I first wrote about Australia-based Skylook back in August when they released v. 1.0. It’s a plugin for Outlook that ties Skype very nicely into email.
They’ve continued to innovate to stay ahead of Skype’s own Outlook toolbar product. And while Skylook isn’t free, it has a number of great features, including presence (see who’s online from Outlook), integration with the address book, call recording and transcoding to MP3 format, and archiving within Outlook. The Skype toolbar, in comparison, is basically a way to initiate instant message and voice calls through Skype from Outlook only.
And you don’t have to initiate calls within the toolbar to record them. As long as Outlook is running in the background, Skylook can automatically record calls and instant message conversations and archive them for you. Note that Skylook does not support recording of video calls.
There are a number of other great features, including syncing of Outlook and Skype contacts and receiving Skype voicemals in your Outlook inbox. For a complete list of upgraded and new features, see the what’s new page here.
As I mentioned, Skylook isn’t free, although they offer a free basic option that doesn’t include recordings. Licenses run up to $50.