Category: Skype
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Photo Tour – Skype’s new Palo Alto office
Continue Reading: Photo Tour – Skype’s new Palo Alto officeIf you recall, back in July Skype announced that it was leasing a gigantic 90,000 square feet of space in Palo Alto. Now it appears that they have moved into the space and Skype’s Jason Fischl posted some photos of the new digs to his Flickr account:Looks like a fun office space to work in!
UPDATE: In an amusing bit of synchronicity, no sooner had I published this post then I saw in my Twitter feed that Skype’s Peter Parkes just published a similar post (only with the full photos). Too funny…
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Interesting Tech in Skype’s Low-Bandwidth Version for UNHCR – Wouldn’t Enterprises Want This?
Continue Reading: Interesting Tech in Skype’s Low-Bandwidth Version for UNHCR – Wouldn’t Enterprises Want This?Skype today rolled out a very cool initiative with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) where a new “low-bandwidth version” has been made available to UNHCR field staff so that they can communicate at no cost with family and friends. My immediate question on reading about it was:
Wouldn’t many enterprises want this capability? Or a similar version?
The UNHCR Partnership
More on that in a moment, but first this is a great example to me of where VoIP can be used to enable communication in very difficult locations. In this case, the UNHCR already has Internet connectivity going into its locations through various means – this now allows the staff to use that connectivity for real-time communications. Consider where the UNHCR is using this software:
The new software has been tested successfully in Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan and is now available to 1,010 staff stationed in remote locations in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Chad, Congo, Iraq, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda.
By the end of 2010, we plan for that to grow to more than 2,072 members of staff across 60 UNHCR locations including Kenya, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. By the end of 2011, the… -
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Skype and the Incredible Power of Persistent Group Chats
Continue Reading: Skype and the Incredible Power of Persistent Group ChatsWhat is one reason why many people continue using Skype for chat / instant messaging when so many other solutions are out there? Particularly when Skype chat is a closed, proprietary “walled garden” that doesn’t interact with IM networks?After I wrote recently about being a huge user of Skype, Michael Graves asked in the comments why an organization like Voxeo that is so insanely devoted to open standards (and even uses a tagline of “Unlocked Communications”) would use something as closed as Skype?
It’s a great question, and while I answered his comment, it bears a bit more exploration.
In 3 words, the largest reason for using Skype is this:
persistent group chats
Being a globally distributed company, Voxeo is an IM-centric organization and we set up “group chats” within Skype for pretty much every activity we’re doing. Some of those are long-living group chats for communication within various teams or groups of people. Those chats may continue to exist for literally years and have people added and removed to them over time. Some group chats are created for short-term projects or deliverables. And some may be created ad hoc for resolving quick issues – and then disbanded as…
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Now We Know What Happens When The Skype Group Video Free Trial Expires…
Continue Reading: Now We Know What Happens When The Skype Group Video Free Trial Expires…When Skype released Group Video Calling with Skype for Mac 5.0 Beta (see my earlier written review and video review), one of the major questions was:What will happen to group video calling when the free trial ends?
Skype representatives didn’t provide a clear answer at the time.
Now we know the answer…
You get another free trial.
And judging from the email sent by Skype, I’m guessing this means “you will keep getting free trials until we figure out precisely what business model works and/or that the technology is all set”:
We’ll see how long this continues…
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Today’s VUC call at noon US Eastern: FREETALK Connect – Skype-connected IP-PBX
Continue Reading: Today’s VUC call at noon US Eastern: FREETALK Connect – Skype-connected IP-PBXIn about 40 minutes, this week’s VoiP Users Conference call will start with Jim Courtney talking about the new FREETALK Connect IP-PBX. It includes:- Skype connectivity for all phones.
- Auto-provisioning works with almost all models of desktop and conference IP phones
- Install wizard configures all basic networking, telephony system and user functionality on the FREETALK Connect
- Remote administration capabilities that enable the system to be administered from anywhere Internet access is available.
I’m intrigued by the system because it integrates an Asterisk-based IP-PBX with Skype – and is “certified” by Skype. I’m looking forward to hearing what Jim has to say about it.
If you’d like to listen live, there are regular, SIP and Skype contact phone numbers to dial into the VUC. You can also jump on #vuc on IRC to join in the text backchannel.
If you can’t join live, a recording of the call will be posted to the episode’s web page sometime in the next few days.
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Tim Panton: Contrasting Digium and Skype’s Developer Programs and Outreach
Continue Reading: Tim Panton: Contrasting Digium and Skype’s Developer Programs and OutreachLongtime telephony developer Tim Panton wrote a great story this morning contrasting recent developer outreach from Digium with that of Skype:
The way to create a new product or service when you already have one.
I do agree with Tim that Digium did a great job in reaching out to the community in developing the Asterisk SCF… and I do unfortunately agree with Tim that this continues to be an area where Skype struggles. Skype is now on perhaps its 5th or 6th iteration of a “developer program”… maybe more… I’ve lost track, quite honestly, over all these years… still working on finding a program that builds a strong ecosystem of developers around Skype. They’ve hired some great people at Skype… and I’m hopeful that their newer work with SkypeKit will be positive… but we’ll have to see.
[In full disclosure, my employer Voxeo has been involved with Skype’s developer programs for a long time, dating back to the first “Voice Services” program back in 2005/2006 (which was later discontinued) and continues to be involved in Skype programs. However, I’ve not been directly involved in those programs on Voxeo’s behalf.]
Tim also pointed to this great TechCrunch guest post…
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Under 2 Hours Left in Skype’s Twitter Contest (for a $1500 Apple Store Gift Cert)
Continue Reading: Under 2 Hours Left in Skype’s Twitter Contest (for a $1500 Apple Store Gift Cert)Speaking of Skype, there is only a little bit under 2 hours left for you to enter their contest on Twitter for a $1500 USD Apple Store Gift Certificate.What contest?, you may ask. Indeed, outside of 3 tweets on their @Skype account I haven’t seen much to promote this contest… but Skype is giving away a Apple Store gift certificate to some random person who has tweeted out their favorite feature using the #SkypeMac5 hashtag. As you can see from the Twitter search stream for that hashtag, there are some people out there tweeting away…
Official rules and all that are at: http://offerpop.com/skype/1609
Of course, I probably shouldn’t mention this as I wouldn’t mind winning! 🙂
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3 Interesting Omissions from the Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac OS X
Continue Reading: 3 Interesting Omissions from the Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac OS XSince the launch of Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac last week, I’ve continued use it on one Mac and simultaneously using the current Skype 2.8 on another Mac. In using both, I’ve been struck by a couple of interesting omissions.One is somewhat trivial but was always kind of fun to see – the 2.8 client listed the number of people online in the bottom right corner:
As a numbers/stats geek, it was kind of fun to see that number change over time, both in terms of hours of the day and also the overall growth. If this number is somehow visible in the Skype 5.0 Beta, I’ve yet to see it.
UPDATE: This was added to a 5.0 release, but through a typed command, not directly in the user interface as it was in Skype 2.8. You can now go into any chat in the 5.x client and type: /mac users to see the number of users currently online.
UPDATE – 5 Mar 2012: This
/mac userscommand no longer works in at least the Skype 5.5 client for the Mac.UPDATE – 6 Mar 2012: It turns out that the command in Skype 5.5 for Mac OS X…
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VIDEO: Review of Skype 5.0 Beta for MacOS X, including Group Video
Continue Reading: VIDEO: Review of Skype 5.0 Beta for MacOS X, including Group VideoWant to SEE the new Skype 5.0 Beta for MacOS X in action? Over on the Voxeo blog for my Emerging Tech Talk video podcast, I posted a video review of the Skype 5.0 Beta for MacOS X. You can see the new UI and see the Group Video calling capabilities:
I’m using the Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac on my personal iMac, where screen real estate isn’t a problem at all and so far it’s interesting… it definitely takes a good bit of time to get used to. Over on my work MacBook Pro, I’m still using Skype 2.8.x until I’m really sure I want to make the switch. 🙂
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Hate all the whitespace in Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac? Re-style it!
Continue Reading: Hate all the whitespace in Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac? Re-style it!Want to get rid of all the whitespace in the new Skype for Mac UI? With the release yesterday of Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac, many folks I know predictably trashed the new user interface and raised many issues with it. One of the annoyances I had was the sheer amount of whitespace that surrounded the chat messages. I have a LOT of chats open… and many are VERY busy, so all the whitespace resulted in a lot of extra space. It turns out that there’s a relatively simple fix:RE-STYLE THE CHAT!
Using some very simple instructions after someone nicely created a new style we could use, here’s my user experience:
MUCH nicer for large chats!
As outlined in this post, “Styling Skype Beta for Mac“, it turns out that chats can be styled through the typical combination of CSS, HTML and JavaScript. As Maykel Loomans writes in that post, you can right-click Skype.app in your Applications folder, choose “Show Package Contents” and then go into Contents > Resources > ChatStyles. There is only one style there, “Panamericana”, which is a package you can then copy, open up and restyle:
I chose not to try Maykel’s “Panamargincana” style…