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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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Yep, They’re Buying SmartPhones! Great stats from Black Friday…
Continue Reading: Yep, They’re Buying SmartPhones! Great stats from Black Friday…Great stats out of the Silicon Alley Insider’s Chart of Day for this past Tuesday:There was a 31% increase in active smartphones over the Thanksgiving weekend compared to the week prior…
The SAI post explains the chart and how the data was gathered:
Cool info to see!
(Although the paranoid security guy inside of me is admittedly wondering how many of the apps on my iPhone include Flurry’s “analytics software” and what exactly it is sending to them… )
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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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A *CRAZY* Week In Collaboration / Communications News – A Summary from Dave Michels
Continue Reading: A *CRAZY* Week In Collaboration / Communications News – A Summary from Dave MichelsThis has been an absolutely insane week of announcements relating to the Unified Communications / collaboration / VoIP / etc, etc. space… it’s been a while since I can think of a week that had so much news packed into it.
I think it’s called… “everyone wants to get all their news out before it is US Thanksgiving and people start ignoring news because of the holidays!”
Regardless of why, the fact is that each day I’ve watched the Twitter stream just scrolling by with tons of items I’d love to write about. Unfortunately, I, too, have been slammed – and unable to write all that I’ve wanted to.
Thankfully, Dave Michels pulled together a nice summary over on No Jitter:
Watta Week!
Check there for pointers to stories about Microsoft Lync… Mitel Freedom… Cisco’s zillion video announcements… and news from Polycom, Avaya and HP, too.
Some week, I’m hoping to write about each of these myself… but that week is very definitely NOT this week!
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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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Meet My Spam Honeypot for Telemarketers (Otherwise Known As My Desk Phone)
Continue Reading: Meet My Spam Honeypot for Telemarketers (Otherwise Known As My Desk Phone)The phone on my desk rang a second time today. I glanced at the console, didn’t recognize the Caller ID and simply ignored the call. A minute or two later a text message buzzed on my iPhone with a transcription of the voicemail left by the caller. I took one look and knew right away:
Yep, another telemarketer!
Just like another call earlier today. As I did my little glance-ignore-wait-for-text-message routine I realized yet again how my communications channels have changed over the years. Here is the reality:
I pretty much NEVER answer my desk phone.
Why not? Pretty simple, really:
The people who I want to speak with already know how to get in touch with me!
And the “how” comes down to: unified communications and mobile.
Unified Communications
For instance, we’re huge users of Skype internally at Voxeo. I have everyone in the company as a contact, and am in a zillion various group chats with internal employees. If someone within the company wants to reach me, they will:
- Check my presence on Skype. Am I online? If so, am I “away”? or “busy/Do Not Disturb”?
- Send me an IM – asking if they can call me if…
- Check my presence on Skype. Am I online? If so, am I “away”? or “busy/Do Not Disturb”?
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Want a Tropo.com USB Bottle Opener?
Continue Reading: Want a Tropo.com USB Bottle Opener?I have to say this is one of the coolest giveaways I’ve seen for bit… yes, it’s for a service of my employer, Voxeo, but regardless, it’s a cool piece of schwag (and I had nothing to do with it):
It worked out perfectly when I wanted to open a beer for a late night of writing blog posts! (Now, whether the beer helped with the coherency of the blog posts is a different topic…)
What’s even cooler from a geek point-of-view, is that the contents of the USB drive are all managed using the Git version control system! Adam Kalsey wrote about how he assembled the drive content using git, and particularly git submodules, and then about how he loaded the content onto the USB drives. Pretty cool stuff!
If you’d like to get your hands on one of these USB bottle openers, all you have to do is speak about Tropo at an event or host a meetup – the Tropo team will ship out a meetup kit that includes a few of these.
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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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Video: AstriCon Keynote Demonstrating Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework (SCF)
Continue Reading: Video: AstriCon Keynote Demonstrating Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework (SCF)Want to learn more about the Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework (SCF)? While I wrote about Asterisk SCF last week, Digium has now posted the video of the keynote session. It starts with Digium CEO Danny Windham and then at about the 5:45 mark Kevin Fleming takes the stage. At about 10 minutes Kevin starts bringing some community members on stage to tell some stories… all building up to the actual SCF announcement about 33 minutes in 🙂
Regardless of the long buildup, it’s worth watching if you want to understand where Asterisk is going… the demo is pretty cool, too!
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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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Disruptive Telephony
Dan York on how Voice over IP is rewriting (almost) everything you thought you understood about telephony…