Skype Around the World

NYC Fashion Week: the glitz, the glamour, the Skype video calls?! That's right; this Fashion Week, Skype will be in the mix.

Fashion designer Norma Kamali, a big Skype fan, has teamed up with us to offer one lucky fan the opportunity to view her OMO (On My Own) collection Fashion Week presentation on September 17 via Skype video call. The contest winner will also be able to ask Norma a question about the collection and win one of her coveted "all-in-one" garments.

Feeling lucky? Get into the front row by entering the contest. Rules and entry instructions can be found here.

This contest is just the latest move by Norma to give access to the often exclusive world of fashion via technology.

She told us, "I believe in the democratization of fashion and technology is accelerating this process. I am grateful that I can utilize Skype, the Internet communications software that connects millions of people around the world, to bring one fan into my show and let them experience the excitement that is Fashion Week in NYC."

We're excited, too, that we can partner with Norma to allow a Skype user an insider's view into a world that most fashion lovers don't get to experience.

For those fans who don't win the contest, but still want to view Norma's Fashion Week presentation and will be in NYC on September 17, they can stop by the Apple store in Soho (located at 103 Prince Street) and see the show live. A podcast of the presentation will also be available for download via the iTunes store in the weeks following the show.

Over the past few days, I've spotted some interesting news stories like this and this about "The Connecting Families" program in the state of Alabama. It sets a great community service example and is a wonderful use of Skype. Through a partnership between the Alabama Public Library Service and Alabama Governor Bob Riley's ConnectingALABAMA Broadband Initiative, 100 libraries across the state will participate in a program that will help connect troops and their families who are thousands of miles apart.

Earlier this week, Tuscaloosa Public Library in Alabama kicked off its participation in the Connecting Families project. Three new Apple Mac computers, loaded with Skype software, were installed in the library to allow military families to communicate over video calls with family members in the U.S. armed forces.

"We're grateful not only for our troops but also for the families who serve by their side, even though thousands of miles often separate them," Gov. Bob Riley said in a press release. "Like our soldiers, the families sacrifice so much. Anytime we have an opportunity to help our brave troops and their families back home, we must take it."

My understanding is that Alabama is the only state today that offers such a program. I think Alabama is onto something big here, and sets a great example for other states. Being in the military can no doubt be a struggle, coupled with isolation being apart from family and children. We're proud and inspired to see that Skype can be used in such a way that brings comfort to military families in Alabama, giving them an opportunity to connect with loved ones overseas in meaningful ways.

Staci Pies is director of Government and Regulatory Affairs for Skype, where she works at the state and federal level to drive public policies that protect consumer access to innovative technologies.

Josh Silverman spent the day at the annual State of the Net Conference in Washington DC, where the hot topic of discussion was the state of the global economy, and the impending passage of President-elect Obama’s economic stimulus package.

This stimulus package currently includes proposals to bring broadband Internet service to the entire country. The FCC can play an important role in doing this by reforming the Federal Universal Service Fund, to support broadband connections in rural and low-income areas. This will benefit the entire country by creating significant economic and democratic opportunities for all US residents.

Today, anyone who is making or receiving landline phone calls using a phone network pays a portion of their phone bill into a fund that is used to subsidize the phone network in high cost and rural areas of the country.

At the moment, this fund subsidizes only narrowband networks, which are of limited value. Skype, as well as many other organizations which understand the value of broadband connections, believe that the Universal Service Fund should be used to provide everyone in the US with access to affordable, open and neutral broadband connections.

This will allow people across the US to take advantage of life-changing broadband services and applications, Skype included, of course.

At Skype, we believe that people should have the ability to use Skype over any broadband connection and on any broadband-enabled device. Given that the Universal Service Fund is funded by US taxpayers, Skype believes that service providers that receive money should be subject to two conditions:

Continue reading "The State of the Net - reforming the Universal Service Fund" »

Susan, who with her twin does the 5 Minutes for Mom blog, shares how Skype enables her family to stay in touch with her husband Rob's family in Itaty.

When her in-laws signed up for internet service, her brother-in-law set up a webcam and Skype. It has been a big hit.

Susan said: "For Nonno and Nonna, seeing and hearing their little granddaughters through the computer is priceless.

"Every Saturday morning, we call Italy computer to computer through Skype. Julia loves to show off her toys to her little cousin Emily and say 'Ciao' to all her aunts and uncles. It means so much to us that Julia can still be seeing her family in Italy every week and really knowing who they are. She constantly talks about Nonno and Nonna and her memories of being there on their farm stay fresher when she can see and talk to them regularly."

New York Army National Guard Sgt. Eric Farina is in Afghanistan this Hanukkah.

But his wife Melissa and sons Gavin, 9, Jake , 7, and Ben, 5, plan to join him to light the candles for the Jewish Festival of Lights--via Skype.

Melissa Farina told Long Island, N.Y. Newsday
she plans to celebrate the holiday by lighting the menorah while on Skype Video.

"My plan is to try to make it as normal as possible...," she said. "We'll try to get on Skype with him so he can be watch us lighting the candles and exchanging presents."

Hanukkah is celebrated over eight days by lighting candles and sharing gifts.

Melissa says when Eric returns in January, she plans to light a ninth candle.

Wałęsa Institute in Poland is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Lech Wałęsa winning the Nobel Prize, holding a conference to remind people of the impact of the Solidarity movement.

Skype is a technology partner for the event, enabling Nobel laureates unable to attend in person to participate using Skype Video calls.

Peter Parkes shares some of the history of Solidarity in Poland along with the plans for the conference on the main Skype blog.

And there's a video in which Wałęsa talks about the importance of communications and demonstrates the use of Skype Video:

Arabic is one of the most common languages on the planet.

Estimates vary. But hundreds of millions of people speak Arabic.

Now Skype has a Web page for Arabic speakers.

Oksana Morina gives the details on the main Skype blog.

She notes: "Skype is all about conversation - and we realize that it's sometimes hard to have a conversation with someone when you don't speak the same language.

"That's why we try to add new languages to our repertoire when we can, and today we've launched an Arabic version of the Skype website. For the hundreds of millions of Arabic speakers across the globe, Skype now speaks the way you do."

Every weekday, around noon, Erin Crispin checks in on Skype Video with her parents, Jim and Karen Cochran, of Mechanicsburg, Pa.

"The kids (Abby, 4; Elijah, 2) love it when I pick them up at preschool to talk to Mimi and Papa," said Crispin, 28, who also has seven-month-old Naomi.

Nothing unusual about this--except Crispin and her parents are separated by more than 5,000 miles and seven time zones.

Erin is the wife of Joe Crispin, 29, a former point guard with the Phoenix Suns, who was part of the 2001 Penn State team that upset the national powerhouse North Carolina Tarheels in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. In recent years, Crispin has been playing abroad.

Erin also is the author of the Married to a Baller: My Life As A Basketball Wife blog, where she tells life as an expat.

The Crispins have spent five seasons in five countries outside the United States over the past five years. Elijah was born in Italy and Naomi was born in Bandirma, Turkey on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara across from Istanbul.

Since last December, Joe has been playing for Banvit--named for a poultry company sponsor--in the Turkish Basketball League.

Erin said Skype has helped the family stay in touch with friends and family:

--When Joe is on the road, he calls in on Skype.

--The Crispins speak to their parents and grandparents on Skype as well as friends in the United States and Europe. "My grandparents' faces just light up at Video," she said.

--The family also has a online number in New Jersey that friends use to call them.

Erin said one of the more difficult times for the Crispins was when they first moved to Turkey and didn't have internet service for almost two months. "I didn't realize how much I had depended on it. I felt out of sorts, I was used to seeing my parents everyday," she said. "With Skype, you don't feel like you're 5,000 miles away."'

Erin shares some thoughts about Skype on Video:

Dr. Deepak Vidmar built his reputation as a nomad astrologer and psychologist, who would out on his motorcycle, computer in saddlebag, to do readings, from Ibiza, Spain to Pune, India.

Deepak, a native of Louisiana and Texas, decided to settle down in Bali a year ago. "I didn't want to leave and go traveling. I'm getting kind of old for that. I'm almost 66 now," he said in an interview.

But he noted the ex-pat community in Bali was too small to keep his astrology business humming. So he decided to change his business model and do astrology sessions on Skype with clients around the world.

He said: "Skype is basically the only way I can survive here. You move to a tropical paradise in a garden, that's great. But how are you going to make money and support yourself?"

Clients go to his Website to make appointments. They use their credit cards to pay via PayPal.

He encourages his clients to set up their own Skype accounts. He uses Skype Out to reach landlines of those who prefer old-fashioned calls.

His clients so far have come from Germany, United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Malta, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, India, Scandinavia, South America.

Deepak is also a teacher and hopes to use Skype Video to teach classes. He also is planning a hypnosis session over Skype with a client in South Korea.

When I interviewed Deepak, the sound quality between Bali and Chicago was as a clear as a day on Bali. I could hear roosters crowing and a fountain bubbling. I could almost feel the humidity.

Deepak even gave me some personal advice during our Skype conversation.

I have been thinking about visiting Spain or Israel in 2009.

Deepak said: "You will be too restless to settle in one place so plan on doing both. You have a Uranus transit over your Moon (once in a lifetime) April 2010-April 2011. You feel it now and in the summer of 2009 the feeling will get stonger and stronger."

Good to know.

After more than a month of trying, negotiating with people in Afghanistan and the United States, I finally was able to talk with Rihana on Skype.

First we exchanged instant messages to ensure we were ready.

We were a world apart, but her voice came through loud and clear.

It was 3:30 a.m. in Chicago, where I am, and 1 p.m. in Kabul, where Rihana is on the faculty at Kabul University.

Twice a week, Rihana works on her English with a Canadian teacher based in Korea. It's part of the "Armchair English" program from the U.S.-based Alliance for International Women's Rights, a U.S. non-profit organization aimed at supporting women leaders and future women leaders in developing countries focusing initially on Central Asia.

Rihana says that she wants to learn English to update the material she uses in teaching. The problem is that most of the books used in her work are horribly outdated, going back 20 to 30 years. She wants to sharpen her knowledge so she can do the best she can for her students.

Rihana said she had some experience with computers, but Skype was a new experience and opportunity for her. She said with the help of her English teacher and a computer trainer she caught on to Skype quickly. She said she appreciates the ability to reach out to her teacher, "a kind and intelligent woman who wants to help me."

Things are tough in war-torn Afghanistan. But it's one thing to watch the war on TV or to read about it in the press. It's quite another to live there. I was asked to withhold Rihana's real name and her field to prevent her from being harmed.

One of her colleagues explained to me why we had to be so careful: "People are extremist in this side of the world. They kill ladies for any reason. The mentality of men is just weird. Taliban kill ladies who work and study with foreigners."

I appreciate Rihana's drive to learn and her courage in even speaking with me. Here's to the day, when we can safely speak with Afghan people on Skype.

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."

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."

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."

Heading out to the ruins in the remote Incan town of Ollantaytambo, about 75 kilometers from Cuzco, Peru,"the navel of the navel" in the Incan worldview, I spotted an Internet cafe on the main square.

My wife Judi and I along with our yoga teachers decided to climb the ruins and on the way back go into the Internet cafe.

The teachers wanted to check their e-mail. But I wanted to introduce them to the wonders of Skype.

I struck up a conversation with Carlos Danz, the owner. Carlos' business may be based deep in the ancient Sacred Valley, but he is a man of modern communications.

I asked him what he thought of Skype.

"It's killing me," he semi-joked.

Continue reading "Good karma for Skype along the Inca Trail" »

I'd like to tell you about an opportunity for the entire Skype community to get involved in an important Internet community event.

OneWebDay is an Earth Day for the Internet that takes place each September 22nd. 2008 is the third OneWebDay. This year, OneWebDay is focusing attention around the world on the importance of the internet to political participation.

Skype's own Christopher Libertelli has joined the cause as one of 100 OneWebDay ambassadors. On each of the 100 days leading up to September 22nd, a different ambassador is reaching out to his or her community about OneWebDay.

We're encouraging people to talk (and do something) about internet issues that worry them - censorship, the digital divide and inadequate connectivity, in general.

The idea behind OneWebDay is to create a platform for a global constituency that cares about the future of the internet. We make progress when we make things visible, and with OneWebDay we're showing that this global constituency exists.

For more information about OneWebDay, check out its website, or have a look at the OneWebDay starter kit for keen participants.

When we last checked in on the Skype Nomad, our intrepid traveler was just setting off on her 33-day, 'round the world journey to test Skype mobility. She was in "perpetual motion"--always on the move, with no hotels.

On Friday, Rebecca Campbell, 26, a copywriter from London, landed in New York, where she planned to check out Times Square and take a double-decker bus tour around the Big Apple.

She came to New York after spending a couple days in California. She was in San Francisco, where she rolled out in an RV with a non-stop talking rapper named Joel who took her to Disneyland. You can read the Skype Nomad's blog for more details.

Continue reading "Skype Nomad's Excellent Adventure in the USA" »

The Washington Post's The Trail blog describes Barack Obama's "International Following."

Shailagh Murray notes: "The World Wants Obama Coalition of international and U.S. expatriate supporters has turned into a booming marketplace of campaign-related outreach -- mostly involving people who are not eligible to vote in the United States but who are transfixed by the Obama candidacy."

There are Facebook campaigns. After all the Man from Illinois has been a major presence with zillions of friends in Facebook. There are online photo albums.

And there are instructions on how to use Skype for get-out-the-vote campaigns back in the USA.

The instructions read, "Start by explaining who you are, and asking if they would be happy to talk, for example: 'Hi, I'm Justin from London, England, and I'm part of an international movement supporting Senator Obama. I can't vote in this election, but if you have a few minutes I'd love to talk to you about how a President Obama would improve America's standing in the world.'"

Meanwhile, we reported on Silicon Valley for Obama's use of Skype to reach out to voters.

Equal time statement: If anyone from the McCain and Clinton camps is using Skype, let us know. We'll rock the vote for them too.

Just to introduce myself. I am Howard Wolinsky, your friendly neighborhood blogger from Chicago. I recently left the Chicago Sun-Times, where I was a tech writer and before that a medical writer. I was among the first journos to cover the AIDS crisis and also among the first to cover the internet.

Check me out at GapersBlock, a popular Chicago blog run by Andrew Huff, a former student of mine at the University of Chicago.

I have long been a fan of internet communications—going back to the geeky "internet telephony" era—and have been a Skype user. As a part-time freelancer, I used Skype to cut my phone bills and to extend my reach for sources to Europe and beyond. Thank you, Skype.

Now as a full-time freelancer, I expect to do more with Skype. I will share my adventures on planet Skype and hope you will do the same.