Skype Passwords compromised again?

I was just frozen out of my account and had to request a new password from Skype.
This is the second time it has happened to me, and I am thinking that the next time will be the last!
Recently the quality of my Skype calls has been very variable, often unusable. I have been travelling around and using shared internet connections, but I doubt that is the whole story.
I'm also getting a bit pissed off at the exorbitant charges on Skype to European mobiles! Though this has a lot to do with the mobile companies, Skype are not making much effort to reduce prices here, or, perhaps, they are just not passing on their savings?

Also, a passing note, the Share Skype blog has moved, and looks a bit different. Did they stop using Mambo and switch to something else? e.g. Wordpress. There's no indication of what they use, but given the improvement, I would not be surprised if they changed tool.

Hard to swallow

The news that a woman tried to swallow a mobile phone sounds almost as implausible as the event I just witnessed 2 days ago, when my second daughter squeezed out into the world.
God knows what the pain is like, and thank goodness for epidurals!
Looking at the graph of heartbeat and other statistics spewing out of the small medical printing device at 7.00pm, I said to my wife "It doesn't look like it's coming right now, the contractions don't look regular? Are you in a lot of pain?"
"Shut up, .... F*** off!" said my wife, with a look that implied she would be happy to see me swallow the entire printer!

Sometimes you don't need a lot of information to know what's going on...

Our daughter was born at 9:40, and weighed 3kg. My wife appears to have forgiven me! :)

It's cute... but it's WRONG!!!

When I worked as a strategist for a major telco Billing supplier, I frequently had the debate about the impact of IP on the telecom industry. My view then, as now, was that IP innovation was moving far faster than telco and would therefore assume the dominant position pretty soon after 'they' ( the IP guys) decided to go after the telco space.
Telcoland response was, effectively, the Parley protocol. 'Hey, let's allow the IP guys to call functions that make the IP network look like the IN network!'.
Great idea....?! It's cute...but it's WRONG.
Why would any developer in their right mind sacrifice the simplicity and flexibility that allowed them to get this far, just to be chums with the slow-moving, analy-retentive telcoheads, who never managed to do anything interesting to voice communications in 50 years!

It seems that IMS is another stab at providing a sandpit for the IP kids to play in. But it is similarly doomed. (Hands up those of us who would willingly let our parents organise a party for us when we were 21?)
Every service that the telcos provide has a way to be bypassed, and the only way the telcos can prevent it is to restrict access - and I don't believe that is an economically sustainable solution!

The interesting applications will exist outside of the IMS straightjacket, and the more successful networks will avoid the expense of IMS implementation to concentrate on building the best customer access experience.
The whole concept of a Service Delivery Platform, at a technical level, is an anachronism. The SDP will produce a large number of very dull services. It's like Stock, Aitken and Waterman producing music (you can have any tune as long as it goes like this!)

By all means, build a business package to assist the creation of new services, but don't, for god's sake, link it to a set of technical standards that are over-specified and under-implemented (and hugely expensive!).

PS. SAW were rather more successful than IMS will be, because they were populist, rather than autocratic. Where is Rick Astley now??

It's customer-centric and it's coming...

I don't ordinarily post stuff from other blogs verbatim (do I?), but this just had to be elevated to more prominence than it had buried in Doc Searl's recent post

In other ways, however, the differences between customers and consumers remain an academic distinction. For example, airlines and car rental agencies conspire to create an on-line experience that replicates the airport experience in which travelers have been trapped for decades. Ideally, you would like to present your credentials and preferences to a whole market category and have vendors compete for your business. Instead, you're forced to flit from agency to agency like a bee buzzing between flowers, looking for the best car and the best deal.

Recently I talked to the top marketing guy at one of the car rental agencies. When I told him my ambitions for "fully empowered customers" that could engage several agencies at the same time, and that this would be good for his business, he was horrified by the idea. To him, customers were consumers, period. "We're in a tonnage business", he said. He made it clear that his company didn't want to get any more personal than it needed to.

So I think there is undone work here. First, we need to understand what networked--conversational--markets really are. I think they are so different from anything we saw in the vendor-dominated industrial age that we have to all but zero-base our new understanding of them. I also think there must be some original and creative work being done by economists on the subject. In fact, I'm told there is. But I haven't found it yet. So that's a project for this next year.

I hope I've already said this clearly enough in several posts on this blog, but it does seem that there is a mind-shift forming in the blogosphere.

Let's see what happens in 2006...

Oh, and any Ruby gurus who want to spend 6 months in Thailand for very little money, please get in touch! ;)

Web 2.0 in stealth mode

Being in stealth mode myself (or my company anyway), I was ruminating about what I actually meant when I said 'stealth mode'. Seems I'm not the only one who came to the correct conclusion!

By the way, I'll have to tighten up security round here, seems like Martin's read my business plan! Though perhaps I should just stop all these cryptic posts.

The other network

This is not a new idea, I thought about around 4 years ago and I'm sure there were others ahead of me. The thing that puzzles me is why no-one does it!
How many phoneboxes are there in the UK? (there are apparently around 150,000) Where are they? - all over the country, in the kinds of places that people congregate.
With a bit of effort and foresight, they could have another use. Convert them into WiFi hotspots.
Nowadays, a big organisation like BT should be able to get ADSL and toughened WiFi routers for, I would guess, around 300 quid for each box. If 100,000 out of the boxes were converted, that would be around 30 million quid for a national WiFi network!

Then, the killer for BT; give away access! (they could bundle it with your ADSL package but the regulator might have something to say about that!) This just goes against the grain for telcos; "What about the usage! Every usage of 'our pipes' must be compensated!"

The thing is that, in combination with the new economic model, all kinds of new opportunities exist just from knowing that X number of people are logged in to your network in Y location.

So stop complaining about the cost of maintaining the phone boxes and turn them into an asset!
2006 will be the year of the WiFi device; Phones, iPods(?), PSPs, Nokia 770's are already there, and there will be dozens more next year.

Update: Originally written in November but after a few glasses of Christmas wine, I can't remember why I didn't publish (and be damned), so here goes!

When is 'Free' good value?

I had a recent experience in a Bangkok shopping centre which opened my eyes a little wider to the 'How do you improve on Free?' question.
We were buying gifts for Christmas and the shop assistant asked if we would like our presents wrapped for us. 'How much is it', I asked. The service was free, but after handing in our presents and being given a number (seemingly random), we waited...and waited...people came and went, cobwebs formed on one particularly narcoleptic shop assistant, and still nothing came back. Eventually I went up to the counter and asked where our presents were. Much confusion ensued and eventually it was discovered, with some assistance from us, that only 1 of our presents had been wrapped so far. No-one was prepared to complete the job immediately (we had 2 things to be wrapped) so we eventually came away feeling short-changed.
But wait a minute, it was free, wasn't it. Actually, they had wasted 20 minutes or more of our time, and still not given a result that we would be happy with. I felt guilty being angry about a free service, but when it comes down to it, no matter how cheap it is, it has to be good enough, otherwise it will create just as much ill feeling as if it was a paid service.

If the free voice services on the internet do not provide adequate quality for the mass consumer, then they will be upset, regardless of how cheap it is.

'Free' is no defence for poor customer service and poor product quality! Take a look at the comments on the Share Skype blog

Pay-as-you-drive...slowly?

Just as telecom pricing moves towards flat rate charges, the insurance industry comes out with this!
Pay-as-you-drive insurance.
Sign up for the service and your premium will be charged depending on 'when and where you go'. First hundred miles of peak usage FREE!
They didn't mention 'how fast you go', funny, that!
Next we will be having the law enforcement agencies demanding E911 provisions and retention of all driving records for a period of 7 years, plus the ability to tap in to a drive without the driver being aware.

Frequently Asked Questions
4. What do you do with the data you receive from the box?
We have expert partners who are supporting us by transmitting the data over their mobile network and encrypting (securely ''scrambling'') the data before passing it on to Norwich Union.

Golly, those mobile chappies really know their stuff; 'securely scrambling', hmmm

Charity begins with Marketing?

I'm not an overly generous charity giver, but I have a few that I give to on a regular basis.
As we approach Christmas there is a frenzy of activity on the Charity Marketing front, bombarding us with glossy literature and status reports.
It is so bad that when I come back from Thailand, there is about 40% of a large pile of mail that can be attributed to Charity Marketing.
A Medical Research Charity that sends me a newsletter telling me what they are doing!? Well I bloody hope they are doing medical research??? Do they really need to spend 2 quid to tell me?
Third World aid programs. 'We're building wells and schools and educating farmers in sustainable agriculture' - Well, thank god you're not cutting down jungle and investing in chemical plants to manufacture pesticides!? That was keeping me awake at night worrying!

The sheer volume of this 'information' is what astounds me. Who collects up this PR extravaganza? Why? (and I don't mean that flippantly, I mean what is the purpose of collecting it?)

Put the useful information in one place, on the web, and send me an email linking to it! Wells dug, roads built, trees saved, literacy level improved by?

Less people paid on the PR merry-go-round, less trees killed, less delveries of junk mail to my house, and, most importantly, more time spent on helping people who need help!

Going, going, gone

I extracted myself from the UK mobile phone market today in a fit of pique. I have been living in Thailand off and on for the last 3 years and yet still maintained my old account at Orange.
It was good to take with me when travelling, as I could then benefit from the super-value-for-money roaming on my monthly bill. Well, actually I used Skype unless I got really stuck for access. Still, I managed to pay them a few hundred dollars per year, and never used my included minutes or texts.

Yesterday I went online to see if there were any good deals to get a 3G phone. There were no 3G phones available on my upgrade list, and no explanation why not. Ok, I'll pay up my current contract (2 months left) and get a new 3G contract, I naively thought.
No can do, please refer to upgrades if you want to keep your old number. But upgrades has no 3G options!!

Today I went into an Orange Business Centre in London, where they told me I would have to wait until my current contract expired!! Can't I pay it up and get a new contract? No, they couldn't do anthing in the shop with current contracts and I would have to phone customer care on 150.
Sorry, can't help, don't care, it's just the rules, mate. [Perhaps he has a head-up display of my customer information, grabbed by bluetooth from my phone that's telling him I make no calls and generate little revenue; a class D customer, don't waste your time!]

Ok....dial 150, [endless options presented by IVR], get through to cancellations and a real person.
"I'd like to cancel my Orange account",
"What's the number? [duh] You still have 2 months left",
"I will pay the costs of cancellation",
"Ok, I need to transfer you to the cancellations dept", [I thought that was you?]
[irritating music] "Just puttin' you fru now" [more irritating music]
"Hello, I understand you want to cancel your account?"
"Do you want it cancelled immediately?" [Do I want to be cut off as we speak!?]
"No, at the weekend"
"That will be 23.57, we will add it to your final bill"
"Make sure you copy all information from your SIM card, it will be erased on Monday" [Can they do that? Legally, not technically. Any no win, no fee lawyers want to find out??]
"Ok, goodbye!" .... click [ and so endeth a 5 year relationship with Orange ]

At least something's easy at Orange!

WoW, Gold 10 cents a gram!

As real gold breaks through the $500 an ounce barrier, the virtual stuff is getting cheaper, thanks to vast armies of 'gold farmers' in China.
Game playing is being outsourced by wealthy western kids (and adults too!) to companies of professional players in China and other Asian countries. 100 grams of World of Warcraft (WoW) gold is $9.99 on Ebay, apparently.
Games companies are worried that it will distort the games and prevent people having fun. In fact, it is just Economics in action and the games companies are the governments trying to regulate their worlds in order to preserve equality of opportunity in the virtual economy.

So how would a real government prevent the rapid accumulation of wealth by specific individuals?? Tiered taxation.
Expect virtual tax and soup kitchens for down-on-their-luck wizards. Sure you can build a big virtual castle, if you can afford the virtual property tax.

I can't help feeling that we are going to learn a hell of a lot by watching how these MMORPGs are evolving.
It's only a matter of time before people start to realise that they have a very non-virtual contribution to make to the way the real business world operates.

Just please don't create virtual laywers in the games, I really don't think I could stand it!

Sugar and spice...

It's been about 10 days since I got my Nokia 770 and I wanted to give my impressions. Not so much for the device itself, but the market for a WiFi-enabled browser (for that is pretty much the extent of it!).
Is it an additional thing that I use, or does it replace something else? What should it do, and what should other devices in my personal arsenal do?
I have a laptop with 256MB, 40Gb, 1.6GHz Centrino and Wifi (Bluetooth hasn't worked since I updated XP!!), the battery lasts 3 hours on a good day.
I also have a 'smart' phone (GSM) running Windows Mobile, the SPV500, with bluetooth and GPRS.
Various cameras and video recorders find their way into my pockets (!?) and I am covetous of a GPS bluetooth 'dongle'.
The first thing that strikes me is there is a lot of redundancy. My phone is a camera too, and my video camera can take pretty good stills (better than my phone!). My laptop has Wifi, and so does my Nokia 770. Most of the devices have storage (in various formats). Several of them can play MP3 or MPEG.

I like the size and form of my phone, but I hate the functionality of Windows Mobile (I preferred my old SE P800, but it was too big for a phone and too small as a browser/email tool). I love the screen on the 770 but I hate the applications (and where is calendar and alarms!?). I like the storage, keyboard and speed of the laptop, but I hate the battery life and awkwardness of using it.

I'm seeing this problem as similar to the Hi-Fi configurations of old. You could buy a combo system with speakers, amplifier, tuner, deck and cassette built in together, or you could buy the individual components and link them together. Perhaps the average Joe on the street just bought the tower system, pre-integrated, but anyone who was into music bought the NAD amplifier, Mission speakers, Linn deck (and never bothered with cassettes) - N.B. The above list probably shows me up to be a Hi-Fi philistine, but those were the names I remember.

So, what I really want is this component specialisation in my gadget LAN. But it isn't going to work, because the connection between devices sucks! Bluetooth, a protocol dreamt up by the telcos (initially), never does what you want it to do, and the speeds are laughable. Sorry, this device doesn't have the YYY service, or is not set to discoverable, or just does not work because the intelligence in the network is trying to be controlled by separate applications. Hmmm, services, applications, intelligence, where have I heard that before
What we need is just straight TCP/IP between these devices, obviously low power, but NO intelligence, NO services, just IP, all the way, all the time.

This means I need a router/pbx/processing unit, a storage device (NAS), a microphone, speakers/headphones, a screen, a camera/video device and a keyboard/mouse/joystick. They all need to be battery operated and certain functions might be combined together in some configurations (e.g. Router/NAS/PBX)

It's not for everyone, but in HiFi, the margins were higher in separates. Not everyone wants the lowest common denominator.

The Nokia 770 doesn't really fill the niche I want filled, and causes me frustration due to unfulfilled promise (not Nokia's, but of my own making). It's like a Porsche with a VW Beetle engine; looks great, but something's missing in the heart of it.

Christmas snog...

Here's a couple I would really like to see get together over the Christmas period, Level 5 Networks and xG Technologies. Low latency, low power, high range, high capacity, IP networking. It's what Moore wants for Christmas next year...

Unfortunately, it will probably be big, ugly guys and Merchant Bankers who spoil the party!

(with apologies to my US readers!)

No-shit kinda guy...

I have read a lot, over the past few days, about the Ben and Mena affair.
I've made my opinion known in comments, but I have one addition, now that I watched the presentation, the Q&A session did go a bit West-Coast, so I can forgive Ben's outburst on the backchannel for that.

The thing is that Mena's speech, in my opinion, was about the fact that we can't undo the things that we put on the internet (in many cases, at least).
Every blog has it's readers, and the more readers, the bigger chance that the content will spread virally across the net. In many cases, retractions are like the newspapers printing a retraction on page 12; no-one reads it and the collective memory of the blogosphere is that the original comments stand. Searching the web may or may not direct the reader to the original piece, and regardless, there will likely be sufficient copies to diminish the retraction.

The Ben and Mena affair actually goes further to supporting Mena's speech than anything she could possibly have said. The only problem is that she and Ben are the victims of the ill-considered comments.
If someone introduces themselves to you on the web, what's the first thing you do? Google their name! In the case of Ben Metcalfe, what do we see? Out of the first 10 links, 4 of them (including the top 3) relate to the incident with Mena, and several others are not about the BBC Ben at all.
So people will think of Ben as the guy who called Mena's speech bullshit, even though that's not exactly what happened.

I don't think we can proscribe 'civility' on the blogs, but we do need to be more careful and consider ourselves more like journalists. We may not have a large readership, but a raging bushfire can start with a single match.

The thing that makes the blogosphere great; the interlinking of stories and opinion across the world, is also a weakness when misused. Lies, misinformation and personal attacks are propagated just as easily as truth, informed opinion and valid criticism.

People are afraid of that, and it prevents some people from stating opinions that are controversial.
Companies are afraid of blogs for the very same reason. A disgruntled customer or ex-employee can start bushfires that are hard for a company to put out, even if they are innocent of the charges.

If our 'airborne' conversations were recorded, and indexed by Google, would we be more careful what we said? Perhaps the CIA is listening in?

Here's perhaps the most telling example of why it's good to exercise restraint in blogging nasties; the last few IRC log lines from the Les Blogs conference (Ben Metcalfe is dotBen) (I tried to highlight the interesting conversation... :)

17:54 < tara> I've had several people tell me they have really enjoyed reading the back channel onscreen
17:54 < Salim> i think it's great onscreen....  parallel processing the backchannel and the panel is excellent
17:54 < dotBen> I think it was a mistake, to be honest
17:54 < NicoleSimon> nikolajn oh you already back in dk?
17:54 < factoryjoe> NicoleSimon: so... being two-faced?
17:54 < factoryjoe> Salim++
17:54 < dotBen> If I was a speaker, I wouldn't have wanted it projected.
17:55 < tara> dotben: seriously?
17:55 < peterkaminski> NicoleSimon++, for saying it the way she sees it
17:55 < peterkaminski> Mena++, too
17:55 < michel_v> chrisheuer++
17:55 < nikolajn> NicoleSimon: indeed. unfortuantly had to leave already this morning (a 7 am flight out)
17:55 < factoryjoe> totally
17:55 < dotBen> tara yes
17:55 < NicoleSimon> factoryjoe about being not truthful, about being not honest - but demanding it from others in massive amounts.
17:55 < KevinMarks> but as a non-speaker you took ad avantage of it ?
17:55 < Salim> we're all typing while we listen.... no reason not to add one more element...
17:55 < NicoleSimon> nikolajn i'll mail you, i need you ;)
17:55 < factoryjoe> NicoleSimon: that's bs no matter what
17:55 < chrisheuer> read about the impact of the backchannel at the AO Summitt - works for multi-taskers, but not for linear thinkers who get distracted from their linear thoughts
17:55 < chrisheuer> its hard
17:55 < Salim> CH: ++ great point
17:55 < factoryjoe> mm
17:55 < peterkaminski> chrisheuer++
17:56 < factoryjoe> yeah
17:56 < dglazkov> it's competition for the eyeballs
17:56 < factoryjoe> that's what me and peterkaminski were discussing yesterday
17:56 < factoryjoe> i dunno
17:56 < michel_v> chrisheuer: linear thinkers can choose to pay attention only to the presentation at hand, or am I being too naive? :)
17:56 < Salim> are linear thinkers allowed??  haven't the French banned that?
17:56 < cfd> speakers (I did) know about the backchannel.
17:56 < dglazkov> hard to compete with 67 witty jokes /sec
17:56 < factoryjoe> for me this is like listening to NPR and talking to friends about it
17:56 < KevinMarks> the first AO summit we used the backchannel to debunk a speaker who was bulshitting
17:56 < NicoleSimon> the thing at the moment is working because it is not very sharp an much more unnoticable.
17:56 < peterkaminski> there are different kinds of people, and some people it makes happy, and some get overwhelmed
17:56 < factoryjoe> i mean, i got like 3.5 hours of sleep last night
17:56 < surfnode> no the french inventend them
17:56 < factoryjoe> and i haven't napped all day
17:56 < NicoleSimon> peterkaminski everybody here has a laptop or reads over another ones shoulder - great!
17:56 < cfd> somebody logged the two days of backchannel?
17:56 < Salim> The best description I've ever heard of the French:
17:56 < factoryjoe> i can't say that for my backchannel-less college courses that followed a similar format
17:57 < jalonso> the future is here, its just not widely distributed
17:57 < chrisheuer> for a lot of people - we have enough trouble processing the thoughts in our own head, let alone that of the person we are listening to - add in the 67 other people at the same time and./....
17:57 < Salim> "It works in practice... but will it work in theory?"
17:57 < chrisheuer> different strokes for different folks
17:57 < tara> yep
17:57 < peterkaminski> Nicole, but projecting it makes it "official", and reminds people to stay with everybody else
17:57 < dglazkov> backchannel is graffitti
17:57 < factoryjoe> hmm
17:57 < dglazkov> it needs to be on the side screeen
17:57 < factoryjoe> but it also is like "showing our faces"
17:58 < tara> It's added many valuable layers and stories to the presenatations
17:58 < adecarvalho> photo-op
17:58 < chrisheuer> might be interesting to have the people who are multitaskers on one side of the room with the backchannel and others on the opposite side fo the room where they can not see it
17:58 < factoryjoe> flickrtime....go!
17:58 < jemstone> yay loic
17:58 < chrisheuer> but that would defeat the point of inclusiveness
17:58 < cfd> bravo.
17:58 < jemstone> and the team. ta
17:58 < factoryjoe> including the backchannel
17:58 < factoryjoe> oh yes
17:58 < Salim> oh shit...
17:58 < JeffClavier> Can we get the red badges ???
17:58 < peterkaminski> thanks loic! we all learned a lot, i think
17:58 < dotBen> oh shit
17:58 -!- neilmcintosh [n=neilmcin@195.68.195.29] has quit []
17:59 < maartens> I loved that last commetn
17:59 < factoryjoe> vive les blogs
17:59 < maartens> Next week :-)
17:59 < tara> Thanks Loic! Les Blogs rocked!
17:59 < maartens> Can we get an update on
17:59 -!- paolovalde [n=paoloval@81.80.55.12] has quit []
17:59 < maartens> * bandwidth per day
17:59 < maartens> * total storage used
...
17:59 < maartens> oops again
...
17:59 < cfd> who's publishing the log? where?
17:59 < JeffClavier> Loic++++++++++++++++++
...
17:59 < dltq> i will publish my parts of the log at dltq.org
17:59 -!- TonWes [n=chatzill@81.80.55.12] has quit ["of to holland"]
17:59 < dltq> but i miss parts
17:59 < rodrigo_> all sessions up on vpod.tv in multiformat early next week. take care !
...
18:00 < dotBen> I doubt I'll get allowed to come another SixApart event again - so so long!
18:00 < dotBen> :)(

They logged the backchannel?? Oh shit!

Nokia 770 & Anna ;)

The Cafe, Vaci utca 5, not the girl.
If my battery lasts, then tnis will be my first mobile blog entry.
I've discovered that searching for networks is seriously depletary!
Anna Cafe has a great wifi setup and I didn't even have to buy a coffee, though i bought several.
Budapest is overflowing with wifi, although most nets are not completely open. With the right software it would be simple to get in to most.
I would post a picture but my phone's bluetooth is not capable of file transfer??!
Later...

Goulasch, anyone?

I'm off to Budapest for a couple of days, and I'm not taking my laptop with me!!?

This, in fact, did not require a surgical procedure, but rather the acquisition of a bright, shiny, new toy that I couldn't help but unwrap before Christmas!
I received my Nokia 770 last weekend and have been playing with it over the last couple of days.

The screen is great, although I think surgical procedures may be required if I concentrated too long on the miniscule text.

I've added a few of the blogs I read to the Newsreader and should be able to keep up with everything assuming there is Wifi readily available in Budapest (hope it's better than Portugal!)

I'll give an update on how it goes...

Motivational movements

I'm really playing catchup at the moment. There's a lot of things I'd love to comment on out there, but I'm always late.
Anyway, here's my 2 cents on what's happening to Skype, and why, in general, it's not a particularly good idea to buy a small fast-moving company if you are a large, lumbering one.

Small companies get where they are because of the people, and the people come together to give the company a specific atmosphere and culture; a team spirit.
As the company starts to expand and move faster, decisions are made that begin to affect morale.
Skype was probably starting to implode before Ebay took it over, but it would have been a slower fall.

The thing is, big companies can't help messing with their new family member. It's like the unpopular guy at school and the clique of cool guys. He can buy his way in to the clique, but he is never really accepted. Eventually, the clique fragments and reforms elsewhere.
Or another analogy, if your mum decided she was going to play with you and your friends ('now, first we need to put on our aprons!' ??)
I'm sure Rajiv is a nice guy and smart too, but his mummy-quotient is high!

Here's my list of what's wrong with Skype, chronologically: (many of these are complete conjecture, but based on experience of working in a rapidly expanding European company and being taken over by a large, well-meaning American company! ;)

Expansion of London office and hiring of highly paid people to take roles from lowly paid Tallinn people who did them better.

Abandonment of workforce by leaders more intent on selling the company

Sale of the company to large American organisation with very non-European values

Even more fading out of the leaders, now they have their money

Some bitterness in developers at not receiving a 'fair' cut of the monster sale, more because of people from point 1 being highly optioned.

Decision to go for Video and subsequent resource problems compounded by simultaneous sale. (the 'Why am I working 14 hour days for these guys?' syndrome)

Process changes introduced as a result of the takeover, however needed they are (the apron)

'Help' provided in development by Ebays resources stateside, gradual erosion of control of architecture and development.

Loss of key staff who don't like the shift in control, and/or got their money anyway.

Loss of momentum, giving all the problems and niggles so much more friction.

Shift from a 'can-do' company to a 'can't-do' company.

In the end, Niklas and Janus were very successful, perhaps they reached their end-goal. The people who are still working on the product need to reset their end-goals and have a new vision. Merely reacting to the market and working longer hours will only hasten the departure of the key people. (and remember, those that can, leave. What remains?)

Ebay needs to do something radical to retain the key people who really created Skype , otherwise they need to bite the bullet and take full control internally.
Neither will be easy.

In the end, the primary motivation for Skype has already gone. Skype need to recreate that common sense of purpose, and the broad strategic vision for where they are going.
They probably need it to come from inside, and not from an Ebay plant.

Skype, the company, has fundamentally changed. If it wants to retain its leadership position, it needs to take its people with it. I don't rate it's chances.

Enough Four-play, deprecate Quadruple Play

I like Om's term "Four-play" to describe the Voice, Data, Mobile and Video uber-package. (Couldn't it just be Data + Mobility?)
One reason is because a company I know (I won't embarass them by naming their sorry ass), was smugly announcing internally a year or more ago, that they had trademarked the term Quadruple-play.
When that's the main achievement of your marketing department, there has to be a little Schadenfreude when/if the industry adopts another term for your surefire marketing coup!
Please, please, use Four-play instead of Quadruple-play, it's more fun and it'll last longer.
Hey, ********* better run along and trademark 'Five-play'! Surefire winner!

Fon for free? They don't get it...

Om has a post over on his site about Fon. I have been watching it for a while and considered getting involved in Thailand, but it's not really much of a franchise operation (no startup packs and collateral for people helping the movement) and I'm not sure I can spare enough time for it.

I have posted some opinions about the real value behind it, though and reading Oms readers replies, I'm not sure they see the value!

I don't think the aim of Fon is to make money from access to WiFi. They need a hook to get cafes and centrally located organisations on board, because those people are not able to see the long game.
So what if people sign-up to Linuses, instead of paying for network access?? You just extended the Fon network! The key here is penetration and you need to get a lot of penetration before it starts to be compelling.
I see it as being useful for kids who want to move around their neighborhoods with their WiFi enabled gadgets - PSPs, iPods, mobile phones, Nokia 770s.
Perhaps, if enough businesses can be convinced to offer it, then it may become a useful business service, but it will suffer the exact same problems that Joltage did, except now, it doesn't matter if you don't make money from the access, because you can have the 'presence', and Skype showed that that is worth billions...(ahem!)

With the right software, I believe it, but Skype wasn't there yet (and looks like it's off down a blind alley), Fon may get there, but I haven't seen any evidence of a broader understanding on their part. I hope they don't really believe the 'Bills' angle, but they can't really come out and admit it, can they?

To paraphrase the song 'I believe the children are Fon's future, treat them well....and show them all the devices they have with Wifi access'

Neutrality Accelerator?

There has been a lot of debate about Network Neutrality, and I'm coming (fashionably) late to the party. Martin Geddes doesn't buy it, but others believe it is essential that neutrality of a resource as critical (try and live without it nowadays) as the internet. It has mainly been said already, but I wanted to summarise my thoughts and reiterate my view on the 'arms race' effects of Regulation and Licensing.

I tend to agree with Martin (and the rest of the gang, Susan Crawford particularly); attempting to regulate Network Neutrality would be a disaster!
The thing is that the licensing and regulation we have in place now are to protect the investment of telcos that spent heavily to build their infrastructure. The bills in discussion at the moment say as much.
But now it starts to look like the incumbents are poised to exploit their position of power, so we want to add more regulation to balance the cartel-effect created by granting the licenses/monopolies in the first place. This just increases the barriers to entry and reduces the competition!

If we agree that the customer wants Net Neutrality, then removal of licensing, regulation and any other artificial barriers to entry will produce it. If the customer doesn't care about Net Neutrality, then we would just create a very competitive market.

We have been in a situation where regulation and licensing begets more regulation and licensing. An opening up of the system and reduction of rules would ensure that people could choose the kind of access they want.
Interesting aside on E911 is that we don't require houses to have phones (as far as I know), so that implies that choice to refuse E911 already exists?

BellSouth, SBC et al would not be in a position to differentiate services, that the customers actually wanted, because their customers would churn somewhere else. If customers use VPNs, then operators can't tell what the traffic is, and if all VPN traffic is low priority, poeple will move.

If customers want a raw pipe to the internet, with no service differentiation, then government should make it possible for companies to provide it without undue hindrance.

Companies such as xG Technology and LocustWorld
enable communities to build their own networks, effectively recreating the internet as they go.
If the initial reports on xG's system are true, then mesh networks could span continents very cheaply (I am assuming that xG won't break the bank).
Fon is already attempting this with WiFi technology.

The technology is there, and there is a tipping point on the horizon. If the telcos decide to take away the internet from us, we can rebuild it. If the regulations and licensing allow us to.

The Lazy B.....

Just when it was becoming hard to find the time to post to this blog, a few words of encouragement (someone actually does read this!?)
Jeff Pulver listed this blog in the top VoIP blogs of 2005. Shock is about the only way I could describe my reaction.
Thanks for the encouragement, Jeff, I feel humble in such esteemed company!

Wifi access in Portugal - Vodawho?

I've been in Portugal for the last week or so and have had some trials and tribulations getting connected. As I don't want to carry my laptop around with me on the offchance that I hit a Wifi network, I have been looking for places that advertise Wifi connectivity. Nada!
Eventually the hotel I signed into in Sesimbra had some brochures for Vodafone WLAN at reception. Yes, they said, you can browse in reception and in the public bar. Not the rooms? No?!
Anyway, I dutifully sent my SMS which was supposed to be charged at 20 euro for one whole days access (24 hrs?!). The return SMS came back with my userid and password and I eagerly opened up the laptop and selected the Vodafone wifi connection.
'Acquiring Network address....', hmmm
Did I have it configured for fixed IP address? No, nothing. Ok, seems to be a slight problem. I went to reception where it became clear that they had had no training, no access and no tools to assist customers. They volunteered they now hopelessly late information that 'many customers had had problems with the connection'.
Could they phone to Vodafone and check out what the problem was? OK, reluctantly they phoned. No answer.
No willingness to retry. Finally I was forced to make the call on my UK mobile (roaming) at God knows what cost. I go t through to an engineer who attempted to determine if I was a computer idiot. I told them their DHCP wasn't working!
After several minutes of holding they agreed that it wasn't my problem and their network was screwed.
Ok, that's the bad news, the good news was that they phoned me the following day and said they were going to refund my 20 euros. We shall see.
Interestingly, in several other places on my trip I have accessed wifi networks from small WISPs. Bangkok, Vienna, Denmark, UK. In all cases, it worked with no problems.
Why is it that something as simple as Wifi is so difficult for a company the size of Vodafone to deliver??
My guess is that they overcomplicate it. In the case of access, the old adage (slightly modified) is highly appropriate - Keep it simple and stupid!