Last week Skype announced some changes to their developer program. In that post I mentioned that the only application to date where one could experience SkypeKit Desktop in action was a beta version of Trillian for Windows. Earlier this week Trillian released version 5.1 to the Skype Apps Directory.

Trillian aspires to become a single client for all your conversation, messaging and social networking activity, whether on Skype, Google, Facebook, Live Messenger, Four Square, several email services and many others. And there are versions for Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and the Web. Ideally it would replace several individual clients and be accessible across multiple platforms.

Having set up an account that has been active for about a week here are some observations:

• While it allows you to track and converse with several applications and services, each one remains siloed with respect to exchanging communications. In other words, Facebook converses with Facebook on any device but not with, say, a Google application. Skype conversations are established with other Skype contacts only.
• It is the first application that demonstrates the use of SkypeKit in a desktop application; as a result it not only supports chat conversations and voice calls but also provides support for Skype’s SILK codec providing crystal clear voice quality, file transfer and access to select audio devices.
• At the moment it does not support video calling but that is simply because Skype only released the appropriate Skype video API’s last week; there is no technical reason that video calling should not appear in a future release of Trillian.
• Voice call quality experience reflected the crispness and clarity expected of the SILK codec. On a Trillian to Skype for Windows call, the Call Technical Info confirmed use of the SILK codec.
• Trillian offers a “Pro” service where all your activity is stored in the cloud on their servers; cost is almost a “nobrainer” at $12 per year.

Trillian is well along the path of providing a single client for multiple applications and services. It runs on not only PC’s but also iOS5 and Android devices. Its Pro service allows you to track all your conversations on any of these devices. However, Trillian for Mac does not yet have any Skype support (even in a beta version) yet the SkypeKit API’s are available. One cannot expect Skype support any time soon on iOS5 and Android devices as Skype has yet to release any API’s for working with these devices.

Some screen shots:

Trillian for Windows 5.1 Preferences | Accounts screen provides an overview of how it may be set up:

The main Trillian menu showing all the applications and services to which I have logged in along with an example of my Twitter feed:

All the “Contacts” menus were compressed to demonstrate the various options available for messaging. Double clicking on any of the social networking accounts brings up the relevant feed in a separate window as shown.

As shown in the menu at the right Trillian is a good way to find a Contact’s “current” status on all their social networking and messaging applications. Simply filter down with a (partial) name and you get this. In this example Boston is online in Skype, GTalk and GMail and Facebook while Alex is offline in both.

Note that, while logged in, a Contact appears under the appropriate messaging application but once logged out the Contacts are all relegated to the Offline Contacts category. Also note the icon beside each Contact name to identify the relevant messaging application.

With Google applications, logging in and out can result is some strange identification such as “gmail.51AC27DE”. It simply indicates, in this case, that the contact can be accessed via GTalk or GMail simply when s/he is logged into either. In fact, this also happened with someone who contacted me through the new Google+ chat feature where the identification under Google Talk starts with “TalkGadetC85….”.

With Trillian open or running in background you also have the option to receive small notification windows at a designated corner of your desktop as a feed is updated or an IM message is received. This can be annoying and distracting; it requires some discipline to ignore it. There are options in the preferences for turning these notifications off.

During a Skype voice call the user interface contains all the features associated with Skype calls:

One final observation: when you go to Task Manager | Processes you see this when SkypeKit is being used:

Small footprint relative to Skype (which was also open when this screen capture happened). As a matter of interest trillian.exe is using about 29,000K of memory. But this is without any video support; it will be interesting to see any change once Skype video can be accessed via Trillian.

Bottom line: Trillian is certainly well down the road to becoming a universal messaging and social networking client. And it gives an initial feel for how SkypeKit can be deployed in a desktop application. For those who use multiple applications it can become the default IM/social networking client; in fact, “Boston” in the example above has done so as he follows both Skype and Facebook for chat. Currently he still needs to open Skype for video calls.

Check out the Skype App Directory to download.

The Big Brother feel: And if you were wondering where Dan York is active as I write this (he had Google+ open in two browser windows):

Related articles

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• Whither Skype Extras III? On the Skype Store Apps Page (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype desktop SDK to bring video calling to third-party apps (arstechnica.com)

Having been invited to attend a BlackBerry Torch launch event in Toronto a week ago Monday, I have now experienced RIM’s latest smartphone for about ten days. Suffice it to say, as a veteran BlackBerry user, it certainly elevates BlackBerry’s feature set to a level that is very competitive in today’s smartphone market.

So what’s new – relative to my previous Bold 9700?

• combining a touch screen display with BlackBerry’s traditional keyboard
• BlackBerry 6 operating system
• a WebKit-based web browser that delivers a state-of-the-art smartphone browsing experience
• universal search
• an accelerometer that allows operation in both portrait and landscape mode
• a 5M-pixel camera with flash
• enhanced multimedia support
• significantly enhanced social networking support

To comment on some of my experiences:

Migration from a Bold 9700 to the Torch: using the latest version of BlackBerry Desktop Manager’s “Switch Devices” feature, the entire migration process required 20 to 30 minutes, including all my installed applications. Desktop Manager 6.0 is more user friendly and has a much easier migration process than previous versions – key when you’re trying to appeal to a consumer market.

However, for many applications, such as Twitter and Social Scope it was necessary to log in again; effectively a positive security feature. The biggest challenge is organizing the applications within the various categories across which you can swipe in the main menu: “All”, “Favorites”, “Media”, “Downloads” and “Frequent”. Once organized finding an application using touch screen gestures becomes much faster.

The Touch Screen and Its Keyboard: Touch with all its gesturing effects brings a significant productivity improvement to the handling of emails, media and web browsing. All the traditional ways to use the touchpad and keyboard remain available but for the majority of applications it becomes much easier to use the touch screen as opposed to the four function keys, touchpad and traditional keyboard. For example, it is now possible to simply swipe a finger left or right to move through your Messages, including emails.

As for the Touch screen keyboard: it simply confirms that my fingers are too large for a touch keyboard – works fine for entering a few characters but I revert to the hardware keyboard for any serious typing such as longer email replies.

Bottom line is that the touch screen and hardware keyboard are significant complements to each other and bring the advantages of each where appropriate in context of the application. And, being a true multi-tasking smartphone, the touch screen has features that make application switching much easier.

Note there are a few applications that are currently not sensitive to the touch screen, the most significant being the Google Mobile suite, including GMail, Google Maps and Google Reader. Here you can continue to use the touchpad but trying any gesture on the touch screen has no effect. I’m sure Google and RIM are working on a resolution of this situation. But almost all my other applications are appropriately touch sensitive.

The Browser: Not only is the WebKit-based browser the first truly reliable browsing experience on a BlackBerry; it also brings in features such as “tabs” that make browsing a much more manageable activity. Combined with the touch screen’s gesturing, such as the two finger expansion and pinch for zooming/unzooming, BlackBerry’s OS 6 browser has become on par with my iPhone browsing experience. Actually one advantage of also having the BlackBerry’s touchpad available is that it can be used for the precision cursor location required when two or more links are very close to each other such as on the PGATour.com mobile website.

The Torch also includes an accelerometer to allow portrait and landscape mode viewing in the browser; however, if the hardware keyboard is open, only portrait mode is available. On the other hand, when viewing YouTube videos they always come up in landscape mode. One of those small but important features that contributes to the device’s user friendliness.

Overall the BlackBerry 6 browser is a much more reliable, user friendly (and satisfying) experience.

Universal Search: within BlackBerry 6 is a search facility that not only searches the web but can search the entire BlackBerry. Basically hit the search icon on the status bar, enter the search term(s) and hit return. The applications containing the search term(s) will show up; click on the application and it will take you to the search term(s). Included in the applications is an option to do a Google search. In my world there can never be too many search opportunities, whether in Outlook, Skype chat messages, Gmail on the BlackBerry or iPhone, Google on the desktop, or locating emails from a contact on my BlackBerry.

Social Media: When I arrived at the Canadian BlackBerry launch event, one of Canada’s top social media guru’s, Amber MacArthur (@ambermac), author of Power Friending, was demonstrating the Torch’s social media features. Full disclosure; through a recent series of her columns in the Globe and Mail, it was apparent Amber remains a hard core BlackBerry user. But it quickly became apparent why she was carrying out this role at the launch event. BlackBerry 6 includes a comprehensive “Social Feeds” application where you can readily view your stream of Twitter, Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger and five other IM feeds either in one stream or filtered by application. In addition swipe to the left and you can view a stream of selected RSS feeds. A very comprehensive interface that has the potential to challenge my favorite Twitter/Facebook client – Social Scope. (Social Scope, which has BlackBerry 6 compatibility, has the ability to follow individuals and specific hashtags as well.) In summary, Social Feeds is a new feature that will readily appeal to anyone managing social media.

Of course, BlackBerry Torch includes RIM’s unique social networking tool, BlackBerry Messenger, that, in its latest incarnation, provides instant PIN-to-PIN chat, photo and file transfer along voice messaging. I continue to use it when I really need to grab a contact’s attention and using other Internet messaging applications, including email, as an intermediary can not get the message across fast enough.

And finally, BlackBerry integration with applications. Many BlackBerry apps are integrated tightly with the Address Book and other primary BlackBerry apps such that, for instance, a Contact’s picture will be retrieved from FaceBook if it is not available from an Outlook Contact synchronization. From a Contact in the Address Book, one can immediately go to her/his Facebook or LinkedIn page or locate an address in Google Maps.

Bottom line: This review highlights the features that became apparent over the course of my first ten days with the BlackBerry Torch; there are many other more subtle ones. For any BlackBerry aficionado it’s a “must” upgrade that puts the BlackBerry technology performance on a par with either iPhone or Android.

RIM’s real challenge is to attract new BlackBerry adopters and recruit more application developers. Certainly the PlayBook announcement earlier this week, with its underlying QNX OS, appears to brings to the table many of the tools required to assist the latter challenge. And RIM’s continued promotion of BlackBerry Messenger, a unique application that has bailed me out on many occasions, as well as its ongoing reputation for the most mature smartphone email operation and high level of security help with the former.

Of course the final piece of the puzzle for full support of real time social networking would be that missing BlackBerry SuperApp: a carrier agnostic Skype for BlackBerry; Amber, a longtime Skype user and enthusiast who used Skype for TV reporting long before Oprah, would have loved to have been able to demonstrate it.

And why the timing for this post? BlackBerry Torch launched yesterday on five Canadian carriers: Rogers Wireless, SaskTel, Telus, Bell and Virgin Mobile

Three more announcements this week that should help these challenges:

• Press Release: Research In Motion announces BBM social platform
• Press Release: RIM launches BlackBerry Advertising Service
• Press Release: RIM to launch free BlackBerry Analytics Service

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• Review: BlackBerry Torch is a hot pick, but has flaws (thestar.com)
• BlackBerry Torch 9800 Goes Live on Rogers (intomobile.com)
• BlackBerry Torch up for pre-order on Vodafone (v3.co.uk)
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This week I am attending the fourth Emerging Communications Conference, or eComm America 2010, with the byline “What’s Next in Telecom, Mobile and Internet Communications”. The first morning was probably one of the best overall sessions for providing an update of where several major players are taking their offerings and how they are contributing to bring more value add into real time communications experiences.

For example:

Erik Winkler, CEO of Bit Torrent, whose  peer-to-peer file transfer service gets caught up in the Net Neutrality debate since their service has the potential to take over all the traffic to an end user during a download, talked about management of congestion and differentiated it as an issue that is independent of management of content issues. Offering a solution that represented a win for consumers, the communications industry and publishers, he talked about taking a “congestion control approach” to address the problem with recommendations that leave management of content out of the issue:

• manage for congestion
• manage in a protocol agnostic manner
• meter fairly
• re-think download caps since they have no obvious link to congestion
• incent network friendly behavior

Next up was Craig Walker, Group Product Manager, Google Voice who talked about moving communications into the cloud. (As a hint to Google’s overall tactics, I had attended a Mobile Monday event in Toronto two weeks ago; the feature presentation talked about “moving communications into the cloud” from a mobile device perspective.) Craig started out with the economic arguments for this shift, eliminating server hardware and oversight resources from a business’s communications costs. As a result a startup can generate interesting communications applications without having to deal with the capital cost overhead of a traditional telco. And he concluded with an overview of Google Voice and how it can provide a person with a “Find Me, Follow Me” single number to reach the person at any of multiple end point devices, while at the same time managing the voice mail that can arise from having multiple “numbers” to reach those end points.

Next we learned some insight into the U.S. National Broadband plan from Carlos Kirjner, Senior Advisor to the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. His three major discussion points: “Why the Plan?”, “The ‘Aha’ Moments” and “How to Make It Better”:

Why: Congress mandated it but there’s really a fundamental revolution, at a level similar to the introduction of the printing press and electricity, taking place that will impact the U.S. economy

The Aha’s: The need to consider the entire ecosystem that brings together a national broadband infrastructure: not simply connectivity but also devices, applications, network, consumer issues, regulatory issues and legal constraints. He went on to define what FCC sees as the role of government including competition policy that will drive and foster innovation, assets to be managed such as spectrum allocation, universal service mechanisms and, not to be overlooked, laws, rules and standards for key sectors.

With respect to competition he emphasized the importance of tracking and benchmarking actual behavior, lowering barriers to entry, device competition, application innovation and empowering consumers. In closing his third major point was to ask for feedback while noting that real data beats analyses which, in turn, beats out opinions when it comes to setting policies.

After the morning break, we heard from Jonathan Rosenberg, Skype’s Chief Technology Strategist, whose presentation on Social Sharing 2.0 and the role of Real Time Communications will be the subject of a separate post.

Jonathan was followed by one of his former Cisco colleagues, Cullen Jennings, a Distinguised Engineer in the CTO office at Cisco, on the subject of Identity for Global Communications and that least common denominator of voice calling identity, the phone number. Cisco’s proposed ViPR technology combines a Distributed Hash Table, the PSTN and SIP to provide “Blue Sky Computing” that can validate that a number being called is actually reaching the party whom one really wants to communicate with for privacy or security reasons. It’s a peer-to-peer solution that has implications for communications business models.

The morning session concluded with two product announcements; both designed to provide intelligent business communications solutions that facilitate PBX-type functionality for managing calls to the appropriate end point within a business’s ecosystem: Ringio (a startup launched yesterday) and CounterPath’s new Nomadic PBX. Both could be represented as solutions for a mobile Call Center with different approaches to the issue and target markets.

Bottom Line: Overall I came out this session with a lot to absorb but impressed with not simply the thinking behind these offerings but also the execution that is taking place to make these solutions a reality.

Note re photos: Photo by James Duncan Davidson, the show photographer.

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Yesterday Rogers launched the first Android phones available in Canada with two devices: the HTC Magic (touch screen only) and HTC Dream (touchscreen and slide-out keyboard). Rogers is the first carrier worldwide offering both these devices and also the first North American carrier to offer the HTC Magic.

Over two years ago, in a post Precursor to GPhone? On My Blackberry?, I had predicted any Google-powered phone would include all the Google features found on the BlackBerry (or iPhone).  In this regard today’s demonstration and presentation did not disappoint. Search, Maps with Latitude, GTalk, GMail, News, Google Docs, Sync, Calendar, were all included in the demonstration with the same Google features as found on any BlackBerry or iPhone. However, there were some differentiating features:

• both phones run on Rogers recently launched 3.5G 7.2 Mbps HSPA network, which Rogers claims to approach broadband DSL speeds and to be 3x faster than any other Canadian wireless data network
• there are over 3,200 applications available in the Android Market. Currently these applications are free; however, Google is expected to add a payment system in a few months.
• both phones have a touchscreen with haptic keyboard which, on a brief trial, was definitely impressive (the Dream also has a physical slide-out keyboard)

A few comments:

• While the Skype Lite beta client was seen on the demonstration devices, it does not work at the moment on Rogers. See my upcoming post about Rogers’ position on supporting Skype for more details; suffice it to say it is a Skype issue that needs to be addressed at this point.
• They are currently targeting the consumer market. With a launch involving “Fringe” actor Joshua Jackson (a native Canadian), the entire presentation centered on drawing attention through his promotional tour of the past few days.
• Pricing for these devices are C$149 when purchased with a three year plan. The voice and data plans are the same pricing as for BlackBerry and iPhone but with an one month introductory offering of C$30 for 6GB data usage per month. Interestingly, according to a salesperson in the Rogers Retail Store at their headquarters, the same offer is being made for iPhone purchases during June.
• Rogers continues to demonstrate an ability to outperform AT&T in the U.S. when it comes to fully supporting 3G, and now 3.5G, networks.
• In Om Malik’s post today, With 2M Downloads, Where Is Right on Track, it appears that ”Where” is the most popular Android application. However, for Rogers’ customers the question would be the extent of the Canadian content in this application.
• Yesterday T-Mobile USA’s CTO reported that over 1 million G1 phones have been sold in the U.S. over the first six months in the market. According to mocoNews.net, it appears that T-Mobile USA is going ahead with new Android models and forsaking Nokia’s new N97 offering:
  

  [CTO] Brodman said they are not very interested in Nokia’s flagship N97 device, which hits the market this month. Brodman: “Some of the Nokia/Symbian devices have a lot of functionality, but they are quite expensive and Symbian does not have a lot of traction in the U.S. While Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is a strong partner, we haven’t had a lot of demand for N-series products to date.”

Bottom line: Android opens up new user choices in the Canadian consumer smartphone market. Frankly, the key attraction and differentiator will be the variety of applications available on Android Market along with the overall touchscreen user experience. As a representative application, at yesterday’s launch they mentioned Savvy Shopper that allows price comparisons, using the camera as a bar code reader, for any product in their database.

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Yesterday’s announcement of Grand Central’s rebirth as Google Voice drew a lot of attention from both the mainstream media and blogger world. In following the IP-based communications world over the past three years, I have come to believe that the only potential real time conversation service provider challenger to Skype could come from Google. It has huge user registration numbers at a world class scale; however, its primary business is built around how many ways can one drill down within Search and then offer contextually relevant advertising. On the other hand, they appear to be looking to complement search-embedded activities, such as Search within GMail, with real time conversation capabilities.

For instance the recently launched GMail Voice and Video chat allows users to migrate to real time conversations directly off an email message. Great in the context of building a dialogue out of an email’s subject and content. I’ve tried it and it works but have not had reason to use it in my everyday activity; on the other hand, if I  find reason to use it, it’s there and easy to launch. A great example of voice-enabling a conversation in the context of an ongoing dialogue.

Show me a platform that is not supported by Google’s GTalk chat offering. Almost every PC and mobile device I receive for evaluation is supported by GTalk. Yet, I only have about ten contacts on GTalk and may get a message once every week or two. There’s a reason Alec Saunders came out recently to say “Ditching all IM Systems except Skype!”. On the other hand, GTalk is there; it’s handy if someone contacts me via GTalk.

While Google Voice lists its entire feature set here, Kim Peterson’s post, “Free long-distance? Oh yeah, Google;s going there”, on the Topstocks blog at Microsoft’s Money Central, highlights the the top ones:

In a nutshell, here’s what you’ll be able to do with the free program:

1. Get a single phone number that routes calls to your cell, work and home phones simultaneously.

2. Call numbers in the U.S. for free. And call internationally for ridiculously low rates — I’m talking 2 cents a minute to China.

3. Get your voicemail transcribed into e-mail or text messages.

4. Make free conference calls.

5. Get your voicemail on the Web.

Mainstream media, however, could only focus on how Google Voice would provide competition to eBay’s Skype. New York Times’ Miguel Helft starts out with:

“Google stepped up its attack on the telecommunications industry on Thursday with a free service called Google Voice that, if successful, could chip away at the revenue of companies big and small, like eBay, which owns Skype, telephone companies and a string of technology start-up firms.”

Ryan Singel at Wired’s Epicenter:

When Google announced its integrated phone service called Google Voice Thursday, it said something very loud.

Google is saying it wants to be the world’s communication hub, and hundreds of companies — ranging from mobile phone operators to Skype to Microsoft better be listening.

Further down the same article, Ben Lilienthal, now general manager of audio services for Citrix Online – and a Skype partner for full service audio conferencing, “isn’t convinced that businesses will move to the service very soon”, Ben went on to say:

“For a consumer, it is a pretty compelling service,” Lilienthal said. “But I think if you are a business user, it’s not necessarily a road you would want to go down. There are a bunch of things business users worry about that consumers don’t. If it doesn’t work, can I get a live person on the phone? Is it reliable? What kind of quality of service can I get?”

Many reporters and bloggers had a chance to upgrade their Grand Central service to Google Voice yesterday. However, being a Canadian I never acquired a Grand Central number for the same reason as fellow Canadian and Fonolo CEO Shai Berger:

….. this problem is not unique. Many similar services don’t extend into Canada. It’s still hard to get a Canadian Skype-In number for example. Ooma has the same problem and when I spoke to some senior people at Ooma last year they cited complicated regulatory issues (including a word I hadn’t heard before: “homologation“. Always like learning a new word). I don’t expect Grand Central/Google Voice to address this any time soon and I don’t hold it against them — the extra hassle is probably not worth it in the early stage of the game.

But Shai also gives a more generic reason for not being a user of Grand Central:

That 2nd item is a bigger issue because it effects everyone, not just Canadians. Our mental model for interacting with phones is that “if you called me from number X” I can hit redial to call you back. (Or I can store that number in my address book for later.) To fix this we either have to change user behavior (tough) or spoof the caller-ID (technically doable but quasi-legal). The only Voice 2.0 company I know of that has solved this problem is Truphone, which does transmit your Truphone number as to the destination. [Author’s note: SkypeOut also provides callerID using either your Skype Online number or your “Skype registered” mobile phone number.]

But there’s also a user interface issue when you look at how a call is placed. Further down in Kim’s post (and similarly described in the NYT post referenced above):

Here’s how it works: You call into your voice mail on Google Voice, and from there you get transferred to a dial tone. You can call any number at that point [author’s italics]. You also have a central Web site that will show your voice mails and manage your account.

So I have to call one number in order to call the number I want (and, at that point, there’s probably no linkage to my device’s native address book), eh?

And, finally, Om Malik points out a few issues, including how users will pay for international calls:

Just as a warning, the upgrade to Google Voice won’t allow you to take your Grand Central address book with you, since the new system uses Google Contacts. In addition, the service doesn’t work with those of you who have Google Apps accounts; you’ll need Gmail accounts. Lastly, they make you use Google Checkout to pay for international minutes. No thanks — I am happy paying with PayPal and/or credit cards. [author’s italics]

Let’s go back to Skype (and iSkoot):

1. I want to locate a phone number (or SkypeID) in my native mobile handset address book, hit the green “Call” button on my mobile phone and launch a voice call. Real simple UI here. On a mobile device, such as BlackBerry or Nokia N-series, I can do this with iSkoot for making both Skype-to-Skype or SkypeOut calls.
2. I have 14 years invested in my current office and mobile phone numbers. I’m not ready to make any changes. iSkoot, on my BlackBerry, and Truphone on both BlackBerry and iPhone work with each device’s existing phone number.
3. SkypeOut (and iSkoot, when making SkypeOut calls from a BlackBerry or Nokia N-Series S60 phone) provides my mobile phone number as a callerID. A party who needs to return my call can simply click on the number and reach me. (and, if in my native address book, readily see who has called).
4. With Skype I can make payments via PayPal or directly on my credit card.

While I will try Google Voice once they expand to supporting Canadian numbers, its modus operandi certainly does not come up to Skype’s standards for a truly user friendly calling experience. On the other hand its call screening, call management and voicemail handling features certainly provide some new challenges for Skype to watch out for.

Bottom line: today we all look for competition in the wireless carrier and mobile smartphone markets. But there are key differentiating features. It’s healthy to see two players such as Skype and Google, both with world scale user bases, in the real time conversation space. But there are differences, in the individual end users will adopt whatever provides the most convenience for his/her individual needs.

Full disclosure: the author has Bell Canada lines for his home office, including fax, requirements while using Rogers Home Phone for family voice calling. He also uses Skype for most of his business conversation requirements, especially long distance and international calling. Just as different smartphones meet different user needs, we’re probably going to find that many of us need multiple services for all our real time conversation needs.

Finally let’s look at one more slide from Skype President Josh Silverman’s analyst presentation earlier this week:

Google has a little bit of work to do to round out an equivalent ecosystem.

Check out Kim’s post for links to several other bloggers’ comments as well.

Andrew Hansen: Skype makes a small ripple, but no Splash with new VM features.

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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.

In a press release issued this morning, Google and eBay announced an agreement which comprises “two primary components involving text-based advertising and “click-to-call” advertising functionality”;.In the course of the press release there are several implications for Skype; however, let me draw attention to where Skype already has incorporated Google searches, namely, as an option in the search icon of the Skype Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Skype Toolbar for Firefox:

Other options in this Skype Toolbar’s search element include Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, eBay and Shopping.com.

Lisa Leff at AP provides a good overview; combined with the press release we can see the following implications for Skype:

• Google will become the exclusive provider of text-based advertising for eBay outside the U.S. This complements the Yahoo-eBay deal last June that applies only to the U.S.
• “Click-to-call” integration involves both eBay and Google platforms worldwide “using Skype or Google Talk”. It remains to be seen how this will play out but certainly with over 100 million registered users, we can see where Skype’s strength lies here.
• Skype will soon offer its users an option to download the Google Toolbar to which Skype will add a custom button. Probably won’t look a lot different from the Skype Toolbar for IE or FF shown above.
• The most interesting comment from a Skype observer’s viewpoint is the statement: “The companies will also explore interoperability between Skype and Google Talk via open standards to enable text chat and online presence.” Does this mean that Skype will execute on its opportunity for IM Federation Leadership and take up Alec Saunders’ challenge issued when the Skype code cracking story broke:

Skype should take a leadership position in publishing those protocols, and encourage others to build upon them. The Skype client becomes the first, and possibly the best, way to use the Skype protocol, but not the only way.

This agreement also recognizes the “international” aspect of Skype with over 72% of all users having registered a language other than English as their primary language:

• Skype has developed a universal Phone Number Recognition API component that Skypifies any phone number recognized on a web page or in an e-mail. In fact the PNR has been incorporated not only into all the Skype Toolbars but also into the latest release of Skype (ever wonder why you now see a flag associated with phone numbers in Skype 2.5?).
• Skype has just announced a localization support utility for its third party developers comprising a list of more than 2600 phrases translated into Skype’s 27 supported languages.

Today Alec hypothesized on where the money is in “Click-to-Call”. Jaanus Kase, Skype’s Chief Blogging Office, has commented on the interoperability item above. Andy has thrown in his perspective, including what he hears about Google’s “weak” pursuit of PSTN termination. I’m sure we’ll see lots of other coverage, especially given I first heard the story on various morning television shows that are viewed at my fitness club. However, the final proof of this agreement’s value and impact is going to take a few years to play out.