Skype in the news

A report issued by AdMob (via Om), which serves adverts to mobile websites, notes that the 3 Skypephone is now the number 5 mobile internet device in the UK.

It’s a new entrant in their top twenty ranking of handsets, and made up 2.7% of all ad requests in March 2008 — the top handset’s share was 6.6% by way of comparison.

Of course, this isn’t entirely surprising — 3’s keenly priced unlimited data package (minimum £5 top-up per month on pay as you go) means that the 3 Skypephone is a good deal for those who want to talk and surf on the move.

You can see and download the full report below:

On Sunday, Wired brought us the story of the first Twittered marriage proposal — and here’s the evidence:

Stephanie Sullivan, who accepted Greg Rewis’ proposal, said that ‘email, Twitter, Flickr and Skype are the staples of a long-distance relationship — not to mention extraordinarily high cellphone bills!’ Of course, I’m going to mutter something about Skype’s rather good mobile products here, but it’s great to know that Skype’s helping to make people happy even if they do run up big mobile bills at the same time…

On the subject of long distance relationships, yesterday the mental health team from Emory University blogged about how to maintain relationships while 10,879 miles apart; last month, Lee McEwan talked about the rise of the commuter marriage, and we heard last week about UK blogger Roo Reynolds’ thoughts on Ambient Skype. What’s next?

Philip Howard, the Times’ Modern Manners columnist, offers some sage advice to those of us in a quandry about when to call:

How should one use programmes such as Skype to contact friends? Unlike telephones these programmes tell users when their friends are online. I find it very tempting to call them, but realise they may already be talking to someone much more important to them than I am. What should one do?
Christopher Evans, Shipley, Yorkshire

I should call them, provided that you do not contact them immediately and every time they are on online. It’s marvellous that we can contact friends with the touch of a key. The downside is that such continual contacts are promiscuous. We must beware of becoming online bores.

Should we update the Skype etiquette statement to cover promiscuous bores?

The guys over at the Digital Arts blog set themselves up with some of the latest Logitech webcams and had a go at some international High Quality video calling. They seemed pretty impressed with the results:

For less than [£100], the Skype-Logitech combination gives you two good-quality Webcams and the ability to have free video chats with your spouse, family members, friends, business colleagues — whomever you want. In particular, I strongly recommend the Skype-Logitech system for those who travel frequently and would like to make free video calls back home.

If you’re thinking about stepping into the world of video for the first time, you might also like to check out Andrew’s webcam reviews on the Skype Gear blog.

If you read the main blog, you’ll have noticed Villu’s post earlier about the 3 Skypephone — the excellent news (if a little delayed) that it was highly commended for its innovative approach in the Best Mobile Handset or Device category at the Global Mobile Awards.

The 3 Skypephone (psst — as well as being less than £50 in the new Skype Shop) is linguistically interesting. Or at least it is when we think about freedom.

Free, of course, can mean two things — free in the sense of lack of restriction, liberty, and free in the sense of costing nothing. The 3 Skypephone goes some way to providing both. Okay, it doesn’t let you make calls anywhere in the world (you’ll need a signal for that), and we don’t give them away entirely (though they’re pretty good value). But we like to think it’s a pretty good deal.

For more about freedom, you might want to check out the Stanford Enyclopedia of Philosophy. Or to experience freedom, find a nice beach with a 3G signal

Bonus trivia: I’m pretty sure this is the first occasion on which Skype has run a newspaper ad in the UK, too, though I suspect our friends at 3 might have had something to do with that too…

Photo by Tom

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.

Engaget published an interview with Richard Branson the other day, in which he had some promising things to say about VoIP on planes:

If somebody really wants to talk to somebody, we might well have a couple of rows at the back where people can go and make a call there. We wouldn’t really want to have people talking next to each other, but a place on the plane where people can make a call if they really wanted to, if we had VoIP, then that might be possible.

I can’t imagine they’d section off part of the cabin in today’s world of seat revenue chasing, but a plane with Skype in every seat would be even better.

It’s a shame that Connexion by Boeing got axed before I had a chance to try it out, but according to Chris Pirillo and Vincent Brousseau Skype worked like a dream.

Maybe SRB can make it happen again…

Update: Thanks to all of you who’ve spoken to me individually — now safely arrived in Tallinn after some little flight-related hitches, but it’s not too late to contribute. Hit me up on Skype or leave a comment here and I’ll make sure your feedback counts.

On Monday I’ll be heading to Tallinn to join the rest of our Skype bloggers and forum moderators, along with Villu Arak, who heads up the main Skype blog, and Ike Roelfsema, who manages the forum side of things.

We’ll be talking about the way Skype works with communities online, and discussing how we can improve the way we talk to people about Skype — whether it’s good, bad or ugly.

Here’s a good example: yesterday, the Today programme on Radio 4 featured an interview with the chairman of the BBC Trust, Michael Lyons. When the connection failed halfway through the interview, John Humphrys revealed that he was using Skype. Good or bad? The Inquirer’s coverage and PCW’s The Test Bed offer different points of view.

As Jaanus pointed out a year ago, Skype invests a lot of time in improving the quality and reliability of calls (and perhaps not as much as it should in the quality of its door signs). It’s just a shame that the call from New Zealand (where Michael Lyons was) to London cut out in the middle of his conversation.

I debated whether or not I should blog about this - on one hand, it’s a bit embarrassing; on the other, it’s a great example of the way in which Skype can make conversations possible - and free. For a public service broadcaster like the BBC, that’s very important, and that’s ultimately why I’m writing this.

When I meet with the other bloggers next week, we’ll talk about the way we write, and what we write about, and I hope that we collectively agree to carry on telling the embarassing but fun stories as well as the ones which are fun without any embarrassment.

What’s your view? How do stories like this affect the way you think about Skype? It’dbe good to hear from you. Post a comment below, or chat to me on Skype — whichever suits you.

Oh, and John, if you’re reading, give me a shout and we’ll send someone round to make sure you’ve got your internet connection set up properly…

The BBC reported yesterday that Gamblers Anonymous are using Skype to help their members in Dumfries and Galloway to speak to their peers.

Faced otherwise with a long journey to either Carlisle or Glasgow, using Skype will allow members in the south of Scotland to get advice online using Skype’s call and chat features.

Gamblers Anonymous is kitting out its members with Skype phones so that they can get in touch for free - a move which could save them thousands of pounds a year on their current phone bills by using Skype’s free conference calling instead.

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.

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

A quick hat tip to the guys over at Excite who pointed me to the latest edition of Ofcom’s Broadband Digital Progress Report.

It mentions using Skype on your 3 X-Series, but most interesting are the statistics about VoIP usage as a whole:

At the end of 2006, one in ten UK adults said they were making calls over the internet, double the proportion that said they did this at the end of 2005. Of these, 14% said they did it daily and a further 30% did so several times per week.

An interesting graph:

— Source: Ofcom Broadband Digital Progress Report

This suggests that there are plenty of people in the UK who are receptive to using internet phone software, but who just haven’t got round to it.

I hope that Skype is easy enough to use that people see the benefits immediately, but perhaps we’re not doing enough to convert these ‘aware’ people into users.

Is there anything specifically we could do to make it easier for people to get Skype?

Of course, if growth continues at this rate perhaps we could just wait 40 years

News from the Republic of Ireland: Suzy Byrne teasingly points out that Fianna Fáil now have a Skype name (fiannafailhq) — does this mean that they’ll roll it out across the nation if they’re re-elected?

Perhaps this is where Skype could make inroads into the public sector; while government departments are no doubt tied in to long term IT contracts, the politicians who run them have much more freedom.

Maybe our representatives in Westminster, Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont could be persuaded to follow Fianna Fáil’s lead — to be honest, it’d be better if each representative had a Skype name, but one’s a good start

Does your MP, MSP or AM have a Skype name?

So the over-45s are technophobes who don’t know their RSS from their elbow, are they? Not according to a new report from Birmingham Midshires, which has found that mature surfers are an extremely net-savvy bunch.

Fifteen per cent of Brits over 45 use Skype, the same number that indulge in a spot of MySpacing and YouTubery. Canny older web users are also driving the boom in online price comparison sites and online finance management, found the first quarterly Life 2 report.

A hardcore of 14% of over-45s are termed “Micropreneurs”. These are the people for whom the internet is everything: they harness it to trade, network and build business relationships, and do the majority of their work online. Another group, the “Knowledge Traders”, account for 36% of over-45s and use internet services like Skype to broaden their horizons and share their beliefs and passions with net users around the world.

Jason Robinson, director of savings operations at Birmingham Midshires, said: “We have noticed an increasing number of customers in the over-45 age category logging on, and this report has shattered the myth of the traditional Silver Surfer. Mature internet users are online activists, and they know exactly what they want and will use the internet to get it, be it saving money or keeping in touch with family.”

As Skype chalks up 9 million concurrent users and the company’s owner eBay posts a quarterly profit rise of 24 per cent, things are suddenly looking rather sunny in the boardroom.

eBay chief exec Meg Whitman revealed that Skype registered user base tripled last year to 171m, and that Skype revenue topped $66m burst in the fourth quarter of 2006 – 164 per cent up on 2005.

Meanwhile over at eBay, the cyber-auctioneer enjoyed a particularly good Christmas as buyers hunted down elusive Wii and PS3 consoles. UK PS3-hunters have had to import them from Japanese and US eBayers after a component shortage forced Sony to push back the European launch date to late March.

The Beeb’s news website has been on the trail of Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, who’s been getting an awful lot of publicity lately for a certain web TV project. Happily, this time Niklas had his Skype chief exec’s hat on.

He’s been speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where, says BBC News, “an aura of awe surrounds him”. The reporter also confidently reveals that Skype is “striking fear into the hearts of telecom firms around the world” – you betcha!

Zennstrom is described as exhibiting “a quiet pride” when he speaks of the continuing success of Skype. He pointed out to delegates that more than 171 million users have registered with Skype so far, and 200,000 new users are signing up every day. The company’s net revenues topped $66m during the last three months of 2006 alone.

Now, revealed Zennstrom, Skype is looking for new targets. “We are going in a few different directions,” he said. Skype wants to be “where users want to use us”; they don’t want to “sit in front of a computer all the time”. Could this mean that more mobile network operators are in talks with Skype about making the software available via their handsets? Let’s hope so.

Meanwhile, at the weekend I took delivery of a shiny new Nokia phone from 3’s X-Series, which launched in November with Skype built in. The bad news is it’s only mine for a couple of weeks; the good news is that I’ll bring you a review once I’ve given it a thorough road-test.

First came Kazaa, which changed the way we bought music. Or didn’t buy it, to be strictly accurate. Then came Skype, which changed the way we made calls and allowed us to tear up our phone bills for good.

Now we have Joost, the newly-unveiled name for The Venice Project from Skype/Kazaa founders Niklas and Janus, and it looks set to do for our TV viewing what Skype did for our phone habit: allow us to do a lot more of it for a lot less money.

The new web TV service offers broadcast-quality full-screen content and full copyright guarantees – and, unbelievably, it’s free. Or maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised, judging by Niklas and Janus’ track record.

Continue reading "Will Joost be the Skype of the TV world?" »

Internet telephony is set to grow and grow in the UK for at least the next five years, according to industry-watcher Ovum. This takes us into next-generation voice – and, one would hope, a properly unbundled phone network.

“The composition of the voice market will be quite different to what we see today,” says Mark Main, senior analyst at Ovum. The changing face of the phone-calls business is largely thanks to players like Skype, according to research firm the Kelsey Group.

“Skype’s service will take business away from the telcos,” says Neal Polachek, senior vice president at Kelsey. “Even at a very low price, putting any price on the offering gives consumers a perception the service has greater value, and more consumers are likely to migrate over from traditional phone service.”

I’m loath to namecheck the telco whose “line tags” are still scuppering my attempts to switch broadband ISPs, and who charge me a fat line rental fee even though I only use my landline about once every four months. However I think it’s worth mentioning BT Retail’s claim to have amassed 1 million customers for its internet telephony offering.

One million, eh? Ovum’s Mark Main dug a little deeper and discovered that the claim is rather a loose one.

“BT implies that it has a million internet telephony users, whereas in reality anyone who takes a BT Retail Total Broadband package is automatically registered for internet telephony even if they don’t use the service.” In other words, it’s rather like God Channel 2 claiming to have 8 million viewers just because 8 million people get Sky. Sheesh, as they say in Las Vegas.

I’m now fending off jetlag from hell in a chilly East London internet cafe, but back in Las Vegas it’s still all go at CES.

Skype took the platform at the Consumer Electronics Show today to explain why there’s no version of Skype for downloading to all types of mobile phone. The reason is pretty simple, and won’t come as a suprise to anyone who’s had a mobile bill recently: carrier charges are still far too high to support it.

If you’ve got a mobile with an inexpensive data connection, it would make perfect sense to use Skype for making calls. But the bit about “inexpensive data connection” is, as yet, as rare as hen’s teeth on a flying pig.

Back in November Skype unveiled a version of the software that runs on a Nokia phone using 3’s 3G mobile phone network, giving unlimited Skype calls for a flat £5 a month. Skype versions for other mobiles were expected to follow quickly, but other carriers haven’t played ball, and have failed to cough up the appropriate low-fee or flat-fee mobile data packages.

Still, the success of the Skype/Nokia/3 launch means that other mobile operators are under pressure to rethink their data pricing strategies. Perhaps at next year’s CES we’ll see some progress…

Intriguing little story spotted on tech news site Slashdot, which claims that the police are asking members of the public to contact them using Skype if they’ve got any info about crim’nuls. Apparently, BBC News is even embedding Skype links to Crimestoppers UK.

Makes that phone number on Nick Owen’s chest look a bit prehistoric, doesn’t it?

All we need now is a Skype link on your actual telly. You know: press red to Skype Crimewatch. Or maybe you could to do your X Factor or Big Brother audition via Skype Video, so you can avoid queueing all night in the cold? The possibilities, my Skype-loving telly addict friends, are limitless.

The first beta of The Venice Project, the new web TV offering from Skype founders Janus and Niklas, is now fully cooked – and the first invitations are being dispatched to people who expressed an interest by signing up online.

“We had a bit of a last-minute frenzy to get the user interface shipshape,” admits chief exec Fredrik de Wahl on the project’s blog, “but all is well now.” Among the latest features added to the beta are a “seek” tool for finding and browsing video content (um, what’s wrong with “search”?), along with tweaks to the installer and user interface.

Being a dedicated follower of Skype and its founders, I signed up for info yonks ago, so I should be getting a beta invitation soon. Can’t wait to find out Janus and Niklas are as good at putting TV on the net as they are at cutting my phone bill. We shall see…

There’s a lot to love about India: onion bhajis, Bollywood dancing, the word “jodhpurs”. I could go on, but I won’t because it has come to my attention that the Indian government, in its infinite lack of wisdom, is proposing to ban Skype.

The authorities, which have already tried to ban blogs, claim they’re losing money due to the increasing popularity of Skype, Yahoo IM and other communication services that don’t pay the usual 12% tax and 6% fees paid by Indian telcos. Tha Man’s answer to this potential loss of revenue is to ban the lot of ‘em, which seems somewhat harsh.

Much more of this and I may have to start boycotting my bhajis.

If it’s November 8, then it must be 8 million Skype users all in one go… now that’s busy. And it’s not even the weekend. Is this a new record?

And while we’re on the subject of very big numbers, Skype now counts 136 million chat-happy people worldwide among its registered users. These merry Skypers are spread across 200 countires (are there 200 countries in the world? Name them all and I’ll buy you a beer), and 250,000 new users sign up every day. We’re gonna need a bigger boat…

Skype for Pocket PC has been downloaded five million times worldwide since it was first rolled out in April 2004. The software allows Skypers to make free calls from any Windows Mobile Pocket PC handheld, as long as they’re in a WiFi spot.

The latest version, Skype for Pocket PC 2.1, is currently supported by more than 60 devices from 20 different manufacturers – which should help to explain the huge uptake. Users in the US and Canada even get free SkypeOut to landlines and other mobile phones in North America until the end of the year. Nice!

First came Kazaa, which was big. Then came Skype, which was bigger. Could The Venice Project be even bigger? Unlikely, but the new web TV venture from Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom is certainly getting them excited in telly circles.

Janus recently set the Venice scene with a post on his blog:

“It’s simple, really – we are trying to bring together the best of TV with the best of the Internet. We think TV is one of the most powerful, engaging mass media of all time. People love TV, but they also hate TV. They love the (sometimes?) amazing storytelling, the richness, the quality itself. But they hate the linearness, the lack of choice, the lack of basic things like being able to search. And wholly missing is everything that we are now accustomed to from the Internet: tagging, recommendations, choice, and so on. TV is 507 channels and nothing on, and we want to help change that!”

Details of the project, which Janus assures us “won’t be called the Venice Project forever”, should become more clear when CEO Fredrik de Wahl takes to the stage at the Future of Television Forum in New York on 16-17 November. Watch this space for news of the full public launch.

Britain is such a nation of natterers that we can’t bear to get off the phone to answer nature’s call – so we just chat on the loo. Yes, that’s you.

According to the new Skype Talk For Britain survey, three-quarters of us talk to friends and family while we’re on the toilet, and 17 per cent have fallen asleep while chatting on the phone. “Some” of the survey’s 1,000 respondents even confessed to talking on the phone whilst driving a tank, but I don’t believe them.

“The bathroom seems to be a popular place for Britain to do most of its talking,” says Skype’s marketing maestro Alistair Shrimpton. “That goes for both men and women. People love talking on the phone as well as guessing which celebrities are the biggest chatterboxes. Of course, Jonathan Ross was crowned king of chitchat, but Graham Norton was relegated to third position.”

So who was in second place? Alistair, you can’t leave us hanging like that. Watch this space, readers – I’ll find out.

P.S: Skype’s Talk for Britain campaign means you get six months of free calls to UK landlines if you buy £10 of Skype credit between now and 31 December 2006. Click here to find out more.

Bothersome broadband messing up your Skyping? Big Brother’s gadget guy Eugene Sully can fix it for you.

A Eugene-themed press release landed in my inbox this morning, and I thought I’d share it with you. “I’m obsessed with technology,” says last year’s BB runner-up, who can apparently “offer advice, explanations, and a quirky take on all up-and-coming technology”. Like Skype!

Right, I’m off to get a Eugene interview for the Skype blog. If you have any questions for the big man, or if you are in fact Eugene Sully, let me know…

Skypedaddies Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström have been nominated as Europeans of the Year in the prestigious EV50 Awards.

Like a sort of Euro Names Oscars shortlist, the EV50 spotlights the continent’s top 50 movers and shakers. Other nominees this year include German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the groundbreaking French surgeons who performed the world’s first face transplant.

To make the list is a big deal in itself; to win would be an amazing achievement. You can make it happen! At the risk of sounding like brucie on Stricly Come Dancing, get voting now, folks. Click here to register your support for Niklas and Janus in the European Business Leaders category. Voting closes on November 10, and winners will be revealed at a gala dinner at the Cercle Royal Gaulois in Brussels on November 28.

My dream of truly mobile Skyping tiptoes ever closer, thanks to a new deal between Skype, handset maker SMC and wireless broadband operator The Cloud.

You can now make Skype calls from an SMC mobile handset in any one of The Cloud’s 8,500 UK hotspots, which tend to pop up in places like airports, hotels and universities. WiFi’s tentacles are spreading fast: the company is now in the process of “hotspotting” nine UK cities, including London and Manchester.

The main catch is that Skype will only be available if you’re using SMC’s WiFi phone, which costs about £135 plus a monthly £7 fee. But hey, it’s a start – and a Cloud rep says that they’re “actively working with (other) device providers to ensure these products work well in the public WiFi environment.”

All of which should mean many more opportunities to use Skype on the go within a few months. I’ll keep you posted!

TV is on a one-way whiz to Webville. And Skype, or at least its founders, are right at the cusp of this telly-internet convergence.

You may have heard talk of The Venice Project, the online TV distribution venture from Skype daddies Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. This week, Niklas and Janus told The Register that they’re now signing up new users for the peer to peer video streaming service, which promises to deliver high-quality, full-screen, copyright-hassle-free TV over the net.

Unfortunately you’ll have to hold your horses for a bit before you can join in. The Venice Project is currently in internal beta, though some commentators predict that it’ll be in public beta by Christmas.

Continue reading "Venice Project edges ever closer" »

So, San Jose State University won’t be banning Skype after all. Quite right, too. Skype has huge potential value as a long-distance education and research tool – and, of course, it’s extremely cheap.

Remember Dr Doug Yu? Skype has transformed his working life down in the Peruvian rainforest, where he works with a group of native Americans called the Matsigenka. Thanks to Skype, Doug and the team can maintain a “virtual lab group,” working remotely with each other whether they’re in Brazil, Germany, Peru or China.

Skype has appeased San Jose by enabling a firewall-friendly version of the software that, for example, can have its file transfer feature switched off. Not ideal for students wanting to trade research notes, but better than nothing. Perhaps now more universities will start to recognise Skype’s power for enhancing their role as educators and centres of research – not to mention its capacity for saving them a few quid.

Pity the poor fool who tries to ban his or her underlings from using Skype.

This week’s prize luddites are the bigwigs at San Jose State University, who (like some UK universities, lest we get too smug about this) want to ban their staff and students from using Skype.

The big-wigs, it seems, are concerned that “outsiders” can communicate using the university’s computer network. Or could the real reason be that they don’t want their staff and students chatting on Skype while they should be working? Kevin Schmidt, campus network programmer at the University of California in Santa Barbara, gave the game away: “What we wind up with [when students use Skype] is a fair amount of traffic that has nothing to do with university business.”

What, like when they use email? Or when their friends come to visit? Atrocious behaviour.

San Jose State University students and faculty members have responded with a wealth of angry blog posts. Steve Sloan, who teaches journalism and has been a member of the IT department for more than 20 years, wrote a particularly eloquent piece entitled ‘Why our students need Skype’.

Continue reading "Skypers shall overcome" »

Ace artsy fartsy reviews website Monsters and Critics put down the popcorn for a few minutes yesterday to earwig on Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, who was in Warsaw talking about how all phone calls will be free within a decade.

(M&C is the web’s sole source of this story, so I can’t help wondering whether it was just a dream they had. But I like it, so I’m going with it anyway.)

“Skype’s vision has always been to make everyone around the world talk for free,” said Niklas, guest of Polish web portal Grupa Onet. Also present – now here’s where I’m thinking it was all a dream – was Polish union leader and olden days Thatcher-botherer, Lech Walesa, who must have been delighted to hear Niklas say: “In ten years’ time all telephone calls will certainly be free, whether you’re calling someone on a computer or telephone.” Power to the people!

Niklas’s Polish hosts wanted to know whether they’d be seeing a repeat of Skype’s “free calls to landlines” project, currently wowing the citizens of France and previously a big success in the US. Alas, the answer was no. (What about the UK, eh, Niklas? We love you, Niklas…)

Got anything planned for Sunday? Nursing your hangover with a bacon sarnie in front of EastEnders, perhaps?

Jo Huxster and the gloriously-named Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent (‘Ants’ for short) will be putting their feet up, too - because they’ll have just got home to Brighton after travelling the 12,000 miles from Bankok in their pink tuk-tuk, Ting Tong.

Before we address what this has to do with Skype, let’s get the Ting Tong thing cleared up first. It is not a pet name for something rude. Tuk-tuks like Ting Tong are Thai scooter taxis. Elsewhere in south-east Asia they’re known as auto rickshaws or cabin cycles, and absolutely no-where in the world are they known as a comfy ride. Imagine a beach donkey mating with a three-wheeled moped, and then imagine riding the result from London to Edinburgh 30 times.

To distract themselves from their tortured bottoms, Jo and Ants spent much of their 14-week journey doing what all enterprising gals do when the going gets tough: they rang up their friends. And, to avoid eating into the £25,000 they’ve raised for mental health charity Mind, they used Skype.

Judging by their Tuk to the Road blog, there was plenty to gas about. Their epic trip saw them braving Hmong rebels in Laos, enduring earthquakes in China and getting all manner of hassle from Russian police. I’ve had some barnstorming Skype chats, but none quite like that. I must get out more.

Now that they’re home, the girls will