Category: Applications
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UPDATE: Apple’s FaceTime for Mac – and shutting the video off
Continue Reading: UPDATE: Apple’s FaceTime for Mac – and shutting the video offSilly me… I had forgotten Apple’s über-minimalist design philosophy. Moments after hitting “Publish” on my hands-on review of FaceTime for the Mac, my friend Stuart Henshall pointed out that the “problem” I listed of not being able to shut off the video was NOT a problem. The answer is simple:
JUST QUIT THE FACETIME APPLICATION!
But, said I… how do I receive calls if the app isn’t open?
Well, as Stuart pointed out to me, followed by multiple comments to the blog, in the background Apple is using their Push Notification framework to listen for incoming calls. And sure enough… after quitting the application I still was able to receive calls fine. When a call comes in the FaceTime application opens up and asks you if you want to accept the call. Simple. Easy.
And yes, “apsd-ft” is sitting there running as a background process:
In fact it seems that the only way to truly sign out of FaceTime is to go into the Preferences of the FaceTime app.
Leave it to Apple to change the way we are used to working (with other video apps) and go for what is a simpler method.…
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Hands-On with Apple’s new FaceTime for Mac (Screenshots)
Continue Reading: Hands-On with Apple’s new FaceTime for Mac (Screenshots)At Apple’s “big event” today, one of the announcements I found most interesting was that Apple’s proprietary FaceTime video protocol would now be available for Mac computers. To date it has only been available for the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch. Naturally, I had to give it a try! 😉 I’ll show the usage here and then mention some problems I found with this “beta”.
USING FACETIME FOR MAC
Installing FaceTime for Mac was a straightforward download, doubleclick and go through the installer. Once you launch the app, you have to verify the email address you want to use to receive calls. After that, your screen loads to show your video and the contacts in your Mac OS X Address book:
Jim Courtney and I usually try out new toystools like this and sure, enough, he was online and called me. The first time, though, he used an email address that I did not have associated with my Mac. It nicely automagically called me on my mobile (which was also in Jim’s Address Book record for me) and we had a MacBook-to-iPhone call.
It worked fine and we had a great call. It was actually quite handy in that I…
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Creating voice, SMS, IM and Twitter apps using Node.js and Tropo
Continue Reading: Creating voice, SMS, IM and Twitter apps using Node.js and TropoI freely admit to being intrigued by all the various new tools (frameworks, platforms, etc.) that are springing up to aid in the rapid creation of web sites and services. One such intriguing tool is Node.js, a way to build event-driven scalable applications using plain old JavaScript. It’s truly a fast way to get web apps up using a language known by most web developers.
So I was naturally pleased to see the Voxeo Labs team come out with a post “Use Node.js & Javascript to Write Your Tropo Apps” explaining how you could build communications apps using Tropo.com and the new Tropo Web API library for Node.js created by Mark Headd (who does not work for Voxeo but likes to develop apps on Voxeo’s platforms). The Node.js library for Tropo can be found up on Github at:
http://github.com/tropo/tropo-webapi-node
You create your app using Node.js and then login to Tropo and create an app there pointing to the URL where your Node.js server is running. In Tropo you can then add phone numbers to the app for both voice and texting/SMS, add instant messaging IDs for most major networks (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber) and add a Twitter ID, too.…
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Interested in Open Government? 24-Hour Open Gov Hackathon at GnomeDex this weekend
Continue Reading: Interested in Open Government? 24-Hour Open Gov Hackathon at GnomeDex this weekendAre you interested in creating applications that can open up government? Apps that can give people better access to government data?
If so… and if you are in the Seattle area or are attending the GnomeDex event happening this weekend, you can join in to the 24 Hour Open Government Hackathon starting at 5pm tomorrow, August 21st, at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle. Here’s the basic info:
Who Should Attend?
Ruby, Python, PHP, web developers, coders and anyone who has a passion to code, hack or kluge applications that will free (or otherwise enhance) the accessability and usefulness of government-shared data. Although the sprint takes place August 21-22 during Gnomedex10 in Seattle, you don’t have to be attending the conference to join us. Participation is free and open to anyone…we just ask that you register in advance so we know how many individuals or teams we need to accomodate. What’s Going to Happen?
The nature of the Hackathon will be fairly free-form. Hackathon Partners will have organizers onsite to help get things rolling initially. At the end of the 24 hours, each app will be evaluated by the Hackathon Partners and prizes will be awarded to those teams or individuals… -
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Calling all Ruby telephony developers -> AdhearsionConf 2010 starts this weekend in SF!
Continue Reading: Calling all Ruby telephony developers -> AdhearsionConf 2010 starts this weekend in SF!Just one day left until AdhearsionConf 2010 opens in San Francisco tomorrow. The schedule looks outstanding and I know that the Voxeo Labs team is already on site getting everything ready. I’ve seen via Twitter that some hardcore Ruby telephony developers are already enroute…. should be a great time!
Sadly, my schedule doesn’t allow me to be there, but the good news is that if you are unable to get there in person, you can follow along on the UStream channel:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/adhearsionconf
If you are in the SF area, or can get there, check out more info about the conference at:
http://adhearsionconf.eventbrite.com/
Great to see an event like this happening!
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Calling all communications startups! StartupCamp2: Comm Edition coming to ITEXPO in L.A. in October
Continue Reading: Calling all communications startups! StartupCamp2: Comm Edition coming to ITEXPO in L.A. in OctoberWhen I was down in Miami speaking at ITEXPO East back in January, one of the interesting parts of the event was the “Startup Camp Telephony” that Larry Lisser produced where a number of startups stood up and gave their pitch on what they are doing. As the pictures on the bottom of the TMC page show, there was great attendance at the event.Larry’s back at it and has plans for “StartupCamp 2: Comm Edition” at the ITEXPO West event in Los Angeles on October 4th:
Five startups will be selected to give brief 5-minute “pitch” presentations following which a panel of industry experts and the audience will ask questions and provide valuable feedback. Early stage telephony companies – voice, mobile, video, network and other – wishing to be included in the pitch roster, should click here to enter their details. Startups will benefit from significant exposure leading up to, at and after the event
I’m slated to speak out there doing my usual security part of Ingate’s SIP Trunking sessions, so while I’m there I’ll be looking forward to seeing what startups show up and what cool things they are doing!
P.S. TMC did put out a…
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Calling all Ruby and Asterisk developers! First Adhearsion Conference in SF Aug 14-15
Continue Reading: Calling all Ruby and Asterisk developers! First Adhearsion Conference in SF Aug 14-15For all of you out there working with the Adhearsion open source telephony framework to easily create communications apps on top of Asterisk using the Ruby programming language…. the first “AdhearsionConf” will be held August 14-15 in San Francisco.Jay Phillips, the creator of Adhearsion, will be in the event and undoubtedly a great amount of hacking on Adhearsion will occur throughout the time.
The exact location and schedule are still being confirmed, but mark the date!
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Tracking Tropo.com calls with Google Analytics
Continue Reading: Tracking Tropo.com calls with Google AnalyticsIt’s no big secret that I’m a huge fan of the Tropo cloud communications service[1] and also a huge fan of Google Analytics. Put them together, as Adam Kalsey did in this blog post today (‘Tracking calls with Google Analytics‘), and I’m excited!I admittedly had not followed the availability of client libraries for “Google Analytics Mobile”, but it makes sense given the diminished capabilities of mobile devices to execute JavaScript (which GA relies upon for tracking). Adam does a great job explaining that and walking through the source code he supplies.
Now I just have to make some time to try it out with my Tropo apps…
[1] In full disclosure, Tropo is a service created by my employer, Voxeo, as part of Voxeo Labs.
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CounterPath launches SIP/VoIP softphone for iPhone/iPad and brings enterprise to mobile
Continue Reading: CounterPath launches SIP/VoIP softphone for iPhone/iPad and brings enterprise to mobileHave you wished you could easily extend your corporate IP-PBX to your iPhone? Or have you wanted a good SIP softphone for your iPhone that you could use for testing systems? Or do you just like new shiny iPhone and iPad apps?This week long-time softphone maker CounterPath Corp. released their “Bria iPhone Edition” and for $3.99 it’s a great app to have! Ever since I learned about it a couple of days ago, I’ve been playing with it and this morning I posted a video review as Emerging Tech Talk #51. I show how I’ve connected the app to Voxeo’s corporate IP-PBX, how I can use it to make calls to both regular phone numbers and also SIP URIs, how it works with the iPhone’s address book and also how I can use it on the iPad. You can view the 7-minute video here:
Now my friend Alec Saunders spoke with someone at CounterPath and published a great post yesterday discussing some of the limitations and the future plans that CounterPath has. Definitely worth a read – and I’m looking forward to some of those plans! (Like wideband codecs and multi-tasking support.)
As he notes, this Bria app…