July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

A brand-new organization composed almost at light speed to oppose the broad surveillance activities of the NSA’s PRISM program is calling on Congress to stop spying on Americans and reveal the full truth.

“The revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights,” the organization’s open letter reads. “We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA’s spying programs.”

PRISM, of course, is the NSA’s big data surveillance program that snags data from massive U.S. Internet and communications companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Apple and other companies accused of participation have denied the allegations – as has the NSA, previously – but those denials seem oddly similar and carefully constructed to truthfully tell a lie.

The 85 participating organizations include well-known companies and organizations such as Reddit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, the Mozilla foundation, the World Wide Web Foundation, and the American Library Association. Concerned citizens who have added their names to the letter so far include author Cory Doctorow and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian.

The signatories believe that PRISM is unconstitutional and therefore illegal, and have set up a website at StopWatching.us to collect more signatures and coalesce support for a political challenge to PRISM.

“This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy,” the organization’s open letter reads. “This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that protect their right to privacy.”

As part of the effort, Mozilla will be setting up Firefox to link directly to the StopWatching.us website from the browser’s start page.

“That means that every time users open a Firefox browser window, they’ll see a message regarding the campaign,” Sina Khanifar, who led the effort to push through cell phone unlocking legislation, told me via email. “They’ve been instrumental in pulling this together, and I’m personally very excited about having millions of eyeballs directed at this message.”

StopWatching.us wants Congress to repeal Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which provides some cloak of legality to the surveillance program, reform the FISA Act, which allows mass surveillance, and amend the state secrets privilege, which prevents the government from being held accountable.

In addition, StopWatching.us is calling on Congress to fully investigate and report on PRISM, and to hold accountable public officials found to be responsible.

“Unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society,” Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet, recently said.”

StopWatching.us will be holding a call today to discuss the new initiative, recent revelations, and a coordinated response.

The organizations that have currently signed the petition include:

• Access
• American Library Association
• Calyx Institute
• Center for Democracy and Technology
• Center for Media Justice
• Centro de Cultura Luiz Freire
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Consumer Watchdog
• Defending Dissent
• Detroit Digital Justice Coalition
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA)
• Fight for the Future
• Free Press
• Freedom of the Press Foundation
• Freedom Works
• Greenpeace USA
• Guardian Project
• Internet Archive
• Learning About Multimedia Project
• Liberty Coalition
• LibrarianShipwreck
• Main Street Project
• Media Alliance
• Media Mobilizing Project
• Mozilla
• National Coalition Against Censorship
• Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation
• Participatory Politics Foundation
• PolitiHacks
• Praxis Project
• Privacy and Access Council of Canada
• Privacy Camp
• Progressive Change Campaign Committee
• Public Knowledge
• R Street Institute
• RevolutionTruth
• Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association
• RootsAction.org
• World Wide Web Foundation

photo credit: laverrue via photopin cc

What do they have to say for themselves?

Reportedly, companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple were secretly helping the FBI and the National Security Agency collect documents, connection logs, photos, videos, emails, and more as part of a massive ongoing surveillance program known as PRISM.

VentureBeat has contacted all those companies to get a statement from them on why they are allegedly participating, what they are reportedly giving to the NSA, and how their customers and users can trust that anything they transmit or share through those services can ever be private.

As we hear back, we’ll update this:

Apple

The first press contact I talked to said they did not know what PRISM was, and then they remembered when I gave more details. The representative referred me to Apple corporate PR, where I have directed an additional query.

The Wall Street Journal published this statement:

“We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”

Apple also said that said that it “has never heard” of PRISM, reportedly.

Facebook

“We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.” In other words, Facebook denies that the FBI and the NSA have a direct connection to its servers.

Google

“Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.” In other words, Google denies the Post‘s PRISM report, too. In an related development, Google lost a battle to deny an FBI request for data last week.

PalTalk

PalTalk has issued a short “no comment.” (In case you were wondering: PalTalk is a video chat community. We hadn’t heard of it, either.)

Microsoft

Via The Verge: “We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis,” adding ” If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data, we don’t participate in it.”

AOL

“We do not have any knowledge of the Prism program. We do not disclose user information to government agencies without a court order, subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers.”

Paltalk

“We have not heard of PRISM. Paltalk exercises extreme care to protect and secure users’ data, only responding to court orders as required to by law. Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to its servers.”

Yahoo

“The notion that Yahoo! gives any federal agency vast or unfettered access to our users’ records is categorically false. Of the hundreds of millions of users we serve, an infinitesimal percentage will ever be the subject of a government data collection directive. Where a request for data is received, we require the government to identify in each instance specific users and a specific lawful purpose for which their information is requested. Then, and only then, do our employees evaluate the request and legal requirements in order to respond—or deny—the request.” In other words, Yahoo, too, says it is not a part of the PRISM program.

Others:

YouTube, which is part of Google, has not responded separately, but we assume Google’s response covers YouTube too. Skype, now part of Microsoft, has not responded to our inquiries.

Image credit: Karl Hab via photopin cc

Strictly speaking, that’s accurate.

Every American who does not use a product or service from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, or Apple might just possibly be safe.

Which means that, in other words, Alexander’s statement looks like a lie.

As we know now, the NSA and FBI allegedly collect, aggregate, and analyze audio, video, photographs, e-mail, documents and connection logs for people using Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, and the other company’s products as part of a surveillance program named PRISM as well as metadata like device and location information via a sister service, BLARNEY. And that pretty much means just about everyone who is actually on anything resembling a grid in America — which is a vast majority of the country, and, for all intents and purposes, all Americans.

This doesn’t even include how many foreigners the NSA’s and FBI’s alleged massive dragnet includes. Given the size of the companies involved, you’d have to think the numbers could run into the billions.

If this report is accurate, this is an international public relations disaster for Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple, who now have to explain to foreign government and citizens how their “private” data with the company has been massively siphoned out of databases and liberally bestowed on one of the most secretive intelligence organizations in America. And they may now possibly respond to foreign governments requests to gain similar access to their data.

But it’s a massive crisis at home as well with constitutional implications on privacy, security, and freedom from surveillance. And it calls into question the NSA’s and FBI’s alleged roles, their capabilities, their mandates, and the legality of this alleged massive data collection project.

When NSA chief Alexander made his I-am-not-a-crook statement, former NSA official Bill Binney said he was playing fast and loose with the truth.

“That’s the kind of word game they play,” Binney said also at Def Con. “There’s absolutely no excuse for him even implying that he’s not collecting all this data.”

And Binney, who helped build the spy-on-Americans capability before quitting, apologized for his role:

“The reason I left the NSA is because they started spying on everybody in the country,” said Binney. “Unfortunately, they took those programs that I built and turned them on you, and I’m sorry for that. I didn’t intend that. But they did that.”

At the time, Alexander seemed to indicate that there might be as many as 260 million Americans in the NSA’s and FBI’s digital files. And that there was no way anyone could analyze that much information:

“Think of that 260 million dossiers, or however many you’d come out [with],” he said. “Let’s see, if you’re trying to maintain those dossiers, I’m not a real good mathematician, but let’s say we have 20,000 people working that. How many files would each of us have to work? I’m not that kind of guy who’s going to work all those files.”

There’s likely some truth there: The mass of data would be overwhelming.

Fortunately for the NSA and FBI, however, automated “big data” analysis is a growing and fruitful field, and the organization is building a 600,000 square foot, $860 million data center in Fort Meade, Md.

After all, what else is technology for? Besides, of course, playing word games.

Related: NSA director Gen. Clapper denied that the agency collects data on Americans, in a hearing last year. See the video below, at the 6:40 mark (hat tip to Nick Bilton for the video link).

Image credit: Meghan Kelly/VentureBeat

[Updated at 6:32 p.m. with response from a senior member of the Obama administration. --Ed.]

The news that Verizon is supplying a wealth of call data to the National Security Agency is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Washington Post reported today that a number of other tech companies are participating in a top secret data mining program for the FBI and NSA, dubbed PRISM.

The companies are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple, according to an “internal presentation” for senior NSA analysts that the Washington Post obtained. Dropbox was next on the list for the feds to tap. The program allegedly enables the feds to gather information from these companies’ servers directly. The data siphoned off includes photos, videos, e-mail, documents, audio files, and connection logs.

In an e-mailed statement to the National Journal, a senior official from the Obama administration said:

The program [PRISM] is subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and Congress. It involves extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.

We’re reaching out to the companies named in the report for comment, but we haven’t heard from all of them yet.

The Post reports that PRISM has existed since 2007, actively collecting information for the last five years. Late Thursday, The Guardian released a secret court order that showed Verizon’s participation in a similar data collection program. Verizon was ordered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court to hand over call information that included the phone numbers of those involved in a phone call, how long the call lasted, when it was made, and potentially even where it occurred.

The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that Sprint and AT&T are also involved in similar surveillance programs, according to its sources. In 2006, Wired published a number of documents from an ex-AT&T employee who claimed the telecommunications provider was involved in “an illegal National Security Agency domestic surveillance program.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) stated in today’s Journal report that, “Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn’t anything that is brand new.”

The White House responded to criticism of its Verizon program, saying it’s necessary to protect the U.S. population from terrorism. It has repeatedly based its right to do such surveillance on its interpretation of the Patriot Act, which gives maintains gives executive branch broad powers to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists. Today, however, the author of the Patriot Act said that the government is going too far.

It now seems that Verizon monitoring just the beginning of a much bigger spying program by U.S. intelligence officers, that the Washington Post reports this has been a critical part of President Barack Obama’s daily briefing.

The ease with which the government can allegedly monitor suspected sources is chilling. “With a few clicks and an affirmation that the subject is believed to be engaged in terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, an analyst obtains full access to Facebook’s ‘extensive search and surveillance capabilities against the variety of online social networking services,’” the Post reports.

“They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the Post quotes a government officer as saying.

It’s quite likely, although the Post report doesn’t address this detail, that the data mining operation is connected with the construction of a massive, $2 billion high-security  datacenter in Utah scheduled to open in September.

The data collected in PRISM makes up for one in seven of NSA intelligence reports, according to the obtained presentation.

See below for a sampling of the NSA slides obtained by the Post.

Image of FBI logo: Federal Bureau of Investigations/Flickr

If you had asked me last week to pick a single device that embodied everything Microsoft was trying to accomplish in 2013 and beyond, I’d instantly point to its Surface tablets. After yesterday’s Xbox One reveal, though, the answer is no longer as clear-cut.

Building on its experience with the original Xbox and Xbox 360 (and to a certain extent, its work on the Windows CE operating system for the Sega Dreamcast), Microsoft has fashioned a powerful gaming system in the Xbox One that will also serve as a media hub for the entire family. The Xbox One can integrate with your TV service, multitask like a computer, and give you instant access to media in the cloud.

It’s more a powerful home theater PC than it is a game console, making it a great tool for bringing Microsoft’s services into your living room. More so than the Xbox 360 — which started out as a simple gaming machine but evolved into an entertainment powerhouse thanks to a slew of regular software updates — the Xbox One is built to take advantage of Microsoft’s web services right from the start.

And it’ll only become more integrated over time.

Skype becomes a living room staple

While rumors have swirled for a while that Skype would eventually head to the Xbox 360, it turns out that the service is actually making its console debut on the Xbox One. You can thank the revamped Kinect sensor for that — it’ll be packed in with every Xbox One, and it also sports a much higher resolution camera than the initial Kinect (which essential for getting decent video from wide living room shots).

It’s not the first time Skype has hit the living room. The video chat app is also available on Google TV devices (with a special Logitech camera) and some smart TVs. But launching on the Xbox One will give Skype its largest living room audience yet, and it’s something no other video chat service will be able to easily match.

You’ll be able to participate in Skype group video chats on the Xbox One, and since the console supports true multitasking, you’ll also be able to jump into video calls while playing a game or watching a video. And of course, the Skype integration will let you easily chat with your friends using Skype on other platforms, like PCs and smartphones.

After two years, it seems like Microsoft’s $8.5 billion Skype acquisition will finally pay off with the Xbox One.

Azure brings console gaming to the cloud

Even though it was a fairly minor bit of the Xbox One’s announcement yesterday, the console’s integration with Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform has far-reaching potential over the next few years. It could be used to scale Microsoft’s Xbox Live service (the company is already adding 300,000 servers to power Live for the Xbox One, while it’s only running on 15,000 servers right now) and store your games and saves. Most intriguingly, Microsoft also mentioned that it could be used for offloading computational tasks to the cloud.

With Azure’s infrastructure, “Xbox Infinity” may have been a better name for the Xbox One.

The promise of cloud computation means that games on the console will only become more complex over time — imagine better in-game physics when you’re connected to the web or seamless loading for maps for massively multiplayer games. Console developers typically manage to eke out better performance from systems as they age, but with Azure’s cloud computing capabilities, Xbox One games could conceivably keep getting better indefinitely. The only limit will be our Internet connections.

Xbox with a touch of Windows

A simplified version of Windows is one of three operating systems powering the Xbox One, which means Microsoft’s new Windows platform now lives on your television in addition to tablets, PCs, and smartphones (Windows Phone 8 has a big chunk of Windows 8′s kernel, the main component of the OS). You can also see a hint of Windows 8′s flat live tiles on the Xbox One’s new interface.

On the Xbox One, Windows powers nongame applications like Skype and Netflix. This means developers can also create new apps easily — potentially with some of the code they’re using for existing Windows 8 apps. The console also runs an Xbox OS for gamers, as well as a hypervisor that lets the the Windows and Xbox sides play nicely together.

Having Windows baked in makes it easier for Microsoft to integrate even more of its services into the Xbox One down the line. It also helps to power the Xbox One’s intriguing multitasking capabilities, a first for a console. While the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 often struggled just to do more than one thing at once, the Xbox One will let you snap apps to the side of the screen just like Windows 8. During Microsoft’s demonstration yesterday, moving between apps on the console was also incredibly fast.

Voice commands have also been greatly improved with the new Kinect, a combination of the Xbox One’s faster processing power and multitasking capabilities. You can command the Xbox One to turn on (which flips on your TV and home theater receiver at the same time) and switch from game to media environments. Instant and accurate voice commands remove the delays it currently takes to navigate the Xbox 360, and it opens the door for even more creative uses of the Xbox One (perhaps as a central hub for home automation, or to remotely give commands to your PC).

I’ve always been intrigued by Microsoft’s initial strategy with Windows 8. Rather than repeat what’s worked with Windows for so long, Microsoft took a radically different route and built an OS that’s optimized for touchscreens. Simply looking at the Surface devices tells you that Microsoft envisions a feature where tablets and laptops merge.

With Windows on the Xbox and Windows Phone 8, it looks like Microsoft’s future isn’t just focused on predicting what computers will look like in 10 years — it’s also attempting to unify its platform on every screen in your life.

What does this mean for Sony?

While Microsoft seems dead-set on showing us the many ways the Xbox One fits into your life with its many services, Sony seems more focused on appealing to gamers with the PlayStation 4. We saw plenty more games during the PlayStation 4′s launch event, and there was also more talk about how its hardware will improve the gaming experience.

I can’t blame Sony for making its pitch to gamers, but Microsoft may have had the better idea by focusing on a more general audience. Microsoft isn’t just targeting gamers — it’s targeting everyone who sits in the living room. And unlike Sony, it has a wealth of services to make that pitch stick.

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According to a test by Ars Technica, Microsoft is intercepting, decrypting, and reading at least some Skype messages — to the point where URLs embedded in Skype chat are being visited by machines at IP addresses belonging to Microsoft … most likely a bot, but potentially a human being.

“And this can only happen,” Ars’ security expert Dan Goodin writes, “If Microsoft can convert the messages into human-readable form at will.”

Skype currently uses 256-bit AES encryption to secure communications between users, which is considered very secure. Secure, perhaps, but not necessarily private. When Ars sent messages via Skype containing four web links created specifically for this experiment, two of them were accessed by a Microsoft-controlled machine.

Skype’s privacy policy openly states that Skype may check instant messages and SMS texts for spam, fraud, or phishing attempts, and, in some cases, have a human being check them. Ergo, we can decrypt our own encryptions and can know what you say and know what you send.

Skype may use automated scanning within Instant Messages and SMS to (a) identify suspected spam and/or (b) identify URLs that have been previously flagged as spam, fraud, or phishing links. In limited instances, Skype may capture and manually review instant messages or SMS in connection with Spam prevention efforts. Skype may, in its sole discretion, block or prevent delivery of suspected Spam, and remove suspicious links from messages.

That’s not good if you have an expectation of and desire for privacy. And now that it’s obvious that Microsoft itself can read your private messages, the question is, who else has that ability?

Almost a year ago, the FBI requested private backdoor access into multiple communication and social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and, yes, Skype. Wiretaps are increasingly useless, the FBI realized, and modern communications were defeating the bureau’s attempts at surveillance. Whether the requested access was ever granted is unclear, but Microsoft has a patent on ways to make it happen.

And Skype’s terms of use also say the company can route your communications to law enforcement agencies:

Skype may disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements, exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims, to protect Skype’s interests, fight against fraud and to enforce our policies or to protect anyone’s rights, property, or safety.

However, if you want more security — and privacy — on Skype, you can have it. You simply have to pre-encrpt any messages (as a Polish professor discovered) and then decrypt them on the receiving end.

I won’t do that, and most Skype users won’t do that, probably because we’re not discussing matters of national security or engaging in nefarious behavior. But it’s disappointing, if only the cold slap of reality in a dangerous and violent world, that private isn’t really private any more.

And it would be nice to know the exact limits of Skype privacy and security.

I have talked to a Microsoft representative about this story and am awaiting a statement or comment from the company.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Blue Jeans unveiled a massive update to its standard pricing today, adding a new licensing model that offers companies unlimited “all you can meet” videoconferencing plans for as low as $10 per user, per month.

And, by the way, kicking some dirt at bitter rival Vidyo.

“A couple of weeks ago we crossed the million minutes-a-week level,” Blue Jeans chief commercial officer Stu Aaron told me yesterday. “We’ve got thousands of paying customers.”

The company has been monitoring usage patterns on its existing payment plans — a minutes-based plan, a per-user plan, and a per-device plan — and is unveiling a new option Aaron thinks is the best one yet. It would appear that Blue Jeans customers agree — a hundred of them have been testing the new plan since November 2012, and they grew their usage of videoconferencing at ten times the rate of other Blue Jeans clients.

The new plan sees participating companies pay one annual fee, plus between $10-50 per month for active users — employees who use Blue Jeans videoconferencing at least once per month.

“It’s a site-license option,” Aaron says. “Everyone gets an account, everyone gets unlimited usage, for an attractive low annual fee. All employees have accounts, but you’re only paying for active users.”

The new pricing model will come in hand when competing with videoconferencing rival Vidyo, whose CEO recently called Blue Jeans out. Vidyo’s quarterly growth in billings was 68 percent, he said, while competitors were flat or down. And, he said, a five-person one-hour call on Blue Jeans costs as much as an all-inclusive, unlimited $30-a-month subscription to Vidyo.

Them’s fighting words, as the saying goes, and Blue Jeans accepted the challenge and knocked off the chip.

“That was not a correct statement,” Aaron told me. “Our customers are typically pay cents-per-minute or tens of dollars per month, and there’s no way anyone has an advantage over those price points.”

In addition, he said, Blue Jeans is growing fast, having reached the 50 million annual minute run rate — even assuming no further growth in 2013 — after just over a year in business. That means, Aaron says, that Blue Jeans is probably a quarter of the entire videoconferencing market.

“There’s 100 billion minutes a year used for audio conferencing, and 200 million minutes a year in video conferencing,” he said. “Since we’ve exceeded the 50 million minutes a year run rate, we’ve grown to 20-25 percent of the market.”

The new plan seems to be a hit.

Not only are existing customers adopting the plan and increasing their use of videoconferencing, 25 percent of Blue Jeans new customers signed up in April were signed up on the all-you-can-meet plan.

That’s impressive, and given Blue Jeans’ ease of use and wide compatibility with a vast array of devices and software (including Cisco, Polycom, Lifesize, Microsoft Lync, Skype, Google Video, WebRTC Browser, and smart mobile devices), it portends well for the company’s future sales as well.

One small caveat before small businesses get too excited: To get the $10/user price point, you need over 10,000 users. Less, and you’ll be somewhere between $10 and $50.

photo credit: iandavid via photopin cc

Originally available only on smartphone platforms like Android, iOS, and others, Viber has added a desktop client that seamlessly interoperates with its mobile apps and now enables video calling for the first time.

The result is a combination of just about every kind of communication you could wish for in a single client: mobile text-like messaging, audio, and video. Which means that not only is Viber competing with mobile messaging platforms like the massive WhatsApp, it’s also competing with existing VOIP giant Skype.

And it’s got a few advantages on both sides.

With its new desktop client, Viber can seamlessly transfer calls between mobile and laptop, handy if you need to get out of the office in the middle of a call. It seamlessly syncs contacts between devices, silently and continuously, and it shows your received and sent messages on all your Viber-equipped devices.

“People spend a substantial amount of time on their smartphones,” Viber CEO Talmon Marco said in a statement. “However, a lot of that usage takes place at home or in the office, where they have laptops or desktops close by. With Viber Desktop you always get to use the most convenient device. You can seamlessly switch devices while messaging and even transfer calls between your mobile and desktop.”

Skype has been the de-facto leader in desktop audio and video communication for years, but its days at the top may be numbered if relatively young upstart Viber continues to grow at its current pace.

The VOIP communications company with its roots in mobile announced today that it has hit the 200 million user mark — startlingly fast growth for the young company which had 140 million users just in December. That’s perhaps not surprising, as the company is growing at mobile speed — it was the ninth most-downloaded app on Google Play as of March, 2013.

In contrast, Skype hasn’t released user numbers in some time, but the company did say it had about 280 million users six months ago, and it has made no secret of its goal: one billion users. It’s worth noting, however, that Skype probably has some user acquisition surprises up its sleeve: It had the third most-downloaded app in Google Play in March, and it recently announced that its users were spending two billion minutes a day on Skype.

On the mobile side, messaging apps such as WhatsApp are killing it, too. WhatsApp was the second most-downloaded app on Google Play, just behind Facebook … and two spots up on Facebook Messenger.

Clearly, messaging is a very, very competitive market.

According to Viber, however, it is “more flexible” than existing VOIP apps (read: Skype) and more convenient than mobile-only platforms. And the company just added eight languages to reach 27 total, to help it expand globally.

photo credit: coreyokada via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Skype’s long-awaited video voicemail feature is finally here.

Skype will begin rolling out video messaging today to its iOS, Android, and Mac apps in the United States, United Kingdom, and a few other countries, a company representative confirmed to VentureBeat this morning. Changes to the chat service’s terms of service in December hinted that video messaging was coming soon.

Skype users will be able to send video messages up to three minutes long. Unfortunately, there’s no word on when video messaging will hit Windows.

A representative of the Microsoft-owned company said: “We’re pleased that there’s interest for Video Messaging to come to Skype for Windows and Skype for Windows 8. We’ll let you know when we expand the service to the platform.”

Video messaging is an important addition for Skype, since it allows for asynchronous video calling. Even if someone isn’t available to pick up a video chat, you can still leave a video message. It’s somewhat shocking that it’s taken Skype so long to roll out the feature, especially given that the company was founded a decade ago. The widespread availability of cloud storage and faster Internet speeds likely made video messaging easier to implement today.

Tango, a competing video chat app that started off on mobile devices, offered video messaging over a year ago.

Additionally, Skype has revealed it will begin transitioning Windows Live Messenger users over to its service beginning April 8 (the move was originally slated for March). Microsoft announced in November that it would be joining the two chat services.

Given Skype’s more than 280 million users and purchase price of $8.5 billion, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is focusing on the service as its core messaging platform going forward.

Wojciech Mazurczyk (10 points if you can pronounce that name) has found a way to hide data in the 70-bit packets that Skype sends by default when it’s detecting silence … when you’re not talking. Skype itself does nothing with these packets when it receives them, but Mazurczyk’s team has discovered a way to intercept and decode them anyway, according to New Scientist.

An even higher level of secrecy might seem like overkill for an already-encrypted call, but Skype is owned by Microsoft, and we know that 3-letter American government agencies want the ability to monitor your digital communications on Skype and social networks … and have asked Microsoft, Facebook, and others for backdoors in their communications technologies.

Microsoft does have a patent application in process called “Legal Intercept” that enables the ability to record “any kind of voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) communications” by re-routing messages over “a path that includes a recording agent.”

It’s unclear at this point whether law enforcement agencies are actually intercepting and listening to Skype conversations, but the Skype privacy policy does seem to allow for it, including the actual “content of instant messaging communications, voicemails, and video messages” in a long list of data that Skype collects on its users.

And this clause basically says that what you do or say on Skype could be disclosed and, I suppose, used against you in a court of law for basically any reason, including the fairly nebulous “protecting Skype’s interests:”

Skype may disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements, exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims, to protect Skype’s interests, fight against fraud and to enforce our policies or to protect anyone’s rights, property, or safety.

All of which goes to show why security researchers might be tempted to find ways to use probably the most popular VoIP app on the planet without airing their private conversations for anyone in law enforcement to enjoy.

A Microsoft representative I contacted for comment could not speak about this issue immediately (it is, after all, the weekend). A Skype representative, similarly, is conferring with the company’s chief security officer, who is based in the UK, before commenting.

Mazurczyk will be presenting his team’s work and findings at a steganography conference this summer in France.

photo credit: Chris Pirillo via photopin cc, Vince Welter via photopin cc

But Vancouver-based Perch has a different idea … one in which video communication is a normal, background constant. No starting and stopping an app, no “phoning” and connecting to another person or group of people, no required synchronicity. Instead, just simple video communication, always available.

It’s kind of like a tiny video-oriented social network, with Facebook’s 2011 “frictionless sharing” concept brought to life. Except only with people you really, really care about.

“I’m a dad, and I work a lot since I’m in a startup,” Perch CEO Danny Robinson told me last week. “My kids are 11 and 8 … the oldest has a phone and can text, email, or IM me, but when she really wants to talk to me, her first choice is to use Perch. It’s completely frictionless, there’s no barrier — you walk up to it, you say what you want to say.”

Perch is an iPhone app — soon to be Android too — that connects any number of people in a family or a company. The app is designed to be left running, full-time, on an older device positioned (dare I say perched) anywhere you want to enable communication. Someone who wants to communicate simply steps up to the device and waves, speaks, or otherwise communicates, and a message is sent to everyone who is connected in the same Perch group.

When they get the message, they simply view the video, and, if they choose, send one back.

In Moments mode, Perch simply records and shares video whenever it senses motion, adding sound whenever its facial recognition sensors detect a face.

This works for families, and it also works for companies, Robinson says, adding that Perch uses its own service almost exclusively for internal communications. For example, here’s Emma, Robinson’s daughter, showing him a report card via a Perch-equipped phone just inside the family’s front door:

“We leave it running all the time in the kitchen or at the front door,” Robinson said. “It’s perfect to see the little moments — I know they’re at home and feel a sense of security … everything’s OK.”

This is not Robinson’s first time around the block. He started Spinway, raising $100 million in 1999 and growing it to the second-largest ISP in the U.S. after AOL before selling it to United Online. Perch is his latest startup, and he’s just raised a $1 million seed round from Zack Lebow and Michael Peroni, two of the founder of Barracuda Networks, as well as geeks-on-a-plane and lean startup guru Dan Martell, with Mike Edwards, one of Vancouver’s super-angels.

One thing is clear: Perch is an idea and a vision, not just an app.

Robinson’s very aware of the fact that communications is a trillion-dollar industry, and seems to have several related products and services up his sleeve, though he’s currently coy about the details. Certain Android is in the very near future (the company has a job opening for an Android developer) and Amazon’s Kindle is a very tempting platform.

“We have a very well-thought out business model,” he told me. “We’re not an Instagram trying to figure it out after the fact, but we are just trying to keep a lid on that right now.”

Coming features include private messages to specific people — currently all group communications are available in a family or company conversation view, and options about how long Perch archives your video messages.

For now, the service is completely free.

Perch works on iPhone 4 and up and the iPod Touch 4 as well as more recent versions. Older iPhones and iPod Touches lack the horsepower for onboard face recognition and some of the other more challenging things that Perch does.

One thing that should reduce the creepy factor for anyone who’s worried: Perch automatically disables the back camera. This is not a tool for spying, Robinson is at pains to highlight.

“We don’t want you to hide this behind a teddy bear. This is designed to be open … everyone knows it’s there.”

Image credits: Perch

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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The Nintendo Wii U video game console is now hitting homes everywhere gamers who must have the newest new thing out — and it’s coming with high quality video-conferencing technology built-in. That technology, I learned last week, is actually the basis for a content delivery platform that its provider thinks is a billion-dollar opportunity.

Until now, it’s been a mystery who was providing the video-conferencing technology in the Wii U. It turns out that Vidyo, the same company that powers Google Hangouts, helped Nintendo deliver living-room teleconferencing.

Vidyo is “disrupting” business-to-business video conferencing with a fairly radical price point — free — and is now looking to expand its reach in business-to-consumer, via the living room.

“We’re trying to bring video-conferencing to the world,” Vidyo chief executive Ofer Shapiro told me last week. “We want to carry it to the masses.”

That’s not because Vidyo wants to display Skype for simple person-to-person video communication. Rather, it’s because it sees a whole new consumer platform based on simple, high-quality, living-room teleconferencing capability.

“Imagine the yoga teacher doing online yoga to 50 people,” Shapiro said. “Think about an audience of 100 million people … for instance buying a subscription for an online Zumba class.”

People have that capability now, Shapiro admits, on devices such as laptops, tablets, and netbooks. But when it’s in the living room, on the big screen, it’s different, he argues. Different enough to create a new way for content creators, teachers, coaches, speakers, and others find and build an audience for live video content.

“The big screen,” he told me,” is more social. You can move around … certain things are better in that environment. Also some people are still more fearful of computers — this reduces the barrier. It’s a market expansion.”

The first uses of Vidyo’s technology, of course, are the in-game experiences and the video chat built into Nintendo’s Miiverse. It’s a software-based solution that runs on Wii OS and does not require any special hardware, Vidyo’s senior VP Amnon Gavish, told me.

Gavish would not reveal the quality of the Wii U’s video-conferencing technology, saying only that it is “excellent, but not trying to have the same quality as a professional system.”

With this deal, Vidyo now has more than 25 partners including Google, NTT, Philips, and others who are bringing its technology to market. Most of those are revenue-share deals focuses on expanding the market for video-based conferencing. Now with Nintendo, Vidyo has a unique opportunity to hit the mainstream — and the living room — at the same time.

That all depends, however, on whether the Wii U is a market success or not.

Confirming rumors we heard yesterday, Microsoft has confirmed that it will shut down Windows Messenger Live and migrate almost all of its users to Skype, the company announced in a blog post.

Messenger service will be cut off in the first quarter of 2013 for all users around the world, expect for those in mainland China. Tony Bates, President of the Microsoft’s Skype division, writes:

We’ve got good news to share! Skype and Messenger are coming together. Millions of Messenger users will be able to reach their Messenger friends on Skype. By updating to Skype, Messenger users can instant message and video call their Messenger friends.

This effort started with the release of Skype 6.0 for Mac and Windows a few weeks ago, which allows you to sign into Skype using a Microsoft account. Now Messenger users just need to update to the latest version of Skype, sign in using a Microsoft account, and their Messenger contacts will be there.

Our goal remains to deliver the best communications experience for everyone, everywhere. We want to focus our efforts on making things simpler for our users while continuously improving the overall experience. We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 (with the exception of mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available).

Microsoft has provided instructions in the blog post on how to migrate your Messenger contacts over to Skype. If you already have accounts for both Skype and Messenger, you can merge your accounts together into one Microsoft account.

Photo credit: Microsoft

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Here’s one that we should have seen coming.

The Verge is reporting that Microsoft may soon shutter Windows Live Messenger in favor of Skype, which would take over as the company’s primary instant messaging software.

When Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion last year, one of the big questions was how the service would integrate with  existing messaging services like Windows Live Messenger and the enterprise-focused Lync. By shuttering Live Messenger, Microsoft is finally giving us an answer.

While the news may come as a surprise for Live Messenger users, it’s actually been in the cards for a while now, as Microsoft already lets users merge their Skype and Windows Live Messenger accounts.

What’s notable about the news is that while Windows Live Messenger is folding into Skype, it’s the former that has the vastly greater market share among instant messaging clients.

As of this June, Windows Messenger controlled over 60 percent of the market, according to software company OPSWAT. Skype’s market share, meanwhile, hovered around 18 percent.

But while Windows Live Messenger has the market share, Skype some big features: video chat and, more significantly, hugely recognizable branding. Together, the two programs give Microsoft control over nearly 80 percent of the instant messenger market, which is why it’s not surprising the company aims to merge them.

But what does Microsoft have to say about the rumors? Absolutely nothing. “Microsoft makes it a practice to not comment on rumors or speculation,” a company spokesperson said.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft executive Joe Belfiore showed off the company’s latest mobile operating system, Windows Phone 8, in front of a friendly audience at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium today. He was joined briefly by actress Jessica Alba and, at the end of the event, by Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, who hawked some of the latest phones and carriers with Windows Phone 8 devices.

Microsoft has been planning this rollout for a long time, and most of its major features are already well-known. But the company surprised us with a handful of cool new features.

Customizable lock screen

Windows has had customizable “live tiles” since Windows Phone 7, which can deliver snippets of custom data, such as calendar appointments and Facebook photos, directly to an app’s tile on your phone’s home screen. Now the company extends that customization to the phone’s lock screen too. Result: If an app supports it, you can customize your lock screen with information from that app. For example, in the new Facebook app for Windows Phone 8, you can have your lock screen display the latest photos from your friends.

Skype

Skype will be deeply integrated into Windows Phone 8, Belfiore promised. For instance, you’ll be able to receive chat notifications and Skype calls even when you don’t have the app open. The incoming Skype call screen looks similar to the one for regular phone calls, and you can even use the phone’s call-waiting features to switch between Skype and regular calls.

Pandora

Pandora has been one of the most glaring absences from the array of Windows Phone apps. Microsoft knows it needs to play catch up, fast. Getting Pandora onto Windows Phone 8 was a real coup — and as a bonus, Windows Phone Pandora will offer one year of cost-free, advertising-free music. It won’t be available until early 2013, however.

Kid’s Corner

Do your kids like to borrow your phone so they can play Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds? Mine too. The new Kid’s Corner feature lets you set up a special login screen just for your kids. It’s got larger, more colorful app tiles, and you can specify which apps, games, music, and videos show up there. To show off the feature, Belfiore’s three kids came onto the stage for one of the cutest tech demonstrations in the history of San Francisco tech demos. His five-year-old daughter bypassed the Kid’s Corner immediately and went straight to the regular homescreen — oops! But once she got to the right screen, she found Fruit Ninja right away.

“I love kid’s corner. I think it’s awesome,” said actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba, who came onstage briefly to wow the roomful of mostly male nerds and to talk about how much she likes Windows Phone.

Data Sense

Windows Phone now includes a feature that compresses web page data while you’re browsing to make sure you don’t overuse your wireless data allotment. Belfiore said this will enable 45% more web browsing with the same amount of data. Data Sense also helps you find local Wi-Fi hotspots on a map and automatically switches you over to Wi-Fi whenever possible. In addition, when you get close to your carrier-imposed cap, you can have it restrict background data downloads to help you eke out an extra few days.

Rooms

Microsoft added a new feature to its People hub: The ability to create “Rooms” for groups of people. Rooms are collections of people, but also include a shared, private messaging string; a shared calendar; and shared notes. You can share calendars with iPhone users, but other features are WP8-only.

Voice notes in OneNote

Windows Phone’s note-taking application, OneNote, now includes a handy voice transcription tool. From anywhere in the OS, press and hold the Start button and say the word “Note.” It will record your voice, transcribe the audio to text, and save both to Skydrive.

Skydrive integration

Skydrive, Microsoft’s cloud-based storage service, is well-integrated into Windows Phone, just as it is in Windows 8. That means you can easily store photos, documents, and other data on your phone and access it from a PC or Windows 8 tablet (or vice versa). Skydrive automatically stores all photos you take indefinitely — unlike the 30-day limit that Apple’s iCloud imposes.

Xbox Music

Although Microsoft had announced it earlier, this is a cool feature worth highlighting: Windows Phone 8 can access all your music via the company’s Xbox Music service. Belfiore said Xbox Music now includes a library of 30 million tracks, any of which you can listen to from your phone or Windows 8 PC or tablet — or your Xbox.

“No other phone works this seamlessly across your phone, your PC, and your home entertainment system,” Belfiore said.

Photo: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Microsoft has brought video-calling king Skype to the new Windows 8 OS, which hits stores Friday, and it sure looks pretty.

Skype on Windows 8 offers all the trappings you’d expect from the well-known app but folds them into a modern design. The full-screen app opens up and shows you people you can connect with and recent chat messages. Ideally, this makes the experience simple.

Like previous incarnations, the app will run in the background so you can receive voice and video calls even if you’re inside another app. The app also has a “live tile” on the Windows 8 Start screen that can tell you about missed calls and new messages.

Skype will also be integrated with the Windows 8 People app. The People app is a “cloud-connected address book,” and if you login to Skype with a Microsoft account, all your Skype contacts appear in the People app. Once you do this, you can pin important people to your Windows 8 Start screen and call them via Skype in a click or two.

“The team at Skype has been building on the Windows platform since the first release of Skype,” Skype chief development officer Mark Gillett wrote in a blog post. “With Skype for Windows 8 we’ve focused on how people are using Skype today and re-imagined Skype for everyday communications across our global community.”

Skype for Windows 8 will be available on Windows 8 launch day, Oct. 26. Check out these screenshots and video below to see more views of the new app.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Even under new management, Skype has continued to pick up millions of fresh users. Today, Microsoft revealed that its voice-over-IP tool for video calls and chats, purchased for $8.5 billion last year, now has well over 280 million users.

The new number was included in Microsoft’s first quarter fiscal year 2013 earnings report. The Redmond company’s web and mobile software purchase has added more than 30 million users since late May. Microsoft, however, did not break out revenue generated from Skype in its earnings report.

In a call with analysts and media, Microsoft added that it counted 120 billion minutes of Skype calls in the quarter, which represents a year-over-year increase of 58 percent.

Since purchasing Skype, Microsoft has pushed to get it onto more platforms such as its own Xbox 360 console, Windows Phone mobile operating system, and new Windows 8 OS. Skype has also released upgraded applications for competing platforms such as Mac and iOS, thanks in part to the division maintaining its autonomy inside the corporate giant.

Despite Skype’s continued growth, there’s still little evidence to suggest that the buy was a wise one — yet. But as the company makes the Skype application more ubiquitous, it will have an opportunity to reach, and sell ads to, a larger base of consumers, some who may otherwise avoid Microsoft-branded services. And the company needs a hit or two with Windows revenue down 33 percent year-over-year.

Below is a video demonstration of Skype on Windows Phone 8.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Skype-calling-on-your-TV startup Tely Labs has raised $13 million in new funding from Comcast Ventures and DCM, according to a new filing with the SEC.

Tely Labs offers a $249 TelyHD system for making Skype calls on televisions. The product plugs directly into a TV’s HDMI port, and the service doesn’t have a monthly fee. If you’re chatting with someone who also has a TelyHD system, you can share photos during a call and send/receive video mail.

The filing indicates that the company has completed $13 million of a $15 million first round of funding. Other directors listed on the filing include Louis Toth, a managing director at Comcast Ventures, and Jason Krikorian, the general partner at DCM. The fact that these two are listed strongly suggests that these two firms have led the round.

CEO Sreekanth Ravi told me the company would not comment outside of what was listed on the filing.

Ravi and his brother, Sudhakar, cofounded two successful startups before Tely Labs: SonicWall and Code Green Networks. Dell purchased SonicWall earlier this year.

The Ravis founded the Menlo Park, Calif.-based Tely Labs in 2010 and began offering its TelyHD system at the beginning of 2012.

Editor’s note: Ravi asked us to withhold this story, despite the fact that the funding is already public record. When we published the story, Ravi emailed to say, “By writing this story, despite telling me that you’d hold off until our formal announcement a few weeks from now, you got some key details wrong….ooops.”

Since this story is based on the SEC filing, our assumption is that the filing is inaccurate. We’re awaiting a clarification from Tely Labs.

Photo credit: Tely Labs

Microsoft is apparently getting ready to launch a new version of Skype that’s been optimized for the company’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.

Windows blog Neowin managed to get its hands on the new app today, which is clearly marked as a preview version. As you can see from the screenshot above, the app features the familiar Windows 8 user interface tiles, which seems like a good fit — especially for anyone primarily using the fugly Skype desktop app for Mac like myself.

After signing in, your most recent activity pops up in a column on the left side of the screen, followed by a favorite contacts/numbers/chat rooms column and a block of Skype users currently online. All the text within the app is larger than what most people are probably used to, but not so much that it’s intrusive.

Neowin said it found the new Skype app to be very polished, with no crashes or clarity issues during video or audio calls. With the launch of Windows 8 just around the corner, as well as the newly released Windows 8 RTM 90-free trial, I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft started rolling its shiny new version of Skype out to users for a public beta testing soon. (And if you’re jonesin’ for the best apps that are already released, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s top 10 killer Windows 8 apps feature.)

We’re reaching out to Skype and Microsoft for more information about the Windows 8 app and will update the post with any new information.

But that’s not fast enough for Vidyo, the company that Google tapped for the technology behind Google+ Hangouts.

To accelerate growth of the videoconferencing industry — and grab share from market leaders like Cisco and Polycom – Vidyo is employing the traditional web nuclear weapon: free.

“We want to transform business-to-business video,” Vidyo senior vice-president Marty Hollander told VentureBeat. “Everything from high quality and high cost to free web-based services.”

In a complicated world that includes everything from six-figure telepresence systems that use dedicated hardlinked network connections to Internet-based services such as Blue Jeans Network (see our recent coverage) to a couple of colleagues hooking up via Skype, Vidyo wanted to build a system for connectivity that everyone can use, said Hollander.

Source: John Koetsier

Videoconferencing: my screenshot of Vidyo’s feed

A director of product led me through a demo of the new product, called VidyoWay: I connected via my Mac, and he jumped in via an iPad.

Then he pulled in colleagues on competing enterprise videoconferencing platforms: Microsoft  Lync, Logitech’s LifeSize, a Polycom system, and perhaps another.

The system auto-detected my crappy Wi-Fi, and sent me a feed my feeble access point could handle. Still, I received a pretty good-looking 720P picture: baby HD, maybe, but still HD.

But others received a better experience, and that’s due to what Vidyo thinks is one of its major competitive advantages: no transcoding.

“Everyone gets the best experience their network can deliver,” Hollander told me. “All those people who are using legacy clients are transcoding.”

Transcoding is a four-letter word in the video industry. It degrades video quality and adds latency as CPUs struggle to decode video in one format, re-encode in another format, and re-send out to participants … all in real-time.

“It’s not a good experience,” Hollander opines. “Vidyo is multi-stream capable, so there’s no transcoding.”

That’s interesting enough in and of itself. But Vidyo wants to grow, and to grow fast. So the company upped the ante, and decided to offer the service to end users for free. Users — such as myself — don’t need a Vidyo service plan or system. Instead, it’s as free to join as any audio-conferencing service … which was exactly the company’s inspiration.

“We’re offering the free 1-800 dial tone for video for anyone to connect,” says Hollander.

The company expects people to fall in love with the quality and the ease-of-use, which is a significant upgrade on legacy systems. (The press release says Vidyo has an “executive-friendly” user interface, which I am, perhaps uncharitably, interpreting as code for technically deficient. I’m sure Videoconferencing for Dummies is coming soon.)

Source: Flickr

Another mode of telepresence

Hollander says that providing the service for free is cheaper marketing than Google AdWords, with the added benefit that the company will get to see who the heavy users are. Essentially, its another freemium model in which the company will upsell a fraction of the users to even better and richer products.

The one question in my mind: Blue Jeans Network. I tried that service just recently, connecting via just a web browser with others on a variety of systems. No downloads, no installs.

For Vidyo, I had to install a local client. There’s no question, the quality was better. But for a freemium service, a no-install signup is definitely preferable.

(Note: if you already have an enterprise video conferencing solution, VidyoWay does not require any client download or installation.)

The answer, I suppose, lies in the target market. Vidyo’s aiming squarely at the enterprise market with a high-quality experience for everyone on different platforms that’s orders of magnitude easier than existing interoperability solutions.

In that market, the company has a good chance of shaking up market leaders Cisco and Polycom with a cheaper and — just as or more importantly — platform-agnostic business model.

Check out the system in this video:

Image credits: Vala Vella/Flickr, MightyOhm/Flickr, HolBox/ShutterStock

In November 2010 Skype updated its Mac client and Skype went from a messaging tool that took up a corner of your screen to a communications juggernaut that demanded virtually your entire monitor. To be sure, I was not just feeling sentimental, I recently re-downloaded Skype 2.8 from Old Apps. Installing this two-year old software was a liberating experience.

Here was Skype 2.8 for Mac

Notice how slim the Skype window was when the user was not actively Skyping? Having Skype active and visible on the desktop was not a hardship — in fact, it was common. And when you were actively Skyping, the drawer at right kept all your chats well organized and accessible. If you only had one chat going, you could hide the drawer.

The point? Skype 2.8 was a very Mac-like application that respected your screenspace.

Skype 5 changed all of that.

In January of 2011, Skype released a new version that was intended to bring the Mac client into feature parity with the Windows version. One of the causalities in that endeavour was any semblance of sensibility with reference to software version numbers. The other was the user’s desktop real estate.

Here was Skype 5 for Mac

Godzilla on an LCD screen it may not have been, but it was LARGE. And suddenly, everything was joined together in one big window that could not be resized.

Mac users who tried the beta versions told the company about the problems, but when the final 5.o version was actually released and had no significant size reductions, they went ballistic. Almost 400 people commented on the Skype blog post announcing the new version, and they were not gentle:

The GUI is completely unusable

…

So great, instead of 500% now the window and contacts are just 450% too large.

…

I’m staying with 2.8, thank you very much …

…

The interface is still hideously bloated and unusable.

…

The smallest window size takes up more than 33% of my screen real estate. Version 2.8 takes up a fraction of the screen and is much more intuitive to use.

Through a few more minor updates the user interface remained largely unchanged. Until Skype 5.8, released yesterday, which the company’s blog post indicates was aimed at these very complaints, saying “your contact list just got slimmer,” and “you’ve been very vocal about the revamped full-screen user interface which we introduced in Skype 5.0.”

Well, 5.8 brings back a few things that Mac users have been longing for two long years.

Here’s Skype 5.8 for Mac

Two things are immediately apparent.

One, you can separate the contacts monitor from the main Skype window, and two, you can make the main Skype window considerably smaller than in the previous version. Both are major steps back towards the user interface that Mac Skype users knew and loved in version 2.8.

Some might argue (OK, I would argue) that the Skype user interface circa 2012 still doesn’t come close to approximating the elegance and simplicity of a two-year-old version. But there’s no denying that it’s gotten better. And, that the people have won.

All hail democracy.

Image credits: Disruptive Telephony, ShutterStock

A 30-second call using Skype in Ethiopia can land you a 15-year prison sentence, thanks to new legislation passed by the country’s government.

The new legislation will criminalize the use of all Voice Over IP (VoIP) services, such as Skype or Google Voice, from within the country, according to an Al Jazeera report. The legislation, which was voted into law last month with little notice from international media, seems to close a loophole that was allowing some of its citizens to communicate without being monitored by authorities.

The country’s sole communication infrastructure is operated by government-run telecom Ethio Teleco. The new legislation empowers the state-owned telecom to prohibit the use not only of VoIP services, but also of video chatting, social media, e-mail, and any other data transfer service capable of communicating information. So that encompass pretty much all communication except for speaking aloud and talking within your own mind.

The law also gives the government the right to inspect any imported voice communication equipment as well as the power to ban any inbound packages that don’t have prior permission from the state, according to the Al Jazeera report.

Anyone in the country who uses an illegal phone service will face up to 15 years in jail and heavy fines. Making a phone call over the Internet is punishable by 3 to 8 years in prison plus fines. Ethio Teleco also recently installed a  system for blocking access to the Tor network that users browse anonymously and access blocked websites, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Ethiopian authorities claim the drastic measures called for under the new law are necessary to protect against security threats. However, African Review notes that observers are saying the law is instead aimed at limiting freedom of expression and the flow of information between the nation’s 85 million people.

Via TechCrunch

Microsoft still doesn’t have much to show for its $8.5 billion Skype acquisition — except for a lackluster Windows Phone app — but Tony Bates, the former Skype CEO and now president of Microsoft’s Skype division, has at least managed to keep his ship independent of the software giant.

“We’ve kept our identity and our autonomy,” Bates told the New York Times in an interview.

How so? He’s based out of Silicon Valley (Skype also has offices all over the world); he demanded Skype-specific ID cards for his employees, instead of Microsoft cards; and perhaps most daring, he uses a MacBook Air in his office.

Skype now has nearly 250 million users, a 26 percent jump over the past seven months, the NYT reports.

Bates’ demand for freedom is understandable — Microsoft has been known to kill innovation as it absorbs interesting products into its Borg-like corporate culture. But it’s also dangerous, since Skype’s true value to Microsoft is the promise of deep integration across all of its many services. Skype is still working on bringing its service to the Xbox 360 (though that likely won’t happen this year), and Microsoft’s business-oriented Lync product, among other Microsoft services.

It may be tough to see now, but once Microsoft and Skype figure out a way to work together, the video chat service could end up being an even more powerful and ubiquitous force in our homes. Integration in the Xbox 360 will bring Skype to the living room, and it’s already available on most smartphones and tablets. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft pushes Skype as a standalone service as well, perhaps with more Skype handsets (which could potentially be powered by Windows Phone).

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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One of the good things to come out of MTV before devolving into a cable network of crappy reality TV shows is 120 Minutes host Matt Pinfield — a man who knows his music as well as he knows the music industry.

“New technology is taking music, the music business, and artists in all different directions,” Pinfield said in a recent interview with VentureBeat. “People used to be so resistant to it.”

The former Columbia Records VP said he remembers that for a long time that music labels were thinking tech would just go away, which obviously hasn’t happened. Today there are a number of streaming music and discovery services such as Pandora, MOG, Rdio, Shazam, Songza, and of course Spotify, which is leading the pack with 3 million paying subscribers.

“Sharing (music online) is going to happen no matter what,” Pinfield said. “Once you’ve let the digital genie out of the bottle, that’s just the way things go. It’s going to keep evolving.”

Pinfield said he’s noticing more bands using things like Skype’s group video chat feature to collaborate regardless of location, thus allowing them to write songs and brainstorm in a way that wasn’t really possible in the past. Things like this are what led him to his latest project.

Pinfield is teaming up with Skype on a new promotional contest, Say it with Skype. Emerging bands can upload a song or music video to be judged by Pinfield, Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, and Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, all of whom will subsequently act as mentors to the winning band. The winners also get an all expenses paid recording session.

“It’s hard enough for bands to get a leg up these days because of shows like American Idol, The Voice, Duets that are basically karaoke of other people’s songs. It dominates not only the pop world but also television,” Pinfield said. “This (Skype contest) is a way to use what’s great about social networking to have emerging bands upload their songs and gain attention.”

In addition to Skype and the new contest, Pinfield also told me about his positive experiences with Spotify. Having recently put together a playlist as part of a tribute article he wrote for The Hollywood Reporter on the late Adam Yauch, he said he’s embraced the service.

“It’s better for the new emerging artists,” he said of Spotify. “If somebody puts a new band on a playlist, others can discover it and look deeper into them.” Pinfield added that, while live performances are still very important for up-and-coming bands, it’s also becoming just as important to make their music available online via services like YouTube.

Pinfield also commented on the recent success some artist are having with crowdfunding their albums, saying “Kickstarter is great” in reference to the crowdfunded projects platform. Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls is the first big example of Kickstarter success, raising over $800,000 for her record release campaign.

“It’s really great for bands that the record companies don’t want to invest in anymore because they’re only interested in what’s new, fresh,” he said. “There are bands out there with enough fans that are making more money through Kickstarter than they ever made when they couldn’t control the marketing money that was used to promote the record.”

Photo via Matt Pinfield/Facebook

PlayStation Vita users will be able to make video calls for the first time thanks to the addition of Skype video communication.

For Sony, the deal will help the company demonstrate the non-gaming virtues of the Vita, which has been struggling to gain wide appeal beyond hardcore gamers.

Sony and Microsoft’s Skype division are announcing today that they are expanding Skype video calling to a portable gaming device for the first time, enabling video and voice calls on both the Wi-Fi and 3G/Wi-Fi versions of the PS Vita. Users can download the Skype app for free from the PlayStation Store later today.

“Our users appreciate being able to access Skype features wherever and whenever they choose,” said Manrique Brenes, senior director of consumer electronics group at Skype, said in statement. “With the launch of Skype for PS Vita, we are taking another step toward our ultimate goal of making Skype video calling available on every platform, all over the world, and meeting the demands of existing PlayStation users to offer video on a gaming console.”

It’s interesting that Sony and Microsoft, which bought Skype for  $8.5 billion last year, are cooperating even though they are rivals in the game business. But then, they have bigger enemies to fight, such as Apple, which has the Face Time video call service on its iOS devices.

Skype on PS Vita runs in “background mode” for users while gaming or using other applications. Users can pause a game, answer a call, and then return to the game. PS Vitas feature both front and rear cameras, so users can switch back and forth between them during a Skype call.

Twelve-time world champion video game player Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendell was one of the first users to test-drive the application.

“As a gaming enthusiast, I am always in search for a next big thing,” said Fatal1ty. “When I heard Skype was going to be featured on PS Vita, my first thought was this was going to be the device that sets the bar for all new gaming consoles — connecting with family and friends while playing your favorite game.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Microsoft has released version 1.0 of Skype for Windows Phone, thus fulfilling a promise the company made at Mobile World Congress to move the app out of beta by April.

The new version includes a new feature that lets you search your contacts and add them on Skype. Other improvements include the ability to call landline phone numbers, a quicker boot time, and other bug fixes. It also includes all the Skype basics such as audio and video calls over 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi, and group messaging.

However, you still can’t receive Skype calls while the app isn’t running on your phone. Apparently this is because of limitations within the Windows Phone OS and Skype, according to Microsoft. Hopefully this will change with the release of Windows Phone 8. This kind of functionality could really be a key selling point for Microsoft to gain some footing over Android phones.

You can download the latest version of Skype for Windows Phone on the official site. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Via The Verge

July 9-10, 2013
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Adding a whole new meaning to the phrase “up close and personal,” Skype has released a version of its iPad application optimized for the device’s new ultra-high resolution Retina Display.

Skype’s 3.8 for iPad was released Monday and is specifically tailored toward early buyers of Apple’s third-generation iPad, which features a heretofore unheard of screen resolution of 2,048 by 1,536 pixels.

With the release, Skype is promising customers its best-looking application yet. Technically, that description is absolutely accurate. VentureBeat’s own Devindra Hardawar, in a review of the new iPad, said, “because of its high resolution, the Retina Display makes practically everything look better, even merely browsing the web.”

But while we’re sure most of your friends and family members look better in high-definition, we know that the additional pixels won’t be favorable to all. So ladies, put your lipstick on. And gentlemen, you may want to rethink that decision to skip a shave in the morning.

Microsoft-owned Skype, which today demonstrated no qualms about rapidly updating to support a competitor’s hardware, was only recently made available to Windows Phone customers. The additional audience pool, however small it may be, helped pushed the VoIP service to a new 35 million concurrent user record.

Photo credit: spieri_sf/Flickr

Skype hit a new milestone Monday when 35 million people accessed its audio and video conferencing service at the same time.

The achievement comes just one week after the belated beta release of Skype for Windows Phone.

The Microsoft-owned VoIP product has been impressively growing concurrent user numbers in recent weeks. Skype had 32 million people sign in at the same time for the first time on Feb. 23, a figure that was soon outdated when it hit 34 million concurrent Skypers the following week.

In June, Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion and promised deep integration with its existing products, including the Windows Phone operating system and the Xbox 360 gaming console. The deal closed in October. The expressed commitment from its new owners to improve and expand the popular communications offering is still a promise in the making, but Microsoft’s backing does appear to be giving people more confidence in the service.

Photo credit: spieri_sf/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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The application Windows Phone owners have been anticipating for eight months and counting has finally arrived — but it’s nothing to call home about yet.

Skype, as expected, has finally released a beta version of its application for Windows Phone 7. The release includes support for Skype basics such as audio and video calls over 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi, and group messaging.

More importantly, the app finally puts Windows Phone owners on par with their friends on Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry, even if it lacks several key features.

Microsoft acquired the audio and video-conferencing company for $8.5 billion in June (the deal closed in October). At the time, both companies talked up a Windows Phone Skype offering that would be superior to the Skype applications available on other platforms. That day has yet to come — and likely won’t come until the fourth quarter of the year.

For now, the just-released Skype application, which requires Windows Phone 7.5, is very much a beta release. The app lacks support for languages other than English and does not run in the background, meaning you won’t be able to receive incoming calls or chats if Skype is not running in the foreground. A full release, or “gold” version as Skype calls it, is slated to launch in April.

Skype for Windows Phone Beta has been tested for optimal performance on the Nokia Lumia 710 and 800, the HTC Titan and Radar, and the Samsung Focus S and Focus Flash, Skype said.

That includes both free and paid memberships, and it represents a sizable chunk of the overall numbers of consumers who bought the game. About 1.5 million of those users have chosen to pay $4.99 a month for the privilege of getting the latest content for titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which was the biggest-selling game of 2011. A subscription to Elite costs less per year than getting all of the downloadable content coming over the next nine months at full price.

Digital revenues, such as downloadable content or the social network subscriptions, added up to $1.6 billion for all of 2011. That was more than 34 percent of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company’s revenues for all of 2011.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 players have logged more than 639 million hours of game time through Dec. 31. The total number of unique online gamers playing the game was 12 percent greater than the number for last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops. (I’m one of those Modern Warfare 3 players, with a ranking of 71, or Major General II, on multiplayer).

Eric Hirshberg, chief executive of Activision Publishing, said in an analyst conference call, “We have grown the Call of Duty franchise every year for the past eight years.” Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops, and Modern Warfare 2 are the top three most-played games on Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service for the Xbox 360.

Hirshberg said that a new Call of Duty game will debut in 2012, repeating a pattern that has taken place every year in recent history. There are 40 million monthly active Call of Duty users, with more than 20 million for Modern Warfare 3 alone. Call of Duty China will also launch sometime soon.

Meanwhile, the company ‘s new Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure hybrid toy-game was a big success, with more than 20 million toys sold. Skylanders has more than 1 million registered users for the online version. A new version called Skylanders Giants is coming this year.