Today's Featured Skyper is David who serves in U.S. Marine Corps. As you'll hear in the interview, his assignments have taken him far away from home and he finds Skype useful for keeping in touch with folks.

Download this interview as [MP3](http://download.skype.com/share/audio/davidthemarine.mp3) or [OGG](http://download.skype.com/share/audio/davidthemarine.ogg) (length 5:19).

David speaks just as a regular Skype user and we at Skype couldn't agree more with this thought:

We're the users, so we dictate how in the end this program is gonna go. Skype is as much our product as it is theirs. We don't develop it, but we're the userbase. We're the customer.

As you can hear from the interview, David is currently serving in Okinawa, Japan, so we had a Skype call between Okinawa and Estonia to record this interview. The recording does justice to Skype call quality -- you can hear high-quality sound and the delay was very low even though the packets had to travel halfway round the world.

As Skype itself does not yet have the call recording feature, I used [Hot Recorder](http://www.hotrecorder.com) to record the call and convert it to wave file for some sound processing, which included normalizing parts of the sound (making it louder) and removing some silence and unnecessary noises. Other than that, the quality is as good as you'd get yourself on a Skype voice call.

On to the interview itself.

Hello.

**Please tell us a bit about yourself -- who are you, where do you come from, what do you do for a living, those kind of usual things.**

My name is David. Im in the United States Marine Corps. I was born near Houston, Texas, in a small town called Baytown. Grew up in Texas. Joined the Marine Corps when I was 22 years old. I've been in Marine Corps since then. I'm 24 years old now, gonna be 25 this year.

**OK. Do you also be wanna be talking a bit about where has your service taken you around the world?**

I did bootcamp training in California. Pretty much all my training has been in California, I'm stationed there. I'm on my second time in Okinawa right now.

**What was your first experience with Skype? When and how did you first hear about it?**

First time I heard about it, it was in a magazine. I believe it was either "Laptop Magazine" or "PC Computing" or "PC Shopper". Picked it up and was reading about VoIP. Saw Skype in there...

**When did that approximately happen?**

It was about a year ago. It was the first time I saw an article or anything about it. It looked like something really interesting. As soon as I got a computer that was able to run it, I downloaded a copy of it, I tried it out, and I love it since then. I keep seeing reviews of it in magazines and stuff, saying it's great, and I can agree with it.

**What is your daily usage pattern? What kind of features do you use most?**

I actually use SkypeOut a lot. I call my parents. I call my wife at home, usually to tell her to get on the computer so I can call her through the Skype network. I use the voicemail a lot. My wife and my family call voicemail a lot. I don't really get that many SkypeIn calls, I think it's because of the time difference.

**But do you have a number?**

Yes, I do.

**OK. You already were speaking about how you communicate with your family, but are there any other groups of people you talk to, like your colleagues or your friends or maybe others?**

Well, I've got a friend right now in Morocco. He's on my contacts. Pretty much just calling family back home is all I use it for right now. I don't have a lot of friends online. I can't say that a lot of my friends have computers that will be able to run the program. They've all got a lot of old, old computers.

**Would there be any interesting or strange or the most weirdest thing you have seen or heard about Skype, that you'd like to share with others?**

No, I really can't think of anything weird or strange... I did get a call from somebody in China a couple of weeks back. I was just trying to see who'd give me a call so I was doing Skype-Me as my status, and I got a call from somebody in China. She wouldn't tell me anything. All she wanted to do is ask me questions. So that was kind of weird.

**Is there any feature or service or property of Skype in particular that you either like a lot, or don't like that much and would like to see changed?**

I like the SkypeIn and SkypeOut service a lot. That really allows me to be able to communicate with my family back home, who are not very computer-literate and don't have computers. They either don't have computers, or they don't keep up on it. It really allows me to be able to keep in contact with people back home very easily.

**And the final question I have to you is, there will be a lot of people listening to this and reading this who are just learning about Skype. You're a bit more experienced Skype user than many others, so what would your message be to other Skype users? Should they be excited, should they be a bit scared of Skype, or what attitude and position should they take?**

Well, this is a great program. Use the service – just use it. Offer suggestions, offer ideas. We're the users, so we dictate how in the end this program is gonna go. Because if there's a service we're not gonna use, then the company is gonna get rid of it. If there's a service we want, then the company is gonna try to add it in. This is as much our product as it is theirs. We don't develop it, but we're the userbase. We're the customer. And something I remember reading in a magazine which said that traditional telephone is dead, it just doesn't know it yet, and companies like Skype are leading the way.

**OK – thank you for your time!**