Tzah 2.0

Com.Vention event took place yesterday in Airport city next Tel-Aviv. Participants in the event were amongst who’s who in Israeli Internet industry including Yossi Vardi, Amos Shapira (CEO of Cellcom, a major Israeli telecommunication company), Ron Eilon (CEO of Yes, Israel sole satellite television provider) and other distinguished guests from Israel and abroad.

During the day, Pelephone, another Israeli-based telecommunications company, had a booth which aimed to create buzz around the company’s new High-speed GSM services. The booth had 3 positions to play Wii game where every 1.5 hours, a was given to the high-point winner at that time.

Well, it so happen that JAJAH’s very own Jasmine Aharon actually won (which is  actually remarkable given the fact she failed miserably playing Tennis Wii in the office)! Excited, Jasmine came to the booth to collect her prize, eager to hold the advanced WM 6.1 phone, try its features, twitter away using its qwerty keyboard and 3.5G high speed network, marvel at its beauty, well, you get the point. Only that the marketing guy at the booth had to brush away her dreams and return Jasmine to the hard, cold reality of Pelephone marketing logic. “you have to pay 70 NIS (about 17$) a month for 18 months if you wish to get the phone”. All of Jasmine’s attempts to get the phone for free (again, she WON that phone) or even for a discount were to a vain. Pelephone was insistent that Jasmine, which is a Pelephone subscriber by the way, will pay for her prize. Reluctantly and disappointed, Jasmine had to give up her prize and go home empty-handed. The same thing happen to other winners that day. Pelephone was not going to give the prize for free and so, many other winners decided to give up the phone. True, Pelephone did mention that the winner would have to join a subscriber program for that amount of money. Somehow, most of the people competing at the booth didn’t notice it. Even so, its simply short-sighting

This is a great example on how to create negative marketing buzz. After giving so much effort (and money) in putting the booths to gain attention, it’s really disappointing to see how, at the end of the day, Pelephone treats existing and potential customers. One of the winners, wondered what is the attitude of Pelephone towards her subscribers if that’s the way they treat the event participants which included CEOs, journalists, bloggers and other technology-eager participants. I truly hope Pelephone will come to their senses and give its prizes for free.

Skype has made a huge move this week announcing . Organizations that have IP-PBX systems can connect it to Skype using SIP. The service, which is currently in beta, has two major benefits to businesses. First, it allows Skype users to connect to the organization using their account. The second, it enables the organizations to make PSTN calls using SkypeOut and saves money.

This is a great day for the VoIP industry. Once Skype users decide to use their account to make a call to an organization, rather than make a regular phone call, the trend towards an all-IP networks would gain more momentum. Furthermore, coupling Skype for business with the use of twitter for direct contact with customers, this service demonstrate the strength that the web/IP has to offer for organizations.

Another reason to celebrate is that Skype, that uses its own standards for signaling and media, has finally integrates with the SIP standard which make them more interoperable. However, it seems that for now, the integration has limited the service functionality to mere calls. That means no presence information, file sharing, text chatting and other great features which only VoIP (we should think of a new name) can deliver. If this remains true, people might start wondering why they should invest their time and energy with a new service that provides them the same functionality they had so far. I truly hope that Skype will enhance the service or otherwise, this entire experiment might cause damage to our industry.

Finally, there’s another aspect that we in the VoIP industry should ponder about. Individuals, as well as organizations, have abundant ways to get in touch with. We have PSTN numbers, emails, twitter, Skype, Windows Messenger, Yahoo messenger, GoogleTalk, and the list goes on and on. What we need is one URI which will map to the specific communication channels of the user. Another service is a global golden page for all those channels. Let’s say I’m looking for John Smith. the service will provide me its URI which in turn, upon sending IM or calling it, will map the request to John’s favorite channel. There’s much more to discuss about this so I’ll leave it to a future post.

iphonetouch.blorge has recently published a story from Arnold Zafra about top 40 best iPhone optimized web sites. Our own iphone.jajah.com is one of the top 40 web sites!  The site is amongst a respectable list of other iphone optimized sites like Amazon, CBS News, Digg, Meebo, Google and Twitter.

Mr. Zafra found these sites to be “useful and highly iPhone optimized sites that will enhance your online iPhone experience”. JAJAH iphone’s dedicated web site, launched at December 2007, has aimed to fully optimize the device capabilities while maintaining a simple and easy user experience. Mr. Zafra story is a testimony for JAJAH efforts in providing a variety of mobile solutions to make low cost calls.

I can’t believe I didn’t mention it in my last post. Google Voice is really great but it looks to me like it’s more focused on getting incoming calls than placing outbound calls (even though they’re free for now). A Google Voice user has : making a callback from his on-line account, calling back people who left a voicemail or manually typing the desired number.

Let’s have a closer look. The first way is simple and intuitive. Google Voice on-line page is based on Google’s famous UI principles thus making it easy to make the call. However, it still requires going on-line with your computer which is somewhat limiting. I didn’t hear about a mobile web version for the service like JAJAH’s mobile web, but I’m sure Google is working on it right now. The second way to make calls  is to callback a person back from a voicemail but that’s more a by-product for the voicemail service than a “legitimate” way to place calls.

The third way is to call your Google Voice number, press 2 and then manually type the destination number . That’s a big problem. Most of the mobile calls we make are from the phone’s address book or call log. Typing the number requires memorizing the number and the entire process takes time. The solution is either to have a number mapped to the destination, like JAJAH Direct service, or install a mobile plug-in. A mobile plug-in can be installed on most phones today and use the phone’s capabilities. On smart phones devices like iPhone/iPod, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android, Mobile VoIP calls can made thus saving you the cost of local call to your operator. In addition, the applications can intercept outgoing calls and route them through Google Voice. The advantage here is that the user doesn’t have to learn new tricks to make calls. She’ll still dial like she used to and the application will make the decision how to route the call. On features phone, which are still the majority of phones today, a J2ME plug-in can be installed to make calls. The plug-in could interface with the phone’s address book, allowing the user to choose a contact to dial to rather than typing the number manually. My guess is that Google will soon launch applications for mobile phones.

Google’s latest revolution and the usual suspect

By now, the news of has spread all over the web. Some celebrates the new revolution from the world’s web seminary, while other raise the usual concerns about invading your privacy. To the skeptics, I can only say, common! Nobody’s forcing you to use it. Google’s power is incredible but there’re still alternatives out there. Besides, free services in exchange for some level of privacy invasion already exist and gain popularity. (, being the most obvious example, but there’re others). Moreover, we already deliberately provide so much private information about ourselves in Facebook, Twitter, windows messenger status and others that privacy claims about big brother monitoring seems somewhat archaic.

One number, many friends

However, Google Voice is facing other challenges before it become globally  available and gain widespread use. First of all, Google Voices should help its users to spread their new number with their friends, family and colleagues. Perhaps a variation of service could help in that. Another related problem is that the numbers given to users are still only US. Even if the service becomes global, the given number is always local to the user. So, if I get a US number and my friend live in Austria, it will still cost a lot of money to make the international call from Austria to Germany. Of course, this is a common problem with all international calls. However, if Google has ambitions to make their service ubiquitous, they’d need to find a solution to this issue. JAJAH Direct can provide such a solution and at low-cost rates.

I’m sorry, what did you say?

One of Google Voice prominent service is it’s voicemail transcripts. It’s a great service, if, Google can indeed make fully automated transcriptions. Personally, I don’t see that happening in the near future. Google’s Speech-to-text services are and . Both services are limited to recognizing specific words out of a pre-defines list like Joe’s Pizza, economics, Texas. At this point, it’s not possible to fully transcribe complete voice mails without making mistakes, asking the user to repeat some words or have human intervention. A partial solution might be to make an educated guess about the nature of the voicemail content. If Google could assume a particular voicemail is of specifi context (entertainment, sports, business), it could reduce the number of transcription mistakes to a minimum. Since Google already has vast knowledge about its users habits and interest areas, that seems to be taken care of. Also, let’s not forget that transcription service should be able to understand different accents, languages, oral mistakes made by the user’s themselves,  nick names, voice interference and more before it become accurate. I know of only one such device that does a similar task, but, it will be in production state only 142 years form now.

One last thing

In addition to the above , Google has to overcome huge operational and regulatory challenges. Call termination, VoIP-related fraud, IP call routing and hosting are just few of issues any valuable VoIP company has to deal with. I wonder how much Google Voice is ready to cope with these issues, especially if it wishes to become a global service provider like JAJAH.

I like wiki. It’s a good platform to share information and ideas in your organization, community or the entire web. Occasionally, you’d like to add links to local files in your organization wiki like list of phone numbers, some how-to documents or something else.

However, Firefox users find out that nothing happens when they’re clicking on the local-file links. This is actually due to security reasons. So, if you wish to override the behavior, this article will explain what to do.  The article suggests two add-ons to use. I prefer to LocalLink and not IE Tab because the later reloads the entire page on the IE engine and loses your logging session.

Meanwhile, on the wiki pages

The correct format for links to local files is to prefix the path with file:/// and wrap it with brackets. Let’s say your file resides in C:\MyFolder\MyFile.ext. The link in wiki will be edited as [file:///C:/MyFolder/MyFile.txt]  (make sure to use slash and not backslash). In case the file resides in a server, the format will look like this: [file://///MyServer/MyFolder/MyFile.txt]  (did you noticed we’re now using 5 slashes?).

After installing LocalLink you could open the file by right-clicking on the link and selecting from ‘Open Link in Local Context’ menu.

You might consider setting your application configuration in Firefox. Go to Tools, Options and choose the Applications tab. Now, for each relevant file type, choose the action you want Firefox to take.

By default, WordPress posts have ugly links like http://yourpost.com/?p=12. It’s very easy changing the links to become more aesthetic and usable:

1. Open your WP account.
2. On the left-hand side, click on ‘Permalinks’ under ‘Settings’ options.
3. Now choose the preferred settings

About a year ago, I published an article that claimed that with all innovations surrounding us, the technology is, in most cases, not reliable enough . The most recent example came from GMail’s outage two weeks ago. Anyway, in the article I mentioned the tragic incident where a VoIP 911 service sent an ambulance to the wrong place.

Up until now, no major breakthrough was made in VoIP 911 services. That is most evident in the FAQ pages of all major Mobile VoIP service provider. You’re guaranteed to see a clause indicating the service is not designated to work with 911 calls. Obviously, many regulatory and technological issues prevent VoIP 911 to become a reality. For instance, how (and who?) would  WiFi routers update when a device connect to them?

Perhaps some partial answer to those issues can come from a totally different place. , which have had an incredible 752% growth in 2008, Facebook and other social-interfaces might provide it. Here’s the deal. You make a VoIP 911 call. The interface to PSAP will send your social-networks username. PSAP could gather your latest status and could know, for instance, that just before the call, the caller twitted about arriving to his hotel. I’m sure you could think of other examples.

With growing trend to tell the entire world what we’re doing and where, that information could help in emergencies.

Did you know you can make conference calls from your mobile? Yes, we can! This functionality is hidden inside your phone and my guess is that 99% of mobile users are not aware of it. Here’s a quick step-by-step on how to do it on Nokia S40 phones. I welcome you to add in the comments explanations for other manufacturers.

1. Call someone! (that’s easy, right?) and wait for your friend to answer. Let’s say his name is Riker.
2. Press options, New call (ah ha!) and type the phone number of another friend. Let’s say his name is Worf. Wait for Worf to answer (Kapla!)
3. Back on your phone, you’re now talking to Worf while Riker is on hold. Now press options, scroll down and press on – yes, you got it – Conference. Now you, Riker and Worf can speak all together.
4. If you wish to add another friend - Data for example - simply repeat steps 2 and 3.
5. To finish the conference just hang up. All your friends will be disconnected from the call.

A word of caution. You should check with your operator how much this calls will cost you. I’m not sure it’s just the rate of one call times the number of participants in the conference call.

Finally, if you wish to make low-cost conference calls to friends and colleagues abroad, you can use JAJAH’s conference call service. If you’re not in front of your computer, you can make conference call as described above with JAJAH.Direct numbers.

We recently began to explore Freeswitch. This is a powerful telephony platform that provides many communication functionalities with  agile configuration. Amongst others, we looked at the dingaling implementation which enables communications with GoogleTalk using XMPP implementation. We quickly found out there’re a few steps to complete before the code will run on Windows/VS environment. So, instead of having others struggle like we did, here’s a list of the required steps. Have fun.

1. Configuration
   1. Enable mod_dingaling by un-commenting on modules.conf.xml the line . Alternatively, you can run on the console load mod_dingaling.
   2. Enable debug mode for the module (dingaling.conf.xml). It’s not required but will helps in understanding what’s going on.
   3. Create jingle-profile like the one below: 

      <include>
        
        <profile type="client">
          <param name="name" value="<meaningful name>"/>
          <param name="login" value="<your username>/gtalk"/>
          <param name="password" value="<your password>"/>
          <param name="server" value="talk.google.com"/>
          <param name="dialplan" value="XML"/>
          <param name="context" value="public"/>
          <param name="message" value="Send help or ? to learn more"/>
          <param name="rtp-ip" value="$${bind_server_ip}"/>
          <param name="ext-rtp-ip" value="$${external_rtp_ip}"/>
          <param name="auto-login" value="true"/>
          
          <param name="sasl" value="plain"/>
          
          <param name="tls" value="true"/>
          
          <param name="use-rtp-timer" value="true"/>
          
          <param name="exten" value="1000"/>
          <param name="vad" value="both"/>
        profile>
      include>
      

2. TLS. You need this to insure your XMPP stanzas are encrypted as required by the specifications. There’re few steps you need to do on windows:

   1. Install GnuTls for windows. Pick the latest exe file. At time of writing, the last one is 2.7.3.
   2. Assuming you’re using visual studio as your IDE, open visual studio command prompt (not your normal console) and type: lib /def:libgnutls-26.def on GnuTls bin folder. This will create a libgnutls-26.lib that can be used as a import library for Visual Studio projects.

3. Configure library ixemel to work with TL S libraries:

   1. Add additional include directory

        

   2. Add additional dependency. 
        

4. Last step, make sure the TLS dlls are copied to the configuration environment. For example, if you’re running on debug mode, you should have the following files in /Debug:

   • libgcrypt-11.dll
   • libgnutls-26.dll
   • libgnutls-extra-26.dll
   • libgnutls-openssl-26.dll
   • libgpg-error-0.dll
   • libtasn1-3.dll

   A post-build event should take care of it:

   xcopy "$(SolutionDir)GnuTLS-2.7.3\bin\*.dll" "$(SolutionDir)$(OutDir)\" /C /D /Y /S /F

5. I-can’t-find-config.h-step. Copy it from \libs\win32\iksemel. Make sure the following line is not commented:

   #define HAVE_GNUTLS 

6. Questions?