Skype at VON Europe 2005
By
on May 27, 2005 in News, events, milestones.
[VON Stockholm](http://www.voneurope.com): What a gathering - even at 10.00 on the pre-opening seminar day, Monday, blessed with the excitement of EU regulatory framework discussion and having gotten out of bed at 0400 on a cold Monday morning, the halls were buzzing with expectation.
The day went by, and the well known names we know from other blogs, from regulators, from industry groups and the formative voices of the industry begun to speak up and we could put faces to the voices and blogs. It was great to meet you all.
The industry was gathering together, was speaking together and it was beginning to feel as if we really are changing the way that everyday people think and communicate. Of course, it's great to be at the centre of the discussion as Skype, but we are also part of a transition. A transition into free and simple communication, where voice becomes an application, running on multiple devices and finally independent of connection type and provider.
Of course, there's some hard commerce behind all this as well. It was great for us to meet the inventors and distributors of headsets, adaptors, and applications that depend on the Skype application, and we will take all your thoughts and comments back into Skype so we can respond even better to your needs. It's clear that between us all we are building a great ecosystem that is becoming commercially realistic by satisfying the needs of the consumers and users of Skype software.
Even the airwaves were overloaded with Skypers it seems -- everyone flying in from the US seemed to have connected via Boeing Connexion, making Skype calls and chats from 35,000 feet. I'd like to ask the pundits and regulators how old world telecomms thinking applies from 35,000 feet over the Atlantic. At the same time, I'd like to thank the critics and sceptics for giving up their time to attend VON and understand the issues.
We all need to understand and propagate the idea that Skype, and our colleagues are changing what consumers want and how they are making their own decisions about talking to each other.
Of course, it's cool that Jeff Pulver in his speech 'Shift Happens' nominates Niklas for Nobel Peace Prize for assisting free communication, but the best is seeing the buzz of a new industry under development.
This isn't going to go away.
Comments
The mod instructions are missing a line. While editing usercp_register.php there's a section in the mod which reads:
#
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------
#
$sql = "INSERT INTO " . USERS_TABLE . " (user_id, username, user_regdate, user_password, user_email,
#
#-----[ IN-LINE FIND ]------------------------------------------
#
user_email,
#
#-----[ IN-LINE AFTER, ADD ]------------------------------------------
#
user_skype,
Another addition is required to the next line of code.
Go to the next line, which starts with:
VALUES ($user_id, '" . str_replace("'", "''",
Look for this:
. str_replace("'", "''", $email) . "', '"
And after it, add this:
. str_replace("'", "''", $skype) . "','"
Otherwise, you're telling it to insert 35 datapoints, but only supplying 34 values in for the INSERT.
Hopefully this is clear.
Nice mod, works fine otherwise, though the InstantSkype popup being in German was a bit of a surprise!
shaendra | Monday, Aug 1
Hang on, am I to believe that the user is required to install a piece of software before this will work for them?
Also, the buffer in the profile panel isn't long enough. My username isn't accepted by it...
jamesarmstrong48 | Wednesday, Aug 3
> before this will work for them
What is "this"? The "Skype phpBB Mod" is a modification (add-on) to phpBB, which is a bulletin board system. It shows whether a user is logged into Skype, and lets you send them an instant message through the board, too.
shaendra | Saturday, Aug 6
Uh how do I use this?
alexjustdoit | Sunday, Oct 16
There is another problem.
When you view your profile, the skype name field is not filled out (tested with phpbb 2.0.17), even a name is stored in the database.
I was trying to fix this, but I had no success yet.
And in the administrator panel, the skype field isnt shown in the users profile.
Nice mod anyway, working fine.
trancefarmer | Sunday, Dec 4