February 2006

If you visited the Skype blogs earlier today, you may have noticed that the layout was broken. Something like this.

Oops. Sorry.

Well all is good and fixed now. This happened because today, we rolled out the new navigation header and footer on skype.com. We think it makes stuff on skype.com easier to find and use. At least that’s the objective. Plus it doesn’t look too bad. And the sitemap thing in the footer is inspired by many other sites, not least Flickr.

What do you think of the new web style? Do you agree it makes things easier to find? Or did we mess something up and could do better? Please tell us here or in the forum.

A new revision of Skype Web Toolbars was just released. Go get the new version.

Lots of new stuff. There’s now a Firefox sidebar so you can browse your contacts right in the page. Send Page sends the current page to a contact. The country selection is more fun than the “industry standard” boring 200-field dropdown — you get a geographical division of the countries instead and can select it from the right part of the world. We like global. Easy-hide lets you hide the toolbar so it won’t clutter the space, yet the Convert-Phone-Numbers-To-Skype-Links-A-Tron machine is still active so numbers and Skype Names on web pages are converted to handy buttons.

Read more and give us feedback in the Toolbars forum.

Hi all,

Very busy planning for CeBIT at the moment. If any of you are planning to attend and would like to meet with someone at Skype, please send an email to partnermarketing@skype.net and we can try to arrange a meeting. Make sure you include information on your company and the partnership opportunity.

We don’t have a stand, but we do have people attending the show, so any meetings will need to be pre-arranged. Short notice I know, but please send an email if you want to meet up.

www.cebit.de

Wired News takes comments about their stories on Skype via SkypeIn or chat. Here’s a screenshot from Rants’n’Raves on Mac Attack.

Do you want to talk to Penelope Cruz, Matthew McConaughey and others? Not read about them in some magazine, but actually talk to them live and unmediated? You can now. If you can outbid others for the privilege, that is. Just go to the skype-a-celeb auction on eBay and make your bid.

The auction terms aren’t clear about whether this is just a voice call or whether it is video — I’ll try to find that out. [UPDATE: it’s voice only.] Apparently, many people are up for the call, and some of the bids like Penelope Cruz and Brooke Shields are already beyond $ 1000. The auction runs until March 3, so find out more and make your bid.

We now have a Skype blog in Spanish — El Blog de Skype en español. This is our second non-English blog (the first was Estonian — Share Skype eesti keeles. Other languages are upcoming.

The Spanish blog is run by a number of folks. We start with a guest author Jesús Diaz. So if you read Spanish, bookmark the blog right away and please give us feedback and comments there.

Would you like to post on share.skype.com in English or any other language? Or are you running a Skype-related blog already? Skype is looking for guest authors for share.skype.com in various languages. Please post here in comments or talk to me over Skype chat.

Here’s a summary of what we’ve been working on in the payments area over the past months. Did you know that Skype supports natively no less than 14 currencies?

Customers wanting to top up their Skype Credit to pay for Skype’s offerings can now take advantage of online payment methods, special vouchers and scratch cards bought from high street stores. As well as giving people more payment options, Skype has made it easier for people on most continents – including Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania – to buy and keep track of their Skype Credit in 14 local currencies, including Euros, US Dollars, Polish Zloty, Brazilian Real, Canadian Dollar, British Pound, New Taiwanese Dollar, Swedish Krona, Danish Krona, Norwegian Krone, Japanese Yen, Hong Kong Dollar, Australian Dollar and Swiss Francs.

Skype customers can choose to pay for Skype Credit via GlobalCollect and FIRSTGATE’s Click&Buy. GlobalCollect enables local offline and online bank transfer payments to be made in 50 countries worldwide. Click&Buy allows online purchases to be made with multiple local payment options in countries across Europe and the Americas.

Along with multiple payment options, Skype customers can now enjoy a simpler and faster way to buy Skype Credit with PayPal. Once customers pre-approve payments with PayPal on their Skype accounts, they can pay in just two clicks, without entering any additional or credit card numbers. With PayPal, Skype customers can fund their payments using their stored PayPal balances, their bank accounts, or any major credit card. PayPal has more than 100 million accounts across 55 markets worldwide, and supports seven currencies.

In addition, Skype customers without a debit or credit card can now purchase Skype Credit with Ukash vouchers bought from high street retailers in more than 50,000 locations across the UK, Republic of Ireland and Spain, with further countries to be added shortly. Skype Scratch cards are currently available in Sweden and Finland at Clas Ohlson and other retail stores, with more countries and retailers to be added soon.

Our friends at Skype Journal, the independent Skype news, views and support site, are experimenting with Skype Tags and icons. You could say it’s a combination of Skype Web and Skype links. This is exactly the kind of thing we made them for. It’s good to see them on Skype Journal, and we hope they will eventually make their way to many more of the world’s blogs and sites with help from us, Skype Journal and others.

The largest Dutch retailbank (Postbank, part of ING) announced that they are introducing Skype as a tool to talk to their Customer Service department for specific segment of their customers. See this and this.

Customers of Dutch bank Postbank can now contact the customerservice by using Skype.
The Postbank has added a Skype button to the site so endusers can call the customerservice by using Skype. This service will be tested for three weeks, says a spokesman of the bank.
“This test will be mainly focused on youngsters and students. They already use Skype and Internet a lot to communicate”, explains Postbank president Ron van Kemenade.

Thanks to Hans from skypeteer.com for translation.

SkypeIn numbers are now available in Japan. Go get yours in our web store. SkypeIn numbers in Japan are provided by Fusion Communications.

Haven’t seen too many of pure Skype podcasts around yet. Here’s a fresh one. SkypePodcast.

[0:52:12] skypepodcast says: http://www.skypepodcast.tv
[0:52:33] skypepodcast says: Started yesterday. It should be in iTunes within 24 hours.

A while ago, we put out the call for user stories. The call still stands, and you can keep sending us your stories.

What’s changed now, though, is that we’re happy to give you back some of the stories. See the brand new Skype stories site.

See the high flight movie with Lori and Keith. Or see how Giulio talks for hours with his grandson Gavin. Or how Alison took Skype into movie business. And all the others, of course. And keep checking back, we’ll be adding new stories regularly.

Getting the stories out there is important for us, since it shows what Skype is all about. Above all, it’s about people who talk to each other. Everything else that comes after that, is secondary. We intend to keep it this way, and we bring you the stories to remind you of that little humble thought.

These are big days for the whole of Estonia and our Tallinn office too. The winter olympics are huge in the Nordics. We won 3 olympic gold medals in a week, two of them by our skiing queen Kristina Šmigun (but she likes to be called “Kiku”), and just now, a third one by Andrus Veerpalu in men’s 15 km. Productivity is horribly down in many offices across Estonia, including Skype Tallinn site, as everyone watches the event :-) congratulations to our champions.

Photo credit: Marko Mumm, Eesti Päevaleht

We’re happy that Skype has contributed its small part in keeping Kiku’s family together and informed.

“My mom and sister are very happy for me”, said Šmigun whose family in America is watching her Olympic performance over internet.
“I heard that during the competition, they called our neighbours in our home town Otepää with Skype, who then used a tiny webcam to “broadcast” the show,” Šmigun told. “The picture was not very legible but they are up-to-date and informed.”

One of the announcements we made at this week’s 3GSM conference in Barcelona was that Skype is to establish a huge new retail presence in Europe, through the creation of a new distribution and retail programme with Dangaard Telecom. To read the official release, please go here

The initial product selection will include starter packs, headsets, USB phones, and webcams – all in uniformly-sized packaging with consistent colouring and branding. The product price range will be €10–40 with an entry-level focus. To showcase the products, retailers will be offered plug-and-play ‘Skype Stand’ display units, ready-stocked with Skype certified products, that can be placed anywhere in the store.

In mid-March, Dangaard Telecom will launch the programme into its existing accessories programme, which currently includes 3,500 points-of-sale across Europe. In late March, Dangaard will work with Skype to expand the programme across its 34,000 retail locations in 12 countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Spain and Sweden).

The Skype–Dangaard programme is open to new retailers. If you’re interested in featuring Skype Certified accessories in your store you should contact Thomas Friis on skype@dangaard.com, or phone +45 7330 3080.

If you’re already a Skype partner or thinking of becoming one, check out our new partners blog. Run by the same people who work with partners daily, it’s going to provide handy tips and tricks about how to work best with Skype, and news about current and upcoming events and anything else a future partner might want to know. Obviously, Skype is a hot place these days and we are sorry if we cannot promptly and individually respond to all of your enquiries and requests, as we get quite a lot of those. Together with our partners homepage, the blog will hopefully do a good job at bridging that gap .

Our great partner in Taiwan, PChome Online, promoted Skype on the street a few days ago. They asked 100 pairs of lovers who use Skype to communicate with their partners to write down their memorable stories related to using Skype, and also their feeling about Skype. We picked a few who wrote the words in English here for you…

But before we get to the pictures, here’s an absolute Valentine power tip from Taiwan. If you need to say hi to that special someone (and it works on all other days of the year too), just copy and paste the following paragraph into a Skype chat message and you’ll get some good karma points right away. Credit goes to Morden from PChome Online.

(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)
(dance)(h)(h)(dance)(dance)(dance)(h)(h)(dance)
(h)(h)(h)(h)(dance)(h)(h)(h)(h)
(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)
(dance)(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)(dance)
(dance)(dance)(h)(h)(h)(h)(h)(dance)(dance)
(dance)(dance)(dance)(h)(h)(h)(dance)(dance)(dance)
(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(h)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)
(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)(dance)

And, here are the Taiwan valentines.

Continue reading "Valentine photos and power tips from Taiwan" »

Hello, I’m Scott from Skype’s partner marketing team. As you can imagine we get lots of requests from companies interested in partnering with Skype. We already have some great partners from many different fields including hardware, software and online; but we are always looking for new partner’s who and can help us grow and better serve the Skype community.

The purpose of this blog is to communicate in a timely way with the thousands of potential partners who want to keep an eye on what Skype is up to. Sorry we can not always respond to everyone individually, but hopefully this blog will help to answer many of your questions and keep you in the loop.

I plan to post information on new developments relevant to partners, upcoming events we will be attending and also any of our partner’s announcements that may be of interest to the broader Skype community.

Who knows where this will take us, but I hope you find it useful.

Skype will be having a presence at the following events:

• CeBIT – Hannover, March 9-15
• CTIA – Las Vegas, April 5-7

Please let us know if you would like to work with us at these shows by contacting partnermarketing@skype.com

You may have seen the recent announcement regarding SkypeWeb, if not you can view it here here

SkypeWeb is supported in the latest release of Skype for Windows. To activate SkypeWeb, you need to turn it on. You can get your own Skype button here.

SkypeWeb in short means that you can have a fancy button for your e-mail or web page which goes something like this:

This functionality is ideal for partners who want to be able to show their online status, or indeed offer that feature as a value add to your customers. We already have 50 or so partner’s using this service, please read below for some examples.

Continue reading "Show your online status with SkypeWeb" »

Skype for Pocket PC 2.0 is now available as the official public version. Thanks to all who helped us improve the beta. Go get it now.

Skype for Pocket PC 2.0 (prior release was v1.1) enhances voice quality and the number of devices supported, more languages and 240x240 screens. Other key features and benefits include:

• Skype to Skype and SkypeOut calls
• Instant messaging
• Presence, including: Online, offline, away, call forwarding, device not connected
• Automatic synchronization of your Skype contact list between device and desktop
• Voicemail
• Making SkypeOut calls directly from the device phone book
• Simplified contact search
• Authorizing contact requests and adding new contacts

The following are some of the many Pocket PC devices that support Skype for Pocket PC 2.0:

• Several HP iPAQ models including HP iPAQ hw6900 series Mobile Messenger, hx2400, hx2700, rx3700 and hx4700 series models
• Dell X3i, X30, X50, X50v, x51 and x51v models
• Fujitsu Siemens Computers Pocket LOOX N520, 718 and 720 models

Together with the new release, we also made it easier to use the download page. You can now select the manufacturer and make of your Pocket PC and the wizard offers you the most suitable version for your device, plus there are screenshots guiding you through the download and installation. Handy stuff.

Following is a report by our very own Skype man in Poland, Michal. Skype is very popular and growing in Poland and the following is a testimony and tribute to this…

One of the most important opinion weekly magazines in Poland, “Przekrój”, has its own awards called “Phenomenon of the Year” and gives it to outstanding people who make great things in their field of activity. The laureates of “Przekrój” accolade are usually people of business, politics, culture and science.

“Przekrój” has been published since 1945. In 2001 it was rebranded, editorial office was changed and moved form Cracow to Warsaw and the magayine got a younger look. Magazine has separate pages about new technologies, computer games, comics and a lot of news about cultural events. The chief editor is Piotr Najsztub – a celebrity, one of the enfants terribles of Polish journalism, an autor of talk-shows on public TV and TVN, which is a private tv station.

This year, “Przekrój” has awarded Niklas Zennström the “Phenomenon of the Year 2006” „for his invention that has revolutionized the social life and the corporate world”. Niklas is the first non-Pole ever awarded the “Phenomenon”.

The list of nominees included famous Polish actors, TV journalists, scientists, sportsmen, writers and even the president of the constitutional tribunal.

The awards were granted during the ceremony held on February 1st in the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. The event gathered more than 1000 people and was attended by many journalists from the main Polish newspapers, radio stations and obviously tv stations.

As Niklas was unable to be in Warsaw on that day, he did agree to record a short speech on video saying thanks and telling a little bit about Skype revolution. The speech was later played on large screens on the stage.

I received the “Phenomenon” statue on his behalf. I will keep it at home until I am in London next time.

The event got extensive coverage in the media including public television.

These are some pictures from the ceremony. The large screens where Niklas speech was transmitted were behind the stage and those folks sitting there are the nominees so this is why the screen is behind their backs :)

Continue reading "Niklas is "Phenomenon of the year 2006" in Poland" »

As the title says, we kick off today’s Valentine Day celebration by handing out some free Skype credit. Today’s SkypeOut Gift Day is limited to USA and United Kingdom. Read more here and go claim your gift credit if you’re from US or UK. Other countries will follow over the next weeks, so keep checking back.

SkypeWeb is now officially available. It is supported in the latest release of Skype for Windows. To activate SkypeWeb, you need to turn it on. You can get your own Skype button here.

SkypeWeb in short means that you can have a fancy button for your e-mail or web page which goes something like this:

One bit of feedback we’ve had is that there’s currently no “dropdown-style” button available in the Skype button builder. People are asking what’s up with it and why did we take it away? Short answer — we just didn’t make it in time to remake it to the new style with status. It’s coming back. Soon. Really. Keep checking the page.

Continue reading "SkypeWeb is now available" »

Those Brazilian folks are quite something. When we launch things in other parts of the world, it is sometimes not much more than a press release/event/call. But the SkypeIn launch in Brazil we did differently. What do you do when you’re in Brazil? PARTY!!! obviously. (They tell me we don’t really use exclamation marks in Skype texts. Well… a good party is always an excuse to shout out loud, so there!)

According to some folks closer to the event… (too bad I couldn’t be there myself this time.)

Here are some pictures of the party that appeared in the socialite type publications in Sao Paulo. It was quite a party, top models, artists, tv stars, etc. were there. The drink flowed, the food was munched, much chatter and dancing was had until the very small hours. The people were extremely glamorous and beautiful — particularly those Skype folks :). Needless to say the paparazzi were snapping…

Here are some shots that appeared in the local press after the fact.

Continue reading "The SkypeIn launch party in Brazil" »

Do you remember Ms Selecta, the caffeine manager? Apparently even she needs maintenance from time to time. And when developers spot something needs maintenance, they’re quick to file it in the bug tracking system. Here’s a screenshot from the actual ticketing system which we usually use to track ways to make Skype better for you by squashing bugs and adding new stuff, but occasionally the ticketing has to take more esoteric requests like this one. (“Anum täis” means “Tray full” or something like that. :)

Today, we announced that Skype supports 10-way conference calling on PC-s with new Intel processors. Specifically, this means Intel Centrino® Duo mobile technology-based laptop PCs, and desktop PCs based on Intel® Pentium® D processors, Pentium Extreme Edition processors and the recently introduced Intel Viiv™ technology. And 10-way conference calling means you can have up to 10 people in the call, instead of up to 5 as was the case up to now.

Support for 10-way conference calling on new Intel processors is available in the current public version of Skype 2.0. If you don’t have it yet, download it from here.

Note that only the conference host needs to have a new Intel processor — other users (conference participants) can participate in the call as clients with any platform and device that supports Skype conference calls.

Like Andy correctly notes, this cooperation is not only limited to 10-way conference calling. We are working with Intel to further optimize Skype on cutting-edge hardware. Video calling and mobile devices are two obvious examples. So going forward, we will definitely see more news about similar innovations from Skype and Intel. See also the Intel’s Skype gateway page.

Interbrand recently surveyed 2,500 voters in 99 countries and asked them which brand had the most impact on their lives in 2005. Skype came third behind Google and Apple. The full article is available here here

Continue reading "Skype voted number 3 global brand" »

This just in from Niklas and Janus…

When we started to think about developing Skype we did so believing that it was inevitable that broadband access would become low-cost and ubiquitous and as it did, communications would increasingly move to the Internet and be accessible through any connected device.

There is no more important shared goal that we have as an industry than helping to make broadband Internet access widespread and low cost — if together we succeed then everyone wins. So as part of Skype’s role in making this happen and our strategy of increasing your choices when it comes to how and with what devices you can get online, today we are announcing that we are making a small investment in a new and exciting company called FON.

FON is trying to make it easy for anyone who has already invested in broadband and a wireless access point to securely share their Wi-Fi, so together we can build a unified global wireless network which is easy to access, safe to share and reasonably priced. What Martin Varsavsky and the people at FON are doing in making it easy for people to access Wi-Fi anywhere is exactly what we had in our minds as a logical next step as Skype began to proliferate across desktops around the world, so we’re delighted to be a part of the FON revolution.

At Skype we are huge believers in the power of community. Community has driven our growth and we think you’ll like this idea as much as we do because it’s one more powerful option we will all have in deciding how and where we can get online. We also think this idea is bigger than any one business, so we are delighted to work with Martin and the rest of the FON team to make the idea of a global broadband wireless network a reality.

Over the last year, we’ve been really focused on helping you extend the Skype experience beyond your desktop. We’ve introduced great new features like video and call-forwarding and we’ve worked with great hardware partners like Linksys, Philips, Motorola and Panasonic so you can have a cordless experience of Skype at home or in your office. In fact just in the last month, we announced at CES with Netgear that you will be able to use Skype on a Wi-Fi phone — no computer, no wires, just turn it on and talk. Over the course of this next year you can expect to see more great Skype accessories coming out from great partners like these and more.

But great accessories are just one piece of the equation. The other piece is reliable and cost-effective broadband access anywhere you go. In 2005, we were thrilled to work with innovative mobile operators in Germany, Sweden and Hong Kong to offer Skype alongside their unlimited flat-rate 3G data packages. We’ve also been able to launch an early version of our Skype Zones service across over 20,000 locations worldwide with Boingo and The Cloud, two of the world’s leading Wi-Fi hotspot access providers. Our goal is to give users a seamless experience of all forms of broadband access. Now with FON there will be another option to connect — we hope you enjoy it.

Niklas and Janus

Security is a big thing on Skype. From day 1 and even before in the core architecture design, we’ve taken security seriously and continue to do so. For those interested in digging in to the subject, I’m happy to introduce our security blog with Kurt Sauer, Skype’s CSO (Chief Security Officer), taking the lead. For starters, see Kurt’s introductory comments on Skype’s PKI model.

We like animals, if you haven’t figured that out yet. Throughout the Skype sites, you’ll see random references to dogs, wombats, cats, birds and who knows what else. So now we’re happy to welcome a new member to the family: the Skype (voicemail) rabbit. Which is probably called Pamela now. That’s a nice name for the rabbit.

So the Skypeteer portal tested and implemented a connection between the Nabaztag rabbit, Skype and Pamela. I guess you could call it a Skype mashup.

Currently we are working on a direct connection between the rabbit and Skype. This means that in the future you can monitor certain Skype events (a friend coming online) and let the rabbit sing, change color and move his ears!

Lester is running a competition on the Skype Developer Blog, where you can win a Fleurop-Interflora bouquet and the Perfectel headset delivered to that special someone door. Plus 10 runner-ups will each receive a Perfectel handset. See the post for details.