In my opinion video for Skype will only be commonly used if it is made by Skype itself, i.e. integrated into the client so that you don't have to download a certain plugin.

The magic behind Skype is: download > install > it works!

I think the majority won't install plugins. So please make video for Skype right!
Offer some good webcams on your shop that can sit on your desktop so that you don't have a picture which shows you from the side.
Enable a feature à la iChat AV so that the users can see whether you are able to communicate text only, voice or video by a simple icon next to the name in your buddylist.

Right !!! Vskype is not that useful cause too many people won't get it ! And the image quality is not that good either. Skype must offer this functionnality to every user, so that we can discuss / have an oral conversation / webcam based conference between two (till 4?) people, à la Ichat.

Same quality for images, same quality for sound. Not less.

I know, we, the customers are really ambitious and we always ask for more functions / quality. But i believe we definitely love skype, even though they are not the cheaper (skype out). We believe in this company, we want to help you to bring Skype as an obligatory software everyone has to have ! good luck guys !!

I am the CTO of Santa Cruz Networks -- the company that developed vSkype.

My coders love the Skype API, and we’ve been getting great support from the Skype team and the Skype community! I was the architect for the add-in interfaces to Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony back in the 80’s – so I appreciate the challenges of building an effective developer program.

vSkype is spreading in the Skype community very quickly -- however, we have not implemented any functionality which sends unwanted messages to Skype users. We don't have any "bots", or any IM "spamming" functionality. All messages are sent on behalf of the user, with the user’s full knowledge. In fact, vSkype only sends chat messages as a way to establish communication between Skype users.

We've offered to give the Skype technical team a detailed description of the APIs that we use, and we'd be more than happy to do a code review with someone at Skype.

As an aside, we’ve been having a little difficulty with the API Access Control in Skype – our users are noticing that they aren’t always prompted when vSkype attempts to use Skype. It appears that vSkype, in some cases, is "turned off" by default without giving presenting the access control dialog to the user. We'd love to see this bug fixed!

Finally, I would be more than happy to do a public code review of our plug-in code using vSkype's sharing feature -- to offset any concerns that the Skype community may have.

Hi Jaanus:

We hate everything to to do with Spyware, Malware, Adware, and Spam. We love Skype and we are trying to create group features that add value to the Skype community. Thousands of users are on video calls, in groups, right now.

Please also understand that we are totally permision based and user controlled. Just like Skype we give users the option of sharing the good news with their friends and we do not keep user data.

I tried vskype yesterday and it works just fine. I got this first screen asking me if I wanted to invite everybody in my contacts, I unchecked everybody but one (a pain!) since I wanted to test with at least someone. After that, I’ve never seen this screen again… Nobody from my contacts told me that I spammed them so I supposed the plugin did not send anything I was unaware of (hope so!).
Have you seen any cases where it happened?
On the other hand, I found the test positive (good audio and video) and vskype quite easy to use, so, for me, no drawback for the moment.

I tried to make clear in my original post (and a followup) that what happened to me might well have been the result of my own misunderstanding of the interface, or lack of physical coordination. My overall message was a positive one, but my one warning was intended to be that if other users are like me (clumsy), they might want to exercise caution in setup. What I'm curious about is that you allude to your "personal experience". Could you elaborate?

I should have made clear above that I am James, author of the "offending post". http://eurotelcoblog.blogspot.com

James, others - the "experience" I referred to was that a number of Skype staff ran into the same situation as you - not being too über-careful, they managed to unwillingly send messages to all their contacts. Also, we have over the past few days received a fair amount of queries from confused Skype customers through our Customer Service, to who the same has happened. So all in all, the amount of not-happy user/customer feedback we've been receiving on vskype is larger than for many other Skype add-ons, makes us concerned a bit and was the reason for putting up this warning. Im fully with you all that the program itself, once you get past the invitation stage, works well.

Dear Janus, We at Santa Cruz Networks sincerely appreciate the clarification. I would be very interested in receiving any/all user feedback that you’ve received about our application. This would be great information for us – it would help us to improve the application and make both Skype and vSkype users even happier than they currently are. Feel free to add me to your contact list and send me any bug reports you may have. Also, you can ask users to report problems directly to http://forums.vskype.com. We have had an overwhelming number of downloads over the past three days – in fact, vSkype downloads will surpass 200K by midnight. (which doesn’t count the users who have shared our setup program file via Skype) I’m not sure what the download rate is for other plug-ins, but if it is appreciably lower, than this may help explain the increased support requests. Warm Regards!

Really nice comments in here! I'm learning a lot! Thansk everybody.

Hi,
It seems to me that a logical solution would be for vSkype to un-tick the contacts list by default. Then Skype users would have to make a conscious decision to send messages.

Though I had already heard of V-skype before I haven't installed it yet:
1. for start I didn't know if this was the solution skype team was refering to when they say they are working on a video solution for skype
2. it seems v-skype works only for windows 2000 and XP and mine being windows-me I think it doesn't apply to my case as I'm not willing to change my OS for now
Well, as far as the unwanted messages are concerned I did receive this following message from a mate who had already and maybe just installed v-skype:

"Check it out. Now we can see each other on Skype.

Click here to get vSkype: www.vskype.com"

Then I asked him and he told me he hadn't sent such a message.

I really would like Skype to provide full-blown video
services through the same infrastructure. Vskype seems to
use skype just for call initiation and user directory.
Actual video/audio traffic through vskype seems to be
totally different from skype.
Video quality through vskype seems to be very good.

While the features this product exhibits are indeed useful for Outlook users, it has a couple of drawbacks:

1. It prevents Outlook from starting minimized. It seems that this plug-in auto-restires the Outlook window on startup.

2. The plug-in always causes the Skype process to run (if it isn't already running). There are situations where I want to run Outlook without Skype having to run, and I can't do this when this plug-in is used.

Can these be 'fixed'?

I do agree that the features are realy handy (have been using them this week).

I've got an error stating that

ActiveX component can't create object
429
3350
objTimer_Timer

The only solution was to kill outlook process with taskmanager. Had to uninstall to get outlook up and running.

same error message for me:
ActiveX component can't create object
429
3350
objTimer_Timer

This is awesome but I have one suggestion so far.. can you make it so multiple contacts can be assigned to one Skype name and so that multiple Skype names can be assigned to one contact? My parents use one Skype name but I have one contact for my mom and one for my dad. I can onhly assign the Skype name to one of them!

Thanks!

Matt

I am sure this would be nice, but unfortunately Outlook 2000 crashes as soon as I start it with this plugin installed. Uninstalling solves that problem...
Too bad, i would have liked to try it out.

Gentlemen, you have to realise there is a BIG money issue. Now you can have Video Calls with your mobile phone. In France (where I live) France Telecom also tries to sell "Videophones". These Video-Call, either with your pretty new mobile phone or your useless "Videophone" have a cost (expensive !!!).
I bet, of course, Skype is preparing his own "Video-Skype" and will extend Skype-Out to "Video-Skype-Out" so that you will be able to have a video chat with a mobile phone.
Of course, Video from PC to PC HAS to be free, because that's the standard price set by MSN.

But there is A LOT of money to make with the video calls to the other devices (mobiles & Videophones), and Skype will certainly not want any "plugin" to take this part of the market !..
At the opposite, the "winner" plugin could have agreements with mobile phone companies and hope for a chunk of the cake.

By the way, France Telecom has already such a software. It's call Livecom. It allows Video, Voice & Text chat from PC to PC absolutely free (that's the standard !) and has the same system as Skype to call Regular Phones (voice) & VIDEO. Yes, it's already there. You can already Video-chat from your PC with your friends using a mobile... but it has to be Orange (France Telecom Mobile).

It's here
http://r.wanadoo.fr/r?ref=cq_3_livecom&url=http%3A//livecom.wanadoo.fr
(It's in French of course !)

Personally I do NOT recommend this software. Because as usual Wanadoo (France Telecom - Internet) did a very unfriendly work. Just an example, you have no option to prevent this software from running at Windows Startup !

I am using Outlook 2003 and I get the following error:

GET: invalid WHAT
7

I've had to uninstall it. Ho hum. I look forward to the fixed version. Keep up the good work.

after installing the skype toolbar for Outlook I constantly get the following warning as a pop up:

GET: Invalid What 7

Hi everybody,
Thank you for your nice comments and for reporting errors!
We hope to publish new versions of the Skype for Outlook toolbar rather quickly in the next few weeks. A few comments on the errors reported above:

* Invalid what:
If you would please update to Skype 1.3, those problems should go away. Sorry for the trouble!

* Outlook 2000.
I believe those errors should go away if you install Outlook 2000 SP1. Outlook 2000 out of the box is not too friendly to add-ons in general.

* Multiple contacts...
That should work just fine. You can select the same Skype Name for multiple Outlook contacts. It is not a "primary use case" that we prioritize in testing, but it should work.

* Skype starting if not started
We will fix that in upcoming releases

* Outlook starting minimized - no longer possible
Tricky, you might have to live with this one, but I will take a look and see what I can do.

I will monitor this page as best I can and hope to answer more quickly in the future.
Best regards

Peter Kalmström
Program Manager MS Office integration
Skype Technologies

Ами засега бачка. Пробвах да званна на моя GSM и стана...Но има още кво да се направи де...

I have an error with my outlook
I constantly get the error message
GET: invalid WHAT 7
After this outlook is blocked.

Please solve.

I use the add-inn for several months. Functioning very fine. From that time on i work for 80% with skype through MS Outlook: Skype using my complete Outlook adressbook in this way. Excelent.
Only suggestion: to show in the journal directly the name of person that called or whom i called.

Hello I use Outlook 2003 and is up to date. First, in the skype toolbar for outlook the "call" (phone) button is active but does not work. Second, after some minutes it appears the message "invalid user handle 8".

Thank u very much

Hi all,
I was not yet able to actually test vskype, but also everyone of my contact list got spammed + several times, since I uninst+inst vskype several times, because of some strange dll not possible to exchange error message.
All in all: this is a very unprofessional way of distributing a software.
I hope skype will come up with a video solution soon.

Hi;

Seems to have the potential to be a good product. However in Office 2003 it creates performance issues indicated by slow or delayed response in outlook 2003. When uninstalling outlook functions normally again.

Best regards/ Rickard

Seems like a good and useful product, but I found Outlook ground to a halt with it loaded so I had to uninstall it. Hope you can fix that problem soon. I'm using Outlook 2002.

Best regards

Helene

I am the recipient of unwanted access messages. I do not know from whom they originate, all I get is a lot of numbers which don't seem to mean anything when I try to block them in Skype. The messages always come in immediately I go on line and occasionally thereafter. I invariably tell Norton to block them but have occasionally permitted them to see what they were all about. Can anyone help me sort this problem. Martin Cross (crossing1)

I was looking for one single funtionality in this program and I did not find it. Look up of skype users in the global address book. May be on the next one. I keep and eye on it.

Will you be providing a version for outlook for Mac?

Great. In every way, except for a couple of errors which automatically were reported. However the toolbar on "Inbox" shows the skpe status of recipients rather than (documented, and more useful) sender. I'm using Outlook 2000 SP3 with XP Pro.

Peter
I had an older version of this program installed. I let it expire (didnt use it very much then). Now I have installed this new beta, but no toolbar appears, nothing happens, but instead everytime I open my contacts I am asked whether I want to buy the program.
Apparently the older version is still active.
How/where can I uninstall it please?

Thanks very much
Theo Richel

Peter, Awesome new version of your old program. Well done!

You may recall that we had a discussion last year about comments after telephone numbers in my Outlook contacts e.g. [then dial 7]. You told me to enclose them in square brackets to make Outlook Skype work OK. I changed nearly 1000 number entries and that solved it.

Now I find that your new program “Skype for Outlook” is missing the filter to remove these square bracket text and most of these 1000 numbers of mine now don't work since I upgraded.

Are you planning to fix this step backwards? Or is there some other solution? (I cant operate without the notes after the number). Thanks, Hamish

DELETING OLD VERSIONS: To reply to theorichel's question above since Peter does not seem to respond to this page very often, to remove old versions of Outlook Skype: Go to Contacts section in Outlook, right click on the title “contacts” on the right hand section of the window. Select “properties” then “home page”. Remove the entry in “address”. Not exactly obvious, unless you know!
There may be a program to remove as well in windows "add/remove programs", can't remember. Hamish

Skype toolbar is shown in MC Outlook toolbars but doesn't work. It is not possible to swich on (if yes how?). Message-box comming up: "Unable to connect to Skype! Would you like to try again?"
Yes but doesn't work again.
Please help to connect!
Thanks and regards,
Balazs

I loaded this and it worked fine except that it suffers (unless I am missing something) from the same crippling inadequacy as Skype search; it searches on name (which is not unique) rather than email address (which is unique) and the results are therefore nearly useless - I generally have no way of knowing which e.g. Tom Brown it comes up with are the one I know, if any.

It is possible to search on email address without compromising security or privacy - see the excellent Outlook Toolbar from LinkedIn for an example.

Peter,

Thank you. This is great product, and as it is in BETA, I suppose I can make some constructive comments??

1. When I switch from one window in Outlook to another, the toolbar moves from the position I prefer it to it's default. I read somewhere that this is going to be rectified - is this true.

2. While reading an email (whether in the reading pane in Outlook, or in it's own window) the toolbar doesn't recognise the contact - even if the contact name and Skype name is exactly the same - so doesn't give me the option to interact

3. When clicking on the option to find name of [email address], even if the contact details contain the skype name (in the radio details) it fails to find it in contacts.

4. When clicking on the option to add the address [email address] to existing contact, I don't get an option to add the email address to a contact that is created with the skype details. Using the alternative by using the magnifying glass just creates another contact, instead of the existing, so creating duplicates.

I know the issue is probably me and user incompetency, is there a more detailed manual of some kind that I would be able to read?

I look forward to hearing from you, again, thanks, so far this is very useful integration tool between Outlook and Skype.

Ashley

The Outlook plug-in was very cool, but I had to uninstall and then re-install the software. After re-installing, the toolbar doesn't show up anywhere, even though I can see SkypeOBE.exe running and it does show up in my COM Add-ins manager dialog.

I think this may be the result of my 'disabling' the toolbar when in the e-mail window (it was slowing down my e-mail browsing), via the Skype Outlook preferences dialog.

I have the same problem as krutschcom above, any assistance duly welcomed.
Thanks.

My company Netralia has produced a more advanced Outlook add-in for Skype. It does the basics like Outlook Skype (and those basics are free), but also introduces two very useful major new features:

1) It records voice calls and text chats to a folder in Outlook. Voice calls are stored as MP3 attachments to standard Outlook email items.
2) It shows all your on-line Skype contacts as buttons in the toolbar, with a range of menu options to allow you to perform actions for these contacts.

The basic features are free forever. The extended features are free for 14 days, then a purchase is required to keep using these features. Do a Google search on Skylook Skype to see what people are saying about our product.

To give it a try go to http://www.skylook.biz .

Hi everyone,

I'm having trouble loading the program. The Skype toolbar does not appear in Outlook. I am using Outlook 2003, Xp and already had the latest Skype installed. I tried uninstalling, downloading Skype for Outlook again and reinstalling again but still no joy.

Pity. I liked the reports on the plug in. Any answers out there.

Thank you

Peter

I have installed the plugin but the toolbar does not show and it is not avaiable for selection in the toolbar menu. Any ideas?

I have the same problem, I have installed the plugin but the toolbar does not show and it is not avaiable for selection in the toolbar menu. Any ideas?

I had an older beta version installed for a while and that worked although it crashed MS Outlook!

-- Dave

sorta neat idea but...
HOW DO YOU GET RID OF IT?
It slooooowwwwwssss down Outlook soooo much, that I can't stand it.
When I turn it's View-Toolbars-Skype menu to OFF, it comes back on its own... When I turn Skype off. It's still there...
How do you UNINSTALL this thing..?

I keep getting an error when i begin outlook, and then the skype toolbar closes down/up/disappears! It opens an error message that i've emailed to the Skype address provided...something about the calendar dates, (and it always states the current date.)

any idea what to do?

I had the toolbar installed previously, and things were working fine. However, I had to reinstall Windows due to a disk crash, and after reinstalling Outlook (Office 2003 Pro), Skype and the toolbar, I have the same behavior as described above with the toolbar not appearing at all.

I have tried installing/uninstalling the toolbar several times, and noticed that only on the first install was I prompted with the configuration dialog/skype warning. On subsequent reinstalls, launching Outlook caused nothing to happen. Outlook works fine with or without the toolbar installed though. Checking in Options->Other->Advanced Options->COM Add Ins shows that the plug in is installed.

Any comments on this would be appreciated, or advice on debugging.

ספר לחברים

Hip, Hip, Hooray for the 3 Skypephone

I am getting unwanted messages every few days. Mostly invites to see someones cam. I have checked my settings for privacy, which is set so that only people who are on my contacts list can contact me. How do I change the settings so that I don't get unwanted messages from unknown spammers? If I need to send this comment to another skype department would someone be kind enough to either forward it or redirect me. Thanks!