June 2007

Nick Carr’s column in today’s Technology Guardian offers an insight into the growing trend for software as a service:

Google is far from the only computing company laying lots of bricks and mortar. Its arch-rival, Microsoft, is building a mammoth data centre on a former bean field in the farming town of Quincy, Washington. It expects that the site will ultimately hold six warehouse-sized buildings encompassing 140,000 sq m of computer-packed space. Also rushing to build or lease data centres are Yahoo!, Ask.com, Intuit, Salesforce.com and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems unit, among many others.

Guess who isn’t doing this? Skype, for one. Skype uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) model, which means that calls are routed through our users’ computers rather than going through a central server. Compare this to a product like Yahoo! Messenger, which follows the traditional server model: (hence the need for the big purple blob in the middle)

Decentralised P2P software has several advantages over traditional server based software.

• The number of users can increase without increasing the need for costly centralised resources.
• It can rely on the processing power of users’ computers, since each new user added to the network adds potential processing power.

Maybe Nick hasn’t captured the whole picture when he says

To be a successful software company today, you increasingly have to worry not just about writing code but about assembling and maintaining big, complex hardware systems.

Or not

Photo by Doc Searls

In case you haven’t heard about it yet, there’s a very cool competition going on right now that’s open to Skype users in the UK until 15 July. The first prize is fantastic, if I do say so myself—it’s a €5000 (about £3360) travel voucher. I’d think that a pretty amazing holiday could be arranged with that much money. The second prize (Fujitsu-Siemens laptop—two available) and third prize (SMC WiFi phone—10 available) are pretty nice too.

So how do you enter? You can either purchase a special summer hardware bundle (which includes a Skype Pro subscription, SkypeOut credit, and/or Voicemail) and fill out the entry form after your purchase, or you can enter without purchase (link on the bundle page).

There are 2 questions—the first is

If you could call anyone in the world, who would you choose to call and why?

If you dig into the Terms and Conditions of the contest you’ll see that the answer to this question is judged on “Creativity and Originality – 80%; Clarity of Writing and ability to communicate – 20%”—so it’s going to take a little creativity. The second question is

How many months of free voicemail is offered with the WiFi phone package for Skype?

That one just takes a little digging on the promotion site.

So who would you call? A celebrity? A politician? Your beloved (but deceased) gran? Give it a think and send in an entry for your chance to win.

Hello UK Skype friends. I’m Andrew—usually I write for the Skype Gear blog (about new Skype hardware and mobile stuff), but this week I’m filling in for my mate Peter as he’s off getting sunburnt somewhere outside of the UK (lucky guy).

So by now you may have tried out one of the many Skype Extras available—they’ve been around since version 3.0 and add all sorts of functionality to the Windows client, from productivity add-ons to entertainment. Some Extras cost a bit of money but many are free. I just wanted to share a new group of them that seems pretty interesting and has the potential to become even more compelling over time.

Now when you go to the Extras Manager (by going to the Tools Menu -> Do More -> Get Extras), in the left column you’ll see a ‘Movies’ option. Therein you’ll find four options related to the new horror film Vacancy, which just came out in the UK on 15 June. You can watch the trailer, tell your friends about the movie, play a 3D game, and even call the Pinewood Motel from the movie.

Now I have to warn you, this movie is a thriller, and the 3D game is almost surprisingly violent, so do take that into consideration before you open it up at the office or show your kid brother or sister. But it’s pretty neat that the Skype Extras manager now has a ‘Movies’ section. No doubt there will be more interactive content from new films down the road.

An article in Saturday’s Telegraph talks about women’s online friendships, and suggests that any stigma around meeting people online which existed ten years ago has almost entirely disappeared.

What’s interesting, though, is this comment from Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University:

“People reveal themselves far quicker emotionally online, because they feel it’s anonymous. My guess is that as we move more towards Skype-based communications [talking over the internet rather than typing] people will be more guarded.”

Does the fact that Skype allows you to hear and see the person you’re having a conversation with make you less open? Or does it increase trust?

This blog post about progressive trust explains one theory of how people begin to trust each other. It talks about credential exchange, which is the way people gradually swap pieces of information about themselves to build up a better picture of who the other person is.

Seeing and hearing someone can be a big part of this — and Skype lets you do just that. I’d argue that Skype makes us more open online.

A To Go number lets you make cheap calls to your best friend abroad without spending a fortune. Whether that’s your backpacking buddy in Australia, granny in Nigeria or wife in the States, it could cost you as little as 1.4p per minute.

So what do you need to do?

1. Download Skype onto your computer
2. Sign up to Skype Pro for £1.50 per month
3. You’ll receive a To Go number as part of the Skype Pro deal
4. Choose the friend or family member you want to call who lives abroad
5. Then enter their international number and in return, Skype will give you a local number to use instead
6. Phone this local number - your To Go number - and you’ll be charged as normal, plus the SkypeOut rate for the country where your friend is

If you have a mobile contract with inclusive minutes, then you’ll be able to call your friend at SkypeOut prices whether your at your computer or not. Not bad, eh?

From now until the 10th of June (next Monday), you’ll be able to text your friends in these countries for half the normal price:

• Australia now 2.8p
• Austria now 4.7p
• Belgium now 3.8p
• Czech Republic now 3.6p
• Estonia now 3.1p
• Ireland now 3.6p
• Korea now 3.1p
• Russia now 2.2p
• South Africa now 3.8p
• Spain now 4.7p
• Sweden now 3.1p
• Taiwan now 2p
• Thailand now 2p
• United Kingdom now 3.2p
• USA now 3.6p

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

To do this, you will need to validate your mobile number by going to Skype and clicking 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.

Photo by JasonJT