Skype Web Beta Means You Can Start Chatting Without Installations Or Plug-Ins

Good news! Skype says that Chrome on Chromebooks and non-Windows platforms can use Skype for Web for instant messaging, but not yet for voice and video because the plugin hasn’t been configured for them yet.

Skype has brought its instant messaging, voice and video chat service to the browser with a new beta available now. The Skype web client also allows anyone to sign in and use it their account when they’re on an unfamiliar or public computer, without having to be able to install native apps.

The Skype web app is designed to eventually work without any plug-ins, which again goes to the point of it being usable without install permissions, but initially it will require you to install a single small plug-in to get voice and video calls, while Skype works with Internet Explorer to bring Real-Time Communications (RTC) standards to that browser. It should sync up your various conversations and message status, and let you get chatting quickly, and it also lets you call friends with a single button press once you’ve installed that plug-in, on Chrome for Windows, IE, Firefox or Safari.

That list might have brought a tear to the eye of some reading this: Chrome is supported only on Windows initially, which means that it’s not yet the web-based Skype solution Chromebook owners have been waiting for. The app is still in Beta, however, so future updates could support a wider range of devices and operating systems, but based on the information currently made available from Skype, Chrome outside of Windows isn’t in the initial group of support.

Skype had already come to the web in one form thanks to a plug-in for Outlook.com launched globally earlier this year, which enabled text, video and voice chat through the company’s web-based email inbox service. This is the first time Skype has had its own web-based client, however, and the key ingredient here is that the company hopes to bring it to users without the need for plug-ins, though this initial deployment still does need that single software install.

The Skype web beta will roll out slowly to a limited number of users beginning today, so don’t be surprised if heading over to the site and signing in doesn’t take you directly to the web client. If you do get selected, logging in will provide you with a notification to try the beta, however.

We’ve reached out to Skype to find out more about Chrome support, why it’s limited to Windows and whether other platforms will be supported soon, and will update when we hear more.

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the document

Clip & Convert Your Video Faster With Quicktime X & The New Handbrake 64-bit [Mac]

Recently a friend of mine asked for my help to find a video of a good presentation to be shown to one of his classes. He also requested for it to be iPod friendly as he would also distribute the video to his students. Three things came to my mind: Steve Jobs, Quicktime and Handbrake . Mr. Jobs is well known for his great presentations which are often used as references. I have several Apple Keynotes videos. For my friend, I decided to choose the one that introduced MacBook Air – the one that never fails to deliver the wow effect to the non-techie audience. It’s a part of January 2008 Macworld Keynote. First step: The Cutting To get only a specific part of the Keynote, I clipped the 1+ hour video into about 20 minutes using Quicktime X (which comes with Snow Leopard). I opened the movie using Quicktime X and chose Trim from the Edit menu ( Command + T ). Then I chose the start and end of my clip by moving both edges of the trimming bar to the desired position. To increase th

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a

Kiran Upadhyay

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