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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 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:

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.

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...

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 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 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.

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!
(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!

I was happily surfing the Web reading the Google News Top Stories when I saw a headline that said "No public viewing at Neverland, but Michael Jackson may get laid". Say what? I had to do a double-take. Then I couldn't help but laugh at how funny this headline was.

No public viewing of Michael Jackson getting laid? Bummer, I'm sure that could have been a pay-per-view event. It's The 40 50 Year Old Virgin movie come to life! Course that might be a problem unless it's some sick necrophilia action going on. Then again, Michael Jackson did play the undead / zombie in Thriller.

Ok, we'll let Michael Jackson Rest in Peace, though I'm sure he too would have laughed at this Google News headline.

Check out a screenshot of it below. Click for Full-screen. Look on the right-hand side. I drew an arrow as well as a box around it. The article in question can be read here. The full article headline is "No public viewing at Neverland, but Michael Jackson may get laid out at Staples Center". Obviously, the Googlebot abbreviated in a very bad spot. Perhaps a human editor might be in order, Google?

Lastly, since Google News changes the Top Stories home page often, you too can view this news story (in its funny abbreviated form) by clicking this Google News search link. It's abbreviated there too.

What if you could do Skype VoIP & video conferencing on the Google Android? Sounds pretty damn cool, doesn't it? Especially given all the media hype surrounding the new iPhone 3GS. I already tweeted my displeasure that the new Apple iPhone 3GS doesn't support Flash and also tweeted my annoyance that Apple didn't put a front-facing camera for video chat support using Skype. Thus, while the iPhone supports a native Skype app, it only supports VoIP and not video chat. And don't expect video chat anytime soon either. As Skype Journal remarked, "iPhone programmers can use the webcam to store video to a file, but won't be able to write apps that manipulate or route the stream. This means Skype for iPhone won't be able to add video calling any time soon."

Well forget about the damned new iPhone! I have a method that "should" enable Skype video chat on the Google Android mobile phone.

How do you ask? Well, first we need to "cook" in a Flash player into Google Android's ROM, since Flash support on the Android isn't officially released yet. But we're not waiting on Google, so let's get cookin'!

Here are the steps to get Skype video chat working on the Google Android:

1) Download the HTC SuperHero V2 ROM for the Google Android
2) To keep memory freed up and automatically install apps to SD, go download this. (direct link to .zip file here)
     Download a2sd.zip, unzip put the unzipped file onto your C drive
     Open command prompt and type these:
     adb remount
     adb push c:\a2sd.sh /system/bin
3) Upgrade to the latest SPL & radio by heading over to this page on android-unleashed.com
4) Launch Skype Flash application and make a video call to another Skype user.

Where the heck is the "Skype Flash" application you ask?

Oh, I'm sorry, I can't tell you that. I want to test this first to make sure it works & capture some screenshots to put here as proof.

Sorry to be such a tease, but I want to be the first to get a Skype video chat call to work on a popular mobile phone platform. Stay tuned though!

P.S. Check out the SuperHero V2 Official Release Change log:

• Cleaned up things to make space, updated boot.img thanks to Detox
• Drawables from ophone were added
• Slightly themed in many places by me & L3wish
• Flash player is back
• Multitouch browser
• Updated libs from ophone
• Led code implemented in init.rc by detox will not be used untill leds are fully working thanks to shasty for the led coding.
• All updated from beta 2 but now optomized to run very smooth and stable.
• Htc chirp still not working will update soon.
• Automatic apps to sd is pre loaded but not used unless you want just add the ap2sd.sh to bin

Release notes & how to upgrade ROM Via:
herog3.wicholandia.com
and
android-unleashed.com