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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."
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
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 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.