Happy 2009!

tags: skype, emoticon, emoticonart, 2009, happynewyear, hearts, suns, smileys, bows, handshakes

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The AdultFriendFinder freemium case study

Skype Journal covered Skype's freemium business model this year. Now Andrew Chen pulls together fresh freemium business and funnel metrics from FriendFinder Networks' IPO filing with the US SEC. FFN runs AdultFriendFinder.com (nsfw), Penthouse, and niche dating/social sites. It's another data point when you want to compare freemium rates.

Trouble topping up Skype credits - RESOLVED

Skype Heartbeat reports PayPal payments to Skype have been delayed for three days. So far. Back office operations are boring, until they stop working.
UPDATE: "The issue with payment delays is solved as of 07:00 UTC 28th of December."

tags: skype, paypal, payments, delays, errors

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RIM Demonstrates Ongoing Support for Older BlackBerries

While ZDNet has named BlackBerry Bold the most influential biztech product of 2008, RIM has not been neglecting the millions of owners of older 8xx0 series BlackBerries. Earlier this week their BlackBerry Connection Newsletter announced that version 4.5 upgrades to all 8xx0 Series BlackBerries (using BIS servers via carriers) are now available.

Why upgrade? To bring along, where practical and feasible, several features now found on the newer Bold, Storm, and 8900 Curve such as:

• HTML email
  
• View and edit email MS Word and MS PowerPoint attachments.
• Download, save and edit files from the Internet
• Enhanced video support for both recording and streaming: required to run Qik.Com and the forthcoming SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry.
• Record and Send a Voice Note which can be sent via email or MMS
• Improved music management

Note that:

• These updates only apply to BlackBerry Internet Server (BIS) users; BES users need to upgrade through their BES host enterprise.
• Updates are carrier specific; early in the process you are asked for your PIN and taken to download files specific to your carrier.
• Updates may also require an update of the BlackBerry Desktop Manager
• MS Excel spreadsheet viewing and editing did not make the cut; they are only available for newer BlackBerry Bold, Storm and 8900 Curve.

Over the past few days I have successfully upgraded a Pearl 8100, a Pearl 8110 and an 8820. Provided you have BlackBerry Desktop Manager (preferably 4.7) installed on a Windows PC, it's a three to five click process (depending on whether you just follow the basic steps or want to change some parameters) to do the upgrade. While your BlackBerry data and applications are preserved after the upgrade, you may need to log into some services or applications again. The final step "Connecting to the Device" may take five to ten minutes - be patient.

One key feature is not in the list above but the new firmware includes new default fonts which are significantly more easily readable. Also, on the Pearls, there are changes to make using the SureType keyboard much easier, especially when it comes to suggested "word completion".

Definitely worth the upgrade - and required for video streaming applications.

A detailed description of the BlackBerry firmware upgrade process can be found at CrackBerry.com.

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Skype UK advertising for Christmas 2008

Skype is running end-of-year banner ads. They are pulling people to Skype.com with “Download Skype now” the call to action. Developed by Albion London.

Here is a video of three flash ads.

The three landing pages. 
 

The intimacy of video. Free. With kissing. Download now!
 

International gossip is a form of social grooming, where people bond and reinforce social structures, family links, and build relationships.
 

Other phone services charge by the minute. Skype-to-Skype is free.

 

Technorati tags: skype, advertising, ads, ad, uk, online, kiss, gossip

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 Greeting Card on Facebook

I wrote about the Skype video holiday greeting cards last week. I whined that the promotion failed to use Skype.

Matt Rhodes of Community 2.0 has a positive take as Skype launches video cards in Facebook. The Skype video card application in Facebook works the same as the standalone site, but you address cards to your facebook friends instead of email addresses.

Matt thinks this is great.

Rather than trying to integrate their actual product and develop an application that people will use and forward to their friends. Instead they opted for the solution of creating an application that creates real value for the users (especially those who have forgotten to send holiday greetings already) and allows the Skype brand to be associated with this.

I agree.

UPDATE: Happy Christmas from We Are Social, a greeting from the outside marketing firm that made the greeting card promotion, targeting “US, UK, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.”

Technorati tags: video, skype, facebook, community, advertising, marketing, promotions, holiday, greeting, card

Skype settles patent suit for $2.3 million

Skype will pay off Mangosoft Intellectual Property, Inc. (OTC:MGOF) to drop a patent infringement suit. Mangosoft holds the assets of a defunct Internet software company. Settlement frees Mangosoft’s lawyers to hunt for other deep pockets. And eBay and Skype to start the new year without this litigation on the books.

Mangosoft CEO Dale Vincent filed this with the SEC:

On December 4, 2008, MangoSoft, Inc. (the “Company”) entered into an agreement to settle its patent litigation (the “Agreement”) with Skype Technologies SA, Skype Software SARL and eBay Inc. (“eBay”) titled Mangosoft Intellectual Property, Inc. v. Skype Technologies, S.A. et al., Civil Action No. 2:06CV-390 TJW, which was pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (the “Litigation”).

Under the terms of the Agreement, eBay and its affiliates and subsidiaries will receive a non-exclusive license to all of the patents or patent applications now owned by the Company, or in which the Company has a controlling interest, for a one time fee in the amount of $2,300,000. The Agreement also provides for general releases and dismisses the existing litigation between the parties.

Technorati tags: skype, mangosoft, suit, lawsuit, litigation, patent, ip, intellectual property, infringement, ebay

What’s your New Year’s Resolution?

IPEVO and 12seconds.tv are are hosting a contest this week: “Give a New Year’s Resolution that will make the world a better place.”

Leave a twelve second long video and you can win passes to MacWorld or IPEVO hardware for Skype. Twelve seconds is short, just 40-50 words.

Skype Journal will pass along a Sony PSP with Skype microphone to the most inspiring resolver; PSP courtesy of Skype North America.

Technorati tags: skype, ipevo, 12seconds.tv, resolution, resolutions, macworld, skypejournal, sony, psp

free and brainless

Hmm. Maybe it’s time for Skype to launch Skype Mail with Skype video built in?

The Skype - Oprah Feedback Loop - It Works in Strange Ways

This afternoon I came across this article by reporter Chris O'Brien in today's San Jose Mercury News: "Video Chat has entered the mainstream". It appears that the worlds of Oprah viewers and Silicon Valley geeks and reporters have more than six degrees of separation. The story starts out by talking about an email he received from his mother:

Seemingly out of nowhere, this note from her landed in my inbox: "Have you heard of Skype? Apparently you can use it to do free video calls on the computer."

My mother, who lives just outside Kansas City, tends to be a reliable barometer for when a technology is gaining adoption outside the hermetically sealed bubble that is Silicon Valley. Well, my mom, and Oprah. As one of only a handful of people on the planet who don't watch Oprah's show every day, I had missed the fact that she's recently begun using Skype to make regular video calls with her audience.

Chris goes on to report on a brief interview with Skype President Josh Silverman whom he quotes with:

And Skype has a new version in beta that will make video calling much more central to the service, according to Skype President Josh Silverman.

.... And in its new release, Skype users will be able to enlarge the video to fill the entire screen without degrading the picture quality.

Well we now know what Chris is giving his mother for Christmas. For his benefit, listed below are previous Skype Journal posts on both Skype High Quality Video and our reporting last March on Oprah's use of Skype Video.

• Skype Sponsors Oprah's "A New Earth" Web Event
• Three Big Milestones in Skype's Fifth Year
• High Quality Video: What's the Benchmark?
• High Quality Video: Definitely a Winner for Skype
• Expanding the High Quality Video Experience and Observations
• To Be Restored: Camera Flexibility for Video Hackers
• Installing a Logitech High Quality Video Camera: The Experience.

Chris, keep up with Skype Journal and you won't be learning about how Skype is used from your mother.

By the way, how did I know to follow up on Chris's interview with Skype President Josh Silverman last Wednesday? He set it up via Twitter messages with Skype PR. They had found that Twitter provided the most "immediate" asynchronous communications mode as compared to, say, email exchanges. Also speaks for the device independence of Twitter.

A final question: will we be seeing a new version of Skype High Quality Video (or better) introduced at CES in January?

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dinner, prophecy, skype

“Wow. I already had the family Christmas dinner. Which was nice, including the End of Days prophecy by my mother. Sis Skyped from Israel” – Ruud van Wijngaarden

Wii Speak connects living rooms

Nintendo Wii owners can buy a Wii Speak speakerphone and talk to three friends also using Wii Speak. Nintendo bundles Wii Speak with Animal Crossing: City Folk and other software.

The social model emphasizes privacy. Your identity is secret. You must exchange Speak IDs before you can talk, and there is no public directory.

Wii Speak let’s you IM, leave voice messages, annotate video messages, and speak live during some games. In City Folk, your Wii Mii avatars speak your chats with comic strip style balloons.

It’s a closed system. Only microphones licensed by Nintendo will work with the system. Approved gear will show the Wii Speak icon (on the right) on their packaging.

This is not a platform play.

But it could be.

In-game talk is a fixture of RTS like World of Warcraft (voice chat and conferencing through third parties like Skype, TeamSpeak, or Ventrilo), virtual worlds like Second Life (includes f2f and distance voice chat), and multigame platforms like Xbox Live (voice and video chat).

The Wii, however, is culturally different from other online gaming social spaces. Wii folks don’t consider themselves as “hard-core gamers”. Yet. So it’s good for the Wii Speak team to slowly discover what works best for Wiiland. Wii Speak is a good first step.

See also:

• 17 Ways VoIP Has Improved My Gaming Experience: One hard-core gamer describes how VoIP has helped her up her game. by Laura Milligan, January 30, 2008.
• Wii Speak Unboxing and WiiSpeak Channel Review by Chris. video.
• Hiii! Demonstrating the Wii Speak Channel voice message process. video.
• Wii Speak Channel - How to Download. video.
• Video interview with one of Wii Speak’s creators. I love the fishing expedition. July 2008. 

Technorati tags: wii, skype, voip, nintendo, wii speak, wiispeak, gaming, games, play, talk, speak

Bold Twittering: When is a SmartPhone Truly a Mobile Microcomputer?

If I ever had any doubt about the value of Twitter as a commercial social networking tool, it evaporated this weekend as a result of following some Tweets on the subject of smartphones that appeared this weekend. They certainly provide an independent perspective on issues that I'm sure others are wondering about:

Mark Evans acquired an iPod Touch back in August after deciding he did not need an iPhone; as a result of his recent employment status change, he is now debating the merits of having a smartphone - in particular, an iPhone

Luca Filigheddu has just gone through the process of evaluating the BlackBerry Bold and iPhone over the past few weeks. Saturday he sent me a Twitter direct message to say that he had acquired a BlackBerry Bold; after he had had a few hours experience Saturday I see this on his Twitter feed:And when I came home yesterday evening I see that my acquaintance Olivier Chaine has put up this Tweet (earlier yesterday I had suggested, in response to his request for smartphone Twitter client recommendations, that he look at Slandr.Net as a mobile platform Twitter client):

First I would suggest that the mini-computer industry died many years ago, to be replaced by the microcomputer era, especially server banks. Trust me, I spent a major part of my career relying on mini-computers. I think I would need a backpack to be mobile with a mini-computer.

So I'll assume Mark is really looking to have a mobile microcomputer or PC experience on a smartphone. Having had several months' experience with both an iPhone and a BlackBerry Bold, here are my criteria for a mobile microcomputer or, more aptly, a "Laptop for the Hip or Purse":

• Minimum 480 x 320 graphics display.
• Full QWERTY keyboard.
• Web browser capable of supporting PC-type browsing.
• Supports "Cut & Paste" (of significant value more often than one would initially imagine until it's not available)
• View and edit MS Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) with potential to add document creation.
• Supports video recording and MMS
• Background processing (especially after experiencing both Truphone for BlackBerry and Truphone for iPhone)
• Supports true Instant Messaging in background while running other applications
• A very high speed processor (>500 MHz)
• Runs applications such as Qik.com, SlingPlayer Mobile and iSkoot (for voice and chat conversations with Skype contacts).
• Bluetooth stereo audio support.
• Removable battery
• Equipped for memory upgrades through a removable memory card.
• Supports both Both WiFi and 3G wireless protocols

A great set of specifications but the key question here is: "How does it change the user experience?". In particular does it eliminate the "urge" to turn on, or always carry, a laptop to keep up-to-date with real time activities?

As I have mentioned elsewhere, after a month's experience with the BlackBerry Bold, I found I had lost that tugging "urge" to turn on my laptop for keeping current with real time (and often mission critical) information. This change did not just involve email and web browsing but also Instant Messaging, Twitter and attached document editing.. RIM would do well to position Bold as a "Laptop for the Hip or Purse", bypassing all the technical comparisons and moving on to succinctly promoting Bold based on the actual user experience.

I like my iPhone for many of its personal information delivery features; it gives me a feel for what is appealing about the iPhone. I can find Toronto Transit streetcar times, do unit conversions, find the nearest Tim Horton's or Starbucks; it has lots of great information delivery features. On the media side it's definitely an extension of the iPod although it does not have the full audio performance of the Bold.

However, a mobile microcomputer the iPhone is NOT! Yes it uses a modified Mac OS; it uses Safari browser; it has an iPod variant.

However, I find myself turning to my Bold much more often than my iPhone for real two way interactivity. Just as important as the keyboard is the ability to track instant messaging sessions, whether on iSkoot (for Skype chat), Palringo or BlackBerry Messenger in background while carrying out other activities. On the subject of low cost international calling I find I can make much more use of Truphone for BlackBerry than Truphone for iPhone (that's the subject of a future post).

I am encountering more and more acquaintances who have no use for a touch keyboard; certainly my typing error rate is much worse on the iPhone. For this reason alone I consider the iPhone to be a very good one-way information delivery device whereas BlackBerry is a true two-way communications device.

As for applications, suffice it to say that over the next six months, where feasible, business savvy developers will publish applications running on both devices. For instance, The Hockey News has just released mobile applications for both the BlackBerry and iPhone. I mentioned Truphone above; Mobile Google apps are another example.

Keeping up with iTunes music via BlackBerry MediaSync is a trivial operation. Frankly from some video and audio streaming experiences I have had, BlackBerry Bold provides superior stereo audio performance even without earbuds or a headset.

Bottom line: when I leave my home office or hotel room with my Bold, I no longer have to take my laptop to keep current.

Yes, at the moment, the iPhone browser a superior user experience but rest assured RIM is not ignoring the issue. At this point the Bold's browser issues have sometimes been frustrating but they not been an inhibition to my browsing activities in any major way - I still get the information I am seeking. The critical parameter here is the 480 pixel display width, which is sufficient to view most websites and weblogs without the need for horizontal scrolling via a ribbon bar. When RIM releases carrier-specific versions of their upgraded operating system - including browser enhancements, the Bold will live up to its full potential as "A Laptop for the Hip or Purse".

(As for pricing on Rogers, both the Bold and iPhone are C$199 with a three year contract.)

In future posts I'll cover in more detail some of the issues mentioned above, including my Truphone evaluation on each device, some very amazing real time video and audio experiences, the range of third party applications available on each device and why both background processing and WiFi is becoming critical to any smartphone.

And, Mark, if you're looking for a mobile microcomputer, I would suggest serious consideration of the BlackBerry Bold. As a final determinant, have a look at the Bold's display - it's been universally acclaimed as "stunning"; I can only agree.

In closing, can we expect Skype to include BlackBerry as one of their supported platforms for Skype for Mobile? Or will iSkoot improve on their user interface to take advantage of some new BlackBerry developer tools? (Most Skype executives I meet are sporting a BlackBerry - it's supported by eBay IT.)

Update: Luca published a post this afternoon, A Bold New Experience, and asks about his Tweet above: "Why Did I Say That?"

1) Always on Experience: the BB is offering me a realtime always-on experience never found in any device I used before
2) Multitasking - It lets you receive IMs while writing an email or making a phone call, for example
3) Stunning display
4) Wide availability of apps
5) Crazy speed
6) Great usability

Other posts:

• Om Malik: Review: BlackBerry Bold is Beautiful
• Web Worker Daily: BlackBerry Bold: Upgrading Your Mobile Experience.
  

Full disclosure: the author has been holder of a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998.

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TokBox: Send Santa a Video Mail

Skype’s video greeting card promotion is nice but doesn’t show the power of Skype.

TokBox’s “Send Santa a Video Mail” promotion is cooler and shows TokBox’s strengths well.

The promotion lives inside TokBox’s flash client (no download required). They offer fun special effects using video mail templates, like speaking inside a Santa hat and beard. Santa answers video mail, a personal touch. You may broadcast to your friend list (not exactly a great idea if you use TokBox for all of your life). TokBox saves your message to Santa in your “Sent” folder, a keepsake.

In all, TokBox’s holiday promo exploits TokBox’s strengths while Skype’s promo fails to employ Skype’s.

Technorati tags: tokbox, santa, santaclaus, video, mail, skype, greeting, card, letter, christmas, xmas

SyncMood and Twype for Windows

SyncMood and Twype copy your twitter updates into Skype for Windows. I’ve had great success with Twype for a while. Now I’m trying SyncMood, happily so far. Thanks, Andrej.

This is part of a few broader patterns.

Open Platforms. Skype’s and Twitter’s APIs are public, free, and easy. So people can build apps that work with them.

Social Sync. Update once, see it everywhere you want it seen. As a category, this is getting smarter. I’m seeing useful features like

• Deduplication. Your update gets caught in feedback loops among networks, creating echoes. Deduping dampens the feedback loops. 
• Time stamp preservation. Assures an update’s original date/time is passed through, not the time it was last passed along.
• Accurate provenance. Keeping metadata about an update’s original system/service source.

Lifestream Shaping. Setting up filters and agents so you and others see only what matters, at the best times, in the best media, in the right contexts. One response to social network overload. 

Data Portability. The social platforms, and the sync and lifestreaming tools which use them, put some power in user hands. It puts a little proof behind a promise that your-data-is-really-yours.

Technorati tags: skype, plug-ins, SyncMood, twype, skypeapi, skype api, platforming, twitter, sync, social sync, lifestreams, data portability, dataportability

49-second student Skype ad

Animated Skype Ad
– Joint Student Project for YCN
from cmygeek on Vimeo.

Pat Phelan Finds How Popular Skype Is, Really!

Today Ireland's favorite communications entrepreneur, Pat Phelan, put up a post: "How Popular is Skype, really?" Shows the potential for both Skype and its (prospective) partners, should the new executive team be able to execute on a restructured Skype and a viable partner program. And it shows the relative magnitude of the challenge that Truphone, Jajah and Rebtel are up against as they try to grow their business.

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China blocks New York Times and Skype Journal

Welcome to our club, Gray Lady. Skype Journal is blocked by the GFW too.

Technorati tags: censorship, china, nyt, gfw, skype journal

Joost drops desktops, moves to browsers

Joost’s experiment in p2p video distribution is over. Technology is secondary to user experience and enterprise flexibility. Joost.com took over from the Joost software client today. This increases Joost’s market reach, shortens release cycles, and slashes a user’s adoption costs (no downloads).

I’m not saying this approach would work for Skype (whose founders invested in Joost) but this gives some insight into the tradeoffs product architects consider.

Back to Joost, Christian Andersen wonders how Joost will be better than or different from other video sites like Hulu.

Technorati tags: skype, joost, architecture, technology, design

Skype hires Google PR exec for global communications vp

Brian O’Shaughnessy will join Skype to direct corporate communications (media relations) from Skype’s Luxembourg headquarters, per Michael Arrington. Hat tip to Neil Lindsey.

Brian is Google’s Director, Global Corporate Communications and Public Affairs. Before that, Brian directed corporate communications at VeriSign, policy communications at Network Solutions and the Internet Alliance.

Brian got his start as a legislative aide for U.S. Congressman Edward Markey, known for his support of net neutrality and other Skype-friendly policies.

P.S. Brian, check out Mousel’s Cantine.

Technorati tags: skype, marketing, pr, mediarels

Microsoft retires its Messenger Bot SDK, Hosting

Voidstar's Void.Bot for Skype is still open source.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is ending its adventures in third parties messenger bots. They announced Windows Live Team Agents' end-of-life in Summer 2009 without announcing a successor service. Companies were exposing their databases through chat, none of them terribly popular.

tags: bots, natural language processing, nlp, voidbot, void.bot, skype, microsoft, wlm, robots, agent, agents

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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

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good webcam?

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.

How Skype Will Grow in 2009

Guest Post by Hudson Barton, The Borderless Communicator

2008 is turning out to be a great year for Skype growth (real users), nearly matching the record year of 2006. In my view, the patterns of Skype growth are affected by:

1. The popularity (name recognition) of the software itself... in comparison to communications alternatives.
2. The capability of computers and mobile communication devices.
3. The quality and capability of the software for multi-modal communication... in comparison to communications alternatives.
4. The state of the world economy
5. The availability of broadband

So for 2009 here is how things are shaping up.

• Skype has no discernible marketing program. It never has. Skype relies almost entirely upon word-of-mouth. If Skype were to introduce a marketing program, the opportunity for growth could be significant. There seems to be zero prospect for such a marketing plan.
  
• The power of computers will grow marginally. The capability of mobile devices, especially smartphones, will grow hugely. The latter is a real opportunity for Skype if it can develop quality software for the most popular platforms such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia N- and E-series. On the other hand, if the world economy sinks, then few people will be buying those new computers and mobile devices. Overall, this is not going to affect 2009 growth significantly.
  
• The overall quality and capability of Skype client software will improve marginally. Aside from bringing out client software for mobile platforms, upcoming improvements in the client (especially video and audio) will affect Skype growth only on the margins.
  
• Because Skype/Skype calling is free, and both SkypeIn and SkypeOut are very inexpensive, it is reasonable to assume that a poor economy is good for Skype in terms of its market share of communications. However, the overall market for communications may well decline in a bad economy. So while a declining economy is not good for Skype, it is less bad than for Skype's competitors.
  
• The availability of broadband is a very important factor in the growth of Skype's "real users".

Summary: Skype growth (as measured by "real users") will continue on its current trajectory (averaging around 830,000 new "real users" per month). That is a huge number by anyone's standard. As in prior years, growth will be strong in the first quarter, slack in the second and third quarters, and strong in the fourth quarter.

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Truphone Breaks the Carrier Barrier

Truphone's announcements last week overcame a significant carrier resistance barrier to using VoIP-enabled services to reduce international calling costs. The key secret here was that it required the combination of Truphone's iPhone and iPod Touch applications along with the Apple Application program that leverages Apple's established carrier relationships to break this barrier.On Friday I was finally able to complete provisioning of Truphone on my iPhone. It happened at this time for three reasons:

• The association of my original Truphone number and account with a Nokia N95 handset and the "416" number I eventually transferred to my iPhone whose acquisition as an upgrade on my carrier account minimize my iPhone costs over the term of the three year contract.
• The original iPhone application only supported outbound calling; I would have lost the Truphone inbound calling feature I had on the N95.
• For this reason I left Truphone on my N95 (using a deactivated SIM and my home office WiFi access point) pending the arrival of a Truphone for iPhone application and service that supported both inbound and outbound calling.

Recall also that the original Truphone for iPhone only allowed calls over WiFi access points with no ability to pass them through the underlying 3G wireless carrier. Truphone's two announcements last week addressed three issues:

• Truphone for iPhone now supports both inbound and outbound calling
• Truphone added the Truphone Anywhere service such that Truphone for iPhone calls could be made over the underlying 3G carrier as well as over WiFi.
• Truphone for iPod Touch (2nd generation) invoked the Truphone Anywhere service allowing calls to be made from iPod Touch to any PSTN number.

Over the course of the past week it has become possible to make low cost international calls from any iPhone or iPod Touch mobile device worldwide. Truphone has demonstrated how the underlying service provider can can eliminate the need to have a multitude of individual "carrier-service provider agreements" with the 79 carriers currently offering the iPhone worldwide. Yet carriers still benefit through increased local minutes used to provide the connection to/from Truphone calls. To quote from Ted Wallingford's "Heartburn Chuckle: The telecom industry can blame itself":

The Carriers

The carriers are firms like AT&T, Windstream, Verizon, BT, and so on. Their obsession with the billing unit (the almighty minute) has made them helpless to see the possibilities of a software-rich, application-based global ecosystem. Consequently, the most successful apps to arrive on the carriers’ networks, the ones most embraced by the public, overwhelmingly have one purpose: to steal billable minutes from the carriers. The innovation disappeared and the scrappy new players in the market, the ones with the power to transform the public’s thinking about telecom, instead got stuck doing the same old thing the big telecoms do to put bread on the table: bill minutes. [Author's italics]

For instance, Canadians can now use Truphone for iPhone as their international calling service over Rogers without the need to subscribe to one of Rogers international calling plans but perhaps with an increase in their monthly "local" voice plan minutes. In this case, there is no cost for the actual application and you establish international call credits through a Truphone account. When Rogers' iPhone customers travel to Europe, calling back to North America can be handled at a much lower cost through hotel, cafe and airport WiFi services, such as Boingo or iPass. (True roaming calls from outside the "home country" over a 3G carrier will still be expensive; Andy's post linked here suggests RebelSIM provides a solution.)

It was the second part of this announcement that is most significant. Previously VoIP-enabled services, such as 3's Skypephone, required working with individual carriers to establish the appropriate business and operating agreements. However, in one move, Truphone was able to leverage Apple's relationships with 79 carriers worldwide to bring about commitment free international calling. Apple, through its Application Program has become a disintermediator, facilitating a business model disruption, once again.

As for the iPhone for iPod Touch application; this is why the most successful carriers need to offer both wireless and broadband Internet services. Calls via WiFi access points, including one's broadband Internet service, go over the broadband connection and reduce carriers' needs to build out the capital-intensive wireless network infrastructure, including backhaul.

In a future post, once I've had some more Truphone for iPhone experience, I'll do a comparison of services available over Skype and over Truphone. But one obvious difference: Truphone is about voice conversations only; Skype is about voice and text conversations.

Related Post: Race to Provide Low Cost International Calling Heats Up

Tags: Truphone, iPhone, carriers, voip, Skypephone, iSkoot, international calling, service providers, WiFi

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Are you going to MacWorld or CES in January?

Skype Journal will be at both events.

Skype will be there too, boothless, doing the quiet meetings and press visits thing.

Good news: Skype friends will be at CES, too.

ASUS, Sennheiser (headphones), Panasonic (Panasonic KX-WP1050 Wi-Fi phone for Skype), IPEVO, Sony (PSP-3000, Mylo), Intel (Skype on MID Linux devices), Nokia/Symbian, Netgear, Gennum, Cisco/Linksys, Thomson.

Sad news: So far, I've confirmed some Skype-friends won't be at CES:

Belkin, Phillips, Auvi Technologies, RTX, TrendNet, Topcom, and Pepper. Tough times, new marketing priorities or nothing Skypey to show.

Will you be there?  If not, why not? If so, ping me, maybe we can say hello or find something interesting to do.

tags: party, schmooze, hangover, networking, macworld, ces, macworld09, ces09, sanfrancisco, lasvegas, january, 2009, events, conferences, tradeshows, ASUS, Sennheiser, Panasonic, phones, skype, IPEVO, Sony, PSP-3000, Mylo, Intel, Nokia, Netgear, Gennum, Cisco, Linksys, Thomson

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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

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good defaults

Google adds two-way, free SMS to Gmail

Announced yesterday. Uses the GTalk chat system. US only for now. Free for you, but each "Enter" you make counts as a text to the person on the phone. Hands-on write-up on VentureBeat. Skype offers SMS (although not in Beta 4 for Windows) for a fee and outbound only.

tags: google, gtalk, im, chat, sms, texting

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Race to Provide Low Cost International Calling on Mobile Heats Up

Yesterday I wrote a post for GigaOm, Skype: Coming to a Cell Phone Near You, discussing how the announcement of two new beta versions of Skype on mobile devices gave a hint of Skype's future mobile strategy.

At the same time Truphone announced a new version of their iPhone application. Whereas the version released at the time of the Apple App Store launch back in July only supported outbound calling over WiFi access points, the new release not only supports inbound calling to your iPhone number but also makes outbound calls via the 3G carrier networks that offer the iPhone.

Innovation driven competition in delivering low cost international calling services appears to be heating up during these challenging economic times - at least for calls originating in your "home" calling country or area code(s). Here's a brief summary of what is evolving:

We've seen the evolution of two architectures for making VoIP-enabled calling from mobile devices; it's all a matter of where the calling party's Skype (or VoIP client) session is opened up - directly on the device or on a dedicated hosted server. This leads to two other considerations:

• Carrying the voice portion of the call from the mobile device into the network cloud, either via the carrier's robust and proven (GSM) voice channel or over via a WiFi access point
• The need to support Skype's instant messaging (chat and presence); this always occurs as a data activity

VoIP Client on the Mobile Device; VoIP over WiFi
Skype for Windows Mobile places the VoIP client directly onto the device. As a result the device must handle the "VoIP processing" to generate the packets that are transmitted over the supporting data network (either a carrier's 3G network or via a WiFi access point.) As mentioned previously, it places heavy demands on the device's resources, especially the processor (running at much lower speeds than on a PC) and the battery.
Truphone's original voice offering also runs on the device (usually a Nokia Smartphone). While both Skype for Windows Mobile and Truphone can run over either WiFi access points or a 3G network, it is strongly advised to use these only over WiFi access points to have a reliable, robust, high quality voice service. For instance, the Skype for Windows Mobile download page says:

• Log into Skype from any WiFi zone to make free calls and send instant messages to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world, any day of the week.
• WiFi connection or 3G/2G data connection (we cannot guarantee voice quality over 3G/2G. You may also be liable to additional data charges so please check with your operator before using)

Truphone's original iPhone outbound calling offering was also only available using the iPhone's WiFi capability; however, details of their architecture were never revealed.

Accessing VoIP via a Wireless Carrier
Over the past year we have seen the rise of several services that use the alternate architecture where a call is placed via a local access point to a hosted server that then opens up a Skype client. The server-based Skype client then completes the call as a Skype-to-Skype call.

While originally pioneered by iSkoot, a service using this architecture, such as Skype Lite beta, makes a call to a SIP Gateway server via a local point of presence while data about the call is concurrently sent via the underlying data network to a hosted Mobile Gateway. This dedicated gateway then sets up a Skype-to-Skype call between the SIP Gateway — now connected to your cell phone — and the destination Skype contact. Skype chat messages can also be exchanged concurrently over the data network. We are now seeing various offerings using this architecture:

• The highly successful Skypephone offered by 3 in nine countries.
• iSkoot providing service for a wide range of phones including BlackBerry, Nokia and T-Mobile's G-1.
• Truphone Anywhere: when Truphone found they could not offer a highly reliable service over 3G networks (largely due to device resource considerations), they launched Truphone Anywhere that allows Truphone calls to be made over a 2G (GSM/EDGE) or 3G (UMTS/HSPA) voice/data network as well as over WiFi access points.
• Skype for Mobile beta - Skype's first attempt to go beyond Skype for Windows Mobile onto other platforms such as Nokia N-Series and E-Series devices. This never got out of the beta phase; while you could use Skype chat anywhere, the voice service was only to be available in a limited number of countries (that did not overlap with countries where Skypephone was available).
• Skype Lite beta: building on the Skype for Mobile beta experience to a service that supports not only smartphones but also over 90 cell phones that support a Java client and include basic web browsing and data capability. According to the Skype Lite page it appears that Skype is working with carriers in ten countries to support this service.
• Truphone for iPhone 1.12 release announced yesterday: makes Truphone calls either over WiFi or any cellular network using an iPhone, building on their Truphone Anywhere experience.

Key features of these server-hosted VoIP client services:

• They are most cost effective when calling from your home country or local calling area. You could incur long distance or, when outside your home country, roaming charges that would run up quite quickly.
• An unlimited or high cap data plan minimizes costs associated with using these services.
• Only Skype provides a full Instant Messaging capability covering both chat and presence. Some Truphone offerings have shown support for SMS messaging.
• Calls to Skype or Truphone contacts are no additional cost beyond the "local" connection cost.
• Calls to the PSTN, such as SkypeOut calls, require Skype or Truphone subscriptions or credits.
  
• Calls to mobile numbers outside U.S. and Canada will still invoke the charges incurred in "caller pays" mobile services.

Why only the cost of a "local" call? Your cell phone makes a call to a local number which puts the call through to the service's SIP Gateway. At this point you connect into a Skype-to-Skype call for which there are no termination charges involved as a result of Skype's unique (and secure) peer-to-peer architecture. The same applies to Truphone where Truphone-to-Truphone calls are free.

This Skype Lite beta announcement portends that we could be seeing mobile Skype-to-Skype calling, along the lines of 3's popular Skypephone service in nine countries, become available to mobile customers having a much broader range of cell phones and in up to ten additional countries.

One other service that can be accessed from any phone is Mobivox. However, there you have to build up and manage your address book online such that VoxGirl can help you make your calls; it does not access your mobile phone address book. It's purely a voice service with no messaging component (other than using SMS to facilitate setting up calls under certain circumstances).

While we're getting a first step in driving down mobile costs for international calling, the next step needs to be finding a user-friendly way to drive out roaming costs. MaxRoam and Truphone's SIM4Travel are starting to offer some hope on this front; however, at the moment their costs for USA-Canada calls are much more than my Rogers roaming charge. The winners will feature not only lower costs but a very friendly user interface, interacting with the device address book, that also provides the most complete ranges of services in terms of coverage and complementary conversation modes, such as IM.

Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 3 Available

We have just learned that Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 3 is now available. Once we have had a chance to install and review it, there will be more to say. But for now:

• Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 3 Download.
• Release Notes
• Raul Liive's Skype Blog Post

From the Release Notes (which also lists many bugfixes):

• feature: Abuse reporting - allow users to report unwanted contact requests and Spam
  
• feature: Call Quality Feedback button
  
• feature: Skype Prime payments support
  
• feature: Outlook Contacts
  
• feature: Custom Chrome
  
• feature: History
  
• feature: My Account in Client 2
  
• improvement: Options panel updated
  
• improvement: improved layout of profile area in group conversations
  
• improvement: Instant Messaging display
  
• improvement: Call Toolbar
  
• improvement: More visible button to switch between default and classic view
  
• improvement: Improved bandwidth allocation methods
  
• improvement: Changes to file sending design
  
• change: Getting Started Wizard improvements
  
• change: Extras Manager updated to version 2.0.0.65
  
• change: Removed AMR-WB audio codec

Remember this is a beta release and should not be used in "mission critical" situations where you require the full Skype 3.8 for Windows feature set. Check it out and provide your feedback to Beta Feedback, Skype Forums or the Jira public issue tracker or in comments to this post below.

bad zeldman

Skype's Restructuring Makes Major Moves: New CxO Announcements

Over the past few months, announcements have been few and far between with respect to Skype product news. But at the same time I have often discussed Skype's restructuring moves; the first official disclosure of a restructuring was disclosed in our September interview with Skype's new President Josh Silverman. Well it appears that Josh has been busy doing interviews; today three top level appointments were announced:

Daniel Berg, previously Sun's London-based Chief Technology Officer for Global Sales and Services as well as Vice-President of Systems Engineering for EMEA, has been appointed as Skype's Chief Technology Officer, starting January 2, 2009. In a summary statement from Skype's blog post:

As CTO, Daniel Berg’s primary responsibility will be to drive innovation and ensure Skype continues to develop great software. With a mandate covering Skype’s full range of products, he will develop and maintain a global team of more than 300 staff.

Daniel has authored several books. But since he has not made any statements on his appointment yet, we could paraphrase a statement he made about his Sun activities last April in a post entitled "Travel, Talk, Repeat" on Sun's "Contrarion Minds" blog:

So he travels. A lot.

"I actually spend 25 percent of my working day, on average, in the air," says Berg, who is based in the U.K. "That's not going to the airport, not coming home from airport, that's in the air."

He knows this because he sticks to a time budget.

"I know I need to be spending this much time with customers and this much with organizational matters and this much with employee development, to make sure I'm staying focused and balanced," he explains.

His biggest challenge?

"Articulating the value Sun [Skype] has," Berg replies. "I know this has been said before, but I've been at Sun 15 years and this is the best lineup of technology, products, and offerings we've ever had. Yet when I go talk to customers, one of the first things they say is, 'Oh, I didn't know you guys did that.'"

So we'll be expecting Dan to become one of the more "public" faces of Skype. And that those air miles will keep on building up.

The second appointment is Christopher S. Dean as Chief Strategy Officer. From his LinkedIn profile, Christopher has a long history of working with startups, including periods on the venture capital side in Silicon Valley, most recently as co-founder of Texada Capital. At one point he and Skype's GM Audio and Video Jonathan Christensen were colleagues in a San Francisco-based venture capital firm called Sweetwater Partners, whose Internet traces seem to have disappeared. From the Skype blog post announcement:

Christopher S. Dean will focus on Skype’s strategy, including the development of partnerships and strategic alliances with other like-minded organisations and the acquisition of companies and technologies for Skype. His team will act as the incubator and strategic planning hub for new ideas and projects which support Skype’s technology vision and long term corporate goals.

It appears that Christopher will be based out of Skype's San Jose office; his responsibilities will be a key to driving Skype from a $500MM per year revenue business into the the multi-billion dollar revenues needed to justify eBay's initial investment in Skype. Why the "S."? I assume that Christopher is trying to avoid confusion with the U.K.'s Olympic Ice Dancing multiple Medallist Christopher Dean.

The final appointment, another key to ensuring Skype hires and maintains appropriately skilled and motivated employees, is the appointment of Anne Gillespie, whose long history of EMEA positions with Compaq and HP, brings the experience required to serve as head of Skype Human Resources.

There's still one more major executive move I am expecting - a Chief Marketing Officer who bring the badly needed messaging and market communications strategies and disciplines required for a business that's expected to attract sufficient usage to generate those multi-billion dollar sales.

And I'm sure Lee Dryburgh has no problem with my publicly inviting Dan and Christopher to register to join the rest of the Emerging Communications community at eComm 2009; after all Skype is a Platinum sponsor.

Best wishes for success, Dan, Christopher and Anne from Skype Journal.

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Will Sony layoffs affect Skype distribution?

Skype software runs on the Sony PSP 2000/3000 and Sony Mylo, perhaps on the Playstation 4 some day. Sony Corporation announced they are setting free 8000 employees and 8000 contractors from the 160,000 employee company. The decimation and plant closings should affect Sony's semiconductor, recording media, and television manufacturing most.

We won't know for until next year how this will affect products that can extend Skype's reach.

See also:

• News Release Bereft of Emotion or Humanity: Sony Announces Initiatives to Improve Profitability and Enhance Operational Efficiencies in its Electronics Businesses.
• New York Times, Silicon Alley Insider, CNET layoff coverage.
• Sony Ericson joins the Open Handset Alliance (to make Android handsets).

tags: skype, sony, psp, mylo, sony ericson, layoffs, us, japan

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make skype dinner

Voxeo Grows Again: Voice Objects Acquisition Adds a Third Layer of Developer Resources

Over the past ten years Orlando, FL-based Voxeo Corporation has grown to become one of the largest hosts of enterprise Interactive Voice Response ("IVR") applications, building not only tools for developing and hosting these applications but also a track record of twenty profitable quarters as a self-financed private company.Historically Voxeo has provided, at no charge, resources for C++/Java and Web Developers to produce customized IVR applications that are then hosted at their network operations center. Their developer community has grown to over 31,000 participants. As their expertise has grown they have also developed their licensable Prophecy SIP platform for those enterprises that wish to host their own services using Voxeo's tools.

Today Voxeo announced an expansion their development expertise, technology base and user community through the acquisition of Germany-based Voice Objects.

While acquiring ownership of Voice Objects' technology assets, Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor emphasized in an interview with me yesterday that Voxeo's first reason for making an acquisition is to acquire the expertise and professionalism of the employees. Contrary to the popular perception of making an acquisition and focusing on the technology assets, Voxeo looks for team players who can fit into Voxeo's culture and then look at the technology synergies.

As a bonus the Voice Objects acquisition brings to the table as customers a new layer of developers; namely those who routinely develop "self-service" applications for service providers and enterprises as a full time occupation. Jonathan described Voxeo's current developer resources as having two layers: API-based telephony libraries favored by C++/Java "low level" developers and XML-based telephony languages using Voxeo's proprietary but simplified CallXML as well as other XML standards for web developers. The acquisition of Voice Ojbects introduces a higher level of object-based telephony tools, employing drag-and-drop and visual rapid development techniques.

Whereas Voxeo's legacy tools facilitated people-to-people connections, Voice Ojbects' toolkits facilitate the development of "self-service" applications where no human is involved in delivering or provisioning enterprise or carrier-based services. It is multimodal in that not only is voice involved but also SMS messaging and video can be brought into the application where appropriate. For example, T-Mobile Czech can easily program changes into their self-service applications reducing development times by an order of magnitude while dynamically addressing market needs.

Taylor described Voice Objects' toolkits as having three major components: a rich development environment, unified self-service middleware - that connects customer information within an enterprise with customers who desire access to this information via voice, SMS or other modes - and, finally, extensive analytics. The analytics component gathers real customer usage data and provides justification for making application modifications based on user experiences as well as changing local market conditions. To quote Jonathan: "Business owners don't want to build a bad experience; however, it is challenging and difficult to build applications that work well for customers."

In closing our interview, Taylor mentioned that Voxeo, recognizing that the best way to recruit talent is through acquisitions of this nature, will be looking at three or four similar acquisitions in 2009 building up a team of "great people who understand the industry well".

The acquisition of Voice Objects will not change Voxeo's business model of making their developer resources available at no charge while charging either for hosting of applications or for platform licenses sold to enterprises that wish to host their own applications.

It appears that Voxeo continues to set a benchmark for operating a sustainably profitable business in the Voice 2.0 world. On a broader scale Jonathan has provided an overview of the various levels of developer segmentation and classes of tools available on the market today for creating Voice 2.0 applications.

Other posts on this acquistion:

• Vox Populi "Best Freaking Voice Platform on the Market".
• Dan York at Voxeo: What the Voice Objects Acquistion by Voxeo means for voice applications developers.
• Michael Dinan, TMCNet: Voxeo Acquires VoiceObjects, Expands Cost-Saving IVR Solutions
• Andy Abramson, VoIP Watch: What's New In VoIP? Lots with Gizmo, Voxeo and Fonality

Tags: Voxeo, Voice Objects. Jonathan Taylor, acquisitions

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Dryburgh 101: Attention is the post-telecom minute

Lee Dryburgh, mister Emerging Communications Conference, gave a great dinner speech last month. Lee's blogging his talk, leaving out the bawdy bits. Three highlights...

Attention scarcity is overcoming carrier scarcity. Phone companies deliver interruptions. This doesn't work when your time, attention, and concentration are valuable. So... 

Power is shifting from caller to callee. Power tools, rich with context sentience, are emerging from our primordial voicemail and caller ID services. Like social secretaries, these tools assess relevance from the callee's view. One effect is...

Multimodal replaces voice-only communication. Because every conversation needs a different blend of media, tailored to the people, the subject, and the environment.

Lee speaks to the growing irrelevance of phone companies.

Read the whole thing.

tags: skype, ecomm09, telecom

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Fonolo Takes Its "Deep Dialing" Into Full Public Beta

When calling into an enterprise of any reasonable size, we all love to navigate our way through those pesky (and repetitive) enterprise auto-attendant services or phone trees that go through menu after menu to connect you directly to an appropriate destination service or person. NOT!

At last spring's eComm 2008 we first learned about Fonolo, a "Deep Dialing" service that bypasses phone trees to connect you directly with the destination extension you really want to reach. I provided a detailed description of Fonolo, incorporating a video, on Web Worker Daily three weeks ago. While Fonolo has been in private beta for a few months, today it is launching a fully open public beta.

I asked Fonolo CEO Shai Berger, aside from the open public beta announcement, what have they learned from the private beta and what other experience have they gained during this period? His response:

• Fonolo has grown to provide Deep Dialing for over 300 companies from 150 six weeks ago.
• They are learning what is required to scale the service; it's not the web portal that presents an issue but rather the scalability of the service itself where they need to be supporting several hundred concurrent calls over the phone network in real time. "Every call involves a "deep dial" which is processor intensive and uses voice recognition to make sure they get to the right place within an enterprise's menu."
• From the beta test experience, "We've learned that 'Deep Dialing' has tapped into a vein of consumer frustration. We get lots of fan mail! We've also learned that the companies people want to call are concentrated on a few verticals, in particular wireless providers and ISPs. We're going to disclose our "top 10" enterprise category list at some point in the future."
• What are the goals for the open public beta? "Watch how the service scales with usage and watch usage patterns. This is particularly important in helping to determine the structure of premium services."

But there's more to the Fonolo story than simply "Deep Dialing". With the data collected during the beta periods and the services they are considering, they will also be able to provide a service to call centers to assist them with improving their productivity. This would include providing data on where users get lost in a menu, hang up in frustration or end up at an inappropriate destination. Martin Geddes foresees potential for Fonolo as having more benefit for call centers than for consumers; check out Fonolo's role in a discussion led by Martin at the recent Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm conference in London, U.K.

… [but] who benefits more: the consumer, or the call centre? We think that it’s the latter, and the consumer is the price-sensitive side. The call centre wants the maximum rate of self-care, high customer satisfaction, and the web site offers the ability to do all kinds of enhanced multi-modal interactions that a 0-9*# keypad can’t do well… Therefore in our two-sided market world, we’d get telcos to distribute and promote this tool (on their fixed, mobile and on-device portals). They would then sell these enhanced capabilities to call centres.”

At the recent Mobilize 08 Shai announced the Fonolo application for iPhone, to become available early in 2009; Fonolo was awarded the Judges Prize at this event's LaunchPad segment. And, given the target user base, I'm sure they'll be looking into putting a BlackBerry application on their roadmap.

Symantec is one of the recent additions to their enterprise directory. I could have used Fonolo a month ago when I was having an issue with upgrading a Norton security product and had to make multiple calls to the same support line to resolve the issue. A mouse click and getting a call-back would have been a lot simpler and less time consuming than pushing "9" four times - interspersed with tedious voice directions - to get to the appropriate service personnel. .(The good news is that the issue did get resolved.)

Sign up for the Fonolo open beta here.

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Skype sued for old money

Do you want your money back after 180 days?

Skype's long taken credits from accounts it deems abandoned. Seattle lawyer Roger M. Townsend filed suit Friday on behalf of all Skype users in Washington who lost money this way.

The plaintiffs say a Skype account should be treated like a merchant's gift certificate. In Washington state, all gift certificates are refundable by law (and balances are turned over to charity 24 months after being abandoned). So Skype should be giving back a Washingtonian's money instead of keeping it.

If Skype broke the law, then plaintiffs want triple damages, legal fees, and for Skype to stop the practice. "Our goal is to get a fair disposition" Townsend said to Skype Journal.

The claim says Skype has billing information good enough to identify and notify all Washington Skype users about the suit. 

A similar suit in Germany ordered Skype to stop this in 2006.

So how could this affect Skype and Skype users?

The suit may not find a legal nexus. But Skype does business with Washingtonians daily.

Skype may win. It's not clear Washington's gift certificate laws apply to something that is neither a gift certificate nor a bank account. However there are enough similarities that Skype may be held to that standard.

Should Skype lose, while this class action is limited to one US state, suits in other populated states may follow. Other states have similar gift card consumer protection laws, but terms vary a lot from state to state.

I don't imagine the business impact would be severe. Skype has been driving customers to switch from Skype credit accounts to signing up for pay-as-you-go subscription plans for years.

Has Skype taken your money? How did it feel? Would you like it back?

2008 Skype Class Action

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business Skype Journal Skype s

tags: skype, security, law, terms, conditions

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somatosensory skype

somatosensory on Wikipedia (touch).

gas free skype

Mobiles (and Skype) force AT&T to layoff 12,000

AT&T blames the 4% layoff on landline loss. Four percent is no big deal for a 300,000 person company; it's just moving people from its landline business to its other operations. This follows 20% of US consumers who left landlines to mobiles.

At least one state government is trying to stop AT&T's layoffs. Connecticut's attorney general is suing to block "AT&T from laying off about 400 employees in the state, charging that the job cuts will further weaken the company’s already dismal service performance."

AT&T will also conserve cash by putting off upgrades to its infrastructure and systems. This could be bad timing as massive copper theft threatens US telephony, internet, and electricity systems.

Om Malik sees this hunkering down as a trend. This is already starving carrier suppliers, as those who used to sell their products at the now-defunct VON trade show know well. 

Personally, I think this is a political gambit. AT&T is getting set to play D.C. hardball when it comes to Obama administration FCC and FTC regulation, Department of Justice antitrust issues, and congressional bailouts.

tags: skype, attention, at&t, att, layoffs, economy, apocalypt08, business

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Motley Fool Discusses The 2012 Annual Report of SkypePal Inc.

The Motley Fool has become a popular and widely respected investment community site since the origins of the commercial Internet in the mid-90's with the objective of helping people take control of their financial lives. It has evolved into a multi-media financial services operation; they have free and premium services; suggest portfolios and try to pick recommendations, host discussion forums amongst other activities. "The company's name was taken from Shakespeare, whose wise fools both instructed, amused, and could speak the truth to the king -- without getting their head cut off."

In a post yesterday about "5 Free Internet Winners" they discuss the five biggest winners if free WiFi comes to pass as a result of anticipated rules for forthcoming spectrum auctions in the U.S. Google, Logitech, Amazon, Nintendo and "eBay | SkypePal" are the selections. Why SkypePal?

Forget eBay.com itself. By the time free access hits the masses, PayPal and perhaps even Skype will be bigger parts of this portfolio of verbs. Heck, even the name eBay may be toast as you crack open the 2012 annual report of SkypePal Incorporated.

Skype and PayPal will be the biggest winners of blanketed coverage. Skype remains the global voice chat leader with 370 million users worldwide. If you don't think that Skype will replace a few landline telephone accounts once connectivity is pervasive, you may as well Skype me to tell me otherwise.

PayPal is already the leader in micro-payments. It will become an even bigger force in real world transactions under Martin's scenario of access for all.

Certainly an opinion contary to all those thinking that eBay is about to run out and sell Skype. And it reinforces my long held opinion that the new executive team has one primary goal - to drive up the value of Skype to the point where eBay can not only fully recover its over $3B total acquisition cost of Skype but also provide a reasonable return, whether as an ongoing operation or through an exit involving a sale or IPO. Motley Fool goes further and feels that Skype will become one of the primary value drivers of eBay shares going forward, given that eBay's online operation is struggling to find new ways to grow.

As for more reliable indicators of Skype's current growth than Skype's published number of accounts (not subscribers, not users), check out the peak number of users daily shown in the Skype client, Jean Mercier's note on the tripling of Skype downloads and Hudson Barton's "Real" User tracking showing that Skype is has returned to a growth rate comparable to its 2006 rate.

But in the background the new executive team has been working on the restructuring discussed in Skype Journal's interview with Skype President Josh Silverman. In a recent "Home Improvement" post, Josh gave an update on the the efforts required to "right the ship":

Excited as we are about bringing new colleagues aboard, there’s more to reorganizing our structure for continued growth. Back in the summer, we set out to be smart about it. And transparent. And fair.

Which is why we held numerous workshops to gain input from the team on how our structure and ways of working need to change. Change that we hope will lead to sustained growth, better products and an even more empowering work life at Skype. One of the things we’re doing is to create smaller “companies” within the company: consumer-, business-, mobility-, and developer-focused business units vaccinated against shackles that curb innovation and risk-taking. Each new business unit is designed to emulate the feel of a start-up and to cultivate a deeper sense of ownership.

This is just a low-resolution snapshot from what’s a continual journey of change. There’s much more to it, of course. Replotting our roles, responsibilities and accountability takes time. While we think that we’ve done most things right, some won’t come through as intended. Tweaking them for a few months should make life at Skype work well for everybody.

And he concludes with:

Our structural rethink isn’t about change for change’s sake. From day one, everything at Skype has boiled down to delighting the customer. With a bit of home improvement to support further growth and innovation, we’re just making sure it stays that way.

At least Motley Fool and the Skype executive team are in sync with respect to the primary goal at Skype. The next few months and the subtle indications of forthcoming new product and service announcements will tell if the foundation is being built to achieve these goals. From restructuring will now come the challenge of execution.

Tags: Motley Fool, eBay, Skype, PayPal, Josh Silverman

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Skype download rate suddenly triples

Guest post by Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist

Since the first week of November, Skype shows an increased download speed. Previously it fluctuated around 500 downloads per minute. Now: 1400 downloads per minute. Almost triple speed since November 5!

I looked at my other data to see if there are other signs, but they are quite contradictory:

• Concurrent users online shows a very strong growth, and we could even reach 15 million very soon.
• Number of purchase orders doesn't seem to have an increased growth pattern.
• There is since September a downward trend in Skype.com website visits.

I didn’t notice any special Skype "event" that could explain this increase in downloads and active users.

What other reasons could explain the growth?

The economical crisis could be one motivation for people to use the "free calls" from Skype.

Perhaps the "Obama Election campaign" is another explanation of the phenomenon: indeed some "Obama teams" used Skype. See the Skype blogs: US Elections: Skype gets out the vote.

tags: skype, trends, downloads, stats, statistics, chart, growth, november, 2008

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Truphone for iPod Touch: Accessing Skype Contacts and Social Media

Over the past year one of the leading IP-based voice service offerings for low cost international calling from wireless smartphones has been Truphone whose service primarily runs over WiFi access points. Their Truphone Anywhere service, launched last spring, provides an option for making calls via 3G networks using a combination of the data channel and voice channel in a manner similar to iSkoot's architecture where the caller's VoIP client resides on the service provider's server(s). When the Apple App store launched last summer Truphone launched an iPhone 3G application that once again offers the ability to make outbound calls over a WiFi access point.

One more user experience consideration: a key user friendly Truphone feature is its complete Address Book integration; when using Truphone on a N95 8GB I can simply go to my standard address book (synchronized with my Outlook Contacts), select a contact, select a phone number for the contact, press the green "Call" button and initiate a call over Truphone.

So it was not a total surprise, with this experience, that today Truphone announced a new Truphone application for the second generation iPod Touch, which supports a headset with a microphone. But it's not simply about making low cost phone calls. Support for chat and social networking has also been included. The client does require the use of a microphone adapter; while available elsewhere, Truphone does plan to offer one as well. From the press release:

Truphone for iPod Touch will become a one-stop-shop social hub with the following features coming soon:

• Calling to landlines (PSTN) at low cost (simply set yourself up with a Truphone account);
• Instant messaging to Skype and MSN (free);
• Calling to Skype users (free);
• Calling to MSN users (free);
• Check and set facilities for Twitter (free);
• Check and set facilities for Facebook (free).

Contrary to what many in the media are saying, the client that resides on the iPod Touch is a thin client, not a VoIP client. This client supplies a Truphone server with the information required to open and set up a VoIP client on a Truphone server which, in turn, completes the call via a VoIP connection.

What can we envision from this announcement for future releases of Truphone for Nokia, BlackBerry, iPhone 3G and Windows Mobile devices? Beyond the calling and SMS features currently available in their respective Truphone clients I expect we'll be seeing:

• Truphone access to Skype IM and calls to Skype contacts, as well as to Microsoft Live contacts
• Facebook access, including possibly the ability to import Facebook contacts into your phone address book
• Following Twitter messages

In addition, Truphone is a Voxbone iNum partner; initially Truphone for iPod Touch users will be assigned an iNum "883" country code number. I have also recently observed use of iNum "883" numbers on iotum's Calliflower conferencing service and at Mobivox. Using Skype today, I confirmed that placing a Skype call to an iNum "883" number results in a SkypeOut call with the appropriate charges.

Looks like we're about to see some interesting innovation coming from Truphone over the next few months.

Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch talks about some of the broader implications of the technology behind this announcement.

Update: Pat Phelan does not think an iPod Touch is a phone device; it's not simply a case of "because you can do it".

Tags: Truphone, Skype, iPod Touch, iNum

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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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eComm 2009 Registration Opens: Take Advantage of the Skype Journal Discount

Two weeks ago I wrote about eComm 2009 and the announcement of Skype's participation as a Platinum sponsor. Yesterday registration for eComm 2009 opened with a Super Early Bird Special pricing of $1,190.00 available to those who register prior to December 22, 2008 - a $600 discount from the Regular price that will apply after January 20, 2009..

But, as a Skype Journal reader, you can save even more. If you enter the promotional code "skypejournal", you'll get a 20% discount, taking that Super Early Bird price down to $952.

The speaker list is almost complete and Lee has announced a recently revised schedule.

Also note that eComm has arranged special conference group rates at the San Francisco Airport Marriott, available until February 8, 2009; note that, as has been my own experience at Marriott hotels for several years, all rooms have high speed Internet access included in the room rate.

An excellent deal for anyone who is interested in learning about developments in the rapidly evolving Emerging Communications space where Alec Saunders Voice 2.0 Manifesto is now turning into reality.

Volunteer Advisory Board member Brough Turner calls eComm 2009 the Best Conference Bet for 2009.

Tags: eComm2009, Lee Dryburgh, Voice 2.0 Manifesto

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Brand Value: Skype, iPhone, Google

I took a look at The Brand Bubble's BrandAsset Valuator (BAV), "the world's largest database of brand perceptions." Market research data visualization from Young & Rubicam Group.

This valuator compares four attributes: brand strength through differentiation and relevance, brand stature through esteem and knowledge.

Here's how they define the terms:

• D. Energized Differentiation. A brand's unique meaning, with motion and direction. Relates to margins and cultural currency.
• R. Relevance. How important the brand is to you. Relates to consideration and trial.
• E. Esteem. How you regard the brand. Relates to perceptions of quality and loyalty.
• K. Knowledge. An intimate understanding of the brand. Relates to awareness and consumer experience.

So I compared three global brands we know and love: Skype, the Apple iPhone, and Google.

You can see they each score well on Energized Differentiation. There's nothing else like Skype, iPhone, or Google.

Skype and iPhone are both much less relevant to the average consumer than Google. Google is well understood and used by many more people.

Esteem and Knowledge both show a similar pattern: the brands with more experience and time have more stature in the minds of consumers. 

The BAV compares strength to stature in the next chart. You want to be in the upper-right quadrant with Google and eBay.

Skype is moderate strength, low stature. So while Skype is defining its unique value proposition well, people don't feel they know or respect it. That will come with education, hands on, and time.

What three things should consumers learn about Skype in 2009? What can Skype do with its product strategy to move from the upper left to the upper right?

tags: skype, branding, brand, marketing, esteem, knowledge, relevance

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