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Microsoft to acquire Skype

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Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#71

Post by lemming »

jarin wrote: post #33
follower wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it still not have cross platform video support?

How many people REALLY use video chat though? I mean more than once a year. Even among techies and businesspeople, video chat rarely seems to have an advantage over regular voice chat.

I live a long, long way from my family. It's impossible to describe how much of a difference Skype with video makes. Similarly, I live in Europe and work for an American company. I can assure you that voice is not the same as voice and video for maintaining relationships with people. For both of those use cases, video makes it orders of magnitude easier to get the feeling of being near someone.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#73

Post by roadnottaken »

jokermatt999 wrote: post #41
jarin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people REALLY use video chat though? I mean more than once a year. Even among techies and businesspeople, video chat rarely seems to have an advantage over regular voice chat.

Ever been in a long distance relationship, missing your kids when you're away from home, or just want to see someone's face? Video chat isn't as convenient as voice chat, but when you want to take some time out to really talk to someone, it's the closest thing to face to face. Also, I think video chat works better and will pretty much always work better on computer than on smartphones. There's a much better screen, y…

FWIW, FaceTime on an iPad is very, very good.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#74

Post by kesun421 »

roadnottaken wrote: post #17

Hopefully Microsoft is swooping in to save Skype from the death-spiral it's been heading towards for the last few years. There really is a lot of room for improvement (software-wise) and I'm going to give MSFT the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

I use Lync at work, and I like it. The features are there, but nothing is in your face. Hopefully Skype will not adopt some of their design concepts.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#75

Post by awa »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #68

Skype+Kinect+XBox actually sounds pretty cool, even WP7 seems to have some potential. I actually think MSFT made a good move and it was worth it to keep Skype out of the hands of Google/Facebook. If I were Microsoft I would even look at buying out Pandora/Spotify/Slacker/Last.fm, Netflix, and remove the file limit on their Windows Live online storage to compete more directly with Dropbox and others--then there'd actu…

They already have Zune subscription for music which is pretty awesome ($15/mo for unlimited streaming + you get to keep 10 songs). I had no idea that they had a limit on files on Windows Live storage though they do allow 25GB of free storage

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#77

Post by lotusleaf1987 »

awa wrote: post #75
lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #68

Skype+Kinect+XBox actually sounds pretty cool, even WP7 seems to have some potential. I actually think MSFT made a good move and it was worth it to keep Skype out of the hands of Google/Facebook. If I were Microsoft I would even look at buying out Pandora/Spotify/Slacker/Last.fm, Netflix, and remove the file limit on their Windows Live online storage to compete more directly with Dropbox and others--then there'd actu…

They already have Zune subscription for music which is pretty awesome ($15/mo for unlimited streaming + you get to keep 10 songs). I had no idea that they had a limit on files on Windows Live storage though they do allow 25GB of free storage

Yeah I know they have Zune subscription, I should have clarified that, but that's why I think Netflix would fit with them well. Having music+movies and giving a discount for the more services you bundle like Comcast/AT&T's double/triple play deals.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#79

Post by tene »

qeorge wrote: post #42
xnerdr wrote: post #18

On a side note, why has no serious competitor to Skype appeared? Given the maturity of the tech involved (its just VOIP) and the size of the pie, i'd have thought there would be more competition for a slice.

I believe the underlying tech, Global Index, is patented and valuable. Global Index is the p2p matchmaking software that runs under Skype (and Kazaa back in the day), which means Skype doesn't have to run centralized servers to route call data. Its also what lets them punch holes in firewalls. My understanding is that their competitors don't (can't?) do this. For example, SIP runs through a central server (e.g., Goog…

You seem to be confused about SIP. SIP is the "Session Initiation Protocol", and its entire point is to coordinate initiation of a direct session between endpoints, the so-called "SIP Trapezoid".

SIP is a lot like SMTP. When you make a SIP call, you talk to your local SIP server, which talks to N intermediaries (usually 0) before going out to the public internet. After passing off to the destination server, the connection can go through N intermediaries on the remote side before being delivered to a final user agent. This connection isn't for delivering audio and video, though, it's for coordinating a direct RTP connection to use for audio and video. Once the two endpoints are communicating, they send information about their real network location, work out details about NAT, and set up a direct RTP connection, possibly using STUN to deal with NAT issues. In a normal SIP environment, neither party's SIP server ever sees any of the actual media.

This is all fairly similar to what skype does, except skype has additional infrastructure for routing media through other clients, in cases where two endpoints can't find a way to communicate directly, as I understand it. I'm not actually authoritatively-informed about skype, though, so don't rely on this last bit.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#80

Post by encoderer »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #68

Skype+Kinect+XBox actually sounds pretty cool, even WP7 seems to have some potential. I actually think MSFT made a good move and it was worth it to keep Skype out of the hands of Google/Facebook. If I were Microsoft I would even look at buying out Pandora/Spotify/Slacker/Last.fm, Netflix, and remove the file limit on their Windows Live online storage to compete more directly with Dropbox and others--then there'd actu…

I've been thinking the same thing.

Look at the modern smartphones. The lesson I take from iPhone and Android is that if you build a device that has a fair amount of memory, a modern processor, and an array of interesting sensors and input devices, developers will build for you amazing applications, killer apps even, in ways you're not able to imagine.

I imagine a next-gen xbox. It has kinect built in. Great APIs for that. It has Skype and Xbox Live and the various Windows Live services all built-in, with great API's for those, treating them as services.

You push the appstore model via xbox live on that device and I bet $10 that developers produce some amazing things for that platform. Perhaps even game changers. It revolutionizes computing in your living room the way that the iPhone revolutionzed computing in your pocket.

I also think... you'd have a very powerful remote control and connection ability to that device using every new Nokia phone (and any new phone on WP7).

Final thought along those lines is that WP7 is really a great mobile OS. I bought a new phone just last week. I'm on Sprint, so the HTC Arrive was available to me which is a new WP7 phone. I had to decide against it and went for an Android device but that was begrudgingly because there's no 4G WP7 phones in Sprint's line-up. (Ended up going Evo).

Here's the thing... WP7 just FEELS good to use. Way moreso than Android and also moreso than iOS. It's very snappy. It uses screen space well. And the Arrive has a GREAT physical keyboard, the best I've ever used on a phone.

No 4G killed it. Also, no removable SD card. And finally there was the Apps issue but they've put out some great dev tools for WP7. I think it's only a matter of time before they catch up.

Also I'm skeptical that the voice UI works as good as it does on Android.

Sorry for taking this slightly off topic but to bring it back around it's this: Microsoft could really do some great value-adds with Skype on a number of their platforms.

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