Source: www.voip-news.com
Flashphone has released an Adobe AIR application, TMC reports. Like Phweet, Flashphone should — in theory — work on Aircell.
Do you Skype? If so, beware, there have been some mysterious hijackings that are leaving users locked out and paying for service they aren’t using. Read about it on The Register.
VoIP Watch has a great post on how to get better service on VoIP.
Source: goebel.net
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Much has been said about startups like Ribbit, Tringme or Flashphone which use the Flash browser plugin for click to call widgets. Aswath Rao even declares 2008 the Year of Flash based VoIP Clients. I can only say that you don’t have to wait till next year to call me for free using Flash. I love my Tringme call widget:
These calls are entirely free to you, because the caller speaks into the Flash widget on my website using a headset or the laptop’s built in phone and speaker. On Linux the sound is a little bit weird. The automatic voice, which says "please wait while we connect your call" before every connection, sounds like a 45 rpm record played on 33. The phone call itself sounds like Mickey Mouse, but still the the words are understandable. On Windows everything works just perfect.
Also to me these calls are entirely free. Other than my widgets from Sitfono and Voxalot where I have to pay to call the person who wants to contact me.
I achieve this by using FWD as SIP provider to power the Tringme widget. The Tringme account website says "Connect my phone and voicemail widget to Phone number or extension". Unfortunately it accepts only numbers and no SIP addresses in this input mask, but as a workaround I have simply put my FWD number there. In the "TringPhone SIP Settings" part of the account configuration I left my FWD login data. Which means that every Tringme call is in fact a free FWD on net call. You can probably do the same with Gizmo Project’s SIP account data and phone numbers, as well as with many other VoIP providers.
Also there is another widget for people who don’t want to talk to me, but just leave a voicemail.
Only seconds later I get a call and a voice says "You have a Tringme" before it plays the message. The Tringme widgets are much better than Gizmocall which also allows free calls from a website.
You could call me for free by simply typing http://www.gizmocall.com/mgoebel in your browser’s address bar. This website also uses Flash, but additionally you have to install a plugin for Windows or Mac. For ten months yet Gizmo owes us a Linux plugin. Although the company’s CEO, Michael Robertson, even has his own Linux distribution, Linspire.
But why bother? The Flash browser plugin gets more and more versatile and works on all platforms. It’s a new way to disrupt the telco industry, circumventing the PSTN and offering a new option for free phone calls that so many people appreciate.
So, if you want, please give me a Tringme call!
And, before you ask: No, I couldn’t get Truphone’s Facebook application running, which should basically do the same like Tringme, only that it uses Java. After one week of tinkering I gave up. But congratulations for winning the "Red Herring 100 Global" Award.
Source: gigaom.com
Updated with more details: Adobe Systems has become the underpinning of the online video revolution. But when it comes to melding voice and web applications, they seem to be falling behind, despite having grand ambitions and a vision to match.
I first wrote about Adobe’s (ADBE) VoIP/voice plans back in September of 2006 . It has been eerily quiet on that front since then. This September, Adobe talked about a secret project called Pacifica, which uses SIP and currently enables point-to-point communications, but it is far from being deemed complete.
Updated: Our sources indicate that Adobe’s VoIP efforts have some internal challenges. For instance, the whole project is dragging because the company is trying to figure out how to monetize its efforts and get people to user their server-side offering as a backend. Adobe doesn’t want a repeat of online video, where YouTube got the upside of Flash video. Nevertheless, our sources indicate that the Adobe will soon have an update that would have SIP P2P enabled functionality.
And as Adobe plods its way forward, suddenly there’s a whole slew of companies already building VoIP applications, including soft clients, that use SIP for voice calling and Flash to interface with the end user. There is a lot of talk about Ribbit and Tring Me, for example; we’ve also heard about Pudding Media’s VoIP client for Meebo, Flashphone, and of course Jeff Pulver’s reboot of Free World Dialup, now called FWD International.
The problem is that most of these companies are using their own workarounds to make voice connections over SIP. In a typical Flash client, voice is encoded in the g711 codec, carried to proprietary servers that connect, in turn, to SIP servers. As these startups start to gain traction, their workarounds will sooner or later begin to obviate the need for a Flash Voice Server.
My good friend Aswath says that Flash-Voice is going to be big in 2008, and that “we are set to see lots of VoIP clients based on Flash that uses UDP for media transfer.” If Adobe wants to play a role in the web-voice business, it’d better hurry up.
