Disruptive Telephony

If you have a new SIP service or application, how can you find other services to which you can directly connect via SIP? That's the idea behind the new "SIP to SIP" directory launched by the folks at FWD and now available at www.siptosip.net. From the main page:

Why SIP to SIP VoIP?

SIPtoSIP lists applications and content that require SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) enabled devices on both ends of the connection. Realizing the promise of VoIP requires expanding real-time communication options beyond the functions already available with traditional telephones or cell phones. The ability of SIP based VoIP to support HDVoice, video, and click-to-connect requires SIP devices on both ends of the connection. Send suggestions for corrections and additional listings to Daniel Berninger at dan at danielberninger.com.

The directory is very obviously new and only has a few entries on the various pages:

• Devices
• Applications
• Content

As is noted, Daniel Berninger is looking for people to email him suggestions.

I do applaud the FWD folks for looking at another way to promote the further building of SIP interconnections and so I wish them well with this directory. I'd note, though, that the VoIP-Info.org wiki does already contain a great amount of this information. For instance, the site has a very lengthy page on VoIP phones. Now, granted, the phones listed there are for "IP" in general and not just SIP. Some use H.323, IAX or other protocols. There is perhaps a role for someone to curate a list like this into just SIP-specific information, but whether that needs to be a separate site or perhaps another page within a wiki like the VoIP-Info.org one is a question to consider.

Regardless, the FWD folks have now made this siptosip.net site available and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

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Technorati Tags: fwd, sip, siptosip, directories, voip

Will you be down in Miami at ITEXPO February 2-4? If so, please feel free to drop me a note and perhaps we can connect somewhere there.

I'll be arriving Monday afternoon and then on Tuesday, February 3rd, I'll be donning my VOIPSA VoIP Security hat to participate in a SIP Trunking Workshop sponsored by Ingate Systems on "SIP Trunking And Security". These workshops are always fun to do and as they are free to anyone attending ITEXPO (even just with an exhibit pass), they are usually well-attended. I'll be bringing my recording gear, too, and the talk will eventually go out in my Blue Box Podcast feed so you will be able to hear it later.

Speaking of recording... I'll have my video gear, too, and so if you have some new product or service in the "emerging communications" space that you think I might be interested in recording for my "Emerging Tech Talk" video podcast... well... pitch me. :-) I know I'll be recording a number of videos down there and I would certainly consider doing some more.

Wednesday evening I'll be driving back to Orlando and in Voxeo's office on Thursday and Friday so if you're in the Orlando area, please feel free to let me know as well.

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Technorati Tags: danyork, itexpo, miami, orlando, voxeo

With a simple "I've changed jobs" blog post (way shorter than any blog post I've ever written), Martin Geddes let us all know that he was now joining BT. The post over on Telco 2.0 goes into more about Martin's move and his reasons why he sees BT's future as bright...

Besides having one of the coolest blog names ("Telepocalypse"), Martin's a great writer and thinking in our space. We've only met a couple of times, but I've always respected the work he's done and enjoyed his writing. I wish him all the best at BT and look forward to what may evolve there!

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Technorati Tags: martingeddes, bt

Having now been in the podcasting space for most of four years, I at one point looked into how "voiceover" work was done with traditional studios. To get the highest audio quality, the traditional route has been to use actual ISDN lines here in North America. This seemed to me an area that could be ideal for VoIP to disrupt... and it appears that in at least one case it's done exactly that.

News out of the Sundance Film Festival is this:

PARK CITY, Utah - Philip Seymour Hoffman literally phoned in his voice performance for tonight's opener at the Sundance Film Festival, the animated feature "Mary and Max."

"The cost of flying any big-name actor to Australia would be extreme," explained director Adam Elliot, who is making his feature debut after his Oscar-winning animated short "Harvie Krumpet."

"We didn't have a lot of money, and it's not like we could have flown him in on economy. So we piped him in for two sessions, in New York and London, with high-quality sound that makes him sound like he was in the studio with us in Australia. I was quite surprised at how good the technology is."

And at the end we learn what the technology was:

"It sounds weird, but I've never met him in the flesh," says Elliot. "We could see him on Skype when he was recording his part all by himself. He was so professional."

Pretty cool to see...

P.S. And yes, there are probably many other examples of this out there, but this is the first one that I've personally learned of.

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Technorati Tags: skype, voip, voiceover, movies

As Alec says, he "missed from the microphone" and so he's brought back the Squawk Box podcast with a show today (also via Facebook) about the new Windows 7 beta and a show next Tuesday (also via Facebook) that will be an interview with Lee Dryburgh, coordinator of the eComm conference.

The Squawk Box calls have been a great amount of fun over the past year or two. We've learned a lot together and shared some great discussions. I enjoyed guest-hosting and wrote here on this site about a number of the calls. I'm glad Alec is bringing them back in at least a limited form.

The conference call today (and most Squawk Box days) is at 11am US Eastern time and is open to anyone who wants to participate. They are made available later as a podcast from Alec's blog at www.saunderslog.com. Being a "Mac"-guy these days, I don't expect to have a whole lot to add to the Windows 7 conversation, but I'll be interested to hear the experiences of those like Alec who are already playing with Windows 7. Next Tuesday, I do expect to be on the call with Lee...

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Technorati Tags: squawkbox, podcasts, windows7, windows, microsoft

Are you interested in learning more about VoiceObjects (recently acquired by my employer, Voxeo) and how you can use VO to rapidly develop complex voice applications? If so, you can join VoiceObjects VP Stefan Besling tomorrow for a "Developer Jam Session" webinar where we will go through the new features of the recently announced VoiceObjects 7.4:

Date: January 14, 2009
Time: 8am PDT, 11am EDT, 5pm CET
Topic: Introducing VoiceObjects 7.4
Speaker: Stefan Besling, Vice President of Engineering, VoiceObjects Germany GmbH

Abstract: This session will give you an overview of the enhancements and new capabilities provided with VoiceObjects 7.4. Learn about 2-way SMS and Instant Messaging, security and user management enhancements, object extensions, and a lot more. Join us to stay up-to-date with the newest release of the VoiceObjects platform.

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Technorati Tags: voiceobjects, voxeo, voiceapplications, applications, voice, development, developers

Over on the eComm blog, Lee Dryburgh put up an interesting podcast on "Matt Ranney on Thinking Beyond VoIP and A. Bell Telephony". It's well worth a listen for those of you interested in the larger picture of what we are building for a communications infrastructure...

P.S. And if you are interested in that topic, you really should consider attending eComm March 3-5...

Technorati Tags: ecomm, communication, telephony, rebelvox, voip

News out of CES in Las Vegas is that Skype is launching on the Android Platform:

Skype today announced the release of a lite version of Skype™, a ‘thin’ client for Skype that can be downloaded on Android-powered devices, as well as more than 100 other Java-enabled mobile phones.

With more details here about the models and where to get it:

It also works on more than 100 of the most popular Java-enabled phones from the world’s top five handset manufacturers – LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. For instructions on downloading the lite version of Skype to LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson phones, users can visit www.skype.com/m using the mobile browser on their phone or www.skype.com/go/mobiledownload from a computer. The web page includes a directory of the mobile phones currently supported.

The news release has more details about costs, etc.

Definitely a great move on Skype's part.... now they just need that iPhone client! ;-)

P.S. And yes, I know (and applaud) that TruPhone came out with an iPhone client that includes Skype support... but it's still not the full range of Skype functionality that I'd like to see.

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Technorati Tags: skype, android, java

Wouldn't it be great if you could integrate Skype's mood messages with Twitter? So that whatever you entered in Skype could show up in Twitter?

It turns out that you can in the new Skype 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X... with a little file editing.

NOTE: This appears to be an experimental feature added by a Skype developer... and as I note at the bottom, it has some bugs.

Here's what you need to do:

1. On your Mac, using either the Finder or the command-line, whichever you prefer, go to the directory/folder /Users/yourmacusername/Library/Application Support/Skype/yourskypeusername. (For example, my directory is /Users/dyork/Library/Application Support/Skype/danyork)

2. With some text editor, open the file config.xml.

3. Toward the end of the file, you will see a section of XML about <UI> and inside of that a subsection <General>. In that General section, add these two lines:

 <TwitterPassword>yourpassword</TwitterPassword>
 <TwitterUsername>yourusername</TwitterUsername>

Here's an abbreviated version of what it looked like in my file:

  <UI>
    ...
    <General>
      <LastSkypeVersionUsed>2.8.0.309</LastSkypeVersionUsed>
      <SmsShowNumber>0</SmsShowNumber>
      <TwitterPassword>yourpassword</TwitterPassword>
      <TwitterUsername>yourusername</TwitterUsername>
    </General>
    <Profile>
      <LastOnlineStatus>2</LastOnlineStatus>
    </Profile>
  </UI>

4. Restart Skype.

Ta da... now anything you type in your Mood Message Chat or regular Mood Message window will show up in Twitter.

Now I found out about this when I sent some feedback to Skype about my initial use of the 2.8 Beta and said "I already have enough places to update status - why can't this be linked to, say, Twitter?" The email response mentioned this hack of the config file. I have no idea whether this feature will be improved in some future version (and perhaps supported) or if it will be removed... or simply remain as a hack for those who want to go through the work.

A MAJOR CAVEAT - It does, though, seem to have at least one major bug. If those of you following my Twitter stream wondered why I had tweets coming out that were simply something like "Define", here's why...

the Skype-to-Twitter integration seems to chop what is sent to Twitter after a single or double-quote

So setting my Skype mood message to:

Define "VoIP" - and then we can talk about it's death!

wound up simply being this in Twitter:

Define

Similarly, mood messages I have entered with apostrophes (such as "Here's a link to .... ") wind up only sending the part before the apostrophe. It would appear to pretty obviously be a bug in how this code is written. Maybe they'll fix that. Maybe they won't.

Still, if you can avoid apostrophes and quotes, it does provide a nice way for Skype mood messages to go to Twitter. Obviously this means that Skype is where you originate your Twitter messages (or at least some of them... the ones that you update in your Mood Messages).

Going the other way and allowing Twitter messages to update your Skype mood message would also be great... but that's not this particular feature.

And there you have it... have fun with it!

P.S. Sorry, Windows and Linux Skype users, this appears to be another Mac-only feature...

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Technorati Tags: skype, twitter, mac, macosx

Skype has now announced that the 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X is available for download. As I wrote about yesterday and demonstrated in a video, the new version lets you do screen sharing, access Boingo hotspots, manage chats and more...

Skype's news release is also out as well as a longer Skype blog post explaining the features (and which talks more about Skype Access, something I was unable to really try or demo).

It also looks to be worth reading through the full release notes for this version as there is a LONG list of improvements, changes and bug fixes.

But you don't have to take my word for it anymore, you can download the 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X now.

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Technorati Tags: skype, mac, apple, macworld, macosx