September 2007

A Read/WriteWeb piece highlights the continued fear among IT decision-makers about the nicely amorphous ‘Web 2.0’ genre. Genre? Phenomenon? Plague? 78% of IT bosses at companies of 500 employees or more said they were ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ concerned about unsanctioned use of Web 2.0 technologies among staff (Forrester).

The solution, says Forrester, is to embrace web 2.0 - but “on your terms”. They recommend that companies create “Web 2.0 policies and usage guidelines”. Also companies should bring secure and compliant Web 2.0 tools in-house. This is all sound advice, as long as it’s not taken to extremes - e.g. banning web apps (unless there is a true security or compliance risk - but Facebook for example wouldn’t qualify there), preventing employees from experimenting with new forms of web technologies, or dismissing web 2.0 as having no business value.

Thankfully, though, fear is accompanied by an acknowledgement that this big scary world might actually be useful. 73% of those surveyed were forced to admit that instant messaging had some business value — something with which we at Skype heartily agree.

I’ve written before about the benefits of Skype’s instant messaging features — if you’re an IT administrator, maybe now’s the time to try them out.

There’s been quite a bit of talk about the 25th birthday of the emoticon over the last few days — and many of you have probably read the email which started it all off:

19-Sep-82 11:44    Scott E  Fahlman             :-)
From: Scott E  Fahlman 

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways.  Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends.  For this, use

:-(

You can read the full email thread on Scott Fahlman’s pages on the Carnegie Mellon website.

Update: Jaanus has posted a photo of a commemorative banner on the Carnegie Mellon campus.

Skype has quite a few hidden emoticons. You can find a pretty comprehensive list on Chris Messina’s site, but here are a few favourites of mine:

(drunk)

(poolparty)

(rock)

For the patriotic among you, you can type things like (flag:gb) (or one of any of the two-letter ISO country codes) to re-live those last night of the Proms moments.

Photo by SMN

If you work for a big company, you’ve probably come across enterprise software. Quite why people use the term any more I’m not sure — it usually goes in sentences along with things like ‘hosted mid-tier solution’ and the dreaded ‘deployment’.

Not, of course, that I mean to poke too much fun at jargon per se — it’s useful in the right context — but there’s so much wrong with the way these products are described. Many people, like Peter Merholz, have been predicting their demise for some time.

I was prompted by a post on the Future of Software blog to think about where Skype sits relative to other software products. Is it an ‘enterprise software solution’? Is it a ‘productivity enhancement suite’? I hope not.

Here’s how we describe Skype:

Skype is a little piece of software that lets you make free calls to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world.

Skype does a lot more than that, of course, but we like to keep things simple in the first instance.

However, if what you’re looking for is an enterprise-ready multi-platform VoIP/IM/video communications solution, we do those too

We’ve all had that experience. The acquaintance who moans non stop about her love life (or lack of); the awful uncle at the family party; the work colleague who can recite entire episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

An article on lifehack.org has one suggestion on how to escape:

Try and confuse the person into wanting to exit the conversation. You can achieve this by bringing the topic of conversation to something off topic, only constantly. Interrupt with strange anecdotes and respond incorrectly and indirectly to questions. Have your own conversation without considering what the other person is saying. Start your own rant.

Alternatively, if you’re taking things a little more seriously, you might want to try to steer the conversation to a topic of mutual interest. That or pretend you have to go to the loo.

According to research by TeleGeography (and thanks to Om for pointing it out), growth in VoIP use in Europe is substantially faster than that in the US.

Several factors help account for Europe’s much more rapid VoIP service growth, including freer access to incumbents’ local copper loops, more aggressive competition and pricing, and the active participation of incumbent operators such as France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and BT in the VoIP market.

Of course, Skype has a substantial part to play in all of this, but what’s important to recognise is that Skype isn’t just about VoIP. While other players focus on providing cheap voice calls — which, admittedly, Skype does pretty well — Skype also includes chat, conference calling, video calls, SMS, and plenty more. Oh, and free calls, too.

Ofcom reported on internet calling earlier this year.

Now I know that this is strictly the UK blog, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about Ireland from time to time. Did you know that 1.2% of people living in England and Wales were born in Ireland? Or that most people born in Northern Ireland are entitled to be Irish as well as British citizens?

Two things you should know about Skype in Ireland:

3 X-Series launched in Ireland

As Conor O’Neill points out, it’s a little bit tricky to find on the 3 website, but the X-Series has launched in Ireland. The X-Series deal is simple - you pay a flat rate per month, and get unlimited internet access. No ifs, no buts. The plans start at 14.99€ per month, and the X-Series phones all come with a special version of Skype, so you can make free calls to Skype users from your mobile without paying a penny extra.

Find out more about the X-Series in Ireland

SkypeIn numbers now available in Ireland

For those of you who don’t know, a SkypeIn number is an ordinary phone number which connects to Skype. That way, when someone calls your SkypeIn number, you can receive calls from them wherever you are, whether it’s at home, in Starbucks in town, or on a beach in the Caribbean. The great advantage for callers is that they’ll probably only have to pay a local rate - the great advantage for you is that you won’t have to pay a fortune to receive calls when you’re abroad.

SkypeIn numbers are now available in Ireland with the following area codes:

• Cork (021)
• Dublin (01)
• Galway (091)
• Limerick (061)
• Waterford (051)

and cost 15€ for 3 months or 50€ for a year.

Get your Irish SkypeIn number

Unfortunately, those of you using Windows may be experiencing the effects of a virus. Here’s what Kurt Sauer, Skype’s Chief Security Officer, has to say:

“Skype has learned that a computer virus called “w32/Ramex.A” is affecting users of Skype for Windows. Users whose computers are infected with this virus will send a chat message to other Skype users asking them to click on a web link that can infect the computer of the person who receives the message.

“Please note that Skype users ONLY become infected after they have downloaded the link and run the malicious software. The chat message, of which there are several versions, is cleverly written and may appear to be a legitimate chat message, which may fool some users into clicking on the link.

“Skype has been in contact with the leading antivirus software companies about this worm, and we know that they are updating their software to effectively stop this worm and as well as its side effects. Currently, F-Secure and Kaspersky Lab have already updated their antivirus products to detect and remove the worm.

“We would like to encourage our users to ensure that they are running anti-virus software on their computers and to download the latest anti-virus updates in order to provide the best protection against this and other viruses.”

More information can be found on the Skype Heartbeat page.

In the FT’s Enterprising Britain series is a video featuring Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, in which he talks at Seedcamp about his desire to help entrepreneurs change the world.

Is Seedcamp the right way to do this? Is the money right? Are the entrants any good?

Still, fair criticism aside, Nic Brisbourne points to some valuable advice from a panel session yesterday:

It is easy to get excited about how great something will be if it works out - be that a new hire, business idea, partnership deal or really just about anything — but if you have a nagging doubt that it might not work then you should give that doubt full consideration. There might just be something in it.