Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Other 'little touches' come together to improve the user
experience, especially for the less technically minded user. So Skype
4.0 will now automatically detect the available bandwidth and
audio/video hardware so make getting started a whole lot easier.
Although Skype is claiming that its engineers
have managed to implement data-compression techniques that enable high
quality voice conversations with a bandwidth as petite as 2Kb/sec, and
video on just 6Kb/sec, I cannot say that I am convinced this is working
properly yet. Skype 4.0 still worked best here when hoked up to
broadband.
In fact, plug it into a 100Kb/sec or faster connection and you can have full-screen, high-res, video calling.
Overall then, Skype 4.0 Beta would appear to be a roaring success. Yes,
you need to factor in that this remains a Beta, so is by definition
being tested and is therefore open to improvement. But the basics are
all looking good.
Fair play to Skype for moving away from the multiple windows interface
and being bold enough to redesign a hugely successful product so as to
make it even more intuitive and efficient. The all-in-one approach will
take some getting used to, but not much. I was hooked within half an
hour of learning what does what, why and how.
Most of all though, kudos to Skype for realising that the focus of its
software needed to reflect the direction of its service. And in 2008
that means moving away from being an IM system with added voice and
video, to being a video and voice system with added IM functionality.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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