Skype And Kalmstrom Both Manage Well After Separation

According to VentureBeat, Skype hit a new milestone Monday this week when 35 million people accessed its audio and video conferencing service at the same time. It seems as if Skype manages well without the kalmstrom.com CEO. Peter is glad to see the success of his former employer, and we are happy to have him more active in the team.

Rapid growth after Microsoft take over
When Microsoft bought Skype in June, Microsoft promised to integrate Skype with its existing products. Except for the beta release of Skype for Windows Phone last week we have not seen so much of this yet, but I assume people feel more confident using Skype now when Microsoft is backing the product. The growth has been rapid, because as late as February 23 Skype for the first time had 32 million people signed in simultaneously.

Skype Product Manager
For five years, 2005-2010, Peter Kalmstrom was Product Manager for Skype Toolbars. If you have seen phone numbers on web pages turn into clickable buttons, you have seen an example of the kind of work Peter was responsible for at Skype. The integration of Skype in Outlook was of course also Peter's creation. Actually Peter first developed an add-on he called Outlook Skype, which was a big success for kalmstrom.com Business Solutions in 2004. We had to stop selling it when Skype achieved it and Peter was employed by Skype.

Rapid growth for kalmstrom.com too
After five years Peter felt he wanted to play a more active role in his own business, so he left Skype. At that time kalmstrom.com Business Solutions had only a few employees, but today we have more people involved in both Sweden and India.

The kalmstrom.com Office applications are also used by more people around the globe. We will never be able to brag about as many users as Skype, but that is not our aim. Our primary goal is to keep the solid base of users we have today and continue to give them best possible service. The second goal is to improve the kalmstrom.com products and have more Community Members using them. With Peter at the wheel we will surely reach both goals!

Skype for Windows Phone Beta – Great GUI, But Serious Problems

Yesterday Microsoft finally announced the release of the Beta version of Skype for Windows Phone. The new app will make Skype available on almost all leading operating systems for mobile smart phones. As Skype has around 200 million users this is welcome news.

Chats are important to kalmstrom.com
Skype for Windows Phone Beta supports common Skype features like audio and video calls and the one-to-one and group chats that are so important to kalmstrom.com Business Solutions. As our team members are geographically dispersed, we use Skype chats to communicate quickly and safely via our PCs. It would be convenient if we could do the same on our smart phones.

Skype on Windows Phone 7.5
kalmstrom.com Lead Developer Jayant Rimza uses a Windows Phone 7.5, which is the latest version with the Metro interface. He has been waiting long for a possibility to use Skype with his Phone, so yesterday he was eager to test it. His first impression was good. The graphical user interface is awesome and Skype is very easy to operate on the Phone.

Test chat
I chatted with Jayant yesterday evening, and on my PC it looked fine. I could not see when Jayant was writing, though, and that was a bit annoying as I did not know if there was more to come from his side.

Jayant complained that he could not see my replies while he was typing in horizontal mode. He had to change into vertical again to see them.

He also had hoped that the spell check of the Phone key pad would work well with the Skype chat, as it does with other apps. Unfortunately it does not, and I can understand that. Not even Skype for PC has a spell checker for the chat – which sometimes leads to crazy misunderstandings when team members write too quickly!

Another problem was that Jayant could not see what contacts were online in his Phone. He had to select each person to see the status, which of course is a time consuming task. We want to see that at a glance, as we are used to do on our computers.

Problems list
The issues Jayant experienced are not included in the list of known problems in Skype for Windows Phone that Skype has published. As this is a Beta version we do expect some trouble, and it is a good idea to let users know what problems the developers are aware of. For some of them a workaround is given, but for most we can only hope that they will be solved quickly.

Only foreground capacity
Jayant and I agree that one of the problems mentioned in the list is devastating: the Beta version cannot run in the background. This means that it is impossible to receive chat messages and calls if Skype is not in foreground, so in reality you can only use Skype for calls and chats you initiate yourself. This is a serious drawback that makes the app nearly useless, so we really hope this will be fixed before the release of the gold version in April. As it is now I am not sure Skype for Windows Phone should even be called a Beta when such an important feature is not there. Maybe this release came to soon after all?

Microsoft + Skype = Great Opportunities For kalmstrom.com

After months of speculations about who would buy or partner with Skype, we today have heard the outcome: Microsoft will acquire Skype for 8,5 billion dollars. The affair will bring many benefits to both consumers and enterprises, and it will give kalmstrom.com exciting new opportunities. Our CEO, Peter, has developed add-ons for Microsoft products for twenty years and earned 15 Microsoft certifications. He also has deep knowledge about Skype, as it was only six months ago that he left a position as Product Manager for Skype Toolbars.

When Peter begun working for Skype in 2005 it was still owned by the two creators, and they had recently bought Peter's add-on Outlook Skype. Under Peter's more than five years in the company it grew to be one of the really big, and the Skype product was much improved. That phone numbers on web pages turn into clickable buttons is just what you expect today, but it was only a few years back that Peter initiated the development of this Skype feature.

It seems that Skype will be a separate business division inside Microsoft, called Microsoft Skype. Two giants have joined forces, and it will be very interesting to see what the deal will bring in the future. I am sure I will have reason to come back to it several times ‒ always with the kalmstrom.com angle, of course!

kalmstrom.com Partners With PamFax

I am happy to announce that kalmstrom.com has gone into partnership with PamConsult GmbH, the company behind the successful faxing software PamFax. Normally we don’t market other products than our own, but when kalmstrom.com CEO Peter worked as Product Manager for Skype he helped designing the first version of PamFax. Therefore this partnership feels natural to him.

PamFax allows users to send fax messages worldwide at a low cost per page, either via a fax application or online. I have used PamFax ever since it was released in 2006. Then Peter suggested that we throw out our bad functioning fax machines and go for using PamFax online instead, and that is something we have never regretted. PamFax is secure, cheap and easy to use, and it has many good features ‒ as support for Dropbox, Box.net and Google Documents and a possibility to send to multiple fax recipients in one fax. I also like that we can see our fax history online at our PamFax Portal.

My first task in the new partnership will be to translate PamFax into Swedish and start marketing it here in my home country. We will also make an Estonian version and introduce the software there. PamFax has been increasingly popular during its five years on the market, and today the tool is used by both individuals and big companies all over the world. It will be great to cooperate with the creators of PamFax in making faxing easier for still more people.