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What will Skype tell us tomorrow live from CES?
Continue Reading: What will Skype tell us tomorrow live from CES?Skype is promoting their live news conference tomorrow through a good number of channels… it will be at 10:30am PST (1:30pm US Eastern) at http://livestream.com/skypeI’m thinking it probably has something to do with… oh… video? 😉
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Want To Discuss the Skype Outage? Join the VUC Call Friday, Jan 7, at Noon US Eastern
Continue Reading: Want To Discuss the Skype Outage? Join the VUC Call Friday, Jan 7, at Noon US EasternWant to discuss the Skype outage? What happened? What we know about it? Supernodes? Mega-supernodes? Skype’s architecture? and more?On this Friday, January 7, 2011, I’ll be joining the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) gang to talk about Skype’s outage. As host Randy Resnick writes:
Mr. Dan York, CNN VoIP celebrity, will be with us for a more geeky explanation of what happened and hopefully what the full ramifications of this will be.
Skype has had a “monopoly” in this space for a long time. Can it continue? Are there contenders, and if so, who are they? Is the free model the key to Skype’s success? Will it always be free? Will it be passed up in quality by something different (like FaceTime (or a cross platform version of it) or Google Voice?
We’ll be talking about my post about Skype supernodes and much more. It should be an enjoyable time.
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…
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Video: My CNN UK Interview about Skype Supernodes
Continue Reading: Video: My CNN UK Interview about Skype SupernodesThe reaction to my last post explaining how Skype’s supernodes work has been both amazing and amusing. Largely the reaction points out to me that Skype really needs to do a better job explaining their architecture… but in their absence, others of us will do so.Anyway, one of the more fun outcomes was that I was asked to appear on a CNN UK show “Quest on Business” with host Richard Quest. Unfortunately the show was not streamed live nor was it available for viewing online later. Quite a FAIL on CNN’s part, in my opinion, because the segment certainly would have been linked to by some of us. In any event, my friend James Enck in the UK captured the segment by the super high tech method of pointing his cell phone at the TV and recording the video. 🙂
The irony, of course, is that we recorded the show entirely using Skype 😉
For those who wish to view the segment, here it is:
It was fun to do and hopefully helped some more folks out there understand a bit more about Skype. (And thanks, James, for capturing it.)
If you found this post interesting or useful, please…
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Understanding Today’s Skype Outage: Explaining Supernodes
Continue Reading: Understanding Today’s Skype Outage: Explaining SupernodesFor the first time in 3 years, Skype was down today – and as I write this is still in the process of slowly coming back online. A ton of articles were written today, mostly all pointing back to Skype’s blog post or status update, which most importantly said this (I’ve shortened it a bit):
Some of these computers are what we call ‘supernodes’ – they act a bit like phone directories for Skype. If you want to talk to someone, and your Skype app can’t find them immediately … your computer or phone will first try to find a supernode to figure out how to reach them.
Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available. Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype. As Skype relies on being able to maintain contact with supernodes, it may appear offline for some of you.
Let’s explain this a bit more.
Explaining Supernodes
If you go back and read my primer on the technology behind Skype and P2P networks, I described supernodes as Skype clients that are on the public Internet and NOT behind a firewall or NAT device that broker…
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Looking for a Last Minute Gift for A Telecom or Security Person?
Continue Reading: Looking for a Last Minute Gift for A Telecom or Security Person?<shameless self-promotion>
With Christmas fast approaching, are you looking for a last-minute gift for someone you know working with telecommunications or security?
If so, may I suggest a book written by a certain someone called, oh, Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks? You can order it from sites like Amazon.com and have the book delivered this week before Christmas!
The book will help whomever you give it to understand what the real threats to communications networks are today – and also what the real solutions are. Here’s a video I made to explain why I wrote the book:
</shameless self-promotion> 🙂
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Apparently I’m Now Skype’s Corporate Receptionist!
Continue Reading: Apparently I’m Now Skype’s Corporate Receptionist!It has happened twice this morning. People calling my phone number looking to talk to someone at Skype. For quite some time now (months), I have received occasional random phone calls from people looking for Skype and when I’ve asked it was usually because they searched in Google and ultimately somehow came up with my number (which I publish freely here on my blogs).This morning, though, I asked the two gentlemen who called how they got my number, and these were there responses:
“I was calling MasterCard to report a fraud and they gave me this number for Skype.”
“Capital One told me to call this number.” (Capital One is a US credit card issuer.)
Oops.
You see, here is the fundamental problem:
SKYPE DOES NOT LIST A SINGLE PHONE NUMBER ON THEIR WEB SITE!
Don’t believe me? Visit www.skype.com and try it yourself. Find a regular PSTN phone number… I dare you to try! (And if you do, please leave a comment here!)
The closest you may get is to the “Where is Skype?” page that lists Skype’s Luxembourg address and an email address, but no phone number. Their…
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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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Android 2.3 Includes SIP Stack, Near Field Communications, More
Continue Reading: Android 2.3 Includes SIP Stack, Near Field Communications, MoreVery cool to see that the Android 2.3 release includes a SIP stack:The platform now includes a SIP protocol stack and framework API that lets developers build internet telephony applications. Using the API, applications can offer voice calling features without having to manage sessions, transport-level communication, or audio — these are handled transparently by the platform’s SIP API and services.
The SIP API is available in the android.net.sip package. The key class is SipManager, which applications use to set up and manage SIP profiles, then initiate audio calls and receive audio calls. Once an audio call is established, applications can mute calls, turn on speaker mode, send DTMF tones, and more. Applications can also use the SipManager to create generic SIP connections.
Naturally this SIP stack is only available if the carrier and manufacturer allow it:
The platform’s underlying SIP stack and services are available on devices at the discretion of the manufacturer and associated carrier. For this reason, applications should use the isApiSupported() method to check whether SIP support is available, before exposing calling functionality to users.
Call me cynical, but I could see a number of carriers NOT allowing the SIP stack.
The Android team has also…
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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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Kudos to Mitel on starting to post customer case study videos
Continue Reading: Kudos to Mitel on starting to post customer case study videosKudos to my friends up at Mitel for posting a customer profile to YouTube, this one of Starwood Hotels & Resorts:Sure, it’s a very professionally-produced video that focuses on marketing messages… and yes, many other companies are already doing this… but having spent six years at Mitel (2001-2007) and having been a strong advocate of the company moving into social media, I just admit that I’m personally pleased to see them doing this.
Looking forward to seeing more…
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Disruptive Telephony
Dan York on how Voice over IP is rewriting (almost) everything you thought you understood about telephony…