Slashdot Mirror
PhoneGaim Brings Phone Calling To IM Users
An anonymous reader writes "Eweek has an article on how PhoneGaim integrates IM and phone into one program making it possible for AOL/ICQ, MSN and Yahoo users to call each other, landlines and cellphones. It talks about how it could be a Skype-killer since it's based on open standard SIP and comes with free PSTN calling (5 minutes per day), free voicemail via email, and even supports incoming phone calls from PSTN. It's out first for desktop Linux (maybe the start of a new trend?) but it's open source so expect a MSWin version shortly from Gaim team."
Now THERE is your linux IM-EMAIL-VOIP killer app.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
but only time will tell if it actually will be useful or will it fall to the wasteside like the phones in the early 90's with the cameras built into them that I think AT&T built.
Whenever I show someone who uses XP what linux has to offer that XP doesn't, I'm usually stumped. (explaining "better security" to a dial-up user who only checks their mail mostly results in blank stares).
This is something that, once on a knoppix cd, should make a lot of people think seriously about using linux.
This week BT/Yahoo announced an upgraded yahoo messenger product that does the same, however pc->phone connects are billed to users landline account. PC->PC are free, International charged at destination countries local rates.
What about the call quality?
A quick look at the site shows the adapter to be about $90 - which, I think, is required to be able to use a normal telephone. That kind of upfront cot is not going to win over customers!
I am not an user of Linspire. Please help me find RPM for my FC2
Okay, okay. I'm excited.
Here's the deal. The house I just bought is POTS. I've long wanted a way to hook a box up between my NID and all the phones in my house, and have that box intercept all calls, and run it through a 'spam' filter if you will. Be able to filter calls by wildcard (block all calls from area code 803, or an exact number, or numbers without caller ID) and give a generic message to the caller, heck even pick up the call and hang up immediately. If it passes the filters, ring the house phones.
I know that this gets off-topic, but it seems to me that this is a step in the right direction (possibly) of accomplishing what I want without having to go buy IP phones for my house.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
is a solution like this that will allow computer users to call VoIP services like Vonage and packet8 without having to use PSTN services. I.e. purely Internel calls.
Seriously. People have been trying to do VOIP for years, but hardly anyone wants it. There's the "neat" factor, but for anything but that international calling (if the call is to someone as tech-savvy as yourself, of course) it's useless.
Does vonage use SIP? I would think not, but I noticed that both use the same softphoneo ne
http://www.vonage.com/features.php?feature=softph
http://sipphone.com/softphone/
Don't tell me Xten thought ahead and created a transport abstraction so that either could be used... cause I want to use GAIM with my vonage account!
...they supported IM through SIP then I might make use of this product. I have no desire to place phone calls through my computer, especially if I have a limited number of minutes or have to buy extra hardware or the cost is going to be more than using the old-fashioned phone sitting on my desk right next to my computer. What I REALLY could use is a linux IM client that supports SIP. My company uses MS products for all it's IT, but everybody in my group runs linux desktops. Now that they've rolled out a corporate IM solution based on MS products we're effectively SOL unless/until somebody develops a SIP IM client for linux... I'd find a linux SIP IM client infinitely more useful than a linux SIP phone.
Is there a way to have linked screen names in GAIM so they all show up in the same buddy list window?
The service (with 5 minutes free etc.) used is SIPPhone, the company that was started by the Lindows guy.
The 5 minutes for free can only be gotten by using phonegaim ON lindows, buying a SIPPhone device, or by buying $20 of SIPPhone minutes. Not actually free, then, just included with the cost of your purchase.
Note that you can only call people if you're BOTH using phonegaim. You could just exchange (S)IP numbers and use any normal SIP client for the same effect. Nothing to see here. There are already dozens of free SIP clients.
Note that skype, while a cooky closed-source, non-standard product, does have good support for using it behind NAT, which is harder with SIP. (Personally, I say, give me the IPv6 already).
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Check out Asterisk. It will do all of the above, and more.
This solution is possible. Use Linux PBX Asterisk with one digium TDM card. Asterisk offer all you need easy and are open source.
You can do this now. Asterix makes a good PBX you just and outward and inward facing physical lines as you desire more inside extensiuons (Groups of phones) and outside lines. The cards are a few hundred and it needs a modest PC to run everything. Pretty much you can add any type of extension be it VoIP or POTS and any type of outside line be it VoIP POTS ISDN or a PRI. You can implment outgoing dial plans so that long distance is autmoticaly routed to the VoIP with fallback to land lines etc etc etc. Right now I run my house with these (it helps that I baught a small pile of dirt cheap Diamond USB attached inside POTS lines) every phone is it's own extension and I have POTS and VoIP external lines.
No sir I dont like it.
I mean, that would rock!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
So, if your friend or parent is in, say, India, will you just call them? I would say this is a very useful tool for travellers of any kind. Even college students who go out of state should find this useful.
The reason the two go together is cause it is about communication, and IM servers provide an easy way to find people (easy as compared to memorizing phone numbers). Also, whether or not you are using voice, you still need text messaging to send links and files because communication is no longer limited to speech.
By the way, file sharing already works (for MSN, at least). The only thing that is missing (from what most people are used to with p2p) is a search tool and persistent shared directories. Right now direct transfers involve actively sending files.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Didi I misread the Linspire site or will this ONLY work on Linspire?
I think its time to make packages for mandrake, redhat, suse, debian, slackware and any other major distros so we can start using this software across linux :)
How about a knoppix cd with this software ready to run? I bet it will appeal on my windows freak friends heh
is there any cross-platform video chat software that doesn't suck?
here is an interesting effect.
when you read the google tech news. the main story about phonegaim points to this very thread on slashdot...
google news
That is... We have a main office and I'm in a remote location (another country). I want to be able to buy a piece of hardware I can just connect to my remote location's LAN (which is connected to the Internet) and buy a piece of hardware that connects to the LAN at my main office. The hardware at my remote location would just connect to a normal phone while the hardware at my main office would just connect to a phone line (or extension of a PBX). When the line/extension rings, it goes over the Internet and rings my phone at my remote location. If I want to make a call, I pick up my phone and I'm given a dial-tone from my main office.
But what I want is a pure hardware solution. I want to pay for the hardware and be done with it. There should be no monthly fee since once I have the hardware I'm not using anyone elses resources.
Likewise, I should be able to make free phone calls to others that use the same hardware as long as my phone knows their IP address (or there is a free/cheap service that maps their number to their current dynamic IP address).
Is there something like this? In theory the hadware ought to be dirt cheap since all it really would require is a network card, an ADC/DAC, and a microcontroller to perform the logic. Such a device could probably be built for less than $30, so it ought to be availble to the public for less than $100 for each location.
is it just me, or is the icon for PhoneGaim just a complete rip-off of the iChat AV icon on Mac OS X.
I can't get excited about this PhoneGaim as I already use a SIP phone client as well as iChat AV.
I expect Apple to add voicemail in the next version anyway. It's been touted in many of the forums I read already.
is the parent post in English? What in the world is he trying to say ?
I'm interested in that too, if you find anything, please do let me know.
I was really hoping this would be an AIM client for my cell phone. All the providers in my area charge my $.05 for each IM sent/received, similar to SMS. This is even though I'm paying the monthly data charge for up to 1MB of data (WAP). Damned crooks. A small downloadable chat client would be fantastic!
with terminating POTS service hung on the back of it.
see http://gaim-vv.sourceforge.net/
in fact... its more than just open source. its *free software8 and is distributed under the GPL. sweet! (remember... not all "open source" software is free, it simply means the source code is viewable; like java.)
Maybe I am missing the point but how is this new? Isn't this just a crossover of Gaim with GnomeMeeting?
linphone.h, and osipua.h. During compiling:Hrm.. Lets see.... GPL software mods
da w00t. mtfnpy?
I'll probably lose karma for this. "Gee Bill, what the hell is that Gaim-y smell? Is it your phone?"
:)
That's funny, I thought all innovation came from M$ - because they have "intellectual property"
a hardware solution to voip ? Like cisco or something?
Sorry for being a bit off topic.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
As usual, Lindows seems to be cruisin' for a bruisin':
PhoneGaim (pronounced "Phone Game") is an Open Source project started by Lindows, Inc.
I believe that should read, "PhoneGaim is an open-source project, using open-source code from Gaim with SIP technology added by Lindows, Inc."
Also, the main page is bullshit:
Available immediately, and exclusively for Linspire
Uh, try, "source is available on the downloads page", not "you must be running Linspire". Then again, they could have crippled it so badly that it will only compile on Linspire...
Please help metamoderate.
... a small (iPAQ or BlackBerry or Tungsten sized) gadget that runs linux and can do IP over 802.11*, GSM and GPRS, I'd grab it and start developing software. Imagine what we could build if something like this were available to those of us who just want to do it ...
;-)
(Actually, all that in a laptop would be a good start. But so far, I haven't learned of a laptop with hardware for all three wireless comm systems. And there's the ongoing problem of publishing the proprietary specs so that 802.11* hardware works seamlessly on a linux laptop. But maybe we'll soon read that WiFi "almost works" on linux, just like it "almost works" on OSX.
Anyway, in our house, we have a Tungsten C (PasmOS + WiFi) and a BlackBerry 7280 (java VM + IP over GSM and GPRS). We keep thinking how nice it could be to have one pocket/purse-sized toy with all three and the programmer accessability of linux. If someone were to put one together and find a way to make it legal to use all three paths to the Net, we could start a real explosion of Open-Source, standards-based portable computer/comm gadgets.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Put a sipura 2000/3000 (see voxilla.org) at your main office and take a SIP Phone with you.
For IP adresses, dyndns.org, zonedit.com and many other provide such services
#include "coucou.h"
My only problem with this would be the frequency you have to update gaim to keep yahoo and others working. If they're going to use gaim they should have some type of notification built in to notify you when a new version is available...AND KEEP IT UPDATED.
It won't be so bad for Joe Blow if all of a sudden he can't connect to Yahoo but sees a new update is available. Then he installs the update and Yahoo works again. He's satisfied and doesn't think anything of it. The problem will be when these lindows users download this and can't connect to yahoo or one of the other services. Then they think gaim is crap...when in reality yahoo just broke things on purpose again.
Well, then you should investigate SIPPhone further, since that is exactly what SIPPhone can do to you.
www.sipphone.com.
You can use any regular phone and call over SIP to other phones, cells, SIP clients, PhoneGaims...
Check out the Call-In-One adapter.
www.asterisk.org - I haven't looked to see is it has the ability to do the toll by-pass you are asking for, but I know a couple of Cisco routers can do it. Software PBX, analog/digital/VOIP phones mix and a toll by-pass link between the two sites with a dial plan should do it.
Which distro does Linus use?
I've been playing with Asterisk myself for a week or so and it's pretty damned good (although takes some time getting your head around the configuration). I've got an FXO card on order to connect it to my POTS line and I have a couple of DDIs registered (for free!) at VoipUser which direct over the internet to my Asterisk server.
I've been looking for a half decent SoftPhone for linux and haven't been able to really find one - the best I've found is IAXComm, which has an annoying habit of missing the occasional call. So I'm hoping that PhoneGaim is what I've been looking for... but damned if I can get the thing to compile...
http://blog.nexusuk.org
if the gaim team would finish the support for normal IM's before throwing themselves into this kinda project.. I mean, I *still* can't get MSN to work using gaim... If I'm lucky I can connect but then I can't receive messages and if I try to write someone I will be disconnected immediately.. Please fix this before making a voice version :)
Oh, and if anyone finds a Symbian-UIQ SIP or IAX client that will run on my SE P900, that'd be really handy (I haven't found one yet, although there seems to be stuff available for the Symbian-60 devices). VoIP-over-bluetooth and turn it into a flashy cordless phone when I'm at home. :)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The reputation of Lindows/Spire is undeserved. They have always made the source code for their modifications to Linux packages freely available.
Phonegaim was paid for by Linspire and they have made the source code available as required by the GPL. This was mentioned in one of Michael Robertson's emails a few days ago.
You should stop speaking ill of people who do nothing wrong.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Cisco produces hardware VoIP phones. When I was studying for my CCNA in highschool, we visited one of the Cisco headquarters and they told us to just go ahead and make a phonecall to anywhere out of the country.
While that in itself isn't telling, the phones were set top units (no computer needed) that had an ethernet cable plugged into them.
Slightly off topic, but may appeal to the geek in you. Their cameras and televisions, projectors, thermostats and lighting was controlled by hardware TCP/IP based units. Very neat stuff.
You're just mad because the voices in your head talk to me.
As a gaim developer, I'm rather curious to know where this idea that we will be providing a win32 version of this fork has come from.
Skype have been incredibly smart.
they use OTHER PEOPLE's computers to route phone calls. not only to initiate them (to bypass firewalls) but also to make them (hence the dramatic increase in quality).
they use the entire skype network as a distributed system to foil attacks and stupidity.
any product that does not do this cannot expect to succeed: they will be too vulnerable to a) people who think a NAT is something that bites you b) telecoms regulation c) traditional telcos with a lot of money to lose.
I thought lindows/linspire was kde based..I have a kde gentoo box and cant get this crap built without gnome..yuck, yuck....all I want is something like net2phone commcenter which has 2cents/minute us long distance but that only works on windows and wont install under wine :(
Somewhere in this thread, and also on the #gaim IRC channel, the Gaim developers have expressed their complete lack of involvement with this project. Moderators, please seek out their comments (ChipX86 and L.Schiere) and moderate them UP.
The slashdot article is not just a little off, it's virtually wrong on every thing.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
That's why I run emacs on my cellphone :D
Gaim is an instant messenger. Its just that, an instant messenger. Not an instant text messenger. but sends messages of all kinds instantly, as its an instant messenger. Instant messages can be files, voice, streaming pictures, and so on, as they all convey messages, and instantly. This perfectly fits into gaim's goal of being an instant messenger. Last time I checked, phones were a form of instant communication.
This has to be one of the most useless apps I've seen.
first, it only works for lindows, you can get the source, but without some serious issues (I had to hack my makefile, and no prevail)
no documentation whatsoever, so you gotta guess the deps.
you could go with gaim-vv rather than this. this is just a waste, it cant connect to any other sip networks except the one run by lindows, and it can only communicate with other phonegaim clients, and it costs money to call a landline, not to mention the rates high for VOIP.
The last comment in the article should be edited out because the GAIM devels have zero involvement with this.
just dont bother with this, it's overhyped, only reason it's getting media coverage is because a company is behind the new features. gaim-vv is much better IMHO.
bottom line, phonegaim is a cruddy hack. dont bother with it.
Say what you want about Lindows, but these guys are consistently delivering useful programs for Linux. First nvu for html editing, then Lsongs, then Lphoto and now PhoneGaim. Bashing Lindows is almost an olympic sport on Slashdot, but they are out-delivering all other desktop Linux companies put together.
Also, all those programs and constant updates are one click easy via their CNR technology which also gets routinely disparaged. Meanwhile posts to slashdot complain about makefiles and such not working. Now that is poetic justice.
And every one of those programs is open source so while it may debut on Linspire it's available to all. Desktop linux needs Lindows and 3 more companies like it.
This works well on Mandrake, but you have to also install Linphone. I was able to get the free calling to the PSTN as well.
It also works fine behind my Nat - I know there was one comment that only Skype works behind Nats. Not true.
Anyone can now call my computer from ANY phone in the world (I used SIPphone to assign a virtual number for $5). It's pretty remarkable that I can receive calls from anyone on the world directly on my PC.
I can click one button and phone any other phone in the world right from my IM client. Am I the only other person who thinks this is two great tastes that taste great together?
Also, I setup 2 computers with PHoneGaim and it seems to use g711 codec to communicate. It takes about 65k, but there is a lower bandwidth modem option which I did not try.
If you want a phone that can be used WITHOUT a computer, then get a hard phone - not software. You'll find a list with links to cheapest buyers at:
SIPhardware.com
The cheapest ones are about $50, but they plug directly into your net connection and work whether your computer is on or off.
.. they didn't call it PhoneLinAIM?
Ok, so it's not as bad as h.323, but SIP is not
firewall-friendly -- Skype is.
We should make it talk IAX2.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I was sitting on the #gaim IRC channel earlier today (actually, starting immediately after seeing the article), and the following is a quote of one of the things I heard.
PhoneGaim is not officially affiliated with Gaim, except for the fact that they have common code. So this probably isn't something that should be expected as a Windows port any time soon... at least, not from them.
Open Source Software doesn't mean all Linux all the time. It means giving users a choice. Maybe you'd like to 'rage against the machine' while at work on your corporate dicated Windows box?
Ahhh... you mean like you can get for mobile phones?
... and then there were none
Friends don't let friends use Windows (or Lindows, for that matter).
Too bad. I thought "PhoneGaim" would be an instant messenger program ported onto a certain type of phones (perhaps Sony Ericsson, like mine), but I'm disappointed to see it's this VoIP stuff or whatever this computer phone calling thing is.
Then I started wondering if it could still be ported onto phones. Just think, I've got my buddy list to carry around with me on my SE T-616, and I can do all kinds of cool, free calling, if I'm near an open wireless network.
Too bad I'd probably have to all kinds of hacking and modifying the firmware on my phone, just to *maybe* get a connection to a network that keeps fading in and out as I walk through my office building. It would seem a bit complicated, but definitely worth it just for the ability to call all of those people!
Then I woke the heck up and realize that all I have to do is PUNCH IN A 10-DIGIT-NUMBER and I can ALREADY TALK TO ANYONE I WANT!
Finally someone recognises that IM and Voice are different enough to use separate protocols for the two. I'm fed up with this bullshit where IM protocols have to implement their own voice protocol because the existing ones simply mustn't be good enough. :-/
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I like the idea of being able to tie lots of instant communication services into one package. Between stuff like this and asterix, linux and open source could redefine how we talk. 'bout time too. ;)
Since VOIP is still pretty bandwith intensive, is there anyway to use this and asterix to route voice data over POTS while having data-type stuff (webcam, text, etc.) go over the internet for one call? Yeah, POTS will go away eventually, but it may have some uses yet
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM