My idea is to develop a piece of software (ideally a Firefox extension) that pulls hyperlinks out of every chat session in Skype. Those links are then saved chronologically into a folder in the bookmark toolbar of the browser.

User Scenario

Let’s assume Mickey is a Skype-user who’s currently browsing the lastest digg news in his browser of choice – Firefox. His colleague Goofy then posts him a message in Skype:

Goofy – 13:37:
Hey Mickey! Check this out, it’s really funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Acb5205wCS8

Mickey gets a notification message on his desktop from from Growl and sees that Goofy posted him an URL. But Mickey does not want to switch the focus to the Skype chat right now.
Instead he clicks on the most top right bookmark folder that is labeled “Skype Links”.
This folder contains the recent posted URLs from all Skype chats in reversed chronologic order (the most recent link at the top).
Mickey then conveniently clicks on the first entry, whereon the link to the awesome video opens in a new tab.

Evaluation

As a long-term user of instant messaging you might agree that hyperlinks that you receive via ICQ, Skype, AIM etc. are often a breed selection of:

1. Private/internal links (Logins, Testing sites)
2. Fresh links (Breaking news)
3. Freaky links (Funny Videos, Gadgets, Tech-Talk)
4. Valuable links (Stunning web designs, Resources, Flawless explanations)

So every URL that is posted in Skype is definately very invaluable for the receiver (Hence the initial transmission by the sender).

Thoughts about Implementation

To make a software out of this idea I need to choose a programming interface. Though the Skype chat history is saved in HTML files, it doesn’t happen realtime. This means it propably will be neccessary to use the Skype API to access the chat-message object at runtime. Or could a Firefox Extension itself do all this? Maybe I’ll need to use both APIs.

After all this would be a nice feature for the Skype Web Toolbar.

What do you think about the main idea of this non-existant plugin? Or will you (as a potentially experienced Skype or Firefox programmer) tell me to better drop this idea?

Posted in Developing, Tags:browser, firefox, idea, skype

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