I'm sat in the Internet cafe in Stockholm Arlanda airport burning my last few Krona coins. Fighting with a Swedish keyboard brings back fond memories of being a code monkey in a Norwegian bank a decade ago. Anyhow, in my hotel and here I've noticed that the both seem to be using some kind of transparent proxy. If a web page doesn't load right, and a duff version is cached, you need to shift-refresh to force the 'no cache' option on.

How come we managed to create a legal and social expectation for the PSTN that your personal communications wouldn't be intercepted or modified, but that on the Internet anything goes (and we certainly aren't going to declare it to you in advance).

This isn't the same as companies like Akamai doing network caching, because that was with the consent of one of the parties; in effect the IP address of Yahoo, say, is just a logical identifier and not a physical endpoint. Akamai are just an agent of Yahoo.

But I am accessing my self-hosted webmail service. I don't consent to having my HTTP traffic pried into.

It's a simple consumer protection issue.

And another thing: you put your coins into the vending machine and get your login coupon. Then you sit down, login, and have to agree to the terms of service. If you don't agree, there's no way to get your money back. Sounds like an invalid contract to me.

We get to inspect the ingredients before we buy a can of beans, but telecom gets away with outrageous anti-consumer nonsense. Time for reform.

PS - This is a great airport, though. No annoying PA system, plenty of space, short-ish walks, high ceilings with lots of light, easy public transport connections, clear info displays, short queues, comfy seating. Scandinavia at its best.

Inspect Martin's packets at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype is an option on two of Dell's cooler laptops, new to the U.S. Anything that gets Skype in front of American consumers is good news for Skype marketing and eBay.

Skype's is a vendor relationship specific to one Dell request for proposal. This is a tiny relationship compared to Google's broader alliance with Dell, where Google Desktop and the Google Toobar will be installed on consumer computers and some business systems. Google Desktop usually comes with Google Talk, a standards based chat and voice client. As softphone vendors fight for market share, distribution arrangements like these become more important.

The XPS M2010 ($3500-4700, 20 inch screen, web cam) is a gamer's dream toy, tuned for the Alienware onlife crowd. (MobileWhack brief) Dell will be able to preload Skype on the hard drive. I'm in serious technolust.

The XPS M1210 ($1300-2500, 12 inch widescreen) has been on sale for a week in Japan. (engadget review) Skype is part of an optional A/V kit: cam, buds, mic, Verizon or Cingular cellular broadband card.

Both sport Intel dual core processors, so you should be able to host 10-party conference calls. Both are Windows Vista capable.

Dell has been selling Skype accessories before this. Linksys and US Robotics phones, SanDisk and Kensington flash drives with Skype inside, and the Polycom Communicator.

Skype news release...

SKYPE TEAMS UP WITH DELL TO MAKE INTERNET CALLING EVEN EASIER New Dell XPS Mobile Systems can be configured with Skype; Free Internet Voice and Video Calling with Other Skype Users LUXEMBOURG, May 31, 2006 -Skype and Dell have teamed up to make it easy to stay in touch. Today, Skype, the global Internet communications company, announced an agreement with Dell, the world's largest maker of personal computers, to ship Skype™ software with new Dell™ XPS™ mobile systems - the XPS M1210 and XPS M2010. The agreement will allow Dell to provide its customers with easy access to Skype's voice and video Internet calling software. Dell will be able to pre-load Skype on the XPS 2010, a unique mobile entertainment system featuring a 20.1-inch high-definition display with integrated webcam. The XPS 1210 can be configured with Skype as part of an optional audio-video communications package that also includes an integrated rotating webcam, noise-isolation earbuds and mobile broadband capability. "As the leading notebook supplier, Dell is committed to delivering cutting-edge technology that provides voice and video connectivity virtually anywhere," said Brett Faulk, worldwide marketing director, consumer notebooks. "Teaming with Skype, the trend setter in Internet communications, will provide our customers the very best experience when reaching out and staying in touch with friends and family around the world." "Dell customers will be able to experience the benefits of Skype, optimized for their computing environment. This gives Dell customers a simple way to use the Internet to talk to their friends and family from home, in the office or on-the-go," said Don Albert, Director of Business Development, Skype North America. "Dell represents a new distribution channel for Skype. New products from Dell will complement the breadth of hardware designed for the convenience of Skype callers." With Skype, customers can talk for as long as they like with other Skype customers across the world without worrying about the cost or the distance of the call. Unveiled today, the Dell XPS M1210 and M2010 are available immediately worldwide.

###

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

by Vikas Rangarajan, senior software engineer, UmeVoice.

Rise in mobile VoIP use

As VoIP applications such as Skype become more ubiquitous, there is an ever increasing need to ensure effective use of VoIP communication in a wide range of environments. Skype is available for a variety of mobile platforms. A new breed of wireless-wifi converged devices is also in the news. VoIP service providers have begun to target mobile platforms. All indicators point to a rise in mobile use of VoIP technology. It is becoming common for the user to be in a noisy environment like an airport or a conference or a café while using his/her laptop or PDA for VoIP communication. One critical factor in making these applications truly valuable will be clear audio transmission irrespective of the surrounding environment. Adopting and recommending effective noise cancelling technology can help realize the full potential of internet voice technologies, making it possible for people to have more freedom to communicate globally.

How important is "Clear Audio" for VoIP?

The most popular use of VoIP technology is in speech communication applications like Skype, Google Talk and other standard SIP phones.

For the purposes of speech communication, clear audio can be defined as an audio stream that has a low noise component (ideally no noise), and a high speech component (the audio content that we are trying to transmit). However, this specification alone is not sufficient to describe clear audio.

We need the speech signal to be transmitted to the listener at the other end of the communication system with the least possible modification along the way (ideally with no modification at all: the listener should hear the audio exactly as the speaker spoke it).

These requirements become even more critical when the "listener" is not a human, but a far less capable recognizer of human speech, such as an ASR (automatic speech recognition) computer program. ASR programs can be found in today's dictation software, telephone IVR (Interactive voice response) systems and command and control applications. 

VoIP systems employ several technologies to optimize the efficiency of audio transmission. These technologies make a trade off between the quality of audio transmitted and the cost of transmitting the audio. In order to minimize the degradation of audio quality, it is important to ensure that clear audio is sent into the system regardless of the environment in which the end users are located.

How to provide clear audio for VoIP in noisy environments

In order to satisfy both the requirements for clear audio (high speech to noise ratio, and high speech fidelity), we need to filter the noise out from the signal leaving the speech. This can be accomplished in two broad ways:

1. Remove (as much of) the noise (as possible) from the signal after it has been mixed in
2. Prevent (as much of) the noise (as possible) somehow from entering the signal

Technique 2 is also a tough problem, since both speech and noise travel through the same medium. A patented technology developed at UmeVoice exploits the noise cancelling properties of a standard dual-port noise cancelling microphone, making use of distinguishing characteristics of noise versus speech, to prevent the noise from entering the signal, thus accomplishing both requirements for clear audio. This makes such a solution ideal not only for VoIP communication but also for high quality speech applications like speech recognition. UmeVoice makes headsets theBoom, theBoom O and theBoom Quiet that offer the ability to effectively communicate even in the noisiest of environments.

Freedom to communicate from anywhere?

In an increasingly global society, technology is making it possible to work productively and stay connected while being mobile. Voice is one of the most natural human modes of communication. Technologies that facilitate clear audio capture and transmission will be crucial in ensuring that people can have true freedom to communicate clearly and effectively.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype was a big hit at the eBay Live Germany event in Dusseldorf on May 26-27.

My German Skype buddy Claudius Henrichs worked at the booth for Skype. He had this to say,

"The Skype booth definitely had the most visitors of the whole show and proved to be the most attractive both by the look of the booth and the products presented. I got asked lots of questions from eBay Powersellers about how to integrate Skype best into their current or yet to be set up call centers. How to use Skype with multiple users how to do call transfer, manage billing and stuff. They really liked the idea of offering buyers the possibility to contact their customer support for free ."

Here are smiles that greeted the attendees at eBay Live. No wonder the Skype booth was so popular.

Don't miss eBay Live Las Vegas June 10 to 12

Posted by Bill Campbell at 04:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past few weeks I have been using my 12-year old Nortel M9417 dual line phone as the primary telephone handset on my office desktop (wood version). It continues to access my PSTN services in the normal manner yet accessing Skype is as simple as picking up the handset and dialing **. This is all made possible through the introduction of VoIPvoice's Skype Certified UConnect USB-Phone Converter into one of my office's Bell Canada phone lines.

Key criteria for this review are:

• Ease of installation
• Ease of accessing either PSTN or Skype
• Access to Skype features, especially the Skype client
• Ability to run other audio programs (Windows Media Player, iTunes, SlingBox, etc.) while on a Skype call
• Duplication of standard telephone user interface features
  • telephone keypad, dialtone access
• Flexibility when leaving the office with a laptop

The Package comprises:

• the VoIPvoice UConnect USB to Phone Converter module (pictured above),
  • Note that there is NO power adapter involved
• a USB extension cable,
• a line cord (RJ-11 connector to the phone line);
• a telephone cord (RJ-11 connector to the Nortel M9417) and
• a CD-ROM with the VoIPvoice software.

Other requirements:

• Installation of the Skype client on a Windows 2000 or Windows XP PC
• A telephone handset that supports DTMF; callerID support is optional
• A working PSTN line for making standard telephone calls.

Installation is a four-step process:

• Attach the UConnect to a (powered) USB port on a Skype-enabled PC.
• Insert the UConnect into the PSTN telephone line using the supplied line cord and telephone cord in lieu of the previous line cord.
• Install the VoIPvoice Integration software from the CD-ROM.
• Check your Windows Audio default Device settings to reset it to whatever device you wish to use for, say, Windows Media Player, iTunes, SlingBox audio, etc. (This does not impact the Skype Sound Devices selection made by the software installation.)

The software installation not only sets the Skype Sound Devices to "VoIPvoice USB Phone" but also installs speech recognition software as well as some on-hook/off-hook signaling to open the Skype client when you lift the handset and dial ** for Skype access. It also passes Skype CallerID information through to the phone handset's display.

Setup:

Upon completion of the VoIP Voice Integration software installation you will find a new "Skype-like" icon in your System Tray. Right click on it and select Options:

• Ensure all options on the General Tab are selected
• On the Speech Tab, define what you want Speech to do; note the various options (hash, pound or sharp) for describing the "#" key which is used to replace the Skype "Call" button on the handset (UK vs North American vs "Musical" English?)
• On the CLIP tab, North American users should select "Send CLIP according to bellcore specification"; this allows the Skype callerID information to be passed to any callerID display on the legacy handset. By selecting "Add prefix "S-" to Caller Name, you can identify any incoming call as coming from Skype in the callerID display.
• In the Skype client go to Tools | Options | Advanced and ensure that the "Start Skype when I start Windows" is unchecked.

Right click on the icon again and select Speech Properties. Select the "Text to Speech" tab and the Audio Output button. Select "VoIPvoice USB Phone" as shown. There are other options available to set properties related to the speech recognition; however, the remaining default settings provide all the basics needed to use the UConnect.

At this point, on starting Windows the VoIPvoice Integration software will open first; it will then launch your Skype client automatically. (Note that once this setup is completed for one VoIPvoice device, it is available for any other VoIPvoice device such as the Cyberspeaker-W.)

As a final step, ensure the USB - USB/PSTN switch on the UConnect is set to USB/PSTN

You are now ready to start using your PSTN phone handset to make calls on both your PSTN service and Skype.

Operation:

• To call a regular (local) PSTN number pick up the phone and dial in the normal manner.
• To call 911, pick up the phone and dial 911.
• To access the Skype client: pick up the phone and dial **; the Skype client will open on the associated PC. Upon hearing "Whom would you like to Skype?":
  • Speak the Skype Contact's Skype Name, or
  • Make a Skype call via the Skype client in the normal manner, or
  • Enter a Skype Speed Dial number and press "#"
  • "Dial" the Skype Contact's name: Dial * and, in response to the voice's "Press digit to select Skype contact", enter the keypad keys corresponding to the Contact's Skype Name. For instance for Bill, press 2455. If there are multiple Bills, the voice will provide a list of Bills: "Press 1 for Bill C., press 2 for Bill D., etc.".
  • Dial a number for a SkypeOut call within the same country code; remembering that the "#" key emulates the green Skype "Call" button after entering the number, or
  • Dial "00" (proxy for "+") and a country code and phone number (without the leading area code "0") to place a SkypeOut call to another country
  • Go to the Skype Email Toolbar (or SkyLook) and select a number to call in the normal manner.
• On receiving Skype calls, check the callerID display, pick up the handset, listen to the voice announcing who is calling (again by their Skype Name), press the "#" button to connect (remember it emulates the Skype "Call" button) and start talking.
  • If you simply hang up without pressing "#", the call is terminated as would happen if you pressed the red Skype "End Call" button.
• On receiving PSTN-originated calls, one answers in the normal manner.

Comments:

• All the comments about the VoIPvoice Skypepone line in my post about "Skypephones that Just Work" apply, including those about the need to work on the voice recognition capability.
• Automatic sound device selection: With the Skype Sound Devices set to "Windows Default Device" one can readily switch between, say, a headset on the PC's sound card and the legacy phoneset for audio. For instance, start a call using speakers and a mic, then lift the handset from the phoneset and the audio is redirected to come through the phone's handset.
• CallerID information from incoming Skype calls is displayed in the phoneset's text display, optionally with an "S-" prefix -- appears as "S-SkypeName"
• Audio quality: On the first day of use, I had at least three callers remark spontaneously on the audio quality as being superior to a standard PSTN phone line.
• Phone line portability: If I want to move this setup to another phone line (such as the second line to my dual line phone set), it is simply a matter of moving the line cord attachments. There is no need to register the UConnect with a central server on the Internet.

Positioning:

• UConnect is suited for those who want Skype/SkypeOut access while still having access to a traditional PSTN phone line for, say, 911, fax and "local" calling services.
• UConnect provides a familiar telephone touchtone keypad and handset user interface to Skype that does not tie up additional desktop real estate.
• With free calls to any North American PSTN number, SkypeOut also becomes an option for even local calls, especially when using PC-based tools such as the Skype Email Toolbar in conjunction with your Outlook contacts as your directory. Find the Outlook Contact, in the Email Toolbar select Skype, Home, Office, Mobile and the Skype/SkypeOut call is initiated.
• When on the road one can take along a Cybperphone-W or Cyberspeaker-W and use the same software configuration to make Skype and SkypeOut calls from WiFi access point such as hotels, airports and coffee shops.

Conclusions:

• Pros:
  • A device that merges PSTN phone line requirements with access to Skype/SkypeOut features, including Presence and Chat.
  • Keep the same phone number available for receiving calls.
  • Allows continued use of Skype-enabled applications such as Skype Email Toolbar, Skype Toolbar for IE/Firefox and Skylook.
  • Passes Skype CallerID information to phoneset's text display
  • Takes up minimal additional desktop real estate to access Skype
  • Maintains access to 911 and alarm services
  • Portable to any available PSTN line
  • Relatively simple four-step installation
  • Automatic interactive sound device selection.
  • Delivers very high quality audio
  • Can listen to audio-enabled applications, such as Windows Media Player ("WMP") and SlingBox, while on a Skype call.
  • Same software supports two complementary dedicated VoIPvoice Skypephones for mobile use.
• Cons:
  • Installation may require resetting of default Windows Audio Device to allow independent operation of audio applications such as WMP, etc. (This may be an issue with how Windows handles Audio Devices.)
  • Voice recognition feature needs improvements to increase recognition accuracy. According to VoIPvoice personnel, this is a high priority issue being addressed.

UConnect turns Skype into an ideal PC-based complement to a traditional small office individual PSTN phone configuration. UConnect takes over the long distance service while offering additional capabilities such as File Transfer, Presence and Chat without changing your legacy phone number and without disrupting access to essential services such as 911 and alarm systems. It certainly passes the Jeff Sandquist seven-day test.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A Skype Journal Exclusive. It is a great book, a great read. It belongs beside your computer, (Windows, Mac OS X or Linux) not on a book shelf. "Skype: The Definitive Guide." The book is rightfully portrayed as the only official guide to Skype, every chapter reviewed and approved by Skype staffers. Written by Skype insiders Harry Max and Taylor Ray (more on them later this week) with a foreword by Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennström.

The whole book feels good. It has balance. Skype stories, user stories, interweaved with useful but hard technical facts. Even QUE Publishing and Amazon got it right. They understand the Skype user is not going to pay big bucks for a book. The price of $12.99 (US) means just about everyone can afford it.

Who will find value in this book?

Skype: The Definitive Guide has value for the novice in Skypeland to the super user on the Skype Forum. The hardest core Skype fan will at least get confirmation if not new insight into how Skype works. Max and Ray have taken what was publicly available from Skype in the Network Administrator's Guide and in Tom Berson's Security White Paper and brought much needed clarity. When I mentioned this point to Kurt Sauer, Skype security head, he smiled and said "Cool, I need to read these books to figure out my own product." The reality, Max and Ray's warm relationship with Skype staff, like Kurt, brought more open discussion and more insight to explaining how Skype works. Does it uncover all Skype's secrets? No. That would be silly. There are many good reasons to have trade secrets. But, as an example, here is a gem from page 210:

"The public-key cryptographic model enables a Skype application to receive private messages that only it can read and to issue signed messages that no one else could have created.

No one (not even Skype Technologies) has a copy of the key shared by the parties to the call. There is neither sharing nor disclosure of the keys to any parties other than the pairwise sharing to establish a 256-bit session key. And when a session ends, the keys are discarded. Encryption keys are neither escrowed to third parties nor disclosed to the Skype users."

So when Niklas Z gets called by Bush, Putin, Hu or whomever he can simply say, "I don't got no keys to give you!"

The book's description of how the supernodes and relays work in Skype will go a long way to ending myth. Hopefully bloggers and journalists will use it as a training guide. They just never seem to get the story right.

Harry Max and Taylor Ray spent nine grueling months but finally pushed out one beautiful bouncing baby of 263 pages. That baby will delight you. If you are a seasoned Skyper you can delight all your friends, relatives and contacts by buying them the book as a gift.

If you Skype: this book is for you.

Thank you, Harry and Taylor.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Over the past three weeks I have had the opportunity to evaluate four Skype Phone products from VoIPvoice; I will review them individually in upcoming posts. However, in addition to being Skype Certified, all four share some common features and traits, including the ability to just attach, install and call:

• At my home office, I make my Skype and SkypeOut calls via their UConnect USB-Phone Converter, using my 12-year old Nortel M9417 dual line phone set. Yet I can still access and use all my Bell Canada services, including their Smart Touch services. "Just dial ** for Skype."
• On the road I take along either the Cyberphone-W or Cyberspeaker-W; plug either into a laptop USB port at a WiFi access point and start making Skype or SkypeOut calls.
• My daughter is using the recently introduced Cyberphone-W for Mac with her MacBook Pro as her primary landline and a complement to her wireless phone.

With all three Windows-compatible devices:

• I lift the phone handset and my Skype client opens on the laptop; when I replace the handset, the Skype client minimizes to the System Tray.
• I have the option to initiate any Skype calls by simply saying the Contact's Skype user name
• I can dial SkypeOut calls in the traditional legacy manner (with no need to add the home country's country code) on a conventional touchtone keypad.
• I have the option to make Skype and SkypeOut calls using the Skype client interface in the conventional manner
• All my other Skype "accessories" such as Skype Chat, SMS Messaging, File Transfer, Skype Email Toolbar and SkyLook continue to be available to work in the normal way.
• I am able to listen to Windows Media Player, podcasts via iTunes and my SlingBox on my stereo speakers while on a Skype call using these handsets.
• I have had several unsolicited comments on the excellence of the audio quality.
• Power comes via the USB port; no external power adapter is required;
• Installation involves connecting the USB adapter, ensuring Skype is installed, installing the VoIPvoice software and, in some instances, resetting the default Windows Audio Device (to, say, your laptop speakers). Once performed for one of the devices, the installation is, in effect, applied to all three devices.

(Note that with the UConnect device, I lift the handset and simply dial ** to access the Skype features outlined above. To use my Bell Canada line I simply continue to dial and access services in the normal manner.)

The only problem I have encountered is that the voice recognition will have some name recognition difficulties such as differentiating Bill (Campbell) from Phil (Wolff). On the other hand when it recognizes Bill's name their "Darth Vader voice" says, somewhat monotonously, "Calling Bill Campbell vertical bar Skype Journal" (Bill's Skype name reads "Bill Campbell | Skype Journal"). The VoIPvoice device reads back the entire contents of your Skype Name field -- amusing! If they would just replace Darth Vader with a "sexy female voice", it would be perfect!

These VoIPvoice devices bring a traditional phone interface (i.e. - a handset with a touchtone keypad) to Skype while maintaining access to all the features of Skype. Combining these devices with Skype's recently announced free North American calling, Skype/SkypeOut has become my preferred service for voice calls from both my home office and remote WiFi access points (hotels, airports, coffee shops, etc.). More details will follow in the individual reviews of each device later this week.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, Skype changed the NorthAm VoIP landscape with free SkypeOut until year end. Skype downloads picked up right away.

This week Vonage speculators caught on about 24 hours too late. Vonage, its bankers and investors took in half a billion dollars. That'll buy them a mix of time, talent, features, and paying customers. We'll see how well they use it. 

StreamCast Networks' little litigation engine ups their lawsuit's ante by going for deep pockets, including eBay's, and naming Skype's founders in the expanded suit. Reading their complaint, they think they're facing the Sopranos. ♥ The ammended complaint (4.6MB, PDF) is full of juicy language like "fraud", "exclusive rights", "secretly siphoned-off", "conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act", "steal", "hatched a scheme", "theft", "secret disabling feature", "sweetheart deals", "hijack the 28 million Morpheus user base", "scheme", "scheme", "conspiracy to restrain trade", "pattern of racketeering", "mail and wire fraud", "are currently being aided and abetted in their efforts to fraudulently tranfer funds and properties by their families, accountants and attorneys". ♥ They say Skype's p2p technology is owned by StreamCast, and that Skype's founders cheated them out of the technology. They also say Skype lied to eBay about owning its technology free and clear, or that eBay (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). To make their case, they must pierce several corporate veils, show they had rights to the technology in the first place, prove the people and companies named messed with their rights. The parties span the globe, from Estonia to Vanuatu, but they may have enough to assert California jurisdiction. ♥ The kicker: StreamCast asked the court to shut down Skype. Right now. Protect your Skype SuperPowers! Should you tell StreamCast's management how you feel about it? Using your free or cheap SkypeOut minutes? Just by clicking on the phone numbers below? Maybe you'd say something like "Hands off my Skype, Mr. StreamCast!"? ♥ Do Skype's users have any legal standing in this?

• Michael Weiss, ceo, (818) 887-8610 x110
• Matt Neco, counsel, (818) 887-8610 x105
• Elizabeth Cowley, vp bizdev, (818) 887-8610 x108

The eBay/Yahoo deal seems healthy. Partner with a symbiote, not a parasite. Don't fuel Google's rising threat with ad dollars. ♥ It's an opportunity. Generalizing for a moment, eBay is great at making markets for goods. Yahoo! is better at making markets for intangibles, like jobs, movies, travel. Both create rich communities, but very different mechanics and cultures. As eBay uses Skype to embrace an intangibles strategy, Yahoo! could be a great partner. ♥ What happens should the Skype and Yahoo! Messenger teams swap spit? The best bits of both products could show up in the other. Might they resolve digital ID spaces and data models for users and conversations? Agree to strong interoperability for chat, voice and video? Standards for distributing in-client adverts? API co-development, blending the Yahoo!, eBay, PayPal and Skype developer communities? Together, they'd be an unbeatable team.

Skype updated Windows and Mac clients, bug fixes and repaired security problems, including a bug that exposed millions of SkypeOut call records to the NSA and other Internet snoops.

Dan Houghton, Skype's answer to Shelley Vision, started blogging about new Skypecasts.

The Skype ecology has been active too. VoIP Voice launched a new Mac phone in the UK. ♥ Actiontec is hiring a director of bizdev for VoIP products. "Actiontec is expanding its presence in the Skype Certified VoIP business! As a leader in this marketplace, Actiontec plans to capitalize on it's first to market advantage in the commercial space, and leverage it's intellectual property and strategic relationships in the VoIP adapter business. This is an exciting opportunity for a highly motivated professional to drive a huge up and coming business segment for Actiontec." If you apply, let us know what you learn. ♥ PhoneGnome to Skype came out, using the Uplink SIP to Skype Adapter.

Sometimes people ask me how I find something to write about just focusing on Skype. It's weeks like this, my friend.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With the turbulent migration to VoIP occurring in 2006, it will be interesting to track usage and subscriber data to support the impact of VoIP and Voice 2.0 business models. A couple of items that appeared this week:

Skype vs Vonage in the UK: Heather Hopkins of Hitwise, an online Internet usage monitoring service, has reported on Skype, Bebo and Vonage -- Why Skype Visits are Through the Roof. Her chart that results from tracking visits to websites for each demonstrates how UK visits to Skype have climbed from ~1% of UK site visits in early February to 6.9% mid-May while Vonage has stagnated in the 0.8% range. And this happened in a market with no free SkypeOut! Score one for market penetration by a Voice 2.0 business model.

Earlier this week I reported on the $15 million funding of Bebo, a social network with 24 million members predominantly in the European market and Andrew Hansen's observation as to how Skype support was probably a factor in their financing success. Heather goes on in her post to report on how Bebo is responsible for over 50% of the upstream sources for visits to Skype. And this number has increased with a Bebo-Skype partnership tied into the launch of Skypecasts. A Voice 2.0 application driving adoption and market penetration in the social networking space.

Acknowledgement to Mathew Ingram for the post that brought my attention to Heather's post through the Comments.

Telus - a legacy Canadian telco in transition: Jon Arnold has posted some numbers provided at the Telus President's Symposium held last Thursday in Toronto. Telus is the primary (and legacy) telco in Alberta and British Columbia and has a very successful national mobile network in Telus Mobility. They have a reputation for rapidly introducing new technology -- they were the first to have an EV-DO offering in major Canadian metropolitan markets; also they went through a strike last summer that was essentially about transitioning labor costs to a level consistent with a Voice 2.0 business model. Telus has continued to be profitable; their stock price has risen over fivefold since mid-2003.

This is the picture of a telco successfully transitioning to a Voice 2.0 model reflecting the value is in applications (as opposed to access and directory) where:

• Talk is the baseline through provision of connectivity and directory services, yet
• The meter is going off -- as evidenced by their reduced long distance activity and the reduced reliability on voice for revenues.
• Applications (as evidenced by their increasing reliance on Data and Wireless) are becoming the value creators.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

I'm listening to IMS architect Colin Pons from KPN. Wow. An operator that gets it.

He sees IMS as a technology that (in his words) makes the Internet more important for customers. No walled garden, preserve the end-to-end principle. Deploy it as a big application-layer intelligent router that ties together value-adding services. (What he means is intelligent find-me/follow-me, next gen voicemail etc. -- not trivial mapping of logical identifiers to network addresses in a desperate attempt to generate billable events). And IMS is a transitional technology to a P2P world.

Most notable is that he sees identity as being front and central to their effort. I know that he knows this is a deep and complex area, and not something that can be easily articulated in one busy slide on a panel session.

Tied with KPN's "scorched earth" strategy for deploying fiber connectivity across the Netherlands, this proposes a radically different culture and outlook to the average operator. They have seen the light that they will only survive by delivering super-abundance to the users, and by attracting users into their world by offering compelling value, not by trying to hold them to ransom by erecting barriers to achieving their goals.

My only bone would be whether KPN is making the most efficient use of capital in evading the Dutch municipal network trend. If they follow their own logic to its conclusion, owning the network isn't much of an advantage any more.

For US readers, this is a description of a telecom world from another planet, with races to deploy fiber and empower users.

Hopefully I can find an excuse to visit Amsterdam again, one of my favourite cities. Not that it needs an excuse. And I know a few readers who may have a more skeptical view of KPN, so the good news is comments are working again now the spam storm is over.

read how Martin normally decries IMS at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

by Steve Smith, Lavalife Chief Scientist

I'm a huge user of Skype, as my friends and colleagues know. I've helped shift the management of several companies over to Skype as a productivity tool. One of the main reasons I use to promote Skype is the value of the seamless pyramid of communication: presence ⇒ IM ⇒ Voice. However, some factors are interfering with this value, and I think there's a paradox in the direction Skype is taking.

To recap, here's what's good about the model:

• presence -- I can see if someone is at their computer, or not. If they're at their computer, it means there's a good chance I can reach them if I need to communicate with them
• I can then IM them for simple matters, or to ask if they have time for a call. This is a much lower profile interruption than a ringing telephone, and therefore I feel freer to do it, and correspondingly do not mind it when people ping me
• If we want to talk, it's just a push of the big green button

But, increasingly people are starting to access Skype from a mobile device that doesn't have presence and IM capability. For example, this Netgear Skype phone which I have on order from Amazon (and which as Andy points out has some flaws as an out-of-the-home device).

For months I was trying to reach a friend in Italy via Skype IM. When I was over there recently, he said, "Oh, the server is up in the attic and I never look at the screen, but if you call it, it rings on my phone downstairs". It turns out he permanently set his status to "online" and walked away. This breaks the model -- presence no longer has meaning, and IM doesn't work. You need to go straight to pressing the big Green "call" button. This is a huge step backwards from the virtuous pyramid I talked about above.

Yet, Skype seems to be accelerating this direction. Witness the recent move to offer free calling in North America (great link collection on this topic here). Witness the variety of Skype-enabled hardware coming. Combined with free urban wifi, these trends point to Skype being a free cellphone, not a Presence/IM/Voice platform.

I fear that you can't be both. Both directions are interesting, both are worthwhile. But by trying to be both you degrade the value of the IM/presence network, and thus rob one group of users from the productivity gain they currently enjoy. It's a bit of a conundrum, and I certainly don't have the answer, but just watch if the value of your Skype presence indications doesn't start to drop over the next year.

via Steve's Tech Journal.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

At the end of the second day of trading Vonage (VG) closed at $13.00 with over 11.3 million shares traded today; down 24.6% from the IPO price. There is some interesting and inisghtul commentary coming out:

Andy Abramson, VoIP Watch: My Thoughts on The Vonage IPO

So really, this reaction to the stock price is not a reflection of how VoIP will do, for VoIP, especially with new and different services coming on line every day that can only be delivered by IP will do very well in the hands of companies with real leadership and vision, not just a sales model that costs more to acquire the customer than will ever pay back.

No, this reaction is a show of no-confidence by Wall Street in the company, their leadership and their approach to business. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Jon Arnold was interviewed by ROBTV (a Canadian business channel); this link will work until May 31.  Jon points out that, whereas the legacy telco and cable competitors at least have a customer base to whom they can market a VoIP service, Vonage needs to recruit a customer base ... thus, the high marketing costs. Well worth a listen for an overview of Vonage and its positioning.

Tom Evslin brings his insight as a former CEO of company that went through an IPO in the Bubble 1.0 era to two posts: Vonage IPO - When the Crowd Is Always Wrong and Vonage IPO - How The Bankers May Make a Bundle More Despite the Bust. Most interesting are his comments about "flipping".

Andy Kessler follows up his guest post a week ago on GigaOm: Vonage Sucker Punch. "Here's how not to do a deal. Citigroup raised the number of shares in the deal, but not the price. Bad move - it signaled some weakness...." Read on.

Mathew Ingram: Use VoIP to Call Your Broker and Sell. But he recommends using Skype to call your broker -- "it's cheaper".

In summary:

• It's the VoIP business model, not the underlying VoIP business technology, that needs attention. Once more an implicit validation of the business model described by Alec Saunders' Voice 2.0 Manifesto.
• Trading at this point appears to be unrelated to any business fundamentals but rather to the psychology and needs of the financial market players.
• There will be a continuing squeeze on Vonage's margins as their competitors come in with lower price offerings. Didn't Skype say "free within North America" to year end?

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Interesting news. Let's hope they make it work. Seems to be mostly about Skype enabled advertising.

Here is an example of a Skype enabled ad from Euroland:

News links...

Skype Forum

MyWay

Yahoonews

This looks like it will play well. Yahoo and eBay have connections and cash; Skype has the cachet. My guess this partnership will help ratchet up the Skype numbers.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I received an email from SightSpeed announcing

On May 24, 2006, SightSpeed will release the next version of our award-winning video calling service. This new release will include significant new beta features, including SightSpeed Phone Out, which you can use to make great quality, low-cost telephone calls from your PC or Mac.

Key Points:

• SightSpeed expands its voice capability from pure 'VoIP to VoIP" to "VoIP to PSTN" (Phone Out launched yesterday) and "PSTN to VoIP" (PhoneIn to be introduced soon).
• Rates for calls within North America are 2 cents per minute; rates to Europe start at 2 cents per minute but vary by country and modality (land line or mobile)
• Ability to make voice only calls (no video required)
• Improved video via a beta codec
• Enhanced Contact List Display options

I have followed SightSpeed since it was first introduced as a high quality video service at Fall Comdex 2003. From the initial press release:

SightSpeed Web matches the speed of the telephone, delivering audio/visual synchronicity at 30 frames per second through patented, human perception-based technology that is based on more than seven years of research at Cornell University.

SightSpeed has always been recognized for its video quality. It has also always had a VoIP capability for those who had headsets to use it as audio accompaniment to the video. Their "SightSpeed Pro" service offers additional features such as multi-party  voice and video conferencing for up to 4 participants. Unfortunately not many of my acquaintances were enamored enough to make it a viable communications service I could routinely use. And I did not find a real need to use their Video Messenger service; but that may just be me.

But SightSpeed also has a Mac version. With this new release SightSpeed has the potential to become the leading service offering combined video and PSTN phone connectivity on MacBooks equipped with the built-in iSight video camera. If this takes off in the Mac community -- where there is a strong viral market user base -- it would give Skype some significant competition at the video level. Purely a question of "how long can a User wait" before s/he absolutely has to have instant messaging video?

I have done the upgrade; turns out the Phone feature is a Beta version -- and it shows. For instance in the country calling rates list one sees "Canada-Alberta" but what about the rest of Canada? When I check out my own (Canadian) phone number it says I am in the USA. Nice to see that Skype recognizes the difference (and puts Canadian flags with Canadian phone numbers). Seems like there are definitely infrastructure issues to smooth out yet.

Will be interesting to see how (or whether) they deal with Skype's free calling within North America. More to follow as I get more experience with it.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Maybe you have experienced callers who have hung up by the time your mobile phone starts to ring because Call Forwarding took so long. Your caller experiences too many rings; you experience a lost call and no voice mail. Anyone who lurks on the Skype Forum knows there is some confusion around the Skype Call Forward function.

Let's see if Neil and I can help you decrypt Skype Windows Call Forward. Neil Lindsey is a fellow Skype Tester (neillindsey) from Vancouver, BC

If you want to have the incoming call forwarded to your PSTN or mobile number on the first or second ring read on...

Note: this applies only for users who have Skype Voice Mail (we have not tested a scenario for Skype users who do not have Skype Voicemail).

If you open Skype>Tools>Options>Call Forwarding and Voicemail and in the lower part of the window (Voicemail section) you see in blue: "Advanced settings". Click to open and a window will open like this:

The setting of the number of seconds directly affects how long it takes for a call to be call forwarded. The default is 15 seconds. The range is 1 to 15. (If you enter a zero it will just go back to the default setting of 15)

Forwarding calls to a PSTN number is always longer than forwarding a call to a Skype Client.

With a setting of 1 a call will be forwarded to a PSTN number in 12 to 18 seconds (average 15 seconds). With a setting of 15 seconds the call forward time ranges from 28 to 32 seconds (just long enough for someone to give up and hang-up).

When Call forwarding to a Skype Client with a setting of 1 the Call is forwarded in about 2 seconds; with a setting of 15 seconds the Call is forwarded in about 17 seconds.

Off our topic but somewhat related, if a recipient does not answer it takes a full minute of ringing before the call falls back to the Voicemail of the Skype Client that did the Call Forward. (Exception: unless the PSTN/Mobile device has it's own Voicemail)

Thanks to Skype Forum user braveheart who started Neil and I down this convoluted path.

Please tell us if any of this helped you.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The public version of Skype is now 2.0.0.107 this fixes a security bug.

The beta 2.5 release has both new features around SMS and many bug fixes. Get it here. New version number is 2.5.0.91. I have used it; I am happy with it.

The change logs for both releases are here.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The Skype product "Skypecasts" get a new blog to inform users with comments, tips and tricks from the makers of Skypecasts. Product news, featured Skypecasts.

Meet the publisher, Dan Houghton of Skype.

Dan tells me,

"I am older than I look. And Bill, I also want to include success stories -- people that have used skypecasts in unusual and effective ways. So please have your readers send me their stories."

Drop by the Skypecast Blog here. Leave Dan a comment of applause for getting this blog and product off the ground.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The dot-mobi domain names are now available for registration. Skype.mobi is is still available if you want to scoop Skype.

Here are a number media links that tell the story:

http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/05/24/mobi/index.php

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6075779.html

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2156716/mobile-firms-act-secure-web

This move helps validate the Orb Networks and SoonR technology.

Your mobile phone will soon be a more capable device. Media goes mobile. Now to get me a new mobile device.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

VoIP/Voice of Manchester, UK yesterday announced the release of its Cyberphone-W for Mac to the U.K. market. A Skype Certified Skype phone for the Mac . From the press release:

.... This product broadens Skype's appeal to consumers who prefer to use a conventional telephone handset and who opt not to be bound to their PCs by headsets.

The Cyberphone-W for Mac has been designed to deliver very high-quality sound and features

• Leading edge design looks great on your desk!
• Tightly integrated with Skype, simplifying calling your friends whether they're Skype users or not
• It looks and acts just like a normal phone
• Manage your Skype contacts direct from the keypad
• Skyping-out via the keypad
• In-built LED to indicate incoming calls, voice mails, on/off-hook status

Not having a Mac myself, an evaluation unit was sent to my graduate student daughter for the ultimate "typical consumer" usability testing on her recently acquired MacBook Pro. On her own she was able to set it up and now has a cost effective "land line" phone to complement her wireless phone. Speaks a lot about Skype's insistence on only certifying "products that just work". Its arrival timed nicely with the launch of free SkypeOut for calls within North America but also allows her to call her friends in Taiwan and Europe at much lower costs than wireless.

Cyberphone for Mac is the first Skype Certified product to be sold at Apple Stores in the UK on an exclusive basis for the first four weeks. It will then become more broadly available, including on Skype Shop. Availability in continental Europe and North America is to be announced. Seems like pricing will be around US$54 (£35.00).

Now if Mac owners could just take advantage of the MacBook's relatively new iSight built-in video camera. To paraphrase the potential: "Lights, Skype for Mac 2.x, MacBook, Action!"

(Interesting that Google directed me to a Canadian Newswire service to find the press release.Also covered on MacMinute.)

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With almost two months experience as a  Skype Journal Associate Editor, it has become apparent that a Skype Journal editor could become a test technician for every product with aspirations to work with Skype.  However, time is a limitation and one needs to somehow define that gray border between evaluating a product and providing consulting on product management issues such as user interfaces, installation and configuration conflicts, Skype API integration and even Skype Certification. Rather than define a boundary here are the priorities I see in triaging our selection of products to evaluate:

1. Is the product or service Skype Certified? If so, it has certainly passed one set of criteria that are becoming tighter as Skype develops experience with its partner program. Most of the items below are included in the Skype Certified criteria (SC) but I repeat them for emphasis.
2. (SC) Does it include User Manuals, either in print or online? At least have them available for assisting the installation and operation. (Yes, I actually read them to assist with the objectivity of my assessment of a product when I run into issues.)
3. (SC) Does it install seamlessly? Any installation or configuration precautions? Does the installation avoid conflicts with previously installed drivers and software? (On this one we recognize that devices with Windows Audio drivers will have to have the default Windows Audio device reset after installation -- a Windows issue, not a product issue. On the other hand any installed software cannot wipe out currently installed drivers - as some have done.)
4. (SC) Can it be installed and configured within 20 minutes? This is a bit subjective but if I can't install the product within this time frame, the typical Skype User will not have the patience to complete an installation and configuration.
5. Does it use the Skype client as the primary Skype Contact manager? Is one option for calling and answering one's Skype Contacts simply the basic means of calling and answering available through the Skype client?
6. (SC) Have the Skype API's been used? While the API set is not complete (#1 request is for a Call Transfer API), they are relatively comprehensive and have facilitated the production of some excellent products.
7. Does the product provide a definable User benefit or is it just "nice" technology? As a business unit within eBay, Skype is looking for third party applications, services and products that build both usage and its User base.

One overarching statement of Skype's philosophy towards Certification::

Overall, we apply the same criteria to the solutions we certify [as] to Skype itself. Our basic feeling is that [since] "Skype is free Internet telephony that just works", we expect the solutions we certify to behave in the same way. If a solution doesn't work in a straightforward way, throws unclear errors upon install, and or requires a lot of backtracking to get it to work, we won't pass it.

As we develop the Skype Journal Labs brand, this is the first of several guidelines that will be used to assist with setting priorities and providing some level of objectivity to our product reviews. Next:: key criteria in product evaluation.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jean Mercier, Oostakker, Belgium

"Look how Skype users online are jumping up", says
Matthew Rabinowitz. Mathew is a US citizen living in Germany as well as a Skype fanatic. He has been harassing me for the last few days on Skype chat.
Of course I knew that Skype had launched free SkypeOut for calls inside Canada and USA on May 15! I am jealous!

I had not enough data points of users online between May 15 and today. I therefore took a closer look at the number of downloads of the Skype application.

In fact, I was thinking that if a lot of Americans began to use Skype, there should also be an increase in the number of downloads. And indeed, the download curve is bending up quite sharply on May 20 (see first red arrow). I asked Matthew why it did bend on May 20 and not on May 15, and he argued: weekend! And his weekend theory is probably right: there is a small downward bending after the weekend (see the second red arrow)! So most people waited for "non-working" hours to install and test Skype probably!

Now, next question: how many new American and Canadian users does this represent? Downloads is not equal to new users of course, and Skype stopped providing data on the new registered user-names!

Well, let's just compare the growth rate before the bending (see dashed line) with the result attained today. We can see that there is an increase of about 3 million downloads (307 million minus 304 million at the end of the dashed line) in 4 days! Supposing that these are all new users, we have therefore a (temporary?) growth of 750.000 new North American (including Canada) Skype Users per day or 5.000.000 new users weekly!

This is quite amazing if it continues!

But I have to admit my graph is based on very few data points, so this is still pure speculation!

Posted by Guest Blogger at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This week sees two events that demonstrate funding of the VoIP-enabled space is alive and well.

Andrew Hansen comments on Benchmark Capital's $15M financing of Bebo, a social network with 24 million members in a space dominated by MySpace and Facebook:

I am pretty confident saying that Skype support was a major (allbeit not the only one) factor in their success. Skype is wildly popular in the EU/UK/EMEA due to high telephony costs. This is great news for the Skype ecosystem, funding is available for innovative and leading edge web applications such as Bebo, and EQO. The lesson learned here is a clear shot across the bow of other major Social networking sites - Skype support = users = traffic.

This is encouraging news for Skype's third party partners as they build businesses that embed Skype.. "Mike" gives a hint as to Bebo's overall architecture philosophy in the Tech Crunch announcement's Comments:

I find it interesting to see that Bebo is trying to integrate well established technology players (VideoEgg and Skype) instead of trying to develop everything inhouse (i.e. MySpace IM, etc.).

Jon Arnold predicts today will be the launch day for the Vonage IPO and makes a bold statement on the consequences of a successful offering for not only Vonage but also the entire VoIP market space:

Bottom line, whether you care for Vonage - or not - it is in the interests of the entire IP communications sector for their IPO to succeed. There is an awful lot of money looking for homes in this market, but until there is some track record of IPO success, that money will stay away. Several companies who entered this space around 2000 are primed for IPO - they've survived a downturn, and have matured to the point where they're ready for IPO. One could argue that if Vonage can't make it work , then nobody can. So for all of those IPOs-in-waiting out there, I'd say let's all hope things go well tomorrow!

Bebo: new communications business model applying the Voice 2.0 Manifesto with social networking application as the value creator; Vonage; replacing the legacy telcos but only with a variation of their legacy business model. Will be interesting to track how well these companies succeed going forward.

Update: Mark Evans reports the Vonage IPO is apparently oversubscribed.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Orb Networks has done it again with the release of a video messaging plug-in for Outlook and Thunderbird. Will streaming video be the next snowboard or skateboard for the digital-MySpace generation? I don't know, but what I do know is when grandma got this video message from her granddaughter, more than video was streaming. Gramma, oma, nonna, mormor, baba, oba-san, abuela; no matter what language you use a video message will touch a heart.

View the stream on YouTube

Video Messaging beyond e-mail
The Video Messaging plug-in for Outlook/Thunderbird is another component in Orb's larger streaming-media application. For example you can send Video Messages via SMS to (Skype links) to any mobile phone. The recipient clicks the link and your video message is streamed to the browser in the Mobile phone:

"What about Skype? Can I send Video Messages via Skype?"

Yes you can. Just copy and paste the link from Outlook/Thunderbird into a Skype SMS message or Chat Window. In a few weeks a plug-in for Skype will be available (watch this space for a review). Copy and paste is a simple enough work around allowing you to test out the power of pushing video content to yourself and your Skype buddies. Whether you are sharing or showing off this is cool technology. I am told a version for AIM is in the works too.

This Sunday's New York Times article by Lorne Manly, "For Tiny Screens, Some Big Dreams", provides an in-depth look at the future of streaming media.

Personally speaking, I sense the future is very bright for the streaming of media to the mobile phone. When you read about or think about mobile and video it is hard to get past the idea of the "tiny" screen. But once you have the technology in your hands you are unlikely to put it down.

Think about the value for 34 million American kids (plus their divorced/separated -parents and grandparents) who live in different cities. Surely as demand for mobile video grows so too will the screen sizes. Technology is already coming available for mini-size projectors being built-in to your mobile phone creating a 7-inch screen.

Video mail was not really a practical option till now. Many ISP limit the file attachments sizes to less than 5 MB. Now Orb's streaming technology makes it simple, secure and convenient. Anyone who has tried Skype video knows how powerfully video enhances communication by conveying the nuances of spoken language and facial expression. Now Orb brings this power to your asynchronous communication in business or personal relationships.

Simple to use...

Just three clicks...

1. Open the Video Messaging application

2. Press the red button to start and stop recording

3. Send the message

Mycasting
The Orb web site talks about how Orb takes the "home" out of "Home Entertainment". Orb turned my "always-on" desktop into a "mycast media server". All my media files are available to me via my mobile phone or my "on-the-road" laptop. When I send a video message the recipient needs nothing. They receive a link and click on it and the video message or TV show is streamed directly to them.

I think this is exciting and important.

Get it here. Play with it. And let's hear from about whether you think streaming video be the next snowboard or skateboard for the digital-Skype-MySpace generation.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Dryburgh -- a friend and recovering SS7 signalling guru -- has stumbled upon a barbed and thoroughly wicked anonymous denunciation of the "Quality of Service" efforts of some distressed incumbent telcos. He's posted it up over at TelephonyDiscussion.com.

via G's TeleQoSolypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I warned you not to ignore Skype and its cousins in my first post. In my second, I explained that Skypers are experiencing today the "communications of the future" you promised generations ago. eBay's building on this to create a new intangibles market. As I pack for my trip to the Telecommunications Association of Michigan's Politech conference, let me tell you something else you may not know.

Skype and its cousins are social media. The calls they support may be transactional but are just as often threads in longer conversations, moments in a relationship timeline. So Skype builds in features that transcend the call and focus on the people and organizations in your life.

Users have buddy lists, the kind of speed dial that's alive and updated every minute, that keeps friends and colleagues and sales prospects close to each other and engaged. eBay says about a third of Skypers use it in the workplace. So project and process communication, small team coordination, collaboration even in the same office, are big applications. And it's not because Skype is free. It's because Skype builds social capital.

It helps people stay in touch through "presence." Before you call you want to know availability. And not just what someone's calendar says, you want to know what they're up to and where they are. Skype's simple moodies ("what I'm up to these days") and geopresence (My Skype should be saying I'm temporarily in Lansing but that my home time zone is Pacific) signal status.

Not all conversations are the same, obviously. So Skypers tune levels of intimacy for each call. They start with chat and if they need more can switch to voice or to video with one button. Like a good Leatherman multipurpose tool, people mix the blend of modes to the person, the topic, their sense of urgency, how well they know each other, how prepared they are at this moment for this level of intimacy (nothing like getting a video call when you are in your pajamas). 

After the calls, Skype keeps a history on my PC. All chats can be archived. All conversations are logged. I can see my own call patterns, who I talk with most. I can read what I promised in chat. With permission I can record calls and play them back when I'm less emotional, or for a coworker taking over an account. All of this makes me smarter about cultivating my relationships.

And all of this is so 2005. Watch for companies like iotum to run apps that help Skypers better manage my attention in the context of my many conversations and relationships. Watch for tools to analyze my social networks and map the social proximity of strangers, and friends of friends.

By the way, we haven't talked about lock-in. I know you're used to contractual terms that meet your every need. But real lock-in is in friends. What does it mean to Skype to have a human hub bring her rolodex into the network? To really exploit all these features to manage these precious connections? To leave the network, you have to take your friends, and they have to bring their friends, and so on. Switching costs become a matter of losing your buddy list, losing your conversational history, being less capable of sustaining those relationships. Social capital lock-in is one of the strongest barriers to switching you may ever experience.

So Skype puts all of these relationship tools in your customers' hands. And makes it simple. And fun.

What do you do as a Michigan phone company?

You have my phone bills, but when was the last time your robot called and suggested adding a frequent caller to my speed dial? Or letting me know that I haven't talked to someone this week that I usually talk with every Monday? You have the data. Do you expose it in anything but a billing context? 

You don't.

You force people to write down their contacts on paper. At a time when we have more contacts to administer, and information overload threatens our competence, let alone our sanity. In perilous economic times, who you know can be the difference between employment and bankruptcy. And as our population ages, those with friends live better, live longer, stay healthier. Yet POTS makes us keep precioius relationship data in our heads.

It's no wonder that people are bringing their friends into Skype's social network. Skype makes those relationships easier to care for, to attend, to garden.

As we measure our wealth in friendships and family, Skype makes us wealthier.

What do you do?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was starting my evaluation of the beta PhoneGnome to Skype feature today when I found that the GnomeLink client is really the (not yet rebranded - it's beta!) Uplink SIP to Skype Adapter available free from Australian-based NCH Swift Sound. If you look at their Typical Applications, it appears to be targeted more at the SME PBX market as an interconnect from the PBX into Skype. From their website:

The SIP protocol has become the industry standard for VoIP. Thousands of telephone companies, IP phone manufacturers and virtual IP based PBX systems use this protocol to connect calls. The problem is the proprietary IP phone 'Skype' has an almost cult following in the youth market and sometimes the call rates for SkypeOut are discounted. This software lets you connect calls between the two systems.

Then I found a post from Michigan Telephone Blog that speculates about its potential as a Skype to Asterisk@Home interface:

Now, I haven't tried to do it, but maybe you could set this up on a Windows box along with a compatible softphone and use that as an interface between Asterisk and Skype.

I'm not the geek techie type but would be interested to hear Comments about its potential in the ongoing Skype vs SIP debate. (As would the people at Michigan Telephone Blog -- comment there or here.)

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I warned folks at this week's Telecommunications Association of Michigan's Politech conference not to ignore Skype or its kin. To continue...

Second, Skypers are having their "communications of the future" moments now. If you're thinking about selling video conversation someday at a premium, it's too late. The market's already commoditized and more useful. And it's happened without fast lanes, using the dumb IP network.  

With:

• free calls
• free conferencing
• free video calls
• free video conferencing
• integrated with instant messaging
• file and folder sharing

All at the same time, in the same call.

Please don't think your rivals in this market are your first mile competitors. Your customers are downloading free software from foreign cities like Shenzhen and Luxembourg and Redmond. And from global brands like Yahoo!, AOL and Google.

And your customers are talking to each other, now more than ever. By one measurement, seven percent of all long distance traffic is on Skype. Seven percent. This isn't at the expense of long distance carriers. It's making the pie bigger, making intercontinental conversation carefree and impulse friendly. Changing caller behavior.

From the portal player point of view, this is a continuation of their moves to win and keep attention. It's all of a piece with event sharing (like Yahoo!'s upcoming) and social calendaring (Google Calendar), social networking (MySpace, facebook, Google's Orkut), social bookmarking (Digg, Yahoo!'s del.icio.us), photo sharing (Yahoo!'s flickr) and blogging (MSN Spaces, Google Blogger, SixApart). You know the funny thing? These systems all talk to each other! Open protocols let you see your flickr photos on your MySpace page and Skypecast schedule on your TypePad blog. When was the last time any two of you, let alone your whole industry, agreed on something as technically simple as exchanging voice mail, a twenty year old technology?

All today, used today, engaging your customers today.

But wait, there's more.

All of this is coming to a mobile near you. Location aware applications are exploding as GPS geocoding becomes cheap and transparent.

But that's just the easy stuff.

Third, eBay will build on that enrichment this year. It will come in at least three parts.

Send money. If you didn't know it, eBay the auction house, car dealer, and flea market owns a bank. PayPal will be built into Skype this year. (screenshots as shown at eBay's 2006 Analyst Day via flickr) Forget Western Union for remittances, you'll just call up your friend, ask for $50 and she sends it. No email, no browser, just money. p2p money transfers via this "phone." As lucrative as this will no doubt be, this is just a baseline service.

Send me money for something. eBay is using Skype to enter the consumer-to-consumer intangibles markets:

• Information,
• Entertainment,
• Knowledge, and
• Service.

They're not just helping people buy and sell figurines, they're selling 3D structural simulation of architectural wind forces, and independent medical opinions, and Arabic and Mandarin language tutoring. Information, education, entertainment, and service. No atoms to ship via UPS. Intangibles.

This plays to eBay's strengths. They master services that free people to buy online with confidence. Fraud detection, private police, strong identity, reputation management, and escrow services. Trust, in short. Which brings us to the third leg...

Find someone to send me money for something. eBay are masters of category management, communities that share a common passion and redefine their markets hourly. They bring millions of people together from around the world. Their directories of people and businesses evolve quickly and richly.

This year Skype will build searc of those directories, and new ones specific to intangibles, into Skype's search forms. So users that let their mice do the walking through Skype's white pages will also use eBay's classified yellow pages and new interest searches straight from the Skype client.

Again, no browser involved. Portable to a mobile client. Just look up a Motown expert, ask for the best Marvin Gaye song a tone deaf groom can sing at a wedding, and pay your $2.  Three minutes, $2, and PayPal and Skype get their few pennies of the transaction.

If Skype's rates of adoption and defection stay flat, they'll have 150 million participants in this new economy by year end. This before eBay spends one dime on advertising. And before they wave the flag and get eBay's own customers to embrace this new medium.

So this ain't your ma bell's plain ole phone call.

And those competencies are so hard to buy or build they are formidable barriers to entry.

Where does that leave you?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Thursday morning I'll be in Lansing on a panel for the Telecommunications Association of Michigan's Politech conference.

These are mostly lobbyists from the bigger phone companies, reps from the smaller ones, and interested state legislators. What should I say to them?

First, you dare not ignore Skype and its kin. Just to get a sense of scale, here are Michigan's top 16 cities by 2003 population [on the right], collectively 2.5 million. Skype is picking up 200,000 new users per day. If all of that energy were here in Michigan, Skype would penetrate 100% your bigger cities in two weeks. And the whole state of 10 million in 50 days. Dear TAM member, how many new customers did you pick up last year? And how much did you pay for them? Skype has less than 400 employees. 

Skype/eBay is not alone. Microsoft Vista comes to a desktop near you later this year. Watch adoption of their Windows Live Messenger with voice and video. What's Microsoft's installed base in your geography?

Your response may be to respond in kind. Everyone and their brother is licensing or building up their softphones. Others are creating consumer non-PC VoIP solutions through Skype or softphones embedded in home phones. Yet others are following Skype onto mobiles or leapfrogging them. Are you used to competing in a very crowded market?

In a very crowded market, how will customers choose? What are the drivers of consumer choice in the world of Skype, QQ (the largest single-language IM/voice network on Earth), and AOL? What are their goals? The risks they're managing? If you answer cost containment, you're right, of course. But that just gets their attention.

So, this shift is big, it's real, it's happening now, and it's affecting your customers' relationship with you. More to come.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype for Mac OSX 1.4.0.49 is on the streets.

- First universal build: Skype is now made to run natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Mac computers
- Web presence: Show your Skype status on the Web and in your e-mail signature
- New language: Skype is now translated into traditional Chinese

Additional features in Skype for Mac OS X 1.4 include:

- Call forwarding: Forward Skype calls to other Skype IDs and landline/mobile numbers
- Music Integration: Automatically pause iTunes when a call is initiated
- Mood messages: Let people know how you feel by adding your mood into a message bubble all your contacts can see in their contact list

- Contacts: Drag and drop contacts to add them to Skype chats and/or calls

- Growl: Support for enhanced notifications: http://growl.info/

Download it here.

But you Mac fans might be happy but you will never catch up with us Windows people. (Grin)

Posted by Bill Campbell at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

PGA.com's new Tournament Central dashboard provides a perfect example where an Internet-enabled PC can be a more effective way to watch a golf tournament than simply a television set:

The convergence comprises:

• Watching the live action on television via my SlingBox
• The new PGATour.com Tournament Central Dashboard that provides the status of all the play currently underway -
  • hole-by-hole, each player's location at Tee, Fairway or Green.
  • more detailed information about a selected player such as current Score, Position on leaderboard and a description of his last shot (in this case I was following fellow Canadian Stephen Ames who is near the top of the leaderboard)
  • a thumbnail picture of the selected player's currently played hole (can be opened into a larger view in a separate window for more detail)
• Just add a Skypecast for spontaneous discussion amongst up to 100 geographically disbursed friends as the action happens.
• The limitation: No beer, wine or other beverages of choice served, unfortunately.

A case of "Content is King" driving convergence for golf geeks and fans. Give it a try as the Bank of America Colonial is played this weekend. And what does this bode for the future?

• Webcams along every hole to deliver video of each player's action (maybe even picked up via Skype video).
• Skype connections for dial-a-player to provide hole-by-hole interviews that can be communicated via a Bluetooth earpiece.

Well, we can speculate.....

Notes:

• Click on the graphic to open a new Flickr window with the full picture. It comes from a dual 1650 x 1080 display setup so will pan out best on wide screens. Link to Flickr photo.
• At the Masters one could also watch via a videocast all the action in Amen Corner as the players played through the 11th, 12th and 13th holes at Augusta National. A great complement to the telecast via SlingBox.
• As I finish this (12:33 p.m. EDT, May 19), Stephen Ames is on the Tee of the 12th hole, -3 for the day, -8 for the tournament, tied for the lead, The 12th hole is 417 yards, par 4 with a dog leg left; traps at mid fairway and protecting the green.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When it comes to displaying online status correctly the Skype Client can't "tell shit from shinola." That is how my long-dead father-in-law would have expressed it.

I get tired of sending a Chat Message to someone whose glowing icon says "Hey Bill, I am here, I am online!" only to have the bright green icon fall off my contact list and turn grey.

Several times a day now I refresh the status by selecting "Offline" for about ten seconds. This refreshes the status of all my contacts. A bit of a pain in the butt; but most workarounds usually are. Certainly easier than creating a web page with all of your contacts listed with their SkypeWeb status icons.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A Skype security bulletin released a few hours ago gives a "Medium" risk assessment to your Skype client.

The following Skype clients are vulnerable to this attack:

Skype for Windows:
All releases prior to and including 2.0.*.104
Release 2.5.*.0 to and including 2.5.*.78

The appropriate action: please upgrade. Here for 2.0 or here for 2.5 which is the new beta.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 07:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Google Trends can help tell the story. Basically Trends is an analysis of search volumes on Google for any two or more terms.

So when you look at Skype a player in VoIP space it dominates. However many people look at Skype as a big phenomena in social networking. This picture tells a different story.

MySpace has more than 75 million registered users.

Learn more about Trend here.

Trends is a fun tool to tell stories about Skype. What Skype stories does Google Trend tell you?

Try a trend graph for Skype, iPOD or as my Skype buddy Neil Lindsey suggested, Skype, Vonage.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 06:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I had some feedback at mesh earlier this week as the Skype announcement of free SkypeOut for calls within North America broke during the lunch break Monday. Others have now commented in both the blogosphere and traditional media; it is interesting to read their thoughts:

• Om Malik (who had just been a keynote Conversationalist at mesh Monday morning): SkypeOut.. Is It Really Free?
• Andy Kessler Will SkypeFree KO Vonage IPO?
• Alec Saunders: Pennies Dropping.... to Zero
• Jon Arnold: Skype - Free Outbound Calls - Good Deal Gets Better
• Andy Abramson (VoIP Watch): SkypeOut Now Free in USA and Canada
• Business Week (registration may be required): Skype Goes for Broke
• Light Reading: Skype Freebie is Defensive (Note; Jon Arnold was not at VON Europe as reported in this story; I can vouch that he was at mesh.)
• Globe and Mail, Mathew Ingram (a mesh Founder): Skype VoIP freebie could put Vonage on the ropes in which Skype Journal's Phil Wolff is quoted.

So the key follow-up questions are:

• Is this the death knell for the Vonage IPO? (or will we learn a new business model on how to operate on zero margin? been there; done that - see the paragraph "Another recollection" in this post on the early history of Internet browsers)
• Will it build Skype's North American user base significantly? (A key measure would be to see 175 to 200 million registrations worldwide by year end.)
• How and when will Skype/eBay leverage the resulting user base for additional revenue generating services and products?

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Call recorder from Ecamm Network I asked my fellow beta tester in Italy to test for our Skype Journal Mac readers.

"It''s a really handy application for mac that allow to record call in a very easy way . You just need to buy it for 12,95 and download the installer , once installed you will find a new tab in the Skype preference panel , where you can set all the options such as Record Quality , automatic record."

Emiliano sent me the MP 3 file of his test call. It was excellent.

Emiliano tells me the whole process from download to test drive was under 5 minutes.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Received a private email this morning with the above subject line but felt it was a question worth a full post as I am sure it is a more universal one:

Hi,

It seems silly that you have to have a computer running in order to use Skype even with your regular phone.  I've done some searches for Skype appliance and have not come up with much... Do you think the release of a Skype appliance that looks like a router is eminent? [ed. - imminent] If not, have you heard of any solutions like a Linux server that is relatively inexpensive that could be provisioned with that? I like Skype, but I just hate to have to have it depend on my computer to be up and running.

Thanks... Mika

"The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good." -Ann Landers-

Good question, Mika. Ideally you are looking for Skype service with the user interface of a traditional phone set. It certainly is one aspect I look for in evaluating hardware; however we need to also keep in mind that Skype goes beyond simply voice to bring along many additional features. Presence, chat, file transfer, voice mail, SMS messaging and other features enhance, facilitate and support the voice conversation.  The challenge is to have a familiar device (telephone type handset) but have access to these features and other benefits of Skype.

I have come across one potential solution that still needs the PC, another that can operate with its most basic functionality without a PC and there is great anticipation about another forthcoming solution that eliminates the PC:

1. VoIPVoice offers three products which provide the ability to use a traditional handset while taking advantage of Skype's other features via the PC. Main point here is that their solutions use a "traditional" hardware user interface, enhanced with some "Skype buttons" and voice recognition, to take advantage of Skype's features. I will be reviewing these devices over the course of the next week.
2. Televolution offers its PhoneGnome which theoretically requires no PC to be usable; however, you need a PC to access the associated web portal to manage services and to access your PhoneGnome Phonebook for click-to-dial. I will be evaluating its recently announced Skype interface in the next week.
3. NetGear announced a Skype WiFi phone at CES earlier this year. Lots of hype; rumors forecast a June launch; pre-orders being taken at Amazon.
4. And, of course, any Windows Mobile-enabled device (PocketPC or Mobile Phone) can run Skype via Skype for Mobile.

None of these provide an embedded router solution but are probably as indicative as one will see to providing a standalone appliance. The router request is solved by having universal WiFi in every coffee shop, hotel and airport worldwide (but, please, not in restaurants).

Of course, there is always the solution that Bill described in a recent post where Skype is deployed in a Call Center; however, once again a "host" computer is needed to run multiple instances of Skype. This approaches your request for a Linux server-based solution.

The Skype API's along with the creative ingenuity of the Skype community (especially on the hardware side) portend for an interesting ride as we seek the "Holy Grail" of the Skype Phone "Appliance".

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype's new Skypecasting (find out what's on now) is fun, exciting, educational and has really good potential for producing revenue. A neat example of all of the above was the Skypecasts I joined the other night called Pokerschoolonline. More about them here.

This 2-hour event had all the ingredients that make a successful Skyepcast. Good participant interaction, focus, everyone left with something of value. It was a training session in poker.
The talk was cheap (free, thanks to Skype) and the instructor was paid.

Try your hand at Skypecasts and share your experince with our readers.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Mesh Toronto 2006 comprised a series of forums and conversations focused on the implications of Web 2.0 on media, society, marketing and business. Much of the discussion centered around the theme of how can  "Web 2.0" services and technologies integrate into everyday life in a transparent, constructive and financially successful way.  Bottom line: Web 2.0 provides significant opportunities for building social networks through building relationships

• Business needs to build conversational dialogues with their customers.
• Blogs can humanize the enterprise (think Scoble and Microsoft)
• Web 2.0 relationships are complementary to "community" media for local news and events, broadcast media for relaxation and print media for easily accessible portable news.
• Copyright reform needs to move from controlling markets to facilitating market driven protections.
• Technology can and will change the way people do business but in a transparent productivity-enhancing manner
• It's about building credibility and trust: When it comes to ethics, etiquette, editorial policies and other social interaction protocols, "legacy" social guidelines survive the technology shift (and, in many cases, become more transparent)
• Participants in communities will self-manage credibility and trust issues  through tools such as self-editing wikis, blog comments and other dialog facilitators
• New advertising models and metrics are needed to build the infrastructure that captures a reasonable ROI for the infrastructure providers

Where is Skype's role in the Web 2.0 world?

• Many of the mesh Conversations and Workshops mentioned Skype as a tool for facilitating conversation in Web 2.0 applications.
• Via the Skype API several participants either have incorporated Skype (Nuvvo) or are building a Skype interface.
• Skypecasts provides infrastructure for community conversations.
• "Free Calling in North America" certainly makes Skype implementation a "no brainer" for any conversation participant

One of the the common questions asked by the Founders of mesh at every session was "Where will "this" be in three years?". Common to the answers was the fact that the potential for Web 2.0 is still in its infancy; get ready for the ride!

Check out the mesh videos which introduced each of the four keynote sessions. (Hint: click on the "work" diamond). And my pictures up on Flickr

The mesh Founders, (left to right) Michael McDerment, Mark Evans, Stuart MacDonald, Mathew Ingram and Rob Hyndman, along with the conference management team at MCC, need to be congratulated for putting together such a successful event on nine weeks' notice.

Many other have posted on individual sessions and their impressions: Jon Arnold, David Bradfield, Scott Karp, Rick Segal

Note: this is our first use of Qumana as a blog editor for Skype Journal; one of the more immediate consequences of attending mesh.

• Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are using the latest Windows Skype beta 2.5 you will want to go here and upgrade to 2.5.0.82. More than 25 bugs are fixed. You can view the Change log here.

The one new feature added is a send SMS button in a Contact's SkypeOut profile:

If you haven't yet moved to the 2.5 beta you might consider it now. I just love the ability to send SMS messages.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (3)

Andy and Om think that Skype's American "voice really is now free" marketing pitch has gobbed in Vonage's IPO champagne. I tend to concur.

I also think Skype has only done half the job, largely as a result of the (necessary) constraints of using the PC as their "retail outlet", rather than traditional phones. Hardly anyone has a SkypeIn number in the grand scheme of things, and on-net SkypeOut to SkypeIn is trivial. The winner could be whoever captures a massive on-net traffic and avoids paying termination fees to anyone else. There's an audacious scorched-earth play still to be done. Suppose telephony revenue comes from user attention and transactions, mostly bridging B2C/C2B, and not from bit haulage. How much does it cost to "give away" landline telephony service in exchange for an identity and billing relationship? What's the size of the prize in effectively owning all 800 and 900 number traffic? How much does it cost to become de facto owner of the residential US telephony market?

I even know how you could do it and who can do it. Sadly, I can't say any more :) It's a long shot, and by no means pre-destined. But if the "Oh f*ck where did that come from?" happens, you will probably want to snatch some stills from Independence Day and War of the Worlds as the artwork for your next telco investor relations meetup.

Give Martin even more attention at telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What is the easiest way to link Skype into your office phone system or office PBX? That is the question I posed to Paul Daut, IT Integration Specialist at US Robotics. US Robotics have all their support call centers set up to accept calls from Skype.

One way of course is...

...with Skype to PBX gateway adapters, such as Zipcom, Vosky, Spintronics, or Skype2PBX.

These gateways handle 4 Skype calls at a time and range in price from $2000 US to $3000 (including the required PC).

Paul's approach was different. Because he is an IT guy I expected a geeky solution. I was wowed with his solution. It did not even use a computer.

For each Call Center Paul sets up a Skype Account and buys a SkypeIn number. That SkypeIn number is then setup in Skype>Tools>Options to Call Forward to the Call Center. Brilliant.

At the time USRobotics was paying about 15 to 18 cents per minute to handle support calls in Europe. Using the above approach all calls are handled by SkypeOut and have a cost of 2 cents. So Paul was achieving a cost savings of better than 80 percent. Of course now with free SkypeOut calls in North America at least one USRobotics Call Center will be at 100 percent savings.

Nice. No capital cost. And no computer. Good going Paul and Skype!

Posted by Bill Campbell at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

PhoneGnome employs a variation on the traditional Analog Telephony Adapter device associated with most VoIP services that allows you to continue to use your legacy phone line while having the option to use a VoIP service where it is advantageous (such as for free or reduced long distance tolls or for enhanced voice services such as voice mail, call forwarding or iotum). There were several "VoIP partnerships" available from which to select a VoIP service to work with PhoneGnome, including Project Gizmo. Yesterday PhoneGnome announced GnomeLink for Skype.

GnomeLink extends the capability of PhoneGnome, adding interoperability with Skype. GnomeLink allows PhoneGnome users to call Skype users from their PhoneGnome-enabled home phone, and to answer Skype calls on their PhoneGnome-enabled home phone.

One of the services available with PhoneGnome is the iotum call management service that screens your incoming calls and, in context - initially provided by Outlook Contacts and Calendar - determines the best way to handle your call: go to voice mail, your mobile phone, business phone or home phone. Yesterday iotum announced a special introductory offer for their service when used with PhoneGnome.

Last week I received for evaluation the Skype Certified VoIPVoice UConnect adapter that, with a different configuration, also allows me to continue to use my regular phone but, simply by dialling ** can access my Skype client and make Skype calls. Once the mesh Toronto 2006 conference is over, I will be making more detailed evaluation reports on both of these offerings that link your legacy phone to Skype.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The announcement today of free SkypeOut for calls within North America has received very positive response from attendees at the mesh Toronto 2006 Conference. Like "This is huge!" Some comments:

• Was Skype motivated to do this as a result of competitive factors such as AOL's recently announced AIM Phoneline?
• Adding free North American SkypeOut to the enhanced ease of installation and registration inherent to Skype's recentlly released version 2.5 makes it a "no brainer" to become a Skype user.
• What will be the impact of this announcement on the Vonage IPO?

Today my cell phone battery died at mesh Toronto 2006; but they have great WiFi service at the MaRS Centre (11g even). So out popped my VoIPVoice evaluation Cyberspeaker-W and I was using SkypeOut to catch up on calls to various locations in North America.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

Ever had Skype ask for your feedback on a SkypeOut call? That's more than AT&T ever did for me. Would be nice if it used a secure browser page (SSL, https) instead of posting my skypedout phone number in the clear. The url leading to the form:

http://www.skype.com/feedback/survey/calls/? service=skypeout & version=2.0.0.103
& username=YOURSKYPENAMEHERE
& call_date=1147565396
& cpu=0
& bandwidth=0
& a_number=+DIALEDPHONENUMBERHERE
& call_type=outgoing
& provider=
& status=
& result=FINISHED
& log_ringing=0
& log_answer=12
& log_finished=145
& pstn_feedback_info=

Lots of unencrypted personal info floating from users to Skype over the Internet daily, where anyone with a packet sniffer can assemble and read the data.

This data is exposed before you even see the form.

Fortunately the fix is easy to recode, a small change. But it's an indicator of how hard it is to keep complex information systems in full compliance with all regulations and company policies.

As of post time:

• SkypeOut data is still being posted in the clear.
• Skype is working on a client hot fix.
• The number of calls and callers exposed is still unknown.
• This doesn't compromise call security, just the metadata describing the caller (skype name, IP address) and call (phone number, start time, duration).

One last note. The timing of this report is an accident. I noticed this privacy problem around 3am Pacific Sunday morning.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Five effects of the announcement:

1. Easier to try.
2. Targets North America.
3. Better for enterprise sales
4. Will affect rivals
5. Small effect on hardware partners.

In one stroke Skype simplifies the choice to try Skype. No need to whip out a credit card or think about minutes. Just download and call. No trying to understand SkypeOut rates. No getting the boss to buy or reimburse credits. Simple. It will be easier to get someone hooked on SkypeOut to pay later, than to bring it up before installation.

This promotion targets Skype's hardest market: North America. Skype's penetration in the US has been horrible, at least compared to other countries. So Skype North America is knocking down barriers to adoption. First with hardware distribution. (One theory: people trust products in retail channels. Another: they want a handset experience.) Free calling takes NorthAm to the next level of accessibility.

This change was also necessary for Skype to penetrate the business market. Skype's business servers and digital identity models aren't up to the challenge of serving enterprises where people have multiple affiliations, roles, payment methods, and IDs. Skype IT has made strong progress in the last year, but Skype needs adoption now, before Microsoft Vista's launch. It needs enterprise and SMB buy-in more than it needs the cash flow.

This promotion is the action of a market leader. It will starve small competitors for seven months. It will force Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL, Earthlink and Google who charge for "out" services to reconsider. And it puts Comcast, AT&T and even Vonage on notice about pricing their own offerings.

Skype Certified hardware has often come with a gift certificate for free SkypeOut minutes, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. During the promotion period this will matter less. It's a small hit compared to the brand value of Skype Certification.

The coolest thing about this: it shows management in touch with unpleasant realities, and a willingness to confront them. All told, Henry Gomez and friends are doing the right things at the right time.

News release follows...

Skype Introduces Free Calls to Traditional Landlines and Mobile Phones in the US and Canada  

San Jose, CA, May 15, 2006 - Skype®, the global Internet communications company, today announced that all US and Canadian-based Skype customers can now make free SkypeOut™ calls to traditional landline and mobile phones in the US and Canada.  Previously, Skype users in both countries were required to pay for Skype calls from their PCs to traditional telephones.  Free SkypeOut calls to the US or Canada will be available to US and Canadian-based Skype users until the end of the year.

Skype has now removed any cost barrier for its American and Canadian customers to keep in touch with friends, family and business associates.  Skype anticipates that completely free calling in the US and Canada will expand Skype's increasing penetration in North America and solidify Skype's position as the Internet's voice communication tool of choice.  More people will now have the chance to benefit from Skype's premium services and online calling capabilities.

"Millions of consumers around the world are flocking to Skype every month, and we believe free SkypeOut calling will rapidly accelerate Skype adoption in the US and Canada," said Henry Gomez, General Manager, Skype North America. "We're very excited to be bringing Skype's convenience and voice quality to so many people for free." 

While SkypeOut calls within the US and Canada will now be free, SkypeOut calls to and within all other countries will continue to incur charges.  Those charges are unchanged by today's announcement and remain among the lowest available to consumers.

Last week Skype released a new beta version of its software that adds even more features and functionality to Skype's voice and video calling options, including: SMS; simplified dialing; payments in Skype; Outlook contact integration; call quality management; simplified registration; shared contact groups; and improved conference calling.   On May 1, after just more than two and a half years in operation, Skype achieved 100 million registered users worldwide.

About Skype 

Skype is the world's fastest-growing Internet communication offering, allowing people everywhere to make unlimited voice and video communication for free between the users of Skype software. Skype is available in 27 languages and is used in almost every country around the world. Skype generates revenue through its premium offerings such as making and receiving calls to and from landline and mobile phones, voicemail, call forwarding and personalization including ringtones and avatars. Skype also has relationships with a growing network of hardware and software providers.

Skype is an eBay company (NASDAQ: EBAY). To learn more visit skype.com.

Skype is not a replacement for your ordinary telephone and cannot be used for emergency calling.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (2)

PolyCom's new Communicator can change your whole Skype experience. Business or personal; the other parties are there in the room with you. You are more than hands free; you can move around the room. Best; no one knows you are on a speakerphone.

Phil Wolff covered the PolyCom story 3 weeks ago here.

Since then I have been putting the Communicator through some rigorous testing. I knew this would be a great product as I opened the box. Professional, high quality, stylish.

What do people I call think?

That's the critical test. My fellow testers have come to expect the same high standard I give them from my Plantronics DSP 400 headset. After 20 minutes into a video call with Peter Henning (Romania) stops and ask, "Wait a minute, where is your headset? What are you using, the sound quality is excellent?" I held up the Communicator to the web cam. The next day Peter ordered one. Another test with to Denmark yielded a "thumbs up" from Carlo.

When I need privacy, I simply plug a headset into the Communicator's right-hand side. When I travel, it takes up less space than my headset. The PolyCom Communicator is now my standard.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

For the balance of 2006 SkypeOut will be free for users in Canada and the US to call others in Canada and the US.

Thank you Skype.

This feels like a marketing ploy. Free calls to landlines and mobile phones is likely to give Skype some needed visibility in this geographic corner of Skypeland. I hope Skype will back this move with some other complimentary moves because cost of long distance is not much of a driver in this market.

Questions and Answers.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (7)

Skype announced Skype for Mac 1.4.0.49 Thursday. Three key features:

1. It is a Universal build of Skype for Mac. According to Nils on the Skype Mac blog post: "Universal means that Skype now runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Mac computers, boosting the performance of Skype running on Intel Macs."
2. It supports web presence, so others can see your Skype status via your web page, like we do here on Skype Journal.
3. There is Traditional Chinese support with "more languages to follow".

Last week my daughter bought a new MacBook Pro. First request on starting up and setting up users: it asks to take your picture with its built-in webcam to be used as an element of the User's profile. Seems like true support for these Intel-based Macs would mean that Skype for the Mac would include Skype video. So the real question from anxious Mac users is: "When will we see Skype '2.x' for Mac?"

More at voipweblog, Macworld. One known issue: "Users who created their account on Intel-based computers will not be able to revert to earlier versions of Skype, after they have installed Skype 1.4.0.49."

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm looking forward to blogging the Conversations that develop from the sessions at mesh 2006 tomorrow and Tuesday. With featured Conversation Mentors such as Om Malik, Michael Geist, Steve Rubel and Paul Kedrosky there should evovle some interesing perspectives on how the a Web 2.0 world will evolve.

Mark is getting excited in preparing over the weekend, he says:

I couldn't help but think that we are a long way from a cold winter night a few months ago at the Paddock Tavern when someone raised the idea of putting on a conference. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into! I'm looking forward to meshing as much as possible so if you see me wondering around, please introduce yourself.

As a media sponsor, Skype Journal will be reporting back daily with a particular focus on how Web 2.0/Voice 2.0 can be integrated into, impact and influence a public beyond the geeksphere.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Then reach out to all the überwomen in your life, and
say something nice.

Mother's Day is about attention. Paying it. Accepting it. Missing it.

Mothers and children rarely have simple relationships. Few are as simple as a greeting card would have it. I'm reading over notes from my mother's funeral. She died bout this time of year nine years' ago. There are still times when I look for her in my Skype contact list, and miss her presence in both senses of the word. I'd Skype her, but don't know the afterlife's country code.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Back in February I opened the kimono on some of my consulting work on decomposing how voice telephony creates end-user value, and applying it to Skype, the PSTN and mobile to understand their comparative advantages. There's actually a bunch of detail and reasoning not on the slides (it's gonna cost ya), but here's the headlines:

• "Best distribution experience" -- Always available everywhere, and easy to join in
• "Best social networking experience" -- Always through to the right person
• "Best directory experience" -- Always on the right device and channel
• "Best presence experience" -- Always at the right time
• "Best privacy and secuity experience" -- Only the right people and the right message
• "Best audiovisual experience" -- Always perfect comprehension and engagement
• "Best transaction experience" -- Always easy to exchange data and money
• "Best user experience" -- Perfect interface for perfect control

Note that price isn't on there. It isn't a value offering -- it's something you take away from the user.

I got a PR release from Skype recently on the beta release of the version 2.5 client. Let's deconstruct the features they're pushing to understand the company's product strategy better. For each PR puff taken at face value, we map it to the corresponding value proposition:

What's interesting is that they are concentrating effort on three particular areas:

• Distribution. Making the Skype network grow by making it easier to join, and the network have more opportunities for use ("outlets"). This is the area where they are weakest compared to the PSTN and mobile networks.
• Audiovisual. Driving home the advantage of a superior experience -- where their competitive advantage is greatest. I think it is imperative, for example, that Skype certified partner devices must all support wideband audio codecs and have suitably high quality microphones and speakers.
• User experience. This helps to re-inforce the virtuous circle of adoption, as well as being the greatest differentiator from rival VoIP systems.

Anyhow, now the cat is out of the bag, and you can see the lens through which I evaluate developments in the "Voice 2.0" space. You can see that Skype has focus, and isn't some feature scattergun.

One parting thought: We've now got real-time voice, synchronous IM, and semi-synchronous (store+forward) SMS. How long before you can enter an asynchronous email message in the Skype client? Are we heading towards Stowe Boyd's nerdvana?

Martin Geddes decomposes news releases, restaurant menus, stree signs, and baby diapers at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 08:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have this horrible idea in my head and the only way to rid myself of its evil influence is to blog it.

First we had emoticons.

Then we had animated emoticons.

Next, and this is the part I can't seem to free from my aching brain, Hamsterdance emoticons. Send little hamsters and their music to dance in some else's chat window.

This goes against everything I believe about using Skype to cross cutlural boundaries, elevate civil discourse, and empower the individual. I pray to all that is holy that it never ever ever comes about. I only hope this is completely ignored by the handful of Skype staff with the power to make this real.

It's only one step from this to... Madonna "like a virgin" dancing emoticon using ringtones. Oh, this is too catastrophic to contemplate. I am soooo sorry. Where's that delete key, must cancel this post...

Posted by Phil Wolff at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The playing field is level; all Skypecasters are newbies. Here are a few tips to make you look like a pro when you host your next a Skypecast.

You will probably see updates to the Skypecasts user interface fairly frequently as it rolls through the beta test cycle... that will change some of these tips.

Most of the dozens of Skypecasts I have attended are obviously done in free-form style: no agenda, no stated goal as to what the participants will leave with, and no supporting show and tell materials. Free-form often results in Skypecasts going into free-fall.

The rules are...

Casting Tips for Hosts

• Pick a name that plays. You want potential participants instantly know this is a cast "for me". If you are hosting private Skypecast, start the name with the label "Private" or you will be too busy evicting outsiders to be an attentive host

• Back up the name with a clear description. List what the purpose and goal. Put your name in this area. Usually people will not know what to call you looking at your Skype ID.

• Remember the first step is to join your own Skypecast. Starting Skypecasts is not good enough, you must join or you will have participants without a host.

• If you run with all microphones on, ask participants to identify themselves when they speak. Otherwise no one will know who is speaking.

• If at all possible have a way to incorporate some "show and tell" visual material. It can real focus the discussion. Use a server, Desktop sharing software like TightVNC or whatever is appropriate for your situation.

Casting Tips for Participants

• Click on the Skypecasts name to get the description of the cast

• Click on the Skype ID of the host to review the host's Skype Profile and open up a Chat Message window so you can introduce yourself to the hot as soon as you arrive. Or to ask permission to join if you think that is necessary.

I hope those hints help. Send me your questions and comments. Now go Skypecasting; tell our readers about your experiences.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today's coolcasts:

• UPDATE: RESCHEDULED TO FRIDAY 19 MAY AT 1:00PM PACIFIC, 4PM EASTERN, 9PM GMT. Network Neutrality. Hosted by Christopher Libertelli, Skype's counsel in the US. Starts 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific. "A discussion of openness on the Internet..." Please ask: How can I explain to phone companies that net neutrality is in their best interests? or Has Skype handed over details about user behavior to US Government agencies without a court order, like other US phone companies?
  
• A chat with Columbia Business School Marketing Prof. Bernd Schmitt. 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Prep for a Corante conference. Please ask: What does branding mean in a culture where conversation and personal trust matters more than institutional messaging?
  
• Conversation Strategies in Higher Education. 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern. Or how to use new media to pimp your school. I love Dan Karleen's blog for Petersons. Despite that, please ask: How can I fake passion and authenticity so I can effectively scale my higher ed marketing campaigns into MySpace, Skypecasts, and email communities and the blogosphere?
  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype Journal is a little over one year old. So we're asking ourselves the strategy questions, and thought you might have some answers, or questions we haven't considered. Please chime in and help us decide:

• For whom should Skype Journal write? The VoIP gear trade? New users? Power users? Independent programmers? Skype employees? People who want to date Skype employees? Phone companies that are scared of Skype? The politically concerned? The small business that wants to save some money? The enterprise that wants to avoid big project failures? Call center operators? Kids who make prank calls?
  
• What problems do our readers have? With which ones can we help?
  
• How should we make money? Ad revenue is neglible now but even with some optimization, it won't pay the rent. Should we drop outside advertising as a distraction to our readers?
  
• Which languages should we support? Simplified Chinese has always been next, but is that right?
  
• Do we have too many "wishlist" types of posts?
  
• What mix of writing styles and topics works best?
  
• What consulting services might we offer to individuals and businesses? How can we promote our expertise and deep knowledge in a way that's both effective and consistent with our editorial integrity?
  
• Should we align and focus our content to support our consulting services?
  
• How much does a "pretty" site matter? Should we invest in a designer?
  
• Should we cover Skype business and technology partners in greater depth?
  
• What can we do to attract more readers? To keep our readers?
  
• What reader services should we add to our site? How can we organize our site better? What can we lose from our site?
  
• In the RSS age, would anyone like to get Skype Journal via email? in print?
  
• What sorts of business alliances and partners should SJ cultivate?
  
• Is our brand focus on Skype too narrow, considering all the great innovations outside the Skype universe? How could we pursue that without diluting our identity? without spreading our editorial efforts too thin?
  
• How well are evaluating products at "Skype Journal Labs"? Where can we take it in the next year? 
• Should we split up into several sister sites to better serve our different kinds of readers? One for newbies and power users, one for phreaks and geeks, and one for suits?
  
• How can we make Skype a better place for contributors like photographers, writers, researchers, statisticicans?
• Should we be podcasting and vlogging? Skype Journal, the television show?
  

What's the one most important thing we can do better in the next 30 days?

What should Skype Journal be this time next year?

Please leave your critique and vision in the comments or Skype me in confidence.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

by Stephen Klosky, Director, Federal Systems Engineering, Dataline, Inc.

I often demonstrate Skype and its capabilities to business associates. Crowding around a monitor is sometimes awkward. At my desk, I have a laptop, a docking station, and a second monitor which works well for me and one or two guests. For larger groups, I needed a better setup, so I decided to "Skypify" the nearby conference room.

Before

The typical setup in conference room before the upgrade was to take a portable LCD projector and connect it to any of the laptops in the office. The projector pointed at a whiteboard or a blank wall. This setup was functional, but had some drawbacks. Cords ran across walkways, image quality took some time to tune and setup correctly, there was no audio support, and there was no pc based VTC support.

I did have some gear available for the project. The IT department had purchased a Polycom ViewStation H.323 station with a TV for a monitor. This setup was on an A/V cart. This was attractive because the remote controllable camera could be used for the video part of Skype. Also, the mic pod could be used for the Skype microphone.

View Stephen's complete photo set on flickr as a slide show.

Shopping on a $510 budget

So, there were definitely some areas for improvement. My plan was to add a stereo for sound reinforcement, a USB video capture device for the video support, a ceiling mount kit for the projector, a wireless keyboard and mouse setup, a ceiling mount kit for the stereo speakers, a manual pull down screen for the projector, cables, mounting hardware and power strips.

I was on a non-existent / small budget, so, after a brief eBay session, I found the items I needed. Fortunately for me, I work for an office with quick approval processing and was able to get the upgrade approved in about an hour or so. After getting the approval, I went back to eBay and ordered up the gear. Here is a spreadsheet I used to track the gear.

Putting it together

After a few days, the items started arriving and I began installing.

I moved the workstation to the conference room and put it on the bottom of the cart. I wired it to the company's network. I installed the wireless keyboard and mouse. One note is that the wireless range is very limited with the current wireless keyboard and mouse I'm using. On my "to do" list is to extend the range of this setup so that the keyboard and mouse can be used anywhere in the conference room. My plan it to ceiling mount the receiver over the center of the conference table and use long keyboard and mouse extension cables to reach the PC on the cart.

The next step was to install the stereo and wire it to the PC. That was straightforward.

Ceiling mounting the speakers was fairly simple as well. For each of the speakers, I removed a ceiling tile, I put a 1/2" x 12" x 12" piece of plywood on the top side of the ceiling tile. I put the mounting bracket for the speaker on the bottom side of the ceiling tile. I screwed the whole "sandwich" together using "zapper" screws (a.k.a. drywall screws). I drilled the appropriate size hole to allow the speaker wire to pass through the "sandwich." I secured the speaker to the whole setup, then returned the ceiling tile to its original location. I then ran the speaker wire from the stereo amplifier to the speaker. I did this by removing the appropriate ceiling tiles and fishing the speaker line down one of the interior office walls. After a brief sound check (using Media Player and a local radio station), this part of the project was complete.

The next step was to install the manual pull down screen for the video projector. This was straightforward, after modifying a few ceiling tiles and using the appropriate fasteners (wire ties, a.k.a. zip ties), the screen was up and operational.

Next step, input audio support. I wired the audio output from the ViewStation to the mic input on the PC sound card. Note that the ViewStation puts out a line level signal, so I initially went to connect to the line input on the sound card. This was a mistake, because Skype seems to actively manage the microphone input, not the line in input. No biggie, I just had to adjust the input channel on the PC so that the level was correct. Note that I have used the voice audio setup wizard in Windows XP several times with good results. You might try this if levels and settings are difficult to get your arms around.

Next step, video support. To accomplish this, I used the USB video capture device and connected it to the PC. I connected a composite video feed from the ViewStation to the USB video capture device. Then I loaded the support software for the USB video capture device. This went well, and quickly I was bringing up the Skype Video Test dialog box and seeing the appropriate video.

Currently, I have the video projector and the ViewStation mic pod on the center of the conference table. On my "to do" list is to ceiling mount these two units.

Cancelling Echoes

After all of this configuration and setup, how did it work? Well, Skype-to-Skype the system worked well. But I ran into a big problem with SkypeOut calls. There was major echo happening. When the person on the other end of the call spoke, they heard their words echoing back from the open microphone. This was embarrassing when I was demonstrating the system to my boss shortly after setting up the rig. We had dialed into an important conference call, and his boss was like - what's that major echo? We quickly reverted to the old speakerphone . . . And I felt like Wile E. Coyote who had just been beaten by the Roadrunner again. Back to the drawing board.

To combat the echo, I started on the Skype forums. It was clear from the forums and other Skype documentation that Skype has Automatic Echo Cancellation (a.k.a. AEC) built into the product. Several configuration settings can be adjusted to get the most out of the native AEC engine. After many adjustments, I concluded that the built in engine was not able to provide the echo cancellation I needed. So, it was back to the Skype forums to find more info on this topic. Surprisingly, I didn't find much. So, it was off to Google for me. After some research, I found that most business conference rooms have big challenges for echo cancellation.

• Ambient noise,
• distance from mic to stereo speakers,
• distance from mic to human speakers,
• loudspeaker volume,
• human speaker volume, etc.

All these factors make it difficult to provide a "one size fits all" AEC. So, I started researching available AEC units.

The three main units I found were the Gentner AP800, the Polycom Vortex and the Wideband Solutions WC-300. From my limited research, the Gentner is an old, discontinued model. The Polycom Vortex is a premium solution used by high end conference rooms. The WC-300 is a unit developed for use with conference rooms, Skype and other VOIP applications in mind. The Wideband Solutions unit is approximately half the price of the Polycom unit.

Given my non-existent budget, I went on eBay, and found a pre-owned (not certified . . .) AP800. I picked it up for about $250.00 including shipping. The installation and setup of this unit took a good amount of time. It took me about three hours to build the cables and insert the unit into the inbound and outbound audio paths. It took me about six hours to tune the unit for optimum performance. In the end, the purchase and the configuration effort paid off, and the echo is gone.

My Wishlist

Somehow, this whole experience reminds me of wiring the TV to the stereo in my first apartment. With today's technology, this setup represents to me a "budget" or "value" setup. Some upgrades I would see might be:

• A premium workstation with massive processor, massive RAM, premium video card with multiple monitor support, a premium sound card with multi channel digital input and output.
• A wireless keyboard and mouse with extended range.
• Better yet, a universal remote that would run all functions desirable for a presentation.
• For microphone support, a multi point microphone system with premium microphones.
• Lavaliere mics would be good for special presentations.
• For sound reinforcement, premium amplifiers and speakers including an earthquake-like subwoofer.
• For video support, a premium video display system.
• Perhaps multiple plasmas in a grid setup, or a couple projectors working in concert with automatic dropdown screens . . .
• Audio treatment for the room would be an upgrade as well.
• Custom lighting to enhance the video experience would be an upgrade as well.
• For the video cameras, multiple remote control cameras with smooth controls for transitions would be an upgrade as well.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The VoIPVoice CyberSpeaker-W meets all the criteria for a positive user experience outlined in my recent post questioning the comprehensiveness of Skype's Certification program:

• installs easly without interfering with any of my current PC programs and hardware
• is fully interactive with the traditional Skype client
• allows me to use my Windows Media Player and SlingBox unhindered while carrying on a Skype conversation
• has both the usual telephone dialpad interface on the handset but also has an independent set of handset buttons for Skype operations
• can operate in either conventional (private) telephone or speakerphone mode
• has a voice command feature to request Skype calls by the Contact's Full Name
• calls SkypeOut phone numbers by simply dialing "00-CountryCode-phone_number"
• easily handles Skype voice mail messages

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"sponsor1" gets you $100 off when you register for the eBay Developers Conference. Brings the price down from $395 to $295.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype portal partner TOM-Skype, serving Chinese users, reported today:

• 12 million user accounts at the end of April, a cumulative number since the start of the partnership. This is a jump of 4 million new accounts since the end of February, about 33 thousand daily. If Skype has 100 million, that keeps TOM-online as a key partner.
  
• The TOM-Skype client software is downloaded from Tom.com and now from eBay China.
  
• The Skype partner tab is sending "significant" traffic to Tom.com channels, Interactive Voice Response (TV related music) and HJSM.
• They plan to offer in-Skype banner ads and other advertising over the next 2-3 quarters.
  

This is the version of Skype that filters IM conversations per Chinese government direction, as reported by Skype Journal.

Observations:

This is pretty good distribution considering VoIP is banned on most Chinese networks.

17 minutes is how long it will take for the first Skype ad blocker to make the rounds after in-Skype ads appear.

The "partner tab" should be a user interface component open to developers, maybe even open to users. Imagine: Tools > Create New Browser Tab > Set Default Home page > Set Default Channel Pages. It's the difference between a trusted platform which others build on and users customize (good) and a walled garden (not so much). As a social medium, I should be able to share my tag configs with friends, perhaps by dragging a tab to a chat session.

See also:

• 950 thousand new TOM-Skypers monthly in mainland China
  
• FT: Zennström confirms Skype filters text; questions he would not answer
• BW: Skype caves in to Chinese censors
• China keeps VoIP Illegal
• More on Skype Blocked in China
• "No change" says Skype on China blockage
• Joint Venture: Skype and portal partner TOM Online
  
• Skype's new Portal Plays...   

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every strategic planner needs to address the issue of how to move beyond of the early adopter market segment. Skype has taken an interesting step to do just that. They got a national grocery chain to sell SkypeOut vouchers. Sainsbury's (UK) is not your typical supermarket. They are a bank... they sell appliances and now Skype minutes!

Credit: NMA

Posted by Bill Campbell at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Data: Skype.com SkypeOut Dialing Wizard; CIA World Factbook

India is not yet served by SkypeOut nor by PayPal purchasing, so is not on the list.

Some online populations adopt Skype at rates beyond their size. For example, the UK, Taiwan and France are ranked higher than countries with larger online populations. What cultural, infrastructure and economic factors contribute to these differences? How much will these factors affect workplace adoption? Skype Journal Consulting would love to research this for you. Skype me to discuss our research service.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

There have been many questions about the valuation used by eBay to acquire Skype. Another player in the VoIP scene, Vonage, launched in October 2002 and has been building a highly marketed VoIP telephony service in the U.S., Canada and U.K. With a forthcoming IPO, their recent S-1 filing presents some numbers that can provide a benchmark measure against the eBay valuation of Skype. The analysis generates two key questions:

1. How can Vonage hope to increase its share value with margin pressures and customer valuation going against its business model?
2. Does Skype represent the new communications business model in the Web2.0/Voice 2.0/ Marketing 2.0 Age?

Vonage services typically offer a monthly subscription to call within North America (or U.K.) and incorporate a range of calling features such as voice mail and call waiting. They include the usual customer access portal via the web to manage the account and services. Their primary marketing messages is "Save 50% on your phone bill." While Skype is not a direct "legacy phone replacement" offering, it provides its own unique set of voice services. Skype not only replaces a significant subset of legacy phone services but also offers additional value-add through features such as audio conferencing, IM, file transfer and Skypecasts.

Mark Evans and others have been cautioning potential investors with respect to the forthcoming Vonage IPO. My primary question is "Where is the margin growth opportunity?". Looking at the S-1 along with some numbers we hear about Skype:

The Skype revenue assumes purchase of $10 per month for SkypeOut, Voice Mail, SkypeIn, Skypecasts, Hardware Royalties, etc. Even assuming 50% gross margins for these services, customer profitability (and positive cash flow) from user purchase of a service commences immediately.

I would suggest that any potential investor study Alec Saunders' post last week: "Reading Between the Margins" Vonage vs Skype". And then ask how there is any potential for Gross Margin growth in the Vonage business where:

• The services offered are largely a replacement for legacy telephone services with the major new feature being the customer web interface.
• Any opportunity for margin on long distance revenues evaporates under the VoIP business model.
• Vonage's major competitors are placing pressure on revenues through competitively priced VoIP service offerings.

Let's look at the Marketing Strategies

One final number for investors to look at: Market Cap per Customer - after all this is a key number in determining an "Exit Price" for investors. Both Vonage and Skype are building billable customer bases. What is the potential market cap per customer? What would a potential buyer be paying per customer to acquire Vonage or Skype?

The challenge for Vonage is to demonstrate that their marketing and service offerings will somehow attract a customer valuation well in excess of $1,250 per subscriber.

The opportunity for Skype is to demonstrate that the real time communications business model has fundamentally changed.

Personallly I feel we are on the bubble of a disruptive change in the business models for real time communications services.

Disclaimer: These are my opinions and I have no financial interest in any of the above companies.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (2)

A new Skype Roadmap was unveiled at the eBay Financial Analyst conference on Thursday May 4. One item touched my heart and soul. Send and receive money via Skype.

You can find out more by downloading this massive document. The pages to focus on are 281 and 290. Several other possible Skype-eBay functions are shown.

Many thanks to Skyper Ivo Hop in the Netherlands for the heads up on this news. I would have fallen asleep by page ten, some how Ivo made it to page 290.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

Skype calls are not perfect quality. No surprise. What can you do when you have a poor connection. Hang-up and call again. Yes, but with a twist.

Here is what my Skype buddy Neil Lindsey in Vancouver discovered. Hang-up, but before you call again set your Skype status to offline for 15 seconds. This apparently forces a new Supernode to be selected for call setup and improves the likelihood for a better connection to be established.

Here is to clearer connections...

Posted by Bill Campbell at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (1)

Officials imprisoned fellow blogger Hao Wu for blogging.

Blogging is just a small step from Skyping and Skypecasting. You can read his sister Nina's blog, sign a petition, or write a letter. Skypers may be next.

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

What do you call the connection from your home computer or office network to the Internet? Telephone companies have long called it "the last mile," the mile to the phone company's central office. 5.4 million results on Google. It often comes up when discussing how to get phone and Internet service to rurual and poor people.

Lately I've been hearing it called "the first mile," coined by Titus Moetsabi. The rephrasing shifts the focus:

• from the center to the edge of the network,
  
• from the provider to the customer,
  
• from a provider's infrastructure to all the choices available to a customer.
  

First Mile more than rebrands the subject. It changes perspective. George Lakoff would be proud. 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continuing the earlier theme on digital meets physical, there's a nice observation over at mobiface about exchanging contacts via Bluetooth:

I think trying to develop something big like new mobile interface paradigm we sometimes forget about other seemingly smaller issues. Like adding a new contact. A common scenario - a couple of old friends meet and want to exchange phone numbers. Usually someone dictates the number while the other is typing it on a phone and then vice versa.

Why not send contact via Bluetooth? First, you have to enable it (process depends on the UI). Then, search for available devices. Then the cumbersome process of pairing the devices... No wonder people prefer to exchange numbers the old way.

I haven't seen a lot of ideas how to solve this, the most suitable for now being touch (or proximity) based interaction. Besides "touch" concept on this well-known site I like the "throw" one. Couple it with "directional UI" and something interesting can come up from this.

Again, until someone works out that the user live in 3D meatspace, and not in some abstract data structure, we'll be stuck with yet more autistic user interfaces. I'm not the first to play down smartphones, but the "big 'puter shrunk small" idea just misses the fundamental difference between a movable thing and a static PC. I'll say it again -- the key secret of the iPod wasn't just nice plastic in a cool colour. It was the user interface matched the need to navigate broad, shallow trees of information quickly. The need for the UI to mirror the data structures and use cases also indicates that "convergence" in the device layer is unlikely to be widespread.

Anyhow, here's another bit of atoms and bits mixing. Disney are launching their MVNO in the US, aimed at famiies:

The service will also include technology that lets a parent view a child's location through the GPS (Global Positioning System) function of the child's phone. They can retrieve that information either by address or on a map, on a PC, or their own Disney Mobile phone.

After reading and digesting Douglas Galbi's treatise on presence, I now see what's wrong with this service. It's like a photograph with the foreground blotted out and the background cloned over it. What parents really care about isn't where their kids are, but who they're with. The device is supposed to be projecting the sense of "being there" (capital 'P' Presence). The location is just the backdrop -- if you were really there watching your kids, you'd want to know what they're up to (which means being an audiovisual spy), or failing that whether they're in responsible company. Location is the least of your concerns.

See whith whom Martin Geddes' progeny assemble via Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this week I reported on the PhoneGnome - iotum announcement where one can use the iotum service simply by acquiring a PhoneGnome appliance and registering for the service. David Beckenmeyer made a very telling comment:

With PhoneGnome, one does not HAVE TO sign up with a VoIP service for handling long distance calls. People can just continue to use their existing wireline service for those calls. Most people elect to sign up to save money on PSTN calls too, but they don't HAVE TO (at last count about 20% of PhoneGnome owners just use it for inbound call features like iotum and voicemail to email etc. and for placing FREE calls, and they do not subscribe to a VoIP to PSTN service).

Great market feedback: In other words, 20% of PhoneGnome purchasers are using it simply to get the enhanced features such as call forwarding, voice mail, etc. Users are looking for applications more than simply seeking lower long distance rates, and they want to be able to manage these services via the web. PhoneGnome is being proven in the market as a platform for delivering new intelligent services under user control, not telco control. Voice 2.0 in action.

Skype and other voice services, whether traditional or VoIP, need to take heed.

Andrew Hansen, after reporting on how iotum would have solved E.T.'s problem in the popular movie of the same name, goes on to articulate how both iotum and PhoneGnome are agnostic platforms designed to enable other solutions. iotum is network agnostic and can just as easily be integrated into Skype or other voice services; PhoneGnome is provider agnostic -- simply add it to any phone line connection to get these services.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reports on Skypecasts preview since the announcement on Wednesday.

Skypecasts has you call into this "strange" phone number, for example +990 01110002544315, to join a Skypecast. Andy Abramson talked to tech types who helped him parse it out.

The + indicates that it is a full international phone number. The first 9 indicates that the number should reside in Asia. However, 990 is actually an unallocated country code. So they are then trapping the calls at their PSTN gateway and sending them off to a normal conferencing bridge.

Alec Saunders commented on both Skype 2.5 and Skypecasts.

This is a smart move. Hooking into the hundreds of millions of blogs in existence could really drive subscribership.

And in the traditional media, Jessie Seyfer at San Jose Mercury News reports on Skypecast as a "town hall" idea.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Pamela 2.0 is shipping. Skype 2.5 compatible and full of new features. Pamela was always the Skype software add-on that tried to be one release ahead of Skype in wished-for features. Probably the biggest win with P2 is recording Skype video calls. Does it work for you?

Zimbio is live. A community site organized around topics, and experts in those subjects. Very much into developing collective intellectual capital. Group blogs, community forums, feeds, foster communication among those sharing common interests. Now sharing member Skype presence to trigger conversations and topical relationships. Chat with co-founder Tony Mamone.

The SMC WSKP100 EZ Connect g (802.11b/g Skype Wi-Fi phone) seems to be shipping in Taiwan, beating the Netgear SPH101 to at least some markets. via eLapin.

From Auctionbytes' report on eBay's Analyst Day, Meg Whitman said:

• (a) the company will continue to insert Skype into buyer/seller conversations, reducing friction, and charging sellers for Skype leads
  
• (b) watch them roll out Skype across many categories and countries this year, and
  
• (c) PayPal transactions will be integrated into the Skype client [Editor: I told you so!] so you can pay the person with whom you're talking without leaving Skype.

China is Skype's biggest market.

Mother's Day is this next weekend. Don't forget to Skype her, courtesy of Skype's marketing department.

Motley Fool's Tim Beyers gets it: "Skype's value is tied to its ability to create network effects. Accordingly, joining eBay's customers with the 100 million-strong Skype user base could unleash huge economies of scale if done correctly. That's why Skype 2.5 is much more than an upgrade; it's a way for eBay to grab hold of more of your network before Google, Microsoft, or any of the others get to it. And that's not just brilliant -- it's beautiful."

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype can attract more customers and slash vendor support costs if Skype can get their testing to live up to their installation certification criteria. Let me explain.

With the eBay acquisition, Skype has set up one enormous challenge for its shareholders: to earn out the $1.5 billion performance bonus associated with the acquisition. To quote the associated press release:

The maximum amount potentially payable under the performance-based earn-out is approximately €1.2 billion, or approximately $1.5 billion, ... with an expected payment date in 2008 or 2009. Skype shareholders were offered the choice between several consideration options for their shares. ... Shareholders representing the remaining 60% of the Skype shares chose to receive a reduced up-front payment in cash and eBay stock at the close plus potential future earn-out payments which are based on performance-based goals for active users, gross profit and revenue.

In order to earn this bonus, it requires that Skype be firing on all potential revenue generating cylinders: voice-to-PSTN services, premium services, hardware royalties, distribution channel opportunities and payment services.

Skype has been very proactive about its Skype Certification program with hardware vendors. Adoption of Skype Certified hardware can become a lucrative revenue stream not only from the hardware device royalties themselves but also for the ongoing Skype services revenue streams they would facilitate. But such a strategy only works if Skype and its associated Skype Certified products can be readily adopted by a much broader consumer and business segment than those currently using Skype through PC's.

As a user I expect that a Skype Certified product would:

1. install easily without interfering with any of my legacy PC/laptop configuration.
2. operate as a simple traditional phone, perhaps enhanced by such features as the user's Skype contact list.
3. allow your PC to operate normally for other audio devices (and especially the default Windows Audio Device) when not using Skype for voice calls.

Reviewing the Skype Certification documentation one would expect these basic concepts would be adhered to with statements such as:

• Installation process must be automatic: from accessing installation media the installation should be logical and straightforward. User does not have to backtrack.
• Application/drivers should install with no errors.
• iIf solution fails to register adaptor, then informative error messages and error log are given.

I am a long time listener of ClassicFM, and have recently become an addict to the SlingBox, so often will be listening to these sources in the background on my headset or speakers while doing other PC-based tasks. In the course of either initiating or answering a Skype call I would expect the following processes to be handled automatically and transparently to the User:

• On initiating the call (i.e. taking the device "off hook"), the active Windows Audio Devices would switch to the Audio Devices selected in the Skype Sound Devices menu (via Tools | Options).
• On terminating the call (i.e. putting the device "on hook"), the active Windows Audio Devices revert back to the Default Windows Audio Devices that allow me to return to listening to ClassicFM or my TV programs coming via SlingBox.

The Default Windows Audio Devices are usually established during the installation of Windows. They are also modifiable under "Control Panel | Sound Speech and Audio Devices | Sound and Audio Devices" (is this tedious?), should additional Audio Devices be installed via new hardware or software. Installation of a Skype Certified Device should only 'add' to the list of selectable Audio Devices but be automatically set up as the default Skype device only via the Skype client.

Over the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to evaluate several Skype Certified (and prospective Skype Certified) products. During this period I also acquired a new Dell Inspiron and included with the order a (Targus) Notebook Docking Station with VGA which adds, via the Targus driver set, a set of Audio Device drivers to allow access to the speaker/mic jacks on the Docking Station (identified as a C-Media Sound Device). (The Inspiron includes a "native" SigmaTel sound card as the default Windows Audio Device.)

Without going into details of whose devices, here is what I have experienced:

• I installed a device (that required no drivers) and had a C-Media Headphone Set driver conflict with the C-Media Sound Device of my docking station. I could not use the accessory; but it worked fine on another Inspiron with no docking station.
• I installed another Skype Phone device that added its own drivers but removed my C-Media Sound Device drivers such that I could no long use the docking station Audio Devices.
• I installed devices where the default Windows drivers were changed as opposed to simply identifying and setting the device's drivers in Skype's Sound Devices settings.
• The "off hook"/"on hook" operation described above simply did not work in an automated manner.

Yes, I had the technical experience to be able to recover from these situations, in the second case after uninstalling all my Docking Station drivers and reinstalling them. This is not a user friendly experience that will virally drive Skype adoption. In all cases I was eventually able to have the device perform its intended function but not without crippling some other aspect of my laptop's operation. For its non-geek target market -- not an acceptable user experience!

I found a couple of common themes on reviewing the Skype Certification specifications for a couple of these device types:

• Skype wants a transparent and seamless user experience in using and installing Skype Certified hardware.
• Skype wants Skype Phones to work as if you were using a standard phone set.

Yet in the execution, their testing appears to only cover basic functionality with little or no consideration for the fact that there is a wide world of user configurations that could encompass several Audio Devices in addition to Skype devices.

• Are they succumbing to Business Development pressures to "just get something out there"?
• Do their test labs lack the resources to test on a range of PC configurations, including working with widely marketed Audio Devices such as the Targus Docking Station being marketed through Dell?
• Does Skype Certification simply mean demonstrated functionality in a basic configuration or represent a positive user experience regardless of PC configuration?

At his "Better Than a Phone .." presentation at Voice over Net Canada, Stefan Oberg, General Manager Skype for Desktop & Skype Hardware, explained how one of the reasons for Skype's widespread acceptance was the ease of installation of the Skype client. From my report in Skype Journal:

He then went on to point out as a simple example how Skype gets complicated as soon as a desktop user installs Skype, realizes they need a headset but need to plug/unplug the headset on the back of a(n older) desktop PC. Such a complication (or to use Stefan's words - "such a terrible user experience") limits the mass market appeal of Skype; it is a goal of Skype to overcome such hurdles to mass adoption.

With the release of Skype version 2.5 Beta, several aspects of the user experience, including the installation or upgrade process, have been addressed to make such a process a "no brainer." At this point, to generate user acceptance of Skype hardware, Skype needs to take the same position with respect to its hardware partners and elevate the execution of its Skype Certification program to one that is comprehensive enough to encompass the real world of hardware and software configurations of everyday consumer and business PC/laptop users.

Such a measure would also build more active users to enhance revenues and gross profits that help with that earn-out. It would also significantly enhance the user base, revenues and gross profits of its hardware partners.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Jean Mercier, Oostakker, Belgium

... temporarily at least (Grin)
Version 1.2 is about one year old, but ...

When I tried the "Import Contacts" function from the new 2.5 beta version I hoped that it would have improved, because the results found from my Outlook address book were disappointing me, this since version 1.4!

That is what it found, in less then ten minutes:

First you should know that I have more then 500 contacts in my address book. And I don't do that kind of importing exercise every month. From the 13 matches, only 2 were people I know.

But, ooooh surprise, this is what Skype showed me, while searching the user cloud:

It searched in 1127 contacts! Why is this, I don't know, I have only about 500 contacts as I told before ...

Then I installed version 1.2.0.48 (yes, about one year old, and with much less functionalities).

The first "old" screen showed indeed the right number of contacts of my Outlook address book (544 instead of 1127):

And the search gave the following results in about 1 hour and 20 minutes:

Ninety (90) possible matches, instead of 13. From these 90 matches 13 (coincidence!) were people I know, and who weren't in my contact list yet.

OK, version 1.2 is slow, but very effective. I definitely prefer the search algorithm of version 1.2.

Of course, I installed again version 2.5: I don't want lo live without the webcam feature or grouping functionalities between others.

Let's tell something about the speed of the search in version 2.5. In fact, it took me only 7 minutes and 33 seconds to find the 13 matches, including the initial manual handlings (allowing the access to the Outlook address book, etc.). That is quite fast.

But the speed is not constant:

To complete 50% of the search (whatever Skype means by this!) it takes about 30 seconds, and to do the rest of the 50% it takes about 5 minutes. Strange!

Perhaps because Skype has to dig deeper (levels down?) in the Skype cloud?

Anyway, my conclusion is that the search algorithm was much better in the past, although slow. What matters for me is that Skype finds as many contacts as possible. I can do the "import contact" task while sleeping, eating or while shopping. Skype should go back (In My Humble Opinion) to the old algorithm.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Lots of developments in preparation for the Toronto mesh Conference:

Mark Evans reports on the selections for 15 Minutes of Fame. They're "giving three people a day 5 minutes each on stage to talk about their ideas, their companies or themselves."

Mark also reports on how they have organized this conference with no budget largely using web-based communications via the blogosphere. (I think he meant to say they have been able to "sell a whole bunch of tickets".)

Matthew Ingram expands on how Web 2.0 is rewriting the rules for the marketing business and how, with appropriate credits to Seth Godin, their success has turned out to be the result of using the web to "create a relationship, a dialogue -- a conversation".

Stuart MacDonald, another of the conference's organizers, asks "Who's in charge around here? Marketing 2.0". He talks about how control of the marketing message is moving from the "big advertising" world to the individuals having conversations on the Net.

And Rob Hyndman, another blogging organizer whose day job is in the legal profession, talks about Bottom-Up Marketing -- a revolution in marketing.

In summary mesh has been organized by five individuals who have to hold down their day job but have succeeded in attracting top notch speakers and several hundred attendees, all via the web, living the Marketing 2.0/Web 2.0 experience. With no budget and taking all the financial risk associated with ensuring a professional meeting environment.

The conference is centred around discussion of Web 2.0's impact on Media, Society, Marketing and Business. A conference whose conversations center around where the new technology is altering our lifestyles, our work activities and our social networks - definitely not for technogeeks.

One more question to throw into the conversation: with Skype's preview of Skypecast, -- Skypecasts are live, moderated conversations allowing groups of up to 100 people from anywhere in the world to talk to one another -- what will be its impact on how we can organize our work activities, our lifestyles and our social networks?

A final note: register here. We're having great weather in the Toronto area these days; come join in the conversation.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Developer Change Log

03.05.2006 version 2.5.0.72

• upgrading to 2.5 and downgrading from 2.5 might take time depending on call history length
• conference call participant names lost in call history after upgrade
• DTMF tones from dialpad do not work

• group types PROPOSED_SHARED_GROUP and SHARED_GROUP (protocol 6 only), commands ALTER GROUP xx SHARE and ALTER GROUP xx ACCEPT/DENY
• commands GET CALL xx RATE and GET CALL xx RATE_CURRENCY
• commands SET UI_LANGUAGE and GET UI_LANGUAGE
• command SEARCH MISSEDVOICEMAILS
• commands ALTER CHAT xx BOOKMARK and ALTER CHAT xx UNBOOKMARK, CHAT property BOOKMARKED
• command ALTER VOICEMAIL xx SETUNPLAYED

• API protocol 6
• conference calls that had been made or received with version 2.0 or older are not considered as conf calls any more
• After conference call is finished, CONF_PARTICIPANTS_COUNT shows number of all participants no matter when they had left

• API: If APPLICATION for app2app communication was created and closed without deleting it, next time it was impossible to create it again.
• API: BTN_RELEASED deleted first character entered on Addressbar
• API: OPEN SENDCONTACTS to multiple targets did not add recipients to form
• API: Setting TIMEZONE bigger than 86400 was broken
• API: ALTER VOICEMAIL actions were not returned uppercase
• API: Sometimes on deleting voicemail notification VOICEMAIL xx STATUS DELETING was missing
• API: SEARCH MESSAGES returned other users' messages also

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

User Change Log

03.05.2006 version 2.5.0.72

• upgrading to 2.5 and downgrading from 2.5 might take time depending on call history length
• conference call participant names lost in call history after upgrade
• DTMF tones from dialpad do not work

• Ability to Send SMS
• Predictive Dialer
• Shared Groups
• View Outlook Contacts
• Payments in Client
• Improved Account Creation
• Improved Upgrade
• Call quality Feedback
• Simplified Installation
• Voice level indicators in conference call
• File Transfer resumes after restart of Skype

• Improved video quality
• Removed windows platform check for video
• Disable the Test Webcam button when Skype knows there is no webcam present
• Improve error message when sending files to Pocket PC users
• Replaced some ringtones
• Accessibility: contact mood text accessible via MSAA
• Accessibility: Implement MSAA support for search results
• Language file editor has simple search and ordering possibilities
• Profile window changed to non-modal
• Clarified 'contact details' in authorization requests
• Sound file too big error shown already on import
• Improved dialog wordings
• Current chat window position at beginning of unread messages when opening the window
• Only focused emoticon is animated in the emoticons roster

• Bulgarian (Nikolay Filipov & Nikolina Filipova)
• Czech (Petr Silon)
  
• German (Claudius Henrichs & Dick Schiferli)
• Estonian (Eve Loopere)
• Hungarian (Mark Bender & Laszlo Koncz & Gabor Stefanik)
• Italian (Daniele Conte)
  
• Norwegian (Stig Auestad)
• Dutch (Kees Koenders)
• Polish (Karol Szastok)
• Portuguese (Francisco Ferreira)
• French (Fabrice Imperial & Bruno Lépaulard)
• Spanish (David Reche), Finnish (Heino Keränen)
• Swedish (Anders Olsson)
  
• Turkish (Emin Dede)
• Romanian (Peter Henning)
• Arabic (Sophia Hammoudeh from Maktoob / Eriksen)
• Chinese Simplified (Leon Yang from tom.com)
  
• Chinese Traditional (Carlos Lee, Morden Chen from PChome)
• Mayu Shimizu (Japanese)
• Anna Nystrom (Brasilian Portuguese)

• SkypeOut call quality deteriorated in long calls over bad network
• Fixed some corner cases where presence was shown incorrectly
• Mood message was truncated incorrectly
• Chinese symbols input to chat window problem with Wubi Input Methods
• No confirmation on deleting Voicemail
• Remove my mood message from 'my panel' title when opened
• Video not updated when on hold
• Pressing "cancel" did not restore previous settings for Voicemail in options
• Calling invalid number with callto: did not show error dialog
• Default action button in multichat for people you have not authorized should be 'add', not 'call'
• Ampersand does not show correctly on tab header
• Double click did not work on quickfiltered chats
• After applying Quick Filter the previous group was changed
• Could not select URL in chat
• After adding new SkypeOut number Skype should focus on it
• When only one contact in the contact list, it should always be expanded
• Sort order in Contact List does not follow local collation order
• User Interface language change not applied to error message
• TypeDown search does not start at focused contact
• Long filenames were not truncated in File Transfer window

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype's Lenn Pryor left a comment responding to my post, The Skypecast service shows a developer program failure.

Skypecasts is a step in a new direction for Skype as it uses some new server based conferencing technology to enable a scalable infrastructure. At the time the product was planned, Skype made a deliberate decision to start by first building a stable platform, testing, learning, and growing BEFORE exposing a public API. This makes good operations sense and enables us to stabilize the product before making it available as a service that developers will rely on.

It is not an oversight, nor a failure, but a deliberate step to ensure the best experience for all. Incidentally, your post stops short of helping your readers and Skype understand what you think developers would do with this API and what the killer scenarios are for this API in your humble opinions. We always welcome input and ideas from the community and hope to see those needs met as we grow Skypecasts from an early vision into a successful platform.

Lenn, thanks for filling us in. It seems some agile development methods, like short, evolutionary development cycles, are evident in Skype's production of Skypecasts. Skype Journal and our readers (with Skypecasts will they be listeners? panelists? discussants? microphone hogs? carolers?) will amp up the conversation.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Skype world is growing fast. If you can think and write, think and write for Skype Journal's readers. Beats:

• Casting Call. Skypecasts are fun, huge and we're going to cover them. Think Hollywood Reporter meets Gawker meets TV Guide. Personality counts.
  
• Skype Journal Labs. You've seen our reviews. We're getting serious. We're helping consumers buy well and vendors bring better products to market.
  
• Call to Action. Can you define net neutrality? On a bumper sticker? Our readers need to understand how public policy choices around the world affect Skypeland. And what they should do about it.
  
• Phreak 2.0. Can you code? Help developers grok the Skype APIs and architecture. Highlight cool projects. Do a few yourself. Geek out a little; it's OK.
  
• Welcome to Skypeland. Let's welcome Skypeland's immigrants with tutorials, product guides, and answers to common questions. Do you like helping?
  
• CSO (aka Chief Skyping Officer). Workplace conversation is all productivity, coordination, knowledge exchange, employee retention, and getting things done. Tell the story of Skype entering the workplace following the trail led by phones, email and the web. Are you blogging a little bit of Business Week, some InformationWeek, and a lot of FastCompany? 

We covered these topics last year, but they each deserve more attention. Help Skype Journal tell the story. Skype Phil Wolff with a topic you'd like to see or a beat you'd like to write about.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In his recently published list of features desired for a small business Skype bundle Martin Geddes included "A cool USB conference call speaker phone to stick in your laptop bag" I received for evaluation the recently released US Robotics 9610 USB Internet Speaker Phone on Friday.

Opening the package to see the physical device brought back images of many meetings I have attended with conference table speakerphones by Polycom [Editor: see the Skype Journal overview of the new Polycom Communicator] and other vendors, designed to allow all meeting attendees around a table to fully and interactively participate in a conference call with outside parties. But the first generation of these devices often generated a "talking in a barrel" effect such that it was difficult for the outside parties to hear the table-talk; technology that was not totally transparent to the business at hand.

In evaluating this device I looked at both ease of setup, quality of the conversation and overall feature set.. For the first I simply had to plug the Speakerphone into a USB port on my laptop. No power adapter required! The installation CD includes a copy of Skype but, if not already installed, I would download and install the latest version. There are no software drivers required. You can verify the installation by going to Skype's Tools | Options menu and selecting Sound Devices. The C-Media USB Headphone selection should be available for all three settings.

For the voice quality check, I called Bill Campbell on Skype; certainly at my end his voice was of sufficient volume and clear. Noting the full duplex nature of the device, Bill reports that at his end there was no "barrel effect." Convenient volume and mute buttons allow you to manage your conversation without accessing the computer application. As the final measure we were able to carry on a normal conversation with no impediment caused by the technology. With its echo cancellation technology, certainly it was along the lines of the portable speakerphone that Martin was seeking.

One caveat: this speakerphone only works in situations where the only other audio device in your laptop is the "default" sound card included with the laptop. (The USR SpeakerPhone effectively becomes a second audio device when you plug it into the laptop.)

The subject of multiple sound cards in a hardware configuration and the management of which audio device with which application will make for a subsequent post as there is an industry issue here both with respect to Skype's certification standards and the management of Windows sound devices.

As a stand alone device to accomplish its stated function. Ideally suited for three to four person conversations in a small office, it not only works well when connected to a standalone laptop but also provides the performance expected of a quality speakerphone. As a product that can easily be integrated into any more complex desktop or laptop configuration, stay tuned.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Skypecast service, announced today, is a fun and useful app. A quick and dirty internal project, about a month old, it lets you log in to a Skype site and create a public voice auditorium for up to 100 people. If you catch this in time, we'll be hosting Skype Journal forum - Today's Skype Announcements - Good, Bad, Great, or Useless? today at midnight Eastern, 9:00pm Pacific, GMT

I love it and will be using it.

But Skype didn't give the people in its third-party Skype developer programme or their online partner programme the tools to build it themselves. Skype staff built the plumbing, then built the app, but kept the plumbing closed to the public.

Skype must carefully and quickly build out their application infrastructure. Their focus must be on seducing entrepreneurial engineers, enterprise IT technologists, and phreaks around the world to a rapidly evolving and increasingly capable Skype platform.

Investors must care. In the coming battles for control over technical standards, over market share, and over conversational commerce, Skype will need friends. In particular, Skype will need a strong, confident, committed ecology of businesses building on Skype as a platform. Skype's bizdev seems up to the task, but Skype's API remains an afterthought.

Who is the product champion at Skype for the API? Which senior executive is driving the client and service APIs forward? Who is committing developer headcount to architecting and constructing server APIs and server agents?

Skype's independent developers want to know. Now. Some certified partners have told me they are limiting their investment in the Skype platform for just this reason, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL and other platforms to be the beneficiaries.

There are many bases for competitive success. This one is key.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you follow Skype's claimed statistics, Skype should hit 150 million user accounts by year end. The arithmetic: There are 243 days until year end. Multiply that times Skype's stated 200,000 new users per day. 150 million assumes the adoption rate doesn't change. It could go up if eBay promotes Skype to its members just a little more than it has. And Skype's positioning of the product for small business could boost adoption too. The adoption rate could slow or fall with rising competitive pressure by phone companies, cable companies, mobile operators and Internet portals. Care to start a pool for the year end number? I'm picking 165,345,201.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Go download Skype 2.5 with these exciting new features: SMS and Skypecasting, along with a whole bunch of other goodies to make your Skype experience richer than ever before.

[Editor: Two known issues with this release. "Conference call participant names lost in call history after upgrade." If you value your relationship data, don't upgrade yet. "DTMF tones from dialpad do not work" SkypeOut users use DTMF tones all the time, so if you need them, don't upgrade yet.]

SMS: Short Message Service

I like SMS. Great for business.

• Global. I can now send a text message from Skype to any mobile phone in the world.
• Cheap too. About 12 cents for users in US and Canada. UK, is 10 cents, Germany 13, Japan 7.
• Accountable too. If the message fails to be delivered I get a notification in 24 hours.
• Simple. Right click on your contact's name and select "Send SMS Message." (Your contact must enter their mobile phone number in the international format in their Skype Profile.)
• Convenient. I have Skype SMS set up so it sends my Mobile number along with any message. This makes it easy for the recipient to send a reply back to my mobile phone.

Wouldn't it be great if they could send an SMS to my Skype Client? You can't in this one-way release.

So I am writing this article while having a Skype video conference with my brother. This is the guy who introduced me to the Plantronics DPS Headset four years ago. I bought three. Incredible audio quality. So after 30 minutes Jim says, "Where's your headset!" He never noticed. I am using the new Skype Certified Polycom Communicator Speaker Phone and no one can tell I am not using my Plantronics Headset. Even, apparently in video. A very professional product. I will have more to share with you on testing the Polycom Communicator tomorrow. (In the meantime just go buy one.)

Skypecasting

The announcement of Skype's Skypecasting service is second in importance only to the announcement of Skype on August 31st 2003. Forget the fact you can have a conference call with 100 people. 100 is just a numbers game. Skypecasting changes forever the idea of podcasting. Blogging will be different after today. This is the wide channel. Skype in 2003 was mostly about you and someone else communicating, 1 to 1. Of course in 2004 we had conferencing of up to 5. But they were mostly private affairs. Family, cliques. Skypecasting is about groups, about public. About conversations: moderating, facilitation, sharing. Skype is about global connections and exchanges. Skypecasting is your village, your pub, your community. Live, real-time, now.

You need to play with Skypecasts. It is more than cool.

It is drop dead simple. Create a topic. Invite people. Join Phil and I in our first public Skypecast at 9 PM Pacific time for a town hall meeting called Skype Journal forum - Today's Skype Announcements - Good, Bad, Great, or Useless?". Caution: the site isn't ready for public consumption until noon Wednesday London time. So don't be surprised if there is a little breakage or a few mid-session changes.

Go to http://skypecasts.skype.com.

Posted by Bill Campbell at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

When I moved from academia to a (public company) technology business over 30 years I ago I had a VP-level supervisor who would always talk about the need to keep margins up. "Why?", I would ask. "What's so important about margns?" "Because that's all there really is to keep a business growing: Revenues minus operating costs."

Alec Saunders has published an excellent post on margins in the VoIP business: Reading Between the Margins: Vonage vs. Skype.

Look out! Aswath's talkin' business. Vonage, that is...

Riffing on Cynthia Brumfeld's analysis of the revised Vonage S1, and the iotum / Phonegnome announcement, Aswath concludes that reduced churn and increased revenues are the keys to success for VoIP providers. Moreover (and thank you for the kind words Aswath), new applications are the way to deliver those revenues. Hear hear!

The real issue is margin, not revenue.

Once again, the real issue is margin, not revenue.

Alec then goes on to do an excellent analysis of Skype revenues (rapdily increasing ARPU, ultra low costs of significant customer aquisition) and to do a comparison with Vonage's potential margins. With their infrastructure taken into account Skype comes in with revenue of $0.80 per month per hard core user with $2 million annual cost (acquisition and operating) while Vonage, based on the S-1 numbers, probably has revenues of $27.70 per subscriber per month with $8.70 operating cost leading to a loss of $167 million annually and 25% customer churn.

Alec then comes to the conclusion:

Let's do a little thought experiment. Let's assume that Vonage continues to add subscribers at their current rate, and Skype does also. By the end of 2006, Skype should be approaching 150 million subscribers. Vonage, should be at about 2.5 million. Let's also assume that Skype's revenues continue to grow at the same rate they have recently. Q4 of this year should be a $100 million quarter for Skype. Vonage, with 2.5 million subscribers should have about $208 million in revenue. If the trend holds true, then Vonage should see losses of approximately $125 million on that $208 million. And what will Skype's loss be?

Ebay is forecasting that Skype will be profitable in Q4 of this year.

The real issue is margin.

All the more reason for Skype to be looking for revenue generation application partners such as iotum.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Polycom, Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:PLCM) is ringing NASDAQ's bell today, ten years listed, shipping the two millionth SoundStation conference phone. But that's fluff, business as usual, generic PR silliness. What matters is their launch of the Polycom Communicator. It may be the highest audio quality USB speakerphone on the market, good enough for CD quality music. Shipping in June 2006, $129.

The product.

Jim Kruger, Polycom vp, did a little show-and-tell last week at Polycom's Pleasanton offices. The 5.4 ounce (151 gram) Communicator comes in a dark soft case.

Unwrapped, it's a simple gadget. Big speaker with the Polycom triangle at the top. Controls in the middle: blue Skype button launches Skype, mute, start/stop call, volume up and down. Two microphones at the bottom. An 1/8" stereo headset connector on the side. Comes with a CD and software that installs in five minutes.

Open the back flipstand. Kruger said the angle was chosen for best acoustics. The stand hosts the Skype Certified sticker.

Under the stand is a data cable, USB connector, and a storage space for them. The unit runs on the USB cable's power, so no batteries are included or required. The flip stand must be open for the unit to run.

The microphones reach a seven foot radius (two meters) so can serve a 14-foot across table (four meters). The two carefully separated microphones are important for reducing noise and cancelling echoes.

The plastic case comes in "cobalt blue" and "charcoal gray." The insides of the plastics are airtight. The seals are necessary for the acoustic tuning to work. Assuring the seals remain intact across the USB and headset connectors, even with regular use, was just one of several difficult challenges.

They describe the audio frequency range as "wideband," meaning it can pick up higher and lower pitches (up to 22KHz) than today's Skype can even use (16KHz).

The processing for all this is up to your computer. The CD 's software makes up for their not including a digital signal processor in the hardware. Software codecs perform automatic gain control (1 person near the mic, 1 person far, both sound good) and acoustic echo cancellation. To get the best performance, they use the Skype client's programming interface to turn off Skype's own echo cancellation.

Positioning

The Polycom Communicator should be available in June 2006 worldwide, priced at $129 in the United States, varying elsewhere. Kruger said the Communicator is targeted to the 30% of Skype users who use Skype in the workplace. They offer hands-free, headset free conversation to small office and home office users. While it will work fine in larger settings, it's optimized for individual use as opposed to conference rooms. It should support small meetings of three to four people without difficulty. 

Polycom is distributing the Communicator through direct marketers, retail and retail online, and existing large distributors. It will also be sold through the Skype store for U.S. markets and Polycom's own store should open later this month.

More to follow...

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)