Tamas Henning

It has been a really long time since I last had the time to actually write about something that has happened with me. So the nutshell then, moving on to less serious stuff:

• Skype passed the 15^th and 16^th million marks… Party
• Skype released 4.0 Gold
• I finished my midterms (even bigger Party)
• I went to Tallinn/Tartu (yes, again and starting it again) – Now this was one of my best business trips I had in my life… little more on this later.
• College started (again…)

So let’s move on to the story telling… I had to go to Tallinn last week for our annual company meeting which was held in Tartu. I’m not going to go into the corporate boredom because I don’t want too, but it was one of the best times I’ve had since a long time. Going out with friends, meeting new people, catching up with old colleagues and staying in the very fancy Swissotel. Who could ask for more? Even though the company cut my work period in half I managed to get so many things solved and still had time free that I amazed myself. But the most shocker for me was when I went to the Skype office in Tallinn on Monday. It was cramped with people from all over. Plus the 2^nd floor is a building site and it was already cramped as it was. Oh well, I managed to find a spot to sit on the 3^rd floor, but not really stayed there much as my laptop and it’s charger were always in my hands no matter where I went (one exception of course :D)

There was only one downside to my trip. The trip back home killed me. I had a 5 hour wait in Prague, but fortunately I had company for a while since one of my colleagues was also waiting for about 4 hours so we talked a lot, but still it was a long wait. During my wait I a man who was so drunk when he stood up from the chair he started going around the place and finally crash landed on the table breaking everything in his path. Everyone remained stunned how drunk someone could get just before a flight… Not sure though he took a flight that day in such conditions.

Anyways, need to run to do stuff… hopefully next time it won’t take so long to blog again

P.S. Don’t even ask what the picture is about and why I posted it because I’m not telling

As many of you already know, there has been a reporting going around about the Tom-Skype software developed in a joint venture between TOM Online and Skype which is dedicated to the users in China. So I’m not really going to talk about that report since already a lot of people wrote about it.

Instead I would like to write a few lines about a new blog post by Skype CEO Josh Silverman (which can be found here). The blog post answers a few very commonly asked questions about this situation. Like for instance “Is Skype secure???” The one word answer for this is YES. But I’ll elaborate a bit more on this. As stated before, the privacy breach has been only detected in the TOM-Skype version, while the standard version you can download from skype.com is complete safe. I know some users might doubt how safe the standard client can be, if the TOM-Skype version is already doing this… But for those skeptics I only have one question: do you have a mobile phone?

I don’t blame TOM Online for doing this maneuver since doing business implies following the law, and if the law forces you to do things your chose is the following: Do it or pull out. It’s not easy to do business in today’s world, but are we sure that China is the only country spying on their people? I for one am not so sure. Security and personal safety has been a serious problem over the past decade and who knows what things could’ve happened if certain people weren’t wiretapped. I only can imagine where we would be today. I accept the fact that I may be monitored by some agency or what not because what do I have to hide that they wouldn’t find out if they wanted to? I only would have a problem if my personal life would get public through these agency otherwise I couldn’t care less… let them listen I don’t have anything to hide. This is just my personal opinion and not everyone has to accept it.

Just a quick summary, be assured if you’re using the standard Skype version downloadable from skype.com everything is ok.

Is Skype secure?
Yes. Skype-to-Skype conversations are among the most secure and private forms of communication publicly available today.

(Quote by Josh Silverman, Skype CEO)

As the title says I’m really swamped with work and my personal life and college and everything. I really know I have been mistreating my blog and I really wasn’t writing about anything but I promise to write more often since the interesting part of 2008 is just beginning. A few days back I did a quick calculation of how many times I was abroad this year alone and I got petrified how busy I was. And still the year isn’t over. Currently for September I have two trips abroad planned but more on that a little later. I will only say that I’ll be in Greece from the 16^th of September. That trip promises to be an interesting one. But again I need to run but I do promise I will write more about what has happened when the time is right. And that will be very soon.

Today Skype has launched a new major version of its client called Skype 4.0. For those who are used to the regular Skype user interface they will see a massive change since it’s now a full screen application. This isn’t necessary a bad thing especially when implementing this new version in a conference room. As a Skype beta tester I had the opportunity to test this version of Skype for a while now and its video features are incredible and very usable in a conference room scenario. However it was a bit hard to get used to initially since I usually have about 3 chat windows open with different people and sometimes it is important to see more than one chat at once. But this has radically changed after just using the client for day to day tasks and when I had to go back to 3.8 it was a bit odd to see the old client.

So I have to ask is the video age starting off today?

It has been ages since I last wrote something on my blog. Since my last post I have been to Tallinn twice again… work related of course and now I’m suffering with my midterms. The main problem is that I’m not on vacation and I work and study at the same time. It was my choice not to go on vacation but I don’t regret it… Maybe I will after the midterms???

Anyways, yesterday I flipped the switch on a new forum release at Skype Don’t yell at me that I forgot to blog about the main release but I was too busy getting things done. This release was just a hotfix that fixed some issues and brought some new features which people were asking for. (So we do listen…) But unfortunately some issues that were reported were in fact actual features. So the saying: “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature” popped into my head from my Skype t-shirt I got in Prague during the closed beta days. I agree that the forum still needs work, but nothing is perfect right? I’ve been working on this project since early August, 2007 so it has taken quiet some time to get to this stage. Am I happy with my work? Yes I am. After all the bumps we had in the road we finally managed to get everything in place at least in an early format. But what is still yet to come will truly turn the Skype forums into Skype Community.

I’ve read plenty of posts on the internet saying that the forum usage has gone down. Well from what I’ve seen as a moderator on the forum this isn’t true. Of course there has been a slight drop at the beginning but come on when you release something new this is to be expected. And from the numbers what I can see the normal usage trend remains. (Please note that this is not an official statistic just a personal opinion).

Anyways I have to end this post since I have a lot more studying to do