Recently in VoIP Category

An interesting article at the Register claims that a recent uTorrent decision to use UDP for P2P file transfers (instead of TCP) to get around ISP "traffic management" restrictions will cause a meltdown of the Internet. Poppycock you say?

It's worth pointing out that traditionally P2P sharing apps such as Bittorrent,  use TCP not UDP. So why would UDP cause VoIP apps to fail? Well for one huge reason, TCP allows for congestion control.

First, the article explains:
The article then adds: Yikes! Say goodbye to VoIP. No more Skype. No more fring, Gizmo5, Packet8, Vonage, Bandwidth.com SIP trunks, and all the rest of my beloved VoIP applications and services. May you rest in peace my good friends. [sniff] Now I'll have to change my blog to the "Gadgets Blog".

Game over man, game over!

Click above to hear this famous audio clip from Alien.

So you want Skype High Quality (HQ) video, but aren't willing to shell out for a nice dual-core processor and a high-end Logitech camera, eh? Well, no worries - Nodewave has a Force 'Skype' HQ Video app that allows you to Enable/Disable (and even configure) High-Quality Video in Skype, and even High-Definition Video regardless of your camera or processor.

So if Santa doesn't stick a high-end Logitech Orb AF webcam (my favorite webcam) in your stocking for Christmas, then this hack might just be the way to go!

Nimbuzz is a free app that lets you call (VoIP), chat, message, and send photos, music and video on your iPhone, which was recently made available on the Apple App Store. Using a centralized contact list you can connect with all your buddies on Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, Gadu-Gadu, StudiVZ, Hyves, Jabber and Twitter, plus popular social networks including Facebook and MySpace. It features presence (who's online and where), group calling, chatrooms, and more.

If your buddies are offline, let them know you're trying to get in touch by sending them a "Buzz". It will start Nimbuzz Mobile on their mobile phone. Nice feature.

Nimbuzz is pretty similar to fring, which I've used extensively. One thing Nimbuzz has up on fring is that it supports regional social network support including German StudiVZ, Dutch Hyves and Polish Gadu-Gadu.

Go download your copy on the Apple App Store today!

VoxOx just released a new version of their "Universal Communicator", which aims to combine VoIP, video, and social networks. VoxOx aims to take on Skype by offering more social networking features. Last year, I wrote an article titled Skype Could Trump Facebook in Social Networking, but Skype still hasn't added social networking functionality.

In any event, today version 1.0.1 was released, less than a month after their initial launch. I was never able to get the Facebook integration to work, but it was a beta release, so I'm hoping they worked out the kinks.

Here are some new features:

New Additions
• Status field set to your auto-response message when away
• Facebook icons link out to friends' profiles so you can write on their wall, private message them, etc
• View Facebook contact photos from their VoxOx Profile
• Text Message window remembers Mobile Numbers
• Chat to Email window remembers emails addresses

Bug Fixes
• Call-Back (Web and SMS) fully functional
• Fixed Crash bug when ending calls
• Added default group for new contacts to be saved
• Login screen text updated to "Login Automatically"
• Web Portal login back online

Some of the major updates they are working on include a new and improved user interface, more efficient memory utilization, smoother and faster SMS functionality, enhanced Facebook integration, MySpace integration, and Outlook & Mac address book integration.

When I met with PIKA Technologies  at ITEXPO they told me support for FreePBX was coming. Well today, PIKA Technologies announced that PIKA WARP the Appliance is now compatible with the Asterisk-based FreePBX GUI (Graphical User Interface) application. I reviewed the PIKA Appliance recently and was pretty impressed with it. Having FreePBX support is a huge milestone for the PIKA Appliance. FreePBX is a popular user-friendly web application  that makes it easy to setup and configure Asterisk.

According to PIKA, "While customers often develop their own GUIs, many have told PIKA that if WARP were compatible with industry-standard GUIs like FreePBX, they would be much more inclined to adopt the portfolio. With today's announcement, PIKA has once again demonstrated its responsiveness to the needs of its user base."

"We are very pleased to have supported the effort to adopt the FreePBX application to run in the PIKA Warp environment," said Terry Atwood, vice president of sales, marketing and customer care at PIKA Technologies. "Used in many Asterisk implementations around the world, including Trixbox, FreePBX has proven its value, time and again. When the FreePBX team expressed their willingness to work with us to port to the Warp Appliance, we jumped on the opportunity."

"FreePBX has become the de facto standard for enterprise grade PBX functionality delivered to the SMB business and includes a very rich set of functionality and customization potential," said Philippe Lindheimer, open source community director of Bandwidth.com and leader of the FreePBX project. "But no GUI is complete without a wide range of hardware options to complete the package. We are delighted that PIKA can now include FreePBX in the PIKA WARP and bring our two eco-systems together."

Today's announcement from PIKA follows news of a new partnership between FreePBX and Bandwidth.com, a complete business communications provider offering advanced VoIP, Internet services and managed network services to small and medium businesses. Bandwidth.com will devote significant resources to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to remain open source and free.

"The partnership with Bandwidth.com is great news as it gives FreePBX the support it needs to grow while ensuring it remains a free GUI for the entire open source eco-system," said David Clarke, business development manager at PIKA and director of the PIKA Warp Community. "I know the choice of Bandwidth.com was a decision that Philippe made only after months of consideration and sound input from the key developers and contributors to the FreePBX project."

Out of the box, FreePBX provides a long list of features including many typically found only in an enterprise-grade PBX, some examples are:

• Unlimited number of voicemail boxes
• "Follow me" functionality
• Ring groups and call queues
• Unlimited number of conference bridges
• Paging and intercom functionality
• and much more

The PIKA WARP Appliance product portfolio is ideal for deploying small- to medium-sized IP-PBX systems, IVR self-service systems, predictive dialling systems, fax servers and many other features typical of a traditional, purpose-built business telephone system that are often lacking in a computerized system. Compatible with a variety of open-source development platforms, including Asterisk and Linux, the Appliance offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional off-the-shelf computers and plug-in-card network connectivity in a smaller footprint.

Ribbit, which was recently acquired by BT, today rolled out its developer platform out of beta at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbits extensive APIs allow you to integrate voice communications into business applications such as Salesforce.com, CRM systems, call center applications, and even social networks.


Ribbit launched its programming platform for developers today at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbit likes to call themselves "Silicon Valley's First Phone Company". Post-acquisition, BT and Ribbit are taking the platform public with "Bring Your Own Network" which they claim is a telecom industry first. Ribbit said, "Carriers around the globe can tap into the power of the Ribbit platform and active developer community, to create new revenue streams and provide their customers with more choice and function through innovative voice-enabled applications."



As seen by the charts above, Ribbit has extensive support for industry standards, including SIP, XMPP, XML, Flash, and more. When I spoke with Ribbit Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs he compared their software platform to Amazon's cloud computing, enabling programmers to build powerful integrated telephony applications for Web sites. A proprietary softswitch (the Ribbit SmartSwitch) mediates communication across protocols, networks and devices. That includes MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and Skype. As I have previously written, the Ribbit API functions include call control, authentication, billing, messaging, and more. The Ribbit API abstracts the protocol inter-communication between MSN Messenger, Google Talk, and even Skype. Ribbit has reverse-engineered the Skype protocol to provide the ability for Skype users to receive calls from MSN Messenger users, Yahoo! Messenger users and Google Talk users by leveraging the Ribbit SmartSwitch.

Their most famous application to date is their use of the Ribbit API to integrate with Salesforce, a popular hosted CRM application. Also, Oracle On Demand support in Q1 2009 is forthcoming. Ribbit told me they've done a lot of work to simplify and automated the process to make it easier for developers to get started. They explained you can sign up, access the APIs and documenation, and play with them for 'free' in a sandbox before deploying and charging for the applications. When I asked if the highly successful iPhone apps sold by third parties on the Apple Store was a good analogy for their applications being developed and sold by developers they agreed that was an appropriate analogy.

BroadSoft and Sylantro Systems are two of the first VoIP providers to leverage the Ribbit platform, which Ribbit now claims has 7,500 developers.

Bandwidth.com has just made an investment in FreePBX, the popular front-end interface to Asterisk-based distros. I discussed this news with Philippe Lindheimer just a couple hours ago. One of the questions I asked was if Bandwidth.com would get "preferred treatment" within the FreePBX interface, since Bandwidth.com offers SIP trunking. Obviously, if FreePBX gives Bandwidth.com a prominent position in the GUI or they make it "easier" to configure FreePBX (i.e. plug-n-play) that could be a huge boon to Bandwidth.com Philippe said that that isn't part of the investment announcement being made today, however, that is something they are looking at.

As for the purpose of the investment, Philippe said it was mostly due to Bandwidth.com's desire to grow the market and help build the FreePBX community. The idea is that the more IP-PBXs out there, the more SIP trunks, and hence more revenue for Bandwidth.com. I have some further thoughts on this, but I'm pretty busy today and wanted to share the news.

Philippe Lindheimer said, "Part of assuring the success of FreePBX is to make sure that we continue to have strong leadership, community participation and a thriving eco-system of users and partners. I would like to announce a new partnership that will help the project tremendously. I have joined forces with Bandwidth.com as their Open Source Community Director, where we will be devoting significant resources and effort to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to make sure it remains open and strong."

One significant piece of news is that Bandwidth.com helped protect the FreePBX's project several months ago when the FreePBX trademark (which FreePBX.org nor Phillipe never owned) was "being shopped around to parties that did not have this project's best interest in mind" according to Phillipe. Thus, Bandwidth.com preemptively purchased the trademark with Phillipe's blessing in order to assure FreePBX was not jeopardized.

You can read Phillipe's blog post about this here which has more details.

This is a call out to all bloggers out there - Rich Tehrani, my boss has extended an open invitation to bloggers interested in blogging for TMCnet.com, a leading communications/telecom site according to Alexa, Quantcast, and others.

So if you enjoy writing about communications, telecom, VoIP, wireless, unified communications, mobile, etc. and want a wide audience, go check out Rich's blog for more details.

p.s. The blogging platform is Movable Type 4.21.

Callpod's new Drone USB Bluetooth adapter turns your mobile phone's Bluetooth headset into a headset/mic for your PC or Mac allowing you to receive Skype or other VoIP calls using your high-end Bluetooth headset (Plantronics, Jawbone, etc.). Just connect the Drone into the USB port of your computer, and it will immediately connect with your Bluetooth headset or headphones to provide streaming music and voice over a 100 meter (328ft) range. When a Skype call comes in, Drone switches over to the call automatically. It supports the A2DP (Stereo) Bluetooth profile.

Of course, many PCs and laptops come with Bluetooth built-in, making this device unnecessary. It's basically a $50 USB Bluetooth adapter/Bluetooth dongle, which is nothing new. Still, if you need to add Bluetooth functionality to your PC or Mac, this might be the way to go. Though, you can pick up a Bluetooth USB dongle for $20. However, they claim their software automatically switches the audio to the Bluetooth headset on an incoming Skype call. I don't believe most Bluetooth dongles support that functionality. Not sure it's worth the extra $30 for the auto-Skype answer, but you make the call.

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