New VOIP App. Profiled

sniggly writes "Cnet News.com has an interview with Kazaa co-founder Janus Friis about their latest product Skype. Skype is a p2p VOIP technology that quote '... is addressing all the problems of legacy VoIP solutions: bad sound quality, difficult to set up and configure, and the need for expensive, centralized infrastructure.' Windows only beta client available."

Comments

What about spyware?

[dzym]

I'd only use it if I could be reasonably certain that it wouldn't be some spyware-riddled infested crapware like Kazaa itself.

Which, since it's from the same guys as Kazaa, I would certainly expect it to be.

Color me uninterested until accounts of user experiences pop up all over the internet with an overwhelmingly positive response.

Google Censorship

[Aliencow]

I wonder how long til there's a Skype Lite out there..and how long before Google removes links to it. Grr.

Probably Redundant, but

[malus]

the telecom industry still hasn't figured out that VOIP is going to take more and more $$$ away.

I wonder just when their lobbyists will get the US congress to outlaw or at least hamper the use of inter/intrastate VOIP?

Hmm alternatives

[Daath]

There are several similar applications out there, the oldest I can remember off-hand is Speak Freely which does secure p2p.

Right now we use Ventrilo internally at work - it's not secure, but we can do conferencing in super quality with VERY low bandwidth! It's excellent!

Re:Very Misleading

[Catharz]

The ability to dial a "real" telephone is exactly what I'm waiting for.

I want a VOIP solution for home. Not so I can call internationally, but for local conference calls that don't tie up every phone line I have. Unfortunately, most of the people I "conference" with aren't on broadband, so for this to work it needs to be able to dial multiple phone lines through a VOIP server.

I'm sure we have the technology to do it.

Forget the popups

[vile7707]

With this we are likely to see a new telemarketting trend if it takes off. Think about it, there's a no call list, but there's certainly no such regulations regarding this technology yet.

Not bad..

[James_G]

I just downloaded and set it up, and had a quick chat with a friend down in California. The quality is very nice and it's super easy to get working. Especially nice is the fact that, although we're both behind NAT connections, we were able to get connected with no problems at all - no configuration was necessary.

Personally, I'd be prepared to pay a fairly reasonable amount for a tool like this, if they decided to go down that route. I live in the US but my family is all back in the UK. I currently spend in the order of about $50/mo on international calls (and that's with a low rate international plan) so something like this could save a lot of money if it was priced reasonably. I've emailed my folks back in the UK to have them download it as well so I can test the latency and see how well it works.

The basically zero effort setup is what really makes this rule though. No worries about forwarding ports, etc. It Just Works[TM]. This may well turn out to be the killer VoIP app. Time will tell!

Rebel without Cause - a Voxilla Editorial

[jeffpulver]

An interesting editorial regarding this CNET story run yesterday on Voxilla.com.

Being one of the people singled out in the story the good news is that since the story ran, I spoke with Janus and Free World Dialup will be working with the Skype team in interconnecting our respective networks.

What concerns me more than this story is that last Friday it was first reported that Wisconsin
joined the growing list of US States that is taking action against VoIP.

Thw Telecommunications wishlist...

[ChozCunningham]

Is it impossible for the open source community to develop a new app and protocol for IM. IM is the biggest thing to not happen on the internet fro users. (Micropayments interest providers, not users.)

Give me one single robust protocol and the apps to run on it can be many and slendid. Just make sure it has everything useful from all the other IM apps out there. Even if the execution quality is poor, lay out the groundwork.

a) decentralized
b) secure
c) video and audio
d) messaging
e) file transfer
f) file browsing
g) open protocol
h) whiteboard
i) multiple logins j) basic multiuser functionality(a la IRC)

I am certain I am missing something. But I really didn't expect things to take this long... I know hypertext took a long time to turn into the www, but that was a bit more pioneering. This is largely a technical issue, since every feature above is offered by On of the big IM's, Skype or Waste.

Obviously, the Major businesses are not intersested in developing an interoperable standard. However, it is the technophiles and pedestrian Internet Users who would benefit from this. So it should be seen to by us to create one protocol to implement such an awesome app. And even if you couldn't call POTS from it, it would catch on. Hell, if it was open, the major IM providers would probably build gateways to access it or eventually leave their existing systems to jion it, increasing it's already immense value.

At least then I wouldn't need to have Trillian, ChatZilla, IIP, Waste and Shareaza all at once (and Y! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM and ICQ installed) just to share a few annecdotes and family photos with friends!

Please, coder people! Help us out!