September 2006

So, San Jose State University won’t be banning Skype after all. Quite right, too. Skype has huge potential value as a long-distance education and research tool – and, of course, it’s extremely cheap.

Remember Dr Doug Yu? Skype has transformed his working life down in the Peruvian rainforest, where he works with a group of native Americans called the Matsigenka. Thanks to Skype, Doug and the team can maintain a “virtual lab group,” working remotely with each other whether they’re in Brazil, Germany, Peru or China.

Skype has appeased San Jose by enabling a firewall-friendly version of the software that, for example, can have its file transfer feature switched off. Not ideal for students wanting to trade research notes, but better than nothing. Perhaps now more universities will start to recognise Skype’s power for enhancing their role as educators and centres of research – not to mention its capacity for saving them a few quid.

I have Skype button envy. I keep getting emails from people with one of these smart little clickable bubbles in their signatures, and I want one.

Happily, I find that it’s very easy to do. Click here to pick a basic Skype button and grab the code for your website, blog or email sig. If someone wants to Skype you, they just click the button.

(Memo to JJ Abrams: flashing green cursors are so 1985. For season 3 of Lost, stick them in a new bunker and make them Skype each other every half hour. Come on, I can see you’re running out of ideas.)

Continue reading "Get a Skype button" »

To celebrate the investiture of mousse-voiced Scot Kirsty Young as Desert Island Discs host, I thought I’d stage a quick Skype-based fantasy interrogation. Stop what you’re doing (come on, I know you’re bored at work), rev up your imagination and answer these simple questions. The best ones will be rewarded with my eternal admiration and, possibly, a Finger of Fudge.

Just click the Comments link below to offer your responses.

1. If you could have a Skypecast with any five people alive today, who would they be and why?

2. Which one person would you like to add to your Skype contacts list?

3. If you could invent a Skype Chat emoticon, what would it be?

(Legal note: I lied about the Finger of Fudge. They’re great, though, aren’t they? An underrated sweet.)

Following yesterday’s news about the mouse with the mostest from a company few of us have heard of, may I now introduce the world’s first wireless Skype music phone from a company few of us have heard of.

The AiGuru S1 is the work of ASUSTeK Computer. Normally they make motherboards and things, but they’re now getting in touch with their sexy side by releasing a gorgeous WiFi Skype phone that doubles as a wireless music streaming device. Mm, my precious.

The AiGuru S1 uses 802.11b/g wireless technology, so you’re free to roam around your house while you chat – and you get better signal quality and wider coverage than with Bluetooth. Skype comes pre-installed, and the phone can be used for SkypeOut and SkypeIn calls. A high-quality speaker turns the gadget into an MP3 player that you can use to access and stream songs stored on your computer.

Want one? Course you do. AiGuru S1 will be available to buy from a gizmo emporium near you in October, with an RRP of £69.99.

That’s a mouse.

No… that’s a mouse!

The name of Taiwanese electronics maker Sysgration may not trip off too many metropolitan tongues, but those in the know are very excited about the company’s new ASG 142 Skype mouse phone.

This tiny gizmo looks, works and feels like a laptop mouse, and it uses a now-standard 800 DPI optical sensor and USB connection. But then you open it up, and… yum.

Inside you’ll find a diddy Skype phone. The 1.3in backlit LCD displays the names of your Skype contacts and their status, and the number keypad allows you to make SkypeOut calls to landlines and mobiles.

So, how do you get one of these fantastic things? Hm. I don’t know. Google can’t find them for sale anywhere in the UK, or indeed anywhere in anywhere. The product page on Sysgration’s website says “patent pending”, which sounds ominous. I’ve seen enough episodes of Dragons’ Den to know that patents are kind of important. But I won’t rest until I’ve got one of these things on my desk – so stay tuned.

Pity the poor fool who tries to ban his or her underlings from using Skype.

This week’s prize luddites are the bigwigs at San Jose State University, who (like some UK universities, lest we get too smug about this) want to ban their staff and students from using Skype.

The big-wigs, it seems, are concerned that “outsiders” can communicate using the university’s computer network. Or could the real reason be that they don’t want their staff and students chatting on Skype while they should be working? Kevin Schmidt, campus network programmer at the University of California in Santa Barbara, gave the game away: “What we wind up with [when students use Skype] is a fair amount of traffic that has nothing to do with university business.”

What, like when they use email? Or when their friends come to visit? Atrocious behaviour.

San Jose State University students and faculty members have responded with a wealth of angry blog posts. Steve Sloan, who teaches journalism and has been a member of the IT department for more than 20 years, wrote a particularly eloquent piece entitled ‘Why our students need Skype’.

Continue reading "Skypers shall overcome" »

If you don’t much like handing out credit card numbers and fat fistfuls of cash willy-nilly, or if you just get bored typing in your card number every time you buy something online, here’s good news: Skype takes PayPal.

Of course, Skype calls and Skype chats don’t need any kind of payment at all – much my favourite kind of transaction. But when you want to buy stuff from the Skype Shop or call landlines or mobiles, you’ll have to cough up some pennies.

PayPal, as eBay addicts know, is basically a secure online wallet. Open a PayPal account, and you can buy and sell using that account – so you never have to send a cheque or hand over your money details to a fellow eBayer. You can either dip into your secure balance, or ask PayPal to deduct money securely from your plastic or bank account.

Some Skype transactions, including Skype Credit, SkypeIn and Voicemail, accept an even simpler version of PayPal: PayPal Pre-approved. This means you don’t have to sign into PayPal and authenticate each purchase individually; instead it’s all done in a couple of clicks. Beats queing in Asda after a long day at work, doesn’t it?

Following on from the release of Mac 2.0 with Video Beta, Mac users are getting another treat today: 10 minutes of free SkypeOut calls to landlines. As a famous Mac user once possibly said: “Mr Skype, you are spoiling us.”

If you’re using a Mac, you’ll see the ‘free minutes’ banner when you go to Skype’s homepage any time from now until 8pm tomorrow (Thursday). I’m using a PC, so I can’t see the banner. Not that I feel deprived…

Click the banner and follow the instructions to bank your freebie, which you can save to use any time you like. I suggest using it to ring up your mates late one night and tell them in a very loud voice to download Skype, or else you’ll send the boys round. A’right?

Being offered an incentive to get your friends onto Skype is a bit like being offered a bung to win the World Cup.

From today until 19 October – that’s one month in old money – you’ll get 30 minutes of free SkypeOut calls to landlines, just for persuading three friends to download Skype. (Of course, once they’re all on Skype you won’t need any SkypeOut freebies, unless you plan to start ringing up complete strangers. And you know what Mummy told you about that.)

And there’s more! Yes, those incentives just keep on giving. When your three referred mates sign up, you’re all entered into a prize draw to win a Sony Vaio FE31H laptop with integrated camera and mic, 20 Philips VOIP321 cordless phones and 52 Logitech QuickCam Express webcams. Not all at once.

The small print: To refer a friend, use this online form. As soon as your three mates have signed up, you’ll get an email containing a voucher code for your SkypeOut freebie. You’ll then get an email with details of the competition draw. If you don’t win the Vaio, don’t come crying to me.

Google “California dating” and you get more than 37 million results. So if a La-La Land matchmaker is to stand out from the crowd, it’s got to find a gimmick – such as turning Skype into a pulling tool.

LA-based dating site TeamDating now shows its members’ Skype status in their online profiles, so that wannabe couples can call or chat to each other without having to muck about with email or, heaven forfend, telephones.

TeamDating.com invites entire groups of friends to sign up and make sweet Skyping with other groups of friends. (I’m saying nothing.) So members would be advised to check out Skype’s Group Chat feature; here’s a user guide.

Behold, the most useful flick I’ve seen on YouTube today. (The most useful, but not the best. That’ll be the kung fu baby.)

Link: More Skyping on YouTube

Ace artsy fartsy reviews website Monsters and Critics put down the popcorn for a few minutes yesterday to earwig on Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, who was in Warsaw talking about how all phone calls will be free within a decade.

(M&C is the web’s sole source of this story, so I can’t help wondering whether it was just a dream they had. But I like it, so I’m going with it anyway.)

“Skype’s vision has always been to make everyone around the world talk for free,” said Niklas, guest of Polish web portal Grupa Onet. Also present – now here’s where I’m thinking it was all a dream – was Polish union leader and olden days Thatcher-botherer, Lech Walesa, who must have been delighted to hear Niklas say: “In ten years’ time all telephone calls will certainly be free, whether you’re calling someone on a computer or telephone.” Power to the people!

Niklas’s Polish hosts wanted to know whether they’d be seeing a repeat of Skype’s “free calls to landlines” project, currently wowing the citizens of France and previously a big success in the US. Alas, the answer was no. (What about the UK, eh, Niklas? We love you, Niklas…)

Skype’s fanbase has always been a bit PC-heavy (hardly surprising, given that the entire computer-using world is a bit PC-heavy), but that may change today with the beta release of Skype for Mac with Video.

The new video calling feature, part of Skype for Mac 2.0 beta, lets you make free video calls to any other Skype users, whether they’re on PCs or Macs. You can view the video in your Skype window or full screen – and, if you both have a webcam, you can use the handy pic-in-pic feature shown above.

A little side window even lets you see how you look to your Skypee, which is a handy for checking that you haven’t got lunch stuck all over your chin.

Continue reading "Mac users get the picture" »

Did you know that you can include up to 100 people in a Skype Chat? Skype’s Group Chat feature is a big help to those of us who are blogging all over the world, as Francis Rossi once nearly sang. When each of Skype’s bloggers logs on, we can automatically catch up with what everyone’s been saying in the Skype bloggers’ instant messaging group - even if we haven’t been near a computer for days. It means you never feel left out of the gang.

To find out more about using Group Chat, visit the user guide and spin through the tips, pic by pic.

Back in the olden days of the early 90s, as a cabal of geeks laboured at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, little could anyone have imagined what extraordinary feats their fledgling “internet” might one day achieve.

Feats like, say, a little man showing his bum-cheeks to your mate in Sydney. In real time!

The bum-cheeks are just one (well, two) of the secret emoticons known to many a Skype Chat veteran, but still a mystery to most newbies who are still getting their heads around the whole free phone calls thing. (Yes, Mum. You can close your mouth now.)

You can find out what other Skypers are saying about these Easter Eggs on the Skype forum, where the bare bum and the one-fingered salute appear to be the most popular hidden gems.

So, how do you slip one of these babies into a Skype chat? In most cases, just type the appropriate word, contained within brackets. So, just as when you type ‘:)’ you see a yellow smiley face in your Skype window, you’ll see the mooning man if you type ‘(mooning)’.

Mess around with other Easter Egg prompts, from ‘(finger)’ and ‘(ninja)’ to ‘(headbang)’ and ‘(toivo)’ (that’s the butch bloke and his dog), and you’ll create seven shades of confusion among your Skype pal as he or she tries to figure out exactly what it is you’re trying to imply.

Skype recently turned three, in the same week that I turned somewhat older, and I got completely trounced in the battle of the birthday cards. But I’m not bitter. Not. At All.

Hundreds of you responded to the Skype birthday card competition by sending all manner of creative e-cards, pictures, videos and even a podcast.

Creator of the celebratory masterwork you see above is called Susan Falkenthal. Virginia girl Susan is currently living in South Korea, making her the perfect poster-child for a global communications company.

Continue reading "Skype's birthday winner" »

Quick! Move to France! The people dubbed “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” by piqued Americans have even more reason to feel smug, because until the end of 2006 they can make unlimited SkypeOut calls to landlines within France for free. La telephonie gratuite indeed.

Skype tried out a similar scheme earlier this year in the US, where it was a huge success. Let’s hope the UK is next on the list. Let’s really, really hope the UK is next on the list. Memo to Skype: make it happen, and the beers are on me.

Podcasting has been hailed as citizen radio - a chance for us all to broadcast our opinions to the world. But the trouble with podcasting is that you need special kit to do it, and it all looks a bit tricky for those of us didn’t spend our formative years writing computer code and unpicking circuit boards in the garage.

So, being as I like very simple web-based things almost as much as I like the sound of my own voice, I was intrigued to hear about the new web-based podcasting service FireOlive (motto: “the sound of reaction”). Just as blogging sites allow you to publish your scribbled opinions about newsy stuff, FireOlive lets you publish your spoken opinions.

And the best bit? You can do it all via Skype. You just call up FireOlive and rant about the issues of the day, and a world full of lucky listeners can then hear your opinionated babble on the website, or download it as a podcast. What are you waiting for?

All the recent talk of business deals between Skype, eBay and Google has got people (including me) wondering what it all means for Skypers and web users. Well, here’s a great example of how the beautiful friendship between Skype and eBay can make life easier, and maybe a touch more lucrative.

Peter Scrope got in touch to tell us how pleased he was with the bright new Skype button on his eBay ads. The first of Peter’s eBay sales to feature a Skype button was his old piano, which was eventually snapped up for £313. Bulky, pricey items like these often attract lots of questions from potential bidders, and the time-delay involved in email can mean that questions don’t get answered before an auction ends. A Skype button, however, allows sellers to chat with would-be buyers in real time.

Continue reading "Skype your way to eBay success" »

When I asked you to get in touch with your true stories about how Skype has changed your life, I hadn’t reckoned on quite such an enthusiastic response. That’ll teach me to be a crusty old British cynic.

One of the first stories I received was one of the most striking. Dr Doug Yu (above left) is a tropical ecologist, currently working with a team of researchers in darkest Peru – though without Skype, he’d have had to pack up and return home to Norwich long ago.

Doug, whose work currently focuses on a group of native Americans called the Matsigenka, originally used GILAT satellite telephones to communicate with colleagues and students back in the UK. But after six months, the system started rejecting calls from the UK, then from the US, and finally from Brazil. About as useful as a marshmallow umbrella.

Then Doug remembered Skype. “So we now use SkypeOut to call the villages,” he told me. “It allows us to arrange logistics, consult with each other during fieldwork and to keep in touch with our Matsigenka friends. These are people who were only contacted for the first time 30 years ago, and they still lead a very traditional lifestyle.”

Skype now allows Doug and the team to maintain a “virtual lab group,” working remotely with each other wherever they are in the world: mainly Brazil, Germany, Peru and China. “We use Web 2.0 services like Basecamp to manage our documents, but Skype is what we use to have group discussions and otherwise chat about things without worrying about the cost. I communicate with my colleagues in the department less than I do with my colleagues around the world!”

And Mac-lover Doug, who’s eagerly awaiting the new video version of Skype for Mac, says: “It’s also nice to watch my nephew grow up.”

* Has Skype changed your life? Drop me an email, or Skype me: janehoskyn36.

BusinessWeek Online is just one of many websites that have been getting excited about a new phone from electronics giant Philips, which allows you to use Skype without having a PC at all.

The Philips VOIP841 is the first Skype cordless phone that doesn’t require support from a booted-up home PC. You plug it into your broadband connection and traditional landline, and it’s all ready for Skype action. The catch? It’s “expected to become available in late 2006”. Oh come onnn!

An earlier Skype-compatible Philips phone, the VOIP321, combines Skype and landline calling, though it needs a Skyped-up PC running somewhere in the house. That handset was launched in January, and according to Philips it has been selling incredibly well, so the new model should be a massive hit when it reaches the market. One for the Christmas list - if Philips get their skates on.

Got anything planned for Sunday? Nursing your hangover with a bacon sarnie in front of EastEnders, perhaps?

Jo Huxster and the gloriously-named Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent (‘Ants’ for short) will be putting their feet up, too - because they’ll have just got home to Brighton after travelling the 12,000 miles from Bankok in their pink tuk-tuk, Ting Tong.

Before we address what this has to do with Skype, let’s get the Ting Tong thing cleared up first. It is not a pet name for something rude. Tuk-tuks like Ting Tong are Thai scooter taxis. Elsewhere in south-east Asia they’re known as auto rickshaws or cabin cycles, and absolutely no-where in the world are they known as a comfy ride. Imagine a beach donkey mating with a three-wheeled moped, and then imagine riding the result from London to Edinburgh 30 times.

To distract themselves from their tortured bottoms, Jo and Ants spent much of their 14-week journey doing what all enterprising gals do when the going gets tough: they rang up their friends. And, to avoid eating into the £25,000 they’ve raised for mental health charity Mind, they used Skype.

Judging by their Tuk to the Road blog, there was plenty to gas about. Their epic trip saw them braving Hmong rebels in Laos, enduring earthquakes in China and getting all manner of hassle from Russian police. I’ve had some barnstorming Skype chats, but none quite like that. I must get out more.

Now that they’re home, the girls will continue to raise cash for Mind, with an end-of-year target of £50,000 (click here to donate). Incidentally if you’re in Brighton on Sunday, you can cheer the homecoming queens in Bartholomew Square at 3.30pm.

Hi,

at Skype, we are always looking for ways to make Skype even better and to continue to delight our users. One of the best ways to achieve this is to meet and talk to people like you.

Skype is currently organising a research groups to be run in London on Tuesday 5th and Thursday 7th September.

If you use Skype and are available on any of these dates and would like to participate, please e-mail us at research@skype.net. Thanks.