Top 10 Tips to Improve your Skype Experience
Hacking Skype: 10 Tips to Improve your Skype Experience
How versatile is your Skype? Ours can podcast, translate French, take conference calls from 15 people, and tutor calculus. Want to learn how to turn your Skype telephone into a multipurpose office machine? We’re going to tell you how.
For millions of users, Skype is the VoIP solution of choice. If you’re just getting into this great telephone alternative, you are going to be surprised how much you can do with it. In this article we cover 25 tips, hacks, and extras to help you utilize Skype to its fullest potential.
Starting Simple: Built-In Skype Features you Didn’t Know About
Skype is such a rapidly emerging technology that a lot of brand new users aren’t even aware of all the built-in features that Skype offers standard, not to mention the add-ons and hacks that you can improve it with. In this section we cover some often overlooked standard features of Skype that can dramatically improve your experience.
1. Call Forwarding
Whether you’ve set your Skype account up on your home or work computer, the fact is, you are occasionally going to get important calls when you aren’t there. Thankfully, you can simply forward those calls to another Skype account or even a cell phone or land line. That way, even if your computer at work is shut down, as soon as a call comes in to your Skype account, the call will immediately ring on your cell phone, your home computer and your home phone line, meaning that no matter where you are you’ll be sure to get it.
To forward a call click on the “Tools” menu and select “Options.” From there set the forwarding number in the “Call Forwarding & Voicemail” section.
2. Filtering and Blocking Users
Skype is a great tool for both business and pleasure, but if you don’t take preventative steps, it can also cause you some serious security problems. Vishing is a new VoIP targeted scam in which cyber-criminals use a VoIP client such as Skype to call people and attempt to trick them into revealing important financial details such as credit card numbers or online passwords. But you can limit these attacks by simply blocking unwanted callers.
To block unknown or unwanted callers, simply click on “Tools” and select “Options.” From there, select “Privacy” and choose the level of security that works best for you. When it comes to individual attacks, you can avoid repeat vishing calls by blocking the spammer by clicking on “Manage Blocked Users” in the “Options” dialog.
3. A DIY Home Security System
Whether you want to keep an eye on your pet goldfish from work or just make sure no one has broken in the house while you are on vacation, Skype can double as an away from home monitoring system.
Checking in is simple with Skype’s one and two way video calling. You’ll need two separate Skype accounts, a computer at home with a webcam, and access to the Internet. Using one account, setup the home version of Skype to auto-answer calls and automatically fire up the webcam. Then to check in, just use the second Skype account to call the first, and the webcam video will pop up.
4. Providing Customer Support
Got a small business online? Want to offer some customer support without spending a fortune on telephony costs? Skype’s graphical click-to-call SkypeMe buttons are ideal for this. Create your SkypeMe button (free account needed) and embed the code in your website, weblog, template, email, or wherever you want it to appear. When someone views your web page (or email message), the button will indicate whether you are online and accepting Skye calls, busy, or offline. If you’re on the go and want to receive calls, just leave your Skype client running and set call forwarding (see above).
Plugins, Addons, and Extras
Think of the off-the-shelf version of Skype as a new car without any optional package. Sure, it will still get you to and from work, but it doesn’t have any of the bells and whistles that make your new toy exciting. Unlike car options, however, these Skype Plugins and Add-ons won’t cost you a fortune, and they’re easy to install to boot.
5. Using Skype to Sell your Services
You’ve got information that other people can use, and with the Bitwine Skype add-on you’ll be able to leverage that information into an income stream. Whether you’re a lawyer, a mechanic, or a talented collector, there are people willing to pay for the information you have, and using Bitwine makes selling that information easy. Through Bitwine, you set up your hourly rate, then customers approach you about the topic they would like to discuss, you set up a meeting time, and at the end of the meeting Bitwine tallies up the time and will even coordinate payment via PayPal through another add-on, Bitwine extra.
6. Recording Calls
There are a lot of add-on options for recording Skype calls, including the free Audacity audio editor. But Audacity has to be triggered manually, and since you don’t always know beforehand when a call should be recorded, the fact that Audacity is manual is a serious limitation. By contrast, there are a number of Skype recorders that start up automatically. HotRecorder is arguably among the best. HotRecorder allows searchable Meta text to be added to each recording, and works with Google Talk and other IM clients. For aspiring Howard Sterns, there’s a selection of Emotisounds such as laughs, claps, etc., that can be inserted into the conversation for later podcasting.
7. Enhanced Voicemail
If you use your Skype phone for more than just the occasional long-distance call, you should enhance your voicemail setup beyond the basic Skype standard. Pamela offers (automatic) call recording, an answering machine for voice and video, automated chat reply if you’re away, Skype VoiceMail management, and email forwarding of audio files. In addition, Pamela will let you setup a separate greeting or voicemail message for different users, so that your business and personal calls won’t hear the same message. And best of all, Pamela allows for remote control, meaning that if you forget to change one of the voicemail settings before you go on vacation, you can make the changes via any computer anywhere.
8. Keep Up With New Music
If you constantly find yourself wondering why everyone else’s iPod seems to have better music than yours, maybe its time to start branching out and discovering new music. Last.fm, a Skype add-on provides you with an easy forum to share your own musical preferences and listen to what other people like. With this add-on, you can browse through other Skype and Last.fm user’s music collections and listen in. While you’re listening, information about the song and artist you’re listening to is displayed and you’re given the ability to find similar titles.
Setup is really simple, you just need to download the Last.fm extra, sign up for a free account at Last.fm and there download the Last.fm software. For those of you that are Mac users, Last.fm will still work as a Skype add-on, the only difference is that you will need to download the iScrobbler extra to make Last.fm Mac compatible.
9. Universal Chat and Language Translation
It’s a global world out there, so whether you’re conducting business or pleasure with Skype, you are likely communicating with people around the world and may occasionally encounter language barriers. Thankfully, by using the quick add-on Universal Chat Translator you can communicate with anyone no matter what language they speak. The software only produces text translations, so you may feel like you’re watching a foreign film with subtitles, but the fact that the Universal Translator can read text in 11 languages and understand spoken text in 50 means that you’ll at least be able to get your point across.
10. A Complete Small Business Collaboration Solution
If you’re running a small business or working as part of a team on a single project, real-time collaboration is essential. There’s no better way to supplement your Skype conferencing than with a collaborative desktop provided by Skype add-on Unyte. Unyte lets you choose which applications or documents to share with the other people on your conference call. Then everyone can be looking at the same documents at the same time, and when changes are made they appear on everyone’s screen so that there is no confusion. Pricing depends on the number of people you want to bring in on the conference, but you can give two-person collaboration a try for free.
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