Leave a comment and win a free pass to the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference in San Francisco. Be sure to leave your email address, Skype name optional, so we can contact you. I'll pick a commenter at random on Monday and post the results.

If you couldn't make last week's Consumer Electronics Show, compare the hundreds of photos on flickr to my photos: I have all the phone and software geek shots, while everyone else seems to get the celebrities, parties, and hot people. (Reminder to self: prioritize.)

Apple upgrades GarageBand to include iChat interview recording. At the moment I can't imagine any product better for podcasting that iChat AV with GarageBand 3.0. It is now more sophisticated at capturing audio, video snapshots, manipulating the audio, and publishing than Skype alone or with any four other products. Sharing conversations is fundamental to serving the enterprise market and to continued access to pioneers and early adopters of social media.

China Tech News tips that eBay China launched their Skype promotion site. Here is the banner.

IT Conversations is carrying an interview with Skype marketing vp Saul Klein. Haven't heard it yet; what do you think? Thanks to John Maas for the tip.

Skype Journal is not Skype. We cannot refund money you paid to Skype, reset your password, or make Skype legal in your country. Please recognise our limits; we sure do.

Stuart Henshall is off to Wien for a few days, so if you're in the area, Skype him this weekend (GMT+1).

Jan in Malaysia posted about a new Skype-blocking filter for Ipoque's network management software. Notice the LAN admin companies aren't making your Skype conversations better (the huge market opportunitiy) but are charging you to get in the way of your employees talking with each other and with customers (the horror!).

AmiciPhone is in a new beta. Skype-like functionality but working to beat Skype's network performance by an order of magnitude in areas like file transfer. Remember, you don't want to be the last carrier standing without a softphone.

9skype blogs that Netopia's PC/Mac remote control software Timbuktu is now Skype compatible. English via Google or by Yahoo!.

Last, I'm not the best joke teller, but this hillarious blonde joke about using Skype and penguins sets the bar high.

Skype Journal is pleased to announce our sponsorship of the first O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference. We'll have at least three of our people there, maybe more. And we hope to see you there too. January 24-26 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. One of the reasons we're sponsoring is to offer our readers a 40% discount; use the code "etel06sms" when you register. If you're going, please leave a comment so we can meet you at Etel.

Skype recently announced a new set of website buttons. This is the first real use of their expanded range of Skype tags. This allows you to integrate calls for text, voice, add a contact, file sharing, and voice messaging just by clicking on a website. It's convenient and provides lots of potential to create new communication solutions.

The latest transparent drop down is really rather neat. It provides all the different ways to contact me. It's quite an advancement. Follow the link to get yours.

Skype buttons can be used on your website, blog or even in your email signature to let other people contact you easily. Share Skype

Then I began thinking about it. What's different here? I took a closer look at comparing the old and new buttons.

This is an orginal early Skype call button:

The new buttons:

First time round I almost missed it. No it's really true. Skype has dropped "Skype" from all its buttons. Maybe they think the branding of the buttons is now so strong everyone gets it? Maybe they did some research and many people seeing these buttons on websites failed to understand their meaning? Perhaps I should be asking them first why they dropped "SkypeMe"?

I thought about this and my response is very much from the heart as a user. Asking questions now would ignore my judgement and reduce the impact of just blogging it. I can sum it up in one sentence. I don't want you to Call me I want you to Skype me.

Here's my logic: Skyping is a multi-dimensional communication tool. I want a Skype experience. That includes chat and voice messages and buddylists etc. I don't want you to call me. I'm not thinking "shooting the breeze" on a telephone. I was almost the first in the world to put a SkypeMe callto tag on a blog. I wore it as a revolutionary badge of honor. It was a statement and an invitation. It became part of our vocabulary - marketers and brand managers will know how utterly powerful that can be, when their brand enters consumer parlance.

In some countries "call me" is the thing you say when running down a hall when you don't have time to stop or be polite. It's not a call to action. By contrast Skype was defining behavior and providing a sense of access and urgency. You are here, you are on my site, here is my invitation. Add presence and the availablity info increases exponentially. From the Skype perspective, you had a unique brand property in Skypeme.

I thought I'd check with a couple of my buddies. Dina's comment summed it up for me.

"hmmm some of the new buttons are pretty nice to use with friends. Am not sure i would change the old SkypeMe button though for clients in an email signature .... it just seemed more business-like. Why have they removed 'Skype' from the call me tag? I kind of liked it .. it made me feel more on-the-edge, like i was using something special. I know it made many of my clients inquire about what Skype is ... and some even adopted it. Call me as a button is confusing too ... i already have my landline and mobile number in my email signature ... and i think i may confuse my clients with this additional Call Me button."

There are some schools of marketing that believe you only want the consumers saying the shortened name or using it as a verb. Did Xerox ever talk about anything other than copying? How did Miller Genuine Draft become MGD etc.? Here Skype has become a verb and we understand SkypeIn and SkypeOut and we now have a callto tag that says "Call Me". Is it just me or has it all gone flat? I can't see the hype or the excitement in Call me. And effectively, you are asking me to change my vocabulary again, having thus far carved a unique position in my mind. Competitors can come up with similar Call Me buttons - none could have used Skype Me. What then is your unique badge?

To make matters worse I watched an SBC commercial on television tonight. Guess what the tagline is? I don't have it perfect... the thrust was SBC "Beyond the Call". When I see it again or remember I will insert it.

I looked some more at the branding and the tags. They are all bigger than the smallest before. The drop down conceptually is really rather cool. Still how does it fit in with my email signature? Is it business like enough? The speech bubble may be alright for Skype staffers but really you must be kidding if you think I'm going to add it to my signature. So overall the selection is way down. Not as many colors and limted shapes. Which brings up two more issues.

Look at the drop down Call Me tag again. (Leave a VM if you want to test it). Now why did Skype fail to incorporate a download Skype link and tie it into the Skype Affiliate program at the same time. (BTW I think if you don't have Skype installed it automatically takes you to a download Skype page although I haven't confirmed this I know it is possible.)

Then think some more. This drop down tag is a perfect way to send a message to contact a company. Thus why isn't there a "SkypeUs" option. That suggests you are getting the generic number for the business. With the latest advances in Skype 1.4 for Windows with call forwarding there are many new ways to encourage Skype onto the business site. For business I could provide a whole set of encouraging options. Some others may want to put the "Call Us on Skype" as the button. Or "Call us Free on Skype". Both these last two promote a key benefit. It's free. The cost of developing them isn't very much. In the end downloads will tell which ones people want.

Thus we have some real progress in the implementation of Skype tags. The current group needs a quick expansion.

There are also options that could significantly enhance these tags. For example the tags could provide my picture, or a company logo. Whatever is put in the Skype profile. I'd also look more to the "buddylist" development. When or if we get headless clients. It could be those buddylists that we are simply scrolling though on a site to connect. Online by department etc.

So there you have it. A strong response. I'm not that interested in adopting these tags although I will use and incorporate the drop down tag. My strong response is a gut level one. I would have loved to debate it with whoever developed it. If I had I would have had more context to write this blog post around. As it is, there isn't a story that satisfies me this was the right move or well done. Questions I could be still waiting for answers on:

• Why do you want to adopt "Call me" rather than SkypeMe?
• What assortment should we have? How many variations? Where will it be used? By whom etc.
• Have you asked other users?
• How are you planning to promote the new tags?

It's quite possible I'm all wrong. Still I'm a Skyper for one and I still want a "SkypeMe" button. Is that too much to ask?

I'm really unhappy with the information architectures we adopt to display presence information. Many of you will be familiar with the work of Edward Tufte and his innovative displays of multidimensional and fluid data on 2-dimensional static paper.

We need to do better with presence data, because that data is going be become a lot richer. So, inspired by Tufte, let's see what we can do. I'd like to introduce to you my little pet Tod the Tadpole. As you'll see, I was diagnosed with disgraphia horiffica and have the drawing age of a 3 year old. Never mind.

(A friendly wag suggested this should be Simon the Sperm, but as a family blog I'll demur…)

What this does is adds some more dimensions to our presence display. The most obvious one is a temporal history of our availability. In the example, when the tadpole tail is high, you're available, when it's low you're not. The time scale is squeezed up as a log scale; the last minute and last hour might have the same pixel-width; the far end of the tail might be summarising whether you where around at all last week in just a few pixels.

This history is useful. If someone has just got back from vacation, you want to see that. If someone's online all the time, there's no rush to grab them; conversely, if they're rarely online and you see them come on, call them now!

The up-down movement of the tail is smoothed by adding some inertia; coming online doesn't make it zoom straight to the top, but applies a point force that accelerates it in that direction. (I guess some user testing would tell us whether "y", "dy/dx", or "d2y/dx2" is the right vertical scale.)

Day and night are shown too. This is important when buddies might be spread around the world and very mobile. I've drawn it really badly, but twilight and dawn would be light grey, whereas the middle of the night would be a jet black background. Tod is approaching sleepy time. Naturally, the lengths of the day and night phases would reflect your actual daylight at your current latitude.

You might even choose to colour the daytimes with weather-related information from the locale of the person, such as temperature hues or a pattern of raindrops.

The tail might also encode data about the nature of the presence, beyond being online or offline. For example, the red parts could indicate "busy" — i.e. typing, talking or dragging. (Just clicking in a browser might be regarded as the equivalent of being idle!).

Episodes of mobility, where such data is available from the user device or a network operator, could also be displayed, such as by using a dotted line.

Looking into the future, the background might indicate someone's predicted presence status. If their calendar has a meeting shown, add a border for "busy". If they're due to catch a plane, add a border for "away".

The "head" of the tadpole is also presence-enriched. If you're listening to music, a set of headphone appear on your head. Hey, the little sound-marks coming out of your ears could even beat to the music! Roll the mouse over, see what they're listening to. If you're on a phone call, it looks like you're wearing a headset. And so on.

Of course, the head icons would be personalisable for more immediate recognition. After all, they're your avatar. A great service would be one where you could feed in a normal digital photo of yourself, and it would do all the pattern and colour recognition to churn out a race, age and facially structure look-alike (assuming that's what you want!)

Facial expression could also come into it. A huge chunk of our brain is given over to watching faces, and it's not used much in today's presence and telephony. Don't show a clock icon when someone is away — make them look like they're dozing!

Ideally the head would have a contextually appropriate background, such as a stylised version of "home", "office", "car", "out and about" and "abroad". Tricky with a small icon, but possible if you allow a little more screen real estate.

Which brings me to my last point. Take a look at this miniaturised screenshot of Skype.

Yes, it's weeny. This protects the privacy of those careless enough to become my buddies. But more importantly, it lets you see the overall structure rather than the detail.

What do you see? A ton of white space! Is this vertical scrolled list the best possible information architecture for presence data? I think not. Now, I'm not sure what the right one is. You need predictability of location so you can find folks. You need to properly group and sort according to current presence status as well as tribal affiliation (different work, family and friend groups). There's a lot of variables, and an unconstrained space on which to display them. Other people get PhDs doing this stuff.

Why is better presentation of presence data so important? Because the toughest part of a phone call is the rendezvous. We often miss each other, play phone tag, have hurried "can I call you backs" (and don't). We often simply don't make some social calls for fear of calling at a bad time, and eventually relationships with old friends dissolve. Anyone who thinks telephony is just about creating a duplex audio stream isn't looking at the whole problem.

Anyhow, I eagerly await for someone to rise to the challenge. In the meantime, remember Tod the Tadpole next time you accidentally call someone at 4am — who isn't there anyway.

via Telepocolypse