Image via CrunchBase

For those asking themselves what’s going on at GrandCentral, the “one number for life” service acquired by Google last year, today Google announces Vocito, a desktop UI for GrandCentral and, this time, for Mac users only.

It’s basically an apple script which integrates into Address Book or the popular launcher Quicksilver. In general, any application which supports the “tel:” URLs can be used with Vocito.

I installed it and as soon as I try to make a call from my Mac Address Book, I’m requested to insert my GrandCentral userid and password.  At that point, nothing happened (and no error messages), but it’s probably because I tried to call an italian number… The behavior should be the following: it calls my GC number and the remote number and connect them together.

I’ll check it out again to see how it really works. Finally something new from GrandCentral. You can download it at this link.

Related articles by Zemanta

• GrandCentral, Where Are You?
• Grandialer, an iPhone app for GrandCentral

Technorati Tags: Address Book, call, Google, GrandCentral, luca filigheddu, vocito

Image by thomcochrane via Flickr

The popular Israeli Mobile IM/VoIP service Fring is slowly introducing banner Ads inside their mobile clients. It seems not all the users are affected, but only a selected group. 

I don’t really know if it will work, anyway praises to Fring to be one of the first players to introduce this approach in the mobile VoIP space. However Fring is not alone since Talkster is another player which announced a similar strategy at the beginning of this year, despite the approach is different (ads into the call stream).

I think 2009 will be a “show me the money” year so I bet many players in this space will launch similar or alternative initiatives pretty soon.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Fring Trials Ads On Free Mobile Chat/VoIP Application
• Fring: Ads Are Coming!
• Report on Low Cost & Mobile VoIP

Technorati Tags: Advertising, fring, luca filigheddu, mobile voip, talkster

Image by stevegarfield via Flickr

A couple of days ago I noticed Jeff Pulver was putting together a new conference in the field of social communications. 

Today he announced it officially: The Social Communications Summit will take place in New York next February 10-11 and he’s looking for talented and passionate speakers to bring their experience and standpoint of the current status of the intersection of IP Communications with Social Networks.

Deadline for the submission of speaking proposals is Dec 5th, so please get in touch with Jeff if you want to be part of this event.

This latest news confirms that February and March are going to be very hot for the IP Communications industry, starting with ITEXPO East in Miami on Febr 2nd to 4th, going through  this new event by Jeff in New York and ending with the second edition of eComm by Lee Dryburgh in San Francisco.

I like being part of this!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Event: Breakfast with Jeff Pulver and Friends in NYC on September 10th
• The Social Media Jungle: Update #4 - Updated Schedule

Technorati Tags: jeff pulver, luca filigheddu, New York City, Social Media, the social communications summit

Technorati Tags: jeff pulver, luca filigheddu

In a nutshell, according to this agreement, Junction Networks has been selected by edgeBOX to be the preferred voice provider for their “office-in-a-box” solution. edgeBOX is “an integrated device aimed at the SMB market and including a full-fledged IP-PBX, wireless access point, router, file, e-mail and VPN server”.

In this story what caught my attention is the following paragraph:

Calls between edgeBOX extensions, whether on-premise or around the world across Internet connections, will incur half-cent-per-minute charges. 

What? IP to IP voice calls are not FREE? Guys, I love this. Praises to Junction Networks and edgeBOX for this brave choice! While someone could see this as a downside of this service, I look at it as a great innovation and potentially the beginning of a new era for VoIP.

On-net VoIP calls have always been offered for free, without any charge. To my knowledge, every VoIP service out there doesn’t charge for IP to IP calls. This could work in the past, but in times where there is a new VoIP service coming out every day and when you offer SMB services to companies whose traffic is mainly on-premise, how can you make money and make your customers happy at the same time? 

This is a great way to lower monthly fees and avoiding long term contracts, something companies don’t always want to deal with. Small companies sometimes don’t trust on VoIP services completely, thinking quality could be an issue. With this approach they don’t feel to be bound to a certain service for a long time, so it definitely helps to shorten the sales cycle. And, we are not talking of a fortune, it’s half-cent per minute

For more information about this new collaboration, take a look at the official press release.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Who Killed the VoIP Revolution?

Technorati Tags: Business, critical links, edgebox, junction networks, luca filigheddu, VoIP

Lee Dryburgh, man behind the eComm conferences, hosts a private dinner for everyone involved in this space, a sort of kick-off meeting for the upcoming eComm Conference taking place on March 3-5 2009 at the San Francisco Airport Marriot.

Only 80 seats are available and 50 are taken already. If you want to attend, please get in touch with Lee through the eComm Facebook group.

The aim of the dinner is to simply be a light-weight social-networking
gathering of those interested in emerging communications. By
light-weight I mean zero organisation except for lets meet at this
time and place for dinner. The hotel informs me that the charge for
the three course meal including two alcoholic beverages will be 75.00
USD/head. It’s cash only but the hotel have informed me they can
provide individual receipts.

The room is booked for 7pm.

Unfortunately I cannot make it this time (next trip to the Bay Area should be in January), but I wish all the friends and colleagues attending a pleasant and enjoyable time together.

Related articles by Zemanta

• eComm 2009 Call for Speakers

Technorati Tags: dinner, ecomm, lee dryburgh, luca filigheddu

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday I was talking with an american friend of mine who told me how Wal-Mart became the winner in the fight among low price stores in the US. In fights like this you just need to offer the lowest price in the market, there is no more space for competitors and no alternative ways to win.

Today I came across two new web based VoIP services (Freeringer and Voxofon) who are offering PC to phone/phone to phone calls with a lot of free calls to specific destinations.

To be honest, I didn’t loose much time to pay attention at their offering, for me this was just another YAWN. I learnt there is nothing free in our life, especially when it comes to business, someone has to pay at some point. Many different models have been tried out over time by different services in various parts of the world, but aside from some exceptions, most of them have been a complete failure.

How can they sustain a credible business model? How can they (these two and any new entrant) deal with competition? I’m sorry, but I do firmly believe the space for new VoIP players is over. Market is full of offerings and services, all of them mainly fighting just in terms of price. Where is the value? What’s the strategy to take full control of churn rate?

New services who want to survive, must offer something new and different, something which provides final users with a different perspective, users who are not looking for money saving only. From this standpoint, Ooma is an interesting example (unlike some premature signs of failure, it seems to be still alive and well).

If your new VoIP service you are proud of and that you are going to launch and make it compete in this tough market, is not offering something DIFFERENT, SPECIAL, UNIQUE to your target customers, please refrain from spending time and money, you’re gonna fail. Period.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Can’t anyone make Internet phones pay?
• VoIP in America: A Tale of Two States:
• Who Killed the VoIP Revolution?

Technorati Tags: Business, freeringer, luca filigheddu, Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, voxofon

Image via Wikipedia

In a period when everyone is talking about financial meltdown, crisis, layoffs and how to deal with the upcoming bad times, it’s very important not to forget that customers are the “food” for any company.

While many startups don’t have customers yet so they face other types of problems, well extablished businesses can face a significant contraction of their sales because of a general feeling of “fear” by their customers. This feeling is due to different reasons: will your company be alive tomorrow? is your product essential for my life or is it better to save money to pass the winter?

One of the most important (and priority) ways to handle this situation is to create a direct line with your customers in order to make them comfortable while buying from you. This is essential and strategic for the future of any company because customers need to hear you, need to hear your voice and to be reassured they can trust you and keep buying your products and services.

Companies which undervalue this aspect and  keep thinking of making their websites more and more self-service oriented are likely to fail and this is even more true in times like this. Giving the right answer at the right time is crucial for any business, in order to take customers and prospects and guide them straight to the end of the purchase process, preventing them to quit as soon as they face a problem.

All that said, don’t hesitate and act now: engage your customers, make them feel your are there, ready to help them to take decisions faster and to make them happy buyers. Your customers are your life: in difficult times, do everything you can to prevent them from going away.

In conclusion, I’d like to share a quote from Sitofono’s website (disclosure: Sitofono is a service from my company):

e-commerce companies have constantly to deal with this paradox: a growing number of contacts, low conversion rates and an high abandonment rate.

The lack of real time interaction between the customer and the vendor, besides being a cause of dissatisfaction of the potential customer, is, for sure, one of the main reasons of missed opportunities to close a deal in a big number of online transactions.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Selling Online: Consider This Before You Decide What to Sell
• Ecommerce Stores for Effective Business Expansion
• Why to Build a Website for Your Business?
• To succeed at selling: Questions and probes

Technorati Tags: Business, customer engagement, luca filigheddu, sales, Service

Image via CrunchBase

I just received a note from Fring informing me that the popular mobile IM/VoIP service has been selected by Mobikom’s brand A1 to be distributed to their customers in Austria.

Here is an excerpt from the official press release:

Under the agreement, mobilkom austria will give its customers access to a dedicated version of the fring mobile client, containing fring’s entire open-platform, feature-rich suite of internet based mobile communications & community services, allowing A1 over IP users to talk, chat and interact with each other & all of their online communities, and access fun mobile web applications, using the internet connection capability of their mobile device.

In Phase 1 of the project, the A1 over IP service will be integrated into fring’s SIP service, offering fring users the opportunity of using A1 over IP accounts and also the ability to configure their A1 over IP accounts to work within fring.

Phase 2 will see a fring application being built into mobilkom austria’s mobile offering and pre installed onto a large number of mobile devices. This will comprise fring’s entire feature set of voice over IP, instant messaging, real-time presence / availability indication, file transfer and access to fring’s new always-on mobile internet applications (fring Add-ons)

This is definitely a major news for the Israeli-based service, which is continuosly bringing innovation to the mobile market and making the mobile IM/VoIP experience much better than what you can get by other competitors.

Skype, Twitter, all major IM networks, SIP calling and much more are the key ingredients for this growing success. Moreover, they recently announced that Fring is finally available on the Apple iPhone’s App Store but if you don’t own an iPhone and you are a Symbian user, you can get the latest version of Fring released yesterday.

Congrats to all Fring’s team for these continuous important announcements, keep up the good work!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Fring brings VoIP to iPhone
• Making Skype Calls from Fring for iPhone
• Fring brings Skype and other VoIP services to iPhone
• Fring Delivers the Most Impressive VoIP and IM Client for iPhone so Far

Technorati Tags: App Store, deal, fring, Instant messaging & messengers, iphone, luca filigheddu, mobile voip

This year, in March, it has been one of the best conferences I ever attended (together with GigaOM’s Mobilize). Aside from the high level of the subjects which are covered and the top-level speakers, the other innovative side of this event is how it is organized and managed. Previous speakers and attendees are continuosly involved in the organization of the next one, from the choice of the venue to the way to better promote it.

A promotional banner will be available on the sidebar of this blog until the beginning of the conference and if you need further details, just click on it or go straight to http://ecommconf.com.

By the way, call for speakers is now open and if you want to submit your proposal, do it as soon as possible since I bet they’ll run out of speaking slots very quickly.

Technorati Tags: ecomm 2009, emerging communications, Events, lee dryburgh, luca filigheddu