Skype To Support Video Conferences Next Week

As of next week, Skype will begin to support video calls to up to four other users, that's five total. The public beta of "Group Video Calling" will be Windows only from the get-go, but they will be rolling out a Mac version later this year, as well. At launch, the feature will be free, but Skype says that in about three or four months (when the Mac version is supposed to be out), they plan to charge for the feature. It'll probably be aimed at the business realm, but I still think it's idiotic that they plan to charge for this. Skype is known for free Skype-to-Skype calls, and conference video chatting is a feature that's been requested for quite some time, not to mention that iChat, ooVoo, TinyChat, and many others offer the feature absolutely free. This has less of a use-case in the corporate setting, because so many offices already have a secure professional video conferencing setup implemented. It makes more sense for use in the home for long distance families to keep in touch, or for friends to get together online. Hopefully they reconsider before too long. Windows users, you should be able to download and give it a shot next week. 

WIndows Phone Series 7 Delivers at MWC

At MWC, mobile hardware and software manufacturers showcase their next step in the mobile evolutionary process. Every once in a while, we see something that manifests as revolution as opposed to evolution. For example, when the iPhone was announced, we'd never seen an OS like that. How could we possible have an touch interface like that? An interface that felt just plain intuitive was not something that was on any of our radars. Thinking beyond a device that makes calls and stores numbers and starting to think about that device as a computer, a true platform, was totally foreign.

Windows Phone Series 7 is just that kind of shift. Now, whether it will be embraced or not is yet to be seen, obviously. The device has not his the market yet, and the OS is not done. That said, it's difficult to express how much renewed faith I have in a company that has long been, in my opinion, under-delivering.

Series 7 does away with the paradigm of modal apps, and even multitasking on a mobile device and replaces it with hubs that deliver information to the user. We've seen some of these concepts before in the form of HTC's universal inboxes, aggregating all of the communication with a specific person and showing it all to the user in one place. This takes that idead one step further and puts all the user's communication in one place, as well as all of the user's games in one place, and photos in one place, and social actions in one place. Reactions are mixed on the current iteration. Without a true life test with the OS being put through real use-case scenarios, it's impossible to pass judgement, but it shows promise.

I've never happily typed the word "Windows" before just now, never mind when it's been associated with mobile. For the first time ever, I'm thoroughly excited to see what else Microsoft has up their sleeves. They've has been consistently underwhelming for years now. Series 7 is a welcome and necessary departure from the same tired model we've grown accustomed to seeing from Microsoft's mobile department. It's not clear whether this is the work of one brilliant man on the Windows Mobile team, or if this is the first in a series of massive shifts for the company, but either way, I'm pleased to see that they're taking a totally new direction with the mobile market and I'm excited to see more.

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