Category: Facebook
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Facebook Rolls Out VoIP In Canada on iOS!
Continue Reading: Facebook Rolls Out VoIP In Canada on iOS!Today, Facebook apparently began testing of true voice-over-IP (VoIP) calling from its iOS app for all Facebook users in Canada. If you have an iPhone and are in Canada, you can update to the latest version of the Facebook Messenger app and start making free phone calls to your friends on Facebook. Two articles have more details:- The Verge: Facebook tests free voice calling in Messenger app
- iPhone Hacks: Facebook Testing Messenger-Based VoIP in Canada (And it’s Amazing)
I was alerted to this by (appropriately) a Facebook post from Tris Hussey, author of the iPhone Hacks article.
Since I’m not in Canada, I can’t test it myself… an update to the Messenger app for me will only get me the ability to leave “voice notes”. But I’m looking forward to learning more from my friends in Canada.
If this rolls out to users outside of Canada, this has the potential to be huge and a major disruption to telecom. Yes, there is Skype on mobile phones, and a dozen other apps like Viber and Voxer, but…
… Facebook has the directory and the eyeballs!
You have your friend connections already in Facebook. Plus, people are already spending a significant amount…
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Oops – Post Published On Wrong Site
Continue Reading: Oops – Post Published On Wrong SiteOops… this post was published on the wrong site – please see the article over on my Disruptive Conversations site at:When Facebook Starts To Become More Useless – Irrelevant In-Feed Ads
Thank you!
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Skype Opens Its Walls A Bit? Lets You IM Facebook Users Just Like Skype Users
Continue Reading: Skype Opens Its Walls A Bit? Lets You IM Facebook Users Just Like Skype UsersDid Skype just add a XMPP gateway into their network and bring their walls down a bit more? Today’s release of Skype 5.5 for Windows had one VERY cool piece of news:Facebook integration
Now when you connect to Facebook you can see when your Facebook friends are online and IM with them directly from Skype.Now I don’t have Windows to test it out (as you would know from my earlier post), but in working with fellow blogger Jim Courtney who uses Skype on both operating systems, this has some interesting aspects to it.
For starters, in Skype 5.5, the chat with the Facebook user appears in your left-side list of chats just like a chat with a Skype user. You have the same user experience chatting with a FB user as with a Skype user. (Subject to the caveat that Jim found he couldn’t edit a message sent to a FB user, but that makes sense given that the message would leave Skype’s network to go over to Facebook’s network.)
When Jim went into his Facebook contacts he found my name (he and I are friends on FB) that I was currently “offline”:
He noted that he could…
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Is Facebook Planning an Official Voice Calling Feature? With Skype? And Would Facebook Users Care?
Continue Reading: Is Facebook Planning an Official Voice Calling Feature? With Skype? And Would Facebook Users Care?News today out of ReadWriteWeb and The Daily What is that a “Call” button was spotted briefly inside someone’s Facebook profile:RWW goes on to speculate about whether or not this could be part of the “deep integration” between Facebook and Skype announced last September. Mike Melanson at RWW wrote this:
The move would make a lot of sense for Facebook, which has worked recently to become the center of your online communication experience. Its recent “not email” announcement debuted a form of communication that would supposedly work seamlessly between devices, so that there would be little differentiation between messaging, email and Facebook chat. Voice calling between users, whether from browser to browser, phone to browser, or browser to phone, would just make sense in creating a more seamless communication experience.
Now, there is the obvious question –
is the screenshot real?
Or are we being hoaxed? Having personally been in a situation where I received an inadvertant preview of possible new Facebook features (which sadly have yet to materialize), I’m inclined to believe that the screenshoot could be real.The Skype Connection?
But is it connected to Skype, as RWW wonders? The “deep integration” reported by RWW in September…
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Use “Facebook Telephone” to call FB friends – or anyone else!
Continue Reading: Use “Facebook Telephone” to call FB friends – or anyone else!With Voxeo Labs’ launch of the Phono software toolkit last weekend that lets you turn any browser into a phone or IM client, one of the more interesting sample applications released along with it was “Facebook Telephone“, a Facebook application that lets you make phone calls from directly inside of Facebook.
In a post on the Phono blog, Chris Matthieu goes into detail about the application, how you can use it to call your friends… to call regular (PSTN) phone numbers… and also to call SIP addresses.
In using the app, I’ve found a couple of things rather cool:
- The “phone-in-the-browser” has been seamless for me in the sense that after I approved the initial Flash security warning (and told it to remember my setting), it “just worked” and I was able to start speaking to people without any problems.
- I like that you can call a friend on Facebook and if they don’t have Facebook Telephone running in a browser it will automatically connect through to their mobile device.
- It’s cool that it works over WiFi… I’m looking forward to trying it out in various different locations. (like the next plane I’m on with WiFi 😉
On…
- The “phone-in-the-browser” has been seamless for me in the sense that after I approved the initial Flash security warning (and told it to remember my setting), it “just worked” and I was able to start speaking to people without any problems.
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Skype 5.0 brings Facebook integration, group video – but ONLY if you are on Windows
Continue Reading: Skype 5.0 brings Facebook integration, group video – but ONLY if you are on WindowsSkype today released version 5.0 for Windows which looks quite cool…
but is also completely unusable to me.
First off, Skype 5.0 includes a brand new Facebook integration that wasn’t in the beta program and, per Skype’s blog post, let’s you:
- see your Facebook News Feed in Skype
- post status updates that can be synced with your Skype mood message
- comment and like friends’ updates and wall posts
- call and SMS your Facebook friends on their mobile phones and landlines
- make a free Skype-to-Skype call if your Facebook friend is also a Skype contact
Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal walks through the new release (which is where I got the screenshot at right) and shows how the integration works. You have a new “Facebook tab” in the 5.0 Skype version that has both a “News Feed” and a “Phonebook” subtab.
From what I’ve heard from folks trying it out this morning, the Phonebook does a one-time import of all your Facebook contacts and then you can call or SMS them via their regular PSTN phone (if it’s in their Facebook profile) or via Skype if they are a contact. I’m not clear on how you keep it up-to-date…
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Equals’ “Party Line” app uses Voxeo’s platform to bring voice to Facebook
Continue Reading: Equals’ “Party Line” app uses Voxeo’s platform to bring voice to FacebookHave you ever wanted to quickly get into a conference call with a group of people? What if you could just call a number and initiate a conference call that automatically dialled out to bring in the other participants? Would you see yourself using this for a group (or groups) of your friends? Could you see this being useful for a group of coworkers? Over on Voxeo’s blog today, I wrote about a new Facebook application called “Party Line” that does exactly this.As I outline in the blog post, Party Line, available (to Facebook users) at www.equals.com/partyline lets you create an unlimited number of “party lines”, each of which can have up to five participants. To initiate a group call, you either dial in to 1-877-4-BUZZ-ME or you initiate the call from within the Facebook page. The application calls all the other participants and brings you all into a group conference call. You can talk for as long as you want. No bridge numbers to remember. No passcodes. Very simple to use.
For Equals, the company who developed this Facebook application, this is their first product and platform. They’ve indicated that in the end they want this app to…
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Today’s Squawk Box podcast – A conversation with Jeff Pulver about VON.x
Continue Reading: Today’s Squawk Box podcast – A conversation with Jeff Pulver about VON.xFor some time now, I’ve been participating in the daily “Squawk Box” podcast hosted by Alec Saunders. These calls take place using Iotum’s Facebook app – “Free Conference Calling” – and they are, in fact, free outside of your normal costs to connect to the calls. I haven’t made it there every day, but I’ve tried to get there when I can. I know Alec well and the calls also include many familiar faces like Jim Courtney, Ken Camp and more.Anyway, the call today (March 6) was with Jeff Pulver about his upcoming VON.x show. It was a fun conversation and VON should definitely be a great show again this year. (Even if I’ll be on the other coast at VoiceCon!)
Technorati Tags: alec saunders, jeff pulver, conferences, von, squawk box
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Voice mashups – Notes on Alec’s conference call today
Continue Reading: Voice mashups – Notes on Alec’s conference call todayUPDATE, Jan 11: The recording of this conference call is now available.
As I mentioned in an earlier post today, Alec Saunders convened a 30-minute conference call today on voice mashups. The call was recorded and will be available as a podcast from his site. (I’ll add the link here once I’m online.)
I was traveling down through the state of Vermont today and so while I had no Internet access I did call in and joined the call from my Blackberry. (My wife was driving the car at the time.) I wrote down the following notes on my laptop during the call.
Alec introduced the call, mentioned that it would be recorded and distributed as a podcast. He then muted all the callers except for himself, Thomas Howe, Jim Courtney and Andy Abramson. For callers with Facebook open, they could press a button to “raise their hand” at which point Alec could unmute them. I was calling in on my cell phone while traveling with no Internet access, so for me it was to press “*2” to raise my hand.
Alec tossed out the first question which was “what is a voice mashup?” Thomas laid out one definition which…