Disruptive Telephony

It turns out that you can in the new Skype 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X… with a little file editing.

NOTE: This appears to be an experimental feature added by a Skype developer… and as I note at the bottom, it has some bugs.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. On your Mac, using either the Finder or the command-line, whichever you prefer, go to the directory/folder /Users/yourmacusername/Library/Application Support/Skype/yourskypeusername. (For example, my directory is /Users/dyork/Library/Application Support/Skype/danyork)

2. With some text editor, open the file config.xml.

3. Toward the end of the file, you will see a section of XML about <UI> and inside of that a subsection <General>. In that General section, add these two lines:

 <TwitterPassword>yourpassword</TwitterPassword>
 <TwitterUsername>yourusername</TwitterUsername>

Here’s an abbreviated version of what it looked like in my file:

  <UI>
    ...
    <General>
      <LastSkypeVersionUsed>2.8.0.309</LastSkypeVersionUsed>
      <SmsShowNumber>0</SmsShowNumber>
      <TwitterPassword>yourpassword</TwitterPassword>
      <TwitterUsername>yourusername</TwitterUsername>
    </General>
    <Profile>
      <LastOnlineStatus>2</LastOnlineStatus>
    </Profile>
  </UI>

4. Restart Skype.

Ta da… now anything you type in your Mood Message Chat or regular Mood Message window will show up in Twitter.

Now I found out about this when…

Skype’s news release is also out as well as a longer Skype blog post explaining the features (and which talks more about Skype Access, something I was unable to really try or demo).

It also looks to be worth reading through the full release notes for this version as there is a LONG list of improvements, changes and bug fixes.

But you don’t have to take my word for it anymore, you can download the 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X now.

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Technorati Tags: skype, mac, apple, macworld, macosx

UPDATE: Skype 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X is now available for download.

UPDATE #2: The 2.8 Beta also includes some experimental support for linking Skype mood messages to Twitter.

Tonight out at the “ShowStoppers” event at MacWorld in San Francisco, Skype announced the new 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X. The new version will apparently be available for download tomorrow, January 6, 2009, from Skype’s website. [NOTE: I will update this post with the download link when it becomes available.]

Continuing Skype’s rather fragmented product strategy, they have rolled out some new features in this 2.8 beta release that will at least stop us Mac users from whining about Windows users always getting the good stuff first. Here’s the quick list of what Skype notes is in this release:

• Skype Access
• Screen Sharing
• Improved chat management: ability to sort chats in the drawer and set priorities to chats
• Quick Add: much easier to add people to chats
• Mood message chat: mood message updates from your friends as chat messages
• Large avatars: 256×256 pixels
• Hidden avatars in incoming contact requests
• Ability to add your own notes to contacts

Courtesy of Skype’s PR team, I’ve had a chance to play with…