July 2006

Friday’s toolbars story sent me spinning off on a magical mystery tour of Skype’s Extras pages, where I discovered the Extras Gallery: a kind of open-source playground for voip-savvy techies.

These are the chaps who spend every last nanosecond (one billionth of a second; abbrev. nsec) of their weekend (223,200,000,000,000nsec, based on one weekend comprising the 62 hours from 6pm Friday to 8am Monday) inventing Skype-friendly freeware, rather than watching telly or playing Dragon Quest.

And let’s be glad that they do, because some of these programs could prove very useful. For example the eBay Bid Advisor alerts an eBay seller when someone’s bid on their item, and the Autodialler connects you via SkypeOut to any number you highlight and copy.

Of course, some entries in the gallery are about as useful as a pair of marshmallow wellies, and it’s worth remembering that Skype doesn’t endorse all this homespun software. Download at your own risk, and all that.

My Skype Extras Gallery wishlist…

Continue reading "Extras, extras" »

Quick newsy post to see you into the weekend. Skype is unleashing three free new toolbars for MS Office, Outlook Express and Thunderbird - and, just so they don’t feel left out, the Firefox and IE toolbars have been upgraded.

Best feature of these new toolbars is that they’ll recognise a phone number contained within an Office document, email or web page, allowing you to call that number with one click.

Have a look at Skype’s Download pages for all the details.

The terms VoIP and WiFi have been dismissed as “geekonics” by the organisers of the Internet Service Provider Awards 2006, aka the ISPAs.

So the ISPA crowd has decided to re-name its Best VoIP category ‘Best Internet Telephony’. Which, er, really rolls of the tongue.

I hate jargon, I hate cliches and I hate the mangling of the English language that’s taking place right now on the desktops of a thousand line managers. But I like “voip”. Not VoIP, with its skyscraper capitals. Not “vee-oh-i-pee”, with its slightly embarrassed undertone of “is that how I’m supposed to say it?”. No, I like “voip”. Voip, to rhyme with “pipe”, as pronounced by a bloke from Dublin.

Voip is a cute, sassy word, infinitely catchier than “internet telephony”. I can understand why the ISPA people might think it’s geek jargon, but I’m sure they’d have said the same about “blog” a couple of years ago - not to mention “iPod”. Now, would you rather say iPod or “Apple portable digital music player”?

Best of all, voip sounds just like the noise Skype makes when someone wants to chat…

The techie tittle-tattle community is ablaze with Chinese whispers about the latest venture from the founders of Skype.

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who also founded music file-sharing service Kazaa, are reportedly getting into telly. No, they’re not the new Ant and Dec - Business Week reckons they’re developing software for distributing TV shows and other video over the net.

If the venture takes off - and, given the gents’ track record and the explosive popularity of TV on the web, it’s hardly likely to be a dud - the world will be at their feet.

London’s Evening Standard newspaper already gave the photogenic pair the full pose-and-pout treatment a couple of months back (how I wish I still had the article to share with you on this steamy afternoon…), so I can only imagine what’s coming next. Bet you’d get a sweet betting price on Janus as the next James Bond.

Worry not, Skypers: Janus and Niklas won’t be abandoning the mothership for the razzle dazzle of TV. These guys can juggle everything. Who said men can’t multi-task?

A serious news day today: This afternoon Skype released a new beta version of its software for Mac OS X.

The program packs all manner of swanky features into its slick new interface. There’s support for nine languages, an improved contacts list with simplified search, and an Easy Dialler tool for calling landlines and mobiles. Mac users will also be able to import Apple’s Address Book (below) and call contacts directly with SkypeOut.

As if that weren’t enough excitement for the Mac pack on a sultry afternoon, Skype for Mac starter packs were launched today, too. The packs include a USB stereo headset with microphone, all wrapped up in a specially-designed carrying case - plus a voucher for free SkypeOut minutes. Skype, you are spoiling us.

For those of us whose language schooling extended no further than a couple of Je m’appelles under the supervision of a terrified 22-year-old supply teacher, Skype can often be a frustrating missed opportunity. All those millions of Skypers, chatting in languages rich, strange and no more familiar to me than Klingon. Good old British edukashun.

So I was intrigued to read on the Skype forum about the catchily-named Universal Language Real-Time Message Translator, known fondly to its creator as “ULRTMT”. Good job he didn’t go for some obscure, geeky name like Skype Translator, isn’t it?

This simple web-based tool translates Skype instant messages in real time, as you might have guessed from the name. Given the vast melting pot of lingo being Skyped across the globe as we speak, this could be the most useful invention since, say, voice-over IP.

Continue reading "Sprechen Sie Skype?" »

Today’s papers are full of mobile phone companies basking in their massive second-quarter profits. Hate to rain on your parade, chaps, but it might not be long before people get used to making free Skype calls on their mobiles.

Skype launches four WiFi VoIP handsets today, seven months after unveiling the first handset at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. (One of the buildings hosting CES was also playing host to an “adult industry expo”. You’d nip out to the loo and find a seven-foot transvestite at the hand-dryer. Vegas is that kind of place.)

That handset was Netgear’s WiFi Phone for Skype, pictured above and coming imminently to the Skype Shop. Enter your email address here, and Skype will let you know when the Netgear handsets are in the building.

Continue reading "RIP mobile bills" »

Disclaimer: I’m not with it today. My brains are the temperature and consistency of freshly-nuked McDonald’s hot apple pie innards. Have you been outdoors? (I assume you’re in the UK, as opposed to Lapland.) I’d advise against it. Stay in, chow Chunky Monkey, play with Skype.

Heat-induced daftness notwithstanding, I still know a good gadget when I see one. The bookie is no longer taking bets on Gadget of the Month. Step forward, SanDisk U3 Cruzer.

From the name you’d think it was a hybrid car that plays MP3s (perhaps that’s just me), but the Cruzer is in fact a smart USB drive, with Skype pre-loaded. Carry it around with you, and you can use Skype on any computer you like, as long as it has a USB port, mic and speakers.

How cool is that? (…as they say.) The Cruzer solves your Skypelessness when you’re in a net cafe or working in an office where you’re not allowed to download Skype. It’d also make a great pressie for software-averse parents whom you’d like to chat with using Skype.

The science bit: SanDisk Cruzer Micros range from 512MB (best price found by Pricerunner: £13) to 4GB (best price £94), while SanDisk Cruzer Titaniums come in two flavours: 1GB (£33) and 2GB (£55).

We’ve seen the future, and it’s WiFi VoIP handset shaped.

According to analysts at Infonetics Research, single-mode VoIP handsets such as the Netgear Skype WiFi phone, along with the next generation of dual-mode mobile/VoIP handsets, are the future of chatter.

The global WiFi phone market is expanding at such a rate - at least doubling each year - that Infonetics predict it’ll be worth $3.7 billion by 2009. To put it into perspective, that’s about what the worldwide anti-virus market is worth right now.

(Trivia corner: it also compares roughly with the money spent on campaigning in the 2004 US elections. I’m saying nothing.)

Continue reading "WiFi VoIP set to soar" »

There’s much excitement on t’other side of the ocean about WebMessenger Mobile for Skype, a free service that allows US users to make Skype calls whilst they’re away from their home PC - without having to worry about finding a WiFi hotspot.

The free service acts as a bridge between your mobile and Skype on your PC, which needs to be online for the call to work. Then you can make and receive calls anywhere in north America using a compatible mobile, including BlackBerry devices and Palm handhelds. There’s a $3.95/month premium version, too, which lets Skypers access hundreds of contacts and indulge in some four-way conferencing whilst they’re out and about.

Anything Skype can do, BT wants to do, too. To which I can only say: come and have a go if you think you’re bloggy enough.

This morning’s FT reports that the telco plans to launch a corporate blog in the next few weeks. If so, BT follows in the richly-blogged footsteps of Skype and the mono-blogged tiptoe-steps of Carphone Warehouse, whose chief exec Charles Dunstone has spent the past couple of months blogging about the fact that no-one can get through to the info line for much-hyped “free broadband” package Talk3.

Like Dunstone, BT CEO John Petter wants to write the BT blog himself, and he’s bullish about its marketing potential. But the FT warns Petter, Dunstone and other blogging execs to be careful with this “I’m a fat-cat exec, but I’m also down with the blogging kids” stuff. A giant corporation is a giant corporation - and if you ask web users to tell you what they think of you, they won’t mince their words.

Remember what happened with General Motors? The US car-maker recently invited its blog readers to post 30-second video adverts for its latest gas-guzzling creation, the Chevy Tahoe SUV. Thousands of videos were posted - attacking SUVs for harming the environment. Heh heh. Power to the people!

Here’s a special post for Aisleyne off Big Brother, on what may be her final day in the house. (She’s second favourite to leave, form-watchers; numpty Nikki is the frontrunner.)

Pretend ghetto superstar Aisleyne, who uses phrases like “off the shizzle” and “I ain’t no man-teef” without blushing, might agree with ZDNet blogger Russell Shaw that Skype has the potential to be the biggest thing in hip-hop since Grandmaster Flash.

Russ points out that MP3.com’s hip-hop page (above) is littered with ads from the likes of Cingular Answer T9ones, but none from Skype. To Russ, this is nothing less than a catastrophic marketing oversight.

Continue reading "Shizzle my Skype" »

Kings of the consumer frontier, Which?, have awarded Skype the top spot in their road-test of VoIP services - which they reckon to be the phone choice of the future.

The latest issue of Computing Which? magazine pits six free VoIP services against each other for ease of use, effectiveness and range of features. Skype took pole position for its “fuss-free approach, easy set-up and exceptional voice clarity”, with second-placed Yahoo! Messenger lauded for a wide range of features. Poor old Google Talk was deemed “less helpful”.

“Using your PC as a phone can be so cheap, often even free, that pricey landline and mobile bills could be in danger of becoming extinct,” said Computing Which? editor Jessica Ross. “With mobile phone services entering the broadband market, VoIP looks set to be the choice of the future.”

Today’s “buy our products” email from cut-price gizmo-peddlar Savastore is decorated with this natty ad for Skype handsets. Trouble is, when you click the link, here’s what you get:

… which is not much use, except to a recovering retail-addict.

So while Savastore sorts itself out, I’ve been looking for more rich and strange ways in which advertisers are selling VoIP to an occasionally confused public.

On YouTube I found this iPhox TV ad, apparently starring a tribute act to Angelina Jolie. The chap who posted the clip seems impressed (“I received this hilarious clip from a friend. Girl is stunning hot!”) but I haven’t quite worked out what it’s saying about VoIP. Got any thoughts?

Right, that’s it. I’m moving to the far east. Not only do you get Kitano Takeshi, sake in the supermarket and city-wide WiFi, but you also get to watch TV on Skype.

This innovation comes courtesy of Japanese company Novac, whose TV for Skype Anywhere (I think that’s what it says) USB stick turns your home TV signal into a digital feed that you can watch via Skype from anywhere in the world. And all for for ¥9,800 - under fifty quid.

“The USB plugs into your home PC, and at the other end there’s a socket for your TV aerial,” says James Peck, from Skype’s hardware team. “Then when you’re on the road you call your home PC, which is reading from the aerial and converting the TV signal to a Skype digital call.” Who needs boring old human beings when you can chat with your telly instead?

You can even change channels using your Skype messaging window. “So if I just type ‘#4#’, the channel will go to Four and I can watch Big Brother.” Ahh, modern life is bliss.

Of course, as with Taipei’s WiFi Skype mobiles, what I really want to know is when TV-on-Skype will be available in the UK. But no-one’s telling.

Continue reading "Square-eyed Skype" »

Our first thought upon hearing that Taipei has rolled out a city-wide WiFi telephony network was not “bravo Taipei, get in there” or even “Taipei? Oh don’t tell me, it’s… it’s…” (it’s in Taiwan). Our first thought was, “Can we have what they’re having?”

The short answer is yeah but no but… well, not yet.

The long answer is that the technology is there, but issues of WiFi hot-spot quality need to be ironed out before WiFi calling is a workable reality in UK cities.

Continue reading "Taipei gets WiFi Skype on the move" »

You could never accuse the Telegraph of hurtling so fast into the 21st century that it’s in danger of bruising itself. But the grand old paper tends to handle tech news with panache, and this weekend’s beginners’ guide to VoIP is no exception.

The article reminds readers that a recent Ofcom survey found that just over half the UK population knows what VoIP is. Thanks to the Telegraph’s latest bit of public education, perhaps as many as six out of 10 now know that VoIP is not, in fact, something you use to clean the bath. Onward and upward.

If the Telegraph piece was the Key Stage 2 of VoIP journalism, today’s Observer adopts a more AS Level coursework approach. John Naughton’s article All Systems are Now Go on Your Computer, a 700-word variation on the theme of ‘computers can do everything’, speaks to the kind of reader who’s had a Gmail account for two years and for whom “naturally, it runs OS X” needs no explanation.

I checked the News of the World for Skype stories, too. Can’t find anything. However the paper does reveal that “Cheryl thinks she’s VICTORIA BECKHAM”, and that’s pretty much all the news I can handle at this time on a Sunday morning.

Stand by your headsets, cash-savvy chatter-fans - a Skype Gift Day is coming to a computer near you next Tuesday, 18 July.

Now, don’t get carried away. Skype Gift Days do not involve pitching up at a secret location and saying “I’ll take the diamante webcam and the cuddly toy, please.” They’re much better than that, because you don’t have to leave the house to get your freebie. Just log into your Skype account and claim 10 minutes of free SkypeOut calling. The offer starts at 7am on the 18th and runs for 24 hours.

Continue reading "Fancy a SkypeOut freebie?" »

When they write about 8 July 2006 in those On This Day In History features, the debut of Skype’s Britblog will be right up there with Amelie Mauresmo winning Wimbledon and Brangelina getting a new car. Well, we can hope.

Anyway, bookmark this site for first dibs on news from Skype insiders, plus behind-the-scenes chatter from Skype Towers and all you ever needed to know about internet telephony.

This post has been brought to you today by Movable Type, the blogger formerly known as Lady Muck, and far too much coffee for a balmy Saturday afternoon.

Greetings, pop-pickers. I’m Skype’s shiny new UK blogger, reporting from the VoIP frontline and getting the inside track on Skype news and events.

I’ve been a journalist for 15 years, with a back catalogue that stretches from saucy features for FHM to the book eBay.co.uk For Dummies. In recent years I’ve specialised in writing about consumer technology and the net, so I’ve closely followed Skype’s progress - including spying on the team as they moved into their huge new London office last week.

For more about me and my work, please see my personal website.