2015-01-08

Wishes 2015 and what with my blog?

To all my readers and occasional visitors, my best Wishes for 2015.

And a special thought about what happened yesterday in France: everybody should be free to say or write whatever he wants, and everybody has the right to disagree! But not with violence! I too am Charlie!

What about the future of my blog? Well, it is and was always mainly about numbers: users online, downloads, financial data, users by country, calling minutes, number of Skype forum users, …

In the far past, when Skype was still a 100% European company, they published quite a lot of those numbers. Then EBay purchased it, and the information became less frequent, but still interesting and even more financial information than in the past.

Since Microsoft took it over, everything disappeared; even the RSS feed of users online or the users online information in the Skype client! So, blogging about numbers has become almost impossible and this blog is for me no fun anymore.

My concerns and questions about Skype:
  • Mandatory update of the client some months ago! Why?
  • Is it still real peer-to-peer?
  • Is there still a reliable encryption?
  • Possible eavesdropping due to US laws – I hope “Big Brother” is not watching me!
  • Appearance of advertisements in the Skype client
  • "Please note that Skype cannot guarantee that caller identification will always be displayed"
 The last “bullet” is the reason I do not use it anymore to call cell phones or send SMS messages!

For the time being, I leave this blog as it is. If something appears about numbers, and if I am aware (or are made aware by some of my followers) I will do my best to publish it and make some comments.

And let us finish with a something positive note: Skype to Skype calling is still free, including video!