Skype just can’t win. Just as it really pumps up its Apple iPhone and Mac support, and signs an agreement to sell its software through Wal Mart, it suffers a major outage. Today the company said a software glitch has left many of its millions of users were without service worldwide. Skype users in the US, Colombia, Brazil, Germany and Finland have reported problems logging on to the free phone system. The company, a division of online auction company eBay, said on its Web site many users cannot log on to the free service. "Our engineering team has determined that it's a software issue," according to a site maintained by Skype. "We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours." Skype urged users to allow the program to continue running and that they would automatically be logged on when the problem is resolved. The outage comes a day after Skype was celebrating some good news. A German firm rolled out a way for Apple’s iPhone users to use Skype’s services. One of the complaints that users of the hybrid was its instant messaging support or lack thereof and other third party services. Shape Services this week ran out IM+ for Skype for iPhone, a Web application that works through the iPhone's Safari web browser and lets iPhone users access the Skype messaging and VoIP network. IM+ for Skype for iPhone follows the release of similar software for other mobile platforms like BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian and J2ME devices. The software taps in to customers existing Skype account, letting users make voice calls using SkypeOut credits. There are now hundreds of apps you can access through the iPhone's Safari browser. For a list of Mac World’s Top 10 go here. Skype also rolled out a new version its Apple Mac software this week. Skype 2.7 for Mac introduces a range of features to the popular VOIP software including group contacts and Address Book support. Group contacts lets users to organize contacts into as many groups as required, which should help keep large lists organized. Skype 2.7 for Mac also lets users see their Apple Address Book contacts in Skype, allowing them to call or SMS anyone who has a phone number in their address-book profile. Users can also create and manage public chats by clicking on Chats in the menu bar and use the new Auto Redial facility. On top of all that, Skype this week started selling its hardware and pre-paid voice-over-IP calling cards in about half of Wal-Mart's stores nationwide. eBay says its Skype VoIP service is still growing but at a slower pace than previous quarters. At the end of March, 196 million people had registered to use Skype. eBay isn't saying how many of those users became regular Skype users after they signed up. Still, it's a big leap from the 95 million people who had registered by end of March last year. Growth in the number of calling minutes used by Skypers also slowed. Skype users talked for 7.7 billion minutes using the free Skype-to-Skype service during the first three months of 2007. That's up only slightly from the 7.6 billion free minutes used in the last three months of 2006. Comcast, Time Warner Cable and others are definitely eating into Skype’s growth, experts say.
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