I’d like to Share Skype, really I would, but I cannot login. I can login successfully to my Skype account elsewhere at Skype, check my SkypeIN voicemail via logged in Skype account, yadda, yadda, but Share Skype just tells me in red text: “Signing in failed. Please double-check your Skype Name and re-enter your password.”. I submitted a support request to Tech support and hopefully will have an answer soon. I see other people commenting on the Share Skype blog so it could be just an isolated single user thing. Anybody else here having trouble logging in over there? Yes/no?

What is Share Skype? It’s Skype’s first foray into blogging and it’s great to finally see. I must admit I’m a little disappointed they have no trackbacks (seems odd for a company which is so communication-oriented), but at least they have comments, unlike some new blogs popping up.

What would really be cool to see is integration with Instant Messaging inside Skype and the blog. So I could see and read the new posts and then comment directly through the Skype client without having to visit the Share Skype site. Even more cool would be letting me add other RSS feeds to my Skype client. Maybe this is something that can be done with the Skype API? I’ll have to do some more research into this.

The Skype.com site doesn’t say anything yet about Share Skype, so my thanks to the fine people who have already blogged about it, via the Share Skype blogroll: Scoble who sees Len Pryor’s fingerprints on this, Skype Journal’s Bill Campbell feels the “competitive pressure is on” and Andy Abramson loves being listed alongside other blogger luminaries.

I’ve been following Skype since early September 2003. Skype launched on August 29, 2003.

My friend Lestat just shared this with me in the Script School IRC chat: Grocery Store Wars [flash] featuring a cast of spoofed characters like ChewBroccoli, Cuke Skywalker and Darth Tater. Prety long flash video load time, but worth the wait: I laughed. Good, clean fun. Man, we need a humor/satire category here I think. I put this one under customer adventures. I think I’ll never look at broccoli the same way again.

Maybe there are some MakeYouGoHmm readers here that can recommend some organic foods that actually taste good? I do like eating vegetables out of the garden. My head started to spin when I read this definition of organic:

‘Organic’ is a labeling term that denotes products produced under the authority of the Organic Foods Production Act. The principal guidelines for organic production are to use materials and practices that enhance the ecological balance of natural systems and that integrate the parts of the farming system into an ecological whole.

I just searched for an organic retailer in my area (lots of farms around here) and couldn’t find one in a 10 mile radius. Then I tried 20 miles and received one result in Federal Way. No organic stores in Tacoma, WA? No way. The Organic Trade Association’s database must not have used the power of the Farm.

tags: star+wars, spoof, organic

As a developer of software and selling programs on the web, I understand how much it sucks to be ripped off. One of the hotbeds for this illegal activity is the Asia-Pacific region accroding to News from The Associated Press:

Software piracy in the Asia-Pacific region cost manufacturers an estimated $8 billion in 2004, with China, Vietnam and Indonesia among the top five nations flouting intellectual property laws, a global anti-piracy watchdog said Wednesday

With that said, let me add that the actual raw cost of distributing software once it is produced is very small. Most people realize this and some seem to feel (usually those not in the business) that they are being ripped off paying hundreds of dollars for something where it costs a very small amount of money to distribute the actual bits and bytes. The packaging and shipping costs are more expensive than the media.

What isn’t as readily apparent to these people is the time, expense and resources involved in creating and maintaining and upgrading the software. Some projects take months and even years to develop only to produce an end product that retails for $100 or less. The investment and time/resources is then anticipated to be returned when the developers can finally start selling the product. Some people mortgage their future (financially) in the hope that the product they spend time developing will return the investment and allow them to continue work innovating new things or making the existing product even better. Some people spend free time away from their families working on projects which may never even make back the expenses, much less a profit.

In a nutshell, this is how it works for development houses of all sizes. The difference between big and small is, generally speaking, the size of the bank account and talent. A company like Microsoft can afford to dump millions into a project that doesn’t bring back profit, but a small development house may go under if they make something that doesn’t sell back to profit. Even Microsoft, with all it’s money, can’t invest in too many money-losing propositions though or the shareholders will be upset.

For small shops like mine with less than five developers, we have to distribute online. And even when we give away more than 75% of the code we produce, we still have people who steal the code and/or violate the licensing agreements. It’s a cost of doing business.

I buy commercial software, pay for shareware that I use and if I like something that is donationware then I donate. I do believe that most people on this earth are good, honest people and behave similarly.

There are situations where people might have a laptop and desktop machine and share the software between the two computers and most licensing agreements forbid this. I wonder if that type of piracy is as egregious as buying a black market CD (or DVD) in some village in Asia, snagging a bittorrent of the file, checking an fserv in IRC, etc? Then again, theft is theft, so maybe it’s all just different shades of black.

I also strongly believe that the music industry has been raping fans for years. I bought a lot of tapes and then albums and now CDs of the same music. It seems like I just keep buying and rebuying the same media, which is frustrating as a consumer. The same thing is happening with VHS to DVD and … well to the next format whatever it will be.

They want to take away my right to make archival copies and that is wrong. If I buy something, whether it be software, music or movie I should be able to use it for the life of the product or my life. I shouldn’t have to buy the exact same thing again on a different format. Note that buying a paperback book is different than buying an audiobook, I’m not talking about different types of content from the same body of work. I’m talking about the same content on diferent formats.

I believe this consumer abuse, for lack of a better word, has driven more people — some of which would never walk into any store and just steal something off the shelf — to push the gray lines with music piracy, license and copyright infringement. Perhaps it is sort of a vigilante type justice for being taken advantage of in the marketplace.

The problem with this type of vigilante consumer behavior in the software realm is that software is rarely repackaged and resold, videogames being the big exception (how many times has Namco sold and resold PacMan?), simply because it is being improved, retooled and recoded for bigger, better platforms. The little guys out here though like me sure need people to pay for each license or donate if it’s donationware or shareware if it is something they use or the model of sharing on the web starts to break down.

Again, I do believe that most people do the right thing.

It’s too bad that a certain region of the world has a higher concentration of people doing the wrong thing. But it’s equally wrong to characterize everybody from this region as bad people. I have to catch myself sometimes when I get frustrated with certain parts of the world where this type of activity is more widespread. Do you?

Solutions:

For people who make products
Let your customers make an archival copy and be able to use the product for the life of the product or our life, if applicable. Allow us to transfer ownership of that product permanently to someone else (and thus give up our right to use the product any longer). Price your products/services fairly and commiserate to the value and give customers long enough shelf life so that they will not be more compelled or tempted to violate your licensing.

For software consumers
Buy what you use. If you use multiple computers and the license forbids that usage, then buy the extra licenses. If money is tight, and it’s tight for a lot of people, then consider switching to an open source alternative and/or try places like eBay if you need to pick up a legitimate copy at a discount from someone else (watch out for pirated copies even selling on eBay though). Another thought is to talk to the vendor of the program about some sort of discount for multiple computers. If you are using a software or services that have donation boxes, then donate. If you use shareware, then pay the shareware price.

This isn’t fresh news or really a huge surprise or anything, but I was just poking around on my MSN Spaces blog and noticed that the text spans in Safari beneath the side menus. As you expand the browser you just end up with a bunch of dead space. This was done in Safari at 1280 x 960 resolution. Unfortunately I can’t edit the CSS and HTML for my Spaces blog template, so it will continue to remain broken for Safari visitors. This is a good example of the problem with pre-built templates and the inability for blog authors to edit their own templates. Maybe one of the other templates renders better in Safari.

How to tell the mood of your dog and have it sent to you via your cell phone? According to KTF Corp, a South Korean mobile phone operator, they can tell whether your dog is happy or sad and will fulfill this need.

The owner will receive text messages telling them how their pet is feeling, such as “I am happy” or “I am frustrated.”

The article says this service will cost about a dollar: a buck for a bark. The marketing on this one will be a lot of fun for somebody.

Houston, this is a joke. And I laughed: Google Content Blocker

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads.

This reminds me of MAD magazine. That was my favorite magazine as a kid. Just checked their official website out for the very first time. I can’t believe I haven’t been here before. The site itself has not come into the internet age very well (not using Zinio for digital subscriptions? Just imagine being able to print out the full color foldable back page, now that would be cool!), but I did get a nostalgic MAD-like chuckle out of some of the messageboard posts like this one from somebody calling himself “Mediocre Man” who thinks his nickname being used in a recent MAD magazine was a violation of his copyright. Fans can subscribe to 14 issues for $16 USD. Nice price, at least.

MAD magazine could appeal to an older and younger audience if it simply started embracing the internet — c’mon Warner Brothers. Currently, they seem like they are trying to stubbornly hold onto an old print magazine model. Not every magazine is good to go digital, but definitely MAD could move forward and do so many cool things with a print and digital edition. Imagine a cool MAD members area (paid) with access to tons of past issue stuff? They could even make money some specialized MAD content to webmasters.

The missed opportunities!

Former Microsofty, Lenn Pryor, who now works for Skype would like developer feedback for the creating the ultimate Skype API and Developer’s Program:

If you could change the rules of what developer programs do, how they interact with you, the way they treat you, the levels of support they offer you, what would you change? If you could wipe MSDN off the slate and start over, what would the dream be?

Save for the potentially spicy MSDN comments, I would say an example of a really well executed API is the Yahoo API. That developer area has the basic information for the REST calls laid out along with some basic, somewhat practical examples. Here’s some more specific dream requests:

1) I think it’s very important to provide a solid SDK which includes example code — as close to real world as possible — in as many different languages as possible. Having a bunch of “Hello World!” stuff might be the standard but that isn’t all that helpful. Be sure to address PHP, all .NET flavors (at least VB.NET), ASP, Perl, Python, Cold Fusion, Java, etc. Don’t forget the new languages if at all possible.

2) Clear, concise documentation. So much of the docs out there (not all of them, of course) are so written poorly that developers have come to expect subpar and even vague documentation.

3) Promotion for applications created by third party developer. If, for example, I take the time to produce something for Skype, what is the developer area going to do to help me promote and drive traffic to this application? Something, nothing, anything?

4) A flexible, fair and clear pricing (royalty) structure for commercial applications. What will require a charge from developers, what will not? And how much?

5) Enough daily API calls, where applicable. Anything less than a few thousand API calls per day is problematic for doing anything worthwhile. Again, Yahoo focused on 5,000 calls per day which is a pretty flexible number. Google’s API has 1,000 calls which can be inadequate for some programs.

6) Blog for updates with RSS feed. A Wiki might be nice too for developers being able to add their own apps produced. If there are multiple feeds then roll an OPML file and let us choose which feeds I’m interested in and can easily import into my RSS aggregator. If necessary, hire some good writers/bloggers to write about the various APIs and provide free sample code to illustrate how to do various things to work with the API. Or if there isn’t enough need to hire full time positions then commission articles from developers who can produce good tutorials, code snippets and examples and pay them accordingly. This type of material is quite valuable.

7) Whatever I’ve forgotten to list and/or readers and developers add through comments or trackbacks. This list is rough and off the top of my head and I’m sure after I’ve published this and/or looked at the next new API from Publisher XYZ I’ll think of more imporant ideas.

BTW, this sounds customer adventure related to me because if a company creates an API then the API customers are developers. So, that’s why I stuck this in the customer adventures category. I very much like the fact that a blog is being used to stimulate this type of developer-to-developer conversation. I’d use the “T” word but I think that word is way overused.

Smart move, Lenn!

Delighting in another business suffering is sort of cruel and unusual punishment, I agree, but as a former ignored customer (by the corporate machine), I can’t be more happy to see Blockbuster misfiring.

Until recently, Blockbuster was the company to beat in home video rentals. With some 9,000 stores worldwide, the company has enjoyed a dominant position as the leading provider of home video and games in the U.S. and 24 other countries, taking in $6 billion in revenues last year. But from virtual obscurity six years ago, online rival Netflix has delivered a serious blow to Blockbuster’s business.

You go, Netflix, you go!

I still remember having problems in one of the local Blockbuster stores (which was handled very well by the store management). I wanted to contact the corporate office to compliment how the store management handled the issue. We were once gold customers of theirs (which means we spent lots of $$$ on rentals and merchandise). This is somewhat reminiscent of the recent situation with CompUSA, except at least at CompUSA we could reach somebody with Corporate affairs and in that case we wanted to complain about management, not compliment them. In Blockbuster’s case the only thing we could do at the time was fill out an online form.

And that online form we filled out — multiple times — and never received a reply to our inquiry. Not a form letter, email or phone call. Yeah, we kept getting their generic “you are a great, loyal customer” spam but nothing in regards to our direct inquiry. That was it for us as Blockbuster customers and we started taking our business elsewhere.

Online form only communication is the ultimate middle finger from any company. If you want to look in business like a total a-hole to your prospective and existing customers then make the only way to contact you via a form online. That’s like 1995 or something. These days with VOIP like Skype, dozens of different IM programs, email, blogs, etc, there are too many ways not to limit customer communication to only online forms. I’m sure Blockbuster has changed this policy now but at one time that’s the way it was. If they had more contact info beside a form then it was hidden very well. They made it very difficult for customers to contact their corporate office. Too bad.

Netflix, on the other hand, embraced the online world. Just one example of two different web business philosophies converging on the web. I’m sure Blockbuster would love to have a time machine right about now and get into the online DVD rental biz sooner.

Domino’s and Pizza Hut take heed: start sending those pies to penitentiaries. The tips might be bad, but hey nobody loves ‘em better than the inmates. Well, in Australia anyway it seems …

An Australian prison siege ended Monday after a group of inmates agreed to release a guard they had held for two days in return for a delivery of pizzas, prison officials said.

The story doesn’t mention what types of pizzas they ordered? Pepperoni and mushroom? Extra sauce? Garlic?

Somebody get OJ on the line, more juice is needed in the auction sector. Yesterday, online auction giant had some power trouble and went offline for a little over an hour, posting the message:

“eBay experienced a power outage at a principal hosting facility in the Bay Area. Some eBay functions and listings are now available, and we are working to fully restore the rest of the site.”

This reminded me of a recent story I read where one of the challenges that Google was having wasn’t with storage, it was power: they needed more power. Start chaining together enough servers and eventually power consumption becomes a much bigger concern. And how do you backup power? (And yes, I have heard of UPS)

Predictably at least a few customers — annoyed by the seller fees that were raised some 60% in February — were upset by the outage.