LONDON. 1 April 2008. After extensive investigation, the independent Skype Journal found a leaked prototype of the "Send Curry" button on the Skype 5 Beta for Windows. "It's part of our new direction" said Josh Silverman, Skype CEO. "We're serious corporate citizens in this time of crisis."

• The UK Curry Crisis:

• Number of curry houses:
     10,000

• People who work in them:
      50,000

• Skilled worker shortage:
       27,500
  UK schools for curry chefs:
        1
• Indian takeout meals delivered to Skype HQ weekly:
        507

A drastic labor shortage of skilled curry chefs threatens the UK's national cuisine. New immigration laws administered by the Border & Immigration Agency are cutting off the supply of culinary talent from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.

Skype has a five-fold plan to ease the pain.

1. Morale: Skype for Curry.

The sounds and sights of a great cuisine to lighten your day.

• Skype Wallpaper: Download Naan and CTM wallpaper to keep you warm until your next fix.
• 24-Hour Skypecasts from the great curry houses of Britain. Tune in to dining rooms and kitchens for the authentic sounds of the select few remaining chefs and those lucky enough to be seated.
• 3 Skypephones in Indian Flavors. 

2. Education: SkypePrime Culinary Academy.

Skype is launching a portal to match cooking instructors with British students. They hope to add fire and spice to professional and amateur cooks accustomed to making fish and chips.

Chefs will tutor by wire, using Skype high quality video and Skype chats to share their cooking skills. Sessions should run from £2 to £10 per hour. Skype High Quality Audio, providing more clarity than ordinary phones, helps people understand each other despite wildly different accents.

3 and 4. Skype Find and the Send Curry Button.

Skype's yellow pages will now feature the menus and ordering forms for all ten thousand sub-continental restaurants. Order in advance for take out or delivery, or to make reservations. Easily add your favorites to your contact list.

The Send Curry button will let everyone in a multichat order for themselves or others in the room, paying with PayPal or Skype credits. A new twist lets you send email and SMS Evites to your Skype contacts for a f2f gathering.   

5. Dining Interop: The Curry Powder APIs.

Skype will make the SkypePrime Culinary Academy, the Skype Find Curry directory, and Send Curry order processing available to programmers through the so-called Curry Powder API, scheduled to come online with the proper release of Skype for Windows 5.

Skype has not confirmed whether you will be able to take your restaurant reviews with you to Skype partners Bebo and MySpace through their DataPortability.org efforts. One developer said, off the record, "we're not sure if this more of a microformats thing or we should just wait for OpenSocial to get around to realtime communities like Skype."

Since we're entering eBay's "quiet period" before Q1-2008 financial results, we're not expecting much more comment from Skype on how this effort will affect Skype's competitive position and cash flow. CEO Silverman hasn't commented on whether this Skype for Curry initiative will help or hurt the Skype for Cows project announced last year.

See also:

• The (London) Independent: Has the great British curry house finally had its chips?
• The Guild of Bangladeshi Restaurateurs: Indian restaurants facing 'staffing crisis'
• Guardian.co.uk: Curry houses feel the pinch of immigration restrictions
• Guardian.co.uk: Hélène Mulholland explains the shakeup of the immigration system
• BBC News: Curry houses 'need more migrants'
• BBC News: Britain's curry house crisis
• BBC Inside Out: Curry Crisis
• DesPaardes: Britain's Curry Crisis
• AP: Curry crisis seen in Britain’s immigration rules. Restaurateurs: Restrictions on Bangladesh immigration hurt business
• Slashfood: The UK is in a curry crisis
• Yumsugar: Britain's Curry Crisis

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Many pundits in the VoIP world have been fixated into thinking that what works on resource-rich PC's and the broadband Internet should "just work" on mobile devices in a wireless communications world. But in practice it boils down to looking at the mobile communications infrastructure currently available and optimizing the use of resources at hand. And we can often find analogies from the past to guide us towards what makes sense for the future.

SS7 (Signaling System 7) is the inherent protocol for managing legacy PSTN voice services such as call forwarding, voice mail, call transfer and three way calling. eComm 2008 producer Lee Dryburgh was a co-author of the bible for SS7 implementation and has built a business around SS7 development. In Lee's interview with Telco 2.0 Chief Analyst Martin Geddes discussing The Future of Telecoms and Broadband prior to the recent eComm 2008 event, Martin points out that:

• The current mobile voice channel used in mobile telephony is quite robust, reliable, scalable and does its job "real well".
• Trying to deploy VoIP via a client on a mobile platform using 2G or even 3G infrastructure is throwing a lot of technology at a problem that does not exist.
• Using the Internet as a signaling system for handling what it does best - presence data, text chat, profile information, location information and setting up a phone call - but leaving the voice conversation itself to be carried on the robust, reliable, scalable and proven TDM voice channel - which "does constant bit rate voice, real well" - is really the optimum solution for the foreseeable future.

Martin raises the analogy of Netflix using the Internet as a signaling system to establish and manage a movie rental transaction and the postal system as the bearer. (A similar analogy could be used for Amazon and its system for ordering and distributing books.).

To quote from the interview - retranscribed and with editor's bold:

[Lee]: Ingeniously Martin has been thinking of the Internet as a means of signaling and coordination rather than always also the best means of delivery. Martin also steps into heretic waters by knocking the fixation with VoIP as a means for moving voice:

[Martin]: Netflix is using the Internet as a signaling mechanism and the postal service as a bearer. And the postal service is a very efficient way of transferring tens or hundreds of gigabytes worth of data....the important lesson is that when you take this to where the cash is - the money is in voice - is that there has been this fixation with voice over IP for a number of years and actually, maybe, and this is heresy, but maybe the good old-fashion phone system is really good at transferring voice. Hey - time division multiplexing does constant bit rate voice real well! So you have to throw an awful lot of [VoIP] technology at a problem [voice quality/delivery] that does not exist [and] to try and persuade anyone to move over to voice over IP. So it is only by understanding the full context and capabilities of each of these systems that you start to think [that], hey, actually the Internet is good at allowing new forms of signaling to evolve faster than what SS7 or whatever may have allowed...so why don't we focus on enabling the IP part to do what it does well which is how do we enable the rendezvous' in front of this phone call, how do we return signals and presence data and the little picture of where I am at, location information to help people make phone calls at the right time...stop worrying about trying to do voice over IP until the technology is super duper mature - until we can not possibly afford to maintain two networks which is quite a long way away still and let the phone network do what it does well which is phone calls.

[Lee] So, for 2008, you're promoting TDM! [Martin concurs]

Sounds like iSkoot, IM+ for Skype and Mobivox, along with 3's Skypephone service, may be on to something here. I can only hope that VoIP Supply's new blog, Mobile VoIP Review, can keep issues such as this and the backhaul limitations in perspective such as not to raise expectations too high until we have the required infrastructure for full mobile VoIP in three to five years.

Tags: Mobile VoIP, SS7, Lee Dryburgh, Martin Geddes, Netflix, TDM, eComm 2008, iSkoot, IM+ for Skype, Mobivox, Skypephone

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Om Malik's heart attack three months ago came as a shock to many of my colleagues in the IP communications blogger space. Since then I have suddenly lost two friends who appeared to be in good health -- one due to a brain aneurysm and the other due to failure to consult a physician when adverse symptoms appeared. About six years ago modern imaging technologies found within me a condition which often is a "silent killer". Fortunately surgery has repaired this condition and I now live in gratitude for every day I am here. And I am fortunate enough to have a son who is doing a cardiology fellowship along with leading medical imaging research projects. So I hear many other stories about the fragility of our individual cardiovascular systems and the abuse they have to take due to neglect.

Friday Om posted an update, What The Past Three Months Have Taught Me, along with an articulation of the many lessons he has learned during his recovery (and my network says he still is not back up to full speed). His lessons:

• Simplicity through Elimination - this should really be a key theme of, and direction for, many of our technologies today. Enough said.
• Empower to Power Up: Delegation is the secret. When I did my guest GigaOm guest post in January, working with his Managing Editor, I came away realizing that Om has nothing to worry about - with the team he has the GigaOm brand will survive any disruptions caused by a sudden turn of events, such as Om's heart attack. If there is one truth about management it is in Om's statement:

I think one of the biggest problems I had as a first-time entrepreneur was an inability to let go; I was always second-guessing every decision not made by myself and was obsessed with minutiae. Three months on, having seen the Giga Gang at work, I realized what a mistake that was. You empower people, and in turn they power you to do good things. Now I am finding more time to focus on writing, reporting and spending time on projects like our upcoming conference, Structure 08.

A final thought: Some may call me a Skype cheerleader. But guess what ... cheerleading, when it's earned, is a lot less stressful on your health than constant fault finding and complaining. And when criticism is deserved, helpful constructive criticism is the only response. I do Skype Journal gigs because it's fun, because there are some great people in this industry and because, hopefully, it will help someone, somewhere make a key communication that changes his/her life for the better. And it's a proven fact that helping others brings healthful rewards to the givers.

Keep writing up those lessons, Om. And, as Om suggests, get a cardiac check-up regularly.

Tags: Om Malik, GigaOm

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

Jeff Pulver wouldn't talk about it with me via twitter or facebook, or with others at Friday's Toronto breakfast. TICC hasn't returned calls since I blogged the rumor Wednesday. And the Pulvermedia offices just went to voicemail on Thursday and Friday.

The losses have been in the wind for years as telecom-grade VoIP was standardized and commoditized. Clearly consolidation among suppliers and vendors makes the booth side of their event business unattractive. The trade show side of the business has been a shell of its former glory, despite attempts to sell attention and floor space to Silicon Valley funded video and voice startups.

VON did its job. It popularized VoIP for telcos and business. It made an industry and brought the like minded together.

All done.

So it's time to walk away. Don't buy it back, Jeff. Start something new.

Make a new brand that stands for your vision, your passions. Don't be bound by VoIP. Or the tradeshow format. Your community will follow.

In fact, I bet that's exactly what you're doing now with your breakfast campaign. Taking an intimate pulse of your constituency the way politicians do before they launch a campaign.

What's the world telling you, Jeff?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I enjoy fitting 40-50 words into a very short video.

Like twitter, terse works.

12seconds.tv is free, easy and viral video twittering. Not threaded like Seesmic.

12seconds will update your twitter feed.

This is my 12seconds channel. And these are my 24 seconds on DataPortability: dp is my onlife everywhere and dp is the new viral.

In the continuum of conversational media, where does 12seconds fit?

P.S. Take a look at Kirusa's Voice SMS service (sold through mobile operators). Someone sends you a text message, you hit reply and speak for a few seconds. Great for when you're in the car or have a bad phone for texting.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Yahoo! Messenger finally brings voice (desktop-to-desktop and desktop-to-PSTN), persistent chat, and file transfers to the Mac (Release 3.0, Beta 3). Webcam calls too. No conference calling yet.

Skype 2.0 for Linux. A minor update to 2.0.0.68. Support for uPnP and a few small bugfixes. For more info: Frequently Asked Questions, Skype Linux blog, Skype Garage blog, Skype 2.0 Beta for Linux forum, Skype for Linux forum.

Apple iPhone SDK beta 2. Now with interface builder inside.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many times in my posts I will reference Andy Abramson and his VoIP Watch blog His communications relations agency, Comunicano, serves many clients in the IP communications space but above all, Andy always puts the good of the overall IP communications space first. He may be critical but his criticism will focus on where a product, company or service needs to pay attention to help not only the product but the industry succeed; he may praise a product or service but it will be well earned praise. And, in the interest of full integrity, when a client is involved in a story there is always a full disclosure.

Andy also is a gracious host; in his typical manner, over the past two weeks he organized and supported many activities at both eComm 2008 and VON.x so that both bloggers and entrepreneurs could get together more informally, discuss industry issues and learn more about not only the products and services but also, and more importantly, the people behind the products and services. Most famous are his VON wine dinners where, in a way only Andy can manage, thirty to forty key industry players can participate in a single conversation. Andy learned a lot about team work, building lifelong relationships and mentoring while he served for thirteen years in various public relations roles for the Philadelphia Flyers professional hockey team. So, with a personal interest in hockey due to both my own upbringing and the current success of one of my own long time neighbors as a player with another NHL team, often our conversations will turn to hockey and the stories behind some of the players and team management I only read about in the news over the years. Can anybody say "Gordie Howe"? or "Bobby Clarke"? or "Bobby Orr"?

On the weekend after eComm 2008, I spent a couple of hours with Lee Dryburgh, the driving force behind eComm 2008 and the fact that it happened at all. Lee had sensed at the last eTel a year ago that there was a community of IP communications players - vendors, service providers and media - who needed to meet annually to get an update on innovation in the space and who needed to network in person on an informal basis. Lee put up his personal backing to make sure eComm happened; he had many challenges in pulling this conference together in a five month period. Voxbone and many other vendors came through with major sponsorships. But there are many aspects to organizing such a conference including the marketing communications required to attract attendees.

Photo courtesy James Duncan Davidson

But I said above that Andy always puts the industry first. In a post-conference blog posting this evening Lee states the situation succinctly:

But there is one post I can not leave any longer. A post to say a big thank you to Andy Abramson and his team at Comunicano. When Andy found out that I was putting together a new conference as a successor to ETel all on my own, he waded in to help. He assigned tasks to his great team members at his PR agency Comunicano and said that it would be without charge (there was no money so this was awesome). At the time I did not know Andy, only knew of him, so I really did not know what to expect. Lots of people had made promises, some of them very grand indeed. Andy promised very little so I did not expect anything and I mentally wrote it off along with many other promises. Cut forwards four months later to the conference, Andy and his team had done more than anyone to build up attendees, press and sponsors. It was completely unexpected. He promised very little yet delivered concrete results above anyone else.

When I first posted about eComm a few weeks ago I knew that Lee needed many more registrations; we were told that this and subsequent Skype Journal posts brought in a few registrations. But I also started receiving low key emails about eComm from Comunicano; at that point I knew that the Comunicano team would be able to draw in many more attendees than any Skype Journal post could even think about attracting.

Thanks, Andy (and your Comunicano team), not only for your contribution to making eComm a success but also for ensuring we all have additional opportunities to network, to meet and to build the relationships, both business and personal, critical to the success of this industry. And thanks to Lee for having the initial vision, personal commitment and deep-down dedication to organizing and executing a successful event.

And hopefully our future Skype Journal posts will be more informed as a result.

Note: Just as I completed my first draft of this post, I saw Phil's post about Pulver Media. Let;s hope we have not lost one other key venue for pulling the industry participants together. VON may have been weak on attendance but was strong once again on bringing the community together for networking.

Tags: Andy Abramson, VoIP Watch, eComm 2008, Lee Dryburgh, Comunicano

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Marc Robins blogs:

Word from a dependable source is that a massive round of layoffs occurred at PulverMedia yesterday, as TICC (the current investor) moved in last week -- while Spring VON was going on -- to take over. I'm not sure who's in or who's out, but I'll certainly provide updates as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Just received word through the grapevine that PulverMedia will be shutting its doors on Friday. (Please note that this isn't verified and isn't based on any public statement by the company.)

I'm betting on rumor; some Pulvermedia staff are just around to prep the big conferences.

I pinged Jeff Pulver and the TICC office but it was after hours on the East Coast when it broke. Will Jeff be hosting a Toronto social breakfast on Friday? Or be supervising the reorg in Melville?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Just ask former friends, girlfriends, and my family.

Seriously, help me understand my relationships.

Show me where I'm spending my time. Who I should talk with on Monday mornings. Which modes work for which people. Who's fallen off my radar, broken a pattern. Look at who I talk to regularly, who I talk to for long times. Find my patterns.

My relationships cross communication modes. So look at

• my call and SMS mobile logs,
• my IMAP mail (like the Google Code mail-trends project),
• my Skype contact logs,
• my lifestreams on the social networks,
• my microblogs,
• my calendars.

Help me understand the people in my world by looking at the events that form my relationships with those people.

You can tell this has value in the workplace. And in romance. And in parenting. And political action. And personal time management.

Wouldn't it be great if Skype (or the next Skype) said:

"Call your mother!" and was able to tell you why?

charts by mihai.parparita 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Missed 2008's CES, MacWorld, TED, ETech, Internet Telephony, EComm, VoiceCon, Von.X and SXSW? Here are some gatherings that can freshen up your social capital as we head into summer.

F2C: Freedom to Connect (31 March, 1 April) Silver Spring, Maryland, US. If US telecom policy affects you, this is the place where vendors, customers, regulators, legislators, analysts, financiers, and citizens hash out the future. Perhaps the top communications-meets-politics conferences in the United States.

CTIA Wireless 2008 (1-3 April) Las Vegas. Will we see much on "social going mobile"? 1200 exhibitors reaching out to the walled garden that is the US mobile phone industry.

DataPortability Meetup (6/7 April) Greenwich, Greater London, UK. f2f for the European contingent of DataPortability.org. At least a handful of the Skype ecosystem will be there. Social network portability may be the big customer acquisition strategy of the 2010s, like viral marketing was for the 1990s.

Data Sharing Workshop (18-19 April) San Francisco. Unconference to work on data portability, social network portability, social graph interop, presence/lifestream interop, and digital identity.

Web 2.0 Expo (22-25 April) San Francisco. The huge gathering for online innovators.

Internet Identity Workshop (12-14 May) and Data Sharing Summit (15 May). The heavyweights of digital ID and online identity resolve their online debates and plan how we all log in at the IIW (no wrestling, just lots of whiteboard and coffee). 

Supernova (June 16-18) San Francisco. One of the smartest assemblages of digerati on Earth. A modest telecom focus.

eBay Developers Conference (June 16-18) and eBay Live! (19-21 June) Chicago, USA. An annual gathering of the faithful. Skype had nominal presence last year.

Personal Democracy Forum 2008 (June 23-24) New York. Where f2c is about policy and governance, PDF is about tech in politics and activism. Swing by before the Democratic and Republican party conventions. 

P.S.  Bold Events are ones Skype Journal plans to cover.

P.P.S. Are you at a cool event? One we're not covering? Take pictures and write a guest post for Skype Journal.

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

Being in a milieu of iPhone users at VON.x last week, Alec Saunders succumbed and bought an iPhone last Friday prior to returning home to Ottawa. As iPhone has yet to be launched in Canada, Alec had to go through an unlocking process to have it work on Rogers network. With four day's experience he has written a very balanced review, iPhone: Brilliant. Frustrating, where he concludes:

I could go on. I want to love this phone — it's that good. At best, however, I can say that iPhone is a frustratingly brilliant device with more potential than any mobile handset in the industry today. Is it going to change how I use mobile phones? Sure. Now I'll be carrying my Blackberry plus one of the iPhone or N95, rather than Blackberry plus N95. Will it change how I use mobile phones in the future? Almost certainly. Some day a vendor will deliver a phone with a great user experience, great browser, great camera, 3G or better network speeds and a great email.

Given Alec's comments on the iPhone's use of the (GSM/EDGE) network: "It's so slow as to be unusable outside WiFi hotspots", a Canadian could get almost the same (carrier independent) experience with an iPod Touch but the lack of a microphone makes the latter not appealing enough for me to upgrade from my iPod. I'll continue with my combination of WiFi-enabled Blackberry 8820 and Nokia N95, of which the latter also gives me SlingPlayer, Qik.com, Truphone along with an FM radio which is most useful for TV audio at my exercise gym.

But overall I agree that, while lacking several applications, the iPhone is a game changer if for no other reason than its overall user experience. And I look forward to seeing how it impacts the evolution of other vendors' devices.

As for Skype access, either IM+ for Skype or Mobivox provide the appropriate connectivity for iPhone. The Blackberry and Nokia N95 add the ability to use iSkoot.

Tags: iPhone, Alec Saunders, Rogers, Blackberry 8820, Nokia N95, IM+ for Skype, Mobivox, Truphone, SlingPlayer, Qik.com

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Until March 31st, call Mexico from the US and Canada - just 2¢ per minute to all landlines and 20¢ per minute to all cell phones. Connection fee applies."

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

Attending eComm 2008 provided lots of opportunity to get an overview of what is holding back the general commercial availability of VoIP on mobile platforms. Let's start with a slide from Jonathan Christensen's Wednesday morning keynote presentation where he talked about the infrastructure available when Skype launched in late summer 2003:

Fast forward to Mark Jacobstein's talk Thursday afternoon on iSkoot, the service that uses the inherent wireless voice network to call a local point of presence. iSkoot then connects the call to a Skype instance on a server and then out to a Skype contact. Mark pointed out that current mobile devices lack the resources - battery, CPU speed and memory - required to have a robust, reliable commercial voice service using a VoIP client on a mobile device itself . iSkoot has demonstrated how to overcome these barriers with their support for the 3 Skypephone service as well by providing clients for other smartphones, such as Blackberry and Nokia, that take advantage of their architecture to operate IM over the data network but voice over the inherent voice channel.

Brough Turner, CTO of NMS Communications, a supplier of communications platforms for service providers, has studied the details of the Internet backbone from an architectural, operational and business relationships perspective. In an earlier session Thursday at eComm 2008 he pointed out that most cell tower sites in the U.S. have only one or two T1/E1 connections resulting in a bandwidth of 1.5 or 3 Mbps connection to the Internet for wireless phone users:

Net-net: As spectral efficiency keeps improving with HSPA and so forth, backhaul is rapidly becoming the bottleneck.

Cell sites are fixed locations. The vast majority are in urban or suburban neighborhoods. Their bandwidth requirements will continue to grow, indefinitely. In any rational world, one would purchase dark fiber to most of these sites. In the irrational real world that is the US today, dark fiber is available on long haul routes but is extremely hard to come by in populated areas where most cell sites are located.

Even with the appropriate smartphone resources and 3G/4G wireless networks at the cell sites, North America has a lot of dark fiber to lay to achieve the 99% VoIP wireless infrastructure conditions analogous to those that allowed Skype to launch so readily over wireline broadband networks in 2003. And this is probably one of the strongest arguments for stating that carriers need to focus on the "pipes" and leave the content and services provisioning to third parties.

But, what about the WiFi option? I used Truphone successfully several times during my time at eComm 2008 and VON.x to complete calls from my Nokia N95. But it always required a good WiFi connection -- not always (and definitely not reliably) the case for the overtaxed WiFi service provided at most conferences I have attended where large numbers of users are attempting to connect to the Internet through a <6Mbps pipe¹. And I had to make sure I charged the battery every evening; even then it would not always last through the day. I still find my best WiFi connections at locations, such as my home office, where individuals have control over the "backhaul" connection and may only have two or three users at most going through the access point. Maybe we all need to take a guerilla rebel approach and install WiFi cells "everywhere".

Or maybe we should all move to Stockholm. As Rudolf van der Berg states in a comment to Brough's post: (and later posted); "In the end life is simple: Without Broadband there is no Mobile Broadband."

Meanwhile I'll continue to use iSkoot or Mobivox in situations where roaming charges accessing the voice network don't overwhelm me. And I'll try out the MaxRoam SIM I received while at VON.x where it does.

Photos courtesy James Duncan Davidson.

¹ Only at Scoble's BlogHaus at CES, with a > 20MBps connection, has there been reliably sufficient WiFi bandwidth to handle up to 50 bloggers, often sending video, concurrently.

Tags: eComm 2008, Skype, Mobile VoIP, Jonathan Christensen, iSkoot, Mark Jacobstein, NMS Communications, Brough Turner, Truphone, MaxRoam, Mobivox, Rudolf van der Berg

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype has time to respond to Kevin Rose's prediction since this is unlikely before 2010; AT&T mobile doesn't seem ready for this much 3G/4G data traffic.

But what if?

If Apple launches a 3G iPhone with two videocams this summer, it would leapfrog today's generation of Skype hardware. None of the devices support Skype video calls, certainly not at higher resolutions or frame rates. This includes the successful iSkoot mobiles like the 3 Skypephones, devices like the Nokia tablets running Skype for Linux, and embedded-Skype devices like those from Ipevo and Belkin. An entire business ecosystem waits for Skype to upgrade their software.

Apple leads the industry by raising customer expectations, first with iPods, then the iPhone. Skype is piling on by driving high quality video in PC-to-PC talk. An iPhone iChat Video would feed that taste for realtime video calling. When it happens, iChat Video over iPhone may restore the iPhone's identity as a mobile phone again. A newer, better, unique mobile phone.

Skype has about six months to seed the embedded hardware pipeline with a video platform if they want to compete. 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Was on the phone last week with an Illinois lawyer whose client was scammed in the traditional way:

• con man calls,
• sends you a huge check,
• you send a smaller check in good faith,
• huge check bounces,
• con man disappears with your money.

It seems the con artist was operating from off-shore, likely Malaysia, so there's little hope of the U.S. victim recovering her money.

The only twist is a local New Orleans phone number helped the predator inspire confidence in his scam. And the number was a SkypeIn number sourced from Level 3 Communications. Skype's very convenience and affordability made this fraud more persuasive.

What's a 21st Century Telco to do?

1. Add a threat/problem reporting function to both Skype's Security Resource Center and to the Skype Security blog. Americans in trouble have been reaching out to Skype Journal because they couldn't find out how to contact a Skype office about something they considered more serious than "customer service." (22/24 Boulevard Royal, L-2449 Luxembourg is the only one listed on Skype.com.) I suspect this is true in all jurisdictions, so a bit of localization may be appropriate.

2. Offer opt-in public authentication of a SkypeIn number. So if someone Google's "020 8816 8780" (my London SkypeIn number) they can see Skype pairing it data. Skype might show an account name, perhaps the latest version of the user's Skype profile, separating user provided data from data verified by credit card or PayPal. Perhaps this becomes part of the new Skype directory services?

The latest information:

• abuse@skype.net is Skype's email address for filing a complaint. Note the .net part of the address.
• You can also submit a support request from this page, select "Abuse" as your major topic.
• Follow up on your support status.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

First, eBay is laying off 150 people of the 15,500 who work there, about 1%. Smart alignment of PayPal and eBay operations staff. Doesn't appear to affect Skype.

About Joost:

• Portfolio breaks the rumor you'll be able to play Joost television shows as easily as you play YouTube videos.
• Silicon Alley Insider finds it
• Stan Schroeder comments: "This, however, is big; having to download a desktop application to watch videos online surely annoys and drives away many potential users."

My take... a lesson for Skype: go where the users are, remove obstacles to adoption like Skype's 20MB+ download before your first Skype call. Get your click-to-your-first-call down from 10-20 minutes to 10 seconds.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A VON.x General Session on Real-Time Social Communications this past Tuesday afternoon turned largely into a discussion of the impact of video on social communications. With panelists such as Robert Scoble (now with FastCompnay.tv), Brad Hunstable (founder of Ustream.tv), Ramu Sunkara (CEO of Qik.com) and Loic LeMeur (CEO of Seesmic) effectively representing broadcast streaming video, Skype's Jonathan Christensen (3rd from right) was the lone representative with the perspective of one-to-one video conversations. Jeff Pulver, right, was the session moderator.

But within this milieu Jonathan was able to make some interesting points:

• While Oprah had been using Skype High Quality Video for two sessions of her weekly "A New Earth" classes, for the first time she used it for about five minutes this past Monday during her regular late afternoon show to promote that evening's third session.
• 30% of all Skype-to-Skype calls include use of video.

• CIF size image vs Skype size image: Initial mass market Internet video over broadband connections, at 320 x 240 (a la SightSpeed), was found acceptable at close to a legacy television-related standard called CIF. When Skype was in the early development phase of High Quality Video and they had the first prototypes of the Logitech Carl-Zeiss optics webcams, Jonathan quickly realized the impact of having a full 640 x 480 image transmitted at 25 - 30 fps in test calls from the development team base in Sweden back to his family in the U.S. Its recent adoption by Oprah and CNN for much lower cost interview production serves as the final confirmation of High Quality Video as a new benchmark standard for video conversations over broadband Internet connections.
• "Backhaul is rapidly becoming the bottleneck": While Skype, iSkoot and 3 are having successful adoption of the 3 Skypephone in those countries where it is available, full mobility with VoIP on the handset is still some time away, especially in the U.S. Skype is monitoring the situation but with issues such as not only insufficient handset resources but also having only a T1 backhaul line to the Internet from cell phone towers, there simply is not the wireless network infrastructure and capacity in place to support any reasonable volume of VoIP calls over wireless with sustainably acceptable quality. Only when these cell phone towers start to deploy fiber for the backhaul will there be the appropriate mobile network infrastructure. Jonathan's analogy of the current situation: "it's like having a dialup connection attached to your 100MBps home network". One more reason for the networks to focus on providing the "pipes" and to leave content to third parties.

Re the Oprah show Skype call: I finally was able to watch a PVR-recorded version of this show when I returned home a couple of days ago, Not only did she spend five minutes having a live video conversation with one of the "A New Earth" session viewers, she then went on for about a minute after finishing the call promoting the virtues of Skype. No longer does Skype need to be questioned about generating awareness in North America.

Check out Alec Saunders'post "Streaming video wirelessly changes the game" for the pervasive exposure we had to Nokia N95's streaming video at every turn during VON.x this past week.

Tags: Skype, VON.x, Skype High Quality Video, Jonathan Christensen, Oprah, CNN, Brough Turner, iSkoot, Skypephone, Alec Saunders, Nokia N95

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's now five days after the completion of eComm 2008 and, while I have not put up much coverage to date, I wanted to provide a brief summary and references to several other bloggers who have covered it in various levels of detail.

Photo courtesy James Duncan Davidson

Take-aways:

• This was a conference about voice enabling our social networks, our work activities, our personal lives and how we could potentially communicate more effectively going forward. Lee Dryburgh gave it the theme "The Trillion Dollar Industry Rethink" but with few exceptions, the carriers were not there is any significant numbers. They missed a huge opportunity to learn about where they can add value to their business going forward.
• It's not about the next great new voice application; it's about voice enabling many of our daily activities and business processes to make them more effective, more productive and more transparent. Getting life-critical information to the hospital while a patient is still in transit in an ambulance; replacing "manual" or redundant business processes where managers are continuously challenged to have even a basic degree of motivation for their team members (would you like to become a "password reset administrator"?) are just two examples where communications enhancement makes our lives more frictionless.
• Skype is becoming an element in any communications platform architecture that requires full global connectivity. While not emphasizing Skype or giving it any pre-eminence, it was "just there" (along with SIP) in several presentations as one prospective channel for voice communications that needed to be accessible at some point in a process.
• Innovation persists - from customized hardware platforms (even at the handset or communications board level) to finding new ways to access and deliver via the legacy telephone handset - human creativity and ingenuity are still at work. One of the most interesting presentations was Brian Capouch's description, called "Twelve Volt Telephony" where he talked about his rural wireless network, including equipment bought over eBay, initially installed to provide security monitoring for his seven abandoned farm houses but also resulting in bringing the Internet into a rural community with a small customer base. At the other extreme we have IfByPhone offering means to access web-based services from the 5 billion legacy handset installed base.

With sessions running from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. it was intense, covering a wide ranges of topics from currently available services to how the communications world can evolve over the next ten to twenty years. Not only practical solutions but also some perspective on sociological, social networking and even anthropological aspects. But Jon Arnold sums up Lee's dilemma in organizing this conference:

If eComm is IP, many of the more established telecom/IP conferences seem very PSTN by comparison - they're complex, expensive to run, less flexible, more mainstream, etc. This can be a dangerous analogy, but that's what strikes me about what's happening here. eComm is a one-track show - no exhibitors, and just one room where it all happens. Simple, very open and collaborative. Lee has been adapting the format on the fly, and I can say this first hand. He's been nice enough to give my son, Max, a 2 minute speaking opportunity for later today. Totally out of the blue. Max is sitting next to me cooking up a short presentation right now, and he'll be up on stage in about an hour.

I could go on, but you get the idea. There's a lot of potential ahead for eComm, and if they can figure out how to make this conference of interest to those who matter the most - the carriers - then Lee could have a real business on his hands. Right now we're among friends, preaching to the converted, so the trick will be taking it to the next concentric circle outside the core.

Here are some blog posts with more detailed coverage.

• Jon Arnold:

  • eComm 2008 Notes and Photos,

  • LeeComm 2008: Template for Conference 2.0?

  • eComm 2008 Reprise

• Andy Abramson: Bring On The Conference Calcutta
• Thomas Howe:
  • Voice Is A Spice
  • eComm 2008: The Stars Come Out
• James Duncan Davidson's Photo Montage
• Lee Dryburgh re the availability of presentations

And finally, kudos to Lee Dryburgh, who in five months took his concept from a dream to a reality. Lee knew there was a critical community out there interested in propagating the message about Voice 2.0 and its implementation. He managed to bring that community back together out of the ashes of the former eTel conference.

Tags: eComm 2008, Lee Dryburgh, Jon Arnold, Thomas Howe, Andy Abramson, James Duncan Davidson

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My friends are my clothing. I feel naked when I enter a new social space, so I get dressed as fast as I can. A Walled-Garden-of-Eden makes it easy to run clothed up and down the ladder of expression, across communication modes. facebook's value is in helping people develop and apply their social graphs.

The rumor mill suspects facebook will launch their own private IM service. After Skype's partnership with MySpace to federate IDs and enable voice calls in MySpace's IM client, will facebook partner with Skype too?

Inside Facebook's Justin Smith wrote Facebook wants to own communication with your friends. About chat:

With the exception of Google Talk, it’s been years since most people have experienced an improvement in synchronous communication. While Facebook hasn’t announced any chat products yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did soon. Chat is just a better experience around your social network - most of the time, people want to talk with their friends. Just as Google Talk has probably significantly increased the number of people using IM, so could Facebook…downloading a client and exchanging odd handles is an experience that’s just too complicated for some people.

Justin concludes:

... people will always stay most engaged with services that provide the most value, and core communication tools [news feed, messaging, wall, chat] are some of the services that can be most enhanced by ownership of the social graph.

I concur. facebook has a measure of lock-in (since folks don't want to start over naked).

Let me suggest there's more value in social network portability than in social network lock-in or holding your social graph hostage. When you let people travel with their clothes on, bringing their friends along to your site, you can do more to keep them happy and engaged. I'm starting to think DataPortability is for customer acquisition in the 21st century what virality was in the 20th.

Data portability is the new viral.

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

I love when developers work up small hacks. Like Hudson Barton's "Chat Publisher", a bot for Skype text chats. CP joins your chat and saves your chat's history to its public web server, updating every 15 minutes. For an example, join this mirrored chat, see its archive, and see see it in context.

CP is in private alpha; contact Hudson (Skype garnet_stone) to set up your public chat.

I use Inezha's Anothr service to pipe the web into Skype. CP reverses that direction.

My wishlist:

• RSS output
• Flexible update schedules (xmpp push?)
• Post through common blog APIs
• ftp to sites of your choice
• Post to private sites
• Self-service web UI for configuring your service
• In-chat commands - pause/resume archival
• Choose the CSS formatting of your choice
• Scale to thousands of chats

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tamás Henning on the Skype Forums has initiated a survey asking "In how many group chats are you participating?" If you participate in at least one Group Chat or Public Chat, add your vote.

Two super heavy users have put up a response to day they are in 40 to 100 chats. And we thought heavy Twitter users were addictive. But in these cases it is helping their Skype business activities become more productive.

Another has commented "The amount of irrelevant chat outweighs what the chat was originally started for". Skype Group/Public Chat provides two tools for managing that situation. A designated Host can make and enforce the rules, including:

1. Set the Topic to Establish a reference point for any discussion
2. Make a participant "Read Only"
3. "Eject and Ban" one who does not "get it".

Following these guidelines has kept discussion on topic and focused on Skype Journal's "Skype 3.x discussion" Public Chat which has been active since the introduction of Public Chat last May. And there are eleven designated Hosts who will enforce these guidelines at any hour of the day.

Tags: Skype, Skype Public Chat, Skype Group Chat

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Russell Shaw, journalist, Blackberry and VoIP blogger passed away a short time ago in his eComm 2008 hotel room. Andy has more details here.

Russell was a probing, knowledgeable blogger who always sought to bring out the reality behind a story. But he was also fair; he praised achievement when it was earned; he never hesitated, through his wit, to raise a problematic issue when it was required.

When I first saw he was referencing some of my Skype Journal posts, it was the first confirmation I had that somebody out there actually read our posts and took them seriously. I finally met Russell quite by chance when he was sitting at a table next to me in the press room at Fall VON in Boston last October. He had his Blackberry and was trying out IM+ for Skype as he was sitting next to Shape Services' Vice-President of Marketing when this picture was taken. At Andy's dinner later that evening I had more opportunity to talk with him; then he put me on the spot in a broader discussion for my comments on the eBay-Skype relationship and where it was heading. We communicated occasionally by email after that meeting but really we communicated much more frequently through our mutual posts about Skype and Blackberry. The communications world has lost a true fan and supporter of innovation.

Ironically his last IP Telephony post (for mature eyes only) was a commentary on Phil's recent post on SPIM.

Thank you, Russell, for what you have brought to this world and your contribution to its conversations.

Update: Other tributes: Dan Farber, Om Malik, Larry Dignan, Ken Camp, Villu Arak on the Skype Blog.

Update: Monday's SquawkBox call will be a memorial to Russell's life and impact on today's communications. Mar. 17: The SquawkBox tribute call.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Download it now. 2.0 release notes (since 6 February 2008 beta: 6 new features, 2 new API features, 59 bugfixes, all localizations updated). It's been a long road from March 2005 and s4l 1.0. Congratulate to the Skype for Linux team!

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype is encrypted end to end, at least on desktops. Wiretaps were part of the investigation. 

So I'm just asking. Might he have avoided prosecution?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

With sessions from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. there's a lot to be covered out of this event; yet, with very limited WiFi access, it's not feasible to do any blogging during the event. Andy Abramson has managed to provide a summary of the first day's coverage in both mainstream media and onllne weblogs.

Jonathan Christensen's leadoff keynote Wednesday was able to set the stage describing (from the perspective of a then Microsoft employee) of how Internet infrastructure evolved that allowed Skype to arrive on the scene in the summer of 2003 and become the main discussion point at Fall VON 2003 largely because its development had ignored SIP and deployed its own protocol to realize the original SIP vision of multi-modal communications. Bottom line was that having an easily installed VoIP client allowing calls at no cost had brought in over 500,000 downloads during Skype's first two months of availability. And the SIP promoters had been left out of the picture creating lots of controversy. A more detailed report on Jonathan's presentation, which included a discussion of Skype's rich Mobile Internet Communications going forward. In the meantime check out The Register's report on a dialog between Jonathan and David Isenberg re eBay's involvement with Skype.

Several presentations, including those from Ribbit, Voxeo, Voxbone and IfByPhone have included, within their conceptual service architecture, Skype as a peer level component to SIP for ensuring truly globally accessible voice enhanced services.

iSkoot's new CEO Mark Jacobstein made his initial public appearance (and sponsored Wednesday's lunch) to talk about how the iSkoot architecture presents the most viable solution, in today's mobile architecture, for accessing Skype from a mobile phone. Complementing the architecture is a business model that is carrier friendly. As proof of concept in a commercial setting, he presented information on the highly successful launch of the 3 Skypephone in the eight countries served by 3 .

Coming just before a coffee break, Mark's presentation generated lots of post-presentation informal discussion, especially with respect to the potential for iSkoot's operation on other mobile platforms such as Blackberry, Nokia and Windows Mobile devices. (Mark is not in the picture above.)

Ben Lilienthal, VAPPS CEO, (shown on the left) gave a Lightening Talk update on their HighSpeedConferencing.com service with its ability to support HD Voice for all those participants who come in via Skype. For a quick demonstration to hear the HD Voice difference call +9900827047997030 on Skype or (605) 475-8800, conference ID 7997030 from a PSTN number.

Lots of discussion about accessing services from the most common platform of all, the traditional 12 button phone or handset with over 5 billion in use. Mobivox's COO Nitzan Shaer provided some insight into the issues they have encountered and resolved involving having a "purpose driven" speech recognition capability for their service that provides low cost calling to both PSTN and Skype destinations.. IfByPhone demonstrated how to get driving directions if you know a phone number near your current location (such as on a store windwow) and a phone number at your destination using a Voxeo-hosted service.

More to follow ...

Tags: Skype, eComm2008, VAPPS, HighSpeedConferencing, iSkoot, Mark Jacobstein, Mobivox, Nitzan Shaer, IfByPhone, Voxeo, Ribbit, Jonathan Christensen

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

11-12 minutes.

That's how long we go without interruption at work.

And it's getting worse.

Intel Research anthropologist Dawn Nafus spoke today at the Emerging Communications Conference about the increasing interruption and disruption caused by sensor-driven applications. For example, geo-presence apps that alert you when your contacts are near, even when you're trying to concentrate on work.

Dawn blames the problem on designing from a sensor-net view, not from a human view.

How interruptible is a person? Ask or have them signal: you'll infer badly since software rarely understands our fluid human condition. 

You probably need a social secretary. Someone to wave people off, to defend your attention from threats of interruption. And to break in when it needed. A gatekeeper, a bouncer, a bodyguard.

Dawn's right of course. Our sensor networks are becoming richer, diverse, and more mobile. Phone and software makers will create value with models of how we think, work, play, socialize, shop, flirt, [insert 93,746 other behaviors here]. They'll inform those models with sensor data (location, temperature, blood pressure, air pressure, etc.) and volunteered human behavior like Skype's availability signals (presence and mood messages) or the famous Do Not Disturb Button.

The presence system is a vital service in the Social Stack's Real Time Layer ("Now"). It helps negotiate and schedule live interaction, even when we face social network overload.

But I'll write more about that soon. Someone's tapping my arm, trying to ask me a question.

See also:

• Presence on Skype Journal

Posted by Phil Wolff at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype's Jonathan Christensen presented these slides yesterday to the Emerging Communications Conference. Christensen is Skype's GM for Voice and Video.

Sorting the Mobile Mess

• Mobility is the last anchor to the old way
  • Fastest growth telecom service today
  • Spectrum scarcity makes it a perfect walled garden
• The good old days again
  • Closed networks.. Device lock-in.. Phone numbers with geographic bias.. Contracts.. YUCK !!
    
• Finally.. The Internet goes mobile
  • First successful auction - 22 MHz of “700 band” spectrum
  • “Open Platform” conditions apply
  • A new game begins..

and

The Next Ten Years

• The Era of Rich Mobile Internet Communications
  • Multi-modal communications (original SIP vision)
  • Real time HD video, Data, Presence, Text, Wideband Audio
  • Smart endpoints, open platform… Application innovation..
  • Fixed / Mobile Convergence – for real…
  • Mash ups of web based communications
  • Freedom with mobility…
• Natural segmentation of competencies
  1. Network infrastructure (pipes)
  2. Application innovation (developers)

I'll leave interpretation to Jim.

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

Hard on the heels of Skype's use to dialogue with individual viewers for Oprah's Monday evening classes, CNN found itself needing to interview an analyst who was vacationing at a remote location in Hawaii when the Elliott Spitzer scandal broke Monday evening. From Paul Gough's Hollywood Reporter story:

Toobin, who went to Harvard Law School with Spitzer, appeared via telephone Monday from Maui to contribute to the coverage. For the second day, CNN executives wanted to use a video feed but were stymied by the fact that they didn't have the equipment to make it happen.

"I didn't want to take this guy and his family away from vacation and send him to Oahu (where there would be other facilities)," CNN senior vp David Bohrman said. "I thought it would have been really annoying."

Turns out that some CNN technicians had been experimenting with Skype and jumped at the chance to use Skype Video for this interview when no other video resources were within reasonable proximity at the analyst's location in Hawaii. Of course they could have found prior experience by talking with CITY-TV in Toronto who have been using Skype video (even pre-High Quality Video) for about a year now for reports.

Is this a foreboding whereby CNN will have no limits as to where they can reach Skypers when appropriate within the context of a story?

By the way, Oprah's second class with A New Earth author Eckhart Tolle went quite smoothly this past Monday night with claims that over 2 million have now watched at least one viewing of either of the two classes to this point in time.

However, at some point producers and viewers alike will begin to wonder if there’s a better way to stretch the equipment budget. Skype video won’t yet replace satellite-linked videophone reports from an Afghan mountaintop, but in more hospitable locations (with wireless or cable broadband) a laptop with Skype and a webcam will be economically more viable for skeleton crews on a tight budget. And aesthetically much more pleasing to the viewer..

• Jeffrey Toobin Talks Spitzer on CNN via skype from Hawaii
• VoIP News: Could the Spitzer Scandal Save Skype?

Tags: Skype, Skype Video, CNN, Oprah, A New Earth, Hollywood Reporter

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm prepping slides for my talk on Friday at the Emerging Communications Conference (starting tomorrow, discount code Skypejournal08). I'm starting to describe how many types of services are coming together as a new infrastructure.

Once upon a time...

You may be old enough to remember a time after Sneakernet, before the Internet, when people started cabling computers to each other. Manufacturers like IBM, Digital, and Wang invented their own combination of networking hardware and software. Massive customer lock-in as your computers could only talk to other computers from the same manufacturer.

Then in 1972 ANSI drafted what would become the ISO Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Basic Reference Model. The model divided networks up into a "stack" with seven layers (like a stack of pancakes):

The OSI Layers
• 7: Application
• 6: Presentation
• 5: Session
• 4: Transport
• 3: Network
• 2: Data Link
• 1: Physical

A few principles made this amazingly successful:

1. Each layer does work of a specific type, and sticks to it.
2. A layer gets services (defined through protocols) from the layer below it.
3. A layer provides services to the layer above it. 

This abstraction and separation encouraged:

• specialization by companies within those specialties
• competition by vendors in a layer
• innovation within layers

All without breaking the stack. Or your network.

The competition improved all the components of the network stack until iteration and evolutionary pressure stabilized most of it.

Thesis: We're at a similar point in history.

We need a new stack to sort out social media's plumbing.

Introducing the Social Stack's Six Zones of Interoperability.

• ID (Account lifecycles, Login)
• Sync (Profile, Contacts, Objects)
• Permission (Policy, Licensing)
• Find (People Search, Discovery, Gatekeepers)
• Action (Group Actions, Relationship Actions)
• Now (Alerting, Presence)

Community providers like Skype stand to gain as their architectures first recognize/design, then adopt and apply the Social Stack's standards. As with the first stack, the Social Stack will attract:

• Engineers amazed and delighted at how convenient it is to build solutions or integrate existing systems by using well documented patterns and protocols.
• Entrepreneurs hungry for the chance to build unique value atop commodity plumbing
• Capital seeking to unleash new markets
• Consumers flying to seamless onlife experiences

We'll talk about the stack, its components and how they interact at

• Mar 12, 2008: Emerging Communications (eComm) 2008 
• Mar 20, 2008: DataPortability Meetup at Six Apart 
• Apr 18, 2008: The Data Sharing Workshop
• Apr 22, 2008: Web 2.0 Expo
• May 12, 2008: IIW - Internet Identity Workshop
• Jun 16, 2008: Supernova 2008

This is a draft, a work in progress, so please kibitz in the Skype Journal Skype chat or DataPortability.org's Technical Group's Skype chat room.   

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a reminder that Lee Dryburgh has put together a conference, eComm 2008, that includes many of the innovators who have been working to revolutionize how we communicate going forward. Lee wants it to be known as the "Trillion Dollar Industry Rethink". From the eComm 2008 press release issued last week, Lee states:

“The speakers participating in eComm are just the kind of forward-thinking people who will spark debate about the future of the industry. What I’m hearing during my preliminary conversations with them is a prelude, I believe, to the thought-provoking, high-energy dialogue that will be taking place at eComm.”

Leadoff speaker will be Jonathan Christensen, Skype's GM of Video and Audio, who led the recent widely acclaimed (here and here, for instance) launch of Skype's High Quality Video for which new interactive video programming concepts are being incorporated into one of Oprah Winfrey's new productions. Skype Journal recently covered Jonathan's interview with Lee as a lead-up to the conference itself. On a day-to-day operating basis I am finding that many of my Skype calls are now enhanced by the use of Skype's video.

Have a look also at Lee's "Call for a Telephone Industry Wakeup."  Phil and I  will be attending and covering the proceedings. I'm especially looking forward to meeting many of those fellow bloggers and industry thinkers whom I have met on the Internet but never in person previously. If you are inclined to register, use the promotional code 'skypejournal08' for a 15% discount.

Tags: ecomm 2008, Lee Dryburgh, Skype, Jonathan Christensen

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

Earlier this week Skype Journal reported on Skype's sponsorship of Oprah.com's Web Events involving "classes" discussing Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth. A unique aspect of this presentation involved "full duplex" video dialogues as viewers posed questions. In some cases the viewers were supplied with the appropriate webcam and dual processor PC so that they could use Skype's High Quality Video to support the dialogue with Oprah and Eckhart. Unfortunately last Monday's initial session was fraught with network congestion issues as Harpo Productions attempted to support viewing by over 500,000 participants. However, I was finally able to watch the entire presentation once the video download or streaming was made available Tuesday.

My one key observation about the impact of the video technology is being able to watch the viewer's facial expressions change as her/his question is answered. It provides an additional perspective to the discussion through watching the viewer's emotional response as a complement to the verbal dialogue between the viewer and either Oprah or Eckhart. Using High Quality Video allows the viewer to be seen at the same level of video quality as the primary video feed from the main studio. Even when the viewer was shown full screen there was minimal pixelation; it allows the technology to take a back seat to the primary presentation and discussion as opposed to being a distraction. Bottom line: a viewing experience that focuses on the subject matter under review. And [switching to Skype cheerleader mode] you had to love Oprah's comment during one dialogue: "Thank God for Skype!". Whereas a year ago I was a skeptic about the value of video in conversations, watching this show, following my Skype High Quality Video experiences of the past few months, changed my viewpoint.

This weekend Oprah distributed an email to her book club registrants:

To Students of A New Earth,

Like you, I was deeply disappointed that so many dedicated webcast participants around the world were unable to view our first live webcast.

Experts from both Limelight Networks and Move Networks, our partners in bringing this groundbreaking experience to the Internet, believe they have identified and addressed the programming problem that was unmasked by a historic number of simultaneous users. While we were certainly prepared for the more than 700,000 people registered and continue to be assured that capacity was not the issue…it is clear that pioneering this new platform will always come with risks. So, that said…the team believes we are good to go for another try.

Since Monday night, over 1.5 million people have streamed or downloaded the webcast, and that option will be available on Tuesday of each week after all of the next nine classes.

I have been encouraged by the thousands of message board posts cheering us on to continue the live classes on Monday nights, and so we will keep moving forward, attempting to break new ground.

If you are willing to partner with me in exploring this new frontier — I'll see you in class live on Monday. Otherwise, you can stream or download the class on Tuesday or whenever it's convenient. I understand the frustration and leave it to you to experience the class in whatever way works best.

— Oprah

For those who always asked about Skype promotion, does 1.5 million viewings over a one week period answer their concerns about Skype's awareness generation in North America? I would probably expect around 1 million real exposures as there were four options for downloading and I'm sure, as I experienced, lots of visitors made a couple of attempts to determine a suitable format for viewing or listening.

[In case you had any doubt about the power of an Oprah endorsement: Earlier today, while visiting a Staples, I asked where I could find a Post-It Flag Highlighter -- a co-sponsor with Skype and GM Chevrolet division of this event. In an unsolicited response the Staples associate told me the store had been inundated with requests for this new book reading tool as a result of Oprah's using it on one of her shows. Also worth noting - While Skype's only appearance during Oprah's class is the actual use of Skype High Quality Video with the Skype logo in the name bar as shown above, the other two co-sponsors only had ads that were inserted every 20 minutes or so during the event.]

There was a caveat with respect to tomorrow's second class (of ten):

We are asking you to arrive early to take your seat. On Sunday, you will receive an e-mail that contains your special link and specific time to enter class. If you arrive after 8:55/7:55c, there is a chance you will be unable to participate in the live Web event. Our goal is to provide as many of you as possible with a positive experience. If we should see a significant decline in video quality, we may limit the size of the class that evening.

Today I received that email with a link; I'll report on the outcome.

• Dan York: The Oprah-tization of VoiP via Skype
• Harold Wolinsky: Oprah Goes Skype
• Skype Ad Page on Oprah.com

Tags: Skype, Skype High Quality Video, Oprah, Oprah.com, Oprah Book Club Web Event, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, Post-It Flag Highlighter, GM Chevrolet Division

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The biggest news in VoIM this week is AOL (hmmm, maybe YAhOoL?) renewing Open AIM, AIM's platform for programmers. With these tools you can build your own AIM client, plug-in, or application on nearly any platform.

• Want to build AIM into banner ads, blogs, MySpace widgets, mobiles? No problem.

• Want to mashup presence, IM and video conferencing? Easy.

• Integrate into enterprise software? CRM services? Painless contracts.

• Want to combine multimodal talk (voice, video, text) in a home appliance? All there. All connected. All documented.

Will this capture the imagination of entrepreneurs? of engineers? Will they choose this proven, scalable, secure platform over open source? over Skype, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Tencent, and Google platforms?

Meanwhile Apple promises to open the iPhone.  Many APIs, SDKs, standard protocols. AOL had AIM up and running on an iPhone in 5 days. Disney, EA, and Salesforce showed iPhone apps. Push email and Exchange integration puts it into RIM Blackberry territory. A $100 million VC fund will invest in iPhone apps/businesses.

I have enormous hope for Skype as a developer platform, especially with the newly unleashed leadership. Josh Silverman, Skype's new CEO, doesn't start until later this month. But he's moving to Tallinn, Estonia, where the development teams live.

Did you know Skype has public APIs for their desktop clients and presence service, and private APIs for commerce? Still, Skype's public API roadmap doesn't come close to the degree of openness, depth and power AOL and Apple offered this week.

Good reads:

• Kee Hinckley, Meebo and Adium developers give their reactions to Open AIM 2.0.
• Mary Jo Foley, Apple finally acknowledges iPhone’s Exchange support
• tuaw's iPhone Roadmap Event Metaliveblog. All the details
• Ryan Block's photos of the Apple iPhone SDK press conference. Good shots of Apple's slides. 
• Hudson Barton predicts "Skype will soon announce that it will be on the iPhone and iPod Touch by the summer of 2008."

Posted by Phil Wolff at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is evil genius. The evil is the Spam over Instant Messaging (SPIM) time wasting, behavior changing, unsolicited contact.

Let me explain the genius part...

SPIM like this is hard to do. Especially if you want it to scale. And you need it to scale to make money. (Compare the difficulty with that of building an  enterprise CRM system.)

Ten Steps to Build a SPIM Empire

1. Spider for Skype names. You'll find Skype IDs on the web, Skype's authentication server, and the Skype cloud. Skype.com is locked down tight, hacking supernodes is complicated, so I'll bet they got an off-the-shelf web crawler to search for Skype names in the wild. The spider will have fun in the Skype forums, public email archives, and open social networks.

2. Generate Skype accounts. You want to make it hard for Skype to blacklist you, to bar you from logging on to the Skype network. So:

• write a script that automatically makes new profile data, combining art, names, and text from a small collection.
• for each profile, create an email address. You need an email address to authenticate each Skype account, one per profile. You'll want many email servers for this, again so Skype.com doesn't block you at the domain level.
• Script creating the Skype account using the profile data and email address.
• Confirm acknowledgement email from Skype.com email. You'll write a script to do this.

3. Run lots of Skype. You'll need a farm of Skype clients running. One client for each account. Skype IM is cheap on bandwidth but can chew up lots of memory and CPU. You can run a handful of Skype clients on a Windows PC, but lots on a well-tweaked linux box with tweaked Skype installations.

Skype farming is a practice proven by all the companies that make Skype-to-PBX gateways or offer services that connect to the Skype cloud. iSkoot, Mobivox, and others keep hundreds of Skype clients running in production data centers. 

4. Reach out and touch someone. Now it's time to hit your targets. Your management software keeps track of your relationship with each target, each time and way you touched them, and what the response was. Here's where you try different patterns of art, language, time of day, day of week, profile elements. With Skype, you'll send IMs and friend requests. 

5. Automate the first answer. Assure your prospective customers, victims, or voters have a prompt response. Having a robot say "Hi!" or "Hola!" may give your human a chance to get in place and catch up.

6. Route incoming chats. So a dozen of you are sitting in a room with a thousand Skypes running. You'll need to write a Skype plug-in that alerts you whenever someone takes the bait. The plug-in needs to tell the management software whenever there's a new friend. It will also bring a Skype chat window into focus so a human can see it.

You may also find the best operator available for a given prospect. Language, gender, time availability are all factors that might boost conversion rates.

7. Sell, Sell, Sell. Now you have a prospect in a chat room. Good luck!

8. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Experimentation is the key. You won't know if I like blondes or brunettes, naughty nurses or the sexual object next door, regular or decaf, blue or green. Brute force trial and error is the plan.

9. Then quit. It's a world full of prospects, so you don't want to waste system or staff time on unlikely prospects. At some point you cut your losses and leave a prospect alone. For now.

10. Pssst. Hey, buddy, wanna buy a million Skype names? Count on it.

What does Skype do about it?

Skype's Chief Security Officer, Kurt Sauer, explained the problem from Skype's view.

"Skype defines SPIM from a behavioral point of view, not from a message content point of view, as messages are sent directly from one user to another peer-to-peer.  Because of that, each copy of Skype software attempts to identify patterns of activity that appear to mimic the sending of unsolicited message content to a broad audience.  Once this pattern of behavior has been identified, the software limits the number of messages that can be sent. In addition, each Skype user has a range of privacy settings at their disposal that can prevent the receipt of any kind of unsolicited contact, whether by video, voice or chat.

Skype is constantly reviewing its software architecture to find new ways to ensure its customers’ protection from receiving unwanted communications.  SPIM control is a growing area of research, not only for Skype but for the online communications industry as a whole.  Consequently, Skype continues to develop and test innovative solutions to improve the quality of the Skype experience.

Skype's privacy policy only promises they protect your information on their computers.

What can you do for yourself?

Basically,

1. Keep your Skype name private.
2. Keep your Skype account unlisted (only accept contact from people already in your buddy list).

Related Skype support articles:

• How can I block unwanted callers?
• What is the difference between authorizations and Contacts?
• Can I have a person in the Contacts List without receiving authorization from them?
• Can I remove a Contacts List entry?
• Can I remove or revoke authorization?
• Can you give generic guidelines about managing my Privacy settings?
• Which fields in my profile are public?
• People keep sending me spam messages or abusive calls, what can I do?

How does Skype's SPIM problem compare to other IM networks?

From what I can tell, it's astoundingly better than Yahoo!'s, long polluted with massive quantities.

No idea about Microsoft or AOL.

On the net:

• SPIM & SPIT - Spam over Instant Messaging or Internet Telephony flickr group - all the screenshots included above.
• Jim Higdon, VoIP-News, What’s the Deal with Skype Spam? The best coverage roundup.
• Christian Yates, Please Skype Spam me! Improve your attractiveness to spimmers by putting a Skype badge on your blog.
• Raanan Bar-Cohen went unlisted on Skype. And likes it.

The Evil Genius Song

Spim spimminy
Spim spimminy
Spim spim sperree
I'm searching the net
For vulnrabil'ty

Spim spimminy
Spim spimminy
Spim spim sperroo
Bad luck will rub off
when I make friends with you

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Getting an interactive Internet program broadcast out to 500,000 proves to be a true pioneering effort; Oprah.com and Harpo Productions demonstrate the value of transparent communication to your audience as a result of a communication technology breakdown. From the Web Event web site at about 10:00 p.m. EST:

Congestive heart failure is a disease where functioning of your heart continues but in a somewhat weakened state. Last night 500,000 logins was too much for Oprah.com. In spite of moving information over the Internet at 242 Gbps, Oprah's Web Event¹ suffered congestive Internet failure. Some got a steady stream apparently during the first 15 to 20 minutes after a 9:00 p.m. start, whereas others (myself included) received intermittent coverage that eventually just froze. Harpo Productions, however, was quick to put out an apology and explanations, via both the Oprah.com website and emails to all who registered:

Harpo Productions, Inc., Move Networks and Limelight Networks recognize that interactive Internet broadcasting to a mass audience is still an emerging medium, and we're proud to have been pioneers in pushing the industry forward. We deeply regret that some of our audience did not have an optimal viewing experience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. The first session of the webinar will be available in its entirety for viewing on Oprah.com or for downloading as a podcast on Oprah.com or iTunes on Tuesday, March 4.

In the public relations space, it's called quickly and transparently acknowledging your issues and getting a message (any message) out to your target audience.

As for Skype's involvement, during the snippets I could watch in 15-20 second intervals, Oprah took two questions over Skype High Quality Video from Illinois, one an individual and one a group watching at a Borders store in Chicago. Some comments:

• The bar with the Skype logo remained on screen during the entire dialogue with each questioner. No brief ten second impressions here; this was an ongoing continuous five minute impression! And repeated for each questioner.
• At one point I heard Oprah say something along the lines of "Let's go back to Kelly via Skype. This Skype is 'wonderful': I didn't even know about Skype until a couple of weeks ago."
• The Skype High Quality Video logo appeared continuously in the upper left hand corner of both the video calls I was able to view.
• While Oprah.com had broadcast transmission issues, the performance of Skype High Quality Video within the broadcast certainly was a positive and transparent experience.

When the webcast is available later today, I'll go back and listen for more details on what is hopefully an uninterrupted stream. Being available as a webcast and a downloadable podcast, there will be lots of residual impressions for Skype. As one of my fellow bloggers commented to me in a chat session: "OMG, the Oprahfication of Skype!"

With nine more Monday night "classes" scheduled, this will be as interesting for the communications technology story and associated public relations activity as for the book's content.

¹ Due to the dynamic nature of this landing page, the content may change with time. As of 8:00 a.m. EST Tuesday, March 4 it started out: "Monday night's webcast was one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet. More than 500,000 people simultaneously logged on to watch Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle live, resulting in 242 Gbps of information moving through the Internet. Unfortunately, some of our users experienced delays in viewing the webcast. We are working to identify the specific causes for the problems experienced and will work diligently to rectify them."

Tags: Skype, Skype High Quality Video, Oprah, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, Orpah.com Web Event

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

by Hudson Barton, guest blogger

The two most noticeable long-term sub-trends or anomalies in Skype growth, as measured by "concurrent users" are:

1. Underperformance of Asian usage in comparison to American and European usage.

2. Outperformance of weekend usage in comparison to weekday usage.

The first anomaly may be already correcting itself. Asian growth is fairly strong this year so far. Notwithstanding the nearly two weeks during the Chinese New Year celebrations when Skype usage in the Pacific Rim dropped almost out of sight, growth of Asia's "real users" in 2008 has been unexpectedly strong, reversing the trend of the prior 3 years. "Real users" is a measurement that marks both actual Skype users and their average time logged into Skype. It is too early to tell for sure whether the trend will continue but this has to be welcome news for Skype; proof that registrations of new Skype names eventually turns into real customers.

The second anomaly is not correcting itself. Here we are essentially looking at the usage of Skype in America and Europe and comparing growth rates during the midday when we expect weekday usage to be weighted far more heavily toward businesses than weekend usage when we expect Skype users will be logged in for mainly personal and recreational purposes. What we see very plainly is that Skype is growing more rapidly as a general communications tool than as a specifically business communications tool. There could be several reason for this, and the measurement technique is not precise enough to know what the truth is:

• One guess is simply that the general market for VOIP is growing faster than the business market.

• Another possibility is that Skype is doing well in both general and business markets, but better in general markets.

• Lastly, it is possible (but not likely) that Skype is actually doing poorly in business markets, and that other VOIP carriers are having more success.

Observations about Skype growth from the perspective of "real users" are made regularly on The Borderless Communicator blog.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype High Quality Video to be used in the world's largest classroom.

For all those who have complained that Skype has not generated enough awareness in North America, an event this evening (9 p.m. EST - GMT-5) should change all that. Skype, along with GM's Chevrolet division and Post-It Notes, is sponsoring all ten weekly segments of Oprah.com's "A New Earth" Web Event discussing Eckhart Tolle's book: "A New Earth: Get Ready To Be Awakened". With over 750,000 registrants, this could be, to quote Oprah from the video, the world's largest classroom. Click on the image to hear Oprah's message to Skype users.

Towards the end of each segment, Oprah and Eckhart will be taking video questions using Skype's High Quality Video. From all the questions submitted, Harpo, the producer, has selected several for a response during the seminar. Those asking the questions have been equipped with the requisite Logitech cameras and dual core PC's such that they can use Skype's High Quality Video. Obviously a significant logistics operation here; it will be interesting to watch and see what level of spontaneity is afforded by this arrangement.

To follow the "class", you need to join Oprah's Book Club and an opportunity will be presented to attend the event. Note that you also need to install the special movie player required to watch. One has to assume this player has been developed for large audience broadcast events.

I'll watch and report back tomorrow.

Skype Journal on Skype's High Quality Video:

• 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.

Tags: Skype, Skype High Quality Video, Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Book Club, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Economists say much of the world is facing an economic downturn. We've already seen layoffs at Yahoo! and other big companies, financial markets unstable, oil going through the roof, housing markets shifting.

Startup growth is often independent of economic cycles, especially when you enter a market. For example, Skype's growth depends on broadband growth and broadband growth looks promising in the US.

Skype is now large enough (it will collect a half-billion dollars a few pence at a time this year) that regional economic swings affect its customers.

Scary stuff.

So, Are Bad Times Good For Skype?

I'd say Yes.

And it's not just cost savings.

We change our behavior when we think about tough economies or personal financial risk. Some freeze and close down. Most pay attention and respond to the challenge.

In bad times we help our friends.

We need our friends.

Even our onlife friends.

Laid off by Yahoo!? Update your facebook account, your phone and email address books, your blog, your LinkedIn profile, your Skype buddy list. Refresh those connections with chats and blog comments and pokes and video messages.

In bad times we fly to social capital.

That's how we learn survival skills, discover new jobs, and earn social currency - reputation, debts of honor - that help us in the worst of the bad times.

"Joining and participating in one group cuts in half your odds of dying next year." -- Robert Putnam

Skype and other social media help.

Skype provides visibility into your social network. Skype could provide a lot more: sort/filter by last contact, sort/filter by how much/often/long you talk, reveal second-order relationships (clusters of friends who know each other).

Skype provides modes that fit the intimacy of each relationship. I'm a text chat friend to most, a voice chat friend to a few, and a video friend to my close friends and family.

Skype provides a history of each relationship. You can read your prior chats, see your phone logs, the better to continue conversations.  

Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) warned of a plummeting U.S. social capital.

• Every ten minutes of commuting reduces all forms of social capital by 10%
• Attending Club Meetings: 58% drop over the last 25 years
• Family dinners: 43% drop drop over the last 25 years
• Having friends over: 35% drop over the last 25 years

I think a lot of those impulses are showing up online. In blogs, social networks, wikis, and, of course, Skype.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)