Last Call ☎️👋

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover Microsoft’s decision to close down Skype in the coming weeks. We can file this under “unsurprising,” sure, but the OG video-calling tool leaves behind an important legacy. We also have news on a novel way to test AI benchmarks with Super Mario games, Perplexity building an AI phone, Mozilla (seemingly) backtracking on data promises, and the latest from 3Advance HQ — the launch of Shift.irish!

🎬 Our Top Take

👋📵 Skype – Microsoft Calls Time on Once-Revolutionary Video-Calling App

For those of us with more than a few gray hairs, the shuttering of Skype tickles a lot of nostalgia buttons. Its arrival and the advent of free voice calls over the internet felt revolutionary in 2003. While that may seem like old hat now, its influence should not be dismissed. Like Google, ‘to Skype’ quickly became a verb, with its genius lying with cutting out the middleman (traditional telecoms) and allowing peer-to-peer contact from computer to computer. By 2011, it had 150 million users, enough for Microsoft to step in to buy it for $8.5 billion. Yet, its decline came about for a few reasons, not least the lack of foresight about a smartphone-orientated future and how video-calling applications should become broad enterprise collaboration tools with seamless file-sharing, cross-platform flexibility, and so on. Skype added those things, but they always felt half-hearted. By the time of the pandemic, we were all joining Teams and downloading Zoom rather than heading back to the original trailblazer. So, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is calling time on the OG video-calling tool. But its legacy on everything from encryption to laying the ground for remote work should not be forgotten. Farewell, Skype. Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Respeecher

The Oscars were relatively free of controversy this year, but there has been a mini-backlash against Best Actor winner Adrien Brody. The issue arises from Brody’s accent being slightly altered by AI when his character speaks Hungarian in The Brutalist. We will leave the ethics debate up to you, but we can point you to the tool that Brody used – Respeecher. It’s a voice synthesis company specializing in text-to-speech (TTS) AI. It’s been used in lots of movies and TV shows, including Star Wars, yet it does have plenty of use cases beyond the creative arts, and they’ve been targeting industries as diverse as healthcare, advertising, and cybersecurity. Find out more about Respeecher here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: $300B

📈📉 Crypto – Sector Rides Pumps and Slumps of Trump’s Policies

If you are in crypto, the last few days will have been quite the ride. First, the markets pumped dramatically due to President Trump’s weekend announcement of a government crypto reserve program, which would see the government buy and hold Bitcoin and (crucially) other tokens in reserve. Yet, just as the champagne corks were popping, crypto dramatically went the other way as Trump announced tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. Around $300B has been lost at the time of writing. #TrumpPumpsSlumps Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

It’s officially March, which means St. Patrick’s Day is around the corner. And for most Irish people, including those of us at 3Advance, that means a whole month of festivities, not just the day itself. So what better way to kick the season off than with some major news - Shift.Irish is officially live! Getting Shift live before St. Paddy’s Day was a huge goal for the team, and we did it - with two weeks to spare! Right now, we’re all about St. Patrick’s Day 2025, helping you track what’s happening in major US cities. But this is just the beginning, and every day (hour?) we’re adding more cities and more shenanigans. Soon, Shift.Irish will be the place to find everything Irish - events, pubs, artists, and organizations across the globe. And this Summer, we’ll be launching the Shift mobile app, bringing even more ways to connect in real life - whether that’s dating, making new friends, or just finding the best local pub and the Craic.

We’re partnering with Patrick Blood, whose vision it was to connect Irish people everywhere, and we couldn’t be more excited. Massive shoutout to Darren, Chloe, Ayush, Jose, Kieran, and Paul for making this happen! Want a sneak peek at what’s next? Check out our Product Roadmap and let us know what you think of the Beta! Sláinte. 🍻🍀

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