Skypecasting the new trend in peer-to-peer file sharing

Technologically savvy users are merging these technologies to "Skypecast", using Skype's service to distribute recordings across the internet for free. This allows expert users to run their own mini-radio stations, which can be accessed by any Skype user. Skype does not actively support these uses, but encourages its users to find new applications for their service.

• A growing number of people are sharing the digital music on MP3 players and other music devices using freely available software and Skype, a free Internet phone service.
• The enthusiasts are borrowing heavily from another personal broadcasting phenomenon called podcasting, in which digital recordings are posted on a Web site for download to a variety of music players, including desktop PCs and portable gadgets like Apple Computer's wildly popular iPod.
• "Skypecasters," as they call themselves, use Skype's peer-to-peer telephone network to distribute recordings over the Internet directly to each other for free.
• Skype is the largest of the new breed of companies offering voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, which lets Internet connections double as telephone lines by treating calls no differently than e-mail, Web pages or other common Internet travelers.
• The Luxembourg-based upstart has so far signed up 29 million registered users for its free PC-to-PC Net phone calling service.
• To some extent, Skype competes against Vonage, which at 550,000-plus subscribers is among the world's largest commercial VoIP providers, as well as some cable companies, which have commercial VoIP services of their own.
• Skype's peer-to-peer infrastructure--similar in construct to Kazaa, Morpheus and other file-swapping programs--makes it well-suited for turning Net phones into a broadcasting system, as Skypecasters now do.
• Other possibilities discussed by Skypecasters at Unbound Spiral or Moodle are to turn an MP3 player into a radio station for any of Skype's 29 million registered users to dial up using their Skype line.
• All of the work is being done without Skype's active input.
• But it has made some of its source code public so developers can tinker with new applications, such as Skypecasting, said Skype spokeswoman Kelly Larrabee.