Skype Debuts Video Calls For Android

Skype, which is being gobbled up by Microsoft for $8.5 billion, debuted a new service on Thursday allowing users of Android phones to make free video calls to Skype contacts, including those on Apple iPhones.

The company whose name has become synonymous with Internet calling said its updated Android app would initially support video calling on selected HTC and Sony Ericsson Phones, with more devices to follow shortly.

“We are committed to bringing Skype video calling to as many platforms as possible,” Skype’s product and marketing chief Neil Stevens said in a statement.

The move will help makers of phones based on Google’s Android software compete with Apple’s FaceTime video-calling service launched last year for the iPhone and now available on its iPad 2 tablet and Mac computers.

Video calling could also help new Skype owner Microsoft promote its Windows Phone smartphone platform, which it is merging with Nokia’s in an effort to become competitive with Android and Apple.

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Microsoft Patents Snooping Technology

A newly patented Microsoft technology named Legal Intercept that would allow the company to covertly intercept, monitor and record Skype calls is raising privacy concerns.

Microsoft’s patent application for Legal Intercept was filed in 2009, well before the company’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype this May. The patent was granted last week.

From Microsoft’s description of the technology in its patent application, Legal Intercept appears similar to tools used by telecommunication companies and equipment makers to comply with government wiretap and surveillance requests.

According to Microsoft, Legal Intercept is designed to silently record communications on VoIP networks such as Skype.

According to Microsoft, Legal Intercept fixes the gaps in current monitoring tools that are designed mainly for intercepting Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). “With new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other communication technology, the POTS model for recording communications does not work,” Microsoft noted in the patent application.

Michael Froomkin, a professor of law at the University Of Miami School Of Law, said that from the patent description it sounds as if the technology would allow Microsoft to do is make Skype CALEA capable.

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AT&T’s iPhone 4 Beats Verizon’s

In the phone wars between the two big carriers, it looks like AT&T wins this round. The iPhone 4 on AT&T’s network downloaded data twice as fast, on average, as the iPhone on Verizon Wireless, according to thousands of recent field tests in five U.S. cities performed by Metrico Wireless, an independent mobile device performance evaluation firm.

Metrico’s tests looked at several other variables, however, and found the average Web page load time was nearly the same on iPhone 4 on both networks, a Metrico official said.

Also, when the iPhone 4 was in a moving vehicle, the AT&T model successfully finished about 10% more download session than Verizon’s. But when the iPhones were stationary, the Verizon iPhone had a 10% better success rate in uploading data than the AT&T iPhone, Metrico said.

Metrico did not reveal actual time measurements for any of its results, including the data downloads and uploads or Web page loading times, prior to publication of its full study.

Some of Metrico’s findings are at odds with several smaller spot reports conducted last month that found Verizon’s iPhone performed better on several criteria. But a Metrico official noted that those quick studies were based on only a handful of test samples, often in a single city, including San Francisco, where AT&T’s coverage for the iPhone has been consistently criticized.

AT&T admitted more than a year ago that it had network problems in downtown San Francisco and Manhattan and had begun infrastructure updates.  Read More….

Support Calls To Help Desks Are On The Rise

At a time when technology is supposed to be getting simpler, less complex and easier to manage, more people are calling help desks for assistance than ever before, according to a new report. That’s one of the findings that HDI, formerly known as the Help Desk Institute, revealed in its recently released 2010 study of help desk trends.

What HDI found is that the number of incidents reported to help desks via chat, e-mail, telephone, self-help systems, social media, the Web and walk-ins is rising, with 67% of all help desk operations experiencing increases in 2010. That’s roughly the same percentage who reported an increase in 2009.

In recent years, many organizations have moved to centralize their help desk operations and establish a single point of contact for workers, said Roy Atkinson, an analyst at HDI, whose members represent a help desk community of about 50,000 people.

Those centralization efforts have improved incident data collection, which helps to explain the spike in reports. Moreover, creating a single point of contact, and offering multiple ways for people to reach the help desk, encourages users to seek assistance, Atkinson said.

While centralization and better record-keeping may explain much of the increase in reported calls, it doesn’t completely explain it. Atkinson said another part of the explanation could be the fact that IT complexity is actually increasing, especially as users seek to connect multiple devices, including mobile phones, tablets and laptops to corporate networks. Read More…….

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