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.)

If you’ve got a bit more time on your hands, use the wizard to customise the colours, functions and styles of your Skype button. You just enter your Skype name in the box, choose whether the button should show your Skype status (eg ‘Skype Me!’ or ‘I’m awaaaay’), pick the size and shape of your button. Then you can cut and paste a bit of hmtl code to include in your blog, email sig or whatever.

Do make sure that your email program will convert any html in the signature. If it doesn’t, your recipient will just see a bunch of pointy brackets, meaningless letters and inverted commas.