Skype SILK codec

At eComm on Tuesday, Skype announced that it'll make its SILK wideband codec available royalty-free to third-party developers. The release gives Skype a shot at solidifying its lead in the VoIP race and should increase consumers' exposure to, and desire for, wideband-quality call quality.

SILK, which debuted to positive reviews in the 4.0 version of Skype for Windows released last month, is Skype's default audio codec for Skype-to-Skype calls. It scales its bandwidth usage in real time between 6 Kpbs and 40 Kbps, and in "superwideband" (best) mode samples at 24 KHz. Likewise, bit rate scales from 6-40 Kbps as dictated by connection conditions.

The data sheet, which includes test results from the Dynastat labs comparing SILK with rival codecs Speex and AMR Wideband, is available as a PDF file. Charts of those test results indicate that SILK managed to maintain relatively high sound quality even at high (10%) levels of packet loss.

Despite scattered grumbling about Skype's slow rollout of SILK to its very own clients -- a Mac version isn't expected until April -- the announcement has been generally received with excitement, as well as questions about whether the SILK release presages greater openness for the service's core protocols. (SILK does not require Skype's signaling protocols. In fact, it doesn't require Skype at all.)

Interested developers should consult Skype's SILK page for details on getting access to the SDK.

Firefox 3.0.7 Addresses Security Issues

The latest commercial edition of Firefox, version 3.0.7, is said to address three "critical" security issues. But a close look at the list itself shows that a myriad of similar issues were grouped together as one, making the total list of high-level issues as high as six.

Four issues with layout engine crashes collectively constituted a single security issue, and the concern here is the possibility -- though no proof of concept yet exists -- that such crashes could lead to exploitable memory corruptions. Two of the four memory crash issues involve both series 2 and 3 of the browser, and some only occur when certain add-ons are installed.

In one case, a layout crash was reported by Firefox contributor Jesse Ruderman that was best recreated with the installation of Quitter, a quick-exit add-on written...by Jesse Ruderman.