Month: August 2011
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Happy Birthday, Skype! Celebrating 8 Years of Disruption
Continue Reading: Happy Birthday, Skype! Celebrating 8 Years of DisruptionIt was 8 years ago today that the first public beta version of Skype was released… and so began the amazing journey of a product/service that has truly disrupted the telecommunications industry. The Wikipedia page on Skype has a good record of the history, which is interesting to look back upon now.
I started using Skype sometime in early 2005 or so… working in Mitel’s Office of the CTO charged with evaluating new technology – and seeking to understand what Skype was all about. I started writing about Skype then… and still continue writing a good bit about Skype as it is certainly one of the more disruptive players in the industry. Skype today is a HUGE part of my daily life and truly is one service that is integral to my daily workflow and life online.
Skype’s blog post today, of course, focuses on their current fixation on video calls… even including the strange text (my emphasis added):
What started off as a little idea to connect the world over video calls has turned into something so much more, and we believe this is making a huge difference in making the world feel smaller and a lot more connected.
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Video: How to Communicate at Burning Man using OpenBTS and Tropo
Continue Reading: Video: How to Communicate at Burning Man using OpenBTS and TropoHeading to Burning Man this coming week? Would you like to use your mobile phone to connect up with others on the playa in Black Rock City?If so, check out this video from Chris Pirillo about the work being done by a team of folks to supply local cell phone coverage… the vans with satellite and cell hookups are already enroute… it uses software from OpenBTS and Tropo.com to let burners leave each other voice messages, exchange SMS messages and more. Here’s the video:
And here are some blog posts that provide more information:
- The Long and Winding Road to Burning Man
- Tropo + OpenBTS + Burning man = Awesome
- Voice Board and Group SMS for Burning Man
- Papa Legba FAQ (about the deployment at Burning Man and what you need to do to participate)
I’m not personally going to be at Burning Man, but this does sound very cool!
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
- The Long and Winding Road to Burning Man
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Adhearsion (and AdhearsionConf) On Tomorrow’s VUC Call – Telephony Via Ruby
Continue Reading: Adhearsion (and AdhearsionConf) On Tomorrow’s VUC Call – Telephony Via RubyWant to learn more about the Adhearsion framework that lets you easily create telephony and other communication apps using the Ruby language? On tomorrow’s VoIP Users Conference (VUC) call at 12 noon US Eastern, Ben Klang from the Adhearsion project will be talking about all that’s new in Adhearsion-land, including the upcoming AdhearsionConf 2011 in October in San Francisco.I’ve written about Adhearsion before and while I don’t do much with Ruby myself, the power of Adhearsion to create powerful telephony apps in a few lines of code is pretty amazing.
If you’d like to join the VUC call live tomorrow, the info is:
- SIP: 200901@login.zipdx.com (works with wideband!)
- Skype: vuc.me
- Regular old PSTN phone: +15672522286
There’s also a very active IRC backchannel (#vuc on free node) that provides another way to communicate during the call.
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Google Chrome Rolls Out Web Audio API Support: Audio Processing in JavaScript
Continue Reading: Google Chrome Rolls Out Web Audio API Support: Audio Processing in JavaScriptFascinating news out of the Google Chrome team yesterday: the latest developer build of Google Chrome now supports audio signal processing directly in JavaScript!To say that more simply… right now to do good audio communication on the web, you have to use plugins built in Flash, QuickTime or Java. This Web Audio API aims to let you do much of that audio control via JavaScript and HTML5. From the specification intro:
Audio on the web has been fairly primitive up to this point and until very recently has had to be delivered through plugins such as Flash and QuickTime. The introduction of the audio element in HTML5 is very important, allowing for basic streaming audio playback. But, it is not powerful enough to handle more complex audio applications. For sophisticated web-based games or interactive applications, another solution is required. It is a goal of this specification to include the capabilities found in modern game audio engines as well as some of the mixing, processing, and filtering tasks that are found in modern desktop audio production applications.
The Web Audio API specification, which is a proposal for a standard being discussed in the W3C’s Audio Working Group includes a set…
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13 Great Tips And Tricks for Skype 5.2 for the Mac
Continue Reading: 13 Great Tips And Tricks for Skype 5.2 for the MacAre you a Mac OS X user trying to learn to live with the new Skype 5.x user interface? Would you like to learn some great shortcuts for working faster with Skype 5?While the Skype 5.x interface has certainly come under fire from many folks (including me), the reality is that it is the direction Skype is going forward with and so to a certain degree we who want to continue to use Skype have to either learn to live with the new UI – or revert back to Skype 2.8 while realizing we won’t get any new features.
Recently my corporate laptop was upgraded to a brand new MacBook Pro and in the process I decided to finally make the jump over to Skype 5.2. In doing so, I started hunting around for ways to work even faster with the user interface. Thankfully, the folks at Skype came out with this great list of 12 tips:
Skype 5.2 tricks and tips
It turned out I knew most of them (or other ways to do them), but the one I have found very useful was the three-finger swipe on the trackpad to move up or down between conversations.…
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Google’s “Calling From Gmail” Aims to Disrupt International Calling – 38 countries, 4 currencies
Continue Reading: Google’s “Calling From Gmail” Aims to Disrupt International Calling – 38 countries, 4 currenciesFascinating move by Google… they’ve now expanded “Calling from Gmail” to 38 countries, opened up payment into 4 currencies (US Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Euros or British Pounds), and lowered their calling rates to over 150 “destinations” around the world. If you aren’t familiar with “Calling from GMail”, it’s the green phone icon you may have inside your Gmail inbox:I’m showing the phone “popped out” of the browser window, but normally it just appears inside your browser window and lets you search your contacts or dial new numbers.
Personally, I find that most of my international calling (and actually most of my calling, period) is done via Skype… but for those who want to reach people internationally on regular mobile phones (or (GASP!) landlines) this could offer another cheap option.
Similarly, if you live in Google products (something more people are exploring now that Google+ is here), this provides a great way to stay within Google-land and make your phone calls. While I am a Gmail user, I read all my email offline so I never use the web interface… so I don’t see me using this, but many will, I’m sure.
Sadly, there seems to be no way to…
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Video Interview: What Is The Future of Real-Time Communications?
Continue Reading: Video Interview: What Is The Future of Real-Time Communications?As I posted over on the Voxeo Talks blog recently, über-geek Chris Pirillo recently interviewed VoIP industry veteran Jeff Pulver and Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor on the topic of the future of real-time communications. It was a wide ranging interview talking about the history of communication apps, how VoIP has evolved, the role of standards, issues around bandwidth caps, the role of individuals and so much more. Chris explained a bit more on his site.. The video is now available on YouTube:
As a producer of video interviews, I was personally intrigued by Chris’ use of a Google+ “Hangout” to conduct the interview. I’m going to have to try it at some point.
Enjoy the video!
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either: