Category: Applications
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WhatsApp Calling Arrives on iOS – More Telecom Disruption Ahead!
Continue Reading: WhatsApp Calling Arrives on iOS – More Telecom Disruption Ahead!As I checked my AppStore updates on my iPhone this week I was surprised but pleased to see that WhatsApp now includes “WhatsApp Calling”. As it says:“Call your friends and family using WhatsApp for free, even if they’re in another country. WhatsApp calls use your phone’s Internet connection rather than your cellular plan’s voice minutes. Data charges may apply.
How many ways can you spell “disruption”?
(Hint: w – h – a – t – s – a – p – p)Sure, there have been a zillion mobile apps providing Over-The-Top (OTT) voice services, many of which I’ve written about here on this site.
But this is WhatsApp!
This is the application that just passed 800 million monthly active users! (Techmeme link) With projections to hit 1 billion monthly active users by the end of the year.
Oh, and it’s owned by Facebook! 🙂
Now, I personally don’t use WhatsApp that much right now. The people who I want to message are primarily using iMessage, Facebook Messenger or Wire. (And every once in a great while I’ll fire up Skype on my iPhone.)
But obviously there are 800 million people who do use WhatsApp each month… and…
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Wire 1.4 on iOS Tweaks The Display And Adds Avatars To Chats
Continue Reading: Wire 1.4 on iOS Tweaks The Display And Adds Avatars To ChatsToday the team at Wire rolled out a new version 1.4 of their iOS app. As they say in the release notes visible in the AppStore, the changes are:- Added avatars and blurred background in conversations for improved readability.
- Added colored background images in the conversation list
- Improved tutorial hints
- 1Password support
- Bug fixes and improvements
More to the point, the Wire team outlined the thinking behind these changes in a blog post on February 2, 2015. At the time they indicated the changes were available right then on Android and it apparently took this long for Apple to approve the new version for iOS (depending upon when Wire did in fact submit the new version to Apple).
I’m admittedly in a bit of a mixed mind with regard to the evolution of the chat interface. Here is what a Wire chat looked like on my iPhone 5s before (left) and after (right) the upgrade to Wire 1.4 (click/tap the image for a larger view):
On the plus side, I do find the avatars helpful as visual identifiers that help you easily see who is writing what in the chat window. Particularly if people use the same avatar image as…
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Video: VUC 528 Provides An Update On Matrix.org And Wire
Continue Reading: Video: VUC 528 Provides An Update On Matrix.org And WireLast Friday’s VUC conference call / podcast / hangout provided some interesting updates about the ongoing work at Matrix.org to build services for scalable, distributed and federated collaboration systems as well as some discussion of Wire, the app I’ve written about here. Guests included Matthew Hodgson and Amandine Le Pape from Matrix.org, as well as the usual cast of characters and a couple of live demonstrations, too.
You can view the episode web page and listen to the show here:
I joined the show about mid-way through and naturally wound up talking about IPv6, the Internet of Things (IoT), ICANN, DNS and other topics.
FYI, some good info about Matrix.org can be found in their FAQ. Back in November 2014, there was also another VUC episode focused around Matrix.org.
It was an enjoyable show and I’d encourage you to give it a listen.
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
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Congrats to the Wire Team for TNW Apps of The Year Selection
Continue Reading: Congrats to the Wire Team for TNW Apps of The Year SelectionCongratulations to the Wire.com team for having Wire be selected as one of The Next Web’s “Apps of the Year”!TNW’s Napier Lopez talks about how beautiful Wire is and how much it is a platform that he wants to use… and suddenly he is the one asking people to join him.
Many of comments mirror my own opinion of how much I enjoy using the app. It’s just a pleasure to use for communication.
Napier Lopez does, though, hit Wire’s real challenge:
Still, I mentioned earlier that I started using other messaging platforms because my friends made me, and therein lies the crux with Wire, or any new messaging platofrm, really: you need to get users on the platform.
This is indeed the “user directory problem” that I wrote about at great length. And I, too, hope that the Wire team – and we all as Wire users – can find ways to help bring people to the platform.
Meanwhile, congrats to the Wire team for this recognition – and I look forward to seeing what may be coming up next in the app!
P.S. I notice a version 1.2 for iOS just appeared in the AppStore and it…
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The Directory Problem – The Challenge For Wire, Talko And Every Other “Skype-Killer” OTT App
Continue Reading: The Directory Problem – The Challenge For Wire, Talko And Every Other “Skype-Killer” OTT AppAs much as I am enjoying the new Wire app, there is a fundamental problem that Wire faces… as well as Talko, Firefox Hello and every other Over-The-Top (OTT) or WebRTC application that is seeking to become THE way that we communicate via voice, chat and/or video from our mobile phones and desktops. That is:How do they gather the “directory” of people that others want to talk to?
The fundamental challenge all of these applications face is this:
People will only USE a communication application if the people they want to talk to are using the application.
And where I say “talk” it could also be “chat” or “message” or… pick your communication verb.
It’s all about the “directory” of users.
There’s a war out there right now… and it’s a war for the future of our communications between each other. It’s a war for messaging… and it’s also a war for voice and video.
And it all comes back to… which communications application or service can provide the most comprehensive directory of users?
Which communications tool will be the one that people use the most? Will any of them replace the default communications of the mobile phone? NOTE:…
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How To Add An Emoji Character To Your Name In The Wire App
Continue Reading: How To Add An Emoji Character To Your Name In The Wire AppBecause I keep getting asked…. here is how you can add an emoji / emoticon to your name inside the new Wire app on Mac OS X / iOS / Android. (The Wire app that I wrote about yesterday and the day before.)
Many people have been asking why some names have a symbol after them inside of Wire, such as Olle’s:
Or these:
The answer about how to do this is simple…
YOU JUST ADD AN EMOJI CHARACTER TO YOUR NAME!
Yep… that’s it!
Adding an Emoji On Mac OS X
In the Mac OS X client, you click on your name, and then the pencil next to your name:
When you are then in the edit box, you can type the magic Mac OS X keystroke to bring up the emoji panel:
Control + Command + Space
Ta da! All the emoji you could ever want…
Adding an Emoji on iOS
Similarly, you just go into the Wire app on iOS and click on your name at the top of your list of contacts. You should now be in edit mode:
Then you just add an emoji. Now, there may be easier ways to do this, but I…
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More Observations About The “Wire” App
Continue Reading: More Observations About The “Wire” AppAfter yesterday’s launch of Wire, I continued to use it a bit today and am writing these notes, mostly for my own memory.Group Chats ARE Persistent
In my post yesterday I said that it seemed like Wire group chats were “persistent” (something I’d previously written about with regard to Skype). Today I can confirm that they ARE persistent. When I fired up the Wire app this morning I received all the messages that had been posted into the group chat overnight while I’d been offline.
Further, when I went to add someone to the group chat, I received this message:
The Wire team also deserves credit for how smoothly they make the scrolling back through the chat history. Works very well!
No IPv6… yet
Friends tested Wire in an IPv6-only network and confirmed that it unfortunately does not yet work. In reaching out to someone at Wire the word was that they are definitely investigating this to see what can be done. The issue is that the Wire app connects to Amazon EC2 servers – so it’s really an issue of Amazon’s capabilities.
I will say again that Wire at the very least deserves credit for coming out with…
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Initial Thoughts On “Wire”, The New Communication App From Ex-Skypers
Continue Reading: Initial Thoughts On “Wire”, The New Communication App From Ex-SkypersAnother remarkable day in Internet communications! Today brought the launch of “Wire“, a “modern communications network” that runs on iOS, Android, Mac OS X and soon in WebRTC-equipped web browsers.My first thought was naturally – do we really need YET-another-OTT-communication app?
After all, my iPhone is littered with the dead carcasses of so many other apps that have launched trying to be THE communication platform we all want to use. (And indeed I’ve written about many of them here on this site.)
But what makes Wire different for me from so many other similar apps that have launched (and faded) is really the PEOPLE involved. The news announcement mentions, of course, Skype co-founder Janus Friis as one of the big names behind Wire. Jonathan Christensen is also the co-founder and CEO of Wire. The news post says this:
The company’s team comprises former product and technology leaders from Apple, Skype, Nokia, and Microsoft. Christensen held leadership roles at Microsoft and Skype, and was co-founder and CEO at Camino Networks. Along with Christensen, founders include Alan Duric, Wire’s CTO, a co-founder of Telio (Oslo exchange TELIO) and co-founder of Camino (acquired by eBay/Skype); and Priidu Zilmer, Wire’s head…
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How To Test Firefox Hello, Mozilla’s New WebRTC Video Call Service
Continue Reading: How To Test Firefox Hello, Mozilla’s New WebRTC Video Call ServiceWow! Mozilla’s new Firefox 34 includes a great new WebRTC-based feature called “Firefox Hello” that lets you call people without requiring them to have an account with Firefox. You simply send them a URL via email, chat or some other method – and they can start calling you from within Firefox.Here’s all you need to do to try it yourself. First, you need Firefox 34, of course. Once you have upgraded or installed the software, you should see a “Hello” button over on the far right side of the browser’s top bar:
If you don’t see this button, as I didn’t, you may have to perform the following steps, as documented in a Firefox help page:
1. Open the “Customize” section of the browser to add the “Hello” button to your menu bar:
2. Drag the “Hello” button to the browser bar or to the drop-down menu.
Now, in my case, that still didn’t work and I had to use the additional trick mentioned in the help article of going to http://about:config and changing “loop.throttled” to “false” (simply by clicking on that setting). After restarting Firefox I was then able to go into the Customize window and add…
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Talko Looks Very Cool, But Needed A Firewall Change To Work
Continue Reading: Talko Looks Very Cool, But Needed A Firewall Change To WorkThe big telecom story today certainly seems to the be launch of Ray Ozzie’s new “Talko” application for iOS. Tons of attention in the tech media, and many of my friends on social media have been trying it out. There’s a brilliant article posted on Medium about the “Brave New Phone Call” along with a great blog post from Ray Ozzie about how this new app will revolutionize the voice experience.I think Talko has great potential to do so, particularly after using it.
But…
… I had to change my firewall rules in order to make Talko work. 🙁
And I don’t know how long it will continue to work.
Perhaps worse than that… it wasn’t clear initially that I had a firewall problem. Frequent testing partner Jim Courtney sent me a message and after installing the Talko app on my iPhone I tried to talk to him, but all I seemed to be able to do was send him a voice message or a text message.
Subsequently I tried connecting to Tim Panton and again could only send voice messages. It made for a very asynchronous “walkie-talkie” style of communication that clearly seemed to not be what…