If you’re in the market looking for a new job, knowing how to use Skype can give you an edge.

More and more companies are using Skype to interview prospective candidates to save on travel costs and time.

Check out this great article from TIME Magazine and accompany video on Time.com providing tips for making your job interview via Skype picture perfect.

By Skype USA

Skype Heartbeat

Our payment partner Yandex.Money will be carrying out some maintenance work on Tuesday 9th February between 0430 and 0530 GMT. You won’t be able to pay via Yandex during this time. Please use an alternative payment method. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Доводим до Вашего сведения, что наш партнер Yandex.Money проводит работы по техническому обслуживанию систем, во вторник 9го Февраля с 0430 до 0530 GMT. Оплата через Yandex.Money будет остановлена до окончания технических работ. Пожалуйста используйте альтернативные методы оплаты . Извиняемся за причиненные неудобства!

By Skype Heartbeat

Many of you have been asking when we’ll release a version of Skype for iPhone which supports 3G calling. Well, the simple answer is soon.

Last Thursday, Apple introduced the iPad, which we’re very excited about here at Skype. David Ponsford, who features in the video above, and his team are reviewing the device and its specs, and you can expect to hear more from us about Skype for iPad in due course.

What does this have to do with calling over 3G? The SDK (Software Development Kit) which Apple provides to developers like Skype has been upgraded for the iPad. The new version, 3.2, removes the restrictions on calling over 3G, which is great news.

You may have seen other apps offering calls over 3G, but we’re holding ours back for a little bit longer. Why? So that we can give you the very best audio quality we can. When our 3G-capable Skype for iPhone app is released, it’ll let you make calls in wideband audio, giving you greater clarity and fidelity – because that’s what you expect from Skype.

To be among the first to know when the 3G-capable app is available, follow @skypemobile on Twitter or subscribe to this blog either by RSS or email using the links to the right.

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Skype Heartbeat

Since around 18:15 GMT, we’ve been having some problems with Auto-recharge and recurring payments.

Auto-recharge and Recurring payments aren’t working as normal, so your balance may fall below the minimum amount without being topped up in time and your subscription will be renewed with delay. You can still buy Skype credit as normal.

We’re sorry for the trouble this is causing.

[2010/02/02@2040UTC] We expect the delays to be solved by 2100UTC, stay tuned.

By Skype Heartbeat

Skype Heartbeat

Some of you who’ve just tried opening Payment In Client window, making a call to Online number, making a purchase or using any other service, may have noticed some difficulties to do so. You may have received some error such as “Internal error” from the web or “Check your connection” from the Skype Client.

We’re investigating and hope to have more information to share soon.

By Skype Heartbeat

Skype Heartbeat

Some Skype for SIP users have reported problems with SIP channel subscription extensions. We’re planning to roll out a fix today, but there may be delays to SIP channel subscription extensions for the next few days.

By Skype Heartbeat

Skype Heartbeat

Some people are reporting problems signing in, making calls to landlines and mobiles, as well as receiving calls to their online numbers.

We’re investigating and hope to have more information to share soon. You can follow @skype on Twitter for faster updates.

[2010/01/29@1915UTC] Things seem to be returning to normal.

By Skype Heartbeat

var so = new SWFObject(”http://download.skype.com/share/videos/player.swf”, “videoplayer”, “660″, “371″, “9″, “#00AFF0″);so.addParam(”allowFullScreen”, “true”);so.addVariable(”videoXML”, “http://share.skype.com/sites/en/video/josh/josh.xml”);so.write(”josh_video”);

I caught up with Josh Silverman earlier for a quick chat about video – past, present and future. In the video above, we talk about what makes video different, its current ubiquity, and a little bit about what the future has in store.

He also published a guest post on GigaOM earlier today, which outlines some of his thoughts in a bit more detail, from the philosophical:

For hundreds of thousands of years, people have shared meaning through language. Its form has evolved from oral to visual and, for the past few thousand years, written. Yet until the 20th century, true conversations were tied to a shared place or shifted by time (letters). Even then, only being together with someone allowed for rich, full interaction to bloom. Live video conversations are changing all that, combining the oral, visual and written traditions into virtual presence.

to the practical:

With video, people are suddenly present without having to be in the same room as one another. The encounter, by extension, is no longer merely transactional. When my friend in Ann Arbor, Mich., turned 40, I joined the party from London over video. The distance between us evaporated — a benefit voice calls cannot deliver. A similar thing happens by way of the permanent live video wall that joins up our offices in Tallinn and Prague: An Estonian engineer’s desk is right next to that of her team member in the Czech Republic.

Last, but not least, the Institute for the Future has released a report titled ‘The Future of Real-Time Video Communication’, commissioned by Skype, which sets out to answer three important questions:

• What is the future of real-time video communication?
• What will it feel like to live and work in a world where real-time video is ubiquitous?
• And what are the most important user, technological, market, and policy forces that will shape the course of global real-time video development and diffusion?

As video is at the core of what we do at Skype, we’re curious about its direction and want to ignite a discussion about its meaning and implications. Not all of us here necessarily agree with all of the authors’ findings, but I hope their work sparks an enlightening debate.

You can read more about the report on the IFTF website, or download the full report and executive summary (PDF, 1.1Mb).

I’ll be exploring some of the findings of the report in more detail over the coming weeks, but for now, dive in and take a look.

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Skype Heartbeat

We’re having some problems with our sign in server, so you may not be able to sign in to the Skype application or to your account as normal.

[2009/01/21@1746UTC] If you’re already signed in to the Skype application on your computer or mobile phone, you should be able to call/IM/etc as normal. This is only affecting people who aren’t already signed in.

[2009/01/21@1752UTC] Our forums are experiencing heavy traffic and so access may be slower than usual. Apologies! For more updates, watch this space or follow @skype on Twitter.

As soon as I have more information, I’ll update this post.

By Skype Heartbeat

One of the more interesting sessions I attended at the Pacific Telecommunications Conference (PTC) in Honolulu this week was a panel discussion called “The Content Providers Speak”. It included technical eaders from Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, who were talking about their perspective on what networking means to them.

A few really interesting points came out:

• Electricity is the dominant cost factor for them. This creates a tension between cheap power – often available far from large user populations – and good experience – which drives data centers closer to large user populations.
• The growth of dynamic content is seriously weakening the value that these guys are seeing from Content Distribution Networks (CDN).
• Facebook has a 50/50 split between leasing datacenter space and building, while Google and Yahoo primarily build.
• There is a growing move away from the use of transit ISP providers. All three of them said they had, or were planning to, move to direct peering with local ISPs. This was driven by cost savings and the ability to have greater control over performance.

I thought these were great insights into the challenges that application providers in our space are facing.

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