Disruptive Telephony

Skype launches version 4.1... (yawn)... still only Windows... still a fragmented product strategy

2009-06-30T21:29:07-04:00

Skype today announced Skype 4.1 for Windows. As Raul Liive outlined in a post about the 4.1 beta (see also Jim Courtney's take), this version brings to Windows users the "screen sharing" feature that we've had in the Mac version of Skype for a bit. It also restores several of the features that were in the previous Skype 3.8 for Windows but that got left behind when Skype rushed 4.0 for Windows out the door. And it adds the SILK codec and some other odds and ends.

Per Raul's Skype blog post today, the final 4.1 version fixes a whack-load of bugs as well.

If I were on Windows, I'd definitely head over and download 4.1. The bug fixes alone are probably worth it.

Of course, I'm not on Windows (I'm a Mac user) and so today's announcement is pretty much irrelevant to me. Just as whenever Skype comes out with a new Mac version or beta, it's irrelevant to Windows users. And if by some miracle Skype should actually come out with a new Linux version (no update to their blog in 6 months), that would be irrelevant to both Mac and Windows users.

It's hard to get excited about a new Skype release when regardless of what is new in it, you can generally only use it with people on your platform. Maybe. If they care enough about Skype to download the new version.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge Skype fan. It's open for me all the time and I have something like 40+ group chats (IM) open at any time for various projects and teams.

But Skype's continued belief in a fragmented, fractured, siloed platform-specific product strategy is still a path of monumental stupidity, in my opinion. I've ranted about this before. It's still the same.

In contrast, Mozilla comes out with Firefox 3.5 on the same day across all three operating systems. For any given Firefox release, there is tons of attention and interest because everyone can download, try it out, write about it, tweet about it and generally use it. There's a good buzz that can happen.

I know, I know... Firefox is "just a web browser" and Skype is a much more complicated real-time communication tool... etc., etc. And yes, I know that Windows still has the largest market share so it makes sense to focus there to reach the largest % of customers. (Although I'd wonder if that is true of the "influencer"/word-of-mouth/blogging community that seems to have a higher Mac %.) And sure, maybe there is good sense in both those statements. (or not)

Still, as a Skype fan, I'd love for maybe Skype 5.0 to be a release that came out across all platforms and let me share the excitement with Skype users across all the different platforms.

Probably not. But it would be nice.

Meanwhile, if you are a Windows user, you can get 4.1. And if you are a Mac user, you can safely keep ignoring Skype... no update for you, yet.

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Technorati Tags: skype

Speaking at the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week in Boston

2009-06-22T07:34:49-04:00

This week, I (Dan York) am at the Enterprise 2.0 conference today through Thursday at the Westin Boston Waterfront in downtown Boston. The keynote panel I'm on, The Future of Social Messaging in the Enterprise, doesn't happen until Wednesday morning at 9:15am... but I came down early as a good number of the sessions are of interest.

If you are at the show and would like to say hello, please do email me. I expect to also be posting updates to Twitter on both danyork and voxeo.

You can also follow along with the conference "backchannel" on Twitter by following the hashtag "#e2conf". Here's an easy search URL:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=e2conf

I expect to have a very cool Voxeo announcement out on Wednesday, too... but more on that then... ;-)

P.S. And why do I do the silly "I (Dan York)" construction at the beginning of this post? Because I see my content being scraped and so "I" alone doesn't make sense in other places the content winds up :-)

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Technorati Tags: e2conf, voxeo, danyork, dan york, enterprise 2.0, boston

For a brief bit - Skype video calls from 30,000+ feet on Southwest Air WiFi!

2009-06-15T09:11:33-04:00

Upon entering the Southwest Airlines plane this morning on my flight to Orlando to visit Voxeo's headquarters, I immediately noticed a "WiFi zone" sign on a column by the entry door. Naturally, I had to pull out my Macbook Pro and give it a whirl... and, given the issue of Skype-blocking last summer... try out Skype.

To my great surprise and pleasure, it worked great. (For a little while - see below.) Here's Bruce Lowekamp:

As you may or may not be able to see in the graphic, our call had been up for 3 minutes and 33 seconds when I snapped the picture.

Unfortunately, I didn't have easy access to my headset, so I couldn't really have a great conversation. The ambient background noise in the plane was really too much for my voice to be heard unless I bent down toward the microphone... and likewise even with the MacBook Pro volume up all the way it was a bit hard to hear Bruce unless I bent down toward the laptop.

And, of course, I didn't really want to annoy my fellow passengers. :-)

You can see on the right the technical stats for the call. Packet loss was surprisingly low. At the time I captured this window, I had a 3% receiving packet loss... but through much of our call that was hovering down around 0%. A roundtrip of 789ms is, of course, rather entertaining.

Sadly, though, the connectivity didn't last forever. After about maybe 30 minutes of trying this out and making video calls to different people, my Skype account went offline.

COMPLETELY offline.

No instant messaging/chat, either. Which is exceedingly annoying.

Out in Twitter-land, Fred Posner asked Southwest if they were blocking VoIP, to which Southwest replied:

@fredposner yep...we do.

Bummer.

Actually, what annoys me more is Southwest blocking Skype IM. Other than the novelty today, I don't know that I really want to be making calls from the plane... although I could see the usefulness from time to time.

What I do want is the Skype IM... since I use Skype IM heavily for communication with people including my team. It seems, though, that my Skype connection is completely blocked. Which is unfortunate, given that all my other IM services seem to be working fine.

Southwest, can you please figure out how to block the Skype voice and video, but still leave us the chat?

Despite the VoIP-blocking, though, it was seriously great to be able to use my laptop and work online during the flight. Even better, on this flight the Southwest WiFi was free while they are apparently testing it out. I did a couple of speed tests from DSL Reports, naturally, and seemed to be getting around 3Mbps down and around 200-250 Kbps up. Here's one of the results:

What a crazy world we're now in... 3 Mbps downlink... on a plane!

P.S. And of course I had to snap a picture like this:

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Technorati Tags: internet, connectivity, southwest, wifi, travel, voip, skype, airtravel, airplane

Video: Sir Terry Matthews on startups, Canada, what's exciting...

2009-05-15T14:30:46-04:00

By way of a tweet from Matt Roberts, a friend from my Mitel days, I learned of this video interview with Sir Terry Matthews on Canada's Business News Network:

Sir Terry Matthews speaks to BNN about the state of the industry in Canada, why he loves home-grown startups and what he sees as the next big thing in technology.

If you've not heard him before, the interview is a good view into the passion, enthusiasm and charisma that keeps him starting up companies all over the place. The report says he's now up to 80 companies or so that he's started up... and I'm not surprised.

His overall message, though, is what he has been consistent saying for many years now... we are in an age where incredible broadband capacity is coming online - as that happens, what will we do to make use of all that bandwidth?

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Technorati Tags: terry matthews, canada

Returning from a blogging hiatus...

2009-05-15T14:12:32-04:00

As you have no doubt noticed, my last post here was April 20th... what happened? Well, our second child was born April 24th, and as any parent of a newborn can tell you, you enter this wonderful yet challenging vortex where your time is entirely in the service of the wee one... ;-)

I'm slowly getting back up to speed now, though, and so you'll see more posts appearing here and across all the other blogs where I write...

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Speaking about Voxeo Prophecy 9 in webinar tomorrow (Apr 21, 2009)...

2009-04-20T20:02:06-04:00

If you are free tomorrow at 11am US Eastern / 8am US Pacific / 5pm CET, and want a glimpse into what we all are doing over at Voxeo, we are offering a free webinar about what is new in the upcoming Prophecy 9 and VoiceObjects 9 product releases. I am speaking in the first part about Prophecy 9 and then will be followed by Stefan Besling from our VoiceObjects team to talk about what is new in VO9.

As I put together the slide deck, I realized that the engineering team has filled this release with some great features:

our voice application platform now works across all three major operating systems: Windows, Linux and MacOS X
the new management console has some graphical features to aid in managing large premise installations that simply have to be seen to be believed (think... three dimensional walls...)
the new "virtual platforms" feature makes adding new capacity as drop-dead simple as installing a new server and adding it in
the new log analyzer tool lets you dive deep into logs to find what's going on - and to generate pretty pictures out of the activity as well

I'm definitely looking forward to talking about it tomorrow... and the more I use it on my home system (the beta is available at www.voxeo.com/prophecy), the cooler I think it is. (And I'm not saying that simply because it's my job now! :-)

Anyway, please do join us if you can - and if you can't, an archive will be available on the VoiceObjects Developer Portal soon.

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Digium takes on the "fax issue" with Fax For Asterisk...

2009-04-09T14:25:44-04:00

I can't stand fax. I can't. It's a technology that I just wish would go away. It kills me that fax is one of the main reasons I didn't drop my landline in my move. Yet the reality is that fax usage is everywhere... and probably will be for quite some time if for no other reason than the complete and utter simplicity of fax usage. Print out your message, or write your message (you know... that thing we all used to do... take a writing tool (pen, pencil, crayon, charcoal, etc.), grasp it in your hand and make marks on some writing surface...), just stick that message in your fax machine, punch in the number and press Send. It's hard to get much simpler than that.

But the lack of fax has been a barrier to many a premise-based IP-PBX deployment. Everything's going great... people are looking at all the great things they can do with VoIP and Unified Communications, etc. They are figuring out distributed architectures that are all IP-based. It's all looking really cool technically and will save money, too. All is going well and then someone asks "What about the fax machines?" And so people wind up with kludge solutions using analog breakouts or local lines or attempting Fax-over-IP or keeping some TDM around or... or... or...

We as an "IP communications industry" have to figure out a way to address the "fax issue" if we really do want to build our big interconnect and move beyond the PSTN into a richer communication experience. (And the SIP Forum, by the way, has formed a FoIP Task Group to look at this issue.)

In this context, I was intrigued to see that this week the folks at Digium announced a new service called (Duh!) "Fax For Asterisk". Here's the standard blurb:

Digium's Fax For Asterisk is a commercial facsimile (Fax) termination and origination solution designed to enhance the capabilities of Open Source and commercial Asterisk as well as Switchvox. Fax For Asterisk bundles a suite of user-friendly Asterisk applications and a licensed version of the industry's leading fax modem software from Commetrex. Fax For Asterisk provides low speed (14400bps) PSTN faxing via DAHDI-compatible telephony boards as well as VoIP faxing to T.38-compatible SIP endpoints and service providers. Licensed on a per-channel basis, Digium's Fax For Asterisk provides a complete, cost-effective, commercial fax solution for Asterisk users.

Translation: You can send and receive faxes through Asterisk using either TDM or Fax-over-IP (T.38), licensed on a per-channel basis.

In a rather smart move on Digium's part, they've also rolled out "Free Fax For Asterisk" where you can get a free 1-channel license for Fax For Asterisk for an Asterisk installation. This will let people at least play with FFA and may be all that some small offices need.

I'm naturally intrigued by the FoIP side of the offering, which the FAQ dives into in a bit more detail. Unfortunately I've been doing some work on my home network and my Asterisk installation isn't operational right now, but I expect I'll be bringing that back online soon and expect I'll then be experimenting with this a bit more as well. So if I could get termination with a SIP service provider who offered T.38.... could I at least solve the receiving side of the picture? (And yes, I can also solve that through eFax and a zillion other providers.) The sending side still requires some hardware changes on my end to scan it in...

Now if we can just make it ultimately as simple as sticking the papers to send in the document feeder and pressing Send...

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Technorati Tags: asterisk, digium, fax, voip, foip, sip

Skype on the iPhone: Some initial thoughts...

2009-04-09T12:33:01-04:00

Unless you remained under a rock last week, you know that Skype was released for the iPhone, somewhat predictably rocketed to the #1 downloaded iPhone app, shot past 1 million downloads in two days and then just today went past two million downloads. As Skype's Peter Parkes' writes:

I’m back with an update – and it’s no surprise that we’ve stormed past the 2 million download milestone. This means an average rate of 2-3 downloads per second since the app first appeared on the 31st March.

2-3 downloads per second! You have to think Skype's got to be rather happy about those numbers. Jim Courtney had a good post rounding up some of the Skype for iPhone coverage.

The good news, for me, was that Skype for the iPhone did include support for persistent group chats, which I noted was my one big desire for the iPhone client.

I've been using the client now off and on for the past week, and thought I'd write down a few initial impressions:

Audio quality - I've not actually used it for too many calls, but when I have the audio quality (over WiFi) has been great. I'm looking forward to trying it out more whenever I next travel. Interestingly it seems to use the G.729 codec versus any of the ones that Skype developed themselves.
Group chats are supported, but are buggy - As I said above, the good news is that group chats, both public chats and also non-public group chats, are supported by the iPhone client. The bad news is that the groupchat support is still a bit buggy (and yes, I realize that it's a 1.0 release). I found a wacky behavior (which I reported) where the iPhone client would only show you the 10 last updates in a group chat, which made it kind of useless.
I've also noticed that when I go into some group chats in the iPhone client, they don't have the most recent updates in them, which you could expect... but they don't ever seem to update. Now, this could be part of the known issue Skype has with multiple Skype clients simultaneously using the same Skype ID. The updating of groupchats between multiple Skype clients sharing the same ID is a bit funky with regular PC/Mac clients, so it's probably no surprise that it could be strange with the iPhone client in the mix. I'll have to try it sometimes without being signed into Skype anywhere else.
Still, the great thing is that I can update group chats while I am mobile and, if things work right, also catch up on what's been written in those chats.
Battery life - Somewhat predictably, I've found that keeping the Skype For iPhone app running does eat up the battery a good bit. At one point when I left it sitting on my desk for a while purposely, I did see that the battery went down considerably - and my iPhone got a bit warm, too. Now perhaps this is because I do have so many chats open. I did, however, expect this to be the case. I can see myself using the Skype For iPhone client primarily for dipping into the Skype flow to send messages or catch up on what's going on. I don't see myself using it for an extended period of time while mobile... although of course I can always plug it in.

All in all I've been quite pleased with how the Skype For iPhone client works in my initial usage. I need to use it while traveling to really get a sense of how well it performs. It does, of course, suffer from the two inherent issues in the Apple iPhone platform: 1) you can only use the voice portion over WiFi; and 2) there is no background processing - any app has to run in the foreground. Of these, #2 is really the larger annoyance because you can't be doing something else on the iPhone and still receive Skype IM messages or calls. Still, it's great to have a Skype client on the iPhone.

What do you think? Have you installed it and tried it out? What have you found works well? Or doesn't work well?

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Technorati Tags: skype, iphone, apple

Skype for iPhone - All I Want From It Is....

2009-03-30T16:57:34-04:00

In case you've been under a rock, or are just tuning in from a long weekend, Skype is releasing "Skype for the iPhone" tomorrow and will apparently follow that with a Skype for the Blackberry application in May. GigaOm ran with the story last week, CNET came out with an "it's official" story last night and then seemingly everyone and their brother and sister came out with stories today about it. (Phil had nice pictures over at Skype Journal.) It's been a big day for Skype - and the formal launch isn't even until tomorrow. Expect that we'll see a large number of stories tomorrow when people actually are able to install the Skype for iPhone app and start playing with it. (And yes, I'll probably write one, too.)

What's fascinating and perhaps incredibly predictable is that almost all of these articles talk about how this brings Skype's free calling to the iPhone... about how this will make it easier for people to make cheaper calls... how it is integrated in with the iPhone Address Book for easy calling... about how this disrupts voice and calls... about how this will make cheap calls available... about how nice the GUI is... about how calls will be cheaper...... (Do you detect a theme?)

MY ONE BIG WISH

While all this is true, I personally don't really care. Sure, it will be great to be able to receive a Skype call and sure, it be great to be able to make a Skype call (all on WiFi of course). Sure, all that's great.

But there is one single thing that I am looking for in this Skype for iPhone application that has been missing from Fring, IM+, TruPhone and every other iPhone app that has offered some type of Skype integration. In a word, it is simply this:

groupchats

Over the past several years I have become a huge user of Skype multi-user groupchats. Both for internal groupchats within organizations or companies and also for public groupchats where people have joined together to discuss common topics. They are an incredible communication tool - and no other iPhone app has delivered those for Skype.

THE POWER OF PERSISTENT CHATS

The strength of Skype's multi-user chat facility is in its persistence. Once you join a groupchat, you will receive all messages to that groupchat until you actually go up to the Chat menu in the Skype client and choose "Leave Chat". Closing the window doesn't get you out of the chat - you must actually leave the chat.

The power here is that "all messages" means even those messages sent in the groupchat while you were offline. When your Skype client reconnects to the Skype P2P cloud, your client downloads all the messages sent to the chat while you were away. Within typically a few seconds you wind up getting a complete history of everything said over the past while.

Think of it as a conversation that never ends.

When you are traveling, you can be typing in the groupchat up until the time you have to board your plane. Land at your destination, pop open Skype, wait a few seconds or so, and... ta da... you have the full conversation of what happened while you were in the air. Or if you are being environmentally-concerned and put your computer to sleep at night (or power it off), when you wake it in the morning, after the sync, you get all the messages sent during the night - which, when you start working with global teams, becomes increasingly important.

Persistent groupchats are powerful organizing and community-building tools.

And we've not had this yet in an app that works with Skype on the iPhone. We've had person-to-person chats in apps like Fring and IM+, but not group chats.

So tomorrow, when everyone is trying out the Skype For iPhone app and testing the voice quality, whining about how it only works on WiFi and not 3G (Duh! Apple has forbid VoIP over 3G.), looking at presence, whining about how video isn't yet supported, looking at address book integration... none of those will be my concern...

I'll be looking at the groupchat support and pushing it's limits as best I can. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. We'll see.

UPDATE: I should have noted, of course, that multi-user groupchats are possible with both Jabber and of course IRC. However, while you might be able to configure certain clients and servers to supply some level of persistence, it is not on by default (that I have seen) nor as simple as it is with Skype.

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Technorati Tags: skype, apple, iphone

Skype to stream live news conference about iPhone app from CTIA - Tuesday

2009-03-30T10:19:51-04:00

With the rumors now being confirmed that Skype is releasing an iPhone app, Skype PR is putting out the word that they will be live-streaming their news conference tomorrow announcing the iPhone app. The details are:

http://skypectia2009.stream57.com/
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
3:30pm US Pacific time

You can be sure I'll be watching... ;-)

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Technorati Tags: skype, iphone, apple

Skype tears down more walls with "Skype For SIP"

2009-03-23T05:24:07-04:00

NOTE: I have a few updates to the post that I am putting at the bottom of the text.

Would you like Skype users to be able to call your business' phone system? Would you like to connect your phone system to Skype's network and make use of their cheap calling rates? If you have an IP-PBX or other call server that supports the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), you may now have those options.

For a company that only a bit over a year ago was saying that customers weren't asking for interconnection, today Skype has done something rather dramatic and lowered their walls a bit more with the announcement of the beta program of "Skype For SIP". With this announcement from the "Skype For Business" group, companies with SIP-enabled phone systems will be able to receive calls from Skype users - and make calls using Skype's network at Skype rates. The news release (and blog post announcement) highlights these four aspects:

Receive and manage inbound calls from Skype users worldwide on SIP-enabled PBX systems; connecting the company Web site to the PBX system via click-to-call
Place calls with Skype to landlines and mobile phones worldwide from any connected SIP-enabled PBX; reducing costs with Skype’s low-cost global rates
Purchase Skype’s online numbers, to receive calls to the corporate PBX from landlines or mobile phones
Manage Skype calls using their existing hardware and system applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voicemail; no additional downloads or training are required

Let's take those one at a time - and then take a look at some details and what's missing.

[NOTE: For the ease of writing this post I am going to refer to the SIP system as an "IP-PBX", but it could be a "call server", "call manager", "application server" or anything else than can send and receive SIP signaling. It could be open source or commercial - that doesn't really matter.]

INBOUND CALLS FROM SKYPE USERS

In a pre-announcement briefing, Chris Moore, a senior product manager at Skype, indicated that when the "Skype For SIP" service is fully released, the current "Business Control Panel" will be revamped a bit and will have an area where you can sign up for the service, identify your IP-PBX and associate one or more Skype names with your IP-PBX.

Calls from Skype users to those Skype names would then be routed across the SIP connection to your IP-PBX, where the IP-PBX would deal with those incoming connections exactly as it would any other incoming SIP connection. Call routing will be handled in the IP-PBX. Perhaps the incoming call will go to an auto-attendant, IVR, call-center software or other application. Perhaps it will be routed to a person. From the IP-PBX point-of-view, it's just another incoming call.

From a Skype users point-of-view, they are simply calling another Skype ID. It's a free call that seems just like any other Skype call.

You will, Moore stated, be able to associated multiple Skype IDs with your single SIP connection. Now I'm not sure what kind of call info you get across the SIP connection, but if you do get to see the Skype name the person is calling you could do some interesting call routing based on the Skype ID called. For instance, if someone made a Skype call to "companyname-help" it could be routed one way and calls to the Skype ID "companyname-sales" could go another way.

In any event, this aspect of the service makes it so that any Skype user can call your IP-PBX.

SIP TRUNKING, SKYPE-STYLE

The second aspect of the "Skype For SIP" service is that you can use Skype's global network for connections out to the PSTN... what we have been generically calling "SIP trunking" for some time now. As part of the Business Control Panel registration you will apparently indicate which Skype ID is to be charged for outbound calling (what we used to call "SkypeOut") and then any outbound calls via SIP will be charged to that account.

Effectively, Skype just opened up cheap international calling to businesses everywhere using Skype's cheap rates.

The already crowded "SIP trunking" market just got another big player. Configure your IP-PBX to send calls out across Skype's network to the PSTN... and start calling. Right now the plan as I understand it is that you would pay the regular SkypeOut rates, without the subscription plans that are available to individuals. Skype's Moore did say that they may evaluate some form of plans during the beta period. As we see all these various details, we'll have to see what impact this will have on the existing players.

ESTABLISHING PHONE NUMBERS AROUND THE WORLD

The third aspect of the announcement is that you can establish phone numbers around the world that will route to your IP-PBX via the Skype For SIP connection. Since, as I mentioned above, you are associating one or more Skype accounts with the SIP connection to your IP-PBX, you can also associate the "Online Numbers" (what we used to call "SkypeIn" numbers) of those Skype accounts with your IP-PBX.

So if you want a phone number in one of the 20 countries where Skype currently supports Online Numbers, you just buy the number for one of the Skype accounts connected to your IP-PBX.

For $60 per year per online number.

Not a bad deal if you want phone numbers in other area codes or other countries that will ring your business' phone system. Again depending upon what kind of caller ID and called ID info you receive, some interesting call routing might be possible.

(This assumes, of course, that Skype keeps the current pricing for Online Numbers and doesn't charge any additional costs.)

USE EXISTING HARDWARE

Skype's point here is really just that there's no additional software... it's just an inbound SIP connection to your IP-PBX that you deal with in the same way that you deal with all other inbound SIP connections.

COMMENTS/CONCERNS

Based on the conversations I had with folks from Skype about this new service, I do have a couple of comments and concerns:

SECURITY

Yes, okay, you would expect this of me. Obviously we'll have to wait to see the implementation, but it sounds like Skype has thought this through a good bit. They'll support the standard SIP digest authentication, but more interestingly they will support restricting connections based on IP addresses. If your IP-PBX - or more likely the SIP-aware firewall or SBC or edge proxy - has a fixed address you will apparently be able to enter this in and use that to limit inbound SIP connections. Skype also indicated that when they service moves out of beta into full production they intend to support TLS-encrypted SIP as well.

Similarly, on the media side the beta will support regular RTP but Skype is looking to support SRTP in the full production release.

CODECS

In a somewhat bizarre move (to me), Skype is initially releasing this in the beta program with only support for the G.729 codec. For those who don't follow audio codecs (used to encode the audio of your voice to send across the network), the G.729 codec compresses audio and results in lower bandwidth usage. It also, unfortunately, requires the payment of royalties which typically then require the purchase of additional licenses from the IP-PBX vendor. (This is true even in the case of Asterisk, where you can purchase G.729 licenses from Digium.)

Given that the very people likely to want to use Skype's services for low-cost calling are also the same people who are probably not going to pay for G.729 licenses, it seems that there is a bit of a disconnect here.

The good news is that the folks at Skype say that they are going through the testing to make the much more widely used (and royalty-free) G.711 codec available and expect to have that ready within the first couple of weeks of the beta program.

On the wideband side, Skype folks indicated that at the point in time where there are SIP endpoints that support the SILK codec, which Skype recently said they will make available in binary form for free, those SIP endpoints should be able to make and receive calls to/from Skype users with wideband audio.

(I'll just note that Skype's rationale when I asked them about why G.729 vs G.711 was that they currently use G.729 with all their many SIP termination providers and so using that codec just seemed to make sense to them. For someone with the high volume of calls that they have who are looking to send as many as possible over limited bandwidth, that probably does make sense. However, in this era of more and more available bandwidth, I've seen many people, especially on the SMB side, less concerned about conserving bandwidth and just using G.711.)

SIPconnect

I was pleased to hear Skype's Moore mention that they are looking at specifications like the SIP Forum's SIPconnect initiative as a way to help with interoperability from premise IP-PBX's out to Skype's service. Having been peripherally involved with SIPconnect, this is exactly the kind of situation that it's trying to address (interop between a premise SIP system and a SIP Service Provider). It would be great if Skype would formally get behind that initiative. (I can see certain SIP Forum people typing email as soon as they read this... ;-)

OUTBOUND *TO* SKYPE USERS

It's interesting to note what this release does NOT have - the ability to call from your IP-PBX out to a Skype user. You can call out to PSTN numbers via the SkypeOut connection... but you can't call a Skype ID. This isn't surprising, on one level, because this is a MUCH harder problem to solve. Basically every SKYPE ID would need a SIP address (a "SIP URI" in SIP-speak) that the IP-PBX could use to connect.

Several of us (myself included) have been asking for that kind of interconnection for years - and perhaps at some point we'll see that. Meanwhile, this "Skype For SIP" release gets us closer.

SOME CLOSING WORDS...

Over the years, I have written a good deal about Skype on this blog - and I have certainly been critical of Skype's closed network in the past (such as here and here). I don't like "walled gardens" in general and Skype has definitely had high walls.

That's certainly changing. I've definitely been pleased to see what they started last fall with "Skype For Asterisk" (which I wrote about here, here and here).

And now... "Skype For SIP".

If Skype implements this well, I think there is great potential. Suddenly, the millions and millions of Skype users are able to call your phone system... just via Skype. Forget dealing with long-distance or international calls. Just have someone use Skype to call your Skype ID.... ta da, it winds up on your corporate phone system via SIP. Similarly there is now the ability to easily project your presence geographically with phone numbers in different regions or countries - all through Skype's easy UI. Let alone the SIP trunking via Skype's network.

Granted, you can get the phone numbers and trunking through existing SIP service providers today. Skype just makes this a bit easier because they have the existing programs, user interfaces, etc.

Skype For SIP isn't perfect - it still doesn't get me the outbound calling to Skype users that I want - but it's definitely a step in the right direction as we continue building the interconnect between all these IP communications systems. (See my rant here and my Park Bench Manifesto presentation out at eComm)

Kudos to the folks at Skype for taking this step. For lowering their walls a bit more and letting others connect in. I definitely will look forward to seeing what evolves out of this.

Meanwhile, of course, I'll be heading over to skypeforsip.com and signing up for the beta program. :-)

UPDATE #1: (a few minutes after posting) Two items:

GigaOm has a post up that I'm sure will attract some good comments
~~The skypeforsip.com website is apparently not live yet (oops!) but will be soon.~~ The skypeforsip.com is now live and accepting applications for the beta program

UPDATE #2: (6 hours later)

Moshe Maeir disputes my characterization of G.729 and says most of his customers use it.
Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal came out with his contrarian piece: Skype For SIP: Big Money, Skypeless, Brand Destroyer that argues that Skype For SIP is a negative thing for Skype. I disagree with a number of Phil's points (and would note that some of his info relates to the SFS *beta* versus the full announced release (such as the 1 Skype ID only limitation), but it's definitely worth a read.
Phil does make the point, reinforced in the SFS beta application, that during the beta you can only have one Skype ID associated with your Skype connection. Per the beta application, it also needs to be a "temporary" one, i.e. you may not be able to continue using that after the end of the beta period. Chris Moore at Skype indicates that this has to do with different Terms of Service and EULAs for business users right now versus regular Skype users and they are looking to rationalize all of that before the full product launch.

UPDATE #3:

Jason Goecke has a view that the release of Skype For SIP greatly reduces the value of Skype For Asterisk.

UPDATE #4:

Rich Tehrani thinks that Skype should just call a spade a spade and refer to SFS as "SIP trunking", which is what we in the industry would certainly call the PSTN connectivity side of what Skype is offering. I think, though, that as much as we use that term, it is not widely used outside of our own industry. So as Skype seems to promote itself to the larger business audience, it makes sense to speak of it more openly as "placing calls", etc.
Irv Shapiro over at IfByPhone weighs in on "Why Skype for Asterisk is more important than Skype for SIP". Irv believes because SFA lets out make outbound calls TO Skype users it is ultimately more important than SFS. I agree with Irv that SFA definitely has advantage and value because of this.

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Technorati Tags: skype, sip, standards, voice, voip

Oprah and Ellen push "Skype-ing" as a verb...

2009-03-20T22:12:17-04:00

On Ellen Degeneres' TV show today (Friday, March 20, 2009):

Ellen:(very excitedly) How is this happening? Are you Skype-ing in? What's happening?

Oprah: Skype-ing in - that's exactly what I'm doing!

I learned of this in a Skype public chat where someone passed along the link to the Huffington Post article: Oprah Invites Ellen To Share O Magazine Cover. Having not seen either of the shows, I had no clue as to the backstory where apparently Ellen has been campaigning to get on the cover of Oprah's "O" magazine. Oprah was surprising (apparently) Ellen with a call via Skype video to ask her to be on the magazine's cover.

For me the most interesting part was that first little bit where Oprah and Ellen had the dialogue above about "Skype-ing".

Now I don't know if the mention of Skype is related to the sponsorship of Oprah that Skype began last year although that would seem reasonable. If it is, I'd have to say that Skype is getting some great mentions for whatever they are paying. If they aren't paying, it's perhaps even more powerful in that Oprah and Ellen are using the tool and mentioning it on their own.

UPDATE: Phil Wolff from Skype Journal tells me that Skype says that they did NOT pay for product placement. Oprah and her production team just like the tool.

Regardless, it's interesting to see. (And I want to know what kind of camera Oprah is using to get that great video quality!)

Here is the segment of the show:

Now of course the really "important" issue for us pedantic language types is... how do you spell "Skype-ing"? Is it:

Skype-ing
Skypeing
Skyping

#1 looks funny with the hyphen, but #2 looks really wrong with the "e" next to the "ing". #3 would probably be the most proper, but of course the brand name is "Skype".

What do you think? :-)

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Technorati Tags: skype, oprah, ellen

IETF 74 starts next week in San Francisco...

2009-03-20T22:08:29-04:00

The 74th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) starts Monday morning out in San Francisco. As usual there is a packed agenda with a lot of great discussions going on. This one is particularly interesting for those of us involved in the "Real-time Applications and Infrastructure (RAI)" area - which is all the various working groups related to SIP and other real-time communications protocols - as there are some proposals moving forward to rather fundamentally restructure the ways in which SIP-related work moves through the IETF. I expect there will be many involved conversations going on out there next week.

As much as I would like to be there, I won't be physically out at IETF 74. It's not my new role at Voxeo keeping me away, but rather this... oh... wee minor little detail that my wife is now five weeks from giving birth to our second child! :-) At this stage of things I'm severely limiting my travel - and flights across the country are definitely out.

Instead I'll be participating remotely, listening to the audio streams and joining in the Jabber chat rooms. Probably writing about some of it over on the "Speaking of Standards" blog I write in from time to time. The great thing with IETF meetings is that you can participate remotely (albeit obviously not to the same level of effectiveness as being in the room).

Lots of good stuff going on...

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Technorati Tags: ietf, standards, sip

Of eComm and boots...

2009-03-13T16:46:48-04:00

Out an eComm last week, Jon Arnold posted a set of pictures that included this fun one of me (click for larger version):

For those not aware... I've been wearing "western boots"/"cowboy boots" for years... in fact, I wrote up a fun story a while back about how Twitter and Facebook helped me find cowboy boots in Ottawa.

(And boots purists will note, of course, that the pair pictured here at eComm are not really real western boots in that they don't have a leather sole. These are in fact my winter western boots that have a rubber sole with a tread. Smooth leather soles don't work too well in New Hampshire winters with ice and snow ;-) And while eComm was in San Francisco, I did have icy parking lots in NH to be thinking about. I'll be able to start wearing the other ones real soon now... )

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Technorati Tags: ecomm, boots, danyork

A view into Skype's business model...

2009-03-13T12:19:34-04:00

Ever wonder what Skype's business plan was really all about? Over on his VoiceOnTheWeb site, Jim Courtney dives into this with: Skype Business Model Revealed at eBay Analyst Event

The post is a deep dive that gives some good insight into Skype. Definitely worth a read.

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Technorati Tags: skype

My new role at Voxeo: Director of Conversations

2009-03-12T08:25:35-04:00

Two weeks ago, I took on a new role within Voxeo, but rather ironically I've just been too straight out to write about the role change with the Tropo.com launch, our activities at eComm and, well, the new role itself. I've given some teasers in my Twitter stream, told a number of folks out at eComm and outright gave it away in my weekly report into FIR #426, but I haven't written about it. Some of you may laugh, but I also, quite frankly, find it a bit odd to write about, well, me. I prefer to tell the story, rather than to be the subject.

When I joined Voxeo back in October 2007, I wrote about the move and said that a part of my role in the Office of the CTO was this: Basically I get to help tell Voxeo's story. And for the past 1.5 years I've been doing that through blog posts and podcasts over on blogs.voxeo.com, through my external blogging, through my many presentations at all sorts of conferences, through Twitter and Facebook and probably a hundred other venues and services.

Now, though, telling Voxeo's story is no longer a part of my role... it is my role.

After four years in "strategic technology" roles where "social media" was a part of my role, I'm now shifting to head up Voxeo's marketing/communications/PR/AR/events/etc. - not just the "social media" but all of the traditional media and channels as well.

Those of you who know me may not view this as a big shift - I've always had one foot in technology and one foot in communications/marketing/PR. Even in my online writing. Just look at Disruptive Telephony and Blue Box on one side - and Disruptive Conversations and my weekly reports into For Immediate Release on the other. My job roles over the years have oscillated between those poles, sometimes heavily into tech, sometimes heavily into communications... very often a strong combination of both.

With this new position, obviously, communications/marketing/PR is front and center, but of course in 2009 in the Era of Search, SEO, social media and information self-service - technology plays a strong role.

I'm looking forward to it. Voxeo has some great stories to be told. There are some great conversations out there to engage in. Communities to help foster. I have an awesome staff to work with (who, like me, are distributed all around geographically). I report directly to a CEO who twitters, uses Facebook and is heavily into SEO. I am surrounded by some truly amazing people doing incredible work. It will be fun and frustrating and joyous and overwhelming and all the other polarities that come with intense jobs.

As to the job title, Director of Conversations, it's really a recognition that in the Age of Google and Facebook and reviews (in iTunes, Amazon, etc.) and Twitter and everything else, what we think of as "marketing" is increasingly all about joining into all the various conversations that are happening out there. Ten years later, many of the theses of Cluetrain are more true than ever. The conversations are happening. Our challenge is to find the most appropriate ways to join in.

That's the news... with that out now I can thankfully get back to the regular storytelling of this blog...

P.S. One amusing aspect of this new role is that it is now a zillion times easier to explain what I do. The title may be "different", but saying you "head up marketing/communications/PR" is more understandable to most people than saying you "explore and analyze how both the ways in which we communicate and the tools we use are changing and then write/speak/talk about those changes both publicly and to the company and customers" (my previous OCTO role). :-)

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Technorati Tags: voxeo, danyork, dan york

The Park Bench Manifesto - text coming soon, video and slides now up

2009-03-06T11:26:35-05:00

This week out at the Emerging Communications Conference in San Francisco, I gave a 10-minute talk called "The Park Bench Manifesto: Why We Want To Kill Off The PSTN". In the talk, I mentioned that the text would be available here soon... And it will be.

In the meantime though, I have put up both the video and the 54-slide deck over on <a href="http://blogs.Voxeo.com/ett/">blogs.voxeo.com/ett/</a>

More soon..... (need to fly home...)

Want to know why I enjoy working at Voxeo? Listen to this interview (or read the transcript)...

2009-02-24T04:18:37-05:00

To get a sense of why I completely enjoy working for Voxeo, simply listen to this interview (or read the transcript) from Lee Dryburgh over on the eComm blog: (Voxeo CEO) Jonathan Taylor on the Origins and Near-Future of Voxeo

Do I need to say anything more? There is an immense amount of fun in being part of a company whose focus is on disrupting existing players and in the end helping people developer better voice applications... and hopefully bringing about better communication.

For those of you going out to eComm next week in San Francisco, I'll see you there. And if you haven't registered yet, there's still time - check out this blog post for a 20% discount code.

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Technorati Tags: voxeo, jonathan taylor, ecomm, interview, voice, voip

Skype changes "Fair Usage Policy" to stop businesses from being too cheap...

2009-02-16T20:56:21-05:00

Over on his new "Voice on the Web" blog, Jim Courtney outlines some changes Skype has recently made to their Fair Usage Policy. This subject came up on the "Skype 4.x" public Skype chat hosted by Skype Journal and in the discussion it appeared to most of us that what Skype is really trying to do is to:

eliminate businesses making tons of calls on cheap monthly subscriptions.

The idea for the business is simple really... get Skype... get one of the cheap monthly plans and start dialling a zillion numbers for your business. Made even easier if you use one of the various appliances these days that let you do "Skype trunks" from an existing PBX or other call server.

The new "Fair Usage Policy" makes these changes:

calling to a maximum of 50 numbers per day
maximum six (6) hours of SkypeOut calling per day
each subscription is to be used by one person only and not to be shared with any other user (whether by a PBX, call center, computer or any other means).

As Jim's post discusses, there are a number of caveats and other points to this (for instance, you can call the same number repeatedly and not have it impact the 50 call limit).

Note, too, that if you exceed your "fair usage" limit, your calls are not stopped but rather you start paying for calls on a per-minute basis (assuming you have SkypeCredit).

It's understandable to see Skype making this move. Infrastructure is not cheap and obviously they have to figure out how to pay for it all. Still, it will be interesting to see what if any reaction there is from existing customers.

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Technorati Tags: skype

An insanely busy couple of weeks... (and VoiceObjects training)

2009-02-13T12:21:37-05:00

You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging much lately... or podcasting..... I've certainly been twittering since it's fast to do... but I haven't been writing much here or across any of my blogs and podcasts lately.

Several good reasons... mostly that today is the last day of two weeks of travel, broken only by about a 40-hour visit home over the weekend. Last week I was down at ITEXPO in Miami and then spent the end of the week with one of my periodic check-ins at Voxeo's corporate office in Orlando, FL.

This week I've again been at Voxeo's office in Orlando, although not for meetings but instead to participate in a week of in-depth training in the VoiceObjects service creation environment for creating voice applications. You may recall that Voxeo acquired VoiceObjects back in December and so we've had a series of training sessions in Orlando for our development and support staff to learn all about the product.

It's the first time in a while that I've spent a week in a training session where my time is focused on a topic (or at least is supposed to be). I've come away from it very impressed by what the VO tool can do to help people very easily and quickly build very complex voice applications. It's also been a great way for me to learn more and more about the Eclipse tool, which continues to impress me with the plugins that are available for it. (Probably the most common way to use VoiceObjects is as an Eclipse plugin, although it can also be used through a web interface.)

I'll be writing more about VoiceObjects and what it can do - although probably over on the Voxeo Developer's Corner blog - but I'll mention here that if you'd like to try it out yourself, you can download a free copy of the VoiceObjects "Developer Edition" from the VoiceObjects Developer Portal.

Of course, during this week of training, all the other normal work tasks don't stop... so the nights and mornings have been long... and much of my blogging and podcasting has had to be put on hold.

Next week I'll be back up in my home office in New Hampshire and would like to hope that the pace might be a tad bit better... but... well... the Emerging Communications (eComm) conference is only 2.5 weeks away, and there's a lot to be done before that! :-)

Somewhere in here I should be able to start posting more again...

Technorati Tags: voxeo, personal, voiceobjects