Recently in VoIP Category

Skype has been striving to improve the usability of Skype and give more prominence to other features such as video by rearranging Skype's interface in version 4.0. They also have improved conversation management. Today, Skype released Skype 4.0 beta 3 for Windows.

So what's new in Skype 4.0 beta 3? New is this version, is an abuse reporting feature, which will give you the option to report any users you are blocking to Skype. According to Skype, "Under the hood we have also added a bandwidth manager which will enable better call quality."

They also have also brought back the Call Quality feedback area, Outlook Contacts and full History. They've added full History features, as promised when we launched Beta 2. You can browse and search past conversations by event type (instant messages, incoming calls, outgoing calls, and so on), making it easy to retrieve information about who was involved and what was said. You'll find the History button at the bottom of the Conversation tab. There's also a new download manager for file transfers and they customized Windows Chrome to give a spiffy new look.

Full release notes for the build 4.0.0.176 are:

* feature: Abuse reporting - allow users to report unwanted contact requests and Spam
* feature: Call Quality Feedback button
* feature: Skype Prime payments support
* feature: Outlook Contacts
* feature: Custom Chrome
* feature: History
* feature: My Account in Client 2
* improvement: Options panel updated
* improvement: improved layout of profile area in group conversations
* improvement: Instant Messaging display
* improvement: Call Toolbar
* improvement: More visible button to switch between default and classic view
* improvement: Improved bandwidth allocation methods
* improvement: Changes to file sending design
* change: Getting Started Wizard improvements
* change: Extras Manager updated to version 2.0.0.65
* change: Removed AMR-WB audio codec
* bugfix: Skype occasionally crashed on login on Windows XP SP1
* bugfix: When entering the symbol & into your mood message then it changed to &amp
* bugfix: Call cost for calls to phones was not displayed
* bugfix: When resuming download wrong estimate was shown
* bugfix: The confirmation page for Adding a phone number contact showed html code
* bugfix: Light Installer did not show plugin installing options on re-install
* bugfix: Right hand blue canvas placement fixes
* bugfix: Instant message sound notifications did not always play
* bugfix: The duration of your voicemail recording was displayed incorrectly
* bugfix: Jpeg error was shown when viewing profile
* bugfix: First character in Cyrillic was displayed incorrectly in quickfilter
* bugfix: Instant message windows in compact view were not always in focus
* bugfix: High Quality Video call logo overlapped some call controls
* bugfix: Webcam not available message not displayed
* bugfix: Links to webpages which contained @ were not clickable
* bugfix: Incoming message notifications did not always clear
* bugfix: In compact view, instant message windows sometimes popped up when they shouldn't
* bugfix: In compact view, new incoming instant messages did not pop up
* bugfix: Local network contacts online status showed incorrectly on occasion
* bugfix: Japanese language input was problematic
* bugfix: Web links caused "unable to launch web browser" error for people who have AOL broswer installed
* bugfix: Group conversations did not act consistently with contact categories
* bugfix: Occasionally Skype crashed on login
* All localizations updates

One has to wonder when the Skype 4.0 final version will be released. If I had to guess I would say mid-February.

Skype 4.0 Beta 3 Download

More from Skype:
http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2008/12/skype_40_beta_3_for_windows.html

snom and Camrivox today announced free VoIP telephony integration with Microsoft Outlook with snom Flexor CTI software for Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Outlook is the most widely used contact manager with a market share of over 60% of email users. A free CTI app for snom's VoIP phones? I remember the days where you had to pay thousands of dollara for a CTI server. No CTI server required for this app nor the thousands of dollars!

The highlights of this integration are:

• On-screen Click-to-Dial makes calling really simple and screen pop-ups when someone calls
• Calls, made or received, automatically create a journal entry with the call details to build up a call log
• Supports Microsoft Outlook 2003 & 2007

snom Flexor CTI enables users of snom's 3xx series and snom 820 VoIP telephones to integrate their telephony with Outlook. Benefits include click-to-dial, contact screen pop-ups and call logs. Once the snom Flexor CTI software is downloaded onto a user's desktop it automatically integrates the snom telephone with Microsoft Outlook.

snom Flexor CTI for Outlook also enables click-to-dial of phone numbers dialed straight from Outlook, as well as on-screen call control, contact screen pop-ups for incoming calls, and call reporting. Users can also record notes in Outlook Journal entries during a call and have these saved against each contact record to generate a structured call log for each contact.

The snom Flexor CTI software is also available to integrate snom VoIP telephones with professional solutions for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NetSuite and Salesforce.

To download free snom Flexor CTI for Outlook head here.

Truphone is now bringing low-priced international calls to the iPhone even when not connected to Wi-Fi. In case you don't recall, Steve Jobs will only allow VoIP over Wi-Fi and not over a 3G data connection. So has Truphone enabled VoIP over a 3G connection for the Apple iPhone? Not quite. It's a callback system similar to Jajah that uses the 3G voice bearer channel not the data channel. So you're still using voice minutes. But if you have an unlimited bucket of voice minutes, you make international calls across the internet for as little as £0.03/$0.06 [UK/Rest of World] per minute even when they're not connected to the Internet using Truphone Anywhere. Today Truphone also announed inbound Truphone calling on the iPhone making it possible to have completely free Truphone calls between two iPhones.

Truphone Anywhere works by connecting to a local Truphone server, which then connects the long-distance part of the call over the internet, i.e. VoIP. The local connection to Truphone is, typically, free because it uses bundled minutes from the customer's usual cellular service provider.

Unlike calling card solutions, Truphone Anywhere doesn't require a user to remember what to do. Whenever an international number is dialed from outside Wi-Fi, Truphone Anywhere simply asks whether he/she wants to make a Truphone call. The user simply accepts, and Truphone connects the call.

The second new key feature - inbound calling for Truphone on the iPhone - works in all countries. Using the new 'presence' feature, iPhone users can see which of their other Truphone-using contacts are online, including contacts who also have Truphone on their iPhone. This makes it possible to place, for the first time, a free iPhone-to-iPhone Truphone call.

Benefits of Truphone for the iPhone:

• Truphone routes calls over the internet whenever possible, saving loads of money both on international calls from a user's home country and on calls when connected to Wi-Fi abroad
• Truphone routes calls over the internet, so customers don't need to worry about poor mobile reception. Calls are crystal clear and voice quality is superb from almost any Wi-Fi zone
• No monthly line rental, subscription or other hidden charges. Truphone customers only ever pay for the calls they make. Additional credit is simply purchased online, or an account may be set to top up [refill] automatically when it falls to a certain level
• Truphone is free to download via the iPhone App Store and takes seconds to install. New customers receive £1/$1 [UK/RoW] free calling credit to get them started
• With Truphone's American Tru Saver bundle, calls within and to the USA and Canada can be as low as 0.75 pence/1.5 cents [UK/RoW] per minute
• Calls within and to 40 countries (including UK, Australia, Brazil and most of Europe) are £0.03/$0.06 [UK/RoW] per minute to landlines and £0.15/$0.30 [UK/RoW] per minute to mobiles
• making a Truphone call is easy: open the Truphone application and dial as normal. Truphone uses the iPhone's own address book.

With a slowing global economy, one of the cost-cutting measures desired by IT personnel appears to be the desktop phone, including desktop IP phones. That at least according to an OnRelay survey that shows 88% of cost-conscious IT Professionals would ditch the desktop phone. Apparently, the desire for for mobile working makes desktop tools a low priority expense. I should point out that OnRelay offers a hosted PBX solution with mobile phone only extensions, so you might think this survey has a conflict of interest. However, OnRelay's solutions can work with existing PBXs and desktop phones, so there isn't necessarily a conflict.

In any event, today OnRelay published results from a survey revealing the personal business tools IT professionals couldn't be without, and the equipment they would give up as corporate budgets tighten. Their answers show a clear preference for the mobile office, and question corporate spend on technologies that those in IT have already left behind.

OnRelay surveyed 330 IT professionals in UK enterprise. Reflecting today's tougher economic choices, they were asked to select the four office IT tools they see as essential - out of a list of nine items.

Those surveyed were asked to choose from: the laptop; desktop PC; virtual private network (VPN) access; mobile phone; Blackberry™, desk phone; video conferencing; or their own personal desk.

The top three items chosen by the IT professionals were all mobile office technologies. The laptop came in as the most essential item - making the must-have list of 88% of respondents. The mobile phone came second at 74% of respondents, followed by VPN access (69%).

The least chosen items emphasise the low priority end-users place on fixed desktop equipment. The office desk phone was the tool those questioned were most willing to give up, with only 18% listing the desk phone as essential. This is akin to the 20% who prioritised a desktop PC, and the 22% who chose video conferencing as a must-have.

OnRelay's survey provides insight into IT professionals' disengagement with desktop tools. Although the majority of those questioned (87%) currently had an office desk phone, if given the choice, 88% said they would choose the mobile as their one business phone.

The underuse of the desk phone is already apparent from the fact that only 3% of those surveyed said they forwarded their calls to mobile when away from their desk. A full 54% of IT professionals admitted to never forwarding their desk phone calls, whilst only 10% forward their calls when away from the office.

"This survey shows that IT decision makers want wireless, use wireless, and will lead the drive to cut the cord as budgets tighten," comments OnRelay, CFO Marie Wold. "Costly desk phones will rapidly be phased out of IT budgets to be replaced by mobile-only telephony. The current economic climate is accelerating this shift towards mobile integration in the corporate."

We do indeed live in a mobile world, but do I see the desktop phone going the way of the dinosaur anytime soon? Not likely. There are just too many advantages to a desktop phone, including a larger LCD, higher quality speakerphone, more feature buttons & speed dials, and more. Still, it was an interesting survey worth sharing.

Skype's Mobile team has overhauled Skype for Windows Mobile and released Beta 2.5 today. The new beta features improved sound quality, better stability and a more familiar user interface. Will have to give it a try on the XV6700 running Windows Mobile 6.1.

Download it now here:
http://www.skype.com/go/windowsmobile.

Back in September I wrote about Fonality's trixbox Unified Agent Edition (UAE) and how it can automatically match all inbound and outbound calls with the corresponding record in salesforce.com's AppExchange, and call data is captured and logged. Apparently, this was still a yet-to-be-announced product I wrote about that resulted in a call from Fonality's CEO Chris Lyman asking how I found out about it. Woops, my bad, Chris.

Well, today, Fonality has officially launched UAE. I spoke with Chris Lyman to learn more about this product. Chris told me, "What we've done is allow managers and agents using CRM and a phone system to make some pretty serious decisions about how they run their business and what we consider some major cost savings."

Chris explained that they pumped the CDR (call data records) from Fonality's PBXtra into Salesforce.com. Once the CDR data is housed in Salesforce.com obvious business benefits can be realized. You can for instance know when customers called you or when you last called a particular customer. Importantly, with the reporting mechanisms you can understand how long it takes to call a lead or opportunity and how that affects your close rate. The reports allow you to for example easily see "neglected opportunities" such as 'opportunities that have not been contacted in XX minutes'.  This lets you see how long does it takes an agent to make a first contact for a lead/customer/opportunity that been created inside the CRM system. Here's a screenshot of some of the reports:
[click for larger image]


Fonality UAE brings a whole new level of CRM integration with PBXtra, an Asterisk-based system. This tight-level of integration with an Asterisk-based system with the popular Salesforce.com hosted CRM platform is great news for the Asterisk community. While Asterisk-based systems have made in-roads in the contact center space, heavyweights like Nortel and Avaya still win a huge share of the contact center space because of their advanced CRM integration. So the more Asterisk-based solutions offer advanced CRM applications, the better for the Asterisk ecosystem. We'll see more Asterisk deployments in contact centers as a result.

It's worth mentioning that Digium's Switchvox IP-PBX also offers integration with CRM apps, including Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. I saw a demo of Switchvox's web-based panels down in Huntsville, Alabama. I remember it supported querying Salesforce.com on an inbound call (screenpop), but don't recall if it supported querying Salesforce.com on an outbound call. I'm also not sure to what level Switchvox offers reporting on inbound & outbound calls tied to the CRM contact records. I don't believe Switchvox offers contact-based reporting based on CDR information. I've actually been meaning to do a full-review of Switchvox.

In any event, getting back to UAE, I should point out that Fonality queries a local cache of the Salesforce.com database for it's instant when it performs a contact record lookup and is not affected by any sort of Internet outage or Salesforce.com outage. Importantly, inbound calls can be automatically directed to the contact or opportunity owner. This prevents sales personnel from 'stealing' a lead.

"The Frankenstein, bolt-on products from other telephony vendors provide only basic screen pops or click-to-call features. Fonality has a much more sophisticated approach for delivering feature-rich, end-to-end contact center solutions," said Corey Brundage, vice president of marketing and product management at Fonality. "PBXtra Unified Agent is the only offering available today that immediately impacts a contact center's top and bottom line without the need for professional services or a six-figure capital expenditure."

Overview:

• PBXtra Unified Agent from Fonality combines phone system, call center, and CRM capabilities to provide a complete view of contact center operations. With Salesforce CRM and PBXtra Unified Agent, companies can increase close rates, revenue and profits, while providing much better customer service and dramatically reducing sales and support costs.
• For less than $20/user per month, PBXtra Unified Agent delivers an immediate return on investment. Agents benefit from productivity enhancements and timely access to more accurate and complete information so they can do a better job selling to and supporting customers. Managers gain deep visibility into real-time and historical agent call activity within Salesforce CRM so they can make more intelligent business decisions based on accurate data.

"Today, contact center managers are often faced with inaccurate or missing data and agents struggle with cumbersome CTI applications, resulting in a poor customer experience," said Richard Gonzales, president of Buvelo Solutions, a salesforce.com consulting partner. "PBXtra Unified Agent solves these problems with a unified solution that helps managers and agents use Salesforce CRM more effectively than ever before."

With PBXtra Unified Agent managers can easily measure, test, and improve sales and support processes, view the effectiveness of human resources, salvage opportunities or identify lapses in service level agreements. PBXtra Unified Agent includes the following features for managers:

• Track and record all call data in Salesforce CRM automatically
• View customer call histories
• Understand how call follow-up times impact profitability
• Find out the number of calls it takes to convert a lead to a sale
• Determine which agents are the most responsive
• Visually rank agent calling frequency and duration
• Instantly report all leads not called within a specified period

With HUD, Fonality's communications application, you can view desktop alerts with inbound caller name, number, even deal size. In the sample below, the sales agent can see an inbound $120,000 opportunity:


"PBXtra Unified Agent's deep integration with Salesforce gives our customers even more value from their CRM installations," said Clarence So, CMO, salesforce.com. "Thousands of customers have installed applications from the Force.com AppExchange because partners like Fonality are offering innovative tools that expand the capabilities of Salesforce CRM."

Chris explained that one of reasons why they called it Unified Agent Edition is because they created a unified agent creation and logon. When you make an agent on PBXtra, it displays a drop-down box of your Salesforce.com agents allowing you to map your extension on Salesforce.com account. So it matches username and password across the two platforms. That's how you know the name of the person making a call as opposed to the extension number.

For current PBXtra customers it's a $4,000 upgrade for unlimited agents. New customers the pricing starts at $6,995 for server hardware and software.  Interested parties may also participate in a Fonality-hosted informational webinar taking place on Friday, December 12 at 10 a.m. PT. To register for this webinar, head to www.fonality.com/UAEwebinar.

A few days ago the FBI's Internet Crimes Complaint Center (IC3) issued an unclear warning that says versions of Asterisk software are vulnerable to vhishing (voice phishing) attacks, but didn't say which versions, but causing a flurry of news activity on VoIP news sites, tech sites, and blogs.

It all started with this warning from the IC3:

New Technique Utilizing Private Branch Exchange (PBX) Systems To Conduct Vishing Attacks

The FBI has received information concerning a new technique used to conduct vishing attacks. The recent attacks were conducted by hackers exploiting a security vulnerability in Asterisk software.

My esteemed colleagues Rich Tehrani and Greg Galitzine did some research to find out what the story was, including contacting Digium's John Todd.

Here's Rich's take:

Before commenting I waited to hear back from Digium's John Todd who explained that there were some methodology and editorial process issues in this alert - basically no one checked with Digium before going public. As it turns out, after checking with Digium, the FBI quickly revised their statement and everything is fine.

The details are that there was a bug which Digium found in March of 2008 and subsequently patched in version 1.2 and 1.4. Version 1.6 is not affected. Besides, according to Todd, the security issue would arise if system administrators basically disregarded logical security measures like using numerals in passwords.

Read more...

Greg Galitzine also writes about the FBI's warning about Asterisk in an article titled Digium Defends Asterisk Against Fed Warning: "Tempest in a Teapot"

In it, Greg writes:

Todd writes in a blog entry titled SIP Security and Asterisk:

That bug allowed in some cases unauthorized callers to make calls through an unprotected "context" in Asterisk. Due to the nature of the bug there was fairly limited exposure - it would have required a fairly unusual set of configurations to permit fraud, and there was both a simple config file change that would provide protection, as well as an actual patch to the code which we have every reason to believe has been widely implemented by the very proactive Open-Source community using Asterisk in production environments. The bug didn't allow arbitrary setting of caller ID, and would only work in a limited set of circumstances that personally I think would be unusual, though possible.

Early on, Todd had a sense that this might just be a misunderstanding: Sorry for the fuss, and I suspect this is just a tempest in a teapot. Use good passwords, keep your packet filters up, and I'll update things here as we hear more.

Digium's John Todd wrote an excellent blog post describing what happened after he was able to contact the FBI in charge of the security warning. While there was indeed a security vulnerability in Asterisk, it was patched in 1.2 and 1.4 and doesn't exist in 1.6. Thus, someone would have to be using a very old version of Asterisk. And as for the security vulnerability itself which seemed to enable vhishing attacks, John indicates that it was a relatively obscure exploit and "an administrator would have to consciously configure their system in what I believe to be an extremely unusual way in order to be victimized by this particular vulnerability." So indeed in John's own words, it seems to be a tempest in a teapot after all.

John Todd wrote:

As we had surmised, the warning from the IC3/FBI on Friday was just a re-hash of a bug that was fixed back in March of this year.  I was in touch with the agent in charge of this release this morning (after contact attempts on Friday failed) and he understood quickly that the wording was lacking in ways that created questions in the minds of readers, and this was being amplified by bloggers who more clearly outlined the set of questions raised by the advisory/release.  To his credit, the IC3 agent quickly pushed through a set of changes today to the posting which more specifically describes the issue, which indeed is the AST-2008-003 SIP guest permissions problem.

 

John Todd also wrote:

This bug was discovered and patched for 1.2 and 1.4 versions of the software, and 1.6 releases were not vulnerable.  Simple changes to site-specific configurations typically would be all that would be required even on systems that did not get patched or upgraded.  The bug that is described is relatively obscure, and was found by Jason Parker here at Digium.  We didn't know of any "in the wild" exploits back then, though of course there may be some now.  I'm still somewhat surprised that anyone has been able to use this bug to the extent that they were able to mount "vishing" attacks.  While I won't get into the details of configuration specifics, I would say that an administrator would have to consciously configure their system in what I believe to be an extremely unusual way in order to be victimized by this particular vulnerability.

John Todd complains about the "vagueness" of the warning but in an update after speaking to the IC3 agemt, John Todd says "To his credit, the IC3 agent quickly pushed through a set of changes today to the posting which more specifically describes the issue, which indeed is the AST-2008-003 SIP guest permissions problem." (an old issue)

So my Asterisk-loving friends. If you are indeed running patched 1.2/1.4 Asterisk or v1.6 you have nothing to worry about. And if you aren't running these versions, what the heck is wrong with you? And you call yourself an Asterisk fan. Per shame!

P.S. As Rich said, "I am sure by the time Asterisk World rolls around in a few months in Miami, we will all be laughing about this incident and marveling at the opportunity that is open source communications."

Nerd Vittles (Ward Mundy) is the man! He just combined the popular Acer Aspire One NetBook featuring the powerful Intel Atom N270(1.60GHz) processor along with Fedora 10 and his Asterisk-based distro. Nerd just may have cooked up the perfect low-cost, powerful, GUI-rich (low overhead KDE), and portable Asterisk-based appliance! Now you can take your phone system on the road while driving, on the plane, etc. Imagine sticking a 3G/EVDO card in the system while driving and your Asterisk-based PBX is still able to make/receive VoIP over EVDO calls and route them accordingly. He writes about the challenges of building a portable Asterisk-based platform:

CounterPath Corporation announced the launch of Bria for Microsoft Outlook, which integrates CounterPath's softphone technology directly into Microsoft Outlook. CounterPath also makes the popular (& free) SIP client called X-Lite.



The toolbar gives users easy access to VoIP call control aling with personal information manager (PIM) info stored within Outlook Contacts. On an inbound or outbound call, it will automatically perform a lookup of your Contacts to find a match so you can see exactly who you are calling or who is calling you. With a minimally invasive GUI that fits right into Outlook, an application that many users "live in" as party of their daily work, Bria for Microsoft Outlook will certainly have some interest.

According to Counterpath, "Appearing as part of Outlook's toolbar, the Bria plug-in provides a non-intrusive VoIP interface that does not infringe on the PIM's traditional three-pane design or workspace real estate - preserving the productivity benefits of Outlook while integrating value-added VoIP services."

"CounterPath is committed to enabling unified communications in a way that employs a user's favored application tools, preferred operating systems and devices, and existing telephone infrastructures," said Donovan Jones, President and CEO for CounterPath. "As Microsoft Outlook is one of the most utilized PC applications in the business market today, integrating our softphone into Outlook was a logical move and positions us to fulfill the strong demand that we are seeing from our existing channel partners as well as the overall market for this type of solution. Our Bria for Microsoft Outlook application is designed to increase productivity while reducing overall costs, making the softphone experience even better."

You can click-to-dial from your Outlook Contacts, but also from a scheduled Calendar meeting. You simply highlight the meeting, then click the toolbar icon and it will display the attendee participants allowing you to select & click-to-dial.

Bria for Microsoft Outlook features include:

• Direct call from email, Calendar and contact list (click-to-dial)
• Multiple simultaneous calls
• Call display
• Call transfer
• Call forwarding
• Redial
• Call Hold
• Call history
• Missed call indicator and display
• Message waiting
• Voice mail access
• Speaker phone and mute

Other features include:
- Screen pops and call handling options such as call hold, forward and
ignore
- Click-to-Dial from any location within Outlook
- Ability to manage multiple simultaneous calls
- Message waiting indicator and one-click access to voicemail

In addition to calling features, Bria for Microsoft Outlook provides support for narrow and wideband codecs, zero touch configuration during installation, auto-updates and NAT traversal using STUN and ICE. Bria for Microsoft Outlook also offers flexible branding options, allowing solution providers to incorporate their brand into the integrated VoIP-to-Outlook user experience.

Bria for Microsoft Outlook will be available for purchase at the CounterPath website beginning December 9, 2008. To learn more, head to http://counterpath.com/bria-for-microsoft-outlook.html.

Rich has a great interview with Sangoma's VP Sales and Marketing, Doug Vilim about their new B600 Series of Analog voice cards, which can be used in Asterisk-based systems. Apparently, Sangoma's über customizable & modular cards can be a slight cost detriment for those that don't need such modularity.

                        B600D PCI model.

Here's a teaser from Rich's blog:

What is the reason for these new cards to be introduced?

Some of our OEM customers;  those who are building IP PBX appliances Empowered by Sangoma, often do not require the modularity, port customization and single slot expandability that our A-Series analog cards provide.  Also, four PSTN lines and one fax connection is a common configuration that creates economies of scale, which can lead to a substantial cost savings for these customers when purchasing in larger volumes.

Read full story

Also, here are the specs: