eBay is preparing to spin-out Skype, setting it free to steer its own course. Almost six years ago Skype redefined realtime communications and changed the industry. Lee Dryburgh, the man behind the Emerging Communications Conference, shared some though…

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Yugma desktop sharing still hosts multiparty Skype meetings. New CEO tells TMC’s Patrick Bernard this Skype partner is restarting after layoffs and generally winding down the company. From happier times, Skype Journal wrote up: Yugma Skype Edition: Cro…

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meaningfulwork asks "Has your job expired?" in this video. This leads to http://MyJobHasExpired.com. Which leads to http://newjobs.skype.com/ The concept started with Skype alumnus Villu Arak (@villuarak), now CEO of Hill & Knowlton…

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Stefan Öberg spoke at Interop 2009 last month, as Jim Courtney reported and Öberg blogged. Two key takeaways. First, Skype plans to formalize and extend its premium (prioritized queue, private resources) online customer support for enterprises an…

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Have you noticed President Obama is never photographed using a mobile anymore? Here are some pics from The Official White House Photostream on flickr by Pete Souza.  Given how many hours the President must spend on a phone, is a Blueto…

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Skype earned market acceptance when Oprah said "I love Skype" in 2008. Skype started to become a household name as Oprah brought guests to her her weekday show. Thursday, a year later, she spent an hour in Skype’s honor. Nothing happened; S…

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You knew it was coming. Now eBay is weaning its markets sites from Skype influence. No longer is Skype among "More eBay Sites." Meanwhile, eBay forbids Skype links/buttons in listings. Skype voice and chat buttons in listings are bei…

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Here’s a 2004 TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell about the importance of variability in product design. He concludes with four points. There’s a disconnect between what people say they want when you ask them (in focus groups, for example) and what the…

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eBay announced quarterly reports today. Skype did well. Activity continues to go up, revenue goes up, people keep joining at a faster rate. Skype’s Freemium Rate (the blue line below) holds steady, showing people are still willing to pay to talk, fin…

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One half of the US Internet access duopoly reported it continues to drag its heels rolling out higher speed midband connectivity through DSL (U-Verse) and wireless. Here are the slides from today’s investor conference call. 2009q1 AT&T Earnings…

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By Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist and regular contributor to Skype Journal. Wandering over the Internet I found several comments on the value of Skype, for instance here and here. Interesting to see an analyst predicted a revenue of $786 millio…

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Watch famous people using Skype. Skype quickly fades into the background, focus returning to the people and what they say. But how did they do it? Why use Skype when The Oprah Winfrey Show can rent a team to shoot Ashton Kutcher’s side of the segment? …

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2009 Q1 Google Earnings Slides View more presentations from evanwolf. The face of the Great Recession. From Google’s quarterly conference call. 

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$US 1.2 billion for a stake in South Korea’s Gmarket auction site. Skype had better fetch a pretty penny if eBay Inc. is going to keep up this M&A effort. Skype is currently operating in Korea as part of eBay’s Auction company. Will Skype’s separ…

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So you’ve read about eBay making an IPO of some Skype stock in early 2010 after "the founders’ offer fell on deaf ears." This means: The stock market values Skype, instead of bankers or M&A experts. Mark Evans. "Skype has a s…

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From the WSJ.com Deal Blog [links and emphases mine]: A group including KKR, Warburg Pincus, Providence* and Elevation Partners recently teamed up to back the founders of Skype in an attempt to buy back their free Internet calling service from Eba…

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Coming events: eBay’s Q1 2009 Earnings Call April 22, 2009 2009 Annual Meeting of Stockholders April 29, 2009 Join our Skype Journal Investor Forum to track the news and dissect the financial state…

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New York Times reports Skype founders Zennstrom and Friis are raising about $1 billion to buy back Skype. The article says some analysts think eBay would want at least Skype’s book value: $1.7 billion. So what would a good market value be? Skype are pr…

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Company parties at tradeshows have messages. Skype’s Wednesday night party at last week’s CTIA Mobile 2009 event had a few. Fruit: Celebrating the launch of Skype for the Apple iPhone and announcement of Skype Lite for the Blackberry. Without perm…

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Added Skype for iPhone to the Mobile Software branch of the Skype Products mind map. tags: skype, iphone, productsCall me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of t…

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Guest post by Katherine Robinson in response to SkypeIn number used by con artists, Skype Journal, 24 March 2008. I just got a Skype online number and I love it. I want to use it for both business and personal. But there is no way to opt out of allow…

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  sfx: soft sound of fast typing on a computer keyboard text: Sarah had a baby girl at 6:30am sfx: Skype water drop, into music father’s voice over animation: She’s beautiful, so beautiful. We’re …

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Business Control Panel (BCP) Management by Role. When a manager leaves the company and takes her Skype account with her, will the company lose access to its control panel? To its funds? To its records? To its control over control panel membership? …

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Multiple Business Control Panels Per Company. The power in Skype for Business lies in Skype’s Business Control Panel (BCP). The BCP is where Skype gives you fund multiple Skype accounts and manage SkypeIn phone numbers for your organization. Today,…

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Guest post by David Tang, Global VP at Skype partner VoSKY, and Craig Coward. Voice Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have long delivered real benefits to businesses with multiple sites or branch offices. As well as free calls between sites, they ena…

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Guest post by Jason Goecke, Adhearsion Today Skype announced Skype for SIP (SFS). Put simply, enterprise telephone systems may now interconnect with the Skype network to receive calls from the Skype network and place calls to SkypeOut. All without the…

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Skype For SIP (SFS), announced today, is really two Skype for Business services. And a huge problem. The services: Skype-Name-to-SIP-Address. Skype for Business users map one Skype name to one IP address. So people can Skype your Skype name but y…

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Multiple Companies Per Account. A Skype account is a person. Let me be affiliated with more than one company. I may have: a full time day job, bake cookies under my own name, help a friend’s business on weekends, sit on the fundr…

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Sharing Aliases. Nobody works 24 hours a day. Companies still need to serve customers all day, every day. They do this by sharing roles. On call neurosurgeon for a hospital. Help desk operator. Even the receptionist who takes a lunch…

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Integrate and automate provisioning of Skype business control panel (BCP), Skype account, and Skype aliases. So you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter on per-seat-licenses for email, accounting, virtualization, commerce, manufacturing …

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Transferability of Aliases. I wear many hats at work. A Skype account’s aliases should hold all my hats. I should be able to: define a role (the person who orders office supplies, for example), use it (call and IM suppliers, build a contac…

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Aliases (Multiple Skype Names per Skype Account). Multiple custom profiles per Skype user account. I need one for my external customers, another for my team, another for external suppliers and partners. Also, my boss doesn’t need to know I’m Gorgon…

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Skype will announce results of their Zogby consumer survey tomorrow. Findings support Skype’s bargaining position with mobile carriers (pre-install Skype, embed SILK) and their freedom-to-connect regulatory rhetoric (delamination, Skype Carterfone). …

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me I’m in the New York Times coverage of Google Voice. Quoted correctly (yay!) but before my own column on the subject came out (d’oh!). Google has some truly delightful advantages in the race to become the world’s largest communications company.&#160…

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Wednesday 11 March 2009 was eBay’s day to sell Skype to the investor community. Here’s the combined slide show. eBay 2009 Analyst Day The Skype slides start in page 145. Thanks, Jennifer. tags: skype, ebayinc, financials, strategyfollow @sky…

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[Editor: My paraphrase. Mr. Donahoe is more genteel.] AP’s Rachel Metz: "I think it was an acquisition that had potential, we thought it would have synergy. In the fast-moving Internet world it’s turning out not to. I’m being transparent …

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I don’t have a solid list of all of Skype’s products for the Skype Journal Briefing Book I use on consulting gigs. Here’s a very rough list of Skype’s desktop, mobile and embedded software; search, network, and gateway services; and developer products….

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Happening upon virtual items for sale in the games you play is now as common as a dentist handing you a new toothbrush after each visit. It is expected that online games will hawk some form of virtual wares to players.
But most social and casual game makers are carelessly tossing virtual swords and daggers into […]

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Xandros previewed Presto last week, a light operating system that boots your laptop quickly so you can be running Skype (for Linux) in about 8 seconds instead of minutes. Firefox, Skype, your Windows files and thousands of other apps and media are avai…

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It’s been almost a month since I broke up with my iPhone and switched to the new T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8900. And while I sometimes yearn for my iPhone’s awesome sleekness and its admirable browser, the new BlackBerry Curve is proving to be a worthy and admirable replacement. Instead of boring you with details about the innards of the device, let me stay focused on what matters most to typical BlackBerry owners: usability.

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Basic voicemail is so 1980s. Now SpinVox transcribes voice messages and alerts you, for a fee, when you get Skype voice mail. Set up your Skype voice mail alerts here. This is a great idea. I love anything that improves voice messaging freshness, accur…

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In his inaugural post, Thomas Howe articulates the platform challenge: to make realtime talk easy for non-voice programmers. Andy Abramson bets Thomas will strengthen Jaduka’s focus on enterprise integration. Rich Tehrani’s interview with Thomas co…

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Vodafone, Orange, O2 and others will have to succumb to the market reality that the Skype offering is a win-win… — Jim Courtney Jim, you could be right, but I don’t think so. There’s nothing inevitable about Skype having success with ot…

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Over at DataPortability.org, I’m in a conversation about what we want to see in a modern Terms of Service or End User License Agreement. Political geography is a subset of what I want to know. Five Location Disclosure Questions: 1. In which countr…

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No more PSP-to-PSP voice and video calling with Go!Messenger, the product of a Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and BT Group joint venture.  A year from its launch, too few people used Go!Messenger to justify operations. The service will end 3…

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF for short) petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to allow people to put whatever software they want on their mobile phones. This would permit working around copy protection.  Computer programs that enab…

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OK, all the sex stuff’s a been a bit much. But I wanted to let you get a feel for yourself.  We’ve never really covered Skype in the bedroom. So, in the run up to this weekend’s Valentine’s Day, I’ve been sharing first hand accounts from twitter…

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   Skype sets the mood with free video valentines. Pick your cover… Record your love note using a webcam, and address it to the one(s) you love. From the Skype media team: Roses are Red, and Violets are Blue Chocolates…

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Software is always too hard. Skype’s advantage five years’ ago was it just worked. That’s no longer enough. Skype serves pioneers and early adopters just fine, but now Skype is mainstream and needs to be easier, simpler, more streamlined in turning pro…

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American wireless companies are control freaks when it comes to configuring the mobiles they sell. They limit hardware features, choose applications, and otherwise protect their walled gardens. Now they’re set to sell netbooks with wireless data plan…

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