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Posts categorized "Voxeo"

Free Webinar Today - "How Do You Hear Me Now? The Power of Wideband (HD) Audio"

June 09, 2011
Developer Jam SessionYou know how great the audio quality can sound in a good Skype call? Almost like you are right there in the room with the other person?

That's possible because Skype uses what is called "wideband audio" (or "HD audio" by some).

In about 3 hours I'll be presenting a Voxeo Developer Jam Session on "The Power of Wideband Audio". The session is at:

Thursday, June 9, 2011

11:00 AM US Eastern, 8:00 AM US Pacific, 5:00 PM Central European

I'll be talking about why you should care about wideband audio, what you can do with it, and how you can get started. Here's the abstract:

What is “wideband” or “HD” audio? What are the benefits of wideband audio? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using wideband? With all the buzz out there, what does wideband or “HD” audio really do for you in a business setting?

In this Developer Jam Session, Dan York, Director of Conversations at Voxeo will explain the basics of wideband audio, discuss the various versions of wideband audio deployed in the industry, explain why it is important in terms of business value. Additionally, he will talk about how wideband audio is implemented in Voxeo’s Prophecy and PRISM products.

If you can't attend, the session will be recorded and available later from the jam session web page.

To me, wideband audio is one of the truly compelling advantages of voice-over-IP and I'm looking forward to sharing that passion with the attendees in a few hours... why not join us and listen in live?

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Posted on June 09, 2011 at 08:15 AM in Audio, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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What is Best? Deploying Communications Apps to the Cloud? On-Premises? Or Hybrid?

May 29, 2011
What is the best way to deploy communications applications? In the hosted "cloud"? On your premises behind your firewall? Or some kind of hybrid approach? Back in February I presented in a Voxeo "Best Practices" webinar on just this topic: Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid. While a recording and the slides of the hour-long session have been available on the webinar page, it is also now available via Voxeo's YouTube account:

The great part about YouTube is that you can view it on many different devices, including mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad.

It was an enjoyable session to present with lots of great questions. If you have any feedback on the session or would like to know more, please contact me.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Posted on May 29, 2011 at 09:12 PM in Cloud Computing, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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Tropo.com Lowers SMS Rate to 1 Cent Per Message - Now Super-Cheap To Build SMS Apps

May 13, 2011
Want to build text messaging (SMS) applications for a very cheap price? My colleagues over in Voxeo Labs recently reduced the price of sending or receiving SMS messages to only 1 cent per message. (As a bonus, they also came up with the cute graphic I'm using on the right.)

As Adam Kalsey writes in the Tropo blog post, "Announcing New lower SMS pricing" sending an SMS is a trivial matter in Tropo. His language of choice is PHP, so he shows: 

<?php
call('+14155551212', array('network' => 'SMS'));
say('d00d, Penny SMS? ');
?>

But you could obviously do something very similar in Python, Ruby, Groovy or JavaScript in Tropo Scripting... or with any language using the Tropo WebAPI.

Personally, I like seeing what I can do to merge SMS with Twitter... back in December I wrote about how to use Tropo to trigger alerts via SMS based on text in Twitter, which is a variation of an app I do actually use for Twitter monitoring. My colleague Justin Dupree also wrote a cool post about using Node.js to build a Twitter IM/SMS service.

Anyway... all of these SMS apps are now able to be deployed in production for only 1 cent per message to and from US numbers. Text messages to numbers outside the US are still the low 2 cents per message. If you'd like to try it out, Tropo is free for developers to build and try apps... you just have to sign up for an account.

P.S. In case it wasn't crystal clear, Tropo is a service of Voxeo, my employer. However, I wouldn't write about it here if I didn't think it was cool!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Posted on May 13, 2011 at 11:24 AM in Applications, Mashups, Programming, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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Reminder: Free Training on IPv6 and Communications Apps (including SIP) on Thursday, May 5, 2011

May 02, 2011
voxeologohoriz.pngAs I mentioned last week, I'm speaking in a "Developer Jam Session" on this Thursday, May 5, 2011 on the topic of:
IPv6 and How It Impacts Communication Applications

I'll briefly cover IPv6 basics, talk about how it impacts building communication applications and the SIP protocol and then have some demonstrations of SIP-over-IPv6. You can learn more about the session and register on the Jam Session web page.

It's free to attend the session - and it will be archived for later viewing if you can't get there live during the session.

It should be an educational session and I expect I'll be writing a good bit more about IPv6 in the weeks and months ahead. (You can see some of my writing over on Voxeo's blog at http://blogs.voxeo.com/speakingofstandards/tag/IPv6/ and here on this blog at http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/ipv6/)

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Posted on May 02, 2011 at 03:20 PM in IPv6, SIP, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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Speaking at SIPNOC Next Week on SIP Interoperability and Security (and Joining an IPv6 BOF)

April 21, 2011
Sipnoc2011Next week in the DC area (Herndon, VA) there will be a unique event taking place - SIPNOC: The SIP Network Operators Conference. This event is organized by the SIP Forum and will bring together a great collection of service providers and carriers to share and learn from each other about the realities behind providing SIP-based services today. It will be a great place for those providing real-time communications over IP networks to look at how we can continue to expand and improve the services.

There's a packed agenda at the event that includes many great sessions I'm looking forward to attending. I'll be there speaking about SIP interoperability and some of the lessons we've learned at Voxeo as we've interconnected our SIP cloud to that of so many carriers. I'll also be donning my VOIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) hat to participate on a panel about security.

And naturally given my intense interest in IPv6 these days (and all my writing about IPv6, I'll of course be joining in to the "IPv6 Readiness" BOF planned for Tuesday, April 26.

I'm very much looking forward to this first SIPNOC event... if you are already planning to be there please do say hello, and if you are interested in attending, you can still register to attend.

We need events like these to help improve the overall IP infrastructure and help move us faster to the time when we can have even more of our connectivity all happen over IP. Great to see!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Posted on April 21, 2011 at 09:59 PM in Conferences, IPv6, Security, SIP, VOIPSA, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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Want To Learn Best Practices in Multi-Channel App Creation? (Voice, SMS, IM, Twitter, etc.)

April 14, 2011
voxeologohoriz.pngWant to know industry best practices in creating apps that work across voice, text messaging/SMS, IM and social channels like Twitter? Would you like to know some of the latest research on what channels customers are using to communicate with companies?

Next Tuesday, April 19, at 11am US Eastern time, I will be joining an industry analyst in a webinar called "Best Practices in Multi-Channel Customer Interaction". We'll be covering topics such as:

  • what communication channels customers are choosing for interacting with businesses
  • best practices you can implement for each channel
  • where customer interaction is heading, with particular focus on social and mobile channels
  • how you can create applications that interact with customers across multiple channels
  • best practices in cross-channel analytics and integration into business intelligence systems

I think you'll find it quite educational if you're wondering how to expand your customer interaction beyond simply voice or web. The session will have some solid quantitative data and will take a look at what's ahead in terms of customer interaction.

Registration is free and simple and is open to anyone. We'll also be recording the session and it will be available for listening after the fact if you can't attend on Tuesday.

Please do join us... and bring your questions... it should be a good time!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Posted on April 14, 2011 at 09:41 PM in Applications, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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Stuck With Old Nortel PeriPro Apps? Check Out This Migration Tool...

March 28, 2011
Did you spend a significant amount of time, money and energy building voice applications with the "Peri Producer" (a.k.a. "PeriPro") tool formerly owned by Nortel and now by Avaya? Would you like to move away from proprietary lock-in to a standards-based platform with a clear future? Would you like to move your PeriPro app beyond simply voice and add in communication channels like SMS/text messaging, IM, mobile web and even Twitter?

If so, do check out what my colleagues within Voxeo have come out with as the "VoiceObjects Migration Manager":

http://developers.voiceobjects.com/support-training/voiceobjects-migration-manager/

It's a tool that helps you move those PeriPro apps over onto Voxeo VoiceObjects where they can then work with either Voxeo's IVR platform or the IVR platforms of about 30 other vendors. My colleague Tobias Goebel put together this screencast that talks about what the migration tool can do:

There was also an hour-long webinar earlier in March where Tobias and Dan Evans discussed the tool at great length and answered many questions from attendees. You can view the webinar and/or download the slides at the jam session page at:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/jamsessions/2011/03/07/jam-session-march-10-2011-peripro-migration-too/

While PeriPro apps were the first type of app to be converted by the VoiceObjects Migration Manager, I know that the team has its eyes on several other legacy proprietary formats that they will be adding to the tool to help even more folks move over onto VoiceObjects. It's cool stuff they are working on!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Posted on March 28, 2011 at 09:35 AM in Applications, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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New Phono "Callme Button" Demo Shows Use of Calling Directly from Web Browser

March 14, 2011
Hot on the heels of the new release of the PhonoSDK I wrote about last week, Dave Hoff over in Voxeo Labs came out with a new "Callme Button" demo that's very cool. As he describes in his blog post on the Phono blog, adding a "call me" button to a website is now as simple as adding this snippet of JavaScript to your web page: 
$("body").append(
   $("<div/>")
    .css("width","210px")
    .callme({
      apiKey: "C17D167F-09C6-4E4C-A3DD-2025D48BA243",
      numberToDial: "8007773456",
      buttonTextReady: "1-800-777-FILM",
      slideOpen:true
    })
  )

There is a Callme "demo page" online at:

http://s.phono.com/releases/0.2/samples/callme/index.htm

That shows how you could create a button with or without a dialpad and in various themes:

Phonocallmeplugin

The source code is naturally there for you to play with if you want to do so.

Cool stuff!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Posted on March 14, 2011 at 02:54 PM in Programming, VoIP, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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Voxeo Unleashes PhonoSDK 0.2, a jQuery Module for Voice and Chat In the Browser

March 11, 2011
Phono shadow 1How about some echo suppression for voice calls directly from your web browser? That was the big news out of the Voxeo Labs team yesterday with the release of version 0.2 of the PhonoSDK... no more headsets required! Just click the Phono button on your website and start talking!

If you aren't aware of Phono, back in October Voxeo released the Phono SDK, letting you easily add in voice or chat directly into your website. The way to think about is this... traditionally, websites have had a "click-to-call" button that would call you and call a call center and bridge the two calls together. For this to work, you have to typically enter your phone number into the phone.

Phono changes that by running a softphone client directly in your web browser. So instead of entering your phone number, you simply push the button and start talking to your browser. (For those interested, we posted about the architecture, which uses a mixture of XMPP/Jingle and SIP. Phono itself is a jQuery module/library/app/whatever-you-want-to-call-it that you reference in your web page.)

Phono received a good bit of attention and we posted a lot of content about it online, including sample apps, tutorials, videos and more. The source code, too, is all available online.

One thing that always bothered us, though, was that you needed a headset for Phono to really work well... and so we spent a great amount of time working on echo suppression so that people could ditch the headset and just talk to their computer. Given that on the development side we're all Mac users, we're used to apps like Skype where you don't really need a headset. We wanted Phono to be the same.

So now we've done it... PhonoSDK version 0.2 is out! We're thrilled with how it came out and are looking forward to seeing what people build with it. If you want to try it out, simply go to Phono.com, check out the documentation and get started!

Full disclosure: In case the "we" usage above wasn't enough to clue you in, Phono is a product of my employer, Voxeo. But even if that weren't the case, I'd still write about Phono simply because it's cool... and it's disruptive.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Posted on March 11, 2011 at 03:49 PM in Programming, VoIP, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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Free webinar Tues, Feb 15 - Deploying Apps: Cloud vs. Premise vs. Hybrid

February 14, 2011
DSC_0206

With all the buzz around the "cloud" and "cloud communications", what is the reality amidst the hype? That's a topic I'll be discussing in a Voxeo webinar on Tuesday, February 15th, called "Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications:  Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid". Given that Voxeo's had literally hundreds of thousands of apps deployed in both our hosted cloud and also on customer premises, we've learned a thing a two that I'll be sharing. I'll talk about questions such as:

  • What are the advantages of deploying voice and SMS applications into the cloud? 
  • What are the disadvantages? 
  • What are the security issues you need to be aware of? 
  • When is it more appropriate to deploy applications on your premises? 
  • What kind of hybrid architectures are now available and what are their pros and cons?

Tuesday, Feb 15, 2011
8:00 AM US Pacific, 11:00 AM US Eastern, 5:00 PM Central European

REGISTER TODAY

It should be a fun session... and we'll have time at the end for Q&A.

If you can't watch it live, the webinar will be archived for later viewing (and if you register, we'll alert you when the archive is available).

Image credit: me :-)

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Posted on February 14, 2011 at 09:41 PM in Cloud Computing, Voxeo | | Comments (0)

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