The significance of new giant solid-state hard drives is probably higher than many readers imagine.

I used to work at Oracle from ‘97 to ‘01 as a server technology specialist, mostly poking around high availability and very big transaction systems. Databases like Oracle perform two main functions:

- They manage concurrent access to data from contending users.
- They ration out I/O, and abstract that process away from users.

The rest is just features, as they say.

The end of the spinning hard drive will be disruptive, as it undermines ones of the two central pillars of our information storage tools. I wouldn’t rush out and short Oracle stock right away, though — they’ve diversified into apps and this is a slow process unfolding over a decade or more.

But it will cause seismic change — an equivalent of the invention of optical networking, say. Whilst CPU, transmission and storage have become cheap, I/O itself has been relaively expensive. Many disk arrays attached to Oracle databases are mostly empty. They’re being bought for multiple spindles, not storage area. Order-of-magnitude shifts in the relative costs cause structural industry changes.

The telecom angle is that faster I/O means we’ve got an even greater ability to soak up connectivity. Your kids will laugh that you called a 1 megabit connection “broadband”, and even had to pay for such meagre resources. Roll out that fibre, folks! You’re gonna need it.

Spin some Geddes at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Awesome comes to mind. Exceptional. Professional. Skype opened a new site on March 29th. It is a new place for the Skype Developer Ecosystem to find out what's happening. Go there now.

Well done Skype!

Posted by Bill Campbell at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm looking for the Skype world record holder. The person that has amassed the most Skype buddies on his buddylist. I know of one person that has more than 1000 and more than a few with 300 to 500. However I'm looking for you if you have more than 1000. I'd like to hear your stories about your buddylist and how it came into being. I'm not looking for a solution that is a "Skype corporate client" eg a client everyone in the company has added as a buddy. I would be interested in any of these "server" applications as a separate category. Thus if anyone has registered more than 1000's of people on a Skype client I want to talk to you too. Sort of the biggest Skype corporate ecosystem. Now who has that?

Why? I bet there are some good stories in it. Separately, I know that this is a core group of exceptional Skype users. The buddylist is long enough to test any new API or Wi-Fi phone that comes along. You have tested Skype in more ways than most people at Skype. I'm also interested in user profiles. I have a little hypothesis that says... Skypers are breaking the rules that existed on other buddylists (orginally most only allowed 100 buddies). There may be no correlation between number of buddies and usage. Still I'm interested to learn more about thresholds. If you have a 1000 buddies and me just over 300... what's the expected impact on time, calls, number of messages etc. In other words I want to know more about your Skype life. Please comment or call me and share. Thanks.

If you hold the world record and don't want publicity please still introduce yourself. I'll respect your privacy. If you want to boast. Leave a comment and a link to your profile. Example skype:stuart_henshall?userinfo

Thanks!

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Buddylist NDA. I've always thought that what I shared via my buddylist "presence" "mood messages" was between me and my buddies. Now that is not always the case. There's an "unofficial" Skype Plug-in that's getting a little testing on the side. A couple of my favorite Skypers are involved. Kevin Delaney and Jaanus Kase. Moodgeist is their project and sets a dangerous precedent. To my knowledge this is the first time the idea of a "buddylist NDA" has been breached in the use of a plug-in.

The description for Moodgeist is below. An example of how my "mood" was exported is in the picture. Note it is anonymous. My mood at the top of the list. However, they probably have my name on the export as they are capturing mood information across different users. The problem is not these two guys and their neat little program. It's a great experiment and I'm sure there is nothing nefarious in the code. The problem is. I can't trust others and what they put on their PC's. They may even mistakenly put something on their PC.

Then we have bots harvesting names, capturing and exporting data and exchanges. The only way to stop on accessing your info drop is to drop all your buddies. Now clearly that doesn't work.

The problem remains. There is no trust level control in adding buddies. I wrote on this before when Skype first launched their API, and again when Skype launched SkypeWeb pointing out that it was all or nothing. That same behavior and set of beliefs appears to flow into the API. It's wrong. we need a minimum of two levels. level one is presence and mood sharing etc however "no exporting" of our information via the API. Unfortunately that will impact negatively on some API applications.

We need a better solution. I'm inclined to believe that presence (unless enabled for skypeweb), mood messages and avators, location in the future, all represents data that a "colleague" may not access via the API but can see in the Skype client. By contrast a buddy may access them all via the API. Take this a step further and buddies should be able to see and exchange information on which plug-ins they are each using, as approved, banned, and currently active. From a developer point of view that would help the "viral" spread of new API applications.

The fact remains that you can't limit text. Plus if someone wanted to export it / copy it then they will anyways. In that sense it is no different to making an audio recording. The distinction is the application that goes beyond manipulating your data and exchanges with others to actively exporting it for other benefits. An example would be a well written Market Research API application.

Skype appear blind to this. Youthful and perhaps naively they say.. hey you can do this on MSN etc in no time flat. What's the big deal? The big deal is security. The problem is also users aren't smart enough to get this until burned. Thus Skype's responsibility is to take a lead on it. This is a hard problem that needs solving.

What is Moodgeist?

Moodgeist is an experiment to show what’s currently happening in the “Skype Land” and what’s the Skype community’s collective state of mind.
How can I use Moodgeist?

You can use Moodgeist in two ways.

* if you just want to browse the data, then you can do so right on moodgeist.com front page, or use the API if you need some other feeds.
* it would be great if you also pinged Moodgeist with data for your own contacts. This helps us all to get a more complete “big picture”. For this, please install the Pinger program and just leave it running — there’s nothing more you need to do. You will then see data from your own contacts showing up in the “collective state of mind”.

How does Moodgeist work?

Moodgeist consists of two parts.

* “pinger” is the program that sits in the computers of the users who have chosen to install it, and “pings” over the data from their Skype contact lists to the Moodgeist server. Read more about the pinger and Ping protocol.
* “server” is moodgeist.com — it collects and stores the pinged data and publishes it for everyone to see and use.

Are there any privacy or security concerns around Moodgeist?

The “mood messages” concept is quite new and part of Moodgeist’s objective is to test out how people feel about this kind of thing. See this discussion for more.
Moodgeist Description

The SkypeAPI provides the opportunity for all sorts of things. The question remains. Do you trust your buddies and are you happy about having everything you do exported.even when your buddy may not be aware. That's what happens in Moodgeist. I want to share my mood more broadly. Cool I add the plug-in. However, I'm sharing the moods now for many of my pals too. This could easily be worked into something neat. Example: Think about "collective polling" of moods and mood changes. You could easily program it to do a reminder: your mood hasn't changed in 3 days... is everything ok? It would create new chats or potential for chats.

Currently you cannot access the "avatar" info via the API like you can "moods". Thus avatars are not exportable. Updates to the Avatar and the Moods cannot currently be synched either. If they were I'd expect many to put up their own personal ad servers. A simple API app would serve them up to all multi-chats and to the buddylist whenever you weren't in a call. At other times.. it could provide other details. There are other opportunities that aren't yet available. For example Could I share mood messages differently with different groups of buddies? Currently no. If I could I might use the mood message to share who I'm in a call with. Note you could share the mood "In a Call" with all your buddies now if the plug in was done correctly. This example also highlights the dilemma in Moodgeist. If one of my buddies installs a plug in to share "in a call" info with his work buddies... My action of using Moodgeist may share who he is in a call with the whole world. That's a security breach in. There are benefits to both.. but be careful what gets compromised.

Skype should look more seriously at concepts that may help users to federate and accelerate the exchange of certain information. Trading information is smart when it is for my benefit. I won't mind rewarding the agent. Are we going to go in that direction? That remains unclear to me.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

SkypeAttendant is a test program that demonstrates a simple IVR system for Skype. Like many companies you can request an extention and then be directed there. This demo is important for it shows the power that will exist on your desktop when Skype finally enables "call transfer" in the API. It's a wait-listed API item. We still don't know when it is coming. When it does, it is a game changer.

SkypeAttendant is a bilingual(Chinese/English) auto-attendant system for Skype. It can be used in a company, or just for a group of friends that would like to share a common representative skype account.

A demo scenario (skype:delta.com.tw?call) is listed below.

From this example, you call to delta.com.tw, and would like to speak to a person whose Skype account name is “Skype sound test”.

System: “Welcome to SkypeAttendant system. 歡迎使用自動總機.
國語請按1, for English service please press 2.” (if you do not press any key, the system default is Chinese)
Caller: (press 2) System: “Please say the name that you want to speak to.”
Caller: “Skype sound test”
System: “Skype sound test. OK, cancel, retry?”
Caller: “OK”
System: “Transferring call, wait a moment please.”
(connecting to echo123… connected)
echo123:”Hello, welcome to Skype call testing service…”Skype Attendant

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I thought Lycos was a search engine. Now it seems they are in the phone business. In a deal that has been structured with Globe7 the Lycos Phone Beta is now available. What's intriguing about this deal is the opportunity to "earn" free talk time through partner offers. Then one look at them put me off. Overall we have another clumsy VoIP client. Sound quality is narrow band, and the usual SIP issues like authenticating your buddies and poor presence information just mimic other "telco" productions. For a Skyper it is a good illustration that UI's (user interface) matter. It also reinforces that all sorts of new content and value creation opportunities are coming to theIM/Voice/Video client.

Lycos is redefining a new path by delivering unlimited entertainment across the globe to your lap. Now you need not browse other websites for information as information will be tunneled directly to you. Watch Globe7 TV in full screen by just double-clicking on the screen.Globe7 TV

So a multimodal media experience is here which includes a telephone. Is there any difference to adding IM and PSTN to MSN Media Player" or "Quicktime"? Integrating the "video" channel is the future. "Dialing" or clicking for content is easy. BTW.. .why can't I add channels already to Skype? Oh that's right it is proprietary! Maybe a deal with Apple is in the works.

Overall, Lycos Phone is beta so I should be light handed with criticism that is easy to dish out until you have to create one of these monsters yourself. As a voice client, it doesn't do it. It's twice the size of Skype to download. Why? Does it contain a desktop snooping agent? I have no idea. Maybe because it is executed in Java? Next, getting it logged in and running was too hard. I managed to make a regular phone call before I made a PC to PC call. The beta came with $1.00 credit. 100 free minutes to the US for those that want it... and the hassle. I'd say it isn't worth it. Money won't buy you happiness in this instance.

Did it work?

Sort of. I couldn't click to call my added buddy. The calls from Bill came in as a "number" rather than name. Maybe it was how I added him to my contacts. The video connected at each end... eg we could see ourselves but no video was exchanged etc.

Your PC is your Phone Download Lycos Phone and start using your PC to call landlines and mobile phones. Get 100 free minutes to US, then earn free talk time through partner offers. All you need to start is a headset or microphone and speakers. Learn More � Lycos Phone Beta

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Two related bits of pundutry out there that illustrate my belief that success in network operation comes from innovation in funding and pricing models.

First, the prolific Mr Frankston:

Instead of having the strange phenomenon of carriers spending billions and then arguing that they deserve to be paid we’d have them bidding on contracts to install and/or maintain connectivity to a marketplace that is buying capacity and making it available so value can be created without having to be captured within the network and thus taken out of the economy.

To achieve this we need a different “unbundling” regime. Maybe call it the “secession” regime. I don’t believe the natural unit of purchase of connectivity is the household; the costs of marketing, billing and support are too high. Imagine that everyone connected to a central office exchange could vote to leave their “service provider” and collectively choose someone else to operate all the equipment in the switching centre. There are a number of possible fiscal models, such as absolute buy-out of the local loop assets, or rental and maintenance payments.

Here’s the other bit of related “who owns what resources” news from Techdirt on unlicensed spectrum:

Last year, we were intrigued by the new spectrum allocation plan in the UK that would create a much more open market for spectrum. The idea was that rather than (as the FCC does) setting exactly what the spectrum must be used for and who can use it, the market is allowed to decide. That is, anyone can purchase the exclusive rights to the spectrum, but then, they can do with it as they want — whether that’s selling it to others, or making use of the spectrum.

Here’s my idea. Some philanthropist with deep pockets wanting to make a lasting impact on society should just go buy up chunks of “private” spectrum, and then open it to the public in a managed way. In fact, we’ve got a great model for this already with physical cultural and landscape assets over here: the National Trust. (Hey, dig that commie tagline: for ever, for everyone.)

The good news is that there are enough tech billionaires out there who can pay as well as understand the benefit. I’m sure we can figure out a licensing scheme that immortalises your name onto every device operating in that spectrum band…

The bad news is I’m not one of them.

Read up on Martin Geddes telepocalypsecession.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 06:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thoughts for the day:

- In physical transport (atoms), we found that there was a complex business called “logistics” which is where the profit is; “trucking” is just a small function of logistics. With data networks (bits), it’s the exact opposite; there once was a complex “bit management” industry called telecom. This is slowly, painfully fading away. It’ll get replaced by a simpler industry that just teleports bits over geographic distance. We don’t have a name for it yet.

- Telecom is just another utility delivering stuff through pipes. In fact, it’s just like a water utility — except you don’t have the glamour of sewage disposal.

More of Martin's meteoric metaphors at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My Polish Skype buddy Andrew sends me a text message from his laptop. Embedded in his chat message, “Is this legal? Am I stealing WiFi from this hotel?” This was last summer. Andrew is sitting on a park bench, in the dark, beside a hotel somewhere in the middle of UK. He had landed a summer job in the UK.

The brilliant, but untrained lawyer inside me spoke very authoritatively of the possible tort. “Quit worrying Andrew it is not a problem!”

A few days later Andrew sent me a news media piece about someone being arrested for using an unprotected Wi-Fi access point.

I must have thought the article was from a blogger and thus disregarded it.

This morning this link is sent to me:

Illinois Man Fined For Piggybacking On Wi-Fi Service

Further searching gives me this:

Florida man charged with felony for wardriving

Also see this.

Is this legal nonsense US centric?

Will this legal FUD make it more difficult or ease the adoption of FON? I love this idea. Sharing is good.

Read more about Skype Journal editors say about Wi-Fi sharing here, here, and here.

This site will make Free Wi-Fi less threatening for some. However, look for my name in the news as I will continue to access unsecured Wi-Fi where ever I find it, including in Illinois and the king making state of Florida.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Promise you won’t tell? Really?

It’s been quite nice being away from family duty on a business trip to Paris and London for two nights.

Ssssshh. It’s just a secret between you and me, OK? I’ve always wanted to try out the Eurostar train from Paris to London, and it’s certainly quick. Although someone needs to buy them a few sponges to clean the windows a bit.

Anyhow, I passed through London’s Kings Cross station today on my way back up to Edinburgh. Here’s a few vignettes from around the station I’d like to share with you.

Firstly, here’s the automated ticket machines and an economics lesson for telcos.

Now, I’ve got an APEX ticket that only is valid on this 2pm service from London, and I collected my ticket from one of these machines. But I got to the station at 1pm, and there was a 1.30pm departure I could in principle have taken. The train operator, GNER, missed a chance at an up-sell here; they could have offered me (for a price) to go on the earlier service. There’s always a price at which they won’t undermine the price-discriminating effect of the original APEX ticket. It’s free money! Likewise, they could try to do impulse up-sell to first class. This train is also one of the older 125mph diesel ones, as it carries on from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. The earlier (all-electric) service probably had Wi-Fi on board, so they’ve also missed an opportunity to see me connectivity.

I’ve been putting in my client reports some examples of how telcos fail to manage up-sell, cross-sell and impulse buys. For instance:

• You can normally call someone back from an SMS by just pressing the green call button; so why not at the bottom of each SMS draw a horizonal bar, and then say “To call Bob back press [green button icon]”?
• The phone and network knows who I SMS and MMS the most. Where’s the one-click impulse “Send this message to Jane’s mobile” menu option? Amazon don’t own a patent on all impulse buying, you know!

Next up, here’s a fuzzy O2 advert up above the entrance to the newsagents:

And the message, in close-up:

This is an iMode promo with a a picture of a field and the slogan “bid on eBay from here”. Now, I’m sure there were some good expensed lunches for the biz dev teams, but this model is ye olde school “Look mama! I’ve got a link on their portal!”. Will you be able to register your mobile number on eBay and have a seamless federated identity experience? Probably not. And even if you can, it’s not enough. Because eBay is only one of many, many services with which you probably want to interact. If the mobile industry is going to have a future doing anything apart from bit pipes, it can’t be this. Other people are better at portals, and can integrate more media properties together and scale their partnerships better. But if O2 offered a more open platform with a bunch of APIs, and don’t put up hurdles, then there’s a real chance that the public will find lots of services that have their mobile number automagically become easier to use on O2. And not just the few that they do deals with. Gatekeepers, burn your gates!

Next is this snippet from another illuminated advert.

The track infrastructure in the UK is operated by a nationalised body, Network Rail. (There was a literally catastrophic period when it was privatised; another telco infrastructure funding lesson for another day.) The trains are operated by various private companies. In some places, there’s competition on parts of routes where the franchises of multiple train operators overlap. (The original rail infrastructure in the 19th century had multiple vertically integrated operators competing with different routes to the north and west!)

This ad is telling commuters from distant Peterborough that by putting up with the slower stopping service that regional operator WAGN offers, they can save £1000 a year (about US$1750) over the long-distance GNER service.

Competition works.

This brings me back to my old bug bear of network neutrality. This tries to get the outputs of competition without the inputs on, um, multiple competing services. Unsurprisingly, it’s a dud. Suppose you pass such a law, and outlaw all “packet discrimination”. You enforce it. Success? No banana, babe.

Say I’m a small business customer, and I don’t care too much about how fast my connection is. I even don’t care too much if I have to pay a bit more to get a “VoIP-compatible” jitter-free unblocked connection. But I really care if the service goes down for more than a few hours. A domestic DSL contract promises a fix to a service outage within a “reasonable” period, where “reasonable” is defined by the telco. They offer a “business-class” service that is functionally identical at five times the price with a sensible SLA. I’m not happy, but I have no choice. Network neutrality merely entrenched the single-supplier structure, delivered benefits I cared little about, and didn’t give me the outcome I wanted.

There are many facets to a connectivity service, and different people place varing values on each of those facets. Picking one of them, application price discrimination, and artificially mandating an outcome in that one facet, is a pale shadow of what competition or alternative network ownership structures might deliver. “Positive discrimination” policies have been a spectacular failure for people; why should we think they’ll align behaviour and incentives for technology any better?

PS - This train has a super-cool feature. Look!

Someone at GNER understands they’re in intermodal competition with the planes, and the plane folk don’t get it. Push home your advantage, whatever it is!

Posted by Martin Geddes at 02:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Whilst I'm neatly balanced between flu and pharmaceuticals and enjoying some fading lucidity, one parting thought for today.

I can't name my accomplice, 'cos it busts his girl's privacy without her permission. But he tells me that his tweenage daughter has taken to a new form of social communications media (reproduced with permission, though):

one little strange thing my daughter and her friends do with skype is they put their best friend's picture instead of their own in the profile, strange huh? It seems that part of their identity is their best friend and they advertise who this is to each other.

Wowee. Cool! The users will always re-invent your products in unexpected ways.

Funnily enough, some telcos did great with "family plan" products. Some even managed minor product innovation as well as billing changes. But none seem to have produced group-centric products. You don't have to be a business genius to see that the social group dominates the life of tweens and teens. Admittedly, it's a back-office nightmare with current systems to build such products, because identity management isn't up to scratch. (Lots of dirty telco secrets, but it takes good wine to extract them.) Then again, that isn't a problem for those aiming to win the whole schebang from scratch.

Martin reinvents everything at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The adage, “Use your own products”, may be followed by USRobotics. A couple of weeks ago (March 15) USR introduced the USR9620 ATA (Analog Phone Adapter) at CEBit in Germany.

Today they announced something more impressive: the ability for a USRobotics’ customers to call Customer Support via Skype instead of a landline telephones or SkypeOut. This is the USR Support page:

My guess is USRobotics used their USR9620 ATA to link Skype to their PBX in the same way Jeremy at Z-Tech did as explained in this article. When you click the “Call with Skype Icon” a lovely recorded voice greets you and you are placed in the call queue with background music.

Using ATA’s as a Gateway between the office phone system and the Skype network is a great idea with many dividends for organizations, customers, employees and suppliers.

This is a hot market led by vendors like ZipCom and VoSKY.

"Support through Skype gives our customers one more way to get in touch with our technical support agents. Customer and technical support is now offered via the phone, through email, and now via Skype," says Mary Galbavy, Director of Customer Support. "We are constantly looking for ways to improve our customers' experience and this is another way we've found to do that within our support organization. The satisfaction of our customers is key to our service delivery choices."

The Skype theme for 2006 is Skype for small and medium business. USRobotics seems fits squarely in the middle of the demographics for this sector─

A global company, USRobotics’ operates from offices in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as satellite offices in seven other countries. Today, more than 125 employees worldwide support the millions of users of USRobotics modems, routers, and security devices.
http://www.usr.com/press/pr-backgrounder.asp

Posted by Bill Campbell at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is the proof. Thanks to Jean Mercier in Belgium who is GMT+2. The event happened 30 minutes later on my screen. "You are always late in Canada", says Jean.

Five million was passed Jan 20, 2006. And four million on October 20, 2005. The cycle time was about 90 days. Now it is 66 days as pointed out by a reader aaytch. Thanks! That is a dramatic increase in growth.

Will we be at 7 Million on June 1 and at 10 Million before year end?

Thanks to Jean in Belgium and John Richards in Manila for the heads up on this event.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 06:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

• Andy: Skype, Zennstrom, Friis Et Al Sued for RICO Violations. These laws are commonly used by law enforcement to seize cars, houses, cash and other profits from illegal activity. Could this be why Niklas Zennstrom never travels to the USA?
  
• TechCrunch previews SKY-click call center for Skype.
• N-Yoshi points out that Skype just crossed the 276 million downloads mark today (chart) and we may have missed moment when the Skype network had 6 million simultaneous users online. (This a great Japanese Skype blog, even through Google or Babelfish machine translation.)
  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

What have people typed in their Skype mood indicator lately? Ask Moodgeist:

Anchor Porter vs. Guiness 3 hours, 29 minutes ago
eBay research labs in San Jose 3 hours, 35 minutes ago
totally board 3 hours, 35 minutes ago
How can my speech be free is yours is so expensive? 3 hours, 35 minutes ago
Mehed, aitab tööst ! Hakkame laulma ! 3 hours, 35 minutes ago
Parik 3 hours, 35 minutes ago
WFH 17 hours, 36 minutes ago
- Tallinn 17 hours, 37 minutes ago
اسمك في هو...
17 hours, 37 minutes ago
spring is comming 17 hours, 37 minutes ago

[off topic: I will take up the stout vs. porter debate any time. -phil]

Popular keywords: London, Tallinn, your, home, Skype, back, vacation, March

Even though nobody discusses Skype in the same breath as MySpace or LinkedIn, it really is a large and dynamic social network. I love that the guys are probing into its human nature.

Maybe it's time for Skype to adopt Google's R&D policy that mandates 10% of every developer's time (around four hours per week) be spent on personal projects. Innovation booster. The other good practice is to set up a laboratory site for hosting and featuring interesting projects that aren't ready for the everyday user. Nurture the team's adventurous spirit, and reap the benefits in-house.

The Moodgeist blog, the restful API and feeds.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Three things about the new Yahoo messenger beta that’s desperately struggling to reach parity with Skype by adding PSTN in and out services and the same wideband GIPS codec for PC-to-PC use. Two bad, one good.

Number one. Telling me my ordinary, standard Firefox-on-XP setup doesn’t meet your all-Microsoft standards doesn’t endear you to anyone:

Secondly, putting the address book in a handy accessible tab with all the contact methods visible is good. This isn’t a new feature, but it’s still good. I’m not convinced anyone has really yet got the right model for buddies, acquaintances and contacts. My Skype buddy list grows and grows, despite many of those interactions being one-off or temporary. The tool isn’t mirroring the real social relationships I have. The dissolution of a “buddy” relationship is too socially fraught. Yahoo’s model isn’t perfect either, but a tighter buddy list with a separate contact space is probably somewhat closer. The difference is minor, though.

Now for the big’un. I think Yahoo is making a terrible strategic blunder and is failing to leverage its own advantage in community. Yahoo is about the triumvirate of media, community and communications. They’re all supposed to benefit from each other.

I’m a member of several Yahoo groups. In particular, there’s one for my younger daughter’s rare medical condition. (Her business, not yours. Don’t ask.) But the new client doesn’t integrate these communities. There’s no “there” there in which we can meet. The electronic world gives me the opportunity to be in multiple places at once. One place I want to sometimes be is “hanging out” in the virtual meeting space of people concerned with this medical condition. But there’s nothing like “3 members of XYZ Group are online”, and then invite me to enter that space and negotiate the privacy and permission stuff.

Yahoo’s job is to broker great conversations. Adding radio into the IM client isn’t nearly as powerful as bringing disparate folks across the world with a common interest.

PS - When I click on “What is Yahoo! 360?” I shouldn’t get a blank web page. And when I try to log in to Yahoo! 360, I’m not supposed to get this either.

Skype is successful because (a) it works, (b) everyone has access, not just Americans. If you’re looking to build some complementary good like a Wi-Fi phone, Skype’s still the more attractive option.

Martin Geddes posts on his Telepocalooooopse blog.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had the pleasure in January of briefly visiting Seattle to see my old friend and mentor, David Anderson. On the Saturday I went with him and his elder daughter for a toddle around the canal locks in Ballard, followed by a coffee (what else?) at a local cafe. As David pointed out, this cafe specialises in cupcakes, thus differentiating itself from the ubiquitous Starbucks and Tullys — a “plus one” marketing concept.

Being January, and Seattle, it wasn’t exactly tropical outdoors. When we got in to the cafe there was quite a long queue, and all the seats were taken or reserved. (This latter practise of bagging a seat which stays empty whilst those ahead in the queue are then forced to stand and drink is not my idea of good manners.)

Anyhow, it occurred to me that the queue itself was part of the experience. You get to longingly gaze into the cabinet of cupcakes, discuss with your friends which type you want to guzzle. You’re in the warm, out of the chilly wind. You can smell the aroma of the drinks being prepared; there’s a sense of anticipation in the palate. You watch groovy Ballardites doing their Saturday thing. You aren’t too hurried and flustered in selecting a drink and encoding your order in the local coffee dialect — “A ventissimo ne plus ultra grande sucrified milky-milky cocoa beverage, please.” (Handy hint: theobromine is a better mood-altering drug than caffeine.)

I believe I once read of studies of how much people’s enjoyment of Disneyland rides varied with how long they queued. The result? Zero queue was not the best! Even the newer fast ticket bypass system still makes you wait in anticipation for your allotted time on the big ride, just without the pain of standing in line.

The lesson from all this is that value in the eyes of the customer is not some simple end-product of an industrial process. Indeed, it can be hidden and subtle. The activity is not the same as the user’s goal. At the extreme, what appears to detract value may be an intrinsic part of the experience; and adding more features and capabilities in fact decreases value.

With various consulting clients, I’ve been unpicking the value proposition of messaging and telephony. You can read about some of the results in my ETel ketnote. But here’s an example that doesn’t appear in any of my client reports of how value is created and destroyed. (Disclosure: I think I got the insipration for this one from an article I read once, but I’ve lost all references.)

When you send an SMS to someone, you have almost total certainty that it will be consumed on a mobile handset. Furthermore, that handset is a personal device used by one person alone; and there is a social taboo of messing with other people’s handsets and checking their messages. So there is a strong privacy value element to SMS, because the sender can make assumptions about how the message will be received and consumed.

Now, imagine for some moment that an overexcited telco doing some triple/quadrouple/whatever play bundle decides it would be a great idea to integrate messaging and telephony. Now, if your TV is on then your text messages also are displayed there in a little scrolly box at the bottom of the screen.

Does this new feature create or destroy user value? My belief is that it destroys more privacy value than it creates in distribution value. No longer can senders be sure that messages will be consumed on a small, personal, private 1.5-inch screen; rather, they may be broadcast to the whole household or visitors. The “feature” has net-negative value. But the only way you’ll work this out is by going through the intellectual exercise of decomposing the activities involved in the product and reverse-engineering out the underlying value to the user.

Sadly, my experience in telcoland tells me you’re liable to be labelled a freak for even trying.

Martin waits in line at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 06:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The CEBit trade show is possibly the largest consumer electronics trade show in the world. This year it was attended by 450,000 people. You would think Skype would be there, wouldn't you? There were lots of Skype posters, Skype devices, and the Skype application was loaded on all the PC’s in the visitors lounge. BUT NO SKYPE! NO SKYPE STAFF.

It took me three-days to visit ‘Hall 12’ and ‘Hall 13’. This was space for the big Telco’s, Cellular, Providers and TV/radio stations: Lot of IP-telephony, VoIP and Wireless, Cordless, VoWiFI (Voice over WiFi), SIP on WLAN, Voice on SIP, IP communication, some video systems. But then Cebit is so big!

The best thing was when you needed to rest CEBit had great resting places...

That's me wearing the blue-checkered table cloth. I am with the RTX USB DualPhone product manager Carsten Helmuth.

Lots of DECT phones for SIP or Skype with color display most being both PSTN and VoIP. None of the Skype ones being standalone, but a few of them being cordless connected to the PC by a USB dongle.

View image of the Avaya booth <<>> Telecommunication Systems by Avaya

New was a Bluetooth device for hands free mobile operation combined with Skype connectivity via a USB cable, allowing using your mobile phone for Skype calls. And a Bluetooth integrated DECT base making calls via the mobile phone possible, VoIP/Bluetooth Mobile/PSTN in on system.

None promised or announced better Skype integration than already seen. So still on the horizon a standalone Skype device and devices with even better Skype integration than already; chat, search, entering Skype names, contact info, etc. Will it be weeks or months?

Several SIP DECT gateways. One is the impressive multi equipped Gateway from AVM - FT 7150 D Cordless DECT VoIP integrated with WLAN router and DSL modem. It is competing with the RTX made LAN Cordless DUALphone and both is meant for providers and OEM-customers.

AVM is also making a series of multi feature integrated LAN gateways capable of connecting both POTS and ISDN phones to ADSL and or POTS/ISDN combined with a USB host, firewall VoIP and more. A hell of a device to build a Skype gateway into! Though AVM seems to be heading down the SIP road only.

Corporate use of Skype: A Platform independent CRM (in German), purely web based also for any mobile device with a browser, a customer’s management system, using MS ATAPI but now on the move to integrate SkypeWeb. Or SkypeNet?

Wimax is warming up – a company is ready to supply a wimax based corporate VoIP solution (in German), that makes your PBX obsolete, Cordless phones surplus and use your cellular/smartphone without the SIM card, Simless Calling (in English too).

I hope to get back to some of these items and some others, promising real potential, with further information or reviews.

The Plantronics booth was offering a massage thereby both being felt and heard.

I Tried the Netgear Skype Wi-Fi phone prototype, ever so shortly:

Trying to get just an appointment to hold and have it demonstrated was quite a job that took several visits. But visiting a few minutes after opening Monday I was lucky, Karsten being a busy man took the time to find a charged device. Thank you Karsten!

I think it is going to be a LITTLE great Skype phone. Holding it in your hand it is an impressively small, well designed, device when you think of the 3-4 hours talk time and 50 hours standby. The screen was clear and crisp seemed adequate as I tried moving through menus. It even accessed Skype Shortly while connecting to a Wi-Fi spot and we did receive a mysterious call attempt ;) which I tried to get to in wane. There wasn’t time for real hands on experience, browsing the Skype menu structure (also it was explained as not possible while being offline?). But using the device feels good, the mechanical side and tactile feeling was excellent, the layout being compact, but easy. (Again it was a few minutes, short test – Why? Not having enough charged devices?)

The battery was a prismatic cell that seems to be fairly standard. The price is expecting to be 200+ € /240+ USD.
Release date is expected to be late may or at least in June (will we see it outside at café’s and restaurants this summer?).

A promissed firmware update is going to fix payee access, which I consider a must. (Being without a browser, entering userid and password on hotspot web pages is not possible now)
Where will we use such a device; at home, travelling, browsing the city life? On the move will you bring your cellular too? At home will other standalone Skype devices offer more features at same or better price? On the move will it support charging without a USB cable connected to PC? Will we see a (3rd party?) cradle, so it can display its very nice design standing?

While also making a Wi-Fi phone for Skype ASUS has shosen a slightly different solution.

Skype Phone – Free talk anywhere with mini audio speakers

The handy wireless Skype phone leverages 802.11g standards to deliver free talk anytime and anywhere. Working as a remote, the Skype phone can also be used to control Windows Media Player for playback options. The Skype phone also delivers terrific sound quality and doubles as mini audio system.

ASUS Strides Forward Realizing the Dream of Digital Home
Wi-Fi Skype goodness from Asus spotted at CEBit, by MobileMag

Another device I interviewed, was attracting more attention I think, one device one booth just beautifull 'KISS', the Imcosys Smartphone with embedded Linux running on a 200MHz TI OMAP 730 (a dual core/processor chip) it comes with a SIP client and a impressive array of bands; quad GSM/GRPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS I am not sure about GPS SW (Maps) but it should come with an SD card holding that. It has almost an all touch screen user interface with only a navi button and a few keys (one being an emergency call button). Something completely new is the add-on, in German: Skinplex NFC (Near Field Communication) feature, allowing your presence to influence access control or as corporate Fleet device automatically load you as user when you grip it.

How about developing a Skype for embedded Linux on it I asked, Oscar Daniello seem confident it will be able to run Skype, because being Linux it has more free resources than other OMAP devices using MS (Others might beg to differ). I told him if not already doing so get working on it. Boots in a few second, 125 x 64 x 18 mm, 135 grams, more pictures, data sheet.
The smart phone will sell for 298 €/355 USD and hit the market June/July.

“He wants a Linux smart phone because with an open-source operating system….”

Introduction into the Skinplex NFC technology, popup: Ident Diagram
In German but yet instructive: Skinplex video, sunroof 1:58 and lawnmower security 2:23 at 496Kbit/s.

Posted by Torben Nyhuus at 06:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Put this on your "must read" list: "An Experimental Study of the Skype Peer-to-Peer VoIP System " if you ever wondered about supernodes.

Abstract:

Despite its popularity, relatively little is known about the traffic characteristics of the Skype VoIP system and how they differ from other P2P systems. We describe an experimental study of Skype VoIP traffic conducted over a five month period, where over 82 million datapoints were collected regarding the population of online clients, the number of supernodes, and their traffic characteristics. This data was collected from September 1, 2005 to January 14, 2006. Experiments on this data were done in a black-box manner, i.e., without knowing the internals or specifics of the Skype system or messages, as Skype encrypts all user traffic and signaling traffic payloads. The results indicate that although the structure of the Skype system appears to be similar to other P2P systems, particularly KaZaA, there are several significant differences in traffic. The number of active clients shows diurnal and work-week behavior, correlating with normal working hours regardless of geography. The population of supernodes in the system tends to be relatively stable; thus node churn, a significant concern in other systems, seems less problematic in Skype. The typical bandwidth load on a supernode is relatively low, even if the supernode is relaying VoIP traffic.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bob Frankston writes on "Skype as the Future of the Connectivity". He links to a paper ("Silver Needle in the Skype") that is going round from another set of researchers who try to figure out how it all works.

Bob writes:

Skype’s encrypted communications is vital because it allows connectivity without having to trust intermediaries and, even better — it frustrates attempts to block the traffic even if some corporate IT managers view that as a deficiency.

Encrypting the code itself is less important. It serves mainly to prevent third parties from vetting the code for simple bugs or maliciousness. Perhaps the real value is in the four billion dollars eBay paid. But biggest value to eBay may not be in the voice business but in creating a trust community that frustrates phishing and local gatekeepers. The basic concepts should work fine even with the code fully exposed – that’s a basic tenet of secure communications.

The Skype approach doesn’t solve all problems of edge relationships. For example, how do you know the JohnSmith you are trying to reach is the one you think it is? Of course you have the same problem in the real world in recognizing friend vs foe so we must tolerate surprises.

The authors of the paper focused on the crypto aspects. The real importance is in helping others understand how to create communities that operate at the edge of the network independent.

Read his whole post on SATN.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm with you, Doc. Dave Winer changed my life. It was a type of leadership by example. His blogging, his design principles, the extended conversation and subtle experiments that led to innovation; all in public. He took abstractions about conversation and personal publishing and made them real. He shared tools that let others experiment along with him and share that trip.

There have been warning signs for two years. The whole "we'll explain blogging to you" consulting and conference business. Blogging For Dummies. Blogging becoming a mainstream verb. Dave becoming more popular than he knew what to do with. The halt to new vocabulary related to blogging, and the retirement of old terms.

Chasms crossed, the technology and behavior of blogging will evolve naturally. New forces of natural selection are at play: commerce, political, and cultural. They'll be incremental for the most part, that's how it usually works. I'm looking for the mutations that lead to very different things. Like podcasting's logical leap from blogging/syndication to something all its own. Like p2p's jump from bootlegging to telephony. Maybe structured/adaptive blogging will take off. I'm convinced that the slow social net (blogs, podcasts, wikis, del.icio.us, flickr) will continue to blend with the fast mobile-social net (voip, chat, writely, sms, irc) keeping the next two or three years a time of behavioral ferment for Conversation 3.0. And opportunity.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 03:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve long described the Net as a “consumer suplus engine” to anyone who’ll listen. It takes previously bundled billable services like voice telephony, strips out the service from the connectivity components, and stops you being over-charged for the service because of lack of competition on the connectivity.

Anyhow, here’s the verbatim quote from Paul Kedrosky, who has found an academic paper that puts the numbers to what’s obvious to everyone:

Only about 0.2% of consumer spending in the U.S. … went for Internet access in 2004 yet time use data indicates that people spend around 10% of their entire leisure time going online… Based on expenditure and time use data and our elasticity estimate, we calculate that consumer surplus from the Internet may be around 2% of full-income, or several thousand dollars per user.

Wow, that’s pretty awsome, isn’t it? You’re only paying for about 10% of the value you get from your Internet connection. That other 90% becomes a budget for other, exciting services and activities. Who knows, your non-telco job may be funded by the consumer suplus of the Net!

Personally, I suspect that this report will under-estimate the real value, because it only considers monetised value, and users as consumers of content and service. How can you put a price on the value of open, democratic discussion, for instance?

PS - I haven’t got time to read the paper; anyone who wants to write a guest blog post on it, feel free to pitch me!

Martin's surplus lives here.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm always interested in how profiles and data will converge and who they will benefit. Is this the darker side of eBay vendors enabled with Skype? Many of you may have seen it. If you haven't it is really very funny. Click to Play




So how close to the truth is it?

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Marc Canter has an unmissable statistic:

Did you know that 45% of all of eBay’s listings come in through their APIs?

As you might remember, at Sprint we were trying to open up the wireless side into an open technology and business platform. It failed, mostly for lack of a cultural imperative to drive in that direction.

Ebay’s business comprises two stages: someone lists an item (eBay gets paid for this), and someone buys the item (eBay gets paid for this too). They’ve taken all the friction out of the first half of their business. No human necessary! Only the actual purchase still requires a human click, and it can’t be too long until the shop-bots start to change that too. (Although we’re part-way there already.)

Now think about the traditional telephony business. I have to dial, you may have to answer. Voicemail part-automates the answering, generating more metered minutes. But you have to ask yourself: is it really the best you can do? Is it impossible to broaden the business model — temporary buddies, address book access, directory, etc.? Can’t you deepen it too, and automate previously manual business transactions via APIs?

If I were a telco investor, one of my key criteria of comparing the various “voice nets” (PSTN, mobile, Skype, open SIP, etc.) would be the existence, quality, adoption and economics of the APIs.

UPDATE: You can bet that a lot more than 45% of eBay’s margins come from these transactions. And note how their business model has no upper bounds imposed by human action; an automated voicemail answer still requires a human-initiated phone call. Now, start to imagine your voicemail box (with a sensible UI) as your “RSS feed of the most important stuff” like customer service messages from your bank. Et voila! You have a platform business.

Martin keeps his mo here.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I still can't believe there isn't a completely open market for Skype customization. The local futbol team should be able to distribute logos and the team song from their site, and it should either be one-click-free-instant-installation or one-click-buy-it-now-instant-installation to get it. It would make skype so much more fun and social. Every ten year old should be making their own and giving it to their friends.

There's more value in activating users as producers than in tapping them as a market. Once you start with Skype customization it's only a short leap to other forms of commerce, collaboration, and community of the type you associate with the blogosphere and wikis. The power is at the edge, and the value is in helping the edge do its thing.

Tags: wishlist, skype, skypejournal, ludacris, futbol, customization, personalization, glocalization, edge, community, commerce, collaboration, km, ringtones, skypetones

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“A quantum leap… unprecedented Skype integration to Outlook”, are just some of the radical claims made by skylook’s web site. Are these claims true? I had no idea. So I spoke to Jeremy Hague last night, “Jeremy will it record a conference call?” (The previous version didn't even though they claimed it did.) Jeremy answered, "yes". I uninstalled the previous trail version I had been tested, installed the new 1.5 version, found and clicked the skylook tools icon in order to set up the Options my:

Five minutes later I placed a conference call with Jeremy in Australia and my Skype buddy Bill in California.

A flashing icon tells me skylook is recording each voice; however I have been fooled by that icon before! Jeremy ranted