Category: Collaboration
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Tim Panton’s VERY cool demo: Google Wave + Skype + Asterisk + Ibook
Continue Reading: Tim Panton’s VERY cool demo: Google Wave + Skype + Asterisk + IbookOver on Skype Journal, Phil Wolf posted about Tim Panton’s VERY cool demo which he gave at Astricon and then apparently just yesterday at eComm Europe. Tim from phonefromhere.com mashes up Google Wave, Skype, Asterisk (with Skype for Asterisk) and Ibook to make Skype calls from within a Wave, complete with recordings of utterances and, naturally, the ability to have an annotated collaboration session in Wave:Phil quotes Jason Goecke (a colleague of mine at Voxeo) describing how it works:
“it is a Google Wave Gadget with his PhoneFromHere.com IAX2 Java softphone as the client. Then, the IAX2 Java phone connects to Asterisk with Skype for Asterisk installed. Then, there is a server-side element, Ibook, that is breaking apart utterances into individual files. So that as each person speaks, it captures it into its own file. Then, as that happens, a text frame is sent from Asterisk to the softphone with the file details. The gadget then uses some Javascript to embed a link. IAX2 supports text frames.”
Read Phil’s full post for more info and for Phil’s views on what this all means.
VERY cool demo!
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Do the IM protocol wars even matter? Adium and the continued *client* unification of IM…
Continue Reading: Do the IM protocol wars even matter? Adium and the continued *client* unification of IM…Do you care any more about zillion different IM services? Do you care about the IM protocol wars that have plagued the usage of IM for the last years?Odds are that if you are an IM user like me, you probably don’t. Why not? Simple… we’ve unified the IM services on the client side and basically stopped caring about the various services and protocols.
I was reminded of this fact this morning when I received a message saying that an update was available for Adium on my Mac that solved a really annoying disconnection problem with Yahoo!Messenger. (And if you are a Yahoo IM user, you really need to get the 1.3.2b1 beta.)
[NOTE: An equivalent to Adium for Windows or Unix/Linux users is Pidgin.]
Somewhat ironically, there was a discussion going on in a Skype groupchat in which I participate about the various IM protocols and whether anyone really used GTalk, etc. Since I was updating Adium at the time, I took a moment to look at all the different protocols that Adium now supports… as seen in the screenshot on the right side of this post. If I look at my own usage, I use Adium to…
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It’s all about syncing to the cloud – Apple’s MobileMe was the most interesting part of the iPhone 3G WWDC keynote
Continue Reading: It’s all about syncing to the cloud – Apple’s MobileMe was the most interesting part of the iPhone 3G WWDC keynoteOkay, so the iPhone got better – so what? To me, the new iPhone 3G was NOT the most interesting part of yesterday’s Steve Jobs keynote at the Apple WWDC event. Sure, the blogosphere (and mainstream media) is buzzing like crazy about it (and we discussed it at length on yesterday’s Squawk Box). Sure, it’s great that the iPhone costs a lot less (at least, up front), is available in more countries (but still not in Vermont!), has GPS and now will work over 3G networks. Sure, all that is great.
<Donning flame-proof clothing> But at the end of the day, it’s still just a mobile phone! Sure, it’s an incredibly sexy one and yes now that I live in New Hampshire I admittedly am considering getting one. But it’s… still… just… a… phone. (And yes, I realize such a statement is heretical in defiance of the Cult of Apple (of which I am increasingly becoming a member).)
To me what was far more intriguing was Apple’s launch of “MobileMe” at me.com. Why?
Apple is getting into the “cloud” in a major way.
Let’s take a look at what Apple is offering (watch the Guided Tour to see it in…
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Attempt to join a VoiceCon/Mitel presentation on UC foiled by Real Player on Mac
Continue Reading: Attempt to join a VoiceCon/Mitel presentation on UC foiled by Real Player on MacSo today my participation in a VoiceCon webinar was foiled by “fun” with RealPlayer and my MacBook Pro. The VoiceCon team was running a webinar called ‘Demystifying Unified Communications’ and I was curious to check it out as it was sponsored by my prior employer, Mitel, and the speaker was Mitel’s Doug Micheaelides who I know well. I was just curious more than anything else to see if Mitel’s marketing had changed in the six months since I left. I’m also one to often listen to analyst presentations – it’s part of what I do.It was not to be. Now, admittedly, this is largely my fault for not checking whether the webinar system would work with my Mac in advance. But attending the webinar was low priority to me and something I would just try to “fit in” if I could do so. Since it looked like I could, I jumped over to the page, registered and clicked the link to launch the presentation…
Oops.
Turns out that the web presentation system the VoiceCon folks are using needs Real’s player and as shown in the image to the right, my browser wasn’t very happy with that.
Naturally, I did…
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Joining ooVoo for video… are you an ooVoo user?
Continue Reading: Joining ooVoo for video… are you an ooVoo user?I gave in today and installed ooVoo on my Mac. I’d resisted because I’m a wee bit swamped right now, but with friends talking about “My ooVoo Day” starting on Monday I finally succumbed and installed it. I admit to being a skeptic… but I’m also open to being surprised. My skepticism is mainly because I already have a zillion ways for people to contact me and I already run several IM/voice/video clients… so it’s really NOT clear to me that I need another one. Still, the interface looks interesting and they’ve incorporated many of the features you would see in Skype and other clients… presence, status messages, etc. Many of the features are intriguing, such as the ability to do video conferencing with up to six people.
So as the admitted chaser of bright shiny objects that I am, and since they do have a Mac version – and my Mac has a webcam, I’ve installed it. Of course, given that sites like this don’t yet support what DataPortability.org is aiming to do, I have no contacts, so it’s rather useless to me right now. Yes, I can use the “Find Friends” feature to import contacts from…
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A simple answer to why I’ve done more videoconferencing in the past 3 weeks than I have in the past 3 *years*…
Continue Reading: A simple answer to why I’ve done more videoconferencing in the past 3 weeks than I have in the past 3 *years*…In the past three weeks I have done more videoconferencing than I have in the past three years…including my year or so as the product manager for Mitel’s video collaboration products.
Why?
There’s a simple answer, really. And it speaks to the heart of why I think it has taken so long for videoconferencing to take off… I mean, we’ve have been talking about videophones for what? 40 years or so?
The answer is… duh!… I have a camera always available!
It is always there, sitting at the top of my MacBook Pro screen, just waiting to be used. Whenever I am in a Skype call, or using Sightspeed or iChat… or any other communication program that supports video… moving into video is as simple as pressing a button in the GUI and… ta da… we’re in a video conversation.
Contrast that to the situation a few years back where moving into video involved making sure your camera was connected first. In fact, some of the various programs required a restart after you connected a camera, which meant that you couldn’t just escalate into video while you were in the midst of a call. Back when I was…
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A heck of week to choose to go dark! (Microsoft, MySpace/Skype, iPhone… )
Continue Reading: A heck of week to choose to go dark! (Microsoft, MySpace/Skype, iPhone… )Boy, did I choose the wrong week to go dark! Way too many amazing things going on out there this week… here is a quick view of some of the disruptions with relevant links:
- Microsoft formally announces release of Office Communication Server – tons of coverage out there but I recommend the analysis by the UC Strategies team.
- Skype will be providing voice to MySpace IM – again tons of coverage – Skype Journal has more info and a screenshot. See also the Skype blog.
- Per Business Week this morning, Skype will be rolling out its own mobile phone, starting in Europe.
- MySpace
- Apple, meanwhile, announces an upcoming developer kit for the iPhone via a note from Steve Jobs (some reactions here and here).
- And finally MySpace says it will open up to application developers in a similar manner to Facebook.
All in all a rather busy week! (And it’s not over yet…)
Technorati Tags: apple, applications, facebook, iphone, myspace, microsoft, ocs, unifiedcommunications, skype, voip
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Digium buys SwitchVox and gets presence, Web 2.0 interface, mashups to Google Maps, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM…
Continue Reading: Digium buys SwitchVox and gets presence, Web 2.0 interface, mashups to Google Maps, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM…Imagine you are a customer service rep (CSR) at a small/medium company and a phone call comes in from a customer. As your phone rings, up on your screen pops all the information about that customer, pulled from your CRM database in Salesforce.com or SugarCRM, plus other information from other databases and finally a nice Google Map showing you where that customer is located and potentially other information like the locations of your nearest offices. During the call, the CSR needs to bring in a subject matter expert so the CSR consults their web panel and looks at the presence information displayed for each of the other people in the business. The CSR can then contact someone showing as available and potentially bring them into the call.
Now imagine that all that is running on top of open source telephony… specifically Asterisk.
You can now stop imagining, because Digium just bought the company that does precisely that. There will undoubtedly be much attention today (at the very least in the VoIP blogosphere) about Digium’s announcement here at AstriCon today that they have acquired SwitchVox. I am going to bet that much of the reporting today will focus on angles…
