Real World Computing

I think there are a few lessons to be learned from this fiasco. First, although VoIP is brilliant - I use it all of the time - it isn't something you should totally rely on. Landlines and mobiles are both very mature communication media, but VoIP (or rather VoIP as a hosted service) is still very much in its infancy. My suggestion for the SME community would be by all means to use VoIP for outgoing calls if you want (which is, after all, where the main cost savings are to be had) but still retain a conventional phone line/system from an established telecoms provider as your main incoming number. If you want to receive your calls via VoIP, too, you can do this by redirecting the main incoming number to your VoIP service, but (unlike with SkypeIn) you'll still have control of your main incoming number, and can always switch it back to the landline should things go tits-up.

Another lesson to be learned, and this is one for the big companies such as Skype, is to think well ahead when setting up contracts with suppliers. It's a huge failure on Skype's part to allow one of its number providers to get into a position where it could demand unfair rental prices - Skype should have had a watertight contract in place to protect both itself and its customers. This contract should have specified not only the current price levels, but also the maximum permitted annual increases. The fact Skype didn't have such controls in place highlights, once again, the immaturity of this industry.

Finally, though, I must restate something I've mentioned many times since I started writing this column: while Skype may well be the market leader when it comes to VoIP - at least at the consumer end of the market - it's a closed, proprietary system. At the SME end of the market, there are a huge number of suppliers that operate using the open SIP (session initiation protocol) standard. Once you've invested in Skype-based hardware such as headsets, Wi-Fi phones and mobiles, you're tied to its service, whereas if you use a SIP-based supplier for your outgoing calls it's easy to change suppliers if you need to. In fact, my advice is to actually keep accounts open with two or three companies. Normally, this won't cost you anything, since you pay only for the outgoing calls, but you can have an alternative configuration ready to kick in at the press of a button should there be a problem with your main provider.

Nice face, shame about the legs

There's now a Facebook client available for BlackBerrys that comes preinstalled on the latest devices, but is also available for download from both Facebook and RIM. I've had it loaded onto my 8310 for a few months now, and I have to say I think it's one of the worst examples of form defeating function that I've ever seen. It looks great: very flashy and a bit Web 2.0-like. Lots of worker threads in the background pulling back data from the Facebook servers.

There's just one problem; namely, that it's pretty useless for the average Facebook user! It seems like every time you want to do something you're dumped back into a web browser, so you might as well have just gone with the mobile version of Facebook at http://m.facebook.com and forgotten about the BlackBerry client altogether.

Pedant's revolt

Let's finish off this month's column with an interesting email from reader Vic Ludlow of Stevenage, which I'm going to print verbatim:

Continued....