VoIP

Internet telephony company GrandCentral was down for several hours this morning. That wouldn’t be so bad if GrandCentral’s business model didn’t depend on telling users to give out their GrandCentral phone numbers instead of their cellphone, work, home, and other numbers. GrandCentral, which is owned by Google, provides a single number that can ring through to each of your phones. And most of the time it works brilliantly.

But GrandCentral is still in beta. And while we’ve grown used to Google’s beta products being more stable than many companies’ final release products, we probably shouldn’t be surprised when a beta product goes down. And this morning, a lot of people were probably worried about missing phone calls because of the outage.

The service was restored by noon, Pacific time. But the fact that a “power issue” at a single facility could knock out GrandCentral phone service across the country is going to make us think twice before giving out our GrandCentral phone number from now on. Hopefully one of the things Google will do before taking the beta label off of GrandCentral is build some redundancy into the system to avoid this sort of problem in the future.

The Skype team has just released a new beta version of their internet telephony client for Windows. Skype 3.8 beta primarily focuses on audio quality improvements, with less background noise, less delay, fewer cut outs and dropped calls.

Skype 3.8 beta also uses a new UPnP framework, which should do a better job of automatically configuring your firewall and router settings. There’s also a new extras manager and a bunch of bug fixes. The one known issue with this release is that you cannot send voicemails to users who have not authorized you.

[via Skype Journal]

While Call Graph certainly isn’t the only Skype plugin that lets you record calls for free, it is certainly one of the simplest to use. And it’s free, which always helps. Several other popular Skype recording applications like Pamela let you record up to 15 minutes for free, but you’ll have to pony up some cash for a license if you want to record longer calls. There are no such limitations on Call Graph.

Here’s how it works. You install Call Graph, and it will automatically record every call you make as a 128kbps MP3 file. You’ll know it’s working because a window will pop up letting you know the call is being recorded and asking if you want to stop the recording. You can also click the icon in the system tray to configure Call Graph so that it won’t automatically record every call.

When a call ends, a window will pop up showing you a list of recent calls. You can play, rename, tag, or delete files from this window. There’s also a search bar to find previous calls, which can come in handy as long as you’ve been diligent about adding tags.

Call Graph appears to be Windows only for now, and it’s officially a public beta, although it seems to work pretty well.

[via Online Tech Tips]

Skype has released the final version of Skype 2.0 for Linux. The internet telephony application has been available as a public beta since November, but the latest release includes a ton of bug fixes and a few new features.

Skype 2.0’s biggest feature is support for video calls, which means you can do pretty much anything with the Linux version of Skype that you can do with the PC or Mac clients. That includes making PC to PC phone calls or video calls for free, or PC to telephone calls for a fee.

Packages are available for Ubuntu, Debian, Xandros, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, and CentOS.

[via Digg]

Web telephony service Jaduka has launched a bunch of new tools that make it easy to initiate telephone to telephone calls over the web. The most basic service is called dukaDIAL, and it allows you to enter any two phone numbers to initiative a phone call. DukaDIAL will call one number and then the other and initiate a connection. No computer headset or microphone required. Jaduka doesn’t charge anything for these calls, but your telephone provider might.

Jaduka offers several other services that use the same basic technology. For example, dukaBAR is a browser toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer. Once it’s installed you can click a button and automatically detect any phone number on any web page. A telephone icon will show up next to those phone numbers, and if you click on that icon, Jaduka will initiate a phone call between your number and the number on the page. Skype offers a similar browser plugin, but with Skype you’re making a PC to phone call, while Jaduka initiates phone to phone calls.

There’s also a dukaBuzz widget which you can install on any web page to allow visitors to leave listen to voice comments, and a dukaLINK tool for creating clickable links that will initiate phone calls.

If desktop VoIP calling program Gizmo Project previously had a reputation as a Skype Killer, it’s now official: Skype is dead. Gizmo has always done things Skype couldn’t–like custom on-hold music, SIP compatibility, meta-IM with support for Yahoo, MSN, and Google Talk, and a slew (that means dozens) of other things. Indeed, some of us here at Download Squad haven’t had Skype in our startup items for a year or more.

Gizmo Project 4.0 beta just hit the wild. New in this edition are a reworked avatar system, tabbed text chatting, a totally redesigned user interface, and video calling, a feature that we got a first look at with an earlier beta release last month.

Ordinarily, Gizmo Project’s creator, SIPPhone Inc., does a good job of getting features to their Mac and Linux editions in a hurry (though 4.0 beta isn’t yet available for Mac). In this case, however, the Nokia N800/N810 version is also ready to rock, which really excites us, since Nokia’s Internet Tablets have built-in cameras that are ideal for video calling.

As with previous versions of the Project, you can still make outgoing (and receive incoming) telephone calls, and make yourself reachable via a sipphone.com URI. So, with the last nail in Skype’s coffin being hammered in by the good folks at SIPPhone, we’re asking ourselves if we’ll ever need to run Skype again. After all, with services like GrandCentral supporting Gizmo Project, and with the availability of a native Gizmo Project client for mobile phones, it looks like Gizmo Project is ready to bury eBay’s redheaded stepchild.

OK, you’ve been inundated with TV commericals by Vonage and radio commericals by VoIP service providers such as TomatoVine and Packet8. You keep seeing and hearing that if you switch from your traditional phone service to VoIP you will save a whole boatload of money without compromising any service.

It all sounds good, but there’s something in the air that just holds you back from making the switch. Is it the thought that you’ll have to get a broaband internet connection to get VoIP? Or is it your uneasiness over the 911 service (which now seems to have been rectified)?

In any case, voip.com is puffing out its chest and listing a bunch of reasons (10 to be exact) why you should make the switch. Now, of course, nothing is perfect and you have to take this with a huge grain of salt, but it’s better to have some information than none at all.

I won’t list all of voip.com’s Top 10 reasons to switch to VoIP service, but here are a couple to at least get you thinking and (hopefully) spur you to do your own research and see if VoIP really is for you.

• VoIP service has an average monthly rate of around $25; regular phone service averages about $51 a month.
• Most VoIP calling plans offer unlimited long distance in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico as a standard feature.
• Wireless VoIP allows users to make phone calls on internet-enabled cell phones.

In my own experience (I am a Vonage customer), I like VoIP and have saved quite a bit of money already. However, Vonage’s customer relations group leaves a lot to be desired and if you are considering a switch to them or any other provider, do all the research you can on your own first, because the call-center staff are far from helpful or knowledgeable about the service. Trust me on this one.

In an age where the Internet is fast enough and ubiquitous enough to be used as a first-resort for voice calling, it’s surprising that eBay has taken such a Neanderthal stance towards the use of voice calling apps on its web site. It seem that eBay was never able to realize how great it would be for all mutual users of Skype and eBay to have click-to-call functionality in the world’s biggest auction house. Want to ask the seller a question with only four minutes left to bid? Sure is easier with something like Skype than with old-fashioned e-mail.

Yet the capitalization of Skype on behalf of the eBay user community never-really happened, and the widespread use of Skype among eBay sellers never really took off. By some estimates, eBay could’ve doubled the size of the Skype user community had they fully integrated the tool into their auction system. In June of 2006, eBay announced a limited trial of ‘Skype Me’ buttons for eBay sellers, and the selling public took to it like fish to dry land, probably because it only covered item categories in which the vast majority of items on eBay aren’t listed. The rest, as they say, is history.

So over the weekend it became clear that eBay wants nothing to do with this voice business, despite having purchased (for an absurd sum) the world’s most pervasive desktop calling tool. Jajah, a VoIP competitor and Skype-clone-gone-mobile-tool, jumped in to fill the void, offering an easy way for sellers and buyers to get in touch vis a vis eBay auctions. The auction giant’s response? Ban Jajah.

It really makes you wonder just how much garden is still growing inside eBay’s strong walls.