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VoIP in Google ChromeOS

November 20, 2009 9:24 AM |

Google released their ChromeOS operating system yesterday. So naturally, as a VoIP fan I was curious if ChromeOS could run VoIP. Since Google's ChromeOS has a Flash Player built-in, in theory it can run a Flash-based VoIP client. The first VoIP solution that came to mind was Flaphone (formerly Flashphone), a Flash-based VoIP app which runs in a browser. I first discovered Flaphone back in 2007 and did a review of it.

Well, it appears that Flaphone works in ChromeOS. It's worth noting that Flaphone can make VoIP calls to PSTN numbers using any SIP provider you want. Just enter the SIP credentials and away you go! You can also make calls to Skype and Flaphone's callme button widgets also work in ChromeOS.

Update: Looks like TringMe is jumping on the Goolge ChromeOS news as well. Just got an email from their CEO claiming they are "first" to have VoIP in ChromeOS. Well, not to burst your bubble, but Flaphone supports it as well. Let's just call it a tie for "first" and call it a day.

Google has just released the first version of ChromeOS. Give that it is a browser-based OS, one of the key element - that of Voice & Telephony is missing in it. As of now, there is no native VoIP application on it (at least not in the VmWare image which was released). TringMe's Flash Telephony is the first one to support VoIP calls on ChromeOS seamlessly. TringMe enables true VoIP calls directly from ChromeOS without having to install anything.

Although, TringMe has not done nothing special to support ChromeOS, it is important to note that TringMe's Flash Phone and Widgets work seamlessly in ChromeOS. TringMe enables true VoIP calls directly from ChromeOS without having to install anything. We've tested it and the built-in Flash Player 10 is sufficient for enough for TringMe's Phone and Widgets to work well.

So, we are all excited about ChromeOS and feel extremely happy that our Flash telephony technology is working well for ChromeOS without any special needs.

Best
Yusuf
Founder & CEO, TringMe

Via Flaphone blog

fring for Google Android Launches

November 18, 2009 10:10 AM |

2 Comments

fring is finally available for the Google Android. It's about time! One drawback though is that SIP and SkypeOut calls are not yet available on Droid devices. There's always a catch...

In addition to Skype chat and Skype-to-Skype VoIP calling you also get MSN and GoogleTalk support, real-time presence and live chat with ICQ, Yahoo! and AIM buddies as well. fring even has Twitter support. fring on Android works over 3G, GPRS or Wi-Fi connections.

So how do you get it?

Two ways:

1) From Android Market
Start the Market application on your phone
Search for fring and install

2) From WAP on your phone
On your Android phone, go to Settings > Applications and check the box to allow 'unknown sources'
Point your phone browser to fring.com and download fring manually

Check out the video:

Via fring blog

Mashup Google Wave, Skype, and Asterisk = Ultimate Coolness

November 5, 2009 2:10 PM |

2 Comments

Skype Journal wrote about one of the coolest mashups I've ever seen. Certainly one of the coolest VoIP mashups. Skype Journal explains PhoneFromHere Tim Panton's demo that he gave at Astricon where Tim mashes up Google Wave, Skype, Asterisk running Skype for Asterisk and Ibook to make Skype calls from within a browser-based Google Wave.

Not only is it sans Skype client, but it has recordings (labeled by person speaking) of individual utterances, so you can quickly playback what a particular person said at a certain point in time.

It's amazing to make a Skype call from a browser without running the Skype client. How do you ask? Well, it uses a browser-based Skype client using a IAX2 Java client to communicate with Asterisk which then communicates with the Skype network cloud. On top of it all you get Google Wave's powerful collaboration capabilities.

Perhaps some IP address geocoding combined with Google Maps to show the speakers' locations might be nice addition to this mashup. Or even pulling down Facebook profile pictures. There is definitely some awesome potential for this.

Maybe Google can even stick your Google Wave/Skype/Asterisk collaboration sessions into their newly released, centralized, Borg/hive, data-collecting, privacy-busting Google Dashboard?

Ribbit Mobile Launches

November 3, 2009 9:59 AM |

3 Comments

Ribbit today announced the release of Ribbit Mobile, a free communication suite designed for mobile professionals who need to be able to easily manage all of their phone numbers, communication devices, and how & when they are contacted.

Ribbit Mobile is a cloud-based service that lets you manage calls, messages and phones. It's hard not to compare this new offering to Google Voice. One advantage of Ribbit Mobile is that it can make calls from within your browser using their Flash-based software client. Ribbit Mobile features include voicemail transcription, smart call routing, and web-based calling. During the introductory (beta) period, Ribbit is making their "Professional" package free.

Since it leverages Ribbit's open VoIP platform, it can even call your Skype, MSN or Google Talk account, as well as SIP devices.

Additionally, when a new voicemail arrives, Ribbit can notify you via email, Google Talk, Skype, or SMS. Ribbit Mobile transcribes voicemail to text and sends it to you via SMS and email. It also provides a web portal inbox where messages can be managed and stored forever. No voicemail retention limit which is nice.

Ribbit Mobile also has something they like to call "Caller ID 2.0" which links your Ribbit contacts address book with your contact's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr accounts. You can see recent updates made by your contacts to their social networks and pictures of your contacts as seen here:

Google Gods are Killing Me - PageRank 6 drops to PageRank 3

August 5, 2009 12:32 PM |

8 Comments

The Google Gods are really starting to ~~piss~~ tick me off. For years the VoIP & Gadgets blog has had a PageRank of 6 (PR6) and sometimes as high as PR7. As of July of last year the PageRank dropped to PR3 and then went back up to PR4 for quite some time. This week it's back at PR3. I have never seen such as precipitous drop in PageRank except for sites experiencing a dreaded "Google Penalty". So I went through all the steps Google recommends to see if there is indeed a penalty. First, I tried the Google Webmaster Tools and submitted a sitemap, but I didn't see any reported penalties. I also did the suggested Google reinclusion request but still my PageRank was stuck at 3/4. It's now been over a year. We use virtually the same templates globally on all blogs, so if there is a penalty, I would expect it to occur on all the blogs

However, all of TMC's blogs (even brand new ones) have a PR5 or PR6, which is better than mine even though I have more links & traffic than any of them. Not to toot my own horn, I've been quoted/linked to by Engadget, Gizmodo, San Francisco Chronicle, GigaOM, Slashdot, The Inquirer, O'Reilly,TechDirt, and many more. I broke the major Skype outage news story back in 2007. I'm also a Microsoft MVP award winner and have written many reviews on gadgets and VoIP products. Let me stop slapping myself on the back and present some facts why I believe Google is either intentionally penalizing my blog or their Pagerank algorithm is faulty. Either way, Google needs to make it easier for legitimate websites to discover why their websites are being penalized or explain why a PR6 site becomes PR3 overnight.

Check out this chart of similar gadget and VoIP blogs followed by my analysis: (Note: Higher is better for all values)

Website	Description	*Google Backlinks	PageRank	**Yahoo Backlinks
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/	TMC VoIP & Gadgets Blog	1,740	3	2,035,831
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/	TMC Communications Blog (my own boss beats me with less backlinks!)	1,400	5 (was 6 recently)	84,286
http://www.gadgetvenue.com	Similar gadget-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog	421	6	34,669
http://www.voip-news.com/	Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog	1,220	6	56,565
http://skypejournal.com/	Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog	1,740	5	16,548
http://www.asteriskvoipnews.com/	Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog	300	5	50,564
http://www.planetasterisk.org/	Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog & they aggregate my content	216	5	10,324
http://blog.digium.com/	Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog but with multiple bloggers	191	6	4,788
http://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch/	Similar VoIP-oriented site to VoIP & Gadgets Blog	2,190	5	85,764
		*Google doesn't report all your backlinks		**Yahoo reports backlinks more accurately

You'll notice that every single one of these websites has a higher PageRank than I do. Yet, if you look at the Google Backlinks, I'm tied with Skype Journal for the most Google backlinks, while all the others are lower - often much lower. I should point out that this 1,740 number is not accurate. Google limits the number of backlinks they display, which probably explains why Skype Journal and I have the exact same number. I actually have many more backlinks than 1,740. This is confirmed when you look at Yahoo! Backlinks where I sport a whopping 2,035,831 backlinks. I beat all the other websites I listed combined (343,508) by nearlt a 6X factor!

So how is it that I only have a PageRank/PR of 3? That's simply not possible. So the next question any webmaster might ask "Is there a penalty due to any blackhat SEO going on?". Well, there certainly isn't any blackhat SEO going on within my blog's HTML source code. Still, I poured over my Movable Type CMS templates to see if anything might trip the Google penalty filters. Nothing out of the ordinary. I ask another SEO expert his thoughts and he thought my blog was clean. He suggested I try the reinclusion request again.

Continue reading Google Gods are Killing Me - PageRank 6 drops to PageRank 3.

D2 Technologies Showcases its mCUE Converged Communications Client with Embedded VoIP for Android at OESF Japan

July 28, 2009 1:11 PM |

0 Comments

Some interesting news from D2 Technologies about them showcasing their mCUE™ converged communications client with embedded VoIP for Android at OESF Japan. I should point out that D2's mCUE mobile convergence software solution combines a communications user interface with the company's vPort MP VoIP software platform and is targeted towards OEMs and service providers to help deliver integrated Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) and Unified Communications (UC) functionality.

At OESF they will demo how mCUE can enable VoIP, video chat and other IP communications capabilities in stationary Android-based embedded equipment and consumer electronics devices. With mCUE, these devices can offer premium multi-service unified communications capabilities and deliver simultaneous interoperability with any communication service provider, Instant Messaging (IM) community or social networking platform. All popular communication modes are converged to a single communications user interface (UI), including circuit switched voice (PSTN or cellular), VoIP, Instant Messaging (IM), SMS and video chat.

Full release after the jump...

Continue reading D2 Technologies Showcases its mCUE Converged Communications Client with Embedded VoIP for Android at OESF Japan.

Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway?

July 24, 2009 9:42 AM |

1 Comment

I came across a Microsoft page that lists "OCS R2 XMPP Gateway" with a General Availability date of 9/28/09. Very interesting. This would enable for example Google Talk (XMPP) users to instant message (IM) OCS users. Jabber XCP has a "SIP/SIMPLE gateway" as well, but I would assume a Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 XMPP gateway might feature tighter integration.

For instance, it might automatically sync the XMPP users with the OCS 2007 contact list, so any users added to the XMPP server are automatically added to the OCS 2007 contact database, which then gets pushed out to all the OCS 2007 Communicator clients. No need to manually add an XMPP contact manually one-at-a-time. Of course, that's just speculation, so we'll have to wait and see what features this XMPP gateway has come 9/28/09!

Google Brings Location Info to iPhone's Safari

July 16, 2009 11:37 AM |

0 Comments

Google just added location info to Safari on the iPhone allowing you to see local businesses very quickly with a simple search. For instance, search on "coffee" and see the closest coffee shops or search on fast food places like Burger King or McDonald's. You can see local results (Norwalk, CT) in the screenshot to the right, along with the ability to manually enter a location, update current location

It works with the new iPhone 3.0 software. All you have to do is go to Google's homepage in Safari and you'll see text that reads, "New! Try My Location to find restaurants, shops and bars near you!"

When you attempt to allow Google to use your location info within Safari for the first time, the iPhone will pop open the usual message about sharing your location info with Safari which you have to accept or reject.

After accepting, you'll see a dot below the search box with your location info. Next, perform a search and Google will return local results. Even cooler, it appears to work in the popular Google app for the iPhone as well, which I prefer for quick local lookups since it supports fast (and accurate I might add) speech recognition searches as seen here:

Since Safari runs in the background this could potentially open the door to some interesting location-based services (LBS), since the alternative is 3rd party iPhone location apps which must remain running in the foreground, thus limiting their usefulness. In theory, a developer could write a hosted web app that tracks your current location and shares it with your spouse or buddy list. One could hope such an app is forthcoming - or maybe not depending on your privacy perspective.

Nimbuzz Launches Mac client

July 15, 2009 9:32 AM |

1 Comment

Nimbuzz following on top of last night's release of push notifications for their Apple iPhone app has today just released a Mac version of their popular IM/VoIP aggregator application. Nimbuzz supports Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, Google Talk, Facebook, MySpace, and more.

You can download the Mac client here.

Nimbuzz adds iPhone push notifications

July 14, 2009 11:48 PM |

2 Comments

Just noticed my iPhone listed an update for Nimbuzz and it now features highly-anticipated push notifications, thus allowing IMs, voicemail notification, etc. even if Nimbuzz is closed. This update also features faster login, improved buddy list layout, send & receive files and photos, and more. Downloading it now! smile

(ignore the date in the screenshot, that's the date the app first appeared in the App Store)

Update
Just tried it using Skype and Windows Live accounts. The push notifications didn't work in Windows Live. I'm trying Skype right now. Stay tuned...

Update 2:
Actually it does work. Even though when I first launched the app and I clicked "Yes" to allow push notifications, by default the "Stay Online" feature is disabled / off. Very intuitive eh?

Anyway, I had to click 'Settings', then 'Stay Online', and then pick 5, 15, or 30 minutes. Bummer that it's not 24 hours. 30 minutes is way too small. I recall some other push apps limited to 30 minutes. I wonder if this is a Steve Jobs imposed limitation?

Still, it's nice to be able to receive IMs from Skype, Windows Live, Yahoo!, AIM, and more while Nimbuzz is closed and I'm running other apps (up to 30 minutes). It also sports Facebook as well. Going to add that in now and test it.

Update 3:
Looks like Facebook IMs work as well. Pretty sweet! My only complaint now is that I have to scroll through hundreds of Facebook friends, Skype buddies, etc. ~~with no 'search' feature~~. ~~Would be nice to~~ Just type letters and it auto-matches as you type. (Weird, I didn't see the Search field before but it's there. Was late when I blogged this ~12:45am). I'd also like to see generic SIP support like truphone so I can add in any SIP credentials. This way I can configure it with my corporate IP-PBX.

Update 4: (9 hours later)
Looks like Nimbuzz also launched a Mac client too! Boy, they've been busy!

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Today

Tom Keating posted VoIP in Google ChromeOS 2009-11-20T16:05:30Z 2009-11-20T14:24:21Z
Tom Keating tweeted, "VoIP in Google ChromeOS: Google released their ChromeOS operating system yesterday. So naturally, as a VoIP fan I w... http://bit.ly/3T68Ox" 2009-11-20T14:23:33Z 2009-11-20T14:23:33Z

Thursday

Tom Keating queued Love Comes Softly Tom Keating queued Love Comes Softly Tom Keating queued Love Comes Softly 2009-11-20T03:06:22Z 2009-11-20T03:06:22Z
Tom Keating queued The Ultimate Gift Tom Keating queued The Ultimate Gift Tom Keating queued The Ultimate Gift 2009-11-20T03:06:22Z 2009-11-20T03:06:22Z
Tom Keating queued Love's Long Journey Tom Keating queued Love's Long Journey Tom Keating queued Love's Long Journey 2009-11-20T03:06:22Z 2009-11-20T03:06:22Z
Tom Keating queued Saints and Soldiers Tom Keating queued Saints and Soldiers Tom Keating queued Saints and Soldiers 2009-11-20T02:06:21Z 2009-11-20T02:06:21Z
Tom Keating tweeted, "RT @kramerandrea - Woohoo! Route 7 Bypass in Brookfield, Connecticut is open.Trip home tonight should have less traffic: http://bit.ly/CwwZO" 2009-11-19T21:17:12Z 2009-11-19T21:17:12Z
Tom Keating posted StarTech.com ConXit Connection Wizard Helps You Find Right Connector for Home Theater, PC, and more 2009-11-19T19:06:37Z 2009-11-19T21:14:54Z

More...

precoz: I am wondering, if the VOIP market is still increasing read more
Dustin: But that's not the point at all. The majority of read more
commangerYEK: Nicely done! read more
bstella: How did you get an email address to write to read more
Paul: Hi Mike, For Cisco (and normal SIP) passive VoIP recording read more
redshirt6: Yes, dying to know if it worked! rs6 read more
bruno.clermont: SkypeOut work only if I added their phone number as read more
bruno.clermont: I just installed it and try to do some call. read more
Kris: Tom, I'm curious. Did you ever get any resolution on read more
dsi r4: This is the age of smart phone.Nimbuzz launches it's phone read more