We almost got to see what Christmas was like before Skype, and it wasn't pleasant. Of course, VOIP and videoconferencing will never replace Grandma Pat's pizzelles, but the technology sure does make pre-holiday planning a lot easier. For its part, Skype hasn't gone into too much detail regarding the nature of its most recent outage (something about "mega-supernodes"), although as of this writing group video calling appears to be back and CEO Tony Bates has announced that customers will be compensated for the interruption of service with free and pay-as-you-go customers receiving credit for a free 30-minute SkypeOut
