In an announcement today, UK-based Truphonelaunches free calling from mobile Truphone customers in the US to landlines everywhere (well, 40 countries worldwide actually). This program is an extension of their UK launch promotion and will be in effect until the end of June. So if you really want give a great mobile VOIP application a whirl, now’s your chance. US customers have always been able to talk to other Truphone users for free but now they can call regular landlines too.

You can download Truphone for your Nokia handset here:
http://www.truphone.com/downloads/downloads.tru

Watch a YouTube video of this press release here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK9wuSFoSqQ

And finally, read the whole press release:

March 27th 2007 – Orlando, FL & London, UK - Owners of Wi-Fi-equipped Nokia smartphones will be able to make free international calls from the USA to landlines in 40 countries throughout April, May and June, mobile internet telephony pioneer Truphone announced today. The announcement extends and enlarges Truphone’s current price promotion [ending on March 31st], during which customers have been able to make free mobile Voice over IP (VoIP) calls across the USA and Canada.

“We’re delighted to be making it so attractive for people to try internet telephony on their mobile handset, instead of being tied to their computer,” said James Tagg, Truphone’s CEO. “The convenience of a normal, mass market cellular handset and free international calls is an unbeatable combination for the consumer.”
Countries to which any on-net Truphone user worldwide may now make free calls to landlines include China (landlines and mobiles), Mexico (Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey), Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg) and most European Union countries.

Tariffs to some paid-for numbers may have changed from the previous promotional period. Truphone’s full tariff document is available at www.truphone.com.

Under the terms of the new promotion, free Truphone calls can be made to the following countries (applies to Truphone calls to landlines only, unless otherwise stated): Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro & Sao Paulo only), Canada, Chile, China (Landline and Mobile), Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Guam, Hong Kong (Landline & Mobile), Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea (South), Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico (Guadalajara, Mexico City & Monterrey only), Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama City, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia (Moscow Central & St Petersburg only), Singapore (Landline & Mobile), Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, US Virgin Islands and USA (landline & mobile).

About the Truphone service
Truphone enables Wi-Fi equipped mobile phones to make 100% VoIP calls at either zero or very low cost to the caller, by using the SIP standard and the Internet to route network traffic, rather than traditional mobile phone networks. Truphone-to-Truphone and Truphone-to-SIP number calls are always free, with Truphone calls to other numbers charged at cheaper rates than those charged by mobile operators and often at lower cost than even a conventional fixed line.
There is no monthly subscription, no inbound charges and billing is via pre-pay. Sign-up and top up are done via the web site. Customers get Truphone by downloading a small piece of free software over the air to their phone. When a Truphone-equipped handset is not in Wi-Fi range it reverts to being a normal mobile phone, with calls routed over GSM as usual.

By now the VOIP world knows of Truphone’s victory in court over mobile giant T-Mobile. Yesterday, UK Truphone won an injunction against T-Mobile blocking calls to Truphone users: For the last month, anyone calling a Truphone number on T-Mobile network would hear a "Number not in service" message. By Monday, July 23, T-Mobile has been instructed to start routing these calls.

There’s plenty of cheering on the Truphone website, http://truphone.blogspot.com/2007/07/truphone-wins-court-injunction-against.html but I have yet to find T-Mobile’s official or unofficial response. I couldn’t find anything on their website. In the spirit of gathering the whole picture, let me know if you find a company statement or interview anywhere. 

This caught my eye today. AvantiMobile in the UK is marketing something called Least Cost Routing for mobile phones. When you make a call, the Avantimobile application in your phone checks to see if it can be routed cheaply through their VOIP network. If it can’t, the call goes through the regular cell network. You don’t have to do a thing except dial. It sounds simple and I like that.

Trying to absorb all my choices when it comes to new VOIP handsets, services and applications makes me feel like I need a flow chart just to make a call. Just look at Andy’s list of what he uses day to day!

Yes, I just bought a new headset. So when I read about Jajah’s new No Headset movement, I thought, ‘forget it Leanne, you can’t win’. They even have a web site:  http://www.noheadset.com. You can check out flicks of people trashing their headsets. (I’m not going to slapshot my shiny new $100 headset thanks.)

However, my take on this campaign can be summarized by their new tag line "If You Liked Skype, You’ll Love JAJAH". It’s a way to put themselves in the same league as Skype but also to differentiate in a way that says we do what Skype does and we do it better. Unlike Skype, JAJAH lets you make internet calls using your regular desktop phone, which is great. But, don’t some people choose headsets because they want to be "handsfree"? If that’s the case, blowing up your headset would be BAD. Whatever.

I’ve had my Nokia N95 for a few weeks now and my husband and I have been fighting over it. I don’t consider myself a picky person, so I was surprised that some small external differences on the handset from the N80i made such a huge difference. I like this phone better. It’s thinner, has a comfortable feel in the hand, and the button ergonomics work better. On the N80 I frequently make mistakes using the center scroll/selection button. Not the case on the N95. Other reveiws of this phone also point to the larger screen. First, I thought, “come on, it’s a screen on a PHONE. A few pixels either way isn’t going to make a difference”. Well, wrong again.

  N80i (left), N95 (right)

  N95 (left), N80i (right)

As for what’s going on inside the N95, a big improvement from my point of view is the ease of setting up a Wi-Fi connection. It took me just a few minutes this time to get connected through my home network.

That’s it for my initial thoughts, more later on calling with GizmoProject and EQO. But if you need more, check out this podcast with three Nokia reviewers here.

 

 

Laptop magazine has a review of Fring, Talkster, Nimbuzz and Barablu. These four apps turn your good old cell phone into an internet phone and more. Of the four, Nimbuzz is new to me and Barablu I haven’t tried yet. Fring and Talkster I’ve used and quite like, although I think having a great handset makes all the difference. I wouldn’t bother with any of these if I didn’t have the Nokia N80i to test with.

The review does a good job of capturing the typical setup process for all applications, and gives both the pros and cons of usability, call quality and the like. Author Joanna Stern points out that “regardless of which mobile VoIP service you use, you’re going to need an unlimited data plan, which costs anywhere from $5.99 per month (T-Mobile) to $24.99 (Cingular)”.

Edited May 17, 2007:

James Wanless of Talkster clarified for me that their service in fact does not require a data plan:

Thanks James

I recently mentioned Jangl in Battle of the Js. On first look, I wasn’t overly enthused–the home page promise didn’t mesh with the user interface/support once logged in. But since then I’ve had chance to talk with the folks at Jangl to learn more about their service. They agree the user experience is something they need to improve, and are working hard to get there as we speak.

Jangl’s Tim Johnson was able to walked me through all this, so now I get it. However, he knows you can’t personally explain the concept and use to everyone. Improving the overall package to make the service clear and easy to use is part of Jangl’s planned enhancements over the next month and a half, starting with the announcement last week of a new Jangl widget for Tagged, a social networking site. Today, Jangl announced a new TypePad widget which will give TypePad bloggers and their readers anonymous phone numbers for talking, texting and exchanging voicemail on their mobile phones.

Here’s what I learned about Jangl:

It is all about connecting two people without sharing phone numbers. The two people can be bloggers, social networking junkies, or they can be “off Net” contacts.  Why would you want to keep your phone number private? Well, let’s say you’re selling something on Ebay or Craigslist you don’t want to share a personal phone number. Or you have a personal profile on a social networking site and you want to connect with your fans without sharing a personal number. Or how about you are using an online dating site like Match.com and want to keep your contact number private.

There are two ways people can get an exclusive number for you. As a Jangl user, you can give out your Jangl ID or you can post a Jangl widget on a website or email. If you give your Jangl ID out at a party, for example, the person goes to Jangl.com and follows the instructions to generate a number for you. If someone clicks your Jangl widget online, the widget generates the number. Either way, people can call you on a regular landline or cell phone. You answer the call on whichever phone is attached to your Jangl account. It could be a mobile phone or an office phone, for example. You can choose to answer based on the caller’s introduction, or you can send the call to your existing voicemail system.

Because Jangl relies on the use a regular phone to make the actual calls, not a computer platform, you can receive calls from fellow bloggers visiting your Typepad site while out and about on your mobile phone. YOU don’t have to be sitting at your computer. And once the other party has generated a number for you AND specified their mobile as the phone they’ll be calling from, then they can call you from anywhere as well. That’s a pretty cool way to take your online profile with you.

The only required online part of the process is generating the phone number. Once that’s done, the computer is completely out of the picture. You can maintain a list of Jangl contacts online in your account, but that’s up to you.

Who pays? To get a Jangl ID and create an online widget of your own is free, but because the calls you make and receive are on regular mobile phone or landline networks, you pay the appropriate fees to the service provider.

Hope this helps!

I’m a few days behind on this one (see VoIP Watch and VoIP and Gadgets), but Laptop magazine is giving away a few Skype Wi-Fi phones and router bundles. To qualify you’ve got to tell them the craziest place you want to set up a Wi-Fi connection and make a Skype call.  Sign up here…

Did you know that for the year 2006, “J” was the most popular letter of the alphabet? Okay, I made that up. I have no idea if it’s true, but three out of ten most popular baby names last year started with J….

I had a comment a few days ago from Eric C. wanting to know about Jaxtr, Jangl and JaJah. What’s the difference? What indeed! People (like me) are starting to ask questions like this because…who can remember what these guys do! They sort of sound alike, they’re in the same industry space, they appeal to the same type of folks. Eric then wanted to know how the Js relate to GrandCentral. Oiy!

Jaxtr:

• Provides a click-to-call widget (button) for social networking sites like MySpace, web sites, and blogs. Visitors to your page have the option to call you, send you a text message, or leave you a voice message. They don’t need a microphone or headset. They call you by entering their phone number in the widget, Jaxtr then provides a local number for them to dial.
• Free registration, then you buy jax credits to forward calls to your phone. 100 free credits per month.  You can send unlimited calls to voice mail for free and unlimited text messages for free. Calls to other Jaxtr users are also free.
• No software download required.
• Unique feature is Voiceblast. You can record your own message or greeting that’s played automatically or on mouse-click when a someone visits your web page. I’ve added my voiceblast to my About page here.
• Like Jangl, Jaxtr has privacy options that allow you and the person calling to hide your phone numbers or email addresses.
• Like GrandCentral, you can block incoming calls or forward calls based on caller ID. Unlike GrandCentral, Jaxtr does not give you a 10-digit phone number that can be dialed from any phone. People calling you are given a special 10-digit number they can use, but they must use the same phone every time. If they call from a different phone, Jaxtr provides a different number.
• I like it.

Jangl:

• Provides a click-to-call widget (let’s call this widget dialing) for social network sites, web sites and blogs that masks the incoming and outgoing numbers. It’s a way for people to make and receive calls without giving out phone numbers. I guess the advantage here is privacy. For example, you can post the Jangl widget on MySpace without revealing your personal phone number.
• When you register, you receive a Jangl ID that people use to call you. Someone enters your Jangl ID in the online widget, Jangl then gives them a special number to call you on a regular phone. Your number and the calling person’s number are never exchanged.
• Registration is free, then you pay per call based on telephone company charges.
• You can choose from several cool looking widgets
• Not really like GrandCentral at all, except in that they both have widget dialing (GrandCentral recently introduced web buttons).
• Sounds a lot like Jaxtr but I still found Jangl a bit confusing and not a lot of info or online support. I haven’t used it much.

JaJah

• Provides web-based dialing, or dialing from a web page, without a microphone or headset. All calls are made phone to phone, whether landline or mobile. This means the person you’re calling does not have to be connected to the internet.
• You log in to your Jajah account, enter your friend’s number, and click the CALL button. Your phone will ring, you pick up, then your friend’s phone will ring.
• No software download required.
• Other Jajah services and tools include conference calls, call scheduling, access to Jajah phone book from the web browser on your mobile phone, Jajah plugins for Google, Outlook, Mac OS X Address Book, Firefox, and Plaxo
• Registration is free, you get 5 minutes free calling anywhere, then you pay as you go. Calls to Jajah users are free.
• I have an account but haven’t used it.

I’ll leave TalkPlus, Talkster, and Talk-Now for another time….”Tango of the Ts” perhaps? 

Peter Csathy’s post on how SightSpeed runs things in the office is a great testament to how things CAN work if a company has the will. I started working exclusuively from home in 2003, but even before that point I remember having to negotiate hard to work even a few days out of the office–and that was as a contract tech writer. I mean if a contractor has trouble convincing management, an employee doesn’t have a hope. Since then, I’ve learned that it takes a certain kind of discipline to work effectively from home, and not everyone can do it well. However, with commute times for people edging up into the 4 hour range, companies have to start taking work-at-home scenarios more seriously. The impact of commuters on the environment is staggering as well. We need “to commute less and collaborate more — and more effectively — online”, as Peter puts it.

With tools like SightSpeed that are inexpensive and easy to deploy, there’s really no excuse for not entertaining a work-at-home policy. However, based on my experience, it hasn’t been the tools so much as the mindset. The biggest obstacle I see is a lack of skills or expertise in managing remote workers. It’s not the same as managing employees in the office. But there’s no training and no support, so managers operate the way they always have. It’s up to the remote worker to adapt and fit into the system. And guess what, there’s no support or training for employees to be fantasitc home-based workers either. In my view, you need both.