May 2007

The Edinburgh Evening News reports that Hilary Benn is using Skype to help his campaign efforts:

Labour deputy leadership contender Hilary Benn has taken his campaign to students at Edinburgh University with an on-line Skype video meeting.

The International Development Secretary claims the use of technology can help to rebuild the Labour Party.

Fianna Fáil managed to win the Irish elections, and they use Skype, but whether or not Skype will save the Labour Party is a matter for debate. Still, there’s no doubt that it’s an easy way of speaking to lots of people up and down the country.

For those of you who are interested, you can watch last night’s Newsnight debate on the deputy leadership contest.

Alternatively, you might prefer to watch this selection of Newsnight gaffes, on the grounds that they’re funnier.

Photo by Andrew Heavens

Sam Sethi over at Vecosys argues that email is the new snail mail:

Email is the new snail mail. I now communicate more and more with friends by Skype, IM or Twitter.

And rightly so

Skype lets you have real conversations, rather than the disjointed time-lagged jumble that an exchange of emails often turns out to be.

Because Skype lets you chat and share files as well as talk, you can pick the mode of conversation that suits what you want to do. Quick question? Send a chat message. Document for review? Send it over Skype, and get an instant response. All getting too difficult to type out? Click and you’ve got a conference call.

I suspect that your boss would probably call this ‘increasing productivity’. That’s a good description, but you could also say ‘wasting less time’ or ‘having more fun’

Photo by WTL Photos

Good news…

Skype has reduced the price of the Small Business Pack in the UK to a mere £68.

Readers of my last post will realise that, while stocks last, you can get more than £68 worth of Skype credit by buying the Small Business Pack, making it a pretty amazing deal before you even take the Skype Pro subscriptions into account.

Head over to the Skype store and pick one up today — you know you want to

Today, Skype has launched the Small Business Pack - a no-nonsense money saving deal for SMEs in the UK.

The pack includes

• Skype for Business CD.
• Skype for Windows (business edition) with MSI*
• Business Control Panel — for managing your company’s Skype Credit
• €50 of Skype Credit to distribute to your colleagues (that’s about £33)
• 10 five-month subscriptions to Skype Pro (worth £80)
• Getting started guide with tips and tricks for using Skype for Business

Total value (approximate): £113,Price: £75 £68

And, while stocks last, you’ll get the current Skype Pro deal, which includes £4 of Skype Credit with each subscription, taking the total amount of Skype Credit included to about £73

The pack is an easy way to set up your company with Skype — it offers you control over allocation of Skype Credit and SkypeIn numbers to your employees, and it’s good value too. What more could you ask?

* If this means nothing to you, don’t worry. It makes some people happy, though

From today until the next Tuesday, the 8th of May, you can send half price text messages using Skype to the following countries:

• Austria
• Australia
• Belgium
• Ireland
• Italy
• Poland
• Russia
• Taiwan
• Thailand
• United States

Sending a text to Ireland, for example, will cost less than 3.6p — a perfect excuse to get in touch with all those far-flung friends and family members over the bank holiday weekend.

To start sending SMS from Skype, you need Skype Credit. Once you’ve got some of that, you’re all set to go.

Update: The guys over at Digital Lifestyles point out that as well as being cheap, using Skype to send texts mean that you get to use a full size keyboard. Good point

Hint: For most countries, you can even set up Skype so that their replies go straight back to your mobile, so that you can hear from them wherever you are.

To do this, you will need to validate your mobile number by going to the Skype software and click on Tools > Options > SMS Messages and following the steps described. When you complete these steps, you will receive a text with a verification code. Enter this code in Skype to validate your mobile.

Earlier this week I got in touch with Brenda Dayne, who records a regular podcast about knitting — she and her team from around the world use Skype to keep in touch, to plan their episodes and share files.

Peter: Who do you Skype with?

The Green Room is a private chat that began between four podcasters - Dave from the Chub Creek Podcast, Sage from Quirky Nomads, Syne, who hosts Weavecast, and myself — initially as a way of exchanging ideas, tech tips, and audio content. We’ve since added several other podcasters to the chat - Heather Ordover, from Craftlit, and Christa Giles from CristaKnits — as well as a few people who started as podcast listeners, and who were eventually roped into creating content for our podcasting cartel.

Peter: And what do you talk about?

It’s pretty much a free-for-all, topic-wise, as we’ve come to know each other better. We all meet five days a week, for about an hour, as a way of gearing up for our work days. Time zones are an issue, but we manage — some of us are night owls, other’s early risers, and we’ve fallen into a nice rhythm. Podcast production is still a hot topic, but we also bounce a lot of ideas around, help each other draft responses to listener email and comments, share images and short audio clips, pass along interesting links, you name it. We also use the conference call feature to record group audio.

Peter: And if I want to find out more about Cast On…

You should take a look at the site, and subscribe to the podcast.

Peter: Thanks Brenda