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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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Checked out the redesigned Tropo.com lately? (Voice, SMS, IM, Twitter apps…)
Continue Reading: Checked out the redesigned Tropo.com lately? (Voice, SMS, IM, Twitter apps…)Have you visited Tropo.com lately? Have you used it to create any apps for voice, text messaging (SMS), IM or Twitter? The Voxeo Labs team just gave the Tropo site a major overhaul … added a new video intro… added more sample applications in JavaScript, PHP, python, ruby and Groovy… added more documentation… and just generally gave the site a new fresh look. If you haven’t stopped by lately, do come by and check it out.
If you are looking for a cloud communications platform to build new voice, SMS, IM or Twitter apps on, sign up for a free Tropo account and get started today!
P.S. You can also follow Tropo on Twitter or Facebook – and yes, if you haven’t figured it out, Tropo is a service of my employer, Voxeo. But even if I didn’t work for Voxeo, I still would find Tropo very cool!
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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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Using Apple FaceTime to connect from a Mac to a… TRAIN?
Continue Reading: Using Apple FaceTime to connect from a Mac to a… TRAIN?Received a FaceTime call on my Mac from a +44 number (U.K.) and the first time it didn’t connect… but a little bit later the call came through… and it turned out to be James Body on a train somewhere in the UK!
Apparently James had a 3G MIFI near the window and had his iPhone connected to that via WiFi. James’ audio came across quite well and the video was clear… if choppy from time to time. James said he was experiencing latency around 5 seconds or so.
Still, it was rather cool that it worked as well as it did!
Fun times…
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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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The New Breed of Tablets from Cisco, Avaya and RIM – will they matter?
Continue Reading: The New Breed of Tablets from Cisco, Avaya and RIM – will they matter?Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all rushing out “tablet” devices now for the enterprise market – but will they actually matter? Will enterprises really want to use these high-end and high-priced tablets versus all the new consumer tablets like the iPad and all the various Android and Windows tables in the queue?
Don’t get me wrong … it think it is awesome that Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all coming out with new tablets. Ever since getting an iPad back in early May it has become a constant companion on my travels around and I use it for so many different purposes.
The touch interface is also so incredibly “natural”… I watch my daughters using the iPad and just have to think: “Why shouldn’t computers just work this way?”
Any user interface improvements that improve the communications user experience are very definitely a GOOD thing!
So I commend Cisco, Avaya and RIM for coming out with tablets.
I just still find myself wondering why I might want to pay to buy one of these tablets. I had this exchange yesterday with analyst Brian Riggs on Twitter:
As I said, I already have a SIP client on my iPad (and there…
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TechCrunch interview on Skype’s plan for the enterprise
Continue Reading: TechCrunch interview on Skype’s plan for the enterpriseWhat are Skype’s plans for the enterprise? What do they see as their target market? On Saturday, TechCrunch posted an interview, with David Gurle, Skype’s General Manager and Vice President of Enterprise, focusing on these questions: “Skype’s VP Of Enterprise On Future Strategy, Products And Competitors.
While not deep on details, the interview did offer a few interesting glimpses into their plans. For instance, Skype is looking at industry-specific business-to-consumer apps:
For example, Skype will soon be offering businesses a way to establish Skype-powered virtual video call centers, allowing enterprise customers to talk to their own customers across multiple devices, platforms, geographies, and more.
Such an offering could certainly be interesting. I was also intrigued by this:
When I asked him about Skype’s future, Gule says it is in creating a one-click solution to allow you to reach a partner, friend, manager, employee, or business contact from any platform.
The “directory problem” has always been a challenge, i.e. where does your master directory live… it will be interesting to see what Skype comes up with for their answer.
The interview has more info and is worth a read for those of us continuing to track and monitor what Skype…
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Phono – Your new, free tool for Rewiring the Real-time Web!
Continue Reading: Phono – Your new, free tool for Rewiring the Real-time Web!What if you could have customers call in to your call center from directly within your web browser? No “click to call” that calls them back on their cell phone… but literally just press a button on your web site and start talking? And get connected directly to the team appropriate to the web page rather than a generic inbox?
What if you could do this with more than just voice… but also video? screen sharing? with better audio quality than the legacy telephony network (the PSTN)?
What if you could also add in live chat sessions directly from your website? Giving you true multi-channel interaction with your customers?
And what if you could do this without any downloads by the customer?
Even better… what if this could be done with your branding? and connecting to ANY IP communications system?
Announcing Phono
Today at the JQuery Conference in Boston, the Voxeo Labs team is announcing Phono a new software development kit that lets you create apps just like the ones I mentioned. It’s free, it’s “skinnable” and it works with any systems that use SIP or XMPP (Jabber). More info here:
The Phono…
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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…
Disruptive Telephony
Dan York on how Voice over IP is rewriting (almost) everything you thought you understood about telephony…