Skype Hacks

Chapter 10. Quirks, Gotchas, and Workarounds

Hacks 79–85: Introduction

Skype is a sophisticated piece of software and bundle of services. But it ain’t perfect, as the saying goes.

This chapter deals with Skype’s shortcomings—the ugly underbelly of Skype, so to speak. The good news is that Skype is continuously improving, so many of the quirks and gotchas that are with us today will be fixed over time. But in the meantime, the following workarounds may be of help.

Avoid Problems with Interactive Telephone Services

Skype is known to have real problems when interacting with telephone systems that instruct callers to enter key codes by pressing numbers on the phone’s keypad. At best, it is unreliable, and at worst, it doesn’t work at all. But a neat Skype add-on called KhaosDial might do the trick.

Works with: Windows version of Skype.

Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) is the term used to describe the tones you hear when you press the keys on your phone’s keypad. Each key generates a different tone that can be used to represent the numbers 1 through 9, the letters A through Z, and the characters * and # to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) telephone system. IVR telephone systems provide services without another human being at the other end of the line. When they work, they are a very convenient and efficient way of delivering services. When they don’t work, they suck!

Skype is known to have real problems working with IVR systems—just visit the Skype community forums (http://forum.skype.com/ ...