UK’s OFCOM drags it’s heels on mobile net neutrality, leaving Skype users banned by many mobile operators. Same in other European markets. Jonathan Browning interviewed Skype’s Jean-Jacques Sahel, head of European regulatory affairs at Skype.
I met a bunch of people at the Enterprise 2.0 conference who don’t use Skype, more who only use it for family video calls, a few who use it for international calls, and several who’ve never been interested enough to try it. It reminds me that, with roughly 180 million active users worldwide and likely only 30 million active in the US and Canada, Skype has a greenfield of more than 200 million North Americans who aren’t using Skype. Building market reach looks like an important strategic goal through 2015. Skype’s net adoption rates (adoption less abandonment) have been large but linear. How will Skype redesign their products and rebalance their portfolio so net adoption rates accelerate?
New rumors iChat may come to iOS. So far it looks like IM, not voice or video. I’d be more interested f iChat came to operating systems outside the Apple universe.
Pre-flight check in at Sheremetyevo International Airport over Skype. @svo_skype connects you to an operator for an interview, like a video call CAPTCHA. News release: Now for “flights operated by Air Astana, Royal Air Maroc, China Eastern Airlines, Estonian Air, Hainan Airlines, Hong Kong Airlines, Iran Air, Jat Airways, Turkish Airlines, Transaero Airlines, Aerosvit, Ariana Afgan Airlines, Belavia , Dniproavia, Donbasaero, Nord Wind, Oren Air, Air Algerie” although Aeroflot hasn’t committed. Yet.
Skype pays musicians to sing Happy Birthday to your friends in their Say It With Skype Facebook app. All the flavors are great but I like The Parlotones’ cover.
New betas: Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac and Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows, both approaching feature parity, both now with group screen sharing for Premium subscribers. You can IM and video call Facebook friends from within Skype, although this does not include voice calls (unless you unplug your webcam), conference calls or group video calls. Jonathan Rosenberg explains Skype is hosting supernodes on AWS EC2, is operating a gateway for Facebook identity/directory interop, the calls are flowing p2p through the Skype network, and Facebook is keeping some records about users and their activity. Darrell Etherington thinks this could make Skype even more popular, and Skype should integrate Facebook into Skype’s mobile and tablet apps. Skype promotional video for the release (QuickTime).
Sync contacts. Not just import, but synchronization. Keep my contacts fresh. TO DO.
Sync user profile data. My Skype profile is shallow and often stale. Sync my profile data semi-automatically: “Do you approve this update?” TO DO.
Sync availability. Online, Offline, Busy, In A Call, Do Not Disturb. Facebook has some presence indicators too, from their own chat and from their mobile clients. TO DO.
Sync currency. What’s the exchange rate between Facebook credits and Skype credits? Let me pay for a long distance SkypeOut call with Facebook credits. TO DO.
Facebook updates in the Skype contact list. Give me fresher social objects for talking with my contacts. Make it easier to sort contacts by the last time they updated, not just by alpha or the last time they talked with you. DONE.
Skype history in Facebook’s timeline. Show my friends’ Skype history with me in my Facebook updates. Make it easier to dive back into a Skype conversation from the timeline. TO DO.
Sync personas. Skype is already asking people to create multiple personas, so they log in with one ID for each job and another for home. Facebook will probably offer something similar so you can choose to keep your professional friends from learning too much about your hobbies and dating habits. Skype and Facebook will negotiate the data models and privacy policies that go with it. TO DO.
People search. For all the importance of the Global Index to Skype’s operations, the real value is being able to find the right person to talk with. Both parties could do well to blend their search technologies to improve result relevancy and speed. TO DO.
People recommendations. Skype can’t suggest people you might like or people you might know. Facebook can, so build recommendations into Skype. Skype has very specific data about times of day and places you call from and call to, which Facebook could use to improve recommendations. TO DO.
Events and scheduling. One of the best social objects is an event. Before the call or chat we often plan and invite and schedule our talk. Skype should integrate with personal calendars and with public and semi-public event listings. Facebook’s have taken off as one of the top event directories along with Eventful and Upcoming. TO DO.
Chat interop. My facebook friend chatting with me on facebook while I’m in my Skype chat. We each get the medium we choose. Lots of things to work out including persistence, behavior for adding people to a chat, privacy rules, encryption, archiving policy. STARTED.
Groups sync. Facebook lists and groups should sync up with my Skype contact lists. Define once, update everywhere, always fresh.
Voice enable facebook chat. TO DO.
Video enable facebook chat. STARTED (No group video, no screensharing).
Advertising exchange. Skype has a small but rapidly growing yellow pages business directory, the better for prospects to Skype and SkypeOut your salespeople. Faceskype can cross-sell ads, offer buy-once-and-show-up-everywhere campaigns, improve the sociability and relevance of Skype client ads, offer click-to-call features to Facebook advertisers, etc. TO DO.
Location check-in sync. Start showing my Facebook Places check-ins in my Skype history and offer to let me check into Facebook Places using mobile Skype. TO DO.
Workplace editions. Is Facebook’s Yammer-killer just a rumor? Skype is committing to the enterprise too, so both teams should be imagining together. TO DO.
Comcast briefed GigaOm on their new Skype product (720p@30fps webcam, RF remote control, adapter box with HDMI) and an app designed for television, coming early next year. Some integration with your Comcast account for importing contacts. Skype will only partner with Comcast for the next few years, so too bad if you are one of the 81% of customers served by other ISPs. You’ll have to buy a television with Skype inside or dedicate a computer to running Skype on your television.
Licensed family counseling and psychotherapy over Skype. The BC practice says “the new virtual service removes the factor of geographical proximity, and caters to clients who find traditional settings limiting.” Don’t miss your session because you’re in a small town or far from home.
Gotta wonder if Microsoft would still have bought Skype if they had to pay US taxes on the deal.
A Mint.com infographic using Forbes data: AT&T got $1.05 Billion in tax rebates on FY2010 $18.2 Billion sales. So the US government paid AT&T more than Skype sold all year.
A security hack could reveal your Skype profile and IP address and what bittorrent files you’re downloading. Read the paper from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, NYU-Poly, and the French research institute INRIA. Your browser gives up your IP address every time you visit a web page so this is most interesting to people avoiding surveillance and actively protecting their privacy. Tip: use a different VPN for Skype and each app you use to avoid the cross-referencing that might lead to blackmail.
The October snowstorms that hit the US Northeast put Skype to work as an alternative when telephony and roads were offline for a few days. A friend in Hartford, Connecticut, wrote “I’m sorta acting as a base for all my relatives and coworkers after this snowstorm. relaying calls and messages and such between people with no power and such. my t-mobile phone has no service. my verizon phone has intermittent failures and dropped calls. skype works beautifully, however if I’m dealing with peoples’ cell phones, they’re the weak end of the call.”
Jim Courtney: “If Skype wants to have a viable developer program we need to see results soon that can bring revenue to the developers.”
Skype renamed the Public API to Desktop API. More accurate.
Dan York: “Meanwhile… is this renaming setting the stage for the release of some new client-less APIs? Let’s hope so… ” Dan worries the new realtime communication features (WebRTC/RTCWEB) being built into nextgen browsers will be hidebound to PSTN telephony instead of new over-the-top networks.
Skype is quietly retiring old thin-client services for UK mobile operator 3. Courtney says “I would imagine 3 would have to be working on a strategy to phase out its initial Skype service and transition their customers to newer platforms.” Still available in the UK, Ireland, and Australia for now, it has been discontinued in Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, and Sweden. Andy Abramson: “like so many sideline projects that ‘proved things’ now Skype is back to being just a IM based calling service online with a few hooks to the PSTN.” 4G and smarter phones are relegating Skype thin-client services to developing markets.
Download Skype for Windows 5.6. This update fixes a few bugs, unbundles Google apps (Google is retiring its Desktop which bundled Skype), and gives credit for third-party components. Or get 5.5 (5.5.0.119) which corrects some issues with the Skype home page popping up when in compact mode, fixes memory leaks in Skype Click-to-Call.
30.5 million people signed in to Skype at the same time on Monday, 10 October 2011, a new high-water-mark for Skype dialtone since the end of March. A seasonal thing, fueled by more than a million people downloading Skype desktop apps in the days before. I’m guessing about 180 million active users this week.
Just for comparison, Rafe Needleman reports “Zynga revealed that there are 232 million active monthly users of the network, and 60 million daily users. The company records 2 billion play minutes each day.”
RIP Steve Jobs. All sorts of milestones in my career were directly influenced by Steve. My first job out of college: selling Apple IIs. First well paying job after being down and out: Mac desktop publishing for an artist. First dive into design as a discipline: studying about the anthropology research that lead to the Mac. First usability research: books on the difference between the mac/windows/command line.
I had a poster of the NeXT in my bedroom for years, after I saw Jobs demo one at the Berkeley Mac User Group in the old round Physics lecture hall. the idea that you could engineer hardware to support a Unix operating system AND make it even friendlier for newbies than a Mac was gobsmacking. The whole stand-on-a-stage thing and carefully tell your story was part of my toolkit long before he showed his mastery of that, but Steve added a real appreciation of the subject matter, joy for the value he showed, excitement for the geekery.
The iPhone wasn’t my first mobile phone, or even the first I loved (I miss my N90 sometimes). It was the first that made me use it like a computer, made me want to build apps again, dream the entrepreneurial dream. and keep the internet in my pocket. Damn. Damn. I’m typing this on a MacBook in a pizza joint down the street from the Apple store. And they’re playing sonorous sad music.
Michigan State professors want a law to permit distance weddings. Their proposal. Adam Candeub and Mae Kuykendall support e-marriage and e-ritual in all 50 US states. “States should authorize marriages of those not present within their territorial boundaries. We demonstrate that states have the sovereign power to authorize marriage performed anywhere, and historically have blessed marriages in distant locations.”
UPDATE: Screenshots including one of my friends and text mentioning him have been altered to hide his identity.
Apple added Skype for iPad 1.0.1273 to the iPad’s App store last night. Skype soon tweeted they were not quite ready for the launch, tidying up web sites and such, but they are ready now. Here’s the YouTube announcement video. You can also pick up your copy using your iPad’s App Store app. This is Skype’s second iOS app, if you don’t include those from Qik. Mobile operators should love this; anything that drives up data plan charges replaces lost income from landlines and mobile voice minutes.
Let’s walk through the features, a long call, and talk about Skype’s editing of the design.
CORRECTION: You can now be in group video calls and pay for a Skype Premium subscription, just like the Windows users. You can now screenshare in group video calls, which not even Skype for Windows users can do. From Skype’s blog post and change log:
Major changes in this update compared to previous release are:
Improved Multi-tasking
Group Screen Sharing (requires Premium subscription)
Sidebar enhancement
Support for Mac’s built-in HD and Logitech’s B910 HD cameras
Late last year, IMS Research reported that we’d passed the 5 billion mark – 5 billion internet connected devices – and predicted we’d connect 22 billion devices by 2020. That said, internet connectivity is no longer enough to differentiate your product. So, what will be different about the next 17 billion devices? Video.
We’re finally at a place where we’re moving from the PC to non-PC devices being rich communication endpoints – from your mobile phone and TV to your in-car navigation system. Internet + voice + video is emerging as the ultimate trifecta for cutting-edge devices, and increasingly what consumers will expect from their electronics. However, as demand for video-enabled electronics continues to increase, development bottlenecks caused by closed API standards will continue to plague the industry and hinder the growth process. During his presentation, Skype’s Jonathan Christensen will discuss:
The historical context and early communications pioneers that took VoIP mainstream
The inefficiencies and hurdles that spurred industry-wide change in the early 2000s
How broadband penetration, multimedia PCs and P2P file sharing set the stage for rich mainstream IP communications and the proliferation of video calling
The future of communications in which devices are no longer isolated, and open standards will shorten development cycles Christensen will also give an update on how Skype is working to enable developers to leverage the power of voice and video to create a new generation of communications experiences, gaining access to a huge market potential by bringing video to a wide-range of consumer devices. With this next wave of connected devices, ‘video anywhere’ becomes a real possibility.
The line “Skype is working to enable developers to leverage the power of voice and video to create a new generation of communications experiences, gaining access to a huge market potential by bringing video to a wide-range of consumer devices.” is what brings SkypeKit to mind.
Whythe fuss? Apple is hiringcloud engineering talent. They should. Everyone with a digital side to their business should. That’s how infrastructure works today. Web sites? Cloud. Entertainment for sale? Cloud. Storage to rent? Cloud. Apps to license? Cloud. Data portability features to host? Cloud. Universal identity services? Cloud. Nearly all of Apple’s non-hardware lines of business have an online component. Cupertino staffing cloud talent doesn’t signal revolution or new strategy. It’s an everyday tale of ordinary business adjusting to swings in technology architecture. And if you didn’t notice, Apple’s had cloud operations for years. So. Whoop. De. Doo.
Jason Asbahr is CEO of iOS game publisher Monstrous Company. Design defects in Skype’s persistent chat drove his whole firm to switch back from Skype for Mac 5 to the older 2.8. Still has love for Skype’s group video chat and hotspot payment services.
Millions of people use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files. 80/20 worked with Skype to transform the user experience of its products, starting with the popular Mac client.
OVERVIEW
Skype’s Mac application was beginning to show its age as it packed in an ever-growing number of features. As a result, users were having a difficult time understanding and using the full breadth of its capabilities. Additionally, Skype saw the need to consolidate its product development efforts and drive user experience consistency across platforms. 80/20 worked with Skype on a ground-up redesign of its Mac client, which would set the stage for unification across its product lineup.
So the brief was to fix feature bloat, leaving room for future bloat. Oh, and to save on programming time by having one body of code/design.
SOLUTION
User testing and audits of the Mac client highlighted issues with window management, contact management and revealed that features didn’t have enough real estate to be articulated effectively. The new single-window design improves work flows between calling and messaging while supporting the common behavior of using the “call log” to initiate communication.
The cramped design didn’t offer enough screen space for all those features.
RESULT
The next-generation user experience for Skype Mac increases use of core features while providing a clean slate for growth. The success of the redesign is seen not only in the Mac client itself but in the design’s ability scale to touch-screen devices and beyond.
So:
More pixels per feature.
No features subtracted.
One-window to hold everything.
And a happy client.
Design is hard.
Harder still when you strive to run on every operating system, in every device, with all your features. You want to be true to the nuances that make a Mac app feel like it is native to the Mac. To Android like it was born there.
Yet those many flavors slow Skype’s time-to-market.
How do you hold fast to your core Skypiness, to what made people love you, and support new features for new markets, new use cases, new business models? Your backlogs overflow. The pressure is intense. Heck, I add to my Skype wishlist daily so I can only imagine what your iceboxes look like.
The tension between simple and power is killing you.
I know this. You know this. Everyone at Skype knows this.
The shrieks from Apple users? That’s the anguish of the stricken, losing their love for the Mac-like spare brilliance of their beloved 2.8 client. They forget they’ve been calling for feature and release parity with Windows users for years. Skype gave in to feature creep and bought in to a universal design for desktops, perhaps for tablets and mobiles too.
So here we are.
Seething.
Hoping.
Please see this moment as opportunity.
Take bold risks. Forget our gripes and take us someplace new in a way we hadn’t imagined that makes our hearts swell with pride.
Believe today’s minimalism pays later. You want a diverse developer ecosystem, yes? All those use cases cluttering your inbox? Leave those to third-parties. Let them build upon your ruthless simplicity.
Reconsider fundamental assumptions of what it means to Skype, to be Skype, to belong to Skype, to play Skype, to have Skype. The last seven years are merely prelude.
Hudson Barton invites you to join the Skype for Mac chat (Skype required) on behalf of his Aaytch software development firm. “We decided to concentrate on support for Mac Skype. The new channel, which is a Skype group chat, will be completely about Skype for Mac, and mostly about the new version 5.x.” This is ongoing and the talk runs to tips, bugs, reviews, and add-ons.
The rumor mill: We should expect voice control technologies in iOS 5. More generally, should I be able to control Skype through speech? “Skype, call Rango.” “Skype, answer the call.” “Skype, call Paul at noon.” “Skype, text to George Let’s talk this afternoon.” “Skype, who is near me?” Hands-free is not just safe for driving and easy on the carpal tunnel; talking to machines is becoming a more common user interface.
My hopes were raised when I heard you can tweet within Skype by using the mouse menu on a contact or an IM message. It turns out Tweetie was using a MacOS feature to offer its services inside other applications. So you can tweet from inside browsers, IRC apps, email, etc.
I should find Skype as an option in all my other apps. A control-click in Office, in Tweetie, in Photoshop, in Outlook, even in Gmail, should offer a Skype feature.
First there is bringing other things into Skype…
If it can be resolved as text, let me IM it.
If it can be resolved as a contact, let me add it to my Skype contacts, talk with it, or schedule a Skype talk in my calendar.
If it can be resolved as a file (even a reference to a file), let me transfer it in Skype.
And so on. These will look like: Add this contact to Skype or Skype this contact. Send this picture, file, video to a Skype contact. Send this iCalendar event to a Skype contact.
Then there is bringing Skype things and services into other applications…
Add my Skype profile as a signature in this email.
Address this email to a Skype contact.
Add your Skype conference room details to this calendar event.
Show your Skype history with this Facebook (hcard) contact.
Crop this photo to Skype avatar size.
In the spirit of “Skype everywhere,” bring Skypie goodness into all my apps.
This may be a Mac-first or even a Mac-only feature. But it feels like this could be a high payoff for low effort.
Download Skype for Mac 5.1.0.914. New features, seen in the Windows version:
Skype highlights avatars of active speakers so you know who is speaking.
You can pick recently called numbers from the dial pad.
Skype asks for quality feedback after your call.
Also, “contact groups” are shown on the right hand side, to leave more room in the sidebar. Does this work for you? As always, plenty of discussion in the forums and you can report bugs in Jira.
Qik for iOS is now out in free and $2.99 versions. The three bucks buys you video editing, real-time effects, “HD quality” video, file sync to your camera roll. Both let you point and shoot live video, streaming to friends or the web, and live video calling. Jim Courtney and I tested Qik Video Connect’s presence this morning and neither of us could see if the other was online. If that’s the worst of things, this is a fabulous product. More testing to come. Product tour, Skypenews release, Qik blog post from last week updated with a link to the free version.
Your kids can Skype Santa (Florida time, Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays through 7 December, 4-5pm) @SandestinResort.
ex Wilhelm: “Microsoft is a major player in the Business Software Alliance, along with Apple and 27 other companies. And the BSA supports SOPA.” Learn more and do more to prevent the Internet Blacklist laws.
Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac and Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows, both approaching feature parity, both now with group screen sharing for Premium subscribers. You can IM and video call Facebook friends from within Skype, although this does not include voice calls (unless you unplug your webcam), conference calls or group video calls. Jonathan Rosenberg explains Skype is hosting supernodes on AWS EC2, is operating a gateway for Facebook identity/directory interop, the calls are flowing p2p through the Skype network, and Facebook is keeping some records about users and their activity. Darrell Etherington thinks this could make Skype even more popular, and Skype should integrate Facebook into Skype’s mobile and tablet apps. Skype promotional video for the release (QuickTime).
Jim Courtney
Join the Skype 6.X Text Chat Room