Windows Live Messenger to be Essential

ArsTechnica reports Microsoft's Windows Live Manager (WLM) will be part of the Windows Live Essentials family with Windows 7. More PCs will come bundled with WLM, setting WLM as Microsoft's new standard IM client. Microsoft's consumer MSN and workplace Office Communicator clients will find distribution harder.

This OEM distribution will raise the opportunity cost of messengers, like Skype, that require a download. Advantage: Microsoft.

Other Essential apps: Windows Live Family Safety, Mail, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, Toolbar, Writer and Microsoft Office Outlook Connector.

It seems WLM will continue to be subsidized by advertising.

tags: microsoft, wlm, windows, windows7, windows live messenger, messenger, oem, freemium

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TOM-Skype Breach: Meeting the Primary Investigator

This is the first of four posts resulting from an interview with Nart Villeneuve, principle investigator of the Citizen Lab report "Breaching Trust".

Last Tuesday afternoon I returned to a University of Toronto building I had last visited in its role as an engineering students' residence in the mid-1960's. Abandoned as a residence in the 1980's, the building was restored in the late 1990's to house the Munk Centre for International Studies, when the university's Centre for International Studies was designated as a strategic priority for future growth. In the basement of the former Devonshire Place South House, I found the Citizen Lab, "an interdisciplinary laboratory focusing on advanced research and development at the intersection of digital media and world civic politics".


I spent 90 minutes with Nart Villeneuve, the PhD student and Psiphon Fellow, who was the principle investigator resulting in the Citizen Lab's recently published "Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices of China's TOM-Skype platform". We covered a wide range of issues related to this report, from the initial contact with New York Times through to the follow up activities as a result of the report's release. We also discussed the broader mission of the Citizen Lab and some recommendations for how Skype should address the challenge of participating in the China market while making all parties aware that their conversation activity may be tracked.

Key points about the report and the follow up activity:

• A major issue to address in dealing with the media has been the confusion resulting because there is a need to separate out the security breach that allowed Nart to gather the data he has gathered and the functionality of the TOM-Skype servers resulting in the capture and logging of chat conversations and Skype calling activity. (There was no evidence of capturing voice calls themselves).
• As a result of reporting this breach prior to release of the document to New York Times, the security breach itself has been closed but there is no evidence that the actual information capture activity has ceased. Nart has been checking periodically to confirm that the security breach remains closed.
• There was a period of several hours between finally establishing contact with someone at Skype who could initiate action to address the security breach and the final close down of the breach. During this time Nart observed blocking of read access to the directories but since he knew the file names he was still able to follow a reconfiguration of the web servers, removal of sensitive files, such as an encryption key, and disappearance of the log files such that they were not accessible.
• While they have captured a significant quantity of call log data going back a year, they are being careful not to expose any of the detailed information which comprised both chat message logs and what amounts to call detail records for voice calls; more details are in the report itself. Basically they don't want to compromise anyone individually.
• While the log files are still under analysis, they have been encrypted while he continues to mine them for any additional information they may expose. Eventually it is his intention to destroy even these files.
• Messages were about 40% Chinese, 60% English with a small smattering of other languages.
• While it would be very difficult to reconstruct an entire conversation thread, as only each individual message was logged with no ready reference to other messages within the thread, they could build social graphs of conversing parties.
• There are at least two versions of the TOM-Skype client: a normal version and a second version with additional features such as a Baidu Toolbar; however, the promote.dll module in this can trigger off anti-virus scanners such as Norton.
• Other evidence that the servers had been compromised was the discovery that the servers were hosting "pirate" movies and had the appropriate software to support Bit Torrent transfers.

Nart had three definite recommendations for Skype; we also covered the broader issue of global enterprises doing business in China. These will be covered in future posts.
Next post: The Citizen Lab: Its broader mission and findings.
Tags: Skype, Citizen Lab, Breaching Trust, TOM Online, TOM-Skype, Nart Villeneuve, Munk Centre for International Studies

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eBay publicist kills a meme

Here's a tweet from an eBay publicist, Richard Brewer-Hay, auto-sent from their new new-media aggregator and PR coverage home page. The eBay Ink blog sucks up feeds from eBay and subsidiary blogs, and seems to be a well designed and executed system while suffering from a corporate, inauthentic voice.

And the answer is: No.

When eBay offers IVR (voice menus) and Skype CRM (sales and contact management) for sellers that are: 

1. Turn-key (zero install)
2. Simple (15 minute setup)
3. Hosted (download-free) Skype )
4. Multiple seller brands per Skype account (you don't offer the same customer experience for your auto and your motorcycle customers),
5. Automatically adding callers to your contact list in appropriate contact groups (so your motorcycle customers are all together),
6. Playing music/message on hold including eBay API data driven text-to-speech messaging (4 minutes until the auction closes),
7. Customer experiences so over-the-top fantastic that you'd rush to shop by voice or video call; not wading through web pages,

Then you'll be on the way to integration.

Including the Skype toolbar's Skype linkification feature in another toolbar is fine. Support your siblings. But it is the least -- the very least -- eBay can do to embrace bringing eBay buyers and sellers to Skype and Skypers to eBay. 

Skype me, Richard, when eBay names a "VP for Skype Service Integration at eBay" for the first time. That will be a serious step toward Skype integration at eBay.

tags: skype, pr, ebay, ebayinkblog, hype, annoyed

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New eBay toolbar with Skype, PayPal features

If you like such things, eBay now offers The Browser Highlighter toolbar. Skypify phone numbers, compare prices on eBay, fill forms with your PayPal data, StumbleUpon new sites.

tags: skype, toolbar, skypification, eBay, PayPal, StumbleUpon

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Blackberry: The Smartphone for Wilderness Survival

Several years ago, while skiing at Whistler, a member of our party broke her leg in the most remote (but still in-bounds) glacier (Blackcomb Glacier) with only one route in and out. Having cell phone access resulted in having the ski patrol on the scene within about five minutes and timely removal from the mountain to the hospital. It was critical that the cell phone rf sensitivity in this somewhat remote location was sufficient to make a call.
The past couple of weekends has found me in Ontario's summer cottage areas north of Toronto where distance, remoteness and low population density can provide significant challenges to a mobile phone's usefulness and service availability in emergencies. With no landline Internet connections available I left my laptop at home and tested the bounds of what I could follow simply using mobile devices. Amongst the issues I encountered were:

• Battery: how long is battery life and how easily can you replace a battery?
• Rf sensitivity: can I make a phone call with weak connectivity (<1 bar)?
• Real time navigation: can I follow my progress in a boat as the boat moves along?

In my case I was traveling with both a Blackberry 8820 and iPhone 3G, each connected to the Rogers GSM 3G/EDGE network. The 8820 could only use EDGE for data but the voice channel was the same for both. My experiences:

• Battery Life: the Blackberry was the clear winner requiring much less frequent charging (if at all) in a 2- to 3-day trip. But Blackberry is reknown for its battery management features; if desired as backup, you can take along charged replacement batteries.
• Rf sensitivity: this one really surprised me but also says a lot about the iPhone 3G connection problems being reported. I was at a location on a small lake 6 km by air southwest of Gravenhurst, Ontario (location of the nearest tower) with less that one bar of reception and attempted to make phone calls. The iPhone came up with a screen announcing that it could not make a voice call while, sitting in the same seat, the Blackberry had no problems making a voice call - all over the same Rogers network via the same Rogers cell tower. Amongst the group I was visiting two other Verizon-enabled Blackberries could make calls through the local equidistant Telus cell tower while another person with an iPhone also could not make calls through the Rogers tower. As further affirmation of the Blackberry's superior rf sensitivity, when I drove into this location, the Blackberry was receiving updated Google Maps data (over EDGE) right up until I reached my destination.
• Real time marine navigation: We also experienced some boat trips on Muskoka Lake, which is laden with many islands, bays and inlets, both large and small. On this popular lake with many cottagers there is good-to-excellent Rogers 3G coverage. Let's just say that on our first trip the boat's driver did not know the exact location of a marina we were seeking out. What I found was that while the satellite view of Google Maps on the Blackberry could provide very helpful location and direction information in real time, Google Maps on the iPhone could only provide occasional "static" information but not effectively track one's progress. On the other hand it has been known that iPhone is not capable of the real time navigation critical to the resolution of our situation. Asking a local cottager got us headed in the right direction towards the location of the marina but having real time navigation in Google Maps made it a significantly easier to reach our destination. As would be expected Google Maps does not provide complete marine navigation information such as depth isobars, underwater rock locations, etc. but, knowing the main channels, it became a critical support tool as we found our way.

My conclusions:

• The 3G connectivity issues being reported for the iPhone probably involve both the rf sensitivity issue I experienced as well as carrier issues. By maintaining internal design control of the Blackberry's rf circuitry, RIM has brought into play 11 years of experience in developing wireless products. Contrary to other reports that attempt to lay the blame for iPhone 3G connectivity problems solely on the networks, the iPhone's device engineering, reportedly using a third party 3G chip, is a contributing issue to the problem. (During my time as a research physicist involving the design of rf detection circuitry, the rf sensitivity issue was a critical factor in detecting ¹³C signals using magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the molecular structure of drugs and other chemical formulations.)
• Real time navigation is just not viable on the iPhone. Pretty Google Maps but if they cannot track your progress in real time, not a big help. Especially when you're lost on a lake with as many islands and inlets as Muskoka Lake. iPhone's GPS can find me the nearest five Tim Hortons locations but combine my boating experience with the repeatedly reported inability of the iPhone to multi-task effectively and you have to come to the conclusion the iPhone is simply lacking in processing speed to perform true on-the-go navigation.
• And on long trips, away from a source for recharging, take along a couple of spare batteries.

Before every iPhone defender jumps on the bandwagon, I appreciate many of the iPhone's features. It's a great device for personal voice communications and and one way information delivery such as browsing activity and even receiving email (via GMail). But, it's not up to the capabilities and standards of the Blackberry line when it comes to needing robust communications and processing horsepower.
Bottom line: everybody worries about 911 access for providing emergency communications. But when you travel into more remote, weakly serviced areas you want the most robust mobile device for maintaining reliably effective voice and data communications when emergencies arise. In this case I want a Blackberry, thank you.
(Note: Nokia N95 testing is yet to occur due to limitations on the number of SIM's immediately available.)
Tags: Blackberry, iPhone, 3G, Rogers, Telus, Verizon, Research in Motion

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