonstration in a local hospital where I had no long distance authorization and was restricted from using a wireless phone, yet I needed to contact a tech support operation on the west coast.

A final comment: the beta versions of Skype for Outlook Toolbar were criticized for slowing down the operation of Outlook and several minor “irritants”. The release version has addressed these concerns either through modification or removal of features that inhibited the operation of Outlook’s primary function. ….. The result is a utility that is now a standard component of my Outlook operation; I can heartily recommend that you give it a try. For me it has passed the Jeff Sandquist seven day rule and become a part of my daily work life.

Over the past 33 years Jim Courtney has held general management and sales and marketing management positions with high technology companies addressing business, government, healthcare and academic markets. Ten years ago, while a business development manager with Quarterdeck Corporation, he had his first exposure to VoIP through Quarterdeck’s development of a pioneering VoIP software application, WebTalk, that worked on 100MHz Pentium PC’s with 28.8kbps modems. In early 1996 he participated in an analyst presentation in London, England from his Mississauga, Ontario office demonstrating Quarterdeck’s VoIP and web conferencing software and has continued to hold an interest in the evolution of VoIP and web conferencing as a communications tool. For the past nine years he has been a business development and business plan consultant to start-ups and emerging companies providing solutions in healthcare, communications and Internet infrastructure markets. He occasionally blogs at http://dicx.blogspot.com.

Software certification is warming up. I just noticed the software funcitonal test requirements (pdf), software checklist (pdf), and the user documentation requirements are on the Share Skype Certification Specifications page. Just for Windows right now. Skype has certified software before, but always with hardware.

Skype's requirements aren't rocket science, but few software products pay such close and extensive attention to usability basics. The cert program program will raise the bar for many developers. That's a very good thing. Users will come to trust the "Skype Certified" brand stands for polished software that works out of the box with Skype.

By driving partners to improve customer experience, even on generic items like installation and documentation, Skype software certification:

• Bolsters the parent Skype and eBay brands, by raising the quality of the Skype ecology
• Telegraphs specific goals and values to the development community. This lowers development costs as horizontal capabilities are made generic and standard.
• Brings in knowledge from outside developers about best practices and use cases. The developers represents many different software engineering cultures, user communities, and regional differences. This exposure provides valuable off-campus views for Skype's internal product management and engineering teams.

Call Skype Journal if you'd like help getting your own products ready for certification.

For a sense of the topics covered by the certification...

4.1 HIGH-LEVEL FUNCTIONALITY

4.2 CONNECTION MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS

4.3 CALL MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS

4.4 VOICE MAIL REQUIREMENTS

4.5 CHAT INITIALIZATION REQUIREMENTS

4.6 CHAT CONFERENCE REQUIREMENTS

4.7 PROFILE MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS

4.8 CONTACT MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS

4.9 CLEARING

4.10 DEVICE PRESENCE, CONTROL, RINGING, AND CALL-STATUS REQUIREMENTS

4.11 FILE TRANSFER REQUIREMENTS

4.12 VOICE CONFERENCE REQUIREMENTS

4.13 CALL FORWARDING REQUIREMENTS

I keep getting Chat Messages requesting information to help people select a webcam. I keep recommending the Logitech 4000 Pro along with some words about why. Do people listen? Sure they go off listening to their wallet. (grin)

This picture should tell the story. Carlo bought a new webcam.

It is dark in Denmark. Carlo had to have a light shining in his face as well as the ceiling light. Very uncomfortable for him. So his natural colour becomes unnatural and the frame rate drops. Very uncomfortable for me.

With the new Logitech 4000 Pro webcam Carlo needs no extra lighting shinning in his eyes. His colour is natual and the higher frame rate means the pic is more fluid.

Of course next week when my new Logictech Fusion webcam arrives Carlo will be pissed as my technology trumps his again.

Our tests were carried out using the latest version of wigiwigi.

A few months back Hawking Technologies introduced a device they called a Broadband Booster.

My first thought; snake oil. After reading, I thought; well maybe not.

While I was in a conversation with Andrew Sheppard, the author of Skype Hacks a new book to be published by OReilly Media Inc.

Andrew mentioned he would be testing it. I told him I would like to publish his review of Broadband Booster for my readers on Skype Journal.

Thanks Andrew. I enjoyed reading your draft manuscript it was filled with many good ideas. Good luck on your book sales.

I want to call again for the designers of the Skype API to provide a mecanism for developers to read and write to the audio and, someday soon, the video data streams. This lets programmers create real-time apps that augment conversation. For example:

• Apply noise reduction algorithms to quiet background sounds
• Mix in audio to create a background ambience
• Look up product profiles from recognized barcodes
• Recognize spoken language and pipe a slightly lagged transcript to a chat session
• Recognize spoken keywords, like company or contact names, and show data on those topics (stock prices, recent email, blog posts, etc.
• Detect stress and other indications of falsehood, to better detect lies
• Replace my background video with a more posh background
• Supertitle agenda items in our video
• Add closed captioning to video
• Overlay time zones on each speaker's window
• Change my voice to sound like another sex, age, regional accent
• Identify non-verbal sounds (clock ticking, car passing, music in the background, laughter) for closed captioning
• Hide my eyeglasses
• Quiet my voice volume and play the voice of a simultaneous translator
• Save recognized text with audio or video file
• Make me better looking by at least two beers
• Insert television advertising in the background
• "Sharpen" my speech to improve intelligibility

I'm bringing this up now because TechCrunch just previewed Riya. Riya is a service that recognzes faces in your photo album and helps you tag your album automatically. So all the photos of Uncle Joseph are properly labelled without your reviewing each one. They do this in a batch process on a server, or will when they come out of testing. This is exactly the kind of functionality we need; just in real time and inline.

Hi, I'm Phil Wolff, Editor of Skype Journal.

We're spread thin covering the revolution. Can you help?

We're the romantics and the cynics, the engineers and the coolhunters. And we're building a publication with a large and loyal following. (681k pages served in September, and growing rapidly since we started in March 2005).

If you can find news and make sense of it, we need you.

If you can take the complex and make it seem obvious, we need you.

If you have a vision for the impact of Skype on technology, society, and business, we need you.

Specifically...

If these beats interest you, please email me: editor at skype journal dot com. Or Skype me at evanwolf.

• Skype Developer Guides - Help us top our famous Skype Journal Guide : Learning Skype’s Plug-In Architecture with updates, broader coverage of the Skype API and translations
  
• Skype product updates - latest releases and what they mean
  
• Skype business ecology - updates on companies building business on or with Skype
  
• Skype for mobile platforms - embedded, smartphones, wifi and other wireless environments
  
• The Skype APIs and anything affecting code warriors
  
• Regulatory affairs - especially now that Luxembourgian Skype is becoming owned by Californian eBay.
  
• Competitor watch - telecom, IM, and others
  
• Investor concerns - explain and uncover how Skype contributes to eBay's bottom line, or not
  
• Skype developer forums - buzz watch and advocate
  
• Ebay developer forums - buzz watch and advocate
  
• Skype software how-to's and tips - help users make the most of their Skype
  
• Skype/VoIP security beat - rigor is the login, public safety the password, and the public key is ... too long for this post
  
• Skype commerce/retailing - Dig up the best tools and techniques for selling more with better conversation
  
• Ebayification of Skype and the Skypification of Ebay - follow the changes to the products and companies as they continue to grow, to influence each other, and to create new kinds of value
  
• User stories - How people use Skype in the real world
  

Other roles:

• Editorial intern - Help us write a style guide, admin comments, and stay on top of our editorial calendar
  
• Newsletter editor - Round up each week's posts for our mailing list
  
• Foreign correspondents - Translate your blog posts into English for Skype Journal and Skype Journal posts into your language. Must have three correspondents to create a sister SJ site.
  
• Art/Design/Web director - Ongoing improvement to our designs and sites

The Skype Forum is buzzing with commentary on Tom Berson's security white paper. Most of it from sidewalk superintendents. Here and here.

I thought I would find an industry specialist to talk with.

Please meet Michael Gough.

Security consultant, trainer, author.

Michael, what were your first thoughts when you read Tom Berson’s white paper on Skype Security?

“Nothing custom; nothing home grown. The fact that Skype followed industry best practices helped to ease my concerns and those in my field as to how Skype actually implemented their encryption scheme.”

Tell me about how secure the Skype encryption is?

“Skype uses 256-bit AES to encrypt every session between users. More important, this encryption changes each time you contact someone via IM, file transfer, or a voice call. So if some malicious person managed to capture all the data and managed to figure out your AES key, it would be worthless for the next call you make with Skype. Cracking the AES key would take someone roughly 20 years, so it’s not very probable. The U.S. Government uses AES to encrypt sensitive data, so it is considered secure enough for the available computing power we have available to us today."

Michael, on page 10 Tom mentions a problem in WEP, the security protocol for my wireless router. What is Tom referring to? Is my wireless Router not secure?

“No Bill, your wireless router does not give you much security! At least your Skype traffic flowing through your router is safe, but other traffic is not. To put the two systems –AES and WEP- in perspective: as I said earlier it would take about 20 years for someone to crack AES, however it would take only a few hours to a few days to crack WEP. Now remember that big security code you put in your router when you enable WEP. Well you need to change it every day to beat the bad guys! WEP’s got problems. That is why it has been replaced by WPA and other options."

“So you see, if the experts who worked on security for the IEEE 802.11 security protocol could implement this sort of hole it any wonder security professionals in corporate America are so worried about what some hacks in Estonia would create for a free voice on the net product. So Tom’s paper helps to clarify what they exactly did and how they do encryption.”

Michael, I have only talked to the handful of security people. They are all anal. They are all impossible to please. So you told me the good news; now fill me in on the bad news.

“Tom found some code issues, didn’t he? Well are they fixed yet? Where is the proof? How will Skype continue to test their security with third parties like Anagram Labs?” Security is an on going process and one security evaluation will not be enough to convince the biggest of security skeptics.”

Thanks Michael. I am sure you will hear from me again soon as we get more feedback from IT professionals on this white paper.

“Bill, I would add that it is safe to say "a company needs to look at their company security policies and how a company would use Skype, but in my professional opinion, the way Skype has implemented security and encryption should fulfill many companies requirements for a secure voice client solution. It all depends on how it will fit into your network infrastructure and fulfill their business needs for each particular company as far as how to use Skype effectively"

Michael is a Computer Security Consultant and delivers security consulting services to clients of a Fortune 50 Company where he works. Been at it 18 years. he also presents for his company at many trade shows, presenting at conferences working with associations and groups advising agencies like the FBI on Skype security and Center for Internet Security on wireless security. Michael knows Skype. He is the man behind the hot web sites www.SkypeTips.com and www.VideoCallTips.com and the main author for "Skype Me" by Syngress press. The book will be available in December and followed up with a Video Call book.

Stuart Henshall's post, "megatwork on Skype", provoked an anonymous comment:

I really don't think that Meg appreciates you referring to her by her Skype name. That's really unfair for you to do to her, as she most likely will get bombarded by auth requests or chat messages.

I'm assuming, like many public personalities, Ms. Whitman has multiple phone numbers, email addresses, and Skype IDs. For years, you were able to send an email to the President of the United States, or Oprah Winfrey. It would be filtered by robots and answered by form letter or a volunteer. I'm assuming that this is Ms. Whitman's address (I haven't tried it), and it was found in public and, again I'm assuming, that it was intentional. If it was not, I apologize on behalf of Skype Journal. The Skype client doesn't make it easy for you to manage multiple personas; but it is a feature you could see soon.

We all must have the freedom to call and communicate anonymously (like the commenter), pseudonymously, and with graded control over how much and what types of our data are seen. This is essential for democratic systems, for commerce, and for managing our personal and work lives. Faceted identity affects nearly all the components of the Skype network. It's a non-trivial challenge that few large enterprises and no phone companies understand, let alone master. Skype may very well be one of the first.

This gent put his 277 Skype contacts to use today as he changed his "real name" to "1968 DB5 - Bid: £30k - 4 hrs left" for a while.

It's a great example of "field overloading," where users put a form field to novel uses. In this case, using Skype's p2p white page cloud to share a classified automobile-for-sale advert. Overloading is often a response to users wanting to use a system for more things.

You can easily imagine sharing your eBay listings, romantic status, career availability, or your public calendar. Some you'd make public, others shared to select friends or your whole buddy list. Putting your social capital to use at the edge of a network.

The Skype team that defines the user profile fights to keep it simple and small. Big and complex slows down the Skype ID cloud. Even small changes to the profile can double the bandwidth Skype clients use to keep the cloud moving or to search the cloud.

Skype product architects should pay attention, though. This is opportunity knocking, tipping its hand. Can you spell "Edge Commerce"?

Help me talk better.

There is no way I'm going to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's crazy. Nevertheless, National Novel Writing Month is in November this year. Hundreds of "winners" cross the finish line through the power of a clear goal (50k words), lowered expectations (this is a rough draft; quality follows quantity), and a deadline.

Many of my conversations would benefit from a deadline.

1. I'd waste less time.
2. Through an ounce of planning, everyone would get what they need from the chat or call.
3. The conversation would be less likely to spill over into the rest of my schedule.
4. It sets expectations for conversation style: short, pointed, transactional, focused.

Two kinds of deadlines:

1. The call. We promise to start this call by 11:01 and end by 11:14.
2. The agenda. Time boxes for talking points.
   • Review/change topics for this call (11:01-11:02)
   • Check in on health, happiness, social lives (11:02-11:04)
   • College update (11:04-11:07)
   • How's the family (11:07-11:10)
   • Send money (11:10-11:13)
   • Schedule next call (11:13-11:14)

This is standard stuff on running better meetings.

I want Skype to help by being more aware of time. For example:

• Launch conversations (voice and chat) from a calendar automatically.
• Remind me of my call/meeting schedule
• Offer to help set up an agenda for the meeting.
• Ping everyone in a conversation with a beep and a private text message about pending deadlines (this topic called "treasurer's report" ends in 1 minute, next topic: "membership report")
• Let us change/revise the agenda in mid-call
• Show a countdown clock in the conversation window with both the big countdown (end of call) and the smaller one (end of topic)

I can start an egg timer or download a software timer. But those are both out of context and not part of the collaboration. Time boxing within the user interface, preserving the visual and cognitive framework of the call/chat will improve the success of the conversation.

Help users and developers build this

This is exactly the kind of value-add I'd like users and developers to build. However today's license, terms of service, and API are hostile to UI changes.

You can see that Skype's design has been amazing about getting users into a conversation, and the hard work of keeping the technical quality high. Now it's time to go inside the call: Help our many styles of conversation be more effective.

I don't expect Skype to help me organize a party, plan a wedding, play a game, hold a quality circle meeting, answer a bomb threat, or talk about my car with a potential bidder. I do want Skype (sometime in 2006, please) to let me use, create and share "conversation helpers" the way I use, create and share templates in PowerPoint and Word. Let the power of millions of users shape conversation to their ends.

Have better conversations with Skype

As with PowerPoint templates, most conversations guides will be free and a few worth money. Please don't think of this as a ringtone opportunity. Think of this as (a) part of Skype's platforming strategy, (b) making Skype more social (as we share conversation helpers), (c) making Skype conversations more productive than conversations in other media.

So often you just reach out and touch someone, a personal connection. But then...

How much do you talk on purpose?

p.s. I'm enjoying No Plot? No Problem! right now. Tips on prepping for and surviving your four week novel writing.

p.p.s Congrats to Hyland Baron for joining the NaNoWriMo team. Hyland makes projects more fun and effective.

From Bruce Schneier’s security blog:

Turns out that you can jam cellphones with SMS messages. Text messages are transmitted on the same channel that is used to set up voice calls, so if you flood the network with one then the other can’t happen. The researchers believe that sending 165 text messages a second is enough to disrupt all the cellphones in Manhattan.

Naturally, a stupid network would not suffer from such a performance bottleneck that can be exploited maliciously.

And IMS will keep you totally safe, 100% available, honest ;) No intelligent bottlenecks in this network! Move along please…

via Telepocalpyse

Reality is hard enough to make out without distortion. So facts, data from facts, and testable logic make me happy. Ecademy's Julian Bond fact-checks and rebuts Kevin Tolly's Computerworld opinion column. Tolly called Skype "hazardous" to network health, a poor corporate citizen, and a bandwidth stealing freeloader. Bond says the article is "full of half truths and downright lies."

Your corporate desktops and notebooks are the peers that are consigned as Skype pleases to relay traffic and function as mini-servers in the Skype universe.

If your PC is directly connected to the net with no intervening firewall then there is a possibility of it becoming a supernode. That eliminates every corporate PC. Have you ever seen a corporate network with no firewall?

According to Skype — and validated by our research — a VoIP call will consume between 24 and 128kbit/s. When a Skype station is functioning as a relay the bandwidth is doubled.

If your PC becomes a supernode, you will relay switching traffic and not voice traffic to an expected maximum of 5kbps, according to Skype staff on the Skype forums. Go ahead and do the tests to prove them wrong.

One of the very cool things Skype has done is to publish a few near-real-time statistics to their web site. The statistics rss feed includes "Total Skype Downloads" (177,001,209), "Users Online Now" (3,780,794), and "Total Minutes Served" (14,310,738,687). By looking at the changes in these numbers you can understand more about the size, state, and trends of the skypopsphere's collective behavior.

Reull Consulting, a German consulting firm, sells weekly charts of this data. Here's a thumbnail from their Skype VoIP Statistics Week 39 2005 report, (US$199). It shows Minutes Served (top line) and Users Online (bottom line) from 26 September through 3 October, at 30 minute intervals. Minutes served in a half-hour peaked near 2 million, users online near 4 million.

Skypeteer offers a free flash widget. It shows the number of Skype users online. You can add it to your blog.

Skype Journal has its own number story. In the last seven months we've grown to 71 thousand unique visitors per month, each of whom come about every 8 days, reading 3.3 pages each visit. These are our conservative numbers, after removing search engine and spam activity.

How would you like the freedom to buy In-And-Out services for your Skype client from another company? I think you’ll have that option. It will be good for Skype. And for you.

Let’s start with what you’re paying for when you buy SkypeIn or SkypeOut.

SkypeIn and SkypeOut bring Skype nearly $60 million a year.

These are “call termination” services that let callers talk between the Skype network and non-Skype numbers. SkypeIn gives you a phone number anyone can call, your Skype softphones ring, and you and your caller can talk. Two examples. I have SkypeIn numbers in London, Manhattan, and San Francisco, numbers that connect to my Skype phone. The Katrina.info hotline bought a SkypeIn number in the middle of a disaster zone to accept local phone calls from New Orleans. You rent the number from Skype by the month or year. SkypeOut lets you call a traditional phone number from your Skype software. You pay Skype by the minute, about one euro per hour in most places.

Skype retails the InOut Services

To a Skype user, Skype builds and operates all of this. But they don’t. Skype retails these services, buying them from termination service providers. They provide the logical and physical interconnection to traditional phone networks in various countries. Skype’s partners include Level 3, iBasis, and Teleglobe. Skype sets up billing, buys blocks of phone numbers to be used for SkypeIn, meters use of these services, and sells them to Skype users. When you pay for SkypeIn and SkypeOut, some of the money goes to those partners and Skype keeps the rest. Think of the partners as InOut wholesalers.

Skype locks in customers through bundling.

Skype users can only use SkypeIn or SkypeOut. They can’t use other termination services.

[ Food analogy 1: In-N-Out Burgers. Famous West Coast drive-through hamburger chain. High quality, limited menu, only available at their restaurants. If you want their special sauce, you have to buy their burger in their store. And you can’t bring your own sauce. ]

Lots of companies do this. In the United States, service is locked to mobile phones.

This will change. Customers will have choices. And you will be able to thank Microsoft.

Microsoft must unbundle termination services from Windows

Microsoft will include a VoIP platform and client in Vista, their next version of Windows. Vista rolls out in 2006 and 2007 and hundreds of millions of people will wake up with at least one softphone on their computer.

Seems like happy days for Microsoft, right? Not so fast. If you thought Microsoft was in trouble for not having competitor browsers on their desktop, what do you think will happen when it comes to telephony? Can Microsoft put together a termination service deal that everyone, in all countries will find acceptable? Without massive litigation and regulatory involvement? Not likely.

So Microsoft will pass the choice to customers. They will unbundle the softphone from termination services.

Unbundling creates a new type of business: the InOut Retailer

People will experience this like unbundling your local phone service from your long distance carrier. You get to choose your in+out provider, probably in your softphone preferences or a control panel.

How will this work? Retailers will combine termination services and offer them up in a simple package. And you’ll choose among the packages. Skype could offer SkypeIn and SkypeOut services to non-Skype users, for example. Or you may prefer to get your In service from someone else.

[ Food analogy 2: You manufacture frozen pizza. Eight topping varieties. Then Microsoft comes out with bake-it-yourself pizza dough (a la Boboli). that lets you choose exactly the combinations and proportions of sauces and toppings. An abundance of personal choice and control. ]

Competition and shopping for InOut create opportunity.

So Microsoft unbundles, and Windows users around the world pick from a short list of early InOut services. We may even have a Windows wizard or a web catalog to help shoppers. Each InOut product will include geographies covered, voice networks covered (Skype, Yahoo!, et al), rates and tariffs, and links to account and billing pages. And branding, don’t forget the branding.

This data will be published via xml, RSS syndication style. This will make it very easy to keep millions of subscribers around the world updated. Side effects include very efficient competitive information, useful for those who compete strictly on price. It will also create options for those smart enough to game these markets the way airlines game ticket sales.

Service providers will compete on how well they serve specific markets. One gives great rates to the Philippines. Another provides customer service in Hindi. Enterprises will be able to map InOut service to their customer segments. Some services will be flat rate, others prepay, and yet others a hybrid.

Just as the syndicated product data informs the sell-side of the market, it may make it easier for customers to shop. Depending on the products, it may be as simple as buying a prepaid calling card or as complex as tiered long-distance plans. Expect third-party reviewers to compare services to help your choice.

Will there be switching costs? Aside from the customer attention burden, the biggest built-in switching costs will come from identity and credit verification.

What this means for Skype

Skype, and others like Skype, will respond to the new system. They will play in four ways.

As an InOut service provider. Skype will continue to offer simple, vanilla, global services. As they learn more about their user segments, they will create products optimized for types of use and markets. Perhaps spun off as a sister company, Skype could offer InOut services to people who use competing softphones.

As a softphone network operator. Skype will become a channel for other InOut providers. They will compete against Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Google, QQ, telcos and others by:

• making it ridiculously easy to buy the right InOut service,
• adding trust to the InOut relationship by screening, rating, and certifying InOut services,
• easily managing my service (Am I really getting what I should out of it? Is the quality high?), and
• easily participating in referral sales through my social network.

As a complementor. Skype is in a great position to lower the costs for InOut retailers. They need back office systems for billing, profile management, credit checking and profiling, usage analysis, and selling to users. Those systems are expensive, a barrier to entry. By polishing up their own back office software, Skype can offer these services to InOut retailers for a fee or a piece of the action.

Non-PSTN Peering. Skype may offer InOut services that peer with selected IM and softphone makers. There’s no technical reason that lowest common denominator chat and telephony shouldn’t work across vendors.

Net: new sources of revenue and new brand touch points.

Skype is adept at hiding the plumbing so users focus on what works. That's their brand, to date. Those skills and brands should do well for them in this new space.

Imagine multi-user video conferencing for any IM client: Yahoo, Skype, MSN, ICQ, you name it. That is what I tested with developer Ashod Apakian at WigiWigi yesterday.

This program is not ready for prime time. Unless you are a real geek I would wait a couple of weeks before downloading. So why bring the topic up? I think this opens up a fascinating way to deliver media content.

It works like this. I install wigi5.exe. Wigi icon shows up in my system tray. I go to any IM client and open a chat message to a contact. Establish application focus by clicking my cursor in the chat window and hit the Ctrl key 3 times. A Chat Message is formatted see it View image">here.

The recipient of the chat message, if they have wigi5 installed simply double clicks the wigiwigi call code and copies to their clip board. The wigiwigi application send this code to a central server which then establishes a peer 2 peer video and voice link between our two computers.

Here is the result.

The wigi5.exe is only 450KB iin size. Remarkable for a video application! If the recipient of my chat message does not have the application it can be downloaded in about 10 seconds and installed and configured in another 10 seconds.

I tested with Yahoo and Skype. I will review in more detail when Ashod polishes the video quality and adds the multi-user capability. Lip sync was really quite good. Pictures were very fluid too.

Update: works great with Google Talk!

What ideas come to your mind for using this technology?

I couldn't resist going to the session on IMS, the telecom industry's purported salvation.

As might be expected, I've expressed some strong opinions on IMS previously. I'm always open to learn more and refine those opinions. Yesterday there was a good, educative session once you stripped away the slideware.

For those unfamiliar with IMS, the basic story is this: The old phone network has a media component that reaches your phone's microphone and speaker, and a signalling part that you can't touch (and they screw you hard when you need it to do something for you). The Internet is an IP network that just shifts bits around and doesn't differentiate signal and media; you are in complete control. IMS is an IP network technology that re-introduces a "control plane" for signal and "user plane" for media. Bandwidth and sessions are centrally controlled and managed.

The panel was nicely constructed with analyst (IDC), vendor (Lucent, Intel) and operator (Sprint x2) views.

There's still a lot of strangeness out there. Push-to-talk was given as a great example of an IMS application. But PTT isn't quite real-time; there's no QoS requirement that IMS will fix. If the radio link can't hack it, re-arranging the packets inside an IMS box won't make any difference.

IDC declared: "Equipment providers need to make equipment truly interoperable for IMS to be a success". You can view this statement in one of two ways. One view says that carriers will demand a choice of vendors and low levels of lock-in. More nuanced is the possibility that services will need to inter-operate across multiple carriers. Could the mobile operators define a universal Voice2.0 application and foist it on everyone via control of distribution channels, just as with MMS? Sounds unlikely. Like SMS, Voice1.0 is a minimalist application that is good enough for a massive swathe of users. Richer apps are likely to have narrower, more targeted user bases.

IMS is a double-edged sword to carriers. On the one hand, they get a chance to compete against 3rd party applications that are eroding their revenue base. This competition doesn't need to be ‘fair'. For example, they might only offer the connectivity fast enough for TV and videoconferencing as part of an IMS bundle, not as an Internet service. That raises the barrier to entry because it'll be painful and expensive to build and deploy IMS apps compared to pure Internet ones. This will all feel quite reassuring to telcos, no doubt.

But the curse is that your supposedly differentiating application is now limited in scope to your connectivity customer base. If you have an application that has any form of network effect, you've got a problem. The Internet giants will have ten or a hundred times as many users as you. And increasingly as social networking features get integrated into IP communications, your network operator island looks rather cramped.

I'm seeing the promises of IMS as being great for feature deployment as being hollow. IMS is a Voice1.0 proposition — cheaper, but not better. A juicy qute from the floor:

What can I do with Fortran that I can't do with Assember? Nothing. But we can write programs easier and quicker in Fortran. But the major beneficiary of IMS is the carrier, not the user.

Sprint was honest in saying IMS was enterprise-driven, a means of verticals like healthcare creating secure networks. You won't see the Fortune 100 leading innovation in personal communications. And they won't be held hostage to paying usurious application tolls by carriers. They're used to buying dumb pipes, and IMS will be held to its promise of separating service and connectivity. Just a new form of mentally deficient pipe, rather than dumb pipe.

Even then, I suspect Microsoft might have a few things to say about carriers offering "enterprise instant messaging" as a service. Why stick a carrier SIP proxy between your Microsoft messaging servers? Redmondites don't like being reintermediated.

IMS makes sense from the carrier perspective in consolidating the existing services they have into one architecture. Whether that justifies rip'n'replace on fully depreciated equipment and re-training everyone, I'm less sure. The mobile installed user base is huge, but IMS will grow up as a technology just as the access networks like Flarion, WiMax and WiFi come to obsolete the need for connectivity rationing technology like IMS.

There is the promise of seamless provisioning across multiple networks. But you have to ask yourself whether a vertically integrated, complex architecture such as IMS is really the solution. Isn't this a fairly simple identitiy and authorisation federation problem largely solved by existing IT technology? Why not offer a simpler layered approach?

A good moderator question was what was the litmus test of whether you had ‘true IMS'. The best response, from Intel, was "if you can change you app server without changing your session server in just a week, then you have IMS." Perhaps all IMS is about is the telecom industry discovering the difference between a web server and application server, just as the whole server business is being ripped out of their hands. A decade or two late, but never mind…

Another classic was the usual question: WHERE'S THE APPS? Specifically, what are the services a 15 year-old will want from IMS? The Ericsson response was such a classic (and representative) waffle on this that it deserves to be reproduced in full:

It's all about their methods of communications — they drive the envelope. Everyone comes back to gaming, but I see them spending time collaborating more. We need to shorten the distance between us in a more natural and personal way. These kids would like to communicate more effecively with voice, sight, sound — as many of the senses as we can technically do. The challenge of IP multimedia is to see if we can adapt to this. Be able to replicate these solutions re-usably. Presence and availability, to see if they're ready for a chat session, one that can give them video, voice and chat at the same time. Important thing is for them to have those choices. It's got to be brainless, easy to use, add new value. Today they can chat, get on their video cameras on the Internet.

Err, so, remind me again … where's the value-add of IMS? What new services does it enable?

Just to make sure, I visited the booth of IMS vendor Brooktrout. Nice demo of a game running on a PDA via IMS, but try to get out of them what IMS does for the user experience and nobody can tell me. The only user benefit again is back to that ‘seamless provisioning'. But Boingo does that today on WiFi across a zillion networks without IMS.

To add some more data points on IMS, I went to Hassan Ahmed's IMS presentation. He is the CEO of Sonus Networks, and IMS vendor. His core message:

"It's about empowering consumers. IM, chat, email, phone. They want to be able to seamlessly go between these services. Today's networks don't support that ability."

What! I've been doing almost nothing but seamlessly moving between them, and folks at MSN, Yahoo!, AOL and Skype have been busy making that experience on the Internet pretty slick. There's just no credibility to the story that IMS is fixing something that is totally broken. At best, a minor quality improvement at great expense in limited circumstances.

Hassan sees a transition from Long distance/POTS/Moble -> VoIP -> IMS; vertical integration -> converged networks -> converged services. But we can integrate services without IMS, and millions of VoIP users talk without it. QoS problems inside the edge device or customer network aren't solved by IMS.

Why is nobody calling the bluff on this? The game is over, it's dumbpipeville all round. A few small vertical niches with extreme security and performance needs are all that parts that require anything more.

Having see the WiFi and videoconferencing snafus the previous day, I was wondering. Would IMS have made things better. Perhaps. But the real value of IMS isn't the technology, but the values and attitudes of telcos. IMS should really be It Mustn't Stop. The telco attitudes to scalability, availability, and performance still retain value, even if the delivery technology doesn't.

To wrap up, here is a grin-aloud quote from a Sprint rep:

"IMS separates signalling from bearer channel, not money from wallet."

I think they're on to something, there. Don't you?

Logitech has announced a new family of webcams. I accepted an invitation to visit Logitech while I was in Palo Alto for Skype Night in California last week.

Karen Hoskins, a Public Relations Specialist at Logitech kindly hosted my visit. She hooked me up with Andrew Heymann, Senior Product Marketing Manager and Todd Hernandez, Software Marketing Dude.

I can best sum up the demo with this comment, “I want one NOW!”

I own a Logitech 4000 Pro. I have tested it against many other web cams both in the Logitech family and Creative Web Cam family. I have always been impressed with my 4000 Pro. But the new Logitech QuickCam Fusion left me speechless.

Two big breakthroughs made by this webcam family─
1. Light sensitivity
2. Wide angle view

Those who have followed my posts on The Ultimate Skype Video Experience know that the three most important parameters are lighting, lighting and lighting. The QuickCam Fusion dramatically changes your lighting requirements. Logitech brand this a RightLight. All three webcams achieve this extreme light sensitivity by using 4T CMOS technology (four transistors per pixel).

The second breakthrough is wide angle view. A wide angle view turns your office space into a personal video studio. Two people can comfortably share the same screen. You now get space to achieve what Martin was talking about in his post “Proof by arm waving”
Hopefully I will have my QuickCam Fusion soon so I can do some in-depth testing and show you more about why I am so excited about this new product. At $99 it is a steal.

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