Desktop API Case Study: Vodburner

Netralia Adds Audio and Video Call Recording to Skype’s Capabilities Using the Skype Desktop API

Netralia is a Skype app factory based in Melbourne, Australia, which has worked closely with the Skype team for more than six years. During this time, its team has built a number of applications that extend Skype’s native capabilities, including: VodBurner for Skype (to record and edit Skype video calls) and CallBurner for Skype (to record Skype audio calls).

Netralia recognized early on that Skype would revolutionize how people around the world communicated with each other. “We thought Skype was such a human use of technology,” said Jeremy Hague, co-founder of Netralia. “The ability to talk with someone on the other side of the world from Melbourne, Australia for free was a pretty amazing thing when we first started out and it remains so today.” Realizing that Skype had the potential to attract a large market of users, Netralia began building apps to extend the functionality of Skype.

Working with Skype, Netralia saw the opportunity to build apps that would offer the ability to record Skype calls for later playback, a feature that would appeal to some segments of Skype’s user base. “Whether it is home users capturing memories with their friends and families, business users recording important meetings or podcasters taping interviews, the opportunity to add the ability to record Skype calls through our apps has enabled Netralia to build a significant customer base, grow revenues and create a profitable business,” added Hague.

With the principal objective of enriching and extending a user’s Skype experience, the Skype Desktop API was a flexible way for their apps to interact directly with a Skype session running on the desktop. “The direct message passing protocol used by the Skype Desktop API is straightforward, simple and provides developers with access to everything that they need. We were quite pleased with the comprehensiveness of the Skype Desktop API; there were very few aspects of the Skype UI that did not have control mechanisms built into the API,” concluded Hague.

To learn more about Vodburner visit: www.vodburner.com