How do you discover what people really do with your software? Our behavior often differs from what we think we do. The human-computer interaction research method eye tracking can reveal where a user's attention goes when they use a product.

Two days after Skype launched the Skype for Windows 4.0 Beta in June 2008, Cimex, a British firm with a usability and accessibility lab, spent a day watching people use Skype. Then wrote them up. I'm including the full text of their report below the fold. From their blog:

A usability study by Cimex has revealed Skype’s new Beta release may prove difficult to use, due to weaknesses in presentation, navigation, structure and functionality.

The aim of this study was to capture the users’ expectations, needs and preferences, all of which we believe can be used as a base to create a more engaging, efficient and effective Skype application.

Caveats:

• Only six users were tested: 25-50 years' old; British, French, Greek; three newbies, three experienced Skypers; three men, three women. This is not representative of Skype's worldwide user community. Skypers come in all ages, speak many languages and bring wildly different cultural norms to software use.
  
  The team said "A larger sample would allow us to perform more detailed quantitative data analysis of the performance rates."  A larger sample would also "allow us to create more targeted scenarios and cover all the range of Skype user profiles."

• The study was relatively shallow since few user goals were tested in the time available, and many product features were unexplored. See the sidebar for four user goals.

Four of the twelve tasks used in the study

Could you please have a look at this welcome screen and tell me what your first impressions are? What would be the first thing you would like to do from here? (Users were allowed to explore the options of the welcome screen and then asked to start using the application.)

What are you impressions by looking at this page of the application? Do you like the way the information is presented?

Let’s have a look at the top menu (Skype, Contacts, Conversation, etc). Are these options meaningful enough to you? Without clicking on them yet, could you please tell me what do you expect to find under each of these menu options?

Imagine now, that you want to invite a friend who hasn’t got a Skype account, to join Skype. How would you do that?

Observing users with eye tracking is best applied iteratively and with a specific problem in mind. Feedback from one round can reveal a problem which, once cleared, reveals other obstacles to people doing what they set out to do.

I'd be curious how these results compare with the 3.8 release; has 4's redesign addressed many of 3.X's problems with complexity and discovery?

Unlike many other products, Skype comes in many flavors, like the mobile edition on the Skypephone or Skype for the Nokia tablets. You might learn a great deal by testing goal success (e.g. "Call this phone number", "IM a friend on your buddy list", "start a video call") across operating systems and devices.

So here's the Skype Journal Daily Question: What are the top three design goals you see in Skype 4b?

See also:

• Skype's videos about the 4.0 beta limited release

• Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 1 -- Call for User Feedback

• Mike Bartlett Discusses Skype 4.0 Beta on Squawk Box

• Mike Bartlett Comments on Skype 4.0 User Feedback

Download the Usability Study of Skype 4.0 in PDF format or read the web version below...

Continue reading "4b needs tweaking: Cimex Usability Study on Skype 4.0 Beta 1" »

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

Send faxes via PamFax for €0.14 (a 17% reduction) or, if on a PamFax Professional or PrePaid Pack plan, as low as €0.09.

Since last summer Skype Journal has been reporting on the evolution of PamFax, which allows Skype users to send faxes anywhere worldwide from your laptop in as few as five mouse clicks. Source documents can be locally scanned hard copy or electronic documents in any of 100 file formats, including Office and PDF documents. PamFax can also act as a Windows printer. This weekend last summer's Skype Mashup Contest winner has added several new features:

• An interface for both Facebook and Salesforce.com. The Facebook interface provides your PamFax history and has a link to launch PamFax to send another fax. If you have activated a "still-in-beta" version of the Skype Toolbar for Firefox, the PamFax "Click-to-Fax" icon becomes activated. If you're a Facebook member, you can add the Facebook interface here.

In Salesforce.com, the integration goes much further: You not only have the fax history embedded in Salesforce, but you also have the ability to start a fax from any Contact, Account, User or Lead! So no more copy&paste to send a fax to one of your contacts, as PamFax starts with name and fax number prefilled and you only have to select what you want to fax and then send the fax.

Continue reading "PamFax Update: Lower Rates, Volume Plans and Improved Perfomance" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We reported earlier that Mike Bartlett, Skype for Windows Product Manager, would be the guest on Friday's Squawk Box. With 15 fifteen participants, Mike answered questions ranging from features of the new Skype for Windows 4.0 Beta; plans and objectives for the beta program, the challenges of trying to launch concurrent (Windows, Mac, Linux) versions, interoperation with other services (such as iotum's Free Conference Call service that hosted the call) and other issues related to the evolution of Skype.

Three key points:

• The Skype for Windows 4.0 beta program is unique in that they are seeking out user responses to the challenges of getting new users started readily while leaving the flexibility and scalability features power users seek out. For instance, while the Beta 1 client takes up a full desktop -- largely to get user reaction -- there will probably end up being a way to "hide" the conversation content pane, leaving the left hand conversation management pane but they want feedback from all beta participants on the full desktop. As a result we will see several phases to this beta program with a final release date largely dependent on the beta program feedback (and they're getting lots).
• New users are randomly being presented with the beta to get the feedback from actual new users on how they adopt Skype. They want to improve on the adoption rate by new users; abandonment is an issue they are certainly conscious of. (Or does it help to answer the question as to, why, with over 300 million reported account registrations, are the ongoing usage rates in the range of 30 to 35 million "real users"?)
• Providing real time communications infrastructure is most efficiently handled when Skype can write in the native environment for each of the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. As a result they do not want to compromise the performance through using a cross platform environment but rather want to provide user experiences that users of each environment are accustomed to. Yet this diversity approach to each platform allows the team for one platform to pick up features and experiences from other platforms. For instance the conversation management user interface of Skype for Window 4.0 beta was picked up from experience with the Skype for Mac user interface with its "slide-out" drawers.

There were many more issues discussed; go over to Saunderslog.com's "Squawk Box June 20 - Skype 4.0" and listen to the complete interview.

Once again, if you wish to participate in the Skype 4.0 for Windows beta program, read our earlier post for download information but also read the caveats.

Tags: Skype, Skype for Windows 4.0 Beta, Squawk Box, Mike Bartlett, Alec Saunders, Saunderslog.com

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

SkypeSync is a Skype for Windows plug-in that pumps contact phone numbers from your mobile phone to your Skype account. This makes it easy to call your contacts via SkypeOut ("call phones"). This is an example of contact data portability.

A few questions with Andrey Goltsov, SkypeSync creator.

Skype Journal: Why did you make SkypeSync?

SJ: What do you like or would like to change about SyncML?

Andrey: SyncML - it is long story. I started work with SyncML a few years ago when at the beginning of SyncML standard. The main problem of SyncML (IMHO) that is is a weak standard and all SyncML provider (phone and sever) interpret this "standard" as they want. But a huge number of devices on the market support it. I think like 90% of phones with SyncML support and 10% of others (iPhone, WinPhone, Android etc).

SJ: Does SkypeSync work with the 3 Skypephone?

SJ: What advice would you give to other developers about working with Skype?

Andrey: Read the developer forum at the beginning. Remember that users have different versions of Skype running on different OSs.

About SyncML.

• SkypeSync uses SyncML (short for Synchronization Markup Language). SyncML is a protocol built in to nearly all smartphones, and most phones made in the last four years.
• Mobile phone companies In the United States have turned off SyncML for nearly all phones, with the exception of a handful from AT&T. 
• SyncML was adopted by the Open Mobile Alliance's Data Synchronization Working Group in 2002.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A little sanity moving into the blogosphere? Local blogging colleague Mark Evans¹, in a post earlier today, "The Wonderful World of Web 2.0 Whining", comments on the demands for seven nines reliability and unlimited support from "free" services:

It's bad enough no one wants to pay for anything, but the expectations placed on free services to deliver 99.99999% reliability are astounding. Come on, what do you expect for nothing?

Still, kvetching about popular services such as Twitter, Skype or Facebook when they have technical hiccups has become a popular game. When it happens, everyone wants to get into the action by complaining, criticizing, attacking and pontificating. The best one recently was Webware's Rafe Needleman suggesting Twitter should close until its technical issues are resolved.

Ha!

For some more rational thought on the warped sense of free these days, check out broadstuff, who succinctly pointed out that:

"There is this weird idea in the air that if something is free to a user it is free to produce, and thus must still reach all those other norms we take for granted in paid-for services, like reliability, privacy etc."

Continue reading "Will "Free" Remain a Key Feature of VoIP Services?" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

New service provides format- and platform-agnostic meeting scheduling and co-ordination across the web.

To date groupware's ability to perform meeting scheduling and coordination was limited to within an enterprise's groupware community of users -- i.e. - the employees and perhaps closely connected business associates. And everyone had to be using a common calendaring system running under a common operating system. Yet, studies show that over 60% of meetings will involve invitees who are not within this "enterprise cloud". Half of those "non-cloud" invitees do have a "good" relationship with the enterprise; the other half are those with whom employees would have "sporadic" meetings.

Tungle is an Internet-based service that provides the ability to share availability and manage meeting scheduling across the web. Currently the designated organizer of the meeting (who does not have to be an attendee) must be using Microsoft Outlook; however, the invitees can be running on any platform, whether Windows, Mac or even Blackberry; they simply need a web browser. And they can be using any calendaring application whether Outlook Calendar, Google Calendar, Mac's iCal, or within groupware such as Lotus Notes.

The Tungle client for meeting organizers has a single-click install as an Outlook plug-in. Upon installation it then searches your Outlook for both Contacts and your availability according to your Outlook Calendar. If it finds other Contacts who also have installed Tungle it marks them with an identifier "T" logo. You may then invite individual contacts to "share" their availability; those are the ones identified with the "T" logo on a solid purple background. Select one of those contacts and you will see in the Calendar screen that contact's availability.

Continue reading "Tungle - Taking Meeting Organization into the "Open"" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Single click access to PamConsult's PamFax to be integrated into Skype's Toolbars for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I have previously blogged about Skype's Toolbars for Firefox and Internet Explorer. At this point, these toolbars create a click-to-call from any number identified on a web page; they are optional with an installation of the Skype for Windows client. I use them quite often in my daily activities; simply click on the created Skype button, confirm that you are making a SkypeOut call and launch the call.

I have also previously blogged about PamFax, which effectively creates a Windows printer for sending documents (whether scanned in or in one of several Windows document formats) to any fax machine worldwide. Five or six clicks to send a fax.

Today I learned that PamConsult and the Skype Toolbar team have been working together to develop a click-to-fax extension to the Skype browser toolbars. While still in beta, you can download either of them here. For Firefox it becomes another plug-in that is an extension of the Skype Toolbar for Firefox.

Simply click on the link and, if you have previously installed PamFax, it launches with the fax number "pre-inserted". You can then scan in, or select, a document for faxing to the destination fax machine. Eventually this feature will be an option during installation of the Skype for Windows client. If you have not previously installed PamFax you will be taken to the PamFax download site.

PamConsult has also performed some service upgrades and announced a new referral-to-a-friend incentive program as outlined on this PamNews blog post.

Tags: PamFax, Skype, Skype Toolbar for Firefox, Skype Toolbar for Internet Explorer, Skype for Windows

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I reported on plans for VAPPS to rebrand its business grade conference calling service as HiDefConferencing. Well last week it happened. And the plans have been renamed to Pay-As-You-Go, HiDef 10/25/50/100 and HiDef Ultra for 500 participant calls. Each plan has Unlimited minutes for those accessing the call via Skype. A new plan, High Def Toll Free can support a call of up to 500 participants @$0.07 per minute per user but with no Skype access.

So why would you use HiDef/10 when you can have ten participant conference calls within Skype. It's about who is hosting the conference. With Skype Conference Calling, the host's PC is hosting the call and subject to interference arising from a range of issues from connection speed and quality to PC configuration (especially processor and RAM) to giving way to Outlook downloads. With HiDef Conferencing, VAPPS is hosting the call on one of its servers which is solely dedicated to managing the call. For $25 per month you can ensure VAPPS' business grade conferencing for up to ten participant calls.

A ten day free trial for a HiDef/25 account is available.

And recall that the reason for the HiDef rebranding is due to the service's support of HD Voice (wideband audio) for all participants who access a call via Skype. Fewer misunderstood words, inflections and accents as well as a high quality listening experience.

Tags: HiDef Conferencing, High Speed Conferencing, VAPPS Inc., Skype, Conference Calling

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We have previously posted about Jonathan Christensen's presentation at eComm 2008; here and here. As well we have referenced the transcript here. This past week eComm 2008 producer Lee Dryburgh was able to make available videos of the presentation. If you want to learn about the evolution of VoIP and how the conditions were ripe for the successful launch of Skype in the fall of 2003 as well as a discussion of the seeds of mobile Skype, take 30 minutes to watch it.

For easy follow along we have reposted the accompanying slides: (Power Point version here).

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last fall I reviewed Convenos Meeting Center, positioning it as "Your Conference Board Room on the Internet":

Convenos Meeting Center is a complete conference sharing collaborative environment suitable for both ad hoc and scheduled meetings as well as a virtual meeting room for "persistent", project-dedicated business activities such as key account sales strategizing or product management support.

I mentioned, however, that one shortcoming was that its Application Sharing was sluggish and found that Convenos only officially supported Internet Explorer as its platform. Last month Convenos released an upgrade that:

• has "lightning-fast" Application Sharing
• supports Firefox as a browser platform
• is Microsoft Vista tolerant (sessions have been known to run successfully on Vista platforms; they just are not sure they have found all the "gotchas".)
• reduces installation time by about 50%
• provides enhanced Outlook support for scheduling meetings

I did some basic application sharing tests this week and can report that the Application Sharing is very fast -- even transmitting some video (but not audio) from the PGA Tour site. Convenos incorporated a "mirror server" into their collaboration architecture to accomplish this.

As a default Firefox browser user, login to, and operation of, my ongoing "Test" Convenos Meeting Room worked just fine. One of the Convenos support staff, who served as another meeting participant during my trial session mentioned above, related a CMC experience where he did not realize two of the participants were on Vista until they mentioned it well into the session. On the other hand they want to do further testing before claiming full Vista compatibility.

If you are currently a Convenos user the upgrade will be offered automatically when you next log into your Convenos subscription. Should you encounter any difficulties with this route, then simply Uninstall your previous installation, reboot your PC and log back, you will have a successful upgrade. The end result performance is definitely worth taking the time to upgrade.

Convenos can be accessed either as an independent browser-based Windows application or as a Skype Extra as a complement to Skype conversations. The Convenos Meeting Center Extra, which recently received Skype certification, provides a complete "instant meeting" Convenos web conferencing mode which incorporates the upgraded Application Sharing . .

And in the same April Convenos newsletter, they remind of the "Green" benefit of collaboration in addition to the well-known cost and productivity benefits:

Did you know that aviation is the world's fastest growing man-made source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and is a major contributor to global warming? Per PlanetArk, 16,000 commercial airplanes release 600 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. A recent survey conducted by a leading unified communications consultancy group revealed that 70% of organizations surveyed rated "reducing organizational carbon footprints" as a key driver in their decision to invest in web conferencing and collaboration.

In these times of rapidly rising fuel prices, one more consideration for using collaboration tools.

Tags: Convenos, Convenos Meeting Center, application sharing, Skype Extras, Convenos Meeting Center Extra

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lee Dryburgh is gradually putting up videos from the eComm 2008 sessions. Today we have iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein's presentation about carrier friendly access to Skype. As mentioned in previous posts on this subject:

• iSkoot uses the robust circuit switched voice channel to connect to an iSkoot server running a Skype session -- generating at a minimum "local" minutes revenue for the carrier
• since calls terminate on Skype there are no termination charges to the carrier
• for the Skypephone service (currently on 3 in 9 countries), customer recruitment costs are minimized since no device subsidy is required.
• long distance
  • iSkoot on the Blackberry, Nokia N-series and E-series, Palm and about 40 other devices can make SkypeOut calls, still providing the carrier with "local" calling revenues while iSkoot receives a share of SkypeOut revenue
  • to faciliate adoption of the Skypephone by carriers, one can only make Skype calls (at no charge), but not SkypeOut calls, thereby leaving the carriers' long distance plans in tact.

Two parts to this presentation: the SD video is below: (alternative HD video)

... and the slides: (alternative PowerPoint version)

| View | Upload your own

Additional references:

• Skype on Mobile: North American Backhaul is the Ultimate Bottleneck
• What VoIP on Mobile Can Learn from SS7
• 3 Skypephone: It's All About the User Experience

Tags: iSkoot, eComm2008, Mark Jacobstein, Skype, SkypeOut, 3, Skypephone, Blackberry, Nokia

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

OnState has been the pioneer in providing full service call center solutions that not only employ Skype's various conversation modes but also use Zimbra to offer a complete multi-modal Unified Communications suite that incorporates conversation recording and archiving, email management and call back capabilities. Call center agents can be contacted via live chat, free inbound Skype calls, toll-free inbound lines as well as traditional PSTN lines and email.

As an initial target market, they have built a full service solution for technical support operations such as that operated by B4 Consulting, a SAP Channel Partner. B4 Consulting needs to provide 24/7 support as they are involved in SAP Business One installations across enterprises with worldwide operations. As a result they have implemented OnState's Call Center for Skype to deliver real-time customer support. From the press release:

The OnState CallCenter for Skype™ is integral to B4 Consulting’s delivery of its global Application Management Services for the SAP Business One application, SAP’s affordable business management solution for growing businesses. B4 Consulting’s Web-integrated call center capitalizes on the full range of OnState’s multiple communications modes and customer contact options. This includes concurrent Skype chat and voice, Skype voicemail, dynamic call recording, and callbacks. Customers can initiate contact with agents via live chat, free inbound Skype calls, toll-free inbound lines, as well as non-Skype traditional landline and email. Additionally, the OnState CallCenter is integrated with B4 Consulting’s customer relationship management system.

It is interesting to note B4's observation that "most customer conversations begin with voice and evolve to other communication modes, principally chat." And once communications with their customers have commenced, live chat is the favored communications mode. All customer contact, conversations, email, and chat exchanges are easily recorded in B4 Consulting’s CRM system for historical reference.

Two quotes from the press release help to put this into perspective:

Continue reading "OnState Announces Multi-Modal Solution for Technical Support" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A panel discussion involving participants from an industry consultant, a mobile carrier, Google, Skype and Nokia.

Moderator: Brough Turner (NMS Communications)

Panelists: Martin Geddes (STL Partners), Stanley Chia (Vodafone), Sumit Agarwal (Google), Jonathan Christensen (Skype), Christopher Allen (iPhoneWebDev.com), Benoit Schillings (Trolltech/Nokia)

Tags: eComm 2008, Wireless Innovation, Brough Turner, Martin Geddes, Stanley Chia, Sumit Agarwal, Jonathan Christensen, Christopher Allen, Benoit Schillings

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

VoIP blogger and Italian IP-communications entrepreneur Luca Filigheddu, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at eComm 2008, reports on speculation that RIM is looking to build a developer team focused on the iPhone. He points to a post on Apple Insider by Aidan Malley who has become aware of a new internal job listing at RIM that suggests RIM is "willing to jump the fence and write applications for the iPhone":

Among the requirements are a very strong emphasis on existing experience with Mac development, including programming in both Cocoa and Objective C as well as user interface design.

Web experience with Javascript, XML, and other functions is also essential. Experiences with developing for the Mac's Sync Services feature and interfacing with Bluetooth and USB devices are both considered assets, according to the company.

If Apple wants to enter the enterprise market with a "push" wireless email application, consider what it takes to come up to RIM's level of enterprise market penetration with their Blackberry Enterprise Server:

• over 200,000 installations on MS Exchange, Lotus Notes (and even Novell GroupWare)
• over 200 business rules supported
• security that has been endorsed by NATO, as well as government organizations in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Austria, Australia and New Zealand
• relationships with over 300 wireless carriers
• Blackberry patents on push email
• a range of products: Pearl, Curve and 88x0 series
• a broad range of third party applications, many of which have an enterprise focus

Also check out Al Sacco's Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone is NO Blackberry over at Crackberry.com.

On the other hand we hear rumors of a Blackbery 9000 with touch screen technology - the iPhone's strongest selling point.And surely a feature for which Apple has patents or patent applications outstanding. RIM has already negotiated deals with Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Palm for its Blackberry Connect which essentially licenses RIM's wireless push email technology for use on certain of their devices such as the Nokia E-series smartphones.

I would take Luca's speculation on RIM and Apple negotiations one step further. Each side has technology that the other requires to succeed in their respective quests for market share (and to mutually grow the overall smartphone market). If there are such negotiations under way, they're about cross licensing each other's patents to achieve their goals without ending up in messy and costly litigation.

Hat tip to Dan York for pointing me to Luca's post.

Full disclosure: when I was employed in the magnetic resonance spectroscopy business three decades ago (used for determining molecular structure in chemical and biochemical analysis), I was peripherally involved in a patent settlement where both my employer and their major competitor ended up resolving some technology-critical patent disputes through a cross-licensing because each party only had part of a comprehensive solution required to advance the use of the technology. Much of that technology has since been licensed by GE, Siemens and others to develop the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Tags: Blackberry, RIM, iPhone, Luca Filigheddu, Apple Insider, Aidan Malley, Blackberry Connect, Al Sacco, Crackberry.com

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I posted about how a security issue was discovered with iSkoot for Symbian phones only and the response from iSkoot. Today iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein reports on the iSkoot blog confirming that the problem only existed on a non-production version of the Symbian client and that a new (secure) version will be out by Wednesday, April 30. Most importantly Mark concludes with:

We wish to express our sincere thanks to Phoneboy for identifying the issue. As he notes, “there’s absolutely no excuse for not encrypting the information with SSL” - we completely agree, which is why we use SSL encryption on every production build.

Earlier today on the VoIPSA blog Dan York published a chronology of the weekend's activity outlining how the blogosphere assisted in bringing about a satisfactory resolution to the issue. Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch talks about how the blogosphere really is passionate about seeing Skype succeed and really wants to help.

This is how the blogosphere helps and will continue to do so. Smart companies embrace passion. It's only insecure executives who fear their help.

PhoneBoy himself debates whether he followed the right process by exposing a "zero day exploit" without first approaching the vendor.

And, in closing, it was only at Jeff Pulver's VON Social Networking Breakfast where there was an event attended by PhoneBoy, Mark Jacobstein, Andy and myself along with other VoIP bloggers. (Dan was at another conference in Orlando or would have been there also.) But I first had the opportunity to meet Mark the previous week at eComm 2008 where he not only presented the iSkoot story but also had iSkoot sponsor lunch on the first day of the conference. How did I know it was Mark at lunch? He had a Skypephone sitting on the table.

Tags: iSkoot, Mark Jacobstein, PhoneBoy, Dameon Welch-Abernathy, Dan York, VoIPSA, Andy Abramons, VoIP Watch

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One benefit of the network of bloggers that has built up around IP-based communications is the ability to identfiy, define and resolve issues in time frames not even imaginable prior to the Internet and the blogosphere. Over the past few months uberblogger PhoneBoy (Dameon Welch-Abernathy) along with Disruptive Telephony's Dan York, who is also involved with the Voice over IP Security Alliance, have become two sources I will often defer to when I need to confirm the integrity of a vendor's claim or the viability of an issue related to telecommunications, especially when it comes to security.

Last fall Dameon (pictured right) worked with me to confirm that Skype's High Quality Video really did provide a superior video communications performance. Recently he was wondering about the quality of audio conference calling until he learned about, and experienced, VAPPS' High Definition Conferencing. Now, I don't know about how you spend your Friday evenings, but it seems that Dameon got an urge this past Friday evening to check out iSkoot's security when using iSkoot's Symbian S60 client on a Nokia N95. Dameon found and reported a security leak that would expose your SkypeID and password -- under very stringent conditions. Dan York followed up with a post on the VoIPSA blog.

To find the security issue you needed to be accessing iSkoot via WiFi on a Nokia N-series phone (in this case an N95) via a home-based WiFi router. And you needed to have the WEP or WPA password for the router and be within radio range (sniffing distance) of the router. And you needed to know how to do a packet trace via a tcpip dump.

Once reported iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein then called his developer team into action early today (Sunday). Around 4 p.m. I learned that the iSkoot team had been in touch with Dameon while Dan and I received the following statement:

Unfortunately, it turns out that Dameon was right. We’re not sure how, but a non-production Symbian build ended up on the site, and it had this bug. We’re pulling the build and fixing the bug and will be doing a forced upgrade to every Symbian user as soon as possible. We also checked all the other builds, and they’re all fine (Windows Mobile, Blackberry, J2ME, etc.)

Thanks to Dameon and Dan for their diligence in identifying and confirming the issue -- score one for the blogosphere. And thanks to Mark and his iSkoot team for acknowledging -- so quickly over a weekend -- that there was an issue and for dealing with it so promptly -- score one for iSkoot.

Bottom line - the blogosphere helped identify and communicate an issue back to the vendor's management team; iSkoot did not try to hide behind any PR spin or mask but rather acknowledged and resolved the issue in a very timely manner. And it all happened over a weekend; now if Dameon would just recognize that there are better things to do on a Friday evening than hacking routers.

And, as an aside. It was VON Spring that provided an opportunity for many of these bloggers to meet not only with other bloggers (and where I first met Dameon in person) but also executives such as recently appointed iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein who attended the Pulver Social Networking breakfast. The recently reported demise of PulverMedia, and with it the VON conferences, will be a serious blow to building a enthusiastic, effective and communicative IP-communications community. Certainly our meeting at this event made it easier to communicate between bloggers and vendor to address this issue over this past weekend.

Related Posts:

• iSkoot - Providing Carrier Friendly Access for Skype
• 3 Skypephone - It's All About the User Experience
• Security, Skype and the Blackberry

Tags: iSkoot, PhoneBoy, Dameon Welch-Abernathy, Dan York, Disruptive Communications, Mark Jacobstein, Symbian S60, Nokia N95, Skype High Quality Video, VAPPS, High Definition Conferencing, Blackberry, VoIPSA, VoIP Security Alliance

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

Becomes an Extra Premium; implements major server upgrade.

While email and VoIP technology have changed our communications patterns, it seems that faxing still has its place as a communications mode. The growth of PamFax as a worldwide fax service using Skype's underlying Skype Extras infrastructure is demonstrable proof.

A key advantage of PamFax is that it works from a Windows-based PC on any Internet connection worldwide and can readily send a fax to any fax terminal worldwide in about five or six simple steps. Amongst its features PamFax can serve as a Windows printer. It can accept input directly from an Office document or scanner. It's available to use any time that you may need it; there are no upfront payments, subscriptions or registration required.

Since its launch last summer (with a major feature upgrade in late December) this winner of last summer's Skype Mashup competition has steadily increased its usage to a point that proves that sending faxes is still a robust, widely acceptable, widely used communications tool. In January I had occasion to use it to recover tickets forgotten for an event. Dick Schiferli, CEO at PamFax publisher PamConsult, has provided some interesting numbers that demonstrate the ongoing viability of fax services:

• almost 25,000 users have installed PamFax with over 1,000 new installations per week
• average fax is 1.57 pages
• 58% of users who take advantage of the initial free page offer come back to send at least one more revenue generating fax
• paid faxes are averaging 6.5 pages
• for progress notification, 88% of all faxes use Skype chat while 25% use email (both options can be selected)

Christoph Buenger, CTO at PamConsult and lead developer of PamFax, reports recently in their blog that PamFax has received the "Skype Certified" designation. ":

Now you can be sure that this add-on for Skype does what we promise and is of high quality. The certification-team at Skype did some very intense tests of PamFax and also helped us improving the add-on.

And over the past few days, PamConsult has upgraded the PamFax infrastructure and architecture such that:

• A much larger number of formats (>100) are supported
• Independent clusters are running in both Europe and North America
• Fax processing speed and server availability are improved (the 2-page PamFax referenced in the chat session above was sent out at about 8:35 a.m.)

In a PamNews.com blog post Dick states:

We are coming up to 25.000 PamFax users now and have made some decisions how to further improve the platform. In the past 9 months we have seen some issues we don’t like and which impact performance and/or system flexibility. Users have also been providing excellent and valuable feedback.

In sending the fax referenced in the chat session above to ensure the new setup is working I noticed that PamFax needs to add a time stamp to the date information associated with the fax. This would be necessary for any use by the legal profession or anyone involved in time sensitive transactions.

Much like Skype provides real time communications worldwide agnostic to service providers, HD Conferencing from VAPPS provides high quality audio conferencing capabilities worldwide agnostic to service providers, PamFax is growing in its provision of fax services worldwide agnostic to service providers.

Tags: PamFax, Skype Extra, PamConsult, Dick Schiferli, Christoph Buenger, HD Conferencing, Skype, Skype Certified

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In previous posts I have reviewed VAPPS, Inc.'s audio conferencing service and its recent relaunch to incorporate high definition (HD) voice. To the user it means that all participants calling into the VAPPS conference bridge from Skype will hear the other participants accessing the call via Skype at the full HD Voice bandwidth.

Recently I reported on PhoneBoy's experience; today Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom reports on a six hour conference call where, only after the call, he found from his administrator that the call had been booked on VAPPS High Speed Conferencing.

Pricing is very competitive and with full recording of the conferences for free I have just opened an account for Cubic. One extra positive point is the fact that I now find a use for the 3 Skypephone that’s been sitting on my desk for months. I can Skype dial into conference calls whilst out and about at zero cost.

Congrats to VAPPS on an excellent product.

Yesterday VAPPS announced two new directions:

• a forthcoming rebranding of the service, to be called High Definition Conferencing (HD-C)
• publishing of an upgraded Skype Extra supporting nine languages depending on your Skype profile language selection.

In fact I interviewed Ben using HD Conferencing where he used its recording feature to capture our conversation:

Inteview with Ben Lilienthal - High Definition Conferencing

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

Ben provided a description of HD Voice, as well as why PSTN and cell phone access has a lower level of quality, and talked about why HD voice is important to a conference call. Note the recording itself is a demonstration of high definition voice; the only editing done to this 16IKHz mono file was to truncate silent spots; there was no background noise filtering or any other effects that might impact the original recording's waveform integrity.

Update: Andy comments on the recording

I for one have been using the HiDef service for a while, and actually was one of the first trial set of ears that Ben called on even before his company became a client. The difference is immediately noticeable between a regular audio conference and a HiDef Conference in what can best be described as tone and audio richness.

In both cases the information disseminated by the use of the call recording and podcast tools clearly demonstrates how VoIP in the middle makes for new ways to communicate. For broadcasters and podcasters the tools available today far outweigh what was there only a few years ago, and pretty much have to be putting companies who make high priced audio gear for broadcasters on the ropes. None of what was done cost anyone any money to record, encode, produce and publish. That's flattening and leveling in my book.

Tags: Skype, VAPPS, High Speed Conferencing, Ben Lilienthal, HD Voice, Pat Phelan, PhoneBoy

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype internal blogger Villu Arak today published an interview with Skype's new CEO, Josh Silverman. Josh has had four weeks, spent largely with the developer team in Tallinn, to dig into Skype's activities and to start to triage a picture of where Skype should be heading. Read Villu's complete interview but a few key statements:

Initial observations:

Where I can perhaps add value is to help us focus us on the "Vital Few" - the (very) few things we're going to commit to delivering with excellence; as opposed to the "Worthless Many" - the long list of very good ideas which, if we tried to tackle them all, would bring us to our knees. The hard part about prioritization isn't saying "no" to bad ideas, that's easy. It's saying "no" to the good ones in order to deliver on the truly essential and/or breakthrough projects that really drives focus through an organization.

Core interest of the Skype community at heart:

Besides keeping communication within the Skype cloud free, there are two things we need to deliver very well: incredible ease of use and world-class sound and video. Everything else wins us bonus points.

Skype's priorities in 2008 and beyond:

....this year we'll make video - including multiparty video - more prominent and, er, easier to use. But more generally, I talk about end-to-end ease of use. It goes far beyond making the green call button easier to find. We're looking at every aspect, every stage of the user journey. From when you download the client and make your first call, all the way through the range of products we have, from the desktop to mobile. We're going to focus on where the biggest pain-points are along that journey, in order to make the whole experience seamless and delightfully easy.

Existing things you'd like to fix:

At the top of my "now" agenda is this: radical ease of use. Skype still confuses some people, so we're digging even deeper to achieve step function change.

On developer partners:

Philosophically speaking, I do think we need to continue building a robust ecosystem and supporting the developer community as best we can. I'm taking a little time to understand where we are and what the next steps should be. Soon, I'll share more thoughts on this on the Skype Developer Zone blog.

And on the prospect of eBay selling Skype:

Skype is a strong, profitable business with 61% year-on-year revenue growth and 309 million registered users, with 33 million added in Q1 2008. eBay has just made a huge investment in Skype by removing the earn-out. We have new management in place, and with the earnout out of the way, we measure ourselves by our ability to delight our users. [SJ link added] That's our focus. That's our test.

We understand that Josh will make himself available for external interviews within the next few weeks, once he has had time to complete his review of Skype's entire business. There are lots of challenges in Josh's statements and lots of promise. As he stated at the end of one response: "But let me get through the first hundred days and let's take stock of our progress in the summer."

Tags: Skype, Josh Silverman, Villu Arak, Skype Blog, Skype video, Skype audio, Skype Developer Program

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

New CEO Josh Silverman has been on the job for three weeks now but little, if anything, has been heard to date beyond Josh's initial blog post at the time of the announcement of his appointment. The comments to this post reveal a lot of "great expectations".

• Andy Abramson speculates: Skype Suffering Bad Press Due to Silence of New CEO. On the other hand eBay is in the quiet period prior to their earnings announcement due out later today so his hands may be tied by SEC regulations.

Yet the Skype ecosystem continues to thrive:

• The Skype Business Control Panel has been upgraded to bring it closer to a realistic Skype for Business management tool. Easier addition of new employees; a new members' directory, better call reporting and an increased limit (to €1,000) of Skype purchases are amongst the new features.
• A Skype-initiated research report on conference calling indicates an appetite for increased use of both voice and video conference calling by small-to-medium businesses (SMB's) over the next 12 months. While it's easy to speculate on reduced travel costs as a driver, it's really the ability to more readily and spontaneously launch a conference call and to use them in situations where previously input and consensus would not be sought due to the overhead and "nuisance" costs involved that has to be a key factor in the increases forecast. It's largely a matter of training more employees about the simplicity of IM messaging and ease of setting up ad hoc conference calls. Computer Business Review interviewed Skype's business product development manager, Wilhelm Lundborg for additional comment:

"There have been several developments in the way we work and communicate. Businesses have become more global in their scope; employers are offering more flexible working arrangements such as working from home, and there is a willingness to cut back on timely and costly travel, in order to reduce carbon footprints,"

Continue reading "Whither Skype? Definitely Not Withering!" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Erik Lagerway posts that it starts today, ends 10 May 2008. Combine the Highrise API (crm, contact manager) and the Lypp API (conference calling) to make something useful, functional, and simple. Contests vie for recognition, $5000 in Apple gift certificates, 35,000 Lypp minutes, and free Highrise MAX subscriptions.

Highrise is somewhere between a light CRM system and a an address book.

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

One unique aspect of Skype is its very "fluid" or simple approach to adding a another contact to a Skype call to build a conference call. Select "Add a Caller", select the contact to be added (or enter a phone number, if on SkypeOut), click "OK" and the caller is added. I find I am having more frequent multi-party calls as a result of this simplicity of establishing conference calls for up to 10 participants.

In the past web collaboration has been associated with structured meetings, involving scheduling, emailing invitations and other activities just to set up a desktop sharing session. But a "fluid collaboration" (YouTube video) approach - that allows users to spontaneously escalate conversations from voice and text to incorporate desktop sharing, persistent file sharing and whiteboarding - provides a more intuitive ad hoc process. Yugma's Web Collaboration for desktop sharing has an architecture that has taken this approach.

Another user consideration: The increased acceptance of both Mac (a record 2.1 million sold in the fiscal 2007 fourth quarter) and Linux (especially Ubuntu) platforms in the market a has led to rising demand for Skype Extras that run on these platforms. A good place to start is a desktop sharing application that is effectively agnostic to the operating system and runs seamlessly in cross-platform scenarios.

Yugma, who has been providing desktop sharing services for a couple of years, recently released a version 3 upgrade to its Yugma Skype Edition, Once installed on a Windows platform simply go to Tools | Do More in the Skype for Windows client and "YugmaSE Team Collaboration" will appear on the drop-down list; on the Mac, install Yugma from the Yugma website and then simply start Yugma Skype. Currently Linux participants can view a session but not host one.

Initiating a session: Once Yugma Skype has been installed via the Skype Extras menu, the ad hoc launch process involves:

• launching the host's Yugma Skype client via Skype's Tools | Do More menu¹
• inviting the participants available as Skype Contacts via an "Invite Participants" window 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

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

Continue reading "Yugma Skype Edition Version 3: Fluid Collaboration" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This afternoon I was directed to the March issue of the Skype Developer Program newsletter, which, in some ways, is probably the last newsletter for the current program. Two items stand out:

(Interim) head of SDP, Peeter P. "Wolli" Mõtsküla, admits that, despite over 50 million Skype Extras downloads, the Skype Extras program has not exactly been a revenue success story for Skype. It appears that the Partner program will be transitioning to come under the Skype for Business group in London. In this regard, Peeter has announced that as of April 1, Skype's share of a Partner's Extras revenue will drop to zero, at least to the end of 2008. He ends with "Whatever you make will be yours to keep -- with one exception: if you make our business customers happy, we'll keep them".

This is followed by an item by "Guest Writer", Shane McNulty of the Skype for Business group who talks about how, in spite of initially growing up with a consumer value proposition at its heart, Skype's customer base has seen the emergence of a "community of Small Businesses (SMB's) getting value from Skype".

Skype can track a segment of its Business Community by looking at those who subscribe to the Business Control Panel and download the Business Version of Skype (www.skype.com/business). This Business community contains a highly concentrated number of Skype customers that contribute disproportionately high levels of activity. In addition to this segment there is also a much larger community of business customers that are leveraging Skype for Business purposes. Through research Skype has discovered that approx 30% of Skype customers are business customers.

Further along Shane states:

In addition to Skype Products, Skype for Business is aware of the need for strategic partnerships with Hardware & Software Vendors to provide complete solutions. Skype will continue to develop relationships with those partners that provide additional benefits to Skype customers. With these partnerships we can offer even richer solutions that reach out to more potential customers and satisfy the different set of needs that businesses have. If you have a solution that would benefit Skype Business customers then lets hear it, we want your valued input.

The Skype for Business team is integrating into the competitive landscape in the SMB space and, therefore, understands the need to articulate the Business proposition offered to both existing and potential customers to increase the breadth of our business customer base and increase the satisfaction of those that have already seen the light. So keep your eyes open for more to come from Skype for Business.

Reading between the lines it would appear:

• The Skype API's will continue to evolve and be supported. But a new roadmap awaits the direction of the Skype for Business team.
• Skype is placing its hardware and software Vendor Partner relationships with the group that can own the relationship from a business perspective, instead of simply a technology partnership.

One of the pleasures of my past two years writing for Skype Journal has been the opportunity to meet many of Skype's Vendor Partners. These entrepreneurs see the potential for Skype and want it badly to succeed. Many have invested six and seven figure numbers in the development of both hardware and software platforms embedding Skype. They envision the potential for both the technology and its impact on business processes.

Having been on the management team of a corporate restructuring many years ago I am seeing many parallels at Skype. New management needs to get a full picture of the business environment, instill business disciplines - including marketing and business development discipline - and execute on a new plan. These newsletter posts would appear to confirm that each segment of Skype itself is coming under review and looking for the business justification.

Skype is a very high profile case of excellent technology -- with ongoing improvements demonstrated by High Quality Video and many aspects of the Skype 3.8 beta released last week -- but business operations that need the application of Business 101 basics. I am encouraged by the appointment of a CEO who is not a telecomm executive (don't need experience from failing former monopolies) and his experience and success with other startups. [Disclosure: I have never met Josh nor spoken with him but have used Evite.com many times.] It is the hope of all Skype's fans - consumers, business users and business partners -- that Josh can find the formula for taking Skype to the next level and, at the same time, result in a "delightful user experience". That would also delight the many business partners who have invested their time, effort and money in becoming part of the Skype ecosystem.

Tags: Skype, Skype for Business, Peeter P. "Wolli" Mõtsküla, Shane McNulty, Skype Developer Program, Josh Silverman

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In a simplistic world, it is easy to view the mobile smartphone as the PC in your pocket when the truth is the mobile smartphone is not the PC in your pocket. The path to low cost or free mobile calling to our friends and business colleagues worldwide is not necessarily through a replication of what works on an PC.

Meanwhile carriers have been using VoIP in their backend, transparently to the caller and called party, for about a decade in order to lower their cost of carrying long distance calls between legacy PSTN phones - both landline and wireless. Adoption of wireless VoIP at the end points with the five nines (99.999%) reliability, call quality and scalability of the current circuit-switched TDM wireless networks requires significant infrastructure advances and developments not only at the device level but also at the network level. The wireless VoIP goal remains fraught with obstacles and barriers that are inhibiting its deployment:

• Mobile devices do not have the internal resources of a desktop or laptop PC. Battery life, memory and CPU speeds are all too underperforming at this time to be able to provide a consumer friendly, high quality service. Even the ability to multi-task with multiple applications becomes an issue.
• Robust, scalable network connections are an issue. Current carrier backhaul capacity, especially in North America, is insufficient to support a scalable service at the level required for the demands VoIP would place on data transmission.
• Call quality issues, especially inherent latency and availability of open sockets, still do not make for a consistent call quality.
• Inherent codecs and other support at both the network and device level within the wireless TDM infrastructure address otherwise device resource hogging issues such as echo cancellation and error correction.
• And, most importantly, it does not provide a carrier-friendly business model. Filling the data pipe while attempting to reduce the billable "minutes of use" (MOU) is not appealing to a carrier executive who's responsible for increasing average revenue per user (ARPU).

Continue reading "iSkoot - Providing Carrier Friendly Access for Skype Calls." »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | 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)

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)

VoIP News has come out with a post discussing what author Jim Higdon deems are "The 5 Best Skype Extras". Jim presents a most interesting perspective on the dyslexic nature of Skype with its superb technology yet turbulent business performance in his statement:

With an unsteady performance since its purchase by eBay Inc., its founder’s costly departure, the emergence of Skype spam, significant competition, outages and poor customer service, many have speculated that Skype could be the next item for auction at eBay. Yet, despite all the bad news and crabby blog posts, more than 100 million people worldwide are registered Skype users, and 60,000 new users sign up every day.

A few comments:

• In my work I am finding that "collaboration" is a catch-all for any service providing an opportunity for a "group", whether two parties or several hundred, and whether unilaterally or interactively, to concurrently communicate together. Ranks right up there in terms of confusion and misuse with the phrase "Unified Communications". Yugma Skype Edition and Lotus Sametime Unyte are desktop sharing applications providing support for conversations, whether voice, text and/or video, while Convenos and Webex historically have provided fully-featured virtual office and virtual conferencing capabilities with voice as an embedded element of the overall collaborative experience.. Different tools for different target markets here
  
• With so many of my network of contacts acquiring Macs these days, I do find that, with Yugma's cross-platform capability which Jim highlights, I am using it as my de facto desktop sharing application in presentations and discussions.
  
• Having had a chance to see both the Sony PlayStationPortable and Sony mylo COM-2 at CES, I have to say the latter offers the more intriguing embedding of Skype. Whereas the PSP only offers voice, the second generation mylo offers both voice and IM along with use of Skype file transfer to send pictures and other files. In fact, I have seen one review where the new mylo should be considered as good competition for the iPod Touch.
  
• Hat tip to Andy for pointing out Jim's post. Note Andy's comments:

What I'm seeing with the add-ins is how Skype has really become a pipe within a pipe, something I felt was coming around the time of eBay's acquisition. With each add-in it becomes easier and easier for two way communications users to build their world around Skype for many interactive, one on one activities, like web conferencing and desktop sharing. This Top 5 list bears that out once again.

Other Skype Journal posts on Jim's Top 5:

• Skylook: A Skype Extras Success Story
• A Most Interesting Skype Mashup: OnState Expands Into Unified Messaging
• OnState CEO Provides More Background
• Brandon Holland and His Affinity for the Echo123 Girl (Skype on AppleTV)

Tags: Skype, Skype Extras, VoIP News, Jim Higdon, VoIP Watch, Sony PlayStationPortable, Sony mylo, Andy Abramson, Skylook, AppleTV, OnState Communications, OnState Unified Messaging

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

Over the past few weeks I have been calling into Alec Saunders' daily SquawkBox where he uses iotum's Free Conference Call on Facebook to discuss (and record) the issues of the day, usually with five to ten participants. In what was the best attended (17 participants) and most lively session yet, Dan York hosted (while Alec flew home from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain) a very engaging interview with Lee Dryburgh, founder of the Emerging Communications Conference (eComm 2008). Later Dan interviewed Thomas Howe, one of the eComm speakers and threw the session open for questions and commentary.

When Alec arrived home this afternoon, he put up a post on today's SquawkBox where you can also click to hear the entire animated discussion.

At one point I had to challenge the contention that Skype usage is falling off. During the past week, concurrent online users has approached (but not crossed) 12 million around noon hour EST (GMT-5) - a long way from the sub-10 million numbers prior to Christmas. (And Borderless Communicator Hudson Barton figures there had to be 1.68 million new Skype users in the past month - I captured today's snapshot since his charts are updated very frequently.) Also, while not widely publicized, Skype accounts from North America almost doubled in 2007 using eBay's reported U.S. percentages as a proxy where US revenue increased 85%. Now if eBay would just release the same customer numbers as released by other US telcos instead of the SEC required bare minimum...

Lee and I briefly chatted about the complex issue of data portability and how it plays in this revolution on the call, but this is a huge problem that we're really only beginning to understand. The telecom industry doesn't understand it all, but the innovators are really beginning to grasp it's full import. Data, our personal data, is a resource. In the world of social media, it may be our most important personal resource. As we learn how to share it effectively with our devices, and with our family, friends and colleagues, the ability to store all this information under our own control somewhere in the "cloud" so it can be accessed any time, anywhere from any device.

Tags: eComm 2008, SquawkBox, Dan York, Lee Dryburgh, Thomas Howe, Skype, Hudson Barton, Alec Saunders, Free Conference Call on Facebook, eBay, Ken Camp, Sheryl Breuker

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype's Halina Mugame, editor of the Skype Developer Program newsletter and weblog, yesterday interviewed OnState CEO Pat Kelly and started her interview, "Less Mess with Unified Messaging", by referencing Skype Journal's recent post announcing OnState's Unified Messaging offering. Questions included:

• Tell us more about this new product. In comparison with current OnState Call Center solution, what new features will be made available via mash-up with Zimbra?
• What makes Zimbra a good solution to integrate with OnState?

But the best line is the last:

Oh, and the important bit, they do all this at an industry-redefining price point.

Read Halina's full post for more background on how OnState's Unified Messaging offering evolved out of their Call Center service.

Tags: Skype, OnState, OnState Unified Messaging, Halina Mugame, Pat Kelly

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This evening Lee Dryburgh, who took the initiative (and risk) to launch the forthcoming Emerging Communications Conference (eComm 2008) issued a "Call for Telecom Industry Wake-Up" where he states:

Communications innovation has been stagnant, in my opinion, for nearly a decade. Telecommunications and Internet communications both seem to be at somewhat of an impasse. The communications industry needs a forum to help break through the stagnancy and highlight the huge opportunity space that is emerging.

Further on Lee states:

The decade long planned protocol basis for delivering a multi-modal client into consumer play (SIP/SIMPLE) has shown little traction; it should be noted that this is the same protocol basis that operators are now hinging their future services around.

Instead four years ago a single private company (Skype) delivered a multi-modal client which was architecturally novel (peer-to-peer based), using their own proprietary protocol and which has gone on to be the most downloaded program in Internet history. So the SIP/SIMPLE vision to “re-engineer the telephone system from the ground up” is off course at best.

Over two years ago Alec Saunders issued his Voice 2.0 Manifesto, pointing out that the value-add for voice going forward will be in the applications. Thomas Howe, with many years' experience involving communications and web services, is building a business around Communications Enhanced Business Processes (CEBP). Dan York is expressing frustration in the realization of interoperability between Skype and other VoIP communications networks. In Lee's interview two weeks ago with Jonathan Christensen, one of those involved in the early days of SIP and now responsible for much of the new technology coming out of Skype, (and the leadoff keynote speaker at eComm 2008), Jonathan laments that..

the vision of the early SIP founders has been largely unrealized in the SIP world. SIP is typically just used for these very mundane trunking applications, like the one that we have, or sending calls between two networks and it's just calls. The vision of multi-modal communications and rich end points has largely failed within the same.

Interesting starting points for the conversations and presentations at eComm 2008. If you're in the telecom business responsible for future ongoing revenues or launching new services you want to attend (and participate). Register here and use "skypejournal08" as a discount code to save 15%.

Tags: eComm 2008, Lee Dryburgh, Alec Saunders, Voice 2.0 Manifesto, Thomas Howe, CEBP, Jonathan Christensen, Skype

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Buried in the Yahoo assets that Microsoft covets is recently acquired Zimbra, "a leader in Open Source, next generation messaging and collaboration software". Amongst Zimbra's product line, the initial offering of Zimbra's Unified Messaging is based on a partnership with Asterisk, the open source VoIP provider. Zimbra has an extensive list of service provider, business and education customers; Comcast has teamed up with Zimbra to offer Comcast's Unified Messaging portal. And I have personally heard positive comments about Zimbra from a couple of third parties.

Yesterday, OnState Communications, provider of the OnState Call Center for Skype announced an expansion of their product line to add OnState Unified Messaging for Skype - a mashup of OnState, Skype and Zimbra. Basically this is a hosted service that involves, for the user, a web client along with an agent that captures Skype chat sessions, on-demand voice recording and voice mail, allows tagging of these conversations and integration with email, a calendar and an address book such as to provide one point access to all your messaging activities. An integrated and advanced search engine with a simple WYSIWYG feature allows for rapid recovery of relevant communications in any mode. From the press release:

Continue reading "A Most Interesting Skype Mashup: OnState Expands Into Unified Messaging" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have often written about Yugma Skype, a recently Skype-certified cross platform desktop sharing Skype Extra, that complements voice and chat with desktop sharing collaborative activities. While the basic version is free and will allow up to ten participants, there is a 500 participant version that needs some robustness testing.

Yugma's COO, Karel Lukas, has put up for "public" viewing, via a 500-user Yugma Premium account, his Mac desktop; with the widgets shown and either a CNN or BBC page's refreshing often, it is somewhat dynamic. Reality desktop sharing comes to the Skype ecosystem!

Click here to view; let's see how many concurrent users it can go to. You will be asked for a user name and email address (privacy policy applies). Note that the window coming up is the Remote Viewer version that requires no software download. It will also open a tab in your browser, whether Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari; as there is no download, that tab needs to be left open to continue viewing. It will be left up over the coming weekend at a minimum.You may even be able to watch Karel at work, should he elect to use his Mac! Oh, and while Karel is based in Minneapolis, for some reason he likes the weather in San Francisco better.

The full interactive version of Yugma allows remote keyboard and mouse control, changing presenters, file sharing and several other features, including links to Skype and/or PSTN audio.

Tags: Skype, Yugma Skype, Skype Extras, Karel Lukas

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If Skype's auto-update feature has not told you already (which you would encounter when logging out of and back into Skype anytime after 10 a.m. EST this morning), Skype released a hotfix update this morning which addresses some security and crashing issues.

In particular the cross-zone scripting vulnerability that led to closing access to the Metacafe and Dailymotion video sources for sharing via Skype Chat windows and mood message feature has been addressed. Issues such as the inability to answer a second call and to start video when plugging in a webcam during a call have also been resolved. On the other hand while the hotfix has addressed several situations that were causing the Skype client to crash, I still lost a call this afternoon where my Skype client "self-closed" when a called party answered my call. A complete list of fixes is at the link above.

This version also introduces a whitelist/blacklist feature designed to prevent malicious use of the Skype API and potential worm attacks. More details are in the January Developer Newsletter with the following article summary:

Recent attacks to Skype public API have made [it] imperative to define a solution in fighting worm and virus attacks to it. Following up a request by the Security Team to address this issue and take a preventive action, this type of attack also puts at stake Skype’s reliability and security towards our user base.

There will be two levels of White- and Blacklist - Local and Global.

Download the hotfix release here. It can also be accessed via "Help | Check for Updates" in your Skype client. Highly recommended if only for the security issues addressed.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

My first exposure to web collaboration came with my former employer Quarterdeck, who in their mid-90's days of developing applications for use on the Internet, had acquired a company that provided whiteboarding and application sharing. It was quite a feat in an era of 50 to 100 MHz Pentium-based PC's and max 33 kbps dailup modems. One morning in early 1996, at 5 a.m,, while at home near Toronto, I came down to participate in a London, UK analyst conference where we demonstrated this collaboration tool between a host in London, a colleague in Paris and myself near Toronto. Since then many collaboration applications have been introduced; they have taken on many flavors, providing different levels of support for activities such as team building, weekly internal sales and support team meetings, customer and employee training and customer relationship management applications. Personally I have had exposure in my consulting work over the intervening years to a few of these tools. Ease-of-use, adaptability into an enterprise's business' processes, the session launch process and customer support policies have become key factors in many enterprise decisions on which tools to deploy within an individual customer's business operations.

The experience and technology behind that Quarterdeck application eventually, after many twists and turns in the business infrastructure, evolved into one of the first web conferencing services: Webex, which grew to become an industry icon and was recently acquired by Cisco. But many others realized that they too could attempt to develop a suite of collaboration tools. One of the eventual web conferencing players, whom I had encountered as a client's competitor several years ago, was an offering called Convoq. They had built up a reasonable customer base but their business focus recently took a turn that went away from collaboration tools.. As a result Convoq had decided to close down their web conference service at the end of January.

Last fall I reviewed a web conferencing service, Convenos Meeting Center, which effectively provides a persistent virtual board room with a "slide projector", "full motion video display", whiteboard, cobrowsing and application-desktop sharing. With its audio options, including Skype conferencing and HighSpeedConferencing.com incorporating HD Audio, Convenos has built an enterprise customer base around its ease-of-use, range of features (including its ability to work with salesforce.com, amongst others) and customer support activities.

Continue reading "Convenos Named Preferred Provider for Convoq Customer Transition" »

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

Last November I reviewed Yugma Skype Edition, the only complete cross platform Skype Extra that adds desktop (and now application) sharing as a complement to Skype voice, text and video conversation sessions. Recently Yugma participated in the Skype booth at MacWorld sponsored by Skype's Developer Program to recruit Mac developers into the program.

Last week Yugma SE Team Collaboration received Skype certification. Today Skype and Yugma announced YugmaSE's inclusion as a certified Skype Extra resulting from Yugma's participation in the Skype Developer Program. For Windows users, YugmaSE can be obtained and installed via Skype's Extras Manager (Tools | Do More | Get Extras | Sharing) or at the Skype Extras website. Mac users can obtain the client via the Yugma for Skype website links here; a plug-in for Linux desktops is "coming soon".

In addition to its previously reviewed ability to share across Windows and Mac platforms, the final release also:

• allows you to share either a single designated application or your entire desktop
• provides the option of inviting remote participants¹ to either a fully interactive session or to view (a) shared desktop(s) via a remote viewer.

The "Free Forever" Skype Extra allows the sharing of a designated desktop (as selected by the session host) with ten additional participants at no cost to the host². During the 15-day trial period you can also share mouse and keyboard control, schedule sessions, record and playback sessions and host a "shared file space". Monthly and annual options for a Premium subscription that provides ongoing access to these features, along with email, phone and web-based technical support, are available for hosting an unlimited number of 10, 30, 100 and 500 participant sessions. Audio support can be provided via Skype conferencing (up to ten participants) or a "free" teleconferencing server for which normal long distance access charges will apply. Independent of Yugma support, HighSpeedCoferencing.com could also be used.

As many of my contacts have been acquiring Macs and MacBooks over the past eighteen months, Yugma's Skype Edition has become a very useful tool for presentations and training sessions during the past few months.

¹ Invitations may be sent to both Skype contacts via Skype chat and participants who are not Skype contacts via email

² Note that free sessions will request all participants to register an email address and password; premium subscriptions simply request an identifier name (for the session) and an email address but no registration.

Tags: Skype, Yugma, Yugma Skype Edition, Skype Extras, Skype Developer Program

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mobivox may have its VoxGirl to direct your Skype calls around the world for the cost of a "local" call from any phone set but Brandon Holland, an AppleTV afficiando and Mac developer in Kewlowna, B.C., Canada, has been trying to get a date with Skype's Echo123 girl (she who answers those Skype Test Calls). He's been calling her a lot lately but she keeps on asking him to leave a message which just gets echoed back to him.

Why this interest? Because Brandon has been demonstrating that Skype's API's have allowed him to create an AppleTV plug-in for Skype. To date he has developed it to the point where he can make Skype and SkypeOut calls (while charged against your SkypeOut credits) from an AppleTV with a USB phone added. The USB phone provides the mic (iPod Touch owners, don't get envious) while you listen to the other party on your TV's speakers via the AppleTV's Built-in Line Output. Future plans call for adding most of the other Skype features such as chat, file transfer, SMS messaging, etc.

Brandon has made lots of calls to the Echo123 Girl and has now made available a version 0.1 beta release that you can download here. Because the AppleTV has not exactly been one of Apple's hit products for which an upgrade was announced recently, I was a little calloused about such a development. But then I watched Brandon's video demonstration and found that his personal passion for developing mashups or plug-ins comes through very strongly as well as showing the stages he is taking this development through to make it a complete Skype offering. A definite 'Must Watch"!

Halina Mugame, editor of the Skype Developer Program's newsletter, interviewed Brandon last week: An excerpt:

Was it easy or difficult to develop the Skype plug-in for AppleTV? What was the most difficult part?

Most of it was pretty straightforward, thanks to Skype's easy to use and well documented API, but it did have its difficult moments. I made many calls to echo123 while testing the plug-in! I think that the hardest part was writing my SkypeBride framework which parses the results from the API and sends notifications to the plug-in. Once I had that implemented, the rest of the plug-in was easily written.

Michael Rose at tuaw.com, "The Unofficial Apple Weblog" brings up some caveats:

I can't really picture how this module is going to work for actual calling (and I don't have an Apple TV to try it out on), but if it refines into a true Skype client, and the [delayed] Take 2 update doesn't completely nuke the Apple TV development scene, and Skype gets past its current security worries, this could be a very interesting path towards our videophone-enabled, jet-pack-wearing future.

So while AppleTV is struggling to get market traction, its Mac OS base and the Skype API's have certainly been combined to demonstrate the potential and ease for developing Skype-enabled applications for the Mac world. And add AppleTV to those devices taking Skype beyond the basic telephone handset.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post: Hudson Barton is a communications consultant whose Borderless Communicator blog not only talks about Skype and related IP communications activity but also attempts to track Skype's "real usage". According to his analysis, Skype has just cracked the 30 million real or "currently active" user number (based on tracking Users Online vs time-of-day). What follows is his post earlier this week summarizing some issues that were raised and discussed on the Skype 3.x discussion Public Chat forum following Dan York's recent guest post on SIP/Skype interconnectivity.

Skype's competitors and critics continually point out that Skype's VOIP architecture is closed and that its API is not adequate for creating a direct connection between the Skype "cloud" and the SIP "cloud". This of course is true, but there are good reasons for it.

1. The security and reliability of the Skype cloud would be seriously compromised if SIP hackers were given the tools to create direct VOIP connections between Skype and the outside world.
2. A SIP gateway to Skype might work if it were handled like SkypeIn/Out. However, I don't think there's a large enough population of SIP users out there to justify the cost of SIPIn/Out. Skype is growing at a rate of 500k-1000k "real users" per month, which is probably 10x faster than the rest of the VOIP world combined. A third party could build these gateways with the presently available API, but nobody is trying it to my knowledge... presumably because there is no demand for it. In any case, the developer (even if it were Skype) would have to justify the cost of such a gateway.
3. An IM (text-only) gateway is very possible and would not compromise Skype's security or strategic position. Look for future interconnections with major players like AIM, gTalk, Yahoo, and MSN.
4. The Skype cloud is far more complex and has far more features than the clouds of any of its competitors. It is not rational to expect any of them to create a feature-for-feature mirror of Skype even if this were something that would be good for Skype (which it is NOT). A partial list of these features: video, SMS, encryption, and file transfer.
5. Relationships between Skype and social networks like MySpace are already possible if there is a partnership agreement. It does not require a change to the Skype API. Note that MySpace is a social network... not a VOIP carrier.
6. Skype may double its revenues this year and it's already profitable. No other VOIP carrier is profitable (unless you want to count a few of the hosted VOIP services from the Telecoms and cable companies). A gateway to Skype will help Skype's competitors far more than it will help Skype, so from a strategic perspective it makes no sense to help the competitors survive. Without Skype's help, they (SunRocket and Vonage for example) are failing at a rapid rate. Meanwhile, "successful" competitors like Packet8 are monetizing themselves by selling off intellectual property. Obviously they "see the writing on the wall."

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Last weekend I traveled to Erie, PA to attend a recognition event involving the Erie Otters junior hockey team; this is a development league for players who eventually end up playing professionally in the National Hockey League. I had ordered my tickets through Ticketmaster last fall when I first learned of the event.

But I drove down only to realize I had left the tickets at home; it's a three hour drive plus time clearing US entry (not excessively long this trip). I did, however, take along my laptop. So, after checking into my hotel, I searched for the confirming email (with help from Windows Desktop Search), looked up my hotel's fax number and then "printed" it to PamFax. Two minutes later I picked up a printed copy of the email, with all the details of my ticket purchase, at the front desk of my hotel.

It was an enjoyable evening for all, especially my neighbor's son, whose leadership of the team when they won a championship five years ago was the reason for the recognition. Thank you, PamFax! (and the Skype Extras infrastructure that made it possible).

Tags: PamFax, Skype Extras, Erie Otters

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Nokia will keep Trolltech as a standalone company. Announcement. Congratulations!

Trolltech shows up wherever Skype is embedded in hardware and in many of its systems.

See also in Skype Journal:

• Skype coming to the Sony PSP? January 3, 2008
• Skype for Linux 1.4 Alpha - good stuff for the brave May 6, 2007
• Niklas OK's Trolltech as standard toolkit for embedded Skype March 20, 2007
• Trolltech @ ETel - Helping programmers Internet phone experiences February 27, 2007
• Code your GUI like Skype February 15, 2007

News release below the fold...

Continue reading "Nokia buys Trolltech" »

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

After a week in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, a small crew of Skype staff, led by Antoine "Ants" Bertout, flew to San Francisco to man a small MacWorld booth in the Apple pavilion. They were joined by folks from Kaplow, Skype's media relations firm, and Skype developer Yugma, living proof you can bring an enterprise-class Skype extra to market.

It was the busiest MacWorld in recent memory. The Skype station was often swamped, overflowing into walkways and neighboring spaces.

Ants and the gang recruited Skype developers, pitching Skype for the Mac's API and the Skype Developer Program.

Mac users love iChat, its fun features, the ability to play any media in sync within a chat and its multiparty video conferencing. But it remains a Mac-only product in a world where your cousin is a Windows user. Skype supports Apple's compatibility story.

P.S. I heard someone ran Skype for Mac on an Apple TV. Anyone see a photo or documentation?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 04:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Robert Poe at VoIP News has written a detailed report on how OnState Communications Call Center works, making a couple of points we had overlooked in our coverage:

Fully a software solution with no servers:

Onstate Communications' CallCenter service bundles Skype's business offering with its own software-based ACD (automatic call distribution) capabilities. Unlike with either on-premise or hosted solutions, no calls go through OnState Communications' facilities or equipment — all the CallCenter software does is tell Skype where to send the calls. "It's true software as a service," said OnState Communications co-founder and CEO Pat Kelly. "It's without parallel given the marketplace we're going after."

CallCenter's software-based architecture is the key to OnState Communications' low price. "We have to some degree an unfair advantage, because we don't have to buy massive racks of equipment like [hosted call-center providers] do because all their calls have to run through them," Kelly stated. The cost of toll-free or local phone numbers, and of SkypeIn and SkypeOut calls, are in addition to the service's basic fee. Adding the ability to record 100 percent of agent calls runs a mere $10 extra per month.

A truly international solution:

The Call Center service originally worked only with Skype calls and callers, according to Kelly. OnState Communications soon added SkypeIn and SkypeOut capabilities, which made it possible to call or receive calls from anyone, anywhere. And an upgrade announced on Jan. 9, 2008 expanded the "anywhere" part to international locations. U.S. companies can now get inbound numbers in a variety of overseas markets and have the calls come to their offices via Skype.

Similarly, non-U.S. companies can get toll-free U.S. numbers and send their incoming calls to agents anywhere in the world that Skype goes, for the same flat rate of around 3 cents per minute. "For people providing international support, that's a big thing," said Kelly. "If you're a European provider and want to give your U.S. customers support, you pay big bucks to get a U.S. 800 number to ring in Denmark."

Another case of Skype and a partner's offering disrupting business: Fifteen years ago my employer was paying over $10,000 per month to have support calls routed to Europe (Ireland) via a T1 line during hours when the Los Angeles based headquarters was closed. And that's another saving besides dropping the need for a six figure PBX to run a call center.

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

OnState Communications have been evolving their Skype-based on-demand call center offering over the past year. Launched a year ago to provide basic voice contact, they added an "open" chat capability last summer. As a result call center agents could communicate with prospective or current customers via Skype, PSTN and/or chat sessions (and could escalate chat sessions to a voice session). However, as they built their customer base, they found three new requirements:

• a need to provide customers a full service call center launch in terms of setting up Skype accounts and acquiring any Skype-related hardware such as Skype phones and/or headsets
• toll-free number call-in for customers responding to OnState's clients' broadcast or print media campaigns, and
• local dial-in numbers for Canadian clients who could not obtain SkypeIn numbers

Yesterday OnState launched their total solution for OnState clients that provides one-stop shopping to not only acquire the core call center services but also offer:

• Skype account setup and management
• US and international coverage in over 30 countries;
• Skype-compatible hardware (phones, headsets, etc.)
• PayPal™ easy-payment plans for all call center needs
• accessibility to advanced customer contact management solutions;
• voice, video, and business chat capabilities;
• reduced operational costs at industry redefining prices;

• Web integration including click-to-call, automatic call-back, and online chat

• streamlined customer communications; and

• improved customer management.

From their press release:

Continue reading "OnState Launches "Total Solution" Offering for Customer Contact Center for Skype" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An interview with Sten Tamkivi, GM Skype e-Commerce and Skype Estonia

As part of Skype's current restructuring, Skype recently made some changes in the Skype Developer Team, moving its primary location from London's business office to the Skype Development office in Tallinn. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Sten Tamkivi, Skype's GM for Development and c-Commerce about these changes and the role he sees for the Skype Developer Program. But first to put the interview in context:

• In March 2007 the Skype Developer Program was transferred to be under Sten's direction
• In the e-commerce role, Sten is responsible for Skype Prime, SkypeFind and SkypeCasts.
• He is also responsible for managing and coordinating administrative activities for the Tallinn office.
• It has been acknowledged by both Sten in this interview, as well as by Peeter and Antoine at the Skype Developer event in New York, that Lenn Pryor's era had driven the launch phase of the program and Paul Amery's leadership had put infrastructure into the program.

Note that, while I have put the following in a Q&A format, I have attempted to summarize the key points in our discussion as we covered the many topics.

Q: What precipitated the recent changes in the Skype Developer Program?

A: Basically we are seeing Skype transition from simply providing a client with communication services into a platform provider from which partners can build out their own unique offerings. We are seeing this not only in offerings from Skype Developer Partners but also in technology licensing relationships such as the recently launched inclusion of Skype for voice calls from MySpace's IM client. With this change in focus and as we developed our plans in the overall review of Skype's activities, we realized that we need to have closer and more spontaneous communications between the Developer Program management and the Skype Developer team.

As we expand the API's to include support for both Mac OS and Linux and evolve with web services API's, we need closer coordination of what is requested from our developer partner base (and user base) when setting our development priorities and assigning resources to the various projects. To quote: "Demands have changed to provide developers with the tools they need" from simply building features and tools as perceived by the developer team.

Continue reading "Skype Developer Program in Flux III: Going Forward" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest post by Vincent Oberle, Skype developer

Scripting simple tasks

I’ve been using Python as my main scripting language for a while now. The Skype Linux tools I wrote a little while ago were already in Python. They used a custom wrapper for the API that Skype exposes for 3rd party applications. There is however a much better Python wrapper available now, Skype4Py, which is even officially supported by Skype.

With it, it becomes quite simple to script Skype for some simple tasks. Added benefit of using Python, your scripts will be portable across the 3 desktop platforms supported by Skype, Windows, Mac and Linux.

Here is an example of a small scripts I wrote to solve a problem.

Skype multi-chats are great for discussions on a project or in a team. But sometimes I need an answer from each member of a multi-chat. Just throwing the question in the chat will result that systematically some people don’t answer (don’t ask me why, I don’t get it either…). So I wrote a little script that will send as individual chat messages the text that follows the /all command.

For example write in the multi-chat:

/all When do you go in holidays this summer?

and each member of the chat will receive the “When do you go in holidays this summer?” individual message.

Here is the code:

import Skype4Py
import re

skype = Skype4Py.Skype()
skype.Attach()  # Attach to Skype client

def message_status(Message, Status):
    if Status != Skype4Py.cmsSent: return
    if Message.Sender != skype.CurrentUser: return
    r = re.search (r'/all (.+)', Message.Body)
    if r:
        msg = r.group(1).strip()
        for member in Message.Chat.MemberObjects:
            if member.Handle == skype.CurrentUserHandle:
                continue # don't sent to myself
            skype.SendMessage(member.Handle, msg)

skype.OnMessageStatus = message_status

while(True): pass # Infinite loop, ctrl^C to break

Intercepting chat messages can be used for many things. Do you want a /sms command in a chat that will send an SMS to each member in the chat? It will probably not take you much more lines of code.

Moods to Twitter and command-line file transfer

I have blogged before about how using the Skype4Py library makes it very easy to script Skype and add little features to it, in a portable way. I have written two such little scripts recently. Their code is short and simple, and while I only tested them under Linux they should also work under Windows and Mac. They can be found with my Skype tools.

The first script will send your own mood messages to Twitter. There are two reasons for doing that. First many people use the mood message like Twitter, to say what they think or as a micro-blogging tool. So the mood message can be a very good “Twitter editor”. The second reason is that Skype doesn’t keep an history of your mood messages. This provides such an history, which can be private if you set your Twitter privacy settings accordingly.

The second script is to make my life easier. Under Linux I’m often in the command-line and I often have to send some file to colleagues. Currently that requires to get to the Skype UI, find the contact, choose the Send file option and navigate to the directory where my file to send is, lots of clicks.

So I’ve written the little send_file.py script. Just specify the Skype name(s) or the display name(s) of the people you want to send the file too, and it will open the file selection window to the current directory. From there you just have to choose the file to send. Why not specify directly the file name to transfer on the command-line? The Skype API doesn’t allow this, to prevent external applications to transfer files without the knowledge of the user. Yet despite this limitation, the script makes the file transfer operation much faster.

Note that “send_file.py John” will be enough to send the file to all contacts that have John in their name. Under Linux, this script requires at least Skype 2.0.0.27.

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

Ars Technica reports:

"Call friends, talk trash to fellow gamers or catch up with acquaintances via Skype for PSP system."

Skype Journal shared clues this was in the works last year.

Skype for the Sony Mylo was built on a TrollTech platform; anyone know if the PSP uses TrollTech too?

Sony will also show the Playstation Eye webcam.

"The Playstation Eye has a fast frame rate for pristine video quality and contains a built-in four microphone array. Chat with up to six people at one time and even share photos while you are chatting. The Playstation Eye is engineered to perform well in low-light conditions and includes a zoom lens for close-up and full body options."

Could the Eye be good enough for Skype High Quality Video? 

We'll have photos from the Sony CES booth.

The timeline...

• Sony saves Skype - August 2006

• Sony Mylo suffers from Sidekick syndrome - August 2006

• Sony Mylo - In Stores Now... - September 2006

• Sony Mylo -- First Impressions... - October 2006

• Suspected: Skype for Sony PSP Coming - February 2007

• Code your GUI like Skype, TrollTech @ ETel - Helping programmers Internet phone experiences  - February 2007

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

While this blog tends to focus on new developments and the role they can play in our future real time conversations, it sometimes pays to look back to see what has been accomplished. For 2007, these are, from my perspective, ten top accomplishments for the Skype ecosystem:

1. eBay CEO Meg Whitman states at an eBay quarterly analyst conference call, "Not enough focus on 'Delight The User'". Hopefully this is a high priority guiding principal in the search for a new Skype CEO. Great technology but needs the business development, marketing and leadership skills of a seasoned high technology executive to truly make Skype happen on a world market leader scale. End users need a delightful "total" experience, including user support, adequate and well timed announcement of changes to calling plans, more participation in the blogosphere, higher awareness and broader availability of Skype hardware ... and the list goes on.

2. Skype High Quality Video: because it brings a whole new dimension and level of realism to real time conversations. Yes, to take full advantage requires a new webcam with enhanced optics, but my final selection came because of the very positive reaction and response of those whom I converse with and who receive my High Quality Video (Recipients don't need all the requirements of senders -- the past two weeks two parties have observed "my" High Quality Video on their Macs.) A success story involving not only Skype software but also hardware specifications and co-operative device driver development.

3. HD Voice --nobody has called it that specifically but here I pick up a term used to name a Fall VON session. I refer to wideband voice transmission covering a minimum 8Khz audio bandwidth (twice that of conventional telephony). Over the year Skype has been making gradual improvements to the Skype voice engine, including the codecs, such that today most Skype voice conversations can be held with a basic laptop, and no additional headset or microphone (provided one is available in the laptop) is required. Over Christmas I helped my son with a Skype for Mac 2.6 installation; he made a call yesterday from his home that was very clear, with no echo, using his basic Mac speakers and mic. Each new version of Skype since Skype 3.2 for Windows has had some improvements but with Skype 3.6 for Windows I am getting many unsolicited comments, along the lines of this one, about how it better handles lower Internet connection bandwidth configurations. And, should you use a headset, such as the FreeTalk Wireless Stereo headset, for, say, personal privacy or office etiquette reasons, you will find your other parties on the call "in your head". HD Voice received additional support this fall when High Speed Conferencing became equipped with the ability to ensure all Skype participants on a conference call would experience HD Voice quality when conversing with other Skype users on the same call.

Continue reading "2007's Top Ten Skype Ecosystem Accomplishments" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tis the season for bringing utilities and products out of beta; Yesterday I reported on PamConsult's PamFax coming out of beta with the addition of scanning and printer driver support.. At almost the same instant I received notification that Skype has made generally available version 1.1 of its Outlook Email Toolbar, a tool which I use frequently for launching Skype and SkypeOut calls directly from Outlook.

The new features include:

• support for Outlook 2007.(the major one)
• improved startup performance (except the first time you log into a profile)
• changes to improve overall performance as an Outlook plug-in
  • for instance, selecting appointments is no longer supported
  • on demand analyzing of other email recipients

To expand on the last comment: "When you create a conference, multichat etc from an email the other recipients (apart from the sender) are analyzed when needed, not in advance."

Skype Toolbar Product Manager Peter Kalmstrom has more details here on the Skype for Business blog; he has also created an instructive screencast here.

I have been a member of the beta program for this utility over the past three months and can testify that the new version has also eliminated one "nuisance bug" I was experiencing with the earlier version. Having followed the Outlook beta test group chat, I can also testify that it went through some fairly rigorous and aggressive testing to ensure that it works with both Outlook "Internet" and Outlook "MS Exchange" and across VPN connections.

Continue reading "Skype for Outlook Toolbar Updated" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

... adds scanning and print driver features for sending faxes worldwide.

Back in August PamConsult, publishers of the Pamela universal Skype utility with call recording, conversation archiving, message personalization and audio emoticons, entered the Skype Mashup competition with their beta release of PamFax. At the time PamFax would allow you to select a (Word or PDF) document and fax it to any destination. At the Prague developer event in September PamFax was announced as the worldwide winner of the (first?) Skype Mashup Competition. Dick Schiferli at PamConsult reports that PamFax has been quite busy delivering faxes for Skype users since the September launch.

Today PamConsult has released PamFax for general availability; in this release PamFax adds two important new features:

• the ability to scan a document from any Windows-compatible scanner for faxing, and
• a PamFax print driver which allows you to select PamFax as a printer and turns every fax machine worldwide into a potential printer for your Windows print operation.

Continue reading "Mashup Champion PamFax Becomes a Full Fax Sending Solution." »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Late this past Monday afternoon, VAPPS, Inc., operator of the High Speed Conferencing service, sponsored a Skype Developer Event at Soho House in the West Village of New York City (Lower Manhattan). Given that the Skype Developer Program has been in flux for the previous few days, there was certainly interest in hearing about the direction of the program.

At the event itself Peeter "Wolli" Mõtsküla announced that, having informed his wife the previous Monday that he would not be traveling any more in 2007, he was informed Thursday that he was becoming the Interim Director of the Skype Developer Program. As a result he was still getting his head around putting a direction to the program but could speak about the development roadmap that was first announced in Prague in September. Basically he reported delays in reaching this quarter's objectives for new API's and that he would be providing an updated roadmap by the end of January, once he had had more time to give a full assessment to what could reasonably be accomplished on the API front going forward.

Antoine "Ants" Bertout is continuing and expanding his role as the Developer Relations Manager, remaining in London, acting as the interface between the Developers in Tallinn and the Partners. Antoine outlined a few of his objectives but was more importantly meeting partners individually over the three days of his New York stay to get one-on-one dialogs going with each partner.

BubbleShare

We then had presentations from:

Continue reading "Skype Developer Event New York City" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype this morning released what amounts to a bug fix release 3.6.0.244 to address several issues as outlined in the release notes. Comments on the three "changes":

• Internet Explorer plug-in updated: Currently the Skype browser plug-ins can only be installed during an installation of Skype. If you reject the option to install the appropriate plug-in, based on your default browser, during installation, there is no means to install it later. Many have noted and commented on the absence of these plug-ins that were previously independently available.
  • I am a heavy user of the Firefox plug-in as a click-to-call convenience. While it is desirable to have the browser plug-ins installed at the time of Skype installation, it would be appreciated if these plug-ins could be restored as independent installables.
    
• Audio device checking before placing a call and changing to windows default device if previous device is non-existent. Placing access to audio devices in the active call tab has been a great help on many occasions when an incorrect device was being used. I would hope this addition will reduce the frequency of having to manually change audio devices.
  
• Re-enabled config.xml keys for higher resolution and frame rate video. This is the implementation of the previously announced restoration of a capability (for hackers only) to allow users to use the 640 x 480 resolution inherently available in more recent legacy webcams. However, there is no guarantee of frame rates or automatic adjustment to end user Internet connections; it is simply allows users to try out the 640 x 480 mode of the webcam. In other words it is not suitable for meeting High Quality Video standards which combines webcam resolution with video transmission capabilities to provide full 640 x 480 at 24 to 30 frames per second over a minimum 384 kbps upload Internet connections.

Definitely a recommended update, especially due to the bug fix items listed in the Release Notes. Some are related to issues that have been the subject of intense discussions in the forums and out in the blogosphere; congratulations to the developer team for listening and making the fixes. Hopefully we can now move on to having "delightful user experiences".

As an aside, I have continued to monitor High Quality Video in the course of my normal Skype conversations and will put up a post in a week or so. What is interesting is how the optics quality of the Logitech Carl-Zeiss webcams continues to amaze my contacts. A few have mentioned how they can see, through my window, individual cars passing by 25 meters away or the leaves blowing on the branches of a tree outside my window. Excellent depth of field here.

Tags: Skype, High Quality Video

Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not a typo; bad pun intended.

In August 2006 Jeff Jarvis wrote a post criticizing Dell and their treatment of customers, including the ignoring of bloggers. This post was a trigger for several hundred comments and other blog posts that did not do any enhancement of Dell's image to say the least. By June 2006, Dell senior management realized they had a problem and attempted to soft launch Direct2Dell. They quickly learned that, on the Internet, for a subject with a series of red hot issues, a soft launch is not possible. The rest, as they say, is history as Dell has become very proactive in the blogosphere with two major components:

• Direct2Dell to cover issues related to Dell products and support, and
• Idea Storm out of which arise product line changes such as the launch of a Linux-based offerings and reduction or elimination of bloatware shipped with most PC's.

This past Tuesday evening I had the opportunity to participate in a Q&A event in Toronto where Dell's Richard Binhammer, whose primary responsibility comprises monitoring and acting on blogger activity covering Dell, provided both some history and interesting information about how his coverage and timely responses on complaints, suggestions and other issues that arise in the course of selling and supporting Dell products have turned around Dell's image. Probably, at a minimum, these activities have also helped put the brakes to Dell's declining market share. In particular he stated that, as a result of his and his colleague's activities, they have seen a reduction in negative posts from 49% in the summer of 2006 (when he started participating) to 22%. Blogger Dave Fleet attended the session and gave a very detailed post here.

Richard's Key Take-Aways (according to Dave, and I concur):

Continue reading "Delling with Bloggers: Listening, Engaging and Delighting the Users" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Leaving a program to which you have been strongly committed can be a very emotional personal experience. In a follow up to the news released in my post yesterday about changes in the Skype Developer Program, Paul Amery, who headed the program since August 2006, has very professionally authored an Exit Letter which has been posted on the Skype Developer Blog by Antoine Bertout, Developer Partner Relations Manager. I can certainly concur will Paul's summary of the team's accomplishments during his tenure:

• We created the route to market you requested, in the shape of Extras Manager since 3.0 launch
• Downloads of third-party apps have increased from a few thousand a month to 40m downloads in 12 months
• Finally, we’ve made progress on Web Services. wolli will keep you posted on plans for the Directory Web Service, open sourcing plans and the shape of Client APIs
• Thanks to sterling work from Antoine, partners and press are reporting healthy relationships with SDP
• Events in Tokyo, San Jose, Prague and New York help you meet us often
• Comms are much better, I kicked off a monthly newsletter, and Halina is working hard on a new Devzone rebrand and launch. It looks good.

Once again, Paul, and I'm sure the Partners join me in this, thanks for your program leadership and accomplishments. As I was told by a mentor when I started my career in the technology business many decades ago: "The only constant in this market is change".We know this is only a juncture in your career and there is an opportunity out there somewhere for your skills and experience.

(Photo taken at eBay Developers Conference, Boston, MA, June 2007)

Tags: Skype, Skype Developer Program, Paul Amery

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I initially learned of this from a Facebook status update this morning, Skype issued the following statement early this afternoon:

Change has always been a constant at Skype and will continue to be. We will keep re-shaping our business to take advantage of the immediate and short-term opportunities in front of us. In this context, Paul Amery & Lester Madden have moved on from their current positions and we’re working closely with them to support them through this process.

In addition I have learned that responsibility for the Skype Developer Program has been moved to Tallinn under Peeter Mõtshüla who, in turn, reports to Sten Tamkivi, GM of e-Commerce and Estonia operations. Peeter, who has been instrumental in developing the Skype public platform roadmap, will be attending the New York Developer event planned for next Monday along with Antoine Bertout, Skype Partner Relations Manager.

Anyone who follows my posts in Skype Journal knows that I am a disciple of Alec Saunders' Voice 2.0 Manifesto (Adobe Reader required), whose thesis is that applications are the value creators in a Voice 2.0 world. Having worked with several of Skype's Developer Partners over the past year and a half, we have seen the evolution of a range of collaboration, conversation recording/archiving, call center and other ancillary offerings that provide value creation for their customers while reducing business operating costs.

If there is one constant to all these partners, it is their entrepreneurial belief in Skype as a business process facilitator and that Skype's best opportunity for revenues resides in disrupting legacy communications infrastructure with more flexible, more readily adaptable, lower cost business solutions. They have invested six or seven figure numbers in developing their Voice 2.0 offerings; let's hope these changes allow their applications to flourish in a win-win-win environment for Skype's Partners, the partners' customers and Skype itself.

In closing, my thanks to Paul and Lester for all the assistance they have provided over the past year and-a-half. Andy's network tells him that Paul had made significant contributions to the evolution of the Skype Developer Program.

Related posts:

• A Primer for Skype's Direction:-- Skype's Extra Gallery and Developer Partner Program
• Memo to Skype CEO Candidates: An Interview That Nails What Skype Can Be.

Tags: Skype, Skype Developer Program, Paul Amery, Lester Madden, Peeter Mõtshüla, Antoine Bertout, Sten Tamkivi, Voice 2.0 Manifesto

Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

... former WebDialogs CEO, now Lotus SameTime Director of Operations and Strategy, Lou Guercia leads a web seminar positioning the WebDialogs offerings, including Skype Extra Unyte Plus (to be renamed Unyte Share), within the overall SameTime product offering. Is IBM about to license Skype for real time communications technology?

Normally I don't get into the predictions business and I do my best not to violate any confidences, especially when there is embargoed information that could affect the stock performance of a company. What I report on this post is purely my own speculation as a result of having my ear to the ground over the past few weeks and pulling together seemingly independent comments and information to arrive at what amounts to a possible, but still speculative, conclusion.

While many have speculated that Skype should play a "portal" role in social networking, my contention is that Skype is first and foremost a communications service that should enhance real time conversations across many portal and other collaborative services. Skype's focus for research and development, marketing and business development resources should remain on building out this real time conversation infrastructure tools, not getting into businesses which would require a complete new set of business models to succeed (in a very competitive market space).

Recently I attended an press event for Check Point, a pioneer in securing Internet-based transmissions for the enterprise market (and more recently publisher of the highly regarded Zone Alarm security software for personal PC's). I first encountered Check Point in the commercial Internet pioneering days of 1994-1996 A key point in the recent Check Point presentation was that, to this date, they have stuck to their knitting and are one of the most respected brand names when it comes to enterprise communications security. From their website: "Check Point’s PURE focus is on IT security with its extensive portfolio of network security, data security and security management solutions."

In the same way Skype, with continuous improvements to evolve its real time voice and video conversation infrastructure¹, does not need to divert its time and resources to what are effectively social networking services that aggregate and support "friendship portal" networks and require a totally different business model. In a more formal way, Skype has started down the path of portal partnerships with the announcement of a forthcoming relationship with MySpace. In this post I present some enough information "crossing my desk" in the past days to question whether Skype is about to announce a partnership with one of IT's pioneer enterprises who has taken to growth through acquisitions and partnerships.

Continue reading "WebDialogs Unyte Re-emerges out of IBM SameTime Group..." »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype has become a vital tool for not only keeping their reporters in touch but also for delivering high voice quality reports and more effective technical support.

Broadcasting in nine languages, via short wave radio (primarily), Internet and satellite feeds, to several southeast Asian countries where open sources of news and information are lacking, Radio Free Asia competes with Deutsche Welle and BBC for southeast Asian ears; from their website:

RFA is a private, nonprofit corporation that broadcasts news and information in nine native Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. The purpose of RFA is to provide a forum for a variety of opinions and voices from within these Asian countries.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Radio Free Asia's Chief Technical Office, David Baden, to learn more about how RFA is dealing with their voice communications requirements.

RFA has recently incorporated Skype into their operation, largely for voice conversations. Initially they had been using Net2Phone for low cost voice communications but with ownership changes and other happenings at Net2Phone they had to find a new service. Interestingly enough the original trigger for using Skype was its ability to manage billing and accounting related to a VoIP service. They had found many of their ~100 reporters and stringers migrating to Skype on a personal basis; the Skype Business Control Panel provided a path to consolidate and manage all their voice communications amongst their many offices in southeast Asia, including an office in Hong Kong that is a legacy from the British colonial period.

Continue reading "Radio Free Asia: A Skype Facilitated Broadcasting Service" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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)

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.

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

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.

Continue reading "IPv6 for the Incurably Curious" »

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)

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.

Continue reading "Skype Outlook Toolbar: Beta Testers Sought" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:28 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:

Continue reading "Is there an Android in Skype's Future?" »

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

Continue reading "Goin' Mobile with Skype -- Beep, Beep" »

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

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:

Continue reading "Yugma Skype Edition: Cross Platform Desktop Sharing" »

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

Thomas Howe laments the passing of the eTel conference and the thinking behind its demise that VoIP is boring ... stagnant ... unappealing ... not sexy. But he goes on to say "stick a fork in it baby, VoIP is done". And then he gets to the meat of voice's role going forward:

.... I think that anyone who deeply thinks about this stuff knows that voice, in and of itself, is pretty stagnant and boring. But, if you only consider voice by itself, and voice services as only being about voice, then you’re really at a dead end. But, as Martin Geddes would say, if you see the transformation from horizontal voice into vertical services, where voice stops becoming the important part, and starts supporting the other applications around it… then you see we {are} at the beginning of true, massive and ubiquitous voice enabled applications. I can’t believe that true Internet guys would miss this obvious architectural (in both business and bits) opportunity, but apparently… they have. [author's bold]

When you take out the hardware and, concurrently, you take the complexity out of call center operation as OnState has done for call center management, when you start providing tools for making conversations asynchronous as Evoca has done with their audio web services, when you embed conversation tools (voice and IM) into Salesforce.com as PamConsult has done by developing Skype for Salesforce.com you can start to see voice embedded into customer relationship management applications.

Go back and read my Skype Primer post on Skype's Extra Gallery and Developer Partner Program. Enhance business processes by embedding voice and you have a key differentiator for Skype; enhance business processes by embedding voice and you have not only increased productivity but also increased revenue opportunities for both the partners and their customers.

I look forward to meeting Thomas this week and learning more about embedding voice such that it supports many other vertical applications around it.

Tags: Skype, Thomas Howe, OnState, PamConsult, Evoca, Skype Developer Partners, Skype Extras

Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tuesday I will be heading to Boston for the annual fall VON event. The past few shows have been criticized for their migration towards a "carrier" conference, leaving little room for attracting the innovators in the (IP) telecommunications space. As a result Carl Ford, Chief Community Development Officer at PulverMedia, has included an Innovator's Track where the creative talents reign supreme. Intriguing topics to be covered include

• Rapid Development
• VoIP over 3G
• VoIP, Virtualizaton and New Service Creation
• Enterprise 2.x
• Social Networking
• Goin' Mobile with Skype
• iHacks Freeing the iPhone
• Europe Leads the Way
• The Secret Life of HD VoIP

with panelists such as Thomas Howe (aka Mr. Mashup), James Tagg (Truphone), Ben Lilienthal (VAPPS - HighSpeedConferencing), Aswath Rao, Helen Khais (IM+ for Skype), Stephane Marceau (Mobivox), Samuel Li (iSkoot), Jeff Black (Talk Plus) amongst others.

But this was not sufficient so Carl has also worked with Thomas Howe, Alec Saunders and other to create a VONCamp UnConference. I have no experience with Unconferences but in addition to Alec and Thomas both Jon Arnold and Brough Turner have written about it.

The challenge for me is to determine when I should be at the Innovators Track and when at the VONCamp. But to help sort it out:

The Innovators Forum is a series of sessions that show case companies in our more traditional format. However dialogue in these sessions is encouraged. The VONCamp Unconference is harder to describe, because it gives people a chance to self identify as a speaker. ... If you've got something you want to discuss that's outside the formal program, VONCamp Unconference is the place to do it.

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

AuctionBytes.com is an "independent trade publications for online merchants", clearly with eBay as their primary focus; they produce a podcast under the title eCommerce Industry SoundBytes.. In a recent interview with Ina Steiner, Editor and Publisher of AuctionBytes.com, OnState Communications CEO Pat Kelly talks about how the OnState ACD call center is becoming as a key customer engagement tool for their clients. Pat had demonstrated OnState ACD to Ina at eBay Live back in June. In this interview they talk about:

• OnState's focus on customer service and business communications for the small and medium enterprise space.
• OnState's role in enhancing business to business and business to consumer relationships using Skype
• how Onstate lets customers communicate with a vendor in the way most convenient to the individual customer, especially where the client's customers do not use Skype
• how OnState can provide customer service infrastructure for online resellers
• how Onstate's clients are embedding OnState communications options into their websites via click-to-call with any of Skype, a local call or a toll free (800) number and directing customer calls to the right person
• the role of, and place for, live chat in providing customer service
• how eBay resellers, who are already familiar with Live Chat, could be using OnState's Live Chat features and Skype for servicing their customers through instant messaging
• Ina's experience with using IM at virtual trade shows
• how OnState has simplified the live chat process and, in turn, removed much of the complexity and cost involved with live chat implementation and operation.
• how, clients are driving their customers to adopt Skype to build the ongoing client-customer relationship such that the combination of OnState and Skype becomes a viable marketing tool, especially in business-to-business conversations
• how an OnState ACD client builds their personalized horse rug business using OnState ACD and Skype to accelerate the sales process where customers want to know not only about the product but also the craftspeople behind the product.
• how a retailer of health products for lifestyle enhancements worked OnState into their marketing activities to drive business not only from their website but also radio ads. "Web 2.0 Mail Order".
• the OnState pricing model
• the role of voice as one embedded mode of real time customer communications when using the web for retailing

And Pat points out that OnState's focus is on clients who require real time conversations, regardless of business size. High product value, building the emotions associated with personal items such as jewelry along with opportunities to upsell and cross-sell and cement the customer relationship are the more important criteria for adopting call center and live chat infrastructure as a powerful marketing tool.

Listen to the complete interview to get the full story about how the combination of OnState and Skype are creating new business opportunities and successes for online retailers. And you can try it out at their own website.

Previous posts:

• Call Center Infrastructure Disruption - A True Voice 2.0 Application Incorporating Skype
• OnState Converts Skype IM Client into a Live Chat Center Agent
• On Being a Skype Software Business Solution Partner
• Getting the Story Right: Whose Call Center for Skype was Introduced?
• OnState Booth at VoiceCon

In closing this interview provides a practical example of why Skype's Developer Partners are so critical to Skype's success going forward -- not only for the services they provide but also for the revenue opportunities for both the partners and Skype. Must listening and reading for Skype CEO candidates.

Disclosure: OnState has been a consulting client; the author offers professional services based on previous experience with the implementation and operation of Live Chat services.

Tags: Skype, AuctionBytes.com, OnState, OnState Communications, live chat, call center, Pat Kelly, Ina Steiner, eBay, eBay resellers

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype partner HighSpeedConferencing enhances their conferencing infrastructure to provide high definition voice for all Skype participants on a call.

Skype-to-Skype calls have long been known for their high quality audio; certainly when I am talking to another Skype user using my stereo headset, it sounds like the other party is "inside my head". To give a brief explanation:

The human voice and ear have an audio bandwidth range to produce voice and hear sounds up to 22 KHz. But the introduction of electronics, such as microphones, speakers, switches, amplifiers and repeaters, into the landline telephone system reduces that bandwidth transmitted by the legacy telephone system to under 4 KHz -- sufficient to clearly get across the essence of the voice conversation but certainly not for recording the deep audio of that high pitched soprano or tenor solo you just may be hearing and definitely not providing the full richness of a face-to-face conversation. Mobile phones have an audio bandwidth that is about 50% of landlines bringing us the sometimes scratchy quality of mobile calls. But the Skype engine is capable of handling audio up to somewhere around 12KHz, providing a much richer and more realistic sound approaching the reality of face-to-face human conversation. At VON Boston next week, the general concept of high bandwidth voice in real time conversations is taking on the term High Definition Voice (HD Voice) at a session in the Innovators track called The Secret Life of HD VoIP. (As an aside, audio bandwidth should not be confused with the network bandwidth required to make a Skype call; different issues related to transmission of voice packets.)

One problem created by this reality is that Skype calls to SkypeOut numbers lose that high bandwidth quality. In the worst case, due to all the compression/decompression going on involving both voice and wireless compression standards, it sometimes becomes difficult to complete a call to a mobile phone. And in conference calls involving both Skype and SkypeOut participants, the call quality is reduced to the lowest common bandwidth.

For three years, VAPPS, Inc. of Hoboken, NJ has been offering its HighSpeedConferencing service extending conference calls involving both Skype and PSTN participants to as many as 500 participants. A key differentiator of this service is that VAPPS uses their own proprietary conferencing bridge which mixes the Skype and PSTN audio streams for listening by all the conference call participants. Today VAPPS is launching a beta high definition voice version of their High Speed Conferencing service that incorporates an enhanced version of this bridge. The result is that all Skype participants on the call will hear each other at the full audio bandwidth inherently available with Skype. Participants on landlines and mobile will still get the quality level associated with the underlying landline and mobile services.

Continue reading "High Definition Voice: Bringing Skype's High Bandwidth Audio to Conference Calls" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest opinion by Gordon Voller, Skype Forums Super User, personally responsible for 3% of all forum activity.  

Let's turn our attention to the way the Skype support/bug reporting structure is operated and how I think it should be operated and vastly improved.

The Support request/bug reporting structure uses two methods for reporting problems/bugs.

1. The Support request ticket which is done via the main Skype.com web site or by clicking on Help from the main Skype window then choosing "Contact Customer Support."

2. The Skype Developers Zone "Jira" where you either login or sign up for an account and report your problem/bug including any log files you may have generated.

A Message In a Bottle

Let's take the support request ticket system first. Once you have filled in all the boxes marked with red star * you then submit your ticket. At this stage nine out of ten times you are told that information regarding your problem can be found in the Skype knowledge base and you can't send your support ticket.

Continue reading "Forum Watch: Voller on Skype's Support Systems" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 02:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the fourth post in a series summarizing the current state of Skype's ecosystem and providing a perspective on the assets in place for a new CEO to run with.

Getting to the Present

Alec Saunders' Voice 2.0 Manifesto talks about Applications as the value creators in a Voice 2.0 world. Once again Skype differentiates itself through a two-year-old Skype Developer Partner program as evidenced by Skype's Extras Gallery. But getting to this point was not easy; in fact:

• Developer Partners had to be true entrepreneurs who kept their vision of a value-generating application above all the obstacles encountered in not only developing their offering but also in initially marketing it. Close communication with many players at Skype was a key to resolving many issues.
  
• Skype needed to develop experience with all the subtleties of a developer program from building a roadmap and a viable API set to communicating where Skype would play and where they would let their Partners play in the overall market space.
  
• Skype's API set has evolved over time to the point where only over the past summer, as evidenced through the Skype Mashup competition, it provides a more complete set of developer tools, including many, such as Call Transfer, that have been clamored for by developers. (But Skype is by no means finished yet with delivering API's.)
  
• Skype has also developed a publishing platform, Publishing Studio, that lets developers focus on their application while providing the infrastructure to bring the application to market and generate transactions associated with the application
  
• To provide standards for quality assurance, Skype is in the process of certifying its partners' software applications.

The Voice 2.0 Challenge

Continue reading "A Primer for Skype's Direction - Skype's Extras Gallery and Developer Partner Program" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype announced some particulars about the new Skype Approved Integrator (SAI) programme at last week's Skype Developer Program Congress in Tokyo.

Selection Criteria:

• Trusted partners
• Skype Developer Program staff selects
• Development experience
• Expert with Skype APIs
• <5 to begin with, including
• PamConsult GmbH - builders of Pamela, PamFax and Skype for Salesforce
• Ubion - pioneer and leader in the Java Skype community

Programme Process:

• Skype introduces partners to SAIs
• SAIs develop projects

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The past week has provided an opportunity for all the nay-sayers and pessimists to say "I told you so". But many bloggers have followed on Jeff Pulver's lead with I Come to Praise Skype, not to Bury Them. Alec Saunders: Stop Wringing Your Hands. Skype is a Huge Success:

No, Skype isn't a failure. By most definitions it's a roaring success. The failure was EBay's when they paid so handsomely for a business that was dedicated to sucking the profits out of a bloated telecom industry. Skype's business plan was to take less money from consumers than a telco would for the same services. What were they expecting? What Skype hasn't done is live up to its potential. The platform which many hoped would emerge from the momentum of Skype — the Voice 2.0 ideal of voice as an element in all applications — appears to have been sublimated to the needs of EBay's balance sheet. The potential for Skype to utterly dominate voice in this new world has not yet been realized.

There's still time. Nobody else has come close to what they've accomplished.

Over the past week I have also spoken with several Skype Partners; they all can only talk about the potential of Skype. I have to say, that due to the entrepreneurship shown by these partners, the Voice 2.0 ideal is being demonstrated in practice. Yes, they may be Skype versions of some legacy applications; however, Skype makes them even more useful and cost effective as applications. Best example: OnState's Call Center virtually eliminates the need for a six figure PBX in order to operate a call center. And it provides an additional mode of communication with its unique chat capabilities. Three collaboration tools (my series will continue later this week); a voice conferencing app that handles up to 500 participants; Skype utilities (Pamela, Skylook) for logging and archiving in depth your Skype activities and a voice hosting service are all contributing to the Voice 2.0 ideal. Paul Amery has done an excellent job of leading the Skype Developer Partner program while recognizing there remains a long road ahead to make it totally successful. The recent Skype Mashup contest demonstrated developer enthusiasm for incorporating Skype services into new applications.

Ken Camp, one of Skype's most frequent critics, in "Comments from the Blogging World on Skype" sums it up with (typos corrected):

Overall, I think the community at large is still waiting to see what happens. There have been times I have not been a fan of Skype at all. That said, I want to see them succeed. I want to see them thrive more than they ever have. And like others, I'm optimistic that under the right leadership, Skype can set the bar far higher than they ever have before.

Thanks, Ken. Enough said....

Now that we are through the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday my Skype Primer series will continue later this week also.

Tags: Skype, Jeff Pulver, Alec Saunders, Ken Camp, Paul Amery, Skype Developer Program, OnState, Pamela, Skylook, Evoca, Convenos, Unyte, Yugma

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the last few weeks, Skype developer relations evangelized the new Skype Public platform roadmap. Peeter "wolli" Mõtsküla presented it at the September 2007 Prague developer days. His slides:

Highlights:

• Skype uses the term "plug-outs" for apps that use Skype's web services. "think virtual walkie-talkies in a multi-user first-person-shooter game"
• Peeter refers to a Skype "naked" client as if it is really going to happen.
• Plans for Q4-2007 development:
  • Web services for a "Unified Directory" - users, SkypeFind businesses, Skype Prime services, public chats/casts - est. Q1-2008 release
  • Client Conversation API - one API for all media (sms, chat, voice, video, file transfer), privacy modes (public, private) - specs in Q4-2007, release in Q1-2008
  • Non-interactive login on Linux - progress to "headless" UI-free Skype - release in Q4-2007
  • Releasing Skype4COM as Open-source - working the way developers work

Pros:

• On the right track on all counts. I'm grinning about the Skype roadmap for the first time in ages.

Cons:

• Missing: Call controls via web services. The roadmap doesn't include the ability to start, join, leave or answer conversations via web service API, not even in the "maybe, someday, no-promises" section.
• No discussion of innovation around groups of people. Vital for social network and enterprise workgroup applications and integration.

Paul Amery, director of Skype's developer relations program, spoke last week to developers and press at a Skype Inn open house in San Jose, California. His slides:

Continue reading "Skype "Unified Directory" web service APIs slated for Q1-2008 release" »

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

Yesterday, VoIP industry pioneer and visionary Jeff Pulver put out his post commenting on the changes at Skype: I Come to Praise Skype, not to Bury Them. Jeff, better than any of us, understands the value of VoIP technology as contributing to a platform for building communities through real time conversations: He stands by, and quotes, his words posted at the time of eBay's Skype acquisition and follows them up with:

Back then I also was thinking how eBay might be able to leverage the power of Skype in a private eBay Social Media platform when I wrote: "Unlike traditional voice communications providers, eBay gets the concept of community and community building. Adding a rich IP-based communications capability -- including IM, voice and presence applications -- to its community should dramatically enhance the value of and services available to eBay's community…

And closes with:

My advice to the current eBay team is to take notice of a suggestion I first suggested on September 12, 2005 which was ridiculed at the time by TheStreet.com: "If you take the elements of eBay, including the micro-payments capability of Paypal and, now, the IP-based communications capabilities of Skype, we may be seeing the formation of the next Reuters." And if not Reuters, than at least Brokerage Firm 2.0.

Having attended two eBay Live events and absorbed some of the eBay Reseller culture, my advice to the new CEO is to leverage the eBay relationship by training eBay Resellers on how to use Skype and then let them decide how to build out their Skype ecosystem within the eBay community. As suggested in a post after this year's eBay Live, it starts with education; the Resellers' curiosity and will to learn is there.

Thanks, Jeff. I know the Skype teams will appreciate your support and vision at this time.

Now back to my series on A Primer for Skype's Direction.

Tags: Skype, Jeff Pulver, eBay

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To steal a theme from one of the parties in our current Ontario provincial election - Leadership Counts! It has been apparent to many of us who follow Skype that Skype needs to renew its vision, its values and its directions. Providing the necessary leadership awaits the new CEO. In the meantime let's take a look at what Skype and its new CEO has to build on.

The past eighteen months with Skype Journal have given me the opportunity to meet many levels of the Skype team from tech support, development and quality control personnel through to Partner Program managers, Product Line Managers and a couple of Vice Presidents. They are all energetic, enthusiastic employees who want to see Skype succeed, who want to be participants driving a communications revolution but they are crying for leadership with a vision, leadership that can leverage and uncover the full potential of the Skype team members, leadership that can establish values and point Skype towards a sustainably successful business model.

Just as importantly many third party partners have made extensive investments to develop offerings and services that enhance the Skype conversation, especially in business. One of the more enjoyable experiences with Skype Journal has been the opportunity to meet at length with many of these partners and absorb their passion and enthusiasm for supporting Skype and its potential.

I should also mention that 13 years ago I was a member of the management team of a NASDAQ-listed company that successfully turned around the company at the time. I see many parallels for Skype. When I look around Skype I see the foundation and infrastructure from which an appropriately experienced CEO can build for success..

Skype has five primary assets:

• A brand name, Skype, associated with low-cost worldwide Internet-based telephony
• A keen, energetic and enthusiastic team of business managers, administrators, developers, program managers, product managers who want to be part of the real time conversation revolution.
• New products in development (have no idea what they are but there have to be reasons for the beta testers meetings in Prague recently and all those developers working in Talinn and elsewhere).
• Passionate business partnerships leveraging Skype as a platform for extended services development.
• A range of licensed hardware platforms that provide a seamless, transparent migration path from legacy PSTN to Skype

Within the Skype ecosystem can be found three core business groups:

Continue reading "A Primer for Skype's Direction -A Backgrounder" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Two weeks ago, it was announced that PamFax, with its ability not only to fax a document but also work through the Skype Extras Publishing Platform to collect revenues, was the winner of the European Mashup competition as well as the worldwide winner.

Thursday afternoon at a Skype Developer Event in San Jose, a mashup that I had been using during my trip to locate WiFi hotspots in the south Bay Area, JiWire Hotspot Finder for Skype, was the recipient of the North American Mashup Cup. After receiving the cup JiWire COO Nidhad Hafiz (right) gave a brief demonstration and I had an opportunity to discuss its development with Nihad and CEO Kevin McKenzie (left). Not only does the JiWire Hotspot Finder locate nearby locations with WiFi access but it also provides local information of interest to the road warrior such as driving directions, weather, road conditions and several catagories of nearby retail, lodging and services locations. From the Skype Press Release:

The JiWire Hotspot Finder for Skype allows users to search for and to find WiFi hotspots anywhere in the world through Skype. It allows one to view surrounding access points and then connect to them in just one click. The JiWire Hotspot Finder for Skype includes easy keyword search capability; just type in "café" or "hotel" or the name of a specific location to find a nearby hotspot. You can also get local weather or traffic reports, news and directions by simply clicking on the map.

The download of the JiWire Hotspot Finder adds a contact to your Skype Contacts; typing "?" provides a complete set of instructions for using its Natural Language search engine. But not only does entering "restaurants in Sunnyvale, CA" into the chat window bring up a list of five "closest" WiFi-enabled restaurants (with a "next" command to bring up additional restaurants), it also brings up the JiWire WiFi companion that provides the meat of this mashup.

Continue reading "Dawn of the Mashup Age IIa: And the North American Mashup Competition Winner Is ...." »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

PamFax now available for North America; Evoca launches phone-to-web media services platform.

The Skype Mashup contest award winning PamFax initially was rolled out as a beta for use by Europeans in order to determine infrastructure issues as well as performance requirements. You could send faxes to, however, not initiate them from, North America. Yesterday PamFax was made available worldwide, including North America. Download it at the PamFax website; it will be available in the Skype Extras Manager within a few days.

Evoca provides audio web hosting services using embedded Flash player technology where, for instance, voice recordings can be made via a Skype Contact algorithm. Today Evoca launched "a phone-to-web media services platform to easily create user-generated content"; a key feature is that there is no software download required to use the services. From their press release:

Evoca (www.evoca.com), the phone-to-Web services company, introduced Evoca Media Services to help companies increase their ROI - “Return on Interaction™” by using audio content to attract users to go online, generate more page and ad views, boost purchase and donation conversion ratios, and increase advertising revenue. Evoca Media Services technology gives companies easy ways for their customers, audiences, and supporters to record content from any phone - landline, mobile, and Skype™, and play the content with branded Flash players that bring any web page alive.

“Evoca invites media companies, political campaigns, cause marketers, social networking sites, and any organization to ‘Get a phone for your website’,” said Murem Sharpe, CEO and president of Evoca. “Now organizations can leverage the world’s 4 billion phones to capture customers and supporters’ exact words at the point of passion, when they have a phone in their hand.” People can record opinions, reviews, testimonials, and stories from local and toll-free phone lines available for over 40 countries. Companies can turn browsers into buyers and donors with Evoca's hosted voice application services that keep the target audience engaged both online and offline.

Along with this launch comes a set of Evoca API's and a comment from Mashable.com:

With its API, Evoca now enables users to customize their call recording solution for their audience. While it seems the focus is on business users, there could also be opportunities for social networks looking to add a voice comments feature (Facebook app anyone?).

Tags: Skype, PamFax, Evoca, Skype Extras

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you'd like to meet Skype software partners, swing by Skype North America's Open House BBQ this Thursday afternoon, 27 September, in San Jose, California. Jim Courtney and I will see you there.

If you liked the Skype Mashup Contest, check out the Sylantro Mashup Contest, starting now, organized by Thomas Howe and Mashable. The Sylantro contest is open to any tools or technologies so long as you're making great demonstrations of voice technologies in mashups.

See also:

• Skype Public Platform Roadmap
• The Dawn of the Mashup World II: And the European Mashup Competition Winner Is...
• The Dawn of the Mashup World: Part Ia: What is a Mashup?

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

When looking at Convenos, think of entering your conference or board room and encountering the audio-visual devices within that room: a slide projector, a whiteboard, a video monitor and probably a display adapter with screen. In essence Convenos Meeting Center moves that board room to the Internet, even to the point where you can enter and leave the board room at will and re-enter to find all your shared content just as you left them previously. Convenos Meeting Center is a complete conference sharing collaborative environment suitable for both ad hoc and scheduled meetings as well as a virtual meeting room for "persistent", project-dedicated business activities such as key account sales strategizing or product management support. Perhaps the best indicator of its effectiveness is that Convenos Meeting Center is being adopted by enterprises requiring up to three figure numbers of licenses.

Sharing Modes: The essence of Convenos is demonstrated in their tab bar's titles:

• Slides: A full presentation slide manager (PowerPoint, PDF and MS Office files, etc.)
• Web: Cobrowsing (sharing links) of web pages
• Draw: A virtual whiteboard with the usual annotation capabilities
• Media: embedded Windows Media Player for full motion video sharing
• AppShare: an application sharing environment for either your full desktop or one individual desktop application window

In addition to displaying the five basic services, the Convenos Meeting Center session displays sidebars that facilitate and support management of the meeting:

Continue reading "Convenos Meeting Center: Your Conference Board Room on the Internet" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

A few days ago I provided an introductory post to the forthcoming series on desktop collaboration offerings that are available as Skype Extras. In this post I simply want to mention the three offerings that will be reviewed along with some additional criteria for the evaluation.

Skype Extras for PC Desktop Collaboration:

Convenos Meeting Center: emulating your conference board room with a slide projector, video monitor, whiteboard and display adapter with screen. A key feature is Convenos' "persistence" capability that allows you to enter and leave the "board room" or conference at will without losing any of the information left in the room.

Unyte: bringing desktop sharing as complementary real time conversation mode to Skype's traditional voice, IM and video modes via a single click. Includes a "Remote Asssist" feature that allows the user to view a remote Windows platform for providing customer presentations and support to, or reviewing documents with, both Skype-enabled and non-Skype-enabled contacts.

And announced today (drum roll for Mac and Linux users): Yugma Skype: full cross platform desktop sharing (Windows, Mac and Linux). Simple swapping of shared desktops and a free offering for up to ten-participant sessions are two key features.

Criteria for evaluation include:

• User interface
  • Remote viewing: browser-based or independent window
  • Session setup and scheduling
  • Approach to handling different screen sizes
• Operating System, Web Browser flexibility
• Extent of Skype integration
• Sharing Modes
• Refresh/update speeds at remote participants' desktops
• Session/conference persistence

If you are looking for a desktop collaboration solution I would suggest you first determine what your needs are, try out all three for compatibility with your needs, identify features within the products that can bring additional productivity and value-add to your activities before making a final decision. All three products offer limited use trial versions and/or a free trial period for the full product.

Other posts in this Skype Extras Collaboration services series

• Desktop Collaboration: Ten Years Later - The Skype Impact
• Convenos Meeting Center: Your Conference Board Room on the Internet
• Yugma Skype Edition: Cross Platform Desktop Sharing

Tags: Skype, Skype Extras, desktop collaboration, desktop sharing, Convenos, Unyte, Yugma, Yugma Skype

Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With the first full weekend of September and lots of upcoming conference and seminar activity, we found some interesting posts over the weekend:

Andy Abramson challenges Yahoo execs to admit that "Yahoo isn't talking".

John Musser at ProgrammableWeb.com comments on an interview by Sean Ammirati at Read/WriteTalk with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone about the almost dominating role of the Twitter API's in Twitter's success:

Two things that jumps out is that Biz’s comment that the API has 10x the traffic of the website and that of all that’s happened with Twitter in the past year that “the amount of activity around the API has been the most surprising experience”.

One of the three specific API's mentioned in John's post is Skype to and from Twitter. (Thanks to Julian Bond for the heads-up on this via one of our ongoing Skype Group Chats.)

Ever wonder who dominates the mobile smart phone market? Check the graph at Om's Who's Afraid of Apple & Google? Not Symbian. Seems like Nokia dominates everywhere but North America where RIM (Blackberry) and Windows Mobile share market leadership. Certainly says why the folks at SlingBox are beta testing SlingPlayer for Symbian at the moment with release expected within the next few weeks. And it will be interesting to see how the Skype ecosystem evolves in the Symbian market with IM+ for Skype, iSkoot and Fring emerging as players.

A minor bug fix release for Skype for Windows last week; from your Skype client: Help | Check for Updates.

Tags: VoIP Watch, Yahoo, Twitter, Skype to and from Twitter, Nokia, Symbian, Blackberry, IM+ for Skype, iSkoot, Fring, GigaOm, Symbian, Skype

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In February 1996, while with Quarterdeck, I came down to my Mississauga-based office early one morning and participated in a demonstration of Quarterdeck's nascent remote collaboration tools to a market analyst presentation in London, UK (another participant was in Paris) using a whiteboarding product (which later became core to Webex's technology), a VoIP offering and IRC chat (this was a year before ICQ introduced IM). Over the past eleven years, the desktop collaboration space, pioneered by Webex, has evolved to the point where, if you can spontaneously download a small client, remote collaboration tools are available for a wide variety of applications from building customer relationships, through remote presentations and customer support, to operating an ongoing, persistent virtual enterprise conference room.

The biggest issue with the early real time collaboration offerings, aside from the widespread availability of an appropriate broadband infrastructure, was getting the voice connection right - both technologically and economically. Until a few years ago, traditional voice conferencing could result in significant phone bills - several hundred dollars for a one hour multi-party conference call, especially when the call involved overseas participants. It was a significant inhibitor to adoption of real time collaboration on a worldwide scale.

Introducing VoIP into the enterprise has significantly reduced those costs. The availability of Skype and its voice conferencing offerings (up to ten participants within Skype or several hundred through Vapps' HighSpeedConferencing.com) has significantly broadened the market for real time collaboration suites to include small-medium enterprises as well as consumer, family and special interest community conferencing. As we shall see in one instance, it also allows Skype to take a role in social networking.

Over the past week I have been evaluating a few desktop collaboration offerings that are being offered within the Skype Extras program. As a heads up my criteria for the evaluation have included:

• transparency relative to the discussion or meeting agenda
  • ease of setup and operation
  • spontaneity
• role of desktop sharing as a real time conversation mode
• emulation of a traditional enterprise conference room
• platform capability (browsers, OS's)

With respect to the last item, I use Firefox as my primary browser (IE 7 just gave me too many headaches). But I have installed the IE Tab and IE View Firefox extensions to facilitate interacting with products that require IE features. As an aside, these, along with FirefoxView, are amongst my most frequently used Firefox extensions; highly recommended for more fluid web browsing. Having these extensions installed certainly makes the evaluation much easier to execute.

As the evaluations proceed I will list the products and links here for ready reference.

• Desktop Collaboration: The Skype Ecosystem Expands
• Convenos Meeting Center: Your Conference Board Room on the Internet
• Yugma Skype Edition: Cross Platform Desktop Sharing

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While at the Skype Developers Conference in early June, I learned about the first Blackberry application involving Skype; in particular, it followed the model I had been suggesting of using Skype itself for IM but, for a variety of both technical and cost reasons, using the underlying wireless voice plan for voice calls. In practice, IM+ for Skype incorporates Skype IM, SkypeOut, Skype and Skype Conferencing to provide such a capability for the Blackberry, Nokia Symbian 60 phones (certain N-series and E-series versions) and Palm devices. And they now have a web-based beta version that provides Skype access on Apple's new iPhone.

Last week I received an email from Shape Services Vice President of Marketing advising me that IM+ for Skype has received Skype Certification in a new Remote Access category. Congratulations to the Shape Services team on achieving this milestone; we look forward to other Skype Certified products in this category.

Other posts:

• Security, Skype and the Blackberry
• IM+ 2.5: Call Your (Skype and Blackberry Contacts Your Way!
• Skype on the Blackberry - A New Era in the AlwaysOn World
• Seat to Seat Calling via Skype on a Blackberry
• iSkoot Launches Beta Client and Service for Blackberry
• Dan York: Making Skype Calls from the Blackberry.....

Tags: IM+ for Skype, Shape Services, Skype, Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, Symbian 60, Dan York

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Call Center introduced this week for Skype comes from a Skype Extras Partner, not from Skype itself!

Two posts this morning talk about a new offering exhibited at VoiceCon in San Francisco earlier this week. However, while one post eventually notes that this is a third party offering, another post blatantly assumes that Skype developed the service. (Full disclosure at this point: OnState Communications is a client for my professional services involving market research of the Live Chat market space where I have previous experience. Also note that this post has not been reviewed or cleared through OnState.)

Fact: At VoiceCon this week OnState Communications introduced and demonstrated their recently announced Live Chat feature that works within their overall OnState ACD for Skype offering. As stated in previous posts (here and here), OnState's ability to deliver their basic ACD ("Automated Call Distribution") service was inhibited until Skype's Call Transfer function became available in June. As a result they developed a Live Chat feature that can run independent of the Call Transfer requirement. With the availability of Call Transfer for the past two months, OnState is now able to offer both Call Center and Live Chat services or both; this is what was exhibited this week.

So Russell Shaw is correct in his title "New call center soluton unveiled for Skype". However, I would disagree with his statement: "You may not realize this, but Skype has vivid aspirations of being a major player in the call center game. Skype is doing this through Skype for Business." In practice, Skype looks to its Extras Partners to provide third party solutions such as a Call Center.

• Developing a Call Center requires unique experience, technology and expertise that Skype internally cannot hope to match, given the demands on its developer and product marketing resources just to build the basic Skype service across multiple platforms.
• At the Skype DevCon in Las Vegas a year ago June, I had a long discussion with David Clarke of Pika Technologies where he educated me on the requirements for a fully capable call center offering.
• Russell then does go on to acknowledge that OnState's offering is a third party solution; in fact, OnState is participating in the Skype Extras program.

Then Gokul Gopalakris, with reference to Russell's post, goes onto Smith on VoIP and puts out a post "Many Companies Don't Understand the Call Center Business". To put it mildly the statements in this post need to be addressed:

Continue reading "Getting the Story Right.: Whose Call Center for Skype Was Introduced?" »

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

The infrastructure that allows Skype-to-Skype calls to continue to be free.

Telecom industry veteran and VoIP pioneer Tom Evslin writes an excellent blog covering politics, life in Vermont, technology business issues and occasionally the communications industry. While the rest of us were beating the Skype outage issue to death, Tom was writing a very informative three part series of posts on "P2P - Boon, Boondoggle or Bandwidth Hog?" The trigger for Tom's posts was the BBC's decision to make most of its content available free over the Internet for a limited time after showing using P2P technology. He does reference Skype throughout the series.

I. Introduction: P2P Explanation for non-nerds, Advantages of P2P - Scalability, Survivability, Hardware Economics, Bandwidth Economics (posted August 15 before the outage):

... So the bandwidth needed for both the calls and the call setup is provided by the users. If eBay had to provide all this bandwidth, Skype-to-Skype calls probably wouldn’t be free.

II. The Dark Side: A discussion of the implications for ISP's on a P2P-based application that is "much cheaper FOR THE PROVIDER of the application in terms of hardware and bandwidth required".

It’s the FOR THE PROVIDER part that’s the rub. Let’s consider the case of BBC’s iPlayer service. For a seven days after most broadcasts, UK residents over 16 years old can download the show free and store it 30 days on their PCs for later viewing which can be offline. The current version doesn’t even download ads with the shows.

Sounds great, right? Just what TV should become on the Internet. Not so fast, according to British ISPs.

and, having been posted August 16, it includes a "Timely note: Ironically, as I write this, P2P network Skype is experiencing a rare outage". Read his post for the rest of this "note".

Continue reading "A P2P Primer" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the Skype Developers Conference in June Lou Guercia told his story about how WebDialogs became a Skype Extras Partner with their Unyte Desktop Sharing service and how this partnership had benefited his business, along with the trial and tribulations of getting to the point where they were seeing some success.

Today WebDialogs passed a significant milestone; according to this report from Dan York, it was announced at VoiceCon 2007 this afternoon that WebDialogs is being acquired by IBM for incorporation into IBM's Lotus Software Group. From the IBM press release:

With the acquisition of WebDialogs, IBM is adding a software-as-a-service delivery model to the Lotus Sametime family of products, providing customers with choice and flexibility in how they buy and operate their web conferencing services. IBM will also integrate the service with its industry-leading collaboration portfolio, including IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Sametime software.

The WebDialogs Unyte services will expand IBM's offerings in the Web conferencing space, particularly for the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) segment and departments within larger organizations.

I have personally enjoyed watching as Lou, Gershon and the WebDialogs team build Unyte over the past 18 months into a first class desktop sharing service. Congratulations to them all.

Phil is attending the IBM press conference as I write this; he will probably have more observations later today; perhaps even information on how WebDialogs services will become incorporated into other voice-enabled services beyond Skype.

P.S.: It's another of Andy Abramson's clients who is being acquired; last month Google acquired his client Grand Central.

Tags: Skype, Unyte, WebDialogs

Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The Skype Mashup competition is heating up with entries arriving at Antoine's desk daily. You can check out the most up-to-date entries here.

But to turn to the full spirit of the MashUp competition. Personally I do not know and have never met Thomas Howe, an independent consultant and VoIP expert, who writes a blog, The Thomas Howe Log, that I follow daily, based on a recommendation by long time acquaintance Alec Saunders, author of the Voice 2.0 Manifesto. And it's over thirty years since I last wrote a computer program (can anybody say FORTRAN?). So while I might have an overview about making mashups, I cannot say I understand all the details. But I do know that mashups are changing the development world in a big way.

Thomas wrote a post yesterday that exemplifies the spirit of the mashup competition, API of the Week: DBpedia API.

It's not in any way a telephony API, and that's my point. A large number of innovative applications that use telephony will include APIs that have NOTHING to do with telephony. The DBPedia API is an effort to put a Web Services API on top of the Internet's encylopedia.

...Essentially, it allows you to access all of Wikipedia's 1.6 million articles from your application, whatever that application might be.

Read the post but he articulates the essence of the MashUp competition when he says:

The twenty-something-don't-know-or-care-about-SS7 engineer will sit down and design their version of the hot-or-not site one day, and use a whole bunch of crazy APIs to put together the application. Then, they will go have a beer, come back, and say "You know, it would be really cool if you could just call the person you want to hook up with. Is there an API for that?" They won't even consider for a minute the words "termination", "LATA" or "CALEA". They're just writing an application. They need an API for some function, and it will take a few minutes to integrate it into their application. And, there are many, many more of these guys than all the telecom engineers that have ever, and will ever, exist.

Can we see an entry that mashes up Skype with Wikipedia? Don't know but I thought I'd throw it out as a challenge. As Thomas concludes: "Go check it out; let your imagination run." Just over two weeks left to the August 31, 2007 deadline.

In a subsequent post, Thomas announces his partnership with Programmable Web, a key mashup resource often referenced by Skype personnel.

Tags: Skype Mashup, Skype, Thomas Howe, DBpedia API, Wikipedia, Thomas Howe Log

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MyToGo connects your most used PSTN phones to reach your most frequently called Skype Contacts.

While Skype provides the ability to call another Skype user anywhere in the world at no cost and to call PSTN numbers worldwide for minimal charges (except for calls to non-North American mobile phones that can run an order of magnitude larger than "minimal"), we are not always at a device, such as a PC or Skype phone, which has direct access to Skype. We have already seen services on mobile devices that allow you to chat via Skype IM on the mobile device while using the underlying wireless network to facilitate attachment to a Skype gateway that completes a Skype call from the wireless device. Now arriving on the scene are three "ToGo" services that allow you to connect to Skype on your PC from any PSTN phone device.(landline and/or mobile) with the phone's inherent touchtone dialpad as the user interface.

Mobivox was the initial service that provides, via local access numbers in over 40 countries, an ability to call your Skype Contacts by issuing voice commands. Works from any phone platform, but does require registration with Mobivox and a directory of POP access points. There could arise speech recognition issues if your English is not clear enough. No IM component; nothing to download to the device, no Skype on the PC required.

SkypeToGo is a recently launched Skype Pro service that allows you to turn one most frequently called remote (usually international) into a "local" number from within your local calling zone. With SkypeToGo, you can call, from any PSTN phone, an assigned "local" number which, via Skype, will connect you to the single designated remote (international) number. Great for building personal relationships with that "significant other" who happens to live in a remote country or a business relationship with your most important international customer. With SkypeToGo you will still pay wireless minutes or any landline connection charges to the assigned "local" number plus the SkypeOut charges associated with calling the destination number. So SkypeToGo works as:

Any “local” phone --> SkypeToGo “local” number --> one designated International phone

Skype UberDeveloper Don Kennedy's ZOverLord Creations has offered up for beta testing a new service called MyToGo, combining SkypeIn, the recently launched Skype Call Transfer and Skype's Speed Dial feature, to reduce the costs for calling up to 396 destinations worldwide. At the calling end, however, you are limited to calling from three phone numbers: your mobile phone, your home phone and your office phone (or appropriate proxies). But these are the phones from which you would probably place most of your calls when away from a direct Skype client access situation.

Continue reading "Skype as a Minute Stealer" »

Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)