Disruptive Telephony

To say that more simply… right now to do good audio communication on the web, you have to use plugins built in Flash, QuickTime or Java. This Web Audio API aims to let you do much of that audio control via JavaScript and HTML5. From the specification intro:

Audio on the web has been fairly primitive up to this point and until very recently has had to be delivered through plugins such as Flash and QuickTime. The introduction of the audio element in HTML5 is very important, allowing for basic streaming audio playback. But, it is not powerful enough to handle more complex audio applications. For sophisticated web-based games or interactive applications, another solution is required. It is a goal of this specification to include the capabilities found in modern game audio engines as well as some of the mixing, processing, and filtering tasks that are found in modern desktop audio production applications.

The Web Audio API specification, which is a proposal for a standard being discussed in the W3C's Audio Working Group includes a set of example applications, including multi-player games like Quake, musical examples and more.

If you want to live on the edge with the "Beta Channel" of Google Chrome builds (I do), you can even go over to Google's page of Web Audio examples to try it out yourself.

It's great to see this support in Google Chrome as it can help us continue the move away from proprietary browser plugins to more standards-based solutions - and through that to a more open Internet. Kudos to the Google team for rolling out the support - I'm looking forward to seeing what people build with it!

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While the Skype 5.x interface has certainly come under fire from many folks (including me), the reality is that it is the direction Skype is going forward with and so to a certain degree we who want to continue to use Skype have to either learn to live with the new UI - or revert back to Skype 2.8 while realizing we won't get any new features.

Recently my corporate laptop was upgraded to a brand new MacBook Pro and in the process I decided to finally make the jump over to Skype 5.2. In doing so, I started hunting around for ways to work even faster with the user interface. Thankfully, the folks at Skype came out with this great list of 12 tips:

Skype 5.2 tricks and tips

It turned out I knew most of them (or other ways to do them), but the one I have found very useful was the three-finger swipe on the trackpad to move up or down between conversations.

And the 13th tip?

That would be my own that isn't on that page. Being a huge Skype chat user, I like to quickly be able to find and jump into various chats. While in the Skype UI, hold down:

Option + Command + f

Your focus will jump up to the search box in the upper right corner and you can type in the name of someone or some text that is in a chat name. You should see the search results start to appear below. Hit the tab key to move down to the list of search results and then the arrow keys to move up and down in the list. Hit Enter to go into the chat ... and there you are.

Simple way to find chats... without having to use the trackpad. It's a shortcut that I use pretty much every day!

Are any of these tips major time savers for you? Have you found other tips or tricks that help make the Skype 5.2 UI work better for you?

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I'm showing the phone "popped out" of the browser window, but normally it just appears inside your browser window and lets you search your contacts or dial new numbers.

Personally, I find that most of my international calling (and actually most of my calling, period) is done via Skype... but for those who want to reach people internationally on regular mobile phones (or (GASP!) landlines) this could offer another cheap option.

Similarly, if you live in Google products (something more people are exploring now that Google+ is here), this provides a great way to stay within Google-land and make your phone calls. While I am a Gmail user, I read all my email offline so I never use the web interface... so I don't see me using this, but many will, I'm sure.

Sadly, there seems to be no way to call SIP addresses, so for those of us who want to break the shackles of all the legacy PSTN limitations and, for instance, have calls in rich wideband/HD audio, "calling from Gmail" still won't cut it.

Google provides a simple rate chart (click "show all rates" to see the full list) and says in their blog post:

For example, it’s now only $0.10 (or €0.08) per minute to call mobile phones in the U.K., France or Germany (landlines are $0.02/min), $0.15/minute to call mobile phones in Mexico and $0.02/min to call any phone number in China and India.

They also note:

Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed within those countries will continue to be free at least for the rest of 2011. Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed from outside these countries will be charged $0.01 per minute (or €0.01, £0.01, C$0.01 per minute).

Google being Google they also provide a nice happy video:

All in all it looks like an interesting offering for people who live in the Google web interface. And it all continues to add pressure to that international dialing market...

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As I posted over on the Voxeo Talks blog recently, über-geek Chris Pirillo recently interviewed VoIP industry veteran Jeff Pulver and Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor on the topic of the future of real-time communications. It was a wide ranging interview talking about the history of communication apps, how VoIP has evolved, the role of standards, issues around bandwidth caps, the role of individuals and so much more. Chris explained a bit more on his site.. The video is now available on YouTube:

As a producer of video interviews, I was personally intrigued by Chris' use of a Google+ "Hangout" to conduct the interview. I'm going to have to try it at some point.

Enjoy the video!

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Facebook integration
Now when you connect to Facebook you can see when your Facebook friends are online and IM with them directly from Skype.

Now I don't have Windows to test it out (as you would know from my earlier post), but in working with fellow blogger Jim Courtney who uses Skype on both operating systems, this has some interesting aspects to it.

For starters, in Skype 5.5, the chat with the Facebook user appears in your left-side list of chats just like a chat with a Skype user. You have the same user experience chatting with a FB user as with a Skype user. (Subject to the caveat that Jim found he couldn't edit a message sent to a FB user, but that makes sense given that the message would leave Skype's network to go over to Facebook's network.)

When Jim went into his Facebook contacts he found my name (he and I are friends on FB) that I was currently "offline":

He noted that he could call me via a regular phone number... but not through Skype, even though we are connected on Skype. (So a bit of future integration work that could be done.)

Once I opened a browser and logged into Facebook, I showed up to Jim as online:

Jim initiated a chat... and to me it seemed to be just like a regular Facebook chat:

On Jim's side, it looked like just a regular Skype chat.

This is VERY cool!

Why? Because this is really the first direct integration I am aware of between Skype and any other IM service. Sure, there are any number of services that people have connected to Skype to bridge Skype messages out to XMPP/Jabber or other networks... but they aren't directly supported by Skype and in my experience some of them haven't worked too well.

Now, I don't know how Skype actually accomplished the Facebook chat integration. I do know that Facebook supports XMPP (Jabber) for connections to external services for chat, so this would be one very obvious way for Skype to make the connection to Facebook. They might have done the integration at a deeper level. I don't know.

But if Skype did add an XMPP gateway to the edge of their network... that's great news... and perhaps may bode well for future integration with other IM services.

Skype 5.5 for Windows has a bunch of other updates, including those emoticons I ranted about, and if you are a Windows user I would suggest you look at upgrading.

Meanwhile, even if it is only on one platform, kudos to the folks at Skype for lowering the walls a bit and connecting out to the other IM networks!

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What they look like on my Mac is this:

C'mon Skype... would it have killed you to make this available in a simultaneous Mac release?

I don't personally really care about access to these emoticons... my life will not be any better or worse based on whether or not I can use these emoticons (although I do see places where I could use them).

The point is that Skype once again continues to roll out features that work on one operating system but not on others.

Personally, I'd love to see Skype get to a point where it could be like Mozilla Firefox (or Voxeo's Prophecy) where a new release comes out across all operating systems.

Let's break the silos, Skype... and provide a more consistent user experience across ALL platforms!

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In the run-up to our presence at the SpeechTEK conference in New York starting on August 8th, some Voxeo marketing colleagues of mine put together this fun video:

And of course, if you want to find out WHY Sam is censored... well... you'll just have to wait until SpeechTEK! ;-)

P.S. There's also an outtake video :-)

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• Open Source Tools, Social Media and Crisis Response
  
  
• Managing Open Source Releases of a Cloud Platform
  
  
• Why Should You Care about IPv6? And What Should You Do about It?

I was supposed to be out there at OSCON giving that last presentation about IPv6, but unfortunately I'm not able to travel this week. Adam is thankfully delivering that presentation on my behalf.

If you are out there at OSCON, I hope you enjoy the event - it looks to yet again be a fantastic event!

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And after all the buzz... where is it?

Nowhere.

At least, it's not in the AppStore, as of just a couple of minutes ago.

Where is the hang-up, one wonders... delays on Apple's end? on Skype's end? Where?

Regardless, the net of it is that we iPad users are all left out here... wondering...

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Would you like to understand how these services can grow your business? Make your operations more efficient? Open new revenue channels?

Are you concerned about being "locked in" to proprietary services or APIs?

Would you simply like to learn new products and skills to develop your own career?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, please plan on heading down to Orlando, Florida, for the Voxeo Customer Summit 2011 on October 10-12.

Courtesy of a number of sponsors, registration is FREE. You just, obviously, need to get down to Orlando and cover your hotel, etc.

From the Voxeo blog post announcing the agenda, here are some of the highlights:

• A presentation of the 2011-12 product roadmap
• Real strategies for creating competitive advantage with multi-channel, Social CRM and cross-channel analytics
• Technical deep dives on PRISM, Phono and more
• An interactive Demo Lounge showcasing products from Voxeo and Summit sponsors
• A keynote presentation by Joseph Jaffe, author of Flip the Funnel
• A hands-on pre-conference developer workshop: Building Apps with Phono and Building SMS Apps with SMSified (OneAPI)
• Great networking events including the Party at the Plaza! Come check out our brand new office!

I'll be presenting a tutorial on IPv6 and how you can use it with our applications and will be around through the event blogging, tweeting, interviewing folks and generating other online content.

It promises to be a GREAT time and I'd love to see many of you down there. Register today!

P.S. The first version of this post had the dates incorrectly as Oct 8-10 - and in fact the URL still has those dates in it. However, the correct dates are Oct 10-12. My brain was temporarily confused with SpeechTEK 2011, where I will also be speaking, and is being held August 8-10.

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