Skype Zones
I’ve been travelling widely through the UK and Western Europe in recent months and often longed for ubiquitous, or at least reliable wireless internet access. Unfortunately there is nothing available for the casual tourist or business traveller- UK telcos do not accept credit cards domiciled in other countries, and the rates are quite horrendous and /or you cannot roam from network to network.
So I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Skype-Boingo offering known as Skype Zones. For a small monthly rate, you get unlimited access to a range of networks around the world, with connections managed by a small but ahem inelegant piece of software. A travelling colleague and I quickly identified a number of pressing issues when using their software in the field. Since no feedback/support mechanism is provided, I posted to Skype’s regular telephony forums, and quickly got a response from someone at Boingo. They asked that I send feedback to them directly … however they have not acknowledged a single email, so I’m posting my thoughts here.
Hotspot data issues
Outside of London, the hotspot directory proved to be woefully inaccurate. Some of the towns that did not have hotspots working were Stratford-on-Avon, Henley-on-Thames and others in the Oxford city area.
The hotspots above either didn't work or the ones listed in the directory were for other UK towns that were not even in the same county. Although I always use Country, State (ie ENG) and Town, I'm pretty sure there are no other cities with those .
If you look for example at Straford-upon-Avon, it lists 5 spots, but two of them are actually in other cities (the zipcode is right but the city is wrong). This seems to be the main problem with the data. Of course none of the actual hotspots in Stratford actually worked...
User interface bugs and design problems
The UI really needs a complete overhaul so that there is room for useful information rather than decorations. If you're in a hotspot or looking for one, you need to maximise the use of your time to find and utilize the hotspot. Any and all of these issues could have been quickly found from a field trial. Since the beta software doesn’t include any feedback mechanism, then I can’t call it a real field trial.
1. the zone dialog needs to be resizable so that more spots in one location are viewable – too much space is wasted on decorative UI
2. it's not obvious that the location data is local to your machine OR that it can be updated from the Help Update Skype Zones software menu
3. it would help greatly if there were some intelligence to let you find the nearest hotspots from a city/zip code (off line)
4. If you request that Skype Zones connect automatically then it should log-in automatically as well (if you so request)
5. Skype Zones doesn't ever actually connect automatically - it ALWAYS asks, even if you've specified automatic connection
6. other wifi signals may connect automatically even though you have specified only Skype should - the precedence rules set in Skype just don't work
7. if Skype loses connection then it should try to reconnect without asking you and then asking you to log-in again
8. it shouldn't keep telling you there are new signals and offering to connect you if you are already connected - in particular it shouldn't offer to connect you to a network you're already connected to!
9. it shouldn't put up modal dialogs if it can't connect
Feedback after looking for hotspots in Italy and France.
The abbreviated "State" listings are really unhelpful as they are different to the states listed in the results. The software should also remember the location that you last searched in, instead of always defaulting to the USA.