Over at O'Reilly's eTel, Gershon Goren, CTO of Webdialogs, Inc., publisher of the Unyte Desktop Sharing Extra for Skype, goes back to the time when Webdialogs decided to partner with Skype and speaks of the trials and tribulations they went through in working with Skype to launch Unyte. There wasn't always a Skype Developer Program and it was not always clear who the decision makers were at Skype.

As we began investigating partnering with Skype, we quickly realized WebDialogs would be pioneers with Skype in the level of integration that would be required for success. And so began the WebDialogs development team's journey with Skype--one that took unexpected twists and turns along the way. But our team of developers and the Skype Developer Program team persevered through a mutual learning process. And, as a signpost for other developers, we believe we proved that persistence pays and challenges can be overcome by working together for mutual gain--with the result being a tightly integrated product offering.

He talks about the evolution from the highly unstructured Skype Early Adoption program, the evolution and maturation of communications infrastructure to support development between two parties to today's situation with a much more mature Skype Developer Program. But the effort is paying off:; the bottom line reads:

Furthermore, our early perception that integration with Skype would pay dividends down the road has indeed come to pass. Our relationship with Skype has driven the bulk of Unyte's usage and helped us build our user base. Unyte has more than 500,000 users, largely as a result of our relationship with Skype.

Our relationship with Skype's SDP has enabled Unyte to acquire a broad international customer base that now reaches 30 countries. Without our relationship with the Skype Developer Program, this kind of market reach would not have been possible for us. {Skype Journal's bolding)

Stories we need to hear as Skype leads up to its forthcoming Skype Developer's Conference in Boston in ten days. Check the eTel site for the full story. Hat tip to Andy for pointing us to this.

Unyte: An Extras Gallery Success Story

Unyte Testing Beta of Enhanced Desktop Sharing Tool

Tags: Unyte, Skype Developer Program, Webdialogs

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have just read Ike Roelfsema's post on "Skype Goodbye and Skype Hello". Seems like Jaanus Kase has been bitten by the academic bug and is returning to University. Jaanus picks his study subjects well; I have always respected Carnegie Mellon as having one of the best programs involving human interactions with digital technology. From not only cost effective but also results oriented software development processes to actual human-computer interfacing, they have always had some of the best programs; I have had the pleasure of working with some of their methodologies and graduates.

While at Skype, Jaanus has become probably Skype's most public face through his authorship of some of the most read Skype blogs, his hosting of Skype's Group Chats on Skype topics referenced elsewhere here on Skype Journal and his participation in many Skype events. Thanks Jaanus!

Ike, who has long been a Skype "addict", a Skype Forum moderator, publisher of her Skype Lifestyle blog and builder of a business structured around introducing Skype-based processes into business services, has just spent her first day, as a Skype Consultant, as full-time Head of Communications and Forum Operations. As such she is assuming responsibility for managing Skype's forums, the great team of moderators of those forums, the development of the forums and related feedback/communication channels within Skype. (Sounds like someone at Skype was attending Richard Edelman's keynote at mesh 2007 earlier today.)

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TechCrunch: eBay's StumbleUpon Acquisition: Confirmed at $75 Million. eBay's getting a real-time context generator. Each time you thumbs-up or tag a page, you're joining other people who share that interest. So when you build Skype into the StumbleUpon toolbar, those contexts will enable, if not trigger, live conversations among millions of Stumblers. eBay's been investing in context generators like Meetup.com for a while.

Paid Content: Exclusive: Former Cisco Exec Mike Volpi In Line To Be New Joost CEO. He's a former Skype director, too, one of the ones who sold out to eBay. Hmmm, who is Joost's eBay? 

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

About to head down for the second day of mesh 2007 with its themes of Marketing and Business. Looking forward to discussions with keynote Connectors such as Global CEO of the PR firm of the same name, Richard Edelman, and Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster.

At some sessions I have been sitting with proficient blogger, Tony Hung, who publishes Deep Jive Interests and is editor of BlogHerald, one of the oldest blogging institutions in the blogosphere. Tony has effectively transcribed most of the sessions (except the one where he was a panelist) here for reproducing details of the session conversations. If Tony ever leaves medicine, court reporting could be a career. In Tony's summary of the day's events you will find a "small world story" but "Jim" will suffice for an appellation, Tony.

I am gathering several experiences of Skype usage in not simply business but also television production applications. More to follow when I write my response to Alec Saunders post of desperation (really with Windows but, as I state in the comments, MS DNA has a long half-life). Basically I am finding a very positive attitude towards Skype for those who have made it a critical tool for their activities where business operations or maintaining personal contacts.

More to follow; must run to catch the Richard Edelman session.

Tags: mesh07, Tony Hung, Deep Jive Interests, Alec Saunders

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thursday, 31 May, is Google Developer Day. Lots of events streamed online. A great way to learn about their web APIs, mashups, client APIs, AJAX, XML, commerce and all the other shiny buzzwords. No voice, IM, or email sessions.

Ten countries, one very long day, thousands of developers, free to programmers. The California event is too big for Google's Mountain View campus, so they moved it to the enormous San Jose convention center. 

Developer relations writ large.

If I can crash the event I'll bring back some details, but track the GDD07 tag on Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket and see related posts on Google Blog Search and Technorati.   

Same time, next door at the San Jose Marriott, is the Inbox conference. Several sessions on unifying IM, email and voice messaging. Case Study: Designing an Email System as a Back-end for Voicemail. The Power of Presence. Enterprise 2.0 and the 'Resocialization of IT'.  

This month's coverage of Skype's own developer program:

• Skype Journal interview with Paul Amery of the Skype Developer Program (video)
• Paul Amery's pitch to potential Skype Developers (video)
• Skype Developers Conference 2007
• Ants is throwing a Skype geek party: London, Thursday
• Skype Extras: Goals and Achievements

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I talked with Phil Windley about Skype stuff for their Technometria podcast. We talked censorship, Skype metrics, DDoS attacks in Estonia, the Skype Carterfone petition to the FCC, Skype's architecture and OpenCallerID, and side conversations triggered by Ben Galbraith's and Scott Lemon's observations and questions.

Grab a cup of coffee and play now: or Download MP3

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Paul Amery is Director of the Skype Developer Program, based in London. This is an informal interview shot under some willow trees outside the Santa Clara Convention Center in California for seven minutes in mid-May 2007 by Phil Wolff, editor of Skype Journal. Paul had given a talk that morning to more than one hundred programmers at the TMC Communications Developer Conference 2007.

Questions:

• What do you do at Skype?
• Do you like being part of a rock star company?
• So what do you do at Skype? Responsible for the developer programme?
• You were speaking here today. What were some of the key points you wanted to leave with the developers?
• How many developers are part of the program now?
• What are some of the Skype developers that you find fun or interesting?
• Why do you play checkers?
• How did you get checkers on to your desktop?
• What is coming up in the developer programme?
• What makes the Skype Developer Program different or better than other platforms?
• How fast is Skype innovating?
• How is Skype different as a place to work now than when you started.
• How has the company changed in the last nine months? How does it feel to work at Skype?

Feel free to add comments and tags to the video.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What was the occasion? Skype 1.0 release? Anyone know where? 

Photo shot around July 2004 by Blake Burris. This and more on the Skype Journal banner art blog.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Mesh 2007 launched with a very lively discussion with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch as the keynote Connector talking about the evolution of TechCrunch from a hobby to a full-fledged business that recently hired a CEO to bring a level of stability to the operation. Mike provided many insights which will become the focus of a separate post later today.

Over lunch I had the opportunity to meet with Mike and discuss where he saw the real time conversation space evolving. As with many participants, he talks (and lusts for) applications that can embed voice; in particular, with Skype he would like to see a "naked Skype" that can be embedded within applications. Mike is also a big fan of GrandCentral for its ability to organize our voice connections. As for mobile, Mike does not see VoIP as an enabling technology for mobile voice communications but rather agrees with my own mantra of putting the IM functionality onto a mobile device but use the underlying phone wireless service to minimize mobile phone resource usage.

The second session featured as keynote Connectors Tom Williams of GiveMeaning.com and Austin Hill, founder of Zero-Knowledge Systems. Both have sold their original companies and have devoted their activities to web-enabling social projects that harness the power of collective action via the Internet. A key theme of their discussion was that to translate "good intentions" into action requires not simply the desire to "do good" but to mobilize and inspire participants in a project through empowerment of the individual and direct participation. From Austin "Give people things they can do to make a difference." The challenge then becomes one of scaling a project to make a significant impact.

As an example Austin mentioned today's launch of DarkGreenPC where an open source applet can be downloaded to your PC. To quote Austin: "DarkGreenPC is a non-profit, community organized open source project ... where we are going enable people to optimize the power usage of their computers collectively and turn energy saving into a social activity." Austin's claim was that with over 100 million participants, this project can result in power savings that would be equivalent to the power used by Switzerland for a whole year.

We concluded the morning with three "Fifteen Minutes of Fame" presentations by startups:

• Octopz: online collaboration technology for creative professionals
• DemoFuse: creating and maintaining interactive demo tours for websites
• FiveLimes: a place to seek out and sometimes purchase eco-friendly products and services

On to an afternoon of panel discussions.

Tags: mesh07, techcrunch, arrington, austin hill, tom williams

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As we approach the start of mesh 2007, I have set up a Skype Chat where visitors can complement the discussions with a back channel Chat. Of course you have to be a Skype user to join. Talk about social media, the Skype 3.x Discussion and Skype Prime Chat public chats have been ongoing for several months. This one should only last a couple of days and be an interesting experiment: (i) will anyone participate? and (ii) can it contribute to the discussion?.

There is also a mesh 2007 Facebook Group

Update: if you have a Blackberry, there is also a mobile mesh RSS feed available.

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As a result of last week's announcement of Skype's selection of VSNL as a call termination partner, I have spoken with Scott Bagby, Skype's Vice-President of New Markets, about why they entered into this agreement; our discussion quickly transitioned to one about Skype's ongoing efforts to improve SkypeOut call quality.

Scott pointed out that many factors enter into the final call quality:

Getting to the Internet: The audio hardware, PC configuration (especially active programs) and the nature of the Internet connection can all impact call quality even before reaching the Internet. Note that these are factors that, while Skype can make recommendations, are out of their ultimate control. This also explains one benefit of PC-Free phones; they are not competing with any other program for processor cycles.

Once at the Internet, SkypeOut calls go forward to call termination providers for which there are two general categories:

• Aggregators who aggregate various services around the world to complete a connection
• Local terminators who provide country-specific termination services

Skype initially contracted with five aggregators worldwide with the thinking that this would give the broadest coverage to a maximum number of countries with a minimum account management overhead. However, calls via aggregators can be routed through multiple carriers, a factor over which Skype has no control. Skype found a high variability in call quality placed through aggregators. Fundamentally a call could go across several "hops" with a need to unpackage/repackage (decode/recode) the voice signal at each hop, increasing the potential for call quality degradation.

As a result Skype has started signing agreements with country-specific call termination services, for countries such as, for example, Germany, Sweden and Brazil. Through their agreement with VSNL, they are able to add Canada and India to this list. Recall that VSNL acquired Canadian-based Teleglobe for their international VoIP expertise. As these calls go directly from Skype's gateway to the local country, it is anticipated that through these agreements SkypeOut call quality can, over time, be improved on a country-by-country basis due to the significantly lower potential for multiple "hops". Yet there will always remain a need for the aggregators in order to maintain and ensure worldwide coverage.

How does Skype measure call quality? A key input is the feedback provided by users. Remember those "how was your call?" web screens that would occasionally pop up after finishing a SkypeOut call? These call quality questions are now supposed to be popping up within the Skype client as one feature upgrade of Skype 3.2. Skype knows the routing for each specific call and combines that with the feedback from a call to determine call quality patterns and set priorities for where improvements in call quality are needed.

Another contributor to variable call quality is the coding/decoding that occurs with wireless voice streams; combined with the lower audio bandwidth of wireless phones, this requirement results in an additional weak point where call quality can degrade.

While I have not had many problems with SkypeOut calls (and then mostly on calls to mobile phones), we can only hope that Skype, in its termination agreements, can pick the winners when it comes to managing call quality.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not cool enough to get into some clubs. Most clubs. Too old, wrong clothes, insufficient bling.

And that's right.

People who run clubs, even public ones, have standards for entrance.

Bouncers I'd like to run on public chats:

Captcha. Are you human? No bots but the host's bots.

Language. Parlez vous français? The chat room asks you a question in its required language. Can you answer it?

Expertise. Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Enter only if you can explain the difference between Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo. Or solve a programming puzzle. Or list three reasons Governor Bill Richardson should be the next President of the United States.

Age bracket. Too old. We could be discussing retirement homes and don't want any youngsters in the room. Or just people within a year or two.

Social proximity. It's who you know. You have to already know someone in the room. This might be automatic, via buddy list. It might also involve your name being flashed to the membership and someone saying they know you.

Authentication. Prove you're not a muggle. Perhaps OpenID. Or your employee ID.

Queue waiting time. Not so fast, buddy. Everyone must wait an hour before entry, just to prove you care. And aren't still angry.

Bring a gift. Tokens of  respect. Maybe it's a link to hidden gem on the Internet, a snippet of code, or a PayPal payment.

Read a disclaimer. Just so you know. Rules of the road, that we are insane about Harry Potter,

Subject to a Vote of the Membership. Probation. Any member can whiteball/blackball a new member in the first n minutes. 

Think of these barriers as defending the tribe, shaping the mix of people in the group, and a rite of passage for those joining it.

We need an API construct, I think. An event between applying and joining. In theory, you might have a whole new class of Skype Plug-In or Extra.

Thanks to Ants and the people he ejected from Skype DevZone Public Chat for Inspiration. Thanks to the Skype 3.X Public Chat for the play-by-play commentary on Ants' moderation. And thanks to hoggardb for the photo of the Chelsea bouncer.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

PC maker Dell just signed for Wal-Mart distribution, part of Wal-Mart's challenge to the big-box electronics stores. Will any of Dell's Ubuntu Linux computers be on Wal-Mart shelves? The lower initial and lifetime costs might be popular with Wal-Mart buyers.

If Ubuntu Dells show up in Wal-Marts, this might be good for Skype. Isn't Skype's Debian release sometimes pre-installed on Ubuntu, a user friendly Linux distro? This could be good for Skype's distribution and U.S. branding. Especially since we'll expect most Windows Vista computers to come with other messengers, not Skype.

Strangely, Skype doesn't appear to be Ubuntu Certified.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The Do Not Disturb button on phones may have been the first modern presence indicator. Reinhold Henke says it started...  

"In March of 1967 the Northern Electric Company (more recently known as Nortel) was granted a patent (3,321,580, pdf) that claims a privacy feature button on the station set that would allow the PBX stored program control system to reroute the call away from the called station. This common feature on the feature set station phones came to be known as the Do Not Disturb Button (DND). This feature became so popular that soon after companies like Mitel, Rolm, Siemens, etc. followed the call of the Northern Electric Company..."

The DND button was a signal (meaning uncertain but determined by convention) used by a telephone switch to inform the routing of incoming calls.

Six Observations:

1. The purpose of DND was decision support. In this case, routing an incoming call.
2. The original signal was continuous. Hey, it was all electronic, pre-digital.  
3. The signal was tied to a specific desk phone. Not to a person. Or a group of people.
4. The signal stopped at the deciding engine. The incoming caller didn't see the signal and had no influence over the call routing decision.
5. Logic not in phone. Oooh, a clue!
6. The signal was binary. Just "take calls at this phone" or "don't take calls at this phone."   

Six Lessons:

1. The purpose of presence is still decision support. We can support more decisions than call routing.
2. Presence signals need to be "fresh," not continuous. Freshness just means we can trust the signal enough for it to be useful in our decisions.  
3. Presence needs device independence. Many of us are no longer tied to one phone. Or even one computer.  
4. Presence data is useful even if you don't share it with callers. The logic for call routing ran separately from the source of the DND signal. Indirection, abstraction, and logic are friends of privacy and convenience.  
5. Separating sensors/signals from logic engine(s) works. Decentralization offers value. More on this soon.
6. Presence values can be rich. We can be "back in 5 minutes" or "just take calls from my family.". Presence can signal more now, with all sorts of data to inform many kinds of decisions.  

Images from the patent:

fwd/dnd button by clarkk.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although my own experience with SkypeOut has been quite good recently; I have seen some concerns expressed elsewhere about the call quality of SkypeOut calls. My own poor experiences usually occur on calls to mobile phones where there are probably multiple coding schemes involved on both the VoIP side and the wireless side of the call; also keep in mind that the audio bandwidth for mobile calls is significantly lower than that on Skype calls.

However, yesterday's announcement of Skype's selection of VSNL International as a new termination provider partner holds significant promise for an overall improvement in SkypeOut voice quality. About two years ago VSNL acquired Teleglobe, a company who had its origins in Canada as the Canadian overseas long distance provider and became, partially through an acquisition of Tom Evslin's IXTC, the world's largest (at the time) wholesale carrier of international VOIP and the seventh largest carrier of any kind. Tom wrote an excellent post on the VSNL acquisition of Teleglobe: "The World is Flat: VSNL in Definitive Agreement to Acquire Teleglobe" at the time. It includes a history of the evolution of VSNL from the state-controlled Indian telecom monopoly into a privatized division of India's Tata Group. In another post, Tom describes how competition drove ITXC to ensure they were offering a high quality service:

We managed to overcome enough of the suspicion about VoIP to allow us to take a substantial chunk of the world’s international traffic long before consumers even knew there was such a thing as VoIP.

VoIP Monitor brings us up to date on VSNL's current market position with "more than 415 combined direct and bilateral relationships with leading international voice telecommunications providers" and

Over 450 customers including the major portal players are currently utilizing VoIPLink, the Teleglobe premiere voice peering service. VoIPLink provides full interoperability with a diverse list of VoIP equipment and software vendors across multiple protocols.

(Hat tip to Andy for pointing us to this post.) Hopefully we can look forward to improved consistency of SkypeOut voice quality over time as this agreement is implemented.

Footnote: Interesting to note that, in his first post linked above, Tom mentions "Teleglobe was reconstructed from the assets of the former Canadian monopoly international carrier of the same name which were purchased out of bankruptcy by Cerberus, a leveraged buy-out firm." This is the same Cerberus that last week acquired the Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler.

Update, May 31: Cerberus is now involved in the discussions to acquire Bell Canada (technically BCE Inc.)

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A screencast demonstration of Convenos Meeting Center Extra for Skype. Convenos augments the setup and conduct of a call, with Skype used for audio and Convenos using the browser to share presentations, desktops and other work product. The short screencast steps through setting up a Convenos meeting using your Skype contacts. Your contacts don't need Convenos accounts. The Extra version allows up to 20 people in a meeting, paid versions offer more options.  

Let's look at what's going on.

Note this architecture: Convenos' server talks to Convenos client that talks to user's Skype client.

Q. Is this a recurring design pattern?

Q. Does this pattern show demand for Skype web services?  

Video provided to Skype Journal by Skype's Paul Amery, shown at the Communication Developer Conference as an example of a successful Skype Developer Program partnership. Marshall Mosely narrates.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Updates

Linux 1.4.0.64 Alpha updated. Continuing progress. Change log.

Windows Gold 3.2.0.152 updated. (22.6 MB) Small changes.

Joost added to SteamCast’s Lawsuit Against Skype and Kazaa. Congratulations, Joost!

Identity

The Extension of Identity. The dominance of our relationship tools over our authoring tools helps Jim Benson discovers he is really Ed Vielmetti.   

Joe "Whuffy" Petviashvili detects a leak in LiveJournal's OpenID service. Still seeking confirmation. via Terrll Russell.

In Skypeland

Skype Find's tagsonomic problem: Synonyms. Same idea, different words, hard to find.  

Skype partner Vosky buys TMC advertorial. Darn, why didn't I think of that.

Skype hires VSNL for SkypeOut call termination. Should boost service in India.

The competition

Sony PSP to make voice and video calls over UK Wi-Fi. The network: other PSP players and regular phone numbers.

Microsoft signs interop pact with 12 VoIP leaders.  

• "In the two months since Microsoft published the interoperability specification, global telephony and networking companies such as Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Ericsson, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc., Mitel Networks Corp., NEC Corp., Nortel Networks and Siemens Enterprise Communications, and gateway providers AudioCodes Ltd., Dialogic Corp. and Quintum Technologies Inc. have stated their support for the interoperability specification for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Together these vendors provide interoperability with approximately 90 percent of communication systems."

• Specs cover "voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), presence, instant messaging and conferencing".

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Paul Amery is Director of the Skype Developer Program, based in London. This is a handheld video of 19 minutes from Amery's pitch to more than one hundred programmers at the TMC Communications Developer Conference 2007 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. In mid-May 2007 by Phil Wolff, editor of Skype Journal. The slide show is below the video

Feel free to annotate the video.

His slides were called "A Successful Conversation - The Skype Developer Program"

More to come.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 05:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Your cell phone ring tone is damaging your career via someecards.

What's your company's ringtone? Your team's? Your profession's? How does it fit with your personal reputation goals? Your marketing brand? What does it say about your customer relationships and positioning vs. your competitors? 

Announcing a new Skype Journal Prime Service: Enterprise Ringtone Counseling. 

Put Skype Journal's Audiophonic Identity Therapists to work. Let us help you pick the right theme music, song, or arrangement. With the right sounds at your back, you might catapult your business into the blogosphere, make you successful beyond my imagination, get you that corner cubicle in your own home office! 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Enrico Noseda, Skype's director for European telecom business development, is leading the European rollout of the reseller program. We talked for a few minutes today while he was visiting Skype's London offices.

The Revolution

"Join the revolution! We learned from our own users. We understand that the business community is very interested in using Skype in the business environment. That's why we're are really focusing on this in terms of product development, as this package is demonstrating. We have 30% of our user base that is stating they make business usage of Skype; this is an enormous number of people. So the potential for this program and for this product is enormous. If I was a reseller, I could definitely join this revolution and change the way business communicates to the world."

The Profile

Skype is recruiting resellers based on their capacity to sell, the number and size of customers. "It is unlikely we will accept one man bands as certified resellers" said Noseda.

After you apply, a Skype staffer will call and interview for general fit. They haven't completely set criteria but are looking for the right partners to serve small and medium sized businesses. Skype is recruiting retailers, catalogs, VARs (value added resellers) and LARs (large account resellers).

The Programme

Authorized resellers will purchase discounted Skype Business Packs and Skype credit vouchers through national distributors. Some distributors are still being signed up.

The first twelve countries are Skype Pro countries but more markets will be added in Europe and elsewhere as pricing plans permit.  

A reseller extranet will come in June. The site will deliver sales, product and support training, merchandising, and sales leads.  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Building on the success of last year's initial mesh conference in Toronto, Mark Evans, Mathew Ingram, Stuart MacDonald, Mike McDerment and Rob Hyndman and their event management team have once again organized mesh 2007 described as ...

... a chance to connect with people who are as excited about the potential of the Web as you are – people who want to know more about how it is changing the way we live, work and interact with the world.

Under the theme "connect, share, inspire" they are providing a forum to exchange experiences, concepts and ideas about how the web is not only disrupting old business models but also "creating new ways for us to communicate, collaborate, entertain and inform".

And why is mesh happening?

mesh is happening because five people with an enthusiasm for the Web and all the next-generation things happening around us decided an event like this one had to take place in Toronto. Events connecting Web ideas and leaders of the future are going on everyday around the world - Geneva has LIFT, Paris has Les Blogs, New York has BlogOn and Italy has, well, Italy has Venice, it doesn't really need anything else - and now Toronto has mesh so we can be part of the Web 2.0 conversation.

Looking forward to providing coverage of this event and to hearing keynote panelists such as Michael Arrington, Richard Edelman, Jim Buckmaster (craigslist) and many others.

And with WiFi at the show I'll still be available on Skype. (Since there are very few WiFi access points in the building WiFi actually worked very well there last year.)

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So you're a Skype-crazy consultant in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden or the UK. You want to sell Skype to customers. But how?

First, join The Skype Reseller Program. Free to apply, apparently, and one short form.

Then buy the Small Business Pack (shipping early June) at a discounted rate, starting at 20% off the €99 recommended retail price.

Sell your packs.

Then buy €99 Skype voucher packs at 5% off and sell them.

Discounts improve with volume.

Things we don't know:

• Skype's acceptance criteria for reseller applicants.

• What keeps a small or medium sized business from enrolling in the programme to secure discounts for themselves.

• When the programme and products will spread to the other markets.

• Whether resellers based outside the 12 core countries (e.g. Spain) may sell into those countries.

• Whether these markups are deep enough for resellers to be effective.

• How long until reseller support delivers:

  • point of sale displays
  • sales training
  • co-operative advertising funds
  • lead generation
  • specialist certification

• Skype's policies on reseller inventory management and returns.

• Whether the reseller product roadmap includes Skype Certified or Skype Compatible hardware and software.

This is a great next step for Skype's ecosystem.

Thanks to Dan York for tipping me to Scott Davidson's announcement.

Skype news release below the fold.

THE SKYPE SMALL BUSINESS PACK – ONE LITTLE BOX THAT GOES A LONG WAY FOR BUSINESSES

Luxembourg, 22^nd May, 2007 – Skype today announced it is making it even easier for businesses to get started on Skype^TM with its new Small Business Pack. The Small Business Pack gives businesses everything they need to get started to make calls over the internet.

The Pack includes a Skype for Business download, 10 five month subscriptions to Skype Pro™ (Skype’s new internet communications package) worth €100 and €50 of Skype credit for making calls to landlines and mobiles across the world. It is available from the Skype online store at www.skype.com/shop (in the small business section) for €99+VAT.

Skype’s popularity with businesses comes from more and more businesses turning to Skype to keep in touch with their customers for less money. A recent survey of 250 businesses showed that 95% of those questioned confirmed they save money with Skype and 80% said that using Skype has increased employee productivity.

Enrico Noseda, director, telecom business development at Skype says, “Skype has over 196 million registered users today and in some countries more than 30% of those are business users. We want to give our business users a simple and more productive way to communicate but pay less for the privilege. With Skype Pro included, people can make *0/min unlimited calls to domestic landlines along with a series of premium Skype features and discounts on Skype-certified hardware.”

Skype has also made it easier for businesses to install and manage Skype. Skype can be easily installed on multiple computers using the Windows Installer package (commonly known as MSI) giving IT Administrators greater control over how Skype communications traffic runs across their networks.

An online control panel enables companies to allocate individual users with Skype credits that can be used to make cheap Skype calls to traditional landline phones or mobiles and provides a consolidated view of what is being spent.

The Skype Business Pack includes:

• Skype for Business CD
• Skype for Windows (business edition) with MSI Windows Installer
• €50 of Skype Credit to distribute to colleagues
• *10 x 5 month subscriptions to Skype Pro (€100 value)
• Tips and Tricks Guide for getting the most out of Skype for Business

(Total value of €150 – Recommended Retail Price €99 + VAT)

*15% VAT is added where applicable and all Skype Pro calls are subject to a small connection f