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Written by Russell Shaw on January 30th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on News and General and Gizmo Project.
Written by Russell Shaw on December 28th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and General and Gizmo Project.
Written by Russell Shaw on November 17th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and Skype and General and Providers and Packet 8 and Gizmo Project.
Written by Russell Shaw on October 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and Gizmo Project.
GoogleFi, Google’s Mountain View network, may be good for data connections, but is it good enough for making voice calls? In order to find out answers, I headed down to Mountain View to conduct some first hand tests, and well, make some VoIP calls.
Voice over WiFi has the potential to be one of the most disruptive applications for city-wide WiFi networks, unlocking callers from expensive cellular networks. But MuniFi and even WiFi hotspots, many (including Om) argue is not yet reliable when it comes to making phone calls and the devices are still quite complex.
So during another hot daytrip to sunny Mountain View, we took our handhelds and laptops in tow, and spread out our gear under a tree in a city park. First we just tested basic Skype running over a Mac laptop.
The biggest issue is just sitting in a spot with a fast enough connection to the closest access point. After a few tries, we were able to connect and make a regular Skype call to another Skype user online, and managed to get pretty decent voice quality. It’s not as easy or clean as cellular, but it works well enough and it is free!
Test one out of the way, it was time to stress test the network using non-PC devices. We fired up the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet running the Gizmo Project application, which can connect VoIP calls to regular phone numbers. It costs a few cents to make outgoing calls, but we could call anyone over the public phone system and its still pretty cheap.
One problem we noticed with the service is there was a slight lag time between when I called and the listener got the signal. The lag time was large enough to be noticeable. Despite that the call quality was quite clear. Our Pocket PC phones did not play nice with the network, but that might be some configuration issues on our end.
So what is our conclusion? If your call is critical and you’re in a big hurry, and not willing to tinker with new technology, stick to your cellular handset.
Now, if you’re willing to give up the ease-of-use of your mobile handset, then, Google’s Mountain View network is not bad. If you find a spot where the signal is pretty strong, the calls can be as good as cellular calls. It might be just me, but the prospect of cheap or free phone calls over a free network, is something to get excited about.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and VoIP and Google and Gizmo Project and WiFi and Cellular.
A few weeks ago Gizmo Project made its debut on the Nokia 770. There are rumors of Zune being voice enabled. There is now word that Nintendo DS will allow you to make voice connections, perhaps with folks who are playing with each other over ad-hoc wireless connections.
Given that DS has WiFi, and an embedded Opera browser, the easiest way would be to develop a web-based SIP client that would allow you to initiate phone calls from within the browser.
Alternatively Nintendo could (and should open) up its DS platform to outside developers who could come-up with a Voice app that allowed you to make phone calls. A Skype or a Gizmo Project port to Nintendo DS would be nice!.
Written by Om Malik on August 1st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and VoIP and Gizmo Project and zune.
TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadget Blog | Permalink: LiveJournal meets VoIP via Gizmo Project
Tags: gizmo project, google talk, im, jabber, six apart, skype, voip
Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on July 27th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and VoIP and Gizmo Project and im and google talk and jabber and six apart.
The marriage of the web and voice is slowly but surely happening. As two worlds come together you have voice showing up in all sorts of places. Andy Abramson has the scoop on a pending deal between Six Apart’s Live Journal and The Gizmo Project.
Live Journal which recently launched a Jabber-based IM network, is going to soon talk to Gizmo users. It was briefly mentioned in the comments on the previous Live Journal post. Andy adds that there will be voice talking between two networks as well.
Meanwhile boys from 37Signals have launched pointed out voice notes for Backpack. You get a phone number, where you can dial in (from one of the three numbers you can sign-up with: cell number, home phone and work phone) and leave voice notes. There is some kind of VoIP magic at the back it seems. (Jason, dude shoot me the details? Are you using Asterisk at the backend?)
Elsewhere, everyone is talking about SightSpeed. Okay, I did that, so no point repeating myself.
Update: 37Signal’s Jason Fried says voice notes for Backpack was actually built by a Backpack customer. Nice work!
Written by Om Malik on July 26th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Gizmo Project and VoIP Apps.
Last night Andy tipped me off to GizmoProject introducing their “All Calls Free” program on Thursday. According to Gizmo's site, you can call all of your Gizmo friends for FREE on their landline or mobile phones in 60 Countries. Free PSTN dialing in 60 countries? Wow. This is a major salvo in response to Skype's offering of "free" SkypeOut calling to U.S. in Canada until the end of 2006 and JahJah's free worldwide calling offering they made last week. The $3 billion eBay spent on eBay is looking more and more like one of the most questionable acquisitions in history. 
The VoIP Clone Wars have begun...TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadget Blog | Permalink: The VoIP Clone Wars Have Begun...
Tags: ebay, gizmo project, skype, voip
Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on July 20th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and VoIP and Gizmo Project and ebay.
First it was Skype, then came Jajah, and now it is the turn of Gizmo Project to offer almost free voice calls to the old PSTN numbers. We are seeing the price of plain vanilla voice collapse to almost zero. (Some argue, with Skype to Skype calling, those prices are already zero.)
Gizmo, infact is going one step further and offering free dialing to old-fashioned phone and mobile numbers in 60 countries. When you sign up for Gizmo Project, you fill out your profile and add your work; mobile, and home phone numbers to that profile. These are the numbers that can be called for free.
To be eligible for All Calls Free, users have to log in to their account and make a call using Gizmo Project to attain “active” status. The countries included in this plan are China, the United States, Brazil, Japan, Germany, Thailand, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Canada, and more. (Sadly, calls to India are not part of the plan, so calling mom is still going to cost a lot of cash. Acceptable expense, I would say!)
This free voice movement had me thinking – what kind of a loss is acceptable to these companies? Though it is hard to get a straight answer, Jajah officials say they can make up all the losses in premium services such as scheduled conference calling, or other such services.
“Wholesale PSTN rates are sooo cheap these days that it’s not much different than the cost of bandwidth back when I started Scour.net,” says Jason Droege, chief executive of SIPphone, the company behind Gizmo Project. “In the last 12 months I’ve seen wholesale PSTN costs drop dramatically and I expect this to continue. ” (I would need to check on that – its almost midnight, so cannot hassle folks at Telegeography just as yet!)
Like Jajah, he believes that there are many other ways to make money off usage here – pay-per-call ads, premium services, calling to non-covered countries, virtual numbers. Still, being a believer in the age-old dictum that there are no free lunches in life, I suspect that many of the VoIP companies (including Skype) are finding that attracting users beyond the early adopter set is hard, and needs major marketing dollars.
Random though - more trouble for Vonage perhaps?
Written by Om Malik on July 20th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and Gizmo Project and jajah.
Gizmo Project, a soft phone developed by Michael Robertson’s SIPphone has been upgraded to what else: version 2.0. And it is truly 2.0, and has some major enhancements. (Michael’s Thoughts can be read here.)
One of the biggest improvements is that it now works with Asterisk, an open source PBX software that is just growing in popularity as fast as mushrooms grow in rain forest after a monsoon shower. Fonality, a Business 2.0 Next Net 25 company, has signed up 10,000 users who have made 20 million Asterisk calls.
Till recently, if you were using Asterisk, you would use some other softphone, such as eyeBeam, which is quite nice, but still it mean another client open on your computer screen. (IM, Skype, Gizmo and eyeBeam - that a whole lot of IM windows on a tiny laptop screen!)
It also works with Free World Dial-Up and other SIP based services. Another bit of good news is that it would work on the Nokia 770 Tablet as well, and the two companies are collaborating on rolling that out soon enough.
Previous Gizmo Project coverage
Written by Om Malik on May 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Gizmo Project and VoIP Apps.
Michael Robertson’s San Diego, Calif.-based voice-over-IP start-up, SIPphone just raised $6 million in funding from New York-based Dawntreader Ventures. The company behind increasingly popular Gizmo Project soft phone and instant messaging client is going to use the cash to expand into wifi and dual mode phones, Robertson told in a late evening chat yesterday. Dawntreader’s Ed Sim is going to join the board of SIPphone. Existing investors in SIPphone participated in this round as well.
SIPphone will use the investment to expand their VOIP platform to portable devices which do not require PCs to make or receive calls and promote adoption of the open standard auto-provisioning system plug-n-dial. The San Diego headquarters is expected to triple in size over the next year with hiring primarily in business development and engineering.
SIPphone currently has about 20 employees. “There is no doubt that the price of voice calls is headed towards near zero, and companies like us need to make money off premium services and features that consumers are willing to pay for,” says Robertson. [ Read: The great VoIP implosion.] SIPphone is going to announce a new “premium offering” later this week. Robertson, who previously had started MP3.com, says he is working on creating a private label business for SIPphone as well, and is already powering a low-cost calling service called iPhox.
SIPphone was rumored to be in talks with News Corp, for adding voice functionality to MySpace.com. There were rumors of a $50 million buyout offer from Rupert Murdoch. While those talks haven’t gone anywhere, this new round of funding will give SIPphone the runway it needs to get market traction.
While it is no Skype, The Gizmo Project has still managed to get 400,000 registered users, of which nearly 29% are Mac users, Robertson says. About 2% of Gizmo Project are Linux desktop users. “In the end our adherence to SIP will pay off because it will allow us to offer many services easily,” says Robertson. One of the benefits is the ability to connect directly to other SIP-based services such as Earthlink’s VoIP service.
Licensing the technology to device makers for a sliver of profits is a model being used by Skype to generate revenues, and I guess SIPphone is going to do the same as well. Google is also rumored to be working on similar strategy and trying to lure hardware partners, but no recent developments. If the Skype experience of feeding-off-the-licensing margins is anything to go by, this will indeed a very tough business.
Written by Om Malik on February 14th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on VoIP (the New Phone) and Skype and Gizmo Project.
The much awaited Google Talk federation is live. Gary Burd, the software engineer who works on GTalk writes over on the Google Talk Blog:
I flipped the switch to connect the Google Talk Service to the public XMPP network this morning. Google Talk users can now chat with users on other XMPP services and vice versa.
What this means is that now Google Talk’s XMPP servers can talk to other XMPP servers such as Earthlink and Gizmo Project. (I had written about GTalk-Gizmo Link Up earlier.) I am not sure if those two companies in specific have turned on the features, but essentially if you have your own Jabber server, you could talk to GTalk. Some have already had success in cross-server traffic exchange.
Written by Om Malik on January 17th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on VoIP (the New Phone) and Gizmo Project.