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

Skype Journal begged Skype to share their near term product roadmap with independent developers. Recently they've started to do just that, in private forums for their beta developers, at meetings of their developers' advisory board, and last night at their "Skype Night" for developers meeting at VON Boston. Normal caveats: everything is subject to change, we don't know what the new feature names really mean, and this all comes out for Windows first.

Here is the chart as projected for the audience.

Details from that slide.

The current release is 1.3, so 1.4, now in beta, is coming up in September. It will include better people search, help, expressive content (ring tones and the like) and basic call forwarding. UI and usability improvements: Improved GSW (my neighborhood emergency room uses this term for gunshot wounds), Improved Search, Improved Import Contact Wizard, Web Based Visual Setup Guides, Basic Dynamic Content (?), Login-by-Alias (?)

1.5 adds video (?), client-side web presence, and partner bulids (?) in October.

1.6 is the Novemer 2005 "Community Release." New: Simple Talk (client-side) and talk directories, social networking (?), dynamic content (http), and removing bloat from the client's software libraries.

Release 1.7 will feature "Talks and PIM" in December-January. New features: advanced talks on the client side, editable profiles and enhanced video. UI and usability: UI 2.0 (phase 1) and dynamic content p2p (?). On the web: tools for webmasters and blogs.

Unscheduled items: PTT, user rewards program, offline IM, shared groups, video mail, expressive content (phase 2), and phase 3 importers .

Can Skype be a gateway to a PBX? Skype 2 PBX?

Here is a scenario posed to me by a Canadian company.

A company has four offices each with a local PBX. These PBXs are interconnected via SIP. (Of course the PBXs could have been interconnected with Skype, but that would be a boring story.)

This company would like to have any remote Skype Client have access to the corporate telephone infrastructure and as well, have any phone connected on any PBX access the Skype infrastructure, i.e. receive SkypeIn calls, place SkypeOut calls and place calls to any Skype Client. As well, all voice mail would handled by the PBX. When the remote client (e.g. a remote employee in San Diego) is unattended, all incoming calls are to be Call Forwarded so as to terminate at the PBX.

Here is a possible solution-

I find this offers exciting opportunities to decrease costs and increase value particularly for companies connecting internationally. Think small travel agencies needing to compete with Expedia. Think of Hotel's who might want offer lower costs to their guests to call home while making a buck at the same time.

The technology driving Skype 2 PBX was covered here.

When evaluating USB devices that connects your Skype Client to your landline for interconnecting Skype 2 PBX check out this technical pdf.

I tested this Skype 2 PBX out a couple of weeks ago. I am in Western Canada. The PBX and Gateway in Taiwan.

Using Skype I called the Skype Gateway, my call was answered by the IVR Automated Attendant. I used the Dial Pad in Skype to select the individual I wanted to connect with. I also requested to be transferred to another individual. It all worked seamlessly.

Next, I had the manufacturer of the device acquire a SkypeIn number in the US (area code 415). I used SkypeOut at 2 cents per minute and again connected to the PBX with the Automated Attendant in Taiwan. Perfect.

Next I asked him to set his PBX to Call Forward his local analog phone to his mobile device and I called again. Worked like a charm.

I think it is amazing. I hope you do too.

How would you like a multi-line 800 number? Just about for free. Maybe multiple 800 numbers placed in strategic geographical places around the globe for your customers to call you for free and you pay all most nothing.

If you have a SkypeIn account and the latest Skype 4 Windows beta with Call Forwarding then you already have that 800 number! 1.4.0.56 (get it here)
Yes, you read correctly... one SkypeIn number handles multiple concurrent callers!

And since you can now use Skype’s Call Forward function, these additional calls (up to three) can be handed off to other Skype Clients or devices: mobile phones, landlines or to your businesses PBX .

You will pay SkypeOut rates for calls forwarded to non-Skype IDs. Tomorrow I will show how these 4 to 8 of these calls can be passed for free to your company’s PBX.

This has some neat possibilities! Once connected to your PBX you can handle unlimited calls at no cost per call.

A totally non-actionable, useless, pie-in-the-sky thought.

Old fashioned desk phones are a bit like thin-client web terminals. A limited set of UI functions are communicated to a central, smart server. Management costs are minimised as a result.

The stupid network wants to invert all of this, and make the edges smart. When the telephony application is in a state of rapid flux, replacing a $100 device with a new, smarter $100 device is much less intimidating than risking the upgrade of a $10,000 PBX in the hope you’ve picked the right feature set. We’ve taken to using $1000 laptop PCs as telephones to get the functions we desire, because they’re more adaptable, and the change can be done with free or cheap software upgrades.

But there’s that little niggling issue of manageability of heterogenous distributed network devices. So I just wonder … could the idea of a “thin client” smartphone be feasible? Say you want a desk telephony device that can display Skype buddy presence, for example. Is the device itself the best place to put the Skype-specific application logic? Or is a device with a few softkeys, and a stripped-down web browser or Flash-type interface a better bet, interfacing to a server of some kind out there in the cloud?

There’s an unresolveable tension here. The stupid network is adaptable to change, and small incremental change at the edge is quicker than large change in the core; but change costs money, and co-ordinated change managed centrally can reap economies of scale. So as the level of uncertainty drops about what customers want out of Voice 2.0 over the next 5 or 10 years, expect to see the architecture shift accordingly.

Deal done. Retail VOIP in the offing? Views later.

eBay has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration.

Skype generated approximately $7 million in revenues in 2004, and the company anticipates that it will generate an estimated $60 million in revenues in 2005 and more than $200 million in 2006. For Q4-05, eBay expects the acquisition to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.01 and $0.04 respectively. For the full year 2006, eBay expects the transaction to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.04 and $0.12 respectively, with breakeven on a pro forma basis expected in the fourth quarter of 2006. On a long-term basis, eBay expects Skype operating margins could be in the range of 20% to 25%.

The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005.

eBay will host an investor conference call to discuss the announcement at 5 am Pacific Time today. A live webcast of the conference call can be accessed through the eBay's Investor Relations website at http://investor.eBay.com. An archive of the webcast will be accessible through the same link.

Full text of news release...

On Skype.com:

eBay to Acquire Skype

London, September 12, 2005 – eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY; www.eBay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. The acquisition will strengthen eBay’s global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company. The deal also represents a major opportunity for Skype to advance its leadership in Internet voice communications and offer people worldwide new ways to communicate in a global online era. Skype, eBay and PayPal will create an unparalleled ecommerce and communications engine for buyers and sellers around the world.

“Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community,” said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay. “By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net.”

Founded in 2002 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, Skype offers high-quality voice communications to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world. The Skype software is easy to download and install, and enables free calls between Skype users online. Skype’s premium services provide low-cost connectivity to traditional fixed and mobile telephones. Skype’s software also offers a robust set of features, including voicemail, instant messaging, call forwarding and conference calling. Upcoming product innovations include Skype video, expressive content such as avatars, and customized toolbars for Outlook and Internet Explorer.

One of the fastest growing companies on the Internet, Skype already has 54 million members in 225 countries and territories. Skype is currently adding approximately 150,000 users a day and has created a thriving ecosystem of products, services, developers, and affiliates. Skype is considered the market leader in virtually all countries in which it does business. In North America alone, Skype has more users and serves more voice minutes than any other Internet voice communications provider.

“Our vision for Skype has always been to build the world’s largest communications business and revolutionize the ease with which people can communicate through the Internet,” said Niklas Zennström, Skype CEO and co-founder. “We can’t think of any better platform to fulfill this vision to become the voice of the Internet than with eBay and PayPal.”

“We’re great admirers of how eBay and PayPal have simplified global ecommerce and payments,” said Janus Friis, Skype co-founder and senior vice president, strategy. “Together we feel we can really change the way that people communicate, shop and do business online.”

Zennström and Friis will remain in their current positions. Zennström will report to eBay CEO Whitman and join eBay’s senior executive team.

A Powerful Ecommerce and Communications Engine

Online shopping depends on a number of factors to function well. Communications, like payments and shipping, is a critical part of this process. Skype will streamline and improve communications between buyers and sellers as it is integrated into the eBay marketplace. Buyers will gain an easy way to talk to sellers quickly and get the information they need to buy, and sellers can more easily build relationships with customers and close sales. As a result, Skype can increase the velocity of trade on eBay, especially in categories that require more involved communications such as used cars, business and industrial equipment, and high-end collectibles.

The acquisition also enables eBay and Skype to pursue entirely new lines of business. For example, in addition to eBay’s current transaction-based fees, ecommerce communications could be monetized on a pay-per-call basis through Skype. Pay-per-call communications opens up new categories of ecommerce, especially for those sectors that depend on a lead-generation model such as personal and business services, travel, new cars, and real estate. eBay’s other shopping websites — Shopping.com, Rent.com, Marktplaats.nl and Kijiji – can also benefit from the integration of Skype.

PayPal and Skype also make a powerful combination. For example, a PayPal wallet associated with each Skype account could make it much easier for users to pay for Skype fee-based services, adding to the number of PayPal accounts and increasing payment volume.

In addition, Skype can help expand the eBay and PayPal global footprint by providing buyers and sellers in emerging ecommerce markets, such as China, India, and Russia, with a more personal way to communicate online. And consumers in markets where eBay currently has a limited presence, such as Japan and Scandinavia, can learn about eBay and PayPal through Skype. Skype can also help streamline cross-border trading and communications.

With its rapidly expanding network of users, the Skype business complements the eBay and PayPal platforms. Each business is self-reinforcing, organically bringing greater returns with each new user or transaction. The three services can also reinforce and accelerate the growth of one another, thereby increasing the value of the combined businesses. Working together, they can create an unparalleled engine for ecommerce and communications around the world.

Transaction and Financial Information

eBay will acquire all of the outstanding shares of privately-held Skype for a total up-front consideration of approximately €2.1 billion, or approximately $2.6 billion, which is comprised of $1.3 billion in cash and the value of 32.4 million shares of eBay stock, which are subject to certain restrictions on resale.

The maximum amount potentially payable under the performance-based earn-out is approximately €1.2 billion, or approximately $1.5 billion, and would be payable in cash or eBay stock, at eBay’s discretion, with an expected payment date in 2008 or 2009. Skype shareholders were offered the choice between several consideration options for their shares. Shareholders representing approximately 40% of the Skype shares chose to receive a single payment in cash and eBay stock at the close of the transaction. Shareholders representing the remaining 60% of the Skype shares chose to receive a reduced up-front payment in cash and eBay stock at the close plus potential future earn-out payments which are based on performance-based goals for active users, gross profit and revenue.

The above-mentioned dollar and eBay share amounts are approximate, based on the Euro-Dollar exchange rate and eBay’s stock price as of September 9, 2005. The final value of the stock component of the consideration may vary significantly from this estimate based on the value of eBay stock at closing.

Skype generated approximately $7 million in revenues in 2004, and the company anticipates that it will generate an estimated $60 million in revenues in 2005 and more than $200 million in 2006. For Q4-05, eBay expects the acquisition to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.01 and $0.04 respectively. For the full year 2006, eBay expects the transaction to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.04 and $0.12 respectively, with breakeven on a pro forma basis expected in the fourth quarter of 2006. On a long-term basis, eBay expects Skype operating margins could be in the range of 20% to 25%.

The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005.
About eBay Inc.

Founded in 1995, eBay pioneers communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity. eBay enables ecommerce on a local, national and international basis with an array of websites – including the eBay Marketplace, PayPal, Kijiji, Rent.com and Shopping.com – that bring together millions of buyers and sellers every day.

About Skype Technologies SA

Skype, the Global Internet Communications Company™, allows people everywhere to make free, unlimited, superior quality voice calls via its award-winning innovative peer-to-peer software for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Pocket PC platforms. Skype is available in 27 languages and is the fastest growing voice communications offering worldwide. Since its launch in August 2003, Skype has been downloaded more than 163 million times in 225 countries and territories. Fifty-four million people are registered to use Skype’s free services, with over 3 million simultaneous users on the network at any one time. Skype Technologies SA is headquartered in Luxembourg and is growing its offices in London and Estonia.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements regarding Skype and the expected impact of the acquisition of Skype on eBay’s financial results. Those statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from those discussed. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the timing of the closing of the transaction, the possibility that the transaction may not close, the reaction of the users of Skype’s services, the future growth of Skype’s user base and public acceptance of Internet voice communication services, rapid technological changes in the Internet voice communications sector, the reaction of competitors to the transaction, global developments in the regulation of Internet voice communication services including those provided by Skype, the possibility that integration of Skype’s offerings following the transaction may be more difficult than expected, and the possibility that entry by Skype and eBay into potential new lines of business will not be successful. More information about potential factors which could affect eBay’s business and financial results is included in eBay’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004, the company’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to eBay on the date hereof, and eBay assumes no obligation to update such statements.

The eBay announcement:

***A New Way to Communicate***

I’m excited to let you know that eBay plans to acquire Skype, the leader in online voice communications.

Skype has set a new standard in online voice communications with
outstanding sound quality and unmatched ease of use. And like eBay,
Skype has a fast-growing community -- some 54 million Skype users
around the world already use their PCs to talk with one another.

And best of all, conversations between Skype users via PC are free. You
can get up and running on Skype in just a few minutes. Just go to http://www.skype.com/go/x.home to learn more and download the free Skype software application. Try it – it’s fun!

Over time, we intend to make voice communications a part of the eBay
marketplace – a huge step forward in making transactions faster and
easier, as well as bringing even more interactivity and humanity to the
eBay Community.

You can include your Skype ID in your About Me page. For now, however,
Skype links may not appear in View Item pages. We’ll be working with
you, our Community, over the next few weeks to thoughtfully work out
the details of how eBay and Skype will interact, including any policy
changes that may be required.

We expect this acquisition to be finalized soon. In the meantime, you can learn more about our Skype plans in the news release we issued just a few minutes ago.

Working together, eBay, PayPal and Skype will redefine online trade and
community. I hope you’ll join us in this exciting new chapter in eBay’s
history.

Sincerely,

Meg

Skype as a VoIP PBX Gateway application has some interesting appeal.
We all use Skype 2 Skype to call across the Internet to bypass the PSTN costs or to interconnect with the PSTN through SkypeOut. Some of us purchase a Gateway like Actiontec’s Internet Phone Wizard to connect our residential phone to Skype. But what about using a Skype Client as a Gateway to bypass the PSTN off your PBX? Who is doing that? Skype as a VoIP PBX Gateway application has some special appeal. You can use Skype as a Single Point Gateway between your firm’s PBX and the Skype Network or interconnect two remote office PBXs together to create a Skype2Skype link between them. This should have great appeal in the European Common Market as well as for businesses doing business between Asia-European-America. Or for those who are managing outsourced relationships offshore.

Just think, if your PBX supports Call Forwarding, Call Transfer, Call-on-hold, Call Recording, Voice Messaging, etc this rich environment becomes available to callers from SkypeIn, SkypeOut and Skype2Skype.

In Skypeland there is not a lot talk about PBX interconnects. But it is the hot topic in the SIP or VoIP market. All the PBX and VoIP vendors are offering customers VoIP Gateways from single line models like Linksys/Sipura SP3000 for $99 to the 4 Port Mediatrix for about $650 US. These Gateways interconnect analog/digital handsets on the PBX to remote PBXs or handsets in small, medium and enterprises to bypass the telecoms by moving voice over the Internet.

Isn't it about time this Gateway technology is moved into Skypeland? It seems to be the perfect companion for SOHO and the Small to Medium Enterprise doing business internationally. Not everyone you need to talk too has a PC on their desktop nor do they have Skype.

As well, Gateways can give remote employees, customers and suppliers access to your corporate telephone infrastructure at zero cost per minute.

I will be testing a Skype PBX Gateway in the coming weeks. I would like your ideas of what functions to test and experiment with. So far I have called a SkypeIn number and was greeted by the Automated Attendant and using the Dial Pad in Skype connected to my party. I also tested Hold and Call Transfer, as well as Call Forward to a mobile phone. I was suitably impressed. If your office has a PBX what applications do you envisage? How would this help a small hotel chain? Why would you choose Skype over SIP for a PBX Gateway?

The Ebay rumors are hilarious. Nobody can verify or confirm anything. Not even vague denials from any of the parties. Who benefits from the leak? Skype's VCs pushing valuation buzz and Skype's bizdev team, both to better arm-twist partners.

Everything Skype can offer eBay or its subsidiaries (technology, network access, Skypification of its user experience, PayPal currency conversion of Skype Minutes) can be delivered as a service, without an equity entanglement.

And then you get the Skype Voice announcement. Bill Campbell does a fine job skewering the outrageous charges imposed by Skype. Can you imagine paying 30% of a sale to your credit card company? Or to your phone company for letting you hook up your computer to the phone network? That's Skype's program!

But that's not the worst of that deal. It's that Skype's BizDev team is driving for tactical profit but creating a strategic disadvantage. I'm tempted to say they're trying to think like a mobile service provider but Bill says it looks like simple opportunism.

This deal is an innovation killer.

This type of deal, cherry picking three players out of an entire industry, only reinforces Skype as a "walled garden," a private, tightly controlled place with one master. The other way to do it is to set things up so anyone who wants to compete can do so. Publish protocols and specs and some common tools for call termination (SkypeLite, maybe?) and for commerce. Set rates comparable to what credit card processing companies charge for debit transactions; Skype minutes are risk free since all funds are prepaid cash.

By the way, do you understand what Skype Voice companies do? They are middleware. You call a number. Their computer picks up the phone and answers with a recorded message. It creates a user experience for you using a library of prerecorded messages, a little speech recognition, Voice-XML to guide the conversation, and whatever database of content you're sharing. Like calling up for movie times and making it easy to search for the blockbuster playing near you.

Enormously helpful.

And these companies offer the service now, on regular phone lines, on toll free numbers. They make their money by selling their service to companies that want to engage their customers over the phone. Like banks for bank balances. Or a newspaper for delivery problems. Or a shipper for tracking problems. In none of these examples does money change hands. It's just my business process talking to customers in a convenient, narrow, well structured conversation.

They don't pay the phone company extra for the privilege.

Skype's partnership model doesn't allow this. If there's no revenue, nobody gets paid. And Skype must be paid before they let you pick up when a Skype caller rings you.

Skype's model doesn't allow public service implementations. The volunteers who put together KatrinaHelp would love to implement a service like this but will not charge the dispossessed to find a lost child.

And companies that want to plug in their own IVR systems are shut out too.

Like Bill said, it's a mess.

Instead of putting up a new api, protocols, etc. upon which vendors can innovate and add value the way tellme adds value (terminating calls and doing something with it), they are doing custom deals for a handful of players for short term cash, closing out the developer and entrepreneurial ecosystem including dozens of Tellme rivals.

Skype can fix it but, as it stands, the Skype Voice program is one step back.

"Is Skype in China risking compromising their encryption and anonymity model?" so asks my Danish contact Torben Nyhuus after reading this article on Yahoo turning state's evidence:

Information supplied by Yahoo! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison

It is an interesting question. The Skype Partner TOM does have a different version of Skype. H'mmmm...

How do you open up your software's user experience to outside parties?

It's distressing to hand your hard fought, crisply crafted, sophisticated design to imperfect strangers.

But you must.

It's key to learning new things. To multiplying the value you create by the curious, concerned, and committed. To meeting more customer needs. To lock-in.

So what's the best way to do it?

Prior art includes plug-in standards, high level human-computer interaction specifications and browser based methods.

With plug-ins, you parameterize everything within a few fixed guidelines. Think about Adobe Photoshop plug-ins, all looking more-or-less the same, but packaging different calculations in one consistent set of controls.

Sometimes a plug-in definition restricts too much. Kai's Power Tools went outside the Photoshop client to create user surfaces that better served user goals than anything possible within the plug-in UI spec.

"An interface is about hiding complexity from the user, It's about guiding a process, without cognitive understanding of what goes on beneath. Interface design is the art of enveloping the observer in an enticing, "try this" exploration with ever-new elements and designs as the tools to triumph in new territories." - Kai Krause

Ever wonder why it's easy to learn a new Macintosh program? Apple's famous UI specs for the early Macintosh OS guided the design of Mac apps.

Enter the AJAX era [wikipedia], a universe of loosely coupled, thoroughly decentralized, OS-independent applications. Where 14-year-olds can create toolbars for Firefox that produce new navigation of Flickr's photo site. Where users record and share Greasemonkey scripts that rewrite web pages so phone numbers become clickable SkypeOuts. Where Vonage users write and share desktop widgets to show Vonage status, minutes used, and performance. Where a weekend hack shows a Google map of a Craig's List of apartments renting near you.

Ten years' ago users were putting up words and pictures on the web.

Five years' ago users were storing them in databases.

Now we're creating applications, in a wave of design riding atop existing data, databases, and services.

The elements are straightforward, even if creating an effective platform remains an art.

So here's my first cut wishlist to open Skype's UI.

1. Open up your embedded browser to users
2. Let us open arbitrary web pages
3. Open up your tabbing and menuing navigation, subject to to
4. Expose its document model
5. Add JavaScript
6. Add Java
7. Support the web2.0 protocols: RSS, Atom, XML-RPC, SOAP, etc.
8. Support Flash
9. Open up the messaging/alerting system
10. Open up the help/documentation system
11. Build a toolbar system, so I can configure feature sets
12. Docking of external UI components/widgets with or within the main application
13. Skin the UI, so I can distribute my enterprise's branded skin or my Natasha Lyonne fan club skin.

Let

• engineers add functionality,
• designers adapt function to specific purposes,
• partners to channel their content, and
• users to make their copy of Skype their own.

Create a safe and flexible place, and they'll experiment and play.

Whilst perusing my daily feeds, I see Kim Cameron bring up the following idea:

When I was in Britain earlier this summer, I met Toby Stevens. How should I describe him? Can we invent the category of privacy entrepreneur?

Was trying out the Skype 1.4 beta today, with auto-forwarding. You know, Skype is now in a position to re-intermediate the mobile and other carriers (for a fee!). If your cellular carrier doesn't "get it" and see that there's a demand for innovation in voice features (like enhanced privacy), you just hand out your Skype number instead and have it intelligently forwarded.

Only want to be called on your mobile at certain times of day, or when you're not in a meeting, or when you're at your keyboard with a certain presence status? Then just set up your forwarding accordingly.

The current forwarding mechanism is just a binary on/off, but it doesn't take a genius to see how extensions could play into this.

So Skype Inc. is indeed a form of privacy entrepreneurialism. Roll up! Roll up! Come here to buy your missing telecom privacy features!

Now all Skype has to do is find a way to remunerate developers whose extensions lead to more billable minutes and up-sell to premium features. Unless of course they like pissing in their own pond and killing the little developer fishes...

Now here's a really evil thought. Want to upset the incumbent telecom players with some progressive regulation? Then force a separation of connectivity and service markets upon them. Allow users to port their number to a service provider like Skype, but still allow termination to your mobile device. Finally make numbers logical addresses associated with service, not physical addresses associated with routing and connectivity. Add a dash of wholesale pricing rules, stir in some termination rate sauce, and serve with gusto. Et voila! A competitive market in advanced telephony service emerges, unconstrained by the low level of competition in connectivity.

And we didn't even need to buy a single IMS box...

Unfortunately, the implementation will be really messy with all sorts of craziness because even things like a 3G data card needs to be assigned a telephone number to be accepted by the provisioning system. Doh! But where there's a political will, there's a technical way.

www.flickr.com

Skype has an API. Flickr has an API. For the wishlist:

Before the conversation.

Flickr Caller ID. When someone calls or texts me, show me what they've posted on flickr. Show me their flickr profile in a "who's calling" browser.

Skype a Flickr user. Let me find someone to talk with through flickr. Show a user's Skype name in their Flickr profile. So I can chat or call them. The realtime version of Flickr Mail.

Sync flickr groups with my Skype groups. Groups of people are already defined in flickr. Let me sync a group in my buddy list to a flickr group.

Launch a group chat from flickr groups. One click, instant conversation.

Populate my flickr profile from my Skype profile. Location information, affiliations, home page, my "about me" box, etc.

Add my flickr interestingness rating to my Skype profile. So when people with interesting photos call, I answer.

During the conversation.

Social browsing of flickrspace. During a call, let one or more of the participants guide the rest through flickr.

Thread flickr log. Skype knows the Skype IDs of the people in the room, in the thread of conversation. Let me see a stream or collage of their recently flickrd photos. Add visual, topical and temporal context; the joy of flickr.

After the conversation.

Upload via Skype. Skype has encrypted person-to-person file transfer. Let me use it to upload pictures to my flickr account.

Flickr presence in Skype. Show when my buddy uploads pictures to their flickr account. And make it easy to launch from my contact list to their flickr page.

Flickr is, of course, now a part of Yahoo!. Will they be able to integrate openly with other communication services? Or will they succumb to the resources and convenience of Yahoo!'s Messenger platform?

Hurricane Katrina refugees lost more than property. They are uprooted, sheared from the close friends and hundreds of acquaintances that make the social fabric of our lives. We can help them reconnect with old roots and plant new ones.

Goal: Help people easily form "tribes" sharing common affiliations or goals.

Examples: Survivors from a neighborhood. New settlers in a town. An extended family. Schoolmates. Coworkers. Health care workers seeking certification in a new state.

Specifically: Make it simple to provide the online/offline tools that help groups form and sustain themselves:

• Phone trees.
• List serves.
• Blogs and wikis.
• Conference calls.
• Chat rooms.
• Buddy lists.
• Meetups.
• And directories so people can find and join groups.

Some of this has started, a little here and there. We need a comprehensive and integrated approach to make communities from strangers.

Conducting a business meeting and one or more attendees are not in the boardroom but are availble via Skype or SkypeOut? If so, you have the perfect application for a speakerphone.

Maybe you have family members in a conference setting? Again a perfect application for a speakerphone.

In my experince, most calls using a boom microphone and speakers are not of good quality and often result in echo.

I just tested the Radio Shack MV 100 $39 speakerphone with JP White, a Skyper in Nashville, TN. I was very impressed. Even when he walked twenty-feet away I could hear him clearly. Same when he turned his back to the microphone.

Best of all, no echo.

No big surprise. The MV100 is a USB device using DSP technology.

I will pick one up tomorrow while I am in the Bay Area meeting with Stuart and Phil. Radio Shack closed all their stores in Canada.

Thanks for testing with me JP!

From J.P. White

At my end of the converstaion with Bill using the MV100 speaker phone, I found that turning the volume up too loud caused bad distortion of Bill's voice. I had to maintain a volume of about 1/2. I would have liked for it to go a bit louder but, at the price, it is ideal for a small conference room or home application. All volume adjustments and call initiation/answering are done on the PC.

Being a speakerphone you have to be cognizant of background noises that can interfere with the clarity of you own voice.

It can't rival a Polycom speakerphone but they cost many $100's and connect to POTS lines not PC's.

Shop: Froogle, eBay, Amazon, Radio Shack.

Silicon.com has a hot news item about Skype and Intel.

Intel senior vice president Pat Gelsinger said on Wednesday that the two companies were working together at the research and development level to build what he called "good business-class audio", for voice over IP networks.

"I'm happy to announce a partnership between Intel and Skype to make their clients better on our platforms using our software technology, codec technology [encoding and decoding software], and our dual-core platforms," he said during his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum. The collaboration will lead to "improvements in the number of participants in calls and the quality of calls as well", he added.

Notice this partnership does not include Global IP Sound as pointed out in the Skype Forum here by muppetmaster.

Anyone know more about this announcement? Did any of our readers attend the Intel Developers Conference?

The SkypeNet and SkypeWeb announcements are interesting. A bit scary too. Not for Google, the intended target, but possibly for members of the Skype Developer Community.

Lenn Pryor in today's Share Skype blog had this to say,

"We are announcing two new initiatives that make Skype and the Web a little more interesting and open up new possibilities for the developer and partner community... "

I am glad Lenn feels that SkypeNet and SkypeWeb will "open up new possibilities" because Skype's actions have been shutting down opportunities for developers.

Using the Skype API the Development Community created Web Presence Applications, integrations to e-mail systems like Outlook, and browsers like Internet Explorer, along with voice messaging/answering systems, like Pamela. In each case Skype moved into these tested and proven markets, thus eating the children they had spawned. Now the Skype Ecosystem is offered another API─ SkypeNet API.

For me, Skype’s new announcement just killed a $10,000+ contract for web presence I spent five months cultivating. Thanks, Skype. However, where I see a blunder of biblical proportions (lev 26:29 And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.), Martin Carleton, a developer of the Jyve Web Plugin for Skype, sees the move by Skype to be very positive.

A third perspective comes from Martin Geddes,

“Skype's limited resources are too diffused. Is a Skype toolbar really the biggest strategic imperative, something that cannot be done by a third party? An in-house video solution? Yet another web presence server?”

If Martin's insight is correct then Skype may be shooting itself in both feet: loss of strategic focus and a disheartened ecosystem. These are big problems to have just as Google Talk is emerging into the marketplace and as Yahoo and Microsoft sharpen their swords.

I have yet to meet a software developer who has made any money with their Skype Add-on applications. And yet these add-ons have created value for Skype. CRM and Outlook add-ons increase the use of SkypeOut. But the developers get no share of the revenue. Isn’t sharing good?

What do you see? Is Skype eating its children? Is SkypeNet and SkypeWeb creating new developer opportunities? Is Skype losing strategic focus? Tell us what you see.

Is it all over for Skype? As Google Talk launched tonight with an Orkuttian viral shove provided by Gmail. At first glance it could be Skype's worst nightmare or the kick start necessary to refocus Skype. If you missed the buzz, Google Talk is the long awaited and predicted IM / Voice client. It won't be over for a while and the battle will take to the trenches with Yahoo, MSN and AOL battling to the end. This is a first salvo. Don't expect Google's feature set additions to follow Skype's path immediately to Telecom as Google has other opportunities sitting there within its empire. These are my first impressions.

• Extreme Simplicity. If you have a Gmail account you can just log in. The client is very simple.
  
• Find buddies quickly. If they are in Gmail then you can make hundreds of invites very quickly. Authorization is simple.
  
• Presence. Simplified and more intelligent than ever with customized field options that add new fun to presence. It's about time!
  
• Chat. Very basic, no emoticons etc. Still it's clean and archived and I bet searchable (if not now soon) by google desktop. Chat uses XMPP and thus iChat and Jabber clients can connect directly to Google Talk. You can also add it immediately to Trillian. (Trillian could be quite a winner). Guess that will put Google Talk presence on mobiles too!
  
• Talk. Talk is chat centric. Ie click to chat rather than Skype's click to call. Clicking opens a chat dialogue box. You then initiate a call from the chat window. Talk quality matches Skype and is better than Yahoo.
  
• Chat Window Organization. Windows self organize in an interesting fashion until closed.
  
• No profiles and no friendly pictures at this time.

How it really worked.

I had 8 conversations all around the world. Some of the voice connections didn't connect immediately and felt like they failed. There was just no sound. Sometimes the sound started after the call was connected for 30 seconds or more. This is likely just a short term bug. I enjoyed the inbound ring tone. Distinctively different from Skype. The invite process was very simple, building my list very elegant.

What's Missing?

From a Skype user's point of view: Almost everything. There are no profiles, no photos / pictures, no voice mail, no multi-conference or multi-chat. Plus there is no SkypeIn or SkypeOut capabilities. This is not a phone replacement. The multi-chat and conference calling should be easy to duplicate. The telephone system more difficut. However, each name is a SIP name and that is designed to connect with Vling and Gizmo project in a very short time. Plus with rumors around Google raising money, a TMobile USA purchase can't be that far away. That would provide a user base, the WiFi hotspots and most importantly the chance to integrate mobile numbers with VoIP.

Where's the Strength?

Talk is already integrated with Gmail and thus links nicely with IG, Google's personal content portal. So when will GoogleTalk have access to Orkut (profiles / social networking - pictures and profiles) Blogger (another place to share presence), Desktop (archive searching), Maps (location information) and instantly the whole Jabber/XMPP community. How quickly can Google bring these all together. Then they already have a photosharing program etc. Google has all the elements to bulk up to a Yahoo like client very quickly. Add in Ad Sense etc. Very neat models are likely to emerge. I heard from one punter tonight they had told their mother to buy more Google shares.

Developer Talk

Google has a great page outlining their preliminary plans and open strategy for the future of "talk."

Google's mission is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful. Google Talk, which enables users to instantly communicate with friends, family, and colleagues via voice calls and instant messaging, reflects our belief that communications should be accessible and useful as well. We're committed to open communications standards, and want to offer Google Talk users and users of other service providers alike the flexibility to choose which clients, service providers, and platforms they use for their communication needs.
Google

How does Skype stack up? Yahoo?

• Google may win on philosopjy alone (see above mission) or the resources in dolars and manpower. However today, while Google may get it's Orkuttian swell of new users isn't actually an acceptable replacement client for either Skype or Yahoo. Both do more better for their current audiences.
• On features, Skype is still ahead and if they would speed up their development and releases of call forwarding, VM improvements, Video, and their Presence Server they still have a chance althougth the market has shifted dramatically. Yahoo is bulking up however still does nothing really well. That may change.

Where should Skype's strategy start?

Open Up! By contrast with Google, Skype is on a philosophical back foot, well balanced. Being closed is no longer an asset, so Skype can compete only on its design, features and capabilities. To open up, the Skype chat client must adopt the Jabber/XMPP protocol, accelerating its interconnect and encouraging developers to "stick" / "start" developing products around the API. So far Google hasn't announced an API (count the hours). They will need one even if just for hardware. Skype will be forced to open up many aspects of its interface now.

Thanks to translation efforts of Giovanni Tomassini, Skype Journal's guide,"Learning Skype's Plug-in Architecture" is now available in Italian as Imparare l’Architettura delle Estensioni di Skype (pdf, 1.1mb). Learn the Skype API while making your own voice mail, in about an hour. Also in Spanish, Japanese, Russian and English.

Giovanni is a graduate of Electronic Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering of University of the Studies of Florence. In 1996 he set up the first Home Banking function for an Italian Bank. He works as the Networks Server Farm Administrator for a medium-size Italian Bank. He's the creator of the Pagineskype.it portal that promotes the use of Skype in the companies and Skype Italian Portal. Married with two sons, he lives to Arezzo, in the Tuscany between Siena and Florence.

Blogs and wikis are slow motion social media, at least compared to real-time telephony and videophony. What makes them work is the permalink, an url that points to their atomic elements. All of what Mary Hodder calls "the exhaust" of the blogosphere evolves from the ability to point to a blog and to a blog post.

We need the same in Skypenet.

• Skype names. Skype names are aliases, and people may have more than one. Neither Skype's directory services nor the client are direct about this. Each instance of the Skype client must be able to manage my multiple identities, including distinct contact lists, privacy policies, and presence. This does not mean I don't need a unified interface, but that the interface must address the reality that I am one person to the people at my synagogue, another to the members of my political club, another to my coworkers, another to my family, another to my drinking friends, another to my neigbhors, and yet another to playmates I keep locked up in my dungeon. See also: faceted identity.

• Group names. A big subject. I must be able to address communication to groups
  • whose membership I define,
  • defined by others (either by a person or by a system, like a corporate directory),
  • self-defined as people opt-in and opt-out, as you see in mailing lists and clubs
  • defined by search result (e.g. all people I've talked to in the Emirates this year, people in my friends-list I haven't talked with in six months)
  • and groups of groups.

• Thread. This is the direct analog to the permalink. A permalink is the url associated with the event, with the action, of publishing your blog post. Even if your post took hours to write, the permalink refers to the entire post, a chunk of your blog, published at a specific date and time.

Conversations need rich external metadata (great envelope information) like participant identity, threading, and affiliation with groups.

For us to create a navigable, conversationsphere, we also require comprehensive maps of internal structures.

1. Time. Let us link to time stamps within a conversation. And bookmark them. If videos cut from one view to another, from one person to another, mark the time.
2. Space. Geocode everything. Points of recording (increasingly interesting when conversants are in motion). And locations discussed in...
3. Topics. All that ontology, tagsonomy, folksonomy stuff? Let's bring it inside the conversation, associate topic tags with locations, with timestamps, and with...
4. Objects. What do you hear besides the words? Fingers snapping. A cough. A truck going by. Office sounds. Birds chirping. A song playing on the radio in the next room. A sound effect. What do you see in the video? Is it night or day? Inside or out? What is in the sky, in the background? What are people wearing? What do they have in their hands? Are they men or women, how old are they, what colors are their eyes, skin, hair, nails, hands, teeth? Professional archivists and cataloguers develop skill at annotating photographs and film because it is invaluable at putting your library to use.
5. Text. Uh huh. Yowzah. Yep. Riiight. Sounds as words as text. Tied to timestamps, and to the speaker.
6. Sounds. It's still expensive to search audio files for a match to a sound sample. But it's been done. The mechanics at the Car Talk radio show thrive on their ability to put meaning to the car sounds callers make. So you should be able to find that clip with the four part male a capella G-major chord or that guitar riff or the thwack of a 45 caliber bullet slapping into a torso.

This is memory, of course. Like blogs, our conversational records become our backup brains, our oral histories, our touchstones to who we were and what we will become. And, if we are wise, it provides the seed for growing tools. To help us learn, help us communicate and collaborate more effectively, to live well, and to understand our worlds as we make them.

We can build (or adapt) Technoratis and Googles and LinkedIns and undreampt of marvels. So long as we have rich conversation permalinks.

Who is using Skype Zones? What is your experience so far with Boingo and Skype Zones?

So far our experience is mixed. Torben Nyhuus in Denmark and I have been doing some testing and we would like to hear from you. There are over 18,000 hotspots you can test!

It only costs 2.50 Euro or $3.00 US to test for 2 hours.

Install the SZ software. Then in theory once you arrive at a hotspot, boot your laptop up. Skype Zones should pop up with a message Skype Zone “Found” would you like to login. 30 seconds later you should be ready to make a Skype call.

Keep the Boingo Support number handy: 800-880-4117. If you do have problems call them and check out their response time and support levels. Don’t follow the support information listed in their beta software to e-mail 'wificlienthelp@skype.com' because you won’t get an answer. We can’t say you will never get an answer; we have only tested the wait period for 12 days. Does this feel familiar? (Grin)

Look forward to hearing from you!

"When will Skype open access to their codecs?" Doc Searls asked me at the Always On picnic. It's not clear they will. If they do, the Jerk-O-Meter is an example of the kind of application you could build. A project of the MIT Media Lab, it analyzes voices during the call, telling users how much they are paying attention. Per their project page, "The current version of the application runs in Linux on the Zaurus VOIP phone. It uses Ron Caneel's code to extract the activity and stress levels in real-time."

The Skype API doesn't expose the audio stream; you must work through the operating system to get at it. The same is true of the upcoming Skype Video.

There's money in analyzing and transforming media streams, whether for call centers (like the Jerk-O-Meter), annotation services, call/video quality boosters, semantic content detectors, translators, relay services, or simple stress/lie detectors. The Skype API should safely expose the media streams, and provide mechanisms for user authorized manipulation and substitution of that media by a friendly application.

It won't be easy, but the market value is huge.

It is a big day for the Mac Developer ecosystem. The Skype API is now available. It was announced on the Skype Forum a couple of hours ago here.
Skype is now Applescriptable!

It's intriguing that an IM product that's had a voice component for years must launch a new version "with voice" and yet that is the message that Yahoo is promoting with the release of Yahoo Messenger 7.0 for Windows. As I reported on the beta version it's a big step forward and it does add real utility to Yahoo. Will it hold the tide of IM users flocking to Skype? Maybe. Is it enough to turn the tide? No not yet. Still it makes the Yahoo client much more sticky. Plus Yahoo has some integration options with e-mail and mobile IM that keep it attractive.

Two things Yahoo is really promoting in this release.

1. Free worldwide PC to PC calls. You can also buy a phone card although the integration could be better. Voice now works, often better than using the phone, however it's not well integrated, retaining a bolted on rather than built in feel. Example - the VM voice mail notification (you have to have "messenger" "show/hide" "seach bar") for it to be visible. The voice archives are difficult to find without this. There is no "events" notification. I can't identify how a YahooIn call (Future) would be handled, or how caller ID would be presented in the future. The downside of these additions is a lack of control over whether anyone can call or start a chat etc.
2. Photo Sharing: On the plus side Yahoo has enhanced how pictures can be shared. It's another integration. The more I think about it the more I'd like to see it in the actual client, Slide shows should be possible

Emoticons: Yahoo adds some new ones. They are nicely done.

Things I haven't checked but am curious about.

• Is dialup performance better than Skype? How's the voice quality stack up. Yahoo has many more dialup users.
  
• What will the impact on Yahoo chatrooms be? Will better voice change dynamics? Note the beta and previous versions weren't voice compatible.

Overall

Skype still has quite a lead. From recent reviews of new clients Jajah, Gizmo, Wavigo, Voipbuster, all these are lacking what makes for an easy-to-use telephone replacement. In Yahoo's case they have the resources and capabilities to blow Skype out of the water. Still it's only going to happen if they get the basics right and open up to the developer community. That's key if Yahoo is to get linked to the next generation of hardware devices now being released. Otherwise Yahoo could find themselves locked out of the future because they are not compatible with these upcoming products.

João Brogueira writes:

On 1 June 2004, Jean Mercier posted an article on SkypeJournal making an analysis of how many users are online at a certain our within a 24 hours period. This raises the question of how to register the values without being waked up during all night.

The same Jean Mercier as per request of Bill Campbell, of SkypeJournal, shows how to make a video to register the Skype window and the number of users online.

I was surfing the Web today and I found this very interesting post claiming to have miniSkype, a small program that can not only register these values but also export them directly to a database for later analysis.

In short:

1. Jirong Zhou posted a test program on his blog, likely written by others.
2. It logs in to the Skype network, without Skype.
3. It gets data from the Skype network, like the number of people online.

Let me describe the screenshot for you...

It is a Windows XP desktop and three windows are open.

Two stacked on the left are titled "miniSkype v0.0.0.01". They each have a Log In/Out dialog panel on the left, showing "shantou001" logged in with a five character password and a "Log Out" button. To the right of the dialog panel is a text box showing a log of miniSkype's activity.

The first window's log shows:

Login
listen on random port
connecting SkypeNet ...
SkypeNet connected

The status bar shows a "1", "3", "login success", and "305271 Online".

The second window's log shows:

Login
listen on random port
connecting SkypeNet ...
SkypeNet connected
Logout
SkypeNet not connected
Login
listen on random port
connecting SkypeNet ...

and then scrolls out of sight.

The second status bar is the same as the first except that the number of people online is 3047812.

The third window is an application, what appears to be a utility from Gunagzhou's http://www.sky.net.cn/, makers of personal firewall software. It shows open applications and their network connections. One of the instances of MiniSkype.exe (running on drive E:) is shown with both a TCP connection (open on port 1389?) and a UDP connection.

Accessing the Skype Cloud Without Skype?

So does this mean...

• Skype's access to the cloud can be reverse engineered? If so, we can write applications that can write and read to the cloud from servers or clients. So if Skype doesn't write a version for your platform (let's say the PalmOS, for example) you might write your own.
• Cloud data is posted in the clear? While conversations are encrypted, it isn't clear that profile data and presence status is. And, I'm assuming that MiniSkype didn't encrypt the login process beyond common https.
• The MiniSkype client successfully logged in through Skype's own admin servers? If so, can Skype be selective about which clients have access? Should Skype publish a Terms Of Service about touching the cloud? In other words, how should Skype sanction access to the cloud?
• Having accessed the cloud, what other data from the cloud is available? Everything described in the Skype APIs? More?
• Can MiniSkype ask questions about other people, the way the Skype client can see buddy list presence and profile information?
• Is this intensely cool? Widely important? Or dangerous?

Everyone dreams about that day when Wi-MAX will arrive. There will be some obvious advantages, but as this exciting story, “When Pigs Wi-Fi” by Nicolas D. Kristof in the New York Times shows some people are not bothering to wait…

“Today, this chunk of arid farm country appears to be the largest Wi-Fi hot spot in the world, with wireless high-speed Internet access available free for some 600 square miles. Most of that is in eastern Oregon, with some just across the border in southern Washington.”

Google Earth “HERMISTON, Ore” and you will find this community is in the boondocks. An area along the last few miles of the Columbia River before it drains into the Pacific.

Like the boondock country of Estonia, a couple of international petroleum companies provide free wireless access at most gas stations when you drop by to top up your tank. And cities like Philadelphia are planning similar projects to the one in Hermiston, Oregon.

Convergence may be a tiring word to hear, but these projects along with the Skype Zones on the Boingo Wi-Fi network and the Skype Wi-Fi Phone highlight just how much mobility we will have.

Mobile on Skype and almost free. Hard to beat. I live in the boondocks; I hope my community is next.

She walks in and sees me with my headset on.

"Are you on a call?" she asks.

As it happens, I'm not. But maybe my headset needs an LED on top to show if I'm on a call, listening to music, or just inert!

Windows update today: version 1.3.0.60. It's a bug fix: "call quality is improved for users with restrictive firewalls and routers."

Mac users, the latest version is Mac OS X, Version: 1.0.0.24. Release date: April 12, 2005.

A Mac Beta version is available for the adventurous. 1.0.0.49. Release date: July 27, 2005. This is a major update, adding multichat, the Skype API and a slew of bug fixes.

Linux users were updated last week, minor. Version: 1.2.0.11. Release date: July 28, 2005.

Linda tells me, "I would never do video." Dina says, "I feel naked!"

For many the web is a place of fear: fear of being flamed, fear of being "hit on" by the opposite sex, spammed, infected with a virus, or of someone hacking into your computer. To protect themselves many users hide behind NAT Routers, double firewalls and strive for anonymity hiding behind pseudonyms and avatars. Trust takes a longer time to build in this environment. It might take weeks or even months weeks before you share a pic of youself with what was a brief time ago a complete stranger. Given the potential intimacy provided by live video this behaviour seems to suggest that video will be in low demand or its use constrained.

But other real-life examples tell a different story. Video is hot. 500,000 Skype fans downloaded Video4IM and vSkype in the first 30 days of the beta release of both these products. WebCams are hot too. This ChannelTimes article (server down at time of posting) claims Skype's partner Logitech shipped its 25th million webcam this year (37 % of the world market according to research firm IDC).

Is all this activity about moms and grandchildren? Or is sharing real-time images of you and your environment simply cool. Does video dramatically enhance voice and Skype Chat? So what is the story here? And what is your story? Is your video pic a real-time emoticon?

Robin Batt's story covers both sides, "I get more of a feeling of a connection with Kay, she's based in Italy, we speak daily, IM all the time. If she leaves her camera on, I know when she's there, I can see when she's frowning/laughing/doing something else. Although, Kay doesn't like it because it makes her self-conscious."

"There is a big opportunity in making cute little apps that let you mess with your appearance. I'd actually like to find a developer who can and build a couple. Could be either really sophisticated photographic touch up or could be really easy to build little cartoon cutouts like, today's Friday, I've got my real face, but my party hat on or or, you could have fake backdrops so if I'm talking with a client I put a fake office backdrop on so I look like I'm in a smarter environment than I really am.

I think video will be about fun long before about doing mission critical business much like mobile, emoticons, ringtones etc. Mobile operators ALWAYS get it wrong they are only just learning now that mobile data is about killing time, not saving time. That's especially important in the mobile environment waiting for a friend in a bar, waiting for the bus, dentist, taking the train somewhere, even if using business apps - like stock tickers - you're doing it more to kill time than to save time that's my philosophy anyway.

I think video is the same as mobile. It will be more about social interaction - friends goofing around...than business communications...in the beginning. Killing time and goofing around become the drivers for the mobile and video market until the deeper uses get discovered.

And until people get familiar with it...or until it becomes so popular on a social level that it starts to virally pervade businesses anyway...so they decide to harness it so they can control it...and it becomes an enterprise app (like IM did). Plus I don’t think goofing around is necessarily shallower. Nothing wrong with goofing around.

oh, and porn of course - always an early driver of new tech. Although that's an interesting one because the phone/online/text sex industry benefits from the fact that the buyer cant see the 'hot chick' to validate if she really is hot. That changes in the video environment, obviously."

I wonder if Robin has it right with her comment on hot chicks? I wonder whether in fact all chicks are hotter in a video call than a voice call. Are there not more "emoticons" happening in video? Doesn’t live video provide more to feed your imagination; not less?

Tell us about your experience with video. What "deeper uses" than goofing around will make Skype Video a pervasive application? Is it a killer-app for job interviews? Does Skype video enhance voice and chat messaging for you? In what ways?

Are you afraid of Skype video; are you videophobic?

August 2-4, 2005 - VoIP Developers Conference - at South San Francisco Conference Center starts today in San Francisco. Let us Skype phreaks convene Wednesday, 7pm, in the lobby. My mobile is +15102061138. If you're attending and have South San Francisco dining suggestions, please leave a comment on this blog post or a Skype chat (evanwolf).

This is what we have been waiting for! A Skype WiFi Phone

And we still have a bit of a wait. (Grin)

We predict it will have a price point under $150.

Thanks Jaanus for sharing...

This new whitepaper The Skype Payment API from Connectotel should wake up everyone in Skypeland.

I found it on the Skype Forum.

Summary:

The proposed design for SkypePay would allow any Skype user to make use of his/her existing SkypeOut account to pay for goods and services. At the most basic level, the process of making a payment via SkypePay can be considered as a transfer of an amount
between one Skype user’s SkypeOut account and another.

This whitepaper is an epic. If implemented, and the rumour mill says that it will be, SkypePay has profound consequences for everyone: The Skype Developer Community, for the users of the Skype Global Network and Skype. As well, it opens up a whole new developer community ─ those engaged in producing content. From home movies, games and porn.

It is a show stopper for MSN and Yahoo.

Niklas Zenström has always talked about delivering “services”. SkypePay would make this easy for everyone, not just Skype to get paid for services: consulting on any topic, teaching languages, just let your mind wander.

What an awesome way to build a community.

A list of my 329,001 fellow IBM employees.

Alphabetically.

By first name.

"How do we scale up the number of quality human relationships one person can sustain by many orders of magnitude? In an increasingly connected world, how does one person interact with a hundred thousand, a million or even a billion people?"

Adrian Scott on Edge.org

Useful? No.

(Just an example, folks; I don't work at IBM. I used to work for Adecco, which employed 3.5 million people. You should have seen Adecco's employee directory around the year 2000, but that's another story.)

Let me clarify Skype's opportunity.

Overload.

Being true to "It just works" even when there's too much.

• Too many names in the cloud. Which Gupta do you mean? When there a billion profiles in the cloud, every query will turn up too many results.
  
• Too much information about each person in the cloud. Our profiles will expand to look more like CVs/resumes and biographies than business cards.
  
• Too many conversational media and styles. Not just phone calls, but phone+text, text+video, video+game+text, voice+blog+irc, voice+desktopsharing, stressanalyzer+voice, etc. How should I contact Bill about his article at this time of day?
  
• Too many inquiries or calls in a day. Can Skype help me be Oprah popular without being rude? Can I avoid distractions gracefully? Can Skype help me prioritize whom I should call?
  
• Too many changes to the profiles of the people in my contacts list. As my contact list grows by a hundred or more each month, people already in my list are changing where they live, where they work, what they look like, whom they know, what they do for fun, what they care about, what they've said and done lately.
  
• Too many contacts. How can I make sense of the 50,000 people in my address book? Can I find someone based on something said in a conversation we had? How are my contacts related to me and to each other? What should I do to keep our relationships current?
  
• Too many and too rich an archive of prior call attempts and conversation records. I text, talk, or vid with Stuart a few times a day. When did we first mention video when talking about Skype? When I've had Skype for 10 years, I'll easily have gigabytes of archives (after SkypeVideo, maybe by year end). How do I find those conversations? those urls mentioned or people quoted?

I have just two eyes, two ears, and 24 hours in a day.

Skype, please help me manage today's and tomorrow's ever accellerating information overload.

The more I live in Skype,

• the more I bring my work, family, social, and civic life into Skype,
• the more I depend on Skype across my mobile phone and laptop and TiVo and Xbox360,
• the more my memories are stored in Skype's logs and archives than my email or my brain...

Skype, please help me:

• Spend my precious time wisely.
• Find relevance.
• Discover and create meaning.
• Lubricate and propel my relationships.
• Hold more efficient and effective meetings.
• Help others do likewise.

Thanks.