Welcome to our page for top tips, tricks and uses for Skype. This started as an article on using Skype as a home security system, but we have been inundated with requests to update this page, and here is the result. This page will be updated weekly. As a hat tip to the article that started it all, we will always have this article in top position.

Use Skype as a home security system

Open two new Skype accounts.
On the first account, add the second account as your only contact.
Re-log into account number one and set it as as follow:
Go to tools–>options–>advanced–>(tick) automatically answer Incoming calls–>
Then go to Tools–>options–>Video–>(tick) start video automatically and Only People in My contacts–>save.
Leave this account on-line.
Log in as account 2 from another PC.

Account number one should be on your computer that you wish to use for monitoring.
Calling account 1 from account 2 completes the process.
Account 1 will answer automatically and start the web cam and you can start monitoring from wherever you are.

This trick is very easy to set up, and implement in a variety of ways.

Getting the Latest version of Skype.

The latest version for skype is avaiable on all major platforms including Windows, Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Open SUSE etc.) and Mac.

Skype is also available for the following: Wifi Phones, Windows Mobile, cordless phones, various Skype phones, Nokia N800, PSP, and I Phone.

As an added benefit, Skype will autodetect the applications on your system, and assist you in installing the right application

The page to the downloads section can be found here.

Dragging and dropping

Drag-and-drop works well in Skype chat. You can drag and drop people between your contact list and chats, or between chats. Want to add someone from your contact list to a chat? Just drag him/her from the contact list to an existing chat. Want to move people between chats? Drag them over to the other chat. The user objects in the chat participants list are large and easy to grab.

If you have an ongoing team chat and want to distribute a file to several people at the same time, there’s no need to do separate File Transfers to everyone — just drag and drop a file onto the chat window and it’s sent to everyone in the chat (they have to accept it, of course).

Disabling Pop-ups

Preferences differ. If you’re not the busy type, you surely enjoy a window popping up every time someone wants to say hi. But if you’re busy and engage in conversations with tens of people during the day, which is often the case if you use Skype at work, there’s nothing more annoying than all those windows and notifications popping up. So do yourself a favour, go study the Options where you can turn things on and off as you like.

If you go to the “Advanced” section in Options and uncheck “Pop up chat window”, all of those chat windows popping up suddenly disappear. When a new chat message is received, it is placed in the Events panel that provides an extremely handy overview of things wanting your attention, but lets you do your own choices as to which chats needs your attention in which order. Chat topics are useful, but if a chat doesn’t have a topic, Skype automatically uses the first few words from the chat as the topic in the Events area. So the Events area becomes an inbox of sorts.

See also the “Notifications” section that lets you enable or disable various types of event notifications — those small windows appearing and disappearing when someone comes online, starts a chat/call with you or does any of the other things you can do in Skype.

Editing skype sounds

The default sounds in skype is easily editable, here’s what to do:

  • press alt+T for the Tools menu
  • Press P for options
  • Move your cursor down to the sounds menu
  • You can now edit the various sounds by going through the tabs.

Try experimenting with the various settings available. There is even an option to download more neat custom tones.
After you have made all changes you want, press tab until you reach the save button and press it by pushing the space bar.

Clear Your Skype History

Press control + 4 to access your history tab.
Press control + a to select all
Press the delete key.
Go back to your list of contacts and press control + 1

Call Forwarding

People can still phone you even when you’re not at your desk. With the  Call Forwarding option you can have any incoming calls transferred up to 3 phones of your choice (your caller will be charged at the standard SkypeOut rate).  All the phones that is set up will ring simultaneously until one is answered. To turn this feature on go to Tools, Call Forwarding.

Send text messages

You can use Skype to send SMS texts to any mobile phone. Go to Tools, Send SMS Message. Add a contact’s mobile number, then type and send the message. Texts aren’t free and your caller will receive them from a truncated version of your Skype name, meaning they won’t be able to reply. However, you can change this by entering and verifying your mobile number. Do this under Tools, Options, SMS Messages.