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Skype group video calling becomes free

blogs.skype.com

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Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#131

Post by bertil »

jamra wrote: post #91

I use Skype everyday to communicate with family abroad. I have a camera mounted on my television. The quality of Skype is abysmal. Most of the time, you do not have HD video. When I switch over to using facetime, the video quality is amazing. I don't know what happened to Skype, but its quality is by far the worst available on the market.

> The quality of Skype is abysmal. Most of the time, you do not have HD video.

That comment reminded me of what Louis CK says about wifi on the plane — or attitude towards technology in general. I won’t link because the swear ratio is… well he uses all the possible syntactical options of the f-bomb.

The quality difference is striking, and Skype pales in comparison. But live video feed between common computers is something that, no matter the quality of the feed, should still be seen as the miracle that it is, and somehow only seem so to too few users. Doing that with limited central server is even more impressive. It might not be enough to gather facial expression, and that is a real problem for their offer. But what they do remains the result of ten years of high level engineering, with broad room for progress in many circumstances.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#132

Post by isomorphic »

gregcohn wrote: post #109
spankalee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for Google, so I'm obviously biased here, though I don't always like everything we do around our sites and integration. But, I'm genuinely curious, what nonsense does Google+ pollute your regular Google account with? I believe that you get a profile page, but you can leave it entirely blank.

If you're seriously asking, I'm happy to answer my two cents, but i'm very concerned that you don't have a sense for the reasons people would want to use G+ gated products without being part of G+. As someone who has a personal G+ account and doesn't mind, and who runs a company that pays Google for apps for my domain on which we manage our email, I still had to register for G+ to be able to use the hangouts product…

I agree completely. I am astonished that Google people genuinely don't understand the things that are off-putting about Google+.

I've never even tried Hangouts because of the G+ requirement. I suppose if I had to, I'd create a one-off account for the purpose.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#133

Post by rz2k »

shmerl wrote: post #78

I hope open protocols will catch up already. XMPP/Jingle has user side multiplexing for a while (MUJI), but it requires decent bandwidth. It's a deferred XEP for some reason though. Also, most clients lack support for it. Server side multiplexing wasn't standardized for some reason, so XMPP servers didn't come up with anything common so far. Skype remains just another proprietary walled garden communication network w…

I think it is amazing how little strategy and disruption there seems to be in the industry.

My dad is mostly retired, he rents out his office, but his secretary still comes into the office one afternoon a week. I didn't want to stress her out by asking her to learn new technology, but the phone was used only an hour or two a month. I ported the same number he'd had for a few decades to Google Voice, and attached an ObiHai box so that she can use a regular phone, rather than needing to understand why messages are in Google Voice but outgoing calls are placed using Google Chat, or use a special earpiece plugged into the computer.

Anyway, over the two years that it worked it saved a couple thousand dollars that would have been spent to use the phone for about 30 hours. Since Google Voice will no longer be compatible with ObiHai devices this month (moving away from XMPP), I ported the number to Anveo, which is no longer free, but still only $40/year.

Both Microsoft and Google should offer small businesses packaged services where you bring your own internet service, then buy telephone plus email using your own domain name from them for a flat fee. Something like $200-400/year for 1-3 users would find an enormous market. Afterwards, they could sell office suites, billing/accounting software, scheduling software as add-ons.

Right now it is needlessly complicated for people who have minimal communication needs, and don't care about technology, to avoid huge costs. It's kind of absurd to consider how little service someone like a barber or a shop owner gets after paying fees that make up a significant part of their operating costs.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#136

Post by jaredmcateer »

praeivis wrote: post #97
shawabawa3 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

funny, because I don't know anyone who likes skype over G+

Funny, because I dont know anyone who use G+ at all. Except these who was forced to make G+ profile while was registering just for e-mail. And same time I know hundreds who use skype on daily basic on literally every device they own. Including TV. Only device in my house lacking skype it's refrigerator.

You dont need to use G+ to use Hangouts. If you have a gmail account you're a one step install away from using video chat. Doesn't matter if you have multiple gmail accounts or not, you just need a link, which hangouts gives you in the invite modal.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#137

Post by unoti »

junto wrote: post #106
finkin1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the CEO of a small remote-working startup with 5 employees. I pay $20/mo for Skype since some of people I meet with only use that and I need the group screen sharing feature. Whenever I have a Skype meeting, I'm nervous, because 50% of the time video or screen sharing won't work. Once I get them to switch to Hangouts there's no problems, ever. Are you telling me that you experience the opposite? If so, that's ver…

We use Skype chat as a daily tool to keep the team (a few remote) up-to-date. We have daily standup using a proper mic so the remotes can hear properly. I find the screen sharing feature in Skype to be poor quality. We tend to use Skype for calls, and then join.me for screen sharing. We sometimes have call quality problems on Skype too. We also switch to hangouts for this reason, and we are often surprised how good t…

It's a complete nightmare for you if you ever get involved in a court case. All that is discoverable-- truly a goldmine for the opposition.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#138

Post by unoti »

subdane wrote: post #46
shawabawa3 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

funny, because I don't know anyone who likes skype over G+

I prefer G+, but the onboarding - actually getting disparate folks easily invited and notified has been inscrutably hard. Part of the prob is that I have multiple gmail accts and address books as do the folks I'm inviting, but another prob seems to be the less than ideal invite workflow. When Goog gets calendars, gmail, docs and hangouts well integrated, Skype will have a serious threat on its hands.

My invite workflow is "Skype everybody the G+ URL"... If they could make a better workflow that'd be great. Maybe they could stop tripping over their feet trying to make everything social and just make this workflow make more sense!

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#139

Post by shmerl »

rz2k wrote: post #133
shmerl wrote: post #78

I hope open protocols will catch up already. XMPP/Jingle has user side multiplexing for a while (MUJI), but it requires decent bandwidth. It's a deferred XEP for some reason though. Also, most clients lack support for it. Server side multiplexing wasn't standardized for some reason, so XMPP servers didn't come up with anything common so far. Skype remains just another proprietary walled garden communication network w…

I think it is amazing how little strategy and disruption there seems to be in the industry. My dad is mostly retired, he rents out his office, but his secretary still comes into the office one afternoon a week. I didn't want to stress her out by asking her to learn new technology, but the phone was used only an hour or two a month. I ported the same number he'd had for a few decades to Google Voice, and attached an O…

Ooma is also rather cheap for telephony. Once you bought the device, you only pay taxes basically (which is something like $3.80 a month).

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#140

Post by unoti »

bertil wrote: post #131
jamra wrote: post #91

I use Skype everyday to communicate with family abroad. I have a camera mounted on my television. The quality of Skype is abysmal. Most of the time, you do not have HD video. When I switch over to using facetime, the video quality is amazing. I don't know what happened to Skype, but its quality is by far the worst available on the market.

> The quality of Skype is abysmal. Most of the time, you do not have HD video. That comment reminded me of what Louis CK says about wifi on the plane — or attitude towards technology in general. I won’t link because the swear ratio is… well he uses all the possible syntactical options of the f-bomb. The quality difference is striking, and Skype pales in comparison. But live video feed between common computers is some…

I appreciate the Louis CK argument, but when it comes to communication it doesn't fully apply. Have you ever had a terrible cell phone connection in which you can make out the words but conversation isn't really free and easy? Then you switch to Skype or another medium where you can hear each other with radically improved quality and less latency and then the conversation progresses more smoothly and rapidly?

The same can happen with video. A low quality video connection is a mere novelty, doing little to improve the conversation. A high quality video connection, though, can dramatically improve the conversation. For example, you can watch the expression in your partner's face to see when they are confused, or disagree, or you need to slow down or go faster, and if your points are resonating and connecting.

The Louis CK principle does apply, yes, its amazing. But just as video opens doors not available to audio calls, high quality video calls open many doors that low quality video calls do not.

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