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What is new in VoiceXML 3? Join this free webinar tomorrow (May 20)
Continue Reading: What is new in VoiceXML 3? Join this free webinar tomorrow (May 20)What is different in the upcoming VoiceXML 3 specification from the W3C? How will it help you create better communication applications? How can you get ready for VXML 3?If you are curious about what the VoiceXML 3 effort is all about, Voxeo is hosting a free webinar tomorrow, Thursday, May 20, 2010, at 11 am US Eastern time where one of the co-chief editors of the specification, Dan Burnett, will talk about these questions and more.
Registration is free and you can register online. It should be a very informative session.
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Google buys GIPS for $68 million – to take on Skype? Apple? Microsoft?
Continue Reading: Google buys GIPS for $68 million – to take on Skype? Apple? Microsoft?The big news out this morning was that Google is acquiring Global IP Solutions (GIPS) for $68 million USD. GIPS may not be a familiar name to many folks, but for us in the communications / telephony space, they are widely known as the supplier of audio codecs (and increasingly video) to companies creating real-time communication products, including Yahoo, AOL, IBM and many others. Many of us, though, knew them best as the initial provider of the wideband iSAC codec to Skype.To put this in more normal language, if you know how good a Skype conversation can sound… how rich the audio can be… how it can sound like the person on the other end is right there in the room with you? The quality of that audio connection is because Skype uses a “wideband codec” to send the audio from one end to the other. Up until 2007, GIPS provided the primary wideband codec that Skype used.
At some point in there, Skype realized that, particularly giving away a free product, it needed to control more of its technology stack and stop paying licensing fees to GIPS and so it bought a company, Camino Networks, that had its…
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Want to learn about Voxeo? About building apps? Attend Voxeo’s Customer Summit June 21-23
Continue Reading: Want to learn about Voxeo? About building apps? Attend Voxeo’s Customer Summit June 21-23Would you like to learn more about Voxeo, this crazy and cool company I work for? Would you like to learn about how you can build communications applications that go beyond voice and let you interact with customers via SMS/text, IM, Twitter, web and video? Would you like to meet Voxeo executives, partners and others in the industry?As I wrote about over on the Voxeo Talks blog, you can do all that and MUCH more at the Voxeo Customer Summit 2010 at the amazing Hard Rock Hotel at Universal Orlando on June 21-23, 2010.
Note that the Summit is for anyone working with Voxeo services… so even if you just have a free developer account over on our Evolution developer portal (or are thinking about getting one), you are welcome to come down to Orlando to join in the fun.
On the Summit agenda, you’ll see that we have:
- Sessions about the future of Voxeo and our roadmap
- Product spotlights highlighting what is new in each of our products
- Business sessions showing you how you can grow your business
- Technical deep dives to help you get the most out of our services
- Feedback sessions where we want to hear…
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Skype 5.0 Beta 1 with multi-party video: Phil Wolff gives a tour…
Continue Reading: Skype 5.0 Beta 1 with multi-party video: Phil Wolff gives a tour…While I may rant about Skype’s multiparty video being Windows-only (or “kvetch”, according to the VoIP Princess), I still do think it is an excellent development. I’m on Skype conference calls quite often and it would be great to add video. More often, I’m in a video call with someone and we realize we need to bring someone into the call… which we do… and drop everyone to audio.So, rants aside, I’m very much looking forward to trying out the feature whenever Skype makes it available for the Mac. In the meantime, those of us who choose the Mac will have to live vicariously through blog posts such as this one from Phil Wolff at Skype Journal:
Notes from Skype Group Video Test
Phil went screenshot-happy and captured a whole sequence of shots experimenting with the new feature. Looks very cool.
Thanks for sharing, Phil.
P.S. And by the way… nice hat! 🙂 UPDATE: Just after publishing this post, I noticed that Phil has another post up, “Skype 5 beta and group video bandwidth” where he’s investigating the network paths and video used by the multi-party video. Good stuff!
If you found this post interesting or useful, please…
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Why I’m NOT excited about Skype 5.0 with group video calls
Continue Reading: Why I’m NOT excited about Skype 5.0 with group video callsBy all accounts I should probably be incredibly excited about Skype’s new 5.0 beta 1 with group video calling. After all, I’m a huge daily user of Skype and make video calls pretty much every day. It would be fantastic to be able to add video to some of the conference calls I do… particularly where I work with a globally distributed team.I should be excited… but I’m not.
Why?
Because yet again, Skype continues to follow their fractured and fragmented product strategy that I’ve ranted about before:
Skype 5.0 Beta 1 is Windows only.
I would love to try it out and use it… I’d be glad to give Skype feedback… I’d be glad to write about it here, talk about it and show it off on my video podcast… I’d tweet about and promote it on Facebook and other sites… as a fan, I’d love to help Skype promote its services!
But I can’t really…. yet.
You see, I use Macs exclusively these days. In fact, I work for a company of over 140 people… all of whom are Mac users… and all of whom are heavy Skype users. None of us can try this out. Sure……
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Photos from Voice Biometrics Conference 2010 – of speakers… and Manhattan…
Continue Reading: Photos from Voice Biometrics Conference 2010 – of speakers… and Manhattan…As I mentioned previously, I spoke at the Voice Biometrics Conference in Jersey City, NJ. While there, I brought along my Nikon D90 DSLR and took a series of pictures of the speakers at VoiceBioCon. Click on the image below to go over to the set on Flickr:The Hyatt Regency Jersey City turned out to be an incredible place to take pictures of Manhattan and the New York City area. The hotel is right on the river across from Manhattan. You could also see the Empire State Building down one direction… and the Statue of Liberty up in the other direction. The buildings in Jersey City were also quite amazing to shoot. Here is a set on Flickr of Manhattan and the Jersey City shore:
The conference itself was a great event… I’ll be writing up some thoughts from the event soon.
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Speaking at Voice Biometrics Conf next Tues, Weds, May 4-5, in NY
Continue Reading: Speaking at Voice Biometrics Conf next Tues, Weds, May 4-5, in NYIf any of you will be at the Voice Biometrics Conference next week (May 4-5) in the New York area (Jersey City, actually), I’ll be there speaking on Wednesday about ‘Seeding the Cloud – Authentication as a Service’. I’m arriving Monday evening and will be there through early Thursday morning.“Voice Bio Con”, as it is called, is a rather comprehensive gathering of the major players in the voice biometrics / voice authentication / voice verification space. Great agenda with some excellent speakers (and yeah, I’m on that list, too). I wrote over on the VOIPSA blog about the number of case studies and real world deployments that will be discussed.
It should be a great event… I’m on that panel and will also be talking about Voxeo’s voice biometric partner program where you can try out voice biometric solutions for free using our hosted platform and the hosted services from four of the major voice biometric vendors. I’m looking forward to meeting up with some friends there and undoubtedly having some great conversations and learning a good bit.
If you are at the event, please do say hello! If you want to go and haven’t registered yet, there’s a…
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Adhearsion open source telephony framework has new source code repository
Continue Reading: Adhearsion open source telephony framework has new source code repositoryI’ve long been a fan of the work that Jay Phillips did to create the Adhearsion open source telephony framework and so I was delighted to read today of news of its future. To give some context, Jay first created Adhearsion a number of years back because he was frustrated with how hard it was to create dial plans with the open source Asterisk PBX. So Jay went off and created a framework where a programmer could use the Ruby programming language to very simply create voice applications.Jay went on to team up with Jason Goecke to further develop Adhearsion and then last year Jay and Jason joined Voxeo (my employer) to create Voxeo Labs out in San Francisco. While Jay has since moved on, Jason continues to move Adhearsion forward and announced today that Adhearsion has a new home on Github … and hinted at much greater plans in store. I’m looking forward to seeing what all they may be…
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What will Skype be changing May 6th with “Skype Manager” replacing the Business Control Panel?
Continue Reading: What will Skype be changing May 6th with “Skype Manager” replacing the Business Control Panel?So what exactly will Skype be changing next week with regard to the Business Control Panel? No signs of change on Skype’s “business” page… no new posts on Skype’s business blog… or Skype’s main blog…Just an email that I, and presumably every other BCP user, received today:
We just wanted to let you know that on May 6, 2010, Skype Manager will automatically replace your Business Control Panel (BCP).
Everything you currently do in your BCP will be available within Skype Manager.
You can continue to manage your employee’s Skype accounts, allocate credit and assign features. But you can also do a lot more besides, all with the same sign in details.
From May 6, you will automatically start a free trial of Skype Manager, which will run until October 31, 2010.
We will be in touch again before the free trial ends to let you know the exact Skype Manager pricing for your business.
So ten days from now we all get “Skype Manager”, eh?
What will be the new features? I’m guessing from that last sentence that the “free” BCP will be going away… although that is not stated… and a free option could still be around.…
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Voyces.com launches as a “Independent voice on voice communications”
Continue Reading: Voyces.com launches as a “Independent voice on voice communications”Congrats are definitely in order to Alec, Andy, Jamie, Larry, Luca and Thomas on the launch of their new portal called “Voyces“. As Andy Abramson writes in his first post on the site:A few months ago a group of us, all of whom will be blogging here, got together and realized that with the declining media environment, less pages in the trade press and the failure of the remaining outlets to be able to provide enough coverage of what is still a very much growing sector, that there was a need to be filled. That need was the Independent voice on voice communications.
Alec Saunders writes in his first post about the changes in the communication space and says this:
The cost of entry to be in the business of delivering communications products is dramatically lower than it has ever been, and continues to fall. As a result we’ve seen an explosion of creativity in this space – a renaissance of sorts in which companies and individuals alike merrily combine communications, web, mobile and desktop technologies into a heady “witches brew” of innovation.
I’m delighted to see this team of six come together. I’ve known several of them…
Disruptive Telephony
Dan York on how Voice over IP is rewriting (almost) everything you thought you understood about telephony…