Disruptive Telephony

UPDATE: Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal has had some great detailed coverage of Skype Prime over at Skype Journal.

News out of Skype today is that a new 3.1 beta includes a new service called SkypePrime, where you can charge someone to call you for either a one-time fee or a per-minute fee.  It also marks the beginning of the frequently-discussed integration of Skype and PayPal, because the payments go into your PayPal account.  However, the payment is deducted from the payer's SkypeCredit (so you are paying in SkypeCredit and the receiver is getting it in PayPal).  Here's the relevant part of the blog entry:

When you call someone who is a Skype Prime call provider, and you both have the new version of Skype, the provider can initiate what we call a “payment request”. That is, all calls start as free, but you can then switch to the paid calling, charging either by the minute or a one-off fixed fee. The call then proceeds as a paid Skype Prime call and your Skype Credit is deducted by the appropriate amount that then goes to the receiver’s account. The provider does not get the call fees directly as Skype Credit — rather, they go into a special holding “box”. The provider then receives the revenue via PayPal.

It's an interesting model that I could see definitely working especialy for consultants, freelancers, etc.  If someone calls you up asking you questions about some topic, you could say "I'd be glad to help you, but to do so I need to charge you for the time."  You click a button or two and, ta da, you're doing small micro-payments deducted directly from your SkypeCredit account. The Skype/PayPal integration facilitates it all and makes it easy.

Of course, Skype isn't giving this service away for free... as noted on the screenshot to the right (click for larger image), they take a 30% cut of any payments.  Note also the list of categories they have set up.   When "Astrology & Spiritual" is the first one, you can imagine the type of calls that Skype is envisioning.  What is interesting to note is the point Skype makes that this is a global service, whereas traditional pay-per-call services are limited to the local nation in which you live.  Hmmm... think the regulators in various countries might not be entirely thrilled about this?  (Since they're conceivably losing their tax revenue to Skype?) Interesting to note that if you are an EU resident, you'll also be charged a 15% VAT tax.

The Service Provider Terms of Service actually goes into more details... right now you can only charge between $0.50 and $2.50 USD per minute or between $0.50 and $12 USD per call... interestingly, Skype bills in increments of 1 minute and rounds up to the next minute after five seconds into the new minute.

It's also interesting that this allows pay-per-call video calls... and the security guy in me immediately has to wonder about the usage of this for the sex/porn trade.  Calls to 900-number-type-of-services - with video - from the privacy of your PC... and all encrypted across the Internet.  Seems like a rather obvious use for that industry.  Of course, Skype prohibits this in section 4 of their Terms of Service, but one has to wonder... if this is all truly peer-to-peer, encrypted, etc., how would anyone else know?  It will curious to see if Skype is able to keep its SkypePrime Service Providers truly clean and adhering to the TOS.

One thing that's missing, curiously, is any kind of mention of a directory.  If I create a SkypePrime service, how can others find that?  Obviously I can advertise it on my web page, etc., but one would think it would have been integrated into SkypeFind or some other (global!) service directory.  Perhaps that is that the next stage... given that this is just the first public beta.

Lots more to digest in the SkypePrime FAQ.  It will be indeed curious to see how much this takes off and whether this does enable people to earn money from the usage.  In the meantime, if you have questions about something like, oh, podcast production, for a mere $2/minute, I'll gladly talk to you... ;-)

Phil Wolff asked if he could republish my review of Skype 3.1 and SkypeFind over on Skype Journal and with the re-pub including a link back I was perfectly okay about that... so there it is.  My premiere as a guest blogger on Skype Journal... :-)

Welcome to anyone who landed here after visiting Skype Journal.  You'll find I do talk about Skype here, although it's just one of the many topics.  If you find my writing useful or helpful, feel free to subscribe via RSS or email through the right sidebar.  Thanks for stopping by!

Skype today released a new "3.1" beta for Windows (you can get it here) with a number of minor tweaks - and a brand new component called "SkypeFind".  As you can see in the picture to the right, there's a new tab added... and is the entrance of Skype into the game already being played by GoogleMaps, Yahoo!Local  and Microsoft's Windows Live Local...  namely... providing an easily searchable directory of businesses. 

It's not stated, but it's pretty clear the ultimate goal is to control the directory you use to initiate calls.  Think about it, Google is aiming to do this with their "click-to-call" in Google Maps.  Find an entry (in the US, anyway) and simply click "call" and your regular phone rings.  It's simple and easy.  Google controls the directory and the initiation of calls.  It's even more logical for Skype to do this.  Find a business in the directory, click the phone number and you're dialling away using Skype/SkypeOut...

Of course, Skype aims to be more than simply yet another business directory.  As the Skype blog entry states:

SkypeFind is one of the most interesting features that we’ve done in quite a while now. We call it “Local businesses you like”, and that’s what it is - a collection of businesses, with reviews and comments, built by everyone using Skype.

So it's really a mashup of a business directory, a ratings service... and a social networking service.  The other interesting aspect is that the directory is basically empty!  It started out this morning basically with only a few entries.  Tonight it's now up to "318 listings in 49 countries by 83 people".  (Of course, you'd have to find out about the beta and then have the time to experiment.  I actually learned of it because I've stayed logged into the Skype Journal public chat and conversation popped up there this morning.)  Now I find it interesting that Skype didn't work with someone else to pre-load the database, but: a) this is still in beta; and b) the major local databases are in the hands of Skype competitors who have very little reason to work with Skype.

As you can see in the image on the left (click image for larger view), when you go into the SkypeFind tab, you wind up being able to search within a country, region, etc.  There's also recommendations from people in your contact list shown on the bottom of the panel.   You can switch to a different region.

Since Burlington, VT, had no entries and I didn't feel like entering any, I switched to the UK and figured searching for "pub" in "London" ought to generate some listings.  It did, of course, and if you click on the image to the right to get the larger view, you'll see entries with reviews and ratings.  Skype is using a cute motif of a flower with petals being removed as the rating goes lower.  Note also the choices in the dropbox in the upper right corner:

• Most relevant
• Most called
• Highest rating
• A-Z

Most called?  Well, of course, if you are Skype you would have knowledge of how many times Skype users call that number.  Just an interesting twist that you wouldn't find, of course, in the other directories (although you would wonder if Google could add it with their click-to-call).

Another interesting twist is the "Ask your friends" for recommendations button seen at the bottom of the listing.  I've not played with this yet, but per the Skype blog entry, it will change your advisory/mood message to be a question and provide a link to a public chat where Skype-using friends can then join you (presumably with Skype 3.0 or later) and answer your questions (or at least chat with you).

Going into an entry shows the ratings and reviews and gives you the ability to add your own review.  But also notice the little link at the top?  It says:

Edit this listing

Yep... you can just click on it and go in and change the name, address, web site... basically any info except for the phone number and country which per the SkypeFind guide, Skype uses as a unique identifier.  Now being a security guy, I immediately wonder about this... I can put in any URL.  What's to prevent a spammer from going through all these pubs and entering the URL for some spam site? Or a competitor from changing the names around?  Or someone just making mischief?  Nothing, really.  Phil Wolff called it a "wiki" in the Skype Journal chat today and that is what it's like. You can view the editing history, so you can see who made the changes (or at least the SkypeID of who made the change)... but the changes have in fact been made.  It will be curious to see how much abuse this does or does not get.

So will SkypeFind ever have ads or premium listings?  It would seem to be the obvious thing to do (like Google's sponsored results) and Paul Kapustka writing over at Om Malik's GigaOm site has a review of SkypeFind that quotes Skype General Manager of E-Commerce Sten Tamkivi as saying that SkypeFind may include ads in the future.  The article also talks again about how recommendations from friends will help listings "bubble up"... we'll see... first there need to be listings before they can bubble up!  (I know, I know, it hasn't even been out for 24 hours....)

One curious omission, that I have to credit Phil Wolff for pointing out.  If you look at the larger view of the "Add a listing" screen to the right, you'll notice something fairly basic is missing... a place to enter a Skype ID!  It seems that for a business to be listed you must have a PSTN number.  Given that it's Skype, you might have thought there would be a way to enter the Skype ID and call the business over Skype!

Ah, well, it's still in beta... and only available on Windows, so Mac and Linux users have to wait to play.

Beyond SkypeFind, the release did have some other minor tweaks.  There is now a "Chats" menu on the menu bar that gives you easy access to your public and private chats. And the "eye candy" of this release is the cute way Skype finally provided the notification that the other user is typing.  Where AIM and MSN/WLM have text that says something like "User-so-and-so is typing...", Skype has a pencil icon that writes... and then in a cute move erases when you are deleting what you wrote.  You can see it inthis screen shot (upper right by the woman's picture) from Skype's blog.  It also shows up in chat windows (including public chats).  It's a cute way to meet and exceed what the other services have had for quite some time.

All in all an interesting evolutionary step for the Skype client... will be interesting to see how successful SkypeFind becomes as the directory becomes populated.  Given that Skype accounts are free, the security side of me just sees it as something wide open for abuse... but hopefully for Skype users I am wrong.  What do you all think?

P.S. Many thanks to the Skype Journal for continuing to run their public chat which countinues to be a source of great info about Skype...

Anyone reading this blog using the ChanSkype software to connect Asterisk to Skype?  I've not played with it at all myself, but it sounds like an interesting idea.  Here's what they say it can do:

• Call online Skype users.
• Call using SkypeOut.
• Receive up to 30 incoming Skype Calls ("Skype Trunk").
• Bridge with SIP channels.
• Make any number of simultaneous calls (limited only by system resources).

Their FAQ is just a wee bit sparse on details, like, oh, precisely how many simultaneous connections will it support?  Their main page has the text above and on the Buy page they note that corporate licenses are licensed per port up to 30 users and it has this text:

This limitation is not technical, for ChanSkype's simultaneous call capabilities are limited only by system resources.

Which naturally makes me a bit more curious.  It's clear that they are using the Skype client-side API through a Linux Skype client but that's about it.  I would think to support multiple users they would have to launch multiple instances of the Linux Skype client.  Is this what they are doing?

If anyone has played with it, I'd be curious to know how it works.  It's intriguing enough to me that I might just have to revive my dormant Asterisk install.

VoIP News yesterday posted an article "Hacking Skype: 25 Tips to Improve Your Skype Experience" that definitely makes for interesting reading (using "hacking" in the original sense of the word not the criminal one).  It's a good list of the kind of innovative things people are doing with Skype.  Many of them I'm already using... some were new to me and some I don't ever see myself doing (sorry, I don't want a lip-syncing avatar).  Are you using any of these?  What other hacks for Skype have you found useful?

Forget email, post your support questions to a group chat! Continuing my experimentation with Skype 3.0, I have to say that the persistent group chats are an intriguing aspect of the product.  Back when the 3.0 beta was announced last fall, I joined the "Skype English Blog Chat" and the interesting fact is... I'm still in there a couple of months later.   Now, the reason that I am still in there is because I never went to the top of the chat window (pictured on the right - click for a larger view) and clicked the "Leave" button.  Because I haven't pressed "Leave", I will stay in this group chat indefinitely (or until a Host kicks me out, as Jaanus has indicated he is now doing to inactive members).  This group chat membership survives through shutting down Skype, power cycling your computer, etc.  In fact, it becomes part of your Skype configuration, so even if you login to Skype on a different PC, the group chat is available to you. 

Two other interesting aspects.  First, when you return to the group chat, the history of the chat is available to you. So you might be gone from it for several days, but when you return you can browse through the history to catch up on what occurred.  When you request the history, it gives it to you in batches, i.e. you see the first X amount of time and then you can get more of the history. 

Second, if you don't want to receive an alert every time a message is posted, you can type "/alertson <text>" as in "/alertson dan" and you'll only get an alert when that text is typed in a message.

So what does this have to do with product support?  Well, the folks at Skype have been using this particular group chat as a vehicle for people to communicate issues with first the Skype 3.0 beta and now the released Skype 3.0.  Several of their developers and/or support people lurk in the forum and answer people's questions.  It's been interesting because I've learned a good bit about Skype simply by reading the Q&A that go by.  If you read the image in this post, you'll see that I posted there about an issue where Skype was advertising it's Unlimited Calling for $14.95 but when you went to buy it, they were going to charge you the full price of $29.95. I sent an email in to Skype support and was told I would get a response in 72 hours. I also posted to the group chat and received an answer back there about 12 hours later (I still haven't received an email back As I hit Publish I flipped to check my email and there was a response).

Now obviously Skype can't use this for all their product support.  It's not scalable and besides the group chat feature only supports 100 users.  But it's an interesting use for the tool.  It also has to be interesting for the Skype developers and product managers to see how people are actually using their product.  FYI, if you have Skype 3.0, you can join the chat still.

(And yes, using a group chat for technical support is hardly unique or new... people have been doing that IRC, Jabber and more for years... yes, I know that.  But it's interesting to me to see Skype now offer that.)

Checking out SkypeJournal before starting work this morning, I noticed their post "SecondTalk: Skype in a Virtual World" about a new tool to allow people to "easily" use Skype in SecondLife.  Intrigued, I read the blog announcement, press release (back on Jan 16th) and FAQ and decided to try it out.  I'll suppress the standard rant about SecondLife technical issues and say that when I was finally able to get in to SL and to the right place, I was able to obtain a "headset" that I could "wear" to theoretically communicate with others via Skype.

Now I will say that the process of obtaining and configuring the headset was not exactly intuitive.  I had to:

1. Touch the appropriate sign to be given a headset and then accept it into my inventory.
2. Drag it from my inventory to the ground near me.
3. Right-click on the headset on the ground (which I initially couldn't find) and edit the properties to put my Skype ID in the "Description" field.
4. Click on the headset again and "Take" it back into my Inventory.
5. Click on the headset in my Inventory and "Wear" it.
6. Turn it "on" by typing "/1 on" in the Chat bar (which meant opening the Chat bar up)

 After all of that, I wound up with this headset on my virtual ear and received a message from a "scan" that there was someone else in my vicinity who was able to talk (i.e. was also wearing a SecondTalk headset) and asking if I wanted to talk.  (I didn't right then.) My understanding is that as long as I have the thing "on", I will will receive these type of messages and be able to talk to others.  (It is apparently connecting out to some external server run by Centric that is connecting SecondTalk-wearing users. In the spirit of experimentation I'll try hard not to get hung up on the security ramifications of that.)

You can see the headset on my avatar in the pic to the right (click to enlarge - taken when I later returned to sit in the Crayon diner).  Now, given that I didn't really have time to spend in SL and there didn't seem to be any other SecondTalk-equipped folks around when I was there, I never actually got to try it out.  But I did see this one incredibly fundamental problem with the whole setup:

IF MY CPU IS ALREADY JACKED TO 100% BY THE SECOND LIFE CLIENT, how in the world is Skype or any other VoIP application going to be able to work with any kind of quality?

Just to test my real-world headset, I tried making a Skype call while SL was running, just using regular Skype and not the SecondTalk thing... and couldn't get Skype to work because, as I mentioned, SL was jacking my CPU to 100%.  Now, maybe it is just my PC and its CPU, memory, video card, etc., but everytime I run SL my CPU goes to 100%.  Actually, this is true on my other PC as well.  Now I understand why... there's a lot of rendering going on within SL.  But to me it does beg the question of whether or not something like this could actually work.  It's an interesting idea because SL definitely could use voice communication... but at least on my systems I'm skeptical of how it could work.

I don't know... I'll have to try it out again sometime when I have some time to do so.  Anyone else try it out?

With the torrent of media hype about Apple's new iPhone, one of the things that has surprised me is the lack of discussion about one of the aspects of the device that I find truly disruptive... it will be running a full version of MacOS X.  Now, granted, with 15 million blogs and countless web sites commenting on the iPhone in the past few days, I'm sure I've missed some where people have discussed this aspect, but to me it's a key element.

Consider this... if you have the full capabilities of MacOS X (which we don't yet know for certain but all of the Apple info seems to indicate it will have full MacOS X) - and you also have WiFi support and/or Cingular EDGE support - why not simply run the Mac version of Skype or Gizmo?   Or Yahoo Messenger or AIM? Or anyone else's softphone that runs on MacOS X?

The phone then becomes an extension of your contact/buddy list and can provide that kind of connectivity wherever you can get a WiFi or EDGE connection.  That to me is one of the fascinating aspects of the whole play.  The phone as an application platform - with a "standard" commercial operating system.

I suppose I should note that first out "announcing their support" for the iPhone was the folks over at Jajah (from where I got the picture), but unless I'm missing something there's not a whole lot for them to do.   You go to a web page, enter in the number you want to call and Jajah calls you!  With that in mind, it could be said that any web-based "click-to-call" service will be "compatible with the iPhone".  I mean... you'll be able to start using Google's click-to-call right away as well.  Now, perhaps there is more to Jajah's "support" than just seizing the moment to ride the coattails of the iPhone announcement (they do, after all have a Jajah Mobile version of some type - I'd try it, but it won't work on my Blackberry from what I can see), but in any event it's a sign of the type of services that I can see being enabled as the iPhone rolls out.

Regardless, the iPhone will definitely be interesting as it allows Mac-based VoIP to be extended out to wherever the phone can have data coverage, be it WiFi or EDGE.

P.S. I'd definitely take one to try it out... oh, wait... that's right... Cingular doesn't offer service (or at least numbers) in Vermont!  I'll just have to live vicariously through others (or suck it up and get a number elsewhere and constantly be explaining to people in VT why I have a phone with a NY area code).

After seeing this post at Engadget, I, too, have to truly wonder whether this is for real or some sort of very elaborate hoax.  The Nikko Home Electronics website has more info...  well... actually it has a big Flash object that obviously took some time to create. 

It appears there are two models: 1) The "C.S." or "Communication System" and 2) the "M.E.S." or "Mobile Entertainment System".  Gizmodo has a video of the MES from the floor of CES this week out in Las Vegas, proving that there is at least one working model of that system.

I have to say that the light saber as a phone is certainly amusing and destined to warm the heart of any Star Wars fan.

I don't know if it is actually for real, but hey, it would be amusing if it really is.  (And if Nikko wants to send one my way for review, my shipping address is....  ;-)

Earlier this week I uploaded Blue Box Podcast #48, where Jonathan and I go beyond just talking about the news to also review the "top VoIP security news stories of 2006" and also get into our predictions for 2007. My prediction #1 will be fairly obvious for anyone who has listened to the show for a while. We also cover the typical range of VoIP security stories, talk about OpenID for caller authentication and many more things.

This was a bit frustrating of a show to post-produce. Post-production is always a somewhat lengthy process, anyway, because I want the enhanced audio that you get from a wideband codec, which means that we use Skype. However, Skype creates its own challenges with voice that will simply fade away or get garbled. It's fairly routine that we have to disconnect and reconnect a time or two within the space of the hour in which we are recording the show. (That's actually apparent in this show where Jonathan's voice is at a lower level and then suddenly is much louder. After the reconnect, he wound up with more volume.) If I could get the audio quality in a softphone without the fade outs, I'd probably drop my post-production time by a good bit.

However, this week I couldn't blame Skype. I record the show in Audacity and it appears that because I had been previously editing a file located over on a USB hard drive, Audacity started writing its files for the new episode over on that hard drive. As anyone using Audacity will know, it writes a huge number of files to disk. Basically many, many little files with small pieces of audio in them. What seems to have happened is that periodically parts of the audio didn't get written. Or the files got destroyed. Or who knows what. Perhaps I had too many other apps running on the older computer I'm using for recording and Audacity couldn't keep up with what was being sent to it. Perhaps there was too much latency going to the USB hard drive. I don't know, but the end result was that there were gaps in the audio that got worse as the show went on. Just missing pieces of audio.

Unfortunately, I discovered it after the holidays were already underway and I couldn't really reconnect with Jonathan to rerecord. And also unfortunately, I wasn't running a backup record as I have in the past.

Given that my goal is high-quality audio production, this was a rather disappointing turn of events, but in the end I did put it out there with a big caveat in the show notes.

We just recorded show #49 today and I made sure to have nothing else running on the PC, to be writing to the main hard drive and to have a backup recorder. Hopefully I'll not experience the issue again.

Technorati Tags: security, skype, skype security, openid, voip, voip security, voipsa, voipsecurity