CORRECTION: Skype for Windows 5.7 Beta includes a Push-To-Talk feature. “We have introduced a Push to Talk feature in Skype. Many people who are playing multiplayer games have requested this from us. With this feature you can set a hotkey which will toggle microphone muting on Skype call. You can set the Push to Talk up on the hotkey’s selection under Tools > Options > Advanced > Hotkeys.” — 27 November 2011.
Push-to-Talk is a style of voice call control reminiscent of the way you use a WW II era walkie talkie; on a common channel, the channel is silent unless a participant presses and holds down a button, turning on a microphone. Releasing the button turns off the mic. This is attractive when you have many people in a channel and want to avoid distracting background noise and extraneous chatter. Police radio and taxi dispatch are examples from the real world.
Technically, you might also think of push-to-talk as a call where mute is the default. Try this: start a Skype conference call then have everyone mute themselves. Want to speak? Unmute. Then, when you’re done, mute yourself again.
So why is that Skype operation not what realtime gamers need? Full Story »
HP’s Visual Collaboration businesses will have a much better home at Polycom. Polycom folks understand how people talk at work, their engineers build quality product, and their brand defined office conferencing long before Cisco or Skype. The deal is expected to close in the next few months, followed by quarters of product line consolidation, rebranding, some light reorganization, and a renewed marketing push to get the last of this year’s enterprise IT budget from existing and new customers.
Everyone in this space is competing with Skype at the high-convenience, low-cost, network-effects end and Cisco at the high-touch, high-cost, tiny-private-network end. The extra talent, customers, and technology could buy them time to respond to video conferencing’s commoditization.
A new entry level LogitechLifeSize video conferencing system now comes with two points of Skype integration. First, there’s a SkypeKit-based Skype client inside the LifeSize Passport. So you can log in with your Skype account and call or answer people in the Skype network or SkypeOut to phone numbers. Second, your Skype contacts now show up in the Logitech Passport’s directory. Passports will sell for under $2500. Sadly, there are no demos or screenshots. Here are LifeSize’s celebratory news release, the Skype partner page, blog post and Skype’s blog post. I’ll share more info if I get it.
Three observations.
First, SkypeKit must be maturing for this to come out; LifeSize is small enough that they can’t afford product risks with iffy components.
Next, someone at Skype did a yeoman’s job of reviving what must have been a strained relationship after being unable to deliver needed software since 2009. Job well done, team.
Last, having Skype inside your video conferencing system could well become a must-have. The ultimate market reach for 720p interop with a partner that won’t muscle into your market (cough-cisco-cough).
Tom Green pioneered using Skype video to bring viewers into his home television studio. Here’s Tom testing a combination of twitter, Skype and his pet huskies.
I noticed you can’t see Skype’s logo, which is a requirement of their broadcast terms of service. On Skype for Windows 5, Tools > Options > Advanced Settings > “Show Skype watermark during calls” will do the job.
Skype users call billions of minutes yearly. That customer behavior is stolen from phone companies. Skype accounts for more than 12% of long distance and international minutes after seven years. Those phone companies can’t fight back using their PSTN phone system: 40% of Skype calls have video, and your local phone company can’t offer that. Mobile operators (like Skype partner Verizon Wireless) are migrating users from minutes to megabytes but haven’t shown any apptitude [yes, that’s how I meant to spell it].
If they want it. Will Apple wait to cement their new, ruthlessly simple calling behavior before extending the product family to group calling, webinars, presentations, TV apps, and video meetingware? Probably; they are a consumer products company first and foremost. The opportunity to pick up a billion dollars in Confabistan could well override their sense of purity.
Cisco is in the best position to help Apple’s consumer products sell to business. They sell at every end of the conferencing spectrum except at the most democratic, consumer level. So FaceTime might close that gap for Cisco and lend some of Apple’s brand magic to Cisco’s B2B identity.
As attractive as Apple may be, Cisco may have greater opportunities partnering with Skype.
Skype has a focus on communication, like Cisco. Skype is much more amenable to integrative partnerships than Apple. Skype is looking for ways to boost its valuation before IPO, so they’ll be looking at things Cisco’s way. So Skype would be easier to work with.
Skype has a serious enterprise agenda. Skype is pushing into business through trunking, where inbound and outbound calls travel over Skype’s network. This is an important point of control. While SkypeOut brings in the money today, Skype can help companies bypass the telephone system altogether using the IETF VIPR protocols developed by Skype’s Jonathan Rosenberg and Cisco’s Cullen Jennings. Skype should be able to extract large payments for producing even larger savings.
Skype’s video calling network should fill in Cisco’s low cost retail gap, a gateway drug for Cisco’s more expensive WebEx, ūmi, Tandberg, and TelePresence lines.
A host of companies want to help telcos compete with Skype. Here at ITExpo Los Angeles (where I’m hosting a few sessions tomorrow), SPIRIT DSP announced VideoMost.com as a hosted web video conferencing service ready for your brand. Business oriented, centrally hosted, HD and feature-rich. Pit yourself against Skype, WebEx and GoToMeeting.
This is a good strategy for SPIRIT, moving from supplying technology to a handful of companies in the conferencing business to firms that can retail Video Conferencing as a Service. Business information utilities like ISPs and phone companies will look at this like a feature to enrich bandwidth subscriptions. I wonder if VideoMost will find traction with companies that offer richer contexts for collaboration: horizontal ones like the LinkedIn business social network or the Monster career market, and niche ones supporting specific industries, occupations, tasks, or value networks.
A platform play is missing from this announcement, APIs and SDKs to let you build VideoMost into your own apps instead of sticking your logo on SPIRIT’s.
Skype has been a SPIRIT DSP customer but "the scope of the project between SPIRIT and Skype cannot be disclosed under the agreement between the companies." I’m guessing it was VoIP components for embedding Skype on mobile and appliance ARM9 and MIPS processors.
Bottom right: five bars (signal strength? call quality?).
Center bottom: Add People, Webcam (on/off), and Share (social objects like files, contacts).
Bottom left: elapsed time in call, microphone on/off, speaker on/off, and End Call button.
But what do we need in a Skype multiparty video service? How might we judge Skype MPV?
Before a call:
Option to minimize audio interruptions/distractions during a video conference.
Test your webcam (and how you look) before connecting
One-click launch to video from multiparty audio or chat conversations.
Add a voice caller to a video conference. Drag-and-drop, please. And support leaving a member of the call in audio-only mode.
Invitation and scheduling service. Two people are difficult to calendar; five can waste more time negotiating when to call than in the call itself. Partner with companies like Tungle and Evite.
Addressable chats so we can share a skype: link or a web http: permalink to bring people to a meeting and to its archive.
During a call:
Moderator power for one or more of the parties. Sometimes you help the quiet person to speak, a dominant personality to pause, or a rude person to leave.
Lurking mode: mute your outbound audio and “mute” your outgoing video while continuing to see/hear the meeting. Sometimes you just need to adjust your clothing or divide your attention.
Desktop screensharing, one of the great collaborative features of Skype video.
Easily switch video/audio sources without interrupting the meeting. I should be able to control my contribution to the call. So let me switch from the webcam that shows my face to the Ipevo close-up cam that shows the product defect we’re discussing to the product specifications Acrobat file.
Play a video file or stream from your PC or the web to everyone in your call. Video is a social object, triggering conversation.
Multitask. Sometimes we must be in more than one video conference at a time; sometimes meetings overlap.
Live streaming of meetings through services like Ustream.tv and Livestream. Skype could easily become the talking-heads network.
Let third-party software overlay captions, speaker names, illustrations and effects atop live video.
Picture-in-picture video for full-screen viewing.
Studio controls, to decide which participant has the focus
Interoperability with Cisco, ooVoo, Logitech, and other video calling and conferencing networks.
After the call:
Meeting video archive. Save meeting to YouTube (and other services) and to a blog.
One-click fallback to voice conference from multiparty video. Sometimes you just want to downshift.
Profile the chat. Let me add notes to describe what we did and what we promised, and share them.
Performance concerns:
Video quality. How many participants can be in High Quality (640×480@30fps) or High Definition (720p) at the same time?
Connectivity robustitude. Does Skype MPV perform well under adverse field conditions, with Wi-Fi and 3G/4G connectivity?
Scaling Up with Fixed Bandwidth. How does adding a third, fourth and fifth person affect bandwidth consumption?
Anchor requirements. Do video conferences have an anchor party or host, the way audio conferences do? If so, what cpu/bandwidth/memory is needed?
Audio quality problems and solutions become more difficult with multiple parties. How well does Skype address echo cancellation? Multipoint noise reduction? Sound leveling?
Proprietary or public audio and video codecs?
Backwards compatibility. Will people with older Skype clients be able to join a multiparty Skype video call?
Platform:
Software Developers Kit for the desktop client plug-in architecture. So independent software developers can build MPV applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops.
SDK for SkypeKit developers. So Panasonic, LG, and Samsung can build MPV into their televisions. So others can build MPV into desk phones, video phones, and automobiles.
Hosted web-service SDK. Please! The better to build SkypeRoulette.
Feature-complete SDKs compared to the desktop UI.
Policy:
Is the architecture centralized or decentralized? Where is a call’s jurisdiction? Are PCs used by the parties to a call the only computers used to conduct the call?
Can MPV be turned off through the enterprise IT .msi controls?
Are multiparty video conversations encrypted end-to-end?
Do you need to be a party to a call or be monitoring the desktop of a party to that call to intercept the call?
Can others contribute Skype credits to share a call’s cost?
Is everyone charged, or just the host? How is the host determined?
Priced for wealthy-nation corporate use? Or for developing world personal use?
Can’t wait to get my hands on MPV and walk you through the details.
$10 a month gets you multiparty video conferencing, screen/application sharing, browser and phone access for your guests, and video broadcasting. Vivu‘s VuRoom for Skype plugs-in to your Windows and Mac Skype clients. VuRoom launches your session using the Skype client. Vivu notifies your invitees to your call through a Skype chat. They can launch into the room through their own copy of VuRoom or click on a link to the browser version. Your meeting uses Skype‘s encrypted, high quality audio channel. Here’s a flash demo, an offer for a 15 day trial account, and details on subscribing to VuRoom.
Vivu isn’t the first company to offer multiparty video for Skype, but their timing is excellent. Hundreds of millions of Skype users now appreciate video calling, paving the way in customer appreciation and behavior. This plug-in helps Vivu extend its market reach to Skype’s large user base and builds on the love and trust people have for the Skype brand.
Skype could easily target this market segment as it turns to business markets. Will Skype compete with partners like Vivu for customer attention, as they have with one-to-one video calling software partners and with desktop sharing software partners?
I wanted to follow up on my Monday post about the importance of collaboration products to Skype’s business strategy. The great thing about collaboration is that it is very hard. Collaboration is less a discipline than a catchall term. It’s peopleware more than technology, anecdotes more than evidence. Universities have no Collaboration Studies department in schools of business, humanities, engineering, or medicine. Industry and governments study collaboration but produce narrow benefits, poorly shared.
Frankly, there’s no Collaboration Science to inform the design of the next generation of tools like Skype.
Society needs it. The web needs it. I want to do it.
So what questions about collaborative behavior and collective productivity could investigations answer? Which avenues could radically improve the ability of live and time-shifted talk to become work effort? What collaboration patterns and social software designs can break down barriers and bridge teams and connect project stakeholders?
Talk systems are part of a larger interconnected network of information systems
Work adds constraints that help focus conversation
Collaboration as collective productivity
and the topics fell in three clusters:
Getting Started (Ridiculously Easy Group Formation; Group Goal Forming; To Do Lists, Calendars, Personal Time Management, and Getting Things Done Together; Fame and Reputation)
Being Better Together (Augmenting Inline Conversation; From Discovery to Action; Decision Making and Decision Support; Collaboration Afoot; Situational Awareness; How Collaborators Use Search and Personal/Collective memory; Gestures of Tomorrow)
Crossing Boundaries (Intergroup Collaboration; Earning Trust and Using Whuffie; Collective Presence and Project Presence/ActivityStreams; Transparency and Collaboration; Backchannels; Scaling Collaboration from Tasks to Projects to Programmes)
It’s a quick read, needs pictures and I consider this a rough, incomplete draft. The questions are a sample to get a feel for the space to be studied.
How can we answer the questions? Research. Each topic is amenable to a different blend of usability testing, instrumented communication tools, prototyping, field ethnography of high function collaborative teams, and analysis of data from virtual teams.
I’d like to assemble a body of knowledge that turns our digital tin-cans-with-strings into engines of effectiveness.
Help me kick start this. (Yes, this is a bit self-referential.) What topics are missing? Prior art? Can this research occur in an open space or must it happen inside a corporate firewall? Of all the research topics, which ones are low-hanging fruit and which are harder to reach but outstanding value? Here’s the pdf.
Q. What technology does BT/Ribbit have, making this possible, that Skype doesn’t? Q. Does this scale if Ribbit has to pay for each minute? Q. What advantages does decoupling chat from IM bring to users?
From the Ribbit blurb:
The Ribbit Conferencing Gadget allows Wave participants to escalate an online collaboration session to a real-time audio communications session, allowing participants to talk with each other while collaborating. The Conferencing Gadget is persistent in the Wave and allows any Wave participant to:
Create an audio connection with multiple Wave participants
Add non-Wave participants to the session
Mute or hold any of the individual participants from the stream
I talked with Ben Lilienthal last week about his HiDefConferencing.com business at Citrix. HiDef is the only conference bridge that lets Skype directly into a call with Skype’s high quality audio, established in 2003 alongside Skype.
SJ: What are users’ biggest problems with audio conferencing at it is today?
Ben Lilienthal: Cost. Clarity around pricing and expected cost.
How does audio conferencing fit into the world of social software and social media?
I’m not sure it does. We offer asynchronous components that let you upload meeting recordings to blogs and other web sites. Could that fit in? Over half of users use the recording feature.
What does high definitions audio mean to you today? Is that changing?
It means 16×16 or 16×22 [bit rate x sample rate]. It’s becoming more prevalent. It’s not anything more ubiquitous. When we launched HiDef two years’ ago nobody had heard of high definition.
What companies or institutions need to support HD audio for it to be more than a niche offering?
We’re seeing it in Skype, Cisco, Polycom (Siren codec). Lots of siloed approaches. I don’t know how you make it a ubiquitous standard when they each have their own.
When will we see your iPhone app?
I’m not convinced that you will for the audio.
What do you make of Skype’s SILK wideband audio codec release?
It requires a significant engineering effort and we’re a little reluctant to make the investment because Skype seems to be eating their young. Nobody else seems to be using SILK. Besides, do I want a relationship with a partner who may throw me out the door?
What capabilities do you want Skype’s gateway to offer you that don’t exist now? What would you like to improve or change?
We’re pretty happy with it. We only use Skype as a means of access to our service. We probably do more than five million minutes a month in Skype traffic.
Citrix has a growing family of services, including GoToMeeting. Will the audio parts of your sister business units be adopting your audio infrastructure? Will HiDef Audio continue under its own name?
We are using the HiDef bridge with our GoToWebinar customers. Starting in the fourth quarter, you’ll have the option for HiDef when you buy the toll free option in GoToMeeting.
What are some of the big trends you’re following in the conferencing space?
It’s a race to the bottom, like what happened to long distance a decade ago. So we’re differentiating on quality, ease of use, pricing, packaging. We’re selling on features, ease of use.
Integration with web conferencing is a big one. Being able to go to GoToMeeting with high definition, for example.
Multiple points of ingress to a call: phones, Skype, and browser.
Y!M video calling is not backward compatible; all users must be on Y!M 10. Interop with MSN doesn’t extend to video calls, so friendship across networks is still limited to commodity text IM.
Yahoo! recommends at least 300 Kbps download and 128 Kbps upload, video cards with 96 MB memory, and Microsoft DirectX. This compute burden comes from the audio and video codecs.
Yahoo! adopting GIPS’s video plumbing is a coupe for GIPS. Yahoo!’s choices influence other software companies; GIPS just became a safer choice for video. Despite Yahoo! only using the GIPS VideoEngine for limited 1-to-1 video chats, this opens up room for Yahoo! to expand to video conferencing and game-related video applications.
So far this year Skype published its home-grown SILK wideband audio codec, Google bought On2 for its video codecs, the telecom industry held its first conferences on "HD telephony," Microsoft released a bandwidth-consuming HD webcam, and Yahoo! boosted the quality of its video codecs. Moore’s Law and mobile broadband seem to be pulling industry to higher fidelity.
Screenshots and comments:
Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 1 of 4 – Welcome to Yahoo! Messenger – Typical Install
"Typical Install" includes everything: two browser add-ins, setting Yahoo.com to your home page, and making Yahoo! your default search engine.
Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 1 of 4 – Welcome to Yahoo! Messenger – Custom Install
Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 2 of 4 – License Agreement and Terms
Progress messages set expectations and guide users to features they may not discover on their own.
Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message – "Keep Friends at your Fingertips"
Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message – "A better video and voice experience"
Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message – "Continue the conversation on your phone"
Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 4 of 4 – Installation is complete!
Yahoo! Messenger 10 – Login panel
It’s a loooong panel.
Import Contacts
The import contacts wizard suffers from the Password Antipattern, asking you to trust Yahoo! with your logins to other services. Most of the sites Yahoo! imports contacts from support OAuth.
Still no contact import from other Yahoo! properties like Delicious, flickr, and upcoming. Or from Skype.
Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup – 1 of 3 – Microphone
Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup – 2 of 3 – Speaker
Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup – 3 of 3 – Camera
Goofy face not included.
Yahoo! Messenger 10 Home Page
A Messenger "home page" isn’t new. This design keeps the distracting advertising apart from news and tools.
The Yahoo! Mail tab again shows messaging media are converging experiences, just as Web Messenger is part of Yahoo! web mail and the Yahoo! home page.
Global IP Solutions Powers The New Yahoo! Messenger Video Calling
New Video Call Feature Available for Everyone on Yahoo! Messenger
San Francisco — August 24, 2009 — GlobalIP Solutions (Oslo Børs: GIPS) announced today that Yahoo! Messenger, a leader in real-time communications with more than 133 million users worldwide, is using GIPS VideoEngine™ to enable new high-quality video calling with the launch of Yahoo! Messenger 10.
Since early 2006, GIPS has provided the underlying voice technology for Yahoo! Messenger, allowing friends, family and colleagues to communicate. Now with the addition of the video calling feature, everyone on Yahoo! Messenger can enjoy video calls enabled by GIPS VideoEngine for superior sound, picture quality and user experience.
“With the launch of Yahoo! Messenger 10, we’re allowing people to instantly communicate with friends and family around the world through new interactive and social features like video calls,” said Dave Merriwether, senior director of Yahoo! Messenger. “The GIPS VideoEngine enables us to provide the Yahoo! Messenger community with the best video experience possible. Now people can enjoy full-screen, face-to-face chats with friends and family at no cost, in the familiar Yahoo! Messenger environment.”
“Yahoo! Messenger is the leading communication platform that provides people with the greatest choice to stay connected to one another through text IM, PC-based calling, mobile text messaging and now video calling,” said Emerick Woods, GIPS’ Chief Executive Officer. “We’re proud to work with Yahoo! to deliver a truly differentiated high quality video experience for the hundreds of millions of people on Yahoo! Messenger around the world,” added Woods.
When the phrase "phone sex" becomes "skype sex," you’re hearing a cultural phenomenon go mainstream.
This is great for Skype.
Nearly every technology gets used for sex when it becomes
cheap or free,
reliable, and
many people have access.
Skype is far past that tipping point.
What attracts lovers to Skype are the very things that make Skype attractive to a grandmother vidding her grandkids. Free, high audio quality, video quality at full screen, chat and presence for arranging calls, agile bandwidth management, privacy, and interruption management.
The bedroom is the last part of the home to get technology, and Skype is winning its way through that door.
Downsides.
Skype Spam.I’m tired of sex spam in Skype chats, IM adverts for webcam sex sites. Beyond the rude interruptions of SPIM (messaging spam), they cheapen the world’s perception of my favorite conversation channel.
Skype Prime limits. Skype forbid selling "adult, sexual or pornographic" services through its Skype Prime terms of service. Skype’s own brand is cute and wholesome. Prime’s beta protects that image and avoids criminal issues by keeping the service family friendly.
Harassment.Women often "decline to state" their sex in Skype profiles. This sometimes prevents unwanted attention. Dina Mehta‘s landmark report, SkypeMe Eve, showed the dramatic difference between the number of stranger approaches received by men and women.
Opportunity.
I occasionally follow adult industry information technology. In many respects they lead the Internet by a year or two.
They drove the inventions of payment systems for phone calls and for Internet commerce, long before Skype Prime, PayPal and Amazon.
They drove innovation in video distribution and cheap video production back in the VHS days and later in the early webcam and pre-torrent download days.
They pioneered bandwidth management and traffic analysis.
If you talk with young adult performers today, so many of them have sysadmin skills and talk about Ruby on Rails and CDNs and SEO and all the other geekery that boosts the right traffic, keep operations up, and keep site costs down.
Skype’s technology doesn’t offer the right connections for integration into today’s commercial sex services. Skype would need to offer:
Pseudonymity. Privacy is important in commercial sex services.
Voice, video, and IM gateways. To pipe video between Skype users and the hosted media-stream management systems that route stored and live video.
Payment system integration. So you can pay, confidentially but reliably, with Skype credits.
Talking dirty pays well, as you’d expect in an US$18 billion industry. I expect to see the Skype network interop with adult businesses as the technologies and markets mature. If landline and mobile phone companies, ISPs, web hosting and payment services do business with adult service providers, why not Skype?
People using Skype for sex among themselves affects the sex industry. It raises expectations for quality and personal engagement. It lowers expectations for cost and redefines speed and convenience of setting up a video call. Perhaps most important: Skype sex is market evidence that adult IT providers trust, spurring entrepreneurship in two-way video chat technology.
Summing up.
So people’s love lives are joining the rest of their onlives. And Skype is just the latest utility to bring people closer together. Saint Valentine would be proud that Skype serves Cupid.
Have a lovely Valentine’s Day weekend. Skype someone you love.
Join the Skype 6.X Text Chat Room