Category: Skype
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Skype 2.7 for the Mac publicly released (back in February)
Continue Reading: Skype 2.7 for the Mac publicly released (back in February)This is relatively old news, now, but if you didn’t know, Skype released version 2.7 for the Mac back in February. I’d been using the 2.7 beta for quite some time, but missed the announcement that the production version had been released. (Annoyingly the “Check for Updates” in the 2.7 beta never indicated that there was a newer version.) I just learned of the production version as a result of an amusing little bug that I’ll write about sometime. 🙂If you are a Mac user and haven’t upgraded to 2.7, I’ve been using version 2.7 for quite some time and have been quite pleased with it. The integration with the Mac’s native Address Book is quite nice to have.
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Creating voice applications that interconnect with Skype and SIP
Continue Reading: Creating voice applications that interconnect with Skype and SIPGiven that I write on Voxeo’s blog site, I tend not to write much here about things we are doing at Voxeo.But I thought I’d mention here one specific post I put up recently called “Skype-ifying your voice applications” which talks about the intriguing ways in which you can use our hosted platform to make voice applications accessible through a number of different mechanisms.
As shown in the diagram to the left, an application that you write and is hosted on our platform can be called into over the PSTN, over a direct SIP connection or via Skype or FWD. Likewise calls can go out to PSTN numbers or to SIP endpoints.
This flexibility is one of the many things that intrigues me about the platform (of which I knew nothing about prior to joining the company in October).
Anyway, more information is in the full blog post. I just thought I’d mention it here. (By the way, if you’d like to try it out yourself, developer accounts are free.)
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Skype releases new 3.8 beta for Windows
Continue Reading: Skype releases new 3.8 beta for WindowsIf you are on Windows, you can now download Skype 3.8 beta. As Raul Liive indicates, this beta release is primarily focused on quality improvements, including improved audio quality.I did find it interesting that Skype wrote their own UPnP implementation for this release and stopped using Microsoft’s UPnP code. UPnP (“Universal Plug and Play”) is one of those things you either love or hate. Consumers love it because it lets applications “just work” through their home firewall. Security folks like me usually loathe it because UPnP punches holes in firewalls (and lacks any kind of authentication whatsoever). However, it makes sense for Skype to attempt to use UPnP and, given what they wrote, it makes sense for them to write their own version and not be subject to the issues with Microsoft’s version.
I’ll be curious to hear what others think of the Skype 3.8 beta for Windows… given that I’m on a Mac these days, I won’t be giving it a try.
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The Oprah-tization of VoIP via Skype!
Continue Reading: The Oprah-tization of VoIP via Skype!Did you ever think that we would utter “Oprah” and “VoIP” in the same sentence?
Well, we are… or more precisely “Oprah” and “Skype”. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you need to head over to Skype Journal and read Jim Courtney’s piece: “Skype Sponsors Oprah’s ‘A New Earth’ Web Event”
Essentially, Oprah has taken her Book Club online to host a weekly web collaboration session for the next ten weeks with, oh, 750,000 members of her club! More information – and an audio introduction from Oprah – is available on the Skype campaign page. Monday night was the first first session and as Jim subsequently noted (as did Howard Wolinsky on the new Skype US blog), the session didn’t go so well with regard to technical issues. As Oprah’s company, Harpo Productions (Hint: spell “Harpo” backwards) said in their statement:
Monday night’s webcast was one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet. More than 500,000 people simultaneously logged on to watch Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle live, resulting in 242 Gbps of information moving through the Internet. Unfortunately, some of our users experienced delays in viewing the webcast. We are…
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Congrats to Skype on hitting 100 BILLION minutes!
Continue Reading: Congrats to Skype on hitting 100 BILLION minutes!A huge congrats to Skype for hitting the milestone of over 100 BILLION minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls! As Skype’s Villu Aruk notes in his amusing post, it’s rather hard to wrap your head around numbers of this size. Congrats to all the folks involved with Skype… it is a milestone to celebrate.See also Jim Courtney and Jon Arnold with their views of this announcement.
Technorati Tags: skype
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The EComm 2008 Interview with Skype’s Jonathan Christensen should be required reading…
Continue Reading: The EComm 2008 Interview with Skype’s Jonathan Christensen should be required reading…As we enter into the final month before eComm 2008, I would suggest that the interview with Jonathan Christensen, Skype’s general manager of audio and video, should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in this space. Why? Well, in part because Jonathan Christensen does provide some good information about what Skype has done and is doing but also because it provides some good insight into what one of the people driving Skype’s agenda is thinking about this space. Take one of the final paragraphs where he answered Lee Dryburgh’s question about what he saw as the the future of communications (bold emphasis added by me):Well, a big question I guess and, having worked on the space for quite a while, I think that it’s only going to get more interesting over the coming years since, well, like this open spectrum for example. You know, I just have to reiterate, I think that anybody who has not figured out that the Internet is the platform and that there isn’t any such thing as walled gardens that will survive, or sub-networks [such as AOL tried] that are going to survive, those people are doomed. The intersection of these worlds is going…
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Skype says “No” to VoIP interoperability – *because customers aren’t asking for it!* – Well, I am!
Continue Reading: Skype says “No” to VoIP interoperability – *because customers aren’t asking for it!* – Well, I am!So Skype says that they have no plans for interoperability with other VoIP systems because their customers aren’t asking for it??
By way of Dameon Welch-Abernathy today I learned of Phil Wolff’s post back in December about ZDNet’s interview (Got all that? 😉 with Skype’s VP of telecoms, Stefan Oberg. The article was primarily about Skype’s London phone number debacle, but this was the part that most irritated me:
Another issue which may concern business users of VoIP is the Enum registry, which aims to unite not only the various VoIP providers — referred to by some as “islands” due to their lack of interconnection with each other — but the entire VoIP and traditional telephony worlds.
Asked whether Skype had considered opening up its famously closed communications protocols, Oberg claimed that there had been no customer demand for interconnection. “[Customers] are not saying they would love to call a VoIP provider on a different network,” he said. “Customers are asking for better video and better conference calling. If it is something that customers really ask for, we would consider it, but it is very easy for anyone to get on the island.”
Well, Mr. Oberg, here is one paying customer of Skype…
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Voice mashups – Notes on Alec’s conference call today
Continue Reading: Voice mashups – Notes on Alec’s conference call todayUPDATE, Jan 11: The recording of this conference call is now available.
As I mentioned in an earlier post today, Alec Saunders convened a 30-minute conference call today on voice mashups. The call was recorded and will be available as a podcast from his site. (I’ll add the link here once I’m online.)
I was traveling down through the state of Vermont today and so while I had no Internet access I did call in and joined the call from my Blackberry. (My wife was driving the car at the time.) I wrote down the following notes on my laptop during the call.
Alec introduced the call, mentioned that it would be recorded and distributed as a podcast. He then muted all the callers except for himself, Thomas Howe, Jim Courtney and Andy Abramson. For callers with Facebook open, they could press a button to “raise their hand” at which point Alec could unmute them. I was calling in on my cell phone while traveling with no Internet access, so for me it was to press “*2” to raise my hand.
Alec tossed out the first question which was “what is a voice mashup?” Thomas laid out one definition which…
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Do 40% of men really make phone calls while naked? (Skype blogs are exploring the “Twelve Days of Skype Christmas”
Continue Reading: Do 40% of men really make phone calls while naked? (Skype blogs are exploring the “Twelve Days of Skype Christmas”Over on the Skype blogs, Skype blogger Peter Parkes is having a bit of fun with a series of articles under the banner of the “Twelve Days of Skype Christmas“. They are a bit amusing… although I’m not really sure I wanted to know that 40% make phone calls while naked according to one survey!Anyway, kudos to Peter for putting together a series of posts for the season.
Technorati Tags: skype
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Skype Journal offers “37 Sketchy 2008 Skype Predictions”
Continue Reading: Skype Journal offers “37 Sketchy 2008 Skype Predictions”Over at the Skype Journal, Phill Wolff had some fun yesterday with his “37 Sketchy 2008 Skype Predictions“. Not all of them relate to Skype… and obviously not all are even serious, but they do make a fun read.Technorati Tags: skype, skype journal, phil wolff