With yesterday's news about the new Nimbuzz for iPhone app and the launch of a Nimbuzz Mac client, I contacted Tobias Kemper, Head of Communications for Nimbuzz and asked him a question about DTMF/touch-tone support in any pending release. He wrote back, "I will send you the official news in a few mins - WITH more stats and data! DTMF is a great next step for us but I cannot speak to it yet."Any plans for DTMF support?
Noticed when I tested it by calling my Skype for SIP account matched up to my corporate PBX that I couldn't reach my extension since there is no dialpad once the call is initiated.
I know touchtones are tricky when sent over an IP connection, which is what RFC 2833 is for. However, RFC 2833 is probably impossible for you guys to support.
However, I've found if you simulate the exact frequency tones and send that as a long tone - say 0.5s long, 99% of the time it gets transmitted just fine. Can often get away with ΒΌ of a second as well. Thoughts?
Ok, so he's not admitting to DMTF support in the future, but he isn't ruling it out either. That's good news, since I really like Nimbuzz. It features SIP capabilities, so I can register it with a SIP-based PBX. Though oddly enough, I had a minor issue with the Nimbuzz for iPhone app with case-sensitivity. I have some test SIP accounts with the format SOFTPHONE01, SOFTPHONE02, etc. all in upper-case. The Asterisk-based trixbox PBX is case-sensitive, so it is expecting the username in uppercase. Well, although I was able to enter in SOFTPHONE01 into Nimbuzz in all upper-case, it wouldn't register. So I SSH'ed into the trixbox server and ran "asterisk - r" to see what was going on. I attempted to register again, and immediately saw the problem in the Asterisk console. Nimbuzz converted my SIP username to all lowercase. Thus, I had to add a new SIP account that was in all lowercase. Looks like they need to update their back-end database to support mixed-case for the SIP username. It's pretty common to use a mix of upper & lowercase letters to help secure the SIP account.
In any event, Tobias also told me, "We developed a Mac client (download) in combination with a new iPhone version (download) because we got massive traction since releasing the iPhone client and have a huge number of active users. (official press release below) We did it Apple style, focused on slick UI and usability! "
He added, "(Here are) a few stats on why we made the decision to deliver something specific for the Apple fans out there:"
- In just 9 months since launch, consistent Top 10 ranking on all iTunes AppStores in Europe, Latin America & the Middle East, including regular No. 1 What's Hot positions in influential iPhone markets such as the UK
- Achieved massive penetration and popularity. For example, 1 in 5 iPhone users in France and in the Netherlands are using Nimbuzz!
- Average 848% growth in downloads of iPhone & iPod touch apps in key European markets since the iPhone OS 3.0 update
- One of just 5% of Apps to boast more than 100,000 active users, with an active user base of more than 41% (AdMob Metrics)
- Massive nearly one million newly registered users per month growth across all Nimbuzz clients
The iPhone and iPod touch upgrade lets you share photos, music and videos. The beauty of it is that the files are stored online so you have access to your files from your Mac, iPhone or iPod touch! That also saves device memory.
Push Notification for iPhone and iPod Touch - with home screen alerts of incoming calls or chats, effectively keeping you available to the rest of the world even though the app itself has been closed.
We also introduced another much requested feature: location sharing. Now you can share and retrieve the location of your Nimbuzz buddies on the go. This makes it easier to find your friends and set up face to face meetings.
Here is a demo video to check out before trying : ) ]]>