skype

Microsoft has announced a range of updates to Skype. It's something of a surprise given the tool has taken a major backseat in recent years. With remote working on the increase since the start of the pandemic and more people making video calls to ... friends and family they couldn't see in person, other services have come to the forefront. In particular Microsoft has put more emphasis on its business videoconference tool Teams, while many home users have switched to Zoom. Some had even speculated Microsoft would ditch Skype altogether. Instead its promising changes both in user functions and ... (view more)

Microsoft is to make it easier to build breaks into videoconferencing schedules. The move is designed to overcome a mismatch between technology "efficiency" and the real world. Automated scheduling tools make sense as a way for businesses to ... efficiently find and arrange times for people to get together. By default, most tools will schedule a meeting for a "round" time period such as 30 or 60 minutes. In an era when the vast majority of meetings were in person, that wasn't necessarily a problem. Back-to-back meetings were rare and even when they happened, meetings would naturally end a few ... (view more)

A research group says the number of people using mobile video calling rose 50 percent last year. It forecasts that will continue to rise rapidly even when life returns to a post-pandemic normal. Juniper Research estimates 1.8 billion mobile service ... customers used a mobile video calling service in 2020 compared with 1.2 billion the previous year. That's almost certainly a direct result of more people working remotely and/or making social video calls, rather than meeting friends in person. (Source: techradar.com ) Handheld Video Calls Convenient For Some It might seem ironic that more people ... (view more)

Microsoft contractors listen to some Skype calls to check the accuracy of translations, a whistleblower has revealed. Although Microsoft says it meets privacy laws, critics say its terms and conditions don't clearly warn users about this. The human ... listening takes place on some calls that use Skype's "automatic" real-time translation service. Until now, most users have assumed that the translation is done entirely by a combination of speech recognition and artificial intelligence to work out the context of a sentence and find the correct translations. While that's largely the case, a ... (view more)

Facebook is launching dedicated devices for video-calling friends and family. While they have some impressive technology, it's a bold move from a company whose reputation on privacy issues is controversial to say the least. The devices are known as ... the "Portal" and "Portal+". They both offer some of the features of 'smart speakers' such as Google Home and the Amazon Echo, but the main function is for making video calls. That's reflected in the 10 inch screen of the Portal and the 15 inch screen of the Portal+. There's no charge for making calls on the devices as they work ... (view more)

Skype has added a new "private conversations" feature. Calls made this way will be encrypted so that it's impossible for anyone to usefully intercept or listen in. The data for such calls will use end-to-end encryption. That means the data is ... encrypted on one user's device and kept that way throughout its journey over the Internet until it reaches the other user's device. If the data is intercepted, it won't be of any use. The system will work on a "conversation" basis rather than a call-by-call basis. One user must select the feature, which will then send ... (view more)

Microsoft has released the next set of updates for Windows 10, including improvements for Skype and Cortana. It's also fixed a problem that was stopping some users from activating their copy as being legitimate. The new set of changes are known as ... Build 10565 and are now available to people in on the Fast Ring setting of the Insider Program - in other words, those who have signed up to be the first to test any new features or fixes in Windows 10. Assuming the feedback is positive, the changes will likely be rolled out to the general public some time next month. Product Keys Can Now Be ... (view more)

Facebook has begun rolling out its free video and audio call service to other Facebook users via its Messenger app. It's arguably the biggest challenge yet to the Skype audio and video calling platform, which is now owned by Microsoft. Facebook ... began offering video calls back in 2011, when it partnered with Skype but has since developed its own technology. The new call service works in the dedicated Facebook 'Messenger' app, which is available only on smartphones and tablets and does not work through the Facebook website. Last year, Facebook removed the messaging feature from its main ' ... (view more)

Windows 8.1 users will soon have the opportunity to test a potentially revolutionary feature: live speech translation in Skype. Skype is a software program that allows users to make phone calls or video chat with other Skype users around the world, ... using the Internet. Skype is one of the most popular applications of its kind, with over 300 million users world-wide using the service. (Source: skype.com ) Skype Live Speech Translation - On the Fly The live speech translation feature has been in the works from some time, stemming back to 2011 when Microsoft bought out Skype for $8.5 billion . It ... (view more)