Arnold Schwarzenegger Skype’s With A Fan Who Has Brain Cancer
After Reddit user Courser posted a heartwarming message about his brother Todd on the Reddit Bodybuilding forum, other users took action. Todd has autism and severe learning disabilities and he unfortunately got diagnosed with terminal brain cancer (glioblastoma multiforme) this past spring. "Can anyone suggest another way to reach him? I want to see my brother’s face light up on his last Christmas morning, and an autograph from his idol is the best thing I can think of," was the message that his brother shared. People immediately began to upvote the post and tag Schwarzenegger (/u/GovSchwarzenegger) in it. Before long, it was the top post on Reddit and many were tweeting about it with the hashtag #HelpTodd.
Arnold got the message and arranged a skype session with Todd. With the help of Reddit and Arnold it’s great to know someone’s Christmas will be just a bit brighter this year!
As you know, Skype exists to bring you closer to those who are dear to you, even when you’re far apart. And if you have young children you’ll know that the person dearest to them at this time of year is none other than jolly ol’ Saint Nick, even though the North Pole is a long way away.
For a truly special Skype call this holiday season, why not create a call to Santa for your youngsters? It takes a bit of effort, but it could be a memory they treasure for life, even after the magic wears off.
Step 1: Setting the scene
The first thing you’ll want to do is plan where the call is going to take place. Santa could use Skype on his tablet or mobile, but you’ll have a lot easier time setting the scene if you know in advance exactly what parts of the North Pole will be visible during your Skype call. So set up your laptop or webcam before you start decorating.
We could give you some tips on what Santa’s workshop should look like, but your inner-child probably already knows what’s needed – lots of “Ho, ho, ho” and even more snow, snow, snow!
Also, Santa needs a microphone to be heard, like everyone else, but a headset might spoil the effect a bit (not to mention the risk of beard accidents!). A USB speakerphone like the JABRA Speak 410 concealed in a pile of presents near Santa’s chair would be perfect.
Step 2: Get the mood right
A lot of the mood in a room comes from the way it’s lit. When it comes to dark winter nights and cozy hearthside gatherings nothing beats the warm glow of an open flame. But candles alone probably won’t provide enough light for a typical webcam.
You can supplement candles in the room with some artificial lights if you get the right bulbs, though. You’re looking for bulbs with a low “color temperature” – the closer you can get to 1800K (the color of candle light) the better. Your local hardware store should stock lightbulbs in a range of colors for you to choose from.
Step 3: Write a script
As we know, kids are nothing if not unpredictable, but having a rough idea of what you should and shouldn’t say to keep up appearances on the call is a good idea. Toddlers can ask surprisingly tough and unexpected questions, but you might be able to avoid some of them if you steer the conversation down more predictable paths.
Step 4: Make sure Santa is camera-ready
Once you know where Santa will be sitting, you’ll know what parts of his outfit he’ll need for the special occasion. With some careful angling of the camera, he might be able to keep his bunny slippers on rather than shell out for those expensive black boots, for example.
Step 5: Make magic!
Now all you need to do is put your youngster(s) in front of Skype, start the call from Santa and let the most wonderful Skype call of the year take place. If you need a little help getting the call going, feel free to check in with our friends at Skype Support.
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If you do set up a call with Santa this holiday season, make sure to record it for the sake of posterity. We’d also love to see the result on the Skype Community to get us all in the festive spirit.
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McClone Construction Company: Construction firm unites workforce, speeds pace of business with cloud services
McClone Construction builds concrete structures throughout the United States, which requires seamless work among dispersed teams. The company standardized on Microsoft Office 365 to support close collaboration through frequent video calls, easy access to email and calendars, and a consistent experience across devices. It has increased employee productivity and flexibility, so it can tackle more projects while maintaining its high standard of work.
A solid foundation for business success
From parking garages and reservoirs to hospitals and universities, McClone Construction knows concrete. The California-based company has spent 40 years building structures throughout the United States, gradually expanding its offices to Washington, Hawaii, Colorado, and Texas. Along the way, the company has fostered a tradition of excellence, not just in its projects but also in its culture of teamwork and continuous improvement.
McClone Construction recently moved from a divisional business model to an integrated operation so that it could take greater advantage of employees’ skill sets to form teams based on a project’s location and type of work. “Ours is a cyclical business, and when one office is slow, another is often too busy to handle all the projects coming its way,” says Rick Owens, Project/IT Manager at McClone Construction. “By connecting our offices, we can tackle projects more effectively and achieve greater success as a comprehensive organization.”
Merging resources meant that the company needed to unify business processes across its former divisions. “In the past, engineers in our divisions used different ways of designing form systems, project managers followed their own methodologies, and workflows varied among teams,” says Owens. “We knew that uniting processes throughout the company would demand a lot more collaboration across offices than we’d ever done before.”
A new collaboration paradigm
Fostering the collaboration now expected of employees required giving them common technology. The company’s divisions used a range of technology systems, so McClone Construction looked to simplify. It wanted a solution that would be easy to use and straightforward to administrate, one that included the videoconferencing, messaging, and productivity software needed for efficient collaboration among dispersed colleagues. “In the past, we didn’t have much need to work across our offices, but the change in our business model caused us to take a careful look at how we could collaborate,” says Owens.
As McClone Construction looked at the available technology choices, it also examined the solutions that it already had in place throughout its divisions. The company found that one division had adopted Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based services when the division replaced its aging in-house messaging infrastructure. “We already knew many of the ways in which Office 365 could help the company at large because our Northwest Division had experience with it,” says Owens. “For instance, we liked using Microsoft Exchange Online so that we could avoid all the time-consuming system management that we’d endured in the past. But the biggest draw for companywide adoption was Skype for Business Online. We saw how it would give us video-calling and screen-sharing capabilities that would make it easier to conduct effective virtual meetings, without a lot of hassle to set them up.”
Employees have embraced video calling to such an extent that McClone Construction has reduced costs. Says Owens, “We’ve already seen a savings of at least 10 percent in our mobile phone costs, plus a 5 percent reduction in travel between offices, especially among upper management.”
Greater productivity from anywhere
Using Office 365 helps McClone Construction be more agile as it juggles projects across the company. “It’s much easier to establish a Skype for Business online call than to track down team members on their mobile phones,” says Owens. “We use the presence indicator to see who’s available and then just click to talk. Quickly finding project superintendents in the field and getting information to and from them without delays accelerates our pace of business.”
The company has found that its virtual meetings to coordinate operations among its widespread offices are more effective now, due to the use of video calls rather than audio conference calls. “There’s just something about seeing the people you’re talking to,” says Owens. “It’s the closest you can get to an in-person meeting. Using Skype for Business Online, we see colleagues’ expressions and gain a better understanding of the issues. We can get more done in less time because we also share screens so we’re all looking at the same materials.”
McClone Construction and its partners use Microsoft SharePoint Online to share information between companies. Internally, employees use it to maintain project team calendars and a single, easily accessible repository for engineering documentation.
In addition, employees use Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus and therefore have the same Microsoft Office programs available for use on a range of devices, including Windows Phones and Microsoft Surface Pro 3 devices. Owens, for example, might work on project plans on his PC at the office, make changes to it from home on his Microsoft Surface Pro 3, and review colleagues’ subsequent revisions from his smartphone on the way into the office. “Our employees can install Office programs on up to five devices, which really helps them stay productive when mobile,” says Owens. “Our executives and managers in particular use programs such as Microsoft OneNote Online extensively.”
Overall, Owens believes that the Office 365 components’ built-in efficiencies have the greatest impact on the company’s increased productivity. “We’ve significantly broadened our communication channels due to the Office 365 capabilities that are now at our fingertips,” says Owens. “Plus, Microsoft constantly expands Office 365 functionality, and we get the immediate benefit from product improvements because we don’t have to wait for the next upgrade cycle to take advantage.”
Support for business growth
McClone Construction appreciates that using Office 365 makes it easier to add and remove employees as the company changes. “Right now we’re experiencing significant growth that creates daily IT challenges, but we’re able to onboard new employees right away, giving them what they need to immediately work together no matter where they’re located, rather than taking days to get set up,” says Owens. “And if we opt to open a new office, getting that new area up and running will take approximately half the time that it took before, from a technology perspective. We’re no longer limited by technology—instead, we’re using Office 365 to become a more flexible, adaptable, successful organization.”
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
Skype in the classroom inspires learning
Thousands of teachers are inspiring the next generation of global citizens through transformative learning experiences.
Imagine taking your class on an "around the world" field trip or having your favorite author lead today's class. You can do both of these and more without leaving your classroom thanks to Skype. It's a great use of technology in the classroom!
Learn more about Skype for Education and explore ways to use Skype to transform your students everyday learning experiences. For more information on Education Technology Solutions call Managed Solution at 800-308-6107.
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
Ariela Suster’s company has one bold goal, to employ at-risk youth in El Salvador giving them an alternative to a culture of violence and gangs. She uses Skype on her Surface to stay connected with her team, designs new jewelry lines with Surface Pen, and manages her books using Microsoft Office and other full desktop software.
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
On September 18, 2015, the Skype for Business team shared an important step in their efforts to bring seamless real-time communication experiences on the web to everyone—the Object Real-Time Communications Community (ORTC) API preview for Microsoft Edge browser is now available in the latest Windows Insider Preview release!
The ORTC API preview for Microsoft Edge is the latest result of a close, ongoing collaboration between the Windows and Skype teams. Together we’re able to apply decades of experience building great web platforms to deliver some of the largest and most reliable real-time communications services for businesses and consumers. What does this mean for you? For developers, we’re providing new ways to build innovative real-time communications into your web-based experiences. For people using Skype and Skype for Business at work or at home, calls and meetings on the web will soon get even easier and more seamless.
ORTC API capabilities
The ORTC APIs enable the development of real-time audio and video communications applications directly on top of the Microsoft Edge browser without the need to install any plug-ins. Using components provided directly by the browser, the ORTC APIs provide granular control over audio and video streams on the client machine as well as the transport layer that carries those streams over the network. ORTC APIs also support the development of more advanced real-time communications scenarios—such as group video calls with a diverse set of endpoints—using features like Simulcast and Scalable Video Coding (SVC), while preserving the ability to easily interop with existing telephony networks.
ORTC and Skype investment in standards
Building on the momentum of our updated Skype for Outlook.com and Skype for Web experiences announced earlier this summer, enabling ORTC API support in Microsoft Edge is part of our ongoing effort to bring seamless, real-time communication experiences on the web to everyone. We want Skype to help users reach anyone, anywhere, without interoperability concerns getting in your way. We also want to ensure web-based Skype experiences connect smoothly with the hundreds of millions of other Skype and Skype for Business clients running on desktops and various mobile platforms around the world. As a result, we’re making significant investments in standards-based, protocol-level support for ORTC and WebRTC interoperability across our platforms.
Specifically:
We are updating our Skype media stack on all platforms (Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android) with Standard transport protocols support, including STUN (RFC 5389), TURN (RFC 5766), ICE (RFC 5245), DTLS-SRTP (RFC 5764). The Skype media stack is used by all Skype and Skype for Business clients, cloud services and servers.
For audio, on top of SILK, G.711, G.722, we have added support of the Opus codec in ORTC. We will continue to add native Opus support in our Skype media stack for all platforms.
For video, Skype and ORTC in the Edge browser currently support 264UC. We are working on adding support for H.264. This will enable video interop between Skype and the Firefox browser, which currently supports H.264, and the Chrome browser when H.264 support is added to its WebRTC implementation.
Here’s a high-level view of how a group video call will connect between Skype clients and the plug-in-less Skype for Web clients using ORTC/WebRTC from various browsers:
Enabling seamless web experiences with Skype
Starting later this year, we will start to enable seamless communication and collaboration experiences for Skype for Web, starting with voice and video, without the need for plug-ins on Microsoft Edge. We are also working on bringing the same seamless experience to Skype for Business. For Chrome and Firefox, we will leverage existing WebRTC APIs to offer similar plug-in-less experiences where possible for most scenarios. For those browsers without support for ORTC or WebRTC, we will continue to provide an integrated experience using a small browser plug-in.
Lastly, for developers who take advantage of Skype Developer Platform capabilities such as Skype URI support and the Skype Web SDK Preview, we want you to be able to focus on building great web experiences that will work on the broadest range of browsers. We are working to integrate support for the ORTC and WebRTC APIs into our developer offerings while abstracting out the low-level details and differences in media handling between browsers with integrated real-time communications support and other browsers that still require a plug-in. Look for more details on these developer updates later in the year.
We’re excited about the upcoming updates to enable even more seamless communications experiences on the web and look forward to sharing more details in the near future. In the meantime, we’re always looking to improve your experience on Skype, and we care about your feedback. We’d love to hear from you via Skype Community, Skype for Business feedback, Facebook and Twitter.
—Hao Yan, Jonathan Watson, Daniel Jonathan Valik and Senthil Velayutham on behalf of the Skype for Business team
Source: https://blogs.office.com
Microsoft recently released a new update for the Skype app for Android. While the latest update doesn’t come with a changelog, the folks over at Android Police are reporting that the latest update brings support for heads-up notifications. With the heads-up notifications, you’ll be able to interact with the notifications while you’re using another app — without even opening the Skype app.
Alongside the new heads-up notifications support, the update also packs support for a new monochromatic ticker icon, which looks pretty cool. If you’re an Android user, you can get the Skype for Android app from the Google Play Store here.
For life's little interruptions, use Windows + F4 to mute yourself in #Skype4B.
When it's time to speak up, use it again to unmute.
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