Keith Teare

"Fred I think you might be missing a point here. The 25% iPhone users are demographically very different, and from a use-case pov are also much more likely to adopt smart phone software. Android could have large shares of handsets but low shares of app users. Instinctively that feels like the case to me. So Apple's share of handsets significantly under-measures its software footprint. To put the same thing another way (and this is a sociological point) Android is the equivalent of Symbian. Its free, hand set makers will embrace it, but the users who get the phones will not be early stage software users. If you want to make a real impact IoS is the clear front runner and the first to focus on as a developer. Android is a nice-to-have. HTML5 is a good way to go for some apps but if you need to be native and porting doesn't cut it for your app, do iPhone first." - Keith Teare

"Fred What appears to you as a firewall issue is really more fundamental. The SIP based services use UDP and RTP (real time protocols) for video and audio. These protocols require holes in the firewall, but even then are very spotty when it comes to quality, particularly multi-party video. the reason is that there is no signalling layer allowing varied bit rates on different bandwidth and enabling real-time response to bandwidth change. Skype uses TCP on port 80 and sends redundant packets. It also ignores the "ack" that TCP builds in for quality. this gives it firewall traversal with no issues as well as quality of service. Add to that a signaling layer monitoring bandwidth changes and a great codec and you have great service. So far, the attachment to "standards" (UDP and RTP) prevents most others from having as good a service offering. I recommend staying with Skype and biting what would be a small cost. If you want something a bit different (multi-party with moderation and..." - Keith Teare

"Were you drunk when you wrote this? :-)" - Keith Teare