Skype-modded Hulger phone

The Hulger P*PHONE is a gorgeous retro USB phone. It's technically simple, just a microphone, a speaker and a cable.

Canadian artist and designer Mike Pelletier "added a lever switch connected to a phidgets interface kit [seen below] so a max patch can detect when you pick up and hang up the phone and automatically tell skype to answer or end a call. I made sure that the wires match the phone."

tags: skullbee, hulger, mod, skype, hacks, voip, phone, telephone, handset, switch

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Is there a cure for Skype Syndrome?

Chris from Vancouver suffers from Skype Syndrome. No word yet on treatment or a cure.

tags: skype, syndrome, humor, fun, addiction, boisestate, toothbrush, psychotherapy, skypesyndrome, youtube

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Back to School: Learn Guitar on Skype

Meet Antoine Dufour, of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Antoine on MySpace and on CANdYRAT Records. I like Antoine's offer for a global market. Sections on currency, language, payment, and time zones spell out details you'd assume in local transactions.

Antoine Dufour
Skype Guitar Lessons

Private lesson; live on the Skype video conferencing service.
Intended for intermediate to advanced acoustic guitar players

Cost: $75 for one hour lesson ($ in US or CAN)

Requirements:

Skype application (available for free on skype.com);
High-speed internet connection;
Web-cam & Microphone and headphones;
A Paypal account;
Guitar

The lessons:

I'll be teaching parts of my songs, exercises, technique, tricks, extended techniques, open tunings, interpretation, textures and how to incorporate all that in an original composition and answer any question regarding my guitar playing or gear, etc.

The lesson can be in english or french.

How to register?

• Send me an email, with your skype info at: adguitarlessons@gmail.com
• Then, via email, we can schedule a time for the lesson.
• Payment must be received via Paypal one week before the lesson takes place.

Time zone:

• For lesson appointments, you'll have to provide me your time zone information and I'll find out a time to make it work for both of us.
• My time zone is Eastern time (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

Terms:

• I must be informed of any cancellation at least 24h in advance or you'll loose the lesson.
• If I have to cancel, I'll contact you for another appointment.
• If for some reason I can't give you a prepaid lesson, I'll refund you.
• Sometimes, the Internet could be unstable, don't worry; you won't loose your lesson.
• Registration is now open for a limited number of students.

tags: skype, music, education, guitar, youtube, freemium, skypenomics, lessons, tutoring

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Why Oprah's Skype day was ineffective: tone and Skype

Skype earned market acceptance when Oprah said "I love Skype" in 2008. Skype started to become a household name as Oprah brought guests to her her weekday show.

Thursday, a year later, she spent an hour in Skype's honor. Nothing happened; Skype's download rate didn't budge.

The "Where the Skype Are You?" show aired Thursday, 05/21/09, at 4:00 pm in most US and Canada markets, rolling across time zones. U.S. Memorial Day weekend might have dampened the "Oprah Effect." A few weeks' earlier, the Oprah Winfrey Show had a Nielsen Television rating of 5.4, 6,197,000 audience, and 7,110,000 viewers for the week of 04/27 - 05/03 2009.

Why didn't Oprah's Skype day work?

The small problem: The tone was wrong. It felt like an infomercial more than a celebration of broadband Internet's ubiquity. Oprah's delivery was wooden, the Skype conversations banal, video quality variable.

This episode must have looked great on paper. Skype reinforces several Oprah themes: Surviving tough economic times by using free or cheaper tools. The importance of family and communication. That we live in a connected world and affect each other. 

Sadly, Oprah's regulars already knew the Skype basics, having seen dozens of guest appearances over Skype. Skype day became a "best of" show; not the most exciting format.

The huge problem: Fans could not Skype Oprah. Unlike twitter, where Oprah created an account that everyone could follow and message, Oprah did not give out a Skype account for fans to befriend. People want to be closer to their celebrities so, for example, they followed Oprah on twitter; 1,182,301 at last count.

Why couldn't a million fans Skype Oprah?

Twitter scales well for their news and celebrity users (ones with high TV ratings). Fame changes relationships from symmetrical (we friend each other) to off the charts. 1,182,301 twitterers follow Oprah, Oprah follows 14.

Could Skype handle an Oprah account? Or a Coke, a White House, or an American Idol account? What would happen if someone with a fan base used the web and television to invite a million people to befriend them in Skype?  No PSTN, just in-network Skype activity. One user with a million friends.

Skype is engineered for the average user, with a handful of contacts and modest levels of activity. For the most part, Skype's network is thin, flat, like the long tail in a power curve.

Power skypers, like Skype Journal readers and those who work at Skype or who use Skype for selling, may have a few hundred or a few thousand contacts.

Stressors come to mind:

1. Approval work flow. Can you imagine opening up your Skype client in the morning to approve a hundred new contacts? You might get through 100 in 15 minutes if you click 'add to contacts' blindly. 1000 per day at 6 seconds each? Almost two hours. A million? 1,666 hours, about nine months. For all practical purposes, this must be automated.
2. Client Account Storage. Can your Skype client hold a million contacts? No. Even if it was the only software running and you had all the memory in the world, your Skype client was never built to hold that large a contact list. While some enterprises have hundreds of thousands of employees and and millions of stakeholders, Skype for Windows or Mac will slow to a crawl and crash when loading that many contacts. Let's say each new contact's profile, avatar, and history uses .1 MB. The contact list alone would be 100k MB. Skype still thinks like a phone or mobile phone company, not like a social network.
3. Presence and Activity Streams. Skype updates your friends when you log on, log off, or otherwise change your presence. A Skype client would be very busy with hundreds of thousands of mood and availability updates. Presence data might be very useful to the celebrity if you want to narrowcast updates ("today's show is about puppies") only to people who are online; no need for you to see the message when you log in next week.
4. Navigation. Skype's UI is not designed to let search, sort, browse, discover, organize a million contacts. Not even ten thousand contacts.
5. Filtering contact activity. If you friend them, they will IM, call, and send you files. I sometimes have a dozen public chats and private conversations going at once; dizzying. What happens when ten thousand people try to chat with you during today's financial conference call? You must automate your responses in ways that produce meaningful experiences and that route callers to relevant people and services.
6. Public vs. shades of private. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman revealed a deep flaw in Skype's identity system. Her MegAtWork Skype account was different than her personal account, and she could only log in to one at a time. Techniques vary, but a celebrity must be able to manage personal, family, workplace, acquaintances, and fans from one login, disclosing only as appropriate.
7. Swamping Skype supernodes and relays. What happens when one node on the Skype network connects with five to ten percent of the whole network? Can enough supernodes emerge in Chicago for Oprah, for example, to support all the new connections, updates and conversations? Will this hurt the experience of other Skype users in Chicagoland? How much of updating is done directly between a Skype client and Skype's presence and client-backup servers? Can that client-server connection be swamped as the volume rises four to five orders of magnitude over the norm?
8. No server side messaging, voice, video APIs. No software developer in their right mind wants to build and operate their own IM gateway. Think thousands of Skype clients running on hundreds of boxes, each needing careful administration. Instead they want to talk to a web service API. Services like IMified (congratulations, Voxeo!) let you design and run bots for the AIM, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google networks in hours, and without your getting into the gateway business. Skype isn't on the list because it doesn't host a public web service interface to the Skype network.

Why would Oprah want a million Skype fans?

Why would a brand or celebrity want to have a Skype relationship with so many people? For companies on Cluetrain 1.0 (markets are conversations) and moving to Cluetrain 2.0 (markets are relationships), Skype offers opportunities for engagement and intimacy. Unlike blogs or services like twitter, Skype conversations are held privately.

How will Oprahs engage?

1. Broadcast alerts and information. IM news relevant to fans based on language, interests, location, and length of relationship.
2. Deliver services. You could sign up for Oprah's book club, update Oprah's magazine subscriptions, get the link for the episode you missed, get local show times for next week, or suggest a show topic. Harpo Productions could support those services through a blend of voice mashups and call centers. How about Skyping an Oprah account that played a Skype video of her last show, or a show on demand?
3. Bring fans together. Introduce fans with similar interests to each other. Host thousands of small salons in Skype public chats before or after a show, or about a theme or a magazine topic. Help the millions find others to solve problems, share burdens, and make sense of the world.

See also:

• Jim Courtney's great play-by-play of the Oprah show
• flickr set of photos from the show

tags: skype, tv, television, us, canada, marketing, promotion, tie-in, oprahwinfrey, oprah, theoprahwinfreyshow, scale, fame

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype product placement: Who Wants to be a Millionaire (US)

"Millionaire has teamed up with Skype for "Ask The Expert," one of our most fun and innovative lifelines!"

From an August 2008 ABC press release: "Contestants are invited to ask an expert's advice on any question beyond the $1,000 level. Experts appear via a live face-to-face Skype video call and will include newsmakers, journalists, former "Millionaire" contestants, politicians, doctors, professors and trivia champs, among others. Bill Nye appears during the show's first week, airing September 8-12, and Ogi Ogas, a former "Millionaire" contestant who won $500,000, appears during week two, airing September 15-19."

Here's a video clip that shows Skype in action.

This version of Millionaire is in syndication in the US. It hasn't made Nielsen's top-twenty-most-popular-syndicated-shows lately, but it is seen by millions of households every week.

Experts Skype in to the television studio. In this clip, Will Shortz, editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, calls in from Pleasantville, New York.

See the little white mark in the upper left corner? He's using Skype's High Quality (640x480@30fps) video.

The expert is shown on a large screen in the studio, exposing him to the in-studio experience and letting the contestant get a feel for how much to trust the expert with a lifeline.

When called on, the expert and the contestant talk to each other and the production team shows them side-by-side to the audience. The expert's reactions to being right, wrong, or not knowing add to the drama. 

On the web side of the business, this is the Millionaire home page. See the Skype artwork (bottom middle with the rainbow)?

The Skype badge takes you to the "Ask an Expert" landing page. It encourages you to download Skype. "It's free, easy and quick to get on Skype so check out all the great information below on how you can use Skype to connect with family and friends!"

This makes the fourth US/Canada television product product placement I know of in 2008. Oprah uses Skype for people to call her show, starting in March 2008. CNN started using Skype for interviews in March. And Skype was mentioned briefly in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in July 2008 for a bit of character development involving transatlantic romance.

P.S. What television shows, movies, or characters would benefit from a little Skype?

tags: skype, video, television, tv, conferencing, whowantstobeamillionaire, millionaire, marketing, productplacement, game, shows, advertising, call, us, shortz

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Bold Twittering: When is a SmartPhone Truly a Mobile Microcomputer?

If I ever had any doubt about the value of Twitter as a commercial social networking tool, it evaporated this weekend as a result of following some Tweets on the subject of smartphones that appeared this weekend. They certainly provide an independent perspective on issues that I'm sure others are wondering about:

Mark Evans acquired an iPod Touch back in August after deciding he did not need an iPhone; as a result of his recent employment status change, he is now debating the merits of having a smartphone - in particular, an iPhone

Luca Filigheddu has just gone through the process of evaluating the BlackBerry Bold and iPhone over the past few weeks. Saturday he sent me a Twitter direct message to say that he had acquired a BlackBerry Bold; after he had had a few hours experience Saturday I see this on his Twitter feed:And when I came home yesterday evening I see that my acquaintance Olivier Chaine has put up this Tweet (earlier yesterday I had suggested, in response to his request for smartphone Twitter client recommendations, that he look at Slandr.Net as a mobile platform Twitter client):

First I would suggest that the mini-computer industry died many years ago, to be replaced by the microcomputer era, especially server banks. Trust me, I spent a major part of my career relying on mini-computers. I think I would need a backpack to be mobile with a mini-computer.

So I'll assume Mark is really looking to have a mobile microcomputer or PC experience on a smartphone. Having had several months' experience with both an iPhone and a BlackBerry Bold, here are my criteria for a mobile microcomputer or, more aptly, a "Laptop for the Hip or Purse":

• Minimum 480 x 320 graphics display.
• Full QWERTY keyboard.
• Web browser capable of supporting PC-type browsing.
• Supports "Cut & Paste" (of significant value more often than one would initially imagine until it's not available)
• View and edit MS Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) with potential to add document creation.
• Supports video recording and MMS
• Background processing (especially after experiencing both Truphone for BlackBerry and Truphone for iPhone)
• Supports true Instant Messaging in background while running other applications
• A very high speed processor (>500 MHz)
• Runs applications such as Qik.com, SlingPlayer Mobile and iSkoot (for voice and chat conversations with Skype contacts).
• Bluetooth stereo audio support.
• Removable battery
• Equipped for memory upgrades through a removable memory card.
• Supports both Both WiFi and 3G wireless protocols

A great set of specifications but the key question here is: "How does it change the user experience?". In particular does it eliminate the "urge" to turn on, or always carry, a laptop to keep up-to-date with real time activities?

As I have mentioned elsewhere, after a month's experience with the BlackBerry Bold, I found I had lost that tugging "urge" to turn on my laptop for keeping current with real time (and often mission critical) information. This change did not just involve email and web browsing but also Instant Messaging, Twitter and attached document editing.. RIM would do well to position Bold as a "Laptop for the Hip or Purse", bypassing all the technical comparisons and moving on to succinctly promoting Bold based on the actual user experience.

I like my iPhone for many of its personal information delivery features; it gives me a feel for what is appealing about the iPhone. I can find Toronto Transit streetcar times, do unit conversions, find the nearest Tim Horton's or Starbucks; it has lots of great information delivery features. On the media side it's definitely an extension of the iPod although it does not have the full audio performance of the Bold.

However, a mobile microcomputer the iPhone is NOT! Yes it uses a modified Mac OS; it uses Safari browser; it has an iPod variant.

However, I find myself turning to my Bold much more often than my iPhone for real two way interactivity. Just as important as the keyboard is the ability to track instant messaging sessions, whether on iSkoot (for Skype chat), Palringo or BlackBerry Messenger in background while carrying out other activities. On the subject of low cost international calling I find I can make much more use of Truphone for BlackBerry than Truphone for iPhone (that's the subject of a future post).

I am encountering more and more acquaintances who have no use for a touch keyboard; certainly my typing error rate is much worse on the iPhone. For this reason alone I consider the iPhone to be a very good one-way information delivery device whereas BlackBerry is a true two-way communications device.

As for applications, suffice it to say that over the next six months, where feasible, business savvy developers will publish applications running on both devices. For instance, The Hockey News has just released mobile applications for both the BlackBerry and iPhone. I mentioned Truphone above; Mobile Google apps are another example.

Keeping up with iTunes music via BlackBerry MediaSync is a trivial operation. Frankly from some video and audio streaming experiences I have had, BlackBerry Bold provides superior stereo audio performance even without earbuds or a headset.

Bottom line: when I leave my home office or hotel room with my Bold, I no longer have to take my laptop to keep current.

Yes, at the moment, the iPhone browser a superior user experience but rest assured RIM is not ignoring the issue. At this point the Bold's browser issues have sometimes been frustrating but they not been an inhibition to my browsing activities in any major way - I still get the information I am seeking. The critical parameter here is the 480 pixel display width, which is sufficient to view most websites and weblogs without the need for horizontal scrolling via a ribbon bar. When RIM releases carrier-specific versions of their upgraded operating system - including browser enhancements, the Bold will live up to its full potential as "A Laptop for the Hip or Purse".

(As for pricing on Rogers, both the Bold and iPhone are C$199 with a three year contract.)

In future posts I'll cover in more detail some of the issues mentioned above, including my Truphone evaluation on each device, some very amazing real time video and audio experiences, the range of third party applications available on each device and why both background processing and WiFi is becoming critical to any smartphone.

And, Mark, if you're looking for a mobile microcomputer, I would suggest serious consideration of the BlackBerry Bold. As a final determinant, have a look at the Bold's display - it's been universally acclaimed as "stunning"; I can only agree.

In closing, can we expect Skype to include BlackBerry as one of their supported platforms for Skype for Mobile? Or will iSkoot improve on their user interface to take advantage of some new BlackBerry developer tools? (Most Skype executives I meet are sporting a BlackBerry - it's supported by eBay IT.)

Update: Luca published a post this afternoon, A Bold New Experience, and asks about his Tweet above: "Why Did I Say That?"

1) Always on Experience: the BB is offering me a realtime always-on experience never found in any device I used before
2) Multitasking - It lets you receive IMs while writing an email or making a phone call, for example
3) Stunning display
4) Wide availability of apps
5) Crazy speed
6) Great usability

Other posts:

• Om Malik: Review: BlackBerry Bold is Beautiful
• Web Worker Daily: BlackBerry Bold: Upgrading Your Mobile Experience.
  

Full disclosure: the author has been holder of a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998.

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eComm 2009 Registration Opens: Take Advantage of the Skype Journal Discount

Two weeks ago I wrote about eComm 2009 and the announcement of Skype's participation as a Platinum sponsor. Yesterday registration for eComm 2009 opened with a Super Early Bird Special pricing of $1,190.00 available to those who register prior to December 22, 2008 - a $600 discount from the Regular price that will apply after January 20, 2009..

But, as a Skype Journal reader, you can save even more. If you enter the promotional code "skypejournal", you'll get a 20% discount, taking that Super Early Bird price down to $952.

The speaker list is almost complete and Lee has announced a recently revised schedule.

Also note that eComm has arranged special conference group rates at the San Francisco Airport Marriott, available until February 8, 2009; note that, as has been my own experience at Marriott hotels for several years, all rooms have high speed Internet access included in the room rate.

An excellent deal for anyone who is interested in learning about developments in the rapidly evolving Emerging Communications space where Alec Saunders Voice 2.0 Manifesto is now turning into reality.

Volunteer Advisory Board member Brough Turner calls eComm 2009 the Best Conference Bet for 2009.

Tags: eComm2009, Lee Dryburgh, Voice 2.0 Manifesto

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Alec Saunders Twitters: "Ditching all IM Systems except Skype"!

When I started using Skype more intensively about three years ago, I had been a heavy user of Microsoft's MSN Messenger for several years. But about 18 months ago, I stopped logging into MSN Messenger; none of my contacts were there - or, if they were, they were also on Skype. As for GTalk, well I added a couple of contacts two weeks ago to test out GMail's new voice and video chat feature, so now I'm up to ten contacts on GTalk - and they are also all on Skype. One person still persists in trying to reach me on GTalk these days ... and my BlackBerry catches that - in background.
But when long time acquaintance, well respected blogger and former Microsoft employee Alec Saunders puts up a tweet as shown above, it has to be the ultimate complement to Skype's pervasive worldwide presence.
When you have 370 million accounts (yes, I know there are only 30 to 50 million using Skype over the course of a month), one would suspect that market presence and user base size wins out over any technical disadvantage, such as the lack of XMPP compliance. Sort of places XMPP right up there with SIP - an excellent protocol for interop but it's sort of like the tree falling in the forest - who hears it -at the end user level? And, both SIP and XMPP require business agreements between the linking service providers covering every connection, whether there's revenue or not.
In the IM world, it's a matter of who's available for a conversation? Which service has the highest probability of being able to determine a contact's availability and start a chat, voice call, share a file, send an SMS message or even do a (High Quality) video call? Which service has eight ways of seamlessly carrying out a file transfer?
Alec's one problem in keeping current? He'll have to go back to his BlackBerry to receive Skype IM messages via iSkoot. BlackBerry's background processing capability becomes a very distinct advantage here in the smartphone market. When attending an event in downtown Toronto last night I received an important "good news" Skype chat message on my BlackBerry Bold, while looking up a website the speaker was referencing and following the Twitter feed of one of the organizers.
A more significant challenge for Skype is to generate the marketing that will attract all those of a younger generation (such as my daughter) whose "social networks" are immersed into MSN Messenger as their IM client.
In closing have a look at some of Alec's followup Tweets:
In closing I should also mention that I like to use BlackBerry Messenger for its ability to bypass the Internet for messages that "just have to get there now!" via BlackBerry's unique method for PIN messaging.
Update: An oversight on my part: of course Skype IM also has the hooks to allow Skype chat sessions to proxy for other services. For a classic example check out Twitter4Skype.
Full disclosure: Alec Saunders is author of the Voice 2.0 Manifesto, which is proving itself out in today's dynamic mashup environment - especially when it comes to Communications Enhanced Business Processes. He is CEO of iotum, whose Calliflower Conference Call service is currently being launched. And, much earlier in his career, he was DOS product manger at Microsoft Canada at a time when DOS's memory management feature tried to compete with Quarterdeck's QEMM and the author managed Quarterdeck Canada.

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Tencent's QQ: 45 Million Simultaneous Online

Tencent Holdings (SEHK 700), one of Skype's biggest competitors, had a great quarter. From their 2008Q3 financial release (pdf):

• 856.2 million: Total registered Instant Messaging (“IM”) user accounts, 4.1% growth QoQ [quarter over quarter]
• 355.1 million: Active IM user accounts, +3.9% QoQ
• 45.3 million: Peak simultaneous online user accounts for IM services recorded, +7.9% QoQ
  
• 4.4 million: Peak simultaneous online user accounts of QQ Game portal (for mini casual games only), +11.2% QoQ
• 30.3 million: Internet paying subscriptions, +16.1% QoQ
• 14.8 million: Mobile paying subscriptions, +10.4% QoQ

More people actively use QQ instant messaging than live in the United States and Canada [Tencent defines "active" as logging in to an account in the last 30 days of the quarter].

QQ IM has 3 simultaneous users online for every Skype user online.

Skype has 370 million user accounts, does not report active users but estimates vary from 36 to 85 million people, and peak simultaneous is around 14.5 million.

Skype report minutes, when Tencent does not. Live voice and video calls. Ten billion minutes served in June 2005 (before eBay bought them). 100 billion minutes served as of February 2008. 18 billion minutes a quarter as of 2008-Q3.

Mini-SWOT

QQ has a few strengths.

• No QQ-In or QQ-Out. Regulations forbid connecting to the public telephone network. So Tencent focused their resources to create online communities, content, and games that both trigger talk and make money. QQ commerce is so hot QQ has one of the world's largest virtual currencies.
• Multiple OS clients. Windows. Windows Mobile. Mac beta. Browser. Linux. 
• Age and Incumbency. QQ celebrates their 10th year of service. Skype is only five years' old. Brand awareness and loyalty build with time and experience. QQ has effectively built IM dial-tone (confidence that people will be available through the network) and network lock-in for its customers.
• Monolingual, Monolithic. QQ only needs to support Chinese. So it's easier for people to find other people with similar interests. Spoken Chinese languages pose a linguistic barrier, but not too much since Mandarin is a common second language. 

Weaknesses.

• Sub-Global reach. Skype has to build markets in each country, in every language community. This makes it harder to localize software and web sites, provide customer service and tech support, and talk with a community; the time and costs pose a barrier to entry. Once localized, Skype has an advantage over entrants. QQ isn't even trying to serve non-Chinese cultures.
• No PSTN or mobile voice integration. No income. No new points for the company to learn.
• Platform 1.0. Like most IM providers, QQ offers a simple messaging API. A handful of third-party clients offer alternatives to QQ's own clients. However Tencent lacks a platform strategy, building foundations for third-party partnerships beyond IM clients.

Opportunities.

• Markets: India. Chinese Diaspora.
• Features: Voice/Video/Conferencing.
• Business: Alliances with Indian and western portal/IM companies

Threats.

• TOM-Skype joint venture. Working inside China to spread Skype's brand.
• Premium quality audio and video, a qualitatively different experience.
• The four national Chinese telcos who may enter the market and who restrict PSTN access.

tags: skype, im, voim, tencent, qq, china

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BlackBerry Bold: A Laptop for the Hip or Purse...

With about two months' experience using a BlackBerry Bold, I was able to pull my experiences together for Web Worker Daily yesterday when this smartphone became available on AT&T: BlackBerry Bold: Upgrading Your Mobile Experience.

Last night at a small local dinner on the topic of social networking in public relations, a few attendees had Bold as it has been available for a couple of months in Canada. Our consensus was that in a world where one wants to keep current in real time with Twitter, email, document viewing and editing (a new feature of Bold) and browsing weblogs or many websites, the BlackBerry Bold can be considered as the first generation "laptop for the hip or purse".

As for Skype via the Bold, whenever I'm away from home, I open iSkoot and am able to follow Skype chat messages (including Twitter4Skype) while riding the commuter services or in a restaurant. With Ontario's forthcoming law banning cell phone use (except for Bluetooth headsets) and text messaging while driving. it means safer roads but I may not respond immediately. Of course iSkoot also gives me calls to Skype contacts with only charges for local wireless minutes.

And, if you don't want to be "Always On", BlackBerry Bold (as well as the forthcoming Storm and Pearl 8220 Flip) includes a bedside mode feature with options to turn off both phone call and email notifications (but logs them) yet still allows the alarm to work.

BlackBerry will continue to be a major player in the smartphone market; but these new smartphones are devices you have to see and experience to realize their full potential as not only a business productivity resource but also a personal associate for both your business and personal social networks and activities.

Tags: BlackBerry Bold, iSkoot, mobile, smartphone

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November 2008 Events

I'm attending bold events.
Tips @ SkypeJournal.com with suggestions, photos, reportage. Spend your travel dollars while you have them.

2 November. Dreamforce 2008. Salesforce automation becomes an application platform for live talk. Moscone Center, San Francisco.

3. ARGS: Cross-Platform Entertainment 2.0. People in alternative reality games have strong reasons to talk live in groups. NESTA, London.

3. Defrag. Some of the hardest questions are tackled at this thought leadership event. Among others, Daniela Barbosa of DataPortability.org is speaking. Colorado Convention Center.

3. The Business of APIs - The Web's Industrial Revolution. Platforming as a strategy and survival trait. Brought to you by The Mashery. City Club of San Francisco.

3. Mobile 2.0. Grand Hyatt San Francisco.

3. Widget Summit. Putting some of your verbs into someone else's places. Hotel Nikko San Francisco.

3. ad:tech New York. The people who pay for lots of free. New York Hilton.

3. Future of Web Design. Roseland Ballroom, NYC.

3. VRM Hub London Conference 2008: Unlocking the see-saw. Vendor Relationship Management, putting people back in control of their identities and their relationships with companies. Sun Microsystems London.

4. US Election Day. If your election lasts for more than four hours, call your doctor.

4. Think Global, Drink Local: Think London/Sterling Communications Election Night Party. San Francisco.

4. Mobile Tech For Social Change. A barcamp. San Francisco.

5. Digital Garage New Context Conference. Joi Ito's clan convenes. Shibuya-ku, Tokyo.

5. Web 2.0 Summit. Still hankering for a press pass. Palace Hotel San Francisco.

5. WinHEC 2008. Windows hardware engineering. Los Angeles Convention Center.

5. Design Futures: Deconstructing Networks - Jonah Brucker-Cohen, of Trinity College Dublin, experiments in how we design and think about the social effect places and alert networks. U.C. Berkeley, California. 

6. Edge of the Web 2008. Perth has a growing Web 2.0+ community. Crawley, Western Australia. 

6. Tweets and Dreenks: November Social Drinkup. Mars Bar, San Francisco.

6. Mobile Forum Meeting: Opportunities in Broadband Wireless. San Jose, California.

6. Community Manager Meetup. San Francisco.

7. Unofficial iPhone TechTalk after-drinks. The Apple event at University of Middlesex is full. London.

8. Silicon Valley Code Camp. Hands-on with peer coaching. Los Altos Hills, California.

8. Freebase Hack Day. Build something with massive quantities of creative commons'd data. San Francisco.

10. Mobile Monday London.

10. Internet Identity Workshop. iiw2008b is a must-go event. This is where the digital ID architecture of the next 10 years is conceived, debated, and bought into. Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA.

10. VoiceCon. Enterprise and unified communications. San Francisco.

11. e-Democracy '08. The first post-US election event to explore politics, public participation and digital technology. RIBA, Central London.

11. US Veteran's Day, Canada and UK Remembrance Day. National holiday.

12. Emerging Communications Dinner. Thought leaders who can't wait for eComm2009 March 03-05 will talk over supper. Ping me if you want an invite. (tips at skypejournal.com) San Francisco Airport Marriott.

12. Under the Radar: Mobility. 32 mobile startups less than one year old. Microsoft, Mountain View, California.

12. The Second London Futures Symposium. London.

13. NewTeeVee Live – Television Reinvented. Mission Bay Conference Center.

13. OpenSocial's 1st Birthday Celebration. Day long workshops. And cake. MySpace Offices, San Francisco.

13. IceWeb08. Kathy Sierra keynoting. Reykjavik. 

15. Convergence 08. Focus on long-term technologies, especially Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno. Co-sponsored by Foresight.org. Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.

15. >play – Berkeley Digital Media. This year's theme is Disruption: Changes in the Digital Media Landscape. Organized by MBA students at Haas, U.C. Berkeley, California.

16. Adobe MAX 2008. Designers and developers imagine the next generation of browser-based talk. Moscone Center, San Francisco.

16. Fall IETF Meeting. Minneapolis, Minnesota, US.

17. Future of Mobile. Jemima Kiss, James Brody, and folks from Google, Symbian, and Mozilla make this a must attend event. Kensington Town Hall, London.

17. Mashup Camp. Steve Repetti of DataPortability.org is speaking at this mostly un-conference. Mountain View, California.

18. Mobile Content Forum. The event for all those companies who made millions on ringtones and wallpaper. Register from your iPhone, baby. Hilton London Kensington.

19. Open Mobile Summit 08. Discount: Register by Oct 10 with priority code TRL and save $400. agenda. trailer:

Fantastic hallway with Skype's Jonathan Christensen, AT&T, Dean Bubley, Om Malik, Rebtel, BT Design's JP Rangaswami, Truphone's James Body, Orange, O2, The US FCC's Julius Knapp, David Isenberg, Amazon, T-Mobile, AOL, Nokia, Google, Symbian, Intel, TAT, LG, RIM, OpenMoko, Funambol, Qualcomm. San Francisco.

18. Robo Development 2008. Robotics small, large, smart, and social. Santa Clara, California.

19. SOA World and Cloud Computing. The 14th Service Oriented Architecture conference. Now the standard for platforming architectures. I want to hear the session on building real-time SOA systems. The program's big buzzwords: cloud and virtual. The Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, California.

21. London Geek Nights: Game Programming. ThoughtWorks UK Office, High Holborn, London.

22. YouTube Live. Concert. Fort Mason, San Francisco.

22. Berkeley beats Stanford. Football. Go Bears.

26. The Media Festival. The session I want: "Case study: Lessons from the adult entertainment industry; learn the secrets of success in mobile entertainment." Always two to five years' ahead in technology and business practices due to intense competition. Manchester.

27. US Thanksgiving. A nation shuts down for a long weekend of American football, turkey, beer. And gratitude.

30. St. Andrew's Day. Scotland's national day.

Logitech to Acquire SightSpeed. Questions Arise.

According to Tech Crunch and GigaOm posts late last night Logitech is about to spend $30 million to acquire SightSpeed, the video messaging and video conferencing service that recently was selected ot provide the infrastructure for Dell's Video Chat. Congratulations to Peter Csathy and his team. And to Andy Abramson and his team; another Comunicano client achieves success.

Seems like the video calling and video conferencing market is about to heat up. There will be another post later this morning involving an announcement that can bring video conferencing to a much broader user audience than Skype's (though it's not exactly insignificant) and SightSpeed's.
Questions that arise from this acquisition:

• How is Logitech able to continue to partner with services such as Skype when they are now entering the desktop video services market? Logitech's co-operation was vital to Skype's ability to provide High Quality Video.
  
• Or is it a produce marketing acquisition? Is Logitech acquiring SightSpeed simply to have additional collateral software to provide with their webcam offerings? Will we start to see Logitech's Carl-Zeiss optics in embedded webcams on Dell PC's?

The economy may be in recession; it's driving less travel and more audio and video conferencing. They're seeing a rise in customers and use of audio conferencing at both HiDef Conferencing and Calliflower. It will be an interesting winter for expanding user experiences involving desktop video.

Logitech Press Release

Update: Alec Saunders comments on the same theme here.
Tags: Logitech, SightSpeed, Skype, Peter Csathy, Tech Crunc, GigaOm, HiDef Conferencing, Calliflower

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Marathon Skype voice call: 66 hours 40 minutes

Guest post by Monty, a Palmdale, California, ham radio operator and computer geek. Monty blogs on LiveJournal, tweets, and is on Skype.

Tuesday, 21 October 2008

4:08 AM. Chatting with Guthro. We've been connected for over 10 hrs 45 mins, wow!

8:02 PM. Attempting to have a single Skype call that lasts at least 24 hours, to see what Skype's display shows after 1 day call duration

8:04 PM. Guthro's PC crashed, so call duration only got to 22 hrs, 31 mins, trying again now though shooting for 24 hours.

 

Wednesday, 22 October 2008

6:05 pm: a pointless but interesting Skype call duration experiment

Beginning Monday evening, I got this crazy pointless idea where I wondered how Skype would display call duration time on a call if it exceeded 24 hours. I wondered if it would show time as days, hours, minutes, seconds, or if it'd show hours, minutes, seconds, as it does for calls greater than 1 hour.

So in an attempt to find out what would happen after the 24-hour mark of a Skype call, I called my friend Adam Guthro in Canada, and kept connected, even after he went to sleep and everything. My previous Skype record for a single call was actually a Skype out call to Bec that lasted 12 and a half hours.

That long standing record of mine was shattered yesterday when Adam Guthro and I reached the 22 hour, 31 minute, 20 second mark of our long call. The attempt to reach and pass 24 hours failed at that point, as Guthro's computer decided to reboot itself due to Guthro working it too hard.

So we tried again yesterday into today, and this time results were much better, and in fact the experiment is ongoing as I write this.

As the counter passed 24 hours, Skype did not switch to showing call durations as 1:00:00 as you may have expected, but rather it continues to show time in hours.

As of this entry, our call duration is 24:20:00.

Now I wonder how much longer we can keep the call live? I wonder if we can break a record for longest connected Skype call? Guthro wants to try and break the 100 hour mark. I'll be very amazed if we get anywhere close to that, but if we do, I'd have to guess we'll shatter any known records for longest Skype call ever. Wouldn't that be unique.

Hmm wonder if I should try for longest SkypeOut call duration next? Yes pointless experiments, but fun nonetheless.

2:56 AM. Going to bed, just finished chatting on radio with a good friend, then chatting with Patrick for a bit, that was fun 

2:59 AM. Skype duration now 9 hours exactly on my Skype experiment. 

10:59 AM. Installed Skype scripts, current duration of experiment with Guthro, about 17 hours now and counting! 

12:01 PM. Just finished watching the news, another warm day, temperatures in the 80's to low 90's in much of Socal.

5:09 PM. Longest Skype call experiment continues at this hour, previous record broken, now at 23 hours, 10 minutes! 

6:01 PM. We've passed 24 hours of Skype call duration with Guthro and I, and Skype shows call time in hours after 24 hours, interesting! 

9:32 PM. Just had a good dinner with sausages, Skype experiment continues now past 27 and a half hours! 

 

Thursday, 23 October 2008

3:22 AM. Guthro's up for another day, our long Skype call continues at over 33 hours now!

11:08 AM. 41 hours, 8 minutes now, Skype call duration, and on we go, trying to wake up.

about 18 hours ago. We've now passed the 50 hour mark in my Skype call with Guthro, and we're still going, wow how long will our PC's stay connected? 

about 11 hours ago. Waking up on this Friday morning. Skype call at 58 hours 18 minutes, Jdawg left at 50.5 hrs 

about 6 hours ago. watching the Lunar lander challenge live at http://spacevidcast.com/live, though not totally sure what it is.

about 3 hours ago. Skype call with Guthro and I now over 66 hours in duration. 

about 2 hours ago. Skype call ended abruptly thanks to computer rebooting itself. gurr piss! about 66 hrs 40 min record to beat 

Friday, October 24th, 2008. 1:18 pm

Skype experiment ends abruptly, 66 hours, 40 minutes the new record to beat

My crazy experiment with Skype to try and see how long I can maintain a single Skype call, has ended abruptly after 66 hours and 40 minutes.

It ended without warning, as my computer decided to reboot itself suddenly while I was browsing the web, disconnecting not only my 66 hour plus chat with Guthro, but my telephone call I was on hold with as well! I don't know why the computer randomly rebooted, but I'm assuming it does that when there is low memory, as I did have a couple web browsers open at the time.

If I try this experiment again, I'll have to try and be sure only Skype is the only active window most of the time.

Ironically, Guthro's call duration is still climbing, since Jdawg remained connected to him when I dropped, therefore his portion of the experiment continues, and he's up over 67 hours now of total call duration, and he's shooting for 100 hours. Can he make it, or will he suffer the same fate as me and get the dreaded random no warning reboot? I'll let you know.

UPDATE: The Skype experiment has in fact officially ended with all parties, as Guthro['s connection] died after 73 hours, 15 minutes. so that's the new record.

tags: skype, marathon, endurance, hours, days, record, fun

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
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Hello Apple! IPEVO diversifies

Speakerphones. I love 'em. I'm using one from IPEVO now.

Swing by your local Apple store and you'll find IPEVO's new TR-10 for iChat in the speaker section.

It's the TR-10 for Skype but with reprinted buttons and software for your Mac. IPEVO's software lets you control iChat from the trio and record your iChat calls. $79.90 MSRP.

Gee. Apple? For a company created to build products for Skype in North America?

Skype hasn't promoted IPEVO's seven Skype-integrated products much.

• Only occasional referrals from Skype.com to IPEVO.com.
• Skype certification which lets IPEVO put a Skype logo/badge on their boxes, for which IPEVO pays a hefty royalty.
• Skype helped some hardware partners find some shelf space in Wal-Marts for the last two years, but not IPEVO.
• It's only been this year that Skype is finally becoming a consumer brand name in the US and Canada.

I can't find IPEVO in the online Skype store.

Apple, on the other hand, has stores. These are shots of the merchandise on Cupertino and New York City shelves. 

 

Skype had the potential for a large and healthy hardware ecosystem. Sadly, hardware partners from Skype's early days have burned through so much cash, talent and goodwill, that most have walked away from Skype.

The few remaining, like IPEVO, are eager to partner with companies that help them demonstrate design leadership or even simple distribution support. They may love Skype, but relationships are two-way streets.

From the spec sheet:

Package Content

• IPEVO TR-10 for iChat
• Installation CD http://www.ipevo.com/mac
• USB Cable
• USB Extension Cord
• Quick Guide

Dimensions / Weight

• Size: 15.1x4.2x3.7cm (LxWxH)
• Weight: 140g

Color

• White

Control Buttons

• iChat window launch
• Dial / Answer
• Cancel / Hang up
• MIC mute
• Volume control
• Record / Pause
• Stop record
• Mode switch

LED Indicators

• Green Active LED to indicate: incoming call, outgoing call, call in
  progress
• Red Active LED to indicate: microphone mute
• Green Power LED to indicate: power on/off
• Red Record LED to indicate: record on/off/pause
• Green Switch LED to indicate: speaker / handset mode

Audio Performance

• Microphone Voice Sampling Rate: (UPDATED 17-October-2008)
• Speakerphone: 8KHz
• Handset (holding up to your ear): 16Khz
• Communication: Full Duplex
• Echo cancellation: up to 60dB
• Support AGC (auto gain control) function

Electrical Specifications

• Operating Voltage: 4.5V ~ 5.5V
• Magnetic Speaker
  • Coil Resistance: 4 +/- 0.6 Ohm
  • Sound Pressure Level: 80 dBSPL@0.5m
• Condenser Microphone
  • Omni directional
  • Sensitivity: -36 +/- 3 dB
• Receiver
  • Sensitivity: 90 dBA
  • Frequency response: 180~7Hz

Hardware Description

• USB 2.0 compatible
• Internal omni microphone
• 4Ω 2W speaker
• Power from USB

System Requirements

• Microsoft Windows XP and Vista (32-bit)
• Mac OS X 10.4 up
• 400MHz processor
• 128MB RAM
• 40MB free hard disk space
• USB port
• CD-ROM drive
• Broadband Internet connection (DSL, Cable Modem…, etc)

Regulatory Compliance

• FCC
• CE
• RoHs

See also:

• IPEVO's TR-10 speakerphone makes nice with iChat, Engadget
• Le téléphone compatible iChat, macplus
• IPEVO Teams With Skype To Offer A Range Of Skype-Enabled Devices in US, Skype press release, October 2005

tags: skype, ipevo, voip, speakerphone, speaker, microphone, ichat, apple

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Follow Skype Journal on twitter

Photo credits: IPEVO.

TOM-Skype Breach: Meeting the Primary Investigator

This is the first of four posts resulting from an interview with Nart Villeneuve, principle investigator of the Citizen Lab report "Breaching Trust".

Last Tuesday afternoon I returned to a University of Toronto building I had last visited in its role as an engineering students' residence in the mid-1960's. Abandoned as a residence in the 1980's, the building was restored in the late 1990's to house the Munk Centre for International Studies, when the university's Centre for International Studies was designated as a strategic priority for future growth. In the basement of the former Devonshire Place South House, I found the Citizen Lab, "an interdisciplinary laboratory focusing on advanced research and development at the intersection of digital media and world civic politics".


I spent 90 minutes with Nart Villeneuve, the PhD student and Psiphon Fellow, who was the principle investigator resulting in the Citizen Lab's recently published "Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices of China's TOM-Skype platform". We covered a wide range of issues related to this report, from the initial contact with New York Times through to the follow up activities as a result of the report's release. We also discussed the broader mission of the Citizen Lab and some recommendations for how Skype should address the challenge of participating in the China market while making all parties aware that their conversation activity may be tracked.

Key points about the report and the follow up activity:

• A major issue to address in dealing with the media has been the confusion resulting because there is a need to separate out the security breach that allowed Nart to gather the data he has gathered and the functionality of the TOM-Skype servers resulting in the capture and logging of chat conversations and Skype calling activity. (There was no evidence of capturing voice calls themselves).
• As a result of reporting this breach prior to release of the document to New York Times, the security breach itself has been closed but there is no evidence that the actual information capture activity has ceased. Nart has been checking periodically to confirm that the security breach remains closed.
• There was a period of several hours between finally establishing contact with someone at Skype who could initiate action to address the security breach and the final close down of the breach. During this time Nart observed blocking of read access to the directories but since he knew the file names he was still able to follow a reconfiguration of the web servers, removal of sensitive files, such as an encryption key, and disappearance of the log files such that they were not accessible.
• While they have captured a significant quantity of call log data going back a year, they are being careful not to expose any of the detailed information which comprised both chat message logs and what amounts to call detail records for voice calls; more details are in the report itself. Basically they don't want to compromise anyone individually.
• While the log files are still under analysis, they have been encrypted while he continues to mine them for any additional information they may expose. Eventually it is his intention to destroy even these files.
• Messages were about 40% Chinese, 60% English with a small smattering of other languages.
• While it would be very difficult to reconstruct an entire conversation thread, as only each individual message was logged with no ready reference to other messages within the thread, they could build social graphs of conversing parties.
• There are at least two versions of the TOM-Skype client: a normal version and a second version with additional features such as a Baidu Toolbar; however, the promote.dll module in this can trigger off anti-virus scanners such as Norton.
• Other evidence that the servers had been compromised was the discovery that the servers were hosting "pirate" movies and had the appropriate software to support Bit Torrent transfers.

Nart had three definite recommendations for Skype; we also covered the broader issue of global enterprises doing business in China. These will be covered in future posts.
Next post: The Citizen Lab: Its broader mission and findings.
Tags: Skype, Citizen Lab, Breaching Trust, TOM Online, TOM-Skype, Nart Villeneuve, Munk Centre for International Studies

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Blackberry Bold: Challenged to Deliver on Its Full Potential

Over the past five weeks I have had the opportunity to work with the Blackberry Bold on the Rogers network, including a week in California where I used it on AT&T's network. While it has provided significant performance improvements over my previous 8820 and has several applications that just are not available for the iPhone, I still had the feeling I was running with late beta stage or release candidate firmware. The availability of a new firmware release over the past weekend has changed that feeling. But its U.S. release on AT&T has also been dogged by 3G network robustness issues.
Let me put some of these issues in perspective, incorporating my own experience with the Bold on both networks.
There are two major technical issues related to the Bold:

• Network robustness issues at AT&T
• Firmware issues that have possibly resulted in suspension of deliveries at Orange (and reports of inventory shortages at other carriers)

First, to cover the AT&T network robustness issues:

• as reported in RIM's second-quarter report, 60 carriers in 29 countries have launched the Bold, including Canada where I've had a Bold running on Rogers for the past five weeks.
  
• several recent news reports have reported on network robustness issues as a contributor to the delayed launch on AT&T: Globe and Mail, TMCNet, CrunchGear
• a personal indicator: on a recent trip to California both my Blackberry Bold and iPhone 3G found an "EDGE" signal on AT&T more often than it found a 3G signal (in spite of setting the Bold to only operate on 3G). On the Rogers network I find the "3G" signal (in supported urban areas, such as Toronto and Montreal) more than 95 percent of the time.

I have to conclude, combining these issues, that the AT&T network robustness issues are real and serve as a threat to RIM's ability to penetrate the U.S. market via the Bold. On the other hand the pending launch of Blackberry Storm at Verizon may become RIM's primary route to to the U.S. market for their 3G smartphones, given Verizon's reputation for, and experience with, 3G networks along with their extensive customer base. (Why else would several of my U.S.-based blogging colleagues attending the recent IT Expo all be running their laptops on Verizon for Internet connectivity with no complaints?)
Five weeks' experience with the Bold tells me about its firmware:

• It delivers a significant performance improvement relative to the Blackberry 8820 I have been using for the past year. An half-VGA display with over 200 dpi resolution, 3G network speed and 624 Mhz processor speed all contribute.
• At no time has my experience to date inhibited my ability to carry on my normal mobile-supported business activities. I have had an opportunity to successfully take advantage of new applications such as editing Word documents.
• The display grows on you; when you find crystal clear small fonts or view Google Maps, you get this "how did they do this?" feeling. As indicated in other reviews, it's stunning. And the supported resolution is a major contributor to my next point.
• The Bold is definitely a game changer. After my week of traveling to California with the Bold, I realized that I was experiencing a significant change in my mobile device work patterns. I was simply going to the Bold to keep current not only on email (using a strategic combination of both Blackberry Mail and GMail) but also on my Twitter feed, Facebook and Google Reader. I was able to not only read but also edit Word documents. I had lost the anxiety-inflamed urge to fire up my laptop PC to remain "always connected"; One non-technical acquaintance who has had a Bold since the Rogers launch in late August commented to me last weekend "I'm beginning to think my Bold is more powerful than my notebook".
• At Mobilize 08 I met Google Maps senior product manager Steve Lee who pointed me to a new version of Google Maps for Blackberry which added Street View to the feature set available on Blackberry. While Google Maps itself is an excellent demonstration of both the Bold's display quality and speed, turning on Street View and either moving down a street or rotating around a selected address brings into play both network and processor speeds to dynamically generate high quality images. (While this is a feature that will be included on Android, it is still not available on the iPhone.)
• Using Blackberry's MediaSync, I can keep my music files updated by syncing with iTunes. But I also found having the trackball mouse a significant benefit when transcribing our interview with Josh Silverman via the media player; basically I was using the Bold as a Dictaphone.
• Skype chats running in iSkoot can run in background and provide notification when new chat messages appear. Also when my home office broadband was down recently for a neighborhood cable upgrade, I was able to use iSkoot to call into the daily SquawkBox conference call.
• Performance on WiFi has been excellent; walk into a registered WiFi zone and the Bold picks it up immediately. The actual registration process itself for a WiFi zone could be smoother but otherwise it works as expected.
• However, the Bold has been by no means perfect. Web pages would sometimes come up slowly; on some sites I would randomly get either the actual PC version of a page or the mobile version of the site. Sites were often stripped down to their basic content, absent of banners and sidebars. YouTube videos would stall with a "buffering" indicator appearing in the display; I was never able to view the complete video. I started to feel this was late beta stage firmware, not quite ready for "Main Street". And then Friday reports appeared that Orange was possibly suspending Blackberry shipments due to software quality issues.

Friday evening I learned that RIM had released new firmware for Blackberry Bold on Rogers. It was described as addressing browser issues, delivering more stability and improving memory management, amongst other issues. I installed it quite seamlessly Saturday morning with the following immediate observations:

• The browser is much faster at bringing up standard web pages and renders original web pages correctly. Pages with few "feature enhancements" involving "scripts" load as rapidly as on the iPhone; pages with lots of "scripts" do take longer but are correctly and much more rapidly rendered.
• YouTube videos can now be played to the end. On some videos I encounter a momentary "buffering" delay but they always went to completion. The actual player itself could provide better video quality to achieve the superb quality I have seen on the Bold's display when mpeg movie files are run but a user can readily follow the YouTube video action.
• After two days' use, using the phone itself only minimally but with lots of web activity over WiFi, my battery is only down to the 40% level whereas with the earlier version I found I had to always do a daily overnight recharge.

Other issues need a few days' use to determine if they have been addressed. But overall this upgraded Bold firmware appears to spell good news for not only Blackberry Bold but also the Blackberry Storm whose major differences involve radio bands supported, slightly larger display resolution and the type of keyboard but otherwise are based on the same underlying operating system, application and browser firmware.
The question that remains here is whether AT&T can fix their network problems in the near future or will the pending launch of Blackberry Storm become the real Blackberry 3G device launch product? For once I am quite happy to be a Rogers customer where they have spent over a year working with 3G technology prior to the Bold's launch and the network performance is "just there".
Bottom line: the Bold allows new user work patterns for mobile smartphones. It significantly reduces or removes the reliance on laptops to keep current with many communications activities, whether Skype Chat, Twitter Feeds or even minor document modification. Its 480 x 320 display makes it easy to read blog posts without ribbon bars. Background processing allows true multi-tasking. If you're in a country where it is available it is worth checking out (especially once any residual firmware issues are resolved; if you're in the U.S., it's worth having the patience to await its release on AT&T or even the Storm's release on Verizon.
Disclosure: the author has held a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998.

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