Ever since Skype first launched, they have really been one of the showcases for Global IP Solutions' (GIPS - formerly "Global IP Sound") codecs, particularly the wideband iSAC codec which you could argue is largely what has accounted for the great audio quality you can often get on Skype calls.  Now, of course GIPS has many other customers - in fact their customer/partner list reads like a veritable "Who's Who" of companies within the VoIP industry.  Skype, though, has always been one of the great examples to point to.

It would seem, though, that Skype and GIPS have had a parting of the ways.  Back in March, there was discussion of new codecs in the Skype 3.2 beta and the possibility that this was as a result of an acquisition Skype had made.  Yesterday, though, there was a post to the main Skype blog that included this (my emphasis in bold):

And because we’ve replaced our audio engine in our most recent releases — it’s now fully built in-house — it’s worth bearing in mind that you may run into some bumps when a call is placed from an older version of Skype to newer versions.

So "it's now fully built in-house", eh?  That would seem to pretty clearly confirm that the GIPS engine is no longer inside of Skype.  We can speculate as to why... did the contract with GIPS come up for renewal and GIPS wanted more $$$?  Did Skype just want more control?  Politics?  Personalities?  Some other reason?

In any event, it will be interesting to see Skype's evolution as they work out the issues of the migration, particularly because there are undoubtedly a great number of people out there running an older version who have no clue that they should upgrade.  (Earlier versions had no notification that a new version was available.)

One of the things that continues to fascinate me is the "mashup culture" we are in today where the whole "Web 2.0" (ugh! how I dislike the term!) motif is that you can mix and mash output and input from various services to come up with new and interesting integrations.  Anybody who has at this point NOT seen some mashup with Google Maps should probably stop reading this post now.  (In fact, turn off your computer and just go outside... you obviously haven't been paying attention, anyway!)  The programmableweb site lists now over 2000 mashups.  There's a wiki of Twitter mashups.  Mashable.com reports daily on more and more services that are very often new remixes and combinations of existing services.  It's a crazy but intriguing world we're in right now.

Today Skype joined the fray with their "Mashup Contest" calling on developers to join in building mashups that use the Skype API.  The contest will run until September 12th when they are having a "Skype Developer Days" conference in Prague.  From their announcement:

Judges will be from across Skype, eBay and Paypal, plus external judges. The winner will be chosen and announced on Sep 12th in Prague based on the following criteria: innovation, usefulness, cool factor, usability and a dash of weirdness.

It will be very interesting to see what evolves.  Having been in the Skype public chat that started initially to talk about mashups with Twitter, I'm fairly sure that we'll see some integration with at the very least Twitter and Facebook.  (Will Skype be the first with a Facebook VoIP app?)

Should be fun, at least... I'm curious to see what people do that involves "a dash of weirdness"!  :-)

Today I called Alec Saunders via Skype.  Not terribly unusual, really... except that I initiated the Skype call from my Blackberry!  Back on Monday, Jim Courtney over at Skype Journal had posted a teaser about an application for the Blackberry that allowed you to use Skype IM.  Today my curiosity got the better of me and I had to IM Jim to get the info. I downloaded the app and promptly had to try it out... I guess by virtue of Alec being at the top of my contact list, he was my victim (I also know from past experience that he's open to this kind of thing).

Tonight Jim has spilled the goods for all of us in the post rather dramatically titled "Skype on the Blackberry - A New Era in the AlwaysOn World". It turns out to be an application called "IM+ for Skype" from a company called ShapeServices, which makes a variety of software products for PDAs (and specifically Blackberries).  It turns out there was a news release about this back on May 7th, but I didn't see any coverage of this at all.  The app itself costs $25, but you can also download it and use it for a free 7-day trial.

Blackberry users can even download it directly for Over-The-Air installation from wap.shapeservices.com.

The app itself seemed like other IM programs I've tried for the Blackberry.  Very easy to create chats.  See the chats in progress.  Get a notification vibration/beep when new chats arrive.  You first naturally give it your Skype username and password and it (slowly) loads in your contact list and shows the presence of all of your contacts.  After that, it's rather like a Skype client.  You can scroll through your contact list, open up chats, initiate calls, etc.

The calls are interesting.  I was initially expecting it to be a true VoIP client and initiate the call via Skype over the data connection from the Blackberry.  I wondered how well this would work given the generally limited quality/speed of the data connection.  It turns out that it doesn't work that way.  The data connection is used by the IM+ app to initiate the call, but the actual voice connection occurs over your phone's regular mobile connection. 

So when I called Alec, my phone actually rang and I answered it.  From Alec's perspective using Skype on his PC, he was placed into a conference call with "Dan York" and then a SkypeOut call to my cell phone.  What's curious to me is that I don't quite understand where the other party was that was making the conf call happen.  It wasn't on Skype on my PC.  I can't imagine the Blackberry could actually be doing the conf call... so where was it?  A PC (virtual or otherwise) back at Shape Services?  I don't know... but I will say that it worked.

From a cost perspective, I have the Skype Unlimited calling plan, so the call to my cell phone was free from a Skype point-of-view.  I have an unlimited data plan for my BB so there was no cost there.  Obviously there was an airtime cost for the connection to my BB... but that was it.   Now obviously I could also use it to make SkypeOut calls to other numbers, at which point it is becoming much like one of the call-back services like Jajah.

Interesting app... we'll see if I actually use it much.  My past experience with IM clients on the Blackberry is that if they are left running in the background they tend to eat the battery up very quickly.  Still, I could see me using it when traveling and wanting to IM someone or find out their Skype presence.  Will I make actual Skype calls with it?  I'm not sure.

What do you think?  Would you use it?  For Skype IM?  Calls?  Or both?  Is it a "New Era in the AlwaysOn World"?  (Would you pay the $25?)

Fun stuff...

Today Skype released their initial version of Skype 3.5 Beta for Windows.  You can download it here if you are the adventuresome type. In addition to fixing a bug (that caused Skype to crash) with public chats that has been plaguing those of us who use them, the major feature rolled out in this release is the long-awaited "Call Transfer".  Don Kennedy goes into this at far greater length in "Skype Pro Does Call Transfer" where he provides some examples and also provides a sample application.   

One of his examples is the interesting one of having all calls be transferred to a "group" which could include Skype names as well as SkypeOut numbers.  In Don's example, you could have someone call you on a SkypeIn number which would then be transferred to the "group" which could include your own Skype ID and also a SkypeOut connection to your cell phone.  Now all of this capability isn't yet in the Skype GUI.  Today you need Don's Call Transfer Example application, also available through the Skype Extras manager, but it is a glimpse of what is coming.

There is one gotcha... to do the transfer from a SkypeIn number or to a SkypeOut number, you need to have the "SkypePro" monthly subscription plan.  However, the USA is not one of the "available countries"... but apparently you can, in fact, purchase Skype Pro.  But, of course, if you are in the USA or Canada and have already purchased "Skype Unlimited" for $30 for the year for unlimited calling in NA, you have to wonder why people would pay $3/month more for Skype Pro... unless perhaps to get Call Transfer?   Certainly a bit confusing.

Call Transfer isn't the only thing in the 3.5 beta - per the Windows Release Notes, the release also contains:

• feature: Auto redial
• feature: Call Transfer
• feature: Device Indicators
• feature: Edit chat messages
• feature: Message history loading granulated
• feature: Private Telephone Numbers
• feature: Send contacts inside chat
• feature: Visual indicators for Audio In / Audio Out in options
• feature: Show examples of notifications / alerts in options
• feature: Added Latvian localization - Intars Students
• feature: In-Client Hardware store button
• change: Extras Manager updated to version 1.2.0.261
• change: Options categories smoothly slide open and close when changed
• Updated language files for a variety of languages

Some of those are more obvious that others.  What are "Private Telephone Numbers"?  or "Device Indicators"?  We shall see.  In any event, Skype has now made this release available for those who want to play with it...

UPDATE #1: Raul Liive at Skype indicated that "Private Telephone Numbers" means that your phone numbers in your profile are only shown to those people in your contact list.   

 UPDATE #2: Phil Wolff demonstrated the "Send contacts inside chat" feature that you can see on the right.  You can send a contact to all members of a chat by using the Send button on the top of the screen (or apparently by dragging/dropping into the chat).

UPDATE #3: Raul and others explained that "Device Indicators" will clue you (a Skype 3.5 user) into the fact that the person you are communicating with may be using an embedded version of Skype with less capabilities (for instance, some of the new WiFi phones that have Skype and don't require a PC).

For those of us who pay attention to things related to Skype, one of the people we became most familiar with has moved on to different pastures.  Back in May 2005 when Skype started up their first blogs, Jaanus Kase was the public "face" who helped those of us outside the company understand a bit more about this thing called "Skype" and all that was happening with it.  A prolific writer/blogger, Jaanus told us about new features, industry trends, promotions and also told us about many things happening inside of Skype as the company itself evolved and changed.  He interviewed people, he talked about how Skype was enabling people to communicate, he responded to criticism and generally helped "humanize" the entity that is Skype through his many, many postings.  He did so with a conversational style that was sometimes serious, sometimes humerous... but generally always enjoyable to read.  He also launched a "Skype Blog Public Chat" back in November 2006 that many of us early adopters joined and it provided a great forum for exchange of information about what was going on with Skype.  That public chat still exists, although it doesn't quite have the same volume and interesting topics that it did in the early days... there are now several other public chats where more energy seems to be. Jaanus was also a techie underneath, and let us watch as he played with things like scripts that could get chat stats or do mass-ejection of idle chatroom members.

Jaanus was, of course, a member of Skype's Marketing group, so you understood he came at things with that bias - and he was certainly not Skype's only blogger... they have a whole crew of folks blogging for them.  But over time Jaanus became the voice we listened to in order to understand (or try to) what Skype was doing.  He encouraged a community of people interested in Skype and certainly did, I think, do a great amount in his own way to help Skype spread and grow.

All thing come to an end, though, and Jaanus let us know back in late May that he would be leaving Skype and returning to school.  More precisely, he's heading to Carnegie Mellon University to pursue their Masters of Human Computer Interaction program.  I wish him all the best... any of us can certainly attest to the fact that "human computer interaction" is certainly a key field and will only become more so as we continue to computerize everything we can.

Thank you, Jaanus, for all you did in your time at Skype.  You'll be missed.  Enjoy your summer off.. and best wishes with your new journey... we look forward to hearing about some new wacky UI some time in the future... :-)

As to Skype's blogs, a new face, "Villu", entered the picture.  A self-professed "PR-flack", we'll see how he does!  He's got some big shoes to fill...

Today Skype announced that you could now have up to 150 people in a public chat session. They had quietly rolled this out a bit ago, but I only noticed then because I monitor and participate in a couple of Skype public chats that focus on new releases/features of Skype and development issues.

There does, though, seem to be a continuing puzzle around discrepancies regarding the actual limits.  Ask any 4 people in a Skype public chat to type "/info" on the command line and relay the result... and you'll probably get four very different answers.  I just did that in one public chat (Update: it was the "Skype Developer community public chat") and, as shown in the graphic, showed a total of 201 people in a chat session... with the limit theoretically being 150!  Someone else in the chat did the same command and showed 122 people.  At various times in the past, we've done similar tests and found that there's a very wide range of numbers.

One has to wonder... is this something about the peer-to-peer "cloud" that makes up the Skype infrastructure?  Is this a convergence issue?  i.e. over time the numbers will converge to a common number as the p2p cloud updates?

Very strange.

Update: A contact at Skype indicates that this is a known bug where the count may not reflect people who have left the chat.

For those who read my previous post about the ability to now post to Twitter from within Skype, Antoine "Ants" Bertout from Skype created a new Skype public chat to facilitate discussion around how Skype and Twitter could be integrated.  Anyone interested who has Skype 3.x is welcome to join by following the link below: 

Some of you reading this may be interested in the article on my Disruptive Conversations blog about a new service that lets you update Twitter from within Skype. 

The article itself is an example of the challenge I'm increasingly finding with some things falling into the "grey area" between my two main blogs.  This blog covers telephony, VoIP, etc., while Disruptive Conversations covers the "social media" of blogs, podcasts, etc.  The lines are pretty clear in some cases.

But the challenge is that the lines continue to blur.... communication that used to take place by phone is moving increasingly online and very often to "social networking sites" like Facebook, Twitter and friends... which I have primarily been discussing over on DisCon. Yet in the case of this post I just made, the integration was with Skype, a tool I normally discuss over here on Disruptive Telephony.  I wound up posting it over there... but I just as easily could have posted it here. 

I've toyed with cross-posting some articles into both places. It would be trivial to do since I use Windows Live Writer now for all my blogging.  The act of cross-posting is as simple as switching the weblog menu to a different weblog, updating the categories for the new blog and hitting "Publish".  But I've avoided that for a while primarily just to have one place for an article to live.  Am I being too much of a purist?  The blogs are designed with two different audiences in mind.  There may not be as much cross-over.  Or should I post in one and put a quick link like I did here in the other?

Thoughts?  Suggestions?

Yesterday, Skype announced a new "Small Business Pack" available in 12 European countries - and also indicated that you could become a Skype reseller to sell this pack.

Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal has more coverage and raises some good points that are unknown about the reseller program.  (And FYI, in the interesting way all this happens, my "tip" to him was in the Skype public group chat that Phil has hosted for months when I asked him if he'd heard of this new pack.)

To me, this represents another new method for Skype to look to get into the business market.  It's not entirely clear to me how many resellers will really pick it up, since the pack really only represents a 50-euro savings, but I suppose on one level it's something they can at least sell.  It's also not clear to me exactly why a reseller would be needed since you can also order the pack directly from Skype's online web site, so even with volume discounts, there would not seem to really be a whole lot of margin in it for a reseller. Maybe there are, as Phil writes, enough "Skype-crazy consultants" out there seeking to sell Skype.  We shall see.

 Since Skype has an open client-side API, why not use it as a transport to tunnel VPN traffic and blow through firewalls to connect you to a remote system?  That's the idea raised by Peeter P. Mõtsküla in his Skype Developer Blog entry: "Idea: skypetunnel".    For instance, have a Skype client running on your home machine logged in as one account.  Have Skype on your laptop on another account.  Initiate a connection between the two of them and wind up with secure, encrypted access through the firewall from wherever you are.  Being peer-to-peer, there  would be no central servers or infrastructure required (outside the usual Skype p2p cloud.) This would require, of course, a yet-to-be-created "extra" that connected into the Skype client API and was installed on both systems... but that was the point of the article - to suggest that something like this could be done (and perhaps inspire someone to write one).

It's an interesting idea, although as one commenter noted, it has already been done in a p2p fashion by Hamachi.  I don't know how large Hamachi's p2p cloud (i.e. userbase) is compared to Skype and whether or not that even makes a difference, but the point is that if you are already a Skype user, this would be a way to make use of your existing tools without using another tool.

This whole concept, though, is part of the side of Skype that is admittedly a bit scary for those of us in security, and specifically corporate security.  The client-side API can be accessed by whatever extras a user installs.  All Skype traffic is encrypted, naturally, so a corporate IT security person has no way to know what is going across that connection. Whatever the user installs and allows to access the API gets to use that encrypted Skype connection. If a user installs this fictional VPN Skype extra, the user could then access their corporate desktop from wherever they are - without going through the "approved" VPN gateways... and at the mercy of the security of that fictional VPN "extra".  How well is that "extra" secured?  Could someone else using the extra connect to your corporate desktop PC and initiate a VPN?  What kind of authentication is part of it?

Yes, with Skype's business version, you can use Windows' registry settings to control access to the API, but this means that: a) the company would need to essentially "endorse" Skype usage by promoting the Skype for Business edition; and b) the company would need to somehow block all installations of the "regular" version of Skype.  I guess I don't see that happening - yet - in many corporations.  I expect they will probably continue to take the very black and white approach of attempting to block Skype entirely from their corporate LAN... or just ignoring the issue and letting Skype be installed if users do so.  This latter case is where the Skype client API gets a bit scary.

We'll see.  I agree with the article author that it's a rather logical extension of the Skype p2p cloud.... it will be interesting to see if someone does come up with a VPN "extra" for Skype.