Aid workers and care givers who provide services in politically- and infrastructure-challenged countries where law and order is not necessarily a given, where war, violence and crime are rife, have always ranked very high on my admiration list as one of the most unselfish and high risk roles that one can perform in hopes of betterment of individuals’ lives. And often these workers are in hardship situations where they must spend not only weeks or months but even years with little or no contact with their families and friends.

So what is Skype doing to help?

Today Skype announced a partnership with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) where Skype has not only worked to supply communications services to 120 “hardship locations” but also adapted their software technology to deal with the low bandwidth communications infrastructure available to these locations. Skype’s Antoine Bertout has discussed this partnership with UNHCR’s Mohammed Faisal:

In Skype experiments with refugee workers, Skype Journal’s Phil Wolff outlines some of the special technical features of this “bespoke” version of Skype:

Changes that limit bandwidth use:

• Video will not start automatically.
• Video will not start until Skype sees needed bandwidth.
• Skype’s SILK voice CODEC (8-40 kbps) will be used when possible.
• No Facebook support.

In the video you will hear Mohammed refer to “our network”; there is an element of a virtual private network (“VPN”) involved in some circumstances as well. Also the client supports Skype Chat, including Group Chat, and SkypeOut calls to the PSTN. Note also that the Blue Wall firewall incorporated into the associated infrastructure allows calls only “outside business hours” in order to minimize impact on critical business operations.

Video calling may be bandwidth challenged in some situations; it would be interesting to know what resolutions and frame rates are supported (even if lower that High Quality Video’s 640 x480 @ 30 fps, at least one should be able to see images at, say 320 x240 @ 15 fps, etc., given Skype Video’s bandwidth adaptation features). But just hearing a distant voice will suffice for most calls.

But why just for UNHCR?

Dan York questions why such technology would not also benefit a sector of the business market in Interesting Tech in Skype’s Low-Bandwidth Version for UNHCR – Wouldn’t Enterprises Want This?:

As I listened to the video, it definitely occurred to me that there are businesses and organizations out there who could also benefit from a low-bandwidth version of Skype. I think, for instance, of shipping companies with limited Internet connectivity to vehicles or ships. Or to companies with distributed offices with very small branch offices with very small Internet connections.

Skype’s Peter Parkes has responded to a comment (to the original Skype blog post) about other aid organizations with:

UNHCR is the first partner to benefit from this low-bandwidth version of Skype for Windows. A large dispersed organization such as UNHCR is an ideal testing environment to evaluate the performance of this software in a wide variety of challenging connectivity networks. At the moment we are focused on ensuring a successful roll-out of Skype to a planned 80 to 85 per cent of UNHCR “hardship” locations before the end of 2011.

As such, it is not currently available to other organizations or the general public to download. It is clear to us however, that others could benefit from the changes and the lessons learned during the evaluation of the software that Skype has developed for UNHCR. Unfortunately, however, we are unable able to talk about our future intentions and can only discuss our partnership with UNHCR at present.

You can support UNHCR’s activities also….

Skype and UNHCR have also put up a page where you can provide financial resources to UNHCR to assist with supplying textbooks and training manuals, funding teachers and purchasing solar-powered computers, amongst other requirements that go to support their programs.

Bottom line: Over the past few decades advances in communications technology have helped to overcome many political injustices, natural disasters and barriers to economic opportunity . While it’s been great that Skype offers many cost-free services to all of us,  when it comes to providing assistance to those helping peoples disengaged from life’s real opportunities, Skype’s services become “priceless”.

Related articles

• UN refugee agency staff trial new version of Skype (guardian.co.uk)
• Skype Creates Bespoke Software to Help Refugee Workers (mashable.com)
• Low-bandwidth Skype custom app created for UN Refugee aid workers [Video] (slashgear.com)

Over the past six weeks I have attended four local social media and technology events – a PodCamp, a monthly social networking seminar, an annual project management ski day and  WordCamp Toronto 2010. At each I was able to bring along a few Skype Everyman headsets to be given away as prizes.

Prior to selecting the prize winners I had two or three minutes to talk about how the Everyman worked and their affiliation with Skype; the outcome was not simply a mere handing out of hardware but rather became an opportunity to learn about how broadly and enthusiastically Skype is accepted and used across a range of personal and business communications activities. I started by asking how many in the audience use Skype – usually about 50% to 60% raise their hands but at WordCamp Toronto Saturday about 95% of the 400 attendees raised their hands; three who came up to talk with me later said they had to start using it.

But here’s the best part – it was the spontaneous emotional enthusiasm they exhibited for their use of Skype. Not only when handing out the prizes but by the questions and inquiries I received during subsequent networking breaks. It was the smile on their faces telling about the success they had experienced.

I heard stories of weekly family calls back to South Africa, Europe and the Far East, often with video. I heard stories of how small business entrepreneurs depend on Skype for weekly conference calls to manage their projects and the use of screen sharing to build business relationships around the world.

On the other hand, some conversations would become a mini-training session. Skype has so many features of which users are unaware. Editing chat messages, one-to-one screen sharing and using the FireFox and Internet Explorer Skype toolbars were some of the subjects of conversations during networking breaks at WordCamp Toronto.

As a result Voice On The Web will be introducing two new features:

• Skype in My Life: how users use Skype to support their personal and business life.
• SkypeHints: a twitter feed that will provide daily tips and hints reminding users of the many individual features that are available within Skype with links back to more details at the Voice On The Web reference guide.

If you have a story, tip or hint that you would like to share send your suggestions to me at jim dot courtney at voiceontheweb dot biz or contact me on Skype (mention Skype Hints or Skype Stories in the chat message or contact request).

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Last day to register today for Regular Pricing; Late pricing applies for registrations after Feb.17, 2009. Enter “one touch” for a 20% discount.

Two weeks ago eComm 2009 organizer Lee Dryburgh observed that:

With the heavy backdrop of economic doom and gloom everywhere I’d been finding it ever more strange that virtually every company I was dealing with in relation to the 2009 conference, was reporting accelerating business let alone [as opposed to] flat or declining business.

Via a Skype multi-party call he held a virtual panel discussion involving:

• Jonathan Christensen (Skype)
• Irv Shaprio (IfByPhone)
• Rodrigue Ullens (Voxbone)
• Graham Brierton (Voicesage)on this topic.

When asked about today’s economy he repeatedly found eComm 2009’s sponsors saying “Oh no, we’re actually doing better, due to the downturn”. So he asked each of the panelists what their offering was doing such as to accelerate their business.

Graham Brierton (VoiceSage):

For example, we had a company that the key thing they wanted to do was bring in their debts cheaper and quicker, instead of reminding people to pay their bills.  Part of the paying the bill process was transferring them back into a call center to actually collect the money.  What we noticed when we analyzed the data was they were getting a hell of a lot of people that were wanting to pay between 3:55 p.m. and 4:05 p.m.  We still don’t know the reason why there is a peak at that point, but there is a peak at that point.

One of the issues that these guys had was that they couldn’t actually take all of those calls because they had a shift change at 4:00 p.m.  They were unaware that because they had a shift change there were a lot of people that wanted to engage in a process with them but they weren’t allowing it because of their internal business processes.  They actually changed that.  That came as a direct result of simply looking at the data generated from the interactions that their customers were having with us, and us trying to collect money from them.

Irv Shapiro (IfByPhone):

Batteries Plus is a franchise-based business in the United States and Canada that has hundreds of retail stores that sell only batteries.  If you need a battery for anything, you go into Batteries Plus or you go to their website and you can purchase a battery.

In many, many cases, people need a battery right away so they want to go to a store.  Batteries Plus was finding that they were fielding hundreds and hundreds of phone calls to stores asking for routine information such as “What are your hours of operation; which is the closest store to my address…?”  We automated that process for them.

In fact, they automated it themselves by going to our website, provisioning a toll-free number, putting in a IVR on the front end that asked a couple of very simple questions to determine whether the customer was looking for information about batteries.  In that case, the call was transferred to a central call center corporate.  Were they looking for the closest location, in which a geo-coded application automatically provided them with the closest location and driving information.  If they were looking for store hours of operation, same geo-code process except in this case we retrieved the hours of operation.

They found a dramatic increase in the productivity of their in-store personnel because now those personnel could concentrate on spending time with customers in the store.  The side effect of that is they sell more batteries.

Rod Ullens (Voxbone), who reported business growing at 15% per month:

At some point, they [cloud based services such as VoiceSage and IfByPhone] need to reach the PSTN.  Most of them actually need a telephone number to be activated.  The bigger they get, the bigger we get.  That’s already one reason.  It’s not necessarily because of us, but because of our customers that have services that are interesting, and we grow with them.

If you look at the way numbers were used in the past, where you had a telephone number that was just linked to a physical location, that’s all you can do with it.  The cost to dial such a number is pretty expensive.  What we’ve done is to just completely take away the geographical link.  Now a number is just a software-based identifier that people can use to call you on.  It’s very flexible.  You can just build up a service.

First of all, that service can be completely Internet based.  You can just use telephone numbers from Voxbone to make it reachable from traditional phone networks, from mobile phones and so on.  Basically, you can be a company and have a virtual presence in a lot of countries.  From day one, you can start a service provider, in forty-five countries.  I think that’s one major reason why we’ve grown, especially now.

Jonathan Christensen (GM Audio and Video Platforms, Skype), in response to Lee’s question: “What do you think is driving these minutes?  Is it businesses using Skype, for a change, in order to save money, for example?”

We’re seeing two things.  One is just consumer migration to value; people want to avoid long distance, but we also see in the consumer space a network effect around your friends being there, the quality being great, it being convenient and easy.  We have a large constituency of people where it is the convenience, free, and easy factor.

On the business side, Gartner, for example, recently said they kind of backed off their position that Skype is dangerous, evil, and will introduce Trojans into your network, and so on.  We hear; we have a bunch of case studies and we hear more and more from corporate IT, these commandments to their workforce saying, “When you’re travelling, when you’re making long distance calls, when you’re going to be faced with insane roaming charges, please try to use Skype.  It works, it’s easy, you can download it, it’s free”.  We are seeing acceleration in that sector, as well.

These are snippets from the discussion; Lee has transcribed the entire session in a eComm 2009 blog post.

Note that while all the participants in this call will be presenting, Jonathan Christensen will be delivering a keynote presentation: “Codec Evolution and Industry Proposal” along with a Skype announcement.

Bottom line: if you’re looking for value in communications services that drive business decisions, if you want to be a player in the emerging communications space, eComm 2009 provides the best opportunity to get a three day education in how the Voice 2.0 world will evolve. It’s an opportunity to network with the thinkers and business leaders who will be providing services for that market space. That’s why I’ve convinced a friend who is a 34-year veteran in the Canadian telecomm market to come; he wants his new consultancy to have relevance going forward.

Register here; enter “one touch” to get a 20% discount. Speakers. Schedule.

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While the whole world knows that there is a U.S.federal election on November 4, little international notice has been given to Canada’s upcoming federal election, October 14. But both are providing significant opportunities to make use of the Internet. Emails, text messaging, candidate websites. Twitter feeds all are coming into play.

In a post on Forbes.com this morning, Elizabeth Woyke talks about “Skyping the Election”, where Skype is being used to connect campaign volunteers with voters and journalists with viewers.

Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama have turned to Skype, which processes both land line and cellphone calls over the Internet, in order to reach voters. In June, Elizabeth Edwards used Skype to chat with attendees of the Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference on the intersection of politics and technology. In August, reporters from CNN, C-SPAN and NBC used Skype to report from the political conventions. And this weekend, volunteers in Santa Cruz, Calif., will use Skype-loaded laptops to target voters in Nevada, a key swing state.

The article goes on to quote Christopher Libertelli, Skype’s senior director of government and regulatory affairs. Most amusing was this comment:

Libertelli is, naturally, also interested in having Sens. McCain and Obama speak to each other via Skype. “There was that recent press cycle about whether McCain invented the BlackBerry,” he notes. “It would be interesting to see if the candidates know how to use Skype.”

As one who has known for ten years, and come to appreciate the genius of, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazardis (who wrote his original plan for wireless email in 1992 and is still executing on it), I can only chortle at the claims that surface in political battles. John McCain is no Mike Lazaradis.

Last Monday, in a public forum contributing to OneWebDay, Skype was used to help with a debate about presidential campaign tech policies. Chris Libertelli’s comments on net neutrality, the candidates’ positions and its role within the overall presidential campaign can be found here.

I’m still looking for examples of Skype use in the Canadian election campaign; I’m sure it’s quietly getting use in many ways by those candidates who have an enlightened appreciation for web technology.

Over the past few months I have been a frequent participant on Alec Saunders’ daily SquawkBox conference call where several of those involved in following today’s communications and web developments will discuss topics of the day. Subjects for yesterday’s call were the impact of the Internet on this years U.S. President campaign and Skype’s fifth anniversary today. Participants included Dan York of Voxeo, James Body of Truphone, William Volk of MyNumo (one of the more successful iPhone Apps developers) and Jonathan Jensen amongst others. The Saunderslog post is here.

The Skype discussion commences about half-way through the call. The one universal agreement was that Skype has succeeded because of the user experience. You can build all the communications technology you want but unless people can get all the way through the setup and readily make a call, people will not use it routinely. And the discussion highlights the importance of getting the Skype 4.0 user interface right but starting with some experimentation that challenges all of us to think through how to set up and manage a multi-modal conversation experience.. Some comments from the SquawkBox discussion:

• James Body: participating in a discussion at a smoke-filled bar in London with Nicklas just after Skype launched: “this proprietary thing will never work because it does not use SIP”. James then goes on to point out that if Skype had not had the success it has achieved, Truphone may never have been funded to the level they have obtained.
• Alec Saunders: basically it was the first VoIP-based service that “just worked”.
• I then discussed my memories of watching the Quarterdeck team develop WebTalk back in 1995 – and how our CEO of the day drove the engineers to make it work on 50MHz (not 50 GHz – a slip of the tongue) Pentium PC’s and over 14.4 kbps modems. But the overall infrastructure was just not there to let it become viable as a consumer in the 1996 time frame.Yes, having widely deployed broadband was one major contributor to the timing element that helped achieve Skype’s immediate success. (I did have WebTalk running over a 56kbps modem on a 100MHz Pentium but it was challenging to carry on a conversation. Yet a few small businesses did adopt it.)
• William Volk talked about the importance of usability. “Just because it – VoIP – works is not enough. Users are fickle. You will lose a significant number of users at each step where the process of installing and completing a call may fail. The user experience is everything.”
• Dan York the security expert amongst us, got into a discussion of how Skype worked when offerings such as NetMeeting and CU CMe just did not get significant traction. Firewall traversal across NAT – a major failing of SIP, the first true high quality wideband codec, and Skype’s inherent security are all features that impressed Dan.

But listen to the recording via the link/player on the Saunderslog post to get the full story, especially helpful for Skype employees involved in the Skype 4.0 beta.

And Happy Fifth Anniversary to Skype from all of us on the call! There are many challenges ahead as Skype liquifies communications – we look forward to the next generation of Skype under its new executive team. And thanks to the iotum team and SquawkBox producer Alec Saunders for making such a conversation feasible.

Dan York, Director of Emerging Communication Technology at Voxeo, but also on the Board of the Voice over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) has written two excellent pieces in another of his blogs, Voice of VoIPSA, discussing the blocking of VoIP calls by Aircell. The first explains how they can block Skype calls, even though they are encrypted while the second goes on to explain why Andy Abramson could make a VoIP call using Phweet.

1. How Aircell is (probably) blocking VoIP phone calls on planes (hint… VoIP Whack-A-Mole)

There it is… all in UDP… and coming in at about 100 packets per second. And if I look at the actual Wireshark traces, I can see that these 100 packets per second are all very tiny sizes. Many of them are between 37 and 50 bytes.

And this is an encrypted Skype call!

No need to decrypt it. Just see that it’s a steady stream of 100 very small packets per second (50 packets per second each way) all over UDP.

Kill the stream. Block it. Conversation dead. No more VoIP on the plane.

It’s basically the network security version of Whack-A-Mole. See a VoIP stream start up… block it. See another one… block it. See yet another… block it. Whenever anything pops up that meets the profile, stomp on it.

This explains, too, why people could talk for a few seconds and then had their conversations terminated. The pattern has to appear in the network monitoring software. The software has to be sure it’s a VoIP stream and not something else… and then the software can block it.

Now I don’t know for a fact that this is how Aircell is blocking VoIP, but it would be easy enough to do it this way.

2. The reason why (probably) you can use Phweet on a plane when Skype is blocked

And there you go… one very possible reason why Phweet may work and Skype, Sightspeed and others were blocked is simply this:

The Tringme Flash-based softphone is sending audio over TCP and Aircell is not recognizing and blocking VoIP calls over TCP.

Or at least Aircell wasn’t blocking TCP. (They probably are by now or will be soon.)

Now to be fair, if Aircell isn’t blocking TCP, this was probably a decent assumption to make. I mean, the typical mindset to date has been… who in their right mind would send audio streams over TCP?

In all the VoIP systems I’ve worked with, I can’t think offhand of any other systems that send audio over TCP. As part of its range of tricks to get through firewalls, I understand that Skype can use TCP if it is unable to send over UDP, but I’ve never captured it doing so. The IP-PBXs I’m familiar with, both commercial and open source, all send RTP over UDP.

Read the entire posts for the details of Dan’s assumptions and explanations. One of Dan’s writing strengths is his ability to make technology understandable to the lay person.

As for not wanting to have voice calls available in flight I would soften my stand if human nature would change. Over the weekend I was reading a book on the history of one of our rural independent telephone companies where they were providing anecdotes about early usage of the operator-serviced telephones:

Mrs. Alice Cooley’s brother, Billy Huang, Tiverton, used the phone for the first time to call his chum a few houses down the street. Alice and some others were out in the garden and they heard Billy shouting loudly on the phone. He thought he had to shout to be heard. Some people never did get over the idea that they had to shout on the phone.

From “Bruce Municipal Telephone System – A Long Line of History 1910 – 1994″ by Anne Duke Judd.

Enough said. Thanks, Dan for taking time to put up these explanations.

Tags: Dan York, Aircell, Skype, GoGo, Andy Abramson, TringMe, Phweet

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Take a MacBook with embedded webcam, add Skype video and mix into a WiFi Connection

Amber MacArthur is a local Toronto-based technology reporter who not only does daily television broadcast reports for CityTV but also has her own CommandN.tv online video podcasts. Last Wednesday at mesh 2007 I found her in one of the conference hallways broadcasting live to CityTV’s local cable information station, called CP24, being interviewed by an anchor back at the studio. The viewers would see the anchor while Amber appeared on a display monitor beside the anchor (unfortunately I had no way to capture the actual broadcast).

As her video source she was using her MacBook’s webcam, capturing the picture via Skype for Mac and sending it out over the conference’s WiFi network back to the CP24 studio where they were receiving the video on another Skype client and putting it up on the flat panel display monitor in the anchor’s studio. Because this was a live broadcast, she did use a mobile phone for the audio as they could not risk any audio degradation due to packet loss, etc. She did say that had it been a recorded event, they would have used Skype as they can then edit out any audio problems.

Amber uses Skype for Mac quite extensively for her own podcast interview recordings and has a Cyberspeaker for Mac to assist with these recordings. CommandN is produced weekly every Wednesday and can be uploaded to iTunes for viewing on a PC and is also available in several other formats. Recently she launched Webnation, another weekly technology show produced for broadcast on CityTV but also available for download via iTunes; once again Skype plays a key role in its production.

I’ll be watching for a future opportunity to capture an actual broadcast as viewed over my cable service. And there should be a contest for the most innovative application of Skype; this would be a winner!

By Jim Courtney, Toronto, Canada

Two weeks ago Skype released version 1.0 of its Skype for Outlook Toolbar, which had been available in beta versions over the previous three months.

From the Skype website:

“This toolbar brings all your Skype and MS Outlook contacts together in one handy place. That means you’ll be able to call Skype contacts who email you and make SkypeOut calls to your Outlook contacts who aren’t on Skype yet, all through the toolbar.”

Effectively Skype for Outlook Toolbar introduces the communications functionality of the Skype client into Outlook such that all your Skype communications activities can be managed from Outlook. It mines your Outlook for contact information, incorporates Skype Usernames and results in a Toolbar from which you can launch all communication via Skype, SkypeOut or Skype Chat. At a more abstract level, Skype for Outlook is an implementation of two of the building blocks of Voice 2.0 with its ability to combine both presence and directory information with single click access to trigger a communication session.

A detailed review of Skype for Outlook Toolbar can be downloaded here Download file
It covers all aspects of the Skype for Outlook Toolbar including installation, configuration, incorporation of Skype Usernames, presence information, e-mail integration, use with Outlook Contacts, launching conference calls and Outlook Journal entries. As an example, using all the recipient names in an email one can launch a conference call from a single window via the “Start conference call…” command:

From the conclusion:

Skype for Outlook Toolbar allows Outlook to incorporate Skype presence and contact information; it converts Outlook into a full service personal communications management platform. It gives you the opportunity to gain practical experience with two primary building blocks of Voice 2.0: presence and directories. You can even become your own conference call operator.

I have found Skype for Outlook most useful when traveling. Find a hotel offering high speed Internet, connect your PC, launch Skype and go to Outlook to launch all your phone calls, bypassing costly hotel switchboards and eliminating the need for calling cards. It was also very useful for me when recently doing a demonstration in a local hospital where I had no long distance authorization and was restricted from using a wireless phone, yet I needed to contact a tech support operation on the west coast.

A final comment: the beta versions of Skype for Outlook Toolbar were criticized for slowing down the operation of Outlook and several minor “irritants”. The release version has addressed these concerns either through modification or removal of features that inhibited the operation of Outlook’s primary function. ….. The result is a utility that is now a standard component of my Outlook operation; I can heartily recommend that you give it a try. For me it has passed the Jeff Sandquist seven day rule and become a part of my daily work life.

Over the past 33 years Jim Courtney has held general management and sales and marketing management positions with high technology companies addressing business, government, healthcare and academic markets. Ten years ago, while a business development manager with Quarterdeck Corporation, he had his first exposure to VoIP through Quarterdeck’s development of a pioneering VoIP software application, WebTalk, that worked on 100MHz Pentium PC’s with 28.8kbps modems. In early 1996 he participated in an analyst presentation in London, England from his Mississauga, Ontario office demonstrating Quarterdeck’s VoIP and web conferencing software and has continued to hold an interest in the evolution of VoIP and web conferencing as a communications tool. For the past nine years he has been a business development and business plan consultant to start-ups and emerging companies providing solutions in healthcare, communications and Internet infrastructure markets. 

Posted [on Skype Journal] by Guest Blogger at 07:06 AM