Category: Skype
-
/
Skype leases 90,000 sq feet in Palo Alto!
Continue Reading: Skype leases 90,000 sq feet in Palo Alto!Skype announced their expansion in Silicon Valley today and while such an announcement might be routine and not really worth mentioning, I was certainly struck by the size of the space they are leasing:Today, I’m pleased to announce that Skype will expand its operations in Silicon Valley, and has just signed a lease with Stanford University for a 90,000 square foot office space in the Stanford Research Park at 3210 Porter Drive in Palo Alto, CA. Silicon Valley will add to Skype’s excellent engineering team in Estonia, Prague and Stockholm, and will also become the home of regional marketing, business development, and the Skype for Business team.
90,000 square feet is good bit of space! Obviously they have solid ideas around growing. It’s great to see Skype continuing on its path as its own company and I wish them all the best with the move.
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either subscribing to the RSS feed, following me on Twitter or subscribing to my email newsletter.
-
/
NetworkWorld interviews SIP pioneer and now Skyper Jonathan Rosenberg
Continue Reading: NetworkWorld interviews SIP pioneer and now Skyper Jonathan RosenbergThis week Network World ran a great interview with Jonathan Rosenberg about his new role at Skype. Jonathan is now the “Chief Technology Strategist” at Skype, but he’s known in the industry as one of the co-authors of the original RFC 3261 that defines the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and also for his many years working at Cisco. He’s been extremely active within the IETF, writing a seriously large quantity of Internet-Drafts. I think, in fact, I first met JDR at an IETF meeting… and subsequently was on at least one panel with him (I think a VoiceCon or Interop in New York).It’s been interesting to watch Skype accumulate more and more people with strong SIP backgrounds, and hiring Jonathan was definitely an interesting – and good – move on Skype’s part.
I don’t know that the Network World interview broke any amazing new ground for those of us who have been watching Skype closely, but if you haven’t been paying attention to Skype, Jonathan gives a great view into what the company has been doing lately and where it is going. It is definitely worth a read.
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either…
-
/
How to use a USB headset with the Apple iPad
Continue Reading: How to use a USB headset with the Apple iPadAs I note over on the Voxeo web site, I recently posted a video showing how you can use a USB headset with the Apple iPad. The video is available on YouTube and you can see it directly here:WHY might you want to do this? Well, primarily if you want better audio quality when using VoIP on your iPad… and if you are like me and always find Bluetooth headsets sucking up too much battery power, it’s nice to have a wired option.
Next up, figure out what else can be plugged into that USB connector… 😉
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either subscribing to the RSS feed, following me on Twitter or subscribing to my email newsletter.
-
/
Google buys GIPS for $68 million – to take on Skype? Apple? Microsoft?
Continue Reading: Google buys GIPS for $68 million – to take on Skype? Apple? Microsoft?The big news out this morning was that Google is acquiring Global IP Solutions (GIPS) for $68 million USD. GIPS may not be a familiar name to many folks, but for us in the communications / telephony space, they are widely known as the supplier of audio codecs (and increasingly video) to companies creating real-time communication products, including Yahoo, AOL, IBM and many others. Many of us, though, knew them best as the initial provider of the wideband iSAC codec to Skype.To put this in more normal language, if you know how good a Skype conversation can sound… how rich the audio can be… how it can sound like the person on the other end is right there in the room with you? The quality of that audio connection is because Skype uses a “wideband codec” to send the audio from one end to the other. Up until 2007, GIPS provided the primary wideband codec that Skype used.
At some point in there, Skype realized that, particularly giving away a free product, it needed to control more of its technology stack and stop paying licensing fees to GIPS and so it bought a company, Camino Networks, that had its…
-
/
Skype 5.0 Beta 1 with multi-party video: Phil Wolff gives a tour…
Continue Reading: Skype 5.0 Beta 1 with multi-party video: Phil Wolff gives a tour…While I may rant about Skype’s multiparty video being Windows-only (or “kvetch”, according to the VoIP Princess), I still do think it is an excellent development. I’m on Skype conference calls quite often and it would be great to add video. More often, I’m in a video call with someone and we realize we need to bring someone into the call… which we do… and drop everyone to audio.So, rants aside, I’m very much looking forward to trying out the feature whenever Skype makes it available for the Mac. In the meantime, those of us who choose the Mac will have to live vicariously through blog posts such as this one from Phil Wolff at Skype Journal:
Notes from Skype Group Video Test
Phil went screenshot-happy and captured a whole sequence of shots experimenting with the new feature. Looks very cool.
Thanks for sharing, Phil.
P.S. And by the way… nice hat! 🙂 UPDATE: Just after publishing this post, I noticed that Phil has another post up, “Skype 5 beta and group video bandwidth” where he’s investigating the network paths and video used by the multi-party video. Good stuff!
If you found this post interesting or useful, please…
-
/
Why I’m NOT excited about Skype 5.0 with group video calls
Continue Reading: Why I’m NOT excited about Skype 5.0 with group video callsBy all accounts I should probably be incredibly excited about Skype’s new 5.0 beta 1 with group video calling. After all, I’m a huge daily user of Skype and make video calls pretty much every day. It would be fantastic to be able to add video to some of the conference calls I do… particularly where I work with a globally distributed team.I should be excited… but I’m not.
Why?
Because yet again, Skype continues to follow their fractured and fragmented product strategy that I’ve ranted about before:
Skype 5.0 Beta 1 is Windows only.
I would love to try it out and use it… I’d be glad to give Skype feedback… I’d be glad to write about it here, talk about it and show it off on my video podcast… I’d tweet about and promote it on Facebook and other sites… as a fan, I’d love to help Skype promote its services!
But I can’t really…. yet.
You see, I use Macs exclusively these days. In fact, I work for a company of over 140 people… all of whom are Mac users… and all of whom are heavy Skype users. None of us can try this out. Sure……
-
/
What will Skype be changing May 6th with “Skype Manager” replacing the Business Control Panel?
Continue Reading: What will Skype be changing May 6th with “Skype Manager” replacing the Business Control Panel?So what exactly will Skype be changing next week with regard to the Business Control Panel? No signs of change on Skype’s “business” page… no new posts on Skype’s business blog… or Skype’s main blog…Just an email that I, and presumably every other BCP user, received today:
We just wanted to let you know that on May 6, 2010, Skype Manager will automatically replace your Business Control Panel (BCP).
Everything you currently do in your BCP will be available within Skype Manager.
You can continue to manage your employee’s Skype accounts, allocate credit and assign features. But you can also do a lot more besides, all with the same sign in details.
From May 6, you will automatically start a free trial of Skype Manager, which will run until October 31, 2010.
We will be in touch again before the free trial ends to let you know the exact Skype Manager pricing for your business.
So ten days from now we all get “Skype Manager”, eh?
What will be the new features? I’m guessing from that last sentence that the “free” BCP will be going away… although that is not stated… and a free option could still be around.…
-
/
Another Hotel Fails To Support Skype – Here’s Why Skype’s P2P Connection Model Breaks Their System
Continue Reading: Another Hotel Fails To Support Skype – Here’s Why Skype’s P2P Connection Model Breaks Their SystemUPDATE: When I stayed at this same hotel in August 2010, I no longer had the issue with Skype being blocked. Presumably they got a smarter network monitoring system. While this specific hotel now works with Skype, the same issue will undoubtedly be out there for many other hotels and locations.
Summary: Hotels restricting the number of simultaneous network connections per user may wind up blocking legitimate usage of Skype. Skype’s peer-to-peer network model uses a high number of network connections to synchronize multi-party group chats.
Read on for the full story, network diagrams, etc….
Two weeks ago on a visit to Voxeo’s corporate headquarters in Orlando, FL, I stayed at the Grand Bohemian Hotel, conveniently located only a block or so away. Arriving in the early evening, I checked in, got to my room and immediately plugged my laptop into the Ethernet port to catch up on what had happened while I’d been offline traveling. As is the case in many hotels, I was asked to login and pay through a system from “Nomadix”. I did so… and very quickly started to see Skype coming online, my other IM client (Adium) coming online, email starting to flow in and…
-
/
The Skype and Verizon partnership – explained by animated video
Continue Reading: The Skype and Verizon partnership – explained by animated videoBack in February, Skype and Verizon announced a partnership that will be bringing Skype to various Verizon smartphones apparently this month. Last week more details emerged, including the fact that Skype would not be sold in Nokia’s US app store because of the Verizon partnership.Skype and Verizon also released this animated video explaining their partnership:
While I am an iPhone user who left Verizon behind (but would love to return to their network with an iPhone!), I applaud both Skype and Verizon for both their partnership as well as their creative way of explaining it.
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either subscribing to the RSS feed or following me on Twitter or identi.ca.
-
/
VoiceOnTheWeb: A video interview with Skype CEO Josh Silverman
Continue Reading: VoiceOnTheWeb: A video interview with Skype CEO Josh SilvermanOver on his Voice On The Web blog, Jim Courtney posted this morning a two-part video interview with Skype CEO Josh Silverman that is interesting to watch. Jim summarizes the interview indicating that we should expect to see from Skype in 2010 the following:- a revitalized developer program built around a more comprehensive platform from which developers can, amongst other features, embed Skype into their applications
- Skype access on many more mobile platforms as well as taking advantage of wireless carriers’ recognition of Skype as a mainstream telecommunications environment
- expansion of video calling services, including a strong role in the introduction of Internet services as a feature on a new generation of television sets;
- launch of a formal comprehensive Skype for Business program targeted at small-to-medium businesses
- many more Skype video interviews on broadcast media – for example, Skype video (and voice) calling has been used quite extensively by several networks to facilitate communications with Haiti following the earthquake
And while Josh Silverman did cover all of those points, I personally found it interesting just to watch and listen to how he covers the points and where he is focusing his attention (through what he talks about). Skype’s at a…