I’m trying to get into Gizmo. Gizmo Project is a free Internet telephone (or softphone) that lets you make free or low cost phone calls on the Internet. With Skype, you are limited to calling fellow Skypers. With Gizmo, you can call other Gizmo members for free, as well as GoogleTalk users, Jabber users, and SIP phone numbers. Unlike Skype, which relies on a proprietary or closed network, Gizmo users are free to contact any Internet phone number on an open SIP network. 

With Gizmo, calls to regular landline phones and mobiles are subject either to very low rates, or a complicated free call plan that has something to do with calling registered Gizmo members who don’t happen to be online but who normally ARE online AND active Gizmo users. I’m being a bit cheeky here, but free calls really are a good thing in any form.

But as for using it, I’ve had a few hiccups which suprised me. First, I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing and imported my whole Outlook address book into it. Many entries have no phone numbers, so I ended up with a pretty useless list. The only way to delete the entries is to right-click each contact individually and click Delete. Or, log into my sipphone.com account and delete them from there. Both methods take a long time. Yes, I should have payed more attention but I think I was on autopilot.

For folks like me, a pop up or note in the dialog box that says “Some of your Outlook contacts do not include telephone number information. Do you want to continue?” would have been helpful. Or better yet, why not give me the option to import only those contacts with the phone number field filled in. I mean, I can’t remember which Outlook contacts have a phone number attached and which don’t until I look it up in Outlook.

Then, adding contacts using the Contacts > Search for member command didn’t seem to work. Before I lost my mind I upgraded to the newest Gizmo version and that fixed the problem.

These aren’t big issues, but it definitely took me more than 10 minutes to make my first call. Many of the opinions I’ve read seem to indicate that Gizmo is the favoured choice. Is it because it is the anti-Skype or is it easier to use? I’ll let you know when I’ve used it more.

As a little postscript to that Bye Bye Vonage post, I discovered that while Vonage customer support is 247, if you want to CANCEL their service you have to call during business hours (between 9 and 4:55 Eastern). I’m on Pacific time so it took me three tries. Guess they don’t want to make it too convenient if you plan on jumping ship!

But they were very polite, and even offered me free service for a few months to see if they could fix my voice quality problems. I was tempted, but like most people, I don’t want to spend my time friggin’ around with tech support trying to fix it. It ’s not good use of my time. I want it just TO WORK.

I opted to pay the $50 cancellation fee and just move on…

Phoneboy has a great post on how and why handsets make it to the US market, with special perspective on those from Nokia. It kind of provides an answer to questions I get from time to time from visitors to this blog. Mainly, they’re frustrated when they hear about new mobile VOIP services, especially “free” or “beta” ones that they can’t experience because a) it’s not clear which handsets the services run on b) it’s not clear if the handsets are even available, and c) who the heck knows if the network even supports them. Judging from what Phoneboy says, it’s clear that US carriers probably don’t support (or at least officially authorize) anything bleeding edge.

Such are the trials and tribulations of early adoption. Just hurry up already.

I was following the thread started by PhoneBoy and SightSpeed’s Peter Csathy about the obvious advantages of communicating with someone in person. Facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language are huge non-verbal cues that say a lot. But, when face time isn’t an option, then real-time video calling (using SightSpeed of course) is the next best thing. Peter himself runs his Berkeley-based  team from San Diego, and couldn’t do so effectively without SightSpeed. PhoneBoy agrees and thinks that SightSpeed rocks, “Almost like being there”.

But, I’m curious to know if the folks who use SightSpeed today are making spontaneous or pre-planned calls. I confess that when I use it, it’s usually a planned thing. I’ll email or text someone and say, “OK to SightSpeed you now?”, or I pre-arrange a call at a certain time.

My guess is that live video from the desktop is still so new that people hesitate at “surprising” someone with a video call. Unless of course you’re The SightSpeed Guy. You may want to check out his latest blog post. He’s wearing a tie. Must be the staff Christmas lunch.

You don’t have to listen too closely to hear voip and other tech bloggers talk about how for the consumer market, services and applications have to be “dead simple”. Well here’s something embarrassing…for me. 

I’m not an IT pro, but I’m not a novice pc user either. I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, which I love. I’ve had it since last June. When I started demo-ing voip applications for this blog, especially web click-to-call, and pc phone applications, I was using one of two headset/microphones. I mean my laptop has two clearly marked jacks for audio in/audio out. I futz about with these headsets on a regular basis, plugging in, unplugging, trying different things. My husband and I share them you see. So one time I was trying to find my headset and get it plugged in in time to answer an incoming Skype call.

“You know,” my husband says, “Your Dell probably has a built in mic.” Nope, I’d already checked that out. I looked for one, a label, a little pinhole that might be it. I even looked on through the Dell stuff they sent me. I don’t think it has one. Meanwhile, Skype is bleeping away.

“Well you know,” my husband says, “A laptop that new, it’s probably got a built in mic.”

I answer the call. Yes, my laptop has a built in mic. Okay, I’m a dope.

So even if it’s “dead simple”, even if it’s “built in” for crying out loud, for some of us that just isn’t enough.

The newest release of GrandCentral has some great (and useful) features. I’m doubly excited becuase GrandCentral is available to me now as a Canadian. They’ve added web buttons to their line-up. Not a breakthrough feature, but one that has come to be expected. Basically, you add a button to your website or blog that visitors to click to call you (on your GrandCentral number of course).

What’s great is that you can connect with people this way OR you can send them to a voice recording. Like this:

GrandCentral gives some other examples:

• eBay auction: GrandCentral button can send callers to a voicemail with a description of the item on sale. Callers can leave a message and the GrandCentral user can decide whom to call back.
• MySpace page: profile can let people calling without sharing GrandCentral user’s phone number

Time and time again, web marketers show that if you can get your vistors to interact with you (your site), like answer surveys, click a button, answer a question, you’re more likely to make sales, or whatever else your site goals are.

I’ll be adding oneto my About page on this blog, and to my info site www.quickstartvoip.com.

I’ve had a Skype account for awhile, but haven’t used it much because I’d decided to go with Vonage. Now that I’ve cancelled my Vonage service, I’m ready to really put Skype through its paces.

At the time of writing, Skype is up to release 2.5.0.137 so I’ve had to upgrade my Skype software. NOt a problem. Their websit and download instructions are clear enough.

You are prompted to close the existing Skype version if it is running, click the Download button and then the Run button when prompted, and follow the rest of the installation prompts. That’s it.

I recently upgraded my desktop to a Dell laptop, and I had a  headset kicking around. A huge Plantronics thing (a) that must have been originally for my husband’s gaming, but works OK for my purposes. Another way to go is to get just  a microphone (b) and use the speakers on the computer for sound, like a speakerphone. The third nifty piece of hardware I’d like to show you is a “dongle” (c)that allows you to switch between headset mode (in which all sound is piped through your headset), and regular speaker mode. Since I don’t plan on having my headset on all the time, it’s convenient to toggle between the two modes at the push of a button. This gizmo costs less than $15. Go see your local Radio Shack.

(a) (b)  (c)

I posted earlier about a two week wait for response from Skype. I didn’t think that was too bad at the time. But another blogger has been waiting for 6 weeks for support and his Skype account is unusable in the meantime.

What’s the deal? Skype is happy to take your money but if it doesn’t work for you, too bad?

This week thevoipgirl.com went down in flames for the first time. I think it was out for a couple of days after I upgraded my WordPress template and then managed to hose my site. After the initial shock, depression set in since I have absolutely NO idea how PHP works. Thankfully the WP template I’m using is superbly supported by its creator and other code wizards. It turned out to be something wonky with the permissions in my index.php and nothing to do with upgrading (greek to me). So, the reason for this post, in a nutshell, is to recommend this highly customizable and well supported template. Check out Semiologic Pro by Denis de Bernardy. Cheers!

Reprinted with permission from: www.quickstartvoip.com

In order to use VoIP, both parties need a broadband connection. This is a high-speed Internet, or broadband connection usually provided by a cable or DSL modem. Broadband modems are usually used to connect computers to the Internet, but in the case of VoIP, computers are not necessary.

The simplest form of VoIP is a computer-to-computer voice connection. All that is required for this type of connection is a computer, a headset consisting of earphones and microphone, and VoIP software. Most software packages are free and allow you to connect to any computer running the same software. There is no charge for this type of connection and calls can be made to anywhere in the world.

VoIP software can also be used to connect to land-line phones — that is, phones which are not connected directly to the Internet. This type of call is usually not free but the cost is quite a bit lower than what your telephone company charges. Some VoIP services also allow you to make calls to cellular phones.

The only time that both parties need a particular VoIP software package is when they are making computer-to-computer calls. Parties receiving land-line or cellular calls do not need any extra equipment or software.

VoIP Transmissions

VoIP is based on digital data transmission. The first step in any VoIP call is to convert the analog signal of the human voice into digital data. This is done within an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) that divides an analog signal into discrete steps which are represented by numbers. The next step is to compress the audio data using a codec (enCOder/DECoder) which significantly reduces the amount of digital data while maintaining audio quality.

The compressed digital data can now be sent over the Internet. The data stream must be divided into packets which, besides containing the audio data, also have information concerning their destination and their place in the data stream.

All data that is sent over the Internet is encapsulated in ‘layers’ which aid in its proper delivery. For example, web pages may use the Internet Protocol (IP) network layer to specify destination and origin addresses, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) transport layer to create a connection between two computers and the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as an application layer to allow the Web browser to display the web page correctly.

Most VoIP uses a transport layer called User Datagram Protocol (UDP) which is faster than TCP. A commonly used application layer is Real-time Transmission Protocol (RTP) — originally developed for delivering audio and video over the Internet. RTP provides information about the sequence of the data packets so they can be reconstructed in the correct order at their destination.

RTP also has the ability to drop packets if they do not arrive within a certain amount of time. This is necessary for telephone conversations because if the telephone software waited for every packet of information to arrive before reassembling it there would be unacceptable delays in the audio stream.

Even though some of the packets are dropped, there is usually still enough information to make the conversation legible. The number of packets that will be dropped depends on the speed of your Internet connection in the distance between the two parties.

Once the voice data has arrived at its destination, it is reassembled in the correct order and converted back from digital to analog.