The other day I mentioned Skype Garage, where you can find out about new Skype developments and get involved with the process. If you're handy enough with code to cook up your own Skype add-ons, check out Skype Developer Support. Skype's community support staff can offer tips on making your programs work with Skype APIs or services, free of charge.

Today, Skype Garage – tomorrow, Skype Certification? If your program or product is Skype Certified, its quality and Skype-compatibility are assured, and that can only be good news for its popularity – especially if it is listed as a Premium or Featured placement on the Skype Extras Gallery.

To get your product Skype Certified, you need to submit a software certification request and pay a testing fee. If it passes Skype's stringent tests, it wins certification for one year. Since the beginning of this month, any hardware product that uses the Skype API must be submitted for testing.