September 2008

One month ago, Skype celebrated its fifth anniversary.

On Sunday, the software company hit another milestone: the billionth download of Skype software.

CEO Josh Silverman noted at the main blog:

"A few minutes ago, something pretty cool happened. Someone, somewhere in the world, downloaded the billionth copy of Skype.

"It took us three and a half years, from August 2003 to February 2007, to reach the 500 million download mark, and then just 19 months for another 500 million copies to be downloaded. That's a pretty dizzying feat for a five-year old-software company, and one that we're all very proud of."

Silverman said Skype isn't resting on its laurels:

"Our ambition to make Skype available on as many devices as possible...bringing people closer to their friends, loved ones and colleagues - anywhere in the world; at work, home or play; and on any device.

"Here's to the next billion."

In her article "Skyping The Election," writer Elizabeth Woyke, picks up what we've been seeing this political season: Skype is helping the presidential campaigns reach out to voters.

We saw it in the primaries, when Obama's Silicon Valley campaign used Skype to save money and reach voters.

People in Europe who favored Obama used Skype to reach out to people in the US, encouraging them to vote for their candidate.

C-SPAN and NBC used Skype in its coverage of the Democratic and GOp conventions.

And last week, both political camps used Skype in a first to discuss tech policy issues

Forbes said this weekend volunteers in Santa Cruz, Calif., will use Skype-loaded laptops to target voters in Nevada, a key swing state.

"People wanted to have political discussions, and they were looking for technology to enable it," says Christopher Libertelli, Skype's senior director of government and regulatory affairs, told the magazine. "We can accommodate anyone who wants to have a conversation," Libertelli says. "It's a very democratic medium."

Forbes said:

"(Libertelli) is already planning other ways Skype can connect the presidential campaigns to voters and vice versa. One idea is helping voters call congressmen about laws they're considering. The company has approached both the McCain and Obama campaigns about linking the candidates to voters using Skype. The Michigan Republican Party offers one model: Members have been making video calls to rural constituents via Skype.

"Libertelli is, naturally, also interested in having Sens. McCain and Obama speak to each other via Skype. 'There was that recent press cycle about whether McCain invented the BlackBerry,' he notes. 'It would be interesting to see if the candidates know how to use Skype.'"

Obama seems to have caught on to Skype's potential, but Libertelli said McCain's camp is paying attention.

"The Obama campaign is very interested in using technology to organize and create more transparency inside government," Libertelli says. "The McCain campaign is coming to understand the power of the Internet."

Of Skype, Libertelli said, "We're from the Internet party. We support anyone who supports innovation on the Internet."

The Virginia Film Festival, which just announced its program for Oct. 30-Nov. 2, will be looking at "aliens" in a variety of ways, from extraterrestrials to illegal aliens.

Skype will be pitching in at the Virginia Film Festival, as it did earlier this year at Cannes.

Skype will enable Ghazel, a noted Iranian-French video and performance artist, to appear at the festival after she was unable to get permission to enter the United States.

The Festival reports: "Ghazel became even more relevant to the (alien) theme when she encountered what she deemed to be humiliating and unreasonable visa roadblocks from U.S. immigration personnel due to her Iranian heritage and canceled her Festival visit."

Bad Jens, a newsletter for Iranian women, talks to Ghazel about her art.

Back in 2003, MTV introduced the concept of "punk'd." That's where they play a practical joke on someone, recording it on video for all the world to see.

Now a couple of jokers have introduced "SkypeD Yah." The idea is to position your Skype Video window over an image and then snap a photo for some tomfoolery. (When was the last time you used word? A first for me.)

The results are hilarious. You can post your callers' images over movie stars, rock stars, derelicts, whomever you wish.

SkypeD Yah even has Facebook link where you can post your favorites for possible inclusion on the SkypeD Yah blog.

Watch out. You can be punk'd and SkypeD at the same time.

OneWebDay , patterned after Earth Day for the Internet eco-system, will be celebrated on Monday (Sept. 22) with events all over the planet to focus attention this year on the value of online participation in democracy, to focus on local Internet concerns and to create a global constituency to protect the Net.

With Ohio being one of the key battlegrounds for 2008, it's only appropriate that the two presidential campaigns will be participating in a OneWebDay event starting at 10:30 a.m. EDT in Cincinnati, sponsored by Media Bridges , Cincy's media arts & education center, which provides the education, equipment and environment to assist people in communicating effectively through media.

And Skype will be in the center of the action.

Christopher Libertelli, Skype's senior director of government & regulatory affairs, explains how:

"Skype's goal is to enable conversations. In this case, we're enabling a conversation between the two Presidential campaigns about the future of the Internet.

"This is the first time that I know of that campaigns are using a technology like Skype, which is emblematic of the fight for an open Internet. On Monday, you will have both Republicans and Democrats using the same technology to have a conversation about the laws and regulations that would govern the future of the Internet. It's a tangible example of what's at stake."

Gigi Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge will speak on behalf of Senator Obama's campaign. Michael Powell, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will represent Senator McCain's camp.

In an interview, Libertelli provided some perspective on the campaigns' tech policies.

Skype USA: Net Neutrality is one of the key differences between the candidates? What is Net Neutrality?
Libertelli: Net Neutrality is about whether we're going to have an open Internet or a closed Internet, meaning whether we're going to have laws where phone companies and cable operators can decide what kind of traffic gets onto the Internet, or whether we're going to have laws that prevent cable and phone companies from deciding which kind of Web traffic goes fast or slow or which is favored or disfavored.

Skype has a clear position on Net Neutrality. We want a non-discrimination rule that protects the Skype experience on the Internet.

Skype USA: Isn't this issue bigger than Skype?
Libertelli: It's industry-wide. Absolutely. The question of innovation on the Web includes Skype; but it is also much bigger than Skype.

For the last year and a half, Skype has been advocating applying openness rules to the wireless Web. Right now, mobile phone companies block the Skype experience on cell phones.

Skype USA: Wasn't the FCC divided on this?
Libertelli: The FCC is still considering Skype's petition to open up mobile phones.

Skype USA: We're talking about the Presidential campaign here. Is this only a big deal for Skype? Why should consumers care?
Libertelli: This is an important issue for the consumer. The issue of Net Neutrality is one where there are some pretty stark differences between the McCain approach and the Obama approach. I cannot say that Net Neutrality is as important as an energy policy, financial market regulation or some of the other things that the Presidential candidates are talking about. But it is one of the most important technology policy issues that both campaigns are thinking about.

Skype USA: The Obama campaign very clearly states that they're in favor of Net Neutrality and McCain states the opposite.
Libertelli: What will be interesting is to hear the McCain and Obama people talking about openness using Skype. This is a moment where people can see what's at stake. The issue is whether these kinds of conversations will be blocked by the network operators.

Skype USA: Which candidate supports a rule to stop blocking if it occurs?
Libertelli: Obama proposes a rule that would make that practice illegal. It is a question for the McCain campaign: Does their stance block the blockers? Does it allow for these Skype conversations to happen on the Internet?

Skype USA: Why does McCain take this position?
Libertelli: The current telecom policy is a deregulatory policy. The question is whether we're going to have a continuation of these deregulatory policies or whether voters want change and a movement away from deregulation in telecom.

Skype USA: Doesn't the public sometimes need regulation?
Libertelli: Recent events on Wall Street suggest that safeguards to protect consumers may be necessary.

Skype USA: Are we seeing a backlash toward a pro-regulation age?
Libertelli: I think we're heading back to an efficient regulation age.

Skype USA: So maybe I'll finally be able get a 3 Skypephone mobile phone and make a call on Skype in the U.S. as I recently did in the U.K.?
Libertelli: That's where the rubber meets the road. Our openness policy is designed to make Skype available to U.S. consumers so they can make free calls. That is what this is about for us. It's to create a situation where you can go out and buy an unlocked GSM phone and access to the Internet, download Skype and off you go.

There have been some baby steps towards more openness. There have been press releases from wireless operators. We filed a lletter last week with the FCC that made it clear that if the Commission thought that the wireless industry was going to speed toward a broad policy of openness, they may have been mistaken.

Skype USA: Should we vote for president on the basis of Net Neutrality?
Libertelli: In part.

Skype USA: Where else do the campaigns differ? What about broadband policy?
Libertelli: There are some differences there. In order to have an open Internet, you have to have access to the Internet in the first place. People in rural areas need help getting onto the Internet at affordable rates.

Senator Obama has proposed a way of funding broadband Internet service to those areas by using the Universal Service Fund, an enormous pot of money that is used to keep phone service affordable in rural areas. It's phone-centric funding. Sen. Obama wants to repurpose that money and make it friendlier for broadband services.

It appears that Senator McCain's approach is more skeptical that the fund should be used for rural broadband. His approach is different. He has proposed some tax credits that would be used by companies to roll out broadband.

To take this discussion up a level, the purpose of OneWebDay is to bring activists, academics and entrepreneurs around the planet together and celebrate the Internet for one day and to focus on Net Neutrality for one day, so policymakers can see that there is a constituency out there that cares about openness on the Internet. We're going to see that on Monday when there is a conversation between the two campaigns that is facilitated by Skype.

Skype USA: By the way, has Skype made contributions to either of these campaigns?
Libertelli: Skype doesn't have a PAC (Political Action Committee). Skype isn't an entity that can make political contributions.

Oprah experimented with Skype during her last season on TV as well on the Web.

Well, Oprah's back with a new season. And she's using Skype more than ever.

In case you missed it, the media queen used Skype in four out of five of her first programs. All told, she's used Skype nine times.

She fondly refers to "Skypers" and has mentioned how Skype is enabling her to see viewers in their homes.

In case Oprah comes calling at my house, I hope she can give me a heads up so I can comb my hair, change from PJs and pick up around the house.

Microsoft challenged design firms to come up with a new approach to Web design to encourage participation in the democratic process.

The winner of the PhizzPop Design Challenge was the Washington, D.C-based design firm Cynergy System's "ben" system interconnected, cross-platform applications

ben is dedicated to Ben Franklin, who no doubt would be a blogger extraordinaire if he were alive today. And it is a play on the phrases "be informed" and "be involved."

ben, which is not yet available to the public, has the ability to analyze mass quantities of news content, print or video, and put them on a political array from left to right. It also can find political events in which a person can participate.

Dave Wolf , VP of sales and marketing at Cynergy, presented ben to several hundred attendees at the Chicago New Media Summit. ben and its brother apps earlier in the year had won PhizzPop at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

A third part of the ben--known as "Tiny ben"-- enables users to communicate online with their reps.

Wolf explains:

"When our grandparents, listening to Walter Cronkite, heard a story that excited them or upset them, they picked up the phone and called their representative.

"That level of engagement is gone these days, and to a large degree, technology and the Internet have pushed it away. So we asked ourselves, can we bring it back? How? And that's where the mobile device and VoIP work came in."

His team built a phone application into Facebook. ben can browse Facebook for news. Then, the user can click on an image of an application known as "Tiny ben," which enables users to respond immediately to the news by calling their representatives.

In the demo at South by Southwest, a call was put through to the Obama campaign. A message was left in VoiceMail.

I asked Wolf afterward if ben could work with Skype. He confirmed that it did. For demo purposes, he used another VoIP product.

Ben was only an experiment. They say democracy is an experiment as well. But let's hope that ben is unleashed to encourage the democratic process.

Gotta' believe that Ben Franklin would have approved of Tiny ben.

The last I spoke with my friend Chris Martin I had made an accidental pocket dial via Skype on a 3 Skypephone while I was in London and he was in his suburban Chicago office.

Increasingly, Martin told me has been turning to Skype to run his public relations business. I wanted to learn more and hoped to catch up with sooner or later.

It turned out to be sooner and just serendiptitously as a pocket dial.

I signed in to attend the Chicago New Media conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art .

Minutes later, Martin had signed in and happened to see my name. I already had disappeared into the auditorium.

At lunchtime, I was meeting with an friend at the Water Tower and noticed that Martin had sent me an e-mail, asking that I text him. When I got back to the MCA, I texted him that I was in the lobby and he came out found me. Aren't communications amazing?

So he gave me the scoop on how Skype changed his business.

"Skype allows me to communicate over the phone--the core of my business--more inexpensively than I did with AT&T," he said. "I got rid of my business phone."

Now he spends less than $40 a year for long distance, compared with the $1,200 AT&T charged him.

But there's more to this story than saving the money.

Martin says that Skype enables him to do three things he couldn't do before:

--Make easy, inexpensive conference calls with clients.

--Keep an orderly, up-to-date contact list right at hand. "I couldn't do that with my landline," he said.

--Easily record interviews with medical doctors, podiatrists and nurses, which provides quotes and information for his press releases. He uses Call Graph , which produces recordings in the mp3 format. Like other recording programs, it also provides a log of time spent on calls, a handy feature for consultants who track time.

Martin next hopes to produce podcasts from his interviews and may explore Video calls and chat.

Martin says Skype rocked his world.

How has Skype rocked yours? Why not share your story in the comments?

In his interview with Josh Silverman, Skype CEO, Gigaom blogger Om Malik asks: "Where is Skype for the iPhone?"

Silverman's response? "Stay tuned."

He told Malik: ""We need to be on all devices...Skype needs to be everywhere."

Malik: "While (Silverman) wouldn't get into the specifics, he pointed out that, with minimal promotion, Skype for Pocket PC devices has been a big hit -- adding up to nearly 7 million downloads. This response is why Skype is looking at all devices such as BlackBerry and iPhone, but not sharing many details."

Silverman: "People don't want just voice, they are looking for presence and chatting."

In a video interview, Silverman and Malik discuss "the beta of Skype 4.0, the eBay relationship and the Skype-killer client being plotted by telecom operators amongst various things."

Over at BusinessWeek.com, Silverman told columnist Catherine Holahan about 30% of Skype's members use videoconferencing. Presence and chat also are hot features.

Silverman told her: "Communication is being transformed without people realizing it."

He maintains: "The telephone companies are not going to invent the communications of the future."

Continue reading "Skype CEO Josh Silverman meets the bloggers" »

American Airlines and Aircell, the provider of American's new Gogo Internet service, have been going out of their way to block use of Skype and other Voice Over the Net services on aircraft.

Skype's grounded: Gogo sniffs out and stops Skype use. American and Aircell feel that Skype calls would disturb other passengers--though I should note that air phone services have been available for years and somehow we all survived.

Now flight attendants are raising a new concern, what VoIP Watch blogger Andy Abramson calls the "virtual mile high club." In other words, Internet porn at 30,000 feet.

The attendants want the airline to block porn sites on the service. They don't want to be exposed to porn and they don't want innocent passengers to be exposed either.

It's a sticky wicket, Mary Schlangenstein reported on Bloomberg.com

``It's a tricky door to open,'' Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy and Information Center in Washington told Bloomberg. ``Where do you draw the line once you start policing the information your customers can access?''

American's attendants don't want to become ``moral policemen,'' said Frank Bastien, a spokesman at the union's headquarters. Attendants also don't want to be exposed to laptop images of violence or pornography, he said.

``It's a real concern to our members,'' Bastien said. American ``put on filters that will prevent people from making Wi-Fi phone calls, and they don't seem to have any qualms about doing that. Where's the protection for other things out there?''

Why the fuss? If people were determined to view porn to while the time away on a transcontinental flight, couldn't they bring DVDs on board and view them on their laptops? Is this a problem? How do the attendants deal with it?

Using Skype to reach out to friends and family in the air sounding more and more like pretty tame stuff.

Let's hope everyone behaves and eventually these issues are ironed out so the day comes for Skype in the sky comes on American and the other airlines that will be offering the service.

I was caught my old Chicago Sun-Times colleague film reviewer Richard Roeper making a star turn on the season premier of HBO's "Entourage."

Rich was on "a TV show reviewing movies within a TV show" panning Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) in the biopic "Medellin" in which Chase played drug lord Pablo Escobar in a "movie within a TV show."

I suddenly spotted another old friend. At least I think I did.

Was Johnny "Drama" Chase (Kevin Dillon) (Vince's brother) making a Skype Video call on his Mac laptop from his LA pad to his girlfriend in France? Sure looked like it.

The lines between make-believe and reality were blurring.

The upcoming election is big news in the USA. But there's no reason to wait until November to vote--albeit it in a different sort of election.

BusinessWeek has opened its online polls.

And Skype is in the running for the best "Online Tools" for Calling.

The competition is pretty stiff so get over to the BusinessWeek site
and click for your favorite.

You also can vote on the best new Web site, the most influential
person on the Web, information, fun and money sites.

As we say in Chicago: Vote early and often.

The polls close Sept. 12. BusinessWeek will publish the results on
Sept. 29 in the pub's acclaimed "2008 Best of the Web" edition.

Skype isn't just for talking. It can be a tool for learning, especially music.

Musicians who teach lessons remotely over Skype have been featured in this blog.

Now writer Linda L. Briggs describes in current edition of T.H.E. Journal how two Pennsylvania teachers interested in music and technology brought composers into the classroom through Skype Video.

Joseph Pisano, a music professor and conductor at Grove City College, and Travis Weller, a composer, instrumental music instructor, and band director, have been exploring Skype's potential.

Continue reading "Composers, students make beautiful music Skype" »

Nick Wright updates this summer's Skype laughing campaign on the main blog.

He said:

"Since the launch on July 1st, the video has been seen by almost 6 million people worldwide around the internet but what has really rocked our world is that almost 7,000 of you left a video response in our player. A big thank you to everyone who participated . Out of all those, we've added about 450 great laughs to our chain, which now comes in at around one hour and fifteen minutes. To give you a little taster, here's a short hilarious preview of the full chain:"

He said Skype is thanking participants in the laughing academy with some free time:

"We thought the least we could do would be to say thanks to all those that contributed to the chain by offering them Skype credit for 5 hours free calls to landlines and mobiles on Skype. So, if you find yourself appear in the chain (up until August 31st), please send an e-mail to hahaha@skypelaughterchain.com, including your name, Skype ID, the country you currently live in and 2 pictures of yourself so we can identify you in the chain. Please get back to us by September 30th to claim your voucher."

Philadelphia Fox 29 reporter John Bolaris couldn't get his broadcast out on Hurricane Gustav the usual way: The Cajundome in Lafayette, La., from which he was set to broadcast to viewers back in Philly, was in danger of collapsing. He had to evacuate.

He said he had "no way of communicating." No way until opting to broadcast back to Philadelphia on Skype Video "using our age of technology."

With winds howling outside his hotel window at 80 miles per hour, about 15 miles from the storm's center, Bolaris was able to reach viewers in the City of Brotherly Love.