Why Xbox One gaming has been an afterthought

Microsoft took some criticism for pushing gaming to the back burner with its Xbox One announcement, but isn't game quality a given?

Microsoft may not have wowed hardcore gamers with its initial Xbox One announcement, but I’m not sure it wanted to. All of the exclusive game titles and advanced graphics capabilities of the Xbox One will most likely be shown off at the E3 show next week; it’s at that event when Microsoft will specifically target the gaming crowd. What Microsoft did accomplish at its initial Xbox One announcement, however, is declare war on every set top box, media streamer, and HTPC on the market.

To quickly recap, the Xbox One is powered by an 8-Core, semi-custom, x86-compatible SoC made by AMD, with AMD Radeon-class graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and a Blu-ray optical drive. The device essentially runs two operating systems, a Windows 8 derivative and the Xbox OS, seamlessly integrated using a hypervisor that allows for quick task switching and side-by-side operation. And all Xbox One consoles will include a next-gen Kinect sensor too.

One of the most interesting things about the initial Xbox One demo was that the vast majority of the presentation had nothing to do with gaming. Voice and gesture controls were shown for accessing numerous apps and the web. Videos, movies, and live TV were all played back on the device. Applications were snapped to one side of the screen, while another remained playing on the main portion of the screen. And for a large part of the demo, nothing was touched — it was all controlled via voice commands and gestures.

Though the software still isn’t finalized, Microsoft’s Xbox One demonstration showed the device already handling, games, music, movies, the web, live TV, and Skype with aplomb. After seeing the Xbox One in action, I thought it was the kind of device that could easily find its way into the living room and not just the musty man-cave. If using the Xbox One to access all types of multi-media is truly as easy as the demo made it look, even the least tech-savvy folks would have no problem using one. I could easily envision someone like my wife walking in the door, turning on the Xbox One, launching a web browser with her favorite site, and placing a Skype call, all before taking off her coat.

Many of my contacts in the gaming and tech communities reacted negatively to the Xbox One announcement because Microsoft didn’t show enough in-game action, but not me. I already know the games are going to look incredible. The device will offer significant improvement over the performance of the current Xbox 360, with more advanced features, and it will be easier to program for as well. Many game devs were waiting for the next-gen consoles to launch to release their next-gen game engines. The games are going to look amazing — trust me on this one.

It’s the next-gen human-computer interface capabilities that had me intrigued, and once consumers realize they’ll be able to watch videos and movies, browse the web, answer Skype calls, and manage their fantasy leagues without touching a controller, I think many of them will be intrigued, too. The Xbox One’s games will be just a bonus.

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HP's Envy Rove 20-inch 'tablet' tackles Windows 8 desktop PC woes

HP's Envy Rove all-in-one has an integrated battery and the look and feel of a supersized 20-inch tablet

Windows 8 has not found wide adoption among desktop users, so HP has announced a new portable all-in-one and lowered the price of touch PCs so users can take advantage of the operating system.

The company introduced the Envy Rove, which is an all-in-one desktop that looks like a supersized tablet with a 20-inch screen. At 5.3 kilograms, the PC can be moved around a house or office, and an integrated battery offers four hours of run time.

With the Rove, HP wants to bring mobility and tablet-like usage to all-in-ones, said Xavier Lauwaert, worldwide manager of product marketing for consumer desktops.

"Don't worry, we don't expect this to be [carried] to Starbucks," Lauwaert said.

All-in-one PCs like the Rove and Apple iMac typically pack components including processor and storage behind the screen.

The Envy Rove will ship in July though the price was not immediately available. HP has also introduced Pavilion TouchSmart touch all-in-ones at low prices and with upgraded processors that could prompt users to move away from towers. The US$619 Pavilion TouchSmart 20 has a 20-inch screen and will become available on June 23, while the $749 Pavilion TouchSmart 23 has a 23-inch screen and will ship on June 5.

Desktops are not built for the touch, and users have struggled adapting to Windows 8, Lauwaert said.

"On all-in-ones it has not been as much of a struggle as potentially on towers," Lauwaert said. "The appeal is bringing the goodness of Windows 8 to the more cost-conscious kind of end user."

The Envy Rove is similar to Dell's XPS 18, which is a tablet-like all-in-one with an 18.4-inch screen. Other PC makers have tried different designs in an effort to find the next hit. Asus' 18.4-inch Transformer AiO can run either Android or Windows 8, and Panasonic showed off a 20-inch tablet with a 3840 x 2160 pixel display.

HP said Envy Rove could be a substitute for board games. Monopoly and card games will come pre-loaded, and users can place the PC on a flat surface to play multiuser games. HP also demonstrated the PC being used as a substitute for a piano.

Rove will have Intel's upcoming Core processors code-named Haswell, which will be announced in June. Rove will also have 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology and support up to 1TB of hard-drive storage.

The Pavilion TouchSmart 20 and TouchSmart 23 will have the latest AMD and Intel chips.

More users may buy all-in-ones as prices come down and new models promote touch usage, said Jay Chou, senior research analyst at IDC.

"All-in-ones have been the only growing portion of the desktop market," Chou said.

All-in-ones formed 11 percent of desktop shipments in the first quarter of 2013, growing from 7 percent in the first quarter of 2011, according to IDC. Desktops formed 44 percent of all PC shipments in the first quarter this year, and that number hasn't changed much over the last three years, Chou said.

While HP is trying to facilitate easy use of Windows 8, the company believes there are still benefits to budget desktops. The company introduced new towers starting at $289 for users who want easy repairs and memory, storage and processor upgrades. Some of these features are highly valued by IT departments.

"One of the values of the towers is legacy ports and also connectivity to anything," Lauwaert said.

The company has bundled a DVI (digital visual interface) port into one of its latest desktops to serve commercial users. DVI was introduced in 1999 to replace VGA, but it is still being used by commercial companies in monitors and projectors.

HP also introduced Envy desktops including the Phoenix 800, will start at $1,099. HP is offering optional liquid cooling with the model.

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Windows 8 Update: Scarcity of touchscreens is hurting Windows 8

Dell deal on Windows RT, dubious Windows 8 sales numbers

Along with whatever other problems Windows 8 faces, Microsoft partners interested in making machines that show the operating system off to best advantage are handicapped by a short supply of touchscreens, the top Windows executive says.

The company is hoping the problem will be solved in time to make alluring devices in time for Christmas sales, says Tami Reller, chief marketing and financial officer for the Windows division, as quoted in this CITEworld story.

“We see that touch supply is getting so much better,” Reller says. “By the holidays we won’t see the types of restrictions we’ve seen on the ability of our partners and retail partners to get touch in the volume they’d like and that customers are demanding.”

Along with that area a slew of complaints about the Windows 8 user interface, many of which may be addressed by Windows Blue, the code name for the upgrade that is also coming out later this year, likely before the holidays, Reller says.

It’s still unclear what changes Windows Blue will include although rumors say the start button and start page so familiar in earlier versions of Windows will be restored. The specifics of Windows Blue – officially called Windows 8.1 – will be revealed at the Microsoft Build developers’ conference at the end of June, she says.

Although Reller didn’t mention it during her remarks at a JP Morgan tech conference in Boston, by the end of the year Intel’s Haswell chips should be in production offering a longer battery life, higher performance and improved graphic processing for a range of devices such as ultrabooks, convertibles and tablets.

This is a convergence of events that Microsoft no doubt would have welcomed last holiday season just after Windows 8 launched in October.

Windows RT deal
Dell has come out with a Windows RT tablet for $300 - $200 less expensive than the cheapest Microsoft Surface RT.

That’s a limited time offering and is a $150 discount off the regular price for its XPS 10, which sports a 10.1-inch display and, like all Windows RT devices, runs on ARM chips. Another short-term option tosses in a keyboard/dock for an extra $50.

At that price the bundle is still significantly cheaper than an iPad and may grab a few potential Apple customers.

When is 100 million not 100 million?
Microsoft says it’s sold 100 million Windows 8 licenses so far and seems proud of it, but the number is being picked apart by people who note that the number of licenses sold might be far higher than the number in actual use.

According to a story in ComputerWorld the count of machines running Windows 8 could be closer to 59 million.

Why would Microsoft release the higher number but not release the number of machines that have activated the software? The obvious answer: that number is embarrassingly small.

Windows 8 is bad for this business
Buffalo, N.Y. -based Synacor blames Windows 8 for a 16% drop in search-engine advertising revenues for its content-portal services.
Because Windows 8 defaults to Bing as the search engine and sets MSN as the home page, according to this story in the the Buffalo News. Part of Synacor’s business is to set its customers’ advertising pages into the start page of end users’ browsers.

“That hurts Synacor because the company generates revenue every time a subscriber uses the Google search box on the start pages that it designs, while a reduction in page views also hurts Synacor’s advertising sales on those start pages,” the News story says.

The situation has contributed to a 5% drop in revenues for Synacore.

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Jive Software adds integration tool for its enterprise social platform

Jive Software adds integration tool for its enterprise social platform
The add-on was built with technology Jive acquired when it bought a company called StreamOnce

Jive Software has released an add-on to its enterprise social networking (ESN) software that automates and simplifies the process of integrating Jive's suite with third-party systems.

The add-on is based on technology Jive acquired when it bought a company called StreamOnce. At launch, the StreamOnce add-on links Jive's ESN suite with the Gmail and Microsoft Exchange email servers and with the DropBox cloud storage app.

Later on, it will integrate Jive's product with ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) software from vendors including Oracle, NetSuite, Salesforce.com, SAP and SugarCRM. The StreamOnce add-on is available now. Jive officials declined to say how much it costs.

Prior to acquiring StreamOnce, Jive had made custom integrations between its software and several third-party products, including Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration server, Microsoft's Outlook email client, the Box cloud storage and file sharing app and Salesforce.com's Chatter ESN product. Jive also provides a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) that external developers can use to create bridges between their applications and Jive's software.

However, the acquisition of StreamOnce was prompted by Jive's belief that it's crucial at this point for ESN software, such as its own, to be easily and deeply integrated with customers' business applications. That way, people can use Jive as their primary collaboration "hub" which is connected with their work applications.

Above all, a product like Jive's can't exist as a stand-alone tool, said Tim Zonca, the company's senior director of product marketing. "Social software isn't a destination," he said. "People shouldn't have to be tab-hopping among applications. We want to provide a cohesive experience."

ESN suites like Jive's offer users a set of social media tools adapted for workplace collaboration, including employee profiles, activity streams, wikis, discussion groups, microblogging, tagging, comments and document sharing. However, recent studies from several IT research firms have found that often these tools don't generate the necessary engagement level among end users. When this happens, these products fail at their core and basic mission of improving and increasing communication and collaboration among employees.

For example, in an ominous prediction, Gartner recently said that through 2015, a staggering 80 percent of social business efforts will fail to achieve their intended benefits, due to what the company called "inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology."

Unsurprisingly, ESN vendors are heeding the warnings and boosting their efforts to make their products easier to integrate with third-party business applications. Their goal is to make it easy for end users to tap the social collaboration capabilities that their ESN tools provide within the context of the software they use most frequently at work.

Despite the challenges and growing pains, ESN software is hot. In June of last year, IDC forecast that between 2011 and 2016 the compound annual growth rate for enterprise social software will hit 42.4 percent, taking spending from US$767.4 million in 2011 to almost $4.5 billion in 2016.

Meanwhile, Gartner predicted that by 2016, 50 percent of large organizations will have internal enterprise social networks, of which 30 percent will be considered "as essential as email and telephones are today."

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Q&A: Nick Carr on 10th anniversary of 'IT Doesn't Matter'

A decade after writing controversial essay, Nick Carr talks about what he got right, what he got wrong

Nick Carr rocked the tech world with his controversial essay in the May 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review, titled "IT Doesn't Matter." Carr claimed companies were overspending on IT and that the competitive advantage to be gained by tech investments was shrinking as technology became more commoditized and accessible to everyone. On the 10-year anniversary of the article's publication, Carr talked with Network World's Ann Bednarz about what he got right, what he got wrong, and how the piece remains relevant today.

"IT Doesn't Matter" is 10 years old. How do you think the ideas have held up?
The article was really about the IT infrastructure, which is basically what IT departments were mainly concerned with 10, 11 years ago. I think that has become fairly uninteresting from a strategic point of view. Back then, IT companies tried to sell the latest server model as the key to strategic advantage -- you need to be on the cutting edge of infrastructure or your business is going to be overwhelmed by competitors. At that level, the idea that the basic technology was going to be neutralized as a competitive differentiator has basically panned out.

Although it's very briefly mentioned in the article, as I remember, there was a prediction that a lot of this stuff is going to become a utility, and I think that's what is happening with the cloud.

One of your conclusions was that IT management would become boring, it would be about managing costs and risks. Do you think that's the case?
Yes and no. In the context of the IT world that existed 10 years ago, I think that has become true, that it really is about risk management and costs and not about getting the latest stuff and getting a big competitive advantage because we have a new server. On other hand, there have been all sorts of other developments that you have to figure out -- your cloud strategy, social media, marketing, apps. So from another point of view, I think I probably understated the new things that IT departments would have to grapple with. Some of those things aren't necessarily located within IT departments anymore. They're as much about marketing departments and other things. But I don't think I expressed the full range of what was to come, and what was to influence what IT departments would do. I was mainly focused on the state that they were in back then.

When you think about the backlash, what were people most upset about?
The biggest backlash came from IT companies. Steve Ballmer called it hogwash, Carly Fiorina dissed it. All the vendors were really up in arms. That's because -- and this was one of my intents -- the article went right after what was the essential marketing message that vendors were using then. Which is: You need to be on the cutting edge or you're going to get left behind. You need to spend big money on the latest hardware and software. And I said well, no, you don't. And that was upsetting to them.

On the part of CIOs in IT departments, I think the reaction was much more mixed. Some of them really took offense at the article, but others said, "Yeah, I can see a lot of sense here. This is kind of where we're heading, this is what I'm trying to do." And so there was a great divergence of reactions among CIOs, IT departments and other corporate managers.

Was the backlash more or less than you expected?
It was definitely more. I knew I was writing something that was provocative and that went against the grain of a lot of the rhetoric that was out there about information technology and business. But the reaction went way beyond what I expected. The article came out right at the beginning of May, and I remember the immediate Sunday afterwards, Steve Lohr picked up on it and wrote a big story that mentioned the article in the Sunday New York Times, in the front of the business section. That also galvanized attention.

Back then, the article was only available to subscribers. What might it have been like if it were widely available on the Internet?
Back then, if the world had been like it is now, I think it would have gone viral, but I think it would have been forgotten very quickly, which is true of a lot of things that go viral today. I think it would have made a big splash immediately, but I'm not sure it would have had the kind of long-lasting impact that it had in coming out in print in the Harvard Business Review. It was a different world. A lot of people's awareness of the article came not through the article itself, because they didn't have immediate access to it, but through the coverage elsewhere.
A lot of colleges in introductory IT classes will use 'IT Doesn't Matter' as the first thing students read to get them talking about bigger issues of how IT fits into a company. A lot of people I meet, that's still what they know me for."
— Nick Carr

How did the article change your career?
It completely changed it. Based on the reaction to the article, I got a contract from Harvard Business School Press, which was a separate operation but a sister company to Harvard Business Review, to expand it into a book, "Does IT Matter?", which came out a year later in 2004. I left HBR and figured I'd take a year to write the book, then find some other editing job at a magazine, but there was so much interest in the article, I started getting speaking engagements, and other writing opportunities, and suddenly it became possible for me to be a freelance writer. I've been on my own ever since. One book led to another. So it really completely changed my career, it's fair to say.

In some ways it doesn't seem like a 10-year-old piece. Many of the ideas you wrote about are issues that companies today are still grappling with.
Some of the details are outdated, of course. But in some ways what I think I did that hadn't been done before, or at least hadn't been done as clearly as I set it out, was to put the question of IT firmly into the broader question of business strategy. My argument was that this isn't really about hardware or software, it's not really about technology, it's about broader issues of strategy. I think that question is always there. That's one of the reasons it's had legs, I think.

The other reason that I think it's had legs is that I've been told the article served as an inspiration to a lot of entrepreneurs who got interested in cloud-based businesses for corporations. The whole cloud movement, which was at least a little bit predicted by the article, has also been a reason that it continues to be meaningful to people, since we're still obviously working through that transition.

How far along are we on the path to the cloud? Are companies making progress?
This also happens to be the fifth anniversary of my book "The Big Switch," which was about cloud computing. And in that book, I said that I thought we were talking about a 20-year transition. I think that's probably still true. If we're five years into that, there's still more than a decade to go.

If you look at IT, the bulk of investment these days, certainly on the vendor side, is on cloud systems and applications. On the other hand, if you look at corporate spending, cloud is still a fairly small percentage of overall spending, even though it's growing quickly. So we're still kind of between two eras. A lot of corporate IT spending and attention still has to be devoted to proprietary databases and in-house systems. It's going to take a long time to make that transition. I think we're still at the beginning of that shift.

As IT makes that transition, what skills are most important?
My focus for the last five years has shifted more toward the cultural and social implications of computers, so I haven't been focused strongly on trends in IT. I do think that IT ultimately is going to be a smaller department in terms of headcount, but the successful IT departments and IT managers will play a more strategic and kind of consultative role -- thinking about marketing implications of apps and social media and things like that. I think the emphasis is still going to be on being the bridge between technological possibilities and business goals, and less about optimizing the technology itself. That's a trend that has been going on for some time now and I think will continue.

The 2003 essay advocated being more of technology follower than a leader. Do you think that's still the right approach for most businesses, to not be on the cutting edge?
Well, I was writing in the context of what IT's core responsibilities were 10 years ago, when it was very much about purchasing and managing infrastructure and enterprise applications. So in those terms, yes, very much so. I don't particularly think you'd want to install on-premises some cutting-edge CRM system, supposing a vendor offered such a thing anymore. You'd want to go the utility route. The idea of being on the cutting edge and being an in-house innovator at that level of IT is gone, pretty much.

Then again, there are other areas, particularly on the marketing side, such as, "How do we connect with consumers shopping through smartphones?" I think there are new areas that involve IT where being an innovator may well pay off.

What are you working on today?
I'm working on a new book. If all goes well I'll have a manuscript done by end of the year, and it will be out next year, maybe. I'm not talking about what it's about yet, but it's another examination of technology and its human effects. It will be a bit more about business, I think, than my last book, "The Shallows," was. Not the IT side of things, but more about talent and people and how they do their jobs.

Do people still ask about your older work?
Yes. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of colleges in introductory IT classes will use "IT Doesn't Matter" as the first thing students read to get them talking about bigger issues of how IT fits into a company. A lot of people I meet, that's still what they know me for. They might have been 10 years old 10 years ago, but they've just read it.

When you read the article, a lot of the content is relevant today and doesn't seem a decade old, but some sections immediately seem dated. One that stands out is the mention of Sun Microsystems, which isn't around anymore.

In many ways Sun, in their marketing messages and in their rhetoric, was the kind of company that was closest to the idea that I was talking about. And yet, they provide a case study about what happens when you're too early with a message. The network is the computer, thin clients ... they were just too early. And they had some execution problems.

Thanks for taking a trip down memory lane and revisiting the article 10 years later. Any last comments?
In talking about 10 years ago, the article was very much in my mind influenced by the dot-com collapse. There had been so much hype -- the only thing that matters is IT, it's going to take over everything. So the dot-com collapse was one of the reasons that I started thinking about the implications for this within companies, and within IT departments. The hype in the dot-com world in some ways echoed what was going on inside companies. It was a reaction to that.

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Microsoft extends revenue per search agreement with Yahoo

The deal may, however, not prevent Yahoo from trying to terminate the broader agreement with MicrosoftMicrosoft has extended a search revenue guarantee agreement with Yahoo for one more year, amid reports that the Internet company is trying to break its 10-year agreement with Microsoft.

The Redmond, Washington, software company, has agreed to extend the guarantee for an additional 12 months starting April 1, 2013, but only in the U.S., Yahoo said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday. Microsoft had in 2011 agreed to extend the guarantee in the U.S. and Canada through March 2013.

Under a 2009 search agreement for which implementation began in February 2010, Microsoft guaranteed Yahoo's revenue per search on its properties for 18 months after the transition of its paid search services to Microsoft's platform in each market, to protect Yahoo from the impact of the transition. It was part of a broader deal by which Yahoo moved its search backend to Microsoft's Bing and its paid search services to Microsoft's platform.

The so-called RPS Guarantee was calculated based on the difference in revenue per search between the pre-transition and post-transition periods and certain other factors, as Yahoo transitioned its paid search to Microsoft platforms. "To date, there has been a gap in revenue per search between pre-transition and post-transition periods in most markets and Microsoft has been making payments under the RPS Guarantee to compensate for the difference," Yahoo said in the filing.

Yahoo said that in line with the 2009 agreement, it had completed the transition of its search to the Microsoft platform in all markets, and also transitioned paid search in several markets.

The transition of its paid search platform to Microsoft's platform and the migration of paid search advertisers and publishers are expected to continue through 2013, and possibly into 2014, Yahoo said in the filing.

Yahoo under new CEO Marissa Mayer is, however, unhappy with the progress of the deal with Microsoft, and is hoping to end the contract, if it finds a way, reported The Wall Street Journal, citing an unnamed source. The newspaper outlined various options for Yahoo, including a mid-term termination of the deal in mid-2015, when either party can potentially opt out.

Yahoo and Microsoft were both expecting to benefit from the deal in terms of economies of scale in various areas including backend search technology and advertising. There has been considerable speculation previously that the alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo was in trouble. Mayer, who was formerly a top Google executive, signed an advertising deal in February with Google that would result in Google ads appearing on some of Yahoo's websites.

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Opera sues ex-employee for $3.4M over alleged trade secrets violation

Opera sues ex-employee for $3.4M over alleged trade secrets violation
Noted Norwegian developer accused of sharing Opera's secrets with rival Mozilla

Trond Werner Hansen, the designer of some of the Opera Web browser's signature interface features, has been sued by that company in Norway for 20 million kroner ($3.4 million).

The initial report, from Norwegian publication Dagens Naeringsliv, says that Hansen is accused of revealing Opera's trade secrets to rival browser maker Mozilla, and that the case centers on a video detailing new interface design ideas.

Trond Werner Hansen
Trond Werner Hansen, via Twitter

During Hansen's time at Opera, he says in a blog entry, he helped create features like tabbed browsing, speed dial, integrated search and mouse gestures -- many of which have become more or less standard in modern browsers.

Hansen told DN that news of the lawsuit was "sad" and "incomprehensible." He worked at Opera from 1999 until 2006, and came back as a consultant for a second brief stint from 2009 to 2010. The latter period saw him working on a project that incorporated design concepts from a proposed browser he'd been working on in his spare time.

Hansen describes his "green browser" concept (or GB) as being similar to what Google eventually came up with in Chrome -- a stripped-down, open source WebKit browser with a unified search and address field -- but with the addition of a feature that would allow revenue from search providers to go to environmental causes.

Opera founder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner wanted Hansen to develop GB for his company, but balked at the idea of paying 1% of search revenue instead of salary or shares. The two settled on Hansen simply acting as a consultant later -- which means, he writes, that the initial proposal to bring GB into the Opera fold was void.

Opera has declined to comment on the case, citing the pending trial, and referred inquiries to lawyer Ole Tokvam, of the firm of Bing Hodneland.

The competition between Opera and Mozilla is so fierce, according to IDC analyst Al Hilwa, because the two companies both make cross-platform browsers and have an interest in the mobile space.

"Platform owners like Apple, Google and Microsoft will always put their browsers first, so Opera and Mozilla have to work harder and innovate faster to make their technology attractive. It is why we have seen Mozilla make a big effort to launch a mobile OS and we may well see Opera do something similar. The lawsuit we are seeing shows some of the stresses of this competition," he says.

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Microsoft links Skype voice, video calling to Outlook.com

The Microsoft service is available in the U.K. this week, the rest of the world this summer

Microsoft is rolling Skype in with its free Outlook.com email service, giving customers the ability to fire up VoIP calls directly from their mail inbox.

Within weeks the Skype for Outlook.com will be available in the U.S. and Germany, but for now is just deploying in the U.K., according to the Skype Big Blog. It will be available worldwide this summer.

The new Skype service includes both audio and video calls, so together Skype and Outlook.com will support voice, video, email and instant messaging.

The Outlook.com version of Skype requires a browser plugin for Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox, but it must be the latest version of each. Using customers' Microsoft accounts, they connect Skype to Outlook.com.

Those who already have a Skype account have to manually connect it to their Microsoft account, which merges Skype and Outlook.com contacts.

Once Skype has been added to the account, Skype audio and video call buttons appear in the same window with IM chats. If a user is reading email and wants to call the sender, the user mouses over the picture of the sender that appears with the email and left clicks on the appropriate Skype button to set up the call.

Skype for Outlook.com is part of a larger effort of integrating Skype with existing Microsoft platforms. It is already integrated with the Microsoft Lync unified communication platform for voice calls, instant messaging interoperability and shared presence information.

The company promised in February to integrate Skype video calls in Lync within a year so that customers making calls on Windows Phone 8 devices can connect via Skype.

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