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Here's some prior art: dialpad in 1999.

http://www.dialpad.com/ - I used them when they first came out in 1999 because of the really cheap international rates. They had a browser based phone interface which used an activex control for communications when they first started out. Definate prior art.....

I have used the Dialpad service for a long time for making PC-to-phone calls, even before Yahoo took over Dialpad. The sound quality is far superior to Skype. I need this kind of service because I don't have a regular land line and I make so few phone calls. So $10 worth of credit can last me up to 2 months, which means this type of service has a great advantage over Vonage as well. If you check out the information on Yahoo's site you will notice that indeed, once you have a phone number, people can call you if you have Messenger running, and if not then the calls go to voicemail which you can check for free. And the cost of the service is a little extra but not much.

That, and http://www.dialpad.com/ has also been around since the late 90s. I remember making FREE PC-to-phone calls using Dialpad's Java applet. Then, at the very same time the free ISPs (Altavista, NetZero, etc.) stopped being free, so did Dialpad. And now, Yahoo! recycles their services by acquiring them and adding it to Yahoo! Messenger.

This is not news. Tell me Yahoo! is providing a Vonage-like service that will integrate my Yahoo! account, voicemail, email, and information services into my regular phone, and that will be news.

Skype is currently the only provider to allow calls to landlines and cellphones.

Oh, really? What happened to all the H.323 and SIP based services? Did they all vanish?

Officials at Internet portal giant Yahoo (Quote, Chart) are denying a report that it will launch a VoIP (define) service in the next two weeks.

Perhaps it's because they already have one - http://www.dialpad.com/

* Dialpad (http://www.dialpad.com/) was acquired by Yahoo! two months ago.

* Yahoo! has access numerous deals with top last-mile telecoms such as SBC in the US, BT in UK, Rogers in CA, etc.

My prediction: two months after Yahoo! starts to provide VOIP, Google will do so and then Slashdot will have an article annoucing that Google now offers VOIP and is the first one doing so and Yahoo! is copying Google.

MSN used to have this facility (i dont know about now as its an advert ridden piece of shit) that was provided by dialpad if i remember correctly, they even used to bundle a free 5min phone call (anywhere in the world) a week as a taster/teaser

perhaps skype isnt popular and the "hype" is wannabe marketing, anyone can print a download number on a website but it doesnt mean its the truth

Dialpad is still around . . . but it costs money now . . .

Blah blah blah obligatory product plug, even though I'm just a consumer and get nothing out of it... sooooo,

I purchased a 900 mhz logitech headset for use with teamspeak cause I'm geeky like that. Later I purchased a monthly plan with Dialpad (yeah yeah, they need a linux client...) The custom viop app you install is tiny, and doesn't require a reboot so I've been able to use it pretty much everywhere with a cheapy mic/headphone combo. It won't work when I'm booted to linux on the lappy but oh well.

However, the voice quality of the actual calls on a decent qos was pretty good and as long as nobody was edonkeying for porn on my non QOS connection it was about as clear as a cell phone call. The delay (1/2 a second at times) can get to you tho.

I noticed that you did not mention your long-distance carrier. I don't think that the target for these phones is the local provider being that these two phones cannot call regular land lines. How could you order a pizza? Unlike you, my long-distance provider experience has been an utter nightmare. So much so that I have chosen not to have a long distance carrier. If only these phones worked with land lines. There are some alright alternatives though. The one that I am trying is Dialpad.com. There is a little lag but I only need it for international calls. I do my state to state on a cell phone.

You sound a lot like a consumer (:-), so check out things like Net2Phone and Dialpad. But also check out Free World Dialup. Vonage is trying to replace your whole phone line, including local and inbound calls, rather than just skimming your outgoing long distance calls.

Consumer-oriented services typically want your credit card to set up an account, though there are other models. Business-oriented services usually have more interesting options for billing, accounting, grouping users together, incoming calls, etc. Hardware ranges from single-line frobs to 4-line PC boards to 24-line T1s to PBXs, etc. Check out www.openh323.org if you're interested.

What do you do if you have a friend who is similarly situated?

In this case, given that "similarly" means both of us are using dialpad then we can call each other directly through dialpad. I've never done this, so I don't know what the cost is, or the quality.

If you want to try it out, email me.

OgreInside

Specifically Southwestern Bell.

I can go on and on, but I'll tell you this: I do not have a phone at home anymore, and I have long since abandonded my much loved 5 static ips and dsl as well, in favor of dynamic-only port-80 blocked sometimes-slower-than-M$-fixes-security-holes cable modem.

And I'm MUCH happier.

I will never in my life use SWBell's services. If I am running from rabbid wolverines and my only chance of survival is to purchase SWBell local phone service, I'd rather dive into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades, followed by having my face eaten off by said wolverines.

I only make calls through dialpad, ($9.99 a month for 400 minutes). That's all my long distance AND all local calls. No incoming calls. My wife has gotten use to it. Sure beats $50/month for voice mail/caller id/call waiting/call waiting caller id/caller id call waiting calling/made up services to charge you extra in hopes you won't notice (slamming & cramming)/to just look at the caller id, and ignore the call.

Yeah, maybe it's a pain in the butt to connect the handset everytime I need to make a call (that's what wireless+laptop is for), and 911 isn't supported (that's what cell phones are for). But at 2.5 cents a minute, (and best of all NO SWBell), I see no comparison. People just page me, and I call them back. It's a plus, because none of our friends/family have to use long distance to get a hold of us either.

Oh yeah, and no spam calls/wrong numbers either...

I haven't tried this out yet, but it allows you to connect a regular (cordless) phone to your computer, eliminating the wire-fumbling.

OgreInsde

Rest in peace, free anonymous services. We'll bury you in a shallow grave right next to the free long distance calling services and the free mailing list services.

I have abandoned my POTS line, in favor of a combination of Dialpad for long-distance and a $30 a month AT&T cellphone for local. And so far it's worked rather well. I have more cell time than I could ever use, and when I need to call someone LD, Dialpad is there for me. And I'm not paying much more than I was for landline local plus long distance.

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• Routing voice and fax traffic over the Internet
• Enabling automatic reply to voicemail messages
• Delivering content to wireless devices

I'm not sure if I understand the need for this system. Routing voice traffic is already done on a daily basis (dialpad.com). Automatic reply to voicemail messages is certainly something that exists already, and it seems everybody I know has some sort of wireless content service on their cellphone or PDA already.

What a directory like this could more likely be used for is marketing. Every night of the week, right when I sit down for dinner, I get a pointless marketing call from some schmoe who wants to sell me aluminum siding, or give me a great deal on a home loan. Yeah, this is just what need, now all those marketing people will be able to page me and leave me voicemails as well.

Would you like to pet my Penguin? The Linux Pimp

It won't. End of story. If you want clear and concrete examples of this, just look at todays trends. How many Slashdotters primary platform has a web browser that can access Dialpad? How many Slashdotters can access Apple's iTools. As a Mac user, I have run into a number cases where sites provide a service, that I cannot access because they use IE (for Windows)specific coding. Errors as basic as storing links in a page as http://www.????.com/mypage\index.html are more common than you think. Broken tables are very common, ever since the advent of CSS (along with the advent of WYSIWYG HTML coding apps, which convert layers to tables) and it's improper implementation (which renders fine in Windows).

If today you can't go to Dialpad and make your free phone call with MacOS, BeOS, or with Netscape (any platform) AND have both Newbies and "Paid Coders" made basic mistakes because IE for Windows doesn't care, it is reasonable to expect that tommorrow, Office is NOT going to run "properly" either, much less the "services" other companies offer.

We don't have long distance at all because of those fees...however, some sort of "you have no long distance so we'll charge you a fee" fee still pops up, but it's less than any long distance company's fee - I guess it's like the "I have no car insurance" insurance.
For when we do need to make long distance calls, we do it for free using dialpad.com. So you fill out a questionaire, big whoop. THEY KNOW WHO YOU ARE ANYWAY. ;-)

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

Why don't you let the MPAA know how you feel about their actions?

Their website is here , or give the nice folks a call at 818-995-6600. (Don't want to burn your nickel? Try dialpad.com.

"The Whiney Complainer" Pokrefke

FWIW - my laptop doesn't even have a DVD player!

Nor do I use long distance, but that's another story. Can anybody figure out how to encrypt Dialpad.com? ;-)

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

Oh PAYPAL.. Another lamb ready for slaughter. How long before the expenses and fraud catch up with PayPal? Talk about a zero sum gain business. Speaking of "lets just throw some money down the toilet", how about dialpad.com, how long can that last?

But as for PayPal, I can tell you right now they must be making scads of money off the thing. PayPal's one of the most popular auction-payment services ever...which means a whole lot of money is passing through their coffers every day. Do you think they don't float interest off of that money?

Furthermore, they just introduced a "business account" system, where they provide additional services to those who want them, while taking up to 2.5% of those transactions. They were certainly attractive enough to be bought out by the X.com full-service Internet bank within just a few months of their creation.

Trust me on this--banks have little tricks of making money off of things that would cause you or I to scratch our heads. They wouldn't be providing this service if they didn't think it would make them a bundle.
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Considering the cost of local phone service, whcih requires you to pay by the minute connection charges, I think this will be proportionately a bargain in the UK.

If you then use your ADSL connected PC as your telephone with a free DialPad-like service, your total phone bill may go down.

Actually, I think that idea of long distance with ads was really kicked around. i think it's a GREAT idea

Use dialpad, see what your professor says!

right now I am building (in my "free" time) a website for my family. All e-mail addresses, ICQ, phone numbers, birthdays, and even a place to upload pictures. With my immediate family spread across the country, it's one of the few ways we can stay close and in-touch economically. Those free long-distance VOIP sites are nice too (dialpad)


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One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."

The Net not censorable? This is not the case!

Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.

The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.

The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.

One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."

The Net not censorable? This is not the case!

Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.

The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.

The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.

I think it uses Java, I'm not sure if it requires some ActiveX glue though. Just go to www.dialpad.com and check it out.

Oh, and by the way, it likes to mute the line when you stop talking, so sometimes the beginnings of words are cut off. I've found that's Its a good solution to run a midrange frequency softly in the background to keep the connection open at all times (2600hz works pretty well, ironically :)



Amber Yuan (--ell7)

Administrative Contact: (310) 664-8100 Voice

one word: dialpad

Finally, he could make phone calls with Dialpad, order groceries for same-day delivery at WebVan, etc.

In case you didn't notice, the article was in the Toronto Star. Toronto is in Canada. WebVan doesn't deliver to Canada. In fact, I'm sure that there are significantly fewer Canadian Internet companies doing deliveries.

Conclusion: Before you decide to do something like this, DO A LITTLE RESEARCH!

I think given scope to do anything I want as long as I was nothing but Net for five days I think I might even end up learning something.

Also, I think that it is a completely different experience if you are a nerd, since you actually know what to look for, and where to look for it.

Finally, he could make phone calls with Dialpad, order groceries for same-day delivery at WebVan, etc.

Conclusion: Before you decide to do something like this, DO A LITTLE RESEARCH!

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Remember all the talk about how, if Linux loses the battle over browser compatibility, it loses the war for the desktop?

This, my friends, is a large reason why.

Only two things have prevented ASPs from becoming an integral part of the standard computing experience:

A) Lack of widespread high speed networking.
B) Immature tools for representing quality interfaces over HTML/Java/etc.

The judicious use of the extensions offered in Internet Explorer 5 arguably makes somewhat irrelevant the former(there's still the problem in that it's not particularly efficient or stable to have application functionality dependant upon a network connection; but then again it's arguable a server is much more likely to Autorecover much more reliably than a desktop OS) and almost totally obviates the latter.

The only thing preventing more applications from being designed in this manner is the fact that IE5 is nowhere near ubiquitous. Don't laugh--critical applications are already being designed according to Microsoft's master plan: Dialpad.Com, the surprisingly effective free Voice-Over-IP-To-Any-Landline-Telephone, is written in Java with some kind of Windows specific extensions.

Why? Two reasons: One, Sun has utterly bungled Java beyond belief when it comes to deploying new libraries, and two, Dialpad figures (witheringly reasonably) that the majority of their users can successfully *use* Windows specific extensions.

Of course, the fact that Dialpad apparently works successfully on Netscape for Windows hints at broken not-quite-cross-platform code somewhere in the pipeline. (Probably some native methods being used.) Either that, or the system's intentionally limited. I doubt that though--Dialpad actually added detailed Linux Masq instructions to their site. (Joy!)

Dialpad, incidentally, is a fascinating case study in how an ASP can operate. They are actually entirely standards-compliant, using H.323 to move their voicestreams around. However, they implemented a system they call Split-323(patent patending, which is slightly silly since the core concept is found all over the place) where most of the heavy H.323 lifting is done on the server side, with only the voice codec'ing remaining for the client to execute. Quite nifty, and is likely the general paradigm we're likely to see for systems that traditionally required binary application deployment--a small application, usually net-deployed, that executes whatever specifically requires a presence on the individual host(in this case, digital audio in, out, and compression) with the rest being left on some server out on the global Internet.

I said this is what we're likely to see. I didn't say it's the greatest idea known to man.

On the one hand, ASP style deployments work beautifully for applications that are inherently communication oriented. Dialpad is about connecting to other phone lines. MindTerm, the mind-bogglingly(sorry) cool Java deployed and amazingly full featured and GPL'd SSH client, brings high end communicative security in package that requires no installation beyond accessing a web page.

But do we really want non-communication based applications to require a network connection?

Pundits like to go on and on about how broadband is going to be all over the place in a few years. Bruce Schnier, author of Applied Cryptography and creator of the excellent Blowfish encryption algorithm, observed that while high end processing power will increase on and on ad infinitum, the low end never goes away--it just gets smaller, deployed for never-before imagined applications, etc. Smoothly scaling performance from the high end to the extremely low end is, therefore, a value. I posit that bandwidth is much the same way--maximum speeds will get higher and higher(indeed, in the course of the last 5 years I've gone from a 2400bit link to a 1,500,000bit link!), but there's always going to be something puttering along damn slowly and not entirely reliably. Look at the proliferation of wireless technologies proudly proclaiming speeds that are laughable in wired realm but are actually pretty cool once made wireless.

It's the wireless side, specifically laptops, that suffer the most from the ASP paradigm--wireless bandwidth is far more scarce, and many applications already deployed on them are intrinsically non-communication oriented. To force laptops to initiate connections whenever basic applications are to be used removes much of the freedom intrinsic in a battery powered, portable computing environment.

On the flip side, I'll be the first to admit that laptops have been made much less free by the degree to which communicative uses have taken over the actual applications people run. The concept that a laptop would become almost entirely useless, though, without Net.Mommy somehow being able to tunnel a link to it is rather bothersome nonetheless.

Security is a far more pressing concern. People fail to grasp the vast amount of security embedded in the simple fact that their files are located on their hard drives, in their homes, on a machine that is running no remote access services and is not permanently connected to the Internet. This security is eroded constantly by a disturbingly large number of intentional(in the RealNetworks fiasco) and unintentional(insert browser vulnerability here) ways, but literally moving the location of an application from onsite to a remote location introduces an incredible number of possible points of attack, from data corruption to privacy violation / industrial espionage.

A perfect example: GPS-Assisted Destination Routing. Take something like Mapquest.Com vs. a traditional CD-ROM based Street Atlas USA.

Mapquest requires no CD-ROM sale, would never have out of data information on the marketplace, could probably add a Dialpad-style applet to receive location data from a GPS receiver, and would probably require some form of wireless connectivity a la (the soon to be ridiculously oversubscribed) Ricochet service.

In comparison, Street Atlas USA does require a CD-ROM sale, would eventually suffer from stale data, would have GPS easily integratable with the core application, and would require no (expensive) wireless networking to function.

How easy it is to ignore that Mapquest would be receiving up-to-the-minute accurate positional and destination data for whoever's using their service. Combine the ridiculously pitiful privacy standards that Corporate America operates under with constant pressure from VC's to find sources of funding and the ease at which Net vendors can pass off security and privacy lapses as "accidental occurances which have already been fixed" and suddenly the ASP picture becomes much more dangerous for the end user.

The bottom line is, when it comes to security, trust, no matter how great, is no competition to a brick wall: Security Through Impossibility is simultaneously the simplest and most effective means by which sensitive data can be protected from malicious agents. ASP's demand much trust to be usable, and while benefits from ease of deployment and harms from reduced functionality and accessiblity are significant concerns for any business considering employing an ASP, one has to wonder at what times it is justified to remove the brick wall inherent in on-site deployed solutions.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com