As the Skype eco-system continues to gain momentum, an application that should capture some attention is Pamela, a personal assisant plug-in that answers calls when you're away or don't want to be disturbed. It looks like Skype VoiceMail and much more. A basic version of Pamela is free while standard and professional versions with more features are $10 and 35 respectively. What's interesting about all these Skype-related applications is how they're competing directly against Skype's fee-based services. It's not only the "we can do it better" approach but "we can do it better and eat your bacon". This contrasts with the traditional telecom carrier world, there are few ways rivals can offer complementary servies. It's not like if you're a Verizon customer, you can buy call-forwarding or call-waiting from a third-party supplier - although you can buy an answering machine. Perhaps Skype is happy having a small part of a large premium product pool, or maybe Skype believes many of its users will be more comfortable using "real" Skype services.