Recently, Skype has implemented some changes in order to consolidate on the strength of its staff, not long ago a former executive at Motorola was absorbed to contribute his own quota to the development of the company.

The latest one involves the transfer of its global head of public relation, Imogen Bailey, to WPP-owned agency solely overseeing the dell account. Imogen Bailey has started as senior VP of communications for EMEA at Enfatico, overseeing corporate and consumer PR with a particular focus on emerging markets and she was also a director of tech at Edelman before moving to Skype in 2006.

Bailey will work closely with Enfatico’s global team, including those working on marketing and advertising. ‘That’s the beauty of Enfatico – it’s fully integrated’. Bailey said. ‘This is a one-off role’. On the Dell client side, she will work closely with director of communications Stuart Handley. On the agency side, Bailey reports to Enfatico chief communications officer Kelly McGinnis. 

We’ve all been in a situation where one of us gets a fit of the giggles and before long everyone else is joining in; it’s as contagious as a yawn, and a lot more fun. It’s a well known fact that laughter brings us closer together – it’s a language we all understand and everyone loves a good laugh.

These might be what Skype has in mind for its valued users when the internet phone company showcases its viral campaign featuring a cavalcade of jolly babies, grown-ups, snorting and otherwise breaking into hysterical laughter on camera.

 Skype believes that face-to-face communication is the best kind and this has motivated them to create Laughter Chain which hopefully will promote the company’s free video calling feature. You can use Skype to make as many free video calls as you want. Seeing the person you’re talking to makes your conversation come alive – you can share excitement, laughter, tears or even just pull a silly face.

Non-cranky Skype subscribers can record their own contribution and become part of the laughter-is-contagious mega video at the Skype Laughter Chain site.

Many business owners are now in eager to integrate Skype technologies in order to enable them enjoy the free and reduced cost Internet telephony services being offered by Skype. Most of them are now looking for new ways to exploit this free Internet telephony Executives from their IT service partners.

Until now, majority of Skype’s subscribers are either the small business owners or the consumers who applied the service directly for heir personal use. Many enterprise-level are now eager to introduce Skype to certain class of their employees many of whom are already using Skype.

Revealing his observation, Shane McNulty, head of business development at Skype for Business said "The Company does not target the enterprise directly, but we are seeing these kinds of customers pushing their large systems integrators and business process outsourcers to provide Skype services. While these customers may have had reservations about using Skype – with particular concerns about security and quality of service – they are now simply saying "just make it happen" – for cost reasons. There is also widespread evidence that in most areas of business such concerns are unfounded".

According to Ian Robin, director of Skype for Business, the company now has 17 enterprise customers operating more than 2,000 Skype IDs two of those have more than 10,000 and both in the Far East. Skype has total number of registered users of about 309 million, 30% of which use Skype for at least some business activity. A recent survey conducted by the company suggested that 95% of those business customers experience savings as a result, with a third claiming to have cut their phone bill by 50%.

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls between Skype users are free; users pay £2.24 each month for unlimited calls to UK landlines and mobiles, £3.39 for calls within Europe, and £7.99 for calls around the world.

Skype announced the appointment of Scott Durchslag as its new chief operating officer and he is to assume this position with immediate effect. The announcement was made on Tuesday when Durchslag, a former Motorola executive, was told he would be reporting directly to Josh Silverman, the president of Skype.

His appointment by Skype may not have been unconnected with his outstanding track record during the time he was with Motorola. Joining the company in 1992, Scott job was on important issues that range from product strategy, innovation, intellectual property, design, user interfaces to include others such as consumer experiences, partnerships, product marketing and customer care.

Another successful landmark achieved at Motorola by Scott is the fact that he was a major factor who helped seal deals with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Kodak that brought their products to Motorola phones which attracted a considerable number of customers.

While speaking about his new appointment, the Skype’s new chief operating officer said that "I believe in Skype not only because I’ve been a user since the early days, but also because I’m convinced the opportunities ahead for Skype are tremendous given how the world is changing. Skype connects customers and enables smaller businesses to grow without the unnecessary fuel consumption, costs and carbon pollution generated by needless travel."

In his comment, Silverman stated that "Scott has an outstanding track record and will be able to help us apply best practices in staying ever more customer-focused and nimble, even while becoming larger."

In another development, Skype announced its partnership with Wireless Innovation Alliance (WIA), an organization dedicated to gaining access to TV white spaces. This was necessitated by the fact that when broadcasters shift from analog to digital signals in February 2009, there will be an open, unregulated spectrum between the digital channels, or white spaces, that Internet companies like Google and Microsoft want to use for wireless broadband service. The WIA has approximately 15 members, including Microsoft, Google, Motorola, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard.

Users of VoxSwap social network can now watch education and entertainment videos in a wide selection of language through Skype’s video being offered and integrated in the service.  This development will enable users to hear, see and at the same time type text of the language are seeking to learn.

Although, VoxSwap is a social network it differs from other in the sense that it is for people learning and practicing languages.  As such they can add videos to the service at the press of a button to help one another learn and practice each other’s languages. Also the ability of user to hear and see during the period of chatting will help in acquiring knowledge proper pronunciation about the languages they are learning.

Not until the integration of Skype, chatting through this medium had been limited to text, users can now talk to one another and even video conference at no cost. This new features of video and Skype will sit alongside a virtual keyboard, which offers characters and accents users may not have on their keyboards, as well as a built-in Google Translator for understanding phrases and words.

Co-founder Sean Hargrave believes this is a major step forward for the site. Sean set up the site with his wife, Nicole, at the start of 2008 to give social networking a purpose.

Rather than compile lists of friends and have virtual snowball fights, VoxSwap allows people to talk in multiple languages so users can help one another progress - hence the site’s motto of ‘make friends, learn a language’.

Included with the upgrade to the site are new features to improve the internal email system and allow people to take more control over their contact with one another. These additions include the ability to delete emails and comments people no longer want on their profile or mail box, as well as the ability to block user they wish no longer wish to get in touch with.

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The rate at which Skype is growing left many IT managers in some very decisive situations, they no longer have to sit on the fence; those that want to continue using it should bring it in-house to fully manage and control the application and those that don’t need to figure out how to block its use outright.

It is crystal clear many advantages Skype has to offer them among which is the provision of cheap long-distance calling, particularly for those who frequently travel abroad. Skype also enables quick collaboration via conferencing for small groups. Best of all, it’s easy to use and has a broad user base.

Little wonder Michael Jackson, Skype’s vice president of mobile and telecom services, announced at the European IT Forum Sept. 25-26, that Skype has 113 million registered users, 30 percent of which use Skype for business.

By its nature, Skype wants to be on the network and wants to work under any network conditions. The Skype protocol is so well-engineered that it can’t be denied access by simply blocking users’ access to foreign IP address blocks or to network protocols. Skype also will readily leak out of the network, using high-numbered ports—either TCP or UDP (User Datagram Protocol). As a last resort, it will use ports 80 and 443, which are most commonly used for Web traffic.

Another interesting point is that a firewall that blocks inbound traffic or uses NAT (Network Address Translation) also won’t stop Skype. When a Skype client starts, it opens a session with a supernode in the Skype network. If the client cannot be contacted from the Internet, the supernode will notify the client when a call comes in—via the open connection. If the recipient cannot directly contact the sender, the supernode or a relay agent can then act as a proxy between the two callers.

These supernode proxies can be located anywhere on the Internet. In Section 4 of Skype’s EULA (end-user license agreement), its revealed that Skype can use any user’s computer processor and network resources to help facilitate performance. With enough processing power and network bandwidth at its disposal, any Skype client could be a supernode or a relay agent.

Almost all Skype communications are strongly encrypted with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), and some setup traffic is obfuscated with RC4 encryption, so the proxies cannot decipher any third-party traffic that crosses through. But this encryption also means that network administrators have no insight into what data is contained within the encrypted stream.

Check out the all new Skype 4.0

Packed with video, ease of use and call quality enhancements that let users move easily from PC-to-PC audio, video and instant messaging calls, the new VoIP platform released by Skype is now out for beta-testing. This is an improved version and it is aimed at attracting more customers to their service and possibly bringing them to the forefront of the VoIP market considering the fact that they already have some 309 millions users.

It is anticipated that with the improved features such as the video enhancements, in which a big old button can be clicked to trigger an instant video chat between Skype users, it will be well-received for those wanting to communicate over long distances and avoid travel.

According to analyst Rob Enderle, the escalating fuel prices could indeed be a factor in users’ decisions to get on the VOIP bandwagon. He stated that "With gas prices going up at an astronomical pace, there is a massive increase in people wanting to do video calls instead of travel, and the combination of products like this and that high gas price may fundamentally change how many do business."

A Yankee Group analyst, Patrick Monaghan, also offered a similar opinion. He said that  Skype has been pushing its product hard in North America over the last year even though it’s been a hard sell because many U.S. consumers do not have large long-distance bills now that mobile minutes are cheap and land-line long distance is usually unlimited.

The new, easier-to-use video calls button should help. Moreover, Monaghan said Oprah’s endorsement of Skype for a book campaign is already helping. "This has opened Skype to demographics that wouldn’t normally be drawn to Skype," he said. "All the new features that make it easier to install and use video will help these people simply use these features, especially video. People do what Oprah does, and if it’s free, that’s even better.

Check out the New Skype Now.

Users of Skype can now launch video calls with one click and can be accompanied by one-click IM chat sessions; this has been made possible through the latest version of Skype 4.0 which offers users with improved video and options to help users better manage calls.

Excited about this development and the impact it is going to make in the market, director of Windows product management at Skype, Mike Bartlett explained that "This is one of the most fundamental changes we’ve made in the one and a half year history of the company. When you change something dramatically, it can be quite difficult to get used to for your user base. This is an unfinished piece of work at the moment.

However, Bartlett stressed that Skype 4.0 is still very much in beta form and that the company is looking to user feedback over the coming months to shape the final product. "Over the years, we’ve added a lot of richness and functionality to Skype. It’s no longer just a little piece of software for making free calls," said Bartlett.

The VoIP provider is keen to promote its video calling service which it says accounts for around 28 per cent of all Skype call minutes. Version 4.0 has also been designed to accommodate Skype-certified hardware, allowing the application automatically to recognize new devices such as headphones.

To check out the all new Skype 4.0 Click Here Now