Disruptive Telephony

Equals' "Party Line" app uses Voxeo's platform to bring voice to Facebook

Have you ever wanted to quickly get into a conference call with a group of people? What if you could just call a number and initiate a conference call that automatically dialled out to bring in the other participants? Would you see yourself using this for a group (or groups) of your friends? Could you see this being useful for a group of coworkers? Over on Voxeo's blog today, I wrote about a new Facebook application called "Party Line" that does exactly this.

As I outline in the blog post, Party Line, available (to Facebook users) at www.equals.com/partyline lets you create an unlimited number of "party lines", each of which can have up to five participants. To initiate a group call, you either dial in to 1-877-4-BUZZ-ME or you initiate the call from within the Facebook page. The application calls all the other participants and brings you all into a group conference call. You can talk for as long as you want. No bridge numbers to remember. No passcodes. Very simple to use.

For Equals, the company who developed this Facebook application, this is their first product and platform. They've indicated that in the end they want this app to also work with OpenSocial and be able to connect into the other social networking services out there supporting OpenSocial. I'll be very interested to see how well it is adopted.

From a Voxeo point-of-view, as I mention later in the blog post, this is the first Facebook app (that we know of) that uses our SIP/XML application platform, so it is admittedly exciting for us to see. We know we have a great platform for developing these kind of voice applications, but to see someone else recognize that and actually go off and develop such an application is rather cool to see.

On a technical level, it's great to see an example of what you can do with Call Control XML (CCXML). Before joining Voxeo six months ago, I knew absolutely nothing about CCXML but as I learned about what it could do, I was truly amazed. Essentially, it is an XML layer that lets you drive and control SIP-based applications. There's an amazing number of tasks you can do with CCXML and it's something I'll be writing more about here and over on Voxeo's blogs in the future. (If you'd like to learn a bit more now, you can look at the CCXML documentation, check out some CCXML tutorial videos or look at the recent post about sending telephony presence to Twitter.)

Anyway, for the moment I would encourage you to check out my Voxeo blog post with more details about Party Line, install the Party Line app and try it out! Please do let us know what you think.

Technorati Tags: applications, voxeo, equals, facebook, voice applications, voice mashups, social networking, voip, voice, conferencing, collaboration, sip, voicexml, ccxml, party line, opensocial

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

Today's Squawk Box podcast - A conversation with Jeff Pulver about VON.x

For some time now, I've been participating in the daily "Squawk Box" podcast hosted by Alec Saunders. These calls take place using Iotum's Facebook app - "Free Conference Calling" - and they are, in fact, free outside of your normal costs to connect to the calls. I haven't made it there every day, but I've tried to get there when I can. I know Alec well and the calls also include many familiar faces like Jim Courtney, Ken Camp and more.

Anyway, the call today (March 6) was with Jeff Pulver about his upcoming VON.x show. It was a fun conversation and VON should definitely be a great show again this year. (Even if I'll be on the other coast at VoiceCon!)

Technorati Tags: alec saunders, jeff pulver, conferences, von, squawk box

Voice mashups - Notes on Alec's conference call today

UPDATE, Jan 11: The recording of this conference call is now available.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post today, Alec Saunders convened a 30-minute conference call today on voice mashups. The call was recorded and will be available as a podcast from his site. (I'll add the link here once I'm online.)

I was traveling down through the state of Vermont today and so while I had no Internet access I did call in and joined the call from my Blackberry. (My wife was driving the car at the time.) I wrote down the following notes on my laptop during the call.

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Alec introduced the call, mentioned that it would be recorded and distributed as a podcast. He then muted all the callers except for himself, Thomas Howe, Jim Courtney and Andy Abramson. For callers with Facebook open, they could press a button to "raise their hand" at which point Alec could unmute them. I was calling in on my cell phone while traveling with no Internet access, so for me it was to press "*2" to raise my hand.

Alec tossed out the first question which was "what is a voice mashup?" Thomas laid out one definition which Andy then amplified. Alec then asked if a mashup could involve something like Skype to which Jim described the results of the Skype Mashup contest and the winning PamFax app. Alec asked for examples and Thomas gave several. Alec asked how this looked like to the end-user. Thomas mentioned that it could be a web interface, but it might also simply be a telephone interface. The user would just call a number and do some kind of service. (Thanks for the mention of Voxeo, Thomas!)

Alec asked next "why do people build these?" Thomas... they are lightweight, easy to put together, easy to build for small interest groups (and therefore easy to put together a business case). Most ubiquitous interface is the phone. Business case can be small, but because of the architecture the application can actually scale massively if necessary. Jim... talked about ROI of PamFax... ability to take business documents from one location to another. Andy... mashup apps need to serve a purpose. Small, focused apps will be the general rule. However, that can be repurposed. You can globally deliver an app to small pockets of people who need that application. Andy recommends you look at Salesforce.com's app exchange. Mentions Mashery and the work they are doing looking into how you manage the rights around the use of mashup apps.

Alec - "So how do you monetize mashups?" Thomas... at least 3 hooks for monetization: 1) make businesses run faster, eliminate delays; 2) customer satisfaction - giving users a view into your system without; 3) make businesses more efficient. Question from (Dean - someone on wall) - who is making the money? Thomas - most of the work is in professional services. Focus is on developing apps, not necessarily in sale of apps.

(At this point I pressed *2 to raise my hand to ask a question related to monetization. A few minutes later I pressed *2 again.)

Tony from Voxalot talked about his voice mashup for an Australian dating site that allows users to be anonymous callers. Jim Courtney mentioned that PamFax is getting revenue on every transaction. Tony, I believe, also mentioned that Alec is getting revenue based on the usage of his conference call app.

Thomas... mashup architectures allow you to not have to pay upfront capital costs. You don't have to pay for a phone number and manage it, for instance. You can just temporarily use a phone number. Mashup architectures lower the barriers to entry.

As it was now 10:00am, Alec suggested that we should wrap up the call and throw it out to the assembled crowd for questions. It sounded from the tone of his voice that he wasn't seeing anyone raising their hand (and I was wondering what happened to my *2!). Thomas started answering...

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... and then I entered one of those glorious pockets of Vermont where Verizon has no cell phone coverage - and so I was dropped off the call. Since it sounded like it was going to be wrapping up, I didn't bother calling back in a few minutes later when I was back in a coverage area.

All in all it was an interesting discussion. It undoubtedly could have gone on much longer. As I've been wanting to write more about this whole topic of voice mashups, I'll probably have some further posts on this soon.

It was also an interesting usage of Alec's Facebook "Free Conference Calling" application. The Iotum gang has certainly developed that app further and I'll definitely be looking at it again and toying with some ideas about how to use it. The recording feature is certainly an interesting one for someone who likes producing podcasts... :-) (Although it does not seem to be wideband so you are still limited to lousy PSTN audio.)

Technorati Tags: alec saunders, apis, applications, conference calling, iotum, mashups, skype, telephony, tools, voip, voice mashups

Truphone embeds an IAX softphone into Facebook that lets you make calls to regular phones for free

The major product Dean Elwood has been working on now that he has moved to Truphone is the Facebook application that Truphone announced two days ago. Their blog provides a link to the Facebook application and, of course, in true Truphone style, offers us a video with cows:

I've not yet had a chance to do more with it than install it and play a bit with the configuration options:

but I'm very much looking forward to giving it a try. There are several interesting aspects to this app for me:

• It is an embedded softphone (Java-based). No extra software you need. Just click the button and you can call the person who has it on their Facebook profile. To my knowledge this is the first time we've seen this in a Facebook app.
• From the user side, you can link that button to any of the following:
  • Your Truphone number.
  • Any regular landline or mobile phones in the US or Canada.
  • A SIP address.
  • A Google Talk address.
• A GrandCentral phone number.
• The Facebook app uses the IAX protocol used primarily by Asterisk. This gets around all of the firewall/NAT traversal issues that plague SIP.

All of that makes for an interesting new app inside of Facebook. Now, there are already a number of "click-to-call" Facebook apps out there (some of which I've covered here) but in his announcement of moving to Truphone, Dean talks about what is different:

There are several click to call/callback/speak type applications already on Facebook. The differentiator here, and the interesting part about this application (and also the hardest part) is that we’ve embedded a JAVA based softphone right into the heart of Facebook. This makes the experience from a user point of view seamless with the Facebook environment. The user never leaves Facebook, they speak into Facebook. Additionally, the "call me" button for this application is not restricted to your own profile page - it functions as a Facebook attachment, which means it can be dropped onto a friends Wall, or added to a Facebook mail message or any other attachment-accepting application which exists on Facebook now or might do in the future.

So now Facebook users can put this "Call Me For Free" button in other locations within Facebook... and Facebook users can use this as a way to stay inside of Facebook but yet new mix in voice communication to people outside of Facebook. Now I can look up someone in Facebook and then simply click the call button to reach them by voice directly.

I look forward to experimenting with the application in the next week or two. Those of you who are Facebook users and want to try it out can simply install the application.

What do you think? Do you think people will use this app? Does voice have a role mixed into a social network like Facebook?

Technorati Tags: applications, dean elwood, facebook, iax, truphone

New Facebook voice app: VoxCall lets you do free calls between SIP phones/numbers

By way of my Facebook NewsFeed this morning, I learned that several friends had installed a new Facebook app called "VoxCall" (must be logged into the walled garden of Facebook to see the link). A quick Technorati search brought me to Alex Saunders' blog post on the subject which clued me in to the fact that this was from the folks at Voxalot, some of whom I'd met down at Fall VON in Boston.

[Side Rant: This also shows the inherent weakness and stupidity of Facebook's current implementation of "groups". The Voxalot folks had posted info about this app in both the news and wall of their Facebook group, but of course I would never see it unless I just randomly happened to go there. Had they sent a message to all group users, I would have seen it in my Facebook Inbox, but it would be nice if instead Facebook had some way to notify you that you had new info in the groups to which you subscribe.]

The VoxCall app is basically a "click-to-call" app that makes use of Facebook's directory. You simply click on the name of someone else who has the app installed and, like many click-to-call apps, you are called first and then the other party is called and the connection is made.

An interesting aspect is that VoxCall works with SIP URIs (addresses). When you install the app you have to enter your SIP URI at which point you then receive a call on that URI where you are asked to enter the PIN displayed on the screen:

It's actually a pretty nice way of authenticating the endpoint. Given that Voxeo's a VoIP application platform company, we naturally all have SIP URIs for our extensions (sip:dyork@corpsip.voxeo.com for me) so it was easy for me to sign up. Users of Gizmo would likewise have a SIP address, as would users of many other VoIP services. If you don't have a SIP URI, Voxalot has a suggested path to get one on their VoxCall FAQ. (One thing I don't completely understand is why you would need to do their step #2, Register for a VoxPremium account, if you already get a SIP URI from the Voice Service Provider you signed up with in step #1. But maybe the point is that some of those VSPs won't give you SIP URIs... ?)

Once registered, the process is quite simple. You have a "Call Friends" tab that is shown below (complete with some advertisement being blocked by the local proxy server that I run that blocks ads from typical ad-serving sites):

You simply click on the person's icon and the call process starts. First it calls you, then it calls the other party. No charges incurred by anyone outside of whatever inbound connection fees we would normally pay (in my case, none). I called Alec and so my page changed to show his picture and the fact that I was calling him:

Alec and I had a good chat with surprisingly good audio quality given the convoluted path our call was taking. I was on a Polycom IP phone connected across the Internet to Voxeo's SIP servers in Florida. The call went across some network cloud to Alec's TruPhone number (which has a SIP URI) which wound up ringing his mobile as he was driving along the 401 somewhere in southern Canada. Audio quality was quite good and didn't seem to have any real issues in the 5 or 10 minutes we chatted.

The VoxCall app also has an Echo Test number you can call to hear the latency and has some conference rooms that I have not yet tried.

Overall, it's an interesting app, although I guess my basic question is simply this: will I use it? As I wrote earlier, the phone is no longer as critical of a communication tool for many people, myself included. When I think of Facebook, I think of it as a place for email-ish communication. If I need to reach someone urgently, I have used Facebook as a place to get a phone number from in the past. Will I think to use to it place a call in the future? I don't know.

There are a couple of barriers to that, really. First, the app only works with people who have it installed. Second, to install it you need a SIP URI and the whole concept of SIP addresses is only really now starting to come to people's attention (outside the early adopter crowd). Third, initiating the call requires going into the VoxCall application page inside Facebook to click on the person's icon to call. It would be nice if it could be done simply from the list of friends that you have. (Having said that, it's actually easier to simply go into the app page than it is to search through Facebook's friend list and then go into their profile to then click on a link below their picture.)

The nice thing about the app, though is that it does use the Facebook directory. As Alec puts it:

Perhaps the biggest differentiator for Voxcall is simply that it hooks into a directory that a lot of people know and use.

As Facebook continues its climb in popularity and moves onward toward the goal of being your definitive "portal" to the Internet, this VoxCall app (and others like Alec's own Free Conference Call app) help connect in voice to the communications mix (for those who still want/need to use it).

In any event, kudos to Voxalot to bringing out another voice app on top of Facebook. It's good to see the platform being used for voice. As a advocate for SIP and open standards, I applaud apps that promote the use of all things SIP. Give it a try. What do you think of it? (Feel free to give me a call if you are a Facebook friend of mine.)

Technorati Tags: applications, facebook, facebookplatform, voxalot, voip, voxcall

RIM *almost* gets it right with its Facebook app for Blackberries... (but it's missing a good bit)

When I first heard from Jim Courtney and then Alec Saunders that RIM had released an official Blackberry application that let you use Facebook, I naturally went to look at the information and then downloaded the app (which you do on the Blackberry itself after you go to m.facebook.com).

I was initially extremely excited... and then almost immediately incredibly disappointed...

First, I have to say that I applaud RIM for putting this application out. I think this can be a great tool for those of us who use Facebook. I realize this is its initial deployment, so hopefully feedback like this can help the folks at RIM improve the app so that it is truly useful to us.

Before I get to the main screen, let me address the major source of my disappointment. After you have installed the app, you start getting notifications such as friend requests. Here's the problem:

You MUST act on the friend request (Confirm or Ignore) before you can access the rest of the app!

So when I just wanted to zip into the app to change a status message, I was suddenly confronted by the fact that I had to act on a friend request (click image for larger view):

Now I don't know who Paul Sorge is and I don't typically just confirm a friend request if the name isn't immediately familiar to me. However, there is not a choice offered to defer the action until later. I assumed that I could just hit the "Cancel"/"Escape" key and it would take me back to the main Facebook app menu. It didn't... it took me out of the app entirely back to whatever I was in before. When I went back into the FB app, I was back at this Confirm/Ignore screen. Here are my choices (apologies on the image quality... it turns out to be harder than I expected to take close images with the MacBookPro camera):

So I can poke Paul... write on his wall, send him a message, view his profile or confirm/ignore him. I did go look at his profile which strangely didn't show much at all.... and then I just didn't have time to do more. I wanted to use the app - so I just hit "Ignore" and the screen went away. (Sorry, Paul... if we do know each other and I'm just having a mind blank I will be glad to add you.)

This is to me a fundamental flaw. It assumes that people will act on a friend request immediately, before doing anything else in Facebook. I don't know about you all, but I often don't have time to look at friend requests and so if I don't immediately know the person I let some linger until I have some cycles to investigate further. With the regular Facebook interface (either the main one or the m.facebook.com mobile interface), I can let friend requests just sit there until I have the cycles to deal with them. It would be great if the RIM app had some way to cancel out of the friend request and let you just see the main app.

[UPDATE: Some time later I had the main Facebook app screen open and received another friend request. It showed up in the app main screen as one of the new items, so it did NOT lock me into acting on it. However, the moment I entered the friend request I seemed to be locked in again, which surprises me.]

Okay, so once you've confirmed/ignored all queued friend requests, here is the main screen you see:

Going left to right, here are what the icons across the top do:

• View Status Updates - This screen is genuinely very useful. You see your recent status update, can enter a new one and can also see all your friends' recent status updates.
• Upload a Photo - Utterly useless for me. I have a BB 8830 because Verizon (my only choice for a carrier) does not support any of the 83xx series that have cameras. So I can't really see any value here.
• View Friend List - Useful. Shows you a text list of all your friends along with their status msgs. If you click on a friend you see their profile.
• Invite a Friend - Useless to have on a small screen. How often do any of you actually invite someone new to Facebook? In all the time since I started using Facebook in the Spring I've invited maybe 2 or 3 people because they asked about it. Why take up real estate with this?
• Poke Someone - Utterly useless to me. I personally don't like Poke and see little point in it. If I want to say hi to someone, I'll send them a message saying Hi! (Call me old-fashioned, I guess...)
• Write on a Wall - Very occasionally useful. I guess I'm just not a huge fan of writing on walls.
• Send a Message - Useful way to quickly send messages. Start typing a friend's name and you'll see potential matches.

That's it. Those are all the features of the application. You can use the icons, the menu, or keyboard shortcuts... but those are the things you can do. However, let's take a look at what is missing:

• Inbox - This is a rather stunning omission to me. You have no access to your Facebook Inbox! Huh? Given that messages form a significant part of Facebook communication (or seem to at least for me), it seems odd that you can't access your message inbox. Now, you do see messages that have arrived since the time you started using the app (although I haven't tested what happens if I receive a FB msg while the BB app is not running), but there seems to be no way I could figure out to see the messages that are already in there.
• Your own Profile - It seems odd to me that there is no menu command or other way to easily view your own profile. You can see your profile, but it involves going into View Friend List, going to your name and then doing the menu choice to view the full profile. A number of steps to go through. Given that you might want to see your own wall (if you like writing on walls) or other items you have put on your profile, this seems a strange omission.
• NewsFeed - No access to your news feed of changes within your circle of friends.
• Groups - No way to get to your groups.
• Events - No way to get to events - given that your likely to be using your Blackberry on the road when you might be going to an event, this would be quite useful to have.

Now, granted, this BB app is just RIM's first version of the app, so on one level perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on them. However, there's this one minor detail:

All this functionality is AVAILABLE NOW through m.facebook.com!

Given that m.facebook.com works well on the Blackberry already, the bar has been set for RIM with their app... and for me this first version fell short.

In fairness to RIM, they seem to have recognized that they don't have all the functionality yet and so they have a "Go to Mobile Site" option in their app menu that takes you over to m.facebook.com. However, it begs the question... if I need to go to the m.facebook.com site to have much of my Facebook interaction, why should I use the RIM app for Facebook?

So kudos to RIM for coming out with an app that shows the promise of making Facebook more useful on the Blackberry... hopefully we'll see more improvements over time that make it truly useful.

Technorati Tags: applications, blackberry, facebook, rim

Facebook group created for ETel conference... please join if you think you might go to ETel!

For those of you using Facebook, we have created a Facebook group for O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony Conference (ETel) coming up in March 2008. Please feel free to join the group if you are planning to go to ETel - or at least thinking about it. We're hoping to use it to connect people to each other in advance of ETel. We're not entirely sure exactly how we'll use it... it's all part of the grand experiment in social networking. Please join us in that experiment!

Technorati Tags: etel, facebook, conferences

FWD rolls out a "Voicemail" Facebook app... with the promise of calls to the *external* FWD client going to FB voicemail soon (i.e. FB becomes voicemail for SIP connections)

Another new "voice" application for Facebook come out today, this one from the 12-year-old FWD (the service formerly known as "Free World Dialup" and backed by Jeff Pulver, who recently teamed with Daniel Berninger to relaunch FWD - read Daniel's perspective here and also Jeff's post about FWD's beta of a tunneling service )

This first Facebook app, called simply "Voicemail", was announced to members of the FWD group inside of Facebook with a message from Daniel Berninger providing the URL and stating this:

We are particularly interested in novel uses enabled by the several differences with traditional telephone voicemail.
1) CD quality audio
2) Messages public or private
3) Ability to re-record message without sending
4) Sent messages remain accessible
A direct integration with FWD will be available shortly allow you to pickup and leave Facebook voicemail via FWD.

My initial response was admittedly a bit of a yawn.  Back in June, I had written about the existence of several Facebook apps that allowed FB users to leave each other voicemail messages.  The last sentence, though, was enough to intrigue me:

A direct integration with FWD will be available shortly allow you to pickup and leave Facebook voicemail via FWD.

I don't think I've really ever written much about FWD in any of my blogs, but it was one of the earliest VoIP systems (some history here). It uses SIP and interconnects with a range of other IM systems. (See the feature list for more info.)  I have had a FWD number, but haven't really used it that much in a long time.  It will be interesting to see where this relaunch takes it.

Trying It Out

In any event, I was intrigued enough by the tease that SIP-connected endpoints might be able to leave a voicemail inside of Facebook to try the Voicemail application out.  The installation was as painless as any other Facebook app.  Once installed, you get a screen like this:

I logged in and next had an inbox-type of screen (click on image for larger version):

 

I naturally had to click on the "Friends with VoiceMail" link to see what it did and, sure enough, it showed me all my Facebook friends who had the VoiceMail app installed and gave me the chance to leave them a message. Of course I had to try it with Jeff, so I clicked on his name and my system went off and started spinning for a few seconds.  I noticed the Java icon appeared in the Windows systray and soon I wound up with this confirmation box:

Once I clicked on Run, the resulting box gave me a very simple interface to use:

At this point I just thought I should click the big button in the center, not realizing that it had the arrow for "Play" in the middle. Clicking the button gave me a status message that clued me in to that fact and so I clicked the first button which did record and let me see my audio levels as well as the amount of time of the recording:

When I was done, I clicked the third button and stopped the recording.  I could then go and play the recording.  Since it wasn't that great, I decided to re-record.  I clicked the button and was told to confirm:

It's interesting that it is effectively telling me where FWD's server is via the IP address.  I confirmed, re-recorded and then hit the Send button to fire the message off.  There was a brief status message as the voicemail was uploaded, and then I was back to my "Friends with VoiceMail" screen with the typical Facebook-style "success" message at the top of the screen.

Clicking on "My Messages", I returned to my "inbox" and clicked on "Sent Messages", where I saw the message listed:

with the options to delete it or listen to it. 

Conclusion

All in all a pretty straightforward app to use.  I'd note that the button visible on the pages simply takes you to the "Friends with VoiceMail" page where you can then send a message to one of your friends.  There's also an "Invite Friends" page which lets you very simply invite some of your friends to check out the app.  (Feedback for Daniel/Jeff: You are told on that page that you can only invite a max of 10 friends per day but all of your friends are selected and there doesn't seem to be a way to "Select None".  I would therefore conceivably have to go through and de-select all of my friends in order to only select 10. Needs to be a better way to do this.)

The one aspect I was curious to try was this:  "2) Messages public or private"  However, I didn't have any messages waiting for me to try it on and there seemed to be no settings for the Sent message.  So if someone reading this can try out the app and send me a message, that would be great.  Of course, you need to be a friend of mine, eh?

The External Connection

But what about the external connection to FWD clients?  How could we have a call wind up in Facebook voicemail?  Well, inside the Facebook forums, Daniel Berninger left us this tease about the system they are beta testing:

FWD-FB Integration
A) FWD User Leaves FB Voice Message
* FWD user A picks up the handset and dials an FB enabled FWD user (FWD user B)
* User B doesn't answer the call, and the call is diverted to the FB voicemail bridge via SIP or IAX. The call is forwarded using a special number format, indicating the FB voicemail server and the receiver of the voicemail.
* The voicemail application on the FV-VM bridge is activated, and the user records the users.
* Once the user hangs up, the bridge records the voicemail into the database, activating a conversion script to convert the WAV format to an MP3 format - and updates the database accordingly.
B) FWD User Picks UP FB Voice Message - via the phone
* FWD user calls his voicemail service, via a special FB-VM access code.
* FWD identifies itself on the VM system.
* FWD performs normal user interaction with the voicemail system (requires some Asterisk core modifications).
* FWD user hangs up when complete.
C) FWD User Picks UP FB Voice Message - via FB
* FB user listen to messages via the web interface, in an identical fashion to what's available now.

So if I parse through this, it sounds like the FWD team wrote a custom script for Asterisk to do this conversion and is perhaps using Asterisk for the rest of the functionality as well.  Now I'd be curious to wonder if the "FB voicemail bridge" will accept any SIP connections or just those from authenticated users. 

Regardless, I find it an interesting app for two reasons.  First, with the external connection, Facebook turns into a voicemail server.  Now, it may only be for calls between FWD users, but still, it's an interesting place to store the voicemail messages.  If you buy into Facebook as a "portal" for communication, this provides a nice integration of your voicemail along with your Facebook email messages, wall posts, News Feed, etc. 

It gets even more interesting if you can attach a PSTN number to your FWD account.  I don't see a way to do that right now.  I know for a while in the past there was going to be a "FWDin" service, but I don't recall seeing that launch and can't see any sign of it on the FWD web site right now.  Given, though, that you can connect a FWD client to multiple SIP accounts, there's probably some way to go and do it...  but in any event, think about how that then would work.  You could give someone a phone number and if you weren't there, the voicemail message would ultimately wind up inside of Facebook.  Reinforcing the value of Facebook as a communications portal.

[Side note - since your voicemail is now inside of Facebook, does it fall under the terms of Facebook's TOS (which I wrote about here and here) where basically Facebook now owns all your content?  And you grant them a non-exclusive right forever to do whatever they want with your content?  What it if is someone calling with confidential information?  FB now has that.... Or do they NOT have the voicemail messages because they are actually residing on an FWD server?  Hmmm.]

The second reason I find it interesting is because the "FB voicemail bridge" is a SIP device (and IAX, so I am led to assume it's an Asterisk box).  If it's a SIP device it can have connections from other SIP devices... and so now we have a SIP connection going into Facebook in a manner of speaking.

Facebook and SIP.  Interesting.  Walled garden meets open standard.  (although only to leave messages)

Anyway, this is all really mere speculation because the connection from the FWD service is in private beta testing right now. Still, it's intriguing to me to see as an app.  What do you think?

Technorati tags: facebook, fwd, voicemail, voice, facebook platform, jeff pulver, walled gardens, sip

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