News and announcments from developer of Skype products, both hardware and software.

Now you can make a clickable Skype link in Second Life. TDavid of TD Scripts saw my latest Second Life post and whipped up a little service. Form a URL with your Skype name using this format:

http://tduri.com/s-SKYPENAME

That page turns it into a skype:SKYPENAME link that tells your Skype to call that link. Your browser sees a skype:SKYPENAME URL.

So, for me, that's

http://tduri.com/s-evanwolf

You can now create a Skype Me link if you're in Second Life or anywhere else that doesn't know Skype tags from shinola.

Variations:

• sa- add
• st- text
• su- user info

Bonus #1: Promoting a Skype 3.0 public chat? Give an invitation in Second Life by using the "Promote Your Public Chat" link with TDavid's script. Just copy from the promotional link everything after the skype: and paste it in TDavid's script where you'd put your Skype name. I did that to create the url in this link: The Skype 3.0 discussion.

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.

Just off the phone (21 November 2006) with Jeff Black, ceo of TalkPlus and star of the demo I posted 13 November 2006: calling from a mobile to echo123 without a Skype client anywhere in the loop.

He confirmed:

1. TalkPlus does not use SkypeIn.
2. TalkPlus does not use SkypeOut.
3. TalkPlus does not use the Skype-operated SIP gateways now.
4. TalkPlus conversations going from a mobile to a Skype user are only encrypted in the usual Skype way from TalkPlus's servers to the Skype client.

Black said he's been to Skype's London's headquarters several times, most recently about 30 days ago. He said they fully shared what TalkPlus does and how it does it to Skype's management and technical people, right down to engineering diagrams. They continue friendly discussions. He said TalkPlus filed multiple patents which predate Skype on mobiles.

Black declined comment when asked if TalkPlus was building something for Skype.

If you'd like to chat about this, join the Skype 3.0 discussion. You can view the video of the demonstration on Revver, Vox, and Google Video.

CaptainAmerica Maverick gave me a bracelet tonight. A Skype presence bracelet. It shows my Skype availability when I wear it in Second Life. And if you're in 2L with me, you can use it to Skype me (I'm "Phil Arrow").

Stephen "CaptainAmerica" Klosky is using Skype's "SkypeWeb", a web service that takes a Skype username and returns that user's public status.

Web services are the life blood of Web 2.0, published protocols that open a company's software engines to programmers. SkypeWeb is Skype's only public protocol.

Skype must do more to empower developers who want to blend Skype into the rest of cyberspace. On Skype Journal's short list:

1. Turn the Skype client messaging APIs into web services. All of them.
2. Skype user authentication as a web service.
3. Directory service for public chats, public conference calls, and open contact groups.

Offering a "Naked Skype," (Skype devzone wiki, Skype issue database) a bundle of protocols to the cloud, would let developers blend Skype with any service, including email (like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo!).

Skype is in an earnest race. (Skype management has not acknowledged this.) The company wins who publishes the most complete, friendly web services for live communication. The measure of success: developers everywhere mashing up your communications with their social networks, mashing up your social network with their services. Skype's performance so far: not in the game.

Today, for example, I must use the unscalable Skype client on projects to: 

• Write a web page that shows a Google map of the locations of a logged-in visitor's contacts, colored by contact group, indications of when they are likely to be online.
• Build a web based feed aggregator that crawls urls mentioned in buddy profiles, showing updated web pages and blog posts.
• Run gateways between the Skype network and SIP services.

In the Skype 3.0 public chat, Julian Bond said Skype's new Skype4com ActiveX wrapper gets us partway there. I suppose it does, if all you care about is embedding a Skype widget in web pages or rich clients. So much more is needed.

Web services will unleash the power of Skype's

• communication infrastructures,
• identity infrastructures,
• social infrastructures and collective social capital, and
• commercial infrastructures.

Web services open new markets, attract new customers, reinforce your value propositions.

In Second Life, web services literally open up new worlds. Skype's rivals get it and are acting now. Where is Skype's leadership in this race?

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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As mentioned elsewhere I have had significant exposure to a variety of phones that have been designed to work with Skype, either as the primary purpose of the device (Skype WiFi phones, Skype Cordless phones) or as an application within a more versatile mobile "personal assistant" platform (Windows Mobile platforms and, by year end, Symbian platforms such as the Nokia N-series). In addition I have now had the opportunity to work with a few wireless phones made by Nokia and Research in Motion (Blackberry). A few comments that could help Skype ecosystem product managers going forward:

Battery life: many of these phones have a battery life of four to six hours idle time. Probably best to license RIM's Blackberry power management -- I can get four to five days of idle time on my 8700. Any device that will have a hope of broad market acceptance should have at least two days idle time.

DTMF tones: This is a fairly basic and widely deployed feature of the Voice 1.0 phone infrastructure; yet I am constantly amazed at the cavalier approach taken to making sure "TouchTones" work with any Skype client, whether a softphone or a hardware device. Here are some of my experiences:

• Skype itself would not work reliably with DTMF tones prior to version 2.0; that issue has been resolved at this point (within the Skype client's "Dial" tab).
• The Skype WiFi phones do not support DTMF; therefore they limit the usefulness of SkypeOut when calling businesses that use IVR systems or other services, such as voice mail systems, that require a DTMF response. I have also experienced USB phones with the same issue.
• At the other extreme the RTX Dualphone and VoIPvoice Cyberphones do provide the appropriate support; the Sony Mylo aslo supports DTMF but you have to remember to put their unique keyboard in NUM mode to enter the tones.

Chat: I view Skype as having two primary features: Instant Messaging (presence and chat) and Voice. For USB phones, the IM activity remains on the host PC; however, for PC-independent devices there are issues:

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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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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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How does Skype fit into the mix of other social media? If you recall, Lilia Efimova started using the ULRTMT - Universal Language Real-Time Message Translator this summer. Lilia and her online friend Andrea Ben Lassoued wrote "Weblog-mediated relationship: a co-constructed narrative" and it's being included as a chapter in a new textbook.

Their essay documents their professional relationship's evolution. The chart, at left, has three columns: Lilia's blog on the left, Andrea's blog on the right, and mutual territory in middle. The top of the chart is 2003 and the bottom is April 2006. They discovered each other in the blogosphere, reading each others' posts. After a while, they commented on each others' blogs, bookmarked each others' posts on del.icio.us, and swapped the occasional email. After a few months of more intense intercourse, they escalated to Skype conversations.

It is a solid ethnographic case study by professional social scientists. It spans a long time and covers multiple media channels (how we really interact with each other online). In this case, discovery and low level interaction earned (banked) a small amount of trust.

Enabling factors:

• Reciprocity of potential benefits from communicating to each other

• Vulnerable writing

• An ability to go beyond blogging in our choice of communication media

Lilia Efimova
Mathemagenic

They build on that trust until they were ready for more direct communication, with more substance, vulnerability, and immediacy (Skype).

I'd love to see this analysis of online relationship-building extended to other groups and situations. How do entrepreneurs find each other? How do job seekers discover potential employers and choose media during job search? How do new project teams negotiate the fit of modes to communication tasks? How long do some patterns persist, and do people repeat them across different relationships? How effective is shifting into work/task mode before fully establishing lower levels of trust?

I'd also like to see the end of a relationship. Can you salvage a fading relationship by experimenting with other communication channels? What are the textual or other early warnings indicators that a person is fading from "friend" to "former friend" or "contact"? How much asymetric communication can most people tollerate?

Which behaviors affecting user adoption and migration: What factors affect the success rate in dragging your (family, friends, work colleagues) into new channels? Are social network hubs more able to migrate their networks? Or do hubs who switch lose their power and start from scratch?

The ability to create great experiences comes from deep understanding of human nature. If you'd like to fund a more exhaustive study, let me know. I'm organizing research proposals.

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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(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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Earlier this week Skype announced a new Skype 2.6 beta release for Windows.  Two new features:

• Skypecasts controls are now directly available within the Skype client
• A bandwidth indicator is enabled via the Advanced Options (Tools|Optiions|Advanced)

However, the most interesting for partners is this line in the announcement:

For developers, there's a feature here that has been requested a lot: you can turn off the visible Skype UI through the API now. For more info on this, please stay tuned for updates on our developer zone and the developer blog.

As Alec Saunders points out, this is Silent Skype where developers can turn off the visible Skype UI.. Is this on the path to the long requested Naked Skype where developers can build around a core Skype engine?

Skype's Developer Program has launched a developer newsletter. But it begs the question as to why it is simply a traditional web page as opposed to being published with RSS feeds for those who want automatic updates and all the other benefits of RSS use.

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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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While well-known as Canada's capital and, for hockey fans, as home of the NHL's Ottawa Senators, the Ottawa region has transformed itself over the past quarter century into Canada's high tech capital (dare I say Silicon Valley North?). Ottawa is headquarters for Mitel, Corel, and Versatel Networks (amongst others), hosts significant facilities for Nortel, JDS Uniphase (the JDS part), Alcatel (formerly Newbridge Networks) and a major Dell support center, and is a breeding ground for many high tech startups, especially in the telecommunications sector. Under the sponsorship of OCRI,  Ottawa is the site of a new conference - Voice 2.0: beyond telecom - a week from Monday (October 16).

"There is a great need for a venue where practitioners at the forefront of building next-generation communications networks and applications can get a broad perspective on the changes in telecom," said Ross MacLeod, Voice 2.0's conference host. "Voice 2.0 will provide an environment where attendees can share experiences that will speed the adoption of leading technologies and practices in the sector."

As one primer check out Alec Saunders post: Voice 2.0 A Year Later.

Skype Journal will be there and reporting on the activities. Check out the agenda. If you are interested in attending you can register via their website. (Hint: check out Terry Matthews' Brookstreet Hotel. They serve a great Sunday brunch if you arrive a day early and want to work in some pre-conference golf.)

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Just got home from the opening day of Yahoo!'s first open Hack Day. I thought it might be useful to contrast it with eBay's DevCon.

	eBay DevCon	Yahoo! Hack Day
Where	Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay Convention Center	Yahoo!'s training center on its main campus in Silicon Valley
Lodging	Hotels all over Las Vegas, $100-$400/night	Tents, sleeping bags on the Yahoo! campus lawns. A sleepover.
Cost	Hundreds of dollars to attend	Free
Typical participant	VAR manager. Minimizing eBay fees.	Coder, systems analyst, web developer. Minimizing user cognitive burden.
Average age	45	30
Central Activity	Presentations by eBay executives and management	Hackathon contest: best new Yahoo! app, plugin, or mashup written in 24 hours. Voted on by peers and a panel of experts.
Research Lab's demo:	See an auction on your mobile	Automatically use cell tower IDs as proxies for location, cross referencing the location to venues, events, and tags used by others near this place, recommending tags to use with photos taken with your mobile phone's camera, and uploading your pic to flickr with both regular and geocoded tags.
Musical entertainment	None. Unless you include waiting until after the DevCon for the eBay Live sellers' conference opening night. Davy Jones of the Monkees doing I'm a Believer. Preceded by 90 minutes of executive briefings, lectures, motivational speaking and corporate propaganda.	Beck. Full band and light show for a long set. No charge to Yahoo! Included songs from his new album coming out in two weeks. Preceded by two minutes of introductions and a never before seen music video. photo by Fabricio Zuardi.

tags: skype, skypejournal, yahoo, hackday06, hackday, hack or die, yahoohackday06, ebaydevcon, ebay inc