Pamela, the original Skype Extra that provides a range of utilities to enhance your Skype conversations experience, recently introduced Pamela 4.5 with enhancements which provide new call management functionality.

Pamela’s feature set can be broadly summarized as including:

• Conversation management
  • notification management
  • voice mail (with optional email forwarding)
  • video messaging (caller can leave a video message)
  • call transfer (missing from Skype for Windows 4.0)
  • call scheduling (new)
  • conference call management (with new features)
  • launch an application (when a call is received)
• Conversation archiving
  • Call notes (personal text notepad while in a call)
  • Call recording
  • Chat session archiving
  • Video recording
  • Custom recording (for blogs or podcasts)
• Personalization
  • personalized chat auto-responses
  • birthdays
  • rich mood editor

The two key new features are probably of most benefit to business users who have repeated calling patterns to, say, customers and/or suppliers or those who have routinely scheduled (say, weekly) conference calls with a common set of participants, such as a sales or marketing team.

Call Scheduler, shown above, allows you to schedule Skype calls with notification and recurring calls features. When the call is made there are options to provide an audio notification prior to the call, record the calls and/or open a text notes window.

More interesting is the Auto Conference Group Editor  which provides the ability not only to create conference call groups but also to trigger a conference call with the “group” when either (i) a call is received from a designated Skype contact or (ii) an outbound Skype call is made to a designated Skype contact.

It’s a feature-limited conference call management feature; it’s not a full conference call service such as Calliflower or HiDefConferencing with full moderator management features.

As outlined above Pamela has a long list of features that I have used over time, there is one feature that still needs work on both its operational reliability and the user interface. The video recording feature requires download of DivX decoders (which have licensing issues otherwise). I also find that it only works with one of the DivX decoders (DivX 6.8.5 YV12) out of a list of decoders available in the drop down box for selection of a video decoder. Apparently there are some PC- and webcam-specific dependencies related to the decoder issue.

Pamela is traditionally associated with Skype call recording – the feature that made it become virally adopted over the years; however, this is only one feature out of many that can benefit Skype users. Its uniqueness arises from:

• archived content (call recordings, chat sessions) is stored on the local PC’s disk drive in a standalone “Pamela” folder (whereas, say, Skylook is tightly linked into Outlook stores this information in your Outlook folder or Evoca stores your Skype call recordings at a hosted location accessible from anywhere on the Internet).
• the comprehensive feature set of the utility allowing you to select the combination of conversation management, archiving and personalization that adapts best to your individual Skype-enabled conversation activities.

Both PamConsult and Skylook offer basic call recording utilities based on the more feature-rich “parent” utility. Pamela Call Recorder is a free utility for Skype calls up to 15 minutes long. Skylook’s Call Burner has free basic call recording of Skype-to-Skype calls where  both parties have CallBurner but requires their premium version for calls to non-CallBurner users and SkypeOut calls. Evoca offers a free 30-day trial of their hosted recording service.

You can download Pamela 4.5 here for a 30-day trial of Pamela Professional. Pamela comes in four different configurations (including a free Basic configuration) when it comes time to purchase. Updates for Pamela and Call Recorder released

Pamela Case Study: Radio Free Asia: A Skype Facilitated Broadcasting Service

Over the past eighteen months CalliFlower has evolved into a complete audio conference call service. While they still offer a basic free service, in January they launched a premium service that provides document sharing, local calling numbers in North America, Europe and Australia as well as a feature that allows administrators to set up, but not necessarily participate in, a conference call. The most important feature is “no per minute charges”; you get “unlimited calling with an unlimited number of participants”.

Last week, over at Web Worker Daily, I wrote a post “Search Transforms CalliFlower Sessions from Events to Social Media Elements” where CalliFlower had announced that they had made all public CalliFlower sessions searchable such that they become part of an ongoing social networking conversation. My conclusion:

If you are into social networking by engaging your customers through blogs, Twitter and/or Facebook, check out CalliFlower as one additional element for carrying on your ongoing public customer conversations.

Yesterday the CalliFlower team woke up to learn that their CalliFlower for iPhone had been added to the Apple App Store overnight. (Yes, apparently “it just happens”; Apple uploads new or upgraded applications with no notice.) The iPhone application provides access to all of CalliFlower’s features with the exception of document sharing (which requires Adobe Flash – an issue for all smartphones). Set up a call, see your upcoming calls, see who’s on the call, participate in the chat wall and, of course, call in from your iPhone – they’re all there providing a unique mobile smartphone conference call experience. iotum CEO Alec Saunders provides more details in his post “CalliFlower on iPhone releases“  where he states:

And Calliflower on iPhone – well, let me just say that you’re going to love it.  We’ve remained faithful to the Calliflower experience on the web, while taking full advantage of the iPhone experience giving you the hands down BEST mobile conferencing experience ever.  Here’s a few examples of what I mean.

Check out my Web Worker Daily post and Alec’s full description of CalliFlower for iPhone. Also note that CATA makes Calliflower available to 28,500 members. If you have not signed up for the service, give it a try. Or install on your iPhone via iTunes here.

Full disclosure: the author is a user of the service for a non-blogging related project with great success. I call in to CalliFlower calls via SkypeOut.

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OnState Communications hosts business communications services that facilitate customer relationship management and enterprise marketing activities. OnState Call Center for Skype allows even the smallest business to operate a call center with geographically disbursed agents. OnState Unified Communications provides complete business real time communications management by extending the call center back office functionality to include conversation recording and archiving as well as messaging activities such as email and voice mail.

Customer conversations, whether through Skype or the legacy PSTN, may be initiated from a website with click-to-call and click-to-chat buttons, toll free numbers or direct inward dialing (DID) numbers. All back office agent connectivity is handled via Skype to minimize costs.

OnState is a one-stop supplier whose services include setting up not only their own services but also complementary services such as management of Skype accounts and Skype hardware acquisition.

Summary from Supplier: OnState’s founding and management team have pioneered communications solutions that drive customer service and empower business users – so they are aptly named the call center guys. Through highly successful careers with industry giants such as Cisco Systems, GeoTel Communications, and Nortel, they hold scores of industry patents for applications that you may be using right now including: Automatic Call Distributors (ACD); Intelligent Call Routing; Network Call Routing; Computer Telephony Integration (CTI); Voice Response Units (VRU); Customer Relationship Management (CRM); and Quality Assurance and Employee Performance Management.

Always at the forefront of business communications tools that directly serve people, the OnState team is redefining the traditional call center paradigm. They deliver a solution that exploits the convergence of advanced Internet, voice and networking technologies to create value-driven collaborative environments – at the lowest cost possible anytime, anywhere.

Website: www.on-state.com

Products and Services:

• OnState Call Center for Skype
• OnState Unified Communications

In previous posts I have reviewed VAPPS, Inc.’s audio conferencing service and its recent relaunch to incorporate high definition (HD) voice. To the user it means that all participants calling into the VAPPS conference bridge from Skype will hear the other participants accessing the call via Skype at the full HD Voice bandwidth.

Recently I reported on PhoneBoy’s experience; today Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom reports on a six hour conference call where, only after the call, he found from his administrator that the call had been booked on VAPPS High Speed Conferencing.

Pricing is very competitive and with full recording of the conferences for free I have just opened an account for Cubic. One extra positive point is the fact that I now find a use for the 3 Skypephone that’s been sitting on my desk for months. I can Skype dial into conference calls whilst out and about at zero cost.

Congrats to VAPPS on an excellent product.

Yesterday VAPPS announced two new directions:

• a rebranding of the service, now to be called High Definition Conferencing (HD-C)
• publishing of an upgraded Skype Extra supporting nine languages depending on your Skype profile language selection.

In fact I interviewed Ben using HD Conferencing where he used its recording feature to capture our conversation:

Inteview with Ben Lilienthal – High Definition Conferencing

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

Ben provided a description of HD Voice, as well as why PSTN and cell phone access has a lower level of quality, and talked about why HD voice is important to a conference call.

Tags: Skype, VAPPS, High Speed Conferencing, Ben Lilienthal, HD Voice, Pat Phelan, PhoneBoy

Pamela, the pioneering third party Skype conversation management utility, has evolved since its launch in 2004 into the premier utility for assisting your Skype activities with features such as call recording, conversation archiving, personalization, call scheduling and enhanced voice mail management. Its Rich Mood Editor, Emoticons, PamCasting and Blogging Support are amongst Pamela’s additional features.

Summary from Supplier : To be supplied by the vendor.

Ideal for: All business persons who use Skype as a critical tool for their business communications.

Publisher’s Expertise and Background: The PamConsult team is the pioneer Skype partner, having done the initial German translation of Skype and having worked with the Skype API’s since they were first made available.

Contact Information:

• Website : http://www.pamela-systems.com
• Phone: Skype Dick Schiferli
• Email: Contact Form

Products and Services : Pamela has four versions:

• Skype Extras: Call Recorder, Rich Mood Editor (free)
• Basic, Standard and Professional:
• Business (recommended): One-time $36.95, includes priority support
• Multi-user licenses available

Requirements:

• Skype: Version 3.6 or later (to take advantage of Call Transfer and High Quality Video recording)
• Platforms: Windows

Product Acccess :

• Skype Extras [Tools | Do More | Get Extras];
• Download Pamela

Installation Comments: When installing you will be asked to agree with the license.

Product Review

Case Study

• Radio Free Asia: A Skype-Facilitated Broadcast Service

Offerings and Pricing:

Pioneer Skype Extra application Pamela has this week released version 4.0 with a new user interface:

and several new features:

More screenshots here. Download here. Pamela Basic is always free; other versions of Pamela have a 30-day trial. We’ll be doing a review, including a user case study, within the next ten days but in the meantime check out the free trial version.

Pamela Systems’ Pamela, “a personal digital assistant for Skype”, has been one of the more popular Skype Partner offerings with its wide range of Skype enhancement features. and over 350,000 downloads as of early April. Offered in four different editions (Basic, Standard, Premium, Business), Pamela’s latest Version 3.5 was launched a couple of weeks ago.

Pamela provides a long list of features that enrich Skype conversations. Its recording capabilities are used not only as an answering machine but also, combined with its podcast features, Pamela is used by many podcasters to digitally tape their interviews. Pamela’s personalization features allow you, for instance, to provide customized responses to chat messages by individual contacts when you are on a call or Away. It will also switch your Skype status to “Do Not Disturb” while you are in a Skype call.

In addition to bringing full compatibility with Windows Vista and enhancing some of its traditional features, Pamela 3.5 introduces three new features along with an additional one for the Business Edition:

• The most interesting one is the Rich Mood Editor which allows you to build formatted mood messages, incorporating hyperlinks if desired.
• Mega emotion sounds expands on the emotion sounds available in previous versions; however, you can now add your own sounds and catalog them within the emotion sounds window.
• Customized greetings for individual SkypeIn numbers.
• Outlook Toolbar (Pamela Business only) which provides the ability to start/stop recording from Outlook.

Pamela Call Recorder, which incorporates call recording, emotion sounds and chat auto reply , has been one of the most popular Skype Extras. Pamela Basic is offered on a shareware basis while the other three editions can be downloaded for a 14-day trial. And for a little history: why the name Pamela?

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Last weekend Netralia launched Version 2 of Skylook – a tool that links Skype to that ubiquitous contact management and email tool, Outlook 2000/XP/2003, and extends facets of the Skype experience to your mobile phone. In an interview with Jeremy Hague, Skylook’s CEO, I learned that Skylook is rapidly becoming a key business tool for that 30% of users who use Skype in business. Key points include:

• over 60% (and rising) of Skylook licenses are known to be for business use;
• its major appeal is to hard core Skype users
• its business users have as many as 15,000 contacts in Outlook
• its US$99.95 per year per user price tag includes a 12 months 24 hour response time support warranty as well as all updates during this period

While working with Outlook, Skylook 2 also introduces audio technology for several key features, incorporates enhanced SMS messaging into Skype’s Instant Messaging features and uses Skype’s API’s to forward voice and email messages to your mobile phone. In the image above I have “wrapped’ the toolbar to show all its features. Skylook 2 offers six key functions:

• Communicate with Outlook Contacts: for instance, you can even send an SMS message to any Outlook contact, including those who do not have a Skype account, provided they have a mobile phone
• Record Skype calls (with several new features in Skylook 2.0 – the subject of a separate post – ideal for creating podcasts using Skype)
• Alerts and Forwarding: a totally new feature that will be the subject of a separate post.
• Answering Machine provides full voice mail functionality
• Archiving and organizing all your communications: emails, IM sessions, SMS activity and voice mails.
• Synchronize your Outlook and Skype Contacts.

Skylook has a more detailed outline of its functions on its web site along with links to examples of how several features work.

Finally, Skylook will be a revenue generator for Skype itself; two examples:

• Normal Skype SMS charges apply when IM chat sessions are forwarded to your mobile phone (in addition to any charges that may be applied by your wireless service provider for receiving SMS messages)
• SkypeOut charges will apply in instances where voice-based messages, such as the reading of emails from designated senders, are involved.

While Skylook overlaps with some of the basic functionality of Skype Email Toolbar, features such as recording calls, answering machine and the Alerts and Forwarding take Skylook in a different direction. On the other hand Skype Email Toolbar (besides being free) can handle multi-party conferencing and file transfer. And PayPal payments! (Personally I have both products installed due to their different feature sets.)

This post is a brief introductory overview of Skylook 2. In two future posts I will discuss in more detail the Recording features, especially how they have been enhanced to facilitate recording podcasts and the Alerts and Forwarding feature.

In closing one should not overlook that Netralia, through its Skylook product, has successfully built a business by providing unique value-added features. Through them a significant number of business customers enhance their use of Skype and further augment their business productivity. And Skype itself has a supplementary revenue generator. A win-win-win for all three parties.

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