Category: VoIP
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Does “Skype for Asterisk” tear down some of Skype’s walls? (and allow SIP-to-Skype?)
Continue Reading: Does “Skype for Asterisk” tear down some of Skype’s walls? (and allow SIP-to-Skype?)Does today’s announcement of a beta version of “Skype for Asterisk” signal a way to tear down some of Skype’s walls? And does this move Skype along toward better SIP interoperability?The announcement happened out at Astricon today and TMC’s Tom Keating had one of the first posts about it – updated with info from TMC reporters who are at Astricon. Both the Digium news release and the Skype blog post highlight these four points that Asterisk users will be able to do:
- Make, receive and transfer Skype calls with multiple Skype names from within Asterisk phone systems, using existing hardware.
- Complement existing Asterisk services with low Skype global rates (as low as 1.7€¢ / 2.1US¢ per minute to more than 35 countries worldwide).
- Save money on inbound calling solutions such as free click-to-call from a website, as well as receive inbound calling from the PSTN throughcreate virtual offices all over world using Skype’s online numbers.
- Manage Skype calls using Asterisk applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voicemail.
I want to focus on one part of the first bullet. Recall that in my last post about Skype and SIP interoperability I talked about how Skype currently…
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Google’s Android and the future of the (open?) mobile Internet
Continue Reading: Google’s Android and the future of the (open?) mobile InternetIn just a few minutes, at 10:30am US Eastern time, Google and T-Mobile will be in New York City to announce the launch of the first Android handset.Predictably, the blogosphere is buzzing with posts and articles.
I expect, quite honestly, to be a bit underwhelmed by the initial launch… after all, Android is still evolving. We’ll see – the fact that stories are out that Amazon is launching a DRM-free music service along with the Android phone is certainly an interesting dynamic.
Today’s launch aside, the launch of Android is really the next step in the ongoing discussion about what the future of the mobile Internet looks like. Will it be controlled by only the carriers? Or will we as consumers have the freedom and choice to use the apps we want? Android holds out that potential – if the carriers let it be used that way. This morning I recorded a short video on the subject:
If you would like, please do join us on today’s Squawk Box at 11am US Eastern time to discuss what all this means. Undoubtedly I’ll be writing more on this here as will others across the VoIP blogosphere in…
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Skype and SIP interop – the two sides of the issue raised by Michael Robertson
Continue Reading: Skype and SIP interop – the two sides of the issue raised by Michael RobertsonShould Skype open up it’s network to other users? to other networks? Should Skype stop preaching about “openness” when it’s network remains closed?In the middle of last week, there was quite a little storm raised in the VoIP corner of the blogosphere after Andy Abramson published a letter from Gizmo Project founder Michael Robertson critical of Skype’s openness after Skype continued to call upon the FCC to open the wireless network to applications. (See also here and this Skype blog post (and this one) for background.) Being at ITEXPO last week, I didn’t have the chance to blog about this at the length I felt it deserved until today.
First, for some context, here are some of the blog posts last week:
- Andy in VoIPWatch: Gizmo Project’s Michael Robertson Sounds Off
- Phil Wolff asks some pointed questions (of Michael) at Skype Journal: Michael Robertson says Skype should open to Gizmo Project
- Phil posts: Michael Robertson Responds where Michael responds to Phil’s questions
- Andy responds: For the Record, Gizmo vs. Skype
- Alec Saunders had a whole cast of characters on Friday’s SquawkBox, including Andy, Michael Robertson, Jim Courtney (Skype Journal) and a good number of others.
- Phil posts: A few…
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Heading out to Los Angeles this week for Communications Developer Conf / ITEXPO…
Continue Reading: Heading out to Los Angeles this week for Communications Developer Conf / ITEXPO…As I note over in my Voxeo blog post, I’ll be out at the Communications Developer Conference (co-located with ITEXPO) this week in Los Angeles. I will be speaking twice. First on Wednesday morning I’ll be talking about SIP Trunking and security as part of the Ingate SIP Trunking workshops from 10:15-11:15am. Next, on Thursday, I’ll be speaking about “Developing Voice Applications in the Cloud”, a favorite topic of mine these days.Voxeo will also have a booth and I expect to be there. I’m also doing some video interviews and other media work (actually on both sides of the camera). I’m looking forward to catching up with a good number of folks out at the show.
If you read this blog and are out there at either the Communications Developer Conference or ITEXPO, please do come by and say hello. I posted the schedule of talks over on Voxeo’s blog site. You should be able to find out more about where precisely I am through either twitter.com/danyork or twitter.com/voxeo.
Technorati Tags: conferences, voip, itexpo, communicationsdeveloperconference, los angeles, dan york, voxeo, danyork, cloudcomputing, sip, sip security,
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Voxeo’s CEO interviewed on SquawkBox…
Continue Reading: Voxeo’s CEO interviewed on SquawkBox…Given that I’ve written here a good bit about Voxeo since joining the company 11 months ago, I thought I’d point to an excellent interview that Voxeo’s CEO, Jonathan Taylor, did with host Alec Saunders on Alec’s Squawk Box podcast. You can listen to it by either using the audio player on the show web page or alternatively you can download the MP3 file directly and listen to it in iTunes, Windows Media Player or whatever MP3 player you wish.It was an enjoyable call (I was listening) that went for about 45 minutes. Jonathan spoke about how and why he started the company, about the new release of Prophecy 9, the acquisition of Micromethod, our recent financial results and much more. I think you all will find it a great introduction to what Voxeo is all about.
11 months later, I’m still extremely glad I made the choice to join the company…
Technorati Tags: squawkbox, voxeo, voice, voice applications, voip
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Skype’s 5 years of disruption… (Happy Birthday, Skype!)
Continue Reading: Skype’s 5 years of disruption… (Happy Birthday, Skype!)Five years ago today, the first public beta of Skype launched, and in a blog post today new Skype CEO Josh Silverman celebrates with “Five Years of Wow“. It’s a bit of the “Ra-Ra” celebratory kind of post I would expect from a CEO but ends nicely with this:So, as we celebrate the first five years of Skype, let’s raise a toast to the human desire to connect.
Indeed!
Skype has done a great amount to help people easily connect to each other. It’s also caused a heck of a lot of disruption within the telecommunications industry. I use Skype daily (Skype ID: danyork) and it has indeed become a significant part of both my business workflow and personal life.
A PERSONAL REMINDER
I had a personal reminder of that the other day when I wound up in a video chat with one of my closest friends who was my best man at my wedding 12 years ago. Although we have spoken in the intervening years, we had not actually seen each other in probably most of 10 years due to living far apart. He and his wife emailed a group of folks that they now had a Skype…
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Want to learn more about Voxeo? Join Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor appearing on Squawk Box conf call tomorrow
Continue Reading: Want to learn more about Voxeo? Join Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor appearing on Squawk Box conf call tomorrowAre you are available tomorrow, Tuesday, August 26th, at 11am US Eastern time? If so, you are invited to join in to Alec Saunders’ daily “Squawk Box” conference call / podcast where Alec will be interviewing Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor about all the recent news about Voxeo, including:- Voxeo announced record growth and global expansion
- Voxeo announced a new product release with new SIP APIs, Mac OS X and Linux support
- Voxeo acquired Micromethod Technologies
- Voxeo named 2008 Market Leader by Speech Technology Magazine
The call will take place using Alec’s company Iotum’s “Calliflower” conferencing/collaboration application. To join in to the call, you simply need to go to either of the following links to “join” the call and receive a PIN and call-in number for the call:
- Calliflower Facebook application – If you are a Facebook user, simply go to:
http://apps.new.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/37402
You will be prompted to add the Calliflower Facebook application and then will receive the call-in information.
- Calliflower.com site – If you are not a Facebook user or just don’t want to add another Facebook application, you can go to the Calliflower.com site at this URL:
http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/37402
You will be prompted to create a free Calliflower.com user account if you have…
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An extraordinary week for Voxeo…
Continue Reading: An extraordinary week for Voxeo…Last week was a truly extraordinary week for my employer, Voxeo. Here’s a bit of what went on:Voxeo announced record growth and global expansion – In these economic times, it’s incredible to be part of a company putting out information like this.
Voxeo announced a new product release with new SIP APIs, Mac OS X and Linux support – To our knowledge, this is first commercial telephony voice application platform to be available on Mac OS X (as well as Linux and Windows). While our customers might not deploy production servers on Mac OS X, this means that their developers using Macs can now even more easily run our application server. Additionally, we’ve developed some new graphical management interfaces that are pretty incredible (and useful, too).
Voxeo acquired Micromethod Technologies – With this acquisition of a company based in Beijing and San Jose, we’ve added a strong SIP Servlet (JSR 116/289) platform into our portfolio and we’ve already started integrating that into our core platform. Developers will now have even more ways to build VoIP applications on top of our platform.
Voxeo named 2008 Market Leader by Speech Technology Magazine – We received an award at SpeechTEK last week…
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Tune in to the Mitel / Sun Webinar tomorrow (Aug 21) at 1pm EDT
Continue Reading: Tune in to the Mitel / Sun Webinar tomorrow (Aug 21) at 1pm EDTIf you are free tomorrow, Thursday, August 21st, at 1pm US Eastern time, I’d encourage you to listen in to a joint Mitel / Sun Microsystems webinar. Details are available on the Mitel web page.Why am I encouraging readers to tune into this webinar? Especially when I no longer work for Mitel and have really nothing to do with them any more? Two words:
Terry Matthews.
During the time that I worked for Mitel from June 2001 up until last October (2007), the telecom industry went through some pretty bleak periods. Some very bleak periods. Mitel was not immune and there were certainly some tough times there. There were multiple times when friends seriously questioned why I continued to work there amidst some of the challenges and headaches. And while I admittedly had a few of those moments myself, I kept on working hard at Mitel because of the tremendous people I worked with there… and ultimately because of the vision and enthusiasm of Terry Matthews.
If you aren’t familiar with Sir Terrence Matthews, his Wikipedia biography and Wesley Clover (his investment firm) biography give a taste of the man. Terry is at this point a billionaire serial entrepreneur…