I've been in a prolonged fight with a friend over some serious, high-stakes differences. We never seemed to get far, or even get worse. But over the last two weeks I tried to move the conversation from live talk to text chat. And it really helped. Among other things it slowed things down, giving both of us more chances to think and observe the conversation instead of reacting reflexively.

So moving down the ladder of mode intensity and intimacy was more useful than climbing up in this case.

There's a growing body of knowledge about making more out of those situations. The most popular seems to be Crucial Conversations, from the book of that name. Anna Liu graduated from a Crucial Conversations workshop, blogging some of her lessons learned, starting with:

"Get Unstuck: how to spot the conversations that are keeping us from results, and get unstuck with not only changing the content, but also address the recurring problem pattern and work on the relationship."

There's always more to learn from master communicators.

I'd love to see tools that work with Skype to improve the quality of my dialog.

1. A wizard that gathers my talking points and helps me keep my focus?
2. A stress analyzer prompting me to take a breath and slow down?
3. A talking vs. listening meter?
4. A notetaking tool that keeps my notes with the call history? That timestamps each line, like in a chat, but the notes are just for me?
5. A wizard that debriefs me after a call? Asking for promises made and received, follow-up calls or other action needed, loops to close? That invites me to add metadata, like tags or project names, to the call record?

Will there be anything like this showing at Monday's WidgetsLive event?

I just want to acknowledge that I have had a few reports this week to the effect that Comments are not appearing or, in some cases, have been reported as "not allowed". Rest assured that both Phil and I are disciples of Shel Israel's and Robert Scoble's book, Naked Conversations.  We want and appreciate your comments; we want Skype Journal to be a conversation amongst both Skype enthusiasts and Skype users.

Both Phil and I have been taken away on family matters this week; however, I took a few minutes this evening to check out these reports.  There are some problems which only Phil can address as he is the only one who has experience with managing and supporting our Movable Type platform. He will look into them on his return next Monday; in the meantime you can find the comments (to all posts in chronological order going backwards) at http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/recentcomments.html.

I have seen the three comments about the Skype and US Traction story; they are much appreciated. Thanks... and thanks to all who have commented such as to create a constructive conversation about any post.

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I have just been asked to moderate a Round Table at the Voice 2.0 conference in Ottawa next Monday; Topic: the Future Visions for Telecom. Recently there have appeared three posts that provide a foundation for discussion of the subject:

First, James Enck, a highly respected telecom analyst and blogger, based in London, posted details of his keynote presentation last week, Ten Things I Hate About You, at Telco 2.0 in London  James has developed a strategic framework around which he sees the future of telecom:

• Telcos have lost control of their core product
• Voice is becoming a feature, not a service
• Telcos can't grasp that consumers may not want what they're being sold
• Telcos thrive on scarcity - future value will be built around abundance
• Command and control culture is dead, open API's rule
• Telco DNA is fundamentally unsuited to the current dynamics of content
• Telcos expand their footprints physically, not virtually
• Telcos can't innovate
• Telcos shouldn't try to innovate
• Maybe the entire foundation is wrong

Definitely a landmark post. So what should the foundation of telecom become? Alec Saunders presents a first anniversary update on his Voice 2.0 Manifesto:

The customer experience predicted by the Voice 2.0 Manifesto is not of a single carrier, but rather of three classes of entities - access, directory, and applications.  As a customer, you'll pay to be part of the network, you may pay for an identity (and this is an idea who's time will come, although it's hard to see today), and you'll pay for applications that that help you communicate in a diverse number of ways.  This is a very different model from the traditional, vertically integrated, communications network.

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Skype DevZone's Triona Carey wrote about the Tallinn Beta Tester Days just completed (we're eager for Bill Campbell's comprehensive report). She lists the topics ("roadmaps, the forthcoming plug-in framework, Skype for Business, components, and the Skype4Java API.") without actually transferring that knowledge.

And then she does something smart and nice (which is not unusal for Triona). She writes:

International gatherings cost time and money - for attendants and for Skype. None of us can afford to have as many of them as we'd like. We are working on other ways to enrich communication in our community - newsletter coming soon, Skypecasts, conference calls, wiki.

If you can suggest useful ways to enrich networking in our community, please let us know.

Hi, Triona. I wish I'd been there.

You're on the right track. I'd urge the Skype team to look to the needs of the people outside the room. For every attendee, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, who would be there if they could. Four stages for addressing this:

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Organized crime organizations suppress competition in a market. This keeps margins high on vice goods and services. Higher prices means overall crime rates fall, some people just can't afford vices at higher rates. Organized crime trys to avoid "wars" with rivals because they are expensive and bad for business. Big Crime also stifles small time rivals who expand the market by bidding down monopolist pricing.

In theory, police would cooperate with mafiya to keep the streets clean of petty crimes that interfere with the mafiya's business. Total crime falls because monopolists will maximize profits in a smaller market at higher prices. General law and order benefits those holding monopolies on drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other steady businesses.

But there's a greater problem. Monopolies concentrate wealth and power. This leads to corrupt government.

So we write special laws that hurt organized crime. We add penalties for large quantities of drugs. We legalize big gambling to bring it out of the underground economy, producing tax income instead of fueling crime lords. We mandate property forfeiture and allow mobster surveillance. In short, we make it more expensive to do big crime and we level the playing field. You never do away with crime altogether, but you cut the concentrated cash flow that corrupts.

Which brings me to net neutrality.

Our Martin Geddes thinks little of laws and regulations supporting net neutrality.

I've said it many times before, but Network Neutrality is a treatment for the symptoms, not the causes - and it's an ineffective anti-consumer folk remedy at that. Good intentions aren't enough. ... Picking at one tiny part of the anti-competitive edifice isn't the way forward. Better to have power over suppliers through your wallet than via politicians.

I agree. In a perfect world.

But the markets are imperfect, power is already concentrated. We see the corrupting power of the largest lobbyists in Washington D.C. and other centers of political power. We see their astroturfing and other bad acts.

So we must act.

We must effect change.

We must out-innovate and out-market.

We must organize as consumers.

We must organize as citizens. We need to educate this generation's Judge Greens, the judge who broke up Ma Bell and made the mobile revolution possible.

We must lead our society to define unmediated access to the Internet as a human right, a civil right. And to react with anger and purpose to anyone who tries to tamper with that access.    

We must find allies, if not friends, in other industries. Companies that need their bits to go untrammeled. That need an Internet without gatekeepers. Companies that know how to lobby.

Like the mafia, yakuza, or bratva, the concentrated power of the telcos will fight back.

They won't fall to any one measure. So we need a theme that All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
 -- Edmund Burkedrives many measures, new ones over time, each driving the monsters toward acceptable societal norms. Perhaps the theme is liberty and freedom?

I agree with Martin that fighting the telcos with laws is hard. Maybe impossible. And not without risk.

But doing nothing is not an option. The societal consequences of giving absolute control over public assembly, public speech, over our new libraries, encyclopedias and news sources, over our civic participation and education - this is tantamount to creating a new branch of government, one without oversight, without checks, balances or accountability.

Martin, we don't have dozens or hundreds of viable suppliers in the United States. We don't have efficient markets for Internet access. And we have damning evidence of the foul intentions of these monopolists to subvert civic freedoms and rights.

So, instead of waiting for Adam Smith's invisible hand to restore rights seized by phone and cable companies, what do you think should we do? 

P.S. Dr. Magaddino, my old economics professor, challenged me to consider crime, applying supply and demand theory to social evils instead of goods.

This is the first post in a series reviewing wireless devices in the emerging Personal Handheld Assistant space; the ultimate aim is to identify roles that Skype can play in this market of converged functionality devices. Links to other posts in this series are available at the end of this post.

Over the past couple of months I have received several wireless handheld phones/devices from Nokia (manufacturer of the last three cell phones I have owned), Research in Motion and SMC for evaluation. In addition I have been using a WiFi-enabled Dell Axim X50v as a PDA over the past two years and a Canon PowerShot A610 for photography; the Axim, of course, can run Skype Mobile, . Recently Sony announced its WiFi-enabled mylo; meanwhile last week saw the arrival of the Blackberry Pearl 8100.With such a variety of feature sets and user experiences, one needs to take a pause to review what is fundamentally important in a wireless handheld device to provide a basis for reviewing these devices, particularly in view of the convergence emerging in the various Nokia, Windows Mobile and (RIM) Blackberry devices.

This avalanche of handheld devices has made me ask the questions:

• How much convergence of functionality do I want or need on a handheld device?
• Where should Skype play a role in wireless-enabled handheld devices?
• Can my previous three devices (phone, PDA, camera) be combined into one unit or do I continue to need three device holsters on my belt?

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I've been barraged with PR spam, like all the reporters registered for VON Boston. You know it's spam when:

• The products aren't related to your beat
• The request-for-interviews aren't related to your beat
• Your email is stuffed with multimegabyte attachments from complete strangers
• The phone calls come at 5am

I've had some excellent contacts from contract and in-house PR people. Sadly, PR clerks outnumber the great ambassadors eight-to-one. Jeff Pulver is trying to make it better, Andy Abramson and Jim Courtney chime in.

Things Pulvermedia can do next time:

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Monday marks the start of Fall VON and really the first conference for which I, as a blogger, have been registered well in advance as "Press". Over the past few weeks I started receiving emails from public relations representatives (either internal or external to the sponsoring company) and, with a few exceptions -- they know who they are because we have lined up meetings --, have been underwhelmed by the quality of the approaches and messages.

In my past lives I have been on the "client" side of the podium, both as an executive of a publicly traded high technology company and as head of an industry trade organization. I have also had some basic PR training; in Canada I worked with one agency whom I have always considered my PR mentor. They continue to be very professional in their approach, their media relationships and their innovation in getting a story out. Although I have never had any journalism training, I have always had a better than average command of composing stories, writing documentation and general English grammar which I credit to some high school teachers who gave me an early appreciation of the English language. I also hold both technology and business degrees. My experience has also brought me into understanding the pressures CxO's are under with respect to achieving both business and financial goals whether it's a mature business meeting published shareholder expectations or a startup looking for new financing.

So when I found Andy Abramson's VoIP Watch post this evening, Jeff on PR and My View, I was relieved to find I was not the only one questioning how we, as "press", were being deluged with impersonal emails and poorly expressed interview invitations. Since Mark Evans has described Andy as one "who knows the P.R. and VoIP industries like the back of his hand" and Hugh McLeod provides insights through his graphics, I will not comment further; however, in my trip to Boston this week here is what I will be looking for in my interviews:

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• DEMO China. Sep 06 - Sep 08, Tianjin.

• Star Trek 40th Anniversary Celebration & Conference. Sep 08 - Sep 10, Seattle, Washington at The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. But you can celebrate anywhere. Remember, Gene Rodenberry's folks were showing wearable combadges, machine translation, and flip-top phones on television in the 1960s, setting expectations we rose to fill. "Skype Trek" anyone?

• VON - Fall 2006. Sep 11- 14, Boston, Massachussetts. This is old-school VoIP's big get together, where everyone's selling to carriers and the huge enterprise. They've had a year since eBay shocked them by paying billions for Skype. Now everyone's had a year to react. How smart are the responses?
  
  Several companies will launch Skype-related products at VON.
  
  Skype Journal's Jim Courtney, Kevin Delaney, and Martin Geddes will be there; Kevin and Martin speaking.

• Digital ID World 2006: Managing The Decentralization of Identity. Sep 11 - Sep 13, Santa Clara, California. Managing user directories, architecting name spaces, authentication, authorization, identity banking, identity brokering, ID lifecycles, namespace harmonization. Managing digital identity is just one thing that Skype helps user do but that others do better.
  
  Stuart Henshall and I will be there.

• MobileHCI 06 - Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. Sep 12 - 15. Espoo, Finland. Designing Skype for PCs is only vaguely like designing for devices that fit in the hand, with poor resolution, spotty connectivity, positional awareness, and that travel in your bag or pocket. We'll know Skype for mobiles are maturing as (a) their user experiences distill Skype's essence while (b) diverging from Skype for the Desktop's design assumptions and conventions.

• The Future of Web Apps Summit. Sep 13 - Sep 14, San Francisco. A killer cast of Web 2.0 luminaries (aka the people you see at all of these events.) AJAX and web services redux, maybe a few new ideas.

• Social Network Tools and their Business Application: Blogs, Podcasting, Instant Messaging, RSS and Wikis. Sep 20 - 21, London. Classes. Reminds me of the Social Tools in the Enterprise Symposium I spoke at two summers' ago. Euan, buy Stowe a glass of red for me.

• OneWebDay: A time to celebrate the Internet. Sep 22, all over the world. "One web, One world, One day." What will you do to share your appreciation of the net? I'm still working on my project.

• LoveParade SF. Sep 23 - Sep 24, San Francisco.

• Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences. Sep 27 - 30. Brisbane, Australia. Scientists from around the world sharing their findings. Huge conference, 200+ sessions. Brilliant hallway. Would love to see Pamela Koch's presentation: Beauty is in the Eye of the QQ User: Perceptions and Press about Instant Messaging in China. A shout out to fellow metablogger Alex Halavais.

Know an event we should cover? Leave a comment here or a tip.

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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Ken Camp makes a call to Women in VoIP to gripe about the few females at internet telephony conferences like those run by Jeff Pulver and Rich Tehrani and Tim O'Reilly.

In the last episode, the Office 2.0 conference had 53 men and 1 woman speaking. Gender imbalance? The organizer invited friends and strangers and that's how his personal network fell out. Reactions include asking speakers to step down, boycotts, the F-word. And building lists of women.

At least in the United States, women start more small businesses than men and are graduating at higher rates from high schools and engineering schools. So there is a vast pool to draw from. So if that's not the problem...

It's not about finding women speakers. It's about

• making it easy
• to find smart people
• with experience as speakers
• on a given topic,
• in a time frame,
• for a budget,
• outside your social network's event horizon,
• and selecting or deselecting for personal and professional characteristics, like religion, gender, ethnicity, and culture. (BlogHer clearly wasn't shooting for gender balance.)

Essentially, discovering the right strangers to invite to a conversation.

The world of matchmaking.

Of dating.

Of job search and recruiting.

Of Skype's people search.

They are markets of individual conversations. People offering a service and wanting a service, sharing a market. (Remind me sometime to talk about micromarket asymetry, where power is unequally shared among those who have and those who want.)

Conventions collect conversations into packages. Even open space and unconference events, where speakers are selected last minute by the attendees, fit this definition.

Secondary markets come in several forms. Convention programmers make markets for their conversation bundles (called conferences). Others show up as media, like podcasts of interviews or talk radio.

Systems which make matches efficiently (like the Monster.coms of the world) are often ineffective, making good matches. That's why some sites at least try to wrap the match in magic (Dr. Phil's advice to the lovelorn) or science (Ph.D. verified psychometric tests).

Back to women...

Diversity of thought and experience keeps markets, and conferences, vigorous. Balance proven relevance with serendipity, assuring somebody challenges your worldviews and assumptions. My favorite events leave me unsettled; perturbed from my usual orbit.

For example, I went to Blogher, a blogging conference for women (mostly). I'm in the red shirt in Hollyster's The Men of Blogher flickr set. Among other things, I was an obvious minority among 500 women, at a gathering where women's subcultures so clearly ruled. Speakers made meaning differently. It was less about painting a vision, than about sharing stories. Not so much sharing facts and observations as it was about bringing facts into the context of life experience. Not necessarily the way I blog or speak.

I'm looking forward to the Office 2.0 discussions, not this metathread about gender. More on how Skype fits into the Office 2.0 context soon.

A few days ago Alec Saunders, Mark Evans, Jon Arnold and a blushing Andy Abramson all drew attention to a "ranking" of VoIP blogs put out by Garrett Smith of SmithOnVoip. Even Garrett himself admits his poll is somewhat arbitrary; he did outline his criteria and they have been repeated (and praised) in some of the linked posts. Skype Journal came out well at a number 6 ranking in Garrett's Top 10 list. Very encouraging and rewarding to find we are that far up.

Luca Filigheddu, an Italian blogger on VoIP topics, reviewed Garrett's poll and then determined his own ranking based on Technorati rankings. Whereas Garrett's "Smith Blog Rating System" rankings are "agreeably" subjective, Luca's Technorati rankings are based on linkage statistics. Luca's rankings switch Andy and Om for top spot but they always (deservedly) want bragging rights (!) and we always like to see a little competition at the top. Six of the Technorati Top 10 appear also in Smith's Top 10. Eight out of thirty in each poll only appear in the one poll. Interesting, but purely coincidental that Skype Journal is the only Top 10 to have consistency of ranking in each system at sixth place..

Bottom line for me is that I have added a few more VoIP blogs to my personal blog reader and get a wider diversity of news and opinion for linkage in Skype Journal posts. And thanks to all who give us link love at Skype Journal.

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Hi. Just wanted to bring you up to speed and keep up our transparency. Let me tell you about Stuart, our independence, some policies, keeping secrets, reviewing, and ask for your help.

First, one of our owners and founders, Stuart Henshall, left the building earlier this year. He's still an owner but is happily working full time in an executive role at a stealth start-up. I've been asked not to say what his firm is called or what it's doing, but it's very cool. Skype cool.

Second, Jim Courtney joined us this spring. He's a great analyst and brings serious science, engineering, and business chops to his writing. He also brings his field work to the table, consulting on partnering strategies, channels of distribution, product management, and business planning. Jim's become one of the most linked-to VoIP bloggers and we're glad to have him.

Second, Jean Mercier asked if Skype Journal remains independent. Jean, an occasional Skype Journalist, noted I met Skype's Jaanus Kase. I've actually met a handful of Skype personnel. Yes, we remain financially indepedent of eBay and Skype. The only money changing hands that I know of is Skype paying part of Bill Campbell's air travel and lodging costs for a meeting next month. That trip is part of his uncompensated participation in Skype's closed Beta program.

Third, Skype Journal's policies guide our behavior. We link to them in our page footer. Our Editorial Policy governs accuracy, labeling and sourcing, explicit conflicts of interest, and accountability. Our Corrections Policy says we'll make things right. Our Syndication Policy points to our feed formats and provides terms of use. And our Accessibility Policy is more of a goal than reality, I'm sad to say.

Fourth, we respect confidences. If you'd like to tell us something as a confidential source, just tell us as you talk with us. We honor embargoes at least as well as the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek, subject to the usual conditions. If you hire one of contributors as a consultant, they will abide by mutual confidentiality agreements related to their work for you. For example, Bill's service to Skype through their closed Beta program is under an NDA so I never hear any inside scoop from Bill. And neither will you.

Fifth, our product reviews are filtered or frank but not both.

Bill Campbell loves to review new products, especially if they break through in a new category. But he won't print bad reviews. So the only reviews by Bill you'll see on Skype Journal will be happy ones, the disappointments washed out and negative feedback given privately. Part of this, as Bill explains it, is because many small companies can't survive a bad review or even a strong critique. Even big companies and their PR firms don't take criticism well and may exact retribution, which Bill prefers to avoid. So you get posts like Bill's Sony saves Skype on the launch of the Sony Mylo.

I'm less squeamish. For example, you might read my Sony Mylo suffers from Sidekick syndrome post, also in response to the Mylo's launch. They are so different a Sony publicist asked Bill if I worked here. A constructive review is useful for our readers, in the consumer advocacy spirit, and part of telling the whole truth.

So Bill is a gatekeeper, filtering in good news, and Jim and I will tell you the good and the bad. I hope this context helps readers and publicists.

Last, be a Skype Journal author. See our editorial wiki pages (still in draft) for more information.

• Becoming a Skype Journal Author

• Author Guide

• Editing Checklist - before sending your post

• Skype Journal Beats - What we would cover with infinite resources

• colophon - tools we use

Thanks. And if you have any questions or comments, leave them with this post, email editor at skypejournal doht com, or Skype me.

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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You may have noticed the new banner. My photo is from Skype blogger in chief Jaanus Kase's side trip to Oakland, California, earlier this year. Jaanus and I had lunch at Everett & Jones near the water. I wasn't impressed by the barbeque that time but it was great to finally meet Jaanus and talk enterprise blogging, online community, and social software. In the photo, Jaanus is taking a picture of cargo railcars going to the Port of Oakland through the Jack London Square neighborhood. Oakland is a major cargo hub, the fourth busiest container port in the United States.

Railroad rights-of-way made it possible for the telegraph network to spread across North America in the 19th century (like Skype on top of the Internets). At some point Western Union lost its dependency on the railroads, entrenched its monopoly, and lobbied Washington to protect it (like the phone and cable companies which followed). Meanwhile, the railroads developed standards so cars from one railroad could run on all the tracks. They later worked with truck and sea shippers to standardize the cargo container (packets for atoms). Containers slashed shipping costs. Now globalization is the standard in a world economy. And a bottle of Stormhoek, South African blogging wine can be shipped to California for less than a euro.

The masthead change is part of a long list of small site improvements. One side effect: you can read SJ on many mobile phone browsers. 

Help me rotate the photo a few times every month. When you have a snapshot and a story, post it to flickr, tag it "skypejournal", and let me know via email or Skype.

Time for a brief break from our voice communications obsession. As with any blogger, when writing for Skype Journal, I continually seek out tools that facilitate the blogging experience.  Ideally the entry of content, with graphics, should be transparent to the writer. However, while blogging tools make the experience somewhat more transparent, they still have some user interface issues to address. But I diverge.

Our blogging is done via a Moveable Type platform which is well suited to managing and publishing blogs with multiple authors. However, the inherent editor is minimal and requires recalling somewhat more than the basic HTML code experience, especially for inserting graphics. (MT has TypePad for those who want to author at a more transparent level of blog entry) Introduced to Qumana at the Toronto mesh 2006 conference in mid-May, I have found it a very useful aid in providing both a WYSIWYG window as well as a more complete for graphics placement capability. It even does spell checking as you type (à la MS Word). It allows you to build a post offline and save drafts; its Qumana Manager window provides an offline