Skype: Nearly Naked
Get your mind out of the gutter! That’s not what I meant.
One of the most requested developer features for Skype is now part of the Skype 2.6 beta. Called “Silent Mode” it allows you to switch off the visible Skype UI within your application. It’s the first indication that Skype will allow developers to separate the UI from the engine, and deliver what Peeter Mõtsküla referred to last April as Naked Skype.
When the original Voice 2.0 Manifesto was written, one of the things that it contemplated was the need to separate the presentation layer of an application from transport, and to standardize that presentation layer. Skype’s announcement today is a baby step on that road. Who knows… unless an alternative with sufficient momentum emerges, perhaps Skype will become the defacto standard.
October 6th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
[...] And the big new feature is “naked Skype”, which allows developers to separate the UI and the engine. So you can develop voice applications where the Skype engine runs without the interface appearing. Alec Saunders talks a bit about this silent mode Skype. This will be great for the hot new niche of voice data applications, click-to-call. [...]