source: While I was away
That’s really all I have to say this morning.
This post was written by Mike, source: Beer pong is evil
Bill Maher in the LA Times: “Now, I didn’t mind being on the losing side of the last election. But as a loser, I guess I have some “unpopular” opinions and I’d like to keep them. I’d even like to continue to say them right out loud on TV, because if I just get up there every Friday night and spout the Bush administration’s approved talking points, that’s not freedom or entertainment. It’s Fox News.”…
source: Bill Maher on Fox News
I just left a comment on Om’s honeymoon blog post. What’s required are creative solutions, not 100’s of new call center operators. That would be yesterday’s model and entirely the wrong way to handle these issues. Instead engage you and me in reporting SkypeOut call quality by simplifying feedback collection and then sharing the statistics. Just one little thing to ask of Skypers. Concurrently, recognize Skype is breaking new ground in the “payments” department. That doesn’t say give them slack!
Skype identifies a set of SkypeOut problem codes clearly in their FAQ Some of these relate to the volume of traffic, and it’s quite possible that scaling up the PSTN interconnects isn’t as easy as 123. However a more troubling type of complaint exists. These are the ones where the call fails for sound, or latency. It’s connected but you can’t hear each other. Is it Skype, is it PSTN, is it who? I don’t know. It may have cost you a couple of cents. If I get a few it is not a problem when I make many many calls that work. If it is my first experience with Skype then I’d be very annoyed.
Separately, an “account” story I observed in the Forums relates to a code #9403 which means your account has been blocked and you may not be able to make SkypeOut calls. One example (not confirmed) was that if you purchase minutes for more than two people on the same credit card in the same day then Skype locks the accounts. It may take three days to get it fixed. That’s an expensive override to engage customer service on. It looks like they have a backlog too and in one example I looked at it took seven days to get a response. This is really a systems approval problem and could easily be solved by enabling multiple profiles off the same account. Plus providing a “gift vouchers” solution which many of us have been asking for from the beginning. Then creating favored status for returning buyers. At the moment I suspect each purchase may be unique, with no reference to past history. If so that creates an unecessary problem.
As Om notes, on fine margins there is no room for error. The banking system is also incredibly complex. PayPal is not yet all around the world. Visa is a fragmented organization. Skype trys to put minutes in your account immediately. That’s quite a challenge. Can someone point out to me what other business anywhere has this same type of payment requirement? What other truly global payment businesses like this exist? Then Skype could simplify it by simply stating when you buy minutes that in x countries the approval process is this and takes this time. Eg US and Europe I think could be immediate, whereas a customer purchasing from some other countries may simply have to wait for 3 days for the credit to be activated. When it is done correctly it will be quite an asset. With future changes to the Skype API you could potentially pay for many services via Skype. Just like mobile operators sell ring tones.
Other Links.
Silicon Today
Neville Hobson
ZDNet
Net net it’s wrong to think add call center help for these types of problems. It’s simply too expensive and it means the “simplicity” and “it just works” philosophy that launched with Skype is lost. The real learning may be that the backend work in the design phase for both SkypeOut and the accounts system was simply “rushed” by VC pressure. It’s not clear that all the number and error codes are meaningful to management at the current time. Having made a mess of it, now is the time to become more transparent. In the end what the Skype community wants is Skype to have a bigger stick so PSTN and other VoIP suppliers don’t stiff the Skype community. Concurrently I want to know that this problem is fixed!
This post was written by Stuart, source: Sticks n Stones
Peter Cochrane spent much of his working life working for BT as both CTO and Head of Research. He frames a story that began with modems and clips and ends up using Skype. I read 10-20 wow comments from new users via blogs a day. I’m still horrified by the number of “telecom” people that haven’t done what Peter has done. That is really living with a new product. One quick trial doesn’t create an understanding. The story Peter tells is one that says… look folks, this has really changed how I communicate and you ought to use it too. Coming from a genuine telecom guy maybe you will believe him? (My bold and underline below)
For the last few months I have been experimenting with Skype in particular for voice connections when I travel. During the last six weeks, all of my telephone calls - Skype-to-Skype, Skype-to-mobile and Skype-to-fixed line - have been via a headset and my laptop computer. ……..
In short: my mobile phone bill has plummeted from $500 a month to less than $10 a month. The number of times I have had to use my mobile phone in the US during the past two weeks can be counted on the fingers of one hand. For the most part it is people calling me on my mobile that dominates my usage. My outgoing calls are now few and far between. The prevalence of low-cost or free Wi-Fi across the US means I am at most paying for a local telephone call in the destination country.
My evaluation of VoIP is very simple: it either works or it doesn’t - it is strictly binary. It either has a quality of service that far surpasses the telephone network or it is so poor it is unusable. Either way the economic impact for my company and many others is profound. I’ve purchased headsets for all of my children and colleagues and asked them to move to VoIP.
Early this morning in Cupertino, California, I had four conversations back into the UK at zero cost.Here’s one change I’ve noticed. Because VoIP calls cost nothing, or almost nothing, they become a connection and not a call. I just open up a channel and use it much like an intercom or a casual conference call. And because of the voice quality, there is great intimacy and connection. It seems to re-enable those emotional bits normally thrown away by the restricted bandwidth of the old telephone. All in all VoIP makes communication far more effective than standard phones for all levels of social and business exchange. Peter Cochrane’s Uncommon Sense: VoIP wins - silicon.com
This post was written by Stuart, source: Peter “Skype” Cochrane
This is lovely; the pictures are superb…
[news.bbc.co.uk]
A house burglar was caught after a webcam on the owner’s computer
recorded images of him carrying out the raid.
Stills of serial raider Benjamin Park, 19, of Cambridge, were sent to
an email address so even when he stole the computer, the images could
be found.
Police said it was a “brilliant idea” of software engineer Duncan
Grisby, who set it after a previous burglary
Park was given an 11-month jail term by magistrates in Cambridge on
Tuesday after admitting burglary.
source: Serial burglar caught on webcam
In principle Teleo (launched at Demo@15) should be on to a real winner. Its SIP compatible, claims a GIPS audio engine and offers very competitive calling rates. In my book they should be very close to what I want. I get an inbound Oakland 510 number on my laptop, and I can forward it to my cellphone. The rates are cheap $4.95/month for an inbound line and 250 minutes. After that you have to add minutes. They also have a Teleo Lite program which is similar to SkypeOut. Some functionality is claimed but not working yet. This includes conference calling (how many is unknown) and voice mail. Currently limited numbers are available for the US and Canada onlly. It is only available for Windows. Still I’ve played with it and it is at best a Vonage substitute. Apparently it is not a mega-million dollar idea.
Teleo costs $29.70 per six months ($4.95 per month). This includes unlimited voicemail, call forwarding, conferencing, and an inbound phone number that can be called from regular phones. PC-to-PC calls to and from other Teleo users world wide are free. Calls to and from regular phones are charged using PSTN minutes at the lowest rates around (see rate tables). Teleo activation includes $5.00 of PSTN minutes. Teleo
How was the testing experience?
Once installed (I had some issues which may or maynot have been attributed to Teleo) it activates in an easy fashion. I began testing with Bill Campbell, we tested Teleo to Teleo, Teleo to SIP (Vonage) Teleo to PSTN. After I resolved my install problems the quality became very good. I’ll have to do more testing before I’m certain. I’m leaving it online for now. I did find that rejecting an incoming call… just resulted in it continuing to ring. Thus I’m in the directory if you want to test it. When you only have one friend these systems are less friendly. I expected everything to have a right click (am so Skype trained) I missed it. The biggest miss of all was no text / chat system. That simple means that Teleo can’t replace my IM system and thus for me it is just another PoIP solution only required for the number and the voicemail forwarding to my cellphone.
What Teleo needs to do to beat Skype.
They currently have SkypeIn like capability for the US must begin to offer global numbers. Their account system is neat maybe they could be better if they have the capability to do global credit cards etc. Teleo needs to add both chat and video functionality. Without them it’s dead when Skype adds SkypeIn. I’m looking at it as a temporary way to dump my Vonage line. At the moment it’s another smart PoIP play. It’s most likely to hurt Vonage and similar competitors. It won’t do any damage to Skype. Some other difference are clear in the search function. Skype’s profile offers more infomation than Teleo’s. Ultimately it’s an important difference. There is also no way to block unwanted callers. There was no approval function when I added my first friend. Status is limited to online and offline. Thus “presence” isn’t understood or managed here. Teleo is developing a voice mail component. By contrast Skype is adding voice messaging. They are fundamentally different. Net net it clones the voice and adds a number and will find that doesn’t equal a Skype beater.
What are we learning?
SIP’s Final Gasp?
As I look at Teleo I can see there is a lot right. It seems to work, it ties to SIP addresses, captures e-mails etc. And still I can’t help wondering. It comes 18 months after Skype’s launch, their product plan has been spelled out for over a year and relative to Skype it is functionally crippled. The no chat/text feature blows my mind. This may be their design, however I’m guessing it is more to do with integrating Chat into their SIP solution. SIP SIMPLE is available. Xten in EYEBEAM has managed it. Presence is the future.
This post was written by Stuart, source: Teleo Tallyho
One PSP for me — my wife reserved a PSP on launch date for me.. I guess it was difficult to find stores that still had units left to reserve on the Eastside of Seattle; most stores only had availability for later shipments. So, if you dig these sort of gadgets, you best better reserve a unit asap.
The PSP is a ridiculously powerful portable adult (arguably) gaming platform. Oh yeah, it is also an MP3 and video player. And watch out for the killer launch lineup too.
While I have always been a huge gamer, it has been harder and harder to play for more than 10 minutes at a time lately. Adult life keeps getting in the way. Hopefully the PSP will enable me to quench my gaming thirst at places and times that just aren’t possible with a console machine.
I think my visits to the porcelain god just got a lot longer.
This post was written by Dave Bettin, source: Psst.. The PSP is the next cool thing
Please share your security problems with the Government …
I am rather surprised that anyone would ever think this might work.
[www.theregister.co.uk]
US info-sharing initiative called a flop
Nearly a year after its launch, a federal office created as a conduit
for corporate America to provide the government with sensitive
information about critical vulnerabilities has been all but rejected
by the technology industry that helped conceive it.
The Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) program
allows corporations who run key elements of US infrastructure to
submit details about their physical and cyber vulnerabilities to a
special office within the Department of Homeland Security, with
legally-enforceable assurances that the information will not be used
against them or released to the public. The effort is funded at $5.5m
in the White House’s 2006 budget request.
…
What’s the real lesson behind the Motorola and Skype move? Pehaps it is in the minutes? The numbers suggest that “Skype” and “Skyping” is a different kind of communications experience. It’s why Motorola can embrace Skype and not fear the mobile operators. Possibly it is the only way for them to move forward.
After an “envelope” exercise illustrates that Skype minutes per person may just swamp “mobile” minutes lets prototype a scenario where mobile operators embrace Skype and dual-mode handsets. If for no other reason than people want to talk a lot more than they have ever been allowed to before. The service that we “talk on the most” simply wins. Until now mobile has been beating landlines on convenience. However Skype is creating a frame of reference that is “destroying” that advantage through very lengthy call times and “presence”.
Its a challenge to incumbent handset manufacturers and mobile operators alike. If the major handset manufacturers don’t catch up and step forward then they could simple lose the market to PC like boxes. Commoditised by Microsoft Smart Phones.
For for those wealthy enough you can almost make the following choices now. In the next year or so consumers are facing a radical choice. So far it’s not been presented to them. Imagine a world in which you make a set of decisions and new choices about your landline, mobile and wi-fi connections.
Choice:
1. Drop your landline for a VoIP provider and get usage at any Wi-Fi hotspot. Your mobile plan stays the same. Vonage provides Softphones for free (when will they announce this???)
2. Pay a lttle more to your mobile provider, get a unique Skype number (eg #your_name rather than +1 222 333 4444) from your mobile operator and have Wi-Fi and Skype anywhere. SkypeIn calls (#your_name)within the mobile network are free. Vodaphone?
3. Buy a dual mode handset, new Wi-Fi router at home, extra charger stick in the GSM card and say to hell with “discounted phone offers” and additional mobile lock-in. Drop your landline and be happy. One time cost $500. Landline savings start at $250/annum. No more carrier lock-in. Wait for reasonable 3G charges. (iMate really???)
Who is threatened?
This post was written by Stuart, source: Skype The Mobile Operators Friend?
Skype broke the 2 million active user concurrently online for the first time today. Concurrently I tracked call minutes off the Skype site. Just over 3 million minutes were recorded in an hour. Two numbers that encourage crude Skype maths.
My conclusion again… numbers confirm “communications behavior” is being radically changed. Concurrently every Skyper wants a better headset, handsfree or a cordless handset. They also know the value of these new “minutes” and will spend to make them “better”. Confirming while free; users do value them.
Jump to possible conclusion. Mobile operators will have to merge “mobile” with Skype in order to retain “loyalty” to their networks. They can’t provide that based on the “usage” profile of Skype adopters. They also can’t address the global nature of the calls. Skypers want mobility make no mistake. Mobile operators are going to have to address “SkypeIn“.Give me my mobile number for Skype!
Skype Maths:
Three million minutes when 2 million Skyper were online, time one hour. Thus 1.5 minutes called per Skyper. Multiply X 24 hours. Thus approx 30 minutes talking for this hypothetical Skyper. However most Skypers aren’t on for 24 hours. So assuming the average online status time is 12 hours then the average daily call time is twice the thirty minutes.
Thus the average Skyper has a relationship of one hour per day with Skype. I should point out that so far these are all averages. So we have many Skypers using it much more… and some much less. Still if we do the 80/20 thing we judge 800k users (20% of 4m probably low) are doing some 3.5 hours on Skype per day. It’s simply a mind boggling number to me. While the same number would generate some 8 minutes for everyone else. Still it is those “heavy users” that are “in” the new communications landscape.
Back to the average. At 500 minutes per week we are looking at 2000 minutes per month for the average. Looking at US mobile plans 500 minutes person per month (still a big plan!) is probably the individual comparison plan.
So we have the Skype plan at 2000 minutes. Could Skype behavior be too much for the mobile operators to handle? All this in a few months and we are not even near “always-on”.
This post was written by Stuart, source: Skype Two Million Reasons +
As you probably know, I’m full of crazy ideas - plenty of which never see the light of day.
Well, I’ve had this little project bubbling along in the back of my brain for a while - and finally got time to do something about it last week.
(Tidbit - the initial idea sketch was written on the back of two boarding passes while flying to London. Amazing what your brain comes up with inside the darkened fuselage of a trans planetary plane flight)
I have a lot of great developer friends across the planet. I want to get to know them better, to understand why they’re great developers. Simply put, a personal interviews site seemed like a nice way to do it while sharing that insight with the community at large.
I’ve always liked developer interviews, especially those with real developers - not superstars who spend more time in PowerPoint than IDEA. This is my little contrbution to that area.
The end result? My Friend The Developer
Victor agreed to be my first interviewee and I’d like to thank him for that.
What do you think? Crazy idea? Interesting? Would you read it? Did you get something from it?
To my other friends, beware 
PS I have another motivation behind this site. Lately I’ve been getting more interested in fierce conversations and interviewing in general. As such, this is an excuse to improve my interview techniques and ability to ask probing, interesting questions. Any feedback is most welcome - I don’t claim to be any sort of expert, yet.
This post was written by Mike, source: New Blog - My Friend The Developer
Robin Good and James Enck have the scoop on yet another Skype deal. Could this be the deal that Nokia should have done first? In other news MS is moving faster with cheaper wireless solutions.
Motorola has today also answered Niklas Zennstrom’s love-call. The press release isn’t on either site yet, but the alliance focuses on “co-marketing of new optimized Motorola ‘Skype Ready’ companion products, such as Bluetooth headsets, dongles, and speakerphones, as well as delivery of the Skype Internet Telephony experience on select Motorola mobile devices.” EuroTelcoblog
James also writes that he’s just revised his timetable, in his view anything you thought was going to happen (just got faster) — longer than 12 months and says “find it increasingly difficult to putting money into this sector”. The MCI deal like AT&T for just a few billion show just how worthless these assets are becoming.
Meanwhile I’m looking forward to the Skype upgrade that allows me to use my Motorola BT headset’s answer button with Skype. Then manufacturers just found another way to boost interest and demand for bluetooth headsets.
This post was written by Stuart, source: Skype Moto News
Short, sweet and nicely captures the problem of quoted sections in email:
> Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
>> Why is top-replying such a bad thing?
>>> Top-replying.
>>>> What is the most annoying thing in email?
(badly adapted from this post)
This post was written by Mike, source: Oh the reflexiveness
Naomi Klein has been writing some great stuff on Iraq lately. Challenging the left and the right. It turns out that on American TV, the entire occupation has been one long episode of Fear Factor, in which Iraqis overcome ever-more-challenging obstacles to demonstrate the depths of their desire to win their country back. Having their cities leveled, being tortured in Abu Ghraib, getting shot at checkpoints, having their journalists censored and their water and electricity cut off all of it was just a prelude to the ultimate endurance test: dodging bombs and bullets to get to the polling station….
source: Naomi Klein on Iraq
If you’ve had problems with SkypeOut in the last 30 days add a comment or send a trackback. Same if you couldn’t buy Skype minutes.
I suspect it is time to report loudly that SkypeOut doesn’t work all the time, while making account payments can still present “rejection” problems. Neville wrote a post yesterday, and it is a well timed reminder. There should be little tolerance for poor quality connections. Similarly stories of credit card problems / approval flags I’ve had personally and have know applied to my friends.
These occurances are enough to make people mad enough to write in the Skype Forums, and as always these are just the tip of the iceberg. I read the Skype forums regularly and complaints on SkypeOut quality and purchasing Skypeout Minutes are regular. What percentage we don’t know? Are failure rates higher than average? We don’t know. Are they for specific countries? We don’t know. They often appear to relate to the more expensive calls to countries where the infrastructure is stretched, expensive to access etc. Then we don’t know.
Today I got a busy signal on two foreign SkypeOut calls and then the third one connected with quality so poor that I cancelled the call. Skype charged me .138 Euro cents for that call being a 40 second failure to a foreign mobile. For the times it has worked well I sort of forgive them. Still it is not what one wants or is trained for. My .138 cents is gone.
Generally I’ve had real success to landlines, and a rougher time to mobiles. I just tried another call to a different country and it failed again the first two times. I also got “internal error” this time. Finally third time I got his voice mail and it was clear as anything. Is the fact I get “busy” signals a sign that Skype’s network connections are overloaded. Or are telecoms playing another game in the background. Blocking Skype or making Skype calls difficult?
We need to hear more from Skype on this one. Skype is challenging the telecoms, their business models and making a mockery of SIP initiatives. I don’t think they started out with an interconnect plan at the beginning, more likely it became a business opportunity and it was demanded by Customers. What’s being fixed now? What’s the timetable?
On balance failed calls / poor QOS make users mad, and means SkypeOut costs more than it should. It’s more likely to annoy new users than those that have used it for a long time with success. Today the product is no longer in beta. I don’t think I see any beta on SkypeOut. For new users using SkypeOut I’d be willing to bet the majority don’t care about VoIP and many won’t have tried out other services. So the service and connection paradigm is still PSTN which works.
A few users like me have tried all sorts of VoIP appications. The other one I live with daily is Vonage which in my view sucks. International calls on it are twice the price of SkypeOut and for the most part half the quality even on local calls. That is my experience. So my judgement and damnation of one poor interconnect is “I’ll try it later” and looking at the “broader” picture. New Skype users won’t give Skype this kind of slack and I really shouldn’t either. Thanks Neville!
And wow! are they saying things………….
They have coughed up money to buy credit to use a service which, for one reason or another, doesn’t seem to be delivering………….And they don’t seem to be getting answers from Skype.
….And they’ll tell their friends: “Yeah, Skype’s cool but calling [friend X] in [country Y] just doesn’t work.”
Skype Has a Problem With SkypeOut
I totally agree with you. My company is in the Credit Card business and it seems to me that Skype is a good product that is struggling with a poor CC solution. All these things can and must be addressed an soon. There are lots of other people willing to make it work if Skype can not.
forum.skype.com :: moneybookers update
By contrast a useful review of BT communicator. Here’s Martin’s pitch.
I use it for business calls away from home because I’ve experienced mixed results with SkypeOut. Hardly the wave of the future, but better than nothing.
Telepocalypse BT Communicator
This post was written by Stuart, source: SkypeOut Quality & Billing Problems
I’ve been watching for Skype spam and have recently had two experiences that caused me to think about what lies ahead. I think text spam may already be here on Skype and Voice Mail Spam appears to be a real possibility. The examples.
First text message came from “jesusis______” (I’ve slightly changed the names) This is a real example copied from a Skype Chat session.
[11:20:09 PM] G says: HI IAM GREG IAM A CHRISTIAN FROM THE UNITED STATES .JUST LIKE MEETING PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES
[11:21:01 PM] G says: (F) (a skype flower)
[11:23:48 PM] Respondent: do christians send flowers to strangers over the world. sorry i feel this is spam.
[11:23:53 PM] G says: IAM PREACHER012XXX@YAHOO.COM IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO ME
[11:24:41 PM] Respondent: [11:23:48 PM] Respondent: do christians send flowers to strangers. sorry i feel this is spam
[11:24:53 PM] G says: IAM PREACHER012XXX@YAHOO.COM IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO ME
Now this could just be some dummy trying to hit on people via Skype profiles. Yet the timing in the text messages suggests it could be more sophisticated. The second statement IAM PREACHER is only 8 seconds after the last one. This may just be abuse of one of the emerging answer machine type recorders that send text messages when in an away mode. Now if you get unwanted messages then the only way to stop it is to set your privacy options in Skype to only allow text messages from buddies. (File/Options/Privacy). I’d like to know of automated examples of chat spam.
The second example may have just been a game. Still I found I kept getting recorded messages on my iPodRadio. They included one minute form the State of the Union address etc. And that made it abundantly clear to me that it is easy to do. In fact I can do it myself. I just instruct my iPodRadio to call another Skyper. Then they get my music or message. While I set it up so people could opt-in and call this character was using it to call and play. So perhaps the “prank” if it was one was just the tip of the iceberg. The result is both a positive… want to send a message to many people, tick the following list on my SkypePodcaster and it simply phones those Skype contacts one after another. In fact if they all had VM I’d just send the broadcast message to VM (party Saturday Night etc.). On the more somber note this might not be the use that really makes people angry. If we thought telemarketers were bad, just think what it would be like if they spammed your voice mail box all the time.
Will Skype’s little downloading activity that it goes though to play a VM intro before you can send one slow the voice spammers down enough or make voice so inefficient that Skype VM spam is less likely to be a problem? Then there is the other devious opportunity. I purchase a SkypeOut account, and use it to make call offers to PSTN phone numbers using an automated Skype.
Enhancements to SkypeVM.
Potential to limit VM to buddylist only.
Need for a reputation system
This post was written by Stuart, source: Skype Spam
Trend watch? Dina may just be a lucky student, some Universities have banned Skype.
Dina Leibowitz, 24, a fellow student at the Technion, also makes do with a combination of Skype and her cellphone. She sees no need for a Bezeq landline. Since downloading the software from the Internet last summer, Leibowitz’s cellphone bill has shrunk substantially, and “since the people I contact the most have almost all connected to Skype, I barely talk to them on the phone.”
This post was written by Stuart, source: Cellphone and Skype Enough?
And while we’re at it, check out the new supercool Google Maps.
source: Google India Code Jam 2005
Skype recently announced a deal with HGC in Hong Kong while news is now breaking of another deal in Korea with iMate. iMate is the largest distributor for Windows Smart Phones. Both these announcements are interesting. They also suggest a “quickening” for the pace of change. So far the HGC release looks similar to the old formula applied elsewhere. (Scary after deals in Taiwan, China, Japan and Korea, we can call this version common place.) with one difference. HGC is a landline operator. In the case of iMate it is a technology story. Now we have a Smart Phone distributor promising Skype mobility with your mobile. Skype’s PDA version is already running on some iMate products.
I keep thinking about the impact on “you and me” when I see these deals. Tonight I’m wondering when I can buy the “mobile” that provides me “Skype” and drop in my GSM Sim card. Under $500. Then all I care about is whether SBC or T-Mobile is going to enable SkypeIn for me. My preference is for my mobile number. So:
How long until Skype is infecting the common mobile phone? While we have had a Window PDA version (just announced as 1.0) this suggests that the capability to put Skype into Smartphones effectively must be close to a beta test release. (I only know of rumors re Symbian). Last week I suggested the potential for a stripped down SkypeMobile version and impact it could have on SMS revenue. This SmartPhone play suggests things are moving along faster. Still even a Skype with limited voice messaging on a GSM / GPRS phone could make an attractive proposition.
Will the iMate deal bring new integration between the mobile Skype client and the desktop? For those that may have forgotten, You can log on multiple times same profile on concurrent PC’s with Skype. They all ring on the inbound call. So what are the implications for inbound mobile calls after this Skype client is installed? Could any inbound mobile call number be forwarded via Skype text to my Skype Desktop? What happens when the inbound mobile caller is also a Skype buddy? How will adding “Mobile” to presence status messages affect contacts and call behavior? Will this also increase the potential use of SkypeVM? As noted before, why text a buddy who is likely to be driving. Can that PDA / mobile on Wi-Fi also be the phone around home?
Will HGC be the first to announce a SkypeIn deal? That would mean that everyone in HongKong could simple take their home number with them, anywhere they were on Skype. Seems silly right? Why would a landline operator want to provide the number? Looking at the iMate deal perhaps it makes sense. SkypeiMateMobile (call it what you want) could then receive an inbound PSTN call to Skype using an HGC inbound number. In the iMate case that could enable a second line or extension on your cellphone. What’s more the second line also starts to become associated with all the neat presence info. In this twist of fate consumers might look for “fast data” connections only from their mobile operators.
See also:
Mark Evans
Jeremy Wagstaff
Andy Abramson
This post was written by Stuart, source: Skype + iMate + HGC