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.
UPDATE: WHOOPS! Financial Times says EU Commission will approve deal, no strings. I guess it still managed to slip through. “Competition reviews are still under way in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia and Taiwan.”
Less than 100 hours from Europe ruling on the Microsoft-Skype purchase, Skype’s Jean-Jacques Sahel shareda Plum report on the economic value of an “open Internet.” (pdf). It’s an argument for net neutrality, including mobile net neutrality. Sahel’s post is Skype asking regulators to protect Skype’s access to the Internet from companies with the power to harm that access. I believe in net neutrality too. Skype wants government protection from powerful carriers but is struggling to avoid similar obligations of access, openness, and giving back as it finds its own power.
Decentralization of power was at the heart of the Internet’s design and architecture so the net would survive a nuclear attack. "Network neutrality" is a way of repeating that principle. It is unhealthy for the Internet when companies further down the IP stack exploit their power and play favorites among users from higher up the stack.
They are willing to disrupt landline and mobile operators, but unwilling to enable public services like e911, fund relay services for the hearing or vision impaired, or contribute to funds for improving Internet access.
They are eager to distribute Skype by bundling software with Microsoft products, but are unwilling to do so in a way that offers a level playing field to rivals.
They are open to API integration with friends of Microsoft like Facebook and, presumably, Microsoft’s divisions, but they burden their developer program and APIs with untenable terms of service, prohibiting use of their network by use, location, and device and requiring prior approval of any app using their network.
A measure of oversight, ensuring responsible use of power, is fully within the mandate of those approving the acquisition.
Some, like my friend Jim Courtney, worry the EU has been ineffective, citing their failure to protect Netscape from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in the late 1990s browser wars. Maybe.
Ben Lilienthal suggests switching costs are lower with Skype, so their power may not be as absolute. Sure, but Skype is not a personal data portability champion.
Many want Skype to play fair. Alon Cohen IM’d he’d want Skype to “Support 911, collect and pay taxes like everyone else, or stop offering PSTN phone numbers. (Gov can remove the taxes, which will be just as fine from my perspective). Open up to SIP, provide every Skype with a phone number or URI accessible to other companies..”
So what does Skype’s post, “The open Internet: platform for growth. The open Internet is an essential platform for growth and benefits for all, including telecom operators: it has to be safeguarded” really mean? Regulate Skype and it will cost jobs. Really?
Here’s what the Europe could do:
Have Skype be a fair platform provider, enable third-parties to plug their own software and hardware into the Skype network, preserve consumer choice, support citizen safety like other phone companies, let your users leave with their phone numbers and data, support local and regional consumer rights, tilt the balance toward personal power over state power in this transnational Internet, and collect taxes. Specifically, quoting from my earlier post:
Microsoft must expose to the developer community all those plumbing features that make the Skype network so effective on the same basis that Skype and the Microsoft app developers receive access.
Divide Skype departments between the communications infrastructure and the app layer. Make them operate as two separate businesses.
Compel the Skype Network business to treat all customers at least as well as it treats Microsoft and Skype Apps Division customers.
Mandate “platform network neutrality” where bits from third-party apps travel through Skype’s network as well as bits from Skype’s own apps.
Skype must publish protocols so anyone can connect whatever software or service they like to Skype’s network so long as that end point doesn’t harm the network.
Skype cannot tax, register or otherwise control end users or third-parties connecting to the network.
Require compliance with emergency service access laws and rules, subject to user opt-out and local law.
Promote comparable third-party communication products on Microsoft platforms as least as well as you promote Skype.
Prohibit restrictions on bundling third-party Skype-compatible products with Microsoft products.
Require compliance with emergency service access laws and rules, subject to user opt-out and local law.
Skype must accept the transfer of a customer’s existing phone numbers to Skype’s service.
Skype must enable customers to transfer of a Skype-connected phone number to a competing network.
Skype should not be allowed to take away company phone numbers once in service.
Skype must let third-parties extract all customer created and co-created data on behalf of users.
Forbid Skype from banning “class action” suits by customers in its terms of service.
Compel Skype to report statistics on government requests by type and country of origin, the way Google does.
Compel Skype to promptly notify users when they are being surveilled or requests for information about their activities have been demanded by authorities. This should be subject to the laws of the country where the customer claims citizenship. So a US or Chinese government agency could not order Microsoft to spy on the conversations of a French and German national without the consent of the French and German governments.
Require that Skype APIs and clients disclose to users the jurisdictions of their contacts. You can only make informed choices about whom to talk to or not, what to say or not, if you can assess the consequences.
Compel Skype to collect fees and taxes from its customers as required of telephone operators. At a minimum, contribute to the fund that pays for relay services for the deaf and blind.
It’s time for Skype to step up.
Corporate citizenship comes with benefits. This is a rare moment to review, renew, revise and modernize the duties that come with that privilege. The United States missed its moment. Will Europe seize theirs?
Skype was all promise in 2003. Now it is achievement. They are no longer the tiny underdog fighting the phone companies. They are a billion dollar a year business with a thousand employees serving nearly two hundred million people 255 billion of minutes of live conversation every year, rounding slightly. They’ve pulled so much hard currency from national phone companies that Russia’s Chamber of Commerce declared Skype an enemy of the state. They’ve changed consumer behavior and become the default way to talk across borders for anyone with Internet access.
When should regulators consider this a threat?
Now, when an ounce of prevention matters most.
Microsoft wants to multiply Skype’s reach and impact. Microsoft seeks to combine Skype with its other communications properties and bring realtime communication to its non-communication products. Skype, along with Nokia, completes Microsoft’s vision for the Windows Phone operating system. We’ll see Skype inside Microsoft games, Lync business phones, Bing click-and-call adverts, Dynamics call center solutions, Office, Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer.
As huge as Skype is, they could be ten times bigger in a few years with Microsoft’s help. $10B in revenue, 2 billion users, trillions of minutes of live conversation. That comes with market power.
US regulators cleared the deal. A decision by EU authorities is days away.
Who is affected?
At least one Italian VoIP company is reported opposing the deal, per EurActiv. Messagenet asked the authorities to require Microsoft not to bundle Skype with Windows and to compel interop with other Internet presence, IM, telephony, and video chat services.
Skype for Windows 5.5update (5.5.0.117) adds support for Microsoft Windows 8. via Raul Liive. Skype for Windows 5.5.0.119 fixed a few bugs and updated the Click-to-Call feature for new browsers. Get it.
Or jump right to Skype for Windows 5.6 (5.6.0.105) to get a few improvements for new users, for screen sharing, and some UI tweaks, and now “in call advertising.” New, improved distractionware inside.
Skype for iPadand Skype for iPhone users see ads. “Advertising will be shown to users that do not have Skype Credit, a calling subscription or premium subscription.” #SkypeProtectionMoney.Christian Zibreg writes “As most people don’t use Skype Credit, we imagine rubbing their nose into the upgrade offering will be annoying, to say the least. Instead of up-selling us to a paid service, can we please get an elegant interface instead?” Tim Barribeau thinks “while there are some very useful new features in this version, there’s one big, stinking bad one: ads. … Advertising? Oh hell no.” Tom Keating isn’t worried about mobile ads.
Does advertising break Skype’s brand promises?SkypeSedator by eitarosan “automatically closes the Skype Home Popup Window and keeps itself in the Skype Process to continually check and close the popup, whenever it appears” in Skype for Windows. via Stadt-Bremerhaven. Another stab at it is KillSkypeHome by Andrew Worcester. “This script is designed to start with windows, kill the Skype Home window when it finds it, then closes itself so it no longer uses any system resources. For those of you who don’t leave skype running all the time, I’ve added “Persistent mode” which keeps KSH running and watching for Skype Home to pop up.” Instructions for KillSkypeHome. Try at your own risk.
Skype published new user activity stats from June 2011. 65 million people sign in to Skype daily. 700 million minutes daily in Skype-to-Skype calls. 30 million minutes of SkypeOut calls daily. 300 million minutes of Skype video calls daily. Ratios (rounded): 42% of Skype-to-Skype calls include video. 4.1% Freemium rate (minutes paid vs. minutes free). This is a snapshot. What are the year-to-year trends?
Skype Support Network (formerly Skype’s forums) added @skypesupport for Twitter users, for problems solved in 140 characters or less. Nicely active and responsive.
OPSWAT reported market share of installed Windows instant messenger apps for 2011Q2 (pdf). With Windows Live Messenger at 40.67% and Skype at 27.39%, that would put Microsoft’s post-acquisition share of the desktop side of the market north of 68%. Should this affect the EC’s merger approval? Does this market consolidation justify anti-trust restrictions?
The report is incomplete on a few fronts.
OPSWAT’s data source is specific to Windows desktops. So it leaves out web IM services like Google Talk, Mac clients like iChat, tablet apps like Skype for iPad and mobile IM clients like Skype for Android.
It also wouldn’t register the millions of Facebook chat browser extensions connecting to the Skype network, newly released since the report.
Microsoft’s other IM clients – MSN Messenger and Office Communicator – are not listed at all. Defunct or not reported?
The measurements appear to be biased toward Europe and the Americas since products like Tencent’s QQ, with roughly four times Skype’s active user base, are dramatically undercounted.
Ignore nuance: Just look at that huge block of red. Roughly two out of three IM clients will be Microsoft’s. What does that mean for consumers? To competitors?
Does the desktop IM market still matter? Yes.
Desktop IM has been Skype’s gateway drug for eight years. It was the most straightforward way to bring friends in to your contact list and download the codecs and other software needed for voice and video. Ringing, alerting and other attention-grabbers make realtime desktop apps successful.
That is changing. Standalone desktop IM apps will lose share over the next three years to browser, tablet and mobile apps. HTML5 and WebRTC are becoming real and platform makers are baking live calling into browsers and operating systems.
For now, desktops remain how most people IM most of the time. And Microsoft will soon own that market.
Jim Courtney has a complete report on the European Commission’s review of the merger. News early next month but Jim works through how they’ll get there. Think the Commish will call for public comment? Is Microskype good for telecoms competition in Europe? What do Europe’s big telcos have to say? Is Skype a bigger threat on its own or with Microsoft’s backing?
Mobile operator Three partnered with design studio B-Reel to bring the high-touch experience of in-store selling to the efficiency of centralized service. Three Sweden calls the service 3LiveShop, a blend of call center software, CRM, video calling, multitouch user interfaces, heads-up display, and in-store retail culture. It looks gorgeous.
Conversion rates in retail stores are very high, and are painfully lower in online stores. The Fireclick Index reports 74% of online shoppers abandon carts with products before checkout; only 2.3% of shoppers buy. This adds up when the lifetime value of a customer is high and switching costs are low.
Three things inspire me.
That a large phone company executive gave real budget to such a crazy idea and let it come to market. Was this a corporate culture hack or the product of a vibrant innovation system?
That the design process focused on both users: the sales rep and the customer. Too often design favors one or ignores the other.
That the results found human eye contact and rapport were as crucial to success as navigating all the information overload. Video is the real value add, building trust and keeping attention. Touch means operators can respond quickly, within the timeframe of a live conversation.
Here’s hoping a future phase gives some of the touch-screen magic to the customer, for some deep co-creation and collaboration. And that the Swedes get the go ahead to roll this out to the rest Three.
P.S. They built the user experiences in Adobe Flash. Why not Skype? Skype is already a partner with Three.
First, Skype requires each party to a call to use Skype-provided identities. That just doesn’t work for walk-in-off-the-street relationships. Selling starts off anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) for both the customer and sales assistant until you are ready to pay.
Second, today’s Skype doesn’t offer a way to build a video call into a browser-centered retail experience. Even if the developers chose to build the CRM station with SkypeKit, the customer would still have to download a full Skype client or a customized SkypeKit app. That’s serious friction, an unwanted step.
Third, early versions of SkypeKit’s private beta license requires you to share business secrets with Skype about your use of SkypeKit, and give Skype veto power over release of your “Plugged-into-Skype” product or service. That’s a lot of outside control to cede when you can easily, cheaply choose other tools.
Skype Access is a little known feature of Skype. It lets you buy Wi-Fi access by the minute from more than five million hotspots. Access’s two selling points: pay by the minute only for what you need, and pay with Skype credits at 19 cents a minute (US$11.40/hour). Skype Access is free in Spain this week in honor of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Access partners include BT Openzone (UK), Fon, M3 Connect (Germany), Row 44 (in-flight), Skyrove (South Africa), Spectrum Interactive (UK), Tomizone (Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific ), Vex (South America). Skype ran promotions like this before in other markets.
Experiment with helping your customers visualize and act on their non-Skype social updates in the Skype context. New contextual conversation triggers from outside of Skype should foster better relationships and more, longer, better conversations.
Expand SkypeWeb‘s presence service to also return mood messages where privacy settings permit.
Start talks with Ping.fm, Comcast Plaxo and others who can help you pipe Skype’s updates through the social web.
Test the effect of bringing workplace updates (from Yammer, SAP Friend Optimizer, Microsoft SharePoint, for example) into Skype on chat, conferencing and other calling behavior.
There’s an emerging role for Personal Data Stores (some people call it a personal data locker or data bank) that finds your information, collects it, and makes it easier for you to manage your relationships with the sites/services/apps/orgs that use or have custody of your data.
The Money Metaphor
One analog for the Personal Data Store is the bank where you store your money and keep it safe. They help you:
get your money from other places
put it to work passively with as they loan it out on your behalf and pay you interest
pay others with your money through transfers, credit cards, EFTs, checking
understand and manage your money’s states, flows, and allocations with metadata, reports, analysis and alerts
comply with tax and other government authorities.
Continuing the bank analogy, vendors like Skype may take some of your money and hold it for you but that doesn’t make them a bank. Their core business isn’t helping you with your money. They just need to be responsible with your money and their own bank should work well with all of their customers’ banks.
The money metaphor for personal data works pretty well. People need institutions to act on our behalf, to be beholden to us for the security and utility of our personal information assets.
Back to Skype. 2008′s 28 “What Skype Means To Me” posts showed Skype bringing families closer together and helping people work remotely were more important than Skype’s disruption of the telecom industry. Skype’s true purpose, its long term identity, will not be the new phone company.
There are two roles Skype-The-Company would play in this. The first is Social Peripheral Vision Provider. An SPPV provides a view into what is going on in the world through the lens of your interests and the people you know. You see this in desktop apps like TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop and mobile apps like those from twitter, facebook, and foursquare. Consider this a role between social surveillance and social sousveillance.
The second role is as a Personal Data Store, helping Skype users control, manage, and employ their own profiles, updates, and the records of their conversations. None of the major internet or financial institutions does this well or at a broad consumer or business level. Google provides a measure of identity consolidation through the Google Profile. Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault are substantial health PD projects.
Skype should be a PDS for your online data. Skype should help you:
get your data from other places
put it to work for you through de-personalized aggregation
“Sign in with Skype”, authenticating my identity to other services
field anonymized requests for contact (“someone at IBM would like to speak with someone like you at Skype Journal”)
share your data with other services on request (“LinkedIn is checking for your latest contact information”)
facet how you present yourself so your Warcraft avatar is different from your LinkedIn profile photo
contextualize your social graph’s activity (“these seven work contacts are in this meeting”, “your Tallinn contacts are leaving the office for the night”, “you haven’t checked in with your usual Monday morning people”)
withdraw from other services, removing my data thoroughly
Here are a few rights that users might want to be able to secure for their data, as well as some privileges they could provide to vendors:
Reciprocity – That vendors who access a particular type of data also agree to reciprocally provide updates to that data. For example, I might let Amazon access my media history records if they agree to update it with my past and future media purchases at Amazon.
Non-propagation – No further distribution of the data beyond the specific services authorized. No reselling to third-parties. No re-use by other divisions.
Non-persistence – No retention of the data beyond the session of the current transaction. For example, an emergency room physician can access my personal medical history while I’m under his or her care, but he or she can’t store that data on any internal systems.
Anonymous Persistence – Data can be retained, but only if it is suitably anonymized and disassociated from the individual user.
Editable Persistence – Data may be retained by the vendor, but it must be editable and deletable by the user.
Anonymized Analytic Rights – Vendor has the right to query the PD at a later point for business or operational analysis, as long as that analysis ensures anonymity after the fact.
Doc Searls added to the Cluetrain Manifesto‘s “Markets are Conversations” premise a tenth chapter: “Markets are Relationships.” eBay’s instincts were good when they bought Skype, a conversation enabler, to make eBay’s markets better. Skype’s cloud infrastructure could bring great power to their user’s side of business relationships and rich, trusted customer data to the vendors’ side. This could easily be the line of business that outpaces SkypeOut as a Skype’s top income source.
Rumor: Michael Arrington suspects minority Skype owner Andreessen Horowitz is buying Foursquare. I love 4sq. Robert Scoble has 8 suggestions for building more 4sq consumer/platform value as Yelp copies 4sq features. Meanwhile, I can’t wait for an enterprise version, the better to check in with colleagues, clients, suppliers, partners. The location-based-workplace is here, waiting to be updated, searchable, social, and easy to navigate. LBS checkins should do wonders for triggering face-to-face work conversations, adding people virtually to f2f conversations, and plain old space-shifting virtual conversations. A little Skype integration, foursquare?
Steve Jobs announced iOS4 and iPhone 4 at the Apple WWDC. They should make a better platform for iSkype: faster processor, longer battery life, front (VGA) and back (HD) video cameras, two microphones with noise reduction, multitasking, an improved display and now support for Bluetooth keyboards. This could mean better performance from Skype, the ability to stay connected to the Skype network all the time, even better audio than what Skype’s SILK codec offers, touch typing text chat, and Skype video calling.
Apple announced FaceTime, iPhone 4-to-iPhone 4 video calling. The spec for FaceTime is based on some open protocols and Apple will submit the suite to standards bodies. The rumor that Skype wanted to use FaceTime was downgraded to Skype noticing it.
ooVooreset its pricing for multiparty video calling. $0.10 per minute per person (e.g. $18/hour for three people above the two free included in the service) or $20 per month for six-way calling. Clues to Skype for iPhone’s mobile video charges? ooVoo has to pay for expensive servers and bandwidth since every stream goes through its servers at least once. Unlike ooVoo, Skype distributes its iPhone and desktop video streams peer-to-peer. Skype can undercut ooVoo ten-fold and still make money.
Skype hiredRick Osterloh from Motorola to head consumer product management. This includes desktop software (netbooks? tablets?), Skype.com, and Skype’s paid products (SkypeIn, SkypeOut, SMS, voicemail, WiFi access, etc.).
Verizon will put Skype on non-smart phones too, according to a news release. "Skype mobile from Verizon Wireless, currently available on 12 different smartphones, will expand to more handsets later this year, including several 3G Multimedia phones." Good for Skype: a lower price-point means more users will have access to Skype. via Florin
Skype will redesign its Skype mobile UI to pursue international callers. From the same release: "In addition to Spanish, Skype mobile will also be available in Korean and simple Chinese, providing more flexibility and the ability to communicate with people around the world. Skype mobile customers will soon see an enhanced user interface with a drop-down menu with flags for international dialing."
Juniper Research predicts 100 million mobile VoIP users by 2012, half in the North America and Europe. An analyst said "we also anticipate that several more traditional operators will have joined 3UK and Verizon in the US and developed relationships with mobile VoIP players such as Skype."
People are using Skype from conception to the old age home
Telemedicine was attacked in today’s Telegraph Herald, covering Dubuque, Iowa. A right-to-life advocate is afraid out of town doctors will prescribe RU486 to women in local Planned Parenthood clinics through a Skype-like videoconference.
Kids are using Skype for video play dates. In a few years it will be Skype pajama parties. Then Skype sex. I saw a difference between watching people shoot pool through a video monitor and, as I did tonight, watching a pool game in a local tiki bar. As vivid as the video gets, the view is frozen. When I move my head, my body, perspectives change and the part of my brain that thinks spatially tells me this is real, not a painting. So let’s be sure to keep kids catching colds from other kids, immersing them in face to face reality along with skyped conversations.
Meanwhile, check out Skypito: "Kids can finally safely chat on the Internet. Strangers and bad guys cannot reach them anymore." Uses Skype, naturally. Free, sponsored by EasyBits. This follows the classic blend of server based community and desktop based Skype plug-in. Meanwhile CNN readers who’ve never seen kids play together virtually objected strongly to video play dates.
The founders of Helsinki startup Flowdock say you need online/collaborative services to focus on teams, combining the real time aspect of Google Wave and the simplicity of Yammer. You need to be able to stay in close touch with your team without complexity while organizing the team’s data. On YouTube.
[Adam] Anders and his partner in Sweden, super-producer Peer Astrom (Celine Dion, Madonna), work on an intense timeline, with about seven days from music approval to show taping to producing songs. Their teams work across time zones, around the clock, arranging, tracking and mixing — multitasking to produce up to 11 songs in a single week. “We use the time change to our advantage, so when I go to bed he keeps working, and vice versa — basically, 24 hours a day, six days a week,” says Anders.
The team communicates via Skype and transfers files over the Internet. “At one point, I had three studios in Sweden going, I had three here and one in New York, at the same time,” says Anders, who records vocals at Chalice in Los Angeles. “I’m recording, then checking in every half hour on Skype, with all of the other things going on at the same time. It’s pretty crazy.
Our worldwide creative classfollows the sun the way large companies position teams across the globe. Unlike large institutions, creatives assembles their teams as needed, through personal and professional connections.
Guest post by Shahul Hameed, broadband analyst at VAC Media. Shahul reports on UK broadband provider performance, technologies, and markets for VAC’s Broadband Suppliers site.
Will instant downloads ever happen here? Can we play online and watch videos without interruption? We have been expecting these changes with our UK broadband services a long time.
South Korea, for example, is the first country in the world to bring fiber optic cable connections to every school nationwide. Online games are a national event.
The maximum broadband speed offered in UK is 50 Mbps while the average monthly bill shoots up to 10 times higher than other countries. Expert analysis claims houses in most part of the country still connect to exchanges using old BT copper wires. Copper wires do not have better data carrying capacity compared to fiber optic cables. Moreover, the longer the wires are from the exchange, the slower the speed will be. The fiber optic cables have been laid in major cities while other parts of the country still wait for network expansion.
The Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) recently announced that the UK is worse on broadband penetration by standard measures. They also reported that one in every five users (21%) express dissatisfaction with broadband speeds. 16% are dissatisfied with the price of the plan and 13% with the reliability and performance of the connection. Almost 26% of customers say broadband providers set a wrong expectation about connection speed.
Some of the major factors affecting speeds include:
Line capacity of the ISP’s
Cable quality
Distance between the residents and exchange
Awareness about the speed of the broadband is mixed. Many people are well informed about the factors affecting speed and choose the fastest ISP, while almost 40% are unaware of the head line speed. Broadband suppliers continue to mislead the public regarding download speeds and tag customers with higher prices. This was also reported and criticized by Ofcom this year.
The UK Government should speed up the process of laying fiber optic cables and increase the coverage of wireless networks. Else we will remain in the 26th position or fall further when it comes to the quality of broadband service in the world, while competitors like Japan and South Korea are future ready.
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).
Join the Skype 6.X Text Chat Room