Getting to know Pamela

The seeds for Pamela were first sown during the infancy of Skype. With only 10,000 Skype users on the whole planet at that time, Skype was like a diamond in the rough. This situation offered a splendid combination of high potential, the ability to accommodate improvements, and the longing for someone to take and enhance the product. That someone was Dick Schiferli, the head of Pamela Systems. Over the last two years, both Skype and Pamela have evolved and continued to incorporate userrequested features.
Pamela is a well-thought-out tool for managing your messages. You’ll find different levels of functionality depending on which edition of the product that you use. There’s a Basic Edition that you can download for free. But rather than encourage you to go wading in that kiddy pool, we think you probably want to know (and put to use) a set of features found in the higher-end editions of Pamela. Go check out the Professional Edition; you’ll be glad you did.

Pamela is alert

When you work with Skype, you’ll discover a tendency to start accumulating Skype contacts. You may also discover a tendency to overlook some of the information that’s floating around in your Skype database, but Pamela helps you realize just how much info you have.
For example, we like to experiment and tinker, so we decided to launch Pamela with a reasonable number of Skype contacts just to see how it operates. To our surprise, while Pamela loaded, it reminded us that our friend Hannes’ birthday was that day (see Figure) and prompted us to make contact. We didn’t expect this kind of volunteered information, but we certainly welcomed it! Conveniently, Pamela scours your contacts list to see whose birthday is around the corner.

Pamela Is Not Just Another Pretty Voice

Named after the Skype alias of a Skype marketer’s girlfriend, Pamela is one of the first add-on programs available for Skype. Not only is Pamela (like her namesake) elegant, she’s also well designed and feature rich. Pamela comes in various editions (distinguished by varying levels of functionality) and is a handy tool for managing your Skype messages. (Check out www.pamelasystems.com for how-to information on getting Pamela.)

Rather than bore you with a list of features that you can find on numerous product data sheets online, we think it is more interesting, revealing, and in keeping with the spirit of playfulness to introduce you to the real personality of Pamela. So what can we say about Pamela? Well, Pamela is alert; she doesn’t forget anything (unless you tell her to). She is very attentive. This gal has real Web savvy and she always knows whom she’s talking to. Pamela is appropriately polite and punctual. But of course, she wouldn’t be very interesting if she didn’t have her moods.