Just a while ago, we put out some pages that quickly give you an overview of the most essential Skype features. Sometimes you may simply have a question, "so, what can this Skype thing do?". Or you may need to explain the same thing to someone who's not yet familiar with Skype. The features pages help you do that, as they're the essential collection of the most important things you need to know about the topline Skype features.
For example, did you know that...
- ... you can put Skype calls on hold?
- ... the video calls work even if only one of you in the call has a webcam and the other doesn't? Obviously, for best results and mutual enjoyment, it's best if both of you have it.
- ... the Skype chat emoticons are among the coolest and most expressive ones out there?
- ... you can see your Outlook contacts in Skype?
All this, and more, on the Skype features pages.
Comments
I love Skype but the website does my head in. The Skype web developers think they are being clever with their IP to Geographic location to Language, but they neglected to imagine that a British person might be living in Germany, or an American might be living in Spain, etc.
Don't worry, Skype isn't alone in this horrible habit, even Google advertises to me in German.
Since my browser's language is set to EN-GB (British English) I'm surprised they don't check that setting first.
I'm a web developer and I know that this isn't exactly hard to do.
benpowell | Thursday, Sep 28
Hi Ben
Thanks for the feedback. I'm the Editor here at Skype and in answer to your feedback the best scenario would be to sniff your language ahead of GEOIP. I'll pass this along to the 'engine room' and see if we can look at an adaptation to improve the delivery of an optimised Skype page for users in situations like yours.
Cheers
craigalansmith | Tuesday, Oct 3
Ben,
In our testings browser language has proven to be the weakest detection method. We have tested it in the past but it created more problems than it solved. Few users have it configured, there are countless countries that don't have localized Windows and use their browsers on the default settings.
So today we first check browser cookie (if you're a returning user), if there's no language preference in it then GeoIP is up next. So once you've changed your skype.com preferred language back to English you should stay on our English website (unless you don't use the same browser, computer next time you pay us a visit, obviously).
Cheers,
Siim Teller, skype.com guy
teller | Tuesday, Oct 10