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Yak Launches Free Video and Voice Service
Jamie Garson writes to tell us Yahoo is reporting that Yak Communications has launched their new voice and video calling service, yakForFree. From the article: "In a crowded and competitive VoIP marketplace, yakForFree is distinguished by its free video capabilities and ease-of-use. By downloading the free Virtual VideoPhone, which takes less than a minute, users can make free calls over the Internet using a high-speed connection."
I remember getting Teamspeak to contact my family and friends. We would set up a server and contact each other via IM to set up a session. Now Teamspeak charges for their service. I'm sure that was their intention all along, but it was sad to see it go subscription only.
I wonder how long yakForFree will remain *free*? I suppose their free plan is a give away for getting people to sign up for the enhanced services. But I can envision a time in the near future when the free will giveway to *cheap*. I guess that if the price is right, that isn't a bad prospect either.
I guess I'd better use it while the free offer is still good!
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
So, this is a poorly disguised advert, right? Because neither "free video capabilities" nor "ease-of-use" are at all distinguishing features these days. iChat AV probably does both of these things better, actually, and there's a ton of similar apps available. Even for Windows. ;)
Linking to the Yahoo news story is a bit odd, too. Here's "Yak's" actual site.
I, for one, welcome our new slashvertisement overlords.
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Or, maybe I am. I decided "Hm - let's check it out."
Fill out the form - done.
Click the link to download - OK.
They state "Mac/PC compatible"! That's good - I can do this on my Powerbook while I'm working on this code.
Except - the only link takes you to a Windows executable. Um - I think they're missing something.
That, and the site looks like it was designed by people who are REALLY HAPPY! WE'RE AWAKE, AND DAMN IT, WE'RE HAPPY TO SEE YOU. Wagh.
Calm down. Take the lesson from Google: Simple. Easy. Not 20 different links and no clue which one to look for. So, too weird - forget it.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I had a discussion about this a while ago:
Me: I want 10 year old netmeeting technology to go with my VOIP.
My friend Masood Khan: Just Wait!
Me: Wow that worked.
Khan: It's an age-old diplomatic trick.
Does anybody know of a good app that does voip, video, and whiteboard that runs on all 3 platforms?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
so I clicked download, to see if there is a linux version. But I'm not giving them my email address even before I know if there is a linux version. What the hell they think?
,,sacrificed his privacy'' to check, please tell if there is a linux version.
it's not free, the price is your privacy.
PS: if anyone
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
They are blocked by router filters that kill the connections.
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Luckily there's also one free software "skype-like" VoIP in development - http://www.openwengo.com/ (GPL). For video features, there's always GnomeMeeting, though it's more for businesses than for the average Joe because there's no centralized "address book" except for Seconix. And Gaim 2.0 should support Google Talk protocol, together with some webcam support for various protocols.
@yak.ca ..... I remember a time, so long ago, when Slashdot wasn't an add for the latest VC-funded tech firm. Hell, getting a press release on Yahoo isn't really all that difficult, a local podcast group managed that.
I mean, you can do both video and audio calls via MSN Messenger, and it's free... so how is this different?
If you want a free video phone that works great try SightSpeed. They have been consitantly ranked the best by PC Magazine and PC World.
An employee of a company called Yak (jgarson@yak.ca) writes to tell us Yahoo is kindly storing a press release from same company. The press release has the usual glowing praise that offers no objectivity due to the obvious financial interests of the writer. The company has launched their new voice and video calling service, yakForFree, but has no marketing team, nor money, to promote it, and has decided to try to get it in front of people through fooling slashdot editors into believing the press release is a news report. From the press release: "In a crowded and competitive VoIP marketplace, yakForFree is just another soon-to-be burned-out shell of a car along the side of the dot com highway. What truly distinguishes it from other offerings is that it offers both video and voice services, which have only been available in most free chat clients for half a decade now. By downloading the free Virtual VideoPhone, which takes less than a minute, users are locked into a proprietary system which is likely to riddle their machine with spyware."
Sony CDs banned in the workplace
"I've been chasing down several accounts of government agencies, companies, educational institutions and others banning the use of Sony CDs on their PCs, due to the security risks of having Sony's rootkit DRM infecting their PCs. One government ministry, Alberta Agriculture, has banned the use of music CDs altogether, since Sony is hardly the only music company crippling its CDs with sneaky, malicious software. Here are a couple examples:
"EAT IT *AA's! Sony put a gun to your head and pulled the trigger.
Yahoo is reporting that Yak Communications has launched their new voice and video calling service, yakForFree. From the article: [...]
This isn't an article written by a reporter. This is a corporate press release, evidently written by the owners of the product.
Advertising? Yep. News? No.
Seriously, This requires a high-speed conection for one-on-one? Camfrog only requires a 56 k modem and is so good that deaf people can "speak" over video near-flawlessly over 56k. Plus it's loaded with more features, offers actual chat rooms you can go to and see loads of other people (up to 100 cams if you pay a one-time $50 for the pro version of Camfrog Client) in the room, PLUS stream music, PLUS type. Oh, not to mention IRC-style options like giving others ops, half-ops, make users have voice (friend of the room,) and on top of that all it comes with IM built-in. Yak doesn't compare, YET.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
giving someone an email address in no way sacrifices yoyur privacy.
Can the lok into your house? snoop through your wallet? read your mind? no. All they can do is send you an email, which you are free to delete.
I don't like SPAM either, but SPAM in no way invades your privacy.
Personally, I have an email just for this type of thing. If the service turnsout to not be spamming me, and I like the product, I will change my preferences to me second tier email address. My second tier email address has gotten exactly 1 piece of SPAM.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I guess you didn't read her blog.
This woman hates men because of her divorce.
If I got a divorce and had to deal with attorneys I think I would hate the other sex too. Not because I would hate women, just the divorce process.
No one I have known who has been through a divorce has walked away from the experience without severe bitterness.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Thank you for summarizing it. I was wondering if this was really free-as-in-freedom video chat come to earth. I guess it was too much to hope for. Oh well, back to dreaming.
By the way, can anyone recommend some good apps to do voice and or video chat that _are_ free-as-in-freedom and work on *nix and can communicate without too much hassle with some app on doze? I know of GnomeMeeting. Are there any others? How far along is gaim-vv these days?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This is clearly a free (and branded) version of eyeBeam from Xten (link) now known as CounterPath. Therefore my guess is that it's a service pretty similar to Free World Dialup (link) but with video (not sure if FWD support video).
gnuForFree.
really 867993
Karma schkarma
Yak have been email pump-n-dump spamming for quite a while now.
Remember, boys and girls! If it's slashverted, sell short!
So then how is Steve Gibson going to be received? How is he sizing up this competitor? Those of you who are TWiTheads will remember hearing Steve announce on TWiT this week that he is working on a VoIP client to do his podcasts with Leo Laporte, and he will be releasing it free (or so says the podcast).
I'm looking for some free VoIP software which does SIP, works on both Mac and Windows (don't want to learn two programs), does encryption (RTP/SRTP/??) and isn't owned by a company which is already tracking too much of my online activity (aka, Google or eBay). Does something like that exist?
(This Yak thing sounded like it came close, except that the Mac version is vaporware, and I couldn't find anything about encryption.)
And not something crappy like what AIM calls "voice chat." I'm talking something along the lines of TeamSpeak that uses low bandwidth, won't have issues with rather draconian firewalls, is free, and won't sound absolutely horrible in quality.
In the way you are thinking. If you are thinking that you can download this and call your buddy on his cell, you would be incorrect. You want that service, you gatta pay to use their yakToAnyone service.
This is an instant messenger-like application that does voice and video, a la [every other IM service here].
-Valiss
I don't see yet the use for this kind of software. You can call only people who have a computer and are sitting in front of it... Hmm. Personaly, I'm using voipbuster right now, this is free (or cheap, depends on the country 0.01/min), very good quality and you can reach any land phone (cell phone too but it is more expensive).
Million Dollar Screenshot
Broadvoice has somewhat unreliable service, but is free of per-minute charges to 35 countries. Cost: $25 per month. (Unlimited World Plus.)
Does anyone know of direct-connect VOIP software that will traverse a NAT? Why have a middleman? Anyway, all conversations should be encrypted, and not trackable by third parties.
My SO wanted a free email account for trash emails. She tried trash@... It was taken. She tried bigtrash@... It was taken. Then she tried bigbigtrash@... Finally, success.
As everybody above my comment has already stated.. this is just another Video/Audio chat client that joins the ranks of Yahoo, MSN, iChatAV, etc etc. They claim to be "free" VoIP but its not "real" VoIP. Its only connecting computer to computer for others who use the same damn service.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
In the 20th century, the American elite (the rich and the megacorporations and the business lobbies) created and nurtured Identity politics until it became the major aspect of the American Left. In essence the elite thus created a FauxLeft. The main mechanism to create the FauxLeft was the huge nonprofit foundations that were created from about 1920 to 1985 by the plutocrats and their main tool, the CIA and the FBI (back in the day, that is...). These nonprofits (such as the Ford Foundation, etc) funded activists and writers and academics with an eye to such activists and writers and academics who were oriented to Identity Politics, specifically race-oriented and gender oriented and culture oriented activists and writers and academics. By funding these identity-politics oriented activists and writers and academics, the big money was able to create a FauxLeft that paid much less attention the class war, much less attention to populist economics issues, such as universal healthcare and taxing the rich and controlling the monopolies. Instead the elite and their tools the nonprofits evolved a fauxleft that made the white middle class and white blue collar males in particular the scapegoat for inequality. By associating leftism with white hating identity politics, the elite (the true rightwing) was able to drive away most of white middle class and white lower middle class America from economics leftism,,,, Please pay no attention to the man behind the curtain; it is the redneck to blame for it all.... As an example of what I mean, Gloria Steinem was given her start by the FBI decades ago. They MADE her because they wanted to shift attention of the American Left away from economics issues, to identity politics. If you want to improve life for all your working class American citizens, abandon identity politics and become a REAL leftist--an economics oriented, race and gender blind Leftist.... Read and Learn about the manipulations of the elite here at http://www.leftwingmediamachine.blogspot.com/
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Cows launch cowpies, race horses launch piss streams.
TeamSpeak - Proprietary and for idiot Slashdot nubs
Yak - Proprietary and for idiot Slashdot nubs
SIP, FWD, SIPPHONE - Not for slashdot nubs, but work just fine.
Hallo?
..all was so freaking good using gopher..
All I just need is one any-interface, GPL, multiplatform piece of software that roughly:
-supports RSA asymmetric encryption with gpg keys to avoid being listened by the kid next door
-uses any decent combination of patent-free protocols to get just acceptable voice over broadband
-I give it a kindly f'g IP ADDRESS and PORT , I AUTHENTICATE then TALK to whoever is at the other side.
say: a multiplatform slightly improved netmeeting with single-port support to jump through isp portfilters/ proxies/ automatic firewalls with just one port forwarding
Everything is out there: technology, code, codecs, IPv4, broadband connections.
Any clue, ANYONE?
I want not a community to join, no centralized servers to track me anytime I want to say hi to mum, no search capabilities, no calls to fixed or mobile phone numbers, not a PSTN phone replacement, no emergency number reachability, no fixed-location or registration of any sort, no other people's p2p calls killing my 256k upstream, -nothing as such-
Or if that's so hard to grasp just a client-server linux voice bundle I can setup for my own use?
I found hundreds of fancy clients, each with its own server network, community, subscription, "gimme your email or die", "It's free(for now, you s*r)", "I swear I have no spyware" disclaimer and "Best rated" claims all in in 25165824 colors.
AllRight.
`vi myTalk.c`
[..]
The woman who raised you wasn't the only influence in your life. TV (and other advertising that often degradates and commodifies women) and your peers probably had a great influence on your life too.
The woman who raised you wasn't the only influence in your life.
No doubt. But there are several peer refereed journal articles that identify the parents as the most important influence on children's development.
TV (and other advertising that often degradates and commodifies women) and your peers probably had a great influence on your life too.
But the GPs point is that this is due entirely to our patriarchal society.
I call bullshit. That explanation is too simplistic.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Interesting. Thanks. I didn't know about Hamachi.
But what VOIP software would you suggest?
From CounterPath (formerly known as Xten).
http://www.xten.com/index.php?menu=eyeBeam
I suppose it's SIP based.
A sig is redundant.
I've had an absurd number of problems trying to get Netmeeting to work behind a NAT firewall (the type in all home DSL/Cable routers). No amount of port forwarding worked and putting a Microsoft box in the DMZ is extremely unsafe. So I've been keeping my eyes open for an alternative that doesn't have this problem. Maybe it will be different in that it will actually work for me.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm not sure about VoIP software, but any software that can do direct IP to IP VoIP or video will work for you as there is absolutely no difference between regular IP network and hamachi network. It is like having several computers connected to the same LAN. GnomeMeeting is the first one of the possible options that comes to my mind.
Do you really mean "ominous"? "Onerous" I would understand, but maybe there are forebodings of imminent doom in the GUI...
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743 cs@cskk.id.au http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/
While we are discussing this, I thought I would throw in a partially off-topic request. Anyone have any idea about a good service that offers free VOIP to POTS transmission? I used to use a Korean one that was completely free, but it disappeared. Have never found another one that could match it. Any ideas.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
I don't really know how that word ended up there... But looking at X-Lite's GUI, with those black & greenish colors and rounded shapes, it kinda makes me think of a lair from "Aliens." Eerie.
BTW, if a "phone simulator" won't even let you paste in phone numbers copied from your Address Book, you can pretty much tell our world is doomed!
TeamSpeak is still free, unless you use it for commercial purposes. It's definately free in your situation.
And now I can finally(!) use TeamSpeak on my Mac as well, since an unofficial OS X client was released recently: http://www.savvy.nl/blog
It's called TeamSpeex because it uses the Speex codec.
I have tried it with friends and works just as good as the Windows client.
Jeez, so much negativity around these parts. The truth of the matter, is that this is a SIP (read "non-proprietary") format service that just licenses that the rather well working eyeBeam product that is indeed cross platform. Normally you'd have to pay for the client, but this way you're getting it for free if you're doing PC to PC calls.
*SLAP*
Now get back in the fucking kitchen and make me some fucking pie.
Slashdot ended up being paid off by someone at Yak to promote their service as "news" when its a paid advertisement. You can see the lack of popularity of the yakforfree thing at trendwatcher, it rates really low YakForFree voip graph in search engines
Sorry...just had to snag that one
Yak is a SIP client, which is the main newer VOIP standard, an Internet-style followon to the telco-protocol-style H.323 which is the previous main open VOIP standard, and they've included video with it, which the standards support but most clients don't implement. Skype uses a bunch of proprietary stuff, implemented fairly well. The Yak website doesn't appear to tell you how to rip the client apart, reverse engineer it, use it with other service providers, etc., but you should be able to. (Doesn't mean you can't find that out - it may be off in their member discussion boards somewhere.) The cool thing about SIP is that rather than servers being closed, the standard includes server-to-server communications, so you can use one server as a proxy to connect to another to implement stuff or connect providers together. That doesn't mean that Yak's clients or servers are designed to connect over to other SIP providers' systems (like Pulver's Free World Dialup, the well-known SIP community), but maybe htey can. They look like they plan to make money by selling outbound and inbound connections to old-technology telcos, but it'd be interesting to see if they get enough clue to interconnect with other SIP providers to cut down on settlements cost
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm sick and tired of the same old same old : the people I want to talk/video with are not computer saavy in the least, so any time something is even slightly wrong with either PC, like an audio driver gets out of whack or someone clicks "mute" on the mic input, or replugs the mic into the headphone jack, I have to spend 20 minutes listening to my wife saying "can you hear me now?" What I want is a VTC appliance that connects to either the PC monitor or the TV set, and directly to my broadband, not my PC. (Yes, I know about DLink's product, and i2eye's connection service, and it's free for now, but for how long?)
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
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