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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."
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!
...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.
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
it could be a killer open source app but how can it be a killer app for linux if it will be for Windows?
But thinking in terms of "killer" for one platform is the old way of thinking. Open source itself is the killer feature for an app no matter what platform it's on. But if the platform itself is open source-that's a 2fer.
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
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.
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.
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.
with terminating POTS service hung on the back of it.
see http://gaim-vv.sourceforge.net/
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.
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.