Disruptive Telephony

It's all about syncing to the cloud - Apple's MobileMe was the most interesting part of the iPhone 3G WWDC keynote

Okay, so the iPhone got better - so what? To me, the new iPhone 3G was NOT the most interesting part of yesterday's Steve Jobs keynote at the Apple WWDC event. Sure, the blogosphere (and mainstream media) is buzzing like crazy about it (and we discussed it at length on yesterday's Squawk Box). Sure, it's great that the iPhone costs a lot less (at least, up front), is available in more countries (but still not in Vermont!), has GPS and now will work over 3G networks. Sure, all that is great.

<Donning flame-proof clothing> But at the end of the day, it's still just a mobile phone! Sure, it's an incredibly sexy one and yes now that I live in New Hampshire I admittedly am considering getting one. But it's... still... just... a... phone. (And yes, I realize such a statement is heretical in defiance of the Cult of Apple (of which I am increasingly becoming a member).)

To me what was far more intriguing was Apple's launch of "MobileMe" at me.com. Why?

Apple is getting into the "cloud" in a major way.

Let's take a look at what Apple is offering (watch the Guided Tour to see it in video):

• Push Email
• Push Contacts
• Push Calendar
• Synchronization between iPhone, Web interface, Apple desktop and PC desktop
• MobileMe Gallery - taking on Flickr, etc.
• 20GB of online storage - with file sharing

No need to dock iPhone to computer. In fact, no real need to use an iPhone - it will work perfectly fine with regular Macs and PCs, although obviously the iPhone adds the Mobile component. All for the price of $99/year... or $8.25/month. (And with the cute domain of me.com replacing the .mac.com domain.)

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE SYNC

At a base level, MobileMe is all about synchronization, a.k.a. "sync". Now synchronization is not overly sexy. It's not overly exciting. You don't necessarily see people out there drooling over "sync" (the way they do over, say, the iPhone). However...

As we move more and more of our life into the "cloud", sync is critical.

So with MobileMe, you can now sync your email, contacts and calendar between your various devices - and also the cloud. My information lives in the "cloud" and is accessible and visible - and modifiable - through the various devices. Consider the ways in which I can access and modify the data:

• On an iPhone
• On a Mac using the Mac OS X applications Mail, Calendar and Address Book
• On a PC using Outlook 2003/2007
• On a Mac or a PC - and potentially any other device - using a web browser

As the guided tour demo shows, you can add or modify a contact on one device and it appears on all others. The sync to local desktop applications is very cool (and very smart) in that users can continue to use their regular old applications. Outlook users can continue to use Outlook. Mac users can use the Mac OS X suite. Nothing changes.

My last bullet point above is particularly of interest to me. From the demonstrations the web interface to the information looks like the typical AJAX-y kind of interface we see with GMail, YahooMail or any of the other online mail services we have available today. The key question is this:

Will it only work in certain browsers?

Or will it work in all browsers? Could I, for instance, access the information using Firefox on a Linux desktop? Could I even see it using the mobile browser on my Blackberry 8830? Conceivably I could... we'll have to see. Current "supported browser list" is Safari 3 or Firefox 2 for the Mac and Safari 3, Firefox 2, or Internet Explorer 7 for Windows.

In the end, if you buy into using Apple for sync - both literally in paying for the service but also in using your MobileMe account as your online identity - and if you trust Apple with your data and with being available, it looks to be a powerful way to live with your data up in the online cloud.

And so Apple joins the other giants in the playground... Microsoft gets the whole concept of sync with FeedSync and LiveMesh... Google has been all about applications in the cloud, but they've gotten into sync as well with Outlook Calendar sync and Blackberry sync plus IMAP email to use your email wherever (and mobile email apps)... Yahoo's had various forms of sync around... now Apple joins the battle, too.

IT'S ABOUT PICTURES, TOO

As part of MobileMe, Apple also rolled out MobileMe Gallery which lets you easily create and share online photo albums. Think Flickr only with synchronization with all your devices (and without the community that is at Flickr). MobileMe Gallery can also be viewed on AppleTV in addition to your other devices. This capability has been here in a limited form with DotMac, but now seems to be expanded.

IT'S ALSO ABOUT REALLY BIG FILES

MobileMe also gives you a 20 GB online file storage area to "store your files in the cloud". Most interesting to me was the file sharing capability. I'm a podcaster and I work with very large audio files. Sending 20MB or 50MB files (or larger) to someone else such as another producer is a serious pain-in-the-neck.

To solve this large-file problem, a whole crop of newer companies have sprung up... Box.net, YouSendIt, Drop.io, my current favorite DropBox and half a zillion other ones.

Now Apple joins that realm as well... upload a file from any of the devices and simply click a Share button - and then share the link out or send email to people who can share. Set a password... restrict the number of downloads...

A key point here, too, is that to a Mac user your "disk in the cloud" appears simply as any other folder in your Finder. To a PC user it's simply another drive to map.

The online file storage has the same user experience as regular disk file storage.

No web pages to go to. No other applications to install. Simple. Easy. (Provided you've bought the service.)

IT'S ABOUT THE PRICE

Strangely, a good chunk of the commentary I've seen thus far about MobileMe has been about the fact that Apple is charging $99/year for a service that others like Google provide for essentially free. Sure, others are offering the service for "free"... although if you think about services like Google's (which I use) are free as long as you are okay seeing advertisements.

But I mean... is $99/year really too much? That works out to be $8.25 per month. Too much? That's what.... a couple of coffees at Starbucks or a six-pack of cheap beer?

Now I am personally already a .Mac user... so I'm already paying the $99/year. I do so in part because I want to try the services and also because I am personally willing to pay for service because I know it does cost money. Having said that I also like free services and use them a great amount as well. We'll see how Apple does... if they succeed in making the experience simple and painless they just may find people willing to pay that $99/year.

IT'S ABOUT THE CLOUD

In the end, the reality is that an ever-increasing number of us are moving more and more of our data, our applications and indeed our lives into the online "cloud". While some of us may already be sick of seeing marketing pieces about "cloud computing", the truth is we're only going to see more and more on the topic as we move more and more into the cloud.

Apple's MobileMe is their entry into this grand story we're all participating in writing. The service isn't available yet, so we can't really judge it yet... and yes, I have all sorts of questions about it myself, like:

• How secure will the online storage be? What will prevent others from seeing my data? Can I really trust Apple?
• How available will my data be? What kind of Service Level Agreement (SLA) will I enter into with Apple as a paying customer? If I'm going to trust Apple with my data I want to also be sure that I can get my data when I want it? What kind of infrastructure will they have in place to ensure this?
• What kind of APIs will be available? Apple's history is of walled gardens and proprietary lock-in... will this be more of the same? Will I be able to get to my online data through means other than Apple applications?

And so on... we'll have to see. Still, it looks to be an interesting entrant in the space from Apple.

OK, YEAH, IT'S ABOUT THE PHONE

All joking aside, yes, I do realize that yesterday's WWDC event was all about the iPhone 3G.... and the potential that it has to turn millions more users into endpoints of the giant interconnected clouds we're building... we certainly do live in interesting times!

What do you think about MobileMe? How successful do you see it being? More walled garden or maybe something better?

P.S. Want to be notified when Apple actually releases MobileMe? You can now signup to receive email notification.

---

Here are some other views of the iPhone 3G and the WWDC keynote from other VoIP bloggers:

• Alec Saunders
• Phil Wolff (Skype Journal)
• Stuart Henshall
• Om Malik
• Irwin Lazar
• Rich Tehrani

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, mobileme, me.com, wwdc, steve jobs, cloud, cloudcomputing, sync, synchronization

How do YOU see social networking changing enterprise communication?

How do you see "social networking" and "social media" changing communication within companies, enterprises, etc.? How do you think blogs, wikis, etc. will change enterprise communication? What about Facebook and other similar sites?

What would you say on this topic to an audience at VoiceCon Orlando this week?

That's the task ahead of Irwin Lazar and I as we talk with Eric Krapf and Fred Knight in a keynote "conversation" from 10:30-11:00am on Wednesday. The panel, called "Social Networking Meets Enterprise Communication"has this for a description:

It's no secret that world of enterprise communications is undergoing a transformation; IP Telephony and Unified Communications are changing the nature of the game. Now new forms of interaction, which began in the consumer/personal communications market -- blogs, wikis and online services like Facebook are migrating into the enterprise. Where do these social networking systems and mindset fit into the enterprise communications landscape? Join us for a discussion about what's real today and what's likely to happen in the future.

Obviously, this is a topic about which I am rather opinionated and have been writing about in my various blogs for years (including this blog, as well as on Disruptive Conversations and in my reports into For Immediate Release), so I'm very much looking forward to the session with Irwin on Wednesday.

We've already got a long list of points we can cover... and obviously won't be able to cover them all in only 30 minutes (and we've got a hard stop at 11am as what's next is a presentation with Al Gore and Cisco CEO John Chambers!). But I thought to myself - how can I do a keynote panel on the impact of social networking in enterprise communication if I don't somehow include social networking into the prep for that panel?

So here's my question for you all -

What do you see as the top one or two ways that social networking / social media will change the ways in which people communicate within enterprises?

Both internally among employees and also externally between the company and its customers and partners?

To perhaps get the conversation going, here are a few of the topics that Irwin and I already have in our list:

• interest in the opportunities to improve collaboration among employees, especially virtual/distributed
• interest in the opportunities to improve collaboration with customers and partners/vendors
• concerns over enterprise usage of public sites/services, i.e. what security is there for corporate data out on these sites?
• challenges with rolling out these services internally (from a deployment point-of-view as well as business case, who owns it, integration of different systems, etc.)
• expectations of new generation of incoming workers

What do you think? How do you see social apps/services changing enterprise communication? (Or do you take the contrarian view that it won't?) Your feedback is definitely welcome... (thanks in advance)

Technorati Tags: voicecon, voicecon orlando, facebook, socialnetworking, socialmedia, irwin lazar, enterprise, irwinlazar, danyork, dan york

Attempt to join a VoiceCon/Mitel presentation on UC foiled by Real Player on Mac

So today my participation in a VoiceCon webinar was foiled by "fun" with RealPlayer and my MacBook Pro. The VoiceCon team was running a webinar called 'Demystifying Unified Communications' and I was curious to check it out as it was sponsored by my prior employer, Mitel, and the speaker was Mitel's Doug Micheaelides who I know well. I was just curious more than anything else to see if Mitel's marketing had changed in the six months since I left. I'm also one to often listen to analyst presentations - it's part of what I do.

It was not to be. Now, admittedly, this is largely my fault for not checking whether the webinar system would work with my Mac in advance. But attending the webinar was low priority to me and something I would just try to "fit in" if I could do so. Since it looked like I could, I jumped over to the page, registered and clicked the link to launch the presentation...

Oops.

Turns out that the web presentation system the VoiceCon folks are using needs Real's player and as shown in the image to the right, my browser wasn't very happy with that.

Naturally, I did try to install the plugin. Clicking on the images shown there to "download the plugin" took me to Real's page about Real Player 10 for the Mac OS X, but here was the first problem:

Where's any mention of the "plugin"?

Plugin? What plugin? All that is mentioned here is the "Real Player 10 for Mac OS X" and far more annoying is the fact that I have to "Get it now with SuperPass". This of course takes me to a screen where I have to register to sign up to get my "free 14-day trial"!!!

NOTE TO REAL:

I DON'T WANT YOUR 'SUPERPASS'!!!

I don't want to do a 14-day trial. I don't want to do a 1-day trial. All I want to do is download a browser plugin to view a #$%@@#? webinar!

Clicking around the site I eventually did find a page that let me download the unencumbered RealPlayer 10 for Mac. So I did that. This was where I hit the second problem. On the page, it says simply:

4. Drag the RealPlayer icon into your Applications folder.
5. Double-click RealPlayer to begin using it.

But I didn't want to "use" the RealPlayer. I just wanted to use the plugin for my browser. So I didn't double-click it, knowing that many Mac applications do whatever installation they need when you simply drag them to the Applications folder. After I copied it to the Applications folder, I restarted one of my browsers and... nothing. I tried the installation again with the same result.

At this point I gave up on attending the VoiceCon webinar and went off to do other work.

Sometime later I tried just double-clicking the RealPlayer icon and... ta da... there was the installation screen! So here's a note to Real - your page should really read:

5. Double-click RealPlayer to complete the installation.

All in all a brief bit of frustration. I guess the good news is that I now do have it installed for future VoiceCon webinars, but it shouldn't be this hard! The part about the "SuperPass" was particularly annoying to me. (Could you tell?) I realize that Real wants to capture names in return for giving away the player for free and wants to get people to buy more services from them. But I would argue that should be something that users can more easily opt-in to. Real has, perhaps, found that this "in-your-face" method yields better results. But it really turns off some % of people - of which I am obviously one.

Technorati Tags: real, realplayer, voicecon, mitel

Joining ooVoo for video... are you an ooVoo user?

I gave in today and installed ooVoo on my Mac. I'd resisted because I'm a wee bit swamped right now, but with friends talking about "My ooVoo Day" starting on Monday I finally succumbed and installed it. I admit to being a skeptic... but I'm also open to being surprised. My skepticism is mainly because I already have a zillion ways for people to contact me and I already run several IM/voice/video clients... so it's really NOT clear to me that I need another one. Still, the interface looks interesting and they've incorporated many of the features you would see in Skype and other clients... presence, status messages, etc. Many of the features are intriguing, such as the ability to do video conferencing with up to six people.

So as the admitted chaser of bright shiny objects that I am, and since they do have a Mac version - and my Mac has a webcam, I've installed it. Of course, given that sites like this don't yet support what DataPortability.org is aiming to do, I have no contacts, so it's rather useless to me right now. Yes, I can use the "Find Friends" feature to import contacts from email programs... but... maybe it's just that I'm a "security guy", but I'm still leery of letting programs I don't really know have access to my email directory.

So if you are a reader of this blog and an ooVoo user (or install it now), feel free to add me as a contact. I'm using the incredibly creative username of "danyork".

Then we can see what this ooVoo thing is all about. :-)

P.S. Kudos to CRAYON for their blogger outreach program and their "My ooVoo Day" initiative... well done!

Technorati Tags: oovoo, video, collaboration

A simple answer to why I've done more videoconferencing in the past 3 weeks than I have in the past 3 *years*...

In the past three weeks I have done more videoconferencing than I have in the past three years...including my year or so as the product manager for Mitel's video collaboration products.

Why?

There's a simple answer, really. And it speaks to the heart of why I think it has taken so long for videoconferencing to take off... I mean, we've have been talking about videophones for what? 40 years or so?

The answer is... duh!... I have a camera always available!

It is always there, sitting at the top of my MacBook Pro screen, just waiting to be used. Whenever I am in a Skype call, or using Sightspeed or iChat... or any other communication program that supports video... moving into video is as simple as pressing a button in the GUI and... ta da... we're in a video conversation.

Contrast that to the situation a few years back where moving into video involved making sure your camera was connected first. In fact, some of the various programs required a restart after you connected a camera, which meant that you couldn't just escalate into video while you were in the midst of a call. Back when I was the product manager for Mitel's collaboration software, it was often a challenge to find people to test the software with because it required people to have a camera connected... and in the days of laptops and people moving around that required them to carry their camera with them. Once I started working remotely in 2005, there were many times when I wanted to have a video call to see the person or room on the other end. I'd often ask "Can we go to video?" and the answer was almost inevitably "Darn! I left my camera back in the office."

Today the story would be different. We're moving rapidly to an era of ubiquitous cameras embedded in laptops. I don't know if Apple started the trend, but with the MacBook's they certainly propelled the trend along the way. I've seen most other vendors follow suit. A quick tour of the laptop aisle in Best Buy recently showed that most all vendors at this point are including embedded webcams in many if not most of their laptops.

So maybe, just maybe, with ubiquitous cameras we'll finally reach the point where video can truly be just another modality of communication that we can easily move to and from during a call. It's certainly been a great addition to my communication over the past few weeks... and I see myself continuing to use more and more.

How about you? Do you have an embedded webcam? If you do, do you find yourself using video more now that you can do so very easily?

P.S. The captured screenshot at the top of the article is a call yesterday with Dameon Welch-Abernathy, a.k.a. Phone Boy.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, videoconferencing, unifiedcommunications, video

A heck of week to choose to go dark! (Microsoft, MySpace/Skype, iPhone... )

Boy, did I choose the wrong week to go dark! Way too many amazing things going on out there this week... here is a quick view of some of the disruptions with relevant links:

• Microsoft formally announces release of Office Communication Server - tons of coverage out there but I recommend the analysis by the UC Strategies team.
• Skype will be providing voice to MySpace IM - again tons of coverage - Skype Journal has more info and a screenshot. See also the Skype blog.
• Per Business Week this morning, Skype will be rolling out its own mobile phone, starting in Europe.
• MySpace
• Apple, meanwhile, announces an upcoming developer kit for the iPhone via a note from Steve Jobs (some reactions here and here).
• And finally MySpace says it will open up to application developers in a similar manner to Facebook.

All in all a rather busy week! (And it's not over yet...)

Technorati Tags: apple, applications, facebook, iphone, myspace, microsoft, ocs, unifiedcommunications, skype, voip

Digium buys SwitchVox and gets presence, Web 2.0 interface, mashups to Google Maps, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM...

Imagine you are a customer service rep (CSR) at a small/medium company and a phone call comes in from a customer. As your phone rings, up on your screen pops all the information about that customer, pulled from your CRM database in Salesforce.com or SugarCRM, plus other information from other databases and finally a nice Google Map showing you where that customer is located and potentially other information like the locations of your nearest offices. During the call, the CSR needs to bring in a subject matter expert so the CSR consults their web panel and looks at the presence information displayed for each of the other people in the business. The CSR can then contact someone showing as available and potentially bring them into the call.

Now imagine that all that is running on top of open source telephony... specifically Asterisk.

You can now stop imagining, because Digium just bought the company that does precisely that. There will undoubtedly be much attention today (at the very least in the VoIP blogosphere) about Digium's announcement here at AstriCon today that they have acquired SwitchVox. I am going to bet that much of the reporting today will focus on angles like these:

• Digium now has very competitive offerings (SwitchVox SOHO and SwitchVox SMB) for going after the small / medium business market.
• Digium bought themselves a very sophisticated/simple/easy GUI/management interface that moves them forward dramatically in making Asterisk easy to use, deploy and manage.
• Digium just got 1400 paying customers with over 65,000 endpoints.
• Digium bought themselves parity (or more) in their ongoing competitive feud with the folks at Fonality/Trixbox.

All of that is true. The SwitchVox products offer a very seriously competitive list of features (you have to go through and expand the subsections to see all the features). The GUI is very well done and simple. The price is quite compelling for the servers and also the support. I mean, for $1200 ($995 server plus $199 support) an SMB gets an IP-PBX with a very broad range of features and an unlimited number of users! Yes, the business still has to pay for IP phones, but they can buy any of a wide range of phones at varying price points to suit their needs. Considering that almost all the mainstream IP-PBX vendors charge on a per-user basis for licenses, the unlimited user model is certainly disruptive in its own right. (Digium has also been doing this with their Asterisk Business Edition.) And yes, Digium now has an answer to the growing competitive threat of Trixbox and it's management interfaces, support, hybrid model, etc.

All that is true - but it's not the really interesting story.

To me, what is far more compelling is that Digium just bought themselves a whole group of people who "get" the world of "unified communications", business process integration, Web 2.0 mashups, etc.

Digium has had no story at all around "presence" within its core offerings. Now it does. While Asterisk has always been a platform play where you have the ability to integrate Asterisk with other apps, doing so has not exactly been for the faint-of-heart. Hire yourself some programmers and you can do pretty much anything with Asterisk... but that's not something that many businesses want to get into. SwitchVox now gives Digium a way to do easy integration with databases and web sites. The integrations to Salesforce.com and SugarCRM are slick. The Google Maps popup is a seriously cool mashup! (And where is that on the roadmap of the mainstream vendors?)

Throw in a "click to call" add-in for Firefox to let you dial any number you see on any web page, plus a plug-in for Outlook, and you've got a very compelling offering. For a very nice price. My only knock (other than the fact that I can't find a picture of their Google Maps mashup anywhere on their website) is that it doesn't seem like their presence capability is yet integrated with existing instant messaging services. Given Asterisk's XMPP (Jabber) capabilities, this seems an obvious path that could get them connected to Jabber and GoogleTalk presence information. If they don't have that yet, I hope they add it soon, as we really do NOT need yet another place to change/update our presence info.

Regardless, this integration capability is, to me, the real story. Phones are being commoditized. I have to believe call servers/IP-PBXs are on their way to being commoditized. (Folks like Microsoft are going to help in pushing those prices down.) The money will ultimately go away from those areas.

The future of "unified communications" is about platforms. About mashups. About web services. About exposing APIs. About making it easy to combine different sources of data into interfaces that make people more productive. Microsoft gets that. Some of the traditional IP-PBX vendors get that. Digium has always known that, but this acquisition gives them a far better ability to make it happen.

Congrats to the folks at both Digium and SwitchVox for making this happen... I very much look forward to seeing where it evolves! (And in the meantime, I'm going to have to go down to the AstriCon exhibit hall and get some video of the Google Maps mashup to show how very cool it is...)

Read more:

• coverage in the blogosphere
• Digium FAQ about the acquisition
• Digium blog post by Bill Miller (more posts will apparently follow today on their blog)

Technorati Tags: asterisk, astricon, digium, mashups, opensource, presence, switchvox, telephony, voip

MySpace is NOT giving away free cell phones but instead launching a free ad-supported phone VERSION (of the site)....

In what looks like a classic case of someone leaving a critical word out of a headline, the Associated Press this morning came out with this report that MySpace is apparently launching an advertising supported free cell-phone. As indicated in the news release:

The company already offers premium, subscription-based versions of MySpace through AT&T Inc. and Helio wireless services. Those versions include special features integrated into specific handsets, such as uploading cell phone photos directly to a user's profile page.

The new version set to launch Monday will work on all U.S. carriers and will allow users to send and receive messages and friend requests, comment on pictures, post bulletins, update blogs, and find and search for friends.

At first I went along with the headline but the more I read it the more it made no sense whatsoever. There was no mention of phones... rate plans... or anything else. Gradually it dawned on me that while the AP headline was this:

Myspace to launch ad-supported cell phone

what they really meant was this:

Myspace to launch ad-supported cell phone version

Oops!

And here I was getting all excited that News Corp. was doing something truly stunning and had figured out a way to use advertising to drive the costs of all calls to $0 and give away all the phones and minutes for free! Given the huge community of MySpace users out there, they would probably have immediate pickup and would truly disrupt the industry.

Ah, well... the truth appears to be that they are just making it easier to use MySpace on web-enabled cell-phones without paying for the subscription version. Commendable... but not even remotely as exciting.

Let's see how far people run with the "MySpace to give away free cell phones" theme today!

Technorati Tags: freecellphones, myspace, headlines, socialnetworking, wireless

Iotum improves their Facebook conference call app...

What a difference a day makes. When I wrote about Iotum's "Free Conference Call" app for Facebook yesterday, I mentioned that there were a few things still in development.  Today, as shown in the image on the right (click on it for larger image), they've already addressed two of the issues: 1) the Agenda can now be completed (and in fact is the second step now while you are setting up the call); and 2) they've corrected the display issues with the participants.  With a few participants, the pictures loaded in very quickly, and with a larger number of participants the pictures were removed and only the names were shown.  Kudos to the Iotum team for iterating so quickly.

FYI, as shown in the image, I did participate in the "historic" public conference call hosted today by Moshe Maeir at 3:30 Eastern US time today.  It was a good demonstration as at one point we had easily 10+ people involved.  Very nice to see who joined simply by looking at the list of participants and seeing who was in green.  (Hmmm... note to Alec, you might want to rethink the use of green and red as there is some percentage of people out there who are color-blind and can't differentiate between the two.)  Unfortunately, about mid-way through the call, actually when I was in the middle of answering a security question that Moshe asked... the conference bridge failed. (or something failed - in any event, the call was terminated)  The others apparently all dialed back in, but I unfortunately had to prep for a 4pm conf call and couldn't make the time to rejoin.  Despite the glitch, though, it was a nice experiment in using it with a group of people in a public setting.

In related news, Alec Saunders has a nice roundup of the coverage of the launch of their Facebook application.  Worth checking out to see the opinions of others.

Technorati tags: iotum, facebook, facebook platform, conference calls, conference calling, conferencing, alec saunders

Facebook gets free conference calls with Facebook app from Iotum

Conference calls - inside of Facebook?  And for free? 

Yes... courtesy of the folks up at Ottawa-based startup Iotum. As I've written before, there are tons of applications being developed for Facebook, but there haven't been a whole lot of voice applications and there have been even fewer (in fact, almost none) voice-over-IP (VoIP) applications.  Of the existing voice apps (nicely listed by Pat Phelan), most of them are really what I'll call "consumer" apps... primarily focused on cheaper phone calls or making it easier to call people.  Or "calling" other Facebook users - or leaving them voicemail.  But there haven't really yet been any interesting apps I've seen that could provide business features.

Until now.  The team at Iotum just released their "Free Conference Call" Facebook application and now allowed anyone to install it. Until now, it's been in a very limited test phase, but after Alec issued his request for volunteers last Friday, I naturally had to give it a try (and he asked us not to write about it until today).

So here's the process.  After you've installed the app, you have to go through a brief authentication process to put your mobile phone number on file with the app.  Basically, the app sends your mobile number a text message with a verification code.  You then enter the verification code and your number is put on file with the app.

Creating a conf call is then a simple process.  Click a link and then fill in the relevant time/date fields (which can be basically right away) and then choose whether this is a private conf call or should be listed in the public directory (click on image for larger view):

Since the app is still in test mode, there weren't really any public calls to see and I just tried it out with private calls.  The next step is to invite recipients, a process that is made very easy by having a search box in the upper right side that lets you easily search through your Facebook friends (click for larger image):

Note that there is the capability to "Invite Friends who are not on Facebook", although this functionality is still in development.  The basic idea is that that person could receive an email with dial-in instructions.  In the end, you have a conf call page listing the various participants (in this case only one) and you have the ability to send invitations out:

 

When you send the invitation out, it goes out in typical Facebook fashion to the user's Facebook account where the user is then given the choice to RSVP or Ignore the invitation:

In the end, you press "Finish and View" and wind up with a page like this:

It has the typical type of info you would expect for a conference call.  A place to add an agenda (although this was still being developed), list of attendees, etc. Once the call is underway, the portion at the bottom fills in to show the pictures of the participants who are on the call, with the participants in green when the call is underway and red when they are disconnected from the conference bridge:

I'll note that the images took a very long time to load on my PC (in fact, they never loaded in one of my browsers) but this is clearly a bug they are very aware of and working on fixing.  For Alec, the images loaded quickly (and he said it had nothing to do with him being on Iotum's network because all traffic is proxied through Facebook).

Alec indicates that the plan is to highlight the people currently talking, etc.  He also says that over time they expect to add more functionality like a "Wall" capability where you could write notes during a call.  In my brief testing I was able to create both an immediate conf call (by simply scheduling the call for the time it was right then) and also a scheduled call.

Regarding the scheduled call, back on my "Conference Call" application page inside of Facebook, I have a nice view of upcoming conference calls, a tab for past conferece calls and a tab for public conference calls (none currently listed):

The link to create a new conf call is up in the upper left.  Once the time came for the call, I got a red bar across the top that said "ACTIVE CALL" indicating that one of my conf calls was in session.

The call itself was rather straightforward.  I simply dialed into the conf call bridge (a number in Minnesota) and, because my Caller ID matched that of the number on file for my mobile, I was put directly into the appropriate conference call.  Had I called in from another line, I would have needed to provide my mobile number as the "PIN" to get me into the conf call (which may also be the case with some mobile providers that don't send appropriate Caller ID).  I'm not entirely sure how comfortable I am with relying on Caller ID to get you into the conference calls (since, wearing my security hat, I know how easily it can be spoofed), but when it works (as it did for me) it does get you in there easily. Alec said they will soon be sending out a text message prior to the call with the dial-in number, which would make it easier for mobile users to simply dial the number in the text message, and also serves as a useful reminder.

All-in-all, it seemed like a nice very basic conferencing system.  Not yet as full-featured as any of the regular conf call systems out there available for businesses (Full disclosure: My employer makes such a system.), but it's probably "good enough" for many people and more importantly, it's integrated with Facebook.  Yet to be seen is how well it really scales... and what, if any, security exposures are out there, but those type of things will appear over time. It's a new app and, again, it's integrated with Facebook. There's also the detail that it only has a North American phone number, but again, this is just its initial launch.

I had two questions for Alec: 1) Why a conferencing app from Iotum? What does this have to do with their "Relevance Engine"? and 2) What is the business case?  How is he providing the free conference calls?

On the Iotum connection, Alec freely admits that launching the conferencing app now is mostly about time-to-market and getting out there first with a conferencing app.  Having said that, Alec is very clear that iotum's plan is to add in their presence features over time and also integrate this app with their Talk-Now app for Blackberries.  Adding a "social networking" component to their products was always on their roadmap, but the launch of the Facebook platform allowed them to accelerate those plans.  For right now, Alec definitely sees how red-hot the interest in Facebook is and is quite obviously seizing the opportunity to ride that wave. (And the beautiful thing about being CEO of a startup is that he can easily adjust and do this.)

On the money side of things, Alec indicates he's funding the free conf calls in part through sharing termination revenue with the LEC hosting the conference bridge and also through ad-supported SMS messages.

So in the end, Facebook now gets a conference calling application.  Give it a try.    I would expect that it will actually be the first of many such apps, but Iotum is now first out there with a working app.  From my perspective, it's good to see an useful business app out there for Facebook, in whatever form.  Kudos to Alec and team - and I look forward to seeing what it evolves into.

(Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to see a true VoIP app for Facebook (that does more than just calls between FB users) .... )

Technorati tags: conference calls, facebook, facebook platform, alec saunders, iotum, telecommunications, telephony

IBM announces acquisition of WebDialogs, makers of Unyte!

Wow!  From the stage here at VoiceCon, Michael Rhodin, General Manager of Lotus Software at IBM just announced that they are acquiring WebDialogs, the makers of Unyte!

IBM just issued a news release announcing this acquisition.

For those of us following the Skype space, Unyte has been known for a long-time as one of the leading business/collaboration extras available for Skype. 

Congrats to the WebDialogics folks and it will be VERY interesting to see where this goes!

Technorati tags: ibm, webdialogs, unyte, collaboration, web conferencing, skype, voicecon

New version of IM+ out that lets you do Skype from your Blackberry...

About a month ago, I wrote about the "IM+ for Skype" client that let you use Skype on your Blackberry. Well, a new version 2.5 is out now and Jim Courtney over at Skype Journal has a review.  Jim is quite enthusiastic about a new feature that lets you specify the number at which IM+ will call you back (rather than only calling you back on your mobile).  I also found this interesting:

As an added benefit, IM+ 2.5 will not only make calls to those in my Skype Contacts but also my Blackberry address book. In summary IM+ provides a very versatile way of combining access to both Skype and Blackberry resources.

Interesting to see the merger of Skype and Blackberry directories.  I've not yet played with it and don't see myself having the time to do so in the next bit, but Jim says he'll be writing more in the time ahead about it.

Technorati tags: skype, blackberry, rim, im+, im, shape services, jim courtney, skype journal

iSkoot - cool idea for a Skype client for Blackberry, but I don't see me using it much because...

Last week I wrote some first impressions of iSkoot, a new Skype client for Blackberry, and while I still think it's a very cool idea, I don't see myself using it all that much.  Why not?  Very simply...

Battery life!

Or the lack thereof.  Yes, indeed, it all does seem to come down to batteries, and iSkoot seems to certainly consume its share of power.  Now granted, my Blackberry 7290 is an older model and for all I know could probably use a new battery, but in "normal" operation, I can charge it up and then have it run for a good 3 or 4 days before it needs a recharge.  However, start up iSkoot and I found I suddenly needed a recharge by the end of the day!

In fairness, iSkoot is not alone in this... the other Blackberry IM clients I've used, both the Windows Messenger client and also most recently the IM+ client for Skype also have this same problem.  I'm assuming it has something to do with the need to regularly use the data connection for updates to status and to update chat messages.

I can see this actually being most useful to me when I'm traveling and need to quickly reach someone from within an airport or something like that. Of course, that's also when I want the longest battery life, too!  I think I'll keep it installed on my BB, but I don't think I'll have it running except for those times when I'm somewhere and I want a quick way to do IM via Skype.

Too bad, really, because one of the fun aspects of it was that I had a very easy way to read Twitter updates and Facebook updates on my BB (since I have both Twitter and Facebook status streams piped into a Skype chat).

Ah, the joy of batteries...

Technorati tags: skype, blackberry, rim, iskoot

iSkoot provides another Skype client for Blackberry devices... review - and my first reaction is that it has a challenge with the "instant" part of "instant messaging"

NOTE: Please see the updates at the bottom of this post.

Back on Monday, Jim Courtney over at Skype Journal IM'd me (on Skype naturally) asking if he could do a test call to me on "another Skype client for the Blackberry". Naturally, I said yes and in a moment or so we were speaking.  It turned out that he was using a new beta application from iSkoot.  From the news release:

The new iSkoot v1.1 delivers a comprehensive mobile Skype experience on BlackBerry: With the click of a button, users can instantly chat with their Skype contacts, make and receive Skype calls, and use SkypeOut™ to inexpensively call regular phone numbers nearly anywhere in the world. iSkoot v1.1 also displays complete Skype contact status information, so BlackBerry users can see which friends, family members and business colleagues are available, as well as manage their own online presence. This latest release features a next generation, easy-to-use interface especially designed for BlackBerry users and will offer additional features soon. iSkoot works without any need for PCs, special hardware, custom phones or Wi-Fi hot spots, and utilizes the existing mobile network infrastructure to route Skype calls through the voice channel.

It sounded interesting and so, of course, I had to try it out as well and finally had a spare moment to do so today.  Now, both Jim and I had commented a month ago about the IM+ Skype client from ShapeServices (my posts first here and then here with a link to Jim's coverage) so that previous experience somewhat colors my own view of the iSkoot application.

The installation was fairly straightforward. I filled out a form on iSkoot's site and was then SMS'd instructions for the download.  I simply opened the link in my Blackberry's browser and proceeded with the install in the normal "over the air" process.  One minor detail was that my Blackberry 7290 was not in the list of supported handsets, but I took a guess that the 7100 binary might work and so I used that (and it seems to work).

Here are some initial positive impressions:

• Nice user interface - Very nice interface.  Tabs that you can use Alt+wheel to move between for your contacts, online contacts, SkypeOut contacts and chats.
  
• Presence worked - I could see the presence of the other Skype users on my contact list.  I didn't try to see what happens when a user changes to see what kind of time delay there may or may not be.
  
• Outbound calls worked, although with an annoying step in the process - Move to a Skype contact and push your thumbwheel twice to call.  (Or push it once to see your options.) The call then starts by initiating a regular mobile call from your Blackberry to a phone number in Massachusetts (for me).  It then seems to call the other person on Skype and connect you through the gateway at iSkoot.  The annoying step was that when I first initiate a call, my Blackberry throws up a menu saying that an application is requesting to make a call and do I want to allow it, with the default being No. I therefore have to scroll up and press my thumbwheel again.  It's a pain and I couldn't find a way to remove that request.  I don't remember having to do that step in the IM+ client (and my trial has expired).  In any event, once the calls were connected, the audio quality sounded fine on both ends.
  
• Chats worked, and alerted you to new chats - Easy to initiate chats. Nice list of current chats.  If a new chat is opened up with you, you get a notification and can open it up.  If there are new messages in existing chats, you get notified of those as well.
  
• No conference call appearance - Unlike the IM+ client, your call just appears as a regular Skype call.  In fact, there was really no way for me to know Jim was not calling me from his regular Skype client.  With the IM+ client, you wound up getting put into a conf call with the other recipient which just seemed a bit strange.

Realizing it is still in beta (like, it seems, most everything on the net these days), here are some negative impressions:

• No support for groupchats - Using the Skype 3.2/3.5beta clients, I'm accustomed to having several public groupchat windows open.  Unfortunately, groupchats are not supported per the FAQ, and my public groupchats did not appear.  This does work in the IM+ client, so score 1 for IM+.
  
• Very slow updates to chats - In our experiment today, Jim Courtney and I both had Skype running on our PCs and so we could see our chat messages in a chat window there as well.  There were times when it took 5-10 minutes for messages typed in the PC chat window to appear in the iSkoot window!  Given that this is supposedly instant messaging, such a delay was hard to fathom.  Now there is a "Refresh Now" choice in the menu which could force a refresh, but the normal process seemed to have some kind of refresh interval.  Not all the time.  Sometimes messages appeared right away... but other times there was as much as a 10-minute delay before seeing the other message.  Hopefully this is just a scaling issue as iSkoot deals with their release!
  
• Slow call initiation process - Forgetting about my annoying Blackberry question I had to answer, the whole process of initiating the call seemed to take longer than the IM+ client did.  I'd have to purchase IM+ to actually test the timing, but the iSkoot process just seemed slower.
  
• Status did not have DND/Busy - Curiously, you can change your status in the iSkoot client, but you only have the choices of: Online, Away, Not Available and Invisible.  One of the ones I use often is "Do Not Disturb", so that I'm not disturbed.  That choice isn't here.  Perhaps the assumption is that you'll just exit the application.
  
• You can't receive Skype calls if you have Skype Voicemail enabled - Per the FAQ.  Not entirely sure why but this seems to be a bit of a headache if you this is not your only Skype client.  I also have Skype on my PC and if I am not there, I'd prefer to have the call go to voicemail.  Since I'm mostly looking to use this for Skype chats and Skype outbound calls, I don't expect it to be a big deal for me (I'll leave voicemail on) but I could see it being a pain if I did want to receive calls.
  
• You still have to give over your Skype password - As with IM+, you have to provide iSkoot with your Skype username and password and then they log in as you from their server/gateway.  As a commenter pointed out, there is a basic problem here that with your Skype account being connected to your PayPal account which in turn is connected to your bank account, you are potentially letting someone you don't know have access ultimately to your bank account.  Do you trust iSkoot (or anyone else) enough?  On the other hand, I'm not sure how any of these services can really work if you do not provide that information.  (See update below.)

All in all, it's an interesting entry into the idea of taking Skype onto a mobile phone.  As I have time I'll keep experimenting with it over the next few weeks... I could see it be especially useful if you were travelling (which, for better or worse, I'm not doing).

As I'll write up in another post, the one interesting use for me was that I could see Twitter and Facebook updates appearing in a Skype chat window and could post Twitter updates (without using the SMS interface)... which was an interesting experience.

In the meantime, if you are a Blackberry and Skype user and want to experiment, you can head over to iSkoot.com and try it out.

---

 

UPDATE #1 - 11 Jul 07: Jim Courtney IM'd me with the following comment on the Skype<->PayPal linkage:

btw, I investigated re the PayPal access issue. To do anything meaningful you need to log into PayPal as well. Also PayPal would not allow a process that was open to abuse. All you can buy automatically are voice mail, SkypeIn, SkypeOut and even there you can put on a daily limit as low as $50. And my PayPal password is definitely not my Skype pwd.

UPDATE #2 - 3 Aug 07: Jacqueline Van Meter with iSkoot Product Management has responded in a comment to my later post about iSkoot, addressing a number of the concerns I raised here. 

Technorati tags: skype, blackberry, rim, iskoot

Google acquires GrandCentral... and enters further into the PSTN side of telecommunications

News breaking out today is that Google has acquired GrandCentral for something around $50 million. GrandCentral is a service that gives you one phone number that can ring multiple numbers, provide one common voicemail - and all sorts of the other features (see "howitworks" for a list of features). As  the GrandCentral blog entry says:

We started GrandCentral because we wanted to create a service that puts users in control of their voice communications and not the other way around. As you have discovered, with GrandCentral you get all of your phone calls through just one number that never changes and you can link and ring up to six phones to ring when somebody calls you. But that’s just the start. You can set different rules for each caller (some ring all your phones, other can go straight to voicemail), create personal voicemail greetings for each of your callers, and even check your voicemail on the web with all of your messages in just one inbox. We’ll even save your messages for as long as you want.

I first learned of GrandCentral quite some time ago from Andy's blog and subsequently heard GrandCentral CEO Craig Walker talk out at O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony conference at the beginning of this year.  It seemed to be an interesting service, although unfortunately I didn't sign up for the service at the time. (Now you have to wait to be invited if you want to try it out.)

As to Google's motivation, they discuss it in the Google blog entry:

GrandCentral is an innovative service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. We think GrandCentral's technology fits well into Google's efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users.

GrandCentral offers many features that complement the phone services you already use. If you have multiple phone numbers (e.g., home, work, cell), you get one phone number that you can set to ring all, some, or none of your phones, based on who's calling. This way, your phone number is tied to you, and not your location or job. The service also gives you one central voice mailbox. You can listen to your voicemails online or from any phone, forward them to anybody, add the caller to your address book, block a caller as spam, and a lot more. You can even listen in on voicemail messages from your phone while they are being recorded, or switch a call from your cell phone to your desk phone and back again. All in all, you'll have a lot more control over your phones.

So will we ultimately see voicemail inside of Gmail?  One would assume that we will eventually see integration with GoogleTalk, which would give that service its first direct PSTN connectivity.  With a GrandCentral integration, GoogleTalk essentially winds up with a "SkypeIn" kind of service that can route calls to you on GoogleTalk.  The "WebCall Button" and "Click2Call" services also fit in with other Google efforts to expand further into "click to call" (as you can do now in Google Maps).

All very interesting to see... congrats to the GrandCentral team and it will be very interesting to see what emerges from the integration.

Technorati tags: google, grand central, voip

Skype announces "Mashup Contest" to encourage developers to play with Skype's API

One of the things that continues to fascinate me is the "mashup culture" we are in today where the whole "Web 2.0" (ugh! how I dislike the term!) motif is that you can mix and mash output and input from various services to come up with new and interesting integrations.  Anybody who has at this point NOT seen some mashup with Google Maps should probably stop reading this post now.  (In fact, turn off your computer and just go outside... you obviously haven't been paying attention, anyway!)  The programmableweb site lists now over 2000 mashups.  There's a wiki of Twitter mashups.  Mashable.com reports daily on more and more services that are very often new remixes and combinations of existing services.  It's a crazy but intriguing world we're in right now.

Today Skype joined the fray with their "Mashup Contest" calling on developers to join in building mashups that use the Skype API.  The contest will run until September 12th when they are having a "Skype Developer Days" conference in Prague.  From their announcement:

Judges will be from across Skype, eBay and Paypal, plus external judges. The winner will be chosen and announced on Sep 12th in Prague based on the following criteria: innovation, usefulness, cool factor, usability and a dash of weirdness.

It will be very interesting to see what evolves.  Having been in the Skype public chat that started initially to talk about mashups with Twitter, I'm fairly sure that we'll see some integration with at the very least Twitter and Facebook.  (Will Skype be the first with a Facebook VoIP app?)

Should be fun, at least... I'm curious to see what people do that involves "a dash of weirdness"!  :-)

Technorati tags: skype, skype api, mashups, facebook, twitter, ebay, paypal

New Skype public chat about Twitter <-> Skype integration

For those who read my previous post about the ability to now post to Twitter from within Skype, Antoine "Ants" Bertout from Skype created a new Skype public chat to facilitate discussion around how Skype and Twitter could be integrated.  Anyone interested who has Skype 3.x is welcome to join by following the link below: 

Skype and Twitter | http://twitter.com/help/api hosted by bertouta.

Join now

---

Chat about what's on your mind. More about public chats.

Technorati tags: skype, twitter, twitter4skype

Microsoft: When simply having an IM conversation becomes a tool to raise money for nonprofits... is this for real?

We've all undoubtedly seen the chain-letter email messages that circulate around telling you that by forwarding the email you will make money or receive gifts and most people with half a clue understand that this kind of thing is pretty much impossible.  So it was with a whole lot of skepticism that I first greeted Microsoft's "i'm" campaign because the premise is: for every IM conversation you have with Windows Live Messenger, we'll donate some money to the nonprofit of your choice (from among nine choices).  To me, it sounded just a wee bit fishy.   In reading the "About" page you do learn a bit more.  First:

Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with some of the world's most effective organizations dedicated to social causes. We've set no cap on the amount we'll donate to each organization. The sky's the limit. There's no charge, so join now and put our money where your mouth is.

and then this:

Once you've signed up, every ad you see in your message window contributes to the grand total we send to the causes.

So it's all about a portion of the advertising revenue that is generated from use of Windows Live Messenger (formerly "MSN Messenger").  But this second piece I find interesting... it sounds like Microsoft must be being paid on a pay-per-view basis versus pay-per-click.  The advertisers pay MS based on the number of times that their ad is displayed.  Ergo... the more IM conversations there are, the more times the ads are displayed... the more money goes to Microsoft.... and the more can be distributed to the nonprofits.  I was a bit surprised as I would have expected it to be more like pay-per-click - and undoubtedly it still is, i.e. for a view an advertiser pays $X and if someone clicks through an advertiser pays $X + $Y.

Digging into the Press area, there was the FAQ that explained a bit more:

Q: How much money goes to the organization from each conversation?
A: Although the donation amount from each user is small, the power of the Windows Live Messenger network makes this donation significant. For competitive reasons, we can’t share the per-conversation amount of advertising revenue that we will contribute, but every new conversation you have will lead to money being donated to the cause you select. Each organization is guaranteed a minimum of $100,000 for its involvement.

So ultimately it will amount to at least $900,000 in money being given out to these nonprofit organizations... certainly nothing to dismiss!  There was also this little piece of curiousity:

Q: Can everyone participate in this initiative?
A: The i’m Initiative is available to everyone in the 50 United States and the District of
Columbia.

Huh?  I first learned of it from a friend in the UK who signed up for the initiative.  How would Microsoft even know, anyway?  Last I knew you didn't really have to divulge geographic details to sign up for WLM... and even if you did those could be bogus... and people move all over the world anyway.  Strikes me as quite odd.

Regardless, kudos to Microsoft for finding a fun way to make donations to some worthy organizations.  I'm not so naive as to think Microsoft is doing this entirely out of the goodness of their hearts - I do realize that they hope to: a) attract more users to WLM; and b) increase the number of views of their advertisers ads.  I assume they hope that it will incent people who use multiple IM services to have more conversations on WLM because those conversations will count for $$$. Probably not a bad idea.  For me, WLM happens to be one of the two primary consumer IM services I use (the other being Skype) and for whatever reason the sets of people I communicate with are pretty separate.  So it won't really change my behavior, but I could see that potential where people have more overlap between their contact/buddy lists.

To go back to the beginning, why is this "real" when the email scams aren't?  Remember that the major consumer IM services (WLM, Yahoo!Messenger, AIM, Skype) are all "walled gardens" and in the server-based services (WLM, AIM, Yahoo) the companies controlling the servers know precisely how many conversations are going on, who is having them (and in fact what is being said).  In contrast, with email the network of servers is completely distributed with no one controlling them all.  As long as the walls remain, the companies controlling the servers have all that data.  (Skype is a wee bit different, being peer-to-peer.)

In any event, it's an interesting initiative and it's great to see companies trying out new things that do benefit nonprofit organizations trying to bring about change in the world.  Kudos to Microsoft - and if you are a WLM user, check out the initiative... it's very simple... if you already have WLM 8.1, just add a text string to your display name.  If you don't have WLM 8.1, you'll need to upgrade. (Hmmm... which might be a third benefit for Microsoft - encourage people to move to the latest version.)

 

Technorati tags: microsoft, im, wlm, msn, corporate giving, i'm

Native (and UNofficial) Blackberry clients for AIM, MSN/WLM and ICQ available (for some networks)

(Continuing my effort to flush my "queue of things I want to blog about"...)

Last week, per Rich Lafferty, I learned that there are now "unofficial" versions of native Blackberry clients available for AIM, MSN/WLM and ICQ.  I used WebMessenger a bit in the past and found it useful, but stopped using it for some reason I can't exactly recall...  in any event, I'll be curious to try out native Blackberry versions.   Of course, I can't right now.  I naturally tried to download the MSN/WLM client and was told that "this messaging service is not supported by your service provider" (Verizon).  Ah, well, I'll just have to wait a while.  I don't really need IM on my blackberry, but every once in a great while there's a time when I'm travelling and IM would be great to have.

Technorati tags: blackberry, rim, aim, msn, icq, im