People talk 45% longer with Skype high audio quality

Here's a slide from Skype's Jonathan Rosenberg eComm presentation. Skype tested a large pool of users from all over the world for customer satisfaction based on the audio codec they used in a Skype-to-Skype call.

In the chart to the left the Mean Opinion Score rose from 3.4 using mobile phone audio quality to about 3.85 with Skype's highest quality, a thirteen percent jump.

On the right Skype shows the effect of call quality on average call duration. With the lowest quality, the average call lasted about 21.5 minutes. At the highest quality it went about 31 minutes, 45% longer.

One of my fellow eComm'rs noted both scores rose from wideband to superwideband. Notable because you may not be able to tell the difference if asked.

Fidelity clearly counts.

Imagine a meeting between Skype and Verizon.

Hey, Vee.

Hi, Spyke. Our customers are speaking for only three minutes fifteen seconds on each call. And that number's falling. What can you do for us?

Our callers speak for twenty minutes when they experience audio comparable to your crappy standard audio. Maybe if we get our users Skyping on your phones, they'll start talking longer?

Cool. And for when we roll out our 4G network?

Oh, then Skypers talk even longer: for more than half an hour. You just need to be running our superwideband SILK codec on your handsets.

Audio fidelity changes consumer behavior.

tags: skype, silk, quality, stats

Skype for Apple iPhone OS4

David Ponsford demonstrated Skype as a background app at last week's Apple briefing on the iPhone OS 4, coming mid-2010. John Chang, Skype's lead iPhone developer, helped with the demo. David came to Skype from SpinVox Skype's voicemail-to-text partner.

Several features announced at the OS4 preview event affect Skype. Multitasking, location services, data encryption service, and a user alerting service. David answered a few questions by email.

Skype Journal: Now that two apps can be running at the same time, will OS4 let Skype expose its own APIs to third party Apple developers to build iPhone or iPad plug-ins? Are apps now allowed to talk with each other?

David Ponsford: Co-operation between 3rd party apps was not something that was discussed at the iPhone OS 4.0 preview by Apple.

Skype in the iPhone's background, shown on a second status bar, at the top.

SJ: What does Apple's encryption service add beyond what Skype for iPhone does now? Could there be efficiencies? Will OS4's encryption protocols be compatible with Skype's? Aside from encrypting Skype-to-Skype and Skype-to-Server communication, might they be used to increase the privacy of Skype data stored locally on an Apple mobile device?

DP: We are still evaluating Apple’s new enterprise features. All Skype-to-Skype communications are encrypted, as a matter of course. Our users’ privacy is of paramount importance to us.

SJ: Which of Skype's features will be turned off when running in the background? Will Skype's SILK codec be available during background calls?

DP: We are still evaluating all the new features available to us as part of the iPhone OS 4.0 developer preview that was released on Thursday. Early indications are that that Skype-to-Skype calls will still use the full capabilities of the SILK codec, even when they are in the background.

SJ: I haven't seen any Skype alerts on the iPhone so far. Does Skype use the existing alert service? For which notifications? Will you change the types of alerts Skype uses to communicate with a user? The frequency?

DP: Thursday’s technology demo of iPhone OS 4.0, in which Skype participated, used the new local notification system to show that an incoming Skype call was happening.

SJ: Apple is creating stronger technical and experience design differences between the 3GS and earlier iPhones, the iPod Touch family, and the iPad. Will Skype need to offer different software for the platforms or will you be able to offer one OS4 app that adjusts to each device?

DP: It is too early for Skype to give a definitive answer on this specific point; however, it will be our goal to make a single download available to all iPhone users that want Skype, making it super simple to get Skype for your iPhone, with all the features available for it.

SJ: Now that location services are available to Skype through APIs, what will you consider before making it easy or automatic for users to pipe their location into their Skype's presence?

DP: If Skype believes there is a significant benefit to our customers to offer location-based services, we will look at how these can be offered, while making sure that privacy and other customer experience issues are taken into account at the same time.

SJ: Skype on Verizon Android and Blackberry phones is promising betting integration with native address books. Do the OS4 APIs make it easier to offer similar sync, data population, and dialing features in Skype?

DP: Skype will be evaluating the new APIs available to all developers in order to understand what new features they offer us in order to create the best user experience possible for our users.

SJ: How did you wind up on stage in Cupertino?

DP: My dashing good looks, confusing accent and need to get Gold status on Virgin Atlantic...

SJ: What's Steve Jobs' Skype name?

DP: I don’t know this one. J

tags: skype, apple, iphone, mobile, ipod, os4

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

Happy 4th Birthday, Twitter!

Congratulations, Twitter! To get the most out of both Skype and Twitter, try Twype. Julian Bond's Twype (Windows) pipes your latest tweet to your Skype mood message.

Four things Skype could learn from Twitter:

1. "Sign in with Twitter" makes having a Twitter identity more valuable to customers and web site owners. "Sign in with Skype" would be an easy hit.
2. Twitter Lists show how important and useful it is to organize your contacts and share them.
3. Twitter's API makes it easy to create Twitter clients, devices, and services. Twitter encourages the marketplace of ideas to experiment with user experience and add value. Server-based APIs get uptake; client-side ones like Skype's don't.
4. Following is not Friending. Twitter shows the value of supporting asymmetric relationships. You can fill your inbox with a stream of news, family, celebrity life, and colleague updates. You can share opinion and updates with the world, just to those your trust, or privately one-to-one. Although Skype is fantastic at symmetric, mutually close, relationships, it's a blunt tool for treating the many kinds of people in your world.

Three things Twitter could learn from Skype:

1. Community supported localization. More markets, every product, with the help of volunteers.
2. The Freemium business model can work. Cash fuels growth and keeps customers loyal.
3. Ladder of intimacy. Skype makes it easy to shift conversations from presence to IM to voice to video. Twitter doesn't let you dive deeper into a conversation without leaving.

Happy Birthday! And thanks for all the fun.

tags: twitter, skype, twype, #twitterday

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

Why did Skype publish SILK's source code?

Voxeo's Dan York shows Skype released the source code to its SILK super wideband audio codec to the "CODEC Working Group" of the Internet Engineering Task Force, one the Internet's standards bodies. SILK is one of the things that make Skype calls sound so rich and vivid. And now SILK is available for everyone. Jim Courtney reviews SILK's history and lists its early adopters on the way to becoming a freely licensed Internet standard.

Why is Skype doing this?

I think this goes to two issues: adoption and competitive advantage.

Skype got all kinds of grief for keeping SILK proprietary and out of the public domain. That's a barrier to adoption when there are other wideband audio codecs with less encumbered licenses. So publishing the source should, in theory, make this easier for companies and governments, big and small, to choose SILK. SILK is not in the lead when I asked operators at a CES wideband audio session whether they were interested. So anything Skype can do to make it more attractive is a good thing.

As for competitive advantage, Skype's advantage in talk audio and video quality over other VoIM operators (Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL) disappeared when GIPS licensed their wideband codecs. Skype's advantage is really in the network effects (that more people have Skype dialtone than other networks).

So how do you put SILK to use? First, you make it a benefit of partnering with Skype. Make your embedded and mobile hardware sound better or use less bandwidth. Offer wideband audio at narrowband prices. You're free to do this without Skype, but why not take advantage of Skype's global marketing power and be the device/operator that not only sounds good but sounds good with Skype? Imagine that you're a smart television maker; this would be one more reason to pre-install Skype codecs.

One last competitive advantage point: consumers don't care about which codec gives them HD audio/video. Skype doesn't much care either. What matters to Skype is that you define who they are competing against. Their grand enemy/obstacle/incumbent/dominator isn't Microsoft or Google or Logitech or Apple. It's the local and long distance carrier. So anything which helps Skype develop allies that make the PSTN look slow, decrepit, and obsolete positions Skype favorably by comparison.

tags: skype, silk, ietf, codecs, open source

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

Icons for a data portability policy – a few thoughts

I sat down with the DataPortability Project's Elias Bizannes a few months ago to organize the elements of a model portability policy. Your site's portability policy will be part of your Terms of Service or End User License Agreement. Your portability policy should help your sites and services communicate the data portability parts of your relationship with the people who use them and your business partners.

I'm heading down to an all day privacy forum co-hosted by Lauren Gelman and Mozilla this morning to discuss what browsers might do with a "privacy" icon.

The Clusters

We clustered portability policy questions into five stacks: Start, Sync, Access, Share, and End. I sketched five icons:

I cleaned them up a bit, but they are still rough:

Between the five, you'll see questions about the lifecycle of your relationship with a site, from its start to its finish. You'll also see questions about the power to manage your portability through interoperability.

The questions

We mapped these questions for your portability policy to the icons.

The questions can be answered by choosing Yes/No or from a short multiple choice list. Policy explanations, links, and actionable information are optional.

These questions are the work of the DataPortability Projects ToS/EULA Working Group over 2008 and 2009.

Start.

How well do you welcome me, my history, my friends? 

Are your import and export APIs and formats documented?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes,where are they documented?

Do people need to create a new identity for this site, or can they use an existing one?

• New Identity - The person is expected to create a fresh identity that is used on this site. This site does not trust a third party to authenticate identity.
• Existing Identity - The person can register an account that is accessed using an identity authenticated by some third party. This product assumes that, by selecting a third party to authenticate their identity, the person accepts that third party as trustworthy.
• Suggested: If Existing Identity, what identity services will you support?

Sync.

How do you keep my data fresh?

Must people import things into this product, or can the product refer to things stored someplace else? Can this product work with objects and information whose "authoritative home" is another product, or can this product only work with things that it hosts directly?

• Must Host - In order for this product to work with a thing, it must be hosted directly.
• Can Refer - This product has the ability to access and work with things that are hosted by third parties, assuming that the third party allows this.
• Suggested: If Can Refer, what items can be stored elsewhere and under what conditions?

Can this site accept updates that users make on other sites? In cases where the product tracks or manages things that the person has stored on some third party product, can this product watch the third party for updates?

• One Time Import - This product only sees the remote thing at import time, and does not watch for changes.
• Watch For Updates - This product watches the third party for changes, and updates its own view of the remote thing to match.
• Suggested: If Yes, what types of items and under what conditions?

Access.

How well do you help me use and manage my information?

Can the person allow other sites to use the things they've created or updated here? Does this product provide a way for third parties to authenticate a person and read or write?

• No Access - The person must use this product to read or access whatever it manages.
• Third Parties Can Read - The person can provide the third party with authentication credentials, and can read data managed by this product.
• Third Parties Can Write - The person can provide the third party with authentication credentials, and can write data managed by this product.
• Suggested: If Yes, what technical protocols are supported and how can users manage the authority they give other sites?

Can the person download or remotely access a copy of everything they've provided to this service? As part of their standard use of most products, people import or create things. Does this product provide an open, DRM-free way for people to retrieve or access via third party all of the things they've created or provided?

• No Access - This product does not offer the person the ability to download the things they've provided.
• Remote Access - The product provides an open, DRM-free way for people to download all of the things they've provided to the product, or remotely access it using a third party product.
• Suggested: If Yes, how and in what forms?

Do you disclose where my data is being kept in the real world?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, where can I learn where my data is kept?

Can I control where my data is kept in the real world?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, how can I exercise those controls?

Share.

How well do you help me share well with others?

If person updates something here, is that change stored only by this product or can the person ask this product to store it elsewhere? Can this product accept some other site as being the authoritative home of a thing it knows about?

• Must Be Authoritative - This product assumes that it is the authoritative home of all things it manages, and does not update third parties.
• Can Update Remote - This product can work with a third party that is assumed to be authoritative. All updates made by the person using this product are also forwarded to the third party.
• Suggested: If Yes, how does it work in practice?

Can the person download or remotely access information that others have provided to the product? In cases where the product allows download or remote access, can the person export or access all of the data to which they have access, or only data which they have directly created?

• Provider Only - This person may only export or access data which they have directly provided.
• Full Access - The person may export or download any data to which they have access on this product, subject to reasonable usage and abuse rules.
• Suggested: If Yes, how and in what forms and with what other services or protocols?

End.

How well do you support a graceful exit from our relationship?

Will this site delete an account and all associated data upon a user's request? If the user creates a password or account for use with this product, does the product provide a way to cancel the account and erase all data associated with it?

• Immortal Accounts - Accounts or passwords, once created, are assumed to live for as long as the product is available. Desktop applications and other stand-alone products that do not have host services may have no way to remotely revoke accounts or passwords.
• Data Expires - If this product acts as a hub, the data it copies from other sites will expire in a set amount of time. This product must be linked to a place where it can refresh or synchronize data in order to stay current.
• Accounts Deleted Upon Request - This product has the ability to remove a person's account and all relevant data, and will do so when requested by the person or third party with appropriate legal standing.
• Suggested: If Yes, where can I find the procedure to request deletion.

Do you give notice before terminating the account?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, how much notice do you give and in what forms?

Can you recover a terminated account?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, how thoroughly, under what conditions, how quickly, and how is recovery triggered? 

Do you have a posted appeals process or dispute resolution procedure?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, where are the procedures posted?

Going Forward.

The questions and the clusters are works in progress. We're open to better questions, clusters, and definitely better labels and designs. These are just placeholders for better, official art.

I hope they serve a few common goals.

1. Make it easier to learn and understand the overall scope of a portability policy.
2. Make it easier to find the parts of a policy you care about.
3. Provide the visual part of semantic encoding that browsers and search engines can use to discover and understand where and what a site's policies are stored.

Things to do with the icons:

• Confirm the policy asks the right questions
• Prioritize and boil down for the Goldilocks Test: Not too much, not too little, just right
• Design an icon for the whole portability policy
• Design UI/UX behavior for what happens when you click on the portability policy icon
• Make the icons work better everywhere (cultures, visual impairments, sizes) and vet for semiotic conflict and mark infringement
• Semantic encoding (microformats, anyone?) that works across access methods
• Write the legal layer, creating plain language boilerplate that works for the business, for their lawyers, for site partners, and for users. Vary for world legal systems. Translate.

Join DataPortability.org's general mailing list to help or the low-volume announcements only mailing list for updates.

tags: dataportability, dataportabilityproject, dpp, icons, icon, portability, policy, portabilitypolicy

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

Tip: Include Skype Calls in Your Ustream Broadcast (Mac)

This instructional video is courtesy of lockergnome. Ustream.tv lets you broadcast a live video over the web. Here's how to add Skype calls to your show with a Mac and Audio Hijack Pro.

tags: skype, ustream, ustream.tv, broadcasting, streaming, video, tip, tips, tricks, howto, production

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

Free Speech Activists Use Skype Data Channel To Bypass Government Censorship

Skype Journal is blocked by China's government. Millions work around censorship and monitoring with networking tools like GTunnel. The GTunnel proxy on your PC connects to GTunnel servers. The client connects directly, through the TOR network, or through the Skype network. Connecting through Skype assures your packets are encrypted from beginning to end. This hides your IP address from servers. This also circumvents blockades of target servers like mine.

GTunnel is run by Garden Networks for Freedom of Information, a member of the Global Information Freedom Consortium. When you combine GTunnel with UltraSurf, FreeGate, FirePhoenix, GPass, and Ranking you get a complete suite for surviving online censorship and monitoring.

Caution for Chinese users: Skype cannot assure what you download from TOM-Skype does not include spyware. So download the international version from the Skype.com site or another independent source.

tags: security, censorship, iran, china, gfw, encryption, anonymity, gtunnel, anti-jamming system, jamming, blocking, blocks, blocked, globalinformationfreedom, gift

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

Live From The RealTime CrunchUp: No Skype

Stream videos at Ustream

Skype and live voice/video conversations haven't been part of anything in this event, or the others like it. I blame Skype's branding problem:

• Skype is antisocial software, not a place or way to discover future friends or colleagues.
• Skype is just for your closest circle, fewer than ten contacts.
• Skype is an isolated network that doesn't interop with others.

That branding is reinforced by Skype's product focus. Fear of strangers, as shown by the inane and inadequate profile and privacy systems. Little support for large numbers of contacts because the "average" user doesn't need them (and can never graduate to power user if power features remain buried or unbuilt).

P.S. Every conference organizer should Ustream.tv all sessions. Cheap or free and brings thousands of people into the room with an interest in just one session or who cannot attend. You can't buy the resulting word of mouth in a realtime world.

tags: skype, twitter, realtimeweb, realtime, live, crunchup

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.

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.

Can they turn Skype Lite into a Skype Platform?

Skype has some brilliant capabilities. Advanced audio codecs, miraculous network survival, global distribution and payment partners, buying power that drives down per-minute costs. While supporting mobile phones, however, Skype built something that can change the way we look at the company.

It's called Skype Lite.

Skype Lite is a service that lets you talk from mobile phones. Unlike the Skype for iPhone client or the desktop clients, Skype Lite is not a member of the Skype peer-to-peer cloud. So, how does it work?

First you run a Skype Lite client on a mobile phone. Sometimes it comes pre-installed by the handset manufacturer or the mobile operator.

Lite is designed for phones without much processor power. So it doesn't include advanced Skype voice codecs, video features, or much more than login, presence, IM, and voice calling.

"Full" Skype clients, like Skype for Windows and Skype for the iPhone, push both voice and data over data channels.

The Skype Lite client sends its data through the mobile network's data channel. Voice calls travel through the mobile network's voice channel, just like regular mobile phone calls. That first leg of a Skype call, from the mobile phone, is neither VoIP nor protected by Skype's encryption.

How does your data get into the Skype network? Skype operates gateway servers. The gateway's first job is to bring back together data and voice streams from a Lite client or break apart streams going to a Lite client.

Now that your call is back together, the Skype gateway passes your conversation to a version of Skype tailored for servers. Let's call it Naked Skype. "Naked" because engineers streamlined the program to leave out user interface, the Skype Extras program manager, and other components servers don't need.

Like Skype on your PC, each Naked Skype connects to the Skype cloud using the Joltid Skype p2p engine.

That cloud lets you talk or IM with your fellow Skype users.

It also lets you use other Skype services, like receive phone calls from your Skype Online Numbers or call through Skype's SkypeOut gateways to regular phone numbers.

Clearly there are many naked Skype copies running on a bunch of servers. [Bunch is a technical term.] Since most Skype users, especially most mobile users, aren't using Skype most of the time, the Skype server farms (a server farm is a collection of related servers) can support many Skype Lite users.

The servers have management software that helps start and stop Naked Skype's and route Lite traffic to Naked instances. This management layer makes the whole "thin client" strategy possible. It's why Skype is available to over 90% of all mobile phones.

A business note: Like the engineering of the Naked client and Lite client, the administrative layer was hard to design, engineer, and tune. Because it was complex and difficult, it is a barrier to entry for competitors and for partners. Many IM and VoIP companies make and operate Skype gateways to provide even a little interoperability between Skype and their services. Those gateways are a cost, risk, and delay each Skype partner must carry just to have their products work with the Skype cloud.

So that's how Skype Lite works. 

But that's just the start.

Skype Lite does four valuable things.

1. Skype Lite hosts a "naked Skype" client.
• It's lightweight, without video, user interface, or other cruft.
• It's reliable and very efficient and is moving to Skype's next generation of unified API. 
2. Skype Lite separates user experience from the network.
• Teams can build different UIs for different mobile devices.
• Lowers compute and networking burden on mobiles.
• This makes it easy to update everyone's engine without updating each phone.
• It provides metrics on usage rates to inform design, operations, and inform partner relationships.
3. Skype Lite defines a protocol.
• The protocol connects mobile thin clients to the Skype Gateway server.
• The protocol defines how programmers can control everything the mobile Skype client can do. The protocol includes authentication, presence, chat, voice calls, profile editing, and picture or video sharing.
4. Skype scales the gateway like a cloud
• It's efficient, with many Lite clients supported by a few Skype servers.
• It's flexible, building and destroying instances with demand.
• It's location aware (somewhat), cutting latency (the time delay between bits on your phone and bits at their destination) by positioning Naked Skype instances around the world and in telephone company data centers.

So Skype built a platform.

A private platform. 

This creates an opportunity.  

Skype could open up its gateway to more than the Lite client. They could publish a public version of the protocol.

• Independent developers could build Skype clients tailored to markets they know well.
• Software companies could integrate Skype talk into their applications.
• Web sites could let users "Log In With Your Skype ID." Or tell your Skype contacts about a story.
• Services could mash-up Skype with other web service APIs.
• Desktop apps could send files privately using Skype's security.

All of this would make it more valuable than ever to be a Skype user.

That's a little of what happens when you open the protocol.

Skype can do more. They can power the gateway to support more than the Lite modes. 

Skype can add new features to the gateway over time.

Spatialization of audio for immersive experiences like high fidelity video conferencing or in-world games.

Higher resolution video, moving from High Quality 640x480 to Hi-Def to REDCODE RAW 4520x2540 pixels.

Richer syntax for presence. More metadata for mood.

This would also be a great time to unify Skype's APIs. "One API to rule them all."

• Making/taking Skype sessions
• Skype calls, IM, file transfer
• Skype account creation, deletion
• Skype profile editing
• Skype control panel for organizations
• Skype Credit deposits and payments
• Skype ID authentication (Login with Skype)
• More to come…

A unified public API and a rich mode server gets you almost all the way there.

Skype needs two more things to complete the new platform.

First, Skype must find new ways to distribute some of its secret sauce. Developers need Skype's encryption binaries, so Skype calls and chats can remain private. Developers need access to Skype's own codecs (SILK audio) and to codecs licensed by Skype (On2 video) to assure compatibility with all Skype users. Developers and designers also need Skype's default media assets, like Skype's emoticons or Skype's memorable sound palette, that complete the Skype experience.

Skype would also want SDKs (software developer kits) for popular programming languages, frameworks, and delivery systems. Anything to help programmers create a quick Skype app in an hour, to prove they can get to the good stuff quickly.

That would do it.

So.

What do you get? 

"Just Add Skype"

• Millions of programmers can add Skype to their toolkits.
• Metered access to the gateway.
• Commissions for driving paying users to Skype.

Skype as a Platform could be a great driver of innovation, adaptation, and integration for Skype. And revenue.

P.S. I'm sure this is both incomplete and in error on some points. I don't know if this is on Skype's roadmap; they're not telling. This seems to me to be as close as we can get until Skype shares more of their "platform" plans. Please correct me if you have specific information that could improve my diagrams and explanations of things as they are now.

P.P.S. How would you use a service like this? And how much would you pay (thinking metered service like Google, Amazon, and Voxeo cloud services)?

See also:

• Slides on Scribd, Slides on Slideshare.net, slides on flickr.
• Mindmap of Skype product family

tags: analysis, api, apis architecture, architectures, business, cloud, cloudcomputing, clouds, developerrelations, developers, devrels, evanwolf, gateway, iskoot, lite, naked, nakedskype, p2p, philwolff, platform, platforming, programming, saap, saas, server, sip, skype, skypejournal, skypelite, strategy, technology

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.

Cool demo: Google Wave + Skype + Asterisk + Ibook

He's in a wave. Adds a gadget. Passes a Skype name to a gadget. Browser-to-Skype call starts.

They talk. As each person talks for a bit, their bit is encoded and linked-to.

So you have a play-by-play record of a call.

Inside a Google wave.

Under the covers: Jason Goecke said "it is a Google Wave Gadget with his PhoneFromHere.com IAX2 Java softphone as the client. Then, the IAX2 Java phone connects to Asterisk with Skype for Asterisk installed. Then, there is a server-side element, Ibook, that is breaking apart utterances into individual files. So that as each person speaks, it captures it into its own file. Then, as that happens, a text frame is sent from Asterisk to the softphone with the file details. The gadget then uses some Javascript to embed a link. IAX2 supports text frames."

This is cool (like I really had to tell you).

First, it shows what it's like to build Skype calls into other applications. Without a Skype client running. (Pardon my drooling.)

Second, it deconstructs a long talk into directly referenceable snippets. (Still needs permalinks in addition to the playable links). This means you can annotate live calls with transcripts, pictures, etc. So the call's Binary Large Object becomes binary tiny objects.

Third, because the snippets are referred to by a wave, other gadgets and bots can enhance the archive. Add or remove background noise. Translate and provide voiceovers in your language. Highlight statistically improbable phrases. Detect stress in a voice. Visualize the data in a timeline or a relationship scorecard (who talked more?). Add tags to help you find this wave again.

Fourth, no phone numbers were called in the making of this demo. Phone companies weren't bothered. Internet all the way.

Fifth, because this is within the context of a wave, it should be possible to use wave member data to lookup Skype names and bring people into an open conference room.

Am I overstating it?

tags: skype, asterisk, astricon, googlewave, wave, ibook, digium, phonefromhere, demo, video

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.

Wish For A Custom Skype App Contest

Skype developer Don Kennedy will write a Skype program for you. Free. In two weeks. Just ask for what you want in the comments below. "Dear Don, I wish Skype could..."

Don built a Skype bot that translates live Skype chats in 43 languages. An app that monitors your subscription use. A tool that lets you make Skype calls from your mobile through your PC with Skype using a normal mobile phone.

So I challenged Don to build for the #lazyweb. For a random stranger with a clear need.

And it's up to you.

Rules:

1. Post your requests as comments to this Skype Journal post or as tweets to @SkypeJournal by Saturday, 31 November 2009, midnight Pacific (GMT-8).
2. Multiple requests are fine.
3. You may request anonymously, however you won't win a prize. You can DM contact info to me @SkypeJournal or in email to the editor at Skype Journal dot com.
4. I will select and announce Don's project 1 November 2009, Sunday.
5. Don will post his solution, ready or not, on 15 November 2009. Not for Mac, Linux or iPhone.
6. Should Don fail to deliver on time, the winner, if in the US, will also get an Everyman freetalk headset courtesy of In Store Solutions.
7. The application will be free for everyone to use.
8. All contest decisions are mine and are final.

So be creative.

What new feature would you like in Skype?

tags: skype, free, contest, hacks, lazyweb, #lazyweb

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.

Research Topics in Collaboration

I wanted to follow up on my Monday post about the importance of collaboration products to Skype's business strategy. The great thing about collaboration is that it is very hard. Collaboration is less a discipline than a catchall term. It's peopleware more than technology, anecdotes more than evidence. Universities have no Collaboration Studies department in schools of business, humanities, engineering, or medicine. Industry and governments study collaboration but produce narrow benefits, poorly shared.

Frankly, there's no Collaboration Science to inform the design of the next generation of tools like Skype.

Society needs it. The web needs it. I want to do it.

So what questions about collaborative behavior and collective productivity could investigations answer? Which avenues could radically improve the ability of live and time-shifted talk to become work effort? What collaboration patterns and social software designs can break down barriers and bridge teams and connect project stakeholders?

I made a list and called it Skype Journal - Research Topics in Collaboration (not attempting any creativity there). The research areas showed four themes:

• Talk is a component within larger relationships
• Talk systems are part of a larger interconnected network of information systems
• Work adds constraints that help focus conversation
• Collaboration as collective productivity

and the topics fell in three clusters:

• Getting Started (Ridiculously Easy Group Formation; Group Goal Forming; To Do Lists, Calendars, Personal Time Management, and Getting Things Done Together; Fame and Reputation)
• Being Better Together (Augmenting Inline Conversation; From Discovery to Action; Decision Making and Decision Support; Collaboration Afoot; Situational Awareness; How Collaborators Use Search and Personal/Collective memory; Gestures of Tomorrow)
• Crossing Boundaries (Intergroup Collaboration; Earning Trust and Using Whuffie; Collective Presence and Project Presence/ActivityStreams; Transparency and Collaboration; Backchannels; Scaling Collaboration from Tasks to Projects to Programmes)

It's a quick read, needs pictures and I consider this a rough, incomplete draft. The questions are a sample to get a feel for the space to be studied. 

How can we answer the questions? Research. Each topic is amenable to a different blend of usability testing, instrumented communication tools, prototyping, field ethnography of high function collaborative teams, and analysis of data from virtual teams.

I'd like to assemble a body of knowledge that turns our digital tin-cans-with-strings into engines of effectiveness.

Help me kick start this. (Yes, this is a bit self-referential.) What topics are missing? Prior art? Can this research occur in an open space or must it happen inside a corporate firewall? Of all the research topics, which ones are low-hanging fruit and which are harder to reach but outstanding value? Here's the pdf.

Skype Journal - Research Topics in Collaboration - 2009q4

 

 

 

tags: skype, microsoft, google, ge, collaboration, research, science

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.

Why Collaboration is strategic for Skype

The Volpi email says Skype must increase its reach, be in more places, connect with other networks. In other words, more.

That's an indefensible strategy. It won't survive attack.

Talk itself is a commodity with relatively low barriers to entry. Facebook, MySpace, SecondLife, and other communities add IM and voice calling as a feature for their millions of users. In other words, Skype can take those hills of commoditized ubiquity. It won't be able to keep them.

Skype needs to pioneer the next stage. A qualitatively different phase.

Collaboration.

Collaboration as a Service.

Collaboration as a Platform.

I’ve been blogging about collaboration since 1998. If the 1990s were about personal productivity, and the 2000s were about connecting the world, then this next decade will be about working together.

Until now...

I see two stages of Skype’s product innovation in its first six years.

Skype made VoIP easy and reliable. Then it poured the network into many operating systems, mobility and devices. Now everyone has more access to the Skype network. [Somewhere along the way Skype played with video, games, commerce, and public voice forums. Some failed; others, like video, are here to stay.]

These innovations gave Skype a large, growing user population. Sadly, its rate of growth is slowing.

Skype will commoditize minutes and Make Skype minutes more valuable

Skype’s next major stage of product innovation does two opposing things at the same time.

On the one hand, Skype is commoditizing its infrastructure. Skype has been opening up its network and telephony services to third-party distributors and developers. You can see this in Skype For SIP, Skype for Asterisk, and the web platform being built on Skype Lite. So while Skype sells minutes, third-parties innovate with vertical applications.

On the other hand, Skype will add value to its core talk service. Skype will pursue adjacent markets like voice, video, and web conferencing. Skype will compete by being cheaper and more convenient than the incumbents.

Competitors with their own network effects will add Skype-like features. So Skype must learn how to add value in the work context beyond cost savings. Skype will want to design and engineer services so Skype conversations become more fun, satisfying, productive, and effective than having those same conversations without Skype.

Collaboration Research will show how to make Skype minutes worth more

How? The way to make Skype minutes better than other minutes is to enhance Skype’s inherent support for collaboration. Multiple people getting things done together. These research areas will provide the insights, measurements, and experience Skype needs to make Skype the best brand for conversations that produce results.

If Skype’s first slogan was “It just works,” its next could be “You just work!”

Collaboration is a competitive edge

Many of Skype’s serious competitors fall into three categories. Low cost telephony and IM, VoIP and unified communications appliances, and conferencing services.

While they differ in modes, marketing, and value propositions, they all offer communications transport and some light directory service.

They don’t make you a better communicator. A better collaborator. A better teammate. A better leader.

Skype could.

Skype could advance the best collaboration practices and technology. And with Skype’s distribution (one billion accounts by 2013), could easily become the tool of choice for producing results, enjoying your job, and building economic security.

Not just more.

Better.

Together.

tags: skype, collaboration, volpi, strategy, research

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.

photo: swanksalot. CC BY-SA 2.0

Should Skype put Wave inside? Skype inside of Wave?

Skype could be a better Skype with Wave inside.

Should Skype clients be Wave containers? Perhaps. When will Wave become truly free of Google control? That depends on how many other software companies and enterprises start building and host Wave servers.

Would you like to see Wave inside Skype? Skype inside Waves? Federation of Skype names with Wave namespaces? Sharing of presence between the networks?

See also: Google Wave: Loosely coupling IM to everything and video: Ribbit Conference Gadget for Google Wave.

tags: skype, wave, google, googlewave

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.

Google Wave: Loosely coupling IM to everything

Skype soared when it wrapped IM around Internet voice calls. The familiar around the difficult.

IM brings profiles, contact lists, presence, people search, and messages. Google Wave lets you build those into any software.

Skype gained power by creating an IM namespace (the list of people who use Skype) that tightly coupled IM with more things to do (voice, video, file transfer, gameplay). Wave creates the same value but with loose coupling. Third parties have added voice conferencing, video conferencing, games. Third parties will be able to tie in their own namespaces (people@mycompany.com) and their own apps.

I fully expect to see Wave built into web sites, mobile apps, desktop clients, smart devices. Anything where you expect people (or things) to talk with people.

Loose coupling has its weaknesses. Incompatibility with extensions (we have to agree on which video plug-in to use in a conversation), no single point of contact to resolve problems, difficulty upgrading the entire network, and social issues like privacy and spam.

Wave supporters argue that the Wave protocol's weaknesses are strengths. That loose coupling provides for greater innovation in a marketplace of ideas (like software and music). That no single point of contact means no single point of failure, and no centralized control (like email).

It's still early, but now is when companies like Skype and Yahoo! and Microsoft and Cisco need to formulate something other than a wait-and-see strategy. Wave is as intensely viral and engaging as email. So you want to either jump on Wave's bandwagon or have your counter force strategy deployed before Wave hits tipping points and crosses the chasm from geek pioneers to the mainstream.

tags: skype, wave, google, googlewave

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.

video: Ribbit Conference Gadget for Google Wave

Google Wave opens up to more developers today. Ribbit's voice conference gadget is a featured bot. Here's the demo.

Q. What technology does BT/Ribbit have, making this possible, that Skype doesn't? Q. Does this scale if Ribbit has to pay for each minute? Q. What advantages does decoupling chat from IM bring to users?

From the Ribbit blurb:

The Ribbit Conferencing Gadget allows Wave participants to escalate an online collaboration session to a real-time audio communications session, allowing participants to talk with each other while collaborating. The Conferencing Gadget is persistent in the Wave and allows any Wave participant to:

Create an audio connection with multiple Wave participants

Add non-Wave participants to the session

Mute or hold any of the individual participants from the stream

Disconnect any participants from the stream

End the session

tags: ribbit, skype, google, wave, googlewave, collaboration, conferencing

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.

Why Skype needed to kill off its developer program

Killing Skype's developer program was an exercise in business discipline. You prune your tree of small, weak, sickly branches so nutrients and sunlight let the whole tree flourish.

Skype's developer program (SDP) has been bloodless for years. By every measure. Growth in programmers. Number of ecosystem products. Value contributed.

What devalued Skype's developer program?

5. Musical chair management.

I've lost count of the number of managers who've taken a stab at leading Skype developer relations in the last six years. It takes time and focus to be good at devrels, to build your devrels organization, to establish rapport and relationships with prospective partners.

4. Underfunding.

Skype's management shortchanged the developer program for Skype's first four years. DevRels never got the budget or headcount it needed to educate, evangelize and support developers. Software and hardware certifications, intended to promote the Skype brand and build trust, instead became a barrier to entry and a costly delay. 

Metaphor Bank:
Prune a tree,
Remove chometz,
A controlled burn,
Put down a diseased pet,
Excise a tumor,
Balance a project portfolio,
Dumping ballast,
set developers free (Schumpeter creative destruction).

3. Broken trust.

Two steps forward, one step crushing partners. Skype me for the sad details of developers who bet on Skype's constancy and lost. Lost money. Lost jobs. Lost careers. A trail of tears and dashed hopes.

2. Who You Know.

Want to get something done with Skype? You needed an inside friend. Skype's much better now that a process culture's emerging, but it's still true.

1. Six Year Old Technology.

The perfect developer relations program cannot put lipstick on a pig.

1a. Client-only Calling APIs: So no putting Skype inside your app.

Skype's web services are all proprietary, off-limits to the ecosystem. Skype runs "naked Skype" server farms to support its Skype Lite mobile application. Skype Lite does most things a desktop client does, through Internet APIs, and without resource hungry user interfaces. It's an internal Skype as a Platform service.

Skype's third-party developers want Skype as a Platform. A SaaP would bring Skype features and the Skype network to web and mobile applications. Web applications are nearly always better business than rich clients. They cost less, don't have installation problems, are less prone to user failure, are always fresh, and take less time for customers to get their first Aha! experience.

1b. Closed Skype client: So no putting your app inside Skype.

Skype keeps users from seeing third party developers. With the Adobe Photoshop Plugin and Firefox Extension architectures, for example, you can write apps that live inside Photoshop or Firefox. They improve a user's productivity and alter the user experience. They bring specialist expertise to the exact point where users need them.

While Skype's Public API (downloadable SDK) lets your desktop program talk to Skype's desktop software, it doesn't let you change what users see and do. The Skype UI is off-limits, verboten, pristine.

So you cannot offer inline language translation, extended emoji sets, inline Yahoo! Calendar reminders, or enrich contact profiles with updates about your friends' activities. If you cannot put your enhancements where a user needs them, why build them? 

In short, the business and technology sides of the SDP were impaired to the point of irrelevance.

Skype needs to reset the program. And its platform.

More soon.

tags: skype, devrels, developers, apis, saap

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.