In no particular order:

1. a client configuration wizard and dashboard

   • (to create multiple flavors of your current build, to design your next builds, to see what configurations are in situ)

2. a client inventory system

   • (discover and list instances of Skype on your network)

3. network monitoring

   • (see and measure Skype traffic, analyze sources/destinations, detect non-compliant nodes)

4. a client compliance plug-in

   • (to capture Skype call records, to record conversations, and upload them to...)

5. a compliance archive server

   • (to store call records and call recordings in a searchable manner, to destroy those records per corporate policy, to provide controlled access to the records)

6. a rogue client blocking tool

   • (so you can block streams/packets by a given Skype client)

7. malware inspection client for file transfers

   • (so you don't send or receive viruses)

8. proxy service inside the firewall

   • (so you have a chokepoint)

9. superdupernodeplex box in the dmz

   • (running 100 instances of Skype available to become supernodes)

10. Skype account creation/deletion/changes and deployment

    • (triggered by personnel actions)

11. Skype account funding controls

    • (to top up SkypeOut credits, report on costs/activity by corporate cost center)

12. Skype account supervision controls

    • (so some supervisors can see some all of a subordinate's activity)

13. client configuration updater

    • (so you can change policies)

14. client software updater

    • (automatically get the latest from Skype but deploy on demand per the client configuration system)

15. Skype extras filtering

    • (to allow or prohibit some or all Skype plug-ins)

16. contact list LDAP sync

    • (to populate Skype contact lists from the corporate directory)

17. customized in-Skype alerts

    • (like in-house warnings/error messages)

18. custom browser tabs

    • (intranet home page, Skype tech support)

19. enterprise Skypecasts

    • (hosted securely and privately for team meetings and client presentations)

20. enterprise bots

    • (able to inject disclaimers into chat or calls or fetch useful information)

21. Skype enterprise heartbeat

    • (so you can see the current health of the parts you control and the parts you don't)

bonus points!

22. deep integration with Salesforce.com, sap, etc.

    • (triggering useful conversations)

23. datamining tools that run against the compliance archive

    • (to learn from your hive mind)

24. project podcasting/vlogging tools

    • (to improve institutional memory and project communication)

25. private extras gallery

    • (the better to distribute sanctioned home-grown or locally adopted tools)

26. deep integration with attention/routing manager

    • (so your most valuable customers always get through)

Is this feature overload? The kind that kills consumer products? You can design around that problem if the enterprise market is strategic.

Off-topic 1: Corporate in loco parentis behavior always bothers me. Children grow up and seize control of their lives from their parents. Locked-down systems assume employees never grow up.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday Mark Evans posted his Communications 101 thoughts and mentioned:

Note: It’s important to be clear there is a difference between having the “gift of the gab” and communicating well. This post is driven, in part, by my personal goal to become a better communicator.

But when it comes to maintaining family relationships, having the "Gift of the Gab" can be important ... and we all know that "gabbing" to the extent appreciated by Mom usually requires lots of time to catch up on the family news and events. This morning Skype and Intel announced their joint "Gift of the Gab" promotion where

Consumers in the U.S. and Canada can take advantage of Internet communications over Skype by placing free SkypeOut calls to any landline or mobile number around the world on Mother's Day (May 13, 2007). Sponsored by Intel, the “Gift of Gab” promotion represents the first time that U.S. and Canadian users will be able to make free SkypeOut calls to anywhere in the world for a period of 24 hours. Calls from one registered Skype user to another remain free. Usually, SkypeOut calls are billed at per-minute fees depending on the location called, with rates beginning at the low Skype global dialing rate of 2.1 cents per minute.

Why Mother's Day? Skype PR has provided some interesting statistics:

• Mother’s Day is the busiest calling holiday of the year, so there’s no better day to make calls for free.
• Sixty-two percent of moms just want a phone call saying I love you on Mother’s Day, yet only 35% actually receive phone calls, according to a new survey commissioned by Skype.
• 42% of adults say they see or talk with a parent (especially Mom) every single day, up 10% since 1989. Now all that chatting won’t cost anything!

Certainly problems have occurred in past years on the PSTN where sometimes you have to wait several minutes to get a long distance connection on Mother's Day (especially for overseas calling). Obviously using Skype not only provides a higher probability of completing a Mother's Day call (due to its peer-to-peer architecture) but also, more importantly, allows you to have conference calls so that not only you can call Mom but you can bring in your remote siblings to join in the conversation and celebration. Of course you can record the call via either of Pamela's Call Recorder or Skylook in Skype Extras.

For those unfamiliar with making SkypeOut calls, Skype has provided some guidance here.

And why Intel? PC's with Core Duo processors enabled Skype to extend free conference calls to ten participants.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A baggle of bloggers (Vecosys, Mashable, Startup Meme, ben barren, Google Blogoscoped, gSpy, Garett Rogers) are jumping on Martin's interpretation of some user interface text for a Google system.

The text: "NAME has joined".

Explanation: System messages when user joined or left a muc conversation"

Their guess: "muc" is short for "multi user chat".

My guess: "multi user call"

Huge value escalating to live talk from chat, from multichat to conference calling. Google is lining up conversational triggers like email, Google documents, calendar events (time to talk with X about Y), videos/photos, even news (join a conference call with other English-speakers about this Google News headline). 

Did I hear someone say monetization? Anyone remember Google's UK "click-to-call" advertising pilot? How would you like to talk with other customers? Or other people who are searching for the same product? Conversation is sticky in the advertising sense. And live talk can multiply the effect of an ad, sometimes helping people move to action.

Constraints to overcome:

1. Voice, firewall traversal, and switching technologies. They have it or can buy it.
2. Metcalfe's Law. Plenty of gmail users make for a satisfyingly humongous network. AOL/AIM interop, coming sooooon, will just add to Google's network's value.

Skype will no doubt be better at conference calling quality and scale this year. Portal power is Google's advantage: you'll find Google Talk in many meaningful contexts. Those opportunities for goal-driven conversation will be attractive, if not downright seductive.

Skype is the only major VoIM player without a portal of its own. It relies on the portals of strangers (pardon my Gone With The Wind reference). That's why a powerful Skype web-service API is strategic. By exposing carefully constructed sockets to access Skype's core services, Skype can let everyone plug any web app, any web site, and most desktop and mobile apps into the Skype network. Skype could have an abundance of contexts greater than the top portals combined.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 03:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Several posts have come out of the blogosphere re the Alpha Blogger situation Phil described yesterday. Perhaps the best advice comes from three well known bloggers who understand the intellectual property legalities and business protocol much better than I do:

Alec Saunders in Alpha Blogger silenced himself:

Bloggers reactions to Jan Geirnaert's decision to kill his Skype-Gadgets and Skype-Watch blogs are a little over the top, in my opinion. Jan didn't get a cease-and-desist letter from Skype, or from the firm they use for domain name cases. He got a polite refusal from a lawyer when asked if he could put the Skype name (as part of his domain name) on chopsticks. Moreover, unless Skype was willing to extend him a license for that name, no other reply was possible or should have been expected.

Chilling effect? Not really. Expected reaction? For sure! In fact, it was more like a slap on the hand than a "heavy gun".

Andy proffers in The Right Hand and The Left Hand:

In business this is called protecting the trademark, and while I'm not a trademark and copyright attorney, I can safely say that letters like that go out all the time. Those with understanding simply do what my lawyers once told me to do the first time I received one back in my days at a top ten ad agency. That was after we ran a promotion to give away a JEEP, and had already in the print ad in USA TODAY disclaimed that Jeep was a registered trademark of Chrysler Corporation. I followed the lawyers instruction. I threw the letter in the trash.

And Robert Scoble pipes in with:

Ahh, the lawyers at Skype screwed the pooch. I am actually on their side in this fight, too. I know that they need to protect the trademarks otherwise they’ll lose them. At Microsoft the lawyers would do stuff like this from time-to-time (my friend Robert Mclaws told me recently that the Microsoft lawyers are again going after some community members who’ve taken on trademarks too closely).

And Andy ends the post referenced above with:

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations, Yahoo! From JD Power's news release [emphasis mine]:  

Among customers who report using IM on a regular or occasional basis, nearly 70 percent report that to some degree, instant messaging has replaced the use of traditional telephones.

“One of the trends we see in the 2006 study is that the percentage of Internet users who use IM on a daily basis is essentially unchanged from 2005 at 36 percent,” said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications research at J.D. Power and Associates. “This indicates that some of the usage gains we are seeing in text messaging in our wireless studies are coming at the expense of IM usage.”

Ratings Guide. Not reviewed: Skype, QQ (small in the US but huge in the Chinese speaking world), Microsoft Office Communicator, and open source Pidgin (formerly GAIM).  

The numbers from the 2006 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study - Instant Messaging:

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I first came onto the blogging scene a year ago at VON Canada 2006, one of the veteran bloggers who made me feel most welcome was Mark Evans, whose Mark Evans Tech has become widely cited for his insight into various technology business issues.

Emerging from his career as a reporter, Mark last fall became COO of b5media, a publisher of over 180 weblogs in 14 vertical channels. But, with a very geographically dispersed team (Canada, U.S. and Australia), b5media...

....epitomize[s] the border-less, work-anywhere corporation. We live and breadth of communication tools such as Skype, e-mail, the occasional phone call, and rare (but extremely valuable) physical gatherings of the entire team. As a result, we are - for the most part - a digital communications company.

With this background and Mark's personality as a people-person, he often finds himself challenged to use the appropriate communications mode for a particular business or social activity in context. And Skype, with its voice, IM, video and file transfer tools provides a key piece of their communications infrastructure. As a result he has described, in a benchmark post entitled Communications 10: How to Communicate Better, his approach on how to use different tools to communicate effectively.

Note: It’s important to be clear there is a difference between having the “gift of the gab” and communicating well. This post is driven, in part, by my personal goal to become a better communicator.
Note II: I’m reading a book called “The Simplicity Survival Handbook”, which offers many tools/techniques to communicate better, including a suggestion that the key to writing shorter, better e-mails is a system called CLEAR: connected (how does it impact current projects and workload); list next steps, expectations (set ‘em), ability (how will things get done), return (what’s in it for me).

....

In Person: By far, the most effective and powerful way to communicate. The ability to read body language, facial expressions, intonation, etc. makes person-to-person communications work and work well. It can also change the tone of a relationship. Think about how a long e-mail or phone call relationship took on a new dynamic after you met someone in person for the first time. You may never meet that person again but the relationship will always be warmer, more comfortable…and, well, better.

Phone Calls: Obviously, it’s not possible to meet every single person you do business with given the global nature of today’s working world. But a phone call can also be a very effective tool because voice carries many different messages beyond here’s what I’m saying. Voice conveys happiness, frustration, anger, exasperation, laughter, etc. Like meeting someone in person, a phone call offers an opportunity for people to offer nuances and details that are difficult, if not impossible, to do when you write an e-mail of IM. Phone calls also offer insight into someone’s personality as well as their ability to communicate on the fly. Even though Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone more than 100 years ago, it remains an amazing communications tool.

Video-Conferencing/video phones: The magic tool that could bridge in-person meetings and phone calls. Of course, we’ve been talking about video-conferencing for years without much traction happening but maybe the rise of online video will start to change things.

E-mail: The so-called “killer app” of the Web is an amazing way to communicate but it’s also a challenging medium to use effectively (It doesn’t help that bad grammar, and the use of acronyms and emoticons have become rampant within e-mail) But if if you want to send short messages, documents, photographs, music and videos, there’s no better tool than e-mail, which is why billions of them are sent every day. But there’s a danger of over-using/over-depending on e-mail. For example, there are many companies where people are e-mailing the person in the cubicle beside them!
For many people, e-mail become their default communications tool. Most people now send long e-mails rather than deliver the same message in a minute or two on the phone. Why? I’m not sure whether we’ve become lazy, or they’re far too enamored with the convenience of digital communications, or maybe e-mail lets you say what want you want without having to listen to someone else (which is not always a bad thing).

Instant-Messaging: The bastard-child of e-mail. Good for quick questions and answers but arguably little else from a corporate perspective. For teenagers, SMS is another beast entirely.

Maybe my approach to communications reflects the fact I’m not a digital child under the age of 25. Maybe I’m an analog dinosaur, desperately clinging to antiquated communication tools. But I do think digital communications is far from perfect, and people who rely extensively on e-mail and SMS today aren’t communicating as effectively as they can. Sure, they’re communicating but it’s communications-lite.

I’m certainly not suggesting we abandon e-mail and IM, which would be a big mistake because they can be valuable and extremely useful tools. But I do think that we can communicate better, and that stepping away from the keyboard is a good way to start. So rather than e-mail or IM someone, why not meet them for coffee/beer or, at least, give them a call?

Food for thought as Skype and similar services become part of our everyday personal and business lifestyle. And thanks to Mark for permission to quote his post so extensively.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The new banner is a candid shot of Yahoo!'s Caterina Fake and Skype's Niklas Zennström in Munich, shot this January at the Digital, Life, Design 2007 conference. Caterina and Niklas shared a panel on The Future's Future. Photo by Esther Dyson, via Flickr (Creative Commons license).

See our Skype Journal Banner Art blog for more information on the pictures in our banners.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wow. Talk about a chilling effect.

Skype lawyer Seema Sharma emailed blogger Jan Geirnaert Friday afternoon. She told him his popular skype-watch.com and skype-gadgets.com blogs put him in legal jeopardy.

Jan, an independent IT consultant, took the implied threats seriously. He promptly blacked out skype-watch, abandoning two years of intense daily news coverage, product reviews, and wry commentary.

Jan said "I'm not a sadomasochist. Neither am I an idiot. By doing this, Skype sent me the signal not do any of this blogging wise, business wise, in any way."

He's taking his blogging "underground" to VoIP-watch.com. Pretty sure his tone will change. "Maybe they're getting too 'corporate' to tolerate any criticism" he said.

My take: Sharma, co-author of this tutorial on how to threaten people for profit, didn't consult with Skype's PR or marketing communications team before composing her email. If Sharma had, Sharma might have learned Jan's been:

• working on distribution and marketing for dozens of major Skype-affiliated companies, nurturing Skype's ecosystem.
• briefing business and government technology executives on Skype's effect on management, IT, telecom and economic policy.
• covering Skype-related news and issues at international conferences in Europe and Asia, creating unique editorial content.
• contributing to Skype Journal.
• advocating Skype passionately, online and off.

No more.

Skype didn't talk to Geirnaert like a human being, picking up the phone (or Skype) and talking with him, appreciating his business and marketing value in the blogosphere and and his past and ongoing contributions to Skype's ecosystem.

Instead, they brought in heavy guns.

In a few short emails, Skype's blown goodwill and a hard-won media asset.

I'm writing this Friday night, so it's unlikely Skype will respond to this incident until Monday, if at all.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

"At the end of March 2007, we had over 35.5 mn registered TOM-Skype users up from over 31.5 mn at the end of January 2007."

— "TOM Online Reports 1Q 2007 Results" news release.

Not exactly viral, may not even replace users who try Skype and leave.

Why?

4. Great Firewall of China still blocking Skype Journal? (Yes. This is obviously of great distress to the entire Chinese economy.)

3. Competition from Tencent's massively popular QQ?

Total registered Instant Messaging ("IM") user accounts increased to 580.5 million, representing a 1.4% growth QoQ

Peak simultaneous online user accounts for IM services recorded over 24.5 million, a growth of 10.9% QoQ

Active IM user accounts increased 5.1% QoQ to 232.6 million

— Tencent Q4 2006 Quarterly Results

2. Chinese bypassing text-filters built into the TOM-Skype version by downloading from Skype.com instead of Skype.Tom.com?

1. Or a disastrous case of cutey-cute-cute-cute overload?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Garrett Smith today issued a post "No Wonder Skype Dragged Their Feet" where he calls "... Skype's decision to not dive head first into mobile VoIP a smart one". He blames the mobile carriers:

We as consumers can talk about mobile VoIP, how cool it is, how much we want it. Hardware manufacturers can make all of the devices they want. Last mile service providers can come up with the killer app. But until the people who own the network, the cellular carriers, [and] the WiFi network carriers, embrace mobile VoIP and the business economics behind it, we are going to continue to hear, see, and feel the mobile VoIP “ban”.

Based on my (largely North American) experience we have a long road to hoe before we see mobile VoIP take hold. Certainly over 2.xG wireless networks, latency issues work against it; and 3G networks will only be viable when both the economics are right and, as Garrett states, the carriers commit. (At the moment 500MB per month of data plan on Rogers would cost me $1,600 per month.)

The most immediate opportunity should lie with WiFi networks where I have had good "call quality" success with calls placed via Truphone and, more recently, Fring.  But, as of today,. the major Canadian HotSpot network (in Starbucks, other popular coffee shop and restaurant chains, airports, etc.) cost $0.15 per minute; they have a couple of .(600 min., 90 min) monthly subscription plans at $.04-$.05 per minute with a $0.10 per minute overage charge. However, they:

• are very limited geographically
• do not recognize the login window through the browser on my Nokia N-series phones; they do work with the N800 Internet Tablet since it uses the (Linux-based) Opera browser.

I have never been able to get the local Toronto "Muni" WiFi network (Toronto Hydro Telecom) to work beyond getting a SSID on any of these devices. So, in addition to the Canadian Hotspot choices above, I am left with free WiFi on my home network or at free WiFi locations, including some commercial establishments (hotels, a few restaurants and "neighborhood" coffee shops), guest access at businesses and friends' homes.

I made my first VoIP call in early 1996 while working at Quarterdeck where we had developed a VoIP product. It has taken over ten years to build and integrate landline VoIP into an infrastructure that is acceptable to consumers and businesses. A warning to VC's seeing mobile VoIP business plans: the infrastructure is just not there yet for major mobile VoIP market penetration, neither technologically nor economically.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

GSM carriers in North America have always held an edge for trans-oceanic-bound North America-based travelers because their phones will also work in Europe and Asia. The only caveat for Europeans visiting North America was that they needed to have phones that support the 850 MHz band to obtain the most complete coverage while in North America.

So when Verizon and Sprint yesterday introduced a new Blackberry 8830 that provides CDMA support in North America and GSM support elsewhere, why does it get the name "World Edition" or why does Verizon have the right to call their branded version a "Global Blackberry"?

Seems like the "prior rights" for these names should belong to the pure quad-band GSM Blacbkerries, such as the Pearl (8100), 8700 and 8800 supported by Rogers, AT&T (Cingular) and T-Mobile in North America. My 8700 was pretty good at automatically announcing, via a Rogers service SMS message, that I had arrived in the U.S., Germany, Belgium, France and the U.K. last month.

A couple of comments:

• The Blackberry 8830 only supports the non-North American 900 and 1800 MHz bands; thus, they will not work on North American GSM carriers' networks
• The Blackberry 8830 is a good announcement for Bell Canada and at least counters one concern that I had in discussing Bell Canada's dilemma last week. And they don't have to do a North American GSM overlay to accomplish global reach for their customers; strike off one cost for whoever becomes their new owners..

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I reviewed the recently released Nokia N800 Internet Tablet as a mobile Casual Computing device capable of executing many Internet activities.

Ken Camp is currently attending a IT security conference in Minneapolis where he found several attendees who had actually purchased this device. Why were they so keen on it?

I was curious why so many. That penetration rate seems huge to me. So I asked around. And I learned why - Maemo. The N800 is not an S60 device. It doesn't run Symbian. It's viewed as a Linux workstation. Someone showed me Kismet (a very popular wireless sniffer tool) on their N800. They use it for wireless security.

One person described working on getting Metasploit running on the N800. That's a serious security and vulnerability assessment tool. We are not talking casual computing. We are not talking about simple surfing with an Internet tablet. We're talking serious security assessment technology...in your pocket.

Somehow I think we are going to see a lot of Linux addicts writing enterprise class applications that will take advantage of its large screen and the stability normally associated with Linux platforms. And all the more reason to get the previously announced N800 Skype client out there. He goes on:

I'm curious who will be the first company, industry, or vertical sector that will roll out N800s pre-configured with custom apps oriented to very specific use. Truckers who hit WiFi enabled truck stops for fuel, maps and such. Real estate agents and brokers. Insurance adjustors. There are some possibilities that are both broad and deep.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Three events in the next 45 Days in Munich, Santa Clara and Boston.

Munich, Germany. 2-3 May 2007

Entwicklerkonferenz 2007 in München will feature two speakers about Skype on Day 2.  

• Dick Schiferli, CEO, PamConsult.
  "Skype-API: Entwickeln Sie Applikationen für 171 Millionen Skype-Nutzer"
  (Skype-API: develop apps for 171 million skype users) [note: time to update that number!]
• Christoph Bünger, CTO, Scendix.
  "Die eBay-Plattform im Wohnzimmer: eBay und Skype auf dem TV"
  (The eBay platform in the living room: eBay and Skype on the TV)

Lester Madden will be there from Skype London.

Santa Clara, California. 14-17 May 2007

Paul Amery, Skype's top developer relations evangelist, will keynote at TMC's Communications Developer Conference in Silicon Valley on Wednesday, 16 May. The "Voice Service Mashups" session, in the Service Oriented Architecture track (my favorite) will feature Skype. The CDC is probably the biggest gathering of VoIP programmers anywhere in the world and a great opportunity to recruit hands-on geeks.

I'll be there too. We should have a Skype Journal dinner. Call me for an invitation.

Boston, Massachusetts. 11-13 June 2007 

eBay Developers Conference. Skype's info isn't on the event site yet, but last year they had about a dozen Skype engineers leading workshops and talking with eBay/PayPal community. It's only 45 days away - look for hotel space now.

I'm Begging all event organizers: AUDIO AND VIDEO TAPE ALL THE SESSIONS, EVEN THE BREAKOUT SESSIONS, AND POST THEM ON YOUR DEVZONE. Thousands of programmers cannot be there. Sharing multiplies your event's reach for the whole next year. It is cheap if you want it to be: €4000 gets you three consumer grade cameras, three tripods to put them on, memory sticks, and three mp3 recorders. Ask for a volunteer in each breakout session to work the camera and have a staffer upload the videos to Google Video or wherever you like. THIS IS DOCUMENTATION, NOT MARKETING. SHARE THE DOCUMENTATION. Thank you.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps the most demanded feature at last year's Skype Developer Conference was Call Transfer API's. We have seen some activity for Skype to Skype calls recently; however, information on activity related to calls originating or terminating via SkypeIn or SkypeOut (which require significantly more infrastructure) has been negligible.

Today Skype's April Developer newsletter issued a post by Morné van Dalen, Technical Project Manager on the Skype for Windows desktop team, responsible for developing the Call Transfer algorithms.

This feature has been one of the most requested/anticipated features for a long time, so it is important for us to make sure we get it right. We want to be able to offer a feature that not only matches functionality available on your landline or mobile, but be able to deliver an even better experience. That seems like a tall order, so how are we going to do it?

He goes on to outline Functionality, Transfer Methods, Which calls can be transferred and Integrating with existing functionality, including Voice Mail and Call Forwarding.

To clear up one item that is a bit confusing in all this. The Call Tranfer API Skype to Skype API has been available for Skype to Skype calls for a few months; its first implementation in a Skype client was in the recently released Skype for Mac 2.6 beta and it's used in Pamela 3.5. Separate development Infrastructure build out work is required for each of the API's modes liniking Skype to SkypeOut, etc.; the relevant API's modes will apparently become available over the next few weeks.

Note that call transfers to SkypeOut number and transfers of SkypeIn calls will only be available to Skype Pro customers. Hopefully it gets worked in for those of us on the Unlimited North American subscription plan as well. But Phil also asks in the Skype 3.2 Group Chat:

Phil Wolff | Skype Journal | Oakland, Calif |GMT -8 says: "I also think it's weird that you can't xfer calls to groups or skypeout unless you are in a pricing package. Why not just end the call if the account runs out of skype credits?

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Help Stamp Out Voice Mail with Newest iotum Talk-Now Beta

One of the great time wasters of our current communications infrastructure has to be voice mail. The calling party takes a couple of minutes to leave a voice mail; the receiving party needs even more time to recover, listen to, and manage the same voice mail. What if you could simply leave a text message that effectively said "Chris is trying to call you about {insert subject of call here}"? And with a single click you could return the call to Chris? Not to overlook that over 80% of business calls end up in voice mail and require an average of just over 4 attempts to complete a call.

With iotum's release today of a new version of their Talk-Now for Blackberry, they have delivered on a service that basically says "No Voice Mails!". (Well, that would be the dream but someone out there will always dream up a reason they have to leave a long explanation, diatribe, etc.) A key feature of this release is the auto-negotiation of when to have a conversation.

The Talk Now screen continues to be split into two groupings: Conversations and Talk-Now. However, Conversations itself has been split again into a "To Call List" and a "Waiting to Talk to Me" list. The former comprises parties whom you want/attempted to call but are, in some New Presence context, not immediately available. The latter comprises other parties, who are amongst all your Blackberry Contacts, who have attempted to call you. If the other party attempting to call you is also on Talk-Now they can now leave a subject line for the pending call. This is the new feature that is key to minimizing voice mail.

As a Talk-Now caller to a "Not Available" party, you have the opportunity to leave a subject line.This call request ends up under your "To Call List". The called party also receives a notification, which ends up in his/her "Waiting to Talk to Me" list. When both parties are available, there is a "vibration" notification and, on both parties' Blackberries, the appropriate line turns green and includes the subject line.

Effectively, Talk-Now now builds a task list of whom you want/need to call. But it eliminates the average 4.x calls required to actually reach another party along with all the verbiage and button pushing associated with verbal voice mails. It does, to a degree, reflect the contents of your Blackberry phone log; however, it only incorporates calls from Contacts already on your Blackberry and it allows the inclusion of the {subject} line if the caller is on Talk-Now..

Cool? Gardner thinks so. From the citation in their newly announced "Cool Vendors in Enterprise Communications" report:

By combining the capabilities of a to-do list and a buddy list, iotum's Talk-Now helps to eliminate phone tag by automating presence management and allowing users to know when the people they need to speak with are available and to see who is waiting to speak with them.

If you want to get a pragmatic New Presence experience and have a Blackberry 8100 (Pearl), 8700 or 8800, I strongly recommend you and your work team colleagues give it a try at this time (Blackberry link: www.iotum.com/blackberry). [Note that Talk-Now is most effective across (a) team(s) of business related contacts.] Especially important for those Skype executives whom I encountered using Blackberries during my visits to various Skype offices during March. One needs to experience New Presence to develop a feel for not only its full value-add but also its subtleties and to develop a feel for how a New Presence service can be integrated into Skype. Did I mention it's a free beta?

And, as a bonus, try the combination of Talk-Now and Blackberry Messenger -- a most effective real time mobile communications tool set.

Alec Saunders, iotum CEO's post with more information on this release on SaundersLog.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've now had the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet for almost two weeks, wandering about both home and several remote locations including downtown Toronto and local Starbucks, testing it out for both defining what exactly it is and how "mobile" it is.

First what it is not: a wireless mobile phone -- there's only WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Via Bluetooth you can connect to the Internet through one of Nokia's phones, such as the N80i which I have also been testing out.

Here's where I find it so handy. You're sitting in the family room watching the Buffalo Sabres defeat (a Skype contact's) New York Rangers on a high def TV and want to look up the career record for Tim Connolly, a Sabres player, without missing any game action. Pull out the N800; go to NHL.com and voilà - all the information I want is there -- in my family room -- without having to remove my laptop from its docking station in my home office. As a dedicated platform Internet Appliance the N800 offers practical portable Internet access in a handheld size mobile package; Andy likes to call it a platform for Casual Computing.

Ken Camp, Luca Filigheddu and others have written some fairly extensive reviews of its capabilities so I'll stick to discussing its practicality and where I feel it fits into the webosphere. First what do I use it for:

• Casual browsing away from my primary workstation - around the house, on the backyard patio, in WiFi-enabled coffee houses, other remote but WiFi connected locations where I simply want to look up some information.
• While sitting through a seminar in a WiFi-enabled university building, checking key RSS feeds: keeping up to date not only on key news sites such as Google News and BBC News but also on SaundersLog, VoIPWatch, Mark Evans Tech, Mathew Ingram , Rick Segal, GigaOm and other weblogs that I regularly follow.
• Via GTalk, getting video tours of Andy's travel spots: his hotel rooms, the Virgin Atlantic waiting room at Heathrow, etc.
• Interplatform IM .. at one point I was chatting on the N800 via GTalk with Andy from a WiFi connection at a Starbucks. When I drove way the conversation continued on my Blackberry GTalk client. (Of course I could only respond while waiting for traffic lights).
• Checking GMail (not my primary e-mail account) via the GMail POP service.
• Looking at Howard's double.

But there is the one problem I frequently encounter - the variability of WiFi quality. Om has a lengthy discussion in his post on The Cloud's new London muni-WiFi setup about this issue. I find there are WiFi connections and WiFi disconnections. Of course on my home network there is no problem. The N800 works quite well on the Canadian HotSpot network (@$0.15 per minute on any Canadian wireless account) but does not work with Toronto Hydro Telecom's "free" mesh network in downtown Toronto. Either the system does not have enough bandwidth to handle demand or it's of very limited bandwidth. Can find the SSID but does not bring up web pages. In fact the "free" WiFi at the "Howard's double" location was not able to handle external GTalk connections; there were at least a dozen other laptops going in this coffee shop over what was obviously a bandwidth limited connection.

Here's what I like about it:

• Wide screen: the 800 x 480 touch screen responds to a toggle switch between the N800 "desktop" and a full screen display of, say, web pages or weblog entries. Viewing web pages in 800 pixel full width mode is a handheld Internet device dream; it makes reading them much easier than on any "narrow screen" mobile phone or PDA.
• The Home Desktop provides an instant look at key items. In my case I have selected the Google Search Bar, a summary of most recent RSS feed headlines, GTalk presence for selected GTalk contacts and a clock
• The Status Bar at the upper right provides instant access or notifications related to key operating parameters: Battery status, WiFi connectivity, Audio Volume, my GTalk status, etc.
• Relative ease of finding and establishing WiFi access points: click on an icon in the Status Bar and detection of WiFi networks occurs immediately; select the network you want to connect with, enter any requested network key and you're quickly connected.
• The setup of user buttons, not only a five-way button but also a set of buttons to manage Full Screen display and display magnification.
• The pop-out web camera (although the actual video quality needs some work)
• Just having the RSS Reader
• Google Search Bar on the Home Desktop; how many of us start our browsing sessions with a Google search? But it takes up a minimum amount of desktop real estate.
• The ability to have real time chat, voice and video conversations.
• Two SD-size memory expansions slots: one internal and one removable to expand memory up to 4GB; these memory cards become disks when the N800 is attached to your PC.

Awaiting The Skype Role

Here is the problem that becomes obvious when using GTalk on the N800 -- it's got, for me, the same eight contacts that I've always had with GTalk .. well, it's now actually nine, Phil invited me to join his GTalk contacts over the weekend ... But GTalk has become a teaser for the one missing module for such a device. The N800 Skype client that was announced at CES last January for availability early this summer would turn this into an ideal Internet Appliance. It would allow me to use the N800 for real time conversations with my >100 Skype contacts. Then I'd be using it to razz my Skype contact who is such a devoted Rangers fan while watching the games in this upcoming Stanley Cup (professional ice hockey championship) series. Go Sabres!

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Steve Rubel points to Forrester Research's Ladder of Participation. It's yet another consumer behavior map. It's buckets are roughly aligned by effort. From least to most: inactives, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, creators. It's similar to Ross Mayfield's Power Law of Participation and my own experiences in electoral activism. If you're designing a product or business, you'd better understand your customers.  

It's great but incomplete.

First, I'd like to add an orthogonal Ladder of Disclosure, from those who pay cash and live off the grid to those wearing live streaming webcams who twitter every bowel movement and blog their bank accounts. The Participation Ladder is tightly coupled with doing things in public. Look at digital ID (OpenID), presence streams (twitter, jaiku), relationship brokers (iotum), pseudonymity and faceted authorization (Vox-like access to content) for clues to consumer behavior and tools for engaging about privacy. Strategies that acknowledge and compensate for privacy concerns always do better.

Second and Third, the participation ladder views the web as the whole Internet. It's missing (a) The Mobile Net, with SMS, mobile web apps services that people whip out of their purses/pockets and (b) Live Communication like Windows Live Messenger, Skype, IRC. People are spending billions of hours in these two sectors and models that ignore these sides of their lives may miss where their passions live and who they trust.

Fourth, the ladder seems to miss the offline. Effective mapping could lead to strategies that use the online to affect the offline. We've seen that in US electoral campaigning where blogs and mailing lists were used to recruit online citizens and drive them into activities that both brought them up a ladder of political participation (from minutes per year to weeks) and applying volunteers to reach out over the phone and in street action to those who live mostly or completely offline. Ten volunteers in the San Francisco East Bay recruited 5000 volunteers for offline action including a million phone calls to 2004 swing states.

Fifth, the ladder doesn't seem to model participatory mobility. 200 million people tried Skype in the last three years, 100 million people became bloggers in the last ten years, a billion started using email, more using mobile phones. People adopt new behaviors all the time, often en masse. The participation ladder is static, so 2007.

See also: Geoffrey Burling who votes down the report itself.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Paul Gillin featured VoIP Watch blogger Andy Abramson's Comunicano PR agency and a client in a column for Advertising Age on social media. AdAge is a big deal; congrats, Andy.

It's about building buzz. Andy runs "blogger relations" programs for companies like Nokia. He seeds product hoping for meaningful coverage. [disclosure: I'm using a Nokia N80 phone provided through that program; Jim Courtney is using a N800.] With luck, Andy's clients get a conversation going among bloggers, building Googlejuice and blog cred. 

Word spreads via blogs fast compared to other channels, like print media or the average corporate web site.

Skype is faster.

• Andy triggered this post when he shared the news with me in a 1-to-1 Skype chat message.
• Other SJ posts were triggered by ideas and links in private and public group chats.
• One blogger I know uses a skype-merge bot to broadcast updates to colleagues and friends.
• And a well planned and moderated conference call can seed more conversation and action than any news release.

I'll argue that Skypeland is as connected, with more trusted social ties, than the blogosphere. And ideas flow more freely because Skypeland blends the best of real-time and asynch communication across many talk modes (text, audio, video, desktop, mobile).  

p.s. Andy, the N80's compass rose catches on my beard. A known problem, per staff at the Nokia booth at web2expo.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

RAND Europe's report: Security Challenges to the Use and Deployment of Disruptive Technologies. Most of the chapter explains VoIP basics and follows a case study of an enterprise VoIP deployment at HSBC.

Chapter 2 (page 20 in the pdf file) lists risks from the PSTN-to-VoIP transition. They cite technical risks per VOIPSA:

• social threats,
• eavesdropping,
• interception and modification,
• intentional interruption of service includes denial of service and physical intrusion,
• unintentional interruption of service.

Their strategic concern was telecom industry disruption. They worry for the titans of telephony losing revenue and market share to VoIP disrupters like Skype. Until a transition to an all VoIP industry is complete, there is a risk of telco company failures and infrastructure abandonment.

RAND interviewed Skype's Melanie Libraro for their report.

My take: The biggest telcos are more likely to co-opt and squelch disruptive technologies than be threatened by them. For example, mobile telephony threatened local carriers; now local carriers like AT&T own mobile carriers. Why wouldn't they serve their customers if VoIP is what they want? So look to worldwide bigtels driving consumer VoIP regulation, retaliatory pricing, litigation, and M&A in 2008. I can almost smell the blood in the water.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Virginia Tech killer had a 98.5 percent eBay rating. As if we didn't know that "commerce trust" is different than trusting someone with your children. (AP)

Skype not in the new Sidekick iD. AIM, Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger built in to this $99 IM gadget. Isn't Skype a fit for this demographic?

Skype cheaper than Vonage if you can program a VCR. Side-by-side price breakdown.

My Mother Uses Skype - Why Bother With Standards? Video of panel discussion at Spring VON 2007 with Jonathan Christensen, Skype R&D executive. A frank discussion on standards where, surprisingly, the open sourcerers rallied behind Skype's closed solutions.

Google buys Skype-like features. Continuing to triangulate on the workplace, the GTalk team bought Swedish Marratech's VoIP voice conferencing, multi-party video, and whiteboard. Will scaling to Google-sized userbases be a challenge? 

London PowerPoint Karaoke Night. "Five or more brave people get to present slides they have never seen and hopefully have no clue about." Wish I could be there.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The most common question I'm asked (after "Is there really enough to write about Skype?") is "How will Skype make money?"

Skype is clearly making money the old fashioned way: selling phone minutes. And doing very well, with a run rate that could lead to $300-400 million sales this year.

But that's not the breakout business, the business that will eclipse eBay's stores.

Simply, Skype helps people sell intangibles to each other the way eBay helps people sell atoms to each other. The intangibles markets are much larger than the goods markets, a humongous opportunity. Few companies have mastered the art of making those markets work online, but Skype is trying to learn, with Skype Find and the Skype Prime Beta and more services to come. Do you believe we live in an information, knowledge, entertainment, and service economy? Skype looks like a strategic investment.

The best observations on eBay's Q1-2007 conference call.

"eBay isn't saying how many of those users became regular Skype users after they signed up."

"The rapidly increasing popularity of cable "digital voice" service from companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable could be taking its toll on Skype's growth."

— PC World's Mark Sullivan

"I may have to shelve my initial skepticism about eBay's Skype purchase if this growth continues. I'm still a few $100 million in revenue from that point, but getting closer."

— ZDNet's Larry Dignan

"How much Skype is adding to the bottom line is unknown."

"The company doesn't provide figures to show how many of those subscribers are active."

— Light Reading Europe's Ray Le Maistre

"Assuming Skype is on track to generate $400 million in revenue during 2007, that deal, widely criticized for its bubble-like price tag, looks like a good thing for the online retailer, even if plans to use Skype for click-to-call selling activity haven't panned out yet."

— IP Democracy's Cynthia Brumfield.

"Long-term margins for Skype we've pegged at the 20 to 25 percent rate over time,' says CFO Bob Swan, but that's going to come more from turning it into a tool for e-commerce than making a profit by reselling telecom voice minutes."

— Business 2.0 Beta's Owen Thomas

Skype Journal's earlier coverage:

• Q1-2007 Is Skype's First Profitable Quarter
• Join the New Prediction Market for Skype Q2
• Skype financial's: a few more notes on the data
• Questions Raised by Q1 Numbers

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Go read Jean Mercier's reaction to Klonies. An excerpt:

I think Skype is shifting away from my needs! Would you, as a businessman, download something that showed this ... when changing your avatar? And yes, believe me, i like the “original” avatar function!

From Comvverse's Xen Mendelsohn's response:

The ways people manifest individuality in everyday life are essential elements of self identity... Klonies offer something new that Web avatars cannot do: the ability to create an alter-ego, a cool identity to represent oneself in mobile communications, which for many users has become the dominant means of communication.

Xen is right about the value of projecting identity. Jean is right about context. Maybe we need the workplace equivalents of Klonies.

• Bundles of avatars for different professions and industries. The mighty plumber, the serious banker, the school teacher. What are the symbols, the iconography for the hospitality industry, the entertainment business? Can you build them into a character's wardrobe, backdrop, adornments (just waiting for that adding machine tattoo for accountants), and accessories?

• Maybe partner with a service for creating company logos for all those SOHO/Prime businesses?

• How about beautiful art? Or science photography? Currencies of the world? A subscription to a new picture daily that matches your favorite image search?

• Or a photo transformation that takes your portrait or your family photo and puts it on a postage stamp? Or makes it look like a pencil drawing? Artistic effects.

Today's Klonies appear adolescent and juvenile, and seem well designed for mobile youth. There are no balding, fat, older, slightly squidgy-looking characters. Only "cute" identities, and most people don't self-identify as cartoonish or cute. Where are the avatars for "rugged", "mature", "experienced", "damaged", "brave", "caring", "connected", "political", "hard working", "introspective", "elegant"?

These Klonies are also very western. Take a walk through Malcolm Godwin's "Who Are You? 101 Ways of Seeing Yourself" (Penguin, 2000). The diversity of ways people think about themselves is astounding, varying so much by generation, by culture.

IMHO, it's not that we should displace the Klonies, making it safe for those of us who puke over cute. Skype needs to open the doors to a broader range of fee and free identifiers. Don't you think everyone should be able to assemble online personae that represent the identities they choose to project?

Bonus points: Persona by Contact Group. I want my colleagues and customers at work to see one avatar, mood, "full name", and contact details; an informal but professional look. I can have more fun with my friends and family, and I can tailor another personae to the public at large. This goes to Skype's overly simple models of personal and collective digital identity.

See also:

• Deleting Skype Names
• Last Minute Skype2 Gift: Privacy Shield
• Skype identity crisis?
• New Skype Ringtones Revolt Coming

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Mark is on a yearlong walkabout, quitting his job, seeing the world, following Fred's Rules of Travel. He's now blogging his American travels after a year in India.  Mark's discovered SkypeIn is useful for the homeless traveler. I like his observations about using a phone number to establish US identity. Excerpt:

As I am still a homeless traveler in the U.S., this service may still be useful to me. At the moment the prepaid T-Mobile SIM card on my mobile phone is out of the T-Mobile network range. So people could call me on the Skype number.

The real clincher is that calls may be forwarded from Skype to another number. So I can forward calls to the number of the house I am staying at or to my mobile phone if I know it will be in range. If the call is not answered Skype voicemail will pick up the call. Since I get a new SIM card and, consequently, a new mobile phone number each time I change countries, forwarding phone calls from a single U.S. phone number could be very useful for keeping in touch with people in the U.S.

This service is really useful as a U.S. number to leave for banks, credit card companies, and online retail companies. All of these entities want a U.S. phone number at which someone can be reached. Leaving an international number generally is not acceptable. If I had a SkypeIn number registered with all of my financial institutions when I was in India, I perhaps would have found out about outstanding credit card fraud more quickly when my wallet was stolen in New Delhi.

In short, the service lets someone have a permanent U.S. phone number that they can use, maintain, and check while they are in another country for long periods of time. It is usually not possible -- and it is almost always not economically sensible -- to maintain a U.S. landline or mobile phone if someone is going to be out of the country for more than three months. Maintaining an identity for financial and tax purposes in the U.S. is partly dependent upon maintaining a phone number.

Technorati tags: skype, skypein, voicemail, identity, digitalid, forwarding, id

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Q!-2007 Skype-related numbers reported by eBay Wednesday raise some interesting questions. Start by looking at my updated tracking spreadsheet based on reported numbers:

Note that I use the term "Accounts" instead of "Users" as we know there is a significant % of Users with multiple Accounts for a wide variety of reasons.

One other number I measure is ARPU (or maybe should be ARPA): Average revenue per user/account: Last quarter was a record $0.40; however, it has more or less remained constant over the past year between $0.37 and $0.40 even as number of registered accounts increases.

Of most significance is that, while the numbers are only an indicator due to the assumption made, the growth in the U.S has slowed down significantly. It certainly backs up statements made to the effect that termination of the North American "Free" promotion last year has had an impact. But Skype remains largely a non-North American business with more attraction to Europeans and Asians probably due to the different economics associated with their local telephony costs.

But other questions remain:

• Why did SkypeOut minutes remain flat quarter-to-quarter? Was there not significant enough pickup of the Unlimited North American plan when the "Free" promotion ended. At C$35 per year, it is still significantly lower than my costs would be on Rogers or Bell Canada services (min. C$5 per month).
• Does Skype need to look beyond viral marketing to promote Skype, its benefits as well as Skype-certified phones and their features?
• More troubling as an indicator of demand is the flattening number of Skype-to-Skype minutes. Here we have a "no charge" service, with a widely recognized, simple user interface, and with a growing number of accounts, that is largely not affected by pricing promotional plans, yet no growth in usage minutes.
  • Are we communicating more via mobile devices?
  • Are we communicating more via text messaging? (or, going forward is Twittering replacing the need for voice calls <gr>?)
  • Are users tiring of using their PC's as a "clumsy" primary voice communications device?
  • Is there an increasing use of alternative free VoIP services such as GTalk or Gizmo Project? Switching costs to the user are nonexistent.
  • Has Skype saturated the "geek" and "adolescent" (student) market?
  • Or, are we simply spending less time on voice communications?

What action can Skype take to address these issues?

• Expand Skype's marketing activity beyond viral. The geek and student markets are getting saturated when it comes to Skype; at this point Skype needs to build awareness with a much broader consumer public (especially in North America).
• Skype hardware can lock more users into Skype. But, building on the broader awareness issue above, Skype needs to develop more traditional distribution channels to get product into retail stores where "point-of-sale" purchase decisions are made. Just the products' existence in physical stores will drive demand on virtual stores. But retail distribution runs on a different business model involving market development funds, reseller training and building appropriate distributor relationships.
• Focus on promoting Skype PC-Free Cordless phones that allow consumers to continue to use their current landline service but also gradually transition to Skype where appropriate and beneficial.
• Launch a mobile strategy that uses current mobile technology to at least get a presence onto mobile devices (with at least IM, including chat and presence) beyond simply Windows Mobile devices. Did I say Nokia and Blackberry, both of whom have just reported record quarters?

Fodder for future posts. In the meantime what are your thoughts on these issues?

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

At the same time Skype is reporting its first quarterly profit, we are observing the end play for Canada's largest legacy phone company, Bell Canada, which is in turmoil due to its poor share price performance.. Lots of rumors here after it was announced yesterday that BCE Inc., Bell Canada's parent entity, was being put up for sale. Seems like a few Canadian public pension funds want to get in on the act; buffered by KKR who does have recognized turn around expertise. (By law, BCE must have a majority of Canadian shareholders; thus, the pension funds partnering with KKR on a potential deal to take BCE Inc. private.)

Mark Evans has taken one approach to analyzing their business but I would also include the following:

Local Landline telephone: two of my three offspring only use a wireless phone. For the younger generation, mobile is "Cool". Local landline's gradually receding into the tank, especially on the residential side. On the other hand, apparently they are doing well with their Wire Care program (insurance for your in-house wiring) as a value-added service.

TV: not something to hold your breath waiting for. The IPTV technology has a long way to maturity; it's only been deployed by smaller telcos such as for Maintoba Tel. And my engineering sense questions whether it has the potential capacity to handle 200 channels of high def. Its biggest issue is finding a "customer pain" that would cause a significant number of cable customers to switch. Ben Geller, Senior Manager, Industry Marketing for Motive, Inc. summarizes a wide range of other issues in Broadband Bananas:

Around the world, leading telcos are postponing the rollout of IPTV services because of the complicated issues associated with content acquisition, network build-outs, back-office operations, and customer service and support. Compounding these challenges are consumer expectations that IPTV services should "just work" at least as well as, if not better than, traditional services available today.

Wireless: Bell, the original Canadian phone company, is third ranked by number of wireless users in the Canadian market. They do benefit when kids go solely to wireless but when you have CDMA/EV-DO, etc. as your protocol, you rule out a wide range of platforms, services and market share. Bell wireless phones cannot be used in Europe. not to overlook the fact that GSM can handle both voice and data concurrently Both Nokia nd RIM (Blackberry) focus on GSM versions as their first platform for any new device (see Blackberry Pearl and 8800); in fact Nokia is downplaying any CDMA platforms -- all their N-Series devices are solely GSM. Apple's forthcoming iPhone is GSM only. Only Rogers gets to share in the roaming space when Europeans visit Canada. Full protocol migration required here if they want to play in these various markets.

Long Distance: well it seems to be going "local". In fact, do I see them studying the Skype business model strategy with their unlimited free calling subscriptions? Are they starting to subscribe to Voice 2.0 Manifesto's "The Meter is Off"? Not to mention the impact of plans such as TalkPlus or Truphone, should they come to fruition in the Canadian market..Here there future is being bet on the same type of subscriber plan that Meg Whitman spoke so highly of in answer to a question related to Skype's Unlimited North America and Skype Pro plans at yesterday's investor conference call.

Conference Calls: with Skype equipped to handle up to 10 participants and services such as High Speed Conferencing.com, a service that used to run at $0.55 per minute per participant is now down to the "free to $0.10 per minute" range.

Satellite: the rural market may have some growth but then it's got rural demographics and population densities. They shut down their Internet by satellite service, hoping to replace that service by broader deployment of their Inukshuk-based "Network Unplugged" where they have commitments to the Canadian regulatory authorities for annual increases in coverage levels.

High Speed Internet: can DSL move up to the speeds potentially available for cable and have the channel bandwidth required for future video? Can they take Network Unplugged into the countryside (see previous item)?

Enterprise: Factors to consider: Skype, Asterisk, and a wide range of Voice 2.0 applications for business such as OnState's ACD for Call Centers that totally disrupt the traditional Call Center model.

Enterprise Data: when they figure out Voice 2.0, they may be able to start up a strategy for new revenue generation from applications layered onto the copper wire (or fibre). But this requires a command and control business to understand the "open" environment of leveraged partnership businesses (See Microsoft, Oracle for examples)

Not a pretty picture; needs a focused turn around strategy that defines their offerings based on their strengths and transitioning their communications activities into a Voice 2.0 world. Frankly, their biggest business asset is their existing customer base. This bidding activity is the best chance to get out while the price is up. And, is there a reason we see no Canadian truly private equity involvement (non-government pension funds)? (Canada Pension Plan, one of the apparent bidder partners, is a compulsory government run plan for all Canadians.)

(Full Disclosure: I bought a minimum amount of shares when they spun off Nortel a few years ago; even today's share price does not recover my purchase price.)

The joys of being a legacy 21st century telco in the market where the first long distance call was ever made (by AGB in southern Ontario) in 1876!

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Following up on Jim's Q1-2007 Is Skype's First Profitable Quarter, I thought I'd see if I there was more to it.  

Skype calling didn't grow in Q1-20070.

Skype-to-Skype calling didn't grow this quarter, despite 25 million new accounts. Isn't this a churn indicator? For each minute a new user called, someone else chose not to Skype for a minute. This could be seasonal: Q1 2006 was also close to flat growth.

And as you can see in the chart below, Skype's retiring of free SkypeOut plans killed SkypeOut growth for the same period. This is clearly not seasonal.

Paid calls are a bigger part of the mix.

Paid calls doubled their share of all Skype calls in six quarters. Only 1 in 11 calls was paid at the end of 2005 but 1 in 6 was paid for at the beginning of 2007. National calling plans (convenience, predictability) fed the increased use of SkypeOut.

No more than 60% of accounts are active.

The combination of fee and free minutes served rose along with the number of accounts. We can crudely guess the number of inactive accounts. First, let's assume active accounts use the same number of minutes each quarter. But you can see the minutes consumed divided into all accounts fell from 76 to 47 minutes per account per quarter. That means that at least 40% of all accounts are inactive.

Is that fallow rate accurate? We don't know and Skype isn't saying. It's probably higher. The number should rise as more people get separate accounts for work and home.

Is that churn rate good? 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We saw Skype's Q1 results from the eBay conference call. What about Skype's performance next quarter?

I've set up a free prediction market at Inkling to answer that question. By buying and selling with pretend currency, we can collectively make a better guess than any one of us alone. One of those "wisdom of crowds" things. 

"How will Skype perform at eBay's Q2 2007 Earnings Call in July?" is trading in six predictions:

• Cumulative number of downloads

• Cumulative number of Skype accounts

• Maximum number of Simultaneous Online Users

• Quarterly revenue

• Skype-to-Skype minutes served in the quarter

• SkypeOut minutes served 

We'll settle them by the Q2 2007 eBay investor conference call.

Initial guesstimates are 500 million downloads, 230 million Skype names, 10 million simultaneous, 8 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes, 1.5 SkypeOut minutes, and 85 million revenue.

Buy if you think the numbers will be higher, based on what you know.

Sell if you think the numbers will be lower.

Your trades will adjust for new realities as we learn more in May and June about:

• Skype's marketing efforts (pushing up new accounts),
• major new product releases (pushing up downloads), and
• customer adoption of Skype phones that don't need need PCs (so they are always on and push up simultaneous user stats).

eBay, PayPal and Skype personnel: please don't trade. All others are welcome.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Listening to the eBay Quarterly investor phone call, eBay President Meg Whitman announced that Skype had its first profitable quarter in Q1-2007. Other highlights:

• Skype Revenue up 20% from Q4-06 to $78.5MM
• Registered Accounts up 14% to 195.5MM
• Margins for Skype are targeted to be 20% to 25% "over time"
• Skype-to-Skype minutes increased only 1% from Q4-06 to 7.7B
• SkypeOut minutes remained flat from Q4-07 at 1.5B minutes
• Termination of promotions in North America and Asia were a large part of the impact on usage minutes.

This is a quick summary; it introduces lots of questions. More commentary to follow once I have had a chance to look at the numbers in more detail.

Overall eBay met or exceeded analyst expectations and revised their guidance upward. Full news release from eBay is here. Also a Reuters summary in the Globe and Mail Report on Business.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 Skype's Andrus Purde is blogging about Skype Prime. I hope Andrus brings some of the wry views and visual flair of Pravda, his five year old Eesti blog, to his new English Prime blog. When you hang out in the official Prime public chat, say hello to Andrus and see early discussions turn into Prime user guides or blog posts.

Prime is the service most directly directed at Skypers' entrepreneurial spirit. The struggle to make a livelihood using Prime should be great blog fodder.  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Details for joining eBay's Q1 2007 earnings call at 2pm Pacific (10pm London time) today. I'm betting the number of Skype registered users cracked the 200 million mark last quarter.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 03:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We seem to be getting deluged with video applications and services these days as everybody rushes to build on Jeff Pulver's enthusiasm for video over IP (that "Other" VoIP). Mathew Ingram asks: Is there such a thing as too much information?. Two services that I have encountered over the past week:

Vlip is a new offering out on a beta trial basis to get feedback on building a personalized but public video messaging service. Developed by the folks at SightSpeed, Vlip takes advantage of their excellent video technology to allow you to immediately start recording video messages and build interactive video conversation threads. Its uniqueness arises from several features:

• Click-to-Record: No special setup or third party software required to record a video provided you have the basic webcam and microphone,
• With its infrastructure's inherent interactivity, you can build full conversation threads whereby other users can easily respond to your video with their own video message.
• Whereas SightSpeed generates private video messages sent via email and distinctively unique URL's, Vlip generates publicly accessible video messages.
• Vlip threads can be embedded into blogs either within a post or as the basis for a video comment thread.

In an Interview with SightSpeed CEO Peter Csathy, he mentioned:

• Vlip is currently in early beta and has been released as such to learn about user experiences and develop use cases for both consumer and business applications
• They have had many enquiries from businesses who are interested in incorporating Vlip video messaging into both marketing and customers support activities such as training and forums.
• On the consumer side, Vlip is targeted at the 18 to 25 year old demographic who have grown up with interactive messaging in the text and voice space.
• They are interested in learning how Vlip can be used as a social networking tool to help build web "communities"
• Vlip does include "take down" tools to deal with objectionable content.

A second relatively new video service has Robert Scoble streaming live from the lobby of the Web 2.0 conference (although it seems to have taxed his resources and ability to participate in the conference itself; according to an Update he's taking Tuesday off but back Wednesday). UStream TV provides the infrastructure such that you can produce live streaming of events over the Internet. Watched it for a few minutes yesterday as Robert interviewed passersby entering the conference. Mathew Ingram, in the post referenced above, shows how all this user generated content can get carried away:

At one point today, I was watching Chris Pirillo’s webcam, which was broadcasting video of him watching Robert Scoble’s webcam, which was broadcasting video of him driving in the car. Fascinating stuff. About the only interesting part of the whole process was the discovery that a bunch of people seem to think Chris Pirillo’s new wife Latthanapon “Ponzi” Indharasophang is hot (and he agrees).

[Update: Robert has confirmed that 24/7 webcasting can be an exhausting experience.]

A third recent video experience has been real time video calling, not via Skype on my PC, but rather via GTalk on a totally portable - device: the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. More to appear in a separate post but it does contribute to my experience with the Internet video space.

Real time video calling, video messaging, live streaming video production; streaming TV productions to the Internet. The questions we need to get answers to in this early phase of Video over IP include:

• When is it appropriate to use video? I only find myself turning on my Skype video only when I want to show the other party a physical object such as my recently received Nokia N800 Internet Tablet or provide other visual backup relevant to a conversation.
• How many of these tools can be spread or adopted virally?
• What will it take for rapid adoption of "new concept" video applications, such as "getting" the process behind Vlip's interactive video conversation thread, which probably require some user learning, not of the technology, but of the user experience itself (not to ignore the associated social interaction etiquette and protocols)?

I would venture to forecast that, beyond YouTube, video Internet-based calling, such as is available via Skype on my PC or GTalk on the Nokia N800, will remain by far the largest application of video until the killer video application arrives. In the meantime expect more tenuous forays such as Vlip and UStream TV to arrive, all looking for feedback that can turn their product or service into that dominant viral killer video application. But at this point I am not even expecting every real time conversation to transition to a video conversation at this point.

Note: Participants in the Nokia N800 Blogger Evaluation program are eagerly awaiting Skype for the Nokia N800 announced in January at CES and questioning if it will include a video component.

Powered by Qumana

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

All versions of Skype for Windows 3.x have included an option to embed Click-to-Call within Internet Explorer; there is also a Skype Web Toolbar for Firefox that provides the same capability. Click-to-Call is a feature claimed by many products incorporating voice these days but how it is deployed and why it is available covers a wide range of needs. And its use and desirability seem to be generating a lot of blog traffic these days.

As mentioned in a previous post I use Skype's Click-to-Call as one method to avoid dialing phone numbers. But commercial enterprises seek to use it as the final stage in closing an online sale:

• Luca Filigheddu provides his thoughts on Why any website needs a Click-to-Call. Hat tip to Peter Csathy at SightSpeed for directint me to this one.

  • In a real shop you always get the help you want and immediately. You are not willing to leave a message on a sheet and come back the day after to read the response. You need help EXACTLY when you ask for it.

• Garrett Smith, in his post Not Every Site Needs Click-to-Call, has offered some commentary on business issues that need to be incorporated into a business infrastructure involving Click-to-Call, including some cautions.

  • Adding presence to click-to-call technology was an important step, but how does it reflect on your company, when during the middle of the day, during normal working hours, a user could visit your site, and see that help is “offline”. Do you really want a user to have that much visibility into your business operation? Nothing screams “go elsewhere” like help “offline” during normal business hours, especially since most of the time someone is there ready to take your call, they just forgot to log-in to the queue or otherwise.

Both these posts focus on the business issues and transcend any particular technology or implementation. But they also bring into play some of the considerations behind the development of OnState's ACD for Skype 3.x Call Center offering.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'll be at various Geek Week events this week, the biggest being the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo. Here are lists of all talks at the conference, talks that interest me, and six I tagged "skypejournal" as on-point for our  readers.

• "Business Mashups: Designing, Distributing and Monetizing Web Applications"
• "Writing Voice Mashups with Mechanical Turks and Maps" Thomas Howe
• "Mobile 2.0" Mike McCue, Ilkka Raiskinen, Paola Tonelli
• "The Power of P2P: Millions of Tiny Unstoppable Pieces" Ori Brafman...
• "High Order Bit: Joost: P2P Television" Dirk-Willem van Gulik
• "Web 2.0++: Why We Got Here and What's Next" Rolf Skyberg

If you're twittering, here are twitter home pages for the conference, Phil Wolff (follow my twits), and Skype Journal headlines (follow the headlines).

I'll try sending photos to my flickr account.

I believe (wild, unfounded) Skype will launch web service access to the Skype identity service, presence service, payment system, calling and messaging services sometime this year. When the do, Skype's ecosystem will expand to the web2.0 community.

Call or Skype me if you have tips or want to visit this week in San Francisco. My mobile: +1-510-206-1138. Skype should roll over to my mobile.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Pamela Systems' Pamela, "a personal digital assistant for Skype", has been one of the more popular Skype Partner offerings with its wide range of Skype enhancement features. and over 350,000 downloads as of early April. Offered in four different editions (Basic, Standard, Premium, Business), Pamela's latest Version 3.5 was launched a couple of weeks ago.

Pamela provides a long list of features that enrich Skype conversations. Its recording capabilities are used not only as an answering machine but also, combined with its podcast features, Pamela is used by many podcasters to digitally tape their interviews. Pamela's personalization features allow you, for instance, to provide customized responses to chat messages by individual contacts when you are on a call or Away. It will also switch your Skype status to "Do Not Disturb" while you are in a Skype call.

In addition to bringing full compatibility with Windows Vista and enhancing some of its traditional features, Pamela 3.5 introduces three new features along with an additional one for the Business Edition:

• The most interesting one is the Rich Mood Editor which allows you to build formatted mood messages, incorporating hyperlinks if desired.
• Mega emotion sounds expands on the emotion sounds available in previous versions; however, you can now add your own sounds and catalog them within the emotion sounds window.
• Customized greetings for individual SkypeIn numbers.
• Outlook Toolbar (Pamela Business only) which provides the ability to start/stop recording from Outlook.

Pamela Call Recorder, which incorporates call recording, emotion sounds and chat auto reply , has been one of the most popular Skype Extras. Pamela Basic is offered on a shareware basis while the other three editions can be downloaded for a 14-day trial. And for a little history: why the name Pamela?

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Doesn't Skype's bundle of Skype credit (500 SkypeOut Minutes, 12 months Skype Voicemail), fon wi-fi access, and the SMC wi-fi phone remind you of something? We're back to bundling just weeks after Skype filed with the FCC to un-bundle mobile phones from wireless service! 

Laptop Magazine's Joanna Stern is helping Skype promote the bundle with a contest for Canadian and US Skypers. "We're giving away ten FON/SMC Bundles. Just let us know the craziest place you want to set up Wi-Fi, and make Skype calls from. Enter now."  Joanna's account of setting the bundle up in a few minutes. Tom Keating and Alec Saunders are excited by Joanna's context contest.

It's easier to sell an intangible if you wrap it in a brick. Skype's bundle builds buyability, breaking barriers by boosting bolder buyer behavior. Andy Abramson not only agrees, he believes tie-ins like these will help Skype become a mainstream brand. Here's a billboard for a March 2007 promotion selling a Sony Mylo, fon and Skype bundle in Tokyo. 

An update to the SMC phone lets you automatically log on to fon wifi networks. When public wi-fi access control comes through a web page, this SMC model can't log in. The update, a $50 discount, and the promotional bundle should move some harder-to-sell product.

If you don't win the contest, pay Skype $160 for the bundle, $50 off earlier prices.  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A recent invitation to test a "Skype Enterprise Edition" mentioned five features without defining them.

• Enterprise network compatibility.
• Company-owned Skype Name creation.
• Customisable to your corporate requirements.
• Direct technical support from Skype.
• Ongoing upgrades maintenance.

Skype's spokespeople were non-responsive when asked about them. So here's my best guess. 

"Enterprise network compatibility."

This could mean anything. For now it likely means a customizable Microsoft installer so you can tweak Skype's behavior. For example, directing all Skype traffic through a particular proxy or a port on your firewall at time of installation. This is available today as Skype for Business.

Ideally (meaning not in this first edition), network compatibility would include:

• Inventory. Network management software that would list installed, active, and unregistered Skype clients on your networks.
• Feedback. Reports on aggregate bandwidth consumption, usage by times of day, etc.
• Controls. The ability to turn off specific Skype nodes or restrict their passage through the firewall. Post-rollout.

Pretty sure bigger companies would pay for a subscription to this service.

"Company-owned Skype Name creation."

ID lifecycle management is a big deal in a SOX and 9-11 world. I'm assuming this means "create Skype names your company owns." Features to look for:

• Provision via web service. "Web services" are a way for my computer to talk with your computer. You really want to automate creating Skype names the same way you automate creating email addresses and enterprise software logins. Your corporate directory should generate new Skype names when personnel directories change. It also should create role based identities (ShiftSupervisor-at-AcmeInc) from business process systems.
• Skype name End Of Life controls. When an employee dies or leaves, you want to deny them access to their phone, voice mail, email, etc. You also want to give some control over the behavior of those accounts to their supervisor or to other internal authorities. Skype would need to offer a web based control panel changing these authorizations.
• Enterprise Skype name Directory Services. Variations for intranet, extranet, and public people search.
• Push directory updates to Skype Contact Groups. When a new person joins a team, they should automatically show up in each of the team members' contact groups. Most companies have internal yellow pages. Skype for Enterprises clients should subscribe to those yellow page systems. Those systems will automatically define, populate and update contact groups.

Unlikely to have any of these at launch.  

"Customisable to your corporate requirements."

Oooh, this could mean anything.

• Corporate ring tones?
• Company colors?
• Standard bundle of Skype compatible software or hardware?
• Enterprise Karaoke plug-in? (the company that sings together)
• Different terms of service?
• Special SkypeIn and SkypeOut rates?
• Company stock price IM'd to everyone?
• The CEO on everyone's buddy list?
• The CEO on nobody's buddy list?
• A custom tab?

"Direct technical support from Skype."

This exists today, sorta, via Jira prioritization for paying customers. Major accounts could pay more for 7x24 phone support, premise visits, etc.

"Ongoing upgrades maintenance."

Perhaps an RSS feed with the latest public releases as a feed enclosure, downloaded in the background, even via iTunes or any other enterprise feed reader.  

see also:

• Jan Geirnaert. How to apply to this Early Adopter Program.
• Dan York. "Will be interesting to see what evolves out of this."

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Last evening I attended a local event for bloggers. I would get into conversations about Skype 3.2 beta and it turned out most of the attendees had Macs and complained about how Mac users always had to wait longer to get the new features that showed up in Skype for Windows beta first. I simply explained it away as the fact that, with Mac's higher reliability, the Mac team at Skype had to be more diligent about ensuring smooth operation of their Skype for Mac releases.

This morning I received an email from Skype's PR agency with the heading: "Skype for Mac 2.6 Beta Brings Call Transfer to Mac Platform First!"

So without further adieu, all you Mac enthusiasts can, via the Skype client itself, perform a true call transfer to your other Skypified colleagues. Download the Skype 2.6 beta here.

Check out the Release Notes here for complete details. In addition to Call Transfer new features include:

• Join public chats

• Chat typing indicator - see when others are writing a message

• Call any Skype Prime premium services provider and pay with Skype credit

• Automatic Updates – get new features and updates without having to go to Skype’s website to download

• DTMF tones for automatic answering services available also during Skype-to-Skype calls

Now for Windows users, you can take advantage of Call Transfer; however, it involves installation of at least the Free version of Pamela's new version 3.5 - more coming in a post later this week.

And if you're on Skype for Windows 3.2 beta client, get the latest update to build 82 here. Release Notes for this build.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

During my recent visit to Skype's London office I had the good fortune to meet Jeremy Hague, President of Melbourne, Australia's Netralia, who, in turn, is Publisher of Skylook, or, as it is now bylined in Skype Extras: Skypify Outlook with SkyLook.

In spite of having just over 50,000 downloads via Skype Extras (and ranked 15th for downloads as of March 28), Skylook has become one of the premier Skype Extras success stories.Why? Because they have developed a mission critical business tool for a market that benefits significantly from Skylook's value-add.

During the two days we were together I was able to sit in on Jeremy's presentation to Skype staff. Jeremy positioned Skylook as a Skype extension to Outlook. In a manner similar to Outlook's handling and management of email, a Skylook user can also store, track and archive all his/her Skype activities within Outlook folders. Skylook will enter as Outlook events all chat session activity, all Skype call history information and, on an elective basis, Skype call recordings. In addition it provides an Outlook Toolbar from which you can manage all your Skype activities.

But, in addition to the software itself, Netralia's other key asset is the customer base of clients, built up over eighteen months. Skylook provides a valuable conversation management and archiving service for sales, marketing and customer service personnel, who use Skype in conjunction with their customer relationship management (CRM) activities. Skylook 2.0 has an annual subscription-based model at a cost of $99.95 per license which includes all upgrades and customer support; a limited feature set Skylook 1.5 is available for $49.95 until the end of 2008. I'm sure several business cases can be made to show the time to recovery of this charge is less than a month..

In a space where the Skype Email Toolbar is free and where there are other competitors who may have some overlapping features. Skylook has succeeded by listening to its customers and building into Skylook 2.0 the feature set requested by their customers. Finally, for the new quarter starting April 2, 2007, Skylook has been listed as a Premium Partner where they are reached simply by clicking "Tools | Do More"; as a result they have seen an uptick in sales activity.

Bottom line: if you provide significant value-add for business operations, yet charge a fair price with a short term ROI for the customer, a business can be built via Skype Extras.

Note: In Skype Extras, you will find a version of the product that is listed as "Free". In fact downloading Skylook will provide you with a fully featured 14-day trial version; however, after 14 days, should you not purchase a full license, it will drop back to providing some basic Outlook integration features such as calling any Outlook Contact via Skype or SkypeOut, as appropriate from within Outlook.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

When emails are seen in seconds and minutes, and response times (expected and real) are in seconds and minutes, has email become real-time enough to substitute for instant messaging and chat?

In most places, email remains the channel for formal communication because there are persistent records, some threading of conversation, and the tempo is slow. But in some places, especially BlackBerried teams, people expect sub-minute responses to inter-office email. This tempo is comparable to casual chat over IM. Beyond tempo...

Email is starting to offer presence!

Now that Google, AOL, and Yahoo! are blending IM into their webmail services, you should be able to tell if someone is getting your message right now. You still won't know is if it was lost in a massive inbox or misfiled in a spam bucket. And it won't apply to people outside your hosted mail service. But it works and will increase its reach.

So email is starting to look a lot like IM for millions of people.

Email as IM brings us back to Microsoft's four ways of thinking about VoIM (voice over instant messaging). As part of:

1. The portal lifestyle, along with blogs and shopping.

2. A Unified Communications system that brings IM and VoIP into the world of Outlook and Exchange and Microsoft Office.

3. The Windows platform, just a feature for Microsoft's millions of programmers to build into their own software.

4. A bizdev gambit.

The Portal Lifestyle meme is Lively, Fun, for Consumers and Tweens. Parental controls, avatars, skins, and MySpace buttons. XBox360 with Messenger inside. VoIM wearing Adidas. The MSN/Live advantage is huge; blending Messenger into online properties is not only cheap marketing for Messenger, it can add value to existing properties. Microsoft's blogging platform is one of the world's largest. So are its email service, its shopping networks, its search and mapping engines. VoIM adds a real-time social element to its services. Is online dating better if you can chat with a prospective date? A prospective employer? Voice and Video over IM are the new "sticky factor" for web businesses.

The Unified Communications meme is full of knowledge management jargon coated in a hard security shell. A perfect confection for IT operations. VoIM is merely one more communication mode to be plugged into access controls, provisioning, server farming, and network monitoring. VoIM in a suit. The current version of Skype for Business is a lifestyle product putting on that suit and on its best behavior. Can Skype integrate too aggressively with the Microsoft communications, office, and business suites?

The Component meme may endure. I haven't seen a strong set of VoIM elements built into Vista or Microsoft's development tools. I'm sure they're coming. When they do, anyone with a junior high school programming background will be able to build their own "Skype" desktop, web, Zune, or mobile client in a few hours. What happens when most of the technology becomes cheap/free/open and designs become conventional (think rotary or dial pad on phones)? The basis for competing shifts to value-added services and social capital lock-in. Value-added services like trusted ways to pay and get paid, like Skype Prime. Social capital lock-in happens when it is more costly to abandon your hard-won buddy list if you switch to another network.

The bizdev playing card. The fourth meme, dark and quietly simmering, positions the whole VoIM thing as bait. As Microsoft allies with telco and cableco partners around the world, Messenger's large VoIM userbase and database (spelled "sales prospects") has value. How long before Vista ships with an AT&T-powered MessengerOut? Don't discount VoIM's role in Microsoft's business development.

Back to email. And Skype.

I asked Should Skype offer email? skypename@Skype.com? in February. Now more than ever.

• I think it plays in all four memes.
• @Skype would let users create one inbox and history file with multiple views for all communication modes.
• @Skype APIs would let developers mash-up Skype in new and useful ways.
• @Skype would spread the word about Skype faster and to more communities than the existing Skype network.
• @Skype would let people choose more communication modes so they spend more time in Skypeland.

Email has its own design, operational, and economic problems, so entry isn't cheap or easy. But what happens when all the other VoIM players are well and closely tied to email? And Skype isn't?

See also:

• Could Skype achieve Windows-like lock-in?
• Dear Michigan Telcos - Part 4. Skype helps relationships more than you do
• Voice 2.0 - It's About Building Unique Communities
• Skype Is ... "Open for Business"
• Walking through Skype Prime Beta

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First, void the warranty and install OS X on the Apple TV box. This turns the box into a $300 Mac. Then install Asterisk. So you have a telephone switch an order of magnitude cheaper and more flexible than most turnkey systems.

Compare this DIY project with another one. Dress a USB headset as an "old timey" phone on Instructables. It's a really stupid phone, just a fun form factor. You can't dial and there's no dial tone, just like the original, century old phone. Unlike the old phones, there is no crank to generate a charge and notify the operator. And there is no operator.

You could make the old-school version more Skype-friendly by adding:

• SkypeOut to Google 411 (1-800-466-4411). Its voice recognition and phone directory service are the next best thing to an operator.

• Ring (the bells in the project are decorative) when Skype calls come. bonus points: carillon tones that ring the analog bells in different patterns per caller category.

• Tacit realworld presence vs. the declared kind. Sensors (room movement? infrared?) that tell SkypeWeb, Skype's presence server, if someone is around to answer the phone.

Beyond geekiness, the AsteriskAppleTVmod makes a few great points.

Decentralizing power. Blogging seized publishing power from centralized control. IP communication is following this same pattern.

Phone switching was once the exclusive capability of a few hundred phone companies. Recently, you would buy switching as a packaged system from a few hundred manufacturers. Now it is software, a virtual service, so anyone can run a switch from all sorts of gear. (I'm waiting for Asterisk on Symbian.) In a very important sense, this pushes choices to individuals and small groups. The power to connect calls, to connect people, shape human communication experiences.

Open systems encourage innovation. This project also affirms what Chris Kranky wrote about mobiles:

The day will come where wireless will simply be yet another IP pipe. Similar to the PC world, you and I will be free to choose our provider, what device or devices we want to use and more importantly what applications we want to use them with.

I'm still excited by Skype's brilliant Carterfone for mobile networks filing. Skype's Chris Libertelli asks the United States' FCC to let anyone hook up any device and service to the mobile phone network. If engineers can embed a phone switch in a TV, it boggles the mind what they'll come up with for the mobile network. The new services, rate competition, and gadgets will be amazing.

You can "vote" for or against Skype's FCC petition. Reference "Proceeding" number RM-11361 here and show your support with your comment. Be sure to sign your comment too.

DIY is a powerful economic force. And it's fun. Remember, Apple grew up out of the homebrew computing movement. One of the smartest things Skype, Google, Yahoo!, and AOL have done is open up messaging APIs. Microsoft and Adobe are on that path too. They have to open up at least as much as their rivals, and expose more capabilities to DIYers to compete for their attention. And earn their stream of innovation around their platforms.

Thanks to Brian Wang of the Advanced Nanotechnology blog for the Asterisk tip.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For a company that is not top of mind in product announcements these days, Microsoft is certainly getting a lot of attention from the blogosphere. So the questions become: where is Microsoft going on the offensive? and who are their competitors?

Where is Microsoft going on the offensive?

Launch of Windows Vista: we saw lots promotion at both CES and CeBit, yet Vista has yet to get anyone to define its killer feature(s). Having just received an evaluation copy I will be reporting on its implementation while upgrading a three year old PC (which has had its hardware upgraded to be Vista compatible). To add more to my perspective: both one of my sons and my daughter have purchased MacBooks over the past year; I no longer have to help them keep their PC's up to date due to viruses, worms, other security threats and long term congestive registry failure.

Launch of Office 2007: apparently they did a "soft" launch last week. You can take an online test drive here. Outlook 2003's substantial improvements was a prime driver for Office 2003 upgrades but what is the feature driver for Office 2007 uptake?

Real time communications: As discussed in more detail in a post last Thursday, Alec Saunders summarizes Microsoft's entry into the real time communications space as a gradual but consistent build up of components that will become key to a world where intelligence is at the endpoints while the network becomes simply a delivery pipe.

Back Office: Can Microsoft maintain its dominance in the enterprise market with all its server products? Will an Internet-based Web 2.0 world cut into this market? Or is its current enterprise installed base the Trojan horse for building up its real time communications play?

Having started out as a PocketPC PDA device with little or no communications capability, the resulting Windows Mobile is making headway into the wireless phone market. And this thrust got emphasized by today's story from MobilitySite.com that Dell has shipped its last Axim, the last of the pure Pocket PC PDA's of any significance. (At least it goes out as a market leader in many ways.) Definitely reinforces that Microsoft is never in the game to play; they are there to win. And Dell has realized they cannot be a mobile phone space player with all its demands for establishing carrier relationships. Alec sees Windows Mobile as another key component to Microsoft's real time communications play.

Who are Microsoft's competitors: Google? Cisco? Apple?

Paul Graham, Is Microsoft Dead?, seems to think it's Google and Apple. He also argues the broadband Internet and AJAX are contributors to Microsoft's "reduced relevance". In response Tony Hung points out that cash and time are on Microsoft's side. Just to enliven an otherwise quiet Easter weekend, more debate and discussion available via Techmeme. And Paul has responded:

So maybe I'd better explain exactly what I did mean. What I meant was not that Microsoft is suddenly going to stop making money, but that people at the leading edge of the software business no longer have to think about them. [my italics]

Andy Abramson has been saying for a while that it's Cisco (maybe even while working with Apple). Garrett Smith reinforces this perspective in a post today where he effectively positions Microsoft as taking advantage of its current position in the enterprise market and, building on Alec's theme, he states:

And to make things interesting there is an ever growing perception that software rules in enabling communications in offices and not hardware as traditionally believed ( If you have been sleeping for the last 15 years, software is where Microsoft kills the opposition!!). So it’s a huge challenge for Cisco to compete in this space against Microsoft.

And, of course, there's always the European Commission's Competition bureaucrats as well as the Free Software Foundation.

A very lively debate. Is Microsoft becoming "just another" player in the Web 2.0 world? Or can they become significantly relevant again? Your Comments?

Update: Rick Segal provides his usual insightful commentary from the perspective of a former Microsoft evangelist turned VC I first met RIck when he came down to Quarterdeck in this role many years ago; both his business acumen and sense of humo(u)r have become a very welcome addition to the Canadian technology business scene.

By the way, with Dell's abandonment of the PocketPC/Windows Mobile market where do I get to use applications such as SlingBox for Mobile and Skype for Mobile without having to buy a mobile phone handset? Even HP's iPAQ devices have become a line of phones.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Alec Saunders, of iotum, Talk Now and Voice 2.0 Manifesto fame, has written one of his high level overview posts, Aikido, Retreat or War. What's Your Microsoft Strategy? Alec brings a unique perspective to the table because he has moved from being a program manager within Microsoft when their real time communications strategy was in its infancy several years ago to one who must now find his way in a real time communications space threatened by Microsoft dominance. His key thesis is that, as we transition to a Voice 2.0 world where applications are king, Microsoft, with its software heritage, is best positioned, both culturally and resource-wise, to provide the key infrastructure software for a communications world connected solely by "pipes" with the intelligence at the end points.

Before I could fully understand his thesis, I had to Google Aikido. OK, I'm quite familiar with Judo and Karate, but Aikido? Turns out to be a good choice:

Aikido focuses not on punching or kicking opponents, but rather on using their own energy to gain control of them or to throw them away from you.

O Sensei [the developer of this martial art] emphasized the moral and spiritual aspects of this art, placing great weight on the development of harmony and peace. "The Way of Harmony of the Spirit" is one way that "Aikido" may be translated into English.

Having spoken earlier this week with Kyle Marsh, Microsoft's Unified Communications program manager, Alec outlines how Microsoft is quietly but gradually building itself to become a key infrastructure player in the real time communications space. Not only within the enterprise sector but also in the embedded and mobile sectors. (Andy does like to remind us occasionally that Cisco and Microsoft are at odds.) Alec then goes on to outline three alternative strategies to avoid becoming roadkill in this environment:

• Aikido: launching a complementary business that's "in harmony" with Microsoft yet leverages their momentum
• Building vertical market applications, or
• War: being the second or third player in the market.

He then outlines iotum's Aikido strategy, positioning itself within a gap created by Microsoft's momentum. As evidenced in practice by Talk Now's links to, yet independence from, the Blackberry in its role as a key presence infrastructure tool, their Relevance Engine has the potential to become "the central, global presence platform for converged networks".

So where does Skype enter into this picture? What is their "Microsoft strategy" in this scenario? Skype already provides the basic tools for effective real time conversations; simplicity of implementation and operation is one of its most effective features. As Alec states, Microsoft's long term game involves Office integration to their communications platforms. We see the beginnings of Skype's Office integration with its Email Toolbar for Outlook and Office Toolbar. We see Extras partner Netralia's Skylook now being offered in the Extras Gallery as "MS Outlook Office Integration". And Pamela 3.5 provides some Outlook integration. Certainly all of these could integrate into a global presence platform that invokes New Presence.

Are these types of offerings that enhance the user experience sufficient for Skype's prosumer and SMB markets? Or do these markets need the overhead and complexity of Microsoft's Unified Communications software platforms to achieve their business goals and profitability? Underlying all these considerations is also the need to build an infrastructure that has the five nines (99.999%) reliability of the current PSTN.

While these applications definitely reinforce the role of software in real time communications from another player outside Microsoft, only the evolution of accepted consumer usage and business practices will provide the final answer. As Alec states: "Microsoft’s plan is a 10 to 15 year view of the market, which is only starting to be visible today."

Alec started his conclusion by quoting a summary statement in my recent Interruption Manifesto and I stick with the statement as a final thought here:

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.

Update: Check out Ken Camp's comments: Are You an Ostrich or a Ninja?

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

SkypeOut credits burning a whole in your purse? You can now Skype UK premium numbers starting with 09. Peter Parkes announced it on Skype's UK blog. How do the 09 rate, tax, and cost structures compare to Skype Prime? Hat tip to VoIP News.

Update: PC Advisor's Rosemary Haworth has the best walk through on this: Skype offers cut-price phone sex. "The savings weren’t exactly breathtaking. And in at least one case, calling the number via Skype actually cost more."

Technorati tags: skype, skypeout, uk, 09, hiddenchemistry, rates, plans, prices, pstn, icstis

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The call-for-papers deadline for this June's eBay developer conference was March 23rd, extended to March end. No invitation was sent by Skype's developer program so the one PayPal devrels blogged follows below the fold.

Sessions you'd kill to give/take? A few that might be crowd pleasers:

"Seven Winning Ways to Manage Interruptions for Money"

"Mashup City! The Skype Web Service APIs"

"Translation for International Customer Service: Five Methods, Three APIs"

Do you have a topic idea that you'd like to present at the 2007 eBay Developers Conference? One of my favorite parts of our annual conference is checking out talks from our community members who have interesing perspectives and ideas on developing with our platform. If you would like to present this year, please submit your idea by next Friday, 3/30.

We are now accepting proposals for topics in our three tracks:

• Affiliate Traffic and Buying Applications

• Selling and Merchant Tools

• eCommerce Consulting and Integration

E-mail your proposals to devcon-cfp@ebay.com Be sure to include:

• Session Title

• Session Abstract (~300 words)

• Intended Audience

• Speaker Name

• Speaker Company

• Speaker Bio

The key to a good session is focusing on what other developers will find interesting, can use in their own businesses, or otherwise be able to act on to make their eBay or eCommerce business/site better. It is important to be benefit based, not technology based.

Submission deadline: March 30th, but the earlier the better.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mark Evans last week picked up on an Engadget post which suggests the much anticipated GPhone is actually a phone with Google, not Google phone. Based on the associated press release from LG Electronics this line of phones will combine appropriate hardware with Google software, namely, Google Maps, GMail and Blogger Mobile

But a while ago, via my Blackberry 8700's web browser I went to the standard Google Mobile link. It detected that I was on a Blackberry and came up with a screen that asked if I wanted to download and install five "applications": Google Search, Google Maps, GMail, Google News and GTalk. So I installed all five and ended up with the main Blackberry "Home" screen shown above. The filmstrip below then shows some of these applications in operation.

This album is powered by BubbleShare - Add to my blog

Is this Blackberry configuration the precursor to what the GPhone experience will be -- at least on the LG handsets as suggested on Engadget? Of course to be totally user friendly, Google Maps would link into the Blackberry Contacts (but that's Blackberry Maps logo beneath the Google Maps logo and it already has those links) and GMail would link into email addresses in my Blackberry Contacts Manager. To be a true navigation application Google Maps also needs an ability to interact with a GPS via Bluetooth. Finally, GTalk is purely IM with no voice component but we already know VoIP is not readily adapted to wireless platforms. I guess one can always hope. (Note that Blogger Mobile requires carrier adoption and is not yet available for my wireless carrier.)

What I do find is that I use the Google Search and Google News "applications" more often than using the embedded web browser (lower right icon).

When I went to the same Google Mobile link on my Nokia N80i, it recognizes the web browser as being on an N80 and basically wants to run Search, News, SMS and Blogger from hyperlinks within the web browser while separate applications are installed only for Google Maps and GMail. Interesting ...

All this certainly provides a pragmatic hint of how Google is building the components for, and may evolve into, the phone space.

For those who are curious: Icons in the second row: Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry Maps (yes it can be downloaded for an 8700), iotum Talk Now's Free/Busy icon, iotum's Talk Now Status Screen, Phone Log.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Two of the Release Note items for Skype 3.2 beta piqued my curiosity:

• feature: Multi-Device presence

• feature: Call Quality feedback in client

Yesterday I spoke with Mike Bartlett, Product Manager of Skype for Windows, to obtain more details behind these features..

The need for Multi-Device Presence has arisen with the arrival of PC Free phones such as the Skype WiFi phones and the "Embedded" Skype Cordless Dual Phones. In this case a user could be logged in on his/her desktop/laptop PC and then log in on the PC Free phone, creating potential for conflict of the user's presence status as broadcast to his/her Contacts (and you never know from which device). This is complicated by the fact that Skype can "auto change" status to "Away" or "Not Available" if there is no keyboard activity on the desktop/laptop for a pre-configured time period (default 10 to 20 min.)

Also it means that chat messages sent to the user may end up on different but not all logged-in platforms. Or the message may not get there at all if an attempt is made to send it to a PC Free phone that does not support chat -- recall those times you send a chat message and get the response that the recipient is "not on a device that supports chat".

A team at Skype has been reviewing a variety of use cases related to this problem and developed an algorithm to have a truer reflection of a user's Skype presence status. As a result Skype is launching "Multi-Device Presence" as a feature that ensures all "logged-in" instances of a user's account (on up to five devices) are synchronized back to the most recently logged in device's status. While introduced initially with the Skype 3.2 for Windows beta client, it is a feature that must also be migrated to the various hardware platforms' firmware and to Skype for Mac to be fully effective. If you have a PC Free phone, keep checking (in the Settings menu) for firmware updates.

One more challenge as this process evolves: ensuring that "Multi-Device Presence" co-operates with Skype's Partners' software such as Pamela Personal Assistant for Skype that has the ability to automatically change your Skype status while on a call.

A logical extension of this activity would be to have Skype presence managed in context via iotum's Relevance Engine to provide a more complete and thorough method for both presence and interruption management. Such a feature would assist both the Skype user and the called party, especially as users transition to using multiple Skype "end point" devices. More in a future post when I report on the Cordless PC Free phones currently being evaluated.

In previous versions of Skype, upon completion of a SkypeOut call, you may have noticed that, once every 10 or so SkypeOut calls, a browser window popped up asking about the quality of your calling experience. With "Call Quality feedback in client" this feature has been moved into the Skype client such that you may get a query once every seven calls. It will pop up as a blue tooltip in a Call window just above the line for entering phone numbers/Skype Names where you also find the ability to change Sound Device settings, warnings that your microphone has not detected any sound, etc. However, a major difference is that, being embedded in the client, your responses are also accompanied by technical information about your call to facilitate issue and problem tracking (such as the information you see if you have set the "Display technical call info during calls" feature in Tools | Options | Advanced).

One irritation about the previous feature was that it would usually only come up when I had good call experiences (which is my case over 95% of the time). Skype is looking for a way to allow the user to activate this feature whenever s/he wants to report a poor call experience.

Seemingly small features but atttention to this type of detail will lead to a smoother, more productive and effective Skype calling experience.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congrats to Lorne and Audra on their engagement! They Skyped the good news. 

Sunday leftovers:

• Mootones: the next big business. (Cowbell Carillon! Moooon River. 99 bottles of milk on the wall.)
• Emoooticons. With sound. thanks, Martin! 
• Skype and spy agencies. What if? As Spiderman's Uncle Ben said: With great power comes great responsibility.
• Apple, Google join forces for 'ultimate phone'.
• Google Writer autocompletes blog posts. With an API, could be hugely popular with the IM crowd.
• Google buys iotum for $520m. Moshe Maeir.
• Jajah buys Vonage by Pat Phelan. At what point did Vonage employee stock options go underwater?
• JAJAH Announces Quantum Calling. If you can do quantum tunneling, firewalls should be easy.

Strange But True

Skype trousers. R$34.90, look comfortable. Not a joke.

Skype armored personnel carrier. Looks dangerous. Not a joke.

Urban Dictionary's surprising definitions and examples for skype and skyping. Red hair! Drugs!

Joost's "What's On" listings. Lots of mainstream programming now, but some are blocked in major markets. Can't watch SciFi's Alliance Atlantis channel in the United States and Canada. Can watch national Geographic only in the United States and Canada. DRM for Joost's publishers. 

BenQ P51 PDA Phone launched in Singapore and Turkey. Windows Mobile, WLAN, 2.83" touch-screen display, GPS launched. "You can use VoIP services like Skype."

How to integrate Skype into Netsuite. Their trick: using their content management to add a callto: tag to the html around phone numbers. They should look at the more flexible skype: tag. documentation.

Skype Home Automation. DIY project: $100-200, 3-6 hours, intermediate difficulty. "Set up your own remote home automation system - read the temperature of your house, find out what song is playing on your home system and control the volume, all through instant message commands!" Hat tip to John S. Richards.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Roland Tanglao shot this slide by Skype partner EQO at a recent Mobile Monday event in Vancouver. I love the strategy names: "Bandwidth Cheapskate" / "Opportunistic Connector" / "On-Demand Connector."

A fourth strategy, "Don't Make Me Think," lowers cognitive burden. Fewer steps; fewer things to look at, touch or consider; simpler results; elegance. Google used to lead over other search engines. Google Talk still leads this way in VoIM. But I'm betting the VoIM lead changes hands this year when a major player delivers a browser-only solution.

Skype was once EQO's only thing, letting you see/share Skype presence, join Skype chats, and take/make Skype voice calls. Now they also support AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, and GoogleTalk. On Blackberries, too. 

That sort of diversification happens when:

1. customer uptake from your only partner isn't high enough to make your goals (money, virality) or
2. you're afraid the partner may obsolete you with their own product.

Pretty sure EQO management perceives point (a) was true a year ago and (b) is true now. More than that, EQO's diversification capitalizes on everyone else's walled gardens: the Trillian effect let's users operate in multiple networks at a lower cost than running clients for all their networks. Effort and time are worth money; the EQOs, Trillians and ChatStats of the world save it.  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry for being the last one to post this. Here it is from the Skype news release:

Skype general manager Don Albert "With more than 100 million cows in the United States alone, it is a market opportunity we could no longer ignore. One in four Americans is a cow and now they can use Skype."

Features:

• User experience tailored for cows
• Localization for cows from different countries
• Reference design and APIs for developers hardware/embedded manufacturers

Screenshot of the Skype home page featuring Skype for Cows.

We're not surprised: clearly Skype's been working up to this for a while. When you look in Skype's personalization options, Skype's already seeded "moo" (Holstein) and "moo-food" (grass) wallpaper patterns. They built a cow's favorite flower, the daisy, into the Skype Find logo. They partnered with Moo, a business card maker nearly a year ago. We just couldn't take a hint.

Herdware: "Social Software for Social Animals™."

The software is tailored for our 1.4 billion bovine neighbors. Controls are simplified, more visual.

With illiteracy such a problem among cows, Skype is partnering with IBM for moo recognition of Skype commands. Students at the Open University in London are developing moo-to-text conversion. The Universal Chat Translator should be able to translate between different cow dialects and most major human languages.

"We're one big herd."

Skype's certification team is recruiting testers for their new, much larger Tallinn offices. I'm sure they are glad of the ventilation.

Cows are intensely social animals. Herd behavior is different from pack behavior: no hierarchy. But members of a herd stay aware of each other and aware of threats from outside.

"Communicating is fundamental to all of us," blogged Jaanus Kase of Skype community fame. "Skype aims to bridge herding barriers, increasing the connections among cows around the world. We're one big herd in the big scheme of things."

The Skype for Cows Hardware Story

Skype's partners are jumping on the wagon, said hardware alliance director Stefan Mööberg. "We've been calling it Hardware for Herdware."

The biggest technical advance seems to be the Mootooth reference platform. Mootooth equipped gear automatically creates a wireless Ethernet subnet among members of a herd within 100 meters. This improves wireless range, cuts power consumption, and reduces latency. Mootooth nets can combine to form Mootooth mesh networks with thousands of users, all operating locally.

• VoIP Voice: "Barleyphone" RFID tag and Mootooth earphone (pictured above).

• Ipevo: Xing.cow speakerphones. Runs on batteries powered by methane, weatherproofed to work outdoors, with built in Wi-Fi. A dairy cow can belch up to two tons of methane a month. Pilot programs showed great success when mounting the Xing.cow on a salt lick.

• RTX: Mootooth earphones with medical sensors. They collect body temp, pulse, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels. This biotelemetry is reported wirelessly to a service for monitoring via Skype's data channel. This will wake up the vet before a cow gets too sick. You may optionally auto-adjust a cow's feed based on general health.

• Fon: Home On The Range Mootooth base stations. Connecting your Mootooth wireless network to the Internet. Strange cows may have to sign in or pay to use HOTR spots. Due next quarter.

Building community

Bovine Americans have had a rough time of it. Cow tipping (how to) comes to mind. As cattle adopt Skype, expect them to organize for better living conditions and civil rights.

Good for Skype's business?

Active users are great for the Skype network. However Skype for Cows doesn't follow the usual business model since few cows have PayPal accounts or credit cards. So revenue is expected from cowboys, ranchers, and the whole husbandry ecosystem.

I think the big money will be in Herdcasting (Joost for Cows) and Herdsourcing (Skype Prime for Cows), but more on that later.

If you need outside confirmation of this strategy, Yahoo!'s been working on Messenger for Cows with Voice for more than a year now.  

The only critic I've heard from is Tux, spokespenguin for the Linux community. Tux griped that Skype is still not open source, and that Skype was playing favorites with cows. "Penguins are so much more fun than cows, if you need a dumb reason. The practical reasons is we need move our population off Antarctica." Skype is the only communication network serving both the ice shelf and Argentina.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)