This morning, at the CEA Line Show in New York, Skype is taking the first step in the evolution of its revamped developer platform with the beta release of SkypeKit, “empowering consumer electronic and desktop software innovators to embed Skype into their products”.

In summary:

• Most importantly, SkypeKit allows developers to embed all the functionality of Skype into their offering without the need for the end user to have the Skype client open. They call it a “Headless” Skype toolkit whereas the developer community had been using the term “Naked” Skype.
• Initially SkypeKit is available as an invitation-only beta.
• Today API’s are available for Linux; API’s for Windows and Mac OS/X will be available in three to four weeks.
• The current program is targeted to consumer electronics and other telephony device manufacturers as well as desktop software developers
• SkypeKit includes support for Skype’s royalty-free ultrawideband audio SILK codec.
• SkypeKit supports Skype functionality beyond simply voice, including Skype video and H.264 processors embedded within hardware (such as with the FREETALK Everyman webcam).
• Skype’s developers have put significant effort into both security and scalability to sustain two of Skype’s key features.
• Skype will be promoting SkypeKit developers offerings through a “plugged into Skype” logo as well as making them available via the Skype Store.
• SkypeKit provides a long requested complement to the legacy Skype Public API’s used in applications such as Pamela, VodBurner, OnState, InnerPass and others.

This morning I had the opportunity to discuss the SkypeKit beta launch with Jonathan Christensen, Skype’s General Manager and Head of Platform. It provided an opportunity to dig deeper into Skype’s goals and strategy for the SkypeKit platform.

Primary goals of SkypeKit are:

• To provide developers with a “naked” Skype such that a Skype client is not necessary for the deployment of Skype on a hardware platform or Skype-enhanced application
• To provide an SDK that supports ALL the functionality of the current Skype clients, including video and SILK.
• To promote the incorporation of SILK into end point devices, making possible high quality audio calling such as experienced with the recent release of Skype for iPhone 2.0.
• Make the adoption of Skype into a device or application as friendly and readily adaptable as possible while providing appropriate levels of security and scalability
• To provide developers with a robust, scalable and proven channel for readily marketing their devices and applications worldwide.

In our discussion Christensen pointed out that Skype had not only reviewed developer requests for a revitalized and enhanced SDK but also incorporated the need to support all Skype functionality as well as maintaining the level of security and scalability required to meet the demand levels of Skype’s user base.

Christensen emphasized that Skype will be aggressively pursuing hardware vendors to license and adopt SILK as a standard feature of their offerings and to effect interoperability for Skype. IP-phones such as those offered by Linksys, Aastra, Polycom, snom and Grandstream would certainly be good candidates; their adoption of SILK would contribute significantly to Skype’s efforts to make SILK a standard. But it also means we could see the incorporation of SILK into, for example, the Skype for TV offerings available for certain models of Panasonic, LG and Samsung TV sets.

On another topic, Christensen emphasized Skype’s intention to facilitate marketing of the resulting offerings through both Skype’s “plugged into Skype” designation and the option to have them carried on the Skype Store. While any vendor can develop and market an offering on their own, it only receives the “plugged into Skype” designation required to be offered on the Skype Store  by meeting two conditions:

• it was developed using SkypeKit
• it meets Skype Certification standards when it comes to establishing a baseline for audio and video quality

Finally he pointed out that Skype launched this new SDK platform effort with this approach because “having an SDK for devices and desktop applications are a natural place for us to start extending Skype capabilities today”. As for supporting web developers, Skype only said, “We know there is demand among web developers, but we have nothing to announce at this time.”

To give a sense of developers intending to use SkypeKit, FREETALK (with their Webcam for Samsung TV), Panasonic, Litl with their Webbook and Grandstream are participating in the Skype booth at the CEA Line Show this week.

Bottom line: There’s quite a collection of legacy Skype hardware collected around my office over the past four years; most of it is no longer available due to  lack of ongoing support by previous Skype management, technology changes and vendor disappearance (who recalls US Robotics, for instance?). Frankly, if we look at Skype Certified hardware available on the Skype Store today, we only see offerings from FREETALK, Logitech, FaceVsion, RTX and some speakerphone vendors, such as Yamaha and ClearOne.

SkypeKit represents Skype’s first step in rebooting and revitalizing its hardware device support; it certainly fits in with Skype’s “Skype Everywhere” strategy. Last week at CommunicAsia, Skype CEO Josh Silverman was talking about his vision of “fixed-mobile convergence” for Skype where a user can transparently move from device to device and seamlessly continue a conversation without the need to even log on from one device to the next. But the final proof is in the execution:

• Has Skype made the business and ongoing support case for developers to employ SkypeKit and deploy offerings?
• Will SILK become an industry standard for audio quality? and will IP-phone vendors realize the value of SILK?

As for other Questions and Answers, check out that section at the end of Jonathan’s post today.

Full disclosure: In Store Solutions, producer of the FREETALK line of Skype hardware, has become a client of Denali InterConneXions, publisher of Voice On The Web, building on the author’s previous business development experience with establishing partnerships that can assist with the promotion of a primary vendor’s offerings. A more complete statement will follow shortly.

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• The SkypeKit SDK releases. Say hello to the next generation of Skype. (thenextweb.com)
• Skype Opens Up SkypeKit SDK To All Devices And Desktop Apps (techcrunch.com)
• SkypeKit beta SDK adds Skype to any application or device (engadget.com)
• Skype Opens Platform with SkypeKit SDK for Developers and Manufacturers (readwriteweb.com)
• Skype Releases SkypeKit SDK, Will Bring Skype Everywhere [Skype] (gizmodo.com)
• SkypeKit SDK promises devs invisible Skype access for apps & hardware (slashgear.com)
• FREETALK Everyman Headset – Works with Skype on the iPad (voiceontheweb.biz)
• FreeTalk Wireless Stereo Headset: A June Special from In Store Solutions (voiceontheweb.biz)

Skype’s announcement today of agreements to have television sets become end points for Skype video calls really raises a series of both user interface issues as well as social issues:

• Do I want to be interrupted while watching programming such as a sporting event or Oprah?
• Where is it more convenient to talk: via a TV audio channel open to the room or a traditional handset with its inherent conversation privacy and reduced potential to interrupt a roomful of family and/or friends?
• Where do we want convergence? How much do we want to have application-specific hardware?
• Do we want scenarios where all those in the viewing room are exposed to the call?
• What clothes shall I wear while watching TV but enabled to be seen on a video call?
• If Skype is introduced into TV sets, how far can the inherent intelligence and Internet connectivity be deployed in a way that encourages user adoption of additional features and services? (SlingBox in the TV?)
• What Skype account(s) does one want to come via the TV? An separate account? A personal-use account? A business-use account? or combinations of these accounts. (For the Philips VoIP phone on our Rogers Home Phone service, we use a separate Skype account from my normal Skype “business-use” account.)

Why do I raise these questions? Consider three related user experiences I have had:

• When the Turin Winter Olympics opened in February 2006, I happened to be on a Skype call to an acquaintance, Peter, in Sweden while watching the CBC broadcast of the opening ceremony in my office via my newly acquired SlingBox. He was also watching the same opening ceremony on Swedish television. Our conversation was intertwined between the original purpose of the call (to address some technical issues) and comments on the opening ceremony. It was an interesting experience but note that we were watching and discussing the broadcast while being able to watch it.
• Recently Rogers quietly added a TV Call Display service that brought a feature of our Home Phone service to our TV set. Namely when someone calls us the caller ID information appears along the bottom of the TV screen along with options to Send to Voice Mail, Snooze (disable the call notification for up to 2 hours) or change the TV Call Display settings. Bottom line: it’s a minimally obtrusive service that actually provides call information prior to the phone(s) ringing and let’s you have options for dealing with the call without leaving your viewing chair.
• It’s real handy to have a PVR service that continues to record a program while viewing other programs; the other service that comes handy when there are conflicting sports events is Picture-in-Picture.

Skype’s TV Video calling currently has to be in an early adopter (or launch) phase. It simply replaces the currently viewed program with the video call taking over the screen and effectively becomes another Skype client. (More Skype Everywhere?) Obviously the TV set has to be both “intelligent” and Internet-enabled; this explains both why the HDMI 1.4 cable specification includes the ability to incorporate an Ethernet connection and why new higher performance  intelligence has to be introduced into TV sets (or cable set-top boxes).

But, partially based on my experiences described above, for a fully featured user experience we need to see:

• On-screen notification of a call while watching a broadcast program along with options to take the call or send it to a voice mail (or video mail) service.
• Ongoing recording of the currently viewed TV program in background on the PVR while on the call.
• Picture-in-picture integration to allow a viewer to monitor a program while on a call (or switch between the program and calling party as the primary display content).
• Multi-party calling (is this a potential revenue generating service for Skype?)
• Forwarding/transferring of the voice channel of the call to another Skype-enabled device such as the RTX 3088 Dualphone or mobile smartphone, or forward both the voice and video channels of the call to a Skype client on a PC.
• Chat or text messaging capability.

Given the size of the somewhat saturated HD television set market it needs new features to go beyond simply HD capability; using the TV as a Skype end point becomes one option to enhance the TV feature set. From the user perspective, on the other hand, it becomes one of many choices for handling (Skype) conversations. It certainly adds to the “Skype Everywhere” theme but how far do we want “everywhere” to go?

Bottom line: going forward we are going to see a range of attempts at convergence of our communications. But we are left with many questions:

• How much intelligence do we need within our “end point” devices? (I just acquired a Blu-Ray player that has an active Ethernet connection for firmware updates and additional content information delivery).
• Should the Skype intelligence be in TV sets or does it make more sense (and for broader distribution of Skype) to have the Skype intelligence in a set-top box, such as our Scientific Atlanta Explorer box?
• What additional services would intelligence in the TV or cable set-top box could be delivered by the cable service providers?
• How intense will the competition become between TV set manufacturers and cable set-top box manufacturers to control the intelligence behind these services? What can the set manufacturers and the cable companies see as business models for these competing offerings?
• Can this video calling intelligence be brought to mobile smartphones? Do we need LTE or 4G networks to make this happen?

At a minimum, the introduction of Skype’s TV client gives us talking points for the upcoming CES 2010 later this week.

Additional links and information:

Share Skype Blog: Get Skype on your TV

LG Electronics to Unveil Broadband HDTVs With Embedded Skype Capability

Skype and Panasonic Announce Collaboration to Add Skype Software to Viera® HDTVs

Brad Stone, New York Times: A Venture Integrating Skype Into the Family Room

And, as for the Hockey Picture on the captured TV screen: tonight Canada will be defeating the U.S. for World Junior Hockey supremacy once again…. fortunately I will be able to watch it live on my flight to Las Vegas. Something to do in this era of minimalist carry-on luggage.

Thomas Howe has long been noted for his expertise in developing “Communications Enhanced Business Processes” (“CEBP”). Fundamentally this involves embedding communications facilitation into a legacy business process such as to reduce operating overheads and/or increase employee productivity. From many of the examples I have seen, I would call it eliminating the “intrinsically mundane” from any requirements for human intervention or participation at a given stage in a business process.

Enriched with his unique sense of humor Thomas has spent the past three years evangelizing CEBP through consulting contracts, speaking at seminars and forums and his personal weblog. Today, Jaduka, a provider of business process optimization through “blending real-time communications into critical workflows”, announced that Thomas has been appointed as CEO of Jaduka. Through this appointment Thomas gets to execute on his passion by seeing his vision implemented across a wide range of enterprises of all sizes.

In a Calliflower conference call this morning Thomas provided more details about where he sees Jaduka heading:

“My focus will be on helping our enterprise software partners and customers employ communications to improve efficiency, employee productivity and customer experience. With an API accessed by companies a million times daily and a platform with 1 billion user accounts, Jaduka is well positioned to serve both the $250 billion BPO and $350 billion Telco 2.0 marketplaces.”

• Jaduka is focused on embedding voice into existing enterprise applications; they are NOT a provider of voice applications (see Voxeo for these)
• the Jaduka API is already called upon over one million times per day demonstrating that it is a solid, tested, robust service
• Jaduka has solved the problem of scalability; this is perhaps Jaduka’s leading differentiation from any competitors
• Jaduka is looking to launch a new service that will make it radically easy to integrate voice into current enterprise applications
• Jaduka focuses its marketing efforts on enterprise developers (and not telephony or voice developers); they look to partner opportunities with enterprise software vendors such as Oracle and SAP as well as system integrators.

Thomas was another of Andy Abramson’s “draft picks” for leading change in the conversation and communications space. From my own personal experience interacting with Thomas over the past eighteen months, Jaduka has a winner at the top who can now deliver cost savings and productivity enhancements to many, many enterprises in these economically challenging times.

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• Howe goes to Jaduka (saunderslog.com)

With the launch of Skype for Windows 4.0, Skype delivered its first client incorporating Skype’s new superwideband SILK codec providing a new user experience in voice calling. For example, Alec Saunders in “Skype 4.0 audio: smooth as SILK”:

Perhaps the biggest improvement, though, is audio quality.  We all thought that Skype audio was great, right?  Skype’s internally developed SILK codec slipped into the final release, despite not having been in prior betas. A wideband codec that delivers the goods at half the bitrate of prior codecs, SILK makes talking on Skype a pure pleasure.

The SILK codec will be rolled out with the final release of Skype for Mac 2.8 (currently in beta but without the SILK codec) in April and in the next Linux release (no date given). The coding was designed to allow easy embedding into hardware devices, such as sound cards, headphones and Skype phones. But this still limits the SILK experience to Skype-to-Skype calls. So they looked at the question of how can Skype most readily advance the deployment of this high quality codec  and the resulting user experience at billions of additional voice conversation end points?

At eComm 2009 this afternoon Skype announced, during Jonathan Christensen’s keynote presentation, that the SILK codec will be licensable, royalty-free, to device manufacturers and others; it has been designed independent from Skype signaling protocols such that it can be used in voice streams incorporating the SIP protocol. Jonathan mentioned that there is no requirement to use the SILK codec in conjunction with a Skype implementation.

From an interview with Jonathan Christensen, Skype’s GM for Audio and Video, with Alec Saunders in Skype’s SILKen bear hug: “Further, SILK media streams pass unchanged across Skype’s own media gateways, meaning that SIP endpoints have suddenly become much more compelling in the Skype world”.  Alec goes on to discuss two reasons for Skype’s strategy: (i) to spread superwideband audio everywhere and (ii) to give existing carriers a bear hug. Read the post for details.

In his post on this announcement, Jonathan pointed out what the three year Skype SILK development process focused on:

• • improving audio bandwidth going from 8 kHz to 12 kHz, meaning that a SILK conversation sounds like you are in the same room as the person you are speaking with
  • providing real-time bandwidth scalability to deal with degraded network conditions
  • balancing codec optimization between voice, music and background noise, each of which can have an impact on the overall user experience
  • delivering a robust solution that delivers a more consistent audio experience, regardless of network conditions and an individual user’s voice signature

I have watched as a wireless carrier attempts at new video calling services are introduced and subsequently fail due to a lack of adoption – the primary reason being there are too few devices out there supporting video calling and thus, there’s nobody to whom one can make a wireless video call. Skype’s announcement today overcomes a major barrier to allowing a much broader user base to take advantage of superwideband audio. It’s a first, but key, step towards a broader goal than “Skype Everywhere”, namely, superwideband audio on all voice calling.

Finally, this afternoon I had a chance to meet many members of the SILK development team who attended Jonathan’s presentation. They deserve kudos and congratulations for all their ground breaking efforts and success in setting new standards in voice call quality.

Developers can find more information at Skype’s SILK website.

Phil Wolff, Skype Journal comments on the SILK performance slides shown at the presentation: SILK performs better

Update: The transcript of Jonathan Christensen’s Codec Evolution and Industry Proposal presentation.

One of the evolving issues with the release of so many smartphone applications is how to manage access to a multitude of applications from a “Home” screen. iPhone allows up to nine Home screens; BlackBerry and Nokia basically use a Folder Tree for access via the Home screen or a sub-folder. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1, which is a Windows Mobile platform with a slideout QWERTY keyboard, uses an algorithm similar to the iPhones Home Screens, to make available customized “Panels” of which up to nine can be installed at any one time.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Sony Ericsson announced four new panels for the Xperia X1, of which one is a Skype panel, to become available March 31, 2009. Currently this small image is the only one available but gives an idea of how it will appear. From the Sony Ericsson press release:

Available to download from mid March 2009, the latest panels enhance the unique user interface of the X1 that enables users to customise the handset, bringing the content and applications they want onto their active desktop.

• A unique Skype panel brings quick access to Skype on the X1, telling you at a glance which of your friends are online. Browse easily through your contacts and call or instant message them in just a couple of clicks, or customise your handset using the evening, daylight or event based effects.

Building on Skype COO Scott Durchslag’s announcement at CES last month this relationship provides one more example of the Skype Everywhere initiative.

It would be interesting to know if, in this implementation, Skype is accessed using the Skype Lite algorithm over a 3G network or Skype for Windows Mobile over WiFi. Should the latter be the case, then it would be of interest to know if this new offering will use the Skype’s new super wideband, embeddable Skype SILK codec.

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• GigaOM reviews the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 (jkontherun.com)

Earlier this week the GMail weblog announced GMail voice and video chat; basically they are designed to add voice and video modes to an email thread; from the GMail blog post:

… today we’re launching voice and video chat — right inside Gmail. We’ve tried to make this an easy-to-use, seamless experience, with high-quality audio and video — all for free. All you have to do is download and install the voice and video plugin and we take care of the rest. And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

This afternoon I had an opportunity to try it out with Hudson Barton; publisher of the Borderless Communicator weblog and tracker of “Real Skype Users”. We had a 20 minute conversation using my Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks on a Wiindows laptop and the webcam on Hudson’s MacBook. There are two viewing sizes available: a 225 x 140 window inside the GMail tab of a Firefox (or other browser) session and an optional pop-up window that goes to 430 x 270. We were only able to determine that it provides a “letterbox” 1.6 width-to-height ratio (as opposed to the 1.33 ratio of “standard” video), but not the frame size or frame rate actually being transmitted over the Internet. As for CPU usage, the “googletalkplugi.exe” was using between 10% and 17% of my CPU. With no accessible statistics along the line of Skype’s option to display call statistics, it was not possible to drill down further. Both audio and video quality were clear and crisp – quite acceptable for a basic one-to-one conversation. Echo cancellation was apparent; Hudson was using the native speakers and mic of his MacBook with no perceivable echo..

It’s definitely not up to the feature set of Skype but here’s where it fits in:

• GMail certainly has a large user base, same order of magnitude as Skype.
• It’s easy to forward your standard POP/IMAP email account to GMail; I use this feature both for the resulting search capability and the available access to GMail on multiple devices, including smartphones.
• It provides real time conversation mode options for GMail threads being read on a PC. While reading an email and running the cursor over the sender’s name, an option pops up to respond to the email message by email, Chat or Voice/Video based on the sender information as shown in the graphic above.

I would classify GMail Voice and Video Chat as a very mild competitor to Skype, suitable for basic “free” voice and video as a conversation enhancer. There’s no way to establish or check audio and video settings; there’s no access to the PSTN. While the video is quite good, it certainly does not meet Skype’s High Quality Video standards. It’s a perfect example of embedding voice and video into an application as a feature but it’s not a standalone real time conversation software application. When I consider the rejuvenation of Global IP Solutions and look at its customer base, I can foresee many other forthcoming instances of embedded voice and video as a feature within an application.

Note: as for the installation issues that Aliza encountered, I simply went to the URL suggested in the GMail weblog post and installed the plug-in (with the browser open). But then you have to restart your browser (in my case Firefox); initially the “video availability indicators” (as represented in the graphic above) were not present but I had to head out at that point. When I came back to my PC four hours later, they had appeared. Chat pixel dust from the (Google) cloud in the interim is my only explanation. At the time of writing this post, its availability should have spread to many GMail accounts by the usual Google osmosis process.

Full disclosure; the author has had previous first hand experience with what was thought to be an application but turned out to be a feature. Quarterdeck’s mid-90′s effort at building a web browser as an application was thwarted when Microsoft decided to make its web browser (aka MS Internet Explorer) a feature within the Windows operating system.