Author: Dan York
-
/
SIP phone soon to be available on iPhone and iPod Touch?
Continue Reading: SIP phone soon to be available on iPhone and iPod Touch?Will there soon be a native SIP client on the iPhone and iPod Touch? Dameon Welch-Abernathy writes on his VoIP weblog that some developers have gotten a basic SIP stack working on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The limited details available are over on The Unofficial Apple Weblog:iPhone hacker eok writes to let me know that he and Samuel have gotten SIP registration and signalization working. They took a few mobile terminal shots, but the real work is being done via ssh. Samuel is working on connecting the audio in/out to the pjSIP. If you have iPhone or iPod touch coding skills and want to get involved in the project, connect to #touchmods on irc.undernet.org. It looks like most of the work will be done on European time.
As you can see in the screenshots, this is still very early in the development. Still, it’s great to see this kind of development taking place.Technorati Tags: sip, voip, apple, iphone, ipod touch
-
/
“Tryphone” lets you try out various new mobile phones online
Continue Reading: “Tryphone” lets you try out various new mobile phones onlineBy way of a ZDNet blog, I learned of “Tryphone” a site that lets you “try out” various new mobile phones online. It currently just has the Apple iPhone, LG Muziq, Blackberry Pearl and Samsung Juke… but of course lets you buy the phone immediately after trying it if you wish. I don’t know that something like this can ever replace the experience of actually holding the phone in your hand, but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.
-
/
Skype Journal: A paradigm shift… (aka, “phones? who needs them?”)
Continue Reading: Skype Journal: A paradigm shift… (aka, “phones? who needs them?”)Skype Journal had this post today that was short enough to be captured in a graphic:
Indeed. How many other startups have ditched landlines, IP PBXs, etc.? Tools like Skype make that rather trivial to do, especially when voice no longer matters as much in everyday business communication.Interesting times we live in…
-
/
Verizon Business to roll out hosted VoIP (“Managed IP PBX”) based on Nortel gear
Continue Reading: Verizon Business to roll out hosted VoIP (“Managed IP PBX”) based on Nortel gearWhen I think of “disruptive” actions in our industry, I personally don’t ever tend to think of Verizon (well, I do think of them in terms of disrupting GSM service in Vermont, but that’s a different post I need to write). But yesterday, Verizon issued a news release that I think bears reading: “Verizon Business Adds New Option to Simplify Move to IP“. Essentially it amounts to the fact that Verizon will be offering “large-business” and government customers the option of having their IP-PBX hosted in Verizon’s cloud. From a technical point of view, it’s basically a hosted offering of Nortel’s recent products:The Nortel-based offerings, leveraging the Nortel Communication Server 1000 IP-PBX, Business Communications Manager and CallPilot platforms, enable advanced voice applications such as “find me, follow me,” and integrated communications that allow for multimedia collaboration. They also help companies move to a unified communications platform to simplify and integrate a variety of business communications functions such as voice mail, e-mail and instant messaging. For example, end-users can see who is online, or they can prompt the system to prioritize incoming messages and send alerts to end-user devices. Verizon Business’ support for the offering includes full implementation, as…
-
/
A video greeting from IETF 70 in Vancouver
Continue Reading: A video greeting from IETF 70 in VancouverI was up way too early out here in Vancouver, so I wandered over to the show hotel and recorded a little greeting:
Technorati Tags: ietf
-
/
Truphone embeds an IAX softphone into Facebook that lets you make calls to regular phones for free
Continue Reading: Truphone embeds an IAX softphone into Facebook that lets you make calls to regular phones for freeThe 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. …
-
/
Large-scale conference calls with *better* voice quality than the PSTN (using Skype)
Continue Reading: Large-scale conference calls with *better* voice quality than the PSTN (using Skype)One interesting development in the world of Skype last week which I’ve seen little mention of is the fact that the folks at Highspeedconferencing.com have rolled out a Skype Extra that lets Skype users have large-scale conference calls. Like most such large conference bridges, they have moderation/”hand-raising”, call recording, email invites, etc. However, the key point to me is that their conferencing bridge uses the wideband audio supported by Skype! That is the key. You now have conference calling with audio quality that is far better than the PSTN! This is where we start to get into the space where VoIP can offer a truly different – and better – user experience than traditional telephony. The Skype blog touches on this:HighSpeed Conferencing is the only audio conferencing service available to Skype users that offers high-definition (HD) voice quality. There’s no degradation of audio quality, no matter how many Skype users participate in a conference call. And with unlimited usage during a conference call, you can talk as much as you want. Some people stay on the conference bridge all day.
I’ve not yet used the service as right now I’m not involved with large conference calls, but at the… -
/
Introducing “Speaking of Standards”, a new Voxeo blog about industry standards, IETF, W3C, SIP Forum, etc.
Continue Reading: Introducing “Speaking of Standards”, a new Voxeo blog about industry standards, IETF, W3C, SIP Forum, etc.A large part of why I have NOT been writing here all that much in the past few weeks is that I’ve been busy in my new role with Voxeo working on a corporate blog portal. I’ve been covering a bit of that odyssey over on my Disruptive Conversations blog as well as in my weekly reports into the For Immediate Release podcast. It’s been a great amount of work but also a lot of fun – I’ve been very lucky to have a colleague who does amazing things with CSS and graphics, and so the sites look a whole lot better than they would if I were left to my own devices.
I’m very pleased to say, now, that we’ve reached the point where I’m willing to link to our work and talk a bit about what we are doing. The main blog portal is the predictable “blogs.voxeo.com” but the weblog that we’re really starting to use and could be of interest to readers of this blog is our “Speaking of Standards” blog found at:
http://blogs.voxeo.com/speakingofstandards/
I’ve obviously been very occasionally writing here about standards and some of that may continue, but I expect most of…
-
/
Congrats to Dean Elwood for joining Truphone!
Continue Reading: Congrats to Dean Elwood for joining Truphone!Congratulations to Dean Elwood for joining Truphone as their Director of Platform Operations! I’ve known Dean for a couple of years now through Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast where he’s commented from time to time and also provided us the SIP-based comment line (sip:bluebox@voipuser.org) through his involvement with the VoIPuser.org web site. We had a chance to meet a year or so ago at the first Blue Box dinner we had in London and Dean also hosted a dinner at VON Fall Boston a few weeks ago. He’s a great guy with tremendous talent and I’m sure he’ll be a great resource for Truphone. Speaking of Truphone, they are also a fascinating company to watch and I’ve come to know a good number of folks involved over time. I’m looking forward very much to seeing what comes out of their work and I wish Dean all the best in his new role.
Technorati Tags: dean elwood, truphone
