Research Topics in Collaboration

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?

I made a list and called it Skype Journal - Research Topics in Collaboration (not attempting any creativity there). The research areas showed four themes:

• Talk is a component within larger relationships
• 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.

Skype Journal - Research Topics in Collaboration - 2009q4

 

 

 

tags: skype, microsoft, google, ge, collaboration, research, science

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Skype for Windows 4.0 Goes Gold; Improved UI, Audio and Video Performance

Over the past eight months 1.2 million Skype users have participated in the Skype for Windows 4.0 beta program (stage 1, stage 2, stage 3). During this beta period, not only current user feedback was sought but also feedback from new users installing Skype for the first time. The goal was to provide a user interface that was more intuitive while encouraging users to go beyond simply voice calls to experience and use chat and video conversations. Today Skype is announcing the Gold release of Skype 4.0 for Windows. From the download page:

We've built this brand new Skype so you can have the conversations that make a difference to you, every day. It's easy to use, plus step-by-step guides help you get started.

While most of the new features have been revealed during the beta period, Skype's marketing will focus on three key features:

• New user interface; with over 25% of Skype-to-Skype calls involving video this new release has been designed with a focus on improving the video call user experience.
• Improved call quality: Skype 4.0 for Windows incorporates Skype's new SILK codec whose features are discussed in a separate post today. Bottom line is a crisp, crystal clear audio experience, yet only half the network bandwidth of other codecs is required to support a voice call.
• Bandwidth management: a new bandwidth manager has been developed with the goal of improving overall call performance by adapting, in real time, to degraded or low speed network conditions, such as those caused by excessive packet loss and/or jitter.

The new user interface also has taken into account factors that encourage users to explore Skype beyond voice calling. Incorporating beta user feedback Skype has found that the new UI is driving up adoption rates for Instant Messaging, file transfer and video. When you open a contact window launching a voice, chat or video conversation requires a single click on the respective voice ("Call"), chat or video button. The associated text pane tracks not only chat messages but also voice and video call detail information (launch time, end time) as well as file transfer information. And, as in the past with chat, the entire record is all archived on your local PC for future recall.

Other features: You can choose to view your Skype activity in one larger window or in individual "conversation" windows. During a call a drop down menu on the "call audio control bar" provides quick access to making any necessary audio or video settings. Single click buttons allow you to quickly change or add conversation modes to adapt to the context of the conversation. A wizard provides assistance with testing audio and video settings. During their testing they found that these features drove new users to more quickly experience chat and video while there was an increase in usage of these modes by legacy users.

On-the-fly the bandwidth manager can adjust both video and audio transmission by making real time adjustments to parameters such as video resolution, frames-per-second or audio bandwidth. to ensure an ability to maintain a basic level of communication while enduring these conditions. When combined with SILK's reduced network bandwidth requirements, the overall goal is to improve the overall user experience with minimum or no user intervention required.

Two changes;

• The SkypeMe! status button has been removed as a result of its tendency to be used for spamming and other forms of unwanted calls. (Of course you also still have the option to only allow callers in your Contact list to call you.). Along with this Skype has introduced "abuse reporting" which is monitored by Skype personnel for dealing with undesirable calling activity.
• While you can still participate in Public Chat sessions launched or joined from Skype 3.8, there is still no ability to launch or join a Public Chat from Skype 4.0 for Windows. This is my primary complaint about the new user interface. We have had a Skype 4.x Public Chat discussion ongoing since May, 2007; it has provided an interesting dialogue amongst Skype users and Skype personnel, including some feedback on features in Skype 4.0. And it has supported many other informal "water fountain" conversations amongst special interest communities of Skype users. Skype for Windows Product Manager Mike Bartlett claimed yesterday, during an interview, that Skype was reviewing how to embark on "public conversations" in today's messaging world where services such as Twitter and Friend Feed also provide ongoing dialogues. However, Skype Public Chat has its own "space" in terms of user community; it needs to be brought back as soon as possible.

Over the next few weeks, with more experience using Skype 4.0 for Windows we may cover some features in more detail. In the meantime you can download it here. We look forward your feedback in the Comments.

Yesterday Skype went past 16 million concurrent users around 1830 GMT. It will be interesting to monitor both the concurrent user number and Hudson Barton's "real user" indicator as Skype 4.0 for Windows installations grow over the next couple of weeks..

Of course, the best news is that Skype-to-Skype calls (including multi-party calls), chat and video calling remain free. And there are calling plan subscriptions available for low cost calling to landlines worldwide.

From the Release Notes:

• feature: New style when copying and pasting text in an instant message (text quoting)
• featue: Video Call in separate window
• improvement: Skype now creates thumbnails of display pictures
• change: Get more ringtones and custom sounds link removed from options panel
• change: Removed display bandwidth usage option
• change: Dial pad will be opened automatically on call to landlines or mobiles
• change: Increased minimum window size in compact mode

Other Posts:

• Product Manager Mike Bartlett: Skype 4.0 - It's All Yours
  
• Mike Bartlett Discusses Skype 4.0 Beta on Squawk Box
• Skype's videos about the 4.0 beta limited release
• Mike Bartlett Comments on Skype 4.0 User Feedback
• Mike Bartlett on Skype 4.0 Beta 1 Feedback

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LotusLive: Level 1 on the Skype Journal Site Skypification Maturity Model

I first documented the Skype Journal Site Skypification Maturity Model in November 2007. Skype Journal's Jim Courtney analyzed IBM's Lotusphere announcements. LotusLive services have a maturity of 1 on the SJSSMM scale of zero/zed to 4.

Here's what I mean.

Skype Journal Site Skypification Maturity Model

Level 0: None
What's Skype?

Level 1: Static
Storing Skype names and Skype-linking Phone Numbers

Storing and linking people’s Skype names is one part. The other is to offer SkypeOut links for PSTN phone numbers.

Tech: Skype’s “skype:” html protocol to launch Skype from a browser link.

Level 2: Dynamic
Integrating Skype Presence

Is this person available for a call now? You can show a person’s Skype presence in a web page.

You can also use presence information to inform other site behavior. For example, you might aggregate presence data for a team to create collective presence scores.

Tech: Polling Skype’s web presence services

Level 3: Peering
Syncing Skype Profile, Social Graph, and History Data

Skype clients are information rich. You can use that data to enrich profiles, enhance your site’s social graph (who knows whom, how, and how they interact), collect communication histories (who talked to whom, when, for how long), and import chat archives.

You can keep your site's data synced with Skype's by refreshing active connections with your Skype client.

Tech: Using Skype’s client APIs to log in on behalf of a user. With that access you can both read and write to the client, and trigger conversations. At large scale, you will need to operate a Skype client farm.

Level 4: Transactional
Integrating Skype Business/Commerce Services

Skype offers some access to its payment services. PamFax is an example of this, where customers pay with Skype credits for sent faxes.

Tech: Skype publishing and DRM client and web service APIs.

The LotusLive product falls smack dab into Level 1: Static. Just to be clear, although you can associate a Skype name with a colleague, partner, or customer within LotusLive, and while you can launch a Skype call from a LotusLive web page, LotusLive and Skype are not integrated. Repeat: Not Integrated.

• The Skype call happens outside of LotusLive.
• You cannot add people to an ongoing call from LotusLive.
• You cannot trigger a LotusLive session from within a Skype call.
• You cannot mix LotusLive callers and Skype callers.
• If you want a Skype call, all users must have downloaded Skype, created Skype accounts (not the same as your LotusLive account), and be logged in to the Skype network.
• You cannot use LotusLive media assets (presentations, documents) within a Skype call.
• LotusLive has no record that the conversation occurred. No institutional memory, unlike conversations that use LotusLive tools and channels.

It is excellent that you can launch a Skype call or conference call from a LotusLive web page. That's enormously useful, a great first step. But that click passes call-starting data to desktop Skype clients; it's a one way trigger.

We'll have to rewrite the model to include new capabilities Skype Journal expects to emerge from the Skype platform by 2010 year end, including elements of the Social Stack.

• Login Interop. So you can log in to LotusLive using your Skype ID/password (think OpenID).
• IM and file transfer Gateways. So you can participate in a Skype chat even if you don't have Skype installed.
• Voice Gateway – Low Def and Hi Def. So Skype users can talk with non-Skype users.
• Voice Conferencing Gateway – Low Def and Hi Def. Multiparty, using Skype and non-Skype experiences
• Video Conferencing Gateway. So Skype users can join video conferences with people using LotusLive.
• Video Messaging Interop. So you can use Skype video to record messages to people in a LotusLive directory.
• Contact (address book) data sharing, syncing, creation - bidirectional
• Contact Group (team list) data sharing, syncing, creation – bidirectional
• Calendar/Schedule Sync. 

The SJ SSMM helps us assess current Skype readiness and plan a Skype strategic roadmap for our consulting clients.

tags: skype, lotosphere, lotusphere09, ls09, lotusphere2009, lotuslive, skypejournal, sjssmm, interoperability, interop, integration

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Access Your Skype Contacts via Truphone

Over the past few years we have seen the evolution of several conversation communities, some simply employing instant messaging; others employing both instant messaging and voice. Skype is the primary example with its support of IM, voice and video as well as auxiliary features such as file sharing (and, as announced tonight, basic screen sharing) but we are also seeing these services diffuse into Google, via GTalk's voice and chat capability, MSN Live via Live Messenger, and, in spite of its trying to define who they are, Yahoo.

Truphone is a mobile voice calling service that I have used for a couple of years from a Nokia N95-1; it became critical in a situation I encountered in Germany two years ago. I have liked both the quality of the voice calls as well as the user interface, especially its use of the device's native address book for initiating a call. While they have had some hiccups with their recent product launches, Truphone has become the leader in providing low cost calling from the iPhone while breaking the carrier barrier via Apple's App Store. I will soon be reporting on Truphone Anywhere for BlackBerry. Now, under recently appointed CEO Geraldine Wilson, Truphone is making a move to grow their user base rapidly by leveraging the user bases of other services.

This evening at the MacWorld Showstoppers event Truphone announced an enhanced Truphone for iPhone providing connectivity to these four conversation communities. Supporting both instant messaging and voice conversations, voice calls to, say, Skype contacts are free provided they go over a WiFi connection. Calls to these communities can also be made over a carrier's 3G network, usually at the cost of a local call. In addition Truphone is providing access to Twitter as one additional messaging service accessible via Truphone's iPhone application.

In my interview this evening with new Truphone CEO Geraldine Wilson, she pointed out:

• Using Skype as an example, Truphone's enhancements set up an appropriate Skype client on a Truphone gateway and complete the call to the Skype contact, taking advantage of Skype's peer-to-peer architecture such that there are no resulting termination charges.
• By introducing instant messaging, Truphone is recognizing the key role IM is taking on in IP-based conversations where a conversation may start over a chat session and migrate to a voice session if deemed appropriate.
• Truphone sees the introduction of these enhancements as a key to building the Truphone user community; Truphone generates revenue through offering low cost calling to/from the landline and mobile PSTN network.
• Truphone is looking at adding BlackBerry and Android to their supported platforms for this service over the next few months. Key here are devices that support an application store in order to make user access to these services simple and trivial.
• To avoid high roaming charges it is recommended that Truphone for iPhone be used either over a WiFi connection anywhere worldwide but only over a user's home country 3G carrier.
• These new features go live on next Monday, January 12.

Some outstanding questions:

• Given that the Truphone application needs to be active for conversations, how will this work when other applications are open? Currently if I have Truphone as the open application on my iPhone, I can receive free Truphone calls and my presence will be indicated to other Truphone for iPhone users if I am in their "Favorites" tab. However, if I am in another iPhone application, I cannot receive "free" Truphone calls over WiFi; nor is my presence indicated to others. I look forward to seeing how the enhanced Truphone handles Instant Messaging when Truphone is not the "open" application on the iPhone. This is where BlackBerry's full multi-tasking capability is a major advantage over the iPhone.
• Calling Skype contacts involves providing your SkypeID and password. What security is in place to maintain the confidentiality of this information. What other security aspects are compromised as a result of placing the calls via a connection to a gateway that supports the caller's Skype client.
• What is Skype's reaction to having Truphone siphon off what could otherwise potentially be SkypeOut revenues while leveraging the Skype user base and using the "free" aspect of Skype? We know Skype is working to launch mobile phone applications, probably this week at CES. With iSkoot and the Skypephone on 3's networks, as we learned at last year's eComm 2008 iSkoot presentation, a portion of carrier revenues are shared between Skype and iSkoot.

A major step forward in making low cost calls worldwide, Truphone's moves once again emphasize that WiFi is becoming an ever growing alternative connection option to making wireless calls. At the same time it will be interesting to see how the business model plays out in a world where the cost of voice calling continues to move towards zero.

GigaOm: Truphone Brings Skype to iPhone and iPod Touch

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Collective Presence Helps Nomads Do The Right Things

Dell wanted to know about "Keeping Productivity High For On The Go Workers" for their Digital Nomads site. Here's my small contribution to the theme.

Presence is a stream of signals you give off. You've seen simple availability presence signals in instant messaging: I'm online, I'm offline, Do Not Disturb. Some of us lifestream what we're doing during the day: I'm in this meeting, I'm catching up on email, I'm making soup. We also give off contextual presence signals: I'm available for lunch on Tuesday if you're a recruiter, my dream date, or someone I know.

Disclosure like this feels strange. At first. And then something unusual happens. We get used to it. It starts to feel familiar. Like being in an open plan office where you overhear small talk, see people come and go. Or having a break room where you catch up with people a little bit here and there.

And then presence becomes useful.

People use our signals. Strangers decide if they should introduce themselves. Colleagues decide when they should interrupt, and for what. And that makes your life better, because the people around you are making better choices about when and how to engage with you.

We use many tools to broadcast our presence. Twitter, blogs, public calendars, job sites, project status systems, IM mood messages. Even simple things like IM and email. So long as the people in your world can easily see your presence and update their own, tool choices don't matter too much.

Presence is a social interaction. You share yours. You consume others'. And through this, you get to know each other in ways that may be more intimate and current than if you were in the same physical office.

Collective presence is what it sounds like. A stream or a place where you can see what a group of people are doing. Where you aggregate your group's presence signals.

Collective presence is a mix of informal, unstructured, casual talk and structured messages. The Europeans in our team are coming online now. The programmers are working through a pre-release checklist. Someone's dealing with a problem today.

Members of a team experience this collective presence through group chats, like IRC's or Skype's persistent chat rooms, or a listserv. At Skype Journal, we augment group chats with RSS aggregators and other software that pull in team member blogs, twitter updates, public calendars, public bookmarks, new photos and illustrations. So all through the day we keep in touch.

Three payoffs:

First, social media and presence tools sustain bonds that help a team know and trust each other.

Second, collective presence cultivates situational awareness. So people make better choices about what is important, what is urgent and what needs resources.

Third, collective presence means you are not alone. When those feelings of isolation kick in, it's easy to drop into the group chat and see what everyone's been up to.

The essence of productivity is choosing the right things to do and doing them. Collective presence makes remote team productivity easier and more immediate.

My toolkit:

• Skype public chats, Skype contact groups
• iGoogle and Google Reader (aggregating news and blog feeds)
• twitter, TwitterBar (so I can post from Firefox), TweetDeck (aggregating tweets), Twype (putting my latest twitter into my Skype mood),
• Yahoo!'s flickr (images), delicious (bookmarks), upcoming (events)
• Google Groups for email lists

See also: Presence evolving, Skype Journal, September 2007. Describes Collective presence, Faceted presence, Presence attributes and dimensions, Presence federation, Presence prediction.

tags: Collective presence, Faceted presence, Presence attributes and dimensions, Presence federation, Presence prediction, presence, skypeweb, social software, social media, collaboration, productivity, work, telework, distance, twype, twitter, twitterbar, tweetdeck

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Alec Saunders Twitters: "Ditching all IM Systems except Skype"!

When I started using Skype more intensively about three years ago, I had been a heavy user of Microsoft's MSN Messenger for several years. But about 18 months ago, I stopped logging into MSN Messenger; none of my contacts were there - or, if they were, they were also on Skype. As for GTalk, well I added a couple of contacts two weeks ago to test out GMail's new voice and video chat feature, so now I'm up to ten contacts on GTalk - and they are also all on Skype. One person still persists in trying to reach me on GTalk these days ... and my BlackBerry catches that - in background.
But when long time acquaintance, well respected blogger and former Microsoft employee Alec Saunders puts up a tweet as shown above, it has to be the ultimate complement to Skype's pervasive worldwide presence.
When you have 370 million accounts (yes, I know there are only 30 to 50 million using Skype over the course of a month), one would suspect that market presence and user base size wins out over any technical disadvantage, such as the lack of XMPP compliance. Sort of places XMPP right up there with SIP - an excellent protocol for interop but it's sort of like the tree falling in the forest - who hears it -at the end user level? And, both SIP and XMPP require business agreements between the linking service providers covering every connection, whether there's revenue or not.
In the IM world, it's a matter of who's available for a conversation? Which service has the highest probability of being able to determine a contact's availability and start a chat, voice call, share a file, send an SMS message or even do a (High Quality) video call? Which service has eight ways of seamlessly carrying out a file transfer?
Alec's one problem in keeping current? He'll have to go back to his BlackBerry to receive Skype IM messages via iSkoot. BlackBerry's background processing capability becomes a very distinct advantage here in the smartphone market. When attending an event in downtown Toronto last night I received an important "good news" Skype chat message on my BlackBerry Bold, while looking up a website the speaker was referencing and following the Twitter feed of one of the organizers.
A more significant challenge for Skype is to generate the marketing that will attract all those of a younger generation (such as my daughter) whose "social networks" are immersed into MSN Messenger as their IM client.
In closing have a look at some of Alec's followup Tweets:
In closing I should also mention that I like to use BlackBerry Messenger for its ability to bypass the Internet for messages that "just have to get there now!" via BlackBerry's unique method for PIN messaging.
Update: An oversight on my part: of course Skype IM also has the hooks to allow Skype chat sessions to proxy for other services. For a classic example check out Twitter4Skype.
Full disclosure: Alec Saunders is author of the Voice 2.0 Manifesto, which is proving itself out in today's dynamic mashup environment - especially when it comes to Communications Enhanced Business Processes. He is CEO of iotum, whose Calliflower Conference Call service is currently being launched. And, much earlier in his career, he was DOS product manger at Microsoft Canada at a time when DOS's memory management feature tried to compete with Quarterdeck's QEMM and the author managed Quarterdeck Canada.

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more sister

by Kurtado
(the power of presence, convenience, affordability, quality to change behavior)

tags: skype, uk, usa, family

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fring iphone buzz

Fring is clearly tapping pent-up demand for access to Skype on mobiles. The enthusiasm for rejoining your Skype network is infectious.

The biggest limits for me: no multichat support (a big part of my onlife), no background processing (like I only live in Skype?). Jim Courtney's hands-on test may dampen your enthusiasm for fring on the iPhone. Have you had a good experience with fring? 

tags: skype, fring, iphone, apple

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Skype refuses British order for emergency dialing

Skype refuses to comply with 999 ruling. Andrea-Marie Vassou quotes a Skype spokesperson:

"At this time, Skype is not complying with Ofcom’s ruling, as we believe that it is not applicable to our software offering and in fact potentially harmful to public safety.”

I don't know enough about UK law to comment on whether the General Conditions of Entitlement for VoIP applies to Skype. Potential harm is straightforward, though.

The issue is data quality and authority. Landlines, and VoIP systems like Vonage that emulate them, have a single location they can report to emergency services.

One person's Skype account, on the other hand, can be in many places at once and anywhere in the world. I could dial 999 from my laptop in Los Angeles but Skype would have no way of knowing my street address or that the call should be routed to LA 911 instead of London 999 operators.

From the Skype and Emergency Services page on Skype.com:

Skype and Emergency Services

An emergency call is perhaps the most important call you will ever make. We care about your safety and want to provide you with complete information about emergency services.

• Skype is little piece of software that enables a rich communications experience - an entirely new way to communicate online. Skype offers affordable prices and innovation that are years ahead of what a traditional phone service offers.
• Skype is not a replacement for your landline or your mobile phone. Skype does not offer you the ability to call emergency services for help if you are in distress.
• When calling 911 for help, mobile phones can identify your location within a 300 meter range and sometimes even closer. This enables emergency service operators to find you or call you back if the call drops. Landline phones will dispatch help to the address you provided when you subscribed to use the phone company’s services.
• If you are a SkypePro or SkypeIn subscriber, using your mobile or landline phone for emergency calls is still required since Skype does not know your physical location and is unable to assist emergency services.

From Skype's Terms of Service:

1.1 No Emergency Calls: More important than anything: please remember that Skype does not support any emergency calls to any type of hospitals, law enforcement agencies, medical care unit or any type of emergency services of any kind. Skype is not a traditional telephone service or a replacement for Your primary telephone service. There are important differences between traditional telephone services and the Products. You need to make additional arrangements in order to access emergency services. It is Your responsibility to purchase, separately from the Products, traditional wireless or fixed line telephone services that offer access to emergency services. If, with Your permission, another user uses Your User Account or the Business Control Panel, it is Your responsibility to inform that user that it is not possible to support or carry emergency calls using the Products.

From the Skype End User License Agreement:

3.6 No Emergency Calls: The Skype Software is not intended to support or carry emergency calls to any type of hospital, law enforcement agency, medical care unit or any other kind of Emergency Service. You acknowledge and agree that: (i) Skype is not required to offer access to Emergency Services under any applicable local and/or national rules, regulation or law; (ii) You must make additional arrangements to access Emergency Services and it is Your responsibility to purchase (separately from the Skype Software), traditional wireless or landline telephone services to obtain such access; and (iii) Skype is not a replacement for Your primary telephone service.

6.2 Specific Disclaimer Of Liability For Emergency Services: SKYPE DOES NOT PROVIDE CONNECTIONS TO EMERGENCY SERVICES VIA THE SKYPE SOFTWARE. NEITHER SKYPE NOR ITS OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES OR AFFILIATES MAY BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGE, OR LOSS, (AND YOU HEREBY WAIVE ANY AND ALL SUCH CLAIMS OR CAUSES OF ACTION), ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO YOUR INABILITY TO USE THE SKYPE SOFTWARE TO CONTACT EMERGENCY SERVICES, AND YOUR FAILURE TO MAKE ADDITIONAL ARRANGEMENTS TO ACCESS EMERGENCY SERVICES IN ACCORDANCE WITH PARAGRAPH 3.6 ABOVE.

What do you think Skype should do?

tags: skype, emergency, 999, 911, e911

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cataclysm

"I'm signed in to Skype but it looks like everyone is offline. Makes me worried about some cataclysmic event I may have missed." -- Rian

A nod to collective presence?

Michael Robertson responds

[A letter by Michael Robertson.]

Phil,

Thanks for the post on Skype Journal about my letter to Skype pointing out the hypocrisy of demanding that the wireless carriers open up their network when Skype will not open their network to receive calls from others. You don't address the core issue about Skype interconnecting with other networks and seem to make excuses about why it's not possible or safe. These protests had no validity 5 years ago when peering was an issue with the major IM networks. Back then AIM and Yahoo used identical excuses about why they could not interconnect which MSN and Google. Now those entities cross connect with each other in several instances.

Gizmo5 uses and fully supports an open standard called SIP which lets callers from different networks connect to each other similar to how emails from different servers are connected to each other. This is how the Gizmo5 network connects with over 250 big and small networks. You might also be surprised to learn that Skype supports SIP already! Skype uses SIP to hand-off calls to the PSTN (the original phone network). Anytime you are using Skype-In or Skype-Out your calls are going from/to your computer using both the SIP and Skype systems. In spite of your questions and concerns below, this unquestionably proves it is not only technically feasible, but secure and practical.

When it is in Skype's best business interest they support SIP. Other times they want to lock out all competing VOIP companies which is why they don't publish a public SIP interface which is what I'm calling for. (You probably know that several companies like Fring and Nimbuzz have reverse engineered the ability to send and receive Skype calls but it is susceptible to breaking or being blocked by Skype.) This is exactly the situation with the FCC letter. Skype wants others to open their networks but Skype won't open theirs. Either you believe companies should be able to choose or you believe everyone should be open. Either argument has validity but toggling between the two positions to fit business justification should be pointed out.

You state in your public defense of Skype's closed system: "How we connect a phone to a mobile network is standardized. How we connect a client to the Skype network is not. How we connect the Skype network to another service is not." I would contend this is inaccurate. There is a standard way that Skype client's connect to a network - they have just chosen not to publish this and their reluctance you believe gives them the right to lock everyone out. (The wireless carriers could of course make the same argument rebuffing Skype.) However to send and receive calls, it is not necessary for Skype to reveal how its entire network work. Rather they are only required to offer a SIP interface which as I mentioned Skype already has it is just not made available to others.

You proposed several questions so let me address them below.

1.  Will you peer IM, video, file transfer, presence, commerce, desktop sharing, conferencing, texting, microblogging, and data channels? Crossing all conversational modes? Exactly whose codecs and protocols should everyone use? Should Skype users downgrade the quality of their voice and video calls to match Gizmo's?

Yes, Gizmo5 will and does peer all conversation types. We use XMPP for text messaging and presence and SIP protocols for voice. We strive to adhere to the standards to insure interoperability with all. Where there are standards we use them and publish them. If we build something that is not to standard we are open to publishing the specifications.

This is "Skype Journal" so I don't expect objective treatment about voice quality but the facts are Skype and Gizmo5 calls will have similar voice quality because both products use the GIPS media engine. This means the code is identical all the core aspects that impact call quality such as jitter protection, echo cancellation, noise protection, etc. See:  http://www.gipscorp.com/default/customers.html

On the video front, Skype does have higher quality video because they implemented On2's proprietary solution called vp7. Gizmo5 chose the open standard called h.264 so that we could interoperate with others doing video calls. In fact, you will see mobile to PC video in the near future suing Gizmo5 because of this technology choice. Gizmo5 would be happy to license On2's technology if that is what is required to interoperate with Skype. Gizmo5 already supports multiple audio/video codecs so adding another one is trivial.

2. Will you require realtime encryption? Strong enough to prevent live intercepts? Will you require all networks to notify users when their conversations are no longer encrypted?

Skype and Gizmo5 have similar approaches. Skype to Skype calls are encrypted as are Gizmo5 to Gizmo5. Anytime someone calls the PSTN (whether on Skype or Gizmo5) those calls are never encrypted. Encryption should be a user choice where appropriate. No, we don't require realtime encryption.  We don't tell others how to run their networks. If others don't run their networks responsibly then users will abandon them.

3. Will you agree to strong user authentication? So users can have confidence in the identity of friends and strangers?

Not sure how this is relevant to peering with Skype. Remember - that's what we're talking about. Users of other VOIP networks being able to call Skype users and receive calls from them. We don't support this, but the fact of the matter is that if it's important to consumers then a network will support it and users can migrate to that service. As it is, users are locked into Skype and have no choice to choose another service if they want to call anyone in the Skype network.

4. Will you (and everyone you peer with) agree on user profile data structures, white page directory services, and directory search interop?

We can't make everyone who peers with us agree to do this. We do publish an API for our system so others can interoperate. I think this would be ideal. I'd love to have it for email addresses and IM addresses and social network profiles, but sadly we do not. It sounds like you're making my case about why open standards are important.

5. Will you support data portability principles? So users can switch to and from you network with their identities, profiles, buddy lists, histories, and preferences?

I started MP3.com 10 years ago on the premise that open standards are the way to go. They are with music (MP3) and they are with email, IM and VOIP as well. Data portability is also important and I spend my money building companies which adhere to these tenets. Again, not sure what this has to do with peering since Skype supports none of the items you have listed. I encourage you to check out another company I run called MP3tunes which stores your personal music collection in the cloud. Go sign up for a free account. You will see that we let you sync your entire music collection everywhere - no lock in.

6. Will you peer customer support costs and security? How should customers escalate security and technical issues across multiple networks?

Gizmo5 already sends and receives calls from over 250 VOIP networks. And we work through security and technical issues across networks as they arise. This is not a hard thing to do. There's no reason VOIP can't be a universally open system like email. These are just straw man arguments about why it's hard or not possible. These wobbly arguments work when you're testifying in front of congressman who don't know a damn thing about technology, but they don't hold water to technologists. And the point of using standards is that if people adhere to the specifications everything works fine together right out of the box. Of the more than 250 networks we regularly exchange calls with we have had issues with less than 15 in 5 years and they have always been quickly addressed because it's in both peoples interest to make sure things work.

7. Will you mandate end-to-end transparency of call quality information?

I don't even know what this is. But no, we don't mandate how others operate their network.

8. What namespaces would you suggest Skype use? Will you support OpenID or some other namespace?

The SIP standard supports namespace issues. It is similar to email. username@skype will work just fine. Again, this is how we interoperate with hundreds of networks now. It's a non-issue.

9. Will you open Gizmo up to all partners? Your contact page says "Unfortunately, we are not setup to partner at this time with organizations with fewer than one million users."

Nice misquote. Let me include the entire paragraph in context so your readers will get the full picture. From: http://gizmo5.com/pc/about-us/contact/

Potential Partners

Companies and organizations looking to partner with Gizmo5 should visit our parent company site, SIPphone.com. Partners looking to brand the Gizmo5 client and service typically have user bases well in excess of 1 million users. If you are a smaller company or individual looking to start your own VoIP service, please visit our developers area, where you can learn how to start your very own VoIP service. Unfortunately, we are not setup to partner at this time with organizations with fewer than one million users.

As you can see the 1 million reference is related to people who want a branded version of the Gizmo5 client to distribute. Anyone with a VOIP network can setup a SIP service (or Asterisk) and dial our users or receive calls from our network. If Skype Journal has a million users we will provide you with your own branded VOIP client to distribute.

10. How will you make all this work? What industry body or standards process could help Skype and other companies find the sweet spots of commoditized conversation?

Some years back some smart guys got together to address this very problem.  They did so in a public manner using the same process that brought us standards for the web and email which is why the web and email work universally. They called the standard they defined SIP and it deals precisely in how calls are initiated, negotiated and connected. It's what Gizmo5 uses and promotes as the solution to allow calls to flow freely between networks instead of having a big number of disparate networks. You can read all about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol

Skype should support a public SIP interface so standards based networks like Gizmo5 and others can seamlessly send and receive calls.

-- MR

Michael Robertson

www.MP3tunes.com - Your Music Everywhere
www.Gizmo5.com - IM/VOIP/SMS from PC and phone

 

del.icio.us Tags: skype,sip,gizmo5,asterisk,voip

Josh talks with Om

Om Malik wrote up his interview with Skype CEO Josh Silverman today. Here's his 19 minute interview.

Factoids:

• 6% of all international calling minutes.
• $136 million revenue last quarter.

What follows is a very rough and partial transcript of the first half of the interview, starting after generic introductions. Spelling, typos, omissions, and other errors are all mine. Corrections and additions welcome. 

Om: eBay Synergy?

Josh: "Our mission is enabling the world's conversations. We aspire to be is the world's leading communications software company."

Josh: "I think that the communications industry is going through one of the great sea changes of our time. And we'll look back ten years from now at this moment in time and say this is the time when communications transitioned from being hardware to being software.

What i mean by that If you cast your mind back ten years ago, you'll remember that dedicated appliance you had called the telephone. and it was purpose built for voice and it was tied to a network that was purpose built for voice.

if you think about the world we live in today we use these multipurpose computing devices, i don't know about you, maybe 5% of my time on this is spent with voice communications. i do all kinds of other communications with it. if you look at the iPhone, it's not even a communications device. you're checking stock prices or the Internet, watching movies and listening to music. one of the applications you use on that device is around communication.

so communications moved from hardware to software.

it's now part of every device and every device is connected to a multipurpose network called the Internet.

so what that means for consumers is massive amounts of innovation, making communication richer and fuller.

again, going back to when communication was embedded in the hardware, it was only voice. now, if you think about the spectrum of communications, it goes all the way from very short twitter-like communications, in our case we call them mood messages, to chat, to voice, to video, to file transfer and online collaboration; a whole set of different modes you want to talk in, all tied together by some common services. for example one common address book, a common set of presence. and what consumers want and need is that core set of services to follow them from device to device everywhere they are.

we think Skype is uniquely well positioned to capitalize on that. in fact we think that is the future.

just like the train industry did not invent the airplane, the telephony industry is not going to invent the communications business of the future.

Om: I wrote about ten of the telephone companies getting together and building their own client. What do you make of that?

Josh: We welcome competition from all sources.

Om: If you were a betting man, when would you bet will they release a product like that?

Josh: the phone companies have not been known to be world class at building software. when ten of them get together the odds go down a lot.

the great thing about communications being in software is this is going to be a massively competitive industry. and when it's massively competitive the consumer wins.

what we need for that to happen is we need open networks.

and the world that North America lives is in today, where the carriers control the device you can use and the software you can load on the device, consumers are losing big time.

Om: I wouldn't go that far. That's Skype's argument. I don't buy that. Although I agree we're are living in a country where competition is scarce, and where it's almost like an emerging economy as far as broadband and IP networks are concerned.

Being married to eBay seems like a big mismatch.

 

...

Josh: One of the interesting things about the communications space is that it is very balkanized. cable providers against the fixed line against the wireless. and any camp you join makes as many foes as it does friends. one of the really unique things about eBay is within eBay umbrella I'm a totally neutral camp, i can work with everybody.

Om: why not just go public? spin it out of eBay? you are profitable, you've got revenues, you have customers, your are growing business like crazy. why not a standalone company?

Om: What should we as consumers be excited about?

So there's three things we're focused on right now at the highest level. Product innovation, paid services, and platform.

On the product innovation side I'd highlight a couple of things.

Skype was not the first company to do voice over the Internet, it was just the first one to make it really easy. while Skype is very easy to use, it's not easy enough. and so a lot of the innovation you should expect from us is making it even easier and even more reliable.

Another big area of focus in product innovation is going to be around video.

Video is going to be the dominant form of communication. now i don't mean that that all calls will be video calls. i think voice and chat will be table stakes and people will make the decision around which application to use based on who delivers the best, most reliable, highest value video experience. so we think video is a great source of differentiation for Skype.

On the paid services side, we have some great paid services. They're just not particularly well marketed. A lot of our users don't know we have them, we haven't named them well, we haven't described the what the value proposition is well. When people find out about them, they're delighted. We just haven't done a good job. So I think there's a lot we can do just to market our current products and services better and bring some new and exciting ones to market.

The last thing I talked about is platform. Skype has historically been a relatively closed community. now, we have created an api that has about 15000 partners working with Skype to build their capabilities into Skype. there's a massive ecosystem of people who want to build Skype into their products and services, from hardware providers who want to build Skype into flat panel televisions or cordless phones to software providers and web sites who want to build Skype in. and we should be working with all of those, we can't win if we're working with all of them one off, so we need to have a really robust platform. obviously, the within platform the area of most importance needs to be mobile.

This is a great start. Let's explore this further.

tags: skype, gigaom, ommalik, joshsilverman, strategy, competition, differentiation, positioning, marketing, partnering

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.

911-ICE brings web2.0 to mobile emergency dialing

Skype doesn't offer emergency dialing. Among other things, Skype doesn't really know where you're calling from (since you could be logged in from any computer on earth).
But after you call 911 (sorry for the Americanism), what is your second step? 911ICE.org thinks you call your emergency contacts. Your family. Your neighbors. Your doctor. Your child's school.
Many mobile phones now include a special contact called ICE, short for "In Case of Emergency." 911ICE builds on this service.
Here's the model:

1. Tragedy strikes and 911 responders activate the "In Case of Emergency" (ICE) feature in your mobile phone.
2. 911ice.org alerts a list of people from your mobile's address book.
3. It connects your emergency network and drives them to a web page created for the emergency event. They can chat, email, and text updates to each other live.
4. Along the way, 911ice.org shares links to your Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault medical profiles with the emergency room and first responders.

As you recover, your ICE community supports and updates itself, bringing their collective attention to your care.
So:

• Micro-community triggered by a common event
• Different stakeholders (friends vs. doctors) see different information
• Multiple communication modes reach different people
• The triggering event is a kind of highly contextualized presence ("I've been hurt")

I so want a Skype plug-in.

tags: skype, 911ice.org, ice, 911ice, emergency, in case of emergency, calling, dialing, e911, tc50, techcrunch50

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.

Angstro tackles people search

"Follow the right people and they'll lead you to the right information." -- Rohit Khare

Startup Angstro, launched today at TechCrunch50, takes on three challenges:

1. Disambiguating people. There are many people named Phil Wolff. Search engines and white page directories are horrible at telling us apart.
2. Finding news about people. It's one thing to find what you write about yourself on your blog or facebook. What do others say about you? How are you mentioned?  
3. Relevance and People Ranking. How do you bring the freshest, most relevant, most trustworthy news to the top?

People search fuels talk.

So does news from your social network.

Angstro could enhance Skype's people search. With Angstro, Skype could highlight opportunities to talk as your contact list updates. More than online availability or mood messages, this observed presence (not declared presence) could trigger discussion.

Congratulations to founders Rohit Khare (of CommerceNet and microformats fame) and Salim Ismail (PubSub and Confabb co-founder and Yahoo! Brickhouse). 

P.S. If your name is also Phil Wolff (or some variation), please leave a comment on my Homonymous Folk disambiguation page.

tags: angstro, tc50, techcrunch50, presence, identity, search, directory

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.