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Skype Now Available for BlackBerry Z10 Users

Shana Pearlman — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:30:21 +0000

In late April we announced that Skype was available for download in a preview version for the BlackBerry Q10 from BlackBerry World. Today, as the BlackBerry 10.1 operating system starts to roll out on the BlackBerry Z10, we are happy to announce that Z10 users around the world will now be able to enjoy the preview version of Skype on their devices.

We have been working closely with BlackBerry to give users the best possible Skype experience on the Z10, just as we have for the Q10. When you download the Skype app, you can try all of Skype’s popular features, and also see how seamlessly the Skype app integrates with the phone book and the BlackBerry Hub.

With Skype on your BlackBerry Z10 you will be able to talk with your loved ones using free video and voice calling, send them instant messages, or if you know they are busy, reach them through text or video messages. In addition, you’ll be able to call landlines and mobiles all over the world at Skype’s low rates.

Check with your local operator to see when the 10.1 update to the Blackberry operating system is available for your Z10 device and download Skype from the BlackBerry World store to easily connect with your family and friends.

Remember this release is still in preview version. We will continue working with BlackBerry over the next months to refine the performance of the Skype app. So keep an eye for any new Skype updates on BlackBerry World for your device!

We always appreciate your feedback and welcome your comments on Skype Support Network or at this blog. To find out more about Skype, and learn how you can get the most out of your Skype experience, follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

No Love for Mom? 1 in 5 People Forget to Send Mother’s Day Gifts

Stephanie Larson — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:00:18 +0000

Did your mom always have the best advice when you were younger? Mine sure did – “tie your shoes”, “look both ways before crossing the street”, “don’t talk to strangers” and “don’t follow the crowd” – although I didn’t always listen. Well, when it comes to treating mom right on Mother’s Day, we’d all better listen to that point about not following the crowd. A new survey commissioned by Skype and conducted online by Harris Interactive in April among 2,114 U.S. adults, one-fifth of those with mother figures have forgotten to honor mom with a gift or card in Mother’s Days past.

Men, take note: you are especially likely to have overlooked the occasion, with nearly one in four of you failing to send something. So much for mama’s boys – for shame! Sons-in-law are the surprising superheroes, with nearly half of married men who have a mother-in-law saying they always call her on Mother’s Day without a reminder from their spouse.

Take a look at the infographic below for the fully skinny on the survey results:

Are you still waiting to get a gift for your mom? Give her the gift of seeing your loving face via a Skype video call, send her a Mother’s Day greeting via our Say it with Skype Facebook app or visit to get her a Skype Gift Card and continue connecting with her throughout the year!

If you’d like to embed this infographic on your site, use this code:

http://wp.me/p2q6gy-dKe “>http://skypeblogs.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/skype_infographic_mothersday_fnll.jpg ” alt=”Skype sees a surge of calls to mobile phones or landlines on Mother’s Day.” width=”270″ height=”1071″ />
Mother’s Day video calling infographic by Skype

Type Less. Talk More. Make Skype Calls Directly From Your Outlook.com Inbox

Stephanie Larson — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:01:47 +0000

Starting today, Microsoft is rolling out a preview version of Skype for Outlook.com, bringing two great communication experiences together — all in one place! As part of our commitment to bring you the very best ways to communicate, this Skype for Outlook.com preview is beginning to roll out in the United Kingdom and will be made available in the United States and Germany in the coming weeks. In the coming months, audio and video calling powered by Skype will be available in every Outlook.com inbox. By adding Skype conversations to your modern email, Microsoft is creating yet another way for you to connect to the people you care about most.

With the preview version of Skype for Outlook.com you can enjoy Skype video and audio calls right from your inbox — less typing, more talking! For those of you that aren’t familiar, Outlook.com is a free personal email service from Microsoft. In the first six months after launch, Outlook.com attracted 60 million new users, making it the fastest-growing email service in history.

Even with the best email service, sometimes text isn’t enough. We all face those situations where it’s just easier to jump on a call to talk something through. Sometimes that quick call can accomplish more than a long email reply. That’s why we are bringing Skype audio and video calling to your Outlook.com inbox. Now, with Skype for Outlook.com, you can choose the right medium for your message, whether it is an email, call, video call or instant message (IM) — you can connect with your Skype and Messenger friends all in the same place.

We hope you like what you see!

Get Skype in Your Inbox

Skype for Outlook.com requires a one-time download of a plugin for your browser (available for the most recent versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox). After you download the plugin, simply connect Skype to Outlook.com using your Microsoft account.

Customers with an existing Skype account will be asked to link Skype and Outlook.com in a few simple steps. Just merge your Microsoft and Skype accounts and you’re off and running. This will also allow you to add all of your Skype contacts to Outlook.com contacts.

Using Skype for Outlook.com is Simple

Just click on the Skype audio or video call buttons in your IM conversation. To start a call while reading an email from a friend on Outlook.com, move your mouse over the friend’s picture and click on the Skype audio or video call buttons that appear above his or her contact details.

Reach and Be Reachable

We’re excited to offer many of the best ways to keep in touch in one place. With the preview version of Skype for Outlook.com, we’re bringing two great communication experiences together and helping you stay in touch virtually anytime, anywhere.

As we said, this preview experience will start rolling out to UK customers beginning today and is coming to the U.S. and Germany in the coming weeks with worldwide availability this summer.

For those outside the U.K., it will be worth the wait! We will be sure to let you know when the roll-out is complete and available worldwide. In the meantime, look for Skype video calling to come to your inbox soon and tell us what you think on Facebook and Twitter.

Feel free to also visit our Skype Support Network for additional technical details.

Say Hello to Skype on BlackBerry Q10

Stephanie Larson — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:59:52 +0000

A few weeks back, we announced that the Skype experience would soon be coming to the BlackBerry10 platform. The wait is now over! We’re delighted to tell you the Skype app is now available for download in a preview version for the BlackBerry Q10 from BlackBerry World.

What can you expect?

In this version, you’ll get all the Skype features that people have come to love – such as free video and voice calling, sending instant messages and text messages and calling to landlines and mobiles all over the world at Skype’s low rates.

Keep in mind that this release is still in preview state which means that the experiences are not yet final. We do however think you’ll be impressed – the app already offers all the Skype features BlackBerry 10 users have been looking forward to.

We’ve been working closely with BlackBerry to bring our Skype for Android app to the BlackBerry 10 platform in order to bring all the amazing Skype features to the device. When you start using the app, you will notice we have adjusted the Skype user interface to make it look great on the BlackBerry Q10 display. Also, we have made it very easy for you to connect with your friends and family. For example, once you sign into Skype on your phone, your Skype contacts are automatically added to your BlackBerry phonebook. This means you can see your Skype friends and their profile details, and initiate a chat with a contact directly from the phonebook – helping you keep in touch with the people who matter to you most. What’s more, all your Skype notifications – including incoming chat, contact invite requests, and the like – are automatically visible in the BlackBerry Hub.

The Skype app is available April 26th for BlackBerry Q10 users. You can download Skype to your Q10 phone from BlackBerry World now. BlackBerry and your operator will make the new BlackBerry 10.1 operating system available on the BlackBerry Z10 in the near future, also BlackBerry Z10 owners will be able to enjoy Skype.

We would love to hear your feedback. Discuss what matters on Skype Support Network or simply comment on this blog. To find out more about Skype, and learn how you can get the most out of your Skype experience, follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

Skype Brings Military Heroes and Their Families Together on the Red Carpet of Marvel’s Iron Man 3

Stephanie Larson — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:41:51 +0000

It’s safe to say that Tony Stark – self-described genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist – is a bit of a technology geek. He has a degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and started Stark Industries, a multi-billion dollar international technology company. Not to mention his superhero alter-ego, Iron Man, wears a technologically-advanced suit of armor. Clearly it would make sense that he’d also be into advanced communications technology, right?

Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), a fictional superhero from the long-running Marvel Comics series has soared to new heights of popularity in the past few years with a series of blockbuster movies, the latest of which – Marvel’s Iron Man 3 – hosted its U.S. premiere yesterday. Thanks to a bit of technology, the stars of Marvel’s Iron Man 3 – Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Jon Favreau, Sir Ben Kingsley and more – were able to speak with members of the U.S. military at the film’s red carpet premiere, at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

A special live video call from a custom-built ‘Skype Suite’ enabled troops stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Washington to virtually attend the event and take part in Hollywood premiere excitement. Through an over-sized monitor projecting a Skype video call right onto the red carpet, the troops asked the actors and actresses about their experiences in the film. We were lucky enough to catch up with some of the stars, too, to chat about the film, their experience using Skype with the troops and how they use Skype in their everyday lives. Check out a preview of the video below:

You may be asking: why was Skype at Marvel’s Iron Man 3 premiere? Well, we don’t want to post any spoilers, but rumor has it that like you, Mr. Tony Stark himself is also quite fond of video calling…stay tuned for more coverage of Marvel’s Iron Man 3 here!

Click to view slideshow.

Thanks for Making Skype a Part of Your Daily Lives – 2 Billion Minutes a Day!

Robert Gedarovich — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:15:05 +0000

Today, we are excited to celebrate that our Skype users – YOU – are spending more than 2 billion minutes connecting with each other! 2 BILLION MINUTES!

But just how big is 2 billion minutes, you ask?

That’s enough time to travel to the moon and back over 225 thousand times, walk around Earth more than 845 times or travel to Mars more than 5,400 times.

2 billion minutes is more than 33 million hours of people singing, laughing, joking and staying in touch. That means 1,388,000 days of togetherness which make up more than 3,805 years of sharing or nearly 38 centuries of time spent on Skype in one day.

Thank you for making Skype a part of your daily life. With numbers like these, it’s clear that Skype is for more than just for special occasions – it’s for being together with those who matter most – at work, at home and anywhere in between. With Skype you can connect with the people you care about most on any device – PCs, iPhones, iPads, Kindle Fires, Androids, Macs, Windows Phones and even TVs.

2 billion minutes is a testament to our users who are making Skype the everyday communications hub that brings people together. This massive amount of connection – enough time to watch 1.6 million movies – is also a testament to the hard work of our product teams who have enabled these great experiences. Whether making a voice or video call, sending an instant message, sharing a file or connecting with a group of friends, now more than ever before, Skype brings people together whenever they are apart.

But we’re not done yet! We’re constantly looking for even more ways for people to connect and share – from the living room to the board room, on the go, anytime, anywhere. Find us on Facebook and Twitter (@Skype) and tell us how you’ve spent some of those 2 billion minutes with hashtag #2billion.

Thank you for sharing your feedback with us – keep it coming! We will continue to improve your Skype experience.

If you haven’t already joined the conversation, download Skype today!

Thanks 2 billion!

If you’d like to embed this infographic on your site, use this code:

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2 billion minutes infographic by Skype

Skype into Space

Stephanie Larson — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:55:24 +0000

In February, Tony Bates, the president of the Skype division for Microsoft, addressed the Lync Conference in San Diego. In his keynote, he reflected on the Skype division’s B2X journey, enabling people to connect wherever they are. Today we’re announcing an important milestone in this mission.

This B2X journey is all about removing barriers to communication. To put a stake in the ground we are confronting biggest barrier of them all: the final frontier.

Recent developments in private space travel are bringing the idea of space tourism closer to reality. We want you to be able to use Skype in the same way you do when you’re on Earth and it’s for this reason that we’re announcing Skype into Space. We’re working on taking take the best parts of Skype, like video calling and instant[1] messaging, into the cosmos.

As a part of Skype into Space, we’ll be introducing several new features:

Automatic video rotation If you float around in zero gravity while on a video call, the person you’re calling will always see you the right way up.
Extreme gravitational resilience Planning an extreme sports trip past a supermassive black hole? Don’t worry, Skype into Space can work through gravitational fields that don’t even let light through.
Instant messaging in space Looking to find a new life form? You’ll be able to send instant messages to any part of space, however we can’t guarantee that the potential recipient will have evolved eyes to read them with.
Additional language support Our experimental linguists are standing by to learn the languages of any new life forms we come across. We aim to make Skype into Space a truly universal experience.

With Skype into Space, it’s one video call for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Learn more about getting started with Skype into Space.

[1] Despite our best efforts with quantum teleportation we have yet to make messages travel faster than the speed of light. As soon as we have fixed this bug in reality we will be sure to address any delays to your messages.

A Virtual Choir for the Ages at TED2013

chaimhaas — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:08:52 +0000

Is there an equation to making a brilliant musical experience? We think Eric Whitacre might have found at least one such formula:

100 live choir members made up of singers from choirs at California State University, Long Beach Campus, California State University, Fullerton Campus and Riverside City College, +
30 singers from 28 different countries connected via Skype video calls, =
A musical masterpiece.

Whitacre, a Grammy-award winning composer, conductor and lecturer is famous for many musical accomplishments, but his Virtual Choir series, which was first performed on stage at TED in 2011, made him a household name. His Live Global Virtual Choir performance described above made its debut three weeks ago at the conclusion of the TED2013 conference.

No one has ever attempted to put a live choir together with a virtual one. In part, this is due to possible latency-related delays that may be introduced by the Internet connection. As the TED2013 blog describes, ‘it’s less than a second, but in singing, that is still a potentially huge problem.’ Whitacre adapted “Cloudburst,” one of his earliest pieces, to embrace the potential for network latency. Check out the Live Global Virtual Choir’s performance for yourself here:

Attendees at TED, choir members and people across the Internet were astonished, too, and took to the #LVC1 and #TED2013 hashtags on Twitter to express their excitement. But how did Whitacre pull off such a complicated feat? Look no further than our “behind the scenes” documentary video below:

The performance is just the latest in Whitacre’s series of Virtual Choirs, which he first started four years ago. His first Virtual Choir, Aurumque, has received over 3 million views on YouTube and featured 185 singers from 12 different countries. Virtual Choir 2.0, Sleep, was released in April 2011 and involved over 2,000 participants from 58 countries. Virtual Choir 3, Water Night, received 3,746 submissions from 73 counties and launched simultaneously at Lincoln Center, New York and online in April 2012. Skype is thrilled that he decided to embrace our video calling technology to bring his latest masterpiece to life!

Make Your Big Break – Show Your Skills on Simon Cowell’s New Channel “The You Generation”

Robert Gedarovich — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:34:40 +0000

Do all of your friends say you can sing like an angel? Do your cakes and cookies make your best pals sigh with delight? Does everybody say you do an amazing impression of President Obama? Do you think that you could be the best in the world at dog training, BMX bike riding, stand-up comedy, make-up artistry and more – if only you had the chance to prove it? Now you can.

You’re probably familiar with Simon Cowell, television producer, entrepreneur, on-air personality, and, as it happens, the world’s most successful talent scout. Cowell’s television production and music publishing house Syco Entertainment is launching The You Generation, the first online global talent competition and audition process. The competition gives people the chance to show off their extraordinary skills and win a prize simply by uploading a video of their abilities.

Simon Cowell says, “Skype is a valuable partner for The You Generation. Practicing with your friends is the best way for you to improve your skills and Skype can offer invaluable ways for you to perfect your performance.”

You have to get ready to get noticed; to make sure your performance really shines, hone your talents by rehearsing with your friends on a Skype video call. Receiving live advice from your friends and family as if they were the judges themselves is the perfect way to make sure your audition is as strong as it can be. For tips and tricks on how to rehearse your act over Skype, please visit http://rehearse.skype.com.

Once your performance is ready, you can subscribe to The You Generation channel and upload your auditions for your specific category. From style gurus to extreme athletes, chefs to vocalists, EVERY submission will be judged by Syco executives and experts in the relevant field. Finalists will be chosen every two weeks, with the winner being announced on the 2^nd Friday of every contest. Every winner will receive a tailored prize plus the chance to have their talent recognized on a truly global scale, and each winner will also become a finalist for the chance to win an amazing grand prize.

Get involved with rehearsing on http://rehearse.skype.com. Once you’re comfortable and prepared to wow the world, head on over to www.youtube.com/yougeneration to submit your video. Good luck!

Skype Brings Together Bands and Fans at SXSW 2013

kathyg14 — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:05:30 +0000

Over the past weekend, hordes of music fans and artists once again gathered together in Austin, Texas for the 27^th annual SXSW Music Conference. The days were jam packed with people from around the world in the music industry, eager to share their experiences and stories with one another. Music truly brings people together, just as Skype does each and every day.

Together with Live nation, Skype created a unique technology fueled experience for music junkies. Located at the heart of 6^th Street at The Belmont, the Skype Mobile Lounge featured stellar daytime and nighttime showcases from some of the top up-and-coming artists.

In addition to the stellar performances, bloggers, fans, and the artists themselves stopped by to check out and use Skype-enabled devices to share their time in Austin with friends and family. They kicked back, re-charged and relaxed in the company of fellow music lovers.

A peek inside the Skype Media Lounge

Best of all, some lucky fans had the chance to chat with their favorite bands face-to-face. Through a Skype video call, the fans talked to the bands about their music and what inspires them just moments before the artists went out on stage to perform. Fans also had the opportunity to ask bands burning questions that was shared with the bands through photo share and instant message.

Photographer and Kongos fan Joe got to chat with the band via Skype video call before they took the stage to perform.

Jackie from the Barefoot In Austin interviews Striking Matches over Skype.

The dapper Willy Moon takes questions from fans in our upcoming video series: Live from Live Nation Labs.

Capital Cities stopped inside the Skype video booth for pre-show photo session.

Eagles of Death Metal performing at Skype’s Mobile Lounge – Photo courtesy of Devon Adams

Capital Cities performing their hit ‘Safe and Sound’ – Photo courtesy of Joe Abbruscato

The Skype Mobile Lounge projected for all of downtown Austin to see.

From the road to Austin to the final bow, a great time was had by all. Stay tuned to skypemobilelounge.com where we’ll be sharing videos from the Road to SXSW series that follows four bands – Willy Moon, Capital Cities, The Neighbourhood, Colt Ford – and their journey to the event and how they kept in touch with Skype. And, stay tuned to see what the fans and bands chatted about at the Skype Mobile Lounge in the two upcoming video series ’2 Things’ and ‘Live from live Nation Labs.’