by alec on September 13, 2005
Last post before bed. Over lunch today I turned to my business partner Howard, and asked "Why would a small business ever buy an IP PBX if they could reach their customers with Skype? Within a year or two, all you will need is a Skype-In number, and a basic Skype-enabled CRM to do business anywhere in the world."
Martin Geddes on Telepocalypse has written a long, but insightful post on the future of Skype and Ebay. His two big predictions:
Telepocalyptic prediction #1: We’ll see a “merchant edition” of Skype within 12 months, and this will be indirectly a paid-for service to eBay sellers. Skype becomes the “PBX for micro businesses”, and it’s the seed from which eBay can grow a bigger assault on the moribund PSTN application, particularly the 800 number market. The economic driver will be increased conversion rates, larger transaction sizes, lower transaction defect rates (e.g. wrong address), and increased up-sell during closure. Only an advanced multi-modal client can achieve these things.
Telepocalyptic prediction #2: Within 18 months, Skype will be giving away ougoing PSTN calling to places with low call termination charges, in exchange for people adopting the Skype/eBay identity and proffering personal data. eBay needs to grow Skype as fast as possible to keep as much calling on-net as it can. There comes a point when your network effect means you can suddenly drop the price for a wide range of vital services to zero (think: search, browsers) in order to support an adjacent business.
Absolutely right on.
by alec on September 13, 2005
Microsoft ‘Max’ was demoed at the PDC today, and is available for download. Intended as a preview of the future of Windows applications, this is a gorgeous photo organization / sharing application built on the Windows Presentation Framework (formerly known as Avalon), and Windows Communication Framework (formerly known as Indigo). It lets you quickly and easily categorize, and then upload photos to a file sharing site to share with others.
Installation is a lengthy process. Downloading Avalon and Indigo takes time. For me, the process required a reboot, and then failed on restart. I had to locate the shortcut on my desktop to continue.
Loading the software is slow. Once loaded, the beautiful UI is not completely intuitive. You create "lists" of photos to share with others. Using your passport, you create an account, and then you can share the photos.
Slide shows are beautiful streamed slide shows, with large full colour images quickly rendered, even from a web site.
What’s not to like?
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Well, I mentioned the speed. I run a 2 Ghz Athlon processor with 512M of memory, and an ATI Radeon 9200 video card. Max grinds my PC to a halt. If this is the future of Windows, then I will be upgrading every PC in my house.
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Half of my family runs Macintosh. How do I share photos with them?
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How do I tag photos? The feature seems non-existant.
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Did I mention that it’s slow?
Final analysis: Not enough meat on the bone. It’s very pretty, but both Flickr and Picasa are more functional.
BTW, the above screen shot is shared with Flickr.
