Carl Tyler's Blog

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I installed Skype a couple of weeks ago, and no one I knew was using it, so I had no idea whether it worked well or not. Turns out the people who brought you Kazaa have also brought you a pretty damn good Voice Over IP for your PC. Whilst it's in Beta they will not charge for it, so they will probably get us all hooked and then expect us to pay. A few things I've seen so far that I really like:

• It works with no echo on my thinkpad with the built in speakers and microphone
• I spoke to Bruce Elgort in Vancouver, WA and there was no latency
• I didn't have to screw around opening ports on my firewall, although this could also be seen as a concern

The UI seems a little strange in places, like it isn't totally obvious how to add a friend once you find them, but I am sure they will figure this out. We did some messing around integrating VoIP call centers with Instant TeamMessenger, to show when someone is on the phone etc and to call them with a right click, I think VoIP that works into Instant Messaging is going to be a major headache for Telecom companies, and if they haven't realised it yet, Microsoft also believes this. Microsoft may be entering the market with Office Live as an Instant Messaging server, but you can expect this to be a Trojan horse to eventually replace PBXs in companies with Windows Servers running Office Live.

My real tests for Skype are going to be when I try it with my parents in the UK, currently we use Sametime audio calls which can have terrible latency even with great connections at both ends; the other major test will be having Skype running in the background whilst beating Peyton at Civilization. Would be good to hear him cry as I take over yet another of his cities. I used to use AOL Chat with my brother in the UK when we would be hooked up with Flight Simulator or Crimson Skies, and there really is nothing better than shouting back and fourth at each other when trying to shoot each other down.

If you install Skype, feel free to try chatting with me, my username on skype is "CarlTyler", if you've installed Skype it's a clickable link.