Games - Skype

	Games - Skype

Skype (IPA pronunciation: , rhymes with type) is a proprietary peer-to-peer Internet telephony (VoIP) network, founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the creators of KaZaA and competing against established open VoIP protocols like SIP, IAX, or H.323. The Skype Group is headquartered in Luxembourg with offices also in London and Tallinn. The system has a reputation for working across different types of network connections (including firewalls and NAT) because voice packets are routed by the combined users of the free desktop software application. Skype users can speak to other Skype users for free. Skype also has paid services allowing users to call traditional telephone numbers (SkypeOut), receive calls from traditional phones (SkypeIn), and receive voicemail messages.

In September 2005, eBay acquired the company for €2.5 billion in cash and stock, plus an additional 1.5 billion in rewards (earn out) if goals are met by 2008.

Features

The basic computer-to-computer service allows users to speak, to send instant messages or to send files to one another from their computers via the Internet at no cost. Conferences of up to five users are supported.

SkypeOut

SkypeOut is a paid feature of the Skype Internet telephony service, which allows Skype users to call virtually any non-computer-based landline or mobile telephone in the world.

Unlike international long-distance calls made from conventional telephones, which are traditionally rated according to the relative distance between countries, SkypeOut bills all calls according to the level of telecommunications liberalisation of the destination country, the volume of calls made from and to a given country, and access charges such as those to mobile (cell) phones. This rating method is used due to the fact that calls are rated the same regardless of place of origin.

This way, a SkypeOut user will be billed the same for a call placed to a telephone number in London, whether the user is calling from his/her computer in London itself, or from a different country. The Global Rate which is the one used for many countries, including nearly all First World countries, is currently 1.7 euro cents per minute. Credit, which is necessary to use SkypeOut, is usually purchased via credit card, personal check or money order, or online services such as PayPal or Moneybookers. The current deposit is either €10 or €25, which automatically expires after 180 days of inactivity — a timer is reset after each successful SkypeOut connect. In European Union countries, Luxembourg VAT of 15% is added to the charge, which makes the actual prices closer to €0.02 per minute.

It is possible to dial British, French, Polish and U.S. freephone numbers with Skype without having purchased credit. However, dialling some freephone numbers generates a "call failed" error. This is likely to be due to the fact that some freephone numbers only allow calls from their own country, which may not be where Skype's outgoing calls originate from.

SkypeIn

SkypeIn allows Skype users to receive calls on their computers dialed by regular phone subscribers to regular phone numbers. Beta released on March 10, 2005, SkypeIn permits users to subscribe to numbers in UK, USA, France, Hong Kong, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Switzerland, Poland, Brazil and Japan. (Although France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan give SkypeIn numbers only to residents).

Cost is €30 for a twelve-month subscription, or €10 for a three-month subscription. Users can have multiple SkypeIn phone numbers bound to the same account (a separate subscription is required for each). For example, someone who does business in both San Francisco and Helsinki could create a local telephone number in each city, and callers from those locations would pay cheap or free local rates.

Skype Voicemail

Skype Voicemail was released on March 10, 2005. This service allows callers to leave voice-mail messages for Skype users who are not online, on another call or otherwise indisposed. This can be purchased separately and is automatically bundled in with SkypeIn.

Skype Voicemail has experienced numerous problems over the past year and users complain that many voicemail calls are never received and at times callers are never prompted to leave a voicemail message. Additionally, the SkypeIn service at times never records certain incoming calls on the program's history page. These current problems have not yet been resolved completely.

Skype Chat

Skype supports group text chat with an interface similar to IRC.

Skype Video Calling

Skype 2.0 has a Skype Video Calling feature which has been implemented to enable videoconferencing. This feature is only supported when running Windows XP - the feature is not available for Linux or Apple Macintosh users.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Skype ]