Wish For A Custom Skype App Contest

Skype developer Don Kennedy will write a Skype program for you. Free. In two weeks. Just ask for what you want in the comments below. "Dear Don, I wish Skype could..."

Don built a Skype bot that translates live Skype chats in 43 languages. An app that monitors your subscription use. A tool that lets you make Skype calls from your mobile through your PC with Skype using a normal mobile phone.

So I challenged Don to build for the #lazyweb. For a random stranger with a clear need.

And it's up to you.

Rules:

1. Post your requests as comments to this Skype Journal post or as tweets to @SkypeJournal by Saturday, 31 November 2009, midnight Pacific (GMT-8).
2. Multiple requests are fine.
3. You may request anonymously, however you won't win a prize. You can DM contact info to me @SkypeJournal or in email to the editor at Skype Journal dot com.
4. I will select and announce Don's project 1 November 2009, Sunday.
5. Don will post his solution, ready or not, on 15 November 2009. Not for Mac, Linux or iPhone.
6. Should Don fail to deliver on time, the winner, if in the US, will also get an Everyman freetalk headset courtesy of In Store Solutions.
7. The application will be free for everyone to use.
8. All contest decisions are mine and are final.

So be creative.

What new feature would you like in Skype?

tags: skype, free, contest, hacks, lazyweb, #lazyweb

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

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.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Add Directory: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Intranet and Extranet Directory Service.

I love that Skype lets me import my Google and Outlook contacts (at least those with phone numbers). That's not enough.

In the world of work I need to see my company's phone book. Not a snapshot, imported months ago, but the latest version.

• Add directory. Let me add my company directory to my contacts by reference. So I'm always looking at the latest version. This also relieves me from adding all three million people who work for my organization one at a time. Or keeping up with all the adds, moves, and changes.
• Add another directory. Frankly, I really want to be able to add "white page" and "yellow page" directories from partner, supplier, and customer organizations. At the same time.
• Find people. Let me search my company directory using the same search I use for the Skype network. It would be nice if I could restrict searches to specific directories.
• Departments as "contact categories." Many of us live in a world of hierarchy, orgcharts, and cost centers (centres). How about treating department names as tags? So it's easier to find co-workers and their colleagues?
• Autopopulate profiles. Company directory services are rich with descriptive information. Show it.

This is useful stuff.

So much easier to set up multichats and conference calls without leaving Skype to find all the details.

You can easily see staffing companies like Monster offer private directories of job applicants to a specific job. Or project management software sharing a directory of people assigned to a project.

You'll have to work out de-duplication, lifecycle events, authenticating against LDAP, facebook API, and other directory service protocols. But it's doable. This could convince workers to keep Skype up and connected all day.

 

See also:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for the workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Community Wishlist: Skype Chat to Email Listserv gateway

@PacificIT community leader Robert Sanzalone and I have been chatting about Skype and its use as social software. Robert penned this blogworthy bit that started about a Skype client on the iPhone. Robert:

As you saw me mention, I have literally been OFF SKYPE waiting for this client to appear from SOMEONE and it still hasn't arrived.

About half a dozen apps exist to do various basic functions of Skype such as one-to-one text and voice. A few can now also connect with the Skype Out/In services as well.

With the recent development of the latest client focusing on video, it looks once again that "sexy" wins over practicality and what is really needed to keep this service at the front line. I'm almost expecting announcements for new deals with Friendster and Plaxo any day now (yes, it's that bad).

Regardless, my hope is time, money and effort isn't being put into making a VIDEO CLIENT for the iPhone before group chat is solved. I think building community around the client is far more important and the fans keep coming even though Skype seems to be telling them to go away.

My alternative challenge to the community is to look at other common technologies which can bridge this gap.

My crosshairs are on email. Understood and common.

One of the most attractive features of Chatterous was the ability to completely interact in a dynamic IM group discussion exclusively by email. It was (and is) amazing.

BUT.. the name recognition and trust is not as well established as Skype. I PERSONALLY found out people would rather stay with the tried and true recognized name than to move a whole community to a platform or service no one has heard of or is interested in experimenting with.

How to interact with email?

Again, the lesson comes from Chatterous. Essentially, you can choose how to have digested messages sent from a group chat to your email account which you can then react to, or not.

The email sent in completely blends in with the rest of the chat. I was amazed even with the latency of tapping out an email minutes after the initial digest was sent me that the conversation wasn't completely backward (since there are frequent delays, even with real time IM chats).

Now, apply this capability to a mobile device with email capability, and you have the whole issues of a "Skype group chat client" solved. You CAN interact with a group chat even without a specific client on the iPhone, or ANY mobile device anywhere in the world. A sweet solution.

Though I'm not a developer, I'm told time and time again the API in Skype does give the ability to make these types of toys. I have no way to verify this one way or another.

All I know is, it's JUST NOT HAPPENING. I was looking for a few smart people to get on the ball and do something about it.

Turn off your darn video cams and let's get the community together first.

tags: skype, email, wishlist, listserv, mailing list, community, collaboration, chatterous, webmail, bbs, chat

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

BCP Management by Role: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Business Control Panel (BCP) Management by Role.

When a manager leaves the company and takes her Skype account with her, will the company lose access to its control panel? To its funds? To its records? To its control over control panel membership?

BCP "ownership" should belong to a defined role, an alias, perhaps even a shared alias.

A manager, their manager, the telecom manager, someone from HR and someone reporting to the front line manager could share that role.

Skype's current architecture prevents proper:

• Succession
• Delegation
• Supervision
• Audit 

Without management through roles, powered by aliases, Skype's BCP will create problems outside of very tiny, unusually stable organizations.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases 
• Multiple Companies per Account

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Multiple Business Control Panels Per Company: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Multiple Business Control Panels Per Company.

The power in Skype for Business lies in Skype's Business Control Panel (BCP). The BCP is where Skype gives you fund multiple Skype accounts and manage SkypeIn phone numbers for your organization.

Today, you are allowed only one BCP per company.

It's time to decentralize authority.

• Give authority to managers and team leaders closer to the people who use the service.
• Permit companies to create BCPs to match their formal organizational structure.
• Permit teams to create BCPs to match their informal organizational structure.

Benefits to Skype:

• More customer eyes on spending and activity.
• More awareness by first line managers of Skype and it's uses at work.

Benefits to Business:

• Allows sponsors to respect privacy expectations within a company by limiting the size of BCP membership and visibility of BCP activity data and billing details.
• Roll up aggregate statistics and financials across a company to better understand spending and activity by department.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases 
• Multiple Companies per Account

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Multiple Companies per Account: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Multiple Companies Per Account.

A Skype account is a person.

Let me be affiliated with more than one company.

I may have:

• a full time day job,
• bake cookies under my own name,
• help a friend's business on weekends,
• sit on the fundraising committee of my mosque,
• edit my professional association's newsletter, and
• support my kid's virtual lemonade stand.

No place in the real world does someone have just one enterprise affiliation.

We live in a buzzing swarm of many connections and groups.

When you ask people to choose just one, you shove them into the welcoming arms of competitors for every other relationship.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Share Aliases: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Sharing Aliases.

Nobody works 24 hours a day.

Companies still need to serve customers all day, every day.

They do this by sharing roles.

• On call neurosurgeon for a hospital.
• Help desk operator.
• Even the receptionist who takes a lunch break needs to hand off the role to another person.

The virtual equivalent:

• multiple people
• with their unique Skype accounts (account=person)
• able to share and use
• one or more common aliases (alias=role).

Let workers share roles and responsibilities through a Skype alias.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Provisioning: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Integrate and automate provisioning of Skype business control panel (BCP), Skype account, and Skype aliases.

So you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter on per-seat-licenses for email, accounting, virtualization, commerce, manufacturing systems, tech support, operating systems, security systems, HR software, and the home-grown systems that make your business work.

Provisioning systems automate user account lifecycles across all those systems. You'll want to support lifecycles for:

• Skype accounts
• Skype aliases
• Skype control panels and company

Skype must integrate with the top provisioning products to make provisioning fast, cheap, reliable, thorough and automatic.

 

See also:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Alias Transfer: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Transferability of Aliases.

I wear many hats at work. A Skype account's aliases should hold all my hats.

I should be able to:

• define a role (the person who orders office supplies, for example),
• use it (call and IM suppliers, build a contact list of suppliers, accumulate a call/chat history), and
• hand it off to another person when I'm no longer in that role.

This preserves continuity of relationships so work is not interrupted when I change roles or change jobs.

Enterprises spend billions and mount great efforts to define workflows that survive an individual's path through the organization. Skype, even with aliases, will break proven and well-automated roles, relationships, and contact channels if Skype aliases cannot be transferred as needed.

Web domains can be transferred. Email accounts can be transferred.

Let me easily get and give my aliases to other Skype users. 

 

See also:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Aliases: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Aliases (Multiple Skype Names per Skype Account).

Multiple custom profiles per Skype user account.

I need one for my external customers, another for my team, another for external suppliers and partners. Also, my boss doesn't need to know I'm GorgonTheDestroyer in Warcraft, my clan doesn't need to know I collect taxes for HMRC.

Each alias should have its own profile, presence, permissions, history.

My account should give me a view of all of my aliases.

My account should come with two default aliases: @work, @life.

Let me log in once and present myself well in each context.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Skype to announce… something? at eComm09

Skype strategist Julien Decot is off the 2009 Emerging Communications Conference speaker list and Skype GM Jonathan Christensen has an announcement to make. Mr. Christensen's keynote is described as:

Codec Evolution and Industry Proposal (Plus Skype Announcement)

The PSTN has been bandwidth limited from its inception. This was done to keep equipment costs down. But is 3kHz really enough to get your point across? Wideband audio has emerged in services like Skype and with today's low cost, silicon based manufacturing and the move to all IP transmission there is an opportunity to finally break through the POTS bandwidth barrier. Jonathan will discuss the complex audio codec landscape and put forth a proposal for how we [the Industry] can make wideband audio ubiquitous.

Let's parse this and madly speculate where Jonathan's going.

The PSTN has been bandwidth limited from its inception. This was done to keep equipment costs down.

The public switched telephone network (PSTN) cuts off your speech's top (high notes) and bottom (low notes). While some microphones and speakers, like those used by musicians, capture everything, most equipment in mobile phones, landline phones, speakerphones, or even Skype phones captures just enough of your sound to be understood.

But is 3kHz really enough to get your point across? Wideband audio has emerged in services like Skype

Wideband audio restores the lifelike quality of sound by capturing and playing more of your sound's natural highs and lows. Skype's new SILK codec, which moves sound between Skype and your computer, and between Skype and other Skype users, is a wideband codec. Incredibly vivid sound.  

and with today's low cost, silicon based manufacturing

Putting software into a chip... SILK codecs as semiconductor "cores"? A core is a readily usable bit of software already rendered in the software language of chip programming. Everything electronic has some sort of chip in it, from radios to cars. Pre-built cores make it fast, cheap, and easy to drop new features into your product. "SILK Inside"?

and the move to all IP transmission

Most mobile and landline phone companies have switched their plumbing from analog to digital to Internet Protocol.

there is an opportunity to finally break through the POTS bandwidth barrier.

POTS (plain old telephone service) is basic phone service, the one with the 3kHz bandwidth limits. Could the breakthrough be offering SILK Inside in the routers PSTN services use? In mobile phones?

Jonathan will discuss the complex audio codec landscape

Ummm. I haven't a clue. But Jonathan should know; he's been working in the codec business for years. 

and put forth a proposal for how we [the Industry] can make wideband audio ubiquitous.

If you want something ubiquitous, you have to take away cost and risk. Sounds like open source to me.

So, again, this is me guessing what Skype will announce and all errors are mine:

1. Skype will release SILK with an open source license.
2. Skype will partner with an ASIC semiconductor manufacturer to release SILK in VHDL (or another chip design language).
3. Skype has partnerships with Cisco, Motorola, Nokia and other companies to use the chips in networking products and mobile handsets.

Let me make another assumption. Skype will announce a public platform in 2009. So people could make their own Skype clients or build Skype into their own products/services. To make that work, Skype needs to share codecs and encryption with developers. Licenses could be for packaged software or for open source libraries. I'm betting on open source for the codecs and shrinkwrapped for the encryption.

What's your wild guess?

Skype hosts video cards for Valentine's Day

Skype sets the mood with free video valentines. Pick your cover…

Record your love note using a webcam, and address it to the one(s) you love.

From the Skype media team:

Roses are Red, and Violets are Blue
Chocolates are sweet, but what about you!?

To make someone smile and giddy with glee,
Just video call your Valentine; it's easy and free!

With a click and record, your readers can share, 
Their Valentine's wishes as though they were there.

While overpriced roses can stir up some hype,
What better surprise than a quick call on Skype!

So say 'I Love You' to him, her, or mom, 
By recording a video card at Skypevideocard.com.

Observations from the 2008 Christmas/Chanukah Video Greeting Card version still apply: Skype can use your video as they like, including your name and the name of your recipient. Skype will delete your videos when it suits them. No encryption. While Skype video cards are a great example of marketing fun and elegance, my concerns still stand:

The video card site doesn't use Skype. At all.

• No use of Skype names or address books to send video greetings.
• No use of the Skype client to record the video message. Or to view video messages from others.
• No use of the Skype client as a way to continue the conversation in a voice, chat or video call.
• No use of Skype's advanced audio/video codecs for higher quality.

Skype Video Card highlights where Skype's technology is creaking with age at the end of 2008.

<geek>

• Skype doesn't offer a browser-based client. Rich Internet Apps improve virality and adoption with less downloading and faster time-to-value.
• Skype's APIs don't expose an open web services platform beyond simple presence. So third parties cannot build Skype into, oh, say, video card apps running in browsers.
• Skype doesn't support third-party authentication, identity interop, profile synchronization, or personal contact synchronization, or personal contact group synchronization. Far from the data portability ideals.
• Skype's identity model does not facet identity. So you're stuck with one profile for everyone. For family. For every job. For every relationship. Forever.
• Skype clients don't support inline media sharing. No playing of images, videos, sounds or other objects during a conversation.

</geek>

Love, Phil

tags: skype, ebay, identity, dataportability, marketing, promotion, advertising, video, eula, greeting, greeting card, video mail, videomessaging, facebook, stumbleupon, furl, delicious, digg, friendfeed, reddit, valentinesday, holiday

Talk with Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Follow Skype Journal on twitter

Phil Wolff's 26 incriminating 2009 Skype Predictions

Last year's Jim Courtney's 2008 predictions and mine. 
In 2009:

1. MacWorld sucks without Steve Jobs.
2. Steve Jobs steps down as Apple CEO.
3. Skype brings back Skypecasts with a new feature: with one click, introduce spammers, con artists, and sexy webcam girls to each other.
4. Skype for Neocortex. Mood based on serotonin levels. Very high quality audio and video by tapping directly into the optic nerve and auditory system. Some side effects.
5. Skype for Lovers. Extension of Skype 4.1. Just one buddy to dial. No interruptions. Ultrasimple UI: click the heart.
6. Skype's new platforms have more active developers than BT Ribbit. More than Google Android. Fewer than Apple iPhone.
7. Litigation. 1530 sleep deprived patients sue Skype for keeping them up late.
8. Google Central will be exciting.
9. Google Video Talk adds multiparty video.
10. The Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) will sell out.
11. Yahoo! fires thousands of people. Decimates the messenger team. Hires a new executive team. Reorganizes. Again.
12. Skype introduces multiparty video. The kids love it. WebEx hates it.
13. Skype for Asterisk gets video call support. Dating sites love it.
14. Skype for WoW builds on Skype for Asterisk. The raiders love it. 
15. Skypephone comes to the Americas via partnership with with US mobile carriers. Wal-Mart will carry it. Nothing for Canada.
16. 3 INQ1 sales will cut into 3 Skypephone sales in the UK.
17. U.S. Mobile Carterfone rules (to free mobile phones from carrier contracts) will be considered by the FCC.
18. VoIP falls from telecom jargon. Even VoIP bloggers stop using the term. The public starts using Skype as a generic name for internet talk.
19. eBay's auction businesses will do well in tough times, better in the second half of the year.
20. Skype will make $630 million in FY2009.
21. Peak Skype usage will top 18 million simultaneous users.
22. Skype will serve 23 billion minutes in 2009Q4.
23. Skype scores product placements in:
    
    
    • Hannah Montana: The Movie, spurring the rise of Skype pajama parties.
    • The Sinatra Club, using the new Skypeoke feature.
    • Star Trek, as ancient technology.
    • Startups will rally to Running Out Of Angels (March 2009).
    • 24 as Cisco cuts ad spending.
    • In My Pocket (2009) is not about mobiles.
24. Skype issues new krypto since its old cryptographic source code escaped from TOM-Skype control
25. Skype Video for Mobile. Skype buys a streaming video service for smart mobile camera phones.
26. China approves SkypeIn and SkypeOut.

tags: skype, predictions, 2009, inq1, skypephone, wal-mart, canada, asterisk, video, ebay, voip, carterfone, WoW, 24, china, tom-skype

Talk with Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Follow Skype Journal on twitter

famcams

Wishlist:

Does Logitech sell high quality Skype webcams in family packs? Support the viral impulse.

Tips:

1. Position Skype below the webcam. So you’ll be looking “at” the people on the other end of a video call.
2. Look for noise cancellation in speakerphones. Clears up background noise. A little.
3. Keep a notepad and marker handy to show hand drawn notes. Nothing talks like doodles.
4. If you talk with your hands, sit back so the webcam picks up all of you.
5. Get a hand mirror to check your grooming. Nothing like having someone point out food stuck in your teeth from across the world.
6. Turn off automatic answer of video calls. Who knows what you’ll be wearing?
7. Reserve Skype names for your loved ones, especially kids. Don’t leave them with georgewbush29837647a.
8. Chat before you call. Invite them to video, don’t assume they want to now. Netiquette.
9. Make a contact group for your family. Easier to look them up.

What did I miss?

Skype video cards: holiday cheer with a side of humbug

From Skype, the people who brought you the Skype Laughter Chain, here's the Skype Video Card service. A little flash widget lets you record a holiday greeting video into your browser. Share it with friends by embedding the video on your blog, emailing a link, or posting it to any of seven sites (facebook, reddit. friendfeed, digg, delicious, furl, or sister eBay company StumbleUpon).

It's fun, fast, free and easy.

You start.

Pick a cover image. 

Confirm the image.

Let the browser use your webcam.

Record your video.

Preview your video card

Skype says
"Free video calls on Skype. Seeing is believing. Download Skype now"

Share your card

Done.

It's lovely. Light. Simple. Elegant. 4 clicks and you're recording. Sweet. Useful.

Nicely done. 

A few cautions from the fine print:

• Ownership. Skype reserves the right to use your video any time in any way. For example, they might include it in a television commercial, give copies to YouTube, share them with your next boss.  
• Privacy/Anonymity. You're giving Skype the right to use your name in connection with your video. You're giving Skype the right to use anyone else's name too. No privacy. No authenticity. 
• Vague Archival. Skype doesn't promise to keep your videos. They may delete videos when it suits them. Or not. They may keep them until the end of time.
• This Video Upload and Download Is Unencrypted. Unlike Skype video calls or messages.

The video card site doesn't use Skype. At all.

• No use of Skype names or address books to send video greetings.
• No use of the Skype client to record the video message. Or to view video messages from others.
• No use of the Skype client as a way to continue the conversation in a voice, chat or video call.
• No use of Skype's advanced audio/video codecs for higher quality.

Skype Video Card highlights where Skype's technology is creaking with age at the end of 2008.

<geek>

• Skype doesn't offer a browser-based client. Rich Internet Apps improve virality and adoption with less downloading and faster time-to-value.
• Skype's APIs don't expose an open web services platform beyond simple presence. So third parties cannot build Skype into, oh, say, video card apps running in browsers.
• Skype doesn't support third-party authentication, identity interop, profile synchronization, or personal contact synchronization, or personal contact group synchronization. Far from the data portability ideals.
• Skype's identity model does not facet identity. So you're stuck with one profile for everyone. For family. For every job. For every relationship. Forever.
• Skype clients don't support inline media sharing. No playing of images, videos, sounds or other objects during a conversation.

</geek>

Meanwhile, Happy Holidays!

tags: skype, ebay, identity, dataportability, marketing, promotion, christmas, advertising, video, eula, greeting, greeting card, video mail, videomessaging, facebook, stumbleupon, furl, delicious, digg, friendfeed, reddit

Friend Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Follow Skype Journal on twitter

50 people

I use HiDef Conferencing for my work with DataPortability.org. You can Skype into your conference bridge directly for better audio quality. Free trials through February. But 50 people will cost you about $1 per person per month after that.

Wishlist: Skype for Android?

Fifth most popular request for "Suggest an Android Application" on Google Moderator. Tetris is first.

tags: skype, google, android, wishlist, mobile

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Follow Skype Journal on twitter

snap to edge

somatosensory skype

somatosensory on Wikipedia (touch).

Wishlist: sharable emoticon sets

Clearly we need larger, more varied, more topic-specific visual vocabularies. James Bridle is a visual guy and I'm sure he could have come up with emoticons specific to cowboy romance cinema. The better to share stories with friends.

For me, I sooo want a bunch of Jewish emoticons, like: 

(borscht)
(bagel)
(matzoh)
(2candles)
(feh)
(oy)
(minyan)
(lox)
(kvel)
(tzitzit)
(dancingchasid)
(chelm)
(kosher)
(treif)
(bris)
(guilt)
(crushingglass)
(daven)
(dreydl)
(megillah)
(lchaim)
(shofar)

These have meaning for me, are part of my social vocabulary. Glad to provide translations if anyone cares.

But this list is specific to me and my tribe.

It would be enormous fun to have additional emoticon sets to freely, easily and safely share and trade. If you don't have a set, you see the text. If you do, you see the art. Inherently viral, social, meaningful.

And fun.

tags: skype, wishlist, emoticons

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Follow Skype Journal on twitter

Australian PM uses Skype

Kevin Rudd, Australia's 26th Prime Minister, spoke with Rove McManus on Sunday's show. On YouTube: part 1 and part 2.

This brings up one problem with simple IM ID's. You need multiple personae for each user account. For example, one username you can give to friends, another to work colleagues, one for family, another to strangers. 

This tool of faceted identity helps you manage social network overload. By letting you present different aspects of yourself to different publics, you contextualize relationships and shape the stream of your interactions.

Rudd would love to treat people appropriately.

Skype makes that difficult once your contact list rises above Dunbar's Number (~150 people). In Skype, everyone sees the same name, the same presence and mood, the same autobiography, the same sex/gender data, the same contact information. Everyone is managed by the same privacy rules. All 20 million Australians will see the same Kevin Rudd in Skype, even though he may to keep his mobile number hidden from most and convenient to a few.

Today's monolithic identity is baked into Skype. An upgrade would be worth it.

If only so Kev can talk with his daughter without logging in to his office and political Skype accounts.

tags: skype, australia, au, identity

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.

free recorder for skype video?

4b Wishlist: Do more with contacts in multichat

The new Skype for Windows 4 beta consolidates all the elements of a chat into one vertical pane on the right side of the main Skype window.

The upper half shows an alphabetic list of participants in a multiparty chat or conference call. People in the room. What else can we know or do with people in a room?

You can hide the list, but what else could you do with that space?

Sorting compares/contrasts people in the room. Sort by:

• Most recently contributed to the chat/call
• Freshness/aging by participation
  
• Mutual Availability 
• Of the times I'm online, what percentage is this other person also online?
  
• Time zone, relative to yours
• When are the Australians waking up, rejoining the conversation?  
  
• Contacts vs. strangers
• Which of these people have I yet to befriend?
  
• Provocateurs, Amplifiers, Lurkers
• Who triggers threads vs. who jumps in? Look at Marc A. Smith's research on mining Usenet for social network and relationship data. You can look at time gaps in conversation, followed by responses.
  
• Visualize participation volume
• Who has been most/least active? Show a chart (pie chart?) or meter of the number of words contributed to the chat or seconds spoken in the conference call. Acknowledge contribution, encourage the quiet to jump in.
  
• Other profiled demographics: country, age, gender.

What other info would be useful if I move my mouse over someone's name in the panel? Hover information:

• Faces
• Mood text
• Last text contribution to the chat
• Show the contextual menu now shown by option/right-mouse clicks.

Other options:

• Slide show of profiles, rotating through the participants
• Highlight the last contributor
• Animated moodgeist of those in the room
• Highlight people who contributed recently in other chats in which we are both members

Help those in the room make the most of being in that room. Help us with the metawork of scheduling, the facilitation and moderation of the conversation, launching sidebar talk, building reputation through social grooming and participation.

Thanks.

P.S. I miss drag and drop in 4b.

tags: skype, technology, wishlist, collaboration, im, 4b, beta, moodgeist

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.