Voice over IP provider Skype has released beta versions of toolbars for Outlook and Internet Explorer last week. Outlook users can straight away make calls from the phone number stored in Outlook. Whereas the IE plugin offers all the functionality of Skype to be integrated into IE.

Quoted:
The Outlook toolbar lets users make phone calls with the VoIP Latest News about VoIP service to phone numbers stored in their address book without leaving the application.

Outlook Skype Features:-

• Easily match individual outlook contacts to Skype contacts.
• See Presence, start calls and chats for all known message senders direct from the toolbar.
• See presence, call and chat to all outlook contacts known to Skype.
• Create Outlook contacts direct from incoming email.
• Use Skype to Call all Telephone numbers for Outlook contacts.
• Use Skype to call and chat with all other known contacts in the Cc and To message headers
• Record journal entries for all incoming Skype calls
• Use Skype to call telephone numbers and even Skype names in the body of Email messages
• Start group chats from email messages where topics are automatically set the to the email subject
• Automatically add Skype callto signatures to outgoing email messages.
• Import contacts to Skype direct from Outlook.
• Open Outlook contact automatically for incoming calls.

Quoted:
The Internet Explorer plugin effectively adds all the functionality of the Skype VoIP application to the browser, including the contact list, and an overview of the user’s available Skype-out credits.

IE Skype Features:-

• Call and chat to Skype contacts direct from toolbar
• Extract, Jump to telephone numbers and skype names found in web pages
• Call telephone number direct from web pages
• Call, Chat and Add contacts for all Skype names found in callto links in web pages.
• View Presence for all known Skype names in callto links in web pages
• Smart prefixing of Country codes based on page domains.
• Search web and local services with Google, Yahoo and Eniro.
• Change Online Status from Toolbar
• View Skype out credits from Toolbar
• Call or chat to contacts from the IE right click menu.

However, both plugins still contains some bugs. For example, the Outlook plug-in offers to omit the ‘0’ in area codes as is needed with international phone calls to many European countries. Instead of removing just the first zero however, it deletes all of them, resulting in a failed connection. #-o

In the mean time, the company will first collect user feedback and see what changes have to be made.

Download:-

Skype Toolbar for Internet Explorer (beta)
Skype toolbar For Outlook (beta)