Share and share alike: Skypecasting for iPods

Calling all iPods.

There's a growing number of people sharing their iPod digital music 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 website for download to Apple's popular digital music players. 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.

Anecdotal evidence suggests Skypecasters are becoming more widespread, although one user wisecracks that the level amount of required technical know-how makes it "not for mere mortals." Yet the "implications are very disruptive," writes the SkypeJournal, a well-known web community that provides Skypecast instructions. "Many Skypers want to record their Skype conversations and turn them into podcasts."

Skype is the largest of the new breed of companies offering voice over Internet Protocol, which lets Internet connections double as telephone lines by treating calls no differently than email, web pages or other common internet travellers. Skype gives away its VoIP software, and phone calls that stay on the internet are free. Skype also has premium services that charge about two cents a minute to call cell or landline phones.

The Luxembourg-based upstart has so far signed up 29 million registered users for its free PC-to-PC net phone calling service. Earlier this month, the company reported that its SkypeOut service, which connects PC calls to traditional phone lines for a fee, reached one million customers since launching in July 2004. 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.

It's Skype's peer-to-peer infrastructure - similar in construct to Kazaa, Morpheus and other file-swapping programs - that 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 your iPod into a radio station for any of Skype's 29 million registered users to dial up using their Skype line. There's also instructions available on how to record your own soap opera and use Skype to distribute it en masse. Even more ominously, some Skypecasters record Skype calls and post them on the internet.

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 a Skype spokeswoman. "We're aware of this and encourage developers to help facilitate it," said spokeswoman Kelly Larrabee.

"It's a relatively complicated set-up that requires some technical sophistication and awareness of ones entire hardware/ software environment," she added.

Ben Charny writes for CNET News.com