Skype 3.x allows conferencing for up to ten participants whether on Skype or SkypeOut; of course for SkypeOut participants there is the standard SkypeOut charge. Actually, you need one of the newer Intel Core 2 Duo processors to get to ten, otherwise the limit reduces to five. And you can set up conference calls directly within Skype's client or via the Skype for Email Outlook Toolbar.

But what about those Monday morning company sales meetings where you have 23 sales reps in the field or the important financial reporting presentation to, say, 120 investors. If you're all on Skype, then Vapps LLC's HighSpeedConferencing.com service offers a no charge solution; for those Participants who come in via a PSTN line they simply pay their relevant long distance charges. If the Host would like to supply an 800 number, the charge is 10 cents per Participant per minute - a significant reduction from the $0.30 to $0.55 per minute paid previously to legacy telcos.

Speaking with Vapps CEO Ben Lilienthal late last week, I heard another success story for Skype's Extras Gallery program. With over 20,000 downloads of their plug-in since mid-December - triggered by the official launch of the Extras Gallery at that time, they have built their activity to handling over 100,000 minutes per day and accumulated over 2 million minutes of usage over the past three weeks. In the same period they have garnered over 1,000 subscriptions for their Premium service, a monthly offering the provides recording and hand raising for $4.50 per month.

While one can create an ad hoc conference (called simply High Speed), there is a very limited feature set. With the High Speed Plus service (free for Skype-based hosts and participants) a Host can register at their website and take advantage of an extensive range of Web Controls, including the ability to schedule conference calls and send out email invitations. Or, a plug-in available via the Extras Gallery has all the web controls baked into it. It lets you schedule a call via IM or email with the other participants and then manage the session directly from the plug-in without having to go to the HighSpeedConferencing.com web site.

A host for a conference call can initiate a conference either via the HighSpeed Conferencing plug-in client or by creating and calling a designated "High Speed Conference" "Hosting" Skype Contact (via their website) or by calling a designated phone number (long distance charges apply). Enter an assigned conference room number. Skype-based Participants enter via a Participant Skype Contact link while PSTN Participants are provided long distance phone numbers which do incur long distance charges. The host also has an option to provide an 800 number; this is where the $0.10 per participant per minute charge arises.

The Host can moderate the conference by controlling who has access, who speaks, mike muting and other features required to ensure a disciplined, uninterrupted meeting. With the Premium Service ($4.50 per month) the host can also record the conference call and allow participants to "raise a hand" when they want to speak.

Vapps' goal is to offer a high availability (99.999% or "5 nines"), high quality service, merging PSTN (TDM) and VoIP connections through one central server, Currently they are working on voice quality issues to get the PSTN connection voice quality up to the standards set by the Skype connections. At this time they see about 50% of participants coming in via Skype while the other 50% come from PSTN lines. The maximum number of users they have seen in a real life conference is just over 250.

Ben has encountered some non-traditional uses of the service, including personal and religious counseling services and charter school sessions where students become virtual classmates. With the low cost alternatives offered by HighSpeedConferencing.com I'm sure we'll see significant growth in many affiliate group conferencing minutes.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Antivirus firm f-secure reports a hostile bot (bot farm?) uses Skype's client API to send potentially dangerous messages to unsuspecting users.   

We have two reports of people receiving links to a Warezov-infected file via Skype.

Now, some older Warezov variants have used other Instant Messaging client in a similar fashion, but not Skype.

The messages looked like this:

We detect the binary at that download location as Warezov.ly.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Janahan Vivekanandan of SayNow told me about their startup. They're helping creatives (musicians, comics, bloggers) with thousands of fans to create a two-way conversation. A voice conversation. Sure it's been done for years with email, but their service supports phone calls, SMS, and web interfaces.

Broadcast to your subscribers by calling from a phone or uploading an mp3 to the web. Your fans get a phone call, text or email with your message, and options to do more, like surveys or buy stuff. They can leave you a personal message, an intimate communication. As the star in your world, you may also talk back to individuals if you like.

While they've been targeting creative talent, SayNow could be in for Meetup-style growth in the 2008 US election cycle.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sony uses TrollTech's platform inside its Mylo, the handheld device that runs Skype. Skype builds on TrollTech too. Here's a three minute interview with Benoit Schillings, their chief technology officer, on the importance of VoIP and Wi-Fi.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week was one of the biggest news weeks at Skype Journal in a while.

Skype took on the entire US mobile carrier industry. Chris Libertelli, Skype's government affairs counsel, filed with the Federal Communications Commission to open wireless networks to anyone's device so long as it doesn't hurt the network. Unlocked mobile phones, anyone? Phones that can pick and choose which carrier to use for which call? MobileCos competing without shiny new phones on rates, quality and service alone? This could be great for consumers, fantastic for independent business and technology innovators, and uncomfortable for carrier marketers.

Skype 3.1 for Windows launched in Beta with the people's SkypeFind business directory as its biggest feature. Coverage included an exclusive interview with the Skype executive heading up SkypeFind (thanks, Sten), a comprehensive walkthrough and analysis (thanks Dan), a look at SkypeFind's branding, and a painful moan from a vulnerable Skype partner trampled by SkypeFind. Business directories are a first step toward commerce conversations and markets for conversation.

Jim Courtney's Interruption 2.0 Manifesto dove deep into managing your presence and attention, asserting your right to define and control. An important corollary to the Cluetrain, Attention, and New Presence manifestoes.  

The SkypePro bundle went live in most of Western Europe. Strategic pricing and bundling that makes Skype look great compared to most landline services.

Skype crossed the half-billion download mark. And Skypers didn't even throw a press release, let alone a party.

Last week's banner image was of Vonage's "Free Phone Call" phone booths at the Consumer Electronics Show. Popular, convenient, and reinforcing the lie that Internet telephony is just plain old telephone service.

The banner of the week before was of the stylish Ipevo free.2 USB phone. I'm trying out a working prototype. So far it's very small, nice and fun to use. "Cute." Ipevo brings desperately needed sophistication to the design of Skype gear. Fashion and design are part of mainstreaming new technologies. More from Ipevo soon.

Elsewhere:

iMessengr: 13 All-in-One Web-Based Messengers to Chat at Work or School. None of them support Skype; no Skype server software or Skype-hosted web services with cloud access. Maybe in March? April?

Gus Verdun: Ten new features of AIM 6.1.16.1 Beta. Small stuff.  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A public letter from Bulent Yildirim, CEO of KonuSh. KonuSh is a long time Skype developer and the first to operate a Skype business directory, KonuSh.net.

Dear Skype:

The day the first Skype Beta was launched (August 2003), we believed that Skype would be the killer application in the telecommunications world. And we shared this idea with our colleagues. At the beginning even if Skype management was only focused on the consumer market, we believed that most of the people will use Skype for business purposes so that we have to establish a Skype Business Directory. This was our starting point, and we shared the idea with the Skype Team, and we got very good feedback that time.

During that period, we gave more support to the Skype Team to understand the Turkish Market, and we translated Skype web pages to Turkish (we were the first who translated the Skype web pages into Turkish). When we launched our Skype Business Directory Services portal, KonuSh, in 2004, Skype gave us permission to use their logo on our web site because they really liked our concept (creation of the first and only Business Directory for Skype business users).

Three years after our launch of KonuSh, as you already noticed, Skype saw the potential and focused to the Business Market. They saw that the main revenue stream could be generated from the business market.

Since 2004 we couldn't grow fast because we could not invest for marketing, and it stayed just an amatorial project. Also, we could not get support from Skype team to promote KonuSh even if the business market started to use Skype heavily and use their Skype names on their business cards, etc.

Finally in 2006, we decided to set up a private company, KonuSh, with a vision of: to be the biggest and most valuable business directory services provider of Skype and to promote Skype usage among businesses. Then we prepared our business plan and started to have meetings with investors in order to provide value added Business Directory Services to Skype business users. We started to write KonuSh J2ME client for handsets, renew the KonuSh portal with a target of 1 million subscribers in 3 years.

Believing in Skype's preference to support and promote its partners for extras and value added services, at 12.12.2006 we sent an email to Skype management mentioning the latest developments about KonuSh and asking them to support KonuSh in order to achieve our goals; to add Konush's link to the Skype client, and to give extra Skype minutes to the new subscribers. But unfortunately we never received any reply.

Two months later, they announced SkypeFind which explains why they have not replied to our request.

We want to ask to Skype's top management: "Do you plan and start to compete with your committed partners?"

Since 2004, we spent time, effort and money in order to promote Skype usage for the business market; but we are in such a state that we have to close KonuSh or compete with Skype.

Creativity and vision are very important and valuable concepts which we assumed Skype understand and support this. Since the beginning, we believe in the Skype concept and we will continue to support Skype. But we also believe that Skype has to think once more about its partner strategy and relations.

Bulent Yildirim
Skype : bulent.yildirim
SkypeIn: +1(202) 580-8446
Mobile : +905322319784
E-mail : bulent.yildirim@konush.net

Short Story of KonuSh

05.26.2004 : Beginning of Skype relationship. To promote Skype usage in Turkey we initiated a Skype community for Turkish Skype users and then the Skype Business Directory for Turkish SMEs with the vision of creating a fully focused Global Skype Business Directory.

Konush.net featured in a 2004 PCWorld.com.tr article.

06.07.2004 : We share our idea with Skype top management via e-mail.

09.24.2004 : We got feedback from Skype top management. What Niklas said to KonuSh:

"Thanks for the mail. That sounds like a great idea. I have copied Mark Asseily, Business Development Director, on this mail. Mark will contact you.

Best regards,

Niklas"

During this period, we translated Skype web pages into Turkish and supplied as much feedback as possible about the Skype client.

November 2005 : "Skype directories like Konush.net vs. Skype's profile cloud," Skype Journal

November 2006 : KonuSh project became a private company named KonuSh, and Registered Trade Mark in US and TR. We found an investor.

13.12.2006 : We contacted with Skype team in order to have a KonuSh Plug-in in the Skype Client.

02.21.2007 : Skype announced SkypeFind!

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I interviewed Sten Tamkivi last Thursday morning, Tallinn time, the day after the Skype for Windows 3.1 beta launch. Sten is Skype's Estonia general manager and now heads up the eCommerce team that created SkypeFind. SkypeFind is a user populated business directory. Sten is also a serial entrepreneur, spokesperson for Skype, and a blogger. This is a rough, lightly-edited transcript.

SJ. What does eCommerce have to do with SkypeFind?

Sten Tamkivi: eCommerce is a unit inside Skype that deals with this kind of purchase, like SkypeFind, that has activities outside of the telecom-like services space. SkypeFind is one of the first big launches for us. It is a business listings system that enables users to share the businesses they call and what they think about those businesses. If you search for a haircut in London and don't find what you need, you can use SkypeFind also to ask from your contact if they have any good suggestions.

SJ. It looks like "asking your friends" means putting a note into your mood presence.

That's right.

SJ. Why do you think people want a SkypeFind kind of a feature?

We see it as a very natural building block on top of Skype as a communication app. If you use Skype for calling, especially SkypeOut for calling, you have to store your phone numbers somewhere. Why not share that with the rest of the contact list? Why not share it with the 171 million registered Skype users? We see it very much like a missing piece in the whole picture.

Because we are doing it very tightly inside the Skype client, that adds to the usability and the likelihood that people will input.

There is a very interesting social aspect we added to this. For example, if you are searching for a sushi place in Tallinn, and you have me on your contact list, then places I've suggested or rated well bubble up in the search results. So in the search results you get listings that are suggested or rated well by the people in your contact list that you already trust. So this is something that differentiates us as well.

SJ. So there is actual value in having friends that contribute to the network.

Exactly.

SJ. This is very wiki in flavor. Has this been influenced by Skype's internal wiki?

I think philosophically there is an overlap with wiki. With any wiki, not just our internal wiki. Yes, people can edit any listing they see, with small exceptions. You can't change the phone number of a listing that has been entered by someone else and you can't change other people's comments. But if you see a typo in a company name or you know the address, you can add these things, even if you didn't create the listing.

SJ. What are your business goals for SkypeFind?

Yet to be worked on. Right now SkypeFind is a pure and unmonitized service. So all the content is user generated, there is no advertising model involved, and there are no business listings. We are looking in this space as well. However, we have decided that in case we bring in commercial content to SkypeFind, then we definitely will separate it visually and mark it clearly as something different from the user generated or social content.

For now, we decided to start with a zero record database and see how it picks up with our user base. We strongly believe in that content getting there.

There was Forrester research quite recently about consumer behavior on the Internet. It said a whole quarter of U.S. consumers have used a commenting service or rating service or participated in discussion boards around the businesses they use. So I think people have a drive to share their experience and share their ratings and bash somebody who has been bad and praise somebody who has been good to them. If we give them a very simple and integrated user interface to do so, they will.

SJ. Right now, the directory is just of businesses. Have you looked to expand to cover other things?

Around Skype there are a number of directories already, if you think about things like Skypecasts - a directory of events. We might do something with bringing other types of listings together, but for now SkypeFind is focused on businesses and we try to do that part very well.

SJ. Are there any features you wanted in this first release that you didn't have time to get in?

Not really. We wanted to get a very simple neat version out there and listen to user feedback, and see where we can improve. So we are all ears right now.

If you look at the Internet phone or IM applications, no one has done something similar before. It's a learning process for us as well.

SJ. eBay integration. Right now in SkypeFind I have to identify a business by a unique phone number. In the worlds of eBay or Amazon, the vendor is just a user ID in a specific context.

Right now SkypeFind is intentionally focused on phone numbers, as you can see the logical connection with SkypeOut. We are planning to add Skype user IDs to make people happy or support people who have brought Skype into their business as a communication tool. You are aware of Pay-Per-Lead, something we are doing with eBay and other partners. Even though SkypeFind and Pay-Per-Lead are different products, we can see them coming together sometime in the future.

Some of the SkypeFind Community Guidelines language is vague. For example:

"You should not submit comments or keywords or any information that is unlawful, offensive, abusive, indecent, obscene, racist, discriminatory or menacing or which does, or is intended to, cause annoyance, inconvenience or worry, or which is fraudulent or defamatory"

I'm sure lawyers got involved, but the concern is that the definitions of these terms vary by locale. So it is difficult to enforce and to be fair. There are some things that are broad about it. For example, if I say a restaurant's service sucks, and it costs them business that would be annoying and inconvenient to them and might worry them about lost business. So would literally violate your terms.

This is not really my area. But the right direction to think about this is the Wikipedia space. There are many parallels. So if someone bashes your restaurant on a wiki you can go and correct it, it can go back and forth for a while, then you can report the concern to Skype which is a functionality we have included. There should be enough layers of protection.

I only saw western languages in the system. Will you be supporting non-western languages as well?

Character set wise, we' re ok right now. As anything we do in Skype, we localizing.

Are you doing anything to expand the statistics, the metadata generated by the system? For instance, indicating popular tags or popular searches or hot spots in the world, and exposing that back to the users?

We have that data coming from the system but no decisions about exposing that.

Is there some way for me to have some link on a web page to my entry in the directory? Or a review-my-site link?

Right now there are no permalinks you can launch.

Where does the data live?

It is a server based solution, as opposed to peer-to-peer.

Are there any plans for a web version of this?

Technologically it is quite simple, however as you can see the social part, or the relevance brought in by your contact list is a big part of the value here. So taking it to the web and making it anonymous would lose that part.

What are your plans for an API (programming interface)?

I know we have some plans. The keyword "API" is on our roadmap but I haven't looked at that functionality yet.

What do you hope to learn in the next thirty days?

Probably a lot about people's activity. Is there a growth in listings in a way we expected? Does it disperse somewhere geographically? Do people add new content or review what other people have already added? And naturally all the other business statistics behind that, like how many clicks on the call link we get.

I think that's the start. Probably we'll see comments on blogs and coming directly to Skype in our discussion forums. I think we're quite open to see what happens and what users think.

Who came up with the magnifying-glass flower icon?

Our designers, our creative folks.

How are you spreading the word on SkypeFind? Is having the tab enough?

Yes, I think it is, for the searching reason. It will be integrated into other places in the Skype client. For example, if you have a SkypeOut contact on your contact list, then you can add it to become a SkypeFind listing. Also we can embed it, for example, when you finish a call with a business, we can immediately ask if this call is to a business and do you want to rate what happened on that call.

How often will that tab be updated?

Due to very early beta, we don't automatically update it. It updates when you change the country or if you right-click on the tab. Statistics on the bottom will update as well.

(trying an update...) Alex is in Hawaii. It also shows he added a place near me in the Bay Area. That's information I didn't think about from before.

Your default country - the "where" field - is derived from your profile. It defaults to your local stuff. I travel into London a lot so I've been checking what kinds of good restaurants are in London.

Where are you based?

I'm from Estonia.

How long have you been with Skype?

I've been with Skype since summer 2005, about one and a half years. I started off as the general manager of Estonia, then I took over global operations for Skype, and since late last year I've worked more closely with product. I've dealt a bit with devices and about two weeks ago I joined the eCommerce team and took the GM role here.

Does eCommerce include the Skype store and the partnerships that go with that?

The devices and hardware stores are a separate topic. The eCommerce team deals with Skype extras and personalized stuff.

Between the extras and SkypeFind, we're seeing more things being built into or bolted onto the client. What other things would you like to see added to the client if you had all the time and money in the world?

Client real estate is something we think is very precious. Because one of the main drivers behind the success of Skype has been the simplicity of the user interface and the ease of use. So we consider very very carefully what we do in the client and what we don't want to do.

It's very tough to throw something out there. Think about Skypecasts. That big, colorful directory of Skypecasts is something we're keeping on the web. It turns into a client part only when you're participating in a Skypecast and the listings appear as in a conference call.

Probably that's a good example of what we want to do with the client. To be very sensible and see that we don't bloat it with different types of new features but keep it usable.

I was looking for tapas and realized I wasn't getting listings for Spain and France, just for Spain. Same thing for companies wanting to list in more than one country. Have you looked at a country called the Internet?

Not the Internet, but yes, the discussion is going on around if and how we execute on this for businesses that have a Skype name but no physical address.  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"We will guarantee next business day response and three business days resolution -- or your request will be handled free of charge. You will also be able to place your premium support requests confidentially."

• Paid support issues are top priority: your issue will be resolved before work is started on unpaid issues. 
• It's pricey, € 300 per incident, half that if you pre-pay for ten.
• It's only through Skype's issue tracker system. No live support.
• And it's just for software developers.

See also:

• Start your trouble ticket 
• Peeter P. Mõtsküla's announcement
• Skype DevZone wiki entry 
• STS - Skype Technical Services 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A Skype spokesperson passed on this note from the designers about the SkypeFind logo:

"The daisy-in-the-magnifying-glass icon was chosen to reflect the importance of user reviews to the success and credibility of business listings on SkypeFind. So where's the connection? Back when we were young(er), quite a few of us pulled daisy petals one by one, wondering if s/he likes me... or likes me not. The daisy theme is meant as a lighthearted visual play on that theme -- in the context of Skype users 'liking' or 'not liking' a business listed in Skype Find."

SkypeFind also uses the daisy for a please-wait-while-I-do-something message (visual animation of adding petals to the flower) and warnings. I've only seen the warning when SkypeFind had difficulty connecting to its server.

Tip: Right-click on Skype's daisy tab. You get a menu option to "Reload" the tab. This will get a fresh list of your friends' entries and comments. 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In a previous post I presented an Interruptions 2.0 Manifesto, outlining issues that need to be considered in the course of real time communications activity in an AlwaysOn world which, in turn, exposes us as users to being Always Available. And it's not simply a matter of exchanging bits and bytes to manage interruptions; higher level consideration needs to be given to incorporating workflow paradigms, social etiquette, and management policies in building a sustainable business model.

Specifically I wrote about the need for a protocol to make it possible to know when it is appropriate to make a (ad hoc) communications connection and how one can deliver intelligent availability in a real time context to facilitate more effective and more productive real time ad hoc interpersonal communications. iotum's Alec Saunders calls this New Presence:

New Presence is a user-centric view of presence. Instead of merely reflecting the crude, device specific "availability awareness" of today, New Presence systems understand our context, relationships, wants and desires. The New Presence model reflects the integrated conversation web we live in today.

iotum's Talk-Now application for the Blackberry is a technology preview platform which has provided an opportunity to work with the New Presence concept in practice. Talk-Now is built around iotum's Relevance Engine technology which understands the user's preferences and behavior to change the way people communicate. To give a practical example:

A recent study done at Cap Gemini points out that 82% of all phone calls end up in voice mail. Lots of wasted time leaving voice mail messages; lots of lost productivity as two parties attempt to make an initial voice contact. With Talk-Now I can simply look at my Talk-Now client and see who is currently available to take a Call; based on preview user feedback a future build will also allow me to set a flag to notify me when an currently unavailable contact becomes available. And I avoid making the average 3.15 calls prior to establishing real time voice communication with my contacts. Definitely a productivity enhancer.

Sounds simplistic but behind Talk-Now's availability status lies iotum's Relevance Engine that computes your availability based not on a single preset status but on your previously designated contact preferences (VIP, family, friend, customer, etc.), your previous communications with that party, your current Calendar activity and even your future calendared activity. In other words your New Presence is delivered in the context of what you have done (your history), your relationship with each individual contact, what you are currently doing and what you intend to do. Conversely your various contacts' New Presence reflects their individual uniqueness when combining his/her history, relationship and current/future activity. The following logic diagram, provided at a recent briefing by iotum executives Alec Saunders and Howard Thaw, puts iotum's implementation of New Presence in perspective:

Talk-Now's real value is delivered through its ability to help me make contact in real time -- without voice mail or any other "third party" proxy call redirector. Talk-Now provides insight into how we may go down the path of bringing back control of your real time communications in an AlwaysOn world.

Its value is enhanced through its email notification process that sends a Blackberry-originated email to a currently unavailable contact not only indicating that your desire to talk to the contact but also when you are available for a call. And this process works not only with your Talk-Now contacts but also with any of your Blackberry contacts. In a subtle way this feature drives Talk-Now adoption virally.

The challenge for Talk-Now (or any other service purporting to deliver New Presence) is to (i) to refine the service to reflect a readily acceptable etiquette and user-intuitive protocol for establishing a voice connection and (ii) to extend its capability beyond voice to include other forms of real time communication such as text chat, SMS messaging and, with the introduction of GPS on mobile platforms, location-based services. For instance, while I may want to follow several chat sessions concurrently on a mobile device, I may only want to be notified of activity for those sessions with designated "mission critical" contacts.

If you want to experience Talk-Now and provide your own feedback go to iotum's sign-up site. It does require that you have a Blackberry Pearl, 870x or, as of today, 8800 or are running Blackberry OS 4.1 or later..Or, for a preview of the Talk-Now experience, watch Alec's demonstration video.

In my upcoming post on experience with the Skype PC-Free phones I will mention why a variation on Talk Now but still using the iotum Relevance Engine is needed to manage the multiple accounts that will be needed to manage, say, the Skype account duality required to keep "home" Skype calls separated from "business" Skype calls. Just as in the legacy phone world, one Skype account will no longer suffice.

{Note for those wishing to produce their own demo videos: check out Alec's experience producing and mounting this video here and here.)

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:34 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Just over a year ago I brought a SlingBox into Canada, prior to its Canadian launch, in order to be able to watch the Turino Winter Olympics on the CBC while I was working on an assignment in California with no CBC stations - even on cable. The Canadian networks provide over 16 hours a day coverage -- mostly live -- as opposed to NBC's spartan three hour nightly snapshot of events whose results are already well known. In fact I reported on it here and here. SlingBox had its Canadian launch a couple of months later in April, 2006.

One of the major questions that arose as SlingBox made its market entry was how it was going to build sustainable revenues for a business that, to date, has had $53 million of venture capital investment but really only had a "one time" hardware appliance revenue stream.. Today I had the opportunity to meet with Gregg Wilkes, Sling Media's VP of Sales and newly anointed Manager of Online Communications David Zatz, of Zatz Not Funny fame. While they went over their new product line's Canadian launch (for which I will provide a review later after getting some experience with the new SlingBox Pro), the more significant story is their other development activities and how it will extend their business. Basically Sling Media has two major strategies:

• Extend the Digital Home by providing add-ons to current home entertainment devices, and
• Build a sustainable advertising and partnering revenue stream through licensing, advertising and content syndication activities.

So how is this going to play out? Through product and service offerings that will be introduced over the spring and summer.

Before discussing the new products, let me paraphrase Greg's explanation of Sling Media's mission to put their product road map in perspective. Sling Media's goal is to build the digital home lifestyle by taking basic home entertainment devices such as the television, cable box, DVD player, and even, as explained below, the PC.and extend their access both around the home and around the world.. So the original SlingBox allowed me to watch my family room TV not only in my home office but also in a Starbucks in Palm Springs, California or a hotel in Cancun, Mexico. A good analogy would be the huge parts aftermarket that has developed for the "cool" Honda Civic.

The new products are designed to expand on these "access" offerings. SlingPlayers for mobile devices and additional operating systems, new and faster multi-port Powerline Ethernet Adapters and Sling Catcher (announced at CES last month). So we will see:

• SlingPlayers for Symbian, Palm, Macs and Windows Vista are all in beta testing now. SlingPlayer for Windows Vista will let you watch multiple SlingBoxes concurrently, thereby increasing the potential for additional SlingBox sales.
• SlingCatcher: It is common for us to cook and eat in the kitchen while leaving the family room TV on. A primary inhibition to putting a small "monitoring" TV in the kitchen is the requirement to obtain another cable box with all the ancillary wiring and ongoing costs, not to mention countertop real estate occupied. Instead a smaller SllingCatcher can be attached to that "monitoring" TV; the SlingCatcher is attached via powerline Ethernet to the cable TV box in the family room and simulcasts the TV program onto the kitchen TV. As a second application SlingCatcher is also being designed to take the PC graphics display from my home office and put the image onto my family room TV.

This is a classic case where both customer feedback and market experience have built the case for extending the primary business through new accessory product introductions. With the goal of providing enhancements to the digital home lifestyle I can see a time when there would be flat panel displays in every room of the house but maybe only two cable TV boxes. As you enter a room you select which cable box you want to watch while in that room. And when those displays are not showing a TV program they can become digital picture frames -- even changing over time through a slide show algorithm.

And how does the sustainable content and advertising revenue stream arise? Sling Media is developing a new service called "Clip 'n Sling" where you can take snippets of a TV program, put it up on a server managed by Sling Media, and then send an email to a friend or business colleague that includes a link to the "Clip". So a buffer will store, say, the previous five minutes of content during a hockey game. When my neighbor's son scores a goal for the Boston Bruins (sorry UCLA fans) St. Louis Blues, I can then lock in that segment, and edit it to show only the actual scoring play. Then it is put up on Sling's content server and I send an email out to all my friends whom I know are interested in Brad's accomplishments. But when the clip comes up, there can also be advertising and promotions for, say, the network's other related shows such as a schedule of future BruinsBlues games.

Sling Media is currently in negotiations with networks and other content providers such as major league sports. Suffice it to say even Major League Baseball, who raised some concerns last summer about Sling's model, is looking at how Sling Media services can be used enhance their marketing and revenues.

But more importantly, look at how this email-based service will drive Sling's awareness virally. Those emails can got out to anyone; no SlingPlayer or SlingBox is needed to view the video "Clips". Subtle but very targeted promotion of SlingBoxes to build much broader awareness of its capabilities and to pull hardware sales.

With respect to copyright and other content legal issues, keep in mind that only one SlingPlayer can be taking content from a SlingBox at any one time. Sling Media is still examining whether they can and should allow more than one TV to be able to view a cable box via SlingCatcher.

Bottom line is that Sling Media is demonstrating that they know how to take a vision and expand on the vision to build sustainable revenue streams through both hardware innovation and services deployment.

Mark Evans has also posted on his visit with Sling Media today. While he talks about the syndication, licensing and advertising deals as the route to driving sales beyond hardware, I think their hardware and software developments themselves are at least equally, if not more, important for Sling Media's foreseeable future.

Now if Sling Media would just figure out how to add that Skype accessory such that two geographically separated viewers of the same program can converse. Meantime back to watching the Bruins Blues on my NHL Center Ice subscription via my SlingBox.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dan York is the Best Practices Chair for the VoIP Security Alliance and analyzes emerging technology for Mitel Corporation. His writing can be found at Disruptive Telephony.

Skype today released a new "3.1" beta for Windows (you can get it here) with a number of minor tweaks - and a brand new component called "SkypeFind". As you can see in the picture to the right, there's a new tab added... and is the entrance of Skype into the game already being played by GoogleMaps, Yahoo!Local and Microsoft's Windows Live Local... namely... providing an easily searchable directory of businesses.

It's not stated, but it's pretty clear the ultimate goal is to control the directory you use to initiate calls. Think about it, Google is aiming to do this with their "click-to-call" in Google Maps. Find an entry (in the US, anyway) and simply click "call" and your regular phone rings. It's simple and easy. Google controls the directory and the initiation of calls. It's even more logical for Skype to do this. Find a business in the directory, click the phone number and you're dialling away using Skype/SkypeOut...

Of course, Skype aims to be more than simply yet another business directory. As the Skype blog entry states:

SkypeFind is one of the most interesting features that we've done in quite a while now. We call it "Local businesses you like", and that's what it is - a collection of businesses, with reviews and comments, built by everyone using Skype.

So it's really a mashup of a business directory, a ratings service... and a social networking service. The other interesting aspect is that the directory is basically empty! It started out this morning basically with only a few entries. Tonight it's now up to "318 listings in 49 countries by 83 people". (Of course, you'd have to find out about the beta and then have the time to experiment. I actually learned of it because I've stayed logged into the Skype Journal public chat and conversation popped up there this morning.) Now I find it interesting that Skype didn't work with someone else to pre-load the database, but: a) this is still in beta; and b) the major local databases are in the hands of Skype competitors who have very little reason to work with Skype.

As you can see in the image on the left (click image for larger view), when you go into the SkypeFind tab, you wind up being able to search within a country, region, etc. There's also recommendations from people in your contact list shown on the bottom of the panel. You can switch to a different region.

Since Burlington, VT, had no entries and I didn't feel like entering any, I switched to the UK and figured searching for "pub" in "London" ought to generate some listings. It did, of course, and if you click on the image to the right to get the larger view, you'll see entries with reviews and ratings. Skype is using a cute motif of a flower with petals being removed as the rating goes lower. Note also the choices in the dropbox in the upper right corner:

• Most relevant
• Most called
• Highest rating
• A-Z

Most called? Well, of course, if you are Skype you would have knowledge of how many times Skype users call that number. Just an interesting twist that you wouldn't find, of course, in the other directories (although you would wonder if Google could add it with their click-to-call).

Another interesting twist is the "Ask your friends" for recommendations button seen at the bottom of the listing. I've not played with this yet, but per the Skype blog entry, it will change your advisory/mood message to be a question and provide a link to a public chat where Skype-using friends can then join you (presumably with Skype 3.0 or later) and answer your questions (or at least chat with you).

Going into an entry shows the ratings and reviews and gives you the ability to add your own review. But also notice the little link at the top? It says:

Edit this listing

Yep... you can just click on it and go in and change the name, address, web site... basically any info except for the phone number and country which per the SkypeFind guide, Skype uses as a unique identifier. Now being a security guy, I immediately wonder about this... I can put in any URL. What's to prevent a spammer from going through all these pubs and entering the URL for some spam site? Or a competitor from changing the names around? Or someone just making mischief? Nothing, really. Phil Wolff called it a "wiki" in the Skype Journal chat today and that is what it's like. You can view the editing history, so you can see who made the changes (or at least the SkypeID of who made the change)... but the changes have in fact been made. It will be curious to see how much abuse this does or does not get.

So will SkypeFind ever have ads or premium listings? It would seem to be the obvious thing to do (like Google's sponsored results) and Paul Kapustka writing over at Om Malik's GigaOm site has a review of SkypeFind that quotes Skype General Manager of E-Commerce Sten Tamkivi as saying that SkypeFind may include ads in the future. The article also talks again about how recommendations from friends will help listings "bubble up"... we'll see... first there need to be listings before they can bubble up! (I know, I know, it hasn't even been out for 24 hours....)

One curious omission, that I have to credit Phil Wolff for pointing out. If you look at the larger view of the "Add a listing" screen to the right, you'll notice something fairly basic is missing... a place to enter a Skype ID! It seems that for a business to be listed you must have a PSTN number. Given that it's Skype, you might have thought there would be a way to enter the Skype ID and call the business over Skype!

Ah, well, it's still in beta... and only available on Windows, so Mac and Linux users have to wait to play.

Beyond SkypeFind, the release did have some other minor tweaks. There is now a "Chats" menu on the menu bar that gives you easy access to your public and private chats. And the "eye candy" of this release is the cute way Skype finally provided the notification that the other user is typing. Where AIM and MSN/WLM have text that says something like "User-so-and-so is typing...", Skype has a pencil icon that writes... and then in a cute move erases when you are deleting what you wrote. You can see it in this screen shot (upper right by the woman's picture) from Skype's blog. It also shows up in chat windows (including public chats). It's a cute way to meet and exceed what the other services have had for quite some time.

All in all an interesting evolutionary step for the Skype client... will be interesting to see how successful SkypeFind becomes as the directory becomes populated. Given that Skype accounts are free, the security side of me just sees it as something wide open for abuse... but hopefully for Skype users I am wrong. What do you all think?

P.S. Many thanks to the Skype Journal for continuing to run their public chat which countinues to be a source of great info about Skype...

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Pulver yesterday brought to our attention a petition by Skype to the FCC "making the eminently reasonable request that the FCC ensure that its (and, by extension, all) users of mobile devices and networks have the freedom to communicate over wireless networks." Jeff goes on to comment:

I think this petition should have important ramifications for all those that wish to attach devices or provide Internet-based voice and video applications over wireless networks. As things stand now, users are beholden to the wireless gatekeepers who unilaterally determine what devices, what functions, what applications may attach or ride or be accessed from the wireless networks.

One specific request - to start a rulemaking proceeding to determine the legality of the carriers' restrictions on subscribers' full access to Internet-based applications - has significant implications for encouraging application innovation in a Voice 2.0 world. I'm sure developers such as OnState with their recently announced OnState ACD for Skype would want to ensure that their call distribution algorithms can reach out to all wireless devices.

Jeff ends with "I ask our friends who care about innovation in the wireless space, edge devices and Internet applications to take this petition seriously, shine a spotlight on the issue and help move the FCC in the right direction" He plans to post a link to the petition when it becomes available and has more specific information for those who want to follow this story to its conclusion.

Update Feb. 25: Jaanus has posted more detailed information on this petition and make the petition itself available>

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Download the beta of Skype for Windows 3.1. Changes in the 21.02.2007 version 3.1.0.112 BETA change log:  

• New features:
  • Skype Find (more on this later)
  • Account Panel redesign
  • Alerts Platform
  • Typing indicator (Tools > Options > Advanced > Chat > "Show When I'm Typing")

• New features for programmers:

  • possible to get contact's avatar and get and set own avatar
  • GET CONTACTS_FOCUSED
  • SET RINGTONE <id> STATUS ON|OFF
  • GET PREDICTIVE_DIALER_COUNTRY
  • CALL property TARGET_IDENTITY

• bugfix:

  • API: after joining calls to conference VIDEO_(SEND|RECEIVE)_STATUS RUNNING was erroneously sent
  • API: ongoing call was not put on hold while answering another incoming call
  • API: notification of clicking MENU_ITEM in Tools returned user_id

• Known issue:

• SkypePM.exe may show a 'DLL Initialization Failed' error message on shutting down Windows.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[Editor: Skype Journal friend and blogger, Jan Geirnaert, went to the International Telecommunications Fair in December 2006. We'd planned to run his coverage but it conflicted with some of our down time. Here is Jan's second installment.]

My personal impressions on the ITU fair. Flat F(r)ee or pay per minute to the ostriches in the walled garden, wondering why the dumb pipe is drying up.

When I came back from the ITU fair in Hong Kong last week one sentence kept popping up in my mind. It sounded a bit like "the telecoms and their powerful lobby-groups are like ostriches living in a walled garden, wondering why their dumb (cash-flow) pipes are not delivering as much water into their water-buckets. And instead of leaving their walled garden, they stick their head in the sand to wait till more water comes in."

I also realized the huge power and presence of the global telecoms. But still I am trying to get out of the behavior that we all learned to accept: "give coin for dial-tone." I think it will take a while before that changes, if it ever does. Your technology can be very good (in this case disruptive) but you will have to establish a new balance and fight resistance on all levels. Again: my personal impression. For the record.

Besides this, the ITU fair is a huge illuminating summary of the current status of telecom related technology. It really gave me a wake-up and was a great eye-opener. After all, the information you get during the forums is the result of probably six months of preparation by the experts. If you are looking for a good summary, well don't miss out on this event. I loved it.

I also had the distinct impression that WiFi and WIMAX were looked upon as inferior technology, that could be neglected in the over-all landscape of how to get connected. This gave me a strange feeling since (speaking for myself here) I was constantly looking for a WiFi-solution that allowed me to use Skype at an affordable flat fee. I could not find any connection. Maybe I was not close enough to city center. Anyways. Many of my questions on the effect of disruptive technology (during the very interesting forums sessions on ITU) on the revenue were received with some -- well how would I say -- well they did not like that type of question. Maybe they were more interested in devices that could cause some latency on the foreign VoIP signals floating on their network.

I will never forget the visionary projection of one of the keynote speakers during a forum-session: "in the future you will have a cell-phone that will project a hologram of the person you are calling." That is very possible, but it is also likely that revenues of the telecoms will be a hologram if the business-model is not changed drastically. I believe that that pay per minute for telephony is going to be a dead concept. But not yet. Maybe in 2 years from now. Who knows?

The role of the regulators is a major factor in this process. If regulators allow the telecom to stop or slowdown the fast evolution and progress of all kinds of foreign VoIP-systems (that not necessarily create a revenue for the country itself), then things will go slow. Think about the different countries and environments that are already blocking or capping Skype and the likes of Skype.

I just wonder what will happen when the handset-makers are going to put WiFi-chip-sets in the more powerful range of WiFi-enabled cell-phones. Surely people would love to put Skype on their cell-phones, or the likes of Skype, and honestly the GPRS-data (which will increase the ARPU / revenue stream of data-services) will not work with Skype. Maybe for chat, yes.

My point is that the flat-fee data-channels will have to be more affordable and available than the occasional (free) or hotspot WiFi. But again, I believe that if you are in the business of selling telephony-minutes that this will be very tough. There is always somebody cheaper, and lately I have been using my IPAQ PDA-phone with Skype Mobile in it to do unlimited chats (cheaper than SMS), send affordable global SMS and even do Voice Over IP. In this type of scenario, I used a free WiFi service. It worked fine and telecom wasn't touched. I don't like and I don't have to pay for telephony per minute any more. I want flat f(r)ee and I got it.

I also don't like the feeling of being milked like a cash-cow, which exactly explains why I love WiFi so much. And honestly if I need to make a phone to the outside world, I will just go to Starbucks, drink a coffee and do my VoIP phone-call. Much cheaper than the expensive Vodafone.

In that perspective I am looking forward to hear more on the business-deal between www.iskoot.com, www.three.co.uk and www.skype.com. I have seen some videos of a presentation in London whereby a cell-phone (Ericsson and Motorola type) had an "embedded Skype."

But being an MS Windows user, I did go for an IPAQ with a sim-card. It is still more computer than phone in my world, but due to the built-in WiFi I don't have to carry a brick (laptop) in my backpack anymore on short trips that just need a communications device.

For typing and working the laptop is still needed - at least in my world.

Posted by Jan Geirnaert at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Taking back control of your real time communications in the AlwaysOn world.

When reporting on my visit last summer to an Alexander Graham Bell museum near his summer home, I discovered an interesting facet to his lifestyle:

In all his homes he had a separate office/laboratory room where he could be a night owl geek writing, experimenting and thinking. But he never had a telephone installed in any of his offices/labs.

Dr. Bell did not want his experimentation activities interrupted during his time in his home offices. Local folklore (I live less than an hour from RIM's headquarters) has it that when Jim Balsillie, CEO of Blackberry manufacturer Research In Motion, enters his home, his family has asked him to leave his Blackberry at the door. And for years we have been searching for solutions to the dinner-time interruptions of those persistent telemarketers. In the Skype world we have those who seem to think a simple "Hi" in a chat window is sufficient introduction to start a conversation with a total stranger from the other side of the world. The potential for interruptions has become prolific with the introduction of each new technology and/or service, especially those that are "AlwaysOn". In turn these AlwaysOn services expose us, as users, to being "Always Available".

Yet we build our lives around communication with friends, lifestyle service providers and business colleagues who need to communicate at an appropriate time and in an appropriate manner. In today's AlwaysOn world, made possible through both broadband Internet connectivity and mobile phones, there has arisen a crying need to manage our interruptions based on our interpersonal relationships and the real time context of our current activities. We want to ensure our communications efforts and time are spent more effectively with friends and family and spent more productively with the lifestyle service providers, business colleagues and clientele with whom we need to converse to carry on both our personal life and business activities. But such a demand requires a more intelligent algorithm for providing presence and availability information.

Over the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to evaluate many real time communications modes on new platforms such as the Blackberry 8700, Nokia N80i (selected since it runs on both WiFi and all four GSM bands) and a couple of models of the newly released "PC-Free" Skype phones. As a result I have had the opportunity to experience many modes of interruption of my activities and many modes of generating interruptions of my Contacts' activities. They all have an element of providing basic presence information prior to making a phone call and, in some cases, also provide an ability to Chat through an IM client. And through these devices we also have new modes of real time communication: SMS messaging, email, and, with the arrival of embedded GPS, location-based services. More AlwaysOn services that simply increase the potential to be "Always Available".

• While at CES, I used Blackberry Messenger to communicate directly (PIN to PIN) with key business contacts as I toured the exhibition floor and as we approached the time for key meetings. This "direct" channel was instantaneous and improved our "conference" productivity in a very crowded and noisy environment where voice communications was not only relatively expensive but also almost physically impossible due to background noise. Through its "Open Conversation" mode, one has an element of presence (Available/Not Available//Online/Offline) of user-designated remote contacts.
• Truphone on the N80i allows me to make calls from any WiFi hotspot (provided I have or can readily obtain authentication) but has no ability to tell me if my remote contact is readily available for a real time conversation.
• Fring (also on the Nokia N80i) provides both traditional presence and chat capability with my Skype, Gmail and/or MSN Messenger contacts but its "fringing ringing" with every chat session entry becomes overbearing and very annoying, especially once when I was in five concurrent chat sessions.
• "PC-Free" Skype phones provide Skype's basic presence but no chat capability. So one cannot invoke the standard VoIM protocol of texting a Contact to enquire if s/he is available to take a Skype call.
• My Blackberry email messages are restricted, via a web-based service from my Service Provider, such that only those email addresses I have designated will find their emails forwarded from my legacy email to my Blackberry.
• Over the past several weeks I have been participating in the technology preview of iotum's Talk-Now for Blackberry.This testing has provided plenty of opportunity to think about (i) when I want to be interrupted for a real time conversation and (ii) when I want simply to to be able to access presence or availability information in the context of not only my Contacts' current "status" but also his/her current work activity and even previous communications activity.

Concurrent with managing interruptions I also need the intelligence to manage multiple phone connections (and, potentially, multiple IM connections). For instance,

• "PC-Free" Skype phones potentially put the user in the position of effectively having two phones, especially if one wants to continue to use Skype for business via a legacy PC Skype interface but the "PC-Free" phone is to be used in conjunction with, say, a home phone line. This creates the need to sign up for an additional Skype account for the "PC Free" phone. (More in a separate post.)
• My Fring installation is on a separate device which is the only one that supports both WiFi and GSM connectivity.

Bottom line is that I want to manage my availability for real time communications taking into account:

• Whom I want to be interrupted by in real time? whether the communications mode is chat, voice, SMS, video calls, etc.
• How do I triage my incoming calls to determine if I need to answer immediately or should wait until time permits a callback.
• What is the context of the interruption? Am I in a meeting? Is the caller someone whom I will be meeting later in the day and may want to discuss arrangements for that meeting?
• What is the relationship between me and the Contact? Is s/he a customer, a work colleague, a friend or a family member?
• What hours am I available for business activities? for personal activities?
• What is the context of the Contact's current situation? Is s/he occupied by a meeting or willing to accept business calls at this time? What are her/his personal/business hours?
• How do we avoid voice mail tag? A recent study of calls placed at CAP Gemini showed that 82% of all calls end up in voice mail and it takes 3.15 attempts to make a voice connection.
• How do I ensure that I don't miss either business or personal opportunities through ad hoc calls?
• How do I want to be notified of an interruption: a loud ringing phone? a silent vibrating phone?, a ring tone in my Bluetooth headset?
• What is important enough in context to trigger a notification (and therefore an interruption)?
• On what device (or service) do I want to be interrupted at any given point in time and physical location?
• How can my real time communications activity make my day more productive?

What are the implications for the developers and providers of new services?

• While the ability to open the same Skype account on several platforms can be convenient, it raises issues of currency of presence information on any device, including which platform should be considered the "primary" platform for, say, chat messages? How does one keep all the open clients in sync, especially with respect to presence information?
• How can I share my real time availability information with my critical business colleagues to ensure ad hoc access while reducing voice mail's "running interference" and/or inappropriate interruptions?
• How does a service provide maximum end user flexibility with respect to issues such notification method, desired device at the time, hour of the day, designating Contacts' relationships, etc.
• How can a service maintain an element of personal privacy in this era where identity theft and aberrant personal exposure can change your life forever?
• How does a service prejudice my interruption management towards those whom the user really wants to communicate with, yet not miss personal and business opportunities that arise from new introductions?

At this point in time there is no single answer. But through technology preview platforms such as Talk-Now, Fring, Truphone and new types of products, such as the "PC-Free" embedded Skype phones, we are getting a chance to experience in practice when, where and how we want to be interrupted. Hopefully these experiences will build the etiquette and protocols for implementing what Alec Saunders at iotum has labeled "New Presence" - delivering intelligent availability in a real time context to facilitate ad hoc interpersonal communications.

Bottom line: I want to be able to participate in the conversations essential to my lifestyle and my business operations - when, where and how I choose. And the service(s) of choice will only rise above the noise (and become a revenue generator) when I can take back control of my life - through a focus on restoring my privacy and my prejudices to my communications activity.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I talked with Stefan Öberg yesterday about today's Skype Pro launch. The call reminded me that, despite the 500 million downloads that brought Skype to where it is today, downloading is weird. Using a phone, something with buttons you hold to your ear and mouth, is our mainstream human behavior. It's not enough to succeed at getting people to download Skype.

The sweet spot Skype occupies is being nibbled at from three sides.

First are those who are building live communication into the web. No client to download, just flash, a browser, a headset and a webcam. 

Second are those who are turning VoIM (voice over instant messaging) into a feature of other software. VoIM is being built into virtual worlds, customer service systems, Internet television networks, and eBay seller tools.

Third are the gadgets. Mobile phones, hybrid phones, desk stations, cuddly toys. Generations are conditioned by thousands of calls to hold something to the sides of their faces for telephony. Gear that's directly attached to the Internet without a PC lets people get some of the benefit of VoIM without bothering to change their behavior.

Skype Pro will help Skype with the gadget crowd. The pricing plan is much closer to the all-you-can-eat plans associated with landlines. So Skype Pro and a phone with embedded Skype will be easier to buy, to set up, try, and adopt. 

Key points of today's announcements:

Where:

• Today's launch in Western Europe.
  • Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK
• European countries not covered:
  • Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City.
• Next countries to get Pro:
  • Australia, New Zealand.
• General requirements for a country to get Skype Pro:
  • Skype must be able to add value to the bundle with SkypeIn or a hardware bundle.

I find it ironic that Luxembourg, Skype's country of incorporation, isn't on the list.

Selected Skype Pro features

• Zero cents per minute calling to domestic landlines within your home country, previously €1 per hour 
   
• Free Skype Voicemail, normally €15 per year 
   
• Discounts:
  • €30 discount on SkypeIn numbers
  • A €30 discount on a Philips VoIP 841 cordless phone.
  • A €10 discount on an SMC WiFi phone.
  • Additional discounts on a series of Skype Extras are also available including desktop sharing, avatars, emoticons and ring tones

  source: Skype news release

Money:

• €2 per month.
• Early Bird offers. Put €10 into your Pro service (five months' worth) and Skype will add €5 to your Skype account. Early Bird offer should last a few months. 
• Landlines only. The free calling is only free to landlines in the country where you're making the call. So "does not include calls to any mobile, premium, special or other types of non-geographic numbers"
• VAT. Local Value Added Taxes of 15% may apply.
• Connection Fee. All Pro calls charged $0.039 per call.

Stefan says Skype's stats show most SkypeOut calls run 20 to 30 minutes, so the connection fee shouldn't affect most users.  

While the return on voice mail might justify the service, all the exclusions means Skypers must still know what kind of line they are calling. 

With so many people using mobiles as their primary numbers, I'm not sure this will save you much on SkypeOut service.

Marketing:

• Upsell Positioning: Skype Pro isn't viral like Skype basic; it is an upsell conversion. So Pro will bundle enough goodies to make it attractive. For the price of voicemail, you'll also get free landline calls.
• Now:
  • Early bird offer (sign up, get €5 extra credit)
  • Skype.com messaging
  • Upsell messages in the client's live tab
  • Skype.com in the payment flow and account pages
  • PR
• Soon:
  • Promoted through affiliate networks and banner ads
  • Pro bundled with hardware

See also:

• Two hours a month pays back the new Skype Pro calling plans
• VoipBuster smacks down new Skype pricing

Full release below:

MEDIA CONTACT:

Imogen Bailey

imogen.bailey@skype.net

SkypeIn: + 44 207 193 8038

SKYPE LAUNCHES SKYPE PRO IN EUROPE

Subscription Package Combines Most Popular Features for Just €2* per month

LUXEMBOURG, February 20th, 2007 - Skype™, the global Internet communications company, today announced the launch of Skype Pro. Skype Pro is a new Internet communications package offering zero cents per minute calls to domestic landlines along with a series of premium Skype features and discounts on Skype Certified™ hardware.

Skype's popular features such as video calls from one Skype user to another, sending instant messages, transferring files, conference calls for up to 10 participants or joining in Skypecasts (live moderated conversations with up to 100 people) remain free to all Skype users across the world. Skype users can also use Skype to make free calls from one Skype account to another.

"With Skype Pro, we're making it easier for our 171m registered users to buy our paid for communications products. Skype Pro lets you call landlines and mobiles all over the world for exceptional value. The combination of Skype's free features with Skype Pro is very compelling. Along with zero per minute calling, Skype Pro includes free voicemail, a generous discount on SkypeIn numbers, attractively priced Skype devices plus five euros of SkypeOut™ credit when you sign up for five months. Skype Pro is a simple and cost-effective way for people to keep in touch with one another the world over," said Stefan Oberg, VP & GM of Telecoms at Skype.

From today, people can choose to pay a low monthly subscription of €2* and make zero cents per minute calls to domestic landlines in 15 countries in Europe. Skype Pro subscribers will also receive discounts on Skype Certified devices and accessories. Skype Pro's subscription package includes:

• Zero cents per minute calling to domestic landlines in [country] previously €0.017* per minute
• Free Skype Voicemail (normally €15* per year)
• €30 discount on SkypeIn™ numbers
• €5 Skype Credit included as part of the introductory offer (see below)
• A €30 discount on a Philips VoIP 841 cordless phone.
• A €10 discount on an SMC WiFi phone.
• Additional discounts on a series of Skype Extras are also available including desktop sharing, avatars, emoticons and ring tones

* 15% VAT is added where applicable and all Skype Pro calls are subject to a small connection fee of up to € 0.039 per call.

For a limited time only, you can purchase Skype Pro on a five month basis for €10 and receive €5 Skype credit absolutely free. After this introductory period, customers can continue with their subscriptions for just €2* a month.

Skype Pro will initially be available across Europe in the following countries:

• Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK

Skype Pro will be rolled out to Australia and New Zealand shortly and then to other countries worldwide later in 2007.

The European Interactive Advertising Association's (EIAA) 2006 Mediascope Europe Study has found that 45% of Internet users in Europe now go online every day of the week, which demonstrates the increasing importance of the Internet in our everyday lives and its growing role as an engagement medium among European consumers.

The average European Internet user now spends 11 hours 20 minutes a week online compared to 10 hours and 15 minutes a week in 2005, an increase of 11%. With this increase, the average European is now online 5.4 days a week. The study also demonstrates that 15% conduct calls via the Internet - a growth rate of 50% from last year.

As the world's largest Internet communications community, Skype is committed to giving its users the ability to set their conversations free at home, at work and on the move. It is focused on further developing its ecosystem of more than 50 hardware partners and more than 160 Skype Certified devices to broaden the appeal of Skype to a wider base of users who want to use Skype away from the PC, no matter where they happen to be. This is especially true for Skype users who want to take advantage of the mobile Skype experience, which is already accessible to more than 5 million Skype users on over 120 different Windows Mobile Smartphones and pocket PC devices.

For more information about Skype Pro, please go to http://www.skype.com/products/skypepro/

Footnote:

** All SkypeOut calls, including calls made by Skype Pro subscribers, are subject to a connection fee. For details on the connection fee, go to http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/connection_fee.html.

** Skype Pro is reserved for residents within [Country] making calls to landline telephones within [Country] and does not include calls to any mobile, premium, special or other types of non-geographic numbers.

About Skype

Skype is the world's fastest-growing Internet communication offering, allowing unlimited free voice, video and instant messaging communication between users of Skype Software. With over 171 million registered users, Skype is available in 28 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. Visit Skype at www.skype.com.

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

Access to a broadband Internet connection is required for Skype and all Skype Certified devices and accessories. Skype is not a replacement for your traditional telephone service and cannot be used for emergency calling.

Skype, SkypeIn, SkypeOut, Skype Me, Skype Certified, Skypecasts, associated logos and the "S" symbol are trademarks of Skype Limited.

###

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

OnState's Web-based ACD for Skype 3.0 Brings 20 Years of Enterprise Call Center Experience to the Small Medium Enterprise (SME) Market

What changes to Call Center infrastructure and business model can be wrought if you combine

• A team with over 20 years experience as seasoned call center solution provider executives in the enterprise call center market
• Recognition of voice as an Internet application
  • with a complete implementation of the Voice 2.0 Manifesto
• Integration of a call center solution with the web
• Partner with Skype to incorporate an ad hoc IM =>Voice => Desktop Sharing protocol
• Redefinition of the call center business model while keeping enterprise-class features
• Think of Skype applied as a marketing tool

Today marks the official launch of OnState Communiations' OnState ACD for Skype 3.0 - a unique offering that delivers enterprise-class call center robustness at a disruptively low price point. To quote their OnState ACD for Skype press release:

The OnState Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) solution is a fully integrated, Skype Certified™ third-party application, which is available as a Skype for Business Extra. OnState ACD for Skype does not require installation, hardware or special software yet it delivers enterprise-class customer contact management capabilities spanning services such as skills-based routing, chat, click-to-call Web integration, interactive voice response, and reporting. OnState ACD for Skype is part of a suite of OnState Intelligent CallCenter solutions for Skype solutions to be rolled out in the coming months.

Call Center solutions are not simply extended PBX's that can handle multiple phone lines but rather an complete customer interface business management infrastructure that takes what is known about the caller (whether a sales enquiry, a technical support call or a customer service issue) and matches that caller with an appropriate resource within the called business. For instance, a business website could take information gleaned from a customized SalesBuilder dialog with the visitor and route it in real time to, say, an appropriate, product specialist (whose geographical location is irrelevant). 

• The intelligent routing involves not only the responder's skill set but also his/her current availability.
• Business rules, queue management and Instant Messaging play a large role in the ACD solution.
• Any customer can access a web-marketed business via this solution whether via Skype or via the PSTN combined with SkypeIn
• If chat is involved, OnState's  ACD provides a web-based chat window for the non-Skype caller.
• A more complete discussion of how it works can be found here.

What is the role of Skype? From their website:

The actual conversation between your customers and employees is always through the Skype network, and not OnState. Skype is providing the network and services for your customers and employees to communicate. OnState is providing the logic to ensure that the right customer is connected to the right resource and adapting in real-time to changing business and environmental conditions.

OnState's ACD for Skype represents a true Voice 2.0 implementation in that it leverages voice as an embedded communications tool combined with business rules, call queuing and other communications modes (such as Unyte's Desktop Sharing). From the Voice 2.0 Manifesto:

Voice 2.0 is a user-centric view of the world.  In Voice 2.0, "it's all about me" -- my applications, my identity, my availability. Voice 2.0 is all about developers too -- the companies that exploit the platform assets of identity, presence, and call control.  It's not about the network anymore.

At the highest level OnState's ACD can be viewed as turning Skype into a mission critical marketing tool.

Oh yes - that disruptively low price point: when the subscription service launches in late March: $29.95 per agent per month.

A follow up post will comprise a discussion of how OnState's ACD can be used by eBay resellers as a Skype-based marketing tool.In the meantime you can check out the free trial available via Skype Extras Gallery (Tools | Do More | Get Extras | Business) or directly from the OnState website.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

[Editor: Skype Journal friend and blogger, Jan Geirnaert, went to the International Telecommunications Union Fair in December 2006. We'd planned to run his coverage but it conflicted with some of our down time. So here is Jan's first installment.]

Some quick notes. I have been running around here on the ITU fair in Hong Kong. Interesting event. It is a pity I could not "clone" myself in order to visit the 3G Congress at the same time or even attend simultaneously the same speeches, keynotes and slideshows. After all, these are all quite standard. Maybe the telecom guys will in the future (or they already have) invent something to give me live viewable access to these events. Or do they, because actually it would be enough to link just one good existing camera system (call it live press or video-feed) and link it up to Skype.

But I have some gut feeling that that is not what telecom guys want to do. Anyway, it is good to be there in Hong Kong at the ITU event, following what is going on in the industry.

I did not see any booth of Skype, which is not a surprise to me. I did see in a small corner a company showing a Skype / DECT dualphone. What I did see is the guys from FON.COM being represented here on this fair.

Which brings us to another topic, which is what cellco's and telco's will do when disruptive technology creeps past the walled gardens. We all know Skype is a master in bypassing firewalls and switches. Is this the advent of the Skype Blocking Devices? I think any good business plan will and should certainly investigate in keeping the network traffic for their preferred VoIP solution. It would be great to have a free or affordable mesh WiFi network in the future. After all, the current 3G / GPRS is expensive and slow. Ever tried to surf on a web page with your PDA or cellphone? No sensible person will do so. Sorry. Wrong concept. Maybe we are all hyped up here. Maybe we should all look at what is really needed and possible, and wanted. Let's move on.

My point is that if, during one week, a fair can create free WiFi for the users, they can also do it for a year, for a bigger population and for a bigger region. Welcome wimax and WiFi.

Communication should be free. Content should be affordable. Maybe the illegal copying and piracy will go away when the price per unit is not so high as it is now.

Then again consumers, users want to choose. Internet providers have to learn, on the level of content, that blocking is never a good idea to retain your customers. Nobody likes to be a prisoner.

Speaking for myself. I am running around here in Hong Kong and I am being "ripped off" by GPRS and ROAMING costs. In the hotel they charge me 100 HKD per 2 hours of Internet, and it is not even 2 volume hours. It is like "start using at hour xx and the time starts ticking." My point is that I prefer to pay a flat fee for a monthly amount of traffic, whether it is WiFi or GPRS. And roaming costs, well I don't like that. Now follow this, I went to the Vodafone-store to get a Hong Kong simcard which will give a number in Hong Kong, but again all kinds of limitations arise like call barring and stuff like that.

Summary: I would like to have a WiFi or wimax in this city so I can check wether there is a WiFi signal before I have to get GPRS (which is not fast enough to work with Skype). I also think there might be a chance some latency will be added to the free WiFi/VoIP system that "roam" on the network of others. After all, you want your customers to buy what you sell.

Anyway, we can summarize for today (the days are short and intense here in Hong Kong, there is really not much time to blog) with the observation that free WiFi works in the Media-center and on the ITU fair and, well, I hope that in the future one will see this for the whole city of Hong Kong. Telecoms will become Internet providers, Internet providers will become Telecoms, so the fighting can stop and we shall all benefit. Maybe I am dreaming. Are you?

Here are some questions that I might ask (with the risk of being perceived as a trouble-maker, but the question I ask are to the point).  More on this later.

Posted by Jan Geirnaert at 07:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations, Skype! Skype users downloaded the world's leading VoIP program 500 million times today. The current rate is 640 thousand downloads a day, according to Skype data. Adrian Cockcroft observed Skype downloads spike to a million a day during major upgrades. If that rate doesn't change, Skype will cross the billion download mark early in 2009.

Chart by にゃにゃん．と

The latest:

• 171 million user accounts
• 3.5 to 9 million users connected at any one time

Vonage execs dismiss Skype's large user base as not-comparable to theirs. They ask how users that pay for a service, that trust you with their credit cards, are like customers without commitments?

Skype is challenging that opinion. Skype's announced pricing plans may bring some of their customer base into a Vonage-style relationship, monthly payments and all. This migration won't change download rates, but it should boost the number of users connected to the Skype network. It will boost Skype's revenue this year.

What can Skype do to increase virality?  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

春回大地

The Great Firewall still blocks Skype Journal from surfers inside the country. I chatted up 80+ Skypers from all over China to confirm. Skype gives up an error: "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage."

No idea why.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's my first trip to 3GSM, the mega-shindig of the GSM CartelAssociation (shh, Martin, they're a sponsor of yours -- only kidding guys, really).

And wow, I can tell you all three G's of 3G are hot:

• GGGuerilla Marketing. Chocolates, dancers, strange costumes, segways, mints and mimes. Err, and piles of our own event leaflets secreted in special places (but you guessed that, didn't you). Although nobody had the cojones to bring their duct tape and put some ads above the boys' urinals.

• GGGirls. I guess "content" is easier to spell than "naked chicks cavorting with beachballs". We're not in Kansas any more, son.

• GGGuns. Only conference I've been to where all bags go through an X-ray machine on entry which nobody is watching whilst you walk around the security hoop with the semtex and Beretta in your jacket pockets. As the attendant said to me: "It's a little bit random."

The whole event appears to be a form of self-flagellation where over-dressed businessmen (and telecom is 99.386% men) spend 40% of the day sweatily barging past each other along the sunny boulevard in a frantic rush between meetings. A bullfight without bulls. All we need now are the tomatoes for the handset vendors ("We're the product, you're just the truck") to throw at the operators ("we're the product, you're just the box").

Martin indulges in other feats of self flagellation at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 04:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype Journal Labs' new SuperDuperNodePlex for Skype was not selected for Om Malik's Launch Pad at the O'Reilly ETel Conference (co-sponsored by Skype Journal). I imagine he'd say "We only feature real products, Phil. Not imaginary ones."

The SuperDuperNodePlex for Skype is an appliance to be installed just outside corporate firewalls in network demilitarized zones (DMZs).

Problem:

Worldwide supernode shortage. Firewalls mess with Skype's directory (white pages), presence (is Harry online?), and connection (connect my computer to your computer through the skype network) services. More and more SOHO users have firewalls and all mid- and large companies use them, keeping nodes from becoming supernodes. All this firewalling creates a shortage of supernodes in the network.

Opportunity:

Skype is selling into the workplace in 2007 and 2008. As IT managers deploy Skype, they'll want to support those users. Ideally, they'll want lots of nodes available to become supernodes. They'll want those supernodes to be logically and physically close to their users.

Solution:

The SuperDuperNodePlex for Skype!

• A box with many running instances of Skype.
• Provisions those nodes with unique but dummy accounts.
• Sets their presence to "online"
• Sets prefs so they won't receive phone calls or messages from strangers
• Drop that box in the corporate DMZ, outside the firewall
• Admin pages show status and history of the instances
• Subscription service keeps the Skype and admin software current

Not available anywhere at any price.

Have fun. Hope to see you at ETel.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Third Thursday's social media and PR meetup featured speakers from meme/brand measurement firms Nielsen Buzzmetrics (the makers of the beloved BlogPulse), Buzzlogic, OpinMind, and Biz360. In general, the theory is you can only manage (pronounced "control") what you can measure. So these companies spider the web blog and MySpace data and rent their human tea leaf readers to interpret that data.* [Correction: Only Buzzmetrics and Biz360 have humint; Buzzlogic and OpinMind are fully automated.] These folks want to tell you how your company, products, presidential candidate, or trademarks are showing up in "social media."

They can do this because of the "permalink." Permalinks freeze a moment of web conversation, binding it to an url. Skype doesn't have permalinks of conversations past. Skype only leaves that sort of record in desktop archives and Skype's login and billing records.

Until now.

Links to Skype public chats and Skype Me links are showing up on web pages. But these are only pointers to people or conversations; not records of the conversations themselves. 

Yet Skype talk is closer to a marketer's holy grail.

• Live conversation is less filtered, less calculated, and more trusting than "content" "created" for public consumption.
• Live talk reflects our social and professional networks more closely than our blogrolls and "friends" lists ever do.
• While blogged opinion about your brand is more discoverable and enduring, the opinions shared friend-to-friend in private have more immediate impact and affect the relationship.
• Most of all, live conversation is closer to "action" and "engagement" than nearly anything else you'll see cataloged and dissected by the marketing metrics crowd.

So they don't, they can't, track IM or Skype buzz.

Yet.

I'm waiting for an Alexa-style Plug-In for Skype, where people volunteer to share archives and call patterns. Anonymized, of course, and with other privacy concerns addressed.

So when marketers ask "what are people saying about us," researchers can tell them.

p.s. The metrics firms only look at English language social media. Memes build up in one culture only to leap fully formed into another. The lexicographic and semantic challenges of parsing other languages for and tracking the flow of ideas among them are as severe as the opportunity is rich.

p.p.s. buzzword of the night: James Kim of OpinMind tossing off "sentimeter;" a gauge that measures blogger sentiment on a topic. Skype scores 76% pro and 24% con.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An advantage of having a parallel personal blog to your day job blog is you can put your cards on the table and not have to pretend to offer some neutral event moderator position. So this, for the record, is 100% personal opinion.

David Isenberg's next Freedom to Connect conference is coming up. I've managed to make his spring events for the past 3 years, but I'm away so much at the moment it just isn't fair to abandon my wife with two overdemanding offspring for yet another week. So I'm going to have to give it a miss this time, which is sad. Because although I and David probably have quite divergent political beliefs, we're on common ground when it comes to "What is 'the network' for?".

It's for people to speak to each other, freely and openly, about anything, in any medium and manner we can imagine.

Anyone going to F2C looking to find someone to make their next deal with, or to discover some hot new technology or investment trend, is likely to be disappointed. It's really about people who are passionate about human communications and the industries that enable those transmissions. How can you tell if you care enough to be there? Easy, you'll burn the frequent flyer miles and sleep in a doorway if your boss refuses to fund the trip. And you'll get out of it exactly as much as the effort you put in to meet interesting people and learn something new.

Rather like the pharmaceuticals business, the American telecoms market goes a long way to building the supplier scale and revenues that makes the rest of the world's communications affordable. It matters to outsiders. It's also been a crypto-cartel; an OPEC of packets, not barrels. On one hand, it is unlike OPEC, as it's a result of a game theory equilibrium position for RBOCs to maintain non-compete, rather than any explicit collusion. On the other, it is like the energy industry, where centralisation spawns of more "edge-centric" alternative technologies. For the US telecom industry, this is the creation of alternative ownership models, with lots of muni network activity. (Come to the Digital Town sessions of the next Telco 2.0 event where I'll be covering some of this with a Euro-centric focus.)

In other words, the subjet matter, matters. To everyone.

Not that you need to agree with either the diagnosis of the problems nor the remedy. I'm on the record as being deeply anti-regulation with respect to network neutrality. It's an ineffective (indeed counter-productive) palliative. I'm also only a tepid enthusiast for muni net experiments -- I like voluntary collective action and free markets, and dislike taxation and coercion.

Yet the idea any self-starting kid could grow up in a home and not have access to broadband scares me. (I'm probably a socialist for kids and an anarcho-libertarian for adults. Give 'em free and large healthcare and education vouchers for 18 years, then tell them to get lost if they can't make the best of it.)

There are already clear and serious abuses of free speech, such as Verizon's FiOS terms that forbid criticism of Verizon, or the Great Firewall of China (which affects you too, my dearest reader, should you ever wish to be heard by a billion Chinese). "Freedom to connect" isn't a hypothetical concern.

Which kind of leads me to my confessional. Most of the arguments around networks centre on economics -- the cost of this access technology, the subsidy to that service. That's fine to a point, but economic systems exist in symbiosis with political ones. Politics and technology are an explosive combination. Giving everyone a printing press is important, to the extent that truth becomes harder to suppress, and feedback to actions eliminated. I'm awfully tempted to slip in a Monty Python quote here:

Dennis: Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
King Arthur: Bloody peasant!
Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw him, Didn't you?

What I want isn't just YouTube arbitraging my uplink bandwidth. I want every repressed peasant, every Rodney King video, to be given free reign. Would so many of the crimes of the 20th century have been comissioned so easily with a populace armed with videophones? Would Rwanda have happened if every village onslaught had been uploaded to the Net in real time?

On a lesser scale, I want the unsanitised truth: show me a fox hunt, a drug user shooting up, a mugging on the Tube. Show me the real world, not one approved by the unseen censor. My evening news bulletin isn't a showbiz spin-off. It's a sequence of "me TV" snippets from pro to complete amateur centred around my life, my interests and my neighbourhood.

My dream: no media too large to attach to a message of "Did you see this?" and send to all your friends -- directly. It's about a post-democratic society. We don't elect a "great them" to oversee a "little us". We're all permanently networked into a web of action and reaction. No viewers, readers, listeners; no audience share, market share; only participants and mindshare.

It won't all be pretty. New digital narcotics like online games will no doubt leave a trail of addiction, frustration and broken lives, just as previous audiovisual distractions have done. Technology can't re-wire human nature. Suffering and atrocity will continue as usual, just not over on channel 20.

In my Telco 2.0 day job we're taking the view of the operators and vendors looking to progress their business models. (One unkind wag said "turning dinosaurs into mammals", but I'll let you be the judge of that.) You have to be part of the system to influence it. There is no revolution to join.

Freedom to Connect is unique in that it's not beholden to anyone's commercial interest, and comes nearest to being the forum for discussing the public interest.

Telecom's changing. Danish, Irish, French and Dutch regulators over here are getting out the sharp electric carving knife from on top of the cupboard to hack up more of their infrastructure. The developing world is abuzz with wireless connectivity. Spectrum restrictions that impose a small number of gatekeepers to the form of online speech are being loosened. New "Capitalism 2.0" means of network production are being created.

Freedom to connect. Did you see it coming? Did you see it? Did you?

Martin draws parallels at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype Journal reader Arcadio Pesqueira Osuna called me last week. A 23-year-old software engineer from Mazatlan, Mexico (average February low is 67 degrees Fahrenheit), Aracadio works in Charlotte, North Carolina (34F/1C).

He'd been using minute stealer Futurephone to call his girlfriend in Guadalajara. "Sometimes I called Mexico for more than an hour daily with perfect voice quality, but their service is no longer available..." Then Futurephone shut its doors. "They didn't have a revenue model that could sustain free calls for a long period of time."

So Arcadio switched to Skype.

"I use Skype daily (pc to pc) to call my girlfriend in Mexico. And sometimes I buy SkypeOut to call my parents in Mexico to their landlines."

Love triumphs over tariffs.

About Mexican access to Skype: "I think that Skype is way overpriced for Mexico." Mexican SkypeOut costs five times Skype's global rate. While the global rate is about 2 cents per minute, it only applies in Mexico City and Monterrey. It's 3 cents in Guadalajara but it's 10 cents everywhere else in Mexico, and 33 cents to mobiles. "Sometimes it is cheaper to call the States from Mexico than calling a Mexican cell phone."

Broadband to the home is expensive too. Only 19% of Mexico's 108 million people have any internet access. Could Telmex's near monopoly be keeping prices high, mobile adoption up, and broadband adoption slow?

On his Skype wishlist? "Introduce a USA/Latin America deal. There's a whole lot of people from Latin America in the States that would rush to buy a package in which they can call back home. And on the other end, people from latin America would like to also have an unlimited plan to call the States. The 29.95 plan [unlimited United States and Canada] is awesome, but it's a shame that only can be used inside USA/Canada. It's kind of a waste because almost everyone here has unlimited nights and weekends."

See also:

• Wikipedia: Communications in Mexico, Broadband Internet Access Worldwide
• Telmex: Telefonos de Mexico home page, Telmex USA USA-Latin America calling cards, Telmex on Google Finance
• Paul Kapustka: FuturePhone, a Thing of the Past?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Trolltech's Qt (pronounced cutey) is one of the programming tools Skype used to be so cool, and so cross-platform. In addition to Windows, Mac, and Linux, their Qtopia is used in some embedded devices, like the Sony Mylo.

Here's a slide show overview. 

Check out the QtCenter.org developer community. You can talk with Trolltech at 3GSM Barcelona this week and the ETel - Emerging Telephony Conference Skype Journal co-sponsors.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am constantly amazed at the number of businesses I encounter who have worked Skype into both their internal and external communications activity. Introducing any communications system into a business requires customization to incorporate the various tools into the business processes of the individual enterprise. Skype has recently upgraded its administrative tools for the Skype Control Panel; there is a Business category in the Skype Extras Gallery. Facetime recently announced a partnership with Skype to provide "end-to-end security, management and control of Skype to ensure its safe and productive use within organizations".

But how does it all come together? Skype recently held its first Showcase for Business and featured as a case study the integration of Skype into the operations of Lewis & Hickey architects. This video demonstrates that it's not simply about voice communications but rather the overall communications platform incorporating voice, chat, file transfer and video into their business processes. Sounds like they are also becoming viral salespersons for Skype as their clients are starting to adopt Skype.

We are looking for ways to get first hand experience with Skype for Business and hope to soon be able to report on its effectiveness through participating in an implementation.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've checked with Skypers in Shanghai and elsewhere. Haven't been able to see it for a few weeks. Can you comment on your experience?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Google, Microsoft, AOL, and now Yahoo! blending their instant messengers with their email services. So their members get:

• One web, mobile, or desktop client to use your email and chat
• One view of a relationship, spanning conversations across media
• One contact/buddy/address book
• One presence
• One alerting policy
• Integrated alias/pseudonym/profile management

Can you spell "customer lock-in"? Your Yahoo! identity is good for job search, dating, picking television to watch, and running your store. It's also your calling card to Yahoo! groups and other social forums.

How about "time savings" and "lower cognitive burden" and "more mode choices" and "better relationships"? Kevin Tofel says seeing a contact online lets you shift from sending an email to starting a chat session. Brad Linder describes how draft email text follows you into a new IM chat.

How long before email becomes a required messenger feature?

del.icio.us tags: skypejournal, skype, aol, aim, google, gtalk, googletalk, livemessenger, yahoomessenger, yahoo!messenger, im, chat, unifiedmessaging, messenger, yahoo!, yahoo

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

In the first post in this series I provided examples wherein two companies are using similar logos:

Yet only one,.PDT/VoIPvoice, has registered the trademark but the other, Cisco/Linksys, has been using its version for the past 18 months at least. Of course lots of publicity has been given to Cisco's trademark infringement suit over Apple's use of the iPhone label for similar products sold into the telephony market.

In light of this coverage and the subsequent statements that came from Cisco in a blog posting by Mark Chandler, Sr. VP and General Counsel, it becomes interesting to imagine what PDT could be thinking to say about Cisco/Linksys:

In the CNet article referenced above, Bruce Sunstein, co-founder of the Boston law firm Bromberg & Sunstein, is quoted: "Cisco holds a clear advantage in the [iPhone] legal dispute as the trademark holder of record and having already released products using the iPhone name .... The one who has a registration is in a better position than the one who does not."

And the article goes on to state:

In the U.S., courts evaluate trademark disputes based on a list of 13 factors, including how similar the trademarks are, how well-recognized they are--and, crucially, whether there will be "any actual confusion" on the part of consumers.

Sounds like PDT can build a case against Cisco/Linksys' use of the VoIPvoice logo using:

• customer and market confusion
• products that are direct competitors in the same market
• a violation of PDT's trademark rights
• prior registrations in both the U.S. (provisional) and the U.K. (accepted 2002)
• significant ongoing sales of VoIPvoice products in both the E.U. and U.S. (and, in fact, worldwide via the Skype Store)

With respect to the last point there is no confusion over whether PDT had "abandoned" use of the VoIPvoice logo. A post by ZDNet's Ed Burnette reports some experts seem to feel may be the case with Cisco/Linksys' use of the iPhone trademark. PDT has been continuously selling VoIP phones under the VoIPvoice name for at least the last three years. In the author's follow-up article, Jay Behmke, a partner at CMPR who specializes in trademark law, is quoted. "Registration of a trademark is not the crucial issue. Trademark rights come from use. Registration only recognizes the rights you have obtained from use."

[Note: in these articles reference is made to the "recent" application of an iPhone sticker to the Cisco packaging. For the [now iPhone] CIT200 I purchased in December, 2005  (which makes use of the VoIPvoice logo as illustrated in my previous post), there is no iPhone logo or label on either the product or any of the collateral in my possession.]

In a recent development, Cisoc/Linksys has taken out a full page "iPhone" ad in the New York Times (Feb. 1) but there exists significant skepticism as to the real purpose of the ad. Hat tip also to Janet Whitman in the NY Post and  textually.org.

In the final post of this series we will interview an executive of PDT as well as seek a response from Cisco/Linksys.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Most of us know what happens when you stir up a hornets' nest. They come after you. The clamor from Skype customers will reach a roar in just a few more weeks. Most of Skype's customers are blissfully unawares that they have just been sprayed with Raid (a bug killer). This dealthy spray may lay waste to Skypeland in just months.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about the cost of Skype Calls. Effectively without telling you Skype has raised the cost of every Skype Call. They call it a connection fee. So you make a less than 30 second call and leave a quick voicemail. In the good old days of SkypeOut this action cost you 2 cents. You would probably be surprised to learn that today the same call will cost 6 cents. Not much if all your calls are one hour long. A huge amount if the other person isn't there.

That is where Skype screwed up on all their logic. They said.. everyone makes long calls and they will never notice. Well this user has noticed. I've been stirring up a few buddies in the background too. I've spoken to no one that thinks it is really smart. The reasons why stories are just crap. When Gizmo lets me call for 1 cent per minute in the US why even contemplate getting hit for six cents just to find out if they are there.

Come on Skype!

The most popular message on Skype is "can you talk now". What does that tell you. It says that people want to manage their interruptions and be polite. It also says that the most efficient way to connect with someone is send a text message. So what happens. We now penalize  the user that wants to call using Skypeout. We increase the risk factor that the failure a voice mail box will be costly. Which now costs three to four times as much.. Crazy! It's the biggest incentive yet found to encourage users not to use Skype. See if your friend isn't there. Resort to mobile plan and SMS them. Skype SMS is just too expensive and not two way. 

It's worse... Skype didn't communicate this to me.  I am fairly sure about this. They certainly didn't force a note into my client like they do for other services the first time and the second time they tried to charge this. No warnings.  Then I do get a lot of emails. Skype one's aren't high on the agenda. So I'm like everyone else in this regard. I really have no idea.... I also have a US address registered with them for SkypeOut. They are sending me $14.95 deals / offers which as I've spent the month in India I could not buy. Plus even if I had, I'd still get the connection fee hits when I'm in places like India, the UK or New Zealand.

This new charging structure is basically an additional tax levied on users. It's a pure profit play. It obviously relates to payouts, revenue, profits and bonuses related to the Ebay payout. A few billion. Get the details elsewhere.

I bet most users never even look at their account and call logs and see how much they were charged. However, they soon will. The new charges mean your balance will go down more quickly. It's also visible on the client. 6 or 8 cents for a call just over a minute to leave a voice mail will quickly be picked up.

I'm not even going to bother linking to the other posts I've seen on a few people trying to figure this out. You can also go and read the comments on Skype's own blogs. The views mimic this sucks.

My observation and advice is simple

Skype screwed with your rates and the basic deal that you thought you had with them. They have done a lousy job communicating it and the impact on you.

I could calculate the impact on my own bill for the last six months or year. Not really worth my time. Simple conclusion. Look for another VoIP provider for calling out. Skype is certainly no longer the best value for money. Connection charges like these are not consumer friendly. They were designed by Telecoms to make more money.

What did I just say? Schemes like this were designed by Telecoms to make more money. What does that mean? It means that Skype has sold it soul and now believes it is a telecom.... Shame really. It wasn't the dream the users had for Skype or the reason they supported Skype. Then they just changed the tagline too. Some bs is flying around the blogs about that too. No need to comment further here.

If my previous post wasn't crazy... Maybe that's just enough reason for Nokia to embrace and try and push forward SIP for the mobile world. In the end the mobile will determine the desktop. We've been through a short period in time where the desktop defined the future of VoIP. Skype was that story. Time for everyone to focus on what next. And it is not really about rates; it is about services.

In the meantime those of you that still watch for and read my blog... Watch your pennies and keep an eye on the Skype fine print; because you now have a company that happily slips it by you.

For me it is a clear strategic mistake. It seems caution and good business sense was also thrown to the winds in this one.

Technorati Tags: skype, SkypeOut, voip, charges, customerrage

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype Forum moderator Ike Roelfsema's Varras Consultancy is hiring Skype-based secretaries. Varras, a small, virtual firm, delivers office services over the Internet. You might be right for the gigs if you work in the Dutch, UK, or California time zones and meet the other requirements. 

Technorati tags: skypejournal, skype, varras, job, jobs, career

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seems like there were requests for more details behind the issue whereby Skype's Plug-In Manager had the ability to read your BIOS and motherboard serial number. As a result Kurt Sauer, Skype's Chief Security Officer, has expanded his post of yesterday with some additional explanation of how they ended up with this problem.

As a bit of background Skype has built into its Plug-In Manager flexibility in how users could license software from publishers who provide programs for the Extras Gallery. This involves selection by the publisher of Scope (Machine License or User License) and License Type (Trial period, One-Time Purchase, Periodic Renewal, Upgrade). I certainly experience these various options when keeping security software current (machine license, annual renewal) or upgrading applications such as WinDVD (User License, periodic upgrades), etc.

Kurt's expanded post ends with:

To enforce these license agreements, the EasyBits framework attempts to uniquely identify what physical computer it's running on. One way to do this identification is to simply read the serial number of the motherboard, which is often available through a public query to the BIOS.

It is quite normal to look at indicators that uniquely identify the platform and there is nothing secret about reading hardware parameters from the BIOS. The function calls to do this are public and are available to any software running on your computer. Of course, in line with our Privacy Agreement, Skype does not retrieve any of this data. It is only used by the EasyBits software to ensure that plug-in use complies with the appropriate license token or key.

Since we learned that EasyBits DRM did not perform well on some newer platforms, we updated the version of their framework with one that no longer attempts to read from the BIOS.

So it really seems that, in deciding to use a third party software module, someone forgot to check its capabilities against company policies. Sounds like a process issue in product management. Obviously once Skype personnel learned about this via a third party (isn't that how Microsoft learns about many of their security issues?), they fixed it quickly such that it does adhere to company policy. And hopefully their product management process will now include a step to check against adherence to corporate policy.

In the meantime, update your Skype (for Windows) to version 3.0.0.216.

(I have had previous experience with some of these third party modules in the course of beta testing; it gets really interesting when the third party loses version control of what they put out, two independent publishers use different versions of the same software and the module publisher forgets about backward compatibility -- whamo! -- both applications are out of commission.  Ran into that on a project a year ago in a couple of applications that address entirely different requirements in the healthcare field but both needed a scheduling module.)

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pranav T of PSP Updates shows that PSP firmware points to a not-yet-present Skype program.

"Checking the dump, there was no actual PRX by that name which means that the actual functionality is still being worked upon at this stage. And I don't think anyone's bluffing either. There have already been cases of Camera, GPS, and POPS PRXes being in the firmware long before the functionality was opened up."

They'll have to work out the bandwidth, connectivity, microphones, and audio codecs. When they do, we might see Skype-enabled PSP gaming. Or Skype's most popular embedded consumer platform.

A Skype spokesperson couldn't confirm or deny this story.

A version of Skype runs on the Sony Mylo. Skype Journal's Mylo coverage:

• Sony Mylo - In Stores Now...
• Sony Mylo -- First Impressions...
• Sony Mylo suffers from Sidekick syndrome
• Sony saves Skype 
• Skype on Mobile: Status Report - October 2006
• Memo to Skype Phone Product Managers
• Is Texting (SMS) Killing Chat?
• Eight Ways to File Transfer Using Skype
• Skype Starts to Build US Traction
• VoIP Phone Services -- Let's Keep It Simple

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Did you know that?

I've been following GIPS - Global IP Sound - for a few years now, and they've long been viewed as a - or the - market leader in IP voice processing technologies.

Well, on Monday, their re-branding went public, and GIPS is now Global IP Solutions. From what I can tell, this hasn't been picked up, at least among the bloggers, so this may well be news to you.

The name change reflects a few things. First is their broadened scope to include video processing, so this is now a multimedia story - hence the "solutions" moniker. Second, following their recent acquisitions of CrystalVoice and Espre Solutions, they are now entering the enterprise market. Good move.

Finally, to help educate the market more about what GIPS is doing, where they're going, and how they're doing things, they've launched a podcast series. Another good move! The series is called GIPS Real-Time, and the first segment is an interview with their CEO, Gary Hermansen. You can check it out here, and no doubt the podcast will be great vehicle to showcase their renowned sound quality.

Quick sidebar - I met with Gary during the ITExpo last week, so I had a heads-up on this. When asked what I thought of the name, I suggested Global IP Sight and Sound would be a better name. I think he liked that, but I suspect it was too late to use it. Oh well, at least he was nice enough to ask. Next time, call me sooner - I like my name choice better!

I'll be listening to the podcast soon, and you can expect to hear more from me about their new directions. At least you're now up to date. Back to work....

Technorati tags: GIPS, Jon Arnold

Posted by Jon Arnold at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever since Melissa (nom-de-blog: myria) posted Skype Reads Your BIOS and Motherboard Serial Number yesterday, the web has been alive with links to this post. Today we have learned that Skype has found that the Easybits software framework used for the plug-in manager was doing this as a form of digital rights management functionality.

To enforce these license agreements, the EasyBits framework attempts to uniquely identify what physical computer it's running on. One of the possible ways to do this identification is to simply read the serial number of the motherboard, which is oftentimes available through a public query to the BIOS.

Check out item 4 here for more details re DRM within the Skype Extras program.

As mentioned in today's Share Skype post linked above, Skype has "updated the version of their framework with one that no longer attempts to read from the BIOS." Download the updated version, 3.0.0.216 here. Kudos to Jaanus Kase at Skype for keeping all of us participating in the public Skype English Blog Chat informed in a timely manner; note that this chat has been running since mid-November.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Time to pose a fun theory tonight (when I finally seem to have a blogging mood back) and ask if Nokia has had a subtle hand in crushing Skype's mobile ambitions?

For a few months now my Wi-Fi mobility with the N80 has taken a step into VoIP land. Even before Fring I was beginning to ask myself... Why is it that Skype is not on Symbian? There were demos almost a year ago. Fring clearly proves that it's possible and works. So what's the deal?

Now put yourself in Nokia's shoes.

They are launching the most advanced Wi-Fi phones on the planet. The N-Series. In fact even Om says just yesterday or the day before that they have overshot the mark. I think not but that's another post.

Nokia wants these phones to have real impact in the business market. SIP is business. They also know it is going to take some of these global travelers just like me to say... whoa... this hotspot / WiFi thing is better than Skype. No more headset, back to a handset. It feels good. Voice quality ok. almost as good. Still as we fall back to phones and handsets because the cost now lets us, it feels good and natural. Note I've made about three SkypeOut calls in the six weeks. I've made many many calls by comparison on Truphone and GizmoVoip.

SIP to Win Mobile:

Oh... what did I say. I've made many calls on SIP. Ouch! It works! Ouch! It never worked as well as Skype on my desktop and I have so many buddies now on Skype... you can't convert me. Still boy oh boy I have SIP now all over my mobile. As of tonight it is full time active with GSM via Hutch, GizmoVoip and Truphone and Fring which means Skype and Gtalk. Gosh... the only buddies I may be missing are long lost on Yahoo or MSN. Doesn't really matter.

Open vs Closed:

Isn't SIP open? Isn't Skype closed? Aren't SIP to SIP calls generally free. It is in the SIPphone world. What do mobile users really want to do? Talk! What matters little to Nokia? The cost per minute. So... guess the users will chose. Who provides the best or cheapest SIP plan. Oh doesn't that create choice and competition. Plus isn't Symbian open (although the Nokia call manager is pretty structured - please open it up Nokia!)

SIP not Skype:

So you keep egging Skype along, as they are the gorilla in the park.. you feed them stuff that says don't need to be too early on this one and continue not only testing but launch with GizmoVoIP. Probaby help out the Frings and Truphones etc. Why. Nokia benefits from an open platform and communication market. Launching their Wi-Fi phones too soon with Skype would destroy that potential.

Maybe Skype knows and has buried their plans and gone back to aping the PSTN. Not sure. Still in Nokia shoes I'd keep it tough for Skype now as long as I can.  Every new purchaser of a Wi-Fi phone will soon know the benefits and think SIP or just VoIP.

Disruptive:

Did anyone say that VoIP on the mobile wouldn't be disruptive? You have got to be kidding. Accounts are as simple as a new chat account and the best services just let you use your gmail account. It's validated. Once you add your mobile and they send you the SMS so's your mobile number.

All of this is creating a new mobile operating environment. It will be as convoluted as the desktop with as many different services. Still SIP and Jabber eliminate many of those problems. So is Nokia big enough and the Mobile market fast enough to shift the whole VoIP world off Skype?

Okay have probably said the obvious now over and over. Nokia break out the Sippagne and I suggest putting free hotspots in every store you have in India in the next six months. Readers! They have a lot of stores in India and probably sold five million phones here last month. Do this throughout Asia and do it quick.

What Next?

Then what.... Nokia buys Gizmo and SIPphone and launchs Nokia Stores in the US and becomes their own MVNO. I change my phone to packet centric from Cellular. Prepaid minute plans here we come.

Technorati Tags: Nokia, n80, skype, fring, ommalik, wifi, gizmovoip, truphone

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Recall our "Note to Innovators: Market Thyself" post over the weekend triggered by Andy's VoIP Watch post on Why Some Innovate and Die, discussing the importance of marketing considerations in building a business. Alec Saunders has responded with several low cost suggestions for doing market research that don't involve hiring a Forrester or Gartner:

Bottom line, there are many ways you can do effective market research without having to spend a bundle of money.  Effective research will help you find the need and be customer focused.

Read the entire post for Alec's comments on customer focus, distribution models and the role of retail.

Garrett (Smith on VoIP) contributes insight, from his perspective as a largely web-based distributor of VoIP and related hardware, built around three themes:

• Marketers Create Products, Engineers Build Them
• Use Your Money to Build a Great Product; Then Sell It Online
• For Retail VoIP the Numbers Don't Add-Up

The last one comes from his experience with Vonage retail kiosks: As an example:

".... The vast majority of consumers you will encounter in a mall kiosk setting (or even at radio shack) just are not able to comprehend the technology. Not that it is that hard to comprehend, but from my own "market research" during the kiosk trial you wouldn't believe how many people think AOL "is the Internet."

Garrett goes on to talk about the difficulties of hiring experienced staff at the retail level and the role of subscriber commissions and ARPU in generating sales. Interesting perspective....

In case you missed its referrals on other (VoIP) blogs, check out VoIP News' "25 Tips to Improve Your Skype Experience". Some tips are simply pointing out features of Skype (Call Forwarding) while others are innovative applications for Skype (A DIY Home Security System). The "Silliness" section includes mention of a Voice Analysis Love Detector and a NotMyNumber Directory.

And you can read about the DemoCamp 12 event I attended Monday evening in posts from Alec Saunders, Matthew Ingram and Jon Arnold (who has video's of Alec's presentation). Two key rules for participation: 10 Minutes and No PowerPoints! Now if they WiFi link had been more robust...And if you're looking for a photo site that is for non-geeks, check out BubbleShare (whose Albert Lai presented an update on his Bubbleshare's recent sale to Kaboose). It is a prime example of the need for simplicity in consumer products. I speak from experience; several non-geek friends have been using BubbleShare to share family pictures via the 'Net.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have a look at these two logos:

Confused? While not the most high profile logos in the market, they both have been in use for at least 18 months in the VoIP market space but only the one with a five year history is registered. So who is using a logo similar to the VoIPvoice logo (above, left) owned by PDT (Promotion and Display Technology Limited), pioneer manufacturer of VoIP phone hardware under the VoIPvoice brand?

Check any CD included in the package for any of the Cisco's Linksys VoIP phones (woops, now iPhone) line - some of which are Skype Certified; check out the Linksys Product Guide (pp. 41-51) for their VoIP phone (now iPhone) product line. The photo at the right comes from the CD for the CIT200 that I purchased on behalf of a client in December, 2005. Note that is also includes both Linksys and Cisco logos. While not their primary logo, seems like Linksys/Cisco is also trying to build a brand around the term VoIPvoice.

In February, 2005, Skype Journal first made reference to PDT's VoIPvoice in a post about a new Firebox VoIP CyberPhone. April, 2005 saw the first review of PDT's VoIPvoice Cyberphone K in Digital Lifestyles' weblog.  In May 2005 Stuart Henshall reviewed the Cyberphone K he had seen at CES 2005. So when Cisco/Linksys first announced its CIT200 in August, 2005, Stuart Henshall assumed that Cisco and PDT had done some form of business arrangement due to Cisoc/Linksys' use of a very similar logo. Note that the Cisco VoIPvoice logo appears also on the "base station" in the accompanying picture of this product (in Stuart's post). Confusion commences!

In May 2006 I was introduced to the VoIPvoice Cyberphone line, including the CyberSpeaker W, the UConnect and the Cyberphone for Mac -- all imprinted with the VoIPvoice logo and wrote some reviews. Use of the VoIPvoice logo appeared on both the handset and the CD as shown at left. So now I had two different manufacturers' products using similar logos in my office.

Further use of this logo by Cisco/Linksys can be seen in the(Linksys) iPhone packaging picture in this recent Engadget post. And one of the comments reads:

Mike...look at the picture in the post. Cisco are using someone else's trademark! i use a voipvoice skype phone and their logo is exactly the same as cisco's! the trademark is registered to a uk company!

and cisco are complaining about someone else?

Seems like all the packaging, product and collateral materials have extensive use of this logo. Hmmmmmm. Time for some investigation.

First I did a Google Search on trademark registrations. Turns out that the VoIPvoice logo was registered with the UK Patent Office in September, 2002 (application filed in February, 2002). The domain name registration for voipvoice.com was also created in February, 2002. Checking out the USPTO registrations PDT filed a US trademark application in April 2006 (Serial No. 78863329). USPTO has issued an Office Action Letter (Sept. 30) which basically confirms their right to registration of  the logo (and specifically stating a search shows it had never been previously registered); however, there is an outstanding issue that is yet to be resolved regarding the exclusive use of the terms "VoIP" and "voice" in text.

In the next post in this series: a look at the arguments involving the use of the VoIPvoice logo and trade mark that parallel those used by Cisco in their claim against Apple for use of the iPhone name. In the last sentence, Cisco's SVP and General Counsel states:

"The action we have taken today is about not using people's property without permission"

(Note that last week Apple and Cisco agreed to resume negotiations over use of the iPhone name.) In a third post in this series, we'll interview principles of PDT and attempt to obtain comments from Cisco.

What are your thoughts? How do you feel PDT should approach this issue?

Full disclosure: I attempted to install the Cisco phone just over a year ago but could not get it to work and could not find any readily accessible technical support at the time; so it sits here. On the other hand, there are three major reasons I continue to use the VoIPvoice phones on my laptop:

• Installation is hassle-free; the product works straight out of the box; I have even had a couple of non-technical people install it successfully and start Skype calls.
• The VoIPvoice products handle Windows Sound Devices appropriately such that I can be on a Skype call while listening to Windows Media Player or my SlingBox. Effectively the VoIPvoice products have their own "sound card" whereas other Skype phone products I have tried either do not have that level of independence or have conflicts with an internal sound card on my laptop PC.
• When I am at home I plug in the UConnect and use my 12-year old Nortel phone for both Bell Canada and Skype calls. Pickup the phone, I'm on Bell; dial ** and I'm on Skype. When I go on the road, I carry the Cyberspeaker W - plug it into my laptop; it uses the same device drivers as the UConnect, and, with it, Skype becomes my long distance service in a hotel room or at any WiFi hotspot.

I also use an RTX Dualphone on my desktop PC; it is associated with the home phone line.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I also tried out Fring (see Stuart's previous post) on my blogger evaluation Nokia N80i phone via my home office WiFi connection (it could also work with GSM but never got the chance to try it out). I have also been trying out Truphone with some excellent success for about six weeks. First impressions of Fring:

The good:

• Can reach all my Skype contacts and have multiple chat sessions running.
• Can make SkypeOut calls to the Nokia's default Contacts (those synchronized with my Outlook Contacts, for instance)
• Can limit displayed Skype Contacts to only those who are online
• Made a few voice calls to Skype Contacts; good quality

The bad:

• User interface needs a UI guru - More than the Fring UI itself my major issues are with its integration into the overall N80i calling infrastructure. With Truphone, I simply have one more option on the standard phone calling menu beyond "Voice Call" (over GSM) and "Video Call" (well, we need the video calling infrastructure here in Canada yet), namely, "Internet Call" which puts the call through Truphone. Truphone can be set up to be the first service attempted prior to making a call over GSM.
• Not a single step process to access the Fring UI. Either hold down the Menu key and wait to see the active programs listed or look for it through your Menu | Tools | My Own menu system.
• No option to switch between "Handset" and "Speaker" mode. This is when I found I had a problem with the "Handset" speaker on my N80i which is being returned to Andy for repair or replacement.  (I could listen to a Fring-initiated call if I attached the N80i's earbuds.)
• Because they use different logos and can also access other services, such as Google Talk, it is difficult to determine what presence information is being provided. Very confusing.

As for the Chat activity, the good:

• Can have multiple chat sessions running; navigate amongst them via the 5-way Scroll/Select key.
• Synchronizes with chat sessions happening via a Skype client on the PC.

As for the chat activity, the (very) bad:

• Sounds that becomes very annoying: the audio clip that chimes for every chat message, whether sent or received. If you are in multiple active chat sessions, your phone could wear out its battery generating sound tones. Don't need the "fringing pinging" every few seconds. Use of a "vibrate" option would help.
• Also I would want to have a high volume or unlimited data plan to use this over GSM.
• Trying to enter long chat messages via a T9 keyboard. Skype Chat (or extensive chat activity via any IM service on a mobile device) is better suited to the Nokia E-series or Blackberries with their full keyboards. (Recall I am also a Blackberry user).

But here is the killer: if you are running Fring, with its synchronization to any Skype Chat sessions on your PC, you are blocked from doing Skype File Transfers via your PC Skype client. If you want to do a Skype File Transfer on your PC, you need to Exit Fring completely on your mobile device.  Seems that the Fring server virtually, if not in practice, blocks File Transfers.

Other questions:

• When will they be applying for Skype Certification?
• Is Fring using the standard Skype API's or have they access to Skype via some "back door"?

In summary, in its current beta state, Fring is a great opportunity to experience Skype IM activity via a Nokia phone and get some exposure to the UI issues as well as to issues that arise from incorporating IM into a road warrior's daily routine. But when will Skype actually have a true Skype for Mobile on Symbian platforms? Or will Fring address these issues and make it a more user friendly experience for the average consumer?

(I tried out Fring's Google Talk option also -- in fact first learned about Fring when Stuart sent me a chat message and it ended up in the Google Chat client on my Blackberry -- but I have very few (<10) contacts in Google Talk.)

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past eleven years I have been providing consulting services to startups related to business plans and business development activities. If there is one major sin of innovative startups, and roadblock to their success, it is their refusal to accept the need to involve experienced assistance with the development and growth of their markets, especially in the consumer space. Amongst the excuses:

• I don't want to give up control; [insert an statement about vulture capitalists here]
• My product/service should be obvious; why doesn't everybody just "get it"?
• My revenues don't allow me to spend on marketing.
• Research? I know what my customer needs!
• I just need a few more months and this thing is going to be a blockbuster!

Rick Segal can do this type of summary much more effectively than I; he sees many "innovative" ideas every day. "Today I had 9 no harm/no foul meetings, ..." But you get the point -- technology without appropriate marketing does not a successful business make. I personally got to a point where I would not consider a client if they did not want to include marketing in their plans and budget for marketing appropriately -- gets the freebie seekers off your back in a hurry.. And certainly I have never heard of any of these ventures becoming successful.

Andy at VoIP Watch attended DEMO 07 last week in Palm Springs; he obviously found frustration at the lack of consideration of the role of marketing amongst several of the presenters.

.... let's start with where the problems actually lays. A fundamental lack of knowing how to market to consumers that exists in so many companies that are trying to bring consumer products and services to market today.

He goes on to provide one of those rare reference posts listing nine key discussion points that are overlooked by innovative entrepreneurs when it comes to marketing considerations. Amongst the lines I like:

• .... And marketing requires real dollars. Demand either exists and that need can be satisfied, or demand has to be created.
• .... It's not about selling in. It's about selling through, ,,,,
• .... to sell through means you need to know thy customer. To know thy customer means to conduct two types of research.
• [About the lack of consumer centricity] .. It's not that consumers wouldn't want to buy and use them, it's just that they have too many challenges learning how and just give up.
• Distribution---the web is a lousy distribution outlet. I repeat. The web is a lousy distribution outlet.
• Retail is still important.

While at CES last month, I heard more than one vendor of Skype hardware express their frustration at the effort required to market their product into the North American retail channels. I think Andy's post is required reading for anyone who wants to be a significant player in the North American market. He makes some excellent points. Read it; then read it again! Good reading for Skype's internal marketing team also; more in a subsequent post.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just been playing with Fring. I wrote a post some months ago Fringing Interesting. It was a quick glance at Andy's blog today that told me to take another look.

Download and install was simple and easy to do. At first I couldn't get Fring to connect to my Skype Account or Google Talk. Their support department suggested that demand may have been a problem. Anyways tonight on my lousy home Indian broadband it connected. Initial call quality better than my recent calls with Truphone. And I've been swearing by Truphone. See my previous post. In a day in this world everything can change.

Possible Impact: (based on six hours of experience)

Anyone that has a Skype centric-life and has a N80 or appropriate Nokia, can connect with WiFi and manage the interruptions or the beeps will adopt this for their general Skype messaging around the home and office. I will turn Skype on my desktop off for the rest of the week and see how it goes. (This means that Skype has really blown it re mobile) Just obsoleted all those WiFi phones that are coming out. Why waste the $150 or so....

These elements are standouts.

The Mobile Integration: Nokia makes it hard to keep apps running in the background. Almost all other apps die as soon as you close them. Unless Nokia interrupts your browsing with the call manager you usually find yourself logging back in. Fring is best in class from what I've seen. You can disable the automatic startup (which I have although I'm not sure this will be necessary). Nothing like turning your phone on and knowing (what could quickly become) your favorite app is again up and running.

A simple hide brings you back to Nokia. Hold down the menu key and a the shortcuts appear and you are back straight into Fring. Very nice. For those that have messed with sorting out UI and navigation for an app that needs to run continuously in the background this is about the best you can currently do. Nokia doesn't provide a windows task bar type facility on their NSeries.

Chat. I constantly bleep about mobile chat and how everything from the lastest Nimbuzz to a recent test of Talkonit and other mobile chat programs all take you to a separate screen for text entry. The exception was Agile Messenger. Frings clearly taken a good look at the best in class.

Name doesn't show when I get an inbound call! What no caller ID!? Hard to believe. This is a huge potential problem. For it includes calls on my SkypeIn number etc. One of the things about Skype is it is clear who is calling. Maybe I am missing something. Still I don't think so.

What Channel?: I don't get the Fring graphics next to the names. Haven't read the directions so don't understand whether these are google accounts at times or Skype Accounts. As I have to decide which is the preferred channel you are making it difficult for me. I often have two names that look almost the same. Sent two messages to gmail accounts when I thought they were Skype accounts etc.

Characters: I have a few buddies whose Skype names don't use English characters. I have no idea who these people are in Fring. Similarly you can't currently rename them.

I've not imported my Nokia address book into Fring yet. It has 1400 records. I'm going to have to set up a smaller list to test that feature. Still the find buddy by search works easily. I don't seem to have all my Skype buddies yet in the list. Guess they will get there.

Implications:

What's the business model? See the Register. Not sure what to believe yet myself.

The interconnects are pretty interesting. Using SkypeOut may be a detriment to Fring with the latest changes in Skype rates and their addition of a calling fee.

Skype?: Skype has simply lost the high innovative ground. It's worth a separate post. Fring will enable something that Agile Messenger never managed. It's set up well enough already so you can hang out at hotspots and manage your buddylist and simpy chat. If I look at my kids and their SMS usage it would all transfer to chat if they could. WiFi enabled phones like the N80 will take time to proliferate. Still I'm now sorry that I bought my daughter an N73 and not an N80. Fring type programs may even be attractive to blackberry users. 

Why didn't Skype launch a Symbian mobile app? It's beyond me and yet I have a theory. I'm writing about that next. It may also answer the why Skype is going to miss this party.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Light reading to overcome SuperBowl hype prior to the actual game:

Garrett Smith interviews Ted Wallingford,"an enterprise systems consultant, a writer, a blogger, and an authority on Voice over IP", with comments on enterprise use of VoIP:

Smith: Do you think a service such as Skype will ever be suitable as a primary form of business communication for small medium businesses?

Wallingford: Not in its present form. It still has the fundamental drawback of being tied to a PC or Mac, in most cases. Plus, it's too secretive to become pervasive. There are no Skype techno-enthusiasts out there evangelizing it because Skype is keeping all its dirty secrets to itself. The inner-workings of Skype would have to be exposed in order for widespread business use to become common. If we knew how it worked, we could provide QoS measures, and then it would be an acceptable primary telephony solution for businesses. (They do have call-transfers now, with 3.0, which would've been mmy other gotcha...)

Read the entire post for Ted's interesting advice on implementation of VoIP into the enterprise.

Technology plays to watch: Andy has the scoop on the launch of Gizmo Call:

What makes this something cool is that you can make calls today and in the near future receive calls in a browser. That means you don't have to at YOUR computer, you can be at ANY computer.

More insight from Garrett Smith and GigaOm.

Remember eBay's announcement about working with Google and the speculation on how Skype and Google Talk would interoperate?. Not much heard lately but Paul Kretkowski theorizes on Google's VoIP Strategy; can Google be a game-changer?

If Charlene Li's speculation bears fruit and future Google Talk revs both capture and search voice traffic, this little IM client potentially changes the telecom business forever. Here are a few ramifications of digitally recorded, searchable phone calls:

Enjoy the SuperBowl (even if your country's cable regulations overwrite the SuperBowl ads with local content).

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Intuitive Desktop Sharing Application Bringing in Over 5,000 Installs Daily

WebDialogs has been offering beta versions of its Unyte desktop sharing application for Skype for over six months. However, with the release of Skype 3.0, Unyte has become one of the top downloads from the Extras Gallery resulting in over 5,000 installations daily. Simply doing a download is not sufficient for Unyte to count as an installation; Unyte requires that a user not only download and install the program but also initiate at least one session with a remote participant. Key to Unyte's success:

• Increased visibility and awareness through the Extras Gallery
• A positive initial user experience in not only downloading and installing but also in using the product.
• An intuitive user interface
• While a session host needs to download and install the 1MB client, participants in a desktop sharing session simply need any web browser (IE 6 or 7, Firefox, Opera) in any OS (Windows Mac, Linux) to view the shared desktop.

The screen above shows Unyte coming from Phil's desktop to my Firefox 2 browser. Note that there is one level of magnification to all viewing at the native resolution of the shared desktop (with panning).

The free version of Unyte provides basic desktop sharing for one-to-one sessions; it allows the user to get experience with its ease-of-installation and -operation. However, a paid subscription brings many additional features including:

• sharing with multiple participants (at the 5-, 10- and 25-participant level)
• selective application sharing; hide "confidential" applications from remote viewers
• remote control of the shared desktop (with security permissions, of course)
• pointer and annotation
• session scheduling
• salesforce.com integration

In an interview with CEO Lou Guercia, Skype Journal learned:

• Unyte is hosting over 7,000 sessions daily of previously registered users
• While installations are around 5,000, there are actually close to 8,000 downloads daily.
• Many users are taking up subscriptions within a day or two of their first experience with Unyte
• They do not have any server load issues as WebDialogs has many years' experience hosting their other web conferencing and desktop sharing services which are OEM'd through carriers such as AT&T and British Telecom.

Key to Unyte's adoption is the flexibility of communicating an invitation to view a shared desktop. Send invitations directly to your Skype Contacts simply by selecting their name from the Skype Invitations Tab. For non-Skype users, invitations can be issued via email, cut and paste via a non-Skype chat window or just by reading the information to your participant.

Bottom line is that the invitation process and operation is quite intuitive with a fast learning curve. While we have only had access to the free version to date we will be able to provide a more thorough review of the premium version shortly.

For a free trial of Unyte go to the Tools | Do More menu in Skype 3.0 and select Unyte Application Sharing from the drop down menu. Give use your feedback via the Comments.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A Google marketing executive woke up to really bad news last month: terrorists used Google Earth to target a bomb, killing British soldiers. Evildoers using your service is a tough headline.

Some day Skypers will watch a YouTube video of a horrific crime committed using Skype.

• A kidnapper calls in a ransom.
• Conspirators coordinate attacks.
• An orphanage burns down because emergency dispatchers couldn't understand a Skype Out call. 
• Terrorists force hostages to play backgammon.

eBay's been through this kind of thing. The next time someone tries to sell a body part or a nuclear trigger, you can watch eBay (1) look hard at the new facts then (2) respond quickly. Most of their challenges have been the kinds you'd expect. Some, like the December explosion on the eBay campus, you don't.

Is Skype ready for a strong defense told with humility, compassion, and conviction? Which talking points will best make Skype's case? Will Skype just defend their business (the "it's not our fault when customers cross the line"), or are they prepared to argue for the liberties of their hundreds of millions of Skypers? Should Skype embrace a rhetoric of free speech and privacy rights, and back it up with action?

We know any large population has some people who will do bad things. Same goes for Skype's growing network. I worry, just a little, that in the hurry to respond, Skype could miss an opportunity to define itself as more than a phone company. Skype can align itself with rich, culture-spanning values. 

AIESEC is a student run organization that runs a college student work exchange program. But at its core is the belief that helping young business people live and work and make friends in another country changes them. And that those changes can prevent wars. I encourage you to find and support a local chapter near you, They have a mission above and beyond their operations. A cause.

I won't pretend to know or understand Skype's or eBay's beliefs beyond those driven by commerce. But Skype is becoming more important in the world. Millions of netizens the world over bring Skype into their daily lives. And Skype, a private network, is changing our idea of what it means to stay in touch with someone, to make friends, to make a call.

The more Skype touches us, changes our lives, the more Skype has duties:

• To discover what this means to our humanity
• To master the articulation of that meaning
• To advocate for the values reflected within.

Values endure. As we debate Skype's brand and rate structure, let's remember that "values" are more than money. They fuel our allegiances, our actions, our choices. They frame our personal identity. They define how we think about companies and products.

Somewhere in here is an agenda item or two; for whom? I don't know. And this plainly applies to companies other than Skype.

Have a great weekend.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mobile VoIP update.  These are my impressions of GizmoVoip, Truphone, Talkster, and Jajah. I've been using and trying to use them all on my Nokia N80i, which I'm still raving about; especially the VoIP functionality. So how well do these programs work?

First a little perspective. I got them all working in the US over Christmas. As a family we began using GizmoVoIP to call New Zealand in preference to the usual SkypeOut as the Nokia provides an effective Speaker Phone capability. That was worth the extra call costs on these occasions. For the last few weeks I've been back in India. Frankly that is where the real tests and benefits begin. Saved a small fortune already.

At the apartment I have an Indian quality broadband connection; they claim 275K down and 150K up however this afternoon it was 70K down and I have no idea of the up speed. Sometimes I do see the higher speeds, still this is a long way from our office performance or what I get back in SF from Comcast. After some negotiating with our office network adminstrator (port 5060?) GizmoVoIP and Truphone both confirm connections at both places.

After the connection part there is really no comparison in services. Truphone works even when my bandwidth sucks. To far corners of the world it connects and I don't have any problems with just silence. You know where this is going. Nokia provides Gizmo as installed on the N80i. However, Truphone in my view has proven to be the much better service. It does have an advantage currently in calling to the US... (free through the end of March). Note not all my buddies have noted the same and I had my first bad call today Jim Courtney on Truphone.

By contrast GizmoVoIP seems to have a hard time connecting my calls. If bandwidth is tight then nothing definitely happens. As I have money to burn on Gizmo I'd like to use it. I just can't connect any calls. However, they still charge me for some of these attempts. I have a suspicion that these two approaches don't use the same audio codecs. I'm guessing that Truphone's is much more efficient. Ultimately, that's going to be important when HotSpots are overloaded.

Where else is Truphone better? It's much better in it's voice mail feature. It's now integrated into my Nokia speed-dial. works perfectly. Still there is an even more important aspect that seems simple enough. Truphone I think comes out of the UK. They understand how to dial internationally on a mobile. By contrast Gizmo doesn't. It's simple. I travel and most of my numbers are now entered and set-up to be +919899xxxxxx or +44208xxxxyyyy. Mobiles use the + to get to international. Gizmo wants you to use 00 or 011. By using + it doesn't matter if I specify internet or GSM call, the number works. All those + numbers need editing for me to call them from Gizmo.  This seems to contridict how mobiles work.

Now having knocked one versus the other. Truphone should come in for a few whacks too. This learning also applies more broadly. Truphone... selling there services to mobiles with Wi-Fi should have a mobile enabled site. While I managed to top up my account it is painful. Give me quickly a mobile.truphone.com. I don't care about fancy graphics. If I'm out of money I want to be able to add it fast from my phone. Gizmo is a step ahead in this regard also providing a link to the Gizmo directory and thus all those free sip numbers. With Truphone I think this is automatic. Still until the whole office is on it...

So how do these two services relate to the likes of Talkster, Jajah or Rebtel and why should I with a VoIP enabled mobile even be interested. First a little about my Talkster experience. Talkster is providing a very generous $5 with their testing at the moment. I tried a Talkster call to Indonesia and then followed with a Truphone call.  Again Truphone provided the better audio quality and service. (Note this was still using Truphone to call in to me)  Talkster allows you to choose whether you can call in and they will then call out for you. Or like Jajah they will call your phone and that of the party you wish to speak to... simply by clicking on a link.

First challenge. I wanted to call into Talkster using my Internet connection. Afterall it's a free call to the US.. why pay for that leg. However the link click launches my GSM (not sure if I turn my phone to VoIP first) and thus I set it to call me back on my US VoIP number. So I set it to call me and the other party. We connected, and the quality was adequate. Still the bonus of Talkster is I can enter numbers easily in my Nokia Phone browser. That means I can use it over a GPRS connection when necessary to make a call although I doubt I'd use this often.

In principle Jajah offers this too. Except their webpage provides buttons that simply can't initiate a call from my Nokia browser. Their mobile client doesn't work with the N80. Still, why do I need a mobile client? What I do need is a mobile friendly webpage.

Both these services seem to point to a service I'd expect to get from Truphone. Although really it's only really attractive for making international calls. How would I use it? Perhaps to direct calls away from my cellphone to a local number; eg friends house, office etc while making an international call. Both connections then get landline rates. Still I find it hard to find this very compelling.

Overall my curiosity with all this testing just leaves me feeling that the pieces are still sort of broken. I know what I want is integrated channels that make it easy to talk, message or email with my contacts. With VoIP puts a new perspective on Talk for my mobile the associated messaging, presence, address books etc are just missing my expectations.

Gizmo has most of these pieces. It's on the Nokia. There are chat clients that run jabber etc. It has simple presence. Still my perception is of a cheap look we can do this demo rather than what was required. Gizmo could have done Skype for Mobile in execution with a SIP and Jabber platform. It still could. Truphone by contrast seems to have the technology more grounded. I'd like to see them connect it up to Gmail / jabber. I'd add more... 

In the meantime I've been paying Skype for a SkypeIn line. That connection uses SIP. Skype could provide my VoIP in line without any problems. They have my SkypeOut too. They could even set my Presence to Talk/VM only if they still can't deliver a chat client.

To conclude VoIP in the hand is worth more than VoIP on the desktop. I can kiss that SkypeIn line goodbye. If we thought the migration to desktop VoIP has been so-so. I'd predict that the shift to mobile it will be even faster. And yes I know there are hardly any phones out there that currently support it. One it is compelling. Two the investment required for these new phones is less than laptops etc. They are more personal, more about status, and go everywhere. 

One day soon I may even write about why I'm not interested in an iPhone.

Technorati Tags: voip, talkster, gizmovoip, truphone, mobility, Wi-Fi

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)