CounterPath, publishers of the Bria carrier grade softphone, has recently taken measures both to build their enterprise user base and to enhance the user experience when using Bria. Not only is Bria supported on Windows and Mac PC’s but also on the iPhone, iPad and Android. In other words, Bria provides a business desktop phone replacement with PC and  mobile softphones that you can take with you when out of the office. And it’s targeted as a solution for enterprises upgrading to fully IP-based communications platforms. But these enterprises still rely, in many cases, on the carriers to recommend and install products and services.

Building the enterprise user base: Two weeks ago Counterpath announced an agreement with GENBAND, a major carrier supplier of IP infrastructure and application solutions, to provide unified communications solutions for GENBAND’s Communications Application Server on mobile and tablet devices. Andy Abramson, at VoIP Watch, has given an outline of what this means to Counterpath’s participation in the “new” telecom technology market in his post CounterPath Gets Distribution.

Today, the companies changing the game in getting new telecom technology to the market include Broadsoft, MetaSwitch and GENBAND. They each control the lion’s share of what gets to the telcos so eventually in a transparent way the technology gets to consumers, and to the business markets too. Understanding the channel is key to success of any telecom products or services company, for one reason. It’s called Go To Market (GTM) but really could mean Get to (the) Market, and without channel partners there are just too many carriers, mobile operators and service providers out there today to effectively get to and sell to all of them directly.

Having acquired a bundle of Nortel carrier voice and applications assets with an $870 million revenue stream in early 2010, CounterPath has the potential to see its Bria clients on over 120 million ports and 10 million SIP connections. From the Nortel press release:

Nortel’s CVAS business is the recognized leader in the Carrier VoIP space, having shipped more than 121 million Carrier VoIP and Multimedia ports, including over 10 million SIP lines to leading carriers globally. Nortel has  consistently been ranked as the #1 Global Carrier VoIP and Softswitch leader since 2002. Nortel’s CVAS business has customer deployments in all continents with leading carriers and provides VoIP solutions to 80 percent of IDC’s worldwide listing of top 20 carriers (by revenue).

The bottom line is that Counterpath is providing a window into how the tier 1 to tier 3 telcos are absorbing and implementing IP-based communications technology in a mobile platform world.

On the actual product front Counterpath had two recent announcements that contribute to ensuring that Bria remains feature competitive when it comes to the end user experience:

• Incorporation of Skype’s royalty-free SILK codec into Bria mobile products, allowing Bria mobile product users to take full advantage of SILK’s crystal clear voice quality for calls between Bria endpoints within an enterprise communications platform. According to CounterPath’s blog post linked above:

The SILK codec is free and also performs very well compared to other similar codecs that are royalty bearing. I should point out that because Bria supports SILK does not mean Bria can interoperate with the Skype service directly. Of course Bria users can call Skype users via the PSTN.

• Incorporation of social networking into the Bria client allowing Bria users to follow their Facebook and Twitter feeds. Counterpath calls it “social blurring” of the unified communications interface. From an example provided by CounterPath’s Todd Carrothers, Senior Vice-President, Marketing and Products:

Basically Facebook (on the left) and Twitter (on the right) are setup as additional “accounts’ on Bria, connecting via an XMPP feed as a peer to SIP accounts supporting voice, instant messaging and video. Bria becomes one more user interface option for accessing the user’s Facebook news feed and Twitter stream.

Bottom line: CounterPath is making extensive progress as a vendor to the enterprise market through their partnerships with, and support of, market leading carrier vendors in the IP-communications solutions space. And they represent a market leading proxy for following the enterprise market adoption of IP-based communication solutions.

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

• Is Skype Soon To Release New APIs? Skype Renames Public API And Extends “Plugged into Skype” Partner Program (disruptivetelephony.com)
• 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)

Over the past couple of years I have attended quarterly briefings given by CheckPoint Canada that give me some perspective on Internet security issues from a third party (relative to Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Skype, etc.) who understands not only the issues that challenge a business’s Internet security but also how they are changing over time. I’m more interested in the security issues overview and what business issues need to be considered and addressed, not the technology details. (I’ll trust CheckPoint’s sales results to be the guide as to their credibility.) CheckPoint Canada’s presentations are quite educational in this respect, in part due to the knowledge and passion of their lead technical resource for Canada.

At the most recent presentation two weeks ago I learned (i) about the evolution of CheckPoint’s new approach to addressing security at the enterprise level and (ii) about an experience that demonstrated one simple example of CheckPoint’s thoroughness at identifying and addressing Internet security issues at a personal engagement level.

In taking a new approach there are several changes in the business environment that challenge the ability of simple solutions such as firewalls and IP address identification to manage security, including intrusions such as malware and business data loss.

• Users have more than one device: a PC, a smartphone, maybe even a tablet.
• Employees need to be able to carry on personal activities, such as banking, from their place of employment
• this creates data privacy issues
• IP address-based policies no longer work – users no longer belong to one network.
• The emerging IPv6 standard means that it will become very difficult to track activity via a “single” IP address; also the IPv6 protocol is not a simple extension of IPv4’s nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn format.
• Security policies need to synchronize with a customer’s internal business processes as the priority.
• Use of collaboration tools and services is on the rise; not everyone is at one “secure” location.
• Security needs to address permission issues involving both websites and applications
• 189 new websites were created every minute in 2010
• The rise of video use for, say, marketing and support create bandwidth issues

Yet businesses obviously continue to seek protection against security breaches and data loss at minimal overhead and costs to the operation.

CheckPoint addresses these issues with a focus on the business’s policies, people (employees and contractors who need access) and enforcement as opposed to the underlying technology infrastructure. This is reflected in their unique ability to configure their installations to meet a business’s needs. In its infrastructure CheckPoint maintains a dynamically updated database of critical data.

In part CheckPoint addresses these issues through engagement of users as they attempt to visit a website or use an application:

• For instance, when accessing Facebook, a notification comes to the user advising of company policy and a warning about the information that cannot be shared on Facebook.
• Exceptions can be established to permit access to, say, an online banking site without inspecting data.
• All traffic is inspected to ensure SSL certification where appropriate.

One issue CheckPoint addresses is data loss prevention, both internally and externally. Here is one example of how CheckPoint has a significantly complete offering that provides a warning to the individual employee’s activity.

CheckPoint Canada’s Regional Security Engineering Manager was recently checking out one of Checkpoint’s new data loss prevention (“DLP”) tools on his home network (no, they do not have a home product, yet). He attempted to check into an Air Canada flight via the Air Canada application on his iPhone. But the DLP software identified an issue:

His personal information data – including his Aeroplan number – was going across the Internet to Air Canada as unencrypted clear text. Apparently doing an Air Canada check-in via their website is encrypted; however, until Air Canada addresses this issue for their iPhone application (they have been notified), Kellman will not be doing check-ins via his iPhone (and probably the same applies to their BlackBerry application).

Bottom Line: What I can say from the presentation is that CheckPoint has developed not only the technology expertise but also the business experience that addresses they dynamic nature of the Internet, its growth, its usage and its security threats while ensuring that individual users can be comfortable with their work and personal activities. As with business use of social media, engagement of the individual user is a key to their ongoing success. (And their recent sales growth is the best indicator of that success.)

One final comment: CheckPoint employees are heavy users of Skype and, in fact, CheckPoint has no qualms about allowing usage; in the case below, the CheckPoint customer is giving permission for its sales department to use Skype. I’ll have more to say in another post about Kellman’s use of Skype to keep in touch with his young family while having a heavy travel schedule across Canada and to CheckPoint’s headquarters in Israel.

Jeff Pulver has been operating 140 Characters Conferences over the past two years at many U.S. locations where attendees hear stories about how Twitter has played a role in both personal lives and business activities. About six months ago an ambitious group of social media enthusiasts in the Kitchener-Waterloo region approached Jeff about about holding a session in Kitchener, Ontario – twin city to Waterloo about an hour’s drive west of Toronto. Jeff, who has had many reasons to visit the Toronto area over the past several years, suggested that it be billed as the 140 Characters Conference: Ontario to give it a regional perspective.

A historical perspective

During his keynote Jeff mentioned that his origins with real time worldwide communications go back to his early exploration of amateur radio – the only way to communicate socially with individuals worldwide prior to the Internet other than to make expensive international telephone calls. I recall several friends who immersed themselves in amateur radio due to the intrigue of finding new friends in far off locations. (Full disclosure: the author used the Radio Amateur Handbook to build magnetic resonance spectrometers at an early stage in his career.)

One of the applications that drove the adoption of Quarterdeck’s DESQview multi-tasking environment for DOS was community bulletin boards that used DOS PC’s with modems and dial-up connections to allow individuals to communicate via text messages. One of the more interesting applications of bulletin boards was managed by an child oncology doctor at Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital. She had set up a bulletin board service whereby her patients could continue to communicate with each other once they had left a hospital and returned home. The key learning here was that an otherwise geographically dispersed community with a common interest could come together and share their experiences in dealing with their disease as they carried on their day-to-day lives at home. One of the key observations made by the doctor was that the kids could communicate without the need for others to see any physical impact of their cancers – “kids without faces” she called it; as a result it helped to keep discussions focused on the issues they faced in living their lives and gave them the confidence to raise their concerns.

So there was some early evidence that with the appropriate communications tools available, one can establish common interest groups and communities that engage in conversations sharing experiences and information that are otherwise “below the radar” of mainstream media. And they could do this across an electronic bridge that broke down geographical barriers.

So where are we today?

In the past fifteen years we have seen the evolution of many tools for engaging conversations with others through the Internet: email, web post comments, Skype chat sessions, Facebook and, of course, Twitter. For most of them, one is dealing with a closed or gated” community where you, say, accept Friends on Facebook, approve Skype contacts and put up anti-spam filters for email, etc.

However, what became apparent with yesterday’s presentations were:

• Be authentic, remember you are always presenting your “personal brand”, not only building relationships but also establishing legitimacy and credibility even if that is not your intention
• As a “broadcast” tool where anyone can see your Tweets if they have the right tools and filters, you can recruit a community to help you with your common interest.
• Whereas physically close family and friends may not see the nature of your issue, someone out there in Twitterland will be willing to share their experiences and information resources via 140 character messages. Yes, there are pluses and minuses but let’s focus on the positive outcomes here.

We heard stories about helping a single parent with no support resources, alleviating depression, losing your job and becoming an entrepreneur starting your own business, watching out for the “little things” to reward small but important achievements at a small business, growing a “new age” fitness business where the actual activity is secondary to the socialization and building community morale and enthusiasm in a town that has lost most of its “conventional” manufacturing industry. Taylor Jones describes it more completely here.

It was obvious from yesterday’s presentations that each presenter had built a community of interest but most interesting was to note that Twitter was not simply a tool for social networking but also a seed for changing lives. But, as AmberMac stated in her presentation, keep in mind as you tweet – with influence comes responsibility.

The Take Away

A couple of years ago, in conjunction with a CES show, I attended one of Jeff’s initial sessions where he was trying to identify a market to address built around this 140 character communications tool. At that session we listened to Twitter experiences but the presenters largely were achieving commercial success.

What was different yesterday across all the presentations was a common thread of not simply socializing via the Internet to build relationships but then using that socializing for experiencing follow up social change in our lives, whether the Twitter engagement involved dealing with individual personal challenges or driving a “community” to take the initiative to achieve a common goal.

Acknowledgement: Kudos to the K-W area team that organized this conference. Well done, well run. Look forward to hearing about another one in the future.

About two years ago my cableTV/Internet/wireless/HomePhone service provider, Rogers, started to use Twitter as one path for customer feedback and support requests. While many of their customers have expressed their frustration with service issues ranging from outages to account corrections via this Twitter account, there are nine Rogers employees who track and follow up at @rogershelps. Having met a few members of the team at local events, they report having significant success at addressing reported issues.

Over the past couple of months Skype has been upgrading both its community forum and social networking activity with a revamped community forum, called Skype Support Network, and a Facebook page.

Last Friday Skype announced the addition of the @skypesupport Twitter feed:

We’re committed to our customers and we know how important it is to provide support where you want to have conversations. It’s no surprise that a lot of our you are hanging out in social networks and forums, and want us to be part of the conversation providing answers and help wherever it’s needed.

So, we hope you agree that our efforts to increase our support presence in Twitter and Facebook will improve our ability to address your questions. But, we’re not done yet — there is more to come with the additional steps we’re taking to continue our path towards faster, better, more social ways of helping you. We are relentlessly committed to serving you and continuing to improve our products and support.

To use it, go to @skypesupport where you will find an ‘invitation” to “Tweet to Skype Support” (whether you are “Following” or not); clicking on the message box will enter the text “@skypesupport” after which you can enter your issue in 126 characters or less.

While a Skype user’s initial request will show up in the user’s feed, the response comes in the @skypesupport feed with a “^NN” at the end to indicate which of the Skype Community Support team (not necessarily Skype employees) has provided the response. Here’s one engagement that took place within an hour prior to publishing this post:

From the user’s Twitter feed	Skype Support Response

Bottom Line: It’s all about engaging the customer and letting him/her know you care; however, in today’s social media world there are many paths to engagement. Unless you frequented the former Skype forums, there were few paths to finding support until a month or two ago. Skype’s recent adoption of a new “community forum” format, Facebook and Twitter as support tools are certainly helpful steps in the right direction. It’s a challenge when you have a “free” service, yet so many demanding users. Hopefully, as Rogers has experienced, these will all lead to more adoption and acceptance as well as tools for learning learning more about real customer issues that need to be addressed.

One more resource: Check out Voice On The Web’s Skype Reference Guide in the sidebar where I am gradually updating the pages based of over five years of following Skype and adding new pages as new services and features become available such as Skype for iPad and the ability to make and receive Skype calls from your home phone.

While attending CES 2011 back in January, I spent an afternoon visiting the main television vendor floor where 3D TV was definitely the number one topic of interest; however, I found, and reported on, several vendors with display kiosks demonstrating Skype for TV.

Michael Wolf, at GigaOm’s NewTeeVee, recently brought renewed visibility to the Skype for TV initiative in his post: Could Skype Be Microsoft’s Smart TV Trojan Horse?.   Frankly, from my learnings that afternoon,  his view about a role for a Windows OS on TV’s is baseless; it pays to look at the hierarchy for enabling Internet services on the TV’s.

One common trend I observed in visiting these booths is that all the vendors have embedded as firmware a complete Internet-enabling smart platform that provides access to various “cloud” applications. Social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter are the most obvious. Amongst other applications are several involving movies, such as Netflix, and sports offerings, such as NHL and ESPN Sports Center.

Skype, of course, was on at least six vendor offerings, using its SkypeKit platform, initially available for the Linux OS. In fact, Panasonic includes a dedicated Skype button on the remote controller for their Skype-enabled TV’s and BluRay players.

Behind all this I learned how the TV vendors are embedding these platforms. It’s a case of having the platform software embedded into the TV’s firmware and hardware, then layering the applications on top of the platform. Given that SkypeKit is behind Skype for TV it appears that they are using a Linux-based operating system. Certainly there is no room, given the current state of these offerings and time frames involved, for an embedded Windows.

On the other hand Skype for TV will bring to Microsoft exposure to experience with integrating applications onto these platforms. Windows Live services would be an obvious candidate for integration into these TV platforms. After all we do have Windows Live Messenger access on various smartphone platforms such as BlackBerry and iOS4.

And one should never lose sight of the network effect. Skype for TV video calls can be made to over 170 million active users who may be on any of several platforms – PC’s, iPhones, Android phones. One of my first benchmarks for how Microsoft will deal with its Skype acquisition would be the introduction of a unique Skype for iPad. This would be an application that would allow video calling on the iPad 2 taking full advantage of the iPad 2’s display size. It has nothing to do with Windows or Office but rather providing new user experiences using resources at hand.

Bottom line: It’s not a case of will Microsoft attempt to displace other OS’s on TV platforms with a derivative of Windows – that opportunity has passed them by. But rather the strategic opportunity lies in merging Skype’s experience with introducing a real time communications application onto TV platforms with Microsoft’s existing Windows Live experience on other platforms.

Michael also questions whether Google TV will be a competitor. In the end consumers want as few boxes as possible combined with ease of operation. If all the services, broadcast TV and Internet applications can come via one “box” the market for add-on boxes on home entertainment systems will eventually evaporate. How many HDMI connections will be tolerated by the average consumer?

Related articles

• Microsoft Acquires Skype – The “Amber Mac Test” (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Microsoft Acquires Skype – A Most Interesting Marriage (voiceontheweb.biz)
• The End of the “Skype as Bandit” Era (disruptivetelephony.com)

Tuesday’s announcement of the pending Microsoft acquisition of Skype has certainly drawn a complete spectrum of comments, feedback and posts. They range from Microsoft’s perception as doomsday venom for an acquisition’s products and services to praise for the potential to merge two complementary software companies that allow not only the continuation of the current service but also leveraging real time conversation features and technology into Microsoft’s existing platforms and products.

But the bottom line is that over 170 million people have actively been using Skype this year. As reinforced at the acquisition press conference, any move that would threaten or inhibit those users’ ability to continue using Skype would not help Microsoft’s bottom line. Thus, for instance, the ongoing support of Skype clients for Mac OS/X, iOS4 handheld devices, Android devices and even Linux. Yet we can now certainly see that a Skype for Windows Mobile can be expected to surface by year end.

But it’s really the user experiences that will both win new users and drive continued use by existing users. Technology journalist, technology TV program host/producer and social networking strategist Amber MacArthur has summed up the desires of most Skype users in her Tending Tech blog on the Globe and Mail website in a post: Dear Microsoft, don’t mess up Skype.

Amber outlines the history of her experience using Skype video. She was a pioneer in using Skype video for TV broadcast feeds – even when the best Skype video call resolution was 320 x 240 – long before Oprah. She regularly uses Skype for her current productions and business activity. But she also has more importantly found the value in Skype for reinforcing family relationships through calls to relatives, especially to her parents for the weekly grandparent call – regardless of where either she, in her travels, and her parents are geographically.

Amber speaks for all Skype users in her conclusion:

In my world, it’s fair to say that Skype is a necessity. Aside from Gmail, it’s the one piece of technology that I’d hate to live without. With more than 170 million active users around the world, I’m not alone. Sure, Facebook has more subscribers, but I’d ditch that social network any day of the week if I had to choose between it and Skype. I can’t say I remember any memorable Facebook messages, but there are Skype video calls I can’t forget.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the Microsoft news means to the tech world. After all, $8.5-billion is a lot of money. However, the truth is that I don’t care. I don’t really care how much the giant software company paid. I don’t care if it gives them a stronger foothold in the web world. All I care about is that I can still make free video calls to Mom and Dad on my son’s birthday and invite them to share in a little virtual cake and a singalong. [Editor’s bold]

So, Microsoft, don’t screw up Skype. There are 170-million people and growing who won’t be very happy if you do.

Bottom line: I would ask that every Skype employee and all Microsoft employees who may become involved with embedding Skype technology into Microsoft products print  Amber’s post and put it up in their cubicle or office and, when making decisions related to the deployment and use of Skype, ask if each individual business decision passes the “Amber Mac Test” outlined in the excerpt above. It provides one significant benchmark against which the evolution of Skype and its technology can be measured.

Note: the number of users in the quote has been adjusted to reflect the 170 million active users reported at the Microsoft-Skype press conference. Based on previous reporting, this is based on the number of users who actually made at least one Skype call or conversation during the Jan-March 2011 quarter. A much more realistic measure of Skype usage than simply the total number of Skype accounts that are increasing by over 500,000 per day.

Update: Check out Alec Saunders Microsoft-Skype: emerging themes for the perspective of a former Microsoft product manager.

Related articles

• Microsoft Acquires Skype – An Investor’s Perspective (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Microsoft-Skype: emerging themes (saunderslog.com)
• Microsoft And Skype Like A Horse And Carriage (informationweek.com)
• Microsoft-Skype Deal: Three Ways It Benefits Enterprises (lirax.wordpress.com)
• The End of the “Skype as Bandit” Era (disruptivetelephony.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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While attending eComm 2010 three weeks ago I was honored to be asked to join six other bloggers in providing weekly posts to Voyces.com, a blog that provides opinion, insight and perspective on developments in the IP-based and mobile communications space.

The initial two posts:

Has “Social Sharing” Become the “Nom du Jour”? provides a follow up to my previous Voice On The Web post on Jonathan Rosenberg’s keynote presentation at eComm 2010, The Rise of Real Time Sharing. Suddenly I was finding a rash of uses of the term “social sharing” and conclude with:

In six to nine months’ time maybe we’ll have a more pragmatic handle on what “social sharing” really means in terms of the emotions generated and the degree of interaction attained in practice.

• Is it turning a “me” experience into a “we” experience?
• Is it simply an emotion inducing “Kodak moment” or does it require more interactivity?
• Is it an extension of the concept of a “family agent” to our friends and followers on our social networks?
• Or is it simply another “nom du jour” catch phrase?

In the meantime social sharing remains an academic concept whose real value-add needs to be proven through real world experience incorporating real time communications .

The Missing BlackBerry SuperApp talks about RIM’s quest for SuperApps and how the most prominent missing SuperApp is the Skype for BlackBerry “direct to consumer” application. Just having it work over WiFi would meet my needs but more importantly for BlackBerry it would remove one more major negative to acquiring a competitive smartphone for which Skype has written a SuperApp. In conclusion:

…. if FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter are pervasive enough to trigger development of a BlackBerry SuperApp, Skype for BlackBerry has to be the one major “social sharing” SuperApp that is required to help RIM fight the smartphone battles currently being waged in the consumer and business markets.

It’s not a case where its presence would necessarily be winning sales at this point but rather it’s the absence of this application that contributes to losing BlackBerry sales across the consumer smartphone distribution channels. If, as stated at his WES 2010 presentation, Mike Lazaradis is looking to have 100 million BlackBerry users in the next couple of years,  and if Skype CEO Josh Silverman wants to make good on his “Skype Everywhere” goal, Skype for BlackBerry will have to be available soon.

Head over to the post for the details.

I look forward to working with Alec Saunders, Larry Lisser, Andy Abramson, Luca Filigheddu, Jamie Siminoff and Thomas Howe as Voyces.com develops its own “voice”.

Going forward Voice On The Web will continue to be my primary blog, with the goal of providing two to three posts a week on issues as well as hardware and software offerings in the Skype, IP-based communications and smartphone world. I’ll continue to post pointers to Voyces.com posts as well. Stay tuned for the ride.

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Over the past two years I have been occasionally reporting on Tungle, the meeting accelerator that facilitates scheduling meetings and conference calls. Tungle’s goals as a service are:

• bring down barriers, such as different calendar programs, between companies and work teams
• share availability (Busy/Free status only)
• respect privacy and user control

In summary Tungle wants to be “the last mile” for booking a meeting.

Since my last report a year ago on the introduction of the Tungle.me feature, Tungle has added several features including:

• a BlackBerry client available via the BlackBerry app store,
• participation in Google Apps Market Place
• addition of Plancast to its existing social networking integrations with Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn, Ning, etc. and
• integration into Lotus Notes.

Basically Tungle has been building up an infrastructure and partner relationships that accelerate meeting scheduling across your email contacts and social networks. Key to its success is that individual users of Tungle can be agnostic with respect to their calendaring program. Tungle works with Outlook, Google Calendar and Lotus Notes as well as iCal and Entourage on the Mac. And it adapts to a user’s local time zone; Tungle has users in over 100 countries across all the world’s time zones.

At the same time Tungle has evolved its various user interfaces to make Tungle much more readily accepted by both the meeting organizer and the invitees. Key here was the removal of the need for an invitee to actually be registered with Tungle. Simply receive a Tungle invitation via email, click on a link, show your available times and the meeting organizer can move ahead with scheduling a meeting, including sending meeting time confirmation emails.

But there were still many opportunities to improve Tungle and further accelerate meetings. Today Tungle is announcing Tungle.me 2.0 with several new features that “extend the application’s social networking features with the addition of a public directory, search functionality, and group meeting capabilities”.

Modify Your “Weekly Availability”

A year ago Tungle introduced Tungle.me where you could, at your discretion, show times you are available for meetings on a “weekly” basis from a URL, “tungle.me/username”, that could become, say, part of an email signature. Your Tungle.Me availability would automatically be modified as you reserved times slots in your calendar application. As the first of several new features introduced today, users can also edit or customize those availabilities on a daily basis should you decide to take time off for a golf game, have a “must attend” family event or have the boss second you into a short term project.

Tungle.Me Public Directory and Search

Since introducing Tungle.me Tungle has also discretely developed a Tungle.Me public directory accompanied by Tungle.me Search. Provided a user gives appropriate permission, you can now search Tungle’s public directory for a particular user and see if they have made their availability information accessible to schedule one-on-one meetings. Over 85% of Tungle users have given the appropriate permission; recall that only your “Free/Busy” time availability is shown – with no details of why a time slot is tied up or an associated meeting location. But Tungle Search simply becomes one more contributor to a key new feature.

Accelerating Meeting Scheduling Through Aggregation

A major issue that has held up the time taken to schedule multi-participant meetings was the need to have responses from at least a significant portion of the potential participants. This could take two or three days waiting for responses while others are tentatively holding time slots open in the back-of-their-minds if not on their calendar.

Yet, as mentioned above, the information of their availability, if a registered Tungle.me user, is accessible. Today’s announcement is about accelerating meetings through aggregation. Simply go to your Tungle.me Home page (www.tungle.me/username), select contacts who have made their information available and you have an overlay showing what time slots are available. Bingo! Set either the suggestions for a meeting time and send an invite email with pre-qualified time slots or just set a meeting time, if appropriate in context. (Another hint: cursor over an individual contact’s name to overlay a view of the individual’s availability.)

In the graphic below, purple represent my own committed time slots for this week, light blue represent committed time slots of three other invitees to the prospective meeting.

Tungle.Me Groups

While the above process helps to set up one-time meetings, for teams or groups that meet frequently, Tungle.me’s most powerful new feature is the creation of contact Groups. Much like the Group Contact feature in Skype you can designate the members of a group and create the Group as an additional contact. Want to see when your group can get together, simply click on the Group’s name in your Tungle Contact list. You will immediately see the available times at which your Group can come together. Best part of Groups: you can create a URL, “www.tungle.me/username/groupname”, so that all members of your group can quickly see the group’s availability from any web browser.

Two overriding guidelines to Tungle.me’s new features:

1. Privacy – you only make public your available times. No information is provided about why your time slots are tied up or where you will be physically.

2. Aggregate availability to show common times available for meetings with one or two mouse clicks.

Tungle CEO Marc Gingras has provided a short demonstration video to provide a more dynamic introduction:

Bottom Line (and Full Disclosure): I have been using Tungle and Tungle.me for the past two years, witnessing its evolution into a fully featured, easy-to-use service. Consistently their goal has been to improve the user interface, making it a “no-brainer” service to use whether a meeting participant is a registered user or not.

Fifteen years  ago I was taking up to a week to schedule cross-company meetings via emails. Tungle brings the process down to a few easy to follow steps that pull together readily accessible user information and time slots through one service platform such that a meeting can be scheduled within hours, if not minutes. No longer simply an aggregator of user availability, Tungle, incorporating its own social networking ecosystem, has become a key social networking tool that can facilitate the real time “social sharing” envisioned by Skype’s Jonathan Rosenberg at his recent eComm keynote.

Tungle CEO Marc Gingras has also put up a few blog posts with more details on these new features:

• Search and Directory
• Tungle.me Groups
• More new features
• Concerned about privacy? Don’t be

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At his eComm America 2010 keynote presentation Monday morning, Skype’s recently appointed Chief Technology Strategist Jonathan Rosenberg provided his perspective on where Skype can introduce real time communications into “social sharing” activities.

Positioning the current state of social networking as personal broadcasting where a Twitter or Facebook message “broadcasts” your information out to a selected set of Followers or Friends, he went on to outline how these “broadcasts” were missing two key elements: emotion and interaction. And these broadcasts have a “random” aspect in terms of who receives them:

• Followers and Friends could cover a random mix of interest groups: family, work colleagues, special interest groups
• It’s a bit of a gamble as to who sees your ‘broadcast” message; some may follow every Tweet while others may be selective in what they see and take a few days to see a Tweet; others, for whatever reason, may never see it.

Bottom line is that current social networking is missing the emotion and interactivity associated with “social”.

Jonathan sees three “i’s” that need to be added for social networking to become totally social:

• involvement
• investment
• interactivity

And sees real time communications, integrated into a web property, as the infrastructure required to bring these to the table.

Jonathan then proceeded to give an example of each of the three “i’s”:

Real time and involvement: The quality of the real time call experience matters, as supported by statistics that Skype has mined out from their call detail records. It turns out that Skype’s SILK superwideband codec not only provides a higher quality, more readily understood voice conversation but also has been demonstrated to result, on average, in ~45% longer conversations, based on real Skype call detail records data. Phil Wolfe over at Skype Journal has more to say about this.

Real time and investment: here the example involved multiple people planning a trip together by sharing a desktop browsing travel web sites while carrying on a voice or video conversation.

Real time and interactivity – the virtual couch potato. While Jonathan gave an example, my own experience occurred a few years ago during the Opening Ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy when I was on a Skype call with a person in Sweden. We were both watching the ceremonies on our local television networks while discussing them in Skype voice and chat conversations.

This also brings to mind the couple who used Skype a few years ago for a remote courtship a few years ago; not only did a marriage result after a year of courtship via Skype but also a family with a couple of young ones.

According to Jonathan the bottom line is about turning a “me” experience into a “we” experience by escalating an asynchronous conversation (an initiating email or chat message) into a synchronous experience that can involve voice, chat, video and desktop sharing. And it involves bringing emotional and interactive elements into social sharing activities.

So what are the implications for Skype:

• These experiences need to be easy to invoke. What does it take to make users realize they can easily have these experiences?
• According to Jonathan, creating these experiences would involve invoking a web-based infrastructure into the Skype software offerings. Sounds like something we can expect to see later this year.
• What role would multi-party video play in these experiences? Can we expect to see multi-party video later this year?

Bottom Line: Is this all a precursor to some new Skype experiences or features that will be launched over the next few months?

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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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Recently I wrote about the official launch of Tungle, the meeting accelerator that provides a cross-platform,  cross-calendar service for scheduling meetings via the web. In fact, with its new features I am now finding that 100% of my meeting requests have a response that results in a meeting. In other words the released version addressed issues that were roadblocks to successfully, yet productively agreeing on a meeting time.

One could call Tungle’s initial invocation as providing an “outbound” method for scheduling a meeting as you were the initiator from either a browser or email program, such as Outlook and expected to be the moderator of the meeting.

But what if someone wanted to approach you to request a meeting but was not a Tungle subscriber. With the launch yesterday of Tungle.me your non-subscribing acquaintances can launch a request for a meeting with you via Facebook, LinkedIn, a blog or website, your e-mail signature or an IM text chat message via Skype, MSN Messenger, etc.

When a visitor clicks on the resulting widget or link, the visitor will see a web page showing your busy/available times (but no details). You then go into the “Organize a Meeting” mode where, if the visitor is a Tungle subscriber, the subscriber’s busy/available times will also be displayed:

One then proceeds to fill in the standard information (suggested time slots, location, potential agenda) and the normal Tungle Accelerator goes into action emailing invitations and accepting responses.

Whereas originally Tungle was available for outbound requests, Tungle.me provides a path for inbound meeting requests via social media tools and other communications services.

Bottom line: A cool service; however, while providing the ability to receive Inbound meeting requests, you may also want to consider how public you want to make your availability known to the outside world. On the other hand, by once again not requiring non-subscribers to register, Tungle has minimized the barriers and obstacles to using this service.

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Yesterday’s post, SocialScope: for a Complete, But Managed, Twitter Experience, outlines why I have found SocialScope to be the most complete Twitter client on any platform offered to date. But it only runs on BlackBerry. Why? A recent interview with Ubiquitous Systems CEO Amit Kumar provided the answers.

As their initial goal the Ubiquitous team wanted to provide an application that was designed from the beginning as a mobile application. Amit described how they attempted to write an application for the iPhone but, as a result of their prototyping experience, they quickly turned to BlackBerry for one primary reason: background processing. Basically they needed an application that could continue to monitor and report Twitter feeds while using other applications on the platform. However, as they progressed Amit outlined how they uncovered additional advantages to supporting BlackBerry:

• Fundamentally full background processing changes the user experience, including how a user will interact with the application. Read your email, do some browsing, check the hockey, baseball and soccer scores; in the meantime all your Twitter and Facebook status messages, including those from makeitseven, are being pulled in for viewing the next time you switch back to SocialScope.
• BlackBerry is fundamentally a messaging device – combine a QWERTY keyboard with the vibrant half-VGA (480 x 320) display to provide a complete two way communications device.
• Immediacy: in their market research the Ubiquitous team found that users wanted no delays in getting to their Twitter messages – just switch to SocialScope and the most recent messages are there. No need to leave the application open to receive messages (as required for similar applications on the iPhone), no need to re-login. It’s just there when you want it. While the BlackBerry inherently provides “immediacy” the team also found they needed to address scaling and latency issues to ensure messages could be delivered as quickly as possible.
• Integration: SocialScope has been integrated with the BlackBerry Address book to allow instant viewing of Twitter messages from a contact’s page. There is additional integration with the BlackBerry browser and camera that allows the user to quickly post a Twitter and/or Facebook status update incorporating a URL or Twitpic picture.
• Compression: SocialScope uses compression algorithms to reduce the data transmission load by 20% to 30%.
• Battery Life: going forward their primary goal is to reduce battery drain using the recently released “push” API’s available for BlackBerry developers. Currently, when using SocialScope continuously, I do find I need to recharge my battery overnight.

In closing our interview Amit paid complements to the support received from the BlackBerry Developer program personnel as SocialScope development has evolved. This support has contributed to, amongst other results, the deeper integration referenced above.

Selecting BlackBerry as their platform of choice allowed the Ubiquitous team to deliver a unique and productive user experience which, in practice, allows one to both readily and completely manage our individual social media messaging activities.

Bottom Line:  When following any conversation application that supports Instant Messaging services such as Twitter, Facebook or Skype (via iSkoot, for example):

• the most appropriate platform, from the “immediacy” perspective, is a wireless mobile device
• full support of background processing is a prerequisite in order to deliver a real time, “it’s just there”, user messaging experience.
• the client’s user interface on the device, such as SocialScope’s tabbed UI, is critical to an “always on”, “immediate” user experience
• deep integration with the device’s basic feature set delivers extra value

SocialScope provides an excellent  demonstration of the value of managed “immediacy” when following your personal and business acquaintances in today’s “always on” world.

Question: will these messaging services eventually replace current SMS messaging services or simply contribute to a decline in the usage of SMS?

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When it comes to organizing and following my Twitter activity, I have found that SocialScope – currently in a closed beta and only available on BlackBerry – provides the most complete and most satisfying Twitter user experience. A recent interview with Ubiquitous Systems CEO Amit Kumar provided some additional background on how SocialScope evolved and their plans going forward.

Twitter started out as a way to broadcast messages of up to 140 characters via SMS to “approved” followers; however, its popularity has driven it to become a key social media tool whose messages can be followed on a desktop PC, via a web browser or on a mobile device such as smartphones. When one starts following several hundred Twitter users the challenge for the individual has become one of “how can I effectively manage my Twitter activities to my benefit?”. An ecosystem of Twitter clients has evolved in an attempt not only to provide access to Twitter on multiple platforms but also to bring some order and prioritization to one’s Twitter experiences.

Over the past few months I have been experimenting with various Twitter clients on PC’s (TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop), iPhone (Twitterific) and the BlackBerry (TwitterBerry, SocialScope). I came to the conclusion that I wanted a client that:

• allows me to see all my Twitter messages as one viewing option
  • with minimum delay after sent
• is available on a mobile platform
• receives messages while using other applications on the platform
• supports multiple Twitter accounts
• supports Facebook status messages
• is capable of organizing my “Following” Twitter contacts into groups
• provides a search capability
  • including searches for #hashtags
• has a tabbed UI for accessing:
  • all messages, direct messages, @ replies,
  • individual Twitter and Facebook account messages
  • user-defined groups, search results
• provides a complete Profile of a Twitter User:
  • user description and website
  • view all the user’s recent messages
  • select Twitter accounts on which to follow/unfollow
  • search for all Tweets referencing the user
  • see who the user is Following
  • see who is Following the user (Followers)
• allows easy insertion of pictures (via Twitpic) and URL’s into Status Updates
• quickly moves amongst the various tabs, user profiles and searches

About three weeks ago SocialScope delivered a major upgrade to their beta version that built it out to include all the features described above. While attending a social networking workshop two weeks ago I suddenly found myself using SocialScope on my BlackBerry Bold to track all my Twitter activity as I made new acquaintances, followed the event’s hashtag and did searches on various speakers and related topics. It handled both my Twitter accounts, allowed me to organize those I was following, had a neat Search capability, provided a complete user profile for any Twitter user and eliminated the tediousness of performing key operations on a PC.

I then realized that, considering all the Twitter clients I had trialed, SocialScope provided the most complete, yet user friendly, experience. Social media messages basically have the same “immediacy” as a phone call or an email received on the BlackBerry.The convenience of having it on a a QWERTY-keyboard mobile platform with a vibrant half-VGA display had become a significant factor in coming to this conclusion.

Most importantly, however, recall that Twitter’s original ambition was to drive messages through SMS messaging; thus, the 140 character limit. This had become a huge cost factor for Twitter to the point where, for instance, SMS messaging to Canadian users was cut off until Twitter made special arrangements with at least one local carrier. (And now all Canadian wireless carriers plan to charge for inbound SMS messages.) However, SocialScope provides a much more user friendly user interface than dealing with SMS messages; a major benefit is that it eliminates the need for any SMS subscription (but will make “light” use of your wireless data plan) to access Twitter or FaceBook messaging activity on a BlackBerry.

SocialScope was the evolution of the founders’ goal to provide a client that aggregated, yet organized, a user’s social networking activity. Founder Amit Kumar and his colleagues (today they still only have a team of four plus an intern) saw lots of web-based social networking activity on the web but felt that browsers put too much overhead on the overall Twitter (and Facebook) user experience as well as on mobile device resources.

While their original prototypes were developed for the iPhone, they quickly realized they needed the full background processing capability of the BlackBerry (8xxx or 9xxx) to handle social media messaging seriously. Key to their overall design approach was the recognition that, while they are delivering a dedicated client, Twitter itself is a dynamically evolving web page which requires special handling on mobile platforms. To this end they have developed compression algorithms and are working on battery consumption issues. (More details on “SocialScope: Why BlackBerry”will be the subject of a second post.)

SocialScope alpha launched in December 2007; the Ubiquitous team suddenly found they had to limit their alpha subscribers while they dealt with initial scaling and usability issues. Their most important feedback for user interface design came from looking at usage patterns. The most common feedback they obtained was the need for messages to be delivered “immediately”. In response they dealt not only with scaling issues but also latency and connectivity issues.

At the same time they have been developing deeper links into BlackBerry features such as the address book from which one can view a Contact’s most recent Twitter and Facebook updates. When viewing a web page in the BlackBerry browser, a “Send to SocialScope” command is available to insert the web page’s URL into a Twitter Status Update window.

Currently they are working on improving group management, de-duping messages (such that messages sent to multiple accounts only show up once) and deeper integration with Facebook. They also want to add support for showing Twitter “trends” information.

SocialScope is still in closed beta with, apparently, a very long waiting list. However, the wait should not be too long; they expect to release a publicly available version at some time during the summer.

Bottom line: SocialScope sets the bar for all Twitter clients in terms of feature set and performance. It demonstrates that social media messaging and message management is best handled, from a user experience perspective, on a mobile platform. It also demonstrates the importance of having background processing for messaging activities on a mobile handset (did I say their next platform of choice would probably be Android?).

To follow: SocialScope: Why BlackBerry?

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Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading out to San Francisco for eComm 2009. Kudos to organizer Lee Dryburgh, who on his own initiative and at his own personal risk, launched this event last year. Late last week Lee was able to announce that registrations had surpassed last year’s attendance.

Attendees should come away with not only a much better understanding of how this will be a watershed year for telecommunications. The combination of shaky economies, emerging Voice 2.0 offerings and opportunities for more effective personal and business communications is creating a “Perfect Storm” for a watershed year in the communications space. Smartphones, video calling, collaboration services, communications enhanced business processes, communications infrastructure, business models and regulatory issues will all be on the menu. From the eComm press release last week:

Included among the dozen keynote speakers and scores of other presenters over the three days of eComm2009 are:

•    Ge Wang, assistant professor at Stanford University and co-founder, CTO and chief creative officer of Smule.com;
•    Jonathan Christensen, general manager for audio and video at Skype;
•    John Forsyth, vice president of strategy at Symbian;
•    Malcolm Matson, founder of the OPLAN Foundation and entrepreneur;
•    Michael Calabrese, vice president, and Sascha Meinrath, research director, both of the wireless future program at the New America Foundation;
•    Tony Jebara, co-founder and chief scientist at Sense Networks and assistant professor of computer science at Columbia University;
•    Media futurist Gerd Leonhard;
•    Richard Whitt, telecommunications and media counsel for Google in Washington, D.C.;
•    Martin Geddes, head of strategy at BT Design;
•    Benjamin Joffe, founder and CEO of +8*;
•   Mark Rolston, chief creative officer of Frog Design.

Sponsors include Skype, MetaSwitch, NEC Sphere, Voxbone, Global IP Solutions, Voxeo, Jaduka, Ribbit and Broadsoft.

I have already been approached by some companies for interviews (although with full days through to 9 p.m., scheduling interviews may be a challenge) and been made aware of announcements coming from Skype, Voxeo and Jaduka. I’m sure there will be others; it will be a most interesting week.

As Lee says at the end of the press release:

Those wishing to register online may do so at  http://www.amiando.com/ecomm2009.html. For an additional $100, attendees may register on site.

And by entering the promotional code “one touch”, you’ll get a 20% discount courtesy of Voice On The Web.

P.S. – Given that there are many these days in need of social assistance, whether food, shelter or otherwise, Lee has announced that “10% of any profit from the event will be given back to the local community by donating it to the Shelter Network (http://www.shelternetwork.org)”, a Bay Area non-profit undertaking that assists families and individuals with housing issues. Lee has personally guaranteed a minimum $2,000 donation and undertook an interesting social networking experiment to help raise additional funds.

An acquaintance’s selection of BlackBerry Bold, based largely on Twitter message exchanges, has resulted in not only a few informative posts but also an avalanche of almost daily Tweets responding to individuals seeking a recommendation for a smartphone.

When I traveled to IT Expo and Mobilize last September I was in the unique position of having a BlackBerry Bold, following the Rogers Canadian launch but prior to the long-delayed AT&T launch in the U.S. During that trip I showed the Bold to fellow blogger Luca Filigheddu from Italy. I had previously met Luca at eComm 2008 where it was rapidly apparent that he is highly respected, especially in Italy, for both his business acumen and opinions on the emerging communications space. From his About page:

Luca is a recognized expert in the VoIP market. He’s now CEO at Abbeynet, an Italian company which develops technologies and services in the field of IP Communications since 1999. Abbeynet is the company behind services like Chocophone, Abbeyphone, Sitòfono and Hictu!.

As a passionate user of any kind of technology and internet service, he loves gadgets and electronic devices and wants to try out any new cool device that arrives to the market. Luca can be considered an early adopter in any field of technology. In particular, he loves Apple, Nokia phones and his Sony PSP.

And he loves trying new VoIP services out, of course. Luca’s current interests are web-based VoIP services, Web 2.0/VoIP integration and product marketing. In the never-enough spare time, Luca loves martial arts and listening to good music.

He is a very avid Twitterer but only when his Tweets have relevance. Little did I know that showing him the Bold would eventually trigger an avalanche of tweets supporting his decision to acquire a Bold, to be followed by a continuous, almost daily, feed of recommendations to individual Twitterers.

In early November, 2008 His Nokia N95 had died for some reason. Initially he asked on Twitter for input to a decision between the BlackBerry Bold and the iPhone. Unfortunately a Twitter search does not go back that far; however here are some of his posts at the time:

• Business Usage: iPhone 3G or BlackBerry Bold?
• A Bold New Experience
• Why The BlackBerry Bold is Way Better than The iPhone 3G (for business)

and I started observing his recommendations appearing in Twitter, often with the single word “Bold” in response to an @ request. On the right is an early example. Between Luca’s blog posts and the Twitter conversations one can build up the feature set that supported the decision to go with Bold.

• Why Multitasking on Mobile Devices Matters
• He gives a fairly balanced review of four smartphones in Palm Pre, BlackBerry Bold, Android G1, iPhone: What’s best?
• He has become an avid user of SocialScope (full disclosure, so have I): SocialScope, the new Social Networks Aggregator for BlackBerry (Note:  SocialScope is still in alpha as they work out client/server balance, scaling and user interface issues – follow @socialscope for on ongoing dialogue)

• How To Sync your BlackBerry Bold with a Mac (the only solution that REALLY works) Why Google Sync was his sole recommendation.

• David’s Posterous: Why I ditched my iPhone for a BlackBerry Bold.

• Give a New Look to Your BlackBerry: Vista Themes

• How I Achieved an Unbelievable Battery Life on My BlackBerry Bold

Keyboard, multi-tasking, battery life, MMS, cut and paste – eventually Luca covered all the highlights and features of the BlackBerry Bold.

However, just as importantly, Luca’s ongoing dialogue with his Twitter followers and Blog readers provides a great example of the power of social networking as a viral marketing tool. Person-to-person threads, information delivered by a party with no interest in the outcome other than the best interest and satisfaction of his “friends”, a passion for excellence in technology have come together resulting in many sales for a product in a highly competitive market space.

Yes, I have had a Bold for a while; I also have an iPhone. This evening, via an iPhone application with reliable sources, I learned about a 3 cent/litre increase in the price of gasoline tomorrow, went out and filled up my tank to save the cost of a Tim Horton’s coffee and donut. iPhone is a great information delivery platform; BlackBerry has, however, the best line of devices for complete two way personal and business communications. And for some results:

• BlackBerry grabs market share as the iPhone slumps

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• Blackberry vs. iPhone (q-ontech.blogspot.com)
• A BlackBerry That’s Easy on Your Thumbs [The Mossberg Solution] (solution.allthingsd.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A year ago August IBM‘s Lotus Sametime Division announced the acquisition of Skype Partner Webdialogs to obtain their widely respected Unyte Desktop Sharing collaboration technology. About four months later we learned, from Lou Guercia, Lotus SameTime’s Director of Operations and Strategy, more about Unyte’s integration into the Lotus SameTime offerings. In that post on Lou’s presentation I asked:

Question: with IBM pursuing excellence on a service that comprises voice, video, chat and file transfer in a secure, encrypted environment, and with the stated goals of “working with their partners”, would this not result in a situation where IBM would be licensing Skype technology to provide a comprehensive real time multi-media communications infrastructure?

With announcements this week, including some at IBM’s annual Lotusphere 2009 event in Orlando, FL, it seems like that question is starting to get some answers..

Yesterday IBM announced “A Strong Fourth Quarter, a rarity these days“. ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett, in Can IBM sustain its momentum, goes on the provide some background, pointing out that most of IBM’s growth is occuring in its software division. Certainly IBM sees its Lotus Sametime division as a key to sustaining their momentum. Except it appears that IBM has reorganized their SameTime collaborative services into “a cloud-based porfolio of social networking and collaboration services designed for business” under a new name: LotusLive.

In a press release this past Monday, in conjunction with the annual Lotusphere event, Skype announced:

…. it will integrate Skype™ functionality with LotusLive (www.lotuslive.com), IBM’s new cloud services which are designed to help individuals build communities to work smarter, more effectively and more efficiently across and beyond their own companies. Skype’s voice and video calling will add rich, real-time communications capabilities to LotusLive, making it even easier for enterprises to collaborate in the cloud.

At Lotusphere 2009, IBM demonstrated the new Skype integration into LotusLive Engage, “an integrated suite of tools that combines your network [of contacts] with Web conferencing and collaboration capabilities like file storing and sharing, instant messaging and chart creation.”

Today we interviewed Peter Kalmstrom, Skype’s Program Manager for Toolbars, who had been attending Lotusphere to assist with the demonstrations. Peter made several points:

• This announcement covers only the first step of what will be a series of Skype integrations into the LotusLive offerings.
• The integration into LotusLive Engage is targeted at “businesses looking to collaborate inside and outside the organization to easily expand their networks…” In other words for businesses that need to include, say, sub-contractors, third party consultants, suppliers and buyers within their business operation processes.
• Within a LotusLive Engage contact profile, “Skype” fields have been added such that when a user clicks on a a name to bring up a profile card, the user can launch a Skype conversation and transfer files with a single click.
• The only additional requirement for engaging in a Skype conversation is that the initiating user must have a Skype client open.
• In addition to Skype-to-Skype calls, SkypeOut calls can also be made.
• Where several contact profile cards have been opened, a user can launch a Skype multi-party call
• Due to the nature of LotusLive Engage’s web architecture, the resulting Skype access is cross-platform; it does NOT require that the user have a Skype web (FF or IE) toolbar installed.
• A session can then also launch a Lotus Web Meeting (also known as a Lotus SameTime Unyte meeting).

Sounds like the Lotusphere demonstrations got the brainstorming going between Skype and IBM. In a concluding statement Peter said:

“We are enthusiastic about the partnership with IBM and we see a lot of areas where we can collaborate and help each other improve our services. We met with a series of executives at IBM during Lotusphere and the general feeling was highly positive.”

At the same time IBM announced Salesforce.com and LinkedIn integration into their LotusLive services. Andy at VoIP Watch comments on the competitive “collaboration and communications” space where IBM LotusLive, Microsoft Office Live and Google Apps are the key players.

With the IBM offering, we are seeing one more example of “Skype Everywhere”, in this case, being embedded into an offering that is key to IBM’s future success in delivering cloud-based outsourced business services.

Phil will have some comments on the technical aspects of this integration along with where he feels there are “deeper” integration opportunities.

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During our conversations with Skype COO Scott Durchslag last week at CES, Scott outlined Skype’s criteria for its software development going forward.

First was the emphasis on “liquid communications” through statements such as “Skype Whenever, Wherever”. Just as today you can pick up any PC or mobile platform and find all the Google Tools (Search, Maps, News, Reader, etc.) Skype wants to be on virtually any platform or device.

Pick up a smartphone, find the Skype button. Turn on the TV, find a Skype button, have a conversation. Open a web browser; start a Skype session. All this to complement Skype on the desktop. Today, besides on the desktop, you can find Skype on over 200 mobile phone handsets, several (Sony) mobile devices, Skypephone and Apple TV. But Scott emphasized, this is only the beginning. It will only start to get real when we see Skype on higher profile devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry or when we start to see Skype seriously back into the hardware device business with vendors such as Philips and iPevo.

Then Scott outlined four benchmark criteria that every implementation of a Skype on any platform or device must meet:

• High call quality
• Simple and easy user interface
• Consideration for battery life
• Security

Last week’s hotfix upgrade of Skype for Windows 4 beta 3 included the first implementation of Skype’s three year effort to develop the SILK codec, increasing the audio bandwidth to 12 KHz while effectively reducing the Internet bandwidth consumed during a Skype call.

A key reason for Skype’s rapid and widespread adoption has been associated with its ease-of-use. Yet Scott says the Skype conversation user experience needs to be even easier to encourage adoption by a broader user base. Developing a more effective user interface has certainly been a focus of the Skype for Windows 4 beta program. At the Skype CES press conference Scott reported that, in a recent survey of users, 88% preferred the new UI to the previous Skype for Windows 3.8. But I’m still wondering if the Skype for Windows team could take a look at Skype for Mac and implement a “drawer” type interface to manage and select the active conversation. For the longer term evolution of Skype clients hopefully Skype also has a look at Dan York’s post on Skype’s fragmented product strategy.

Battery life on smartphones was a key issue that prevented Truphone, who uses a native VoIP client for calls over WiFi, from launching a native VoIP smartphone client running over 3G networks. Instead they launched Truphone Anywhere that takes advantage of the underlying network 3G GSM voice channel and uses the data channel to set up a call via a server that, in turn, sets up a VoIP client. That voice channel tends to make much less use of the device battery than a constantly compressing/decompressing VoIP client that devours the underlying processor activity. Addressing the battery life issue is a major reason why we see Skype using a similar calling architecture when launching the Skype Lite Java client on over 100 Java-enabled cell phones, including those based on Google Android.

Security is an issue that I’ll leave to Dan York and others who are able to cover this issue more knowledgeably and effectively. Suffice it to say that we would expect security to continue to be a feature of all Skype products, including those that use the mobile voice channel for placing calls from mobile phones.

Two take-aways from these statements:

• Fundamentally we should expect Skype, going forward, to be a provider of real time conversation-enabling software on desktop, web, TV and mobile platforms. To use an old telegraphy term: Full Stop! For instance, rather than developing their own social network, we should expect Skype to seek out agreements with other social network service providers, such as the MySpace agreement. Skype is an enabler of real time conversations; it is not in the community building or social networking business. Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, amongst others have already captured that space and done an excellent job at it.
• These benchmarks also provide a basis not only for deciding what product offerings Skype will develop but also when they are in a position to release a product.

The new Skype executive team is finally starting to set some benchmarks and guidelines against which we can not only measure executed performance but also have a better understanding of where Skype wants to go.

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