Are you a mobile phone software developer? I've been going to MobileMonday events for a long time, mostly in the Bay Area, always great demos, active vendor participation, tasty schmooze. Stuart John, Skype's mobile product manager, is hosting the London MoMo 11 December at Skype's offices. 2 Stephen Street, W1T 1AN (map). The theme this month is mobile community, specifically mobile social networks. Should be hot, especially with the announcement of YouTube for mobile.

"When you go online,
you can see the world.
Richard Pombo hates that.
So he's selling control over which sites you visit
to strangers,
gatekeepers to the Internet.
People who get to choose for you.
Pombo is selling your freedom for cash.
The freedom to read what you want,
to say what you want,
on the Internet.
Fight for your Freedom of Speech.
Save your Free Internet.
Fire Pombo."

You haven't seen ads like that in this campaign. Not on TV, radio or the web.

Because Net Neutrality never cost anyone an election. And NN advocates aren't peppering the Internet or the airwaves with independent advertising for/against candidates.

Russell Shaw doesn't expect Tuesday's US election to remove Republican control of the Senate, so doesn't expect a shift in Congress's net neutrality stance.

I'll go further.

Even if the Dems win both houses of Congress, it will not matter.

Since nobody will win on a "net neutrality" platform, no political capital will be earned for NN. So NN won't be a priority in the 2008 election. It's not like anyone tied NN to big issues like jobs, the war in Iraq, political corruption, or public morals.

And nobody raised a million dollars to advocate for net neutrality.

eBay North America expands Skype buttons in seven more categories, for a total of 24 catgories.

"AuctionBytes has not seen signs of wide adoption of Skype click-to-call buttons in eBay listings."

Money talks. And eBay sellers listen.

Most I've met love being able to squeeze all their customer encounters into email and eBay forms; they really hate interruptions or wasted time. I wouldn't go so far as to call them antisocial... Most, especially those who sell part time, need to fit eBay into the rest of a busy life.

The eBay forums for Skype switched from overwhelming doubt last summer (should we or shouldn't we?) to demands for access and questions about using Skype buttons to drive sales.

As more powersellers stand up and testify that Skype buttons means cash, Skype will continue to spread at a natural, unhurried pace. It feels really slow to me, but unforced and comfortable. This may improve retention as those that adopt Skype buy-in and stick with it.

Last May Skype announced their first "free" SkypeOut promotion -namely all SkypeOut calls within North America would be free until Dec. 31, 2006. In early September Skype announced a similar program covering France. Basically, if you were not already a Skype user, you simply sign up for Skype, and all your SkypeOut calls within the designated territory are free; however, you pay normal SkypeOut rates for calls outside the designated region. And the promotions expire in just over two months, Dec. 31.

Last week Skype UK announced Talk for Britain, a new promotion that probably gives a hint of what will happen to these earlier promotions after December 31. Talk for Britain involves :

• Purchase £10 of Skype credit using PayPal or a UK-issued credit card
• Wait for up to 72 hours to confirm eligibility
• Free SkypeOut calling within UK for the subsequent six months.
• Program expires Dec. 31 for acquiring the six months free SkypeOut credit. (If you buy Dec. 31, you have free calling to June 30, 2007)
• Call Forwarded calls are not included in the promotion.

Over the past few weeks I have had several queries as the what will happen to these promotions after Dec. 31. Does Talk for Britain start to provide some clues?

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Not much to do with Skype but I have just watched (via my Slingbox) the press conference where it was announced officially that Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of Research in Motion, has signed an agreement to purchase the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins. Jim's comments were interrupted at one point as his Blackberry phone rang (even in Silent mode mics will pick up the rf signal coming in and "buzz" nearby speakers). At the end photographers were taking pics of him holding his Blackberry with a Penguins logo on the display. (He spent most of the press conference saying he was committed to the previous owners' commitments to a new arena in Pittsburgh.)

I have been lucky enough to have had some behind the scenes exposure to hockey as a business (my neighbor's son plays for the Boston Bruins); as a RIM shareholder for the past eight years I have been watching Jim (along with Mike Lazaradis, Co-CEO) demonstrate how to build and operate a very successful high tech business.  (Who else can take a patent settlement and get more marketing buzz than any traditional marketing campaign costing the same amount?) It will be interesting to observe how Jim adapts to the professional sports culture and what contribution he can bring to professional sports in terms of business expertise and acumen. Jim has always been approachable and has integrity beyond reproach. (Maybe HP should recruit him to restore their image?) At this year's annual meeting he took time to give me a personal demonstration of the new Blackberry Maps GPS-based navigation feature that will be available this fall (yes, it will retrofit to more recent older models). His enthusiasm is infectious.

While most of the local press will speculate on whether he will move the Penguins to Hamilton, Ontario (it won't happen -- remember I said Jim has good business acumen), I wonder how long it will be before Penguins games become available on your Blackberry. Now there would be a revenue generator for the service providers and RIM gets some fraction of all that service provider revenue. And if they got to the Stanley Cup finals, the traffic demand could bring down the (at least Canadian) wireless networks! (I did watch one period of last spring's finals via my Slingbox during an intermission at a theatrical performance.)

And, let's face it, Jim is living the Canadian dream. How often will we find high tech entrepreneurs who can build their business virtually from scratch  to a level where they can own their own NHL franchise?

Now if we could just get a Skype client onto the Blackberry!

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Messagr launched yesterday to help you find other people to talk to. Messagr is a new presence-based search engine. Register yourself, describe topics that interest you, and give your Skype name. When you want to discuss rugby with someone right now, messagr shows people both interested in those topics and available to talk. 

Messagr gets that value is rapidly shifting from the metered call to everything surrounding the call. In this case, bringing callers together. Unlike Jyve's focus on expert answers and consulting services, messagr aspires to all topics for everyone, a general hub for social, business, academic, and other conversation.

I like the collective interest tag cloud, updated as members change their Skype presence. Reminds me of the moodgeist experiment that aggregates Skype moodie messages. There are other sites where you tag yourself for more specific purposes. Like Ziki, where you tag yourself to manage your professional network, jobster to find work, or Consumating to "find people who don't suck." Skype Ltd. tags job postings too.  

Joel Selvadurai built messagr, now in beta, with java and jsp and the SkypeWeb presence service. A recent computer science grad from Durham University in Newcastle, Joel and his laptop can be found in the cafe of the British Library many days.

tags: skype, startup, london, uk, messagr, searchengine, search, ebay inc., skypejournal

Never wonder about the power of telephone companies. A few weeks ago Wessel van der Vyfer spoke for Telecom Namibia at the Telecoms World Africa conference on "The future prospects of the African telecoms market.. new players ... the latest strategies."

This week The Namibian's Christof Maletsky reports van der Vyfer's Telecom Namibia arranged the arrest and arraignment of five people for selling unlicensed telecom service, in this case Internet phone calls. They were operating out of three storefronts in the port city of Walvis Bay.

Jan in Malaysia comments "It makes you realise how lightly Skype got off in South Korea after it was discovered it had set up shop and was providing VoIP services without the proper licence."

Namibia's six telephones per 100 people leaves them at a competitive disadvantage. Mike at TechDirt says small countries protect their tiny telco monopolies at the expense of economic prosperity. It must be hard to trade proven cash flow for theoretical growth.

Consider this.

I'm a cheapskate, and I'm with Tesco Mobile's prepaid plan. I hardly use my mobile except as a camera and for brief voice notes. Under $10/month expenditure.

Tesco's MVNO only offer Web (ports 80/443 HTTP/HTTPS) access on their GPRS gateway. This is a means of the host operator (in this case, O2) to segment the market and avoid competition from the MVNO for its premium customers.

Now, if you have neutrality rules, you get two unwanted effects:

• Tesco may have to close down their GPRS service, because it discriminates against service providers who happen not to use HTTP as their only protocol. The customer loses if the only type of Internet access allowed is 100% unfiltered.
• Tesco can never expand the service to, for example, allow POP email access whilst disallowing VoIP by inducing jitter and using deep packet inspection. The customer loses again -- in this case the marginal one who may even be willing to pay a little more.

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Jon Arnold is a Toronto-based communications consultant and IP blogger who does a weekly podcast on the Pulvermedia Podcasting Network with IP industry players. Jon and I also share in interest in the Boston Bruins, largely because he originally came from Boston and because my neighbor's son was one of the high points of what was a "down" season for the Bruins last winter. However while Jon is a dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox fan, I still maintain my loyalty to the Toronto Blue Jays when it comes to baseball. So we have our interests both outside and inside the VoIP arena.

Last week Jon invited me to participate as the guest on this week's podcast. Recorded late yesterday it turned out to be timely as a large portion of the podcast covers the Google-eBay announcement which resulted in several posts, not only on Skype Journal (here, here and here) but also by many of the VoIP bloggers such as Andy Abramson and Alec Saunders.I agree with Mathew Ingram in that the Google-eBay deal may turn out to be more important for Google than the Google Office announcement.

You can follow up (with a link to the podcast) here. It's been twelve years since I did media interviews as President of the then newly formed Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft. So if it sounds a bit rusty, it's just my nervousness associated with my first experience with doing a podcast and yet my sensitivity to try to keep a freely flowing conversation.moving along.

Thanks again to Jon for the invitation to participate.Give a listen (iTunes Player recommended) and hope it can provide some additional insight into where Skype is going.

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Jaanus has pointed out that today, for the first time, over 7,000,000 users were on Skype earlier today.  I usually find Skype peaks at some time between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. EDT. And this benchmark is reached on Skype's third birthday.

Now if Skype would fix the bug whereby presence information is not always current in version 2.5, we could get back to saying Skype is a real time communications service. I have noticed the same problem that Rachel, Rick Segal's very articulate daughter, has blogged about. For Rachel and her MusicIP team associates, Skype and its IM presence/chat engine has become "our office":

I'm criticizing because up until a couple weeks ago, the MusicIP team wasis as dependent on Skype for connecting with one another as an all-in-one-office company would be dependent on the water cooler, or for that matter, chairs [modified because after I thought for a minute...we still are dependent on it - we just complain about it now where we didn't before]. Taking to each other from a number of cities (which is usually at about six, but at other times people could be spread out among up to 10 different places), brainstorming via group chats, or simply sharing an interesting link for a laugh - more than our actual office, Skype is our office.

I have it on good authority the Skype development team is looking into this issue as I write. At the same time, Rachel's experience demonstrates, as Skype becomes mission critical to virtual communities worldwide, the importance of thoroughly testing new Skype releases to ensure they are backwards-feature-compatible. It also demonstrates that Skype's presence engine is just as important as, if not more important than, the actual voice communications features.

Let's hope we don't have to wait for version 2.6 going gold to fix this problem.

Update: Rachel has received a response from Roman in Skype Customer Support. Let's just say it's one more indication that Skype employees have just as much passion for their work as Skype users have for using Skype. Quoting Rachel again:

I've done customer service on an absolutely miniscule scale compared to what he's dealing with on a daily basis; his job isn't easy. We're cranky, we're put out, and we want answers. Roman clearly takes his job seriously and is representing the company he is a part of extremely well. It's not easy sometimes to articulate the right reply to a customer inquiry. But it takes a ton more courage and time to respond to said whiny customer in this much more public format.

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Jaanus Kase. Skype's Chief Blogging Officer who visited Phil in Oakland, is also the Chief Skype Forum Officer and has recently completed leading the transition of Skype's Forums to a new platform that provides both visible and backend improvements resulting in a much more resilient and secure forum ecosystem. Key issues included login protocol, security and anti-spam measures. So what's changed? From Jaanus' Announcement: Welcome to the new Skype Forums post:

Here are the most important changes.

• separate forum logins discontinued - you now use Skype Name
• new forum platform - means more security, less spam, new features
• layout and skin changes - you can now use the Skype Emoticons and Skype My Pictures
• admin team reorganization - see below, "Who's who"
• structure changes

The most important "first use" change is the "Identity Re-claim" process for transitioning to using your Skype login information as the login to the new forums. But it's effectively the usual Skype login web page process; you do need to think about what you want to use as your Forum Display Name (which is independent of your Skype Name and becomes your identity on Skype Forum posts). The details are on the Announcement page linked above.

Jaanus, on his personal blog, has written a much more detailed description of the more than year-long process his Skype team went through in identifying problems with the previous php-BB-s platform, determining the objectives of the "forum remake", deciding on a new platform (Invision Power Board) and then executing on the transition in as seamless a manner as possible. In addition to making the change in login protocol, the most important considerations was to not lose access to three years of user feedback and passion. Makes for an especially good read if you're involved in managing a similar user forum.

Our congratulations to Jaanus and his team for such a successful transition. And may the user passion continue to be expressed!

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Jaanus, the blog marketing face of Skype, has posted details of a contest to celebrate Skype's third birthday along with some brief historia about the launch of Skype on August 29, 2003 and their efforts to get the first 100 registered users..

If you want to celebrate our 3rd birthday with us, you don't have to send us expensive gifts or flowers. But you can send a birthday card. Please e-mail your birthday card to happybirthday@skype.net. It can be a picture, photo, video, just written wishes, anything really. If it's a picture or video, you can put it on Flickr, YouTube or any other of those Internet things and just send us the link. Please include your Skype Name.

Go join the celebration of bringing together over 100 million registered users. There are prizes offered; Skype Journal editors are not eligible even if we are not Skype employees.

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In a post this morning, Alec Saunders has introduced Hullo, a new calling service that allows you to control not only to which phone your calls will both originate and be received but even seamlessly hand off calls to another phone as you go from, say, your home to your car. While Alec's post provides much more detail, two key points:

hullo bills itself as a personal call manager.  The promise is that it will help you stay in touch better than ever before.  It incorporates a buddy-list style softphone with some very slick advanced telephony features. 

The company is focusing their launch on the college and high school crowd.  The features have been designed recognizing that young people are increasingly the most sophisticated users of mobile phones.  hullo's feature set makes it easy to use those phones to socialize, arrange events, or stay in touch with friends and family who might live in different cities.  It's not hard to imagine how appealing this will be for students away from home for the first time.

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BlogHer starts today, perhaps the live blogger event with the least recycled blatfarb and the most human context. In honor of women bloggers everywhere, here's a guest post by Matt responding to our SkypeMe Eve post by Dina Mehta. 

You know, I haven't really given much thought to what it would be like for a woman in skypeme mode, but for myself I put it on when I just want to talk to someone and all my friends are busy. I don't often think of speaking with someone intimately that I don't know in real life, so the idea of meeting someone on skype, or anywhere else on the internet on intimate terms is kind of disconcerting to me, but what I have been thinking about is that the internet has slowly been taking the place of other social avenues.

At one point in time, people looking to find 'true love' as well as people looking to find 'a quick lay' would converge in physical establishments such as bars and clubs, and by being there it was like they were announcing themselves to be open to society (that is to talking with strangers). In such situations the people there would have to gauge what others were after by various signs that the person would make, as an example, if there was a woman sitting in a booth alone quietly, I would assume she wanted to remain that way, however if she were at the bar, I would assume she would be open to company at the bar.

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Declan McCullagh breaks down the FBI's new Net-tapping push. Requiring manufacturers of VoIP systems (including Skype) and IM (like Skype) be as tappable as your plain old telephone system. I suppose it comes down to trust, your world view, and how you balance risks with freedoms.

Law enforcement, for example, keeps pressure on legislatures to widen authority, at the expense of citizen privacy, in the name of being efficient and effective. They form an organized lobby putting safety over liberty. Do you know of lobbies that push back the other way?

Laws makers are aware that the threats are personal. For example, this bit from the official site of Ohio Senator Mike "Coingate" DeWine (R-Ohio):

NOTE: Due to heightened security restrictions in the Senate office buildings and elsewhere on the Capitol complex, mail addressed to members of Congress continues to be significantly delayed. Mail addressed to my office must now be sent off-site for irradiation treatment and other preventative measures to ensure safety.

Those wishing to quickly contact my office are encouraged to correspond by telephone or fax. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Senator DeWine will introduce the FBI's bill. If you're a U.S. citizen, Skype him to say the new CALEA extensions are over-the-top and intrusive. Or that you don't mind being spied on. Here are his public phone numbers. If you click them, you'll dial straight from Skype, free in the US:

• D.C. Office: (202) 224-2315
• Xenia, Ohio: (937) 376-3080
• Cincinnati, Ohio: (513) 763-8260
• Cleveland, Ohio: (216) 522-7272
• Columbus, Ohio: (614) 469-5186
• Marietta, Ohio: (740) 373-2317
• Toledo, Ohio: (419) 259-7536

This is an election year for DeWine. He is running for reelection against blogging Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). If you think privacy and freedom should be a campaign issue, Skype Brown's campaign office at 440-282-3314 or his congressional offices: Lorain County (440) 245-5350, (440) 365-5877; Summit County (330) 865-8450; and his Washington Office (202) 225-3401.

Does making phone numbers clickable (click once to call) make you more likely to call, just for the convenience?

Skype on your razr?
incompatible today.
SoonR might do it.

Net neutrality
astroturfed, lobbied and shelved
telcos win again

fcc taxes Vonage
maybe SkypeOut too
Save the Internet!

pick friends well, Yahoo!
AT&T messenger
now with NSA

Supernova word:
people Curate their passions
a new meme rises

Calls in US free
June promo: call the world free.
Skype teases America

Censor carefully:
Global Online Freedom Act.
Do you read Chinese?

Packard-Bell laptop
push keyboard to call
or answer the phone

Phishing in Skypeland
Suckers waiting to be fleeced
Study the handbook

Technorati Tags: politics, activism, netneutrality, askaninja, ninja, rights, ebay, skype, skypejournal, freedom, access

On reviewing my notes from last week's eBay DevCon and eBay Live, some interesting numbers came out in the various sessions:

• eBay: last year sold a "Gross Merchandise Value" of $44B, representing 14% of all ecommerce on the Net.
• PayPal's highest growth is in "off-Ebay" commerce. Last quarter (Q1-06) "Off-eBay" transactions grew by 59% while overall PayPal growth grew by 43% to $8.8 billion of transactions. On PayPal $1.5 billion of stored value is turned over every three weeks.
• Skype, in Q1 of 2006, provided infrastructure for 6.9 billion minutes of long distance calling; representing 7% of all long distance call minutes worldwide.

Developers:

• eBay - 30,000 whose work contributes to 25% of all eBay transactions
• PayPal - 2,500 supporting 350,000 web integrators
• Skype - 3,500 delivering 350 applications and over 400 hardware devices

As mentioned previously, eBay developers and Skype developers have two totally differentiated motivations: eBay developers serve as micro-IT departments to eBay resellers producing customized Seller websites while Skype developers produce Skype-embedded applications for resale to the general public.

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Last week, Skype changed the NorthAm VoIP landscape with free SkypeOut until year end. Skype downloads picked up right away.

This week Vonage speculators caught on about 24 hours too late. Vonage, its bankers and investors took in half a billion dollars. That'll buy them a mix of time, talent, features, and paying customers. We'll see how well they use it. 

StreamCast Networks' little litigation engine ups their lawsuit's ante by going for deep pockets, including eBay's, and naming Skype's founders in the expanded suit. Reading their complaint, they think they're facing the Sopranos. ♥ The ammended complaint (4.6MB, PDF) is full of juicy language like "fraud", "exclusive rights", "secretly siphoned-off", "conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act", "steal", "hatched a scheme", "theft", "secret disabling feature", "sweetheart deals", "hijack the 28 million Morpheus user base", "scheme", "scheme", "conspiracy to restrain trade", "pattern of racketeering", "mail and wire fraud", "are currently being aided and abetted in their efforts to fraudulently tranfer funds and properties by their families, accountants and attorneys". ♥ They say Skype's p2p technology is owned by StreamCast, and that Skype's founders cheated them out of the technology. They also say Skype lied to eBay about owning its technology free and clear, or that eBay (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). To make their case, they must pierce several corporate veils, show they had rights to the technology in the first place, prove the people and companies named messed with their rights. The parties span the globe, from Estonia to Vanuatu, but they may have enough to assert California jurisdiction. ♥ The kicker: StreamCast asked the court to shut down Skype. Right now. Protect your Skype SuperPowers! Should you tell StreamCast's management how you feel about it? Using your free or cheap SkypeOut minutes? Just by clicking on the phone numbers below? Maybe you'd say something like "Hands off my Skype, Mr. StreamCast!"? ♥ Do Skype's users have any legal standing in this?

• Michael Weiss, ceo, (818) 887-8610 x110
• Matt Neco, counsel, (818) 887-8610 x105
• Elizabeth Cowley, vp bizdev, (818) 887-8610 x108

The eBay/Yahoo deal seems healthy. Partner with a symbiote, not a parasite. Don't fuel Google's rising threat with ad dollars. ♥ It's an opportunity. Generalizing for a moment, eBay is great at making markets for goods. Yahoo! is better at making markets for intangibles, like jobs, movies, travel. Both create rich communities, but very different mechanics and cultures. As eBay uses Skype to embrace an intangibles strategy, Yahoo! could be a great partner. ♥ What happens should the Skype and Yahoo! Messenger teams swap spit? The best bits of both products could show up in the other. Might they resolve digital ID spaces and data models for users and conversations? Agree to strong interoperability for chat, voice and video? Standards for distributing in-client adverts? API co-development, blending the Yahoo!, eBay, PayPal and Skype developer communities? Together, they'd be an unbeatable team.

Skype updated Windows and Mac clients, bug fixes and repaired security problems, including a bug that exposed millions of SkypeOut call records to the NSA and other Internet snoops.

Dan Houghton, Skype's answer to Shelley Vision, started blogging about new Skypecasts.

The Skype ecology has been active too. VoIP Voice launched a new Mac phone in the UK. ♥ Actiontec is hiring a director of bizdev for VoIP products. "Actiontec is expanding its presence in the Skype Certified VoIP business! As a leader in this marketplace, Actiontec plans to capitalize on it's first to market advantage in the commercial space, and leverage it's intellectual property and strategic relationships in the VoIP adapter business. This is an exciting opportunity for a highly motivated professional to drive a huge up and coming business segment for Actiontec." If you apply, let us know what you learn. ♥ PhoneGnome to Skype came out, using the Uplink SIP to Skype Adapter.

Sometimes people ask me how I find something to write about just focusing on Skype. It's weeks like this, my friend.

I'm looking forward to blogging the Conversations that develop from the sessions at mesh 2006 tomorrow and Tuesday. With featured Conversation Mentors such as Om Malik, Michael Geist, Steve Rubel and Paul Kedrosky there should evovle some interesing perspectives on how the a Web 2.0 world will evolve.

Mark is getting excited in preparing over the weekend, he says:

I couldn't help but think that we are a long way from a cold winter night a few months ago at the Paddock Tavern when someone raised the idea of putting on a conference. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into! I'm looking forward to meshing as much as possible so if you see me wondering around, please introduce yourself.

As a media sponsor, Skype Journal will be reporting back daily with a particular focus on how Web 2.0/Voice 2.0 can be integrated into, impact and influence a public beyond the geeksphere.

Lots of developments in preparation for the Toronto mesh Conference:

Mark Evans reports on the selections for 15 Minutes of Fame. They're "giving three people a day 5 minutes each on stage to talk about their ideas, their companies or themselves."

Mark also reports on how they have organized this conference with no budget largely using web-based communications via the blogosphere. (I think he meant to say they have been able to "sell a whole bunch of tickets".)

Matthew Ingram expands on how Web 2.0 is rewriting the rules for the marketing business and how, with appropriate credits to Seth Godin, their success has turned out to be the result of using the web to "create a relationship, a dialogue -- a conversation".

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Some say phone calls score more impact with elected officials than postcards or emails.

Conference calls impact even more.

Try this procedure:

1. Add your elected officials to your contact list.
   
2. Start a group chat with up to three other people.
   
3. Discuss what you want to say, agree on a short intro and one key bullet point.
   
4. Pick a host for the call.
   
5. Pick which congressional office you want to call.
   
6. Add an elected office to the chat.
   

1. Turn the group chat into a conference call.
   
2. Record the call, if it's legal where you are.
   
3. Say your piece or leave a message.
   
4. Hang up.
   

1. Ask each other: how did it go?
2. Share the feedback (we made the call/didn't get through/left a message, and this is what we/they said) with those who inspired you.
3. Blog it or podcast it, if you are so moved.
   
4. Drop this elected official from your group chat and add another one.
   
5. Repeat with a new elected official.
6. Repeat with a new topic and other friends.
   

Technorati Tags: skype, freedom, contact, congress, campaign, call, phonebank2.0, skypejournal, voip, democracy, activism, action

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The lessons of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) were reaffirmed at David Isenberg's Freedom to Connect conference.

Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: 'I'm free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't. I can. And my children will.' Boys want to grow up remembering that.

The people at f2c didn't agree on what was worth fighting for, even on first principles.

Worse, despair was the keynote, the pounding bass drum and annoying buzzing sound. Paraphrasing:

You can't beat the incumbents.

They've owned congress and big media since telegraph lines were high tech.

They'll outspend you.

They'll outwit you.

"Just get up off the ground. That's all I ask. Get up there with that lady, that's up on top of this Capitol Dome. That lady that stands for Liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see somethin'. And you won't just see scenery. You'll see the whole parade of what man's carved out for himself after centuries of fighting. And fighting for something better than just jungle law. Fighting so as he can stand on his own two feet free and decent, like he was created no matter what his race, color, or creed. That's what you'd see. There's no place out there for graft or greed or lies! Or compromise with human liberties! And if that's what the grown-ups have done with this world that was given to them, then we'd better get those boys camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it's not too late. Because this country is bigger than the Taylors or you or me or anything else. Great principles don't get lost once they come to light. They're right here. You just have to see them again.

And if, by some freaky accident of the universe, you do get a bill passed?

It will no longer look like the law you proposed, will be out of date by the time it comes to a vote, be unenforced by regulators under the thumb of the status quo, funding vanished in committee.

Maybe you hope for a public outcry.

Louder than the outcry for coypright reform? or patent reform?

Maybe. AARP staff got into it but it hasn't translated into a million vocal supporters.

It hasn't even turned into an email campaign. (Capital Hill staffers call constituent email "spam.")

Sloganeering at the conference was token.

"Fat Pipe. Always On. Get Out Of The Way!" - Tim Bray

"Do you want the Internet to be like cable TV, with someone else choosing what you can watch?"

The search of metaphors continues.

And the search for an audience.

And people who care.

There is no grassroots consituency. No army of irate Skypers and Vonagers calling congress. No Comcasters and AT&Teens walking out of school. No march on Washington this year.

Frank Capra's movie, from Sidney Buchman's screenplay based on Lewis R. Foster's story still rings true.

Then: Corporate interests buying congress.

And Now.

Then: Concentration of media control by those in other industries.

Now: Oligopoly justified with economic darwinism, painted with God Talk. Being big and affluent is a sign of God's goodwill. So a bigco's connivance, no matter how offensive to civil liberties, is sacred.

Then: Lobbying and media distortion used to steal public lands with public moneys.

Now: The onramps to the Internet in the US, the first mile, are effectively owned by two companies (two is a choice, says the FCC). The Third Pipe of alternative access is a distant dream. Municipal wifi and muni fiber advocates would pop champagne corks if they had market share like solar power's .

I believe we need the freedom to connect. 

I believe our civil rights in physical space should extend to our onlives.

The Freedom To Connect conference could have been a constitutional convention.

It wasn't.

We didn't debate those rights.

Nor define them.

The people of my state need permanent relief from crooked men riding their backs.

We didn't draw a map for organizing.

We didn't move one step closer to protecting our freedoms from corporations or governments.

I am disappointed.

But not done.

Because I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a - a little lookin' out for the other fella, too...That's pretty important, all that. It's just the blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great men handed down to the human race, that's all.

I know I’ve written ad nauseam about Network Neutrality, and the fight against bogeymen that aren’t even there. But a couple of people at the Freedom to Connect conference here wanted me to post my speech up online. And as I’m losing my voice, it’s much easier to type than talk, so I can point anyone who approaches me right here. This covers ground I’ve covered before, although never in one coherent argument.

This isn’t a verbatim version of my speech; I just spoke from condensed notes, and I didn’t manage to cover every point in my allotted time, so this is the full text.

Within the current funding and construction approach to networks, I believe a network neutrality law is a tactical, practical, strategic and philosophical error. It takes us further away from Freedom to Connect.

A tactical error

As a tactical proposition, it supposedly is to solve a problem. So what’s the problem it might be solving?

Well, we certainly have a consumer protection and disclosure issue. Consumers are buying a product that has ‘broadband internet’ on the tin can, but they don’t really know what’s inside. The terms are often too obscure, hidden in obtuse language in the terms and conditions. That means we need disclosure along the lines that exist (in the US) for credit cards, where the key terms must be presented in a standard format. Furthermore, I’d suggest that there be regulated terms like “full internet access” and “partial internet access” to make it crystal clear.

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1. Bumper stickers. Short and powerful. Most explanations of what we want and why are incomprehensible as Marxist dialectic. Give me talking points I can use with non-technical human beings.
2. Actionable items. For example, furnishing every VoIP user with a "Call to Civic Action" button that pops up their elected representatives' phone numbers. Getting staffers on the Hill to use Skype. Writing platform statements that Republicans and Democrats can include in state platforms, to which we can hold congressional candidates accountable, which we can feed to the press as newsworthy questions. Acta non verba!
3. Continuity of Conversation. I can't believe there isn't a wiki and a listserve up before the conference. This needs to be an ongoing conversation leading to organization and action.
4. Allies. I don't understand the political map. Many players with multiple agendas. I want to understand who cares about what so I can ask for and offer help.
5. Underwriters. Sponsor our political coverage and we'll acknowledge you Public Television style.
6. Clients. Skype Journal Consulting is helping online campaign managers understand, adopt, integrate, and deploy Skype (and related systems) into their netroots operations. If you thought blogs and listserves were effective in 2004...

By guest blogger Hudson Barton, New York, United States

Net Neutrality proponents sometime make an analogy to a highway with a UPS truck and a Wal-Mart truck where the UPS truck is serving a public purpose while the Walmart truck is serving a private purpose. Unfortunately, the analogy is not helpful at all. It presupposes a world where there are just a few trucks and one highway, and I maintain it is exactly the world that the proponents of "net neutrality" hope will develop. It is a world of scarcity, controlled by a few big telecoms, cablecos and ISPs. "Net neutrality" is just a cover for the market protection that these big companies will receive in exchange for their commitment to a certain fairness doctrine. As a result, Internet service will look increasingly like a public utility. It does not take a big company to be an Internet carrier any more than it does to provide Internet content. The current debate reveals the real intent of "net neutrality" lobbyists... to destroy the very competition that it purports to protect, to reward the mediocre at the expense of the excellent.

So what are the practical implications of being against "net neutrality" when a carrier discriminates between content providers? Since this is a VOIP related forum, let's imagine an example of an entrepreneur that wants to create a carrier optimized for VOIP. He decides to craft an environment with low latency, equal bandwidth for upload and download. It's a wireless configuration and largely unsuitable for "normal" Internet traffic. In the course of developing his business, he approaches one or more VOIP companies, like Skype, and convinces them to enter into revenue sharing agreements. He might share some of his subscription revenue with the VOIP carriers, or they might share some of their VOIP revenue with him (eg. SkypeIN/OUT). His business may fail, but if it doesn't then the public interest will be served by a better or cheaper VOIP than can be obtained through consumer-grade carriers that are optimized for web traffic.

An imperfect technology exists to block content and slow it down (or speed it up). If it is ever used successfully, and that's a big if, it will be because the public interest is being served, not thwarted. Fear of the technology destroying entrepreneurship among content providers is overblown. We all want more content with greater diversity, faster delivery, a more favorable spam/spit ratio, lower prices for connectivity, and more responsive Internet based services. Sure, there may be a carrier out there who thinks he has a private purpose that trumps the public good, but his thinking may be flawed, or the impact of his private network may be suitably small. In general the carriers have an incentive to deliver content without preference, and that's what will happen.

See also:

• Doc Searls: Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering
• Eli Pariser: Net Neutrality: Time to Act
• Wikipedia dueling entries: Network neutrality and Net neutrality
• Coming Events:
  • Freedom to Connect (April 3-4, Washington D.C.) - discount code SKYF2C
  • Personal Democracy Forum (May 15, New York City)

Tags: ftc, freedom, regulation, monopoly, netneutrality, networkneutrality, skype, skypein, skypeout, ups, wal-mart, telecom, policy, skypejournal

Justine Lau wrote the China 'to block VoIP calls for two years' Financial Times story. I'd like confirmation from a government source and from the four big Chinese telcos. Skype has already twisted the product comply with strange requests (IM censorship, five minute limits on voice calls). Is this an administrative choice or is it just a gambit in international trade talks?

The fallout according to Skype Journal:

1. The two year ban won't survive consumer pressure.
2. If it does, QQ wins. The ban buys a two year window to consolidate their lead and become irreversibly dominant. Already 3-4 times more people use QQ IM than Skype. Unlike Skype's userbase, they all read and write Chinese.
3. More pressure on US and Indian Skype staff and partners.
4. eBay was hoping for a boost from Skype's growth in China. Maybe less so.
5. Fearmongers thrive. Companies that monitor, filter or otherwise block Skype will get a small kick out of this; bigger if they have contracts with Chinese authorities. Check out how Verso (NASDAQ:VRSO) and SurfControl (LSS:SRF.L) stock prices perform.

The first part of Lau's article:

China will not allow paid-for calls between computers and conventional telephones for at least two years, according to the head of Tom Online, the Chinese internet portal which has a joint venture with Skype, the internet telephony company.

In the clearest indication so far of when charged telephone services based on the "voice over internet protocol" system will be launched in China, Wang Leilei, Tom Online's chief executive said the government "is not going to issue VoIP licences until 2008".

The news will be a disappointment to Skype, which told the Financial Times in November that it was in talks with Chinese telecoms operators which it hoped would clear the way for the launch of its computer-to-telephone service, dubbed SkypeOut.

Chinese fixed-line operators are concerned that SkypeOut, which allows users to make calls from computers via the internet to fixed-line or mobile telephones at lower rates, could undermine their core business.

Skype currently offers a free computer-to-computer telephony service to its 9m users in China, although calls are limited to five minutes. It also launched a free computer-to-telephone service about a month ago, which has signed up 10,000 users a day.

Mr Wang said that Tom Online, which claims to have more than 70m users, was not disappointed that it could not launch SkypeOut commercially.

"For Tom Online, our strategy is to grow our user base. With a big user base, there is a lot you can do. Revenue [from SkypeOut] is not important to us because we have not put in a lot of cost," said Mr Wang.

Tags: life, business, skype, skypejournal, ebay inc, vrso, srf.l, surfcontrol, verso, blocking, freedom, china, tomonline, tom, tom-skype, qq, ft, voip

I'm going to the Freedom to Connect conference, April 3 -4 in Silver Springs, MD. The priority code SKYF2C will save you $400 off the $895 price before March 31st. The topics on the table are intense. New monopolies want to charge users twice. Some forces are fighting to make privacy optional. Our own Martin Geddes is keynoting against net neutrality, the nutter. This has a feeling like America's constitutional convention, or the rabblerousing leading up to the Boston Tea Party. To paraphrase V,

The people should not be afraid of the telcos.

The telcos should be afraid of the people.

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Here's three Skype products that aim to enhance your Skypeing experience that leaves me questioning exactly what I'm buying with Skype Certified. The three products are the VoSky Chatterbox, Jawbone Headset and the Motorola Wireless Interenet Calling Kit. Each provide a different angle on bettering the standard Skyper's headset and as you might expect each has their pro's and con's.

VoSky Chatterbox.

This simple USB device provides an easily portable plug and play speakerphone for Skype. It's simple to use and requires no additional software to be loaded. It has a volume and mute button on top and works probably as expected, as a low cost speakerphone. I'd liken it to the solution we had as kids when we could finally plug in a speakerphone box between the old phone and the whole family sat around. In principle great, in practice it left something to be desired. The Chatterbox is a little like this. It works. It's also no substitute for a decent headset. The caller on the other end of the line will know and possibly complain. Handsfree solutions curently work better with a good set of speakers and a proper stand mic. Locate them correctly and the caller won't get a any feedback. Many laptops work as good as the Chatterbox. If you feel the need try it. Just don't expect it to be a Polycom and ready for the office. For kids it may be more robust than a headset - read youngsters talking to Grandma.

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Why not nominate Nominate Skype Journal for the second annual Blog-X awards for technical blogs?

Ebay

Steve Dzemidzenka tips us to an ISP-Planet interview with a company that offers pay-per-call advertising on Ebay (vs. pay-per-click); a great read and with one or two insights into models Skype may enable. A related AP story: Online ads urge surfers to pick up the telephone.

Some folks don't like Skype

From the Skype Ecology

Look2Skype, the Outlook plug-in, is upgraded.

Maintaining the key benefit of Look2Skype which is the minimal inteference with Outlook, whereby it doesn't cause it to crash, or slow it down. Some of the new features are:

1. Instant access to all skype contacts from Outlook.
2. Extract callto:// signatures from e-mail.
3. Auto-recognise of skype contacts from e-mails.
4. Free text entry of phone numbers or skype names for contacting. Stewart Bissett

Recovery 2.0

• Families in Kashmir prevailed upon Indian authorities' better natures to open up cross-border phone service, normally carefully scheduled and monitored for security reasons.
• Volunteers are setting up a QuakeHelp Relief Hotline using SMS. Skype was unable to help with a voice line this time (they helped in Katrina relief) because they don't have SkypeIn services in India. Good sources: QuakeHelp and the QuakeHelp blog.
• Pakistan banned public access to satellite imagery of the disaster zone. Security. In a fight-or-flight, clench or relax, response, one or the other response is better. Restricting geo information breaks the decentralized operation of the Internet. You want to open up resources and remove obstacles for the many thousands of online volunteers who can put that data to work. Fortunately, relief workers voices persuaded the UN to re-publish much of the imagery and data. A win for emergent organization.
• The term "Recovery 2.0" is a flexible set of online tools and behaviors that can help invidividuals and groups organize themselves around any crisis. I've proposed a few possible projects on the wiki (feel free to register and add your own):
  • Phone Bank Network; the telephone remains the dominant way people communicate. We need tools to deploy volunteer phone banks that scale rapidly and cheaply.
  • Emergent Relay Service; provide a framework for live interpretation for cross-language and cross-mode communications.
  • Wish I could take credit: Mesh-Networking Cellphones; Why aren't there ad-hoc battery-powered "cell towers in a barrel" that could be "bombed" or floated into disaster zones to turn the thousands of useless cell phones in people's pockets into a crisis mesh network?

Skype at Work

I was wondering if there exists a Skype Proxy server for enterprise use? Essentially, all Skype traffic would flow through this edge device, but would also allow for Skype-to-Skype traffic to stay internal to an organization without having to contact SuperNodes. HTTPS Proxies don't really provide any control of Skype traffic since they blindly pass all traffic since it's so volitile.

Also, is there a product that will allow multiple Skype clients to connect to a PBX simultaneously? Thus, be able to make calls from a Skype client to any phone on the PBX. I've seen some hardware solutions, but they seem primitive and only allow 1:1 communication. I'm looking for large scale many:many.

Thanks, Joe Schwendt

Another case:

Hi guys, I run a 450 person company's IT department. Yesterday Verizon had a man-hole fire and cut our lines completely, so we were phone-less for the whole day. We're a financial services company so you can imagine how freaked out everyone was.

What I was thinking last night is, what if Skype had a great enterprise version, that we could purchase 50 accounts for, and get them set up, distribute mics to our top 50 offices and have a back-up plan immediately in effect

Help Wanted:

Hi. We are currently looking for an Asterisk developer who has experience in integrating Skype to an Asterisk-powered IVR.

Skype me and I'll pass along your interest.

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.

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.

It is my country; but I am not always proud of it.

Stupid

Both the Jewish New Year and the Islamic holy month of Ramadan started today. No coincidence. Both religions use a lunar calendar. Hundreds of millions of people use them when you include the Chinese calendar, Hebrew calendar, Hindu calendar, and Islamic calendar.

Lunar calendar support will become more relevant as Skype continues to:

• integrate with Outlook and other calendars;
• offer alerts, reminders, and scheduled calls;
• help buddies negotiate available times for conference calls; and
• support settings that change Skype's behavior based on the day, date, and time.

Skype's massive localization is a strategic advantage. Lunar alendaring and scheduling will build on that.

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.

Full text of news release...

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Friday, September 2, 2005

FCC COORDINATING TECH AID FOR KATRINA DISASTER
Quick notes from conference call hosted by the FCC today about urgently coordinating resources and personnel from internet/wireless service providers to get communications networks up and running in in gulf states.

Lack of communications systems has been identified as a critical issue holding back aid, missing persons, law enforcement, etc. in crisis areas.

FCC personnel are working throughout the weekend to coordinate these efforts with private industry, with wireless technology groups, FEMA, and state governments in Mississippi, Louisiana, etc.

COMPANIES WITH TECH ASSETS AND/OR HUMAN RESOURCES TO DONATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS AID IN KATRINA-IMPACTED AREAS SHOULD DO THE FOLLOWING

FCC Chief of Staff Dan Gonzalez (daniel dot gonzales at fcc dot gov) says

FCC needs the following information from would be tech donors BY NOON EASTERN [GMT-5] ON SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 3.

1) identify the provider (name of your company or group)
2) identify assets you are willing to commit
3) state clearly what assets you are technologically capable of providing (IP? data? voice?)
4) what your logistical requirements are to bring that to the affected area.
5) can you bring generators? if so what size? capacity? power levels?

SUBMIT THIS INFORMATION TO

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I just got off of a call with Angelo (awake for 90 hours in Bahrain), Dina Mehta (from Mumbai and of Skype Journal), and Anna Lisa (Amsterdam) about setting up the KatrinaHelp Team's phone service. They are working with the Saturn ham radio operators to queue and relay calls for help from around Tulane. So they're setting up a local SkypeIn number and buying some SkypeOut time, about 20 euro for now. The volunteers, many of whom are alumni of Tsunami relief efforts, will follow the sun, handing off the account as they change shifts.

Two unresolved problems so far.

SMS. They need to receive and send SMS. Text will often get through to a mobile phone where voice calls fail. And these are life and death calls for help. The volume is low, fifty to a few hundred messages a day for the next few weeks. If you can help, Skype me (evanwolf) or Skype KatrinaHelp.

Payment. The other problem is that Skype still binds each account to just one payment option, typically a credit card. So the same person who pays for this account now is responsible for topping up the account for the life of the project. This could end up being a lot of money for one person. Right now we're assuming sponsors could reimburse our volunteer, but it would be better if others could buy SkypeOut minutes and transfer them to KatrinaHelp.

This is just one project. Grassroots. Independent. More to come.

UPDATE: See the KatrinaHelp home page if you want to join in.

UPDATE: Thanks to Jaanus Kaase, the official Share Skype blogger, for SkypeOut vouchers. Nice job, Jaanus. Blog on.

UPDATE: The volunteers:

• updated their Skype installs to the latest non-beta version,
• completed their purchase of SkypeIn and SkypeOut,
• set HotKeys so they can answer calls quickly,
• recorded voice mail messages,
• worked out that they couldn't have two people logged in with the same Skype name at the same time, and used SkypeOut to call the Tulane number. It worked!

UPDATE: Jaanus Kaase: "We have eased the payment limits on KatrinaHelp account so you should have no issues making further payments."

UPDATE: Connectotel's Marcus Williamson is setting up a Skype-to-SMS bridge for KatrinaHelp.

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.

Houston Astrodome's refugee city will be online in the next few hours. There are several telephony needs to meet.

Needed Now:

1. Letting refugees call support services and family. This could be as simple as a bank of VoIP phone booths.
   
2. Letting refugees receive calls in the stadium. More complicated, but doable.
   

1. Pager or mobile phone service at the stadium. As services are committed, families found, you must be able to locate individuals among the thousands.
   
2. Following refugees as they are relocated from the stadium. People in diaspora move across area codes and need numbers that follow the person, not the place. No roaming charges, please.
   
3. Supporting volunteers and staff working in the disaster zones and in refugee service. You want to make them productive. And you want them to stay motivated; many will be away from home for long periods. Free connectivity, telephony, videophony, conferencing, etc.
   

1. Forwarding calls made to sector phone numbers. Redirect calls to washed out home phones to new mobile or voip accounts. This provides business and home continuity amid a diaspora that has torn about homes, workplaces, schools. Crucial for personal and regional economic recovery.
   

Niklas Zennstrom, the company's co-founder, estimates that 30 per cent of its 40m users are corporate. A lot of the companies using it are small and medium-sized businesses that are saving money by doing do.

Financial Times

Firecrackers echoed down the street, through my window this evening. An early welcome to America's Independence Day weekend. The sounds of war used to celebrate, and to remember.

We weren't the first, nor the last, to fight a war for national independence. We fought to rule ourselves, a freedom from monarchy. We get to vote, organize, and lobby - to have our voices heard, to hold those we elect responsible, to cast a strong light on their work and the personnel who operate our governments. It's an imperfect arrangement, but democracy is all the rage.

When telephone networks were first rolled out, they were private affairs run by companies.

We've added government to the equation since then. To assure universal access. To compel emergency services. To break up monopolies, increase competition, keep prices affordable for the many. To protect caller privacy, fend off telemarketers, and access for the deaf.

There are many governments with a say. Cities. Counties. States. Nations. International lands. Tribal lands. Each representing the interests of their constituencies.

These often conflict with the interests of a profit-minded company.

Like Skype.

A company with users on seven continents. Beholden only to the commercial interests of its investors and executives.

Leaving government out of it for the moment, how can Skype users assert their interests?

• How might we organize?
• Do we need our own virtual town hall?
• Do we even need representative democracy or can direct democracy work?
• Do corporations have a voice, or just people who may work for/with corporations?
• How about electing directors to Skype's board after they go public?
• Need we group our voices by geography? Language? Operating system? Dominant communication mode (text, voice, video, etc.)?
• What recurring issues warrant standing bodies?
  • Security? Privacy? System health?
  • Foreign relations? With other networks? With governments?
  • Taxation and funding?
  • Development direction?
  • Certification and testing of Skype-compatible systems?
  • Accessibility?
  • Universal Access?
  • Names and Identity disputes?
  • What else?

Chat with a friend. Talking points:

1. Will Skype become as important to you as your other phones?
2. What would you miss if Skype Technologies was taken over by bad people?
3. Who can you call if you want Skype to do something?

If you record your text or audio conversations, please let us know.
Suggestions for Skype Citizen Assignments are welcome; please leave your comments.

The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, and author of "The World Is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century," (a very good read, by the way) tells a great story in his column today "Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio? as he continues his rant on America's failure to meet foreign competition.

"I helped teach a course at Harvard last semester on globalization, and one day a student told me this story: He was part of a student-run collaboration between students in the U.S. and China. The American and Chinese students had recently started working together by using Skype, ... But what was most interesting, the student told me, was that it was the Chinese students who introduced their U.S. counterparts to Skype. And, he noted, these Chinese students were not from major cities, like Beijing, but from smaller towns."

I am sure it is not only telcos who will feel the disruptive affects of change... of Skype.

That's my thought for the day from Long Island, New York where Stuart, Phil and I are meeting to discuss our Skype strategy. "What's your Skype Strategy?" Have you given it any thought lately?

With injury, age, disease, or an accident of birth, our abilities shift from the norm. Reasonable people understand it is useful to have everyone participate in society, especially in public spaces. So we make curb cuts in sidewalks for wheelchair access. Traffic signals and elevators chirp or announce their status. We accomodate to include.

I propose Skype and the Skype developer community set a goal:

Skype accessibility for the visual and hearing impaired by Summer 2006.

Some of the challenges:

• Technical Compatibility. How well does Skype work with today's screen readers? What can we do to make it work naturally?
• Relay service. Human relay services that help the visually impaired to hear a chat (reading the chat aloud) and the hearing impaired to have voice calls transcribed in real time and video calls closed captioned in real time. Programmers: consider relay initiation.
• Captioning. When Skype introduces video calls and conferences, how will we caption video from those using sign languages?
• Controls. What features will help a blind person navigate her Skype address book, search for a Skype user, be notified of voice mail? How will this differ from computer platforms to mobile ones?
• Alerting and notification. Other tools, including many not connected to a computer, are used to notify the deaf and blind of incoming calls. How should Skype work with them?
• Other concerns. While the Skype UI is simple, it is overwhelming for some with other cognitive modes like types of attention deficit or mild autism, for others with motor disabilities, and yet for others with sensory concerns like color blindness.

There are technical and business justifications. These new features will lend themselves to other applications. The challenges will strengthen the Skype API. The accessibility will extend the market. And the programme responds to PSTN/mobile telco lobbying.

But that's not why we must do it.

We can leave no Skyper behind.

It is the right thing to do.

Today is 2005 National Teacher Day, here in the United States.

Bring Skype to School:

1. Talk with teachers in other schools about their craft.
   
2. Turn in homework. Even at the last minute.
   
3. Get help with homework. From around the world.
   
4. Conference call with experts. Even in space.
   
5. Skypecast between classes. Co-teaching.
   
6. Skypecast presentations to parents who are at work. Involvement.
   
7. Plan a PTSA meeting. Conference call/chat the agenda.
   
8. Review your school budget.
   
9. Cut your school's long distance telephone bill. Put the money to better use.
   
10. Thank your teachers.
    

What else?

• Skypers Unite! on LiveJournal.
• List of Skype-related Google Groups includes Skype in Africa, SexSkype, Skype Ebay, VoIP and Video Chat, and Skype.
• 58 Skype groups on Yahoo!

Where else do Skypers gather?

Danah Boyd asks a few questions that Stuart Henshall answers with verve. My own answers to Danah...

Danah: I’d really like to understand the excitement of social software enthusiasts. What is it about Skype that motivates you?

1. Skype engages people who believe their ears more than their eyes. Give Skype to someone in the music business. Or to a dyslexic or someone with ADD. Or to someone who listens to sports or talk radio. This is their linear, visually simple medium. Things should fit people.
2. My Skype addressbook is local. It's unmediated by a third party (unlike my AOL buddy list) and lives on the edge of the cloud, not on a server. This means my addressbook is private. It also means that software/network extensions to my addressbook can scale well and be diverse. My contacts are mine.
3. I can call anonymously. Just log out as me, log in as Mary Had A Little Lamb, and call someone. Then log out and never use that ID again. Unless they recognize my voice, I'm safe. Anonymity (or at least pseudonymity) is vital in larger communities. This assures that 911 calls are made. That whistleblowers reveal secrets. That journalists get tips. Anonymity enables individuality and civility.
4. Skype recognizes the social importance of privacy. Not only is my data kept locally, I control my profile, I control who can see when I'm available, and my conversations are encrypted from my headset to yours. IM, especially at work, is often monitored; phone calls less so. Skype creates a more trusted room in which to talk. Privacy leads to stronger community.
5. Skype moments are exposed by the software. Those user moments are your impulses to use yellow pages, white pages, caller-ID, call waiting, and file sharing. Those moments can be perceived and aided by programmers. So you will shortly be able to leverage your existing online social networks to find a relevant stranger to call, to populate your address book, to see a thorough profile of the stranger calling you (including whom you know in common), to have a side chat explaining the purpose of the call, perhaps to charge the caller for your time, or to securely share that song you're teaching them to sing over the phone. Skype informs phone calls with everything we've learned about software and the web.
6. Skype makes calls more like SMS and IM and less like One Ringy-Dingy, Two Ringy-Dingy. Multimodal, contextual, and soon with time shifting.

In short, Skype promises to bring everything I love about my TiVo to my phone.

Danah: Do you think that its popularity will be limited to specific communities?

No, but some communities will come first.

• Early adopters will be computer users. Millions of us.
• As people buy smarter phones and POTS-to-Skypenet gateways arise, everyone who has a mobile will use Skype-powered services.

If Skype was just the conversation triggered by your connection in your online community, that would be nice.

But it's more.

Skype's address book and phone logs can inform community. How about if people I Skype show up higher in my friends list, or get promoted from my fans list? What if recent frequent callers in my work-related address book show up in my intranet blog's Skyperoll?

I'll always take tacit data from user behavior over expressed content when understanding social networks. For the first time, my telephony behavior becomes useful as a sociocultural informant.

Danah: My skepticism increased dramatically when i read that Skype thinks it’s better than IM clients "Because it works!" What on earth does that mean?

It works as promised. Ummm, that's novel. Exceptional, even. Especially considering that it works over dialup, with encryption, on pretty average machines. Lots of geek cred under the hood to instantly replace hundreds of billions of dollars in telephony infrastructure with a 3 minute download, a headset, and an Internet connection.

From an industrial engineering and user experience view, they slashed the distance from thinking about calling someone to talking with that person. Skype cuts the number of tasks, clicks, typing, memorization and thinking that lead to the call. If both parties have Skype, you can even Skype me in one click.

Skype also helps with discovery. Can you imagine looking for books if Amazon only took ISBN codes? Skype's lookup works well when the other party is online. And this will only get better.

About IM, when you're talking to someone, Skype lets you IM them using its own chat client. A personal backchannel, great for passing urls back and forth.

Assuming you're running Windows, please try it. Get the feel for it. Skype me or look up someone in a far away city and just ring a stranger to say "hello, how's the weather?"

Now add beer.

Wednesday, 24 September 2003 6pm

Pacific Coast Brewing Co. 906 Washington St. (in Old Oakland, a block from 9th and Broadway) Oakland, California 94607 Yahoo! map New! Guest caller: The Skype team all the way from Denmark (2-3 in the morning Copenhagen time).

Call me at 510-444-8234 or Skype me.

Ah emerging words and phrases. I see 12349 Skype users online now and just took up TDavid on his Call Me invite. He's put into practice what John Robb said you could do yesterday. Now I understand just how simple this is to do!

I may just find the Skype logo and put it on my main blog page later. For now you can "Click n Call" Me on Skype

Several searches to this blog for Skype information, not to mention when I first looked at Skype this morning I saw 11,000+ users online which was the most I've seen online to date. And�as of the time I'm writing this there are 11,507...."
skypers (pronunciation: sky-purse) - people who call you the moment before you get out of your chair to do something else. A skype equivalent of eBay snipers. [TDavid]

Someone needs to wire this up with my mobile phone. I mean *now* not some day in the future. Here's how I see it. First a native Symbian app on the phone accesses the Bluetooth connection to a PC and streams voice each way. At 1650 bytes/sec for GSM-encoded voice, Bluetooth has more than enough bandwidth to handle it. This would allow your Symbian device to act, believe it or not, as a phone. On the PC side, a Bluetooth server sits and acts as a gateway between the serial port and the P2P voice app.

Now - I don't want the client to just be a dumb headset with a mike. I want to be able to start the app up, get access to my normal address book, choose someone I know has the same setup, and to attempt to make the call via BT. Now if the call doesn't go through, I want it to swap to a normal GSM connection and then dial that one.