I knew it wouldn’t take long until Skype responded to jajah, it’s amazing the speed as they are evolving and this couldn’t be possible if they wouldn’t have made public their API (To let other companies create/sell products based on the Skype application). They don’t even have to make one line of code, all is done by the aggregates of their “ecosystem”.
Webmessenger announced today the launch of their new product “WebMessenger Mobile”. It has the approach that I mentioned in my last post, as they offer:
“The service provides real-time presence detection of colleagues, friends and family on the users’ mobile devices, enabling them to send and receive chat messages, make phone calls to other Skype contacts, receive calls through their own Skype accounts, and connect up to four participants simultaneously for on-the-go conference calling.” (taken from www.geekzone.co.nz “WebMessenger Launches WebMessenger Mobile for Skype”).
The thing that was not very coherent in jajah service was: If the whole communication is done without any software, why do you actually have to use the computer and an Internet connection? I thought about the possibility of sending an SMS to start the calls; well, WebMessenger mobile has somehow this approach with the use of a mobile device such as: RIM BlackBerry, Palm handhelds, Windows Mobile Pocket PC and J2ME Java phones installing a little piece of software that starts the calls within the Skype-out service in a very jajah-like fashion.
Now, again the problem that I see with this approach is the reach. Not a lot of people have this kind of devices, it should be very interesting that a call could be pushed just with a simple GSM phone. I’m pretty sure that Skype & Co are working in this direction, but somehow the extreme similarity with calling-cards would involve legal issues with these companies.
I hope to see more work of Skype in these matters and discuss them here.