Will Gizmo Project thwart Skype?
Source: gigaom.com
Michael Robertson, never the one to take things lying down, and always willing to promote the open standards is betting that his SIPphone’s Gizmo Project will become a worthy competitor to Skype, which has always been a closed format. Business 2.0 editor-at-large, Erick Schonfeld, believes that Robertson’s latest project has enough merit to give Skypers a pause. “The Gizmo Project hopes to become a private-label VOIP service for all the major Web companies that want to match what Skype offers,” he writes. In order to overcome the problems normally associated with SIP-based Softphones, Gizmo Project has spent a lot of time in building an easy to use interface that mimics most if not all Skype features. On Mac, it is even more beautiful. The SIP based softphones have been disregarded by consumers because of their kludgy interfaces and poorish sound quality. I think Gizmo project is fairly good on both accounts, and like Skype, it also uses the GIPS voice engine.
“Gizmo’s pretty good for a free phone call. I like it better than Skype because it has some cool added features: With Gizmo you can record any conversation and save it as an audio file on your computer, view a map showing a caller’s location, or select the music you want people on hold to hear.”
