Ten Years Of Skype...

Online video-call company Skype celebrated its tenth anniversary on 29 August this year, marking a decade since the software brought free long-distance calling and web chatting to the masses.
The company says more than 1.4 trillion minutes of voice and video calls have been made using Skype since its inception, amounting to more than 2.6 million years of conversations in the space of ten.
A statement published on Skype's website thanked its users for helping to keep the device popular and going strong.
"In 2003, the human genome was sequenced to 99.99% accuracy, moviegoers flocked to see Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Finding Nemo, and J.K. Rowling released her fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," it said.
"And on August 29 that year, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis founded what was to become an indispensable communications solution for more than 300 million people worldwide."
To put things into perspective, the company notes that it took the telephone 104 years to reach 300 million users, the cellphone 25 and Skype just 10 years.
But Skype has been used for more than just free video calls since its introduction.
In May of this year, London-based airline pilot Daniel Hughes made a video call from the top of Mount Everest as part of his fund raising activities for UK charity Comic Relief.
In an effort to raise £1m for the charity, Mr Hughes put on a red clown nose and connected on a live Skype Video Call to BBC News via his Android mobile phone.
At 8,848 meters above sea level, it was the highest Skype call on record.
In April 2013, Terri Cox, Programs & Exhibits Curator at Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, Texas, began a project using Skype to enrich the lives of two resident orangutans named Mei and Mukah.
Trainers say the programme enabled the animals to complete tasks like interacting with a drawing or drumming musical apps and making sounds, during video calls with other orangutans and animals at faraway zoos.
"They're highly intelligent," Cox said. "Allowing orangutans to see old companions from other zoos or meet new friends before they move zoos…it's like meeting a new roommate before they move in."
In May 2011, Microsoft purchased Skype for $8.5bn.
www.skype.com
(IT/JP)