Unbound Spiral

An excellent overview of Skype. Note Robin's comments re Vonage and similar services.

Please Skype Me: Disruptive P2P VoIP Technology Allows You To Call And Talk Free To Any Windows PC - Robin Good' Sharewood Tidings

The advantage(s) of this over other similar new services like Vonage and Free World Dialup is that Skype does not rely on a centralized infrastructure to maintain the directory of users and to route each and every call. This means that for those services based on a centralized infrastructure costs scale proportionally with their user base while providing quality and reliability becomes always more difficult to achieve.

Where I'd disagree with advice later in the article which recommends accepting calls only from friends. I'm happy for example to accept calls from around the world. However I will check the info button before answering. Or I can simply treat it as one to call back. You can't always answer your computer. If I don't know / recognize your name or it is made up.... and there is no country etc. then the caller isn't providing enough info to encourage appropriate courtesy.

An excellent overview of Skype. Note Robin's comments re Vonage and similar services.

Please Skype Me: Disruptive P2P VoIP Technology Allows You To Call And Talk Free To Any Windows PC - Robin Good' Sharewood Tidings

The advantage(s) of this over other similar new services like Vonage and Free World Dialup is that Skype does not rely on a centralized infrastructure to maintain the directory of users and to route each and every call. This means that for those services based on a centralized infrastructure costs scale proportionally with their user base while providing quality and reliability becomes always more difficult to achieve.

Where I'd disagree with advice later in the article which recommends accepting calls only from friends. I'm happy for example to accept calls from around the world. However I will check the info button before answering. Or I can simply treat it as one to call back. You can't always answer your computer. If I don't know / recognize your name or it is made up.... and there is no country etc. then the caller isn't providing enough info to encourage appropriate courtesy.

A recent comment on my blog asked why the hype about Skype? "Aside from quality, why is everyone going crazy over Skype. I have used yahoo, netmeeting, and dialpad with success." I've tried them all too. What's inspired me to keep plugging away and digging deeper on Skype is it's base architecture. All the other systems use some form of centralized directory. Centralized directories create control and incur costs. Decentralized directory systems and input systems appear to create new markets. eBay never decided what should be auctioned, only how to auction it. eBay facilitates connectivity between buyer and sellers - flow and thus trade. I suspect if Skype or an open source substitute comes along it too will facilitate connectivity and create new markets around new very low cost voice exchanges.

If nothing else Skype is changing perspective on VoIP. Today I see 26488 users up +40% from the 18869 I saw yesterday about the same time. A good part of my practice has been scenarios for the last few years. While Skype should not be "news" to telecoms, MS or Yahoo for it's potential. I'd like to know how many have really thought it through and if even aware. Then what action and scenarios are they using to challenge their strategic thinking. Will US Telecoms be the next RIAA?

This link below to a comment sums up why it sounds good to me. It also suggests a solution is required for directory security. Can someone track this down and verify one way or the other? True or False?

An interesting editorial, but you might be wrong. My take on Skype is that it is using P2P technologies for the "white pages" portion of the VoIP network, not just in peers communicating directly. Super-peers store portions of these white-pages. Just as super-peers in Kazaa store indexes to music files stored on other peer machines, these super-peers store indexes to the phone numbers of other peers. They aren't clear if they are using this approach, but it's my take when they say "the network works just like Kazaa". This is also an unsecure approach, which is probably why they aren't publicizing it in detail. These super-peers could "lie" and reroute calls to the wrong peer, just as super-peers in Kazaa can "lie" about what music files are stored where. When you tell the system to find the phone number for 510-938-2222, it probably actually initiates a "search" on the network of super-peers to resolve to the actual peer that has this number, just as it would "search" for madonna.mp3.

This is an important approach, by the way, because if we don't need to maintain massive white pages servers then we can significantly reduce the capital needed to build such a network. In fact, we can reduce it down to such a marginal cost that businesses aren't needed to build these networks at all. The network, including the white pages, self-organizes out of the peers themselves. This network can then be used to build VoIP apps, virtual hard-drives, etc. I have been working on an open-source project named P2P Sockets that is attempting to achieve this; check it out at p2psockets.jxta.org. One significant issue that needs to be solved before this approach is tenable is that these white pages need to be secure even though they are also decentralized and human-friendly.
Comment at Rebels Without Cause

I don't agree, Skype is a one at a time (currently one to one) communication mechanism. You can only talk to one person at a time, and whilst you're in that conversation you're out of communication with everyone else, even if they develop an answerphone system, you'll still have to listen to each message. Speech is a very slow medium of communication, and it requires full attention. You can't talk on skype whilst in your office, or in the middle of cooking a meal, or doing any other task that takes you away from your computer momentarily. (I have a bluetooth headset which solves some of the problems - but popping to the toilet, or to the door, or somewhere out of bluetooth range is still impossible)
refer Jibbering Musings.for more

CNet.  State regulators attempt to control VoIP phone services (Vonage).   Here is a more informative bit of analysis from Jeff Pulver.  LOL.  Let them try that with Skype. [refer J Robb]

So, you can Skype me TDavid of www.makeyougohmm.com answers my request for a Skype me link. Heres his explanation and the HTML tag and heres my Skype me link. Youll need to download and install Skype. On the this looks like a viral winner... [refer Ratcliffe]

It's amazing that the old telcoms industry is still functioning. I'm not in a position to judge this new release from Stealth Technologies. However add this capability to Skype, add easy conferencing and companies like WebEx will be in trouble too.

<Light Reading - Networking the Telecom Industry

Any of these options is expensive. Using the Voice Peering Fabric, providers can connect to the peering point that Stealth has built for a fee of $500 per month for each 100-Mbit/s connection.

This makes it much simpler and easier for these next-generation companies that will compete against the incumbents to connect to each others networks, says Frank Dzubeck, president of Communications Network Architects, a telecom consultancy. This really going to accelerate the entire voice-over-IP issue, because its eliminating some of the costs associated with offering VOIP services.

IBM's case for VoIP During a presentation Tuesday at TechTarget's Networking Decisions conference, Johnny Barnes, IBM's vice president of global IT solutions and standards, told attendees that his company plans to migrate at least 80% of its more than 300,000 employees to voice over IP by 2008.

Though the ambitious project will replace approximately 900 PBXs around the world with regional IP installations, Barnes said the effort will not only reduce voice costs significantly, but will improve worker productivity by enabling application convergence, as every new application going forward will have embedded voice capabilities.

Looking forward to a little change in perspective? When will the telecoms give us what we want. Carl Ford writes:

The Carl Ford Blog: Local Number Portability

For me, my cell phone and my home phone represent very different parts of my life. And the idea that I should combine them means that I will lose the selective call processing capability I gave myself with the cell phone.

Don't know me and want to reach me? Here is my home number.

I want to reach you anytime, I call from the cell.
I expect that about 20% of the landlines will get this kind of migration. I also believe they can get about 5% back in a few years.

Meanwhile you can still reach me on IM.

In "early days" of Skype I posted on this. Numbers may still be required to connect certain services. However what's really required are relationships, introductions, mediated exchanges, conferencing capabilities. See this too on profiles.

On the 20% migration claim... I'l like to enable my cell phone to handle a second line that is shared with my family. I can toggle it off /on at various times of day. When everyones phone rings in the house we know what type of call it is. Voice messages there are for all etc. Then the phones really will become wearable.

That's what still excites me about the Skype type potential. Enabling me to manage access, profiles and multiple lines. At the moment my buddy list continues to grow. I want' to run my own exchange. Guess the phone companies aren't going to encourage me.

Combine disruptive innovation, expensive upgrades, overvalued balance sheets, stratospheric sales and marketing costs, old technologies and trouble is on the horizon. This comment is on the numbers....

The leapfrog effect where one technology makes the next obsolete can work in two ways. The new technology can be so much better that it really undoes the primacy of the former. Or, the new technology can screw up the financial rationale keeping the old tech companies afloat.

Meanwhile, new phone companies, like the wireless kids and even some long distance carriers, get the same switching functionality for millions less. This adds up to a multi-billion dollar loss in competitive (dis)advantage for every landline company. And none of this appears (yet) to be calculated into their stock prices. Once it is....

TheFeature

What is ailing Skype growth today? The link below is hardly a statistical sample on Skype yet some numbers ring true. Read it all for more. What underlies the numbers is that Skype growth is changing. New users (like my son are online sporadically, he uses it with friends while teaming up to play games online). For the rest I hear the frequent story of I only have three or four buddies on my list.....

So a few quick notes on:

This article in Time examines the world in which the phone becomes a computer, and the computer becomes a phone."Eight years after its introduction, VOIP is having its moment. Indeed, 2004 is sure to be the year in which the technology hits prime time."the author Duff McDonald states.
Say Hello to the Next Phone War

[Smart Mobs]

Thoughts on Skype, Skype Problems, Skype Limitations, Skype Hype, Skype Product Development and Viral Marketing. A few things pushed me towards this post.

The blogosphere seems intent on finishing the year on a social note. I'm seeing plenty of posts on LinkedIn, ZeroDegrees, Spoke and continued tirades over what Ryze, Tribe and Friendster provide or don't. Yes it's an area I've read about and have followed closely all year. So in the closing moments I'll say I don't think any of these are real businesses. None of these are the eBbay of social capital. Some may have important functionalities that may add up to a business sometime in the future. However those that use $10 subscription rates for current functionality levels can forget it. They are all too expensive. It's cheaper to get in the Yellow Pages.

Early in the year I found myself writing about identity and sharing human profiles to thinking through circles of friends and the impact of actions on branding and behavior. I've explored almost every one of these software applications as they have come along. There is not yet one pieces of software from this genre that I get real enjoyment from. Each one I can learn the system and get it to do a small number of things. I can get new introductions, however the people that really count and my long time referees aren't on the system and I've given up trying to get them there. In the end my blog and strategies that I execute around it are a better time investment for networking to new connections.

Many of the social networking services provide useful functionalities (dating - matching is really separate to my comments here) however none of them provide the type of product / service that is going to be a big time winner. They are high maintenance for the most part and fail to integrate well into the day to day work that we do. Then there is trust too. Upload your outlook address book etc... They are all useful experiments and many of their features will be built into corporate systems. Yet, I believe the majority are barking up the wrong tree.

Here's some top of mind reasons why.

A great article in last weeks (Jan 26th) Fortune written by Dan Roth on Skype. He travels to Estonia and beyond tracking down and talking to the creators of Kazaa and Skype. Can't help but wish I had been travelling with him. For potential innovators what is interesting is that Skype emerged from over four years of experience. Experience in the music industry, experience building P2P systems and a perspective built round intellectual property, lawyers and regulation. Headquarters now being established in London.

Two quotes really caught my attention.

It costs Vonage-the top provider of paid Internet telephony, with 97,000 users-almost $400 to add a new customer. It costs Skype one-tenth of a cent.

and
"What Skype is doing is like a toy," says Hossein Eslambolchi, AT&T's chief technology officer and president of AT&T Labs. "They will realize they can't scale it, they don't have a brand like the AT&T brand, and they don't have the local footprint, which we have. It's going to be very hard to compete with someone like AT&T."

I would have liked to have seen (in Dan's article) some reference to Skype's experimenting with forums and even bloggers. The "SkypeMe" initiative, the rapid infusion of ideas has from my perspective clearly helped Skype. My bet is they are learning from their marketplace faster than the "traditional company" or organization. That's a cost saving for development. The trick now is to accelerate

Add to that the tenth of a cent that they are demonstrating very effectively. Orkut like Skype is capturing people at a very low cost. I mentioned it with my first post on Orkut that I'd already created a larger network there than on Ryze or any of the other networking services. It's also true for Skype. However for Skype I don't know if I'm unusual or not (I assume I am) however I have more "connections" on Skype than I have on MSN, Yahoo and AIM combined.

Then there is the other perspective my SBC bill last month was $72m my Comcast Cable $91(std tv + broadband) and my mobile $70. Franky I can't wait to get rid of SBC, that is the least useful of all these services. I only keep it for international calls for which my bill has been cut by more than half in the last five month due to Skype. Plus I spend more time talking.

The latest VoIP announcement suggests communities driven by fat broadband connections will join the VoIP telephony game. Streamcast's announcement below is correctly identified as a VNO or Virtual Network Operator by TechDirt. Short-term the opportunity exists to convert a number of large communities (eBay comes to mind) over to VoIP. In the case of eBay they have an incentive to bring the cost of calls to zero. Given the hours ebayers spend online it would be a pretty neat service. While despite current optimism the flat rate plans aren't going to do it in the long run. In fact the Vonage model probably has a pretty short life ahead. Concurrently the need for adaptors will be eliminated in most households.

StreamCast's jump into VoIP is part of broader trend among peer-to-peer software makers, which are trying to use their presence on broadband-enabled desktops to launch Internet phone service. Several months ago, file-swapping software maker Kazaa unveiled Skype, a peer-to-peer VoIP service that's been downloaded six million times already, according to the company. StreamCast's voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service is open to the 120 million people that have downloaded Morpheus, provided they also buy a Morpheus-branded adapter. The adapter is needed to allow traditional home phones to make calls over a broadband connection.
CNET

The obvious connection most people make will be with Skype, the software-based voice-over-the-internet play, because it was written by the folks who created Kazaa - a competing file sharing system to Morpheus. However, the Morpheus offer is quite different, and opens up a much more interesting line of discussion. In this case, Morpheus is just becoming a virtual network operator (VNO). More commonly, people have talked about mobile VNOs (MVNOs) such as Virgin Mobile, where some other network operator handles all the dirty technical details, and a company like Virgin simply slaps their brand and marketing efforts on top. In this case, Morpheus is basically offering a Vonage-like service (powered by i2 Telecom), but with their own brand. It will be interesting to see if other brand companies start jumping into the VoIP VNO business as well. It's even easier to do than jumping into the MVNO business, and I could see a lot of companies deciding that there's a fit - though, it may be a tough sell to a lot of customers. Are people really going to gravitate to a Morpheus service over a Vonage offering at the same or similar price? Still, one of the nice things about such a VoIP system is just how easy it must be to create your very own VNO. How long until companies are offering the ability to automatically set up your own VoIP telephone company the same way you become an Amazon affiliate or put a Google search on your page? Anyone interested in signing up for a Techdirt phone service? Techdirt

WaveIQ consists of three software products, all now available:

WaveSpotter—a cellular map interface that allows users move about, letting users drill down to street level and post or consume blogs.

WaveBlog—a company-hosted super blog serving as a multiple channel informational clearinghouse engineered by uber blogger Russell Beattie, WaveMarket director of blog engineering.

WaveAlert—wireless operator infrastructure that allows users to be notified whenever they enter or leave a designated area. The server software powers a scalable system that reduces network loads and hardware requirements.
Wavemarket

Last night I had a mind bender from a friend who said: "With our solution each Skype conferencee (each on a different continent) could be on a cell phone - and each one could be on a different continent to their PC-now there's a weird extension!"! It sounds pretty farfetched and I'm still trying to get my head around it. Yet effectively this is just one of the possible implications that may emerge from current progress.

PCPro gets the news out today heralding in Skype's new conference service, while Clay Shirky sums up my ramble from two days ago in a nice crisp short sentence. However, I think it runs deeper.

Today sees Skype claiming the accolade of the world's first IP-based conference-call service using peer-to-peer technology. PCPro

The biggest difference between VoIP and the circuit-switched phone network we've got is not going to be cheap phone calls. It's going to be ridculouly easy group-forming. Many-to-Many

You don't have to be a genius to see that low-latency plus high-bandwidth looks like a tasty recipe for next-generation IP-based voice apps. Voice is still the aœkiller app. But it is evolving once freed from the clammy dead hand of circuit telephony. Should enterprises start demanding end-to-end encypted voice, then Flarion can deliver it using off-the-shelf technology. Integrate presence, IM and voice a-la Skype? No problem. Anyone left with a faux-circuit network will be left spluttering. Telepocalypse

The cool thing about 802.20 is that it has "doppler tolerance" which means that unlike the currrent version 802.16, 802.20 can be used for mobile. Go Wireless ISPs and 802.20 go! Roland Tanglao

Voice Avatars:
Last night I suggested we take a deeper look at Wave Market, while I've also had a few more thoughts about Flickr. The real voice applications are still to emerge. While I'm encrypted in conversation with Skype I think for the most part I pretty much sound like Stuart Henshall. Now imagine a different world. A mobile world where people are not identifiable by their live voice but rather by a voice avatar. You may never hear the real me if you are outside my direct social network. Peeling away layers of identity may involve exposing voice too. Think this is weird? Just think of the TV interview where the investigator wants to protect someone's identity. Extend that to conference calls you are in. Some may hear the real you others may not! This game is played in chatrooms around the world. Provide the same anonymities as text and watch for an explosion. Join a wireless chat channel in the Airport etc.

Voice and Location:
Similarly, as systems improve full stereo may become the norm. Total immersion in a game would enable me to hear where my friends are and where the danger is. I still want to play America's Army this way with my mates in the soundscape. In other situations walking towards one another in a crowd could be directed by sound.

These last two items just begin to show new ways for rapidly forming groups and tying them into social networks. They are just one part of trying to solve the "always-on" connection questions and what it means to have an open line and varying degrees of presence no matter where you are. I'd also suggest we don't limit the exploration to the current paradigm. Small group conferencing via Skype is just the beginning. Playing music to the group while in conference might be the next item.... Might just give a reason to leave an open channel on.

For those trying to learn more about Skype's conference call function a forum group put their experiences down in this pdf document. Skype Forum

See also comments via Skype on future conferencing additions.

A great summary by Rajesh Jain on converging technologies and telephony. Reading between the lines I think Rajesh may just want to try out a Nokia 9500. Me too! Add to it the BT Communicator / Yahoo announcement for their new VoIP IM service today for another indicator of rapid change.

Nokia recently announced the 9500 model which is a Wi-fi enabled successor to the 9200 Communicator series. In another announcement Skype developers said they had plans to port their popular P2P net telephony software to PDAs. Can unified telephony become a reality, made possible with the convergence of Wi-fi, VoIP and cellular services? These three stories speculate on various outcomes.

One Person, One Phone

Indoor Wi-Fi coverage would be offered by cellular carriers as an added service. Subscribers would likely have to pay an extra $5 to $20 a month for it, says Ken Kolderup, vice president of marketing at Kineto Wireless in Milpitas, CA, but they’d get cheap Internet calls when they were on the Wi-Fi network. And by providing more reliable service indoors, the cellular carriers would be able to fully compete with traditional telephone companies...

And Kineto has developed a network controller that can be installed on a cellular-telephone company’s network to bridge cellular and Wi-Fi. If a cell-phone user is indoors and near a Wi-Fi access point, his or her phone would sense the stronger Wi-Fi signal and tell the controller that it should route any incoming calls through the Internet, and ultimately through the local access point. Three carriers in the United States and Europe are now testing Kineto’s technology; Kineto expects dual-mode service to be available this year.

Net2PhoneÂ’s VoIP play

Net2Phone, one of the oldest Internet telephony services in the US announced Voiceline, a VoIP service that is custom tailored for the cable operators. A prime example is St. Kitts’ lone cable provider, The Cable, which is going to roll out VoiceLine to provide their customers with a reliable VoIP service using their existing infrastructure and with minimal cap ex. Cable operators can also choose Net2PhoneÂ’s PacketCable Managed Telephony, a managed broadband telephony service. I have a feeling that Net2Phone and Vonage will be butting heads in their bid to capture the private label VoIP market.

Could WiFi Kill the Cellular Star?

New voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones promise free wireless calls while at work using special phones that let you run voice on Internet packets. But this technology is only now maturing, previously beset with long delays and poor quality phone calls. I tried out a VoIP phone from Clarisys recently, along with a Vonage SoftPhone on a laptop. The phone was wired into my laptop, but I could make and receive calls through my laptop anywhere on my wireless home network. The quality was decent and my phone conversations were nearly normal.

[E M E R G I C . o r g]

Via Geekzone. Add this to Skype Business Model (See also Red Herring). thinking for a September European Launch. Some of the other product Siemans announced at CeBIT look desirable. This one would eliminate a couple of plugs and more.

Siemens is launching the Gigaset M34 USB PC Adapter. This is the world’s first consumer Internet telephony and messaging solution for cordless phone products. Developed in partnership with Skype Technologies, the peer-to-peer telephony company, this product merges data and voice communications technology in a simple and intuitive platform, expanding the frontier for consumer choice and flexibility in communications.

This new telephony product allows consumers to easily utilize and manage all of their traditional Internet applications such as instant messaging, chat, buddy lists, Internet radio and emails, from their Gigaset handset, wherever they are in the home.

Gigaset M34 USB PC Adapter offers an open interface to enable third party solution providers to integrate cordless phones into their applications for VoIP, messaging and home control. To encourage developers Siemens provides a free Software Development Kit (SDK), Internet-based support, as well as 24 hours hotline via the Siemens mobile developer portal. The portal contains detailed information about the interface, the SDK and the hardware and tool environment.

The Gigaset-Skype Internet telephony solution is the first product from the Siemens Cordless Product VoIP Integration Roadmap that will soon include Gigaset Residential Voice and Data Gateways, and Gigaset WiFi devices.

The Gigaset-Skype I
Geekzone, mobile forums

Is the P2P telephony space too crowded? Here's a potential Skype twin that may just emerge. Litfiber has announced iTalk2u --- although no "beta" can actually be downloaded. Beta supposed to be released in May.

Note:

Estonia March 23, 2004* WTF Spoof Newswire

Skype Business Plan details released today outline large scale enterprise ambitions. Throwing caution to the wind and responding to recent enquires from international press sources Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom released new products and service details in a closed session post CeBit conference for the Enterprise market. Earlier Skype announced partnerships with Plantronics and Siemans Mobile. The most important announcements disclosed details of the Skype "Supernode" Corporate Server, the Skype "Presence Manager and Skype for PDA's and Symbian Skype Messenger.

Skype testing began with a free to consumer "telephony" application released in August 2003. With over six months in testing billions in connected calls, and online callers exceeding 300000 concurrently Skype announced that HP would begin an immediate world wide corporate implementation. An unnamed HP spokes person said it was their "Windows" opportunity. It will be deployed in consulting services over the next three weeks. Concurrently HP will release new look PDA's and bluetooth headsets. Skype recently received $18 million in funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Index Ventures who said""The Skype team boasts some of the world's great corporate innovators, and is the hottest viral marketing phenomenon since Hotmail"

To summarize. I expect we will begin shipping the Skype server and individual application products in early September 2004. Welcome to the new world of Global telephoney... no scratch that global communications.

NOTE:

* This is a spoof. The author has never seen a Skype business plan or any statement other than publicly announced or revealed details. None of this information or speculation came from Skype so your interpretation and judgement should apply. I have been following Skype since it launched. If you have gotten this far it must have either been compelling or intriguing. If you repost any of it you may want to insure that you note this was a spoof.

I posted these thoughts in this format for sometimes the most compelling way to make managers stuck in a paradigm see what is coming is simply to tell them a story. When one uses Scenarios is it less important to get it precisely right. It's unlikely that every element in the above is true or a certainty. It could be completely wrong. The point is to ask yourself. What could we do? What should we do right now if Skype emerges with all the above capabilities by September 2004? That is where strategy comes in. If you are HP or IBM the context is completly different to WebEx or Vonage. If you are SBC you better have answers. They are different in each case. The purpose of this type of exercise is to enable an interest in gaining strategic foresight. Companies that are open to exploring strategy outside their comfort zone are more likely to succeed in the long run. Concurrently two other things happen. First embracing change becomes easier for the recognition emerges that it is already here. Second making things happen are now in an accelerated context.

I don't get to go to David Isenberg's WTF I'm on vacation at the time. Still this might be a fun way to think about it.

And that sums up this post. WTF --- nothing to lose.

- The Online Presence Spiral - an interactive experience that is engaging, accessible, immersive - not just IM indicators but sound quality - active cams, mobility etc. Emergent thoughts that we need a new "Presence Formula".

This post represents rough notes on how online presence is being redefined by new audio solutions. These are creating a sound spiral and an unexpected tipping point for tel co's and cellular phone providers while redefining consumer / user audio expectations.

Driven by IM systems we are becoming increasingly accustomed to knowing; available, away, do not disturb, not available, invisible and custom forms thereof. In parallel there has been a growing interest in the social networking sites like Ryze, Linkedin, Orkut, Tribe etc. Most of these haven't had the critical online mass to activate an effective 'presence" indicator yet. They also fail to have the immediacy of an IM buddy list. Learning gained in social networking software will be applied to IM systems in the next generation. In fact ICQ has recently been releasing upgrades. As will more complex access profiles which further refine definitions of availability, access, privacy, security etc. However this focus on presence and "presence management" is limited an IM style focus on smiley faces and social networking that may limit developments. As VoIP and IM systems integrate interaction designers should take a broader view of presence.

Let's just step back for a second and consider real life examples…. Eg "you felt his/her presence when they entered the room. Or the speaker carried real presence. Take it further and over the years there have been interests in telepresence from science fiction books to research studies. This objective that i found quickly appealed to me. "To design forms of interactive experience that are engaging, accessible, and immersive". I'd like to think about this as presence cubed.

The IM style is helping with accessible, however the other aspects engaging and immersive still have a way to go. The point is recent posts on "Presence Management" are really missing the broader picture. The post I've seen from Dina, and Dave I think support my point of view. They are looking for a much broader integration of presence. In fact presence management is an oxymoron just like Knowledge Management. Similarly telecoms and VoIP providers that simply believe they can step up with a VoIP IM solution are going to find they are continuing to chase the curve. Using Skype as an illustration, it masters the current state of consumer presence pretty adequately. It also redefines voice presence. Our ears are extremely sensitive to vocal cues. And yet we are accepting. We accept or are forced into landline and cellular systems that clip our voices, reduces our gravitas and thus reduce vocal presence effectiveness. The narrow band spectrums simply doesn't compare favorably with a well connected wide band Skype type call. In fact I was told the other day how different I sounded on Skype. Apparently, I had more presence!

Now imagine you were part of a larger conference call negotiation. You could hear the other party with brilliant clarity. They were restricted to a mediocre cellphone standard. You could easily position each of the individuals and easily decipher the stress or excitement in their voices. Now which negotiation team has the upper hand? If you are looking at new solutions then thinking about presence in terms of availablity indicators and not audio quality will only will only result in an early replacement as higher quality more efficient sound solutions become available. For conference calls you have to have an audio connection that is equal or better than those your are connected to. For the most part the highest sound quality will result in better conversations. It's pretty self-evident. Just like the e-mail that can be misinterpreted. The brain fills in the blanks in poor quality sound.

Now I would like to know if any commercial or consumer SIP applications so far have been initiated with a codec comparible to Skype. For it is not SIP that is restraining the voice quality it is the VoIP telecom providers that seem to think current sound codecs are good enough. I have a Vonage line. At no time does it compare to Skype quality. It's better than my cellphone at home, and often doesn't match my landline for quality. Via the Register today, Morpheus launched a VoIP solution. They are in fact just playing off their P2P name and number of users. As far as I can tell it is a standard VoIP solution a little cheaper than Vonage. Other than trying to leverage the Morpheus userbase I'm not sure that there is a P2P relationship in this system although they are claiming that with VoiceBox to VoiceBox you get higher quality.

With Skype we are only just getting a taste of what's to come. As our understanding of "presence" is broadened by better audio experiences the industry will compete and collaborate to bring even more interesting "presence" experiences. Then the solutions won't stop with sound. There will be a huge awakening in equipment solutions too. Just think what happened when we when from mono to stereo, and then how quickly so many have gone to home theaters. The consumer knows Dolby and 3-D sound. While we may not want a total immersion experience for all calls (you may want to listen in on another simultaneously) we will want the ultimate immersion for some calls. The movie industry has already demonstrated what is possible.

Skype also shows what happens when increased audio presence is combined with appropriate visual cues. Those black heads don't look very friendly now, still when they become real faces and an inbound call is generated then our connection to the caller will be further enhanced. Photo's are a first step that will aid adoption adoption of real-time web cams.

Consequently I periodically find myself running updated experiments on the latest online video solutions. It is almost a couple of weeks ago since I tried out various alternative with Dave Pollard. I'd read Dave's post and he was willing to try out his new webcam. We started with Yahoo cam and voice. The voice connection was crap and so we soon closed voice and opened a Skype connection why retaining the Yahoo cam. In this instance there wasn't much of a delay on the cam although 2-3 seconds is not uncommon. Still as a free solution I've personally found little to beat it.

Next we tried out Sightspeed, The cam was much faster, however the voice connection was not up to Skype quality. We retained it for a period. However by that time we were doing what I think we should be doing. We were sharing http links, and looking at other alternatives. The cam had simply disappeared into the background replaces by texting and browser links. From my perspective this is not unusual.

Durning this week I also tried out CamFrog. While I didn't try the premium edition the basic one didn't provide me with confidence. While these observations and ongoing trials are fun from time to time I'm yet to find a wow solution. Robin Good in particular has shared some great conferencing solutions with me. They do require some customizing to context. It also takes time to master these tools. So ultimately there won't be hundreds of winners.

What I've found is I'm not prepared in any of these online sessions to put up with poor voice quality. That simply is a killer.

Second I dislike screen delays. The update has to be quick. Screen synch between individuals fast. Last year I'd experimented with Glance a product that shares your desktop. More recently Bill Campbell generously got me set up on tightVNC. Many use it for remote access to their computer. It's also perfect for sharing your desktop with multiple users. WIth tightVNC working there is no need for expensive services like MeetingASAP, you can share your desktop at anytime. There are other synch capabiliities that MeetingASAP provides however no matter how beautiful the last time I talked to them they could not confirm that the voice quality was not equal or better than Skype. BTW... if you want a cheap conference where everyone cam is synched on a page and one person is showing a powerpoint. Just cram it all on your screen and then tightVNC. The refresh rates on the cams will be poor for other viewers however it will cost you nothing. Everyone will know who's at their desk and watching the presentation rather than making coffee while wearing their bluetooth headset.

For working with others expecially new people where you have never had a picture before and never met them an early introduction with a web cam is effective. For family and friends it may be appropriate. However my belief is that sharing pictures is a pretty good substitute right now. The issue is most webcams are effectively passive. They provide a head shot as the person is sitting behind their PC. Usually the cam is not directed very effectively. I really don't believe that web cams will be the big thing until they are "active" cams. By active I mean people using them while on the move, out and about. Thus when we get our PocketSkype+ installed in a UltimateWi-Fi PDA with video capability and users are out roaming we will have a webcam usage that really adds a sense of presence along with the mobility and narrative. It still won't be telepresence although we will be a lot closer.

Finally from what I've seen and been fed about Skype performance and connectivity, their sound solution still eats up too much computing power. Add to that limitations on uploads and downloads to maintain voice quality and Skype video and Skype file exchanges may break what is good. That may provide some opportunities for others. So while Skype may have brokered new connections for some, and thus encouraged additional experimentation with webcams this user is still looking for better sound first and foremost. In that regard so should you.

What's more this user has learned that Wi-FI Skyping from HotSpots is better than a Mobile phone when available. Thus the paradigm that threatens the landline system may have more impact on mobility than current projections suggest. Some of you may have seen the recent releases of mobile phones like the Nokia Communicator 9500 that provides the traditional cellphone features along with Wi-FI. So now consider the user experience. When they are in a hotspot sound quality goes way up. When they get home their cellphone automatically becomes the home phone and the cellphone and the quality is way up. It's just possible that the mobile providers are entering a sound spiral as well. Then I also know that despite not being to Skype via my mobile phone to laptop connection Dina has proved to me that she can do it. Looks like the Indian cellular structure is more advanced than the US!. That will make cellular connections a commodity just like the landline in time.

Good place to close. The Online Presence Spiral. The emerging business experience parameters for communications.

Peter Cochrane on the future for telecoms and he should know. Great thoughtful piece.

Everywhere I go in the United States I now see people with PDAs, laptops and headsets making VoIP calls. This has been compounded and supported by the rapid spread of Wi-Fi providing a very powerful platform for users on the move.

The mode of operation spans the normal fixed/mobile phone behavior, plus the use of e-mail to establish contact and prompt the use of Skype, iChat, etc.. The more adventurous are also linking screens and working cross platform--with common applications and displays--in a manner forecast a decade ago but still seldom seen on corporate networks.

I think it would be foolish for any telco to dismiss VoIP and especially Skype. It seems to me that DIY telephony is on the march and will soon be on the scale of Kazaa.

VoIP hype and Skype - News - ZDNet

I brushed over the Morpheus Voicebox announcements yesterday as not really all that interesting. However today I saw moves by Net2Phone announced TCMNet and WiFi Planet. All these mention I2Telecom and Net2Phone who is now obviously making a larger strategic play.

Boardwatch today also provided the news that Sharman Networks is working to add Skype to the file shareing program Kazaa.

VOIP is emerging as a new line of business for many file-sharing companies. Sharman Networks Ltd., a StreamCast rival, is developing a version of its Kazaa P2P file-sharing program that comes integrated with Skype, a VOIP software program created by Kazaa's inventors (see Skype Me? Skype You!). In March, StreamCast launched a version of Morpheus that includes Morpheus VoiceChat, a VOIP software program from Talking Tech Enterprises Inc.

Unlike Morpheus VoiceBox, Skype and Morpheus VoiceChat run on PCs and let users talk only with other users of the programs. The VoiceBox is the first foray into hardware reselling by a P2P company.

href="http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=51527">Boardwatch: Analysis of telecom software, services, and strategy

BTW. Kazaa integrating Skype if approved by Skyper would bother me. I think there are better options for "music" relationships that use Skype. Skyper better be careful with that one.

Rafe Needleman posts a guide to Internet Phone services.

INTERNET PHONE SERVICES
Consumers and businesses alike will come to appreciate the low monthly rates, useful features, and clear voice quality of an Internet phone service. We reviewed five such services and found one clear winner.
Internet phones: CNET Editors' guide to VoIP - CNET reviews

Do you hate dialing with your cellphone internationally? Tends to cost a lot. Here's just another example of how personal VoIP exchanges will change the way we connect and get charged. This is another illustration of the power that is coming to consumers as we move to morphed personal IP PBX solutions.

Technology from i2 Telecom will let cell users dial their home phones and connect to a voice-over-IP network, then dial anywhere in the world for no extra charge--offering big savings on overseas calls. InformationWeek > Cell Phones and VOIP

I spent a few hours at Networld Interop in Las Vegas over the last couple of days. I'm only going to report on two items after noting that this show will be at a smaller venue next year. I was also taking a look for future "stand" reference points and filled a couple of pages with what was good and bad. I saw too many "cloud diagrams" they all look the same, found few had a short elevator pitch and the presentations for the most part required free t-shirts to keep people interested.

As I said two things caught my interest. First for collaborative sharing Advanced Reality and second for some big company thinking Siemens Openscape product provides at least a reference for where "some" industry thinking is.

Brian Hoogendam President of Advanced Reality introduced me to their products. So far demo's are available for Excel and Powerpoint although according to Brian the same sharing technology can be applied to other applications using a simple plug-in creation formula. On Excel and Powerpoint it was pretty neat . I'm not quite sure why there were at this show. This screen sharing app enabled multiple parties to update concurrently.

The blurb from their website:

Presence-AR is the first real-time, peer-to-peer system and enablement platform for adding synchronous collaboration capabilities to existing and new software applications. Presence-AR uses a patent-pending data-centric architecture to provide a full range of collaborative features, and to eliminate the need to modify applications. Presence-AR is the only collaboration platform with support for fail-over and persistence that allows a session to continue uninterrupted when a host signs-off, or is inadvertently disconnected. This enables participants to join and leave a session at will, and supports both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. By providing collaboration on the data layer, Presence-AR:

Allows users to collaborate on the same data using different applications

Dynamically adapts views of the same data for the capabilities of any access device including PCs, handhelds, and mobile phones

Enables collaboration across firewalls, LANs, and dial-up connections

Provides secure collaboration through support of encryption, authentication, and access control systems

Advanced Reality - Products and Solutions

Separately take a look at Siemens OpenScape. I gather it is being used within Siemens currently. It does have a tie-in to WebEx to aid and facilitate conferences and similarly will connect to MS Messenger.

Siemens describes OpenScape as a multimodal communications application that provides presence-aware, real-time communications to quickly and easily synchronize people and information to facilitate action.

So what was notable? Looking at the laptop screens... It had a dialer, a more detailed "my contacts" (presence re phone, messaging and e-mail) and a list of conferences. Some of the conferences were effectively persistent. In many ways the interface for Convoc's Meeting ASAP provides similar details although more efficiently. On the Siemen's page link above scrolling down does provide a few white papers. They may provide some resouces and facts for the payback that can be achieved from "presence".

Jeff Pulver picks up on a theme that I'm now investing a lot of time in. I've bolded his statement where it counts and resonates from my perspective.

The time has come for the IP Communications Industry to start to move beyond the HYPE of VoIP and start to deliver some of the services which are only possible because of the advent of IP based communications. Some of these services start to become very visible only when we start to blur the line between instant messaging, presence, and voice communication. Throw in things like blogging, social networking and gaming and things just start to get interesting. (my bold)

The advent of a technology like SIP means that for the first time in the 127 year history of telephony, the same protocol can be used on an end-to-end basis between customers on two ends of a telephone call. This represents a total radical change in the engineering of communication networks and ways, which value added services, can be and will be introduced in the near future.
I look forward to reading about the next wave of companies, which truly will help redefine the future of the communications industry. My hope is that such services start to arrive in 2004. The Jeff Pulver Blog

"It is said that the present is pregnant with the future." ~ Voltaire Or similarly.... "the future is all around us we just don't know it yet!" --- a line delivered by many. If you read my last post you know I'm actively pursuing my future and it is all around me. One task I wanted to take care of before sending friends and colleagues to my second blog, and new company affiliation was to have something to send you to. It's a little selfish I know. Keep people in the dark, don't blog for a few weeks and then pour out the details. Then part of my job is to create traffic and interest in DiamondWare. So forgive me for being self-serving. You can help me. Come and visit, subscribe to our syndicated blog.

This post aims to do a couple of things. Help kick off a new corporate blog and achieve some visibility with enough intrigue for what you may find there. DiamondWare's roots are high performance audio software. The DiamondWare story is here. We are moving from developing the engine (audio media stack) to building the vehicles / applications for next generation communication. The website is a work in progress. For me this is a first iteration. Release and update may present the best way to get feedback and accelerate message development. So blog friends are beta readers for a current marketing department of one. So, now you know and I'll be very receptive to new ideas and honest input. I hope that over time a successful blogging component will outweigh all the static pages created to date. If I'm working towards real-time communication then a blog componet is a key to the way forward.

Why DiamondWare?
Beyond the great group of people are core elements for the next generation of VoIP solutions. That was key to attracting me to join the team. Plus the desire to create new answers and leap forward with an "always-on mobile presence communicator". For me this opportunity emerges at the intersection of where new audio processing capabilities, VoIP networks and collboration tools converge. This Online Presence Spiral also includes solutions for social networking, privacy, security and digital identity.