Here's a peek at some of Skype's feature development priorities
A cruise through the Skype Developer Zone website takes us to a view of what Skype calls the "Public platform activities" being prioritized for the fourth quarter of 2007.
Loosely translated, "public platform activities" can be taken to mean the initiatives Skype's internal developer teams are pursuing that will likely affect the Skype GUI and related functionalities.
That taken, here's what's up:
Web Services for Unified Directory-Efforts are being made to enable the Skype web client to, as Skype puts it, "enable Skype users to search for premium listings, other users, public conversations, and more."
Conversation API (Application Program Interface)- Skype says these efforts will be directed to "introduce the concept of unified conversations. A 'conversation' is a concept that covers all possible ways Skype users can communicate with each other. A conversation may be two-party, multi-party, or public. A conversation may include text-based chat messages as well as exchange of voice and video.
Skype adds that in Q4 2007, they will "be working on the detailed specification of conversation API and first version of its accompanying developer documentation."
Non-interactive login on Linux- Skype says the goal here is to "make it possible to bypass the login dialog on Linux. This would enable Linux users to run their Skype clients remotely if wanted."
There's also Open Source Skype4COM. This initiative is aimed more at the growing third-party Skype developer community. Since we've gotten this far, might as well tell you what this is about.According to Skype, external developers will be able to
submit their suggestions and improvements back to us for review and possible inclusion into the official library;
derive their own customized versions of Skype4COM; and
learn (or borrow) from the Skype4COM code when developing other wrappers.