The Foreign Service Journal, November 2011

pendence from Sudan, formerly the largest country on the African conti- nent, on July 9. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was among the host of dignitaries attending the ju- bilant ceremony in Juba. Now that the festivities are over, however, South Sudan must address a host of daunting challenges if it is to become a viable nation-state. The country struggles with chronic underdevelopment. At least half of the population (estimated at 8.26 million) currently lives below the poverty line. And as the Sudan Tribune ( www.su dantribune.com ) reports, the ROSS is home to “a unique combination of the worst diseases in the world.” Doc- tors without Borders features the field blogs of Emmett Kearney and Rupert Allan, water sanitation logisticians who recount poignant experiences and challenges they have grappled with in South Sudan ( http://msf.ca/blogs/ ). In September, Oxfam’s Conflicts and Disasters campaign released a briefing paper describing the collabo- ration of 38 aid agencies to set priori- ties for action ( www.oxfam.org/en/ policy/getting-it-right-start-sou th- sudan ). The paper includes an out- line for supporting small-scale agricul- C Y B E R N O T E S N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 Site of the Month: www.skype.com S everal contributors to our May focus on work-life balance described in detail the way Internet telephony has transformed communications for Foreign Service mem- bers. It allows personnel stationed abroad to make free phone calls “home” to fam- ily members and other loved ones, and talk as long as they want, from any place in the world. This innovation would be welcome in any case, but plays an even more vital role in maintaining morale given the growing numbers of Foreign Service em- ployees serving in unaccompanied positions. Skype is arguably the most popular, user-friendly and reliable of the several hun- dred Voice over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, services operating today, and its com- puter-to-computer service is completely free. Just download the software, register and plug in your headset or phone, and you’re ready to talk with another Skype user. Launched in 2003 by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the creators of the peer- to-peer file-sharing service Kazaa, Skype had an average of 145 million connected users per month in the fourth quarter of 2010. Customers utilized the site for 207 bil- lion minutes of voice and video calls in 2010, approximately 42 percent of which was video. Though its basic service is completely free, Skype makes money because a small fraction of its users purchase additional services, such as the capability to call from the site to the telephone network or vice versa. The charges for these services tend to be quite low compared to standard telephone rates. Besides excellent voice quality, Skype communication is fully secure, with end-to- end encryption, and does not require users to configure firewalls, routers or any other networking gadget. What’s more, the software operates flawlessly between and among all platforms. It is also free of the legal issues involved in sharing music or videos online. — Steven Alan Honley, Editor