Month: May 2011
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Sorry, Skype, But Your Auto-Update Feature Is A Fail!
Continue Reading: Sorry, Skype, But Your Auto-Update Feature Is A Fail!According to Skype’s Security Blog post right now, I’m supposed to just do an “auto-update” that will give me the latest version 5.1.0.922 of the Skype for Mac client. When I check what version I have, it is 5.1.0.914:
So I go up to the Skype menu and choose “Check for Updates…”
And this is what I get…
So if, as Skype indicates, this security issue was fixed a month ago, how was I supposed to get it?
Sure… it now seems that I can go to the main page and download the software directly, but why would I ever think of doing that?
C’mon, Skype… if you are going to send out security updates as optional updates, please make sure your “Check for Updates” feature works!
P.S. When I first heard of the security issue, after checking the Skype blogs and Twitter streams, the first thing I did was to go into my Skype 5.1 client and do this “Check For Updates”. The next thing I did was check the Skype for Mac Release Notes, which still do not list this update that was apparently fixed in April. After that I did some more poking around and then wrote…
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UPDATED: Skype for Mac Has Dangerous Security Vulnerability… and There’s No Public Word From Skype
Continue Reading: UPDATED: Skype for Mac Has Dangerous Security Vulnerability… and There’s No Public Word From SkypeUPDATE: Skype has now published a blog post indicating that a Skype 5.1 update is available for download. As I noted separately, the auto-update process is NOT working for me. It appears that I will need to download the new version directly from Skype’s website.Separately, Skype PR indicated to me that version 2.8 is not vulnerable – although I note that this information is not in Skype’s security blog post. (Skype has now confirmed in a tweet that Skype 2.x is not vulnerable.)
It’s great that Skype claims they fixed this in mid-April… but if they didn’t tell anyone – including, apparently, the security researcher who reported the issue – what value is it that they fixed the issue?
I have a longer piece that I need to write on this… but I’ll leave that for another post.
Meanwhile, we finally do have some information and a fix – many hours after it would have been helpful to have had it.
The original post remains below… From the Can-We-Please-Communicate-Better Department… there is apparently an open vulnerability in the Skype for Mac client that lets an attacker send a message to a Skype user and gain remote access. As reported…
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Skype No Longer Doing The Samba – Drops Inbound Numbers In Brazil
Continue Reading: Skype No Longer Doing The Samba – Drops Inbound Numbers In BrazilInteresting development in the land of Skype… they are no longer offering inbound phone numbers in Brazil. Per a post on Skype’s Portuguese blog, translated into English via Google Translate, the company providing phone numbers in Brazil, Transit Telecom, has notified Skype that it will no longer be supplying these phone numbers.Skype’s inbound numbers are now referred to as “Online Numbers” but were originally called “SkypeIn” numbers. For an annual fee of somewhere between $30 – 60 USD per year (depending upon discounts with subscriptions), you can have multiple inbound numbers attached to your Skype account from a range of countries:
In full disclosure, I’ve had a SkypeIn/OnlineNumber for years and it works extremely well.
The challenge for Skype, of course, is that they typically have to work with local carriers in the individual countries to obtain those inbound numbers (also referred to as “DIDs” in telecom)… and obviously is at the mercy of the local carrier to keep providing those numbers. Now who knows what happened in this case… perhaps Transit Telecom wanted to charge more than Skype wanted to pay… perhaps they had some other business challenge between the two companies.
Whatever the case, Brazil is…
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Making SIP Phone Calls Over IPv6 Using Linphone on MacOS X, Windows, Linux
Continue Reading: Making SIP Phone Calls Over IPv6 Using Linphone on MacOS X, Windows, LinuxWant a softphone that can make calls on IPv6 using the SIP protocol? I was… and kept striking out until I discovered that Linphone: a) ran on more than just Linux (it also supports MacOS X and Windows); and b) worked beautifully with IPv6. I wrote up my findings in this post and included some screenshots:How To Make SIP Calls Over IPv6 Using Linphone (on Mac, Windows, Linux)
It’s quite simple to use (assuming you have IPv6 connectivity) and worked very well in my testing. A big benefit to me was that Linphone lets you do direct computer-to-computer SIP calls, without requiring you to register with a SIP server or other IP-PBX. This gets around the need to have an IP-PBX that is IPv6-connected, which could be a different challenge.
As I noted in the blog post, I am definitely interested in any info people have about other softphones that support IPv6. Jitsi (the renamed “SIP Communicator”) indicates that it has IPv6 support, but it requires registration with a SIP server, and I don’t have one of those running on IPv6. If you have info about other softphones (or other VoIP endpoints), please do leave comments either here or…
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Reminder: Free Training on IPv6 and Communications Apps (including SIP) on Thursday, May 5, 2011
Continue Reading: Reminder: Free Training on IPv6 and Communications Apps (including SIP) on Thursday, May 5, 2011As I mentioned last week, I’m speaking in a “Developer Jam Session” on this Thursday, May 5, 2011 on the topic of:IPv6 and How It Impacts Communication Applications
I’ll briefly cover IPv6 basics, talk about how it impacts building communication applications and the SIP protocol and then have some demonstrations of SIP-over-IPv6. You can learn more about the session and register on the Jam Session web page.
It’s free to attend the session – and it will be archived for later viewing if you can’t get there live during the session.
It should be an educational session and I expect I’ll be writing a good bit more about IPv6 in the weeks and months ahead. (You can see some of my writing over on Voxeo’s blog at http://blogs.voxeo.com/speakingofstandards/tag/IPv6/ and here on this blog at /2012/05/17/ipv6/)
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
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Mitel Reorganizes – President Leaves, Business Units Simplified, More Changes
Continue Reading: Mitel Reorganizes – President Leaves, Business Units Simplified, More ChangesMitel today announced a series of organizational changes, including the departure of Paul Butcher, Mitel’s President and Chief Operating Officer. The news release indicates they are merging together various sales organizations and simplifying the business units into three:- Mitel Communications Solutions: responsible for delivering unified communications and collaboration products and services to businesses.
- Mitel NetSolutions: responsible for network and hosted services, mobile services, and broadband connectivity.
- Mitel DataNet: responsible for the distribution of third-party products to partners and customers.
It also briefly mentions the departure of Paul Butcher as of Saturday. From a product point-of-view, there were two statements I found interesting:
- “a re-direction of our R&D investment to products serving the high-growth market of 100 to 2,500 user organizations.” Which makes sense, given that this area is one in which Mitel has traditionally done well.
- “we intend to exploit our significant market leadership in voice virtualization.” i.e. continuing their partnership with VMware. Again this also makes sense given that people are looking for solutions to deploy more applications with less hardware… and looking at virtualization as one of the potential solutions.
To me, all of this is naturally to be expected after Mitel appointed Richard McBee the new CEO…