It lives! (finally making calls with JabPhone)

Well, I finally got JabPhone to work. Or rather I should say JabPhone finally started working. It seemed they had some severe teething problems in the beginning, and then worked with Google to make better use of the google federated jabber servers. After that they advertised that everything was back on-line and even gave us early adopters a $1 bonus to our accounts (err..., wow?)

But for me it still did not work. Or rather calls went through once in about five attempts. That was a week ago. Todays test worked first time. Voice quality was good, not as good as pure GoogleTalk, but better than SkypeOut (at least my last few calls with SkypeOut have been rather poor).

My overall impression is that it is heading in the right direction, but has a long way to go. It is not nearly as polished a product as SkypeOut, and having to initiate the call with a text message is a minor inconvenience, but an inconvenience nevertheless. No dialpad is more serious. I view this as an alpha level service. I am a bit surprised it is 'on the market'. Hopefully they get it dramatically polished up before it develops a negative image.

JabPhone - GoogleTalk 'SkypeOut'

Most people know of Skype and the SkypeOut/SkypeIn services allowing you to phone PSTN numbers and receive calls from PSTN numbers. I, for one, have made quite a lot of use of SkypeOut. When GoogleTalk was released (in beta) last year I tried it out, and felt that the voice quality outclassed skype, but it had no SkypeOut facility, so I was not sure how far it could go. But, being Google, I assumed it would get there soon enough.

Well, it turns out that the Jabber software foundation (which made the jabber protocol Google Talk uses) has created a JabPhone site that is basically a SkypeOut service, with the first 15 minutes free. It started just last week, and has already suffered from problems with overload, but they are getting there. I think the fact that GoogleTalk is based on a free and open standard like Jabber, is an excellent thing, and should easily lead to them providing serious competition to Skype. Skype has a massive lead, but perhaps they will start looking over their shoulders for some new competition from the open-protocol camp.

Amanzi Wiki

Contrary to an implication in an earlier posting, I have been updating my Wiki, mostly with news about VoIP that I find interesting to myself. Take a look at http://wiki.amanzi.com.

Skype/911

I found an interesting blog on VoIP and 911, by Richard Edge. He points out that the FCC ruling has a description of a VoIP provider that clearly includes Skype, implying that the FCC 911 ruling should also apply to Skype, and that the other VoIP vendors might take action against Skype for not complying. However, a more recent blog by Richard also includes the comment that 911 only needs to apply if the service can 'Provide, or enable use of, traditional CPE or CPE that, like traditional CPE, is always on and has dial tone'. Since Skype is clearly a service that is only one when the user wants it to be (switches on their computer and runs the skype client) it might be exempt from 911. I personally think that this is the reason why Skype has never gone the ATA route, and only targets people actually running/using PC's. As soon as they provide a Skype phone that does not need to connect to a PC (ie. runs the client on the phone, and connects with Wifi, for example), they would open themselves to possible 911 hassles (and other regulatory hassles).

VoIP is hot

I recently got interested in VoIP (Voice over IP, or IP Telphony), and started writing my own Wiki site filled with interesting stuff I found out about VoIP, but then I found a public Wiki doing exactly the same thing, at www.voip-info.org, and it was so complete, it really put the brakes on my own little project :-). I've not abandonded my Wiki yet, and will probably just refocus it on the subset of VoIP more related to my specific interests and geography. At some point I will even advertise it to others, but for now, take a look at the public site I've mentioned above if you're interested in VoIP.

And if you're not interested, you soon will be. I've not spent any time in this post clarifying what I meant by the title, but the truth is VoIP has really become a hot topic recently, and is rolling out all over the world, already has millions of customers, and thousands of small start-ups are hoping to cash-in on the ride. I expect it will be something like the internet ride in the last decade, albeit a bit smaller. Many fortunes will be made, and many more broken.

Google does so much

This is old news for anyone up to date on technical issues, but I've been doing a bit of catching up and am amazed by everything google has to offer. I used to use it for searches (and that included the nifty google toolbar in IE), but now I'm regularly using GMail instead of my old yahoo acount (GMail is amazing, really, for a DHTML application), and have been most impressed by Google's maps, another amazing DHTML app. And after all this I only then realized the blogger is also google. If it weren't for the consistently high quality of the google products I could make the statement 'are we going to see another M$ here?" :-)

Google: http://www.google.com
GMail: http://gmail.google.com/gmail
Maps: http://maps.google.com"