Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Skype looks like it’s back this morning.  At least, we’re logged in here in Ottawa, although I don’t see anyone else logged in that I know.    The various explanations making the rounds this morning are interesting — everything ranging from a denial of service attack to the official Skype explanation (”it’s a bug”… how illuminating).

What conclusions can we draw from this?

• The much vaunted peer-to-peer architecture really isn’t that peer, nor that secure.  Something has taken down the entire Skype network, and it seems to have been triggered by a software update to a login server controlled by Skype.
• Five nines uptime matters.  Anyone who moved their landlines to Skype for business purposes got a nasty awakening yesterday.  Five nines reliability is less than five minutes of downtime per year.  What we all experienced yesterday was a little better than two nines — a twenty four hour outage.
• Building quality software is harder than it looks.  The kids in Redmond take a lot of abuse for the quality of Windows, the number of patches they put out, and the lengthy periods of time between upgrades. Never have we seen every Windows PC stop operating globally for a twenty four hour period. 

Over and out.

The lads at Telco 2.0 are busily dissecting whether Facebook is a threat to the carriers.  Doesn't seem likely to me, and neither does it seem that way to them.  But once you get past the initial assessment, the analysis is a vintage piece of telepocalyptic work.

Perhaps the most interesting observation is contained in the diagram of the Telephony Interaction Pyramid, which shows that the area of overlap between social networks, and telephony is around "conversations", which they explain in a distinctly web-oriented fashion as "A conversation may involve a sequence of interactions with some common purpose, initiated in different directions, and potentially with a varying set of participants. An email or newsgroup thread is closer to the meaning here. Telephony includes some limited “conversational” features, like missed call alerts."

The implication is that there is great potential for partnerships between telephony companies and social networking companies, and presumably (given the distinctly anemic uptake of initiatives like the SkypeMe application on Facebook) that partnership revolves around the management of those conversations on voice networks as opposed to IM and email networks.

Heady stuff, and worth a read.

Exploding and overheating batteries seem to be dogging the mobile electronics industry.  The latest to be hit?  Nokia.  Their BL-5C batteries (found in both the N70 and the N91, both of which I own) are now under a recall.  The battery in question was made by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006, and is the most common battery in Nokia's kit-bag. 

To find out if your batteries are affected, and how to obtain a replacement, visit Nokia's battery replacement website. 

Nokia's Stephen Johnston has authored a piece titled Enterprise 2.0 — What does it mean for mobile? which is well worth a read.  He covers the gamut from WEB API's to collaboration tools and presence, touching on places where gaps exist today, and speculating a little about the future.

Recommended.  

Moishe Maeir's Flat Planet Phone Company is offering a free Linksys SPA942 IP phone when you sign up for his $199/year reseller program… plus he's gotten the folks at VoIP supply to kick in a $200 rebate on equipment.

The Flat Planet Phone Company is a great deal for those who want to get into the VoIP business without a huge cash outlay.  It just got even sweeter with this  new promotion.