October 2005

Autumn is kicking in and Halloween is just around the corner. (It just started snowing in Tallinn today. Wet and dirty, but still… something special about that first snow every year.) And right now on Personalise Skype you can download screams, howls and pictures to scare your friends this Halloween. So if you’re not too spooked, why not spend some Skype Credit and be frightful.

You might have heard of Skype Groups before. It is a tool that enables businesses and families to manage multiple Skype paid accounts. The main functionality of Groups is buying and distributing Skype Credit, SkypeIn and Skype Voicemail to members of your group.

Today, Groups moved out of beta and we added the new automatic credit distribution function. Automatic distribution lets you automate the allocation of Skype Credits to users’ accounts, so they never run out of credits again.

Continue reading "Skype Groups helps businesses and families" »

Do you live in or around London? Interested in visiting Skype and meeting with the team?

Whether you’re new to Skype or a grizzled veteran, we want to talk with you about what you like and what we could do better. It’s more than just a focus group, as we would like your input over several months (don’t worry, it won’t require that much time from you).

We’ll invite you to our offices a few times so our relationship can grow, and soon we’ll be finishing each other’s sentences.

If this sounds like fun, go ahead and send an email to “voices ‘at’ skype.net”.

Do you speak Russian? If yes, you may want to check out the Skypomania competition organized by the govo.ru site. It lasts from October 3, 2005 to January 15, 2006.

The idea of the competition is that Skype users call on a special answerback device and leave a message of the following types:

• Anecdote
• Poem
• Entertaining phrase or melody for mobile phone ringing tone
• Message devoted to Skype

The messages left are available on skypomania.ru, where everyone can vote (if you speak Russian and can use the site, that is).

If you’re using or planning to use Skype paid services, you can now switch to Japanese Yen or British Pound on your Skype My Account page. Log on, click on Settings and Change Currency. Your Skype Credit balance and all purchases will then be in that currency. Previously, there were Euro and US Dollar available, so now you can use EUR, USD, GBP, YEN. More currencies coming up.

UPDATE: we first posted this announcement last Friday but pulled it because there was a problem with some Pound payments not coming through. Everything has been sorted out and is working fine now. As always, if you notice anything wrong with your payment or account, please contact our support.

Yesterday we added a new member to our toolbars family, the Skype toolbar for Firefox. It is a beta version, but works pretty well they say. Initially only for Firefox for Windows, other platforms coming up. Also the two other members of the family, the Internet Explorer toolbar and the Outlook toolbar moved out of beta.

We now call them Web Toolbars and Email Toolbar. The Web Toolbar page looks at what browser are you using, and offers you the right one.

The toolbars enables you to call directly form the application you installed them in. So let’s say you are looking for Swedish people and search a directory service like privatpersoner.eniro.se. If you have the toolbar installed, all the phone numbers become clickable so you can call them straight from your browser.

After a while, we’ve got to yet another million, fourth this time.

Also, worth noting (thanks to Bill from Skype Journal for the idea) that almost exactly a year ago, on October 20 2004, a year back from tomorrow, we had our first million simultaneous users. So that’s 3 million onliners added in 365 days, or on an average, 8000 new onliners a day.

Share your thoughts and comments in the forum.

We wouldn’t be where we currently are without our partners. Although you as the user may only see “Skype”, we have many partners who help us be great, while at the same time maximising their own business through opportunities provided by working with Skype.

We have many different types of partners: technology, hardware, software, online, access, retail… the list goes on. And it was difficult to navigate the opportunities. Up to now, at least: we have a brand new partner page, at skype.com/partners, that outlines the options you have to work with us. So if you have a great portal business in some country, or would like to resell Skype certified products, or are operating a WiFi hotspot that you’d like to be Skype-friendly, or… then just visit the new partner page to find out how you can work with us.

“The green book” is the official grammar reference for the Dutch language. The publishers of the green book are now providing help to users about new grammar and spelling rules over Skype. Search for “groeneboekje” on Skype and you’ll see the related users indeed exist. (Thanks to Hans from Skypeteer for pointing this out.)

While going over some old stuff, I found this post by Russell Shaw looking at how many people have something related to Harry Potter in their name.

I found 31 Skype users claiming Harry Potter as either Skype Name or a Full Name.

Oh, and there’s 13 Skype-user “Voldemort”s, or variations on the name of the fearsome Lord Voldemort.

At this time, there are at least as many Harry Potters and definitely more Voldemorts.

[13.10.2005 1:00:36] x says: Is Skype blocking the number 1800FREE411? (many say it lets you make free SkypeOut calls)

These days, several people have asked me this. (Also noted here.) “Was SkypeOut hacked?” Actually, all is in perfect order and it’s just an interesting way of different services working together.

A while ago, we announced global free calls to toll-free numbers. 1800FREE411 is just one of them. When you call it, it helps you look up a U.S. person or business from their directory service and then connects the call (assuming the person or business is listed in directory, of course). And the directory service bears the cost of the call as it seems to be ad-supported. So you use SkypeOut to connect to the service, and the service to connect to the one you’re calling.

You can now buy Skype Gift Certificates. They are Skype voucher codes that you can buy to give out as gifts, resell or use for yourself. You can buy Gift Certificates for Skype Credit (which you can use to make SkypeOut calls), SkypeIn (including Voicemail) and Voicemail.

Cool! How do I buy them?

Just log on to My Account, scroll down and select “Purchase Gift Certificates” from the bottom of your My Account page. Select the desired type and amount of Gift Certificates and proceed according to the on-screen instructions.

Note that not everyone can buy Gift Certificates. To buy Gift Certificates, you need to have made several SkypeOut calls over a period of at least 3 months and not have any fraudulent transactions recorded for your Skype Name. The Gift Certificates links will be visible or not visible to you depending on whether you meet these criteria. If you don’t see the link, just keep using Skype and SkypeOut and check back at a later date. Also, initially Gift Certificates are supported only if your currency is set to Euro. Other currencies coming up.

Continue reading "We bring you... Skype Gift Certificates" »

A short answer would be “Skype Credit is something that we made available today.” But this doesn’t really answer the question :) So read on.

First let’s look back a bit at what has been recently happening on the front of Skype paid services. In August we soft-launched an improvement that introduced US dollars to your payment options, with more currencies upcoming. Just in September, we brought you the Skype Groups Beta, so you can buy Skype services for other people.

Now we have Skype Credit.

You buy Skype Credit in amounts of 10 and 25 Euros or US dollars and then spend them how you like on Skype services and content. When you buy Skype Credit, SkypeOut will be activated immediately and you can start calling out to landlines and mobiles. So far, this sounds a lot like the SkypeOut credits that we had before. What’s new is that you can now also spend your credit balance on other Skype services, like SkypeIn, Skype Voicemail and Personalise Skype sound & pictures.

Continue reading "What is Skype Credit?" »

Related to Lenn’s piece about how to add Skype Buttons signature to your mail in OS X — last night, we released new Skype for Mac OS X, version 1.3.0.14, which supports Skype links and buttons. So now you can use the Skype Buttons also on Mac — go grab one of those buttons and put it to your web page NOW! :) Use http://www.skype.com/go/skypebuttons whenever you want to link to the Skype Buttons page.

As one of Skype’s resident Mac heads, it is my duty to share the little tips and tricks that we uncover in our own quest to have the ultimate Skype on Mac experience. With the launch of our new Skype Me buttons and the coming launch of SkypeWeb (you can show your Skype online status in near real-time on your blog or email) I wanted to share a few tricks to adding Skype Me buttons to your email signature in Mac OS X 10.4’s Mail application. I love Mail.app because it is simple, has an elegant UI, and most importantly supports Apple’s Spotlight technology which gives you instant search results across your email almost instantly. Its like having Google in your inbox.

It turns out that Mail.app’s signature editor isn’t all that HTML friendly and just pasting in HTML to the signature editor will not achieve the desired effect, in fact it will just plain not work. Here is a quick crash course to get you up an running with a Skype Me button in your signature in Apple Mail so your friends can Skype you back instead of replying in email. The following steps require a little tech savvy, but if you follow the steps below you will be up an running in minutes with a Skype Me button in your sig file.

Continue reading "Mac How-to: Adding a Skype Me Button to your signature file in Apple Mail" »