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.

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

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!

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

Image via CrunchBase

I read today about an interesting iPhone application which basically changes the natural behavior of the iPhone and lets VoIP applications use the 3G network instead of the default Wifi.

This application, Voipover3G, works with the alternative installer Cydia, specifically designed for jailbroken iPhones 3G.

After installing this app, VoIP apps which used to use the Wifi connection, like Fring and Truphone, will be forced to use the 3G data channel. Not having an iPhone 3G I couldn’t test it out, anyway I find it useful in certain contexts even if limited to jailbroken iphones only.

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Technorati Tags: 3G, Apple, Cydia, fring, Installer, iphone, jailbreak, luca filigheddu, truphone, VoIP

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

Carl Ford together with Scott Kargman, former men behind the demised VON Conferences, are on stage again with TMCNet with the aim to bring innovative content to the eager IP Communications professionals. People familiar with the VON events are surely familiar with Scott and Carl as well, so these names, under the TMCNet umbrella, are the first guarantee for a very high-quality and “super” interesting event.

This new show is really promising and I highly encourage anyone involved in the Telecommunications space to take a look and actively participate to this event, whether in the role of attendee, speaker or sponsor/exhibitor.

Here is a preliminary overview of the content and the target audience for this event:

4GWE Conference Themes:

• The evolution to 4G and how cellular’s technology history to date will impact the evolution to new technologies and services.
• WiMAX and LTE – Is this really an either/or scenario or will the Mobile network of the future combine both technologies?  If so where do they integrate?
• What are the 4G Wireless killer applications for both consumer and business customer?
• How will content distribution evolve on 4G networks?.
• Key wireless technologies driving investment strategies
• Are smartphones the right way to define the 4G wireless category?  What are device manufacturers’ role in driving demand and marketshare?
• Will applications become a the MVNO driver in 4G business models?

 
Who will attend:

• Mobile Network Operators
• Network Services Provider/ISP/ILEC/CLEC/WISP/MSO
• Handset Manufacturers
• Mobile Internet Device Manufacturers
• Application Providers
• Investment Banking/Venture Capital/Private Equity
• Telecom Network Infrastructure Vendor

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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!

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

Here is an image:

It’s not bad so far, but I’ll need to test it out more to get a good idea about it. Has anyone tried it yet?

Technorati Tags: Blogo, luca filigheddu