July 2008

Skype will be playing a prominent role in the coverage on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2 of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions later this month..

Broadcast & Cable reported Wednesday: "The networks will... use some new technology to enhance their coverage. Correspondents will be armed with Flip cameras and Skype-enabled laptops, allowing for on-the-fly reports from inside and out of the sessions."

C-SPAN's DNC coverage will air Aug. 25-29 and its RNC coverage will air Aug. 31-Sept. 5.

Earlier in the campaign, this blog reported on how Skype was being used by Sen. Barack Obama's supporters to reduce costs for reaching out to voters.

"Political-party conventions remain interesting to the millions of Americans who follow national politics," C-SPAN president Susan Swain said in announcing the coverage. "Convention speeches become previews for future generations of national leaders. Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were all keynote convention speakers prior to their national runs."

Skype President Josh Silverman in a rare blog entry discusses the importance of listening to customers and how it shapes Skype product development.

He said Skype is taking consumer input so seriously it now has a weekly "Feedback War Room to keep things right - a first in our almost five-year history."

He said: "You may have noticed the mid-June launch of Skype 4.0 beta 1 for Windows. While creating this revamped version of Skype was partly a practical move - not unlike moving from a tiny student flat to a more spacious home - it also belies a significant effort to analyze Skype's evolving role in people's lives and to see the findings reflected in how it looks, behaves and interacts. As one user put it, these days, Skype is 'more than just a chat program'."

Continue reading "Skype President Josh Silverman describes how listening to customers leads to innovation" »

E-mail is losing its relevance to teens and adults alike.

We reported on this phenomenon the other day.

Rachel Leibrock, of McClatchy Newspapers, provides some anecdotes, spinning off from the Skype/Harris Interactive survey and another study by Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"I use e-mail really sparingly," Peter Deng, 17, of Sacramento, told her.
She notes: "E-mail, he explains, is reserved for communicating with teachers or -- oh, the irony -- getting MySpace and Facebook notifications."

Jim Schraith, 50, still uses e-mail, but regularly augments it with other platforms.

"I use Skype for business communication (because) it's fairly immediate," he said..
"I'm still getting as much -- or more (e-mail)-- as I did two years ago, but a lot of the quick-communication e-mails have gone away, replaced by Skype or instant messaging."

One of the ways, hotels run up the bill is through charges for phone service.

So it's refreshing to hear about a hotel chain that is offering phone service with Skype as a guest service to save money for the chain and its customers.

TMCnet's Shireen Dee reports on how the Firmdale Hotels, boutique chain in London and soon New York,
Is using VoSKY's system with Skype in conjunction with an existing telecom system to lower calling costs.

"The PBX-to-Skype Gateway enables customers to make overseas calls using Skype, and as a result is making Firmdale Hotels more popular among its guests," Dee said. "Using VoSKY's system, customers can now contact the hotels via the Internet, with no charges, thereby making a significant reduction in international calling costs."

Mark Rupert Read, group IT manager at Firmdale Hotels, said in a statement. "It was also extremely easy to integrate with our existing infrastructure, as it's literally plug and play."

He added: "We have been receiving up to 50 Skype calls per day, and our customers and partners themselves have remarked on the positive difference it has made to them."

Way back in the mid-1990s, e-mail was welcomed as a fresh, new means of communications. It was seen as an antidote to "snail mail."

Not any more. Now its the new snail mail.

A new study commissioned by Skype and conducted by Harris Interactive of 3,091 U.S. online adults confirms that many of us, especially younger people, are opting for other means of communications, including instant messaging, social networks and of course audio and video calling, such as from Skype.

The survey was of users of e-mail, instant messaging, online text messaging, social-network sites and Web-based voice and video calling.

The majority (59 percent) say the immediacy of these newer communication options makes them preferable to e-mail. The survey revealed that 35 percent of those using newer forms of online communications have replaced all or some of their personal e-mail communication with other online communication methods.

Continue reading "Survey shows untimely e-mail lost glow, being replaced by IM, social networks, voice/video calling" »

Uyen Nguyen, 32, is in a bureaucratic nightmare.

As a result of an error in the immigration process, she is stuck in Vietnam and won't be able to get back to the United States for eight years.

She is being kept apart from her husband Loc, 38, and their daughter Cynthia, 5, who are in Clearwater, Fla., in the Tampa Bay area.

The family keeps in touch on Skype Video calls.

The Clearwater Citizen reports: "Loc and Uyen are grateful for the Internet so they can have regular, affordable contact with each other. One night, Cynthia taught her mother her favorite song through Skype and the webcam."

At the Persistent Illusion blog, a strong case is made for using Skype.

PI complains that her Verizon bill last month amounted to $285. (Yikes.) She notes:
"We can't figure out how we used more than 1400 minutes, and went two hundred dollars over our regular bill. But it doesn't matter, because I have had enough."

She investigated and decided that Skype was the way to go. She told her husband "about how awesome Skype is, how we could have 10,000 minutes a month to call anywhere in the U.S. and Canada, how we could get a phone number that people could call in to, how it would free us from the tyranny of Verizon's evilness, and how cheapcheapcheap (!) it is. The only hiccup occurred when we found out that Skype cannot call 9-1-1. But instead of objecting to the idea outright, we did a little research.

"The solution? We are getting pay-as-you-go phones. So, yes. It's a cell phone...with no plan."

She notes: "(I)n reality - I LOVE SKYPE. Chris set up the equipment with a minimum of fuss, but if you are completely techno-ignorant I would suggest dragging a computer geek home with you. (It wasn't much more complicated than installing a printer driver.)"

You can run through PI's economic analysis at her blog. She says her savings from Skype will save her $576 this year and $816 in future years. PI said: "$816 is basically a well executed vacation to the Caribbean!"

Some great comments ensue.

Dreemwhrld notes: "I downloaded the free version of Skype a few months ago. I call my parents as often as I can with it. My favorite part? The video!! Now I can see my parents when I call them and they can see me, something I never wanted to pay for on a cell phone (and something most cell phones can't do anyway). I can conference call with my sister and parents, or send an instant message to one of my friends, and its all free. There's no way I could afford international calling to talk to my family, but now anyone with a web cam or a microphone can talk to me. The usefulness of the internet will never cease to amaze me."

Paul Devlin, five-time Emmy Award-winner and Independent Spirit Award nominee, has been doing some creative financing in the making of his latest work, Blast!, about cosmologists launching a special telescope to the top of the atmosphere via a high-altitude balloon. (Blast is short for Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope.)

He invited his supporters to help finance Blast! for as little as $19.95 as "Blast! Participants," who have access to deleted scenes and production update videos to $40,000 for "Blast! Adventure Participants," who can host a lecture and get a guest lecture from the director and the lead scientist.

The Independent Documentary Association (IDA) wanted Devlin to join a "DOC U " panel scheduled for Monday in LA: "Creative Financing: What's the Deal?"

However, IDA board member and filmmaker Sara Z. Hutchison said Devlin was tied up in France on an assignment.

But she said Peter Broderick, president of Paradigm Consulting and moderator of the panel, and Sandra Ruch, IDA executive director, were aware that Skype had been used last May at the Cannes Film Festival, connecting some Hollywood types to a meeting in France.

James Cameron (Academy Award-winning director of Titanic, Aliens, The Terminator, etc.) and cinematographer Vince Pace participated in a 90-minute session from their Hollywood studio via a live Skype video call to talk about the stereoscopic camera they developed and are using to film the 3D movie Avatar.

So thanks to creative communications, Devlin will be joining the panel Monday from France via a Skype Video call. (Other panelists include Broderick; Jim Gilliam, Brave New Films; Danae Ringlemann, IndieGoGo; Jill Sobule, recording artist.)

Hutchison said many in the IDA community are familiar with Skype, especially "taking a meeting on Skype" and holding IDA committee meetings on Skype audio calls.
"People use Skype all the time," she said.

Video is a nice addition for the visual artists.

This is Skype's latest foray into the world of documentaries. Last April, a documentary came out about a blind adventurer who used Skype to "see."