Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Sometimes spin is pretty obvious, ain’t it?

There’s been a bit of a management shakeup over at Skype.  The EBay crew is out, and Dr. Z (Niklas) is back in charge.  Om Malik has the inside story as, in true investigative reporter fashion, he’s been reporting the juicy tidbits as they leak out.  Jaanus has the sanitized version of the story on the Share Skype blog.  And, of course, there’s the press release. 

It’s spun as a promotion from CMO to President for EBayer Henry Gomez.  But then in the next sentence, Gomez is positioned as an advisor to Niklas…

With Kazim’s departure, Henry Gomez, Skype’s Chief Marketing Office and Director of Country Operations, has been named President. In his new role, Gomez will serve as an advisor to Zennstrom and the principal liaison with eBay and PayPal.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but President is usually an operational role, is it not?

My stomach is still on fire. We had Kentucky Fried Chicken at the office last night, and my 42 year old stomach can’t take the grease any more. The dev team gobbled it up, though.

We’re in crunch mode — that time when tech teams pull out all the stops and crank toward a release. It means a lot of late nights, catered in lunches and dinners (I know… KFC isn’t exactly catering, per se) so people can stay focused, and the push to a deadline. 

I’ve never worked on a technology project where it hasn’t come to this.  It was 2:30 AM when I finally hit the sack, yesterday.

So what are we working on?  A couple of months ago, I called a friend of mine and asked how his day was going.  “Lousy”, came the reply.  “I’ve spent the last two hours playing telephone tag”.

Next week we hope to be able to deliver an early release of a new feature for the iotum Relevance Engine, part of a roadmap of features we call “Minerva” internally.  We’re not quite sure what to call this feature yet… but I think it’s going to change the way people think about presence, especially mobile presence.  It’s not based on today’s presence technologies, although it’s something like presence.  It’s not a buddy list either, but more like a hybrid of a buddy list and a to-do list combined with telephony.  The goal for this feature is the elimination of telephone tag.

We’re going to be looking for a few people to try this out. Initially it will only be available on Blackberry.  If you have a Blackberry with OS release 4.1 or higher, and would like to participate in an early trial, feel free to drop me email.  I’ll send you an invite when it’s ready to download.

The folks at Jajah have a nice Christmas promo going.  Want to call a family member on Christmas day?  For 24 hours on December 25th, all calls to any of Jajah’s zone 1, 2, or 3 countries are absolutely free.  The caller needs to be a member, but that’s all.

Details here.