Author: Blancer

As we all know, when Microsoft jumps off on its own on some endeavor, the results are uncertain at best. The software giant is definitely no stranger to success, but you have to admit, doomed projects like the Zune and Kin aren’t exactly rare (Microsoft fans, feel free to rant about the Netwon and G4 Power Cube).

What Microsoft is good at is using its mountains of capital to acquire companies that are successfully innovative and this week they reached a deal with Skype for their biggest acquisition yet at $8.5 billion. This is an interesting move that has everyone speculating on just what Microsoft plans to do with everyone’s favorite chat client. Following is a brief discussion on what you can expect both as a Skype user and a Mac/iPhone owner.

Skype for Mac and iPhone Will Live On

Naturally, when Microsoft purchases a product that is as ubiquitous as Skype, you can’t help but wonder if it’s in their best interest to further pursue development on other platforms, especially those that could be considered competition.

However, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated clearly that Microsoft “will continue to invest in Skype on non-Microsoft client platforms” (ComputerWorld). Ballmer appropriately went on to point out that they already have a “track record” for such ventures with the Microsoft Office Suite, which has had a Mac presence for decades.

However, it’s interesting to note that this short-term and not-well-defined promise does leave open the possibility of offering incentives for users to switch to a Windows platform. This could easily take the form of added features that you won’t be able to take advantage of on anything with an Apple or Android logo.

Despite these concerns, I don’t really see Microsoft limiting Skype for any users anytime soon. Skype is a strong product with a loyal user base and there’s no way Ballmer and his gang will start alienating significant groups of users for at least a few years. I do expect though that any significant upgrades will appear on Microsoft’s own platforms first, with delayed rollouts to everyone else. Who could resist a little nepotism?

You can bet though that in the short run, Microsoft will be focused on convincing users that the new ownership agreement is a good thing, which brings us to a very important question.

Is This Good or Bad for Skype Users?

This question is a complicated one and to be completely honest, right now it’s anyone’s guess. The benefits are obvious. Microsoft has tons of resources to make Skype bigger and better than it’s ever been. Further, if you own a Windows Phone or an Xbox, you’ll definitely reap the benefits of a sudden partnership with one of the best video-conferencing tools on the planet.

Those are solid reasons to be excited about the acquisition. The potential problem of course is that it’s still Microsoft. They’re a huge company whose focus is rarely clearly defined and seems to change often. Right now, Skype is the big hero getting all of the attention, but what will Microsoft do with it in five years if it doesn’t meet expectations?

We’ve all seen cases of services that we love being acquired and ultimately ignored. As an example, in 2005, Yahoo scooped up Delicious, which seemed like it would be a good thing at the time. Unfortunately, the result was that Delicious eventually went stagnant enough for Yahoo to abandon it completely and it is now being offloaded to the founders of YouTube.

Despite the fact that Microsoft just paid an ungodly amount of money for Skype, it’s not too hard for me to imagine them losing interest down the line when a new trend comes along that they think is worthy of emulating or purchasing.

On the other hand, if there’s one safe bet right now in tech, it’s better, richer forms of communication. Apple sees FaceTime as the casual phone conversation of the future, so Microsoft answering that with Skype is just about the strongest play they can make. It certainly seems like it has a lot of potential to be the one phone/text/video chat client that everyone has regardless of their platform. FaceTime certainly can’t make the same claim.

Conclusion

The good news is that, in the short term, you don’t have to worry about your Skype service. It will continue to be a great product that exists on just about every platform that you could want, including the iPhone. In fact, it’s so good and so ubiquitous that Apple should be scratching their heads to find a way to get us to use their product instead.

Further, Microsoft seems like they will incorporate Skype so deeply into their products that it’s unlikely that they will be able to do anything but push it forward for years to come. You can expect to see Skype-based communication play a big role in the future of Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox and other Microsoft clients.

For the long term, we’ll just have to wait and see which route Microsoft decides to take for development of the Skype clients on other platforms. Hopefully, the suddenly vast financial backing will be a good thing for us all. If not, there’s always iChat and FaceTime!

What do you think? Is Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype a good or bad thing for the Skype user base as a whole? What about the subgroup of Skype users that aren’t on Microsoft platforms?

In today’s poll we ask a simple question: How do you use your iPhone? Apart from being plain curious, we are always trying to structure and evolve our content so that it’s more appealing to you, our readers.

You can help us do that right now by giving us a good idea of what you’re generally doing when you open an app. Are you looking to get something done for work like checking on today’s todo list or finding the fastest route to the airport? Or are you mostly using it for personal endeavors as you check out Facebook and listen to Pandora?

Vote in the poll on the right and then leave a comment below with your top three apps that you open the most on your iPhone. Not your favorites mind you, but the apps that you actually use daily!

As always, thanks for your participation and for supporting AppStorm!

Photo labeling may not be something you are normally familiar with and to be honest I was the same until I found Labelbox. A fairly new iOS application by Stepcase. Labelbox has been taking the App Store by storm recently, being downloaded over a million times in less than a month.

Labelbox makes labeling photos exceptionally easy in an aesthetically pleasing way, and with great end results. Photo labeling may not be your thing, but have a go at this and see if it changes your mind, it did mine!

Getting Started

This is a free app that makes the entire process of taking the picture, adding a label and uploading or saving it very straight forward. Upon opening the application you are presented with a quick introduction on how to use the app. Simply tapping the arrow at the bottom of the screen will bring up the drawer below where you can take a new picture or select from your gallery, and then proceed with tagging.

Labeling A Photo

Once you have taken your picture it is very easy from there on. It is simply a case of picking your desired ‘tape’ by sliding along the bottom drawer. There are many to choose from, ranging from girly pink ones to plain masking tape and even more that you can buy for $1. In the image above you can see that I chose the simple masking tape and just by dragging your finger across the picture you can chose how you want it to apply it.

Once you have done that you can enter your text, in this case it was the lovely view of the Swiss Alps from my balcony, and if you make a mistake you can either hold down on the tape and see it slowly fade away into non-existence, or an easier way if you have several is to shake the phone to remove all tapes. Making an labeled image is great, but there’s no point doing it if you can’t do anything with it; fortunately Labelbox makes saving it easy. Just press the button second from the left along the bottom and it will save the image right into your phone.

Steply integration

Being in the social age that we live in, people don’t just want to keep these images for themselves, they want to share it with their friends. You could download this image onto your phone and then share it using the iPhone’s default options, but what the company Stepcase is more commonly known for is their photo-sharing site called Steply, and as you might have guessed Labelbox has great integration with Steply.

You can access the photo sharing options just by pressing either the ‘S’ button along the bottom or the arrow pointing up button, both of which will prompt you to create a Steply account. As you can see I don’t have any friends yet on Steply because I only recently set it up and have yet to sync it with either Facebook or Twitter, but when you do it shares it with them.

Steply is a hit and miss to be honest. If you already use Steply and have lots of friends then you will love this added feature, however if you are not a previous user and only sign up for it because of Labelbox then it probably won’t be that beneficial to you. This is, I presume, why they released this app in the first place, to bring new users to their image sharing site. Nonetheless, one can not complain when it provides extra functionality without sacrificing anything else.

Design & Interface

As you can see from the various the various screenshots, this app is stunningly well designed in my opinion. The wooden finish is very well done and when choosing the labels it looks so realistic and even the ‘Tape’ is well designed and when you use it has that sound you might expect when sticking down some tape. All of this helps to create a much better user experience, making labeling your photos actually enjoyable, rather than a chore.

Conclusion

As previously stated photo labeling may not have been something that you normally do but the idea makes sense. It is more useful for those postcard-like moments that you want to share rather that every single photo you take, and due to the ease and pleasure you get from using Labelbox anyone can get those pictures looking great for everyone to see in practically no time at all.

Labelbox could do with some improvements, like ability to share directly via Facebook, but at the grand price of Free there’s not much you can complain about and is definitely worth a try.