Ted Wallingford is the author of “Switching to VoIP” and the co-author of "VoIP Hacks", published by O’Reilly Media. As a trusted Voice over IP authority, Ted has done private systems architecture work. Several startup VoIP ventures have called on Ted’s networking experience and marketing insights to build and distribute new telecommunications services. Currently, Ted is a systems engineer with LCG Technologies in Elyria, Ohio, and blogs at http://www.voipfan.com. Aside from technology and writing Ted is an active pro musician and has served as a member of the board of directors at an international adoption agency in suburban Cleveland, where he lives with his wife and two children.
Ted Wallingford -
Ted Wallingford is the author of “Switching to VoIP” and the co-author of "VoIP Hacks", published by O’Reilly Media. As a trusted Voice over IP authority, Ted has done private systems architecture work. Several startup VoIP ventures have called on Ted’s networking experience and marketing insights to build and distribute new telecommunications services. Currently, Ted is a systems engineer with LCG Technologies in Elyria, Ohio, and blogs at http://www.voipfan.com. Aside from technology and writing Ted is an active pro musician and has served as a member of the board of directors at an international adoption agency in suburban Cleveland, where he lives with his wife and two children.
If desktop VoIP calling program Gizmo Project previously had a reputation as a Skype Killer, it's now official: Skype is dead. Gizmo has always done things Skype couldn't--like custom on-hold music, SIP compatibility, meta-IM with support for Yahoo, MSN, and Google Talk, and a slew (that means dozens) of other things. Indeed, some of us here at Download Squad haven't had Skype in our startup items for a year or more.
Gizmo Project 4.0 beta just hit the wild. New in this edition are a reworked avatar system, tabbed text chatting, a totally redesigned user interface, and video calling, a feature that we got a first look at with an earlier beta release last month.
Ordinarily, Gizmo Project's creator, SIPPhone Inc., does a good job of getting features to their Mac and Linux editions in a hurry (though 4.0 beta isn't yet available for Mac). In this case, however, the Nokia N800/N810 version is also ready to rock, which really excites us, since Nokia's Internet Tablets have built-in cameras that are ideal for video calling.
As with previous versions of the Project, you can still make outgoing (and receive incoming) telephone calls, and make yourself reachable via a sipphone.com URI. So, with the last nail in Skype's coffin being hammered in by the good folks at SIPPhone, we're asking ourselves if we'll ever need to run Skype again. After all, with services like GrandCentral supporting Gizmo Project, and with the availability of a native Gizmo Project client for mobile phones, it looks like Gizmo Project is ready to bury eBay's redheaded stepchild.
Sometimes you need to process, crop, clip, or otherwise edit an image file in a hurry--and Photoshop takes longer to launch than most folks are willing to wait when a simple image modification is all that's needed. That's why we were pretty excited to find out about Photo Drop, a Mac Dashboard widget that really seems to speed up quicky image edits.
Since Photo Drop is a widget, you can drag files to it from other widgets or even from your desktop (drag the file to a hotcorner to activate Dashboard and then drop it on the Photo Drop widget). When you're done with your edits, drag it back out to the Finder and off you go.
Photo Drop provides several handy manipulations including cropping, resizing, borders, and some tasty eye candy like "1-bit", which will convert your photo into a strictly black and white image. We're digging it.
Facebook is attracting more and more developers due to its exploding user population and the relative ease of creating Facebook applications--snapins which provide narrowly-focused functionality on a Facebook user's profile page. So it's no surprise that the venerable Voxalot service has brought their VoIP calling solution to Facebook.
Voxcall lets you click to call Facebook buddies, as well as field calls from them, as long as you both have a SIP URI (that's a VoIP address that acts like a phone number and looks like an e-mail address). Of course, if you don't have a SIP URI, you can enroll in the Voxcall Premium service, which supports placing calls to ordinary telephone numbers. And if you're worried about abuse or phone spam, as many click-to-call users are, Voxcall has implemented a PIN code verification which will stop malicious users from registering your SIP URI without your permission. The way it works, once you register, Voxcall places a VoIP call to your URI--and then you enter your PIN code.
Yeah, we know this is just a rumor, but it has quickly bubbled to the top of the VoIP blogosphere, and the ramifications are looming large. Skype may be on eBay's auction block (no pun intended). Among the potential buyers for such a property are the usual suspects--Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and even Facebook if they could afford it. But the excitement about Google seems to be the most fervent. Here's why.
Google is a platform company. Their platform is all about monetizing other people's content. They do it by providing self-service solutions that capture revenue generated on the backs of other content producers. One of their clarion calls has always been--increase use to increase revenue. And nobody does this better than Google.
It was for this reason--increasing use--that eBay invested in Skype. But post-merger politics ruined the exciting possibilities. We never got widespread adoption of Skype on eBay because in order to promote Skype, eBay must also have allowed Skype's competitors (or at least refrain from blocking their use on the site). That was never going to work. The 1.0 mentality at eBay was just too pervasive, even with such a future-bright asset like Skype.
Google, on the other hand, opens just about everything up. So Google's idea of competing is to show the competition exactly what they're holding, source code and all. And that's the crux of it--if Google does get its hands on Skype, count on getting access to Skype you previously never dreamed of: full-blown APIs, web service models, the specs for the Skype signaling protocol, and yes, almost certainly, source code.
The long-time VoIP phone service provider Packet8 just threw its hat into the cellular minute-stealing arena with its new service, MobileTalk. But before we can share about MobileTalk, it would be helpful to know what minute-stealing is. The idea is simple: use your phone's IP data service to transport costly long distance calls using Voice over IP instead of the traditional way--through the cell carrier's grossly expensive long distance interconnects.
MobileTalk is a software download that runs on a variety of phones. Like its contemporaries TalkPlus, Gizmo for Mobile, and Jajah, MobileTalk can be sent directly to your phone via a media message when you sign up for the service. Packet8 gets ten bucks when you sign up, ten bucks every month you stay signed up, and 2 - 6 cents per minute for every call you place. If you make a lot of calls across the pond, that *should* save you a fair amount of dough.
Of course, there's no value-add for existing Packet8 customers (like, say, a discount), and Packet8 still hasn't fixed the original set of problems with its service--for example, their soft phone (a PC program to let you make phone calls) still can't share a phone number with another Packet8 phone line. But if you make a ton of international calls on your wireless and you want the benefit of a single bill from your phone provider, MobileTalk is the way to go.
What do you get when you mix a Digg-esque ranking scale, a Twitter-like SMS roll, and a focus on amplifying the public opinion? You get LouderVoice, a review-anything web site that seems to have caught on. Opinions aplenty abound here, so whether you're looking for more XBox fanboy ammo or just a recommendation on a skateboard to get to work (hey, I ride my skateboard to work--don't you?), LouderVoice indexes somebody's opinion on just about every subject.
LouderVoice gets its content in one of several ways--by aggregating reviews from blogs (which any blogger can take advantage of, a la Twitter), by pulling in a review you've posted on your MySpace page, or by allowing you to submit a review via SMS on your mobile device. Needless to say, SMS reviews are really short and often suffer from typically poor cellphone grammar.
So is LouderVoice worthwhile for review bloggers? Perhaps, as it may drive some traffic to your blog. But, at least to us, it looks like LouderVoice is gaming bloggers for free content in order to (someday) profit from product-specific Amazon sell-thrus. Not a bad business model, if the site becomes popular enough.
There's no denying the appeal of demographically focused media outlets like BET, Lifetime, and SpikeTV to potential advertisers. So whether you're selling products for black people (BET) , women (Lifetime), or gangly teenage boys (SpikeTV), you can exploit a specific vertical media outlet that will expose your product to more of the people you are concerned with selling to.
As we enter the age of social networking, we begin to look at demographic focus in a slightly different manner. Because of database and user profile technologies, it's possible for a single social media outlet, such as MySpace, to provide access to many different tightly-defined demographic consumer groups who are participants in the social network.
Now, instead of dedicating the entire media property to a particular interest group, the social network operator can identify communities of special interest, of a specific race or gender, or of a particular religious background, making very appealing advertising opportunities available. Those who are pushing products aren't so much advertising any more, as they are merely participating in the network that serves their vertical.
Nevertheless, somebody at a company called Community Connect has decided that the approach employed by television network BET (that is, branding an entire media property around a certain race) remains the way to go. And apparently, over one million American blacks agree with them. BlackPlanet.com is a social networking site that is patronized primarily by African-Americans. The site has little to differentiate it from other social networking sites, although there are certainly a few cute innovations here (like BlackPlanet's Secret Admirer feature, a twist on Facebook's "poke").
Community Connect also runs MiGente.com, which is being pushed towards Latino-Americans, and AsianAve.com, which is being pushed towards Asian-Americans. Can these vertically-oriented social sites survive in a Facebook world? Having a million members is certainly a good start. So is carving out a meaningful niche--it appears BlackPlanet has done both.
gpSPhone is a GameBoy Advance emulator for the iPhone and iPod Touch. To use it, of course, you'll need an iPhone that's been hacked to use third-party apps, but that's a small price to pay for quality time with such memorable Nintendo classics as Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga and Mega Man Battle Network. The emulator was co-developed by the guy that made gpSPhone's cousin, a classic NES emulator.
Once you have gpSPhone installed, assuming you're willing to jump through the hoops required to unlock your iPhone, you'll need to get your hands on some games. Since the iPhone doesn't have a GBA cartridge receptable (those short-sighted Apple engineers!), you'll need to grab ROMs instead. ROMs are firmware images of cartridge games that can be downloaded and copied to the iPhone for use with the emulator. Only watch it, distributing copyrighted games in this fashion is mostly illegal.
That said, there are quite a few home-brew games available as ROMs, like our new favorite, Qwak. Now, if only an Amiga emulator would show up on the iPhone so we can play Lemmings.
With UK-based Carphone Warehouse estimating first-day sales of Apple's iPhone at 10,000 or more, observers in England are beginning to gripe about the same things American iPhone consumers have been griping about since last spring. Where to begin? The servers used to activate the phones can't handle the massive swell of eager consumers unboxing and activating their iPhones. There's no Skype. Lack of 3G network support. Incomplete Bluetooth support. A persistent inability to develop anything besides web-based apps for the thing.
Apple took steps to rectify at least some of these concerns by announcing a Software Developer's Kit, a seemingly tardy bit of news. Some believe this tardiness had more to do with the timing of Leopard's release than with the eventuality of third-party apps on the iPhones. We just think Apple got caught off guard and made an error in judgment by telling the world, "hey, it has Safari and that's enough." (As if.) Apparently, even Chinese phone hackers demonstrate that a better development environment is needed, despite having no 'official' network to connect their iPhones to.
Now the rumor mill is really crackling with promise, though. It seems that O2, the mobile operator who plays AT&T in the British iPhone analogy, may not be gifted with the same tolerant regulatory attitude that greeted the exclusive AT&T deal in the United States, meaning there are people in the UK pushing for an actual legislative termination of the O2 exclusive. And, while everybody's been waiting to hear what content partnerships Apple has up its sleeve for this touchscreen-enabled golden goose, it appears YouTube may be among the first to pony up a tasty third-party add-on for the iPhone.
iCal is a great calendaring app, but if you're a heavy user, you'll sympathize with us when we say it drives us nuts. Really, the most troublesome part of using iCal is adding events. Lots of unnecessary clicks and options that you can hide and show combine to slow you down when you're creating an event. Something that should take ten seconds takes forty.
So we went in search of something to speed the process up--and we found it. Do-It is an Automator app that has a single screen for entering iCal events, and it is much faster that iCal itself. Almost every option is there, though recurring events aren't implemented. Do-It is definitely going in our dock.
It appears that Google and Yahoo aren't the only game in town when it comes to search, though they may be the only ones not benefiting from an arguably underhanded tactic called searchjacking. When you key in a typo on Google, you're often given a suggestion, a la "did you mean to say" followed by what Google thinks is the actual keyword you fat-fingered.
But, if you're a Verizon FIOS customer, you may have ended up at a Verizon-branded search page without even trying, because the big telco sometimes takes a different approach with your typos. That is, if you mistype a URL into your browser on the high-speed fiber service, there's a decent chance you'll end up at Verizon's search page instead of the familiar 'Page Cannot be Displayed' message.
The term searchjacking was first used to describe Internet Explorer's tendency to redirect user's to a Microsoft-branded search page when they've mis-typed a URL or experience a DNS name lookup failure. Well, it looks like Verizon has decided to take the low road as well. The objective, of course, is to sell ads on Verizon's customer portal. But one wonders just how large the accidental content delivery market really is.
Microsoft's new product, Home Server, promises to make mundane tasks like media sharing and backup simpler for Joe Six Pack to deal with, but we've been wondering--is this really just a product for geeks? XP Media Center Edition was embraced by at least a portion of the geek populace, but outside the ranks of the nerdy, it never really got much attention. The entertainment industry didn't see it as appliance-like enough, we suppose.
But Home Server is different--it's the piece of software that should have existed before Media Center Edition was ever produced, because it provides some of the nuts and bolts that, if coupled with Media Center Edition, could've made the latter a truly great offering. Lest we digress, Home Server fans now have one more reason to get excited: the addition of video conferencing and video-mail using Sightspeed.
First off, if you've never used Sightspeed, you should give it a shot. It's the most grandma-friendly video-conferencing app we've ever seen. With Home Server, Sightspeed will archive call recordings and video mail messages into the Home Server, making them reviewable from another PC, Mac, or even your XBox. The only thing that could top that would be video-conferencing on the XBox itself. Sightspeed says they have no plans to bring their client to Xbox, but we have a feeling it's coming.
It's really easy to add an RSS feed to your start page or desktop, but we were looking for an easy way to let people add an RSS feed from their favorite sites to their own home pages or social profiles. We came across a really great tool: WidgetBox. Instead of coding our own Flash RSS widget that we could give our visitors to embed on their home pages, we found a ton of cool options for widgetizing lots of existing content.
What's even better, WidgetBox lets you turn any widget-sized HTML web page into an embeddable widget that can be shared with users in a friendly manner. Sadly, these widgets still aren't MySpace-friendly. But the WidgetBox does offer an intriguing wizard for creating Facebook apps out of your widgets.
WidgetBox also offers a very simple but flexible "blidget", an RSS-reading widget with options for size, colors, and presentation. Just type in the URL of your blog and WidgetBox produces a blidget. Check out the one we made for Download Squad.
Music lovers, rejoice. Yet another online music store has appeared. The latest to try selling songs online is Nokia, the king of the cell phone. The differences between Nokia's store and iTunes are few--but at this early stage, there's nothing being offered by Nokia's music store that iTunes doesn't already have... Well, except for Microsoft DRM. Yes, downloaded tracks from Nokia's music store are Microsoft-DRM'd and in Windows Media format.
That said, we tried to fire up the Nokia music store and ran into a few obstacles. First off, we realized that unless you live in the UK, you won't be buying any music at Nokia, for the time being. They've yet to launch in other countries. Second, don't bother with it if you're on a Mac, on Linux, or using Firefox, as the site only supports Internet Explorer.
We were also humorously rejected from the site when we tried to browse it on our N-Series Nokia phone, an N95. The N-Series is the centerpiece product line of Nokia's entire media experience, so getting an 'unsupported platform' message on the Symbian browser gave us a chuckle. This despite the N95 being listed on the music store's compatibility page.
So if you've got a Windows PC with Internet Explorer and live in the UK and can play Windows Media and don't mind DRM and own a Nokia N-Series phone, this place is right up your alley. Rock on, Nokia.
NetZero, the one-time free ISP, which, in recent years has elevated itself to a discount dial-up provider, added voice service to its offering a few years go. This enabled its customers to make and receive phone calls over VoIP in much the same way Vonage and Packet8 provide such service.
Apparently, as Vonage discovered, it's not as easy as it looks on paper to make money competing with the local Bell. So hard in fact, that NetZero is canning their voice offering after many months of unsuccessfully trying to sell off their customer base to a competing interest. This is a harbinger of things to come in the fixed-location voice business, as even telco monster AT&T is losing wireline customers like crazy to cable companies and on account of people who have settled on a mobile phone as their "one solution".
So what's a NetZero customer to do? Well, there's always Vonage, if you must have a traditional phone in your home. But here at DownloadSquad, we prefer software-driven solutions like Gizmo Project, because it follows you wherever you go--on your laptop and on your cell phone.
