Skype is a fantastic tool, especially for those of us who remember the days of $100+ phone bills for calls to other countries. I like to keep Skype running while I’m working, so that if I want to ask a colleague a quick question, I can easily see if the person is online and send a chat message. Sometimes I use Skype’s calling feature when I want to type and talk at the same time (taking advantage of the headset rather than squeezing the cordless phone between my ear and shoulder) or when I don’t want to tie up my work phone line for a long period of time. Overall, I find Skype very useful.
My one issue with Skype (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, which would actually be fantastic!) is that unless you set up multiple profiles, you are confined to using one online status with all of your contacts. When you log on to Skype, you have to choose an online status; I’m not sure I understand the connotations behind all of these statuses, but the main ones I use are Online (when you want all of your contacts to see that you’re logged in), Do Not Disturb (when you are logged in but don’t want your current chat or call to be interrupted) and Invisible (when you are logged in but appear to your contacts as being logged out, which allows you to chat or call someone without your other contacts seeing that you’re online).
All of this makes me feel a bit like the middle-schoolers I used to teach French to, but here is my Skype wish: that without setting up two separate profiles (i.e. one for work and one for friends), I could set up groups of contacts and select the status that I want to display to each group. For example, during the work day it would be helpful to appear Online to my work contacts, but Invisible to my personal contacts, and vice versa in the evening, unless I happen to be working.
As far as I can tell, the only way to achieve this right now is to set up two different profiles, which when added to profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, ATA, CTA, various translation portals etc. is more of a step toward multiple personality issues than I’m interested in taking. Am I missing something, or do other people have this wish about Skype too?
I’m also a big fan of Skype. I use the “Skype In” service as my business phone number – effectively allowing you to have a separate phone number that comes into your computer, without the hassle of having a second physical line installed. It costs me about 18 euros every three months, and I wouldn’t be without it.
I agree that it would be good to be able to set online availability separately for different groups. I have a mixture of work, family and social contacts, and the problem is that if I set my status to “online” so that work contacts know I’m available, I tend to get social contacts bugging me for a friendly chat during working hours. As a result, I tend to leave my status set to “unavailable” the whole time – which may unfortunately also deter work contacts from trying to call. (BTW, I have the same issue in MSN.)
Rob
Bang on target.
I’ve been missing the possibility to set the status on a per-contact basis since day one (i.e., back when the Skype logo was still red… 😉 )
While we’re at it, I also dislike the fact that you can’t log in with more than one account at the same time. (There’s a workaround, but it’s too complicated.)
Finally, why is it that you can’t pick more than one language per account?
Rob, at least about MSN, normally I block the contacts I don’t want to see me online, although it can be a lot of work depending on the number of contacts you want to block.
Maybe it’s just the German directness that I picked up during my years abroad, but I have no problem telling colleagues, clients or friends when I am too busy to chat. It’s a quick way for some of my PMs to determine my availability without writing an e-mail or calling me on the phone. A quick “Got time for 900 words by Thursday” does the trick nicely.
I agree that such a feature would be nice. Maybe someone at Skype will see this post – or you could write them and suggest it?
Until they implement your suggestion, it doesn’t take that long to type out a quick message in the message center at the top indicating you are too busy to chat at the moment (click on your name at the top and “Add video or write a message here for your friends to see”. But most of the time I leave that blank. One colleague writes her availability in that message field every week for her clients (right now it says “FW 27 completely booked until Thurs. Mo-Fr in the office starting at 3 CET”). You might want to give it a try.
Corinne,
Ditto on Skype. I think things look optimistic towards implementing that change and many others actually, as more and more competitors enter the market. On that note, a similar service that I absolutely adore is ooVoo. Same as Skype, but the free version of ooVoo allows 3 people to be in a video room and for that video to be recorded and then sent. Or for you to make a video and send it to other users. I think that it has tremendous potential for those of us who are also in language teaching, voice-over production and interpretation as the image quality is quite good.
Best,
Cris Silva
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