Category: Skype
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SkypePrime – for a 30% cut to Skype, you can charge people to call you and offer fee-based services to the Skype community… (and will it all turn into porn calls?)
Continue Reading: SkypePrime – for a 30% cut to Skype, you can charge people to call you and offer fee-based services to the Skype community… (and will it all turn into porn calls?)UPDATE: Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal has had some great detailed coverage of Skype Prime over at Skype Journal.
News out of Skype today is that a new 3.1 beta includes a new service called SkypePrime, where you can charge someone to call you for either a one-time fee or a per-minute fee. It also marks the beginning of the frequently-discussed integration of Skype and PayPal, because the payments go into your PayPal account. However, the payment is deducted from the payer’s SkypeCredit (so you are paying in SkypeCredit and the receiver is getting it in PayPal). Here’s the relevant part of the blog entry:
When you call someone who is a Skype Prime call provider, and you both have the new version of Skype, the provider can initiate what we call a “payment request”. That is, all calls start as free, but you can then switch to the paid calling, charging either by the minute or a one-off fixed fee. The call then proceeds as a paid Skype Prime call and your Skype Credit is deducted by the appropriate amount that then goes to the receiver’s account. The provider does not get the call fees directly as Skype…
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Skype Journal picks up my Skype 3.1/SkypeFind review…
Continue Reading: Skype Journal picks up my Skype 3.1/SkypeFind review…Phil Wolff asked if he could republish my review of Skype 3.1 and SkypeFind over on Skype Journal and with the re-pub including a link back I was perfectly okay about that… so there it is. My premiere as a guest blogger on Skype Journal… 🙂
Welcome to anyone who landed here after visiting Skype Journal. You’ll find I do talk about Skype here, although it’s just one of the many topics. If you find my writing useful or helpful, feel free to subscribe via RSS or email through the right sidebar. Thanks for stopping by!
Technorati tags: skype journal, skype -
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Skype takes on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in local business listings with new "SkypeFind" – and ratings/reviews
Continue Reading: Skype takes on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in local business listings with new "SkypeFind" – and ratings/reviewsSkype today released a new “3.1” beta for Windows (you can get it here) with a number of minor tweaks – and a brand new component called “SkypeFind”. As you can see in the picture to the right, there’s a new tab added… and is the entrance of Skype into the game already being played by GoogleMaps, Yahoo!Local and Microsoft’s Windows Live Local… namely… providing an easily searchable directory of businesses.
It’s not stated, but it’s pretty clear the ultimate goal is to control the directory you use to initiate calls. Think about it, Google is aiming to do this with their “click-to-call” in Google Maps. Find an entry (in the US, anyway) and simply click “call” and your regular phone rings. It’s simple and easy. Google controls the directory and the initiation of calls. It’s even more logical for Skype to do this. Find a business in the directory, click the phone number and you’re dialling away using Skype/SkypeOut…
Of course, Skype aims to be more than simply yet another business directory. As the Skype blog entry states:
SkypeFind is one of the most interesting features that we’ve done in quite a while now. We call it “Local…
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Anyone out there using ChanSkype to connect Asterisk to Skype?
Continue Reading: Anyone out there using ChanSkype to connect Asterisk to Skype?Anyone reading this blog using the ChanSkype software to connect Asterisk to Skype? I’ve not played with it at all myself, but it sounds like an interesting idea. Here’s what they say it can do:
- Call online Skype users.
- Call using SkypeOut.
- Receive up to 30 incoming Skype Calls (“Skype Trunk”).
- Bridge with SIP channels.
- Make any number of simultaneous calls (limited only by system resources).
Their FAQ is just a wee bit sparse on details, like, oh, precisely how many simultaneous connections will it support? Their main page has the text above and on the Buy page they note that corporate licenses are licensed per port up to 30 users and it has this text:
This limitation is not technical, for ChanSkype’s simultaneous call capabilities are limited only by system resources.
Which naturally makes me a bit more curious. It’s clear that they are using the Skype client-side API through a Linux Skype client but that’s about it. I would think to support multiple users they would have to launch multiple instances of the Linux Skype client. Is this what they are doing?
If anyone has played with it, I’d be curious to know how it works. It’s intriguing enough to me…
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VoIP News: 25 Hacks to improve your Skype experience
Continue Reading: VoIP News: 25 Hacks to improve your Skype experienceVoIP News yesterday posted an article “Hacking Skype: 25 Tips to Improve Your Skype Experience” that definitely makes for interesting reading (using “hacking” in the original sense of the word not the criminal one). It’s a good list of the kind of innovative things people are doing with Skype. Many of them I’m already using… some were new to me and some I don’t ever see myself doing (sorry, I don’t want a lip-syncing avatar). Are you using any of these? What other hacks for Skype have you found useful?
Technorati tags: skype, voip -
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Skype’s persistent group chats as a technical support vehicle
Continue Reading: Skype’s persistent group chats as a technical support vehicleForget email, post your support questions to a group chat! Continuing my experimentation with Skype 3.0, I have to say that the persistent group chats are an intriguing aspect of the product. Back when the 3.0 beta was announced last fall, I joined the “Skype English Blog Chat” and the interesting fact is… I’m still in there a couple of months later. Now, the reason that I am still in there is because I never went to the top of the chat window (pictured on the right – click for a larger view) and clicked the “Leave” button. Because I haven’t pressed “Leave”, I will stay in this group chat indefinitely (or until a Host kicks me out, as Jaanus has indicated he is now doing to inactive members). This group chat membership survives through shutting down Skype, power cycling your computer, etc. In fact, it becomes part of your Skype configuration, so even if you login to Skype on a different PC, the group chat is available to you.
Two other interesting aspects. First, when you return to the group chat, the history of the chat is available to you. So you might be gone from it for several…
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"SecondTalk" allows Skype usage within SecondLife
Continue Reading: "SecondTalk" allows Skype usage within SecondLifeChecking out SkypeJournal before starting work this morning, I noticed their post “SecondTalk: Skype in a Virtual World” about a new tool to allow people to “easily” use Skype in SecondLife. Intrigued, I read the blog announcement, press release (back on Jan 16th) and FAQ and decided to try it out. I’ll suppress the standard rant about SecondLife technical issues and say that when I was finally able to get in to SL and to the right place, I was able to obtain a “headset” that I could “wear” to theoretically communicate with others via Skype.
Now I will say that the process of obtaining and configuring the headset was not exactly intuitive. I had to:
- Touch the appropriate sign to be given a headset and then accept it into my inventory.
- Drag it from my inventory to the ground near me.
- Right-click on the headset on the ground (which I initially couldn’t find) and edit the properties to put my Skype ID in the “Description” field.
- Click on the headset again and “Take” it back into my Inventory.
- Click on the headset in my Inventory and “Wear” it.
- Turn it “on” by typing “/1 on” in the Chat bar (which…
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Apple’s iPhone as a platform for Skype, Gizmo, Jajah and everyone else…
Continue Reading: Apple’s iPhone as a platform for Skype, Gizmo, Jajah and everyone else…With the torrent of media hype about Apple’s new iPhone, one of the things that has surprised me is the lack of discussion about one of the aspects of the device that I find truly disruptive… it will be running a full version of MacOS X. Now, granted, with 15 million blogs and countless web sites commenting on the iPhone in the past few days, I’m sure I’ve missed some where people have discussed this aspect, but to me it’s a key element.
Consider this… if you have the full capabilities of MacOS X (which we don’t yet know for certain but all of the Apple info seems to indicate it will have full MacOS X) – and you also have WiFi support and/or Cingular EDGE support – why not simply run the Mac version of Skype or Gizmo? Or Yahoo Messenger or AIM? Or anyone else’s softphone that runs on MacOS X?
The phone then becomes an extension of your contact/buddy list and can provide that kind of connectivity wherever you can get a WiFi or EDGE connection. That to me is one of the fascinating aspects of the whole play. The phone as an application platform – with a “standard” commercial operating system.
I…
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Is the Skype- and webcam-equipped R2D2 for real? (with a light saber as a phone?)
Continue Reading: Is the Skype- and webcam-equipped R2D2 for real? (with a light saber as a phone?)After seeing this post at Engadget, I, too, have to truly wonder whether this is for real or some sort of very elaborate hoax. The Nikko Home Electronics website has more info… well… actually it has a big Flash object that obviously took some time to create.
It appears there are two models: 1) The “C.S.” or “Communication System” and 2) the “M.E.S.” or “Mobile Entertainment System”. Gizmodo has a video of the MES from the floor of CES this week out in Las Vegas, proving that there is at least one working model of that system.
I have to say that the light saber as a phone is certainly amusing and destined to warm the heart of any Star Wars fan.
I don’t know if it is actually for real, but hey, it would be amusing if it really is. (And if Nikko wants to send one my way for review, my shipping address is…. 😉
Technorati tags: skype, voip, nikko, r2d2, star wars -
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Blue Box Podcast #48 out with our predictions for 2007, VoIP security news, etc. – and the frustrating audio issues in post-production
Continue Reading: Blue Box Podcast #48 out with our predictions for 2007, VoIP security news, etc. – and the frustrating audio issues in post-productionEarlier this week I uploaded Blue Box Podcast #48, where Jonathan and I go beyond just talking about the news to also review the “top VoIP security news stories of 2006” and also get into our predictions for 2007. My prediction #1 will be fairly obvious for anyone who has listened to the show for a while. We also cover the typical range of VoIP security stories, talk about OpenID for caller authentication and many more things.
This was a bit frustrating of a show to post-produce. Post-production is always a somewhat lengthy process, anyway, because I want the enhanced audio that you get from a wideband codec, which means that we use Skype. However, Skype creates its own challenges with voice that will simply fade away or get garbled. It’s fairly routine that we have to disconnect and reconnect a time or two within the space of the hour in which we are recording the show. (That’s actually apparent in this show where Jonathan’s voice is at a lower level and then suddenly is much louder. After the reconnect, he wound up with more volume.) If I could get the audio quality in a softphone without the fade outs,…
