Skype

Skype is a proprietary VoIP application that provides a free voice call service (to other Skype users) and a prepaid service for dialing out to fixed or mobile phones anywhere on the planet.

It also provides basic presence and IM, but oddly enough, did not (until recently) store your buddy list centrally (if you run Skype on several machines (and you can run it on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux ), you had to add your contacts manually several times, which was plain stupid).

The protocol used is entirely proprietary and a nuisance to most ISP s and telcos because:

• It’s P2P, providing very good voice quality and low latency while doing NAT traversal like a knife through butter.
• It’s AES encrypted.

Resources:

using terms from application "Address Book"
        on action property
                return "phone"
        end action property

        on action title for p with e
                return "Call with Skype"
        end action title

        on should enable action for p with e
                return true
        end should enable action

        on perform action for p with e
                set SKYPEurl to "callto://" & (value of e as string)
                tell application "Skype"
                        get URL SKYPEurl
                        activate
                end tell
                return true
        end perform action
end using terms from

Setting Your Mood Message To The iTunes Track

Set SKShowITunesSongAsMoodMessage=1 in com.skype.skype.plist.

High-Quality Video Calls

(taken from here )

Using version 2.5.0.85 or newer, find its config.xml file Video entry (the file is in your Library/Application Support/Skype/username folder), which should look somewhat like so:

<Video>
  <Device>Built-in iSight</Device>
</Video>

Add capture settings as follows:

<Video>
  <CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth>
  <CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight>
  <Device>Built-in iSight</Device>
</Video>

Obviously, this eats up bandwidth and CPU power…

There is a similar hack for Windows