I've just gotten a rather bad message from Skype customer service. Here's the abbreviated transcription:
ME "I'm trying to host a Skypecast and nobody, including myself, can stay connected for more than 30 seconds. More like 26 or 27 sec each time."
THEM "Unfortunatley Skypecasts are currently only available with Windows version of Skype. Since you are using a Mac version of Skype that is not supported also all others cannot join the Skypecats since you as a host cannnot stay connected. They can stay connected as longes the host has not left the Skypecast."
ME "actually, that's not true. Well, it's just that the Mac version really does support Skypecasts. We at the Drupal Dojo have used your Skypecasts successfully for several months now in a new online training format we developed. We're trying to teach up-and-coming web developers, including some Google Summer Of Code students, how to become faster and more adept at the open-source Drupal CMS.
Our approach uses a server with a customized VNC reflector, IRC chat, and Skype for audio. Thus far, we've done about 2 dozen lessons, each
over two hours long, and haven't had a single problem with Mac/Win/Linux hosting Skypecasts up until this week.
What changed? Are you rolling out some new features in the code that just now made it incompatible? I mean, we have a couple of people in
the group who actually develop on the Windows platform, but if they have to be the default hosts from now on, I'm sure they won't be happy about it! ;=)
Please tell me if there's anything we can do or try or troubleshoot from our end?
THEM "You should be able to join a Skypecast with a mac version of Skype, but you cannot host a Skypecast on Mac. We are aware that on some rare occasions it sometimes might work, but it is not officially supported yet. Please use a Windows version of Skype to host a Skypecast."
So that's it. I officially retire my post as a mac-lovin Skyperator. Bummer, huh?
Comments
lame
that is so lame.
Sonuvabitch! That's just not
Sonuvabitch! That's just not cool, dammit. Heh, maybe I can ship you my old pc laptop when my new machine rolls in.
Drupal Dojo - Thelifeofme.com
Drupal Dojo - Thelifeofme.com
Ayone looked at Gizmo?
Has anyone looked at Gizmo for Dojo use? They say they have free conference calling. There is no mention of a limit for the number of people, so I don't know if they have one. I've downloaded it if anyone wants to test it out.
Learn Drupal online at Drupalize.me
Gizmo is compatible with Asterisk
It looks like Gizmo is Asterisk compatible. http://www.gizmoproject.com/asterisk.html I know several people have made mention of Asterisk. I don't know anything about it, but i assume that this compatibility might be a good thing for us?
UPDATE: http://forum.gizmoproject.com/viewtopic.php?t=1503&highlight=conference+...
A lot of people are saying it's harder to conference with this Gizmo thing, but I think, after reading some of their forums, that those users are trying to conference in an incoming land-line call for biz purposes. The Gizmo to Gizmo conference model seems to be 1 server with a randomly user-chosen (security through obscurity) dialup number, and all clients connect inbound to a central SIP server. No controls over who gets in, no administration capabilities like muting, and no way to boot anyone if there is a troublemaker who stumbles into the lesson.
Turns out that Gizmo is much easier to join than s Skypecast. All you have to do is dial a special number, sorta like the Skype direct-dial number, but contrary to Skype, the Gizmo access number doesn't have to change each week. How cool would that be?
[/Senpai]
Joel Farris | my 'certified to rock' score
Transparatech
http://transparatech.com
619.717.2805
No better options
VOIP and linux..Still, they are mostly all platform independent.
I'm quoting Harald Sitter:
Now, the Amarok Wolf Brigade(tm) actually just wanted to do some VoIPing. It ended up in a big fucking mess, which lead to the awful cognition that Skype is the only usable VoIP software on Linux.
Wengo: crashing a lot, not logging in properly, not working properly -> I did 52 tries to package it!!!
Ekiga: pretty sound, shitty GUI, robot voices in conference rooms
Gizmo: crappy sound, crappy GUI, crappy dmix support, funky conference mode
Jabbin: broken website
KCall: crappy GUI, didn't work with wengo SIP
Skype on the other hand got conference call, good quality and a nice GUI. this is probably the reason for stories like this.
Skype has released 1.4 beta, which I'm now using, and I'm very pleased with it's performance. 1.3 was not all good. New gui, better ALSA support. See http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/linux/
Source: http://apachelog.blogspot.com/2007/06/voip-screw-it.html
Can Mac users even join a Skypecast?
Yesterday at the free Druplinars.com web seminar, Mac users could not even join the Skypecast, much less host one. It said they needed Skype 3.0 but that is not available for the Mac (yet).
(I use WebEx for Druplinars seminars but it does not currently support audio for the Mac. Skypecast was my backup solution which, as you also discovered, just recently stopped working.)
It used to work just fine
It used to work fine, and that's what ticks me off more than anything. Those guys at SkypeQuarters started ripping mandatory features out of their new releases for the Mac platform without so much as a "Here's what's different for you" message, and then claimed to never have supported that feature in the first place. I was upset that day. Very upset.
[/Senpai]
Joel Farris | my 'certified to rock' score
Transparatech
http://transparatech.com
619.717.2805