Ever since eBay's acquisition of Skype over two years ago, there has been speculation as to how eBay and Skype should be "integrated" to enhance the auction process. While not the world's most active eBay participant, I have used it several times to acquire items not normally available in Canada and to sell (ironically) a "surplus" Nortel PBX a few years ago. But I have also had the opportunity to attend a couple of eBay Live events and gain some of the flavor of the extent of the Ebay domain and the enthusiasm of its resellers, especially the several hundred thousand who run a full time business through eBay.

During these eBay Live sessions I have noted two key facts:

• There is very little Skype awareness amongst the eBay reseller community.
• When one or two Skype training sessions are available over the three days of eBay Live, they are well attended with an eagerness to learn more about Skype

My primary question has always been, how would one maintain the integrity of the auction process while engaging in real time conversations. It appears there are several stages to the auction process:

• Setting up the individual item's auction information
• Executing the auction, accepting bids and "Buy Now" requests
• Finalizing the payment transaction
• Delivering the item, and
• Exchanging buyer and seller feedback.

The key for the first two stages is to enhance the integrity of the auction itself by ensuring that information exchanged between seller and bidder is available to all potential bidders. Real time one-on-one Skype chat and voice conversations have the potential to violate the integrity sought. Yet, with Skype there are two solutions:

1. Establish a Skype Public Chat that can be joined by any bidder who is on Skype; the reseller can manage who remains on the chat to eliminate "spammers" and others who go off-subject..
2. Establish an ongoing asynchronous voice conversation using Evoca's hosted voice recording and playback services. This allows all (potential) bidders to have an asynchronous, ongoing conversation with the seller incorporating all the additional information disclosed as a result of bidder queries..

For the last three stages, standard Skype conversations (voice, IM chat and video) can be used to provide customer service and support, as appropriate to the individual auction. Should their business be ongoing with sufficient transaction volume, even OnState's ACD Call Center solution can be invoked (at $30 per seat per month - no capital costs) to ensure calls are directed to an appropriate party.

But then there is a bigger challenge beyond simply installing Skype and creating Skype accounts: training eBay Resellers on how they can implement and use Skype to their business's advantage. It is not sufficient simply to make Skype buttons available for eBay Resellers. The Skype ecosystem not only offers basic real time conversation support but also, through its Skype Developer Partners, call recording and conversation archiving as well as collaboration and conferencing tools which may be useful for certain categories of resellers. But they need training to realize the full potential of Skype.

And then there is the missed viral opportunity yet to be fulfilled.

Tags: Skype, eBay, Skype Developer Partners, Skype Public Chat, Evoca, OnState

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

High Quality Video certainly places superior demands on technology resources; in testing yesterday evening with Phone Boy, Dameon Welch, we found superior performance for the user who has those resources.

In previous posts I have talked about doing a setup for High Quality Video and subsequently putting together the requirements, goals and benchmarks for High Quality Video. Working with a 1.6 GHz CoreDuo Laptop, Logitech 9000 webcam with version 11.5 drivers, Skype 3.6 for Windows and a 6Mbps download/800 kbps upload cable Internet connection at my end and a 2.66GHz Core2Duo Desktop, and even faster Internet connection at Dameon's end we did test video calls using both Skype's High Quality Video and SightSpeed 6.0 to determine what constitutes the better user experience. In today's post I will describe our High Quality Video results; tomorrow I will provide a summary comparison with SightSpeed. along with commentary on some other experiences that helped to define what to expect for High Quality Video.

As a preamble to our results, and building on my recent interview with Jonathan Christensen, Skype's GM for Audio and Voice, their High Quality Video is the result of extensive co-operation between Logitech and Skype working together to optimize their codecs and drivers, often at some fairly basic levels to achieve a sustainable high quality video experience. Skype had set initial goals of having a sustainable user experience that could be achieved by a reasonably broad base of Skype users: 640 x 480 @ a sustainable 24-30 fps outcome over an entry level broadband connection (384 kbps). They tested out many webcams on the market to see if there was potential to meet this requirement; nothing worked.

Then Logitech provided a demonstration of a prototype QuickCam Pro 9000 while it was still in development; they had finally found a camera that had the potential to deliver the sustained quality and frame rate in a consistent and reliable way. At that point they launched a co-development effort involving Logitech, On2 and Skype to optimize the codecs along with the capture and rendering software required. They also found it necessary to specifically optimize for real time video conferencing scenarios involving mostly "stationary talking heads" in sustained lighting situations and perhaps people walking into and out of a frame as opposed to the requirements for full motion broadcast video such az YouTube movies. This allowed them to cut back significantly on CPU utilization amongst other modifications.

"The result is that we have certainly arrived at a state-of-the-art situation in terms of coding, capture at the sending side and rendering at the other side", stated Christensen. Amongst other issues Skype and Logitech had to deal with CPU utilization management, low light conditions, image sharpness and intelligent adaptation to varying network conditions (especially at the end points) to deliver a service that could work at a minimum 384 kbps bandwidth. While the released service reduces the wide variability of outcomes seen with other webcam configurations and provides a fairly consistent result, they are still working on issues such as better and more intelligent network utilization but they feel they have the camera, driver and coding issues well under control.

The Complete High Quality Video Experience

Reference: Phone Boy Review

Over the past few days I have tried out the High Quality Video with almost all my Skype calls, even if the other party did not have a webcam. While the sending (capture) end of the call requires relatively new hardware (Dual core processor, Logitech webcams with Carl-Zeiss optics) the receiving end can view High Qualty Video even with higher speed single core processors and have an excellent video viewing experience (based on comments of several viewers).

The real challenge was to find a situation where both parties met the requirements for High Quality Video; yesterday evening "Phone Boy" Dameon Welch (who normally uses a Mac) had finally put together a Windows configuration, using one of the Logitech Carl-Zeiss cameras where we could truly test bi-directional video calling over reliable network conditions. (In another post I'll talk about how testing for High Quality Video is resulting in the exposure of underperforming DSL services.)

Launching a call: once connected the receiving party sees the window on the left in the active call tab of the Skype client; after about 30 seconds High Quality Video has been established. The promotional bar at the top goes away after a minute or so. The white logo in the upper left appears when the frame rate exceeds 24 fps; why this particular number is a question we have put to Skype. Using the "technical call info" we found that, while occasionally the frame rate would drop to, say, 12 - 15 fps, the picture quality did not deteriorate noticeably. Certainly a crisp, sharp picture, moving the head or hand across the viewing range would not result in "shadowing" or other artifacts, even below 24 fps. The "camera" icon on the left in the bottom frame allows you to capture the picture; in the resulting captured image window two mouse clicks trigger a "file transfer" of the captured image back to the other party while the image is also stored in your "My Skype Pictures" folder.

Above is a "Video in Window" image (reduced from 640 x 480 to accommodate the width available in this post). While not having the logo due to insufficient frame rate (~ 15 - 20 fps) it represents the quality of video image we saw. Most importantly we did not see any "shadowing" if he moved his head or put up his hand and raised his five fingers. On the other hand this image is an example of the "intelligent adaptation" inherent to the Skype software at work, where Skype will adjust to both CPU utilization and changing network conditions (jitter, return time, etc.) such as to maintain a high quality picture even when not working above 24 fps.

CPU utilization management is one feature of the new Skype video where the software is monitoring CPU usage such that Skype video does not consume all the CPU resources. In one situation where I found the video "capped" at sending 15 fps, simply turning off my SlingPlayer (which itself was using about 2.5 Mbps of bandwidth via an internal LAN connection to my SlingBox) allowed the frame rate to increase above 24 fps to invoke the High Quality Video logo on a sustainable basis.

Full screen video at 1650 x 1080 gave again a good picture, maybe with a bit of pixelation in going from 640 x 480. In the SightSpeed comparison tomorrow I will comment on the "intense" room light above Dameon's head and how the Skype video adjusts for the saturation such an intense light can create.

Finally an image that demonstrates some of the optics of the camera: close-up of a Pokemon card showing both how the auto-focus feature adjusts and the quality obtained even when an object is only 4 to 6 inches from the camera. And in my image at the lower left I had reduced the room lighting to one 50-watt recessed "under-the-shelf" lamp above my work surface, yet Dameon was able to distinguish the stripes on my shirt. This is the Logitech "Right Light" sensing in operation where it can pick up images in very low lighting situations. (And the High Quality Video logo during this conversation had held at this point for over 15 minutes.)

Clearly Dameon and I agreed that Skype's High Quality Video is a winner and provides, in hardware and software configurations meeting all the requirements, an excellent user video experience. The issues here include:

• Skype's High Quality Video, as a free service, represents one more threat to the personal communications segment of business video conferencing, even at the enterprise level. Business model disruption at work again.
• Having enough Skype users using the Logitech webcam to take advantage of the Carl-Zeiss optics and driver optimization. Dual core processor PC's have now been on the market for eighteen months and become the entry level standard; the new Logitech Carl-Zeiss optics cameras are priced at the same level as their previous generation webcams.
• Ensuring a good quality Internet connection at least meeting the minimum 384 kbps speed but, in subtle ways, High Quality Video works better (for instance ramps up to the desired frame rate faster) on higher speed connections.

Dameon's post; Skype High Quality Video Testing

All in all, I was impressed with the High Quality Video that came from Skype. It's not just marketing hype, it's the real deal. I've seen it for myself and I'm a believer.

Tome Keating and Rich Tehrani have done some testing as well:

As always, Skype has over-delivered on their free offering, providing superior functionality at the bargain basement price of zero dollars. Obviously you will need a new video camera and possibly a new pc to take advantage of the highest quality Skype video yet but these seem like small sacrifices to make when you consider you will not have to pay a recurring service fee to videoconference at far superior resolution.

This new product is certainly a win for the world’s most popular IP communications software company and moreover for users of the popular software/service.

Tomorrow: the SightSpeed comparison, working with Macs, other experiences and a summary.

• High Quality Video: What's the Benchmark?
• To Be Restored: Camera Flexibility for Video Hackers
• Installing a Logitech High Quality Video Camera: The Experience.

Tags: Skype, High Quality Video, Logitech, Skype 3.6, Dameon Welch, Phone Boy, Jonathan Christensen, QuickCam Pro 9000, On2 Technologies, Carl-Zeiss optics

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ipoque reports today:

VoIP isn't a bandwidth threat:

Voice over IP (VoIP) only accounts for one percent of the Internet traffic, but is used by 30 percent of all users.

While many other VoIM and VoIP products include voice and video talk, apparently Skype (with 95% share) is the one people choose for calling:

Skype is by far the most popular Internet telephony application.

Culture and costs change behavior:

The popularity of instant messaging (IM) varies heavily from region to region. In the Middle East, 60 percent of all Internet users also use IM, in Germany, however, it is only 17 percent.

Do people substitute between IM and mobile texting, depending on availability and cost?

Ipoque makes products that examine and manage network traffic for ISPs and large enterprises. Source for this report:

Three petabytes of anonymous data representing over one million users in Australia, Eastern Europe, Germany, the Middle East and Southern Europe have been analyzed.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

People Using Skype

The Severson family moves from Florida to Vienna. "If you have been wondering how you can contact us once we make the big trip, we are encouraging everyone to join Skype."

Skype in mountain climbing. As satellite IP connectivity goes (Inmarsat!), so goes Skype. The quest for Broad Peak's first winter ascent, The MountEverest.net team is a "a global bunch operating over different time zones (communicating over Skype.)"

PR disaster is not all Skype’s fault. "Skype gets a misplaced boot to the swingers cos it’s the ‘brand de jour’. However, the saying ‘timing is everything’ seems pretty poignant in this PR nightmare - after all, when would most international callers want to use the no-cost Skype? Surely around the festive holidays"

Recruit Volunteers with Skyped Testimonials. Tutorial courtesy of Macdonald Youth Services of Winnipeg, Canada.

Labs

Skype from call notes with TEO (Tablet Enhancements for Outlook) now lets you . "Have you ever looked frantically for a notepad on your desk while on a call to jot down a phone number or address? Have you ever clicked Start -> Run -> notepad.exe because you had no other place to write something down? ¶ The telephony features in TEO supports Skype out of the box and provides you with a call notes area for incoming and outgoing phone calls. Even better, it links contact information to the call so that when you save your call notes in the Outlook Journal, you have a link to the contact and the time and duration of the call." via Sumocat's tablet blog.

Yubz classic USB handsets work with Skype. via The Cool Hunter.

Stonevoice offers SkyStone, a software Skype gateway to Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Skype someone and pick up your Cisco IP Phone.

ASUS eeePC comes with Skype. $499 Linux ultraportable for the education market. Ready for Skype video calls.

The Wibrain B1 UMPC now selling at Dynamism. "Integrated wifi and Bluetooth make for easy connectivity, and the pop-up camera/mic make for easy 'Skype-ability'" 

Other

Visual history of Skype Executive team. Courtesy of the wayback machine. on Skype-Watch.

Ed Bott says Skype's IE extensions slow browsing on Vista. Disabling them sped his Vista up.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I read the following Interfax China article by Chen Shasha: China becomes Skype's biggest market with 51 million users, yet to make profit, based on information from Skype partner TOM Online.

China Internet Statistics:

• 162 million users as of June 2007
• 122 million broadband users
• 55 million wireless internet
• 54.9% Internet users are male
• 57.9% are unmarried
• 51.2% are under 25 years old
• The majority of Internet users have at least a college diploma.
• 36.7% are students
• 25.3% are enterprise staff
• 33.9% earn more than 1500 yuan a month
• 53.6% earn more than 1500 yuan a month if student users are left out.

China Internet Cafés in 2005:

• China has 110,000 Internet cafés [Editor: anecdotal evidence suggests this number may be closer to 300k cafes if you include unregistered sites]
• more than 1 million people work in this industry
• 18.5 trillion Yuan per year spent
• 70% Internet café visitors are 18-to-30 years old
• 90% are male
• 65% unmarried
• 54% hold a college degree
• More than 70% of visitors play computer games
• 20% of China's Internet users go to Internet cafés

Like I do usually, let us assume the numbers are correct, this would mean that:

• 20% of the active Worldwide Skypers are from China
• 3.9% of the population of China are Skypers
• 5.4% of the "active" population of China are Skypers (discounting people older than 65 years, and younger than 14 years)
• 34% of Chinese Internet users are Skypers

Bear in mind that the second, third and fourth numbers above are very exaggerated.

As usual, let me correct this statement: they mean "registered user names,"not "registered users", and this isn't equal to "active users".

Reasons are:

• lost password, and therefore inaccessible user name, therefore the need to create a new user name
• testing Skype, and abandoned use of the user name
• spare user names, registered for alternative or future use (i have several!)
• the owner of the user name died (yes, this also happens!)
• the person switched to another VoIP tool
• the person registered a temporary name for a temporary past situation
• spammers also register multiple usernames to "attack" their victims

So, like always, this 51 million "users" statement is marketing exaggeration!

Jean Mercier follows the numbers on Skype Numerology.

Posted by Jean Mercier at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Paul Amery and his Skype Developer Partner team have organized another Skype Developer event to be held in lower Manhattan on Monday, December 10, 4 - 7 p.m.. Hosted by Vapps, Inc., Skype partner vendor of HighSpeedConferencing hosted services, this event will involve getting "your thoughts and feedback. The Skype Developer Program is navigating a clear Roadmap for 2008 with a key focus on sustaining our partnerships and our ecosystem while planning for the coming year."

In attendance, Paul Amery, Director of Skype Developer Program, Antoine Bertout, Partners Relation Manager and several key partners, like our host, Vapps. This is your chance to get behind-the-scenes with some of Skype’s key third party applications and a chance to check out some of the latest Skype partners products, understand the partnership route to market and meet our partners who continue to extend the Skype platform.

Skype Journal will be there to report.

View Larger Map

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

Several posts have been written about the changes of London SkypeIn numbers. VoIP Toolkit blogger David Meyer at ZDNet UK has dug further into the issue in "Skype must 'rebuild trust' after number debacle", talking with both Ian Fogg, an analyst with Jupiter Research:

"My advice to Skype would be: if you, as a company, wish to target small businesses or even consumers, you need to respond swiftly to reassure your users that this isn't going to happen again," he said. "Don't offer a different number without some kind of transitionary agreement."

....

"The regulatory position in the UK is not keeping up with where telephony is today," said Fogg. "The bit that's important is not dialing out — it's the contact number or contact address for incoming calls. That's what's quoted [to customers and contacts]."

and Don McQueen, managing director of GCI Telecom, supplier of the affected numbers:

Although he refused to divulge the exact details of the commercial dispute between GCI and Skype, he said that a "nominal fee" for the 0207 numbers had been charged to Skype until recently, when GCI "had to move to a market-rate fee".

"We have offered everyone who has [an affected SkypeIn number] the ability to keep their number with a VoIP service from us at £4 a month," added McQueen, who claimed that just under 10,000 numbers had been affected. "This service [and price] is probably not going to be offered to other people." McQueen said that interested customers should email sales@geonum.co.uk.

Read the full post for more details, including the role of the regulatory authority, Ofcom, in all this.

Aside from the perfectly justified issue this situation creates for Skype business users, what amazes me, on reading UK Telephone Code Confusion in Wikipedia, is that Londoners don't even know which digits are part of the city code and which are part of the local phone number. According to this reference, London's city code is simply "020" and the "7", "8" and "3" are simply the first digit in the local phone number. But I guess that is the confusion created when the "authorities" keep changing city codes every few years. If you can clarify the issue, please use the Comments to this post (and/or modify the Wikipedia item).

Tags: Skype, SkypeIn, David Meyer, VoIP Toolkit, GCI Telecom, Ian Fogg, Jupiter Research, Ofcom

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Lots of confusion out there: High Quality Video, HD Video, HD Voice, High Definition Audio? What do these terms mean? And what does High Quality Video mean when it comes to Skype Video calling? "Well, my configuration should work", comes from both other vendors and some end users. Did a bit of research to try to find a baseline against which all these claims could be measured.

HD Video generally refers to video with a minimum 1280 x 720 resolution (720p). Common to all High ?? Video descriptions is the transmission of video at 25 - 30 frames per second (fps). "HD VoIP" was the subject of an excellent session at Fall VON and generally refers to audio transmission of voice covering at least 8kHz audio -- primary range of the human ear (sometimes called wide band audio); Intel appears to have taken over the term High Definition Audio to describe some of their audio-related technology.

The aim of this post is to provide some background that allow us to move forward in testing High Quality Video. Without a standard to be achieved we are seeing lots of claims about various webcams and the ability to transmit video. In this post I will set some basic benchmarks to help identify High Quality Video when it happens. In future posts I will cover some of my experiences attempting to have Skype-based conversations using High Quality Video.

My first question to Jonathan Christensen, Skype's GM for Audio and Video, was "What defines High Quality Video?" Summing up his response it's the sustained transmission of 640 x 480 (VGA) video resolution at 24 - 30 fps over a minimum 384 kbps connection. And the key word here is "sustained" as in "carrying on a reasonable length conversation" user experience. According to Christensen, previously one could get bursts of VGA quality but sustaining it was not practical due to non-optimization of all the technology pieces that need to come together.

Skype initially considered a higher resolution involving the 1280 x 720 "true HD" Video spec but soon saw that as unrealistic within today's network conditions and video technology limitations. According to Jonathan, his Skype Audio/Video engineering team did a significant amount of research looking at factors such as webcam technology, codecs, webcam drivers, end user configurations, network conditions (including user end point configurations), image sharpness, CPU utilization, and surrounding light sensitivity in coming up with a video calling product specification. And they had to settle on the type of video content that would be most commonly used: "talking heads" in a home or office desktop environment. (No Discovery Channel panoramic scenery video or high speed action sports such as hockey or football here.)

Basic requirements: many have heard about the Sender (Capture) requirements:

• Intel Dual Core (or CoreDuo) processor
• Logitech QuickCams with Carl-Zeiss optics (9000 Pro, Pro for Notebooks)
• QuickCam software drivers version 11.5
• Skype 3.6
• Internet Connection: (an industry standard minimum requirement for video transmission)

At the Recipient (Rendering) end these requirements are relaxed to:

• Fast processor (but not necessarily Dual Core)
• Skype 3.6
• Internet Connection: minimum 384 kbps upload and download speed

So how do you identify High Quality Video is being captured and transmitted by the sender and received. and rendered by the recipient? Simply put, Skype injects a logo into both the active call window's video indicator and the recipient's video picture, whether within the active call tab, a 640 x 480 Window or full screen. This logo only appears in situations where either the Sender is sending 640 x 480 @ 24-30 fps (above) or the recipient is receiving 640 x 480 @ 24-30 fps (left). Drop below 24 fps and the logo goes away; come back above an it appears. To add to the confusion, the Sender can be sending High Quality Video, yet the recipient does not necessarily see the logo unless certain conditions are met.

A few other notes:

• In my testing I have come across a couple of situations where High Quality Video was being identifiably received under the "Recipient" conditions (for instance an Inspiron 6000 with a single 1.6 GHZ Pentium M processor, shown above, and Phil's 64-bit AMD processor PC, both of which had Skype 3.6 installed).
• Note that the Recipient can launch not only a Chat session from the video within the Active Call window but can also "capture" the picture as a still photo (camera icon).
• If a recipient is using an earlier version of Skype (3.5 or earlier), they may be seeing High Quality Video but there is no indication via the logo. The only way to check is via "displaying the technical call info"¹.
• It can take about 45 to 120 seconds for a High Quality Video connection to be established.. Using Skype's "technical call info" feature¹, you can actually observe the Send fps rate ramp up; High Quality Video identification only occurs above 24 fps (and a 640 x 480 frame size). So there is obviously some initial handshaking/negotiation activity generated on launching a video call.
• It is worthwhile checking your own Internet connection speed and connection conditions^2. I have found using the Visual Ware VoIP Quality and Speed Test provides a relatively good measure (requires Java on your PC). However, other measures may be required on other continents as distance from the measuring server can play a role in the resulting tests. My cable connection appears to be running between 6 and 6.5 Mbps for download and consistently around 800 kbps for upload. QoS is usually above 90% with low jitter (<10 ms) -- more than sufficient for High Quality Video requirements.
• The best SightSpeed can support for "Send" under my network conditions is 320 x 240 @ 30 fps; if my upload speed could be raised to 1.5 Mbps, it could then support 640 x 480 at this frame rate.

But the real challenge is the overall end user configuration including network conditions. And this is where Skype still needs to some testing and more experience to achieve a consistent and sustainable³ High Quality Video user experience. I have attempted Skype High Quality Video calls in several situations with significantly inconsistent results and continue to expand on that experience base.

A second question: In launching High Quality Video as a marketing tool why did Skype let the situation get out of their control in terms of setting user expectations? Can't hit the target when there is no stated target to aim for. It's insufficient to state what the requirements are; independently measurable benchmarks are also required:

• Resolution: 640 x 480 (VGA)
• Transmission rate: 24 -30 fps
• Time of call: 30 minutes meeting these requirements
• Time to reach transmission rate at stated resolution: < 2 minutes

And how does it deal with other considerations?

• Low light environment
• CPU utilization management
• "Intelligently" adaptation to network traffic conditions

Both subjects of upcoming posts.

Update: all the related posts:

• High Quality Video: Definitely a Winner for Skype
• Expanding the High Quality Video Experience and Observations
• To Be Restored: Camera Flexibility for Video Hackers
• Installing a Logitech High Quality Video Camera: The Experience.

¹ Tools | Options | Advanced | Connection --> "Display technical call info ...."; then run your cursor over the active call window to bring up the technical info for your call.
² In one instance the other party found his speed to be about 400 kbps download; he thought he had subscribed for a 3 Mbps service 3 years ago so checked with his service provider who confirmed he was only getting a 500 kbps service. At this point he is seeking compensation from his service provider!
³ Sustainable means to have a 30 minute or longer video call while maintaining the High Quality Video status as indicated by the presence of the logo at both ends.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have complained several times about misleading SkypePro advertising in the past. Tony Austin posted a long but interesting explanation with the following title in iTWire: "1300 reasons to avoid Skype Pro in Australia."

He begins:

There are examples all around us of misleading and deceptive advertising, inflicted upon us either deliberately or due to the lack of attention to detail or even the incompetence of the advertisers. Where does Skype Pro stand in this regard?

And ends with:

Skype needs to change its Skype Pro documentation to read something like:

"Pay nothing per minute for calls to landlines within the same country -- except for certain classes of landlines for which we'll charge the SkypeOut rate and not the Skype Pro rate and this will cost you much much more than nothing per minute!"

I have to agree 100% with Tony!

And Skype can't say they are not aware: the regular questions concerning the SkypePro costs on the Skype Forum don't go unnoticed by Skype staff.
How much money is Skype taking from customers in Australia, Brazil and a lot of other countries with this misleading SkypePro advertising?

Jean Mercier blogs clearly at Skype Numerology.

Posted by Jean Mercier at 07:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Time for a break from our usual programming....

It's always special when the "generally underdog" team" wins a professional sports championship.And it's got nothing to do with Skype; the 900,000 people of Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan had reason to celebrate last night after their Saskatchewan Roughriders' 23-19 Grey Cup victory over arch rival Winnipeg Blue Bombers this evening at Toronto's Rogers Centre.

Jon Arnold has his lifelong Boston Red Sox baseball team devotion; Alec Saunders' Ottawa Senators almost made it to the Stanley Cup last year, playing in the final; Lester Madden has his favourite English Premier League team (but I forget which North London team). Now I can reveal that my upbringing in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan has left me a lifelong member of the Rider nation. When it comes to football, especially the more exciting Canadian version (three downs, larger field, 12 players/side), like learning to ride a bike, being a Roughrider fan has never left my blood. Maybe it was traveling all over northern Saskatchewan as my father carried out his work; maybe it was my time as an stadium employee of the then very popular Saskatoon Hilltops junior team (which in those days developed many players for the Roughriders).

In any event congratulations to the Saskatchewan Roughriders team, organization and fans on winning their third Grey Cup over its 95-year history.

As a bonus, doing some High Quality Video testing while watching portions of the game via my Slingbox revealed some interesting information about High Quality Video performance! And, yes, the 52,000-seat Rogers Centre is owned by the same Rogers organization that provides my wireless, Internet and cable TV services.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I got a very interesting comment of Sascha Vitzthum on a previous post, and I distilled the following graph out of it:

According to eBay …

"Direct contribution consists of net revenues from external customers less direct costs. Direct costs include specific costs of net revenues, sales and marketing expenses, and general and administrative expenses over which segment managers have direct discretionary control, such as advertising and marketing programs, customer support expenses, bank charges, site operations expenses, product development expenses, billing operations, certain technology and facilities expenses, transaction expenses, provisions for doubtful accounts, authorized credits and transaction losses. Segment managers do not have discretionary control over expenses such as our corporate center costs …"

This means Skype had a 15% contribution compared to revenue in the last quarter. This is quite OK. From the graph we also see that 2007 will be probably the first year that Skype contributes really to eBay’s profitability.

Jean Mercier also contributes to Skype Numerology.

Posted by Jean Mercier at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

iSkoot is not architected as a "Call Back" service; impact of having a WiFi-enabled Blackberry

New billing features in my Rogers bill can tell you something about how wireless calls accessing Skype are made. Yesterday I received my monthly wireless billing from Rogers who now include, via the callerID, the name of the party called on their call detail report.. Looks like the detail shows that iSkoot is not a "Call Back" service:

The fact that there is a number (rather than simply "Incoming") in the relevant column tells me that iSkoot initiates a call by calling the local iSkoot point-of-presence (647 is a local Toronto call for me) and then, incorporating data concurrently sent to the same server, transparently makes the connection to my called party (whether via Skype or SkypeOut)¹. The whole process takes about five to ten seconds. As discussed in more detail last week, the user experience is virtually identical to that of making a traditional wireless call.

It also demonstrates that calls via Skype access services, whether via iSkoot, IM+ for Skype or Mobivox, are still charged against your wireless data plan, in terms of minutes if not actual per minute usage charges.

Also revealed in the bill:

• My wireless data plan usage, using a Blackberry 8820 with WiFi, remains somewhat lower than the average usage when I did not have a Blackberry with WiFi. Yet I now use the Blackberry for data services much more heavily in WiFi zones, especially when at the home office. In fact, I try to do all application downloads only when in a WiFi zone.
• Here's a tip for using Google Maps, which uses the 8820's GPS feature: get directions for your trip prior to leaving a WiFi zone and scan through the trip. This will download all the relevant map information for the trip into memory via WiFi such that while traveling the route, you significantly reduce use of the wireless data plan to track the trip.
  
• My total calling time while in Boston at Fall VON for three days was 13 minutes for which I had to pay roaming charges of $0.95 per minute in addition to any long distance charges. All I can say here is that (i) having such high roaming charges means I look for other means of making my voice calls (as did Alec Saunders) and (ii) I did use Truphone in a WiFi zone on my Nokia N95 to make a few "no charge" calls. (Using iSkoot or Mobivox when roaming still invokes the roaming charge of $0.95 per minute even if iSkoot calls the local iSkoot point-of-presence.) Bottom line: having such high roaming charges actually reduces significantly the amount I use my Rogers service; it's effectively costing them business revenues.

¹Short calls but, as confirmation of the calls going through, I did get the called party's voice mail service.

Tags: Skype, iSkoot, Blackberry, Blackberry 8820, Rogers Wireless, Truphone, Mobivox, Nokia N95

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Worried about eavesdropping? Worry less with Skype.

Reuters' reports Jörg Ziercke, president of Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany (Bundeskriminalamts or BKA) said:

German police are unable to decipher the encryption used in the Internet telephone software Skype to monitor calls by suspected criminals and terrorists

Ziercke spoke at this week's Fall Session 2007 of "Internet crime scene-a global challenge to the internal security."

Quotes from the Reuters story:

• "The encryption with Skype telephone software ... creates grave difficulties for us,"

• "We can't decipher it. That's why we're talking about source telecommunication surveillance -- that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it's been decrypted."

• "There are no discussions with Skype. I don't think that would help," he said, adding that he did not want to harm the competitiveness of any company. "I don't think that any provider would go for that."

From a related Reuters story, terrorists use social media to educate, motivate, and collaborate.

I've long Skyped with people who assume their email and phone calls are surveilled by their government, employer, industrial competitors or criminals. So they appreciate Skype-level privacy, courtesy of end-to-end strong encryption.

In counterpoint, Skype's 3 Skypephone + iSkoot strategy, where the iSkoot half of a conversation is not encrypted, erodes public trust in Skype's confidentiality and security.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest post by Simon Perry of Digital-Lifestyles.

Skype has just written to owners of 0207 SkypeIn numbers to tell them that their number will have to change by 20th December 2007 - a mere month away. 0207 is the dialling prefix for Central London.

Although worded in a very friendly way, this bombshell email will not be welcomed by those who rely on SkypeIn to bring calls in to their business.

Digital-Lifestyles is an example of this. We made the decision to entrust our phone number - the telephone gateway to our business - to Skype - We’re living the Digital-Lifestyles dream, right? At no time did we ever imagine that we’d have to change our number - ever.

That’s not how phone numbers work. You’re given a number, and that remains your number until you decide to give it up. It doesn’t give you up.

It’s clear that Skype has either fallen out with their current telecoms provider, or have found a better deal elsewhere. Making their customers pay for this, is not the way to do business.

0208 is not 0207
As if the need to change numbers wasn’t bad enough, Skype casually drops late in the email that the number that you need to change to might not be a Central London number, but the far less desirable Outer London 0208 dialling prefix, or even the near-unused 0203.

Skype is offering 12 months free use of the SkypeIn number in return for the ‘inconvenience’.

Bizarre
What is strange about this, is that Skype is very actively trying to encourage the use of Skype in business, building in features into the software to encourage this.

Quite how they think they can encourage people to become dependant on their SkypeIn service and they pull a prank like this is beyond us.

Loss of Trust
Skype has seriously shot itself in the foot with this. Those who have to change their number against their will, will never trust Skype again.

Skype sign the email off “The (really, really sorry) people at Skype.” No matter what it costs Skype to make sure this doesn’t happen, they must meet it or they’ll end up being far more sorry than they could imagine when people abandon their service.

UPDATE: Skype responds...

Editor: Skype procurement didn't contract for automatic renewal at set rates up-front, assuming renegotiations would be kind. per this blog post by Skype spokesman Villu Arak.

also:

• Wikipedia: UK telephone code misconceptions

Posted by Phil Wolff at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent some time this afternoon interviewing Jonathan Christensen, Skype's General Manager for Audio and Video. After reviewing with me how Skype came to be able to offer High Quality Video (which will be the subject of another post), Skype released this statement of interest to those Skype enthusiasts who had been using a video configuration option (i.e. - "hacking" the config.xml file) to allow Skype video to use a 640 x 480 mode of non-Logitech webcams.

Last year, we created a configuration option to enable better video performance on Skype for Windows for tech-savvy users with webcams that could handle it. In Skype 3.6 for Windows, the option was removed. While it's true that the configuration option (which was essentially a garage hack) did offer better-than-average video, the quality was very unreliable. It worked for some users while frustrating others.

Any benefits of the removed option pale in comparison with High Quality Video, which was our focus in Skype 3.6 for Windows. High Quality Video has moved the video-quality bar significantly higher. That's because, together with Logitech, we worked on all aspects of the video system -- from optics to drivers to the video codec -- to achieve reliable High Quality Video performance.

Very few people used the previous video configuration option, so we were surprised at the reaction of some of these users when the option was removed. We'll therefore happily re-introduce the option very soon. However, we'd like to remind users that the restored configuration option will not provide the High Quality Video experience. In order to get that, users will need a combination of certified Logitech hardware and optimized Skype software.

Fundamentally Skype had set out some time ago high standards they wanted to achieve in terms of sustainable, reliable, robust video calling performance and evaluated many brands of webcams before partnering with Logitech. They then worked together on both hardware and software to achieve what has been released in Skype 3.6 as identified by a High Quality Video logo which appears when meeting all the appropriate conditions, including frame rate.

Skype listened to those who raised the issue. Of importance is to understand that users who deploy the video configuration option do so at their own risk; Skype can only guarantee High Quality Video to those whose PC, webcam, software and network conditions meet the High Quality Video specifications. No date has been given for the hot fix that will include not only the restoration of this capability but some other video operation improvements, but let's hope it's within the next couple of weeks..

Now as for Dan's question about getting High Quality Video on the Mac. Recall the difficulty of getting any tools to allow third party development on the iPhone? Suffice it to say it's not for lack of trying on the part of Logitech and Skype to work with Apple. When I tell the rest of the story about the level to which Logitech and Skype had to co-operate to achieve what we're seeing in Skype 3.6, you'll understand.

Update: related posts:

• High Quality Video: What's the Benchmark?
• High Quality Video: Definitely a Winner for Skype
• Expanding the High Quality Video Experience and Observations
• Installing a Logitech High Quality Video Camera: The Experience.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Pioneer Skype Extra application Pamela has this week released version 4.0 with a new user interface:

and several new features:

More screenshots here. Download here. Pamela Basic is always free; other versions of Pamela have a 30-day trial. We'll be doing a review, including a user case study, within the next ten days but in the meantime check out the free trial version.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When doing presentations via desktop sharing applications there are situations where you simply want the remote parties to passively view your desktop; I have seen this customer request with several desktop sharing applications over the years where ultimate simplicity is more appropriate to the participant who is following the session. Yugma has now developed a Yugma Viewer whereby one simply enters a name, email address and session ID on the Yugma Viewer web page, downloads a small Java plug-in and is able to view a shared desktop in a separate browser window but with no ability to do interactive features such as remote control or desktop sharing. Once again this is cross-platform between Mac and Windows.

Original Post: Yugma Skype Edition: Cross Platform Desktop Sharing

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Facebook is no nirvana for VoIP services; six month total Facebook VoIP installations = 1.5 days' of Skype account registrations.

A real life Skype Conference Call experience: Last Friday, a situation arose while talking to a vendor in the Toronto area where I needed to introduce into the call a prospect at her office in San Diego, who, in turn, asked me to add a colleague on her Blackberry in San Francisco. For a variety of reasons, while all three participants had Skype accounts, at this point in time, all three were most readily accessed via the PSTN (requiring SkypeOut to all three parties). To add the San Diego and San Francisco contacts to my initial SkypeOut call I simply went to the "Add Callers" menu item in my active Call tab, entered each phone number and clicked on the Start button. In each case the addition to the Skype conference call was completed in less than a minute, required no additional action on the part of the party being added and we could focus on the business discussion at hand.

Bottom line: dead easy simple!

• Totally an ad hoc call.
• No conference call operators, no call back,
• No dialing into a central conferencing switch (with potential for long distance charges)
• No action required by the other participants other than to answer their ringing phones.
• No cost! (I am on the North America Unlimited Plan.).
• Technology transparent to the call.
• And achieved our business objective for the call.

In summary: An excellent user experience.

So what's the future for VoIP on Facebook?

Over the past few days lots has been written about the adoption of VoIP applications on Facebook. Launched by a link post from Stuart Henshall, Alec Saunders has elaborated with some statistics, and Jon Arnold has discussed. Om, in On Facebook, VoIP Has a Sore Throat, has the most interesting statistics provided by Ryan Nitz, CTO of Deft Labs, publisher of AppHound.

When Nitz ran queries using the keywords Skype and VoIP, AppHound found that the combined installs for all VoIP applications was 435,481, with 11,615 daily users. That’s about 2.7 percent. (See chart for the full breakdown.)

Check out the table in Om's post: CallMe on Skype leads with 110,650 of those "installs"; SkypeMe, under 4,000.

But here are some Skype numbers that put the whole picture in perspective:

• Daily Skype account additions: 292,000
  • based on eBay quarterly reports Q2-Q3,2007
• Skype Extra downloads: 288,819 (week of Nov. 1 -14, 2007).
  • and almost 23 million downloads in 11 months.
• Number of Skype Users Online at 0900h EST (1400h GMT) Nov. 20, 2007

• 

• Total number of Canadians on FaceBook: 7.8 million
  • 23.4% of Canadian population

HighSpeedConferencing had over 12,800 downloads last week; according to Alec's post referenced above FREE Conference Calls (which is not a VoIP application) on Facebook just passed 20,000 installations after almost three months. FREE Conference Calls is doing one service: introducing the concept of multi-party calls to a largely consumer audience. And they are generating some revenue but I use SkypeOut to call at no charge into FREE Conference Call sessions.

After losing his patience and making a few brief but succinct comments, Thomas Howe has gone back to writing his clients' mashups for enterprise applications:

I’m not going to dispute the numbers, but apparently, about six months after the Facebook API was made public, we’ve been through a complete market cycle. VoIP apps are failing on facebook, so it’s time to pack it in and call it a day. You would have to be a complete fool to waste your time there, no? Of course you would. There can’t be anymore than, say, 100k installs of Facebook voice apps to date, ....

Well, Thomas, it's only the "CallMe on Skype" app that's gone over 100,00 downloads but a total of 400,000 in six months is agreeably pathetic. Thomas' conclusion: "Six months is enough for a gazillion, right? Because that’s the way it is in any market… it fully develops in six months"

Further comments in a follow-up post; it's all about the user experience. And what platform is getting user traction for Voice 2.0 application developers?

Memo to VC's listening to Facebook VoIP application financing proposals: don't read this post.

Tags: VoIP, Facebook, Skype, Skype Conference Call, Alec Saunders, Jon Arnold, GigaOm, Thomas Howe, Skype Extras, High Speed Conferencing, FREE Conference Calls

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I like the guy, but he's been infected with a dangerous idea. In An Open Letter to Comcast and Every cable/Telco on P2P he says

"BLOCK P2P TRAFFIC , PLEASE"

Mark Cuban calls Skypers "freeloaders." Says ISPs should charge a premium to allow supernodes to run (Skype supernodes being the backbone of Skype's p2p network).

Janko Roettgers holds his nose over Cuban's change of heart, citing prior positive blog posts and investments in p2p technology.

Skype expert Andrew Hansen commented:

www.skype.com is P2P - it saves me 10's of thousands of dollars a year and I run my entire business on it, I will gladly pay a little more to have more bandwidth. P2P isn't the problem, Internet providers who fail to see their role as pipe providers are the problem. I have a 10MB home office connection (outside of Toronto) it never hiccups, and in comparison to friends in Japan, Denmark etc., the speed I get is prehistoric. When greedy pipe providers stop worrying about (and trying to) control the syntax of the messages going over the network and concern themselves more with providing a better network, they will realize incredible profits. He who provides the best connection wins.

The joy of p2p is people helping each other.

Cuban thinks this is bad.

Mark, where does your notion come from?

Mark, why are you calling me a freeloader?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Andy have provided an excellent summary of the Minute Stealing space activity over the past few days and concludes with:

In my book we're not done seeing the end of the price drop for minutes, but we are seeing the end of where profits are found simply in minutes. Smarter companies like Migg33 and client Mobivox (as Alec Saunders pointed to) are able to leverage minutes to benefit their community members with added features and more than just minutes vs. a Jajah which only has people who want more for less. In the long run using minutes as a loss leader will be the coin of the realm, not simply minutes for minutes sake, because of what I've labeled the "no-loyalty" crowds modus operandi.

That crowd goes to whomever offers free next.

Alec Saunders provides his viewpoint. In particular with 400 points-of-presence in forty countries, including Canada, Mobivox remains our choice:

It's a good move for Jajah, but it's unfortunate that dial-in numbers are available in such a small number of markets — just the USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Austria and Israel. For now, I intend to continue to use Mobivox since they've provided a local Ottawa [Toronto] number for me to call.

And Mobivox gives me free access to my Skype contacts from mobile handsets as well.

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

Jemima Kiss's Guardian post, Rumoursville: Google sniffing round Skype, puts my rumor-logic-checker hat on.

Currently in favour around London's webbist community is the rumour that Google has been in negotiations to buy Skype, the web telephony firm, from eBay.

What would eBay sell? 50-80 million people using Skype each week, paying about $300 million per year, costing a bit less. Skype licenses the p2p technology but owns most of their codecs. Skype has hardware and distribution alliances in many markets. And Skype has top engineering talent in Estonia with satellites throughout Europe.

Google News search results with Skype mocked up by Jan Geirnaert in Top Rumour : will Google buy Skype ? on Skype-watch.com

Let's test the rumor's internal consistency.

First, why would eBay part with Skype?

• Sell: Meg Whitman's call for synergy, the "Power of Three," never had internal champions within eBay's marketplaces. It's taken eBay Markets a year to trust Skype enough to allow Skype-Me buttons on profiles, not even a full Level 1 on the Skype Journal Site Skypification Maturity Model. There is still no eBay VP of Skype@eBay to lead the skypification of eBay.

• Don't Sell: Skype is paying for itself at current marketing levels, so it's no longer a cash drain.

• Sell: Must Skype buy its way into the US? National advertising campaigns don't come cheap and Skype is unlikely to fund this internally.

• Don't Sell: eBay has a strategic interest in expanding from atoms to intangibles. Is eBay interested in service markets where people sell their time and talent to each other?

  • They own StumbleUpon (helps bring people together around topics),

  • StubHub (helps people sell events to each other),

  • invested in Meetup.com (helps bring those enthusiasts together in real life),

  • Skype (a mechanism for keeping those relationships fresh and delivering services).

Next, Why Would Google Be Interested? or Not?

• Google has many telecom interests.

  • Municipal wireless - learning how to wire cities
  • long distance fiber - buying up big pipes across oceans and continents
  • Google Talk - building chat and voice into widgets and mobile apps
  • Google Android SDK - a software platform so programmers can create custom phones
  • Google Mobile apps - new delivery channel for web services
  • TiSP - fiber, without the glass
  • Spectrum -
  • Directory assistance (1-800-GOOG-411)

• Skype would bring new operational competencies in codecs/fidelity, PSTN integration (In/Out), and wholesale/retail distribution.

• Skype brings an active international calling community, and a growing one in the US

• Skype would benefit from Google's scaling and operations capabilities, online marketing and promotion, nascent people search, and the opportunity to blend Skype into online assets

Last, who else might buy?

• VoIM rivals:

  • AOL - buying talent to infill after the huge layoffs. They may not be able to afford it.

  • Tencent - Expanding QQ out of China into world markets, buying technical expertise. Tencent may be five times more popular than Skype in China.

  • Yahoo! - Consolidating strength in Japan and other Asian markets, adding engineering talent to the Messenger teams

• Long shots:

• Adecco SA, Randstad, Manpower. Seeking to build realtime, online, labor markets.

• Microsoft. Serious Not Invented Here, don't you think?

Rumor score? 1 out of 5 nose wiggles.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The major new feature with the recently released Skype 3.6 for Windows is the High Quality Video ("HQV") which provides 640 x 480 VGA resolution at 30 frames per second ("fps"). (As a reference point, my previous Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks Deluxe would only work on video calls at 320 x 240 resolution with <10 fps; even so I had reasonably good quality video especially when using SightSpeed). But this new camera along with Skype's HQV software "changes the picture" (no pun intended) by setting new standards for video calling quality.

A few pointers when installing:

1. Requirements: a Logitech HQV camera, Skype 3.6, broadband Internet connection (>384kbps upload) and QuickCam 11.5 software. And with four times the resolution, one needs Intel Duo Core processing power.
2. Do not install the Logitech QuickCam software provided on the CD that comes with the webcam. Go to Logitech's website and download the version 11.5 driver for your particular camera.
3. Do not attach the webcam to your PC until you have installed the QuickCam software.
4. Uninstall all previous Logitech QuickCam software, including the Camera Driver.
5. Reboot your PC and ensure you have an Internet (and, if applicable, LAN network) connection. You may find, as I did, after uninstalling the previous version 10.5 software that you no longer have any network connections for your PC. Fortunately I had encountered this issue back in June and reported on it. (Or go directly to the fix.).
6. Quit Skype and any Skype Extras and Skype partner products such as call recording, collaboration and archiving applications, etc.
7. Install the Logitech QuickCam 11.5 software (and, of course, ensure you have Skype 3.6 installed).Towards the end of the software installation you will be asked to plug in your webcam.
8. Check that the webcam is working using the Logitech QuickCam software; for the purpose of Skype video calling check out the picture with 640 x 480 (VGA) resolution. An audio tuning wizard comes up to adjust microphone, speaker and echo cancellation settings (there is a microphone is these cameras).
9. Upon launching Skype it will come up with a window announcing that it has found your High Quality Video camera and taking you directly to Skype's Webcam Settings screen. You will also be asked to confirm that you want "Communications_Helper.exe" to link into Skype.
10. Using the webcam settings tools, adjust the zoom as well as the pan-and-tilt to obtain a satisfactory range.
11. Keep in mind that the Logitech 9000 Pro includes a microphone; installation may change your default audio mic settings (for both Windows and/or Skype).

While the real test will come tomorrow when I connect with some of my Skype contacts (late Sunday evening does not find very many online), some first impressions:

• 640 x 480 vs 320 x 240 comparison; see the images. (Reduced proportionally to fit within the column width of Skype Journal posts). Much more detail at 640 x 480.
• The Carl Zeiss Optics in the HQV cameras has a wide angle lens which provides a significantly wider viewing angle; whereas previous cameras had a much smaller viewing angle such that images that would simply cover head and shoulders at close range, the Logitech 9000 Pro showed a significant portion of my office; now I have to clean up my office.
• It takes a few minutes to "warm up" to the full video potential while making lighting adjustments using the "Right Light Sensing" feature. And the Skype video software, accessed via Tools | Options | Video Settings, appears to soften down harsh reflections (like overhead lights off an uncovered bald head) compared to using the raw QuickCam images.
• When switching to other applications, such as SightSpeed, it does require that you disable video in Skype. Speaking of SightSpeed, it only supports 320 x 240 video with the HQV cameras at this time.
• (Update) I can readily switch between Skype and SightSpeed for video calls; however, since it always uses the webcam when open I must close down SightSpeed when using Skype Video. At this point SightSpeed runs at 320 x 240 resolution with this webcam and my cable Internet service (800 kbps; it only supports 640 x 480 VGA resolution when your upload speed is over 1.5 Mbps; however, I'm sure they're working to reduce this bandwidth demand.
• Colo(u)rs are rich and show every detail across a significant depth of field.
• Putting a business card up to the camera once again shows the versatility of the Carl Zeiss optics: at about a 6 inch (15 cm) distance, one can clearly read the card.

While Skype 3.6, etc. are required to be a "transmitter" of High Quality Video, anyone with earlier versions of Skype (at least for Windows; Mac to be verified) can view an HQV "transmission". I did have a demonstration last week, viewing a remote party with my Skype 3.5 client, during which the video was superb quality.

At this point I simply wanted to share my installation experience. While having had a Skype video call demonstration I want feedback from a wider range of viewers; there will be more to report after doing some Skype video calls with fellow bloggers such as Phone Boy.

One question re the Mac: does the MacBook webcam have the potential to match the Logitech HQV cameras for optical quality and frame rate? HQV is a lot about the hardware optics! And the Pro 9000 requirement is for Windows XP and Windows Vista only.

Tags: Skyype, Skype 3.6, High Quality Video, Logitech, Logitech QuickCam 9000 Pro, Carl Zeiss Optics, QuickCam Drivers

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

This coming weekend sees the U.S. celebrating Thanksgiving Holiday. While it is their traditional "family" homecoming weekend (as opposed to, say, Christmas in Canada), there are still some who cannot get together with family for a wide range of reasons. This creates an ideal situation for learning more about friends and family conference calling (not just three-way calling). A couple of options to try out:

I. Free Conference Call from iotum (requires Facebook account; drawing for free iPod Touch):

Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday season, and I’m writing to tell you about a special Thanksgiving promotion we’re running for users of FREE Conference Calling. As you know, the FREE Conference Calls service is already free (except for the normal cost of your telephone call). However between now and midnight on November 26^th, every call you make lasting longer than 5 minutes will earn you an entry into our drawing for a free iPod touch. We hope you’ll take advantage of this offer to stay in touch with your friends, family and loved ones at this special time of the year… and enter to win that 8G iPod Touch. Invite them to install FREE Conference Calls too, so they can have a chance to win as well.

In case you haven’t checked the application in a while, we’ve added a bunch of cool new features for moderating calls, plus a wall that you can use during, before, or after the call to post your thoughts. Shortly we’ll also have a recording feature and dial-in numbers for Europe starting with the UK.

Canadian firms have to give away the iPod Touch; we're still waiting for the Canadian iPhone launch next spring.

II. Skype Conference Calling

Of course, Skype also offers the ability to host conference calls for up to 10 participants. Friday afternoon I had to quickly conference in participants in Toronto, San Diego and San Francisco. All done very quickly in an ad hoc fashion as the discussion grew and we needed the additional parties on the call. If not in a call use the "Create a Conference" menu item in your Skype Contacts tab to select all the participants you want (and add SkypeOut numbers, if necessary). On the other hand, when in a call, simply go to the Add Callers menu item at the top of the Active Call tab and either select the Skype contact you wish to add or enter the phone number.

It would be interesting to obtain your feedback as a result of trying both services via the comments to this post. Which you would recommend for family conference calls? In any event, if you cannot make it home for the weekend, at least take time for a family conference call.

Tags: conference call, iotum, FREE Conference Call, Skype, Skype Conference Call, SkypeOut

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Let's face it, IPv6 discussions tend to be emotional rather than rational. The calm, constructive and exploratory conversations about "What if" and "Why not" seem to be rather rare. It is much more likely that you overhear in your local tech-crowded establishments a variant of:

"IPv6 is coming!"

"Don't need it. IPv4 with NAT will work forever."

"NAT sucks"

"You suck"

...and from there onwards the quality of the conversation rapidly deteriorates to levels lower than is suitable for printing.

Both the media and a number of consultants tend to repurpose the same statistics about impending exhaustion of IPv4 addresses as "The Reason" for eventual migration. This practice has two immediate effects: The conversation focuses solely on debating if, and guessing when the IPv4 addresses run out, and it implicitly removes any reasons to explore potential opportunities in IPv6 technology beyond the size of the address pool.

The initial "Wow" definitely is in the numbers. How many of us know what "340 undecillion" is without googling for "undecillion"? But even the most severely mathematically-challenged can visualize without any difficulties the humongous difference between the 4,294,967,296 addresses provided by IPv4 and the 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses provided by IPv6.

So it is natural that it became the eye-catching "dominant feature" in TV news and elevator pitches, where you need to cram every topic into a 15 second sound bite. But in most IPv6 presentations and papers, stuck towards the end, almost as an afterthought, you will find several "Other IPv6 improvements", including perhaps the ones we, from developers to business managers, should be most interested in:

• IPv6 also supports natively secure end-to-end communications.

• IPv6 also improves on Quality of Service support, allowing prioritization of timing-sensitive real-time applications, such as video or voice over IP, over less timing-critical applications.

• IPv6 also improves support for mobile devices, such as laptops, PDAs, cell phones, wristwatch computers, GPS tracking devices, etc.

• IPv6 also supports automatic transparent address reconfiguration while the device is on the move or in use.

Each one of those present opportunities for application development, specifically for any video and audio carrying P2P applications, such as Skype and provide added reasons to dedicate some time to seriously study what IPv6 could do to your application or device, if taken advantage of.

It is no longer just theory. In the USA, at least, Sprint and Verizon have quietly built IPv6 accessibility into their networks. Today, if you subscribe to either service and use a PDA, cell phone, or a Smartphone running Windows Mobile, here is a test for you: Point it's browser to ocnipv6.jp. Your device will already have auto configured itself with an IPv6 address and you will see it tagged next to "You are using IPv6 - " on their otherwise all Japanese home page. The chances are, that this was new to you, and that the sales clerk you bought the phone/service from, still don't know what IPv6 is. If you are not with Sprint or Verizon, maybe you should generate competitive pressure on your current phone service provider.

But Sprint and Verizon did not implement IPv6 tunneling so that you can visit Japanese IPv6 sites to verify that you are using IPv6 or to watch golfing cartoons or dancing turtles. No, the reason they did, is that, inherently, it is simpler and therefore cheaper to manage large networks and the millions of end-user devices in IPv6 than it is in IPv4. Another IPv6 feature that gets lost in the small print behind the "340 undecillion addresses" headliner/sound bite.

Most of the nay-sayers will reluctantly admit that IPv6 will eventually replace IPv4. During the transition, IPv6 and IPv4 will co-exist while the content is being migrated across. The latter, of course, will ignite another emotional argument about how long the transition period will be, if it's going to happen at all, again stealing the focus away from calm, constructive and exploratory conversations about how to get your content over to IPv6.

The Catch-22 of IPv6 is of course the content. If nobody moves or generates IPv6 content, there is little to no reason to migrate. And vice versa.

Flame wars have little appeal to me and that is not what I am trying to ignite here. What I am trying to wake up is your curiosity and a desire to dig past the headlines to search and explore the potential impact of Ipv6 to your application or device development, networking, operations and it’s potential benefits to your users. Whether Ipv6 arrives here next year or a couple of years from now, is almost irrelevant. In either case, the time to explore it is here, right now. Who knows, maybe you will come up with the “Next Killer Application” that will catapult Ipv6 to everybody’s desk in record time. But you need curiosity, some tenacity and you need an Ipv6 playground.

Most operating systems already have IPv6 support built right in. I'm using both Windows XP and Ubuntu. If you do an "ipconfig" from the Command Prompt you should see that all your network interfaces have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses assigned to them. The ones starting with fe80: are non-routable IPv6 addresses and never visible outside your own network. If your router were to support IPv6, you could use it in-house already.

You can turn your $60.00 Linksys/Buffalo/many other routers to equal or to surpass the $600.00 IPv6 capable routers by replacing its proprietary operating system with an open and free operating system from either DD-WRT or OpenWRT.

You can get public IPv6 addresses for free from any one of the many Tunnel Brokers (See the partial list below or google for one in your country.) and be on IPv6 inside 5 minutes.

Most major manufacturers are building IPv6 support into all of their network-attached products. There are for example dozens of network attached webcams readily available, which you could access directly from anywhere with your Sprint/Verizon phones.

Quoting Wayne Homren from his IPv6 blog,

"If the first Internet revolution was about connecting people to information, and Web 2.0 is about connecting people to people in social networks, then “The Next Net” will be about connecting people to things and things to each other."

That will require both lots of addresses and the drive from bottom up for capabilities that allows us to connect to "things" and connect "things to other things." So it's time to get curious, get with the program and start exploring IPv6 potential.

1. When you meet with IPv6-aware colleagues, just say to them that "IPv6 is coming" and see what happens for its entertainment value.

2. Don't get stuck in arguments about when or if IPv4 addresses will run out or not. It’s not about “when” it’s about “how you can best benefit from Ipv6?”

3. When you talk to software authors/companies, ask what their plans are to not only tolerate IPv6 but to exploit IPv6 features. Vote with your wallets: buy products only from vendors with intelligent Ipv6 plans.

4. When you talk to you ISP or the host of your website, ask when you will get/have native IPv6 connection. Again, vote with your wallets and support the ones that have a crisp plan in place.

5. When it's cold and dark outside, take time to think how you could add value to your favorite application or product by building IPv6 support in it.

6. When you come up with an idea, start pushing it, in calm, constructive and exploratory conversations.

References:

• Wikipedia: What’s Ipv6?
• Ars Technica: Everything you need to know about Ipv6!
• Command Information: Ipv6 Where the Value Is.
• OpenWRT: Ipv6 capable software for your router
• DD-WRT: Ipv6 capable software for your router
• go6.net: Ipv6 tunnel broker for Ipv6 access
• Sixxs: Ipv6 tunnel broker and a How To
• xs26: Ipv6 tunnel broker
• Hurricane Electric's Tunnelbroker:
• Hexago: Ipv6 tunnel broker

Matti Salminen
Technology Planning and IT Management Consultant to Fortune 100 companies and startup’s alike across five continents, over a period of three decades, on behalf of two of the world’s largest Information Technology companies.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 03:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Previous posts have discussed OnState's Call Center for Skype and its ability to manage customer enquiries by voice and/or chat. A conversation is launched via a website with three options (Skype, Callback and Chat) or via a SkypeIn number (where available). This week OnState added to their portfolio of communications options with the availability of toll-free services for Skype which can be integrated into the OnState CallCenter solution.

What this means is that an OnState-enabled business simply obtains a toll-free number in the U.S. or Canada and the customer enquiries can be directed to any Skype-enabled agent worldwide. Ideal for, say, the European business that wants to take enquiries from the U.S. and/or Canada using agents based in Europe or for Canadian businesses who cannot get SkypeIn numbers. From the press release:

"Skype changed the communications industry with its software and global calling rates,” noted [OnState CEO Pat] Kelly, “Now, OnState continues to challenge the call center market by providing integrated toll-free service at an industry-redefining price. All a customer needs to do is fire-up an OnState toll-free number in the US or Canada and that number can go anywhere Skype can go – this is revolutionary for traditional call centers.”

The service will soon be expanded to include European toll-free numbers.

Bottom line is that businesses can invoke OnState's CallCenter service and take advantage of Skype's low operating costs regardless of whether the customer comes via a website or is attracted by a print or broadcast media advertisement or press item. Adding toll-free numbers simply tells the customer "we care about your interest" in a product or service.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Highrise is the simple customer relationship management system from 37 Signals. As part of last weekend's update:

We’ve added a “Skype” option to the phone number data type. Skype numbers are automatically linked up in the contact information sidebar. Clicking a Skype number will dial the number if you have Skype installed on your computer.

This is a work in progress, but we've been using our own version of the SEI Capability Maturity Model to assess the sophistication of Skypified web sites. The five stages of the SJ SSMM:

0. None
1. Static.
2. Dynamic
3. Peering
4. Transactional

37 Signals is half way through Level 1 with Skype names and links.

With a little more explanation... 

Skype Journal Site Skypification Maturity Model

Level 0: None
What's Skype?

Level 1: Static
Storing Skype names and Skype-linking Phone Numbers

Storing and linking people’s Skype names is one part. The other is to offer SkypeOut links for PSTN phone numbers.

Tech: Skype’s “skype:” html protocol to launch Skype from a browser link.

Level 2: Dynamic
Integrating Skype Presence

Is this person available for a call now? You can show a person’s Skype presence in a web page.

You can also use presence information to inform other site behavior. For example, you might aggregate presence data for a team to create collective presence scores.

Tech: Polling Skype’s web presence services

Level 3: Peering
Syncing Skype Profile, Social Graph, and History Data

Skype clients are information rich. You can use that data to enrich profiles, enhance your site’s social graph (who knows whom, how, and how they interact), collect communication histories (who talked to whom, when, for how long), and import chat archives.

You can keep your site's data synced with Skype's by refreshing active connections with your Skype client.

Tech: Using Skype’s client APIs to log in on behalf of a user. With that access you can both read and write to the client, and trigger conversations. At large scale, you will need to operate a Skype client farm.

Level 4: Transactional
Integrating Skype Business/Commerce Services

Skype offers some access to its payment services. PamFax is an example of this, where customers pay with Skype credits for sent faxes.

Tech: Skype publishing and DRM client and web service APIs.

The SJ SSMM helps us assess current Skype readiness and plan a Skype strategic roadmap for our consulting clients.

We've used maturity models in several areas of our consulting practice. I spoke at the 2006 ETel conference about our Skype Journal Platform Program Maturity Model.

Level 0. No API.

Level 1. Afterthought.

Level 2. API follows UI.

Level 3. Ambition and Leadership.

And the Skype Journal Connectivity Maturity Model addresses a device's Skype-completeness.

Level 0. No connection.

Level 1. Skype indifferent.

Level 2. Skype aware.

Level 3. Skype conversant.

How Skype ready is your site?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cumulative release notes for 3.6 to now, language is Skype's:

New features in 3.6:

• Calling support for MySpace with Skype users
• Display MySpace avatar in Skype
• Linking MySpace profile in Skype
• High Quality Video calls
• User notification if he has old Logitech driver version

changes:

• Computers with Dual Core CPU's will send 640x480 by default on video call with High Quality Video certified cameras
• Extras Manager updated to version 1.5.0.32
• Skype Internet Explorer plugin updated to 2.2.0.145
• Improved audio quality on low speed internet connections
• Improved presence [editor: ???]
• More stable video calls between fast and slow internet connection users
• Relayed file transfer speed improved to up to 70 kbytes/sec

For programmers, API changes:

• Check and set Skype window status
• Notification for changing state of the Skype main window (minimized, maximized, normal, hidden)
• Notification for opening and closing Skype Chat windows

Updated language files:

• Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Estonian, Greek, French, Italian, Japanese, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese-Portugal, Portuguese-Brazil, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, Romanian, Turkish

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While returning to the home office from my workout yesterday morning, before I started driving, I pulled out my Blackberry 8820, selected the iSkoot icon to open iSkoot (which auto logs into Skype), selected a Skype contact in the U.K., clicked on Call, heard a message asking me to "please wait while the call is completed" and within seconds I was talking to my contact in the U.K.

We talked for 15 minutes (over my nXZen Bluetooth headset for obvious safety reasons). A simple, straight forward, familiar user experience -- total cost was a 15 minute charge against my Rogers wireless monthly subscription for a local call (from iSkoot's Toronto POP to my phone). Even the callback operation itself was transparent to the user. In fact, it meets my "Truphone test" for user experience: Look up a contact in a device address book, select which phone number, press the Call button and the call is connected with no further user action.

If this sounds similar to the 3 Skypephone experience, it is; iSkoot provided the Skype access client in the Skypephone. In my case the Skypephone's Skype button is replaced by the iSkoot icon on the Blackberry. Bottom line is that whether via 3 Skypephone or my Blackberry over Rogers a connection is readily made and there are minimal, if any, charges. And it is a very familiar user experience, comparable to making wireless calls via the service provider's native (GSM) voice network. (Photo above: Blackberry 8820 running iSkoot and Skypephone together at Fall VON session on Goin' Mobile with Skype.)

Since the introduction of the 3 Skypephone two weeks ago I have seen many commentaries attempting to find issues with the offering. Very simply stated the 3 Skypephone offers:

• Free Skype-to-Skype calling worldwide, reducing or eliminating international long distance charges, provided your contact is also on Skype (on any platform)¹.
• Free Skype IM (presence and chat)
• Unlimited Internet browsing

provided you contract to purchase a monthly minimum of £12 of traditional voice and SMS text messaging services from Hutchison Whampoa's 3 Service. on an 18 month contract; the phone itself is then free. Alternatively you can purchase the Skypephone for £49.95 and do a minimum £10 monthly Pay-As-You-Go top up.

The Skypephone hardware is a quad-band GSM/UMTS² phone over GSM/EDGE 2G and GSM/UMTS 3G networks. It includes a 2MP camera and video camera along with music services including a (MP3) media player as well as a voice recorder. Think of the additional Skype button as an iSkoot icon on any other iSkoot-supported device such as the Blackberry 8xxx's and Nokia N-series phones.

Fundamentally, the 3 Skypephone is a promotion to encourage generation of traditional mobile voice business over the 3 network. As a result there is no SkypeOut included whereas with iSkoot I can access SkypeOut numbers. In fact the lack of SkypeOut on the 3 Skypephone service will virally encourage Skype adoption by users' contacts who are outside the 3 network service areas.

A key benefit of the 3 Skypephone to the rest of the mobile user world is that it is a pioneering carrier-supported service that threatens to be another crack in a disruption of the traditional mobile voice service business models. As Phil has stated previously, the 3 Skypephone is a live test of a new business model for attracting and retaining customers.

Using my Blackberry I get my equivalent voice service with only the requirement to have a Rogers wireless subscription for a set number of minutes per month (I am not on contract at the moment), which I need anyway.

But there are some other comments in the blogosphere that also can affect the user experience³:

1. Having the Skype client on a server (and not on the Skypephone) means longer battery charge lifetimes for the mobile device and a more robust, carrier grade overall platform for connecting to Skype.⁴
2. Roaming on other networks is expensive regardless of your carrier.This was the number one issue discussed at a recent blogger dinner at Fall VON.
3. Should you have a Blackberry 8xxx or Nokia N-Series phone you can install iSkoot and have a similar user experience on any GSM network worldwide. In fact, 3 itself encourages the use of Skype for their X-Series customers using any of the Nokia: N73, E65, 6120 and N95; Sony Ericsson: W950i; or LG Shine U970 smartphones.
4. UMA/GAN provides an alternative path to low cost, familiar voice calling through its seamless transition of voice calls and data between GSM/2G/3G wireless and WiFi access hotspots.
5. Whether using VoIP or UMA/GAN carriers will still want to have some revenue generating plan, even if it is fixed rate. Both 3's Skypephone offering with the promotion described above and T-Moible USA's Hotspot @ Home unlimited use, but fixed rate, service represent the type of plan we can expect to see going forward.

There are three advantages to using the Blackberry 8820 and iSkoot:

• Having a QWERTY keyboard makes it a much easier to enter text messages, whether in Skype IM or SMS
• The WiFi inherent to the 8820 (or 8320 Curve) can significantly reduce carrier data plan usage, especially important when your carrier has no "unlimited" data plan.
• Blackberries inherently have the best battery management and charge lifetime of any mobile devices.

The only issue I cannot fully address is the Skypephone's voice quality. Certainly the Blackberry-based call I made was limited to the <~3 kHz audio bandwidth of a cell phone and did not inhibit the conversation. Until I know the voice engine within the Skypephone and with no experience using it, I cannot comment. (Link to an experience using Skype on a mobile device with a wideband voice engine.) However, the reviews linked below speak favorably of the voice quality. (Update: Dec. 7: Received a call from a 3 Skypephone - excellent voice quality)

Bottom line: it's the user experience that matters. In architecting the service its goal has to be ease-of-use, robustness and reliability along with a service plan that will be very attractive to generating customers. Using my criteria for evaluating mobile Skype services, it stands up quite well in both in terms of features, especially Skype features, and the user experience. And may it contribute to driving lower mobile user costs for both voice calls and mobile web activities.

Related posts:

• Time Online: On test: the 3 Skypephone

The other great feature of the phone is the ease of use. You sign in on the handset with your Skype account details at the outset. This takes less than a minute. Once signed on, you press a single Skype key and the screen shows all your contacts and their status, exactly as you would see on your computer. You can use Skype to chat or call them. Pretty simple.

• Technical Itch: 3 Skypephone Review

The Skype phone is all about free phone calls, and opening Skype to a whole new mobile audience, and for that purpose it does a good job. With a sub £50 price tag on PAYG it represents great value for money.

• A Primer for Skype's Direction: Mobile Conversations

¹ Note there is a cap of 10,000 IM messages per month (333 messages/day) and 4,000 Skype minutes per month (2 hour 20 minutes/day). With a T9 keyboard you would be hard pressed to generate 100 chat messages per day.

² 900 MHz, 1800 Mhz, 1900 MHz GSM and 2100 MHz UMTS. Without the 850 MHz band, it is not suitable for North American GSM use. Yes, as evidenced by the photo above, I saw a Skypephone running on AT&T while at Fall VON.

³ Normally I would refer to a press release received by many bloggers in the past couple of days but in this case the release was quite pretentious and misinformed with the result that I don't want to give it any publicity that it really does not deserve.

⁴ Today a very significant portion of all long distance calls use VoIP at some stage in the connection between end points; the carriers just don't want to announce that they too have figured out how VoIP can reduce their service costs. The key here is that the VoIP interface does not have to be on the end point device to achieve a cost saving, whether for the user or the carrier.

Tags: Skype, 3 Skypephone, Blackberry 8820, iSkoot, Hutchison Whampoa, 3 Service, Nokia N-Series, Blackberry Curve, UMA/GAN

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Regulation in Europe

EC proposals for VoIP emergency dialing. The EC will require Skype to connect 999 calls. Analysys' James Allens comments  "Under the new proposal, if a user can call telephone numbers at all, calls to the emergency services must be possible. This will mean that VoIP services such as Vonage and SkypeOut will need to support such calls, and this will no longer be optional."

is Apple's iPhone exporting the idea of a locked mobile from the US to the UK?

The New Video

UK's Bebo opens up to video entertainment distributors. No charge. Public protocols. Sharable content on personal pages. via The Hollywood Reporter.

Yahoo! Messenger is doing the same thing, with in-chat video. 

Windows is no more! Skype for Linux with video was the last thing foobar needed to remove Microsoft Windows from his dual-boot laptop.

Education

Estonia university teaches via Skype. For those Finns who want to avoid the ferry to Tallina Ülikool. Or for English speakers learning Estonian. via cafebabel.

This is part of a larger trend, Tom Regan reports in CSM. For the United States:

• 1 in 5 higher education students is now taking at least one class online.
• In the fall of 2005, 3.18 million students were taking online courses
• In the fall of 2006, 3.5 million. That's more than twice as many (1.6 million) as in 2002.
• The 9.7 percent annual growth rate for online enrollments from 2005-06 far exceeds the 1.5 percent growth of the overall higher education student population for that period.
• 47 percent of high school students are interested in taking courses online that aren't offered at their schools.

Skype Ecosystem

IPEVO publishes Mac software for its USB Skype phones. Get Mac drivers and apps for the IPEVO Free.1, Free.2, XING, and TRIO.

Skype using On2 Technologies' latest video codecs, now for Skype for Windows 3.6's advanced video calls. On2's TrueMotion VP7 enables an 8-fold increase in video data rate over previous calls.

Fun fact: About 25 percent of all Skype-to-Skype calls involve at least one video participant.

Competition

AOL and Google now peer for Instant Messaging. via Google Operating System.

TUAW reports Microsoft will upgrade Messenger for the Mac to 7.0, part of Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac.

Yahoo! Korea and LG Telecom bring web services to mobiles. Mobile versions of Flickr, News, Mail and Messenger. It's the Messenger that should catch Skype's attention. That and the overall convergence of communication tools. LG is also offering a Cyworld phone.

Trends

The 3 Skypephone seems to be selling out in some UK stores. More inventory to come for this weekend.

Dean Bubley predicts 250 million users of VoIP over 3G by 2012. More data over wireless means more opportunities for Skype and the operators' own versions of Skype.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Via a Skype Public Chat on Skype 3.x, we have just received the following statement re the problems that occurred on Sunday and were reported on Monday:

Skype’s engineering team has concluded their investigation into the outage that Tom Keating alerted you to yesterday and I wanted to share their findings with you:

Users of some Skype Certified devices experienced login problems on Sunday when a server-hosting location experienced network connection difficulties. As a result, some services became temporarily unavailable. This has since been rectified. The scale of the problem was minor and we've taken appropriate precautions to avoid it happening again.

Seems like it was not only a Skype server-hosting location that had "network connection" difficulties on Sunday; appears that a truck crashing a power transformer brought down GigaOm's hosting service provider on Sunday also. Signs of these trying times of getting the Internet to be a five nines reliable network.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From Google's Android home page:

The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, is developing Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. To help developers get started developing new applications, we're offering an early look at the Android Software Development Kit.

There's an Android developer blog and an Android Google group.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype doesn't offer a free, public, documented IM gateway for the Skype network. It's not even on Skype's public roadmap. So companies that want to embed Skype chat in their service skip Skype.

Joost choosing meebo for channel chat is natural; meebo interops with all the major IM players (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC). Not Skype. That's not to say everyone uses the same protocol. They don't. But each have free, public, documented IM gateways. So meebo and Trillian and others can help the public talk within and across networks.

Joost's close relationship with Skype (common founders, investors, personnel) should make the meebo alliance sting a bit. Then again, you can prototype a meebo app in an hour. Using meebo's free, public, documented web service API. 

It's great that Skype will blend white pages and presence service into the new MySpaceIM client. But it works through a contracted, private, undocumented gateway.

Skype must choose.

A handful of close, high-touch relationships? Or platforms that:

• fuel population growth,
• trigger Skype conversations,
• make it fast, affordable, reliable and convenient to blend Skype into anything.

Interoperability's opportunities are immense and apply to voice, video, file sharing, and commerce.

See also:

• Eric Friedman: The universal Inter operable instant messaging dream
• Google Operating System: Screenshots of Google Talk's Integration with AIM in Gmail
• Jan Geirnaert: Skype chat blocked out from Joost.com ? Or How to kick yourself in the face...

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A phantom outage? Tom Keating reports of difficulties logging onto Skype via Skype WiFi and Cordless PC-Free phones (Philips 841 and Linksys CIT-400 both of which come from the same ODM). Since this issue only came to my attention this morning I can only report that the evaluation Topcom WebT@lker 5000 and Philips 841 units in my office are both working fine. I then checked my "almost a 3 Skypephone plus WiFi" (= iSkoot running on a Blackberry 8820 with WiFi for data such as Skype IM) and was able to place a call to the Skype Test Call service with no difficulty. Whatever was the issue seems to have gone away; all systems are working at this time (Monday noon EST).

(Note that the Philips and Linksys PC-Free cordless phones have no WiFi capability; they do use the DECT wireless standard for "cordless" communication between the handsets and base station.)

< name="on2">Video update: And a hint that video conferencing (multi-party video calls) may soon be coming to Skype. According to a press release today from On2 Technologies, supplier of the video compression engine for Skype:

Skype has used On2's award-winning VP7 video compression since 2005. VP7 technology is designed to provide superb video at very low data rates and perform efficiently on low-power processors. The new VP7 update is specifically designed for video conferencing, using optimizations targeted at stable camera video and processor scalability.

"In conjunction with Skype and partner Logitech, we have been able to optimize VP7 to achieve video-quality improvements while maintaining tremendous bandwidth efficiency," said Bill Joll, president and CEO of On2 Technologies. "These are remarkable results for video conferencing. Users will find that they can get lifelike High Quality Video at 384 kbps¹, a fraction of the bandwidth of most broadband connections." [my bold]

Once the current Skype 3.6 beta, which includes the new On2 video compression for 1:1 video calling, and features High Quality Video goes gold can we soon expect a beta Skype 3.n (where n>6) with multi-party video conferencing?

New malware alert. If you have any of the common security software packages, this should not be an issue but Skype has issued another malware alert re an item that masquerades as a chat message aimed at finding a lost girl

¹384 kbps has been the minimum bandwidth requirement for acceptable quality video conferencing going back to its introduction in the mid-1990's.)

Tags: Skype, Skype WiFi Phone, Philips 841, Linksys CT-320, Skype cordless phone, Topcom, WebT@lker, 3 Skypephone, iSkoot

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A major trend in the late 1990's was the emergence of enterprise grade Customer Relationship Management offerings that not only required IT support but also significant investments in server hardware and business process engineering. However, 1999 saw the launch of a different scenario for CRM, namely a hosted service, Salesforce.com, where even the smallest business could sign up and pay under $100 per user per month with no capital investment required. Today over 35,500 companies have implemented this hosted solution and Salesforce.com is regarded as the pioneer of the "No Software" movement. One could also point out they were the pioneer in the "No Hardware" movement.

Today we are seeing the emergence of several "No Hardware" hosted services including:

• OnState ACD: removing the need for Call Center PBX's
• Convenos Meeting Center: a virtual boardroom for ongoing enterprise team building
• OnSIP hosted PBX: providing a hosted full service PBX for turning any SIP-based connection into an extension.

Of course common to all these platforms is that the users can also be geographically disbursed worldwide, contributing to the "Green" movement by reducing the need for business travel. And common to all these is that they bring what were previously perceived as large enterprise solutions to the small to medium business market space with a sub-$100 per user monthly subscription cost.

Lost in the buzz of Fall VON two weeks ago was the recent launch of another "No Hardware" service, SightSpeed Business, providing a range of video-based services for the small to medium enterprise. What previously required minimum six figure investments for video conferencing hardware has been replaced by a service that costs under $20 per month per seat with no capital investment beyond user PC's.

SightSpeed has always had a reputation for high quality video services including video calling, (up to four party) video conferencing and video messaging (or video mail). Building on SightSpeed's informal adoption by over 30,000 small businesses, Sight Speed Business consolidates its video services for small business by introducing:

• An Administration console for central management of users, including internal directory services as well as coordination of purchasing SightSpeed
• Multi-user licensing
• Full video session recording
• In-call file sharing

The key new software piece here is the Administration Console providing a business of any size a tool to easily and readily take control of how it deploys, manages and purchases SightSpeed's video services. All the features of the previously available SightSpeed 6.0, including its Windows/Mac cross platform capability, are included.

Essentials:

• Operating System: Windows 2000/XP/Vista; Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher
• Video Services: Video Calling (one-to-one), Video Conferencing (up to four participants), Video Messaging (create a video and email it)
• Voice Services: Unlimited (VoIP-based) PC-to-PC calling; Outbound calling to PSTN; Inbound calling via 800 number or local phone number.
• Other features include: In-call file sharing, session recording, unlimited text messaging
• Packages:
  • Single seat: $19.95 per month; $189.95 per year; 5-, 10- and 50-User Packs
  • Free 30 day trial
  • Includes 500 minutes of Outbound U.S. or Canada calling

SightSpeed has developed a customer base associated with their video messaging strengths. Having found a market niche in the SMB space, SightSpeed Business opens up new video communications (and productivity) opportunities for this market segment; it provides the tools for easy implementation across the business's operating space with no capital expenditure. The challenge for small business is to determine where video communications can be incorporated into their ongoing business processes.

With Skype's expanding video capabilities and the increasing general awareness of video overall as a real time conversations tool, we should be seeing additional interesting video-based services going into 2008.

More information here.

Tags: SightSpeed, SightSpeed Business, video services, video calling, video messaging, video conferencing

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype Outlook Toolbar 1.1 beta testing is nearing completion but a broader ranges of beta testers sought.

My introduction to Skype two and a half years ago came through meeting Skype's Toolbar Product Manager, Peter Kalmstrom, (at that time an independent contract developer) via Skype while evaluating one of his then third party Skype accessories. A few weeks later Peter asked me to be a beta tester for a Skype Outlook Toolbar development contract that would integrate Skype into Outlook. A few months later my first guest contributor post to Skype Journal came with a review of the resulting Skype Outlook Toolbar 1.0 in the fall of 2005 during my recovery from some major surgery.

Over the past few months Peter's Skype Toolbar team has been developing a new release 1.1 for the Skype Outlook Toolbar. A primary driver for a new release is Outlook 2007 compatibility; however, Peter is also using this opportunity to improve the Toolbar's overall performance.

For this release its development has been facilitated by several external testers who, for whatever reason, would come to the Skype Toolbars page in the Developer Zone. One major difference for this release: we have all been participants in a Skype Toolbar for Outlook beta Group Chat where we could immediately report and share issues. Often they would be fixed within hours. (Not all! Some of the more challenging issues needed more creative solutions.) As a result of this Group Chat I have become more aware of different configurations for Outlook implementation¹ and their impact on an Outlook plug-in's development.

While the basic feature set remains, a few features that were rarely used, if at all, but heavily impacted "processor overhead" have been removed. Aside from the Outlook 2007 compatibility I would consider this another major improvement as certainly in my testing, I have noticed significantly less impact on my Outlook activity when this beta Toolbar is installed.

And the new release has no impact on the feature set of Skype Developer Partner Netralia's Skylook, which integrates and archives all your Skype activity into Outlook. Fundamentally, archiving your Skype conversations is the key word here where, for example, you're using Outlook as a customer relationship management tool. If you need to archive all your Skype activities along with your email and want to contain it all within Outlook, Skylook remains the solution.

More details if you want to participate in this expanded Skype Outlook Toolbar beta program

If you want to learn more about the various Skype Toolbars themselves check out the Skype Toolbar Screencasts. And the recent Skype Journal review Skypify Your MS Office Documents (covering Skype Office Toolbar).

¹POP, IMAP, Exchange Server email accounts including and Exchange Server via VPN.

Tags: Skype, Skype Toolbars, Skype Outlook Toolbar, Skype Developer Zone, Skype Group Chat, Skylook

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Australian Communication and Media Authority now mandates VoIP services must offer connection to 000 and 106 emergency lines. Stuart Corner wonders if Skype is subject to the ACMA's rules.

This issue becomes more interesting when the 3 Skypephone arrives in Australia in 2008 (pre-register for your Business, pre-register for yourself). I can see how a PC-to-PC softphone would be exempt, even with SkypeIn and SkypeOut PSTN connections. Does the regulation apply to the iSkoot service, where the voice part of a call travels over HTC's mobile voice network?

Skype has been excused from similar e911 rules in the US, so far. Lobbyists for incumbent US telcos pushed back; we'll see if Australian telcos compete as hard in the halls of political power.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Went to a blogger beer bash last night in San Jose (avoiding Sharks fans).

What makes a game fun and elearning not not fun? DOD's Mark Oehlert said I should look to A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Games have fun as a purpose, elearning has control as expressed through learning objectives. Games (fun games) are learning experiences too; you stop playing tic-tac-toe (naughts and crosses) once you learn the game. Mark's a trained anthropologist working in the field of "serious games," emphasis on education.

We stopped talking when Mark got his Sharpie tat.

Didn't get to talk much with Anne Derryberry, a consultant to Adobe (thanks for the drinks, Ellen!) on serious games, game design and how they address business issues. I love her post: Rant: Are We Here to Work or Play? -Wrong Question! the DevLearn folks here are swearing by the Adobe Captivate authoring tool; must play with it soon.

Ross Dawson's Trends in the Living Networks blog emphasizes futures work, scenario planning and other his work as chairman of the Future Exploration Network. His KMWorld talk, Successful Enterprise 2.0 and Social Media, and his talk for the Network Roundtable: Tapping Networks to Bring the Best of the Firm to Clients.

Great conversation with confounding Welshman David Snowden. Speculation over ale... There will be a generation of bigco CIOs who break up IT to create value, the way some CEOs break up a company to unlock value. Routine services live outside the firewall, hosted (from SAP to MySAP) or offshored. High value IT operations, like factory automation, are better owned by line executives. Custom apps now live on servers, instead of desktops, with web UI. So IT is better off going with that flow, let people get whatever computers they want, outsource PC support, and reserve IT for strategic consultancy and the company store. Ouch.

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention: David says knowledge management is dead.

Stuart and others are frustrated at in-session critiques by people who'd obviously never blogged or facebooked or twitted were opining or dissing workplace social media. Strange to think there are very late adopters (pioneers started blogging ten years' ago) among those trying to lead the way. 1950s management thought still rules in most places.  

Jon Husband is down from B.C.. His wirearchy model has been about five years' ahead of the curve, but the world seems to be catching on. Would have talked more with Jon, but he is on deadline for rethinking a classic knowledge management textbook post-Web2.0/social media by Friday. And giving a talk today. Good luck, Jon.

Thanks to the always insightful Jay Cross for putting this together and to Stuart for tipping me.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Effectively opens up Skype Video conversations to platform independence.

Over the weekend I put up a post where Yugma's desktop sharing in association with Skype goes cross platform for Windows, Mac and Linux. Yesterday Skype revealed its plans for making video conversations fully cross platform with the release of a beta version of Skype.2.0 for Linux where the principal new feature is the "most requested" video support.

This release is not just a revolution for us in Linux, but a revolution for the Skype world at large. No longer are we, the people of Linux, prevented from socialising in the same way as our peers.

Raul Liive at Skype posted more technical details and the release notes, listing lots of video features, improvements and bug fixes.

Skype becomes the first to offer complete cross-platform video conversation capability -- and it continues to be free video calling, provided you have a webcam. However, it leaves us now to wondering when we will see the next obvious video enhancement, multi-party video conferencing, such as that available with SightSpeed's new Business Video Conferencing service? Only then can we do a call that is fully cross platform video conversation with at least one participant on each of Windows, Mac and Linux.

Considering the cross platform video conversation capability and the "High Quality" video found in the Skype.3.6 beta along with a newly announced collaboration with Logitech , Skype appears to be very actively beefing up its video services portfolio.

Download here.

Tags: Skype, Skype Vidieo, Skype for Linux, SightSpeed, Yugma Skype Edition, Skype 3.6 beta, Logitech

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not just the iPhone that is challenging Rogers data plans. (And how Canadians can get "almost" the "authorized" iPhone user experience before Christmas)

If you're not Canadian this post may not interest you; on the other hand if you want a study in monopoly microeconomics associated with wireless services, it may. Or, if you want to know more about some recently deployable wireless technology, it may. But Canadian media is only getting part of the story out here due to iPhone hype; it is important to see the bigger picture. Rogers is not only the sole Canadian carrier gateway to Time's Invention of the Year; it is also the sole carrier gateway for what has to be Canada's most prominent technology invention, the Blackberry 8320 Curve and 8820 with GSM/EDGE, WiFi and UMA/GAN support. Neither is, at the time of writing, available in Canada through "authorized" channels.

About three weeks ago I buried in a post a story about Rogers Great Canadian Revenue Sustenance Dilemma. (Some day I'll learn not to put too much into a single post!) In Canada Rogers is the only GSM carrier and there is more than the forthcoming iPhone launch that is grinding on their agenda re data plan offerings as mentioned in the post. It is the combination of:

• iPhone and Apple's desire to have an unlimited data plan (even O2 backed off for the UK launch occurring this coming Friday).

Interestingly, given the public's antipathy to, and loathing of, less-than-transparent mobile data tariffs, O2 has decided to do away with the 200 Mbit/s a month ceiling that it was to impose on iPhone users. Earlier, the carrier was advertising "unlimited" data services and there was some consternation, not to say anger, when it transpired that, in fact, data usage on the iPhone was to be "capped" at 200Mbit/s.

• potentially launching a WiFi-enabled Blackberry (8320 and/or 8820) also brings up the question of whether Rogers would provide UMA/GAN support with its implications for wireless data plan usage. Having experienced an evaluation 8820 for the past five weeks, I can only confirm that having WiFi does significantly reduce my use of my Rogers data plan yet significantly increases my "Internet" use of the Blackberry. Let me state it again: with the 8820 if I can have WiFi access (at home, at an office, in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, at Starbucks, in hotel rooms) then I don't use the EDGE or HSDPA data plan. It changes how you think about accessing data via the Blackberry. But UMA/GAN employs WiFi not only for data but also for voice. UMA/GAN for 8x20's has been implemented by T-Mobile USA's Hotspot @ Home service and Orange in Europe. More discussion on this topic here.
  
• Rogers is a member of the Canadian Hotspot Network, providing WiFi access in Starbucks and other Canadian coffee chains, airports (including Toronto's Pearson), Best Western hotels and a wide range of other public locations. Certainly UMA/GAN presents a significant revenue generation opportunity for this aspect of their wireless business.
  
• We all seem to know that forthcoming iPhones will support 3G wireless; however, will they also support UMA/GAN? Note that, while selling the Blackberry 8820, AT&T, U.S. carrier for the iPhone, is not supporting UMA/GAN.
  
• Jim Balsille, Co-CEO of RIM, Canada's most capitalized public company, in his quarterly analyst press call last month, called on carriers for lower data plan prices to accelerate smartphone sales in general. Somehow the math of 1,000 users at $60 per month for 25MB vs 25,000 users at $60 per month for an unlimited data plan still needs to be worked out at Rogers. Especially when UMA/GAN has the potential to move a significant portion of the capital investment for access points (cellular towers vs home/office-based WiFi access hardware) from the carrier to the user.
  

• Bell Mobility's current "unlimited" data plan offering over EVDO. But what does "unlimited" mean? Bell (and Telus) will not in the next few years be able to offer UMA/GAN; its seamless transition between GSM and WiFi for voice only works on GSM networks.

How distorted is Rogers current data plan offerings? Yesterday's Globe and Mail Report on Business told the story here. Certainly their data plan offerings contributed to Rogers record earnings report last week. But, Catherine and Tony, the data plan picture from the Rogers viewpoint is bigger than simply the iPhone. It's important to understand both the impact and the current availability of UMA/GAN.

From the Rogers Wireless overview on their website:

Pricing

Rogers Wireless price plans offer the best value in quality and service for wireless voice and data customers. Rogers Wireless customers can easily find a price plan to meet their wireless communication needs. Each plan offers specific benefits to Rogers Wireless customers, based on their market and usage patterns.

Ted,.your fellow Canadians are all looking forward to Rogers' providing not simply the best value in quality and service for wireless voice and data customers but with pricing and infrastructure that compares favourably with pricing to, and infrastructure for, wireless customers in the U.S. and Europe. They want price plans that meet not only their communications needs but also their pocketbook needs. Rogers is given wireless spectrum by the CRTC as a public trust; don't betray that trust to your fellow Canadians. And, in the process, you'll even be helping accelerate sales of Canadian technology that has become one of Canada's most successful business stories ever.

Want an "authorized" iPhone user experience in Canada prior to Christmas? Buy an iPod Touch (= iPhone - "phone") and find a WiFi access point because the iPhone launch in Canada will only occur when there is also a French version available early in the new year. (And it's Apple, not Rogers, that is driving that agenda.) Apparently we can expect near concurrent launches in France and Canada.

Finally, to take issue with one of Time's statements: "The iPhone gets applications like Google Maps out onto the street, where we really need them." The Blackberry 8820, with its built-in GPS, not only gets Google Maps out onto the street, it shows you what street you are on ... in fact, is shows me where I am within my home. Scary! (iPhone does not have GPS.) Now if they would stop those satellites from moving so that the location does not "jiggle"!

Back to making those Skype-assisted conversations from my 8820....

Full disclosure: I am a Rogers VIP customer. And I have held a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998.

Another post on this and related issues: Jon Arnold Our Dollar May Be Stronger But Wireless is no Bargain. I made a presentation at the VON Panel chaired by Jon and referenced in his post.

Update: Alec Saunders points to a few more posts and comments on this issue.

Tags: Rogers, iPhone, Blackberry, Blackberry 8820, Blackberry 8320, UMA/GAN, Apple, O2, Canadian Hotspot Network, RIM, Research in Motion, Bell Mobility, iPod Touch, Google Maps

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

<chest thump>Last April I posted about my experience with using "Google Mobile" on various mobile device platforms, including Blackberry, Nokia N80/N95 and N800. At the time my "gut" was saying that Google would not want to get into the hardware business but rather build out from this mobile experience to provide some form of software play for hardware players. Today I see on the Official Google Blog a post by Andy Rubin that starts out:

Despite all of the very interesting speculation over the last few months, we're not announcing a Gphone. However, we think what we are announcing -- the Open Handset Alliance and Android -- is more significant and ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can’t imagine today.

</chest thump>

Dan York says "It's about the platform":

"It's about an open platform, stupid!" While I didn't include Google when I first wrote my post about how voice is really all about application platforms, I did note in the comments that I had intended to do so... and today's announcement really shows that they should be in anyone's list of telephony application platforms.

Of course this brings up many questions:

• With eBay as a member of the Open Handset Alliance, is there a potential Skype play?
• Is eBay's OHA membership their execution of the Google eBay agreement announced a year ago August with the statement:

"The companies will also explore interoperability between Skype and Google Talk via open standards to enable text chat and online presence."

• Why, when you go to mobile.google.com on an iTouch (= iPhone - "the phone" - only in Canada) do you simply get browser based application links instead of the dedicated Google clients found for the Blackberry. (And Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board.)?
• Why are some of the Alliance members those players who are going through some business challenges these days: Motorola, Sprint, to name a couple?
• Is there a Skypephone play within Android?
• With the current Google relationships with other handset vendors, such as Research in Motion and Nokia, can we expect to see them join the Alliance? According to the New York Times article:

But for now at least, Google will not put its brand on a phone. The software running on the phones may not even display the Google logo. Instead, Google is giving the software away to others who will build the phones. The company invested heavily in the project to ensure that all of its services are available on mobile phones. Its ultimate goal is to cash in on the effort by selling advertisements to mobile phone users, just as it does on Internet-connected computers.

And Google sees the same multi-billion device market potential as Mobivox; as Dan says:

In the end, Google wants a platform upon which they can offer their many services. With this plan, they are hoping to turn a zillion mobile phones into a platform which Google - and many others - can use.

Ending with another Andy Rubin quote, this time in the same NYT article: “We are not building a GPhone; we are enabling 1,000 people to build a GPhone,”

....Now back to using those lovely Google clients on my Blackberry 8820 where the 88x0's GPS is now linked into Google Maps......

Lots out there in the blogosphere:

• Mathew Ingram: All Aboard the Open Train
• GigaOm I: What it Means, What Experts Think
• GigaOm II: 5 Open Questions About the Google Phone aka Android

Tags: Android, Google, GPhone, Skype, eBay, Dan York, Andy Rubin, New York Times, Blackberry, Nokia, Open Handset Alliance, iTouch, iPhone, Mobivox

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype fuels Star Trek: The Continuing Mission, original radio dramas telling the new adventures of the USS Montana, ten years before Star Trek: The Next Generation starts. The first episode, Ghost Ship, will be released on Christmas Day, 25 December 2007, a year before the next Star Trek movie. The producers plan a full season of episodes, five more are written already. 

Sebastian Prooth and Andrew Tyrer are producing the series.

When Andy approached Sebastian with the idea for a new Star Trek audio production, Prooth, a longtime Star Trek fan, says it was pretty much impossible to say no. Prooth, known in the Star Trek fan universe for his interviews with Star Trek production personnel on his blog, Seb’s Raw Takes, is also a published author and media producer.

This is a great example of a small team using Skype for project planning, communication, coordination, staffing, and operations.

This must be a labor of love because:

Star Trek® and all related trademarks are property of CBS/Paramount. Star Trek®, Star Trek: The Next Generation®, and all associated marks and characters are registered trademarks of CBS/Paramount. All rights reserved.

To keep in the clear, the show will be free to download. The producers are counting on stunning storytelling and professional production values to get them in Paramount's door.

How did Skype become TCM's dilithium crystal?

Writing. Sebastian Prooth and Andy Tyrer wrote the first episode, Ghost Ship, collaborating with each other via Skype chat and voice. Rapid iteration let Prooth adapt each episode to the strengths of cast members while staying true to the Star Trek canon and the story. 

Casting. Tyrer and Prooth cast the series using email and Skype, especially for on-air (on-mic?) talent. Volunteers responded to the casting call from all around the world. The final cast are mostly professional actors and radio performers, with a few amateurs and alumni from the Star Trek television shows.

Direction. Prooth directed Ghost Ship's talent by wire. No travel budget? Each actor worked from their computer or personal recording studio. Skype let Prooth talk with the cast in high fidelity, for long sessions, across thousands of miles. They prepped by exploring story lines, character development, and ensemble relationships. For each scene, they rehearsed and guided each actor through their performances. Most voices were recorded locally and sent to TCM headquarters by email or Skype file transfer. 

Editing. Sound editing is also collaborative. Andy Tyrer used Skype to share scene drafts, discuss cuts and scene designs with the team, and move large files. Tyrer puts the lines, effects and music for the show together. He uses Adobe Premiere, Sound Forge, Sony Vegas and other audio applications.

Spreading the Word. Andy and Sebastian hit the online talk show circuit. They've been interviewed for podcasts recorded on Skype (Deep Space 2, Treks in Sci Fi) and by bloggers using Skype. Prooth is responsible for marketing the show

The Collaboration. Tyrer lives in London and Prooth is an American in Yorkshire, about 200 miles and a 3.5 hour drive apart. Skype keeps them talking. Their free Skype calls can run for hours in as they work on their own parts of the project.

These folks are breaking new ground.

The last really big sci-fi event on radio was NPR's retelling of Star Wars episodes IV, V, and VI. Lots of added scenes, all your favorite sounds and music from the movies. The whole thing was about 14 hours long (29 episodes, each about 27 minutes long).

TCM is something else. It's not an adaptation (although that might be interesting too). TCM tells new stories, with new characters, in times and places not covered by previous tv or cinema.

Originality raises the difficulty level. Listeners can't recall visuals to paint scenes or draw characters. It also means the cultural context of the story, all the genre elements, are blank pages to start. So TCM's cast and crew must evoke the audience's imagination and bring them into the story.

See also:

• Star Trek: The Continuing Mission's Official Website
• Star Trek: TCM Official Wiki
• Star Trek: TCM's Official Podcasts
• Official Star Trek: TCM Myspace Page, TCM facebook group
• Official Star Trek: TCM Fan Forum 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some right-brain injuries impair speech.

"Their language ... is not normal, lacking the musical quality of speech, prosody, whereby the tone goes up and down, and the words accelerate and decelerate or get louder and softer, providing emotion and emphasis. Speech without prosody is like those computer-synthesized voices one hears on telephones."

-- Chris McManus, Right Hand, Left Hand 

"Computers will really understand what you say when they know how you feel when you say it."

2002 Technology Review article on speech recognition

Prosody is how we communicate so much of our spoken emotion, context, and sub-context.

The first time I used Skype I marveled at three things:

• It just worked!
• It looked just like instant messaging
• It sounded amazing, like we were in the same room, only better

Four questions:

• Do you think Skype's high-fidelity audio helps our ability to understand human speech?

• Conversely, how often does poor audio quality disrupt our ability to hear and interpret prosodic data?

• Does our need for prosody drive the leap from IM chat to voice calls?

• Can we measure prosodic fidelity? 

Jim Courtney and I are digging deeper into communication quality this winter. Quantum leaps up (and down) in audio and video quality change the very nature of conversation. Hyper-fidelity changes competitive strategy, marketing, and design goals, so we'll have plenty to explore.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

About six weeks ago I was asked some questions by Skype Developer Program Newsletter Editor, Halina Mugame, about Skype and its Developer Program. The outcome, An External Perspective: A Viewpoint on Skype from 18 months with Skype Journal, appears in the October issue of the Skype Developer Newsletter.

Here's an overview of the newsletter contents:

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Interest in Skype on mobile platforms drew a reasonable size audience to the Goin' Mobile with Skype session at Fall VON last Wednesday. And the queries at the session certainly were a gauge of the intensity of interest. Panelists represented a range of options for using Skype on mobile devices.

The four panel participants on the left have various Blackberry models while James Body of Truphone holds an iPhone, a Nokia N95 and a Nokia E61; Samuel Li of iSkoot brought along a Skypephone running on AT&T. An informal poll of the 40 to 50 attendees showed only two hands went up for Windows Mobile device users with the remainder split between Blackberry and iPhone devices.

As a result of a last minute invitation from Jon Arnold (seated, center with the Red Sox cap), who chaired the session, I provided a lead presentation of an overview based on my Skype Primer post a week ago on Mobile Conversations. Helen Khais of Shape Services (left), publisher of IM+ for Skype, talked about invoking Skype conferencing onto mobile devices, a differentiating feature of IM+ for Skype.

Showing data supporting his contention that voice over cellular data or WiFi will still only represent less than 10% of all voice traffic in 2012, Mobivox CEO Stephane Marceau (second from left) reminded us that evolving the mobile experience to the mass market involved simplicity:

• No downloads or data plans
• Use currently owned handsets and current carrier services

Key to Mobivox's future is their ability to leverage speech recognition as an enabler of new services without the need for smartphones.

>James Body, Director of Research at Truphone (2nd from right with all the devices on which he does his "research") talked about some of the engineering issues in taking Skype mobile:

• The liabilities of a peer-to-peer infrastructure when going mobile
• Handset stamina: battery life as impacted by radio management logistics as well as wireless mode (WiFi, 2G, 3G) and voice codecs.
• Codecs deployed and their impact on call quality, pointing out that recent changes to Skype codecs have resulted in much better SkypeOut call quality as the new ones transcode much more effectively with mobile device codecs. (More on that when I write about the HD Voice session I attended later.)
• three architectural paths to consider when scaling Skype on mobile:
  • Front end loading (peer-to-peer)
  • Back end loading (with the device as a simple voice and/or dialpad user interface to an underlying intelligent infrastructure)
  • Separation of IM (text chat, presence) from voice and video

James then questioned the carriers' interest in dealing with VoIP, leaving us with the suggestion that it's the technologically savvy "small furry animals", as represented by the panelists' various services, who will lead the evolution that challenges the "dinosaur" carriers.

Blackberry 8820, Skypephone and Nokia E61 with Skype implementations via iSkoot.

Samuel Li, iSkoot's VP Product Management, then brought out his Skypephone with its Skype button that activates Skype access, providing "free" voice and IM access to Skype users worldwide provided you can subscribe to the 3 Network. Most interesting to note was that it is a tri-band device (that only gets you a fraction of the North American GSM coverage but works fine in Europe and Asia) and the phonebook integration. After mentioning iSkoot's portfolio of 7 patents pending, he concluded by claiming that iSkoot's offering (which includes Skype clients for Blackberry and various Nokia smartphones) is the only scalable carrier grade complete Skype solution that combines user and carrier friendliness with an actual carrier supported implementation.

In summary experiencing Skype on mobile platforms is going to be an evolutionary process as we seek out a user friendly, effective, low cost solution::

• we will see a variety of Skype-enabled solutions for mobile access
• there are many engineering issues yet to be resolved
• there is a call for challenging the carriers' role as a "gateway" to low cost, high quality mobile conversations
• we need to see more sophisticated, but user friendly, models for managing multiple Skype logins, presence and interruptions

Related posts:

• Jon Arnold, who chaired the session, put up some photos.
• Alec Saunders spent all of $4.16 for his mobile calls during Fall VON.
• Garret Smith thinks Mobile VoIP is Hot on Consumer Minds

Tags: Skype, mobile Skype, Fall VON 2007, Shape Services, IM+ for Skype, Mobivox, Truphone, iSkoot, Helen Khais, Stephane Marceau, James Body, Samuel Li, Jon Arnold, Alec Saunders, Garrett Smith, Skypephone, Blackberry, Nokia smartphones

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Still no change since March 2007. Not that Hong Kong Skype partner TOM Online doesn't get lots of traffic, but many people want the filter-free International version of Skype.

Ladders over and tunnels under the Golden Shield let thousands of Chinese reach Skype.com anyway. Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT) makes Dynaweb, a way to surf despite the GFW.

Skype decided in September to frustrate those reaching for filter-free chat. When Chinese click for the Simplified Chinese version of Skype.com (the flavor of written Chinese used in the PRC), Skype now opens the TOM Online Skype site, hosting the Skype censorbot.

UPDATE 1: I'm no longer able to reproduce the Skype.com-forwarding-to-TOM behavior. Can you? — Phil

Chinese visitors probably don't even notice the change. Skype doesn't tell them they are leaving and TOM's Skype sub-site mimics Skype.com's look and feel. Skype.Tom.com's design abandoned TOM's common page layout, type treatment, and art to mimic Skype's design, as you can see in these screenshots of the two designs (above). The Skype logo is more prominent than TOM's, misleading as well.

If TOM disclaims the censor-bot (which blocks politically charged terms like "Tienanmin Square" and "Falungong"), they buried it somewhere I cannot find.

A Skype spokesperson chatted "we do all our business through Tom in China." 

"We've always done our business through Tom Online and have a strong relationship with Tom - going back a number of years. And because we're a global business we look at new ways to manage growth in every market we're available in, and China is a very good market for us. Whatever country you do business in, you have to respect existing local legislation. So from a commercial point of view our partnership with Tom ensure we do this properly in terms of working with the Chinese government."

P.S. SkypeJournal.com has been blocked by the GFW since March 2007.

P.P.S. Congratulations to all the bloggers at the third annual CNBloggerCon in Beijing, this weekend. Blog on!

See also:

• China keeps VoIP Illegal
• Chinese Skype partner TOM Online's SkypeOut is blocked
• FT: Zennström confirms Skype filters text; questions he would not answer
• Bill Xia and The Idea War

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:37 AM | Permalink

With the increased acceptance of the Mac platforms in the market a (a record 2.1 million sold in the fiscal 2007 fourth quarter), we are seeing rising demand for Skype Extras that run on the Mac platform. A good place to start is a desktop sharing application that is effectively agnostic to the operating system.

Yugma, who has been providing desktop sharing services for a couple of years, recently released Yugma Skype Edition, Once installed on a Windows platform simply go to Tools | Do More and "Yugma Team Collaboration" will appear on the drop-down list; on the Mac simply start Yugma Skype. A more complete description of how it works appears in Yugma's blog.

Operations: The basic Yugma Skype Toolbar provides an overview of several features:

• Begin Sharing: launches the sharing of your own desktop
• The "mouse" desktop icon controls mouse and keyboard sharing with other participants in the session.
• The double arrow icon allows you, as the host, to change the presenter who would then share his/her desktop.
• The "page" icon launches a file sharing client.
• The crossed sticks icon opens up a drawing toolbar to provide annotation and a whiteloard

The Session

The session above is a Mac desktop being viewed on my Windows XP Professional laptop. Once Yugma Skype has been installed via the Skype Extras menu, the ad hoc launch process involves:

• launching the Yugma Skype client via Skype's Tools | Do More menu¹
• inviting the participants accessible as Skype Contacts via an "Invite Participants" window (shown below) which sends a Skype chat message with the URL,
• inviting participants who are not Skype contacts via email address entry from the same window; the resulting email, containing a link, should arrive within a couple of minutes of sending; and
• letting the Yugma Skype client download onto the remote participants' PC's and install (if this is the first Yugma Skype session on the PC)¹

The host then has various options as represented by the toolbar shown above with additional options in the Action drop down menu shown on the right. Usually the host would "Begin Sharing" simply to ensure the connectivity with other parties is there. At that point the host can continue sharing or can change the presenter to one of the other participants. Other options in the toolbar are described above. One should note:

• Users must set up the voice conferencing independently using any of the voice services shown below.
• Sharing desktop controls, session recording, scheduling and shared file space require one of the Premium accounts beyond a 15-day trial period.
• Additional participants may be invited during the session via the Invite Contacts option from the Action menu. The host would also need to add them to the voice conference call.
• Currently Yugma Skype only displays the entire desktop; presenters should make sure their screen is not showing any confidential information. A "single application" feature will be forthcoming in an upgrade coming along shortly.
• The "Shared File Space" client, while totally functional, will soon be modified to look like the usual format for an FTP client.
• Users can schedule sessions to invite others at a set time/date. The invitations include the voice conferencing details along with a vCal card for insertion into Outlook Calendar.. These invitations currently invite attendees using only the standard Yugma client (older GUI); however, the scheduler is being updated to allow the host to select which client will be launched by the attendee.
• Persistent Meeting mode: you can leave a meeting open for various participants to join by keeping the same Meeting ID and communicating it to parties with whom you want to do desktop sharing in the normal course of your activities. The host can also "dismiss" participants at will.

In our tests involving two parties we found that changes on the screen, such as text chat entries and changing the focus window, were transmitted quite rapidly; only the live video of the Skype call could not keep pace with the video movement. Remote display quality is excellent; while normally it will default to an optimum size on a remote PC there is an option to optimize the remote viewer size (File | Settings) for best viewing.

The essentials:

• Operating Systems: Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS/X 10.3 or higher, Linux; also requires Java 1.5 or later.
  • If the user does not have Java installed, a Yugma-specific Java client is included in the Yugma Skype installation¹.
• Yugma Skype runs on its own (Java) client; however, there is interaction with the web browser; either IE 6 or 7 or Firefox 2.0 as well as the Safari browser on the Mac.
• Meeting Types: Instant, Scheduled, Recurring (through persistent meeting ID)
  • Invite participants via a Skype contact list and email to non-Skype participants
• Packages:
  • Free: ("Unlimited and Free Forever") 10 participant plus host; basic desktop sharing, annotations, change presenter, instant sessions only; website support only; sponsor advertisements.
  • Premium: 10, 30, 100, 500 participants: $9.95/month to $89.95/month. Adds Remote User Mouse Control, Session scheduling, web session recording and playback, shared file space and live technical support (via phone, Skype, email, chat). Webinar features are included on 100 and 500 participant packages.
  • A 15-day free Premium 10 trial is available to test the service.
  • Time Limited Promotion: until December 31, 2007 Yugma will sponsor the hosting of a large group online event (up to 500 participants)
• Voice services:
  • Currently voice operates independently of the Yugma Skype client; conference hosts have several options for setting up a conference call:
  • Skype's inherent conference call feature (up to 10 participants via either Skype or SkypeOut);
  • and three low cost extended conferencing services (long distance charges may apply; email invitations for scheduled sessions can be modified for whichever service is selected))
    • Yugma's Free Teleconferencing service
    • HighSpeedConferencing (up to 500 participants on either Skype or landline/mobile phones) with HD Voice for Skype participants.
    • iotum's FreeConferenceCall service (a Facebook application)
• Private (as disclosed by host's sharing the session ID through individual invitations);
• Public via a Widget button or, for Premium 100 and 500 subscribers, the Yugma Webinar feature.
• Capacity: up to 500 participants
• Web Session Recording (Premium subscription required)
• Access: via Skype Extras (Tools | Do More - Windows only), Skype Extras website (Windows and Mac) or from Yugma's website (Windows and Mac editions).

Positioning: Yugma Skype is unique for its cross platform desktop sharing capability and providing a free basic desktop sharing service that can have as many as ten participants in a desktop sharing session. Session recording and file sharing options make it a more feature rich platform. Going forward they are looking to introduce features which provide single application sharing, tighter linkage to voice conferencing services and a Facebook interface as well as to migrate user interfaces currently available in the general Yugma desktop sharing application to Yugma Skype.

Strengths:

• Cross platform desktop sharing (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• Free basic desktop sharing for host + 10 participants
• Rapid remote viewing updates
• Rapidly switch presenters (shared desktop)
• Several voice conferencing options
• Display versatility: options to resize the remote desktop viewing window
• Outlook Calendar integration related to session scheduling.
• Web session recording and webcasting

Weaknesses:

• Needs single application sharing option
• Needs the ability to include voice conference information within the desktop sharing invitations
• Lacks tight integration of Skype to voice conferencing options
• Lack of Outlook Contact integration for email invitations
• File sharing interface is clumsy (to be improved in a late fall release)

Other posts in this Skype Extras Collaboration services series:

• Desktop Collaboration: Ten Years Later - The Skype Impact
• Desktop Collaboration: The Skype Ecosystem Expands
• Convenos Meeting Center: Your Conference Board Room on the Internet

¹Windows Vista users may encounter several "permission" windows during installation as explained in Alec Saunders post about "Sun's Tactical Error on Java.

Tags: Skype, YugmaSkype, Yugma, Skype Extras, HighSpeedConferencing, iotum, FreeConferenceCall, desktop sharing, Skype Conference

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Don Albert's Tuesday post invites sellers to Skypify themselves. At least a little bit, with Skype buttons. Ina Steiner explains it.

About time. (relieved, petulant) 

How long since eBay bought Skype? What has been the holdup?

Much more needed.

(multiple Skype IDs per eBay account, free basic call center service for sellers, invitation-to-chat language tailored to the auction, buttons influenced by seller availability/schedule)

Tough noogies, Jajah.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype is a social network. Really, dammit! I have a profile. I have friends. We communicate. We do things. We update each other. It's extensible. Skype is a social network.

Google and friends introduced OpenSocial standard vaporware  specs and documentation this week. OpenSocial tells programmers who extend social networks with applications, how to write them so people in those networks can do new/more things in those networks.

It also promises programmers: write once, run everywhere. Everywhere being sites and services that are OpenSocial "containers."

Specs aren't public yet but the list of those buying in (at right) is impressive. MySpace are abandoning their own APIs in favor of OpenSocial. Orkut, Live Journal, TypePad, LinkedIn, Oracle, Salesforce say they will {pick one: adopt, employ, comply with, join, embrace, swallow, hug, love, adore} OpenSocial. Hype aside, it looks like a good thing.

Skype could easily be a container, letting plug-ins run in a client browser window. This wouldn't take away from Skype-specific apps. Skype as an OpenSocial container would:

• Create more conversational triggers
• Give users more reasons to keep the Skype client up and running
• Give friends of users more reasons to try/adopt Skype
• Enroll thousands of new developers to the Skype developer program

Skype could publish OpenSocial apps. Why not build Skype widgets into web based networks? Why shouldn't I be able to open my LinkedIn account and add Skype widgets to...

• Display my friends' moods/presence.
• People I chatted/talked with on this day a year ago.
• Public chats my friends and friends-of-friends find popular.
• Launch in-browser Skype chats. 

The upside is huge, the risk is tiny, and it's consistent with Skype's strategy of being where people want to talk.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The blur called Fall VON is behind me; I'm heading home with lots of material for more detailed posts. But a few highlights:

• Meeting, and actually talking with, "Skype chat mate" Helen Khais who traveled from Odessa in The Ukraine (IM+ for Skype) after five months of Skype chats as our only communications mode (other than the odd email); Helen is normally seven time zones distant. Helen participated as a panelist in the Goin' Mobile with Skype session. And when we found that it was Russell Shaw, who frequently links to Skype Journal posts, at the same table, we had to take a photo of the three participants in a thread last summer (of course the posts involved using Skype via Blackberries and iPhones), all with their Blackberries running IM+ for Skype.
  
• Learning more about how IP-based services continue to drain the world of communications hardware and their replacement by hosted services: OnState's ACD Call Center that eliminates the need for a call center PBX while adding chat, SightSpeed with their newly released business video conferencing service and Junction Networks' OnSIP hosted PBX are three examples that come to mind immediately. (And we saw slides of smashed desktop phones at a session on European developments and mobile PBX's this morning and predictions of their demise by 2010.)
  
• Meeting Thomas Howe (pictured) and Patrick Murphy of The Thomas Howe Company and learning more about their enthusiasm for developing services that embed voice within an application, especially when it comes to facilitating business processes, healthcare procedures and organizational team building. Thomas participated as a panelist in several sessions in the Innovator's Track and led at least one. (About the Bruins sweater: I was haunting the Boston Bruins on Hallowe'en with a Brad Boyes team sweater; the Bruins traded Brad, my long time neighbor, to St. Louis last March; this season he is on a goal-a-game pace -- to date: 9 goals in 9 games -- now turning out to be one of the most lopsided trades in NHL history.)
  
• Participating in a most unique forum: Andy Abramson's annual Blogger dinner where we had many of the bloggers in the VoIP space along with many of the innovators in the IP communications space, several of whom are Andy's clients. Andy had the unique ability to make sure all 35 or so of the attendees heard the entire conversation. More later but one of the key discussions centered around keeping voice communications simple if we hope to see mass adoption of the potential for enhanced conversations. Alec Saunders provides his perspective.
  
• My first participation as a panelist at VON where I provided an overview of Skype and VoIP on Mobile, based on my recent post on Mobile Conversations, at the Goin' Mobile with Skype session. Recognizing the draw of the Skype name, we had 40 to 50 very interested attendees. This session will be the subject of a future post but the presence of a 3 Skypephone (lower right in the picture) certainly piqued interest. On the right three mobile devices in a Skype chat session.
  
• A session Thursday afternoon on HD Voice. Perhaps the most informative session for me in terms of learning about the development of voice technology and the importance of wideband voice in facilitating more comprehensible conversations, whether on VoIP, landline or mobile devices. HD (or broadband) Voice is becoming a feature for differentiating voice services, as we have seen with HighSpeedConferencing.com -- and in many respects, Skype triggered and led this movement as was recognized by a couple of session speakers.
  
• A session on hacking of iPhones and why, with the announcement of a forthcoming SDK, there is no sustainable business case for hacking iPhones at this time as a business Sign on the right was sighted at a kiosk in the mall of the Prudential Center in downtown Boston. A most interesting interview with the kiosk proprietor on developments in this space..
  
• Most prevalent mobile devices in use at Fall VON:: Blackberry and iPhones. (and I have a good feel for when iPhone will be launched in Canada; do not plan to give one as a Christmas present.)
  

Got to run to catch the plane home. More later.

Andy's VON report.

Tags: Skype, Helen Khais, IM+ for Skype, Russell Shaw, Andy Abramson, HD Voice, iPhones, Blackberry, 3 Skypephone, iPhone Unlokcing, iPhone Hacking

Posted by Jim Courtney at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)