Skype Hacks

Preface

My involvement with Skype began in 2004 when, after getting tired of seeing the outrageously high proportion of fixed charges and taxes on my phone bill each and every month, I decided to do something about it. Over the space of a few months, I gradually replaced my old phone system with Skype. In the process, I shaved 82% off my phone bill!

But after a short while, Skype’s potential to save lots of money was slowly eclipsed by the realization that Skype could also do far, far more than any existing phone technology, whether making free calls over the Internet to someone on the other side of the planet, having your phone number and calls follow you wherever you go, or being able to send text messages, for free, from a web browser—even with just a formatted URL—on a machine without Skype installed and have it delivered to any Skype user, wherever he might be. This is a technology that is limited only by your imagination. As you will discover, you can do things with Skype that you simply cannot do with your existing telephone system or by using other VoIP offerings.

As you get to know Skype, you will become aware that Skype is unlike any telephone system you have known before. And after a short while, like Dorothy in TheWizard of Oz, you might find yourself mouthing the words: “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Skype Hacks is a book that shows you how to save money by using Skype, and how to remove the boundaries imposed by having lived within the confines of your regular phone system for so long, a system that has been in stasis for decades—dumb, lifeless, and unmoving. It is a book that hopes to liberate your imagination and show, in a practical hands-on way, how Skype can do amazing new things—sometimes things that even its creators never envisioned. If after reading this book, you find yourself with the urge to hack around with Skype, the people at O’Reilly and I will have succeeded in our jobs—and in the process, hopefully, we will have helped you to save a bundle of money.

Are you ready to journey onward to the “land over the rainbow”? Let’s go!

Why Skype Hacks?

The term hacking has a bad reputation in the press. They use it to refer to someone who breaks into systems or wreaks havoc with computers as their weapon. Among people who write code, though, the term hack refers to a “quick-and-dirty” solution to a problem, or a clever way to get something done. And the term hacker is taken very much as a compliment, referring to someone as being creative, having the technical chops to get things done. The Hacks series is an attempt to reclaim the word, document the good ways people are hacking, and pass the hacker ethic of creative participation on to the uninitiated. Seeing how others approach systems and problems is often the quickest way to learn about a new technology.

Skype has very little in the way of documentation, particularly for the Skype user taking any steps beyond the basics. So in one sense, Skype Hacks is a how-to guide for getting things done with Skype—like a road map to Skype’s basic features and beyond.

On the other hand, it is also a book that shows you how, with a little imagination, you can make Skype do interesting and new things—filling in the details on the map where before, there was only “here be dragons.” Hacking around with Skype is easy, fun, and rewarding. Skype is a technology that encourages experimentation, so the book helps to equip you—the reader—with the mindset and toolset for you to hack around with Skype on your own.

Skype is a new technology, moving very fast and definitely worthy of being written about. Moreover, it is a technology that needs to be written about now, given the dearth of available independent sources of information. By being published now, Skype Hacks aims to be one of the first sources for useful and timely information on Skype. And, by being constantly updated in print and through the book’s web site (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/SkypeHacks/index.html), it is hoped that it will remain a useful resource for all Skype users for a long time to come.

How This Book Is Organized

You can read this book from cover to cover if you like, but each hack stands on its own, so feel free to browse and jump to the different sections that interest you most. If there’s a prerequisite you need to know about, a cross-reference will guide you to the right hack.

The book is divided into several chapters, organized by subject:

Chapter 1, Start Using Skype

This chapter is for readers who are new to Skype. It explains what Skype is and how it works, and introduces Skype’s main features. It also builds a “Skype vocabulary” of concepts and terminology that will help when more advanced hacks are encountered; and, in this respect, it helps the reader to grasp some of the links among hacks in the book that would otherwise remain hidden.

Chapter 2, Save Money with Skype

Skype has the potential to save a lot of money for most current users of landline phone services. This chapter focuses on the economics of Skype and the ways of figuring potential savings. It suggests ways of maximizing your savings by mixing Skype services with your existing phone service, or other alternative Internet phone services. This chapter suggests ways to avoid potentially costly traps and pitfalls that may trip up the unwary.

Chapter 3, Configure Skype

Skype configuration really falls into two distinct categories. The first is configuration to get Skype to simply work, and this chapter helps a little in that respect. The second is configuration to get Skype to work the way you want—that is, improving performance, and customizing Skype to meet your individual needs. The focus of this chapter is most distinctly on the second category.

Chapter 4, Tweak and Tune Skype

In many ways, this chapter expands on the theme begun in the previous chapter—that is, configuring, tweaking, and tuning Skype to work the way you want it to work.

Chapter 5, Skype at Work

Skype in its current form is not targeted at business users. But more and more business-ready features are making their way into Skype with each new release. Even now, as this chapter shows, Skype has a lot to offer the workplace for those willing to give it a try.

Chapter 6, Mobile Skype

Skype is only now beginning to show its potential impact on mobile telephony. But that impact will no doubt be as ground shaking as it has been on fixed landline telephony. This chapter shows how, by hacking around with Skype, you can improve and enhance your communication while on the move.

Chapter 7, Skype Fun and Play

From having fun with creating your own ringtones, to practicing a foreign language with native speakers, this chapter shows the fun and playful side of Skype.

Chapter 8, Skype Chat and Voicemail

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s more to Skype than just voice calls. This chapter redresses that balance by showing you how to hack around with Skype’s other major features; namely, instant messaging or “chat,” and voicemail.

Chapter 9, Security and Privacy

Security and privacy should be a concern for anyone who is part of the Skype online community. Some hacks in this chapter will help you to have only the visibility you desire within the Skype community, and other hacks will help secure you against some of the more common risks encountered by Skype users.

Chapter 10, Quirks, Gotchas, and Workarounds

Skype has its limitations, and you’ll learn how to deal with them in this chapter. Moreover, where possible, you also will receive suggestions for workarounds for the most obvious quirks and gotchas.

Chapter 11, Skype Add-Ons and Tools

Skype has a burgeoning market for add-on products and tools that use the Skype API to extend Skype’s functionality or that use Skype’s services. This chapter gives a glimpse of what’s currently available, and a sense of what is yet to come.

Chapter 12, Automate Skype

In this chapter, you receive an introduction to the Skype API and you learn how to extend Skype’s functionality and automate repetitive tasks using scripting methods: VBScript on Windows, Python on Linux, and AppleScript on Mac OS X. In addition, these API scripts are mixed with shell scripts and scripts that drive Skype’s GUI directly to achieve what no one method alone can achieve. This mixing and matching of complementary scripting methods provides greater flexibility in terms of automating Skype. Throughout the chapter, the emphasis is not only to provide you with a collection of useful scripts that you can use as is, but also to equip you with the necessary knowledge and tools to start writing your own scripts and, in that way, to automate Skype for yourself.

Financial Exchange (FX) Rate

Skype prices most of its services in euros, which is the common currency of the majority of the member countries of the European Union. The symbol for euros is ₠ To make the book more palatable to American readers, prices in the book are often given first in euros and then again in U.S. dollars. The conversion factor between any two currencies (not just euros and dollars) commonly is referred to as the financial exchange (FX) rate, or simply FX rate.

Moreover, sometimes it is also common practice to refer to a currency not by name, but rather, by a standardized and unique three-letter code. Every national currency in the world has such a three-letter code. For the euro, the code is EUR, and for the U.S. dollar, it is USD. Sometimes currencies are referred to in the book by their three-letter codes.

FX rates are not constant. In fact, they can and do move around a lot. But because a book is not a “live” document, it must use a fixed exchange rate. Therefore, unless stated otherwise, euro-to-dollar conversions were carried out at this FX rate: 1 EUR = 1.25 USD.

Skype Software Versions

Skype is advancing very quickly and new releases are frequent for all of Skype’s supported platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Pocket PC, at the time of this writing. Without a doubt, this is good news for you, the Skype user. But, from an author’s point of view, it makes the job of keeping the book up-to-date very difficult. Even during the writing of this book, on several occasions, I had to retest hacks already written for compatibility with new releases of Skype. Table P-1 outlines the versions of Skype I was using as the book went to press, together with the minimum system requirements for each platform.

In terms of testing Skype on its respective platforms, I used these operating systems and applications:

Windows

Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.2180

Microsoft Office 2002 Professional SP3

Skype Toolbar 0.9 (beta) for Microsoft Internet Explorer

Skype Toolbar 0.9.107 (beta) for Microsoft Outlook

Linux

SuSE 9.3 Pro with the KDE desktop

Mac OS X

Apple OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

Skype Widget 1.0.2

Pocket PC

Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition

Table 1. Skype’s minimum hardware requirements

Windows	Linux	Mac OS X	Pocket PC
Skype 1.4.0.56 (beta)	Skype 1.2.0.11_API	Skype 1.3.0.8	Skype 1.2.0.4 (beta)
2000 or XP	SuSE 9, Fedora Core 3, Mandriva 10.1, Debian 3, or newer	10.3 (Panther) or newer	Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC or newer
400MHz processor	400MHz processor	G3, G4, or G5 processor	400MHz processor
128MB of RAM	128MB of RAM	128MB of RAM	WiFi enabled
15MB of disk space	10MB of disk space	20MB of disk space
Sound-in device	Sound-in device	Sound-in device
Sound-out device	Sound-out device	Sound-out device
Broadband Internet connection, or minimum 33.6 Kbps dial-up	Broadband Internet connection, or minimum 33.6 Kbps dial-up	Broadband Internet connection, or minimum 33.6 Kbps dial-up

I also feel obliged to explain the rationale behind using Skype “betas” on some platforms. Writing a book is a process that necessarily spans several months, and even once the book is written, preparation for production, and production itself, add many more months before the book hits the shelves at bookstores. For many subjects, this is of little consequence. However, when you’re writing about something as fast moving as Skype, there is a distinct danger that much of what’s written will be out of date by the time it gets into readers’ hands. To mitigate this problem I have used beta versions of Skype wherever possible on the assumption that the functionality in those will more closely match the functionality available to this book’s readers. This combined with frequent revisions between print runs and timely updates posted to the book’s web site should make the book both useful and relevant for a long time to come.

Warning

One reason to consider the hardware requirements of Table P-1 as being the absolute bare minimum requirements is that Skype is advancing at a phenomenal rate, with each new release bringing you new features and improvements to existing features. All of this new functionality must surely come at the cost of increased hardware resources.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following is a list of the typographical conventions used in this book:

Italics

Used to indicate URLs, filenames, filename extensions, and directory/folder names. For example, a path in the filesystem appears as /Developer/Applications.

Constant width

Used to show code examples, the contents of files, console output, as well as the names of variables, commands, and other code excerpts.

Constant width bold

Used to highlight portions of code, typically new additions to old code.

Constant width italic

Used in code examples and tables to show sample text to be replaced with your own values.

You should pay special attention to notes set apart from the text with the following icons:

Tip

This is a tip, suggestion, or general note. It contains useful supplementary information about the topic at hand.

Warning

This is a warning or note of caution, often indicating that your money or your privacy might be at risk.

The thermometer icons, found next to each hack, indicate the relative complexity of the hack:

beginner moderate expert

Using Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Skype Hacks by Andrew Sheppard. Copyright 2006 O’Reilly Media, Inc., ISBN 0-596-10189-9.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given here, feel free to contact us at [e-mail].

How to Contact Us

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