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Blabbelon, the cross-platform web-based VoIP app designed for video gaming, which I tested yesterday and posted a review today released an official statement about their new offering. I thought I'd share it since it has some good info to compliment my review posted this morning:

Stop Venting: Blabbelon Opens a New World for Gamers
Free, one-click, push-to-talk chat service eliminates Ventrilo frustrations;
No downloads, server rentals or limits on groups; Super wideband audio-quality voice chat using Skype's SILK audio codec

New York, NY- November 3, 2009 - You're about to jump on a MMOG and need to bring other players into a voice chat session. After time-consuming downloads, complicated invites and discovering that your best player can't join the chat because he's on a Mac and not a PC, you finally begin playing - just as your game is rudely interrupted by loud team members. Your voice chat system, which should be providing you with a better gaming experience, has become more trouble than it was worth. Now, Blabbelon is removing the headaches associated with antiquated voice chat services and offering users a new gaming experience.  

In just one click, Blabbelon users are up and running with the Internet voice chat service using Skype's SILK  super wideband audio codec - offering a free, high-quality push-to-talk voice service that uses approximately 50 percent less network bandwidth than previously required. Once a user enters a chat or "Blab," they can invite participants to join in numbers far greater than other push-to-talk services and easily manage their various groups through Blabbelon's extensive built-in administration features.

"I come from a family of avid gamers, and we were all frustrated with our options for online voice chat. I didn't understand why I couldn't just register once, click and talk and at the same time have the ability to easily invite people to join me, manage my various groups, and control my game through better quality communication. And so Blabbelon was born," said Ed Ikeguchi, founder and CEO of Blabbelon.

Acting like a giant walkie-talkie, Blabbelon is perfect for MMOs and other online gaming environments. Designed to overcome the range of limitations that come with other push-to-talk systems like Ventrilo, Blabbelon offers users: 

- One-Click Entry with No Downloads: Users register once for the service, and can start new chats (called Blabs) through a URL. Chats are run through a Web browser with no complicated start-up procedures and no software downloads, allowing other applications to run simultaneously while the Blab runs in the background.

- Fast Push-to-Talk/Low Lag: Blabbelon provides minimal delays in push-to-talk timing, ensuring quick reaction time to any in-game occurrences and lower lag times, while still providing superior voice quality with less bandwidth consumption.

- Party Control: Each user within a game is placed within a specific stereo space, giving administrators more control over their groups. Blab leaders can be assigned dominant push-to-talk capabilities- allowing features such as better management of unruly users and ensuring that sessions run smoothly without forcing session members to mute offending parties. Also, Blabbelon allows administrators to permanently ban unwanted users

- Party/RAID/Guild Security: Purchasing a server with other services often means that "chat leeches" continue to use the server without permission, but Blabbelon enables the administrator to set a wide-range of group security measures. Through Blabbelon, administrators can easily reset a URL, keeping leeches from re-navigating back to a voice server as with other services such as Ventrilo. 

- Multi-Platform Control: Blabbelon works on Windows, Mac, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome without the need to download any content, install new browser toolbars or submit passwords.

- Scalable: Each Blabbelon session can handle several thousand users.

- Privacy: Blabbelon is a personalized and private environment. Only invited and known users are allowed to join, and users can maintain complete anonymity through the use of in-system aliases.

"I used Ventrilo for years, but since trying Blabbelon for about a month now - I've converted my entire Guild - and we're all telling our friends about it. There's no comparison, really. It's easier to use, simpler to manage, sounds great - and it's free. What more could you ask for?" said Lance Hurd, guild master of True Blood of Malkier, Alliance Mok'Nathal.

Video gamers love VoIP in video games but have often been disappointed with poor voice quality - including jitter, lag, and choppiness, inability to continue to talk via VoIP once you close the game and just an overall poor user experience. Well, Blabblelon aims to change all that with the launch of their browser-based VoIP application which uses a mix of Java and Flash to VoIP-enable any PC, Mac, or Linux computer. The beauty of Blabbelon is that it works at the browser-level, so you can VoIP your friends whether you are inside the video game or not. With Blabbelon, you can blab all you want - even start your own blab-a-thon if you want.

Blabbelon is not to be confused with Babylon where the story goes that God wasn't too pleased with the Tower of Babel the people built, so he took one common language and confounded it into many so they couldn't understand each other. Well, Blabbelon may not be a Star-Trekkian universal translator-- or some anti-Tower-of-Babel gizmo helping you to understand what that French guy who just fragged you said, but it will give you crystal clear wideband HD voice.

Leveraging Skype's wideband SILK codec the audio quality is superb. In fact, as far as I know, this marks the first time anyone has embedded the SILK codec into Java. When I interviewed Blabbelon, I asked them if anyone else had successfully embedded Skype's SILK codec within Java and they confirmed they are the first. They pointed out that it took serious coding and some tricks to get the SILK codec embedded into Java. Dean Elwood, CEO of telecom provider Voxygen Limited and chief technology strategist of Blabbelon explained they are using a LAMP architecture on the back-end and the front-end is a combination of Java and Flash. Dean said, "Because Skype is only releasing binaries and not source code. The naked binaries are not Java, so we had to do a few tricks to get Java to work nicely with binaries for Mac and Windows. It's not an easy thing to do. Getting it into the browser we had to do some work."

The browser-based VoIP chat tool not only leverages Skype's SILK super wideband audio codec, but it can handle thousands of simultaneous users - up to 7,000 in fact. According to Blabbelon, "Blabbelon provides a platform for a wide variety of users such as: gamers securely competing in team-based quests; businesses running 7,000 person global conference calls; or grandparents taunting grandkids over a game of Facebook Scrabble."

I took it for a test drive and it worked pretty well with very good voice quality. I was able to hit a "hot key", by default the right Ctrl-key and then talk to my other test account. Here's a screenshot (click for larger image):

Father's Day is just around the corner, so no doubt you'll be wanting to get your dad some cool gadgets for his "man cave". Well, Walmart has some sick deals going on this Father's Day, including a $128 Magnavox Blu-ray Disc player (NB500MGX)! Wow, no reason to not have a Blu-ray player now. Man that's cheap! I remember when they were over $300. Other deals include select Blu-ray movies two for $20, inexpensive HDTVs, and more. Walmart explains, "Every dad has a man cave at home - the place you most likely will find him when he wants to relax. Starting June 14, Walmart is helping families find savings that add something more to man caves in his game room, garage and backyard." They break down the various cave types, including The Game Room/Living Room Cave, The Home Office Cave, Mobile Man Cave, The Deck Cave, and The Garage Cave. What, no Parlor Room Cave, Bathroom Cave, Kitchen Cave, Laundry Room Cave? Oh, those are for Mother's Day, you say?

Check out the full release after the jump...

Cox Communications today expanded its fastest broadband service to residential and business customers in Northern Virginia. Now offered in Fairfax County and Fredericksburg it delivers up to 50 Megabits per second (Mbps) downloads and 5 Mbps uploads using DOCSIS 3.0. Last month, this service was launched in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The third generation of cable's DOCSIS (Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specification) service introduces channel bonding, a technology that can bond parallel cable channels to transmit data at faster speeds. Speeds are further enhanced with PowerBoost™, a cable-exclusive technology that provides an extra burst of speed when it's needed.

Cox's Ultimate Internet package provides residential customers with the ability to download movies and music, share files, stream video and compete with gamers around the world, faster than ever. DOCSIS 3.0 meets the increasing bandwidth demands of multiple users while optimizing their online experience. Standard price for the residential Ultimate Internet package will be $139.99 per month, with an introductory rate of $109 per month.

Interestingly, Northern Virginia business customers will also be able to take advantage of DOCSIS 3.0 technology through Cox Business Internet's new "premium package". It too features download speeds up to 50 Mbps and 5 Mbps uploads, but they claim Cox Business Internet helps optimize support for corporate e-mail, online research and Web-based business applications. Yeah right. You're paying more for the premium business with the same speed as the home edition.

[Update - Cox informed me what the business offering gives you]
"50 Mbps business customers get 5 dynamic or static IP address, domain name hosting, the ability to support servers and 24/7 technical support. When bundled with other Cox services, the business service is priced between $200 and $300 depending on the length of contract. Home office business users pay only a slight premium above standard residential service."

So there is some value-add. I've just encountered too many instances of residential vs. business broadband offerings where it's the virtually the same thing but you pay a premium for business broadband. Several years ago TMC considered using Cablevision for our supplementary Internet access at TMC since it was only like $40 for 10Mbps vs. like $800-$1200 for a data T1 that's only 1.544Mbps. Yet, when we looked at the business cable offering it was much more than $40 and we didn't need the static IPs. So basically you're paying more just because you're a business.

Just as a fun test I took my personal home cable router (also Cablevision) plugged it into TMC's cable line and had high-speed Internet for the $40 rate. In theory, we could have ordered service under a residential plan, but that wouldn't be ethical. Still, I hate paying more for business broadband when I'm not using anything more than residential broadband.

The company has already launched DOCSIS 3.0 in Lafayette Parish, La., and plans to offer Ultimate Internet to several Cox markets by the end of 2009, and to more than two-thirds of its footprint in 2010.

Now if only Verizon (FiOS fiber-to-the-home), AT&T (Uverse Fiber-to-the-neighborhood), Comcast (DOCSIS 3.0 55mbps), or Charter Communications (cable broadband) would bring affordable high-speed Internet to my neighborhood. Stuck on pokey DSL!

Is it me, or this $130 NIC optimized for VoIP overkill? The idea behind this network interface card (NIC) is that it optimize packets and prioritizes games while offloading the voice processing from the CPU.

According to PC World:

...at the 2009 Game Developer's Conference, Bigfoot Networks has two announcements. The first: they are releasing the $130 Killer Xeno Pro card. The big deal this time around is that they've been able to get prices down, beef up the memory and pack on an additional chip that can offload the voice chat. A 400GHz NPU (as in Network Processing Unit -- oh, joy, another acronym!) bypasses the Windows network stack while an integrated audio chip offloads VoIP.

I know gamers are all about low latency while trash-talking their opponents using VoIP, but $130? Aren't PCs and NICs fast enough these days? Well, if you you have to have the every pico-second of latency minimized and want to shell out $130, then by all means have at it.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) announced that it plans to shut down Go!Messenger, a VoIP, video chat, and IM application that launched last February. Citing a lack of interest, Go!Messenger was an intriguing PSP app that leveraged the PSP Go!Cam camera for its video chat capabilities.

Sony explained "Although it proved a popular concept, achieving a significant number of registrations, it didn't gain the number of regular users that BT and SCEE were aiming for."

Go!Messenger will end on March 31. But all is not lost. Skype for PSP still works, but it's too bad Skype for PSP doesn't support the Go!Cam for some Skype-to-Skype video chat action.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Go!Messenger VoIP app for Sony PSP goes bye bye next month (crunchgear.com)
• PSP Go!Messenger No Longer Going Come April [Europe] (kotaku.com)

Apparently, my skepticism over Nortel web.alive was lost on Lenovo since Nortel and Lenovo today announced the first-ever customer to its web.alive Virtual World Application. Lenovo uses web.alive to let shoppers browse, demo and interact with other shoppers and Lenovo Staff in real-time 3D.

In addition, Nortel has licensed the Unreal gaming Engine for web.alive Engine which they claim will create more realistic, interactive 3D Environment for Web 3.0 Collaboration, Training and Commerce. Wow, I used to play Unreal on my old PC. If Nortel web.alive uses the Unreal Engine and looks anything like the video game I used to play, then maybe I'll retract some of my skepticism.


                                                       Unreal Tournament 2004

Here's both news releases coming out any second on the newswires...

Just months after announcing its incubation efforts to develop web.alive, a new virtual world business application, Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] today announced that Lenovo, one of the world's largest manufacturers of personal computers, is using the application in a new online virtual store as a way to give consumers an exciting new avenue for e-commerce.

The Lenovo "eLounge" virtual store is being showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week at the Venetian Hotel's AquaKnox.

What are the benefits of virtual stores?
• Shoppers can create personalized avatars to walk around the 3D virtual store and browse through products while interacting with other shoppers and sales staff from around the globe.
• Shoppers can also attend product demonstrations or tutorials given by the virtual store staff.
• People can build social/virtual shopping communities/groups and host online shopping get-togethers with their network of friends, family and associates - a concept defined as assisted e-commerce or social shopping.
• Customer service online is taken to an entirely new level as customers do not need to email, click to call or deal with hundreds of pages of forum based questions and answers. If a customer has a question, they can simply log on and walk up to a customer service representative or ask another customer with a high feedback rating.
• Businesses can use their online stores to test out new store designs/ideas - in a virtual setting.
Interested in seeing Lenovo's virtual store prototype?
• To see the new Lenovo eLounge, visit www.lenovo.com/elounge** or visit them at CES at the Venetian Hotel's AquaKnox.
• For more information on web.alive, visit www.projectchainsaw.com or www.nortel.com/webalive.

OTTAWA - Nortel'* [NYSE/TSX: NT] announced it has licensed Epic Games' Unreal Engine for Nortel's new web.alive virtual world software application.
"The Unreal gaming engine provides an array of core technologies, content creation tools, and support infrastructure essential to Nortel's web.alive application," said Arn Hynman, web.alive chief architect. "By collaborating with Epic Games and licensing the Unreal Engine, we are enabling our customers to benefit from the same platform that powers industry-leading video games and complex 3D simulations."

"The Unreal Engine enables companies to build dynamic, interactive virtual worlds for the next-gen workforce, and this licensing agreement signifies Nortel's commitment to take its e-commerce and learning initiatives to the next level," said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games. "Nortel's web.alive application uniquely showcases how Epic's engine technology can be leveraged to improve business collaboration."

To learn more about the Nortel and Epic collaboration and to hear an interview with Arn Hyndman and Mark Rein, visit http://podcast.nortel.com/podcasts2/nortel_web_alive_7961.mp3.

web.alive integrates spatial, high-definition audio and customized 3D spaces with conventional telephony, corporate systems and software to create a "real-life" experience in a virtual environment. Epic's Unreal Engine 2.5 enables the display of stunning 3D environments and avatars with lifelike movements and interactivity. Nortel brings this impressive capability to your web browser as a thin client.

Nortel has also announced that Lenovo, one of the world's largest manufacturers of personal computers, is using web.alive in a new online virtual store as a way to give consumers an exciting new avenue for e-commerce.
Nortel's web.alive is a collaborative, browser-based virtual world application for enterprise use that provides an immersive, interactive and web integrated world with 3D voice and graphics. The application facilitates internal collaboration as well as customer interactions over the web and in real time. web.alive brings new dimensions to business collaboration, virtual training and ecommerce. For more information on web.alive, visit www.projectchainsaw.com or www.nortel.com/webalive.

Logitech today introduced what they deem a "Game-Changing Gameboard" called the Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard. Hyperbole aside, the Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard is an interesting concept. It sports a naturally contoured design, on-board memory, customizable backlighting, and programmable keys. A keyboard with memory? What's next? A keyboard which is a full-fledged PC? Oh wait, that's been done.

Anyway, the Logitech G13 advanced gameboard is a hybrid gaming keyboard designed to complement your Logitech keyboard and mouse. It gives you 25 programmable keys and an analog stick, as well and three game modes to help the PWN factor against your gaming buddies.

The Logitech G13 is basically a mini-version of the Logitech G15, which is a full-sized traditional keyboard that costs just about the same as the G13. Personally, I prefer full-sized keyboards for gaming, with programmed buttons & macros, but to each their own.

Logitech stated, "Whether you're rescuing hostages, on a quest with your guild or saving humanity, you don't want to worry about hand fatigue or hitting the wrong key."

The iconic contoured design complements the natural shape of your hand and fingers, while the smooth, concave home-row keys make it easy to locate buttons by touch. With three game modes, 25 programmable keys and a programmable analog stick, the G13 gameboard offers up to 87 ways for you to control your game (software installation required). And you can set up custom button-profiles for each one of your favorite titles. You can even create macros on the fly without having to pause your game.

And for another tactical advantage, the 160-by-43-pixel GamePanel LCD shows live game stats, system info and even messages from other players. Though look away from the computer screen at your own peril!

With the G13 gameboard, you'll also get backlit keys that help you easily locate the right key in low-light conditions or lights-out play. And you can select from hundreds of available backlight colors.

A handy solution for the laptop gamer, the G13 gameboard includes onboard memory, letting you program up to five ready-to-play profiles and take them with you to your next LAN party. The G13 gameboard also offers pre-configured settings for many popular games, including World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™, Call of Duty® 4: Modern Warfare™ and many others.

Pricing and Availability
The Logitech G13 advanced gameboard is expected to be available in the U.S. and Europe in December for a suggested retail price of $79.99 (U.S.). Question is will it be available before Christmas?

More than half of U.S. adults play video games, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and 20% do so daily.

The survey of 2,054 U.S. adults was conducted late last year, with a margin of error of 25.

People from all walks of life play, although younger adults are far more likely to play than seniors, proof that video games are mainstream entertainment for the generations that grew up with them. In all, 81% of respondents between 18 and 29 said they play games, compared with 23% of people 65 and older.

Another Pew survey this fall found that nearly every teenager -- 97% -- is a gamer.

The gender gap between gamers was not what would be predicted by old stereotypes painting video game fans as young men who need to get outside more -- 50% of women and 55% of men play video games.

The Boston Globe/The Associated Press

Ho ho ho!

'Tis the season for steep discounts on gadgets goods on the Internet. According to this article in Electonista, online shopping sites such as Buy.com, HP.com, SonyStyle.com, Newegg.com, OnSale.com and RefurbDepot.com all are offering big savings.  

Buy.com has cut prices on everything from MP3 players and digital photo frames to GPS units and notebook computers. Prices are slashed on everything from wireless routers and printers to wireless mice and Bluetooth stereo headphones at HP.com.

SonyStyle.com is offering deals on notebooks, iPod docks, game consoles, digital cameras, HDTVs and more as well as gift cards this holiday season.

Until December 31st Newegg.com is offering specials on their HDTV collection and until December 11th enter to win a $5,000 Newegg gift certificate in the Holiday Wishlist Sweepstakes.

Deals on notebooks, monitors, iPod docking stations, and Bluetooth headsets can be found at OnSale.com. The Holiday Superstore at RefurbDepot.com has great gift ideas from digital cameras to desktop computers at a range of prices.