David Long

Skinkers is the UK based software developer that provides communication management software to help organisations overcome the current limitations of existing digital channels. We tick all the boxes!Microsoft and Skinkers signed a technology for equity deal in 2006, a first for Microsoft in Europe. Skinkers owns the intellectual propertyrights for the peer-to-peer technology developed by Microsoft Research. Microsoft has a minority equity stake in Skinkers. Skinkers and Microsoft won the UK Partnering for Innovation Award this year.Livestation was released for beta testing in July to moderate reviews and is expected to be released to the general public in the fall. While it is often compared to Joost, Livestation is different in that it streams live video, as opposed to offering video On-Demand. Livestation official channels include Al Jazeera, BBC World News, Bloomberg Television, EuroNews (English, French, Italian and now Spanish), France 24, i>Tele, Russia Today and BBC World Service. A feature allowing viewers to add their own channels has just been launched and has over 400 channels already. To watch Livestation, users must download a free video player, which is available for beta testing.With added funding, Skinkers is looking to compete in an increasingly cluttered P2P IPTV space with competitors like Zattoo, Babelgum, Next.TV, as well as a number of Chinese based companies (Sopcast, PPLive, PPMate).