As Stuart Henshall has been pondering the economics of attention, I thought I’d add in my own experience.

Way back in 1991 I had a summer student job at a small company called NextBase that produced mapping software called AutoRoute. I did sundry C programming, box packing and digital map editing. Soon after I left the founders sold out to Microsoft, getting considerably richer in the process. People paid big money — hundreds of pounds — for the full-featured versions.

Now you can pull scrollable, zoomable maps off the Web in moments and have directions from any A to any B returned in a flash. Client PC apps are relegated to niche applications for disconnected use, or with a GPS receiver. Instead, the value of the map is the attention of the user and a momentary opportunity to highlight a few relevant ways they might choose to spend some of their money in the vicinity.

Now, how hard is it to imagine a multi-modal device where you make “free” calls to businesses, but their upsell marketing message is displayed at the crucial moment? And any guesses whether it’s the telcos or the Net giants who are likely to capture any such revenue?

Feel free to scan Martin's attentionbase at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype gets a new general counsel, Robert Miller, recently eBay UK director of legal affairs and formerly of BT. via TheLawyer.com.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For me and you Skype is about being free. For Ike, well she believes people will pay her to use Skype.

I met this charming lady Ike (pronounced Eeka) sometime back (we are both denominated as Super Users on the Skype Forum. She resides in the Netherlands.

I spoke with Ike late today. Just a few hours before she was to launch her new web site.

Bill “Ike, you’ve done just about everything already. Now what are you up too? Many people I have met dream of making money around Skype. Are you one of those dreamers?”

Ike: Yes, Bill; I guess I am one of those dreamers.

Bill: “So tell me how your story started?

Ike: I fell in love with Skype. I learned so much about Skype as a Super User and Moderator on the Skype Forum. I first joined the Forum in July looking for answers. Soon I found I was able to give answers as well. I was appointed a Super User in August and Moderator in December. I like helping people.

Then I looked at me. Good foreign language skills: Dutch, Swedish, English and German. Skilled international operator. So there is was: a new Concept in Internet Secretary Services. Skype is being used big time in small business. Especially in one person companies. So to start these are my customers. I will offer─

• Skype-based answering service
• Secretarial services such as plan their calendars for meetings with others
• Translation services

As I learn more and more about the product and services of my customer I will be able to solve problems for their customers just like I do for people who drop by the Skype Forum.

Bill: So Ike, how will you learn about your customer’s products and services remotely?

Ike: I will use my second favourite toy. Unyte. It is another free tool integrated into Skype. Unyte allows users to share desktops and do web conferencing. Let me invite you to my desktop so I can show you my web site which will be going “live” in five hours on my magic February 1 date!

So Bill, as you well know, I can share my desktop and my clients and their customers can share their desktop with me. Files, PowerPoint's too. Unyte works for me.

(Here is the screen shot I took of Ike sharing her desktop.)

Bill: Do you have any clients now?

Ike: I sure do. A former employer has retained me to help organize an International boat show. Check my web site for others.

So it is not dream Ike. It is a reality. You get paid to use Skype. Good for you!

Bill: One last question, IKe. What does the name “Varras”mean? Dutch for what?

Ike: It is not Dutch!!! It is Finnish. A Varras is a long iron bar a farmer or home gardener uses to move big boulders.

So Varras Consultancy is all about leveraging your customers. Nice. Very nice name. I wish you luck Ike!

I hope readers will tell us their stories on how they make money using Skype.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype will help its users sell and buy information and services. They are starting small with ringtones. And that's fine. This sets up the business relationships with music labels, shopping services on Skype and partner sites, accounting and billing, reporting and feedback systems. It's a chance to learn and experiment on the cheap, to become wise in the ways of helping Skypers play and shop.

Later comes selling entire songs for downloading, like Apple's iTunes. And podcasts, vlogs, videos, games.

And after that: helping Skypers trade or sell their bits to each other. My old Madonna ringtone for $.10, including the licence key and registered DRM transfer; Skype getting a penny. My mashup of samples of rat pack era songs and Italian specialty numbers to tailor your Skype client for the last season of the Sopranos.

Skype is attractive for more than its millions of active users. It's an economic magnet because users organize themselves along social networks, propagate ideas, and share information through those networks. It's one thing for people to cluster around a "place" like an Elvis memorabilia forum on eBay. It's another for you to have them on speed dial, to see their presence and moods, and to otherwise be more immediately engaged in their lives, and they in yours. I am more likely to learn of the eBay Madonna fan boards on eBay from someone I know than serendipitious discovery.

Today's Skype "ringtones" are overpriced because this is still the PC market, not the mobile market. iTunes sets the bar at $0.99 for a whole song from a nearly infinite playlist. The Warner Music deal says $1.50 for ring tones, but competitive pressure will drive those rates down. Since PCs offer many more touchpoints and contexts to sonify user experience, Skype users may see offerings for entire sound "themes" licensed directly or remixed.

The Skypenomics takeaway:

1. Ringtones teach Skype and Skypers about buying and selling, building trust.
2. Next step: buy Coldplay tracks and download them through the secure Skype file transfer, Skype getting a royalty.
3. Step after: sell my Coldplay track to my friends, Skype getting a cut.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Skype Mega Conference is here. Now up to 500 people with Skype can participate in the same conference call. (Now how does that work? 500 talking at once!). Last week I met Ben Lilienthal who introduced me to Vapps and the premium service they are working to create. Despite the availablity of FreeConference.com, he believes that there is a viable market for this type of mega service. Over 100 is a premium service at FC's at 10 cents per minute. The High Speed Conferencing solution will require Skype participants to have a SkypeOut account. Rates for conference callers are likely to be 3 cents per minute.

As Ben took me through the details I could see a whole group of opportunities emerging for products like this. From "Expert Panels" to "meeting places". This initial integration merely shows what may be done. It's conservative in retaining a traditional cents per minute charging structure and just scratches the surface on integrating Skype into conference management. As a plus they have effectively eliminated the need for DTMF on registration. Apart from being a bugbear on Skype (often producing errors) this reflects the capability to bring Skype profiles into the conference management system. Their Personalization option adds to this.

Additional integration opportunities (for the future) include invites by Skype IM, MultiChats for the conference attendees, screen sharing etc. No video at this time.

What do I think? I don't quite understand the need for pricing on a cents / minute basis. The real value is in the setup. Thus pay $50 to set up a four person panel with up to 500 invites etc. Enable meeting rooms for meeting new people; could be a subscription etc. The Personalisation option is worth having if all the communication is via Skype. E.g. Invites over Skype, Multichat support etc. What I want to see is a Skype enabled conference capability that adds to innovation. This is a first step.

For now the beta test is free. Who's going to invite me to the first Skype 500 Mega Conference? For press release details see below.

PRESS CONTACT: Steve Fiore SZPR (858) 427-1667 fiore@szpr.com

Vapps Brings Large Scale Audio Conferencing Service to Skype Users

Highspeedconferencing.com, the New Vapps Global Voice Service, Connects the Skype Community Through Multi-Party Conference Call, with up to 500 Participants Per Call

HOBOKEN, NJ — Jan. 30, 2006 — Vapps, a leading global provider of audio conferencing systems and services for converged networks, today announced the first multi-party audio conferencing service for the Skype™ community, supporting up to 500 participants per call. Powered by Vapps, the service, Highspeedconferencing.com, gives Skype users the ability to communicate by hosting or joining conference calls with up to 500 participants using any type of Skype, wireless or traditional telephone calling device from any where in the world.

Highspeedconferencing.com has all the features of a traditional conference calling service such as standard call management (volume control, muting, participant announcing, conference locking and recording) along with sophisticated moderator features for Web-based on-demand call control. An upcoming premium service available in early February will target advanced business class users and incorporate conference call recording and Web-based question and answer sessions.

“For the first time, Skype users can enjoy the benefits of full featured multi-party conference calling at any time and from any place,” said Ben Lilienthal, CEO and co-founder of Vapps. “Furthermore, our service can be accessed by any type of network and is a testament to our commitment for bringing high quality converged communications to the marketplace.”

Highspeedconferencing.com has two distinct service options:

HIGH SPEED allows Skype users to join conferences by dialing +990008271111 on Skype and entering their conference room number. All non-Skype users can dial 1-419-753-7120 in the United States, or 0870-119-2350 in the United Kingdom, then enter the conference room number via dial pad. To instantly host a new conference, all Highspeedconferencing.com users can press 0 when prompted and a conference room number will be automatically assigned.

GET PERSONAL option issues customers a permanent, lifetime Skype conferencing number that automatically places the user into their own personal conferencing room and grants access to all Web-based call control features. The customer has the choice of using Skype or a standard telephone to place calls. Registration for GET PERSONAL is free. The U.S. number for this service is 1-419-753-7120 and the UK number is 0870-119-2350.

Powering the Highspeedconferencing.com service is the Vapps CB1000 conferencing platform. CB1000 is a SIP-enabled, carrier-grade conferencing platform that delivers reliable, seamless reservation-less conference calls on both legacy and IP-based telecom systems. The product supports up to 20,000 total conference participants in multiple simultaneous conferences, with the ability to easily scale on a card-by-card basis.

Highspeedconferencing.com is available now and will initially be free during the beta period, transitioning to a paid service at a later date.

About Highspeedconferencing.com
Powered by Vapps, Highspeedconferencing.com is the first multi-party, audio conferencing service available to the Skype community that runs over any communication network. The service offers unrestricted full featured reservationless conference calling on a global scale. Visit us at www.highspeedconferencing.com.

About Vapps
Vapps develops, licenses and supports enhanced services products for converged network providers. The company’s flagship product, the CB1000 conference bridge, is a scalable, fault-tolerant conference calling platform for converged networks being used by service providers like MeetingZone, VoiceText Communications, Powwownow and Excel Conferencing to reliably and continuously provision reservationless conference calling. For more information, visit www.vapps.com or call 201-420-1155.

Technorati Tags: skype, freeconference, premium service, viable market, initial integration, skypeout, mega conference, conferencing solution, expert panels, lilienthal, conservative, cents per minute, conference management, conference call

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 08:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The first Skype Answering Machine has just received a timely 2.0 update and is now enabled with "Video Greetings". The video greeting is recorded by using your default webcam software. While premium versions of SAM enable call recording as yet there is no capability to record video calls. That may come of course in a future version.

This is a screen shot of SAM options. More details can be found at KishKish. They have been busy developing a portfolio of products. These include "Book" a program for managing contacts and two interesting Mobile options. First a Mobile gateway product and second a SMS to Skype capability (which duplicates the Connectotel solution). See their site for more details.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 07:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Knowing Skype and its competitors may earn you the Product Manager – Mobile Instant Messaging job at Verizon.
• VoIP News: Phil Wolff Talks Skypenomics at the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference includes a few highlights.
• YASP (Yet another soft phone): voipstunt.
• Chinagate-Skype, for the Chinese diaspora. Jaanus' post on the new portal partnership. Smart alliance; helping families and commerce that cross the globe stay connected.
• BT's Broadband Voice outage for a few hours this week. What uptime constitutes phone replacement?
• Nuvvo shows SkypeWeb presence for teachers and students in their learning community. Now they're waiting for SkypeWeb to be rolled into an update of Skype 2.0.
• Warner Music Group (WMG) will sell ringtones through Skype. Skype still doesn't offer the ability to tailor ringtones to a caller, a group of callers, or to the time of day/day of week. So I don't know how the whole ringtone thing is. In addition, nearly all Skypers use PCs, so they get visual cues, making ringtones less useful. For the 40% of us who use Skype in the workplace, "Like a Virgin" is sure to make us popular among our colleagues. This follows Warner's general model for licensing music samples to mobile carriers. Are these licensed to all Skype users or just to those living in countries where copyright is enforceable?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Phillip Zimmermann of PGP fame outlines the future for VoIP encryption. A few years ago it began with PGPPhone; now called zPhone. He's provides clarity on how to handle "man in the middle" attacks. His beta will be released at the end of February. This is definitely one to watch.

(Note, this was recorded on my iPod with iTalk, it is not meant to be IT Conversations. In a few weeks I'm sure many of these will be available there)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The PayPal team outlined their approach to micro payements focusing on a new cost structure 5% + 5cents. They were the only eBay/Skype presence at ETel.

(Note, this was recorded on my iPod with iTalk, it is not meant to be IT Conversations. In a few weeks I'm sure many of these will be available there)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Brad Templeton on CALEA, the threat to VoIP. Fun presentation. Part of three that dispensed with PowerPoint slides and better for it. See also David Isenberg.

(Note, this was recorded on my iPod with iTalk, it is not meant to be IT Conversations. In a few weeks I'm sure many of these will be available there)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

David on Freedom to Connect a conference scheduled for early April. If you listen to both David and Brad Templeton then you will understand that "forces" are trying to take the innovative opportunities away. I say join the movement! Fats Pipes! Always On! Get Out of the Way!

(Note, this was recorded on my iPod with iTalk, it is not meant to be IT Conversations. In a few weeks I'm sure many of these will be available there)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Phil's facts on Skype for ETel. Skype was on everyone's lips at ETel and yet many knew little about it. "Closed" was an anathema to many in the audience.

(Note, this was recorded on my iPod with iTalk, it is not meant to be IT Conversations. In a few weeks I'm sure many of these will be available there)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[Correction] Sean Egan leads the Google Talk Libjingle program. Before Google he led the GAIM open IM project. He talks of an API that is running ahead of client development. Great for developers.

(Note, this was recorded on my iPod with iTalk, it is not meant to be IT Conversations. In a few weeks I'm sure many of these will be available there)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yahoo's new Messenger head talks about where they are going. Best quotable quote. There are more people in the US still using rotary dial phones than there are Vonage customers.

(Note, this was recorded on my iPod with iTalk, it is not meant to be IT Conversations. In a few weeks I'm sure many of these will be available there)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Skype on your TV. mcePhone brings Pamela and Skype to the Windows Media Center Edition. Screenshots. 
• Clarification: France's ban of Skype in the university system "only applies to university research centers and laboratories, and not to the general student and faculty population.."
• The Unwired: Skype for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs moves from 1.2 to 2.0 beta "without adding v2 features." No video. Still No Symbian (Symbian runs on CPUs too slow for Skype, or Skype not optimized for cheaper CPUs?). 
• Communications Research Network: Hackers can hypothetically use programmable VoIP to jam servers, PCs, and phone lines. A distributed denial of service attack. The only thing new is an attacker may be harder to trace.
• Vonage starts a SkypeIn service for some Western European countries.
• BT to sell a videophone to its broadband customers for £180 (steep). £6 to £9 an hour for the call. Skype seems an attractive choice.
• Davos:
• Niklas empanelled with Gates, Chambers, Schmidt.
• Eric Pooley: Niklas says Skype has 75 million users. Gates smacks him down (How many are paying?) and Schmidt backs Niklas up (building a brand leads to selling ads or enhanced services.
• Panel highlights podcast.
• Geoff Moore blogs it now comes down to three principles:  1. The core enabling resources of IT are free. 2. Expect digitization of everything. 3. Expect the value proposition of IT to migrate from enabling transactions to enabling interactions.
• Red Herring: "Niklas Zennström, co-founder and chief executive of Skype, said he had meetings planned with incumbent European telecom operators in between conference sessions."
• Niklas goes to the Silicon Valley-meets-Davos party. Also there: Motorola, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, Salesforce.com CEOs, and Laura D. Tyson, dean of the London Business School.
• Loic Le Meur interviews Niklas: podcast.
• 2528 Brandchannel.com readers vote Skype #3 brand in the world. First time nominated.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m just stepping back a minute to think about what Emerging Telephony actually is.

You might have seen my earlier musings on the different philosophical underpinnings of “Western” telephony and “Eastern” thought. In an oversimplified nutshell, the Western approach puts the individual in the centre of the universe. The Eastern idea is to put the group in the middle.

I see “conversation” as being the shadow of a group. So future telephony may look quite different from PSTN-style calling and even philosophical cousins like Skype. We don’t put groups or conversations at the centre of our “Voice 2.0” telephony experience. This could provide a philosophical problem to all the VCs and geeks here at ETel.

Here’s a concrete example. Teens are group-centric. They need to belong, get group affirmation. They send a zillion SMS messages to wring a group experience out of the technology they have.

But imagine if members of the group could see when other members of the group are in a conversation (IM or voice). Then you can (virtually) walk up and try to join in. It requires some digital social gestures that mimic a conversation pause and turning to allow the new person into the ring.

Hey! Telephony is supposed to be a substiute for “being there”. This is the kind of “presence” experience that today is totally missed. (Presence isn’t just smiley icons, folks.) “Voice 2.0” doesn’t even mimic the real world yet, let alone exceed it. And many of the ETel examples are still hamstrung by the legacy thinking of 120 years of circuit 2-person telephony where presence is a 4th class citizen. We’ve still got some learning and exploring to do.

UPDATE: Another example: Skype’s grouping feature (bless them for the effort) is entirely manual. But what the users probably need is some kind of semi-automated grouping of contacts, based on call patterns, social network analysis etc. Personally, I wouldn’t have bothered with the feature at all unless it was adding some serious “wow” and makes life for the users much, much simpler. Yes, I’m setting the bar high. But humans are sophisticated social animals, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise if our conversation tools need to act intelligently too.

Teenagers might automatically find other blog posts from Martin on his Telepocalypse blog.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So far this conference has fueled more ideas (for me) than any VoIP related conference I've attended in the last two years!

The O'Reilly crowd appears to have gotten the basic mix right for this first conference on Emerging Telephony. Perhaps the naming isn't perfect, but it is understood. On topics, they have continued to focus on the fringe and what happens at the edge. VoIP is a clear component but the discussion is pushing towards Conversation or Voice 3.0. There's a mix of developers, companies and investors here. A few more of the big guys are stepping up this morning. France Telecom, Google, BT etc. The room has been packed with well over 300 people excluding what's going on in the halls. There has been a good balance and mix between the technical talk and enlightened briefing. The format focused on 15 minute presentations and 5 minute for lightning presentations is keeping things moving.

Skype has been mentioned by almost every speaker in some way. I know Skype was appoached to speak. Skype made a real (huge / big big) mistake not being here. As an audience all have now heard of Skype, probaby one third have not used it, another third have tried it but aren't really into it --- as many are Asterisk developers and engineers. The balance are hooked on Skype although I doubt any would state that Skype is the long term winner or solution provider. No one in this group believes in the nBillion paid for Skype. I'm writing this now while the Google Talk PM is making the case for Libjingle. He is pointing out that the Google Talk API is running ahead of the Google Talk client (a point Phil made recently).

Peter Cochrane spoke yesterday about the "emotional pull" of successful solutions. That's where there is one element or presentation "so far" missing here. Some of the examples and the lightning pitches have begun to share the "behavioral" and "sociological" impact of this new technology. It's the area I've enjoyed telling the stories about Skype (and other emerging examples). For the developers and engineers in the room working on Asterisk it is a set of stories they need to hear. New behaviors are demanding new applications. How the "few leading edge users" are using these new applications is key to future success. Thus someone really needs to link these examples together.

Standing alone, radio.livejournal, handiradio, yackpack etc are interesting. Bring the mobile, positional, media and billing components together and there's a bigger story that could help developers accelerate their ideas.

Separately, there was a great presentation on Rural Wi-Fi, and I hope after today when David Isenberg presents on Freedom to Connect that the audience leaves with a broader understanding of the regulations and policy developments that could simply destroy the value they are trying to create.

Phil provided a pithy brief on Skype facts and details yesterday. I'll post the audio recording later.

Tag : etel

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Gaurav Prasad, New Delhi. India

Lots is happening in India, most interesting stuff in Telecoms and IT related sectors. As of September TRAI (Telephone Regulatory Authority of India) slashed the rate of broadband connection to more 50- 60 % and there is talk convergence (which means single company can offer both telecoms and data services). Not surprisingly there has been 60 to 70 % growth in broadband subscribers base in India. The government has also legalized Internet telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol or VOIP for short) April 1, 2002. You must be thinking now what this got to do with Skype or VOIP, well almost everything.

One to two years back an Internet connection was too expensive or slow to be used in domestic sectors. It was also a government service, so the favorite place to access Internet were cyber cafes /office /school or college lab, so voip was used for quick short calls (due crappy voip software like Yahoo, MSN and low bandwidth) but most people preferred chatting to voice chat as matter of convenience . Now the provisioning of Internet services is privatized and large ISPs are slashing of rates This has led most people in urban areas to owing or planning to own an Internet connection especially when it costs as little as $5 to $10. (Editors note. For the average Indian this amount of money takes five to eight hours to earn.

Most Internet users adept with use IM like yahoo or msn but Skype is penetration is still low but gaining steadily. Most people at work or friends / family still haven't heard much about Skype or used and those who use them it simply love it. Skype is mainly used by power Internet users like college students or working professionals or by the families of Non Resident Indians, geeks /enthusiasts & many businessmen who do business in Europe (their European-based customers usually recommend Skype to them). Why do we not find Skype on Indian desktops as often as Yahoo or MSN? Especially since Skype offers better service /value. The later products are IM centric, while Skype is Voice centric.

Reasons can be following
• As broadband is new to relatively new to India it might take time for Skype to get a good market penetration.

• Majority of people extensively portals like Yahoo, MSN or rediff for checking emails/search/IM and if 9 out 10 of friends are part of one network switching to Skype wont make sense .

• But I think main reason is relatively low visibility of Skype among Internet users in India most of us just heard about Skype from cousin/friend who lives abroad or by Skype chance stumbled upon it.

I think following can be done to increase Skype market penetration in India

• Skype can tie up with leading Indian ISP (like Airtel, Satyam etc) or portals (like rediff , indya.com etc) and bundle free downloads (same strategy followed by Skype in China , Japan)

• Aggressively Advertise Skype out charges in Indian Media or on line (India has large no citizen working abroad not forget large no of customers who outsource to India)

• IM integration (generic idea not India specific) wont it be great it Skype IM can talk with other major IM like yahoo, msn , AOL , i bet we will see mass migration if and when this happens

• outsource marketing & development to some firm in India ....Just kidding ;-)

As you can plunging broadband rates , large no of citizens, customer base living/working abroad ,booming economy and sheer numbers makes India and also China very good markets and worth fighting for in future . Stage is set for VOIP for one the biggest markets in world

Posted by Guest Blogger at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (1)

There is plenty of interesting discussion going on here at Emerging Telephony. This is a quick post after a fun presentation. There is certainly a few marketing dollars targeted at this audience with T-shirts, postcards etc. I've been listening to the FON presentation which promises internet everywhere, Wi-Fi everywhere and the mission to build a WiFi nation globally. More than anything they are trying to build a community around shared access to Wi-Fi. Thus joined together into one network. I think this is an idea whose time has come. They will need this group, this audience to promote it and make it happen. One difficulty in the US is the license for most of us restricts sharing in this way. Will your ISP clamp down? To that I don't know.

I'm also aware of a similar example Wibiki. The business models are different and I'd have to look more deeply to asses the differences. It's perhaps worth reflecting on the earlier deals Skype did with Boingo. The models above have the potential to obsolete such deals. What they are both learning from is the capability to create a universal log-in to Wi-Fi. Interestingly, both of these types of initiatives could benefit from Skype sponsorship.

Tag : etel

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was really impressed by the pitch from Tellme earlier today. (Although, despite them being great voice usability experts, their web site is a pile of Flash-infested crud.) I’d assumed IVR stuff was dull. On the basis you’ll get the best insights from the session that superficially is least attractive, I selected this session. Turns out it was a good choice.

I really liked the idea as telephony as the most intimate medium — a whisper in your ear. But what Tellme really have cracked is making the IVR experience much closer to interacting with a human, and not a string of audio files tacked together with some shell scripts. They played lots of examples of really, truly awful IVR experiences. And then what they did to them.

This is important because good experiences drive real business. The customer’s impression of your business and brand is derived right from the experience they have. The example Tellme gave was UPS. Their old IVR system was very, very slow. The messages went on and on, slowly read. Do you really want UPS to be associated with “slow”? Thought not. Most of all, a good experience creates trust in your brand.

The first thing they’ve cracked is making the voice experience more seamless. They’ve created vast libraries of all sorts of clever combinations of phrases which get blended together by cognitive psycholgy and linguistics experts. And the result is super-impressive.

Their voice libraries go beyond what’s known as “single prosody”, the old-style IVR where you heard broken-up phrases glued together like “departing | Saturday. | July. | 22nd.” Instead they have multiple prosody — “departing | Saturday, | July 22nd” etc. (note the comma after Saturday.) It works. But they’ve had to record over 37000 WAV files just to read back numbers!

They’ve also cracked “points of co-articulation.” You can’t record every possible combination of terms. So record the first term followed by an example second one starting with one of the 40 phonemes in English — “Hi John”. Then record all the possble second terms: “James”, “Jim”, etc. Then splice in the right second term just in place of the example one. Again, the result is impressive.

You really can tell the difference in terms of comprehension and memory retention.

They also did a great pitch on optimising the usability of IVR systems. The phone is a linear presentation, and taxes short-term memory. You don’t have a 2D screen with bold, drop-down boxes, etc. The boundaries are also invisible. It’s not like the Web. There’s a strong “recency effect” — the last thing said (“press 0 for operator”) is first thing remembered.

So they have a bag of tricks. Personalise. For example the sports team “squeaked by” if you support that side vs. “lost a close one to” if you don’t. They “instruct as you go”, deferring navigation instructions to the time they’re needed. (Lazy evaluation always deserved a comeback…) They use “progress markers” - “First, tell us…” “Next,” “Lastly”. Adopt colloquial language, not written English. Optimise to meet user goals, not sub-tasks. And so on.

I’ve glossed over a lot of ineresting detail, and good stuff. If only they could put up a few corporate blogs and share their cool innovations and work on an everyday basis!

Martin's other tales are told on his Telepocalypse blog.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype is about to release SkypeWeb ("Hi, world, I'm on Skype!" on your blog) as a hosted web service. Right now it will just catch up with the neighbors (AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN all have presence services). This will be free.

That's stage 1 as I see it. Wide-open public presence.

Stage 2 adds a range of personal controls.

It starts with faceted presence. That's when I have more than one identity: "Phil Wolff, Editor of Skype Journal", "Member of the Wolff family", "student in Piedmont Community College Monday night Mandarin 1 class". Each identity's presence is customized for each requestor of that presence. Members of my bowling team can know I'm out of town. My family can always reach me. My colleagues can see me during office hours. SkypeWeb hides my cell phone from most of my clients but my boss and my big customers can always see it. Cheaper than voice mail and priced like caller ID or an unlisted phone number.

Stage 3 is where the money comes in. Shrink-wrap the SkypeWeb presence server. Let enterprises run and manage their own servers, inside the intranet, in their DMZs. CIOs should be integrating finely tuned presence into CRM apps, collaboration toolkits, HR/directory services, phone systems, etc. Licence to online markets (like Microsoft Live Expo, Craigslist, Amazon) who encourage conversation among like-minded buyers and sellers.

The eBay impact: Skype presence becomes a competitive advantage among sellers, especially for complex goods and always for billable services.

Developer ecosystem impact: This can become good for the Skype developer community, integrating faceted presence with other systems. For example, creating collective presence where quorums trigger calls and call negotiation where caller attributes, constraints, goals, and priorities inform schedules.

This depends on:

• Continued investment in SkypeWeb,
• Effectively communicating their commitment to platforming SkypeWeb, and
• Leading (or at least responding) to the other companies entering the presence space.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Alec Saunders has a great writeup on the ballyhoo surround the recent Tello launch. He describes it thus:

The easy way to think about Tello is to imagine what Skype might be like if it were built for a business user. It’s a voice and IM app that can federate across multiple networks, support a heterogeneous universe of endpoints(hardware and software), and reflect presence information throughout the network. It’s a big vision. Alec Saunders

A few comments occur to me. The arguments for presence are it will help enterprise "productivity" dimension. The real issue is increasingly "attention management" and presence is just part of the functionality that enables the new models to emerge around the "economics of attention". This needs more thought. Similarly, Tello says they will federate IM systems so it doesn't matter which one you use anymore. I think this only sorts of works. I'd prefer to know that they are working towards a Jabber XMPP standard. Text is no longer something that provides a competitive advantage. It's the functionality and features you build around it. Perhaps this reflects my resistence to the likely requirement to upload my buddylists. The story also appears to ask the user to follow all sorts of routing info. Frankly I don't want to know about any of that. I do however want intelligence on the best way to make the connection at that moment. That intelligence should reflect both my status and the status of the person or people I want to connect with. No decisions required. Even auto converters where the exchange will be flagged or structured to be asynchonous.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

An interesting panel on design and usability. Most interesting is BJ Fogg sharing his useablity thoughts behind YackPack. This is really a neat application. I'd heard about it but not followed it up in the past. In his case he's actually subscri bed to twenty six packs right now. The interface is very simple. He keep reinforcing taking things out that people aren't using. Basically Yack Pack is a fun method for broadcast audio messaging. Both voice and text are available. Check out the explanatory video. It's intriguing. Here's an example of how to send an audio blast to a group of friends or pack.

It's a great example, with the use of pictures, the simple click, record and send. In many ways not all that different to the voice message feature in Skype. YackPack certainly illustrates where Skype could go with audio / video blasts. There's no reason this couldn't be developed and copied in Skype particularly now that SkypeWeb exists. Is it a priority at Skype? Probably not. Should it be? It's an example of a feature that is "new" thus Skype had the opportunity to innovate in this space and hasn't. When video blasts are restricted to your buddylist "spam" is not a problem. Similarly, additional groups that you might subscribe your SkypeID to would be a value added service. Note that networking groups would probably pay the subscription. Enough said.

Tag : etel

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just arrived at Emerging Telephony. Today various workshops and discussions are happening, tomorrow the conference formally starts. I've ducked in to an Asterisk hacks session. Not sure what I'll find. What I'm seeking is a sense of how adventuous the Asterisk community is and where they are going. There is a good crowd already here. I'd guess O'Reilly will be very happy with 1st show attendance. In the end I'm not sure how much I really learned from this session.

The session moderator is introducing this session on Asterisk, VoIP, and other great hacks. He says telecom has been an adjunct to the systems in the company. Stop thinking about it like a telephone. Let's take a look at what is possible. [Ed: spelling correction. The soft PBX is spelled Asterisk, whereas Asterix refers to the pint sized Gaul of comic book fame.]

This is introduced by Steven Mueller (Sun Labs), who begins talking about the idea of auto provisioning. He descibes it as an easy method to get a new telephones / handsets online and into the Sun network. I'd expect that auto provisioning is automatic. Unfortunately his story shows things are not as simple as this. In this system it is important to be able to update the phone from the center. I can't help but thinking this method is obsolete. The validation system used is likely to be confusing to users. It's obvious that a find me follow me solution would be preferred by users. Summary he's done a neat hack that adds flexibility to his traditional VoIP system and simplifies provisioning. Still I can't help thinking that "softphone" based systems have to end up cheaper.

Christian AstLinux embedded distribution for running Asterix. Allows you to experiment with Asterisk and Linux without leaving your current operating system. Looking on the site it appear this provides a very small footprint and could be run off a USB stick. Still he's talking another language for me. I've had a few pointers recently pointing me to Asterisk options. I'm certainly considering a little "learning by doing" project.

Simon Ditner from Toronto has taken the game Zork and added speech recognition to it. It's been done with Asterisk. It's a fun demo, still complete with bugs. He's using Sphinx2 for the voice recognition portion. There's a good debate on whether there is a commercial application for this. It looks like a wonderful way to me to create a new type of game genre. The mobile operators would love the minutes used online --- talking to a game! Nice.

Raph is taking about Clicktodial, something that I've integrated into my Firefox browser. It just adds a hyperlink to phone numbers on any page and then your skype client or another phone can be set to dial. In this case he has hooked it to SunRocket. He also demonstrates how to do it to any phone number on your desktop. For Skypers using Skylook or the Skype Outlook plug-in this functionality is already common place. It's certainly convenient and it helps the user understanding in merging the computer and telephony.

Ted Wallingford was going to do a presenation on Skype as an attempt. He is not online. Interestingly the moderator has only just today downloaded Skype. That tells me something. I wonder how many more in the audience are like this? Apparently no one from Skype is presenting here. I don't know if anyone from Skype is attending. I think Skype missed an opportunity. They should be here.

Tag : etel

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype broke through the five million active concurrent users today. Congratulations Skype. The growth continues. The next threshold that matters 10 million. Predictions as to when anyone?

For those of you new to Skype, active online users represents the number of users currently logged into the Skype cloud and available to take a call or text message. Most probably use Skype at least some time during the day. It doesn't mean 5 million people are talking all at once. It does mean that more people are on Skype than live in many countries. It also means that Skype is larger than many national telephone companies.

This number is much less than the number of Skypers that Skype during a day. Times 3 is my estimate. Ie somewhere around 15 million Skype per day. Skype claims in excess of 60 million registered users. However many have more than one ID, and some accounts will have lapsed.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Will the SixApart TypePad hosted blogging service integrate SkypeWeb into their comments system when Skype finally releases their extended presence solution? I've blogged the benefits previously of integrating a Skype identity component with blog comments. Similarly, by creating a www.CommentPings.com to register blog comments, commenters would no longer lose the networking value of their comments as they become searchable. Skype-to-comments would also create the opportunity to introduce solutions for audio comments etc.

SkypeWeb is a new feature of Skype 2.0 that allows Skype users to display their Skype online status on a Web page, email, blog, any other HTML enabled content or any other Internet-enabled application.
 - Skype Developer Zone Blog!

Could SixApart abandon TypeKey in favor of Skype user authentication? Short term, that is probably a longshot. However, this blog would adopt "skype names" as an authentication approach in an instant. It would improve the opportunity for dialogue and offer the opportunity for multichats on any post to be opened (for those that "tick" add me to the multi-chat discussion on this post).

We know there have been discussions between both parties, while recently Skype moved their blogs to SixApart's MovableType platform. It continues to use Skype as its log-in authentication for commenters. Adding Skype authentication adds value. There are some management issues... like authentication to your Skype client rather than the Skype server that would be required.

Typepad and the blogger would get both the advantage of a profile and a more personalized way to arrange contact. It would also provide more opportunities for "commenters" on the same post or blog to introduce themselves. Something current systems with hidden e-mail addresses don't allow.

SkypeWeb, announced last year, will be launched officially in a few weeks. For now you can sign up for the beta at the Skype Developer Blog which will give you access to basic details.

That's enough speculation for tonight.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Microsoft's Windows Live will include Expo, a user commerce service.
Craigslist meets eBay meets Yahoo! Groups using Passport /  Windows Live identity, location awareness, collaboration and communication tools. Get a chat message every time a used bicycle is posted for sale in your town this week. Talk to someone selling a car. See what your friends and family are selling. Find a job. Join the Elvis Figurines group.

Discussion points for SkypeBay:

1. Are we integrating PayPal and Skype into marketplaces faster than Microsoft?
   
2. How well are we supporting Craigslist-style local micro-markets?
   
3. How many of our category managers are using Skype as their prime phone?
   
4. Are we helping people connect for activities, career, advice, and other things that UPS can't package?
   

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm reading the SkypeWeb Partner white paper with a jaundiced yawn. There is simply nothing new here. Oh some language tweaks provide localization for the display language. Beyond that nothing. Nothing we, the Jyve guys and others didn't talk about and begin prototyping almost two years ago.

Skype has chosen to centralize delivery of presence rather than providing a presence server on every desktop. This means you can't be selective with sharing your presence information while enabling presence, and thus makes it availabe to all. At the moment it appears to refresh quickly with a status change. So, if you know my Skype ID and I have enabled my presence info, you can check my status at anytime. You can also, without my authorization, put it on your webpage.

My status Skype VP Skype Manager Skype Boss

Note: Skype doesn't yet send an accurate status when logging off or when closed down. There is also no status for Call Forward active (which may or maynot be wanted).

There is nothing (bar decency) to stop anyone looking up every Skype employee and creating an online/offline availablity monitor. Of course such a directory set to refresh every few minutes may along with others put some strain on the presence system. The point is, when you put your presence information out there using Skype's approach, you have lost control of it. You have given it away free to be used by anyone. That's a lost economic opportunity. My presence, like my attention, is valuable and Skype's solution makes a mockery of it. Companies will just use this as another reason to source another solution.

Thus Skype has given away the opportunity to create a permission based presence system and also given up an income earning opportunity. Concurrently with the launch of SkypeWeb, Skype has failed to develop a workable channel for sharing temporary presence and access.

Sharing presence via SkypeWeb is very different to sharing presence with a few trusted sites. Example. I want to share my presence with my favorite social network, a business network, at work and perhaps in a familiy directory. There is no reason I should enable a call center to search Skype, check status and then ring me. Except that is exactly what is now available. Examples above presenting Skype employees online status. If they don't like it the only thing they can do is stop sharing.

To say it yet another way, Skype has missed yet another opportunity to share presence in a way that moves the game forward. As access to it is free rather than restricted, Skype doesn't act as an agent or broker my presence. I can't instruct Skype to only share my presence with www.skypejounnal.com etc. As a result Skype presence availablity won't help with aliases or with limited sharing of my presence and attention data.

If I'm missing something let me know.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

By Jean Mercier, Oostakker, Belgium

Quite a lot of people received an unsolicited e-mail from Skype in a language of the country they are living in. An English speaking person living in Japan received the e-mail in Japanese. A Dutch speaking guy in Belgium received the e-mail in French (Dutch is one of the three languages that are spoken in Belgium, and also the main language!). We can go on …

See the picture below:

So what happens probably: Skype thought to be clever with the aim to accelerate the downloading of the new Video version? It detected the ISP (Internet Service Provider) or the country of the users by checking the account or profile information, and adapted the language of its e-mails without asking permission to its customers! They forgot that a part of their customers are expats, and that some countries have multiple languages.

I received it also (I am another Belgian guy!). I was somehow also "shocked" by the unsolicited "change of language" of this e-mail, although I speak both main languages of my country fluently.

I therefore checked my account, see picture below. Not only is there no option to choose a language, but I had also un-ticked the option permitting them to send e-mails!

Although I don't mind "Dutch or French", a lot of people DO mind! If i am a Belgian in Japan or o Chinese in Belgium i indeed have a problem because I probably do not understand very well the local language!

This is "cultural misbehaviour" from Skype. If you want to respect customers, you should ask them before changing anything in the way you treat them! THIS IS CLEARLY NOT A REAL PRIORITY FOR SKYPE anymore: other example is the changing of the Skype sounds!

So, I have a SUGGESTION FOR SKYPE: put a language field in the account page, and leave English as default!

And please, respect the choice of your customers! If I un-tick the e-mail choice in the Privacy Settings of my account, it means I don’t want them!

Jean Mercier, Guest blogger, www.aimq.be

*** Caution to readers. I agree with Jeans' comments. His story was filed as "pissedoff". Jean has been without a cigarette for some 20 plus days. Even if you do not agree with his opinions. Jean deserves a round of applause.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)