In case you’ve been under a rock, or are just tuning in from a long weekend, Skype is releasing “Skype for the iPhone” tomorrow and will apparently follow that with a Skype for the Blackberry application in May. GigaOm ran with the story last week, CNET came out with an “it’s official” story last night and then seemingly everyone and their brother and sister came out with stories today about it. (Phil had nice pictures over at Skype Journal.) It’s been a big day for Skype – and the formal launch isn’t even until tomorrow. Expect that we’ll see a large number of stories tomorrow when people actually are able to install the Skype for iPhone app and start playing with it. (And yes, I’ll probably write one, too.)

What’s fascinating and perhaps incredibly predictable is that almost all of these articles talk about how this brings Skype’s free calling to the iPhone… about how this will make it easier for people to make cheaper calls… how it is integrated in with the iPhone Address Book for easy calling… about how this disrupts voice and calls… about how this will make cheap calls available… about how nice the GUI is… about how calls will be cheaper…… (Do you detect a theme?)

MY ONE BIG WISH

While all this is true, I personally don’t really care. Sure, it will be great to be able to receive a Skype call and sure, it be great to be able to make a Skype call (all on WiFi of course). Sure, all that’s great.

But there is one single thing that I am looking for in this Skype for iPhone application that has been missing from Fring, IM+, TruPhone and every other iPhone app that has offered some type of Skype integration. In a word, it is simply this:

groupchats

Over the past several years I have become a huge user of Skype multi-user groupchats. Both for internal groupchats within organizations or companies and also for public groupchats where people have joined together to discuss common topics. They are an incredible communication tool – and no other iPhone app has delivered those for Skype.

THE POWER OF PERSISTENT CHATS

The strength of Skype’s multi-user chat facility is in its persistence. Once you join a groupchat, you will receive all messages to that groupchat until you actually go up to the Chat menu in the Skype client and choose “Leave Chat”. Closing the window doesn’t get you out of the chat – you must actually leave the chat.

The power here is that “all messages” means even those messages sent in the groupchat while you were offline. When your Skype client reconnects to the Skype P2P cloud, your client downloads all the messages sent to the chat while you were away. Within typically a few seconds you wind up getting a complete history of everything said over the past while.

Think of it as a conversation that never ends.

When you are traveling, you can be typing in the groupchat up until the time you have to board your plane. Land at your destination, pop open Skype, wait a few seconds or so, and… ta da… you have the full conversation of what happened while you were in the air. Or if you are being environmentally-concerned and put your computer to sleep at night (or power it off), when you wake it in the morning, after the sync, you get all the messages sent during the night – which, when you start working with global teams, becomes increasingly important.

Persistent groupchats are powerful organizing and community-building tools.

And we’ve not had this yet in an app that works with Skype on the iPhone. We’ve had person-to-person chats in apps like Fring and IM+, but not group chats.

So tomorrow, when everyone is trying out the Skype For iPhone app and testing the voice quality, whining about how it only works on WiFi and not 3G (Duh! Apple has forbid VoIP over 3G.), looking at presence, whining about how video isn’t yet supported, looking at address book integration… none of those will be my concern…

I’ll be looking at the groupchat support and pushing it’s limits as best I can. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. We’ll see.

UPDATE: I should have noted, of course, that multi-user groupchats are possible with both Jabber and of course IRC. However, while you might be able to configure certain clients and servers to supply some level of persistence, it is not on by default (that I have seen) nor as simple as it is with Skype.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either subscribing to the RSS feed or following me on Twitter or identi.ca.

Technorati Tags:
skype, apple, iphone

Are you interested in learning more about VoiceObjects (recently acquired by my employer, Voxeo) and how you can use VO to rapidly develop complex voice applications? If so, you can join VoiceObjects VP Stefan Besling tomorrow for a “Developer Jam Session” webinar where we will go through the new features of the recently announced VoiceObjects 7.4:

Date: January 14, 2009
Time: 8am PDT, 11am EDT, 5pm CET
Topic: Introducing VoiceObjects 7.4
Speaker: Stefan Besling, Vice President of Engineering, VoiceObjects Germany GmbH

Abstract: This session will give you an overview of the enhancements and new capabilities provided with VoiceObjects 7.4. Learn about 2-way SMS and Instant Messaging, security and user management enhancements, object extensions, and a lot more. Join us to stay up-to-date with the newest release of the VoiceObjects platform.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either subscribing to the RSS feed or following me on Twitter or identi.ca.

Technorati Tags:
voiceobjects, voxeo, voiceapplications, applications, voice, development, developers

So what are the steps of pushing your voice applications out “into the cloud”? Where do you begin?

As you all probably know and as I mentioned over on Voxeo’s ‘Voxeo Talks’ blog, I have a fascination with network clouds (and cloud computing), and in the latest sign of that, I’ve kicked off a 4-part series over on the TMCnet IVR Community that Voxeo is sponsoring. In the first article in the series, titled
“Pushing IVR Into The Cloud, Part 1: Why Make The Move?“, I talk about why you might want to consider moving your voice application out into “the cloud”. Here’s part of the intro:

In this four-part series, I’m going to explore what we are calling cloud computing and how you can push your IVR applications out into the network cloud. First, in this article, I’ll look at what cloud computing is and why people should think about it for IVR. Second, I’ll look at the security issues and what questions you need to be asking when considering a vendor for pushing your application into the cloud. After that I’ll discuss the key role that open standards play in allowing you to avoid vendor lock-in and I’ll conclude with steps you can take to make the move into the cloud.

The article continues on to talk about what cloud computing is, why you might consider it and why you might not consider it. Now the article focuses on “IVR” because… well.. it’s the IVR Community on TMCnet! However, you can pretty much go through that article and replace every instance of “IVR” with “voice application” or whatever term you want… the concept is the same.

As I note at the end, Part 2 will talk about the reliability/security aspects of pushing voice applications out into the cloud and the question: Can you trust the cloud to always be there for you?

Stay tuned for more… (and please feel free to let me know what you think as comments to this post.)

Technorati Tags:
applications, voice, voice applications, ivr, cloud, cloud computing, voxeo, voip

Is the fact that Chrysler is turning some of their 2009 cars into WiFi hotspots a good thing? And would you really want to answer a phone call by sticking your finger in your ear?

Those are some of the topics we’re going to be discussing on today’s Squawk Box conference call/podcast at 11am US Eastern time. You can see the links to the articles and join the conversation through either:

• http://apps.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/34611 (if you have a Facebook account)
• http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/34611 (if you want to use the non-Facebook web interface)

Here’s my video preview of the show:

I realized today that I haven’t really been posting these previews here, but should… so I’ll be doing more of that. I look forward to our 11am US Eastern conversation…

Technorati Tags:
squawk box, dan york, chrysler, wifi, wearable computing, NTT DoCoMo

For those looking to discuss the recent Skype 4.0 beta release, Skype’s Product Manager for Skype for Windows, Mike Bartlett, (a.k.a. “the guy in the Skype 4.0 demo videos who likes to play football/soccer”) will be the guest on tomorrow’s Squawk Box conference call/podcast at 11am Eastern US time. Jim Courtney has the details over on Skype Journal.

I have another meeting at that time and don’t anticipate being able to participate tomorrow, but it should be an interesting conversation. Given that I’m on a Mac these days, the Skype 4.0 beta for Windows is pretty much irrelevant to me, although I may fire up a virtual machine just to take a look at it briefly.

In any event, it should be a good Squawk Box. Please do join if you’re interested in Skype.

Technorati Tags:
skype, squawk box, skype 4.0, mike bartlett, voip

As an update to my previous post, the Squawk Box recording is now available of our call with Jajah co-founder Roman Scharf. It was an interesting discussion of what they are doing. On a programming note, it was one of the larger calls we’ve done on Squawk Box and we encountered some technical issues that Alec Saunders had to deal with (hence my jumping in as lead interviewer at one point). All in all both a fun and interesting session. Do give it a listen if you are interested in voice platforms!

Technorati Tags:
alec saunders, jajah, squawk box, voip, platforms

IMG_0112.JPG
Originally uploaded by voxeophoto

As most of you know by now I’m now employed by Voxeo and the folks down in the Orlando office recently started using some camera’s to upload pictures to company Flickr stream. We did this largely because we’re hiring (more job openings to be posted soon) and we want potential candidates to see what a fun place it is to work… but it will also factor into some of the other blogging and other work we’ll be doing.

Anyway, you can check it out. No photos of me there, yet, since I wasn’t around when the camera’s were being passed around. (I’ll upload a picture of me to the site, though, soon.)

As he has done for the past several years, Jeff Pulver today announced the “2007 pulver 100 list” – 100 businesses to watch in 2007.  As usual, his list includes many of the names that you see in the news related to VoIP, IP telephony, etc., but there are also some related to video and others of which I honestly had no clue about until Jeff published the list.  (And still don’t because Jeff didn’t yet include URLs and I haven’t had the time to hunt them down.)    You’ll note that Jeff is now calling this entire area “MICE” – “Media, Internet, Communications and Entertainment” which does reflect both Jeff’s own evolution of focus but also the way all these industries are colliding together. (He wrote more here.)

The Pulver 100 list generates a good amount of publicity, so congrats to all those companies who are listed on this year’s list.

The news today out of the WiFi Alliance was that almost 100 phones have become “Wi-Fi Certified” in their testing from 2004 to the present.  What’s interesting to me is that most of those phones seem to be “dual mode” sets designed for the cellular market.  The news release indicates that there are 82 dual-mode phones and 10 single-mode phones… which is a bit puzzling because the list of Wi-Fi Certified handsets shows only 89 handsets, leaving 3 unaccounted for.  Browsing down the list, I can immediately see a WiFi handset for Skype and the wireless Skype/VoIP phones from Cisco/Linksys and D-Link.  One annoying detail – all of the listed models take you to the main home page of the vendor, so you then have to dig to find the phone… would be MUCH better if the link took you directly to the product page of the specific product. I have no idea what some of these phones are (nor do I really have the time/interest to dig for them).

 I don’t see the Netgear and Belkin 802.11 Skype phones, nor do I see many of the zillion wireless SIP phones that are out there.  So either: 1) those phones are still being tested by the WFA; 2) the vendors don’t see the value in WFA certification; or perhaps 3) the vendors aren’t really aware of the certification.  In any event, the net is that there are obviously a lot more 802.11 phones out there beyond this long list.  Nice to see so many dual-mode mobile phones… an obvious sign of the rising reality of Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC).

Jeff Pulver was in Los Angeles and visited the Apple Store there… and couldn’t find someone to pay!  Ever the social media guy, he seized the moment to make this video and share the experience with all of us:

Just a note to anyone in retail… you, too, (or your absence) might wind up on YouTube someday… the shoppers are watching – and recording!