Monday, June 27, 2011

Skype Posts then Pulls Video of Upcoming iPad App

Skype is set to launch an app for the iPad, next Tuesday and the company seems to have accidentally put up a video of its app on YouTube. It's "accidental" because they changed its setting to private as soon as they realized people had watched it. The video is no longer viewable on Skype's YouTube channel but a Razorianfly reader (http://www.razorianfly.com/2011/06/24/skype-for-ipad-video/) managed to capture video of the video and put it up on their YouTube channel. The video is embedded below. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5G_CkPfDOU) Skype's coming for iPad on Tuesday Skype's had an iPhone app since March 2009, but only allowed video capability on it this year (when it made sense to because the iPhone finally had a front facing camera). Skype didn't make an app for the iPad yet because of the same front facing camera reason. And now it's competing with FaceTime for both devices. The obvious advantage that Skype currently has over FaceTime is that it works over both, 3G and Wi-Fi, however that may change as soon as Apple opens up FaceTime to 3G. The other obvious advantage is that FaceTime is Apple to Apple only, however a Windows desktop user can call someone on an iPad using Skype. The video call set up is the same, two windows, the bigger one of the user you're on a call with and a smaller one of you. It also has integrated phone dialling and text chat abilities.