Set Up and Make CalliFlower Conference Calls from Your iPhone

Over the past eighteen months iotum's CalliFlower has evolved into a complete audio conference call service. While they still offer a basic free service, in January they launched a premium service that provides document sharing, local calling numbers in North America, Europe and Australia as well as a feature that allows administrators to set up, but not necessarily participate in, a conference call. The most important feature is "no per minute charges"; you get "unlimited calling with an unlimited number of participants".

Last week, over at Web Worker Daily, I wrote a post "Search Transforms CalliFlower Sessions from Events to Social Media Elements" where CalliFlower had announced that they had made all public CalliFlower sessions searchable such that they become part of an ongoing social networking conversation. My conclusion:

If you are into social networking by engaging your customers through blogs, Twitter and/or Facebook, check out CalliFlower as one additional element for carrying on your ongoing public customer conversations.

Yesterday the CalliFlower team woke up to learn that their CalliFlower for iPhone had been added to the Apple App Store overnight. (Yes, apparently "it just happens"; Apple uploads new or upgraded applications with no notice.) The iPhone application provides access to all of CalliFlower's features with the exception of document sharing (which requires Adobe Flash - an issue for all smartphones). Set up a call, see your upcoming calls, see who's on the call, participate in the chat wall and, of course, call in from your iPhone - they're all there providing a unique mobile smartphone conference call experience. iotum CEO Alec Saunders provides more details in his post "CalliFlower on iPhone releases" where he states:

And Calliflower on iPhone – well, let me just say that you’re going to love it. We’ve remained faithful to the Calliflower experience on the web, while taking full advantage of the iPhone experience giving you the hands down BEST mobile conferencing experience ever. Here’s a few examples of what I mean.

Check out my Web Worker Daily post and Alec's full description of CalliFlower for iPhone. Also note that CATA makes Calliflower available to 28,500 members. If you have not signed up for the service, give it a try.

Full disclosure: the author is a user of the service for a non-blogging related project with great success. I call in to CalliFlower calls via SkypeOut.

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Truphone for iPod Touch: Accessing Skype Contacts and Social Media

Over the past year one of the leading IP-based voice service offerings for low cost international calling from wireless smartphones has been Truphone whose service primarily runs over WiFi access points. Their Truphone Anywhere service, launched last spring, provides an option for making calls via 3G networks using a combination of the data channel and voice channel in a manner similar to iSkoot's architecture where the caller's VoIP client resides on the service provider's server(s). When the Apple App store launched last summer Truphone launched an iPhone 3G application that once again offers the ability to make outbound calls over a WiFi access point.

One more user experience consideration: a key user friendly Truphone feature is its complete Address Book integration; when using Truphone on a N95 8GB I can simply go to my standard address book (synchronized with my Outlook Contacts), select a contact, select a phone number for the contact, press the green "Call" button and initiate a call over Truphone.

So it was not a total surprise, with this experience, that today Truphone announced a new Truphone application for the second generation iPod Touch, which supports a headset with a microphone. But it's not simply about making low cost phone calls. Support for chat and social networking has also been included. The client does require the use of a microphone adapter; while available elsewhere, Truphone does plan to offer one as well. From the press release:

Truphone for iPod Touch will become a one-stop-shop social hub with the following features coming soon:

• Calling to landlines (PSTN) at low cost (simply set yourself up with a Truphone account);
• Instant messaging to Skype and MSN (free);
• Calling to Skype users (free);
• Calling to MSN users (free);
• Check and set facilities for Twitter (free);
• Check and set facilities for Facebook (free).

Contrary to what many in the media are saying, the client that resides on the iPod Touch is a thin client, not a VoIP client. This client supplies a Truphone server with the information required to open and set up a VoIP client on a Truphone server which, in turn, completes the call via a VoIP connection.

What can we envision from this announcement for future releases of Truphone for Nokia, BlackBerry, iPhone 3G and Windows Mobile devices? Beyond the calling and SMS features currently available in their respective Truphone clients I expect we'll be seeing:

• Truphone access to Skype IM and calls to Skype contacts, as well as to Microsoft Live contacts
• Facebook access, including possibly the ability to import Facebook contacts into your phone address book
• Following Twitter messages

In addition, Truphone is a Voxbone iNum partner; initially Truphone for iPod Touch users will be assigned an iNum "883" country code number. I have also recently observed use of iNum "883" numbers on iotum's Calliflower conferencing service and at Mobivox. Using Skype today, I confirmed that placing a Skype call to an iNum "883" number results in a SkypeOut call with the appropriate charges.

Looks like we're about to see some interesting innovation coming from Truphone over the next few months.

Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch talks about some of the broader implications of the technology behind this announcement.

Update: Pat Phelan does not think an iPod Touch is a phone device; it's not simply a case of "because you can do it".

Tags: Truphone, Skype, iPod Touch, iNum

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Alec Saunders Twitters: "Ditching all IM Systems except Skype"!

When I started using Skype more intensively about three years ago, I had been a heavy user of Microsoft's MSN Messenger for several years. But about 18 months ago, I stopped logging into MSN Messenger; none of my contacts were there - or, if they were, they were also on Skype. As for GTalk, well I added a couple of contacts two weeks ago to test out GMail's new voice and video chat feature, so now I'm up to ten contacts on GTalk - and they are also all on Skype. One person still persists in trying to reach me on GTalk these days ... and my BlackBerry catches that - in background.
But when long time acquaintance, well respected blogger and former Microsoft employee Alec Saunders puts up a tweet as shown above, it has to be the ultimate complement to Skype's pervasive worldwide presence.
When you have 370 million accounts (yes, I know there are only 30 to 50 million using Skype over the course of a month), one would suspect that market presence and user base size wins out over any technical disadvantage, such as the lack of XMPP compliance. Sort of places XMPP right up there with SIP - an excellent protocol for interop but it's sort of like the tree falling in the forest - who hears it -at the end user level? And, both SIP and XMPP require business agreements between the linking service providers covering every connection, whether there's revenue or not.
In the IM world, it's a matter of who's available for a conversation? Which service has the highest probability of being able to determine a contact's availability and start a chat, voice call, share a file, send an SMS message or even do a (High Quality) video call? Which service has eight ways of seamlessly carrying out a file transfer?
Alec's one problem in keeping current? He'll have to go back to his BlackBerry to receive Skype IM messages via iSkoot. BlackBerry's background processing capability becomes a very distinct advantage here in the smartphone market. When attending an event in downtown Toronto last night I received an important "good news" Skype chat message on my BlackBerry Bold, while looking up a website the speaker was referencing and following the Twitter feed of one of the organizers.
A more significant challenge for Skype is to generate the marketing that will attract all those of a younger generation (such as my daughter) whose "social networks" are immersed into MSN Messenger as their IM client.
In closing have a look at some of Alec's followup Tweets:
In closing I should also mention that I like to use BlackBerry Messenger for its ability to bypass the Internet for messages that "just have to get there now!" via BlackBerry's unique method for PIN messaging.
Update: An oversight on my part: of course Skype IM also has the hooks to allow Skype chat sessions to proxy for other services. For a classic example check out Twitter4Skype.
Full disclosure: Alec Saunders is author of the Voice 2.0 Manifesto, which is proving itself out in today's dynamic mashup environment - especially when it comes to Communications Enhanced Business Processes. He is CEO of iotum, whose Calliflower Conference Call service is currently being launched. And, much earlier in his career, he was DOS product manger at Microsoft Canada at a time when DOS's memory management feature tried to compete with Quarterdeck's QEMM and the author managed Quarterdeck Canada.

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Updates: iNum, Calliflower and Entering "Last Name" onto a BlackBerry

With both VoiceCon and Under The Radar events in the Bay Area last week, there were lots of announcements in the Voice 2.0 communications space; I wrote up some GigaOm and Web Worker Daily Posts to cover a few of them:

On Tuesday Voxbone announced the launch of their iNum Service. Basically it provides a means to have a universal worldwide "local" number that can be accessed through the recently accredited (by the ITU) +883 country code. Last Tuesday I hosted a SquawkBox conference call with Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens; a post on GigaOm with more details talks about Geography Is Dead - Thank VoIP. Two other excellent "Voxeo Talks" posts from Dan York on this topic (Voxeo is a Voxbone iNum Service Provider Partner):

• How to get an iNum - a "global phone number"
• iNum and "global phone numbers: a video interview with Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens.

A heads up on using iNum; access from Skype to a +883 number is considered a SkypeOut call requiring SkypeOut credits. It's not a "country" covered under Skype's Universal Calling Plans; check out the various alternative means to access iNum numbers here.

The following day iotum announced the official launch of their Calliflower conference call service incorporating premium options for businesses that see its benefits for more interactive voice conferencing through the Calliflower call portal. Document sharing and a much wider range of access points, including iNum access were amongst the new features. And they announced an iPhone application for accessing Calliflower calls. More details can be found in my Web Worker Daily Post: Calliflower: A Complete Conference Calling Service.

Finally, in doing some checking out of a new service, I encountered an Automated Attendant that wanted me to enter a person's last name in order to locate that person in the host business's extension directory. But that presents a bit of a problem when you have a BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard and you want to generate the tones where 2--> "A, B or C", etc. But the RIM people think of everything; there is a relatively simple solution. Find out the answer over at Web Worker Daily in "Entering 'Last Name' From a BlackBerry".

Tags: Voxbone, iNum, iotum, Calliflower, Research in Motion, BlackBerry, Dan York, Voxeo

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Logitech to Acquire SightSpeed. Questions Arise.

According to Tech Crunch and GigaOm posts late last night Logitech is about to spend $30 million to acquire SightSpeed, the video messaging and video conferencing service that recently was selected ot provide the infrastructure for Dell's Video Chat. Congratulations to Peter Csathy and his team. And to Andy Abramson and his team; another Comunicano client achieves success.

Seems like the video calling and video conferencing market is about to heat up. There will be another post later this morning involving an announcement that can bring video conferencing to a much broader user audience than Skype's (though it's not exactly insignificant) and SightSpeed's.
Questions that arise from this acquisition:

• How is Logitech able to continue to partner with services such as Skype when they are now entering the desktop video services market? Logitech's co-operation was vital to Skype's ability to provide High Quality Video.
  
• Or is it a produce marketing acquisition? Is Logitech acquiring SightSpeed simply to have additional collateral software to provide with their webcam offerings? Will we start to see Logitech's Carl-Zeiss optics in embedded webcams on Dell PC's?

The economy may be in recession; it's driving less travel and more audio and video conferencing. They're seeing a rise in customers and use of audio conferencing at both HiDef Conferencing and Calliflower. It will be an interesting winter for expanding user experiences involving desktop video.

Logitech Press Release

Update: Alec Saunders comments on the same theme here.
Tags: Logitech, SightSpeed, Skype, Peter Csathy, Tech Crunc, GigaOm, HiDef Conferencing, Calliflower

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Making Skype Calls from Fring for iPhone

Earlier today Fring, known for aggregating various IM and VoIP services onto a mobile phone, announced Fring for iPhone had become available on the Apple App Store. So I gave it a tryout this evening, exchanging chat messages and then a couple of voice calls to Skype destinations.
My quick comment:

• the other party's voice was both a bit fuzzy and somewhat weak in volume.
• both other parties complained of some echo; I did not hear echo at my end.
• The call appeared to be going out over the iPhone's WiFi connection.
• Calls went out over the WiFi connection.
  

The benchmark in call quality would be my experiences earlier this week where twice , when my home office cable was disconnected due to "cable plant" improvements in my neighborhood, I used iSkoot on the Blackberry Bold to call into SquawkBox via the CalliFlower voice conferencing service over the Rogers 3G network.

Let 's just say in the iSkoot calls, the technology was transparent to the discussion and I could lay the phone on my desk while still actively participating. Whereas my Fring calls would not have been of sufficient quality to carry on natural dialogue participation in a conference call. While Fring has shown to be a leader in demonstrating the potential to make such a call, it has some work to do to achieve business grade call quality.

My other comment, now having used Skype IM chat on both devices. It's much easier to have a text conversation via the Blackberry with a QWERTY real keyboard. Thick thumbs on a "touch" keyboard many errors make; as I said in my brief Fring-enabled IM Skype chat session with Dan York - I was sending these IM messages "under duress" (and with about a 25% typing error rate).

Note that during registration I encountered a bug whereby Fring would not recognize my email address, which includes a "dot" between first and last name. This is a known bug which we hope they will fix quickly, especially due to the privacy issue raised in the linked Fring forum discussion.
More to follow once I will have had a few days' experience in its use.
Other posts: Mac Rumors

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Alternatives to Skypecasts

While there has been lots of dismay about the discontinuation of Skypecasts (Skype's blog posts: here and here), it had appeared for the past several months that the service just did not have the robustness to provide the reliability and quality of service that users would expect. Being a free service, it was obviously placing resource demands with zero revenue potential on Skype developer and support personnel that hopefully can be diverted to bringing feature equality to Skype's basic service, whether on Windows, Mac or Linux.
There are alternatives; in fact, this decision provides a unique opportunity for two third party conference calling services:

1. Skype Multi-Party Calling:

For up to 25 participants on a call, Skype has recently expanded its multi-party calling capacity. The caveat here is that the host must use a multi-core Windows PC and a reliable broadband internet connection (preferably cable). Participants can be on any version of Skype or be accessed via SkypeOut. In this case the host must set up the call and call out to all the participants. More details here. A unique feature of Skype's multi-party calling is its ability to show which participant is actually speaking at any given time. But keep in mind Skype really offers multi-party calling, not a full conferencing service.
2. iotum CalliFlower
iotum's CalliFlower has the benefit of no charge other than whatever it costs to make the connection to one of their access points. I often participate in their daily SquawkBox call via my SkypeOut account; the recent availability of SkypeOut CallerID, displaying my mobile phone number when I make a SkypeOut call, has allowed me to participate in these calls within my SkypeOut subscription without even using the provided password for each call. In fact, there are four options for accessing these calls:

1. Truphone VoIP: A PC, a headset and an internet connection puts you one click away from your conference call.
2. Phone: Dial from anywhere in the world to one of our U.S. or French dial-in numbers to get connected.
3. Skype: Call our U.S. dial-in number from within the Skype network, and get high quality audio.
4. Sitofono call back: Enter your phone number and get called back for free in more than 12 countries

SquawkBox participants regularly call in from the U.S., Canada and U.K. but there is really no country-specific limitation The real gem of CalliFlower is the web-based user interface where participants can see who is on the call, raise a hand, enter text on a "wall". The host can record the call for later playback, mute/unmute participants as well as set up the call, invite participants via email and SMS, and put up the subsequent recording.

As an example of building communities, iotum has worked with Alan Hunkin to provide a weekly interview session, CalliFlower Communiques, with notable personalities such as William Shatner. Immediate future guests include Ken Blanchard, author of "Being a One Minute Entrepreneur" and actor Alan Alda discussions his recent memoir "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself." Recordings of previous sessions are available at the page linked above.
3. HiDef Conferencing
Vapps' HiDef Conferencing (formerly HiSpeedConferencing) provides high definition (HD) voice quality calls for participants accessing via Skype. Their business grade service involves fixed rate monthly hosting subscriptions involving unlimited Skype access, dial-in to specific numbers in several countries and toll-free numbers. Obviously this involves some ongoing expense to the host but their infrastructure supports providing the best possible voice quality, depending on access mode. The host uses their web controls to set up calls, manage call participants as well as record and archive calls.
Looking at the options it appears the best conference experience comes when:

• hosts are able to setup and fully manage the calls, including an open access invitation;
• users can participate through a web-based experience not only via voice but also via chat.

The good news is that Skype provides either free or low cost unlimited access to any of these services. What will be most interesting is to see if iotum and/or Vapps rise to the opportunity here and and is able to provide encouragement to the many communities that were supported by Skypecasts.
Tags: Skype, Skypecast, iotum, CalliFlower, Hi Def Conferencing, CalliFlower Communique, Vapps, multi-party calling, Alan Hunkin

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