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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."
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
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."
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.
Vonage, for instances, bills themselves as a VOIP provider, which I don't see as being quite the case. For pure VOIP calls, you don't need a provider. What Vonage really sells is a VOIP-to-POTS bridge... a transition technology until such time as every telephone and blackberry have IP addresses.