Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Video IM, Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and various bits of hardware new and old.
Thursday 31 July 2008, 8:38 AM
Skype Pursuing "Unarticulated Needs"
I just came across this blog post from Skype CEO Josh Silverman. Basically, it says what has been obvious from Skype's behavior for a long time - they know what is best for you, whether you know it or not, and if you would just think a little harder, you'd see how right they are.
However, what I found more interesting was the comments made on the blog post - "Please Help, Skype has taken money from my bank account", "Why is it so difficult to contact Skype Support", "I agree it is difficult to contact Skype Support", and so on.
As I have said many times before, Skype 'Support" is non-existent. This is becoming more obvious all the time, as desperate Skype users are posting pleas for help to the Skype Journal (aka the Skype Cheerleading Squad), to other user forums, to various blogs, and just about anywhere else you (or they) can imagine.
If you want to risk your business on a product which has no customer support, go with Skype. If you want to risk your money with a company that openly says they will take a MINIMUM of four days to respond to any inquiry and has a company policy of "take the money first, and ignore the questions later", go with Skype. If you are going to take a trip, and want to risk setting everything up so you can communicate with friends and family back home, only to arrive at your destination and find that it doesn't work, and there is no technical support, go with Skype. If you want to chat using a product which promotes itself as "secure", but then won't give a simple answer when asked if there is a back door for monitoring, and they are passing out the keys to that door, go with Skype.
If any or all of these possibilities disturb you, look carefully at the alternatives to Skype.
jw 31/7/2008
However, what I found more interesting was the comments made on the blog post - "Please Help, Skype has taken money from my bank account", "Why is it so difficult to contact Skype Support", "I agree it is difficult to contact Skype Support", and so on.
As I have said many times before, Skype 'Support" is non-existent. This is becoming more obvious all the time, as desperate Skype users are posting pleas for help to the Skype Journal (aka the Skype Cheerleading Squad), to other user forums, to various blogs, and just about anywhere else you (or they) can imagine.
If you want to risk your business on a product which has no customer support, go with Skype. If you want to risk your money with a company that openly says they will take a MINIMUM of four days to respond to any inquiry and has a company policy of "take the money first, and ignore the questions later", go with Skype. If you are going to take a trip, and want to risk setting everything up so you can communicate with friends and family back home, only to arrive at your destination and find that it doesn't work, and there is no technical support, go with Skype. If you want to chat using a product which promotes itself as "secure", but then won't give a simple answer when asked if there is a back door for monitoring, and they are passing out the keys to that door, go with Skype.
If any or all of these possibilities disturb you, look carefully at the alternatives to Skype.
jw 31/7/2008
Tuesday 29 July 2008, 9:46 AM
New Gizmo5 for Windows Release
When it rains, it pours! Gizmo5 came out with a new release today (4.0.3.383), which makes some nice improvements and cleans up some old problems. I use Gizmo extensively for text chat (every day with my brother, for example), and for phone access when I am traveling. This release looks like it will make it even nicer and more pleasant to use.
Login improvements:
- If you have auto-login selected, it will go directly to the main Gizmo window, without putting up the "Splash" window during the login process.
- Gizmo will also remember your last state, so if you had it minimized when you last shut it down, it will start minimized as well (this does not appear to be true if you had the main window closed, and only the Gizmo icon in the system tray visible, however).
- If you are not using auto-login, you can set your presence as part of the Gizmo login screen; if you are using auto-login, you can set your default initial presence in the Gizmo Edit/Options screen. This can be useful if you don't want your presence ever to be "Available", as it used to be automatically on login.
Other Improvements:
- Speaking of Options, Gizmo now remembers the last tab you were in on the Options menu, and returns to that tab the next time you go to Options again. This is nice if you frequently go to the options to change camera and/or audio settings.
- Improvements in DTMF support, particularly to allow input from either the numeric pad or main keyboard numreic keys. I find it pretty amusing that Skype can't even get DTMF to work properly, while Gizmo gets it right with no problem, and keeps making it better!
They say that they have also fixed various bugs and crashes reported in the .374 version, and improved the initial login/connect time. I had not run into any crashes, but I did notice that the initial login is noticeably faster.
If you use text chat (IM), I strongly recommend that you take a look at Gizmo5, they are by far the best in that field, with support for Windows, Mac, Linux, Mobile and Smart Phones (I run it on both of my Nokia cell phones), and cross-system chat support so you can integrate your contacts from Gizmo, AIM, Windows Live/MSN, Yahoo, MySpace, iChat, ICQ and many more in one client.
Likewise, if you need PSTN/POTS dial out (or in) capability, Gizmo has excellent call quality, good prices, and their Business Account for central management of multiple individual accounts is excellent.
jw 29/7/2008
Login improvements:
- If you have auto-login selected, it will go directly to the main Gizmo window, without putting up the "Splash" window during the login process.
- Gizmo will also remember your last state, so if you had it minimized when you last shut it down, it will start minimized as well (this does not appear to be true if you had the main window closed, and only the Gizmo icon in the system tray visible, however).
- If you are not using auto-login, you can set your presence as part of the Gizmo login screen; if you are using auto-login, you can set your default initial presence in the Gizmo Edit/Options screen. This can be useful if you don't want your presence ever to be "Available", as it used to be automatically on login.
Other Improvements:
- Speaking of Options, Gizmo now remembers the last tab you were in on the Options menu, and returns to that tab the next time you go to Options again. This is nice if you frequently go to the options to change camera and/or audio settings.
- Improvements in DTMF support, particularly to allow input from either the numeric pad or main keyboard numreic keys. I find it pretty amusing that Skype can't even get DTMF to work properly, while Gizmo gets it right with no problem, and keeps making it better!
They say that they have also fixed various bugs and crashes reported in the .374 version, and improved the initial login/connect time. I had not run into any crashes, but I did notice that the initial login is noticeably faster.
If you use text chat (IM), I strongly recommend that you take a look at Gizmo5, they are by far the best in that field, with support for Windows, Mac, Linux, Mobile and Smart Phones (I run it on both of my Nokia cell phones), and cross-system chat support so you can integrate your contacts from Gizmo, AIM, Windows Live/MSN, Yahoo, MySpace, iChat, ICQ and many more in one client.
Likewise, if you need PSTN/POTS dial out (or in) capability, Gizmo has excellent call quality, good prices, and their Business Account for central management of multiple individual accounts is excellent.
jw 29/7/2008
Monday 28 July 2008, 2:39 PM
Great New ooVoo Release!
Good grief, I go away for a few days and what happens? ooVoo comes out with a new release (1.7), and it's a beauty! As with the 1.6 release, it is a huge leap forward, and it shows that they are really paying attention to their users, and the market in general, and they are moving steadily in the right direction. To back that up, they have renewed their "30-day free trial" offer for their "Super" version.
The new release has three big changes:
- High Resolution Video. You can now have 640x480 resolution, if your webcam is capable of that. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the built-in webcam in my Fujitsu Lifebook S6510 will do this resolution, and it looks very nice. (I expected my Philips SPC1300 and SPC900 cameras to be capable of high resolution, but the built-in cam was a bonus.) I particularly like the way it is implemented - a simple button at the top of the video chat window, you click it and if your camera will do it, you get it; if it won't, you don't. Period. It sure beats the heck out of the Skype silliness with High Quality Video being restricted to three "anointed" Logitech webcams, and even if you have one of those you have to pray that Skype's mysterious HQ Video routine will not deem your computer, or your internet connection, to be unworthy and refuse to run at 640x480. When HQ Video starts, you get a special symbol in you video preview window showing that HQ is active, and on the other end your video window automatically increases in size. Both ooVoo clients have to be on the 1.7 release to get HQ Video, by the way.
- Video chat with non-ooVoo friends. Along the lines of the SightSpeed Light flash client, and the TokBox flash-based video chat, ooVoo now offers chat between the ooVoo client and a flash-based client. From the main ooVoo window you choose "Actions", and then "call non-ooVoo friends". It sets up a video chat window, and then gives you a URL which you can send to a friend via email, IM, or whatever, and when they enter that URL in their browser, they will join your video chat. For the time being this only works with browsers on Windows, but they say they are working on removing that restriction, and my experience with ooVoo producing what they promise has been very good so far.
- Find Your Friends. The new release is able to search your contacts in lots of social networks (FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo...), other IM programs (AOL, MSN, Skype...), email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail...) and more.
Best of all, ooVoo is once again offering a 30-day free trial of their Super package. Besides including 6-way video chat (vs. 3-way in the free version), the trial package inludes 15 minutes of phone calls to the U.S. and Canada (from anywhere in the world!), and a lot more. If you haven't tried ooVoo yet, or weren't convinced before this new offer is a great chance to see how they are doing now.
I have a lot more testing to do with this new release, so I'm sure I'll be writing about it again in the next few days. My initial impression of it is very, very good.
jw 28/7/2008
The new release has three big changes:
- High Resolution Video. You can now have 640x480 resolution, if your webcam is capable of that. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the built-in webcam in my Fujitsu Lifebook S6510 will do this resolution, and it looks very nice. (I expected my Philips SPC1300 and SPC900 cameras to be capable of high resolution, but the built-in cam was a bonus.) I particularly like the way it is implemented - a simple button at the top of the video chat window, you click it and if your camera will do it, you get it; if it won't, you don't. Period. It sure beats the heck out of the Skype silliness with High Quality Video being restricted to three "anointed" Logitech webcams, and even if you have one of those you have to pray that Skype's mysterious HQ Video routine will not deem your computer, or your internet connection, to be unworthy and refuse to run at 640x480. When HQ Video starts, you get a special symbol in you video preview window showing that HQ is active, and on the other end your video window automatically increases in size. Both ooVoo clients have to be on the 1.7 release to get HQ Video, by the way.
- Video chat with non-ooVoo friends. Along the lines of the SightSpeed Light flash client, and the TokBox flash-based video chat, ooVoo now offers chat between the ooVoo client and a flash-based client. From the main ooVoo window you choose "Actions", and then "call non-ooVoo friends". It sets up a video chat window, and then gives you a URL which you can send to a friend via email, IM, or whatever, and when they enter that URL in their browser, they will join your video chat. For the time being this only works with browsers on Windows, but they say they are working on removing that restriction, and my experience with ooVoo producing what they promise has been very good so far.
- Find Your Friends. The new release is able to search your contacts in lots of social networks (FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo...), other IM programs (AOL, MSN, Skype...), email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail...) and more.
Best of all, ooVoo is once again offering a 30-day free trial of their Super package. Besides including 6-way video chat (vs. 3-way in the free version), the trial package inludes 15 minutes of phone calls to the U.S. and Canada (from anywhere in the world!), and a lot more. If you haven't tried ooVoo yet, or weren't convinced before this new offer is a great chance to see how they are doing now.
I have a lot more testing to do with this new release, so I'm sure I'll be writing about it again in the next few days. My initial impression of it is very, very good.
jw 28/7/2008
Monday 28 July 2008, 7:10 AM
Traveling Success with Linux
I have spent the past four days on a short vacation in the Piedmont area of northwest Italy (beautiful landscape, wonderful people and excellent food!). This has given me the opportunity to make a "traveling test" of Linux on both of my laptops. During this trip I have tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu (Ubuntu with the KDE desktop), and Mandriva, and all three have performed extremely well.
What does one want or need to do with a laptop while traveling? In my case, it falls into two major categories - internet access (email, web browsing, blogging, working) and digital photo management. It is also relatively important that suspend/resume work correctly on the laptop, for quick and easy access. That much I was able to test before leaving, and confirmed that both Ubuntu and Mandriva suspend/resume just fine.
So, the first major test on arrival was to get an internet connection. If I couldn't pick up a WiFi connection, I would have to boot Windows and try my cellular wireless card. I didn't want to do that not only because I wanted to run Linux, but also because cellular roaming data fees can be quite steep. So I was very pleased to see an available network pop up the first time I booted Ubuntu after we got to the B & B, and even more so when it connected on the first try with no problems. A few quick checks confirmed that the connection was working well, and at a reasonable speed - pick up email, check ZDNet UK, VPN connection to work, all just fine.
Next up, digital photo handling. Both of these laptops have slots for SD/MS flash cards, and both of our cameras use SD cards. We took a few pictures on the way down, so pop the SD card out of the camera and into the laptop... with Ubuntu a very nice, very obvious SD-card icon appears on the desktop, and the F-Spot photo viewer opened; With Kubuntu and Mandriva, both of which use the KDE desktop, the flash card was added to the removable storage menu, and a window came up asking if I wanted to open a browser window or start the digiKam photo manager. Mandriva also includes the ShowFoto program.
Obvious things work - double-click the SD icon and it opens a file browser, navigate to the pictures and they show as icons, double click a picture and it opens in the image viewer. The image viewer has simple options for rotating pictures, full-screen viewing and a slide show of some or all photos. For more advanced photo handling and image editing, the F-Spot photo viewer and/or the digiKam photo manager will download the photos to your computer (and can be set to do that automatically when the flash card is inserted), and then give you options to edit them, adjusting exposure, hue and saturation, cropping and much more. For very advanced photo/graphic editing, the GIMP image editor is available as well.
The bottom line is, I was perfectly happy on the road with Linux, it was able to do everything that I needed and a lot more. This was all with the Linux distributions absolutely "stock", the way they come from their respective web pages, I haven't downloaded or installed any additional software.
What does one want or need to do with a laptop while traveling? In my case, it falls into two major categories - internet access (email, web browsing, blogging, working) and digital photo management. It is also relatively important that suspend/resume work correctly on the laptop, for quick and easy access. That much I was able to test before leaving, and confirmed that both Ubuntu and Mandriva suspend/resume just fine.
So, the first major test on arrival was to get an internet connection. If I couldn't pick up a WiFi connection, I would have to boot Windows and try my cellular wireless card. I didn't want to do that not only because I wanted to run Linux, but also because cellular roaming data fees can be quite steep. So I was very pleased to see an available network pop up the first time I booted Ubuntu after we got to the B & B, and even more so when it connected on the first try with no problems. A few quick checks confirmed that the connection was working well, and at a reasonable speed - pick up email, check ZDNet UK, VPN connection to work, all just fine.
Next up, digital photo handling. Both of these laptops have slots for SD/MS flash cards, and both of our cameras use SD cards. We took a few pictures on the way down, so pop the SD card out of the camera and into the laptop... with Ubuntu a very nice, very obvious SD-card icon appears on the desktop, and the F-Spot photo viewer opened; With Kubuntu and Mandriva, both of which use the KDE desktop, the flash card was added to the removable storage menu, and a window came up asking if I wanted to open a browser window or start the digiKam photo manager. Mandriva also includes the ShowFoto program.
Obvious things work - double-click the SD icon and it opens a file browser, navigate to the pictures and they show as icons, double click a picture and it opens in the image viewer. The image viewer has simple options for rotating pictures, full-screen viewing and a slide show of some or all photos. For more advanced photo handling and image editing, the F-Spot photo viewer and/or the digiKam photo manager will download the photos to your computer (and can be set to do that automatically when the flash card is inserted), and then give you options to edit them, adjusting exposure, hue and saturation, cropping and much more. For very advanced photo/graphic editing, the GIMP image editor is available as well.
The bottom line is, I was perfectly happy on the road with Linux, it was able to do everything that I needed and a lot more. This was all with the Linux distributions absolutely "stock", the way they come from their respective web pages, I haven't downloaded or installed any additional software.
Sunday 27 July 2008, 8:55 PM
Do You Like Conspiracy Theories?
If you like cloak-and-dagger stuff, you're going to love the direction that the "Skype Back Door" rumor is going. It seems that some people are now saying that the four day world-wide Skype outage last August was not caused by Windows Update, but was in fact Skype building in a back door for government monitoring of Skype calls (source, more speculation).
I have no idea if this is true or false. My opinion of Skype's technical staff is such that it would not surprise me one bit that they would take four days of down time to accomplish something like this, though. The one thing I can say for certain is that I have always thought that outage was very suspicious. I was pretty deeply involved in the Skype User Forums at that time, and I said repeatedly and publicly that the "explanations" that Skype gave then were silly and inadequate. In fact, that outage and the cover-up and misinformation surrounding it were the beginning of the end for me with Skype.
One thing is for certain, though. I said then, and I will say again now, we will probably never know the real truth about what happened with that outage.
jw 27/7/2008
I have no idea if this is true or false. My opinion of Skype's technical staff is such that it would not surprise me one bit that they would take four days of down time to accomplish something like this, though. The one thing I can say for certain is that I have always thought that outage was very suspicious. I was pretty deeply involved in the Skype User Forums at that time, and I said repeatedly and publicly that the "explanations" that Skype gave then were silly and inadequate. In fact, that outage and the cover-up and misinformation surrounding it were the beginning of the end for me with Skype.
One thing is for certain, though. I said then, and I will say again now, we will probably never know the real truth about what happened with that outage.
jw 27/7/2008
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