July 2007

The other day Lifehacker wrote about Caffeine, a tiny 48KB piece of freeware that does just one thing: it stops my Mac from dimming the screen and falling asleep. It puts a Zzz icon in the menu bar and it functions like a light switch. To turn it on, you click it. To turn it off, you click it again. That’s as basic and binary as it gets. Now, another bit of software, Jiggler, does pretty much the same thing, yet gives the user more configurable options. And weighs in at 168KB.

I’ll now cherry-pick three comments by those Lifehacker readers who prefer Caffeine: “Screw options… keep it simple,” said one. “It does exactly what I want it to do with a minimum of fuss or effort,” said another. “Simple, to the point,” said the third.

Fast-forward to today. And to the bit that will probably frustrate a colleague or two at Skype. Jean Mercier of Skype Numerology has posted “Video in the mood? Bah!”, a piece that condemns feature bloat in Skype without quite calling it that. He points to comments on this very blog which reflect a longing for a lite version of Skype.

Not everyone feels that way. “I think all of the progress and features Skype has added to its product are genius,” says one user leaping to our defense. “I welcome more feature[s] that will enable me to use Skype more efficiently to render my life more productive and allow me to complete tasks faster.”

Although Jean Mercier is a bit unfair when he writes, “Time to listen to the customers Skype! Most existing customers don’t like it!” — basing such a sweeping statement on fewer than ten blog comments is a pretty big stretch — his general observation about features vs. simplicity is a reasonable one. And I won’t muddy the picture by arguing that many new features are added in response to, yes, users asking for them.

Instead, I’ll state the obvious: Finding the right point on the simplicity-feature scale is a fine art mastered by few. I can imagine the fiery arguments that illuminate the room where new features are chiseled in stone. But to say that is a cop-out. We hate feature bloat, too. Question is, have we succumbed to the unspeakable? Or are these concerns premature?

As I await your comments, let me click the Zzz icon on my menu bar to keep the screen from dimming…

Our campaign that allows you to call India and Pakistan for up to 50% cheaper is coming to an end. Tomorrow (31st of July) will be the last day to take advantage of these really friendly prices. Note that international calls are real cheap even without any discounts. So if you have any friends or family who live in either India or Pakistan then go ahead, give them a call.

And if you're too lazy to check out the prices then it costs 7.9 euro cents to call India and 5.6 euro cents to call Pakistan. Doesn't matter if you call mobiles or landline numbers.

Hardware is temporal. Software is forever. You cannot kill software, for it’s like Casper the Friendly Ghost. No matter how sharp your spear or cutting blades, the attempt will be futile. I run Skype 2.6 for Mac that came to me as a 30MB file. I can download it a million times and it’ll still be there, pretty as ever. It will not burn, drown or develop blemishes.

Sadly, this cannot be said about the Apple iPhone. A lovely device. But one that, mind you, doesn’t run Skype. Well, umm.. ok.

When I lived in Utah, a Mormon friend claimed that temple garments can shield and protect their wearer from evil and bullets. Kevlar for the mind, body and spirit. Utah is also home to Blendtec, a company that’s been running hilarious online promotional videos for its commercial blenders. Just add iPhone. Watch:

Weep. Would the result have been different if the iPhone could run Skype? Would our software have acted as its temple garment? With said device reduced to black powder, we may never know.

As you ponder the meaning of all this, feel free to bid for the blended iPhone on eBay, for another two days. Also, if you know someone at Blendtec, drop me a line. There are many fine devices out there with built-in Skype software. I’d love to see one of them — together with my half-baked theory — meet its blender.

So you’re huffin’ and you’re puffin’. Your blood pressure has risen to 140. Your dog is shivering under the couch. You’re angry. Because you didn’t do anything and then everything froze and now the webcam doesn’t work and ten euros worth of Skype credit you bought still hasn’t shown up. Arrggghh.

There are a few things you can do.

• Head to the Skype help pages and search the Knowledgebase

• Submit a support request and get an email response within a day or two (this may not sound incredibly impressive if you expect live help, but Skype has over 220 million registered users. Even if a teeny-weeny fraction sends a question to customer support, it’s quite a load).

Bonus factoid: Skype’s customer support crew is officially fluent in seven languages — English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Japanese, and Spanish. Plus three unofficial tongues which I won’t share with you. Ok, I’ll give you a hint on one: Skype’s largest office is in Tallinn.

But there’s more. Savvy Skype users have also discovered a little gem known as Skype Forums. Once you know what it can and cannot do for you, plunge right in. There’s an enormous amount of searchable knowledge there, courtesy of your fellow Skype (super)users. If you can’t find an answer, you can post a new question. When that’s done, look around. Perhaps you have a solution to someone else’s conundrum. Posting this will brighten her day and help keep the forum community alive and kicking.

Skype Forums are not an official support channel, but believe you me: they’re officially useful.

Every now and then we get an email or chat message asking us: “What’s VOIP?” (or voice-over-IP, as it’s also known). A very valid question and if you were to search skype.com for this term a few weeks ago then you’d come up empty handed. Because we’re not keen on tech talk, fancy acronyms and buzz words. But because we already have lengthy explanation about the technology that powers Skype - P2P or peer-to-peer - then we now also have a nice little “Skype explains VOIP” page. Enjoy.

So, here I was, in my previous post, being all jetsetty and stupid about sitting on a flight to Prague and flipping through magazines in search of a Eureka moment. (You’ve got to admit, though, it was nowhere as bad as Tyler Brule’s endless columns that appeal to people who need their dose of rare elitist cool that only radiates from articles written by a rich guy who spends his life in transoceanic levitation.)

“Business travel accounts for 65 percent of all flights within the United States,” reports Katharine Mieszkowski in Salon, quoting figures from travel-research company PhoCusWright. Read the article here, it’s packed with useful information about emissions related to air travel.

I’m here to state the obvious: if you can skip a flight, do it. And use Skype instead for that oh-so-important meeting. Yes, the chain of events that led to the manufacture and distribution of your PC, webcam, headset, or WiFi phone did create a negative environmental footprint. So the physical stuff that Skype needs is far from squeaky clean when you’ve got your green-colored glasses on. But using Skype sure beats the hell out of binge flying. Oh yessireebob.

Every once in a while, you stumble across an article that expands your horizons. (Reminds me of Stephen Wright, the comedian, who said, “Some people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.” But that’s an unnecessary digression, really.)

On a recent flight, I picked up the July-August issue of Utne Reader and read an amazing article, The Big Throwdown, that they had lifted from the Believer. Apparently, Rock, Paper, Scissors is huge these days, and not just among kindergarten kids. There are league championships, serious strategic gambits, corporate sponsors and pretty girls involved.

Which then reminded me of a really cool game invented by a friend of mine who writes the Virtualities blog. He posted the instructions back in February, but it’s worth introducing it here as well. Basically, it’s Rock, Paper, Scissors twisted and contorted to fit the Skype age. Instead of hand gestures, you use Skype emoticons. Here are his instructions. Try it, not only is the game refreshing, but it gives a whole new purpose to Skype emoticons.

This may be worth reading if you have family, friends or colleagues in Pakistan or India. With a combined population of 1.3 billion, there are plenty of phone numbers to call. Our marketing folks figured this out as well and decided to chop SkypeOut prices to these countries in half for the month of July.

This may not qualify as a pure public-service announcement, but try calling Pakistan from a regular phone and you’ll appreciate the price difference. So, in July, SkypeOut calls cost 6.9 eurocents (+ VAT) per minute to India and 4.9 eurocents (+VAT) per minute to Pakistan. You can call both landlines or mobiles registered in these two countries. Modest connection fees apply.

As I make my way through no fewer than 517 emails that some evil spirit produced during my week-and-a-half holiday, I’m pleased to pull back from the depths of the inbox and mention today’s coolest bit of Skype-related news.

Namely, Nokia’s funky N800 Internet Tablet now speaks Skype. Officially, that is. (You may have noticed in late June that Skype did a pre-release demo of Skype for the N800 in New York).

Andrew Brennan from Skype Gear has written a nice review that you can read here. Once you’re convinced it’s something for you, install the latest Nokia firmware version from here, as instructed by Andrew’s review. Or download Skype for the N800 here.

As Villu’s on holiday this week, and so probably very busy drinking mojitos or sleeping, I thought I’d pop in to let you know about the new 3.5 Beta version of Skype for Windows.

It includes a number of new features and fixes a range of previous problems. However, as Raul points out over at the Skype Garage blog, this Beta version is only intended for use by those of you who don’t mind a few rough edges — it isn’t perfect yet

Video snapshot

This Beta version lets you take video snapshots of the person you’re calling, so whether it’s a reminder of your partner to take with you when you’re travelling on business, or just a snapshot of a particularly silly pair of sunglasses, there’s something for everyone here.

Video sharing

With this version, you can share video in chats and in your mood message — make your conversations come alive with some of the best clips on the web.

Get 3.5 Beta

If you’re keen to try it out, go ahead and download the updated Beta version of Skype.

It’d be great to hear your feedback on the new features — contact us on the Skype 3.5 Beta forum or, for the more technically minded, in our public issue tracker Jira.