Software Programs for use with Skype

Skype 3.0 brings a few new terms to our VoIM glossary.

In this edition: extra, extras gallery, extras manager, plug-in manager, plug-in publishing studio, pxml, call transfer.

Extra. Skype's term for software or other products that work with Skype.

Extras Gallery. Skype's web directory of third party products. Skype is moving the Gallery from Paul's developer relations team to Skype's online store ecommerce team. 

Extras Manager. Skype 3.0 for Windows Beta client's view of a selected short list of extras. Extras in the Extras Manager may or may not be in the Gallery. Extras Manager extras may or may not be Skype Certified or even Skype Compatible. The Extras Manager is a retail zone, designed to sell stuff, and some vendors pay fees and commissions to Skype.

Plug-In Manager. New software that comes with Skype. It runs in the background as skypePM.exe. Programmers talk to it through an API. Users talk to it through the Extras Manager. At the moment, there is no user option for not automatically launching the Extras Manager or the Plug-In Manager.

Plug-In Publishing Studio. A tool that helps programmers package their extras for the Plug-In Manager. If you have C++ or java code laying around, the studio wraps it up properly with a "pxml" file for distribution by Skype. Not available for public download.

PXML. The Plug-In Manager reads this XML file format (example) to learn which text and pictures to show. After developers use the Plug-In Studio to describe their products, Skype writes the entries into a bigger pxml file with everything you'll see in the Manager. Skype is batch updating the clients weekly with a new pxml file, refreshing what Skypers see and where.

Call Transfer. This 3.0 feature is only available to programmers at the moment. This lets programs redirect a call to another Skype user or to a pool of Skype users. If to a pool, the first one to pick up gets the call. When a third party picks up the call, the transferrer is dropped from the call.

Yesterday Skype released its initial Skype for Windows 3.0 beta with several new features. However, the press release does not really show the entire picture and, in fact, two of the four features mentioned were available in the previous 2.6 beta - namely, Click-to-Call and Skypecasts Live. Click-to-Call is simply an embedding of the previously available Skype for Web Toolbars supported by the Phone Number Recognition COM-component. It is a very handy feature that I have been using for some time.

But the other two -- Public Chats and a User Interface refresh -- bring some significant changes:

Public Chats -- my first activity was to walk through the Public Chat setup wizard. But I quickly realized it should be called the Skype Watercooler. The algorithm allows you to control who will participate; you can invite via emails, chat session or via a web page. You can control if a participant is active (able to contribute to the discussion) or passive (can only read the discussion). Lots of flexibility here. Whereas Skypecasts are publicly exposed such that anyone can join, the level of participation here is determined by the level of exposure you provide for your invitation.

But most interesting is to get the experience that comes from the persistence of a public chat. Yesterday I joined the Skype 3.0 Public Chat started by Phil; this morning when I came to my PC I could quickly review all the conversation that had occurred overnight (hey, those Europeans start their day early). Skype's Public Chat will become an interesting tool within the social networking landscape but Skype Marketing needs to look at a more definitive, attention grabbing name for the service. Let me say it again: Skype Watercooler.

User Interface: Lots to talk about here but I will just highlight some features:

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Yesterday came out of stealth mode the TalkPlus project that has been over two years in development; underlining this project's viability was a coincident announcement of a $5.5 million financing by Menlo Ventures. Om broke the story early yesterday morning; Ken Camp, Stowe Boyd, Voxilla and Alec Saunders, amongst others, have posted their initial impressions. I spent an hour yesterday afternoon discussing TalkPlus with Jeff Black, Founder and CEO. Jack provided some of the operational details that were not covered in the press release. First an overview from the press release:

TalkPlus today announced plans to revolutionize the way people use mobile phones by offering new and innovative Voice 2.0 calling services that work with existing mobile phones globally. Under development for more than two years, TalkPlus' patent-pending technology will provide customers a wide array of new and advanced calling services previously unavailable from mobile phone carriers.

First Offering: A Second Number That Works on Your Mobile Phone

With an additional phone number from TalkPlus, mobile users can now take advantage of having two numbers on their mobile phone. This additional mobile number is fully functional and unique; it works just like a mobile number issued by a carrier. By having a separate number to both place and receive calls on the same phone, subscribers get greater convenience and flexibility, as well as the benefit of an additional layer of privacy. With a second number, TalkPlus subscribers will be able to easily manage personal and work lives, while carrying only one mobile phone.

Subscribers will also benefit from an online management center, where they can easily control the TalkPlus Number's advanced call screening, voicemail, and contact management features.

Incorporated into the "Second Number" feature set will be an independent voice mailbox, a rules based engine for call management, bidirectional calling (in and out) such that a user can, say, separate her personal and business life, while using one phone handset with one carrier account. If you want to apply these management features to your original (well publicized) mobile number, you can port that number to the TalkPlus service and have a new (probably unpublicized) number applied to your basic carrier service.

But the calling support services go beyond capturing voice mail. Here are a couple of  examples:

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Today Skype released Skype for Pocket PC 2.1, a release whose accompanying documentation reflects the reality of the limited resources of handheld mobile devices. A full list of new features is available here; however, key items include:

• A new multi-chat interface which supports chats with several participants.
• Skype Launcher, a small 'launcher" application that checks available memory and verifies that Skype is installed correctly. (Hopefully this will avoid the situation I previously encountered where sometimes I had to reboot a Windows Mobile device before Skype for Pocket PC would start if other programs, such as SliingBox Mobile, were running.)
• Built-in call management that detects incoming mobile calls (via your normal mobile service) during a Skype call and offers the user the choice to hang up or ignore the call. You can switch to Skype calls when in a mobile call.
• Detailed contact search including specification of country, city and language as options.

However, buried in the details are the following that reflect a more realistic approach to Mobile Skype:

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Last week's Voice 2.0 Conference in Ottawa exposed examples across the entire range of infrastructure and services that lead to voice-related applications. Martin Geddes led off with a keynote asking What's telephone for? What's the unmet user need? Where's the money and What's next? Sam Aparicio of  Angel.com provides an excellent commentary on Martin's presentation ending with Martin's economic model for Voice 2.0 telephony:

• Martin talks about an inversion of the model. While most of the money was being made once the call was connected, now most of the money is to be made pre- and post-talk.
• Before talking you have devices, connectivity, privacy, presence, availability, directory and integration
• After the call, social networking.
• Google managed to create $400B of market value by exploiting digital social gestures around hyperlinks, but Telcos still fail to see how CDRs are a goldmine.
• Some of the growth areas: B2C (I'm soo glad he mentioned this...), C2B -- whenever you cross the trust of a social boundary. An example: In Finland, some people organized a grassroots, non-official Voice Idol type system, creating tons of value for the carriers without much of their involvement.
• Some examples of new thinking: considering a cell phone as a retail outlet you get to carry with you wherever you go.
• In the end, whoever controls the context in which conversations happen. (Following the Starbucks model, where they get to capture the bulk of the value generated by the chain starting at the bush of Juan Valdes). He mentioned how, in the future, when in a hotel, options for room service will be in a buddy list.

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(The second of three posts on the newly released Skylook 2.0.)

Two legacy features carried over from earlier versions are the Skylook Answering Machine and Skylook Recording, both of which recorded Skype voice mail messages and calls as MP3 files.. Building on the experience with handling audio in developing these features, Skylook 2 has been enhanced such that voice mails can be incorporated into business processes for timely follow up and retrieval while Skylook Recording is an ideal solution for recording podcasts. The new features include:

• Recording in multiple formats: MP3, PCM, etc.
• Record the caller side or both sides of the call
• Split the recording of each side of a call as "raw PCM audio" into separate WAV files; this facilitates later editing of recordings as podcasts.
• Store audio files either in Outlook or in any Windows folder. This allows call centers to store files in Public folders accessible to all members of a call center
• In the Skylook Call Monitor window you can also store (free text) Notes to associate with the recording. These notes, which can be made either during or after the call, become searchable tags that facilitate later retrieval of audio files.
• When deploying Skype Answering Machine a voice mail (optionally from designated callers) can be automatically forwarded to any designated email address as an attached MP3 file.

As with earlier versions of Skylook all Answering Machine and Recording activity is archived within Outlook.

If you are looking for more than simply receiving voice mail and want to not only have several recording options but also have all your call activity archived for later search retrieval, Skylook 2 offers some interesting value-add features, especially for call centers, customer support operations and podcast producers.

First Post: Skylook 2 - Building Business Processes Around Skype

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Last weekend Netralia launched Version 2 of Skylook - a tool that links Skype to that ubiquitous contact management and email tool, Outlook 2000/XP/2003, and extends facets of the Skype experience to your mobile phone. In an interview with Jeremy Hague, Skylook's CEO, I learned that Skylook is rapidly becoming a key business tool for that 30% of users who use Skype in business. Key points include:

• over 60% (and rising) of Skylook licenses are known to be for business use;
• its major appeal is to hard core Skype users
• its business users have as many as 15,000 contacts in Outlook
• its US$99.95 per year per user price tag includes a 12 months 24 hour response time support warranty as well as all updates during this period

While working with Outlook, Skylook 2 also introduces audio technology for several key features, incorporates enhanced SMS messaging into Skype's Instant Messaging features and uses Skype's API's to forward voice and email messages to your mobile phone. In the image above I have "wrapped' the toolbar to show all its features. Skylook 2 offers six key functions:

• Communicate with Outlook Contacts: for instance, you can even send an SMS message to any Outlook contact, including those who do not have a Skype account, provided they have a mobile phone
• Record Skype calls (with several new features in Skylook 2.0 - the subject of a separate post - ideal for creating podcasts using Skype)
• Alerts and Forwarding: a totally new feature that will be the subject of a separate post.
• Answering Machine provides full voice mail functionality
• Archiving and organizing all your communications: emails, IM sessions, SMS activity and voice mails.
• Synchronize your Outlook and Skype Contacts.

Skylook has a more detailed outline of its functions on its web site along with links to examples of how several features work.

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Yesterday Andy posted a reference to an article in today's San Jose Mercury News about various new "mobile lifestyle" companies that want to change the way we are using phones. But Michael Arrington has made an excellent point in stating that:

A bunch of VOIP services have launched to help people make cheaper calls from normal phones. None of them are compelling for the mass market.

The question any VC's need to ask when considering funding of any of these startups is "How do you intend to readily migrate these services into the mass market?".  This is a market that fundamentally picks up a handset, "dials" a number (or looks it up in an embedded directory to dial) and makes contact with the called party. Unless it can perform this basic simple algorithm for establishing a voice connection, additional services and features become technology showcases without hope for any mass adoption (and all the associated revenue opportunities).

Over the past three months I have had the opportunity to use the VoIPVoice UConnect when in my office and their CyberSpeaker W Skype phone when on the road. (Both use the same driver software and start with a standard telephone keypad user interface.) Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to preview what is coming out this fall in cordless phones. As mentioned previously I am evaluating some relatively new wireless devices. Over the past year I have not had to pay more than 3 cents a minute for any landline long distance calls whether at home or on the road beyond any basic service fees (and since mid-May that has gone to zero for SkypeOut calls within North America).

The combined experiences have helped me establish a base line for the level of simplicity I would expect as we see the emergence of both cordless phones and wireless mobile devices that use or access Skype (and/or other VoIP-based services) while serving as a standard telephone handset:

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Last winter, while visiting a friend in Silicon Valley, I had a demonstration of a comprehensive personal video management system that he had set up combining SlingBox, a TiVo PVR and his WiFi-networked home office personal computer configuration that included a 300GB storage drive . This is a person who is a hard core road warrior and wants to be able to access his video recordings from anywhere on the Internet; he had configured this system to achieve this goal. Via his SlingBox Player he could perform all the TiVo functionality, call up any recorded program or PC file, whether stored on the TiVo or his 300 GB hard drive from any broadband connection to the Internet in hotels, airports, etc. But it required some work on his part to pull this all together and to maintain the integrity of the system through software and firmware upgrades, etc. After his initial demonstration I enquired about pricing and then asked, "Is this not 90% of the functionality of a Windows Media Center system at 20% to 30% of the cost?" He replied in the affirmative.

MediaREADY Inc. (formerly known as Video Without Bounderies, Inc.) is a Florida-based provider of interactive, media-ready home entertainment devices that effectively combine the functionality of the TV and networked home PC's media management features into one dedicated Linux-based device. These devices, combined with the SlingBox, can provide the equivalent functionality of my friend's configuration at a much lower cost than a TiVo combined with a home-networked Windows PC and dedicated storage hard drive . Working with a MediaREADY dedicated function device, the user can focus on managing his/her TV viewing, recording and recall without the inherent problems of a Windows system, such as sharing the processor to handle other non-media-related programs or handling Windows security issues. From an home entertainment system point of view it is simply one more box in a home entertainment cabinet as opposed to requiring full PC hardware configuration including the monitor any other attachments and the associated footprint requirements. Not to mention placing a full PC in the family or other TV viewing room may not be appreciated aesthetically (or socially) by other members of the household.

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In a previous post I talked about the announcement of the Open AIM PhoneLine initiative and how, as one of their launch partnerships, they will be working with iotum to incorporate iotum's Relevance Engine call management service into AIM PhoneLine. But there is another story behind the scenes in terms of how iotum and the AOL PhoneLine API development team came together to bring about this service.

Driven initially by its military connections where Halifax, Nova Scotia is Canada's major east coast naval base as well as home to a major oceanography research center and four universities, Halifax has been a hotbed of Internet technology since the early days of ARPANet. In the late 1980's one of the navy's custom software vendors, Software Kinetics, got involved with ARPANet and ended up migrating the technology to open one of Canada's first Internet Service Providers called NSTN.  When the first national Canadian event on the commercial Internet was held in Toronto in early 1994, NSTN was the poster child for what could be accomplished over the Internet; they even had a bookstore making sales worldwide.  During the late 1990's I was consulting for Software Kinetics, visited Halifax many times and came to appreciate that Halifax was an "under-the-radar" mini-hotbed of Internet technology and innovation. So it was no surprise to me when I learned that AOL had setup their AOL PhoneLine development team in Halifax through an acquisition of InfoInteractive who had previously developed some infrastructure software for use with AOL's services.

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Skylook 2.0 for Skype and Outlook is coming next month, beefs up sophisticated alerting and remote controls. The coolest thing is it uses Skype to bring live activity in Outlook to your mobile phone when you're away from your desktop. If you live in Outlook, take a look at their preview page for screenshots and a 10% discount coupon.

15 Apps for Recording Skype Conversations. I think this is the most complete list at the moment. Good job, Andy Boyd. 10 for Windows, 5 for Mac. I'd add YapperNut's Amy recorder for Windows, free download, and bundled with the YapperMouse mouse+phone for Skype. Any recorders for Linux or Skype mobile? For Skype video calls?

Transcribe your Skype conversations. Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 for Windows is out, $99 upgrade. This should be built-in functionality for enterprise versions of Skype. One of the ways you add value is convert Skype calls to text, and post them to team blogs as meeting minutes.

Skype for Windows Beta Preview updated today. The latest version 2.6.0.74, a hefty 12 Mb, takes care of a few rare but nasty bugs and adds a Google toolbar for Internet Explorer with a Skype button on it. (I'm waiting for a Firefox googlebar, please.) The Help | Check for update menu command won't tell you there's this newer version.

Keynoter simulSkypecast from South African conference today. Stephen Downes on learning objects. Downes almost always make me angry when he talks, because he rudely challenges my worldview with facts and logic. And then, maybe minutes or days later, it sinks in and I get it. This was a fast and free way to bring the world into a conference, hopefully others will take note.

FireOlive.com is a Google News + Skype mashup. Call in with Skype or phone, record your thoughts on a news topic, and your message goes live on the site within 2 - 5 minutes. It's blindingly simple, and addictive. I can't wait for this to become a common feature on other news sites like digg or slashdot.

Skype developers can win $2,000. Funambol put a Skype PIM Plug-in on its hit list of extensions with open bounties. They want to sync a user's Skype data with the Funambol mobile app.

China to be First Internet Nation next year. More broadband users than US, fertile ground for consumer VoIP and net television, say two research firms. As important as North America is to eBay this year, I'll bet China takes on new importance for both eBay and Skype next year. vnunet article.

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Last week my Windows configuration finally collapsed under the weight of too many installs/uninstalls. When four different program upgrades won't install properly (including the new Skype 2.6 beta) and come up during the installation attempts with dialogue boxes that only the most dedicated and focused developer would understand, it's time to re-install Windows XP from a fresh start.

How did I know my configuration (and/or Windows Installer) was corrupt? When I went to reinstall the previous version of Skype (2.5) I got the same error dialogue box and there was not a trace of Skype left in Add/Remove Programs. And I had recently experienced two other programs that balked at upgrade attempts.

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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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• Hostel stay comes with Skype.
• Free Comverse Klonie avatars for Skype. One more erased barrier to adoption. It's good that Skype continues to experiment with offers and prices in eCommerce.
• McAfee security products get Skype Certified. Co-marketing, revenue sharing, hoping McAfee's saftey brand notes wash off Skype's piracy brand notes.
• Live video special effects. ManyCam works with Skype, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo!
• Bob Crabtree reviews the D-Link Skype USB Phone Adapter DPH-50U. "Judging by our experiences, a more honest strategy for D-Link would be to pull the product completely off the UK market until it is able to introduce a version that works with modern DECT phones in something approaching a reliable fashion." Ouch.
• Windows Live Spaces launches with gadgets and social networking. Microsoft's blending of their blog and voice social spaces brings their slow and fast worlds closer together. Personal digital identity is the common thread, something shared by eBay/Skype, Yahoo!, Google, and AOL. They build strength by (a) having more places to use your own ID, (b) the convenience of managing contacts in one place, and (c) the large directories that improve your chances of finding someone the first time you look. Stand-alone VoIP networks are at a disadvantage, so I expect lots of M&A activity by this time next year.

See the Mac 1.5 Beta announcement. BETA release: 1.5.0.48. Also: Interface refresh, import contacts from Apple's Address book or Entourage, more languages (French, Spanish, German, traditional Chinese, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch), support for presence and SkypeMe buttons, and Mac starter packs. For OS X v10.3.9 Panther or newer. The last minor update was May 11, and the last major update (1.4) was in January 2006. Download the Mac 1.5 beta.

Correction: (Thanks, Ryan) Video calling is only in version 1.5.0.47. 47 is the same as 48, but it has the only-modestly-tested video component added. Read about the video preview or download the preview. Known video issues from the Change Log:

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