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Windows Live Messenger with VoIP
V-man writes "Microsoft has just launched Windows Live Messenger with free PC-to-PC phone calls and PC-to-phone calling as a pay service provided by Verizon Web Calling. Of course, most people doing PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone calling are probably using Firefox...too bad the Launch Page isn't Mozilla friendly."
too bad the Launch Page isn't Mozilla friendly.
What part isn't Mozilla friendly? I just went to the launch page with Firefox 1.5.0.4 and was able to navigate through the tabs and download the installer with no problem.
It's VOIP! And instead of bypassing the telco, it requires a telco! And instead of working on every computer, it only works on Windows computers. And instead of being free, it costs money! And instead of working with every IM system, it only works with MSN! And instead of rendering it in HTML, we decided to give Adobe/Macromedia a cut and do the whole web page in Flash!
About all it's missing is a .us domain name for Web 2.0 buzzword compliance.
"...most people doing PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone calling are probably using Firefox..."
Oh? Where did you dig up this little nugget of information?
Two points: 1) not only über-geeks are doing PC-to-PC calling. 2) Lots of über-geeks actually use IE.
Doesn't Skype do this pretty damn well already?
The few surviving samurai survey the battlefield. Count the arms the legs and heads and then divide by five.
I'm curious, why is everyone promoting it as a new feature for instant messaging? Yahoo Messenger has had voice chat facilities for ages.
Maybe if you had an up to date version of Firefox you'd be fine... cause it works with no problems here.
And people complain about Microsoft's FUD...
I see that as the most likely cause. I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on XP (full UA string Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4) with Flash 8.0.something and it works just fine.
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
Only uber geeks due this? I am sitting in an office right now with a bunch of folks who use the their computers for VOIP related things, and most are engineers. So I don't see where it is only going to be used by "geeks" that doesn't make any sence what so ever. People are willing to use voip and computers for phone conversations, just look at all the "normals" with a webcam the internet is more accepted as a form of communication than I think even the phone, its becasue of pages like myspace etc. which have made the net usable.
Did someone say cake?
A guy at work installed it on a trials machine, and that machine suffered weird problems. It could release, obtain, and renew a DHCP address, but couldn't ping anything, not even the gateway (which is also the switch that does the DHCP stuff).
He rolled the system back, and it all works.
There is a lot of different stuff on that machine though, so it **might** not be just due to that. I wonder if it hooks into the IP stack at some level, and that's what messed it up? Anyone else have any similar issues with it?
Get your own free personal location tracker
The nice thing about dealing with verizon is that the U.S. government will archive all of your conversations for free! Of course, you may not be able to access them, but it's nice to know there are backups out there somewhere.
Don't know what version of "mozilla" your running, but was able to see the launch page just fine on FireFox, the only one that matters.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Umm, I don't think this is a new feature as ICQ has had this ability for years. Congrats Microsoft for finally making it to 1998. Too bad ICQ was bought my AOL as it was the IM of choice back in the day.
Hey, it's better than a CAR ANALOGY.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
So, are you saying competition is a bad thing?
Come on. This is nothing but good for the VoIP industry. With this, Google Talk, YIM, and Skype (and others, I'm sure) having voice capabilities, each must compete to be the best. Who wins? The consumer.
There are no uninteresting things. There are only uninterested people.
It's VOIP! And instead of bypassing the telco, it requires a telco! And instead of working on every computer, it only works on Windows computers. And instead of being free, it costs money! And instead of working with every IM system, it only works with MSN! And instead of rendering it in HTML, we decided to give Adobe/Macromedia a cut and do the whole web page in Flash!
Couldn't have put it better myself, although when my computer goes to the messenger website, it detects that I am coming from a mac, and offers me the mac version, so I guess it's not limited only to Windows. However, since the website won't even let me see the page for the windows version, I can't compare the differences. Perhaps the mac version has yet to offer full VOIP functionality.
A guy at work installed it on a trials machine, and that machine suffered weird problems. It could release, obtain, and renew a DHCP address, but couldn't ping anything, not even the gateway (which is also the switch that does the DHCP stuff).
He rolled the system back, and it all works.
There is a lot of different stuff on that machine though, so it **might** not be just due to that. I wonder if it hooks into the IP stack at some level, and that's what messed it up? Anyone else have any similar issues with it?
Parent post is a probably a textbook definition of FUD.
So did MSN.. They've all had voice chat.
It's the PC to POTS feature that's really new.
Of course, only XBox users are smart enough to know that. Too bad slashdot isn't made-up-bullshit unfriendly.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Maybe if you were using a non-MS OS you'd be complaining... cause it doesn't work here.
And people (read: me) complain about Macrodobe and their shitty software...
Goten Xiao
Perhaps the submitter doesn't have Flash installed or is using an extension like noscript or flashblock. When I loaded the site with noscript enabled, I saw only a blank page. I had to allow the site before it displayed properly. Yet, I would hope the submitter would be intelligent enough to know the difference between a page that doesn't load properly in Firefox and one that simply needs the Flash plugin or JavaScript support (in the case of noscript users).
It's called the Session Initiation Protocol, and pretty much every VoIP service OTHER than Skype uses/supports it. (With a few small exceptions such as Google Talk which uses the Jingle VoIP extensions to the XMPP (aka Jabber) protocol). Note in that particular case that Google and many of the big proponents of SIP (especially Project Gizmo/SIPPhone) have been working on solutions for XMPP+Jingle interoperability with SIP.
There are a wide variety of SIP softphones available, just as there are a wide variety of SIP service providers. Many of these also support the IAX protocol, which is primarily used by Asterisk PBX systems.
Examples, most of these service providers provide their own SIP client, but in most cases SIP clients are interchangeable between SIP services:
StanaPhone (http://www.stanaphone.com/) - Free incoming DIDs (dial-in phone numbers) in various New York area codes
SIPPhone/Gizmo Project (http://www.gizmoproject.com/) - Free PC-to-PC, DIDs and outgoing PSTN cost money (not much though)
Free World Dialup - Primarily PC-to-PC (or Asterisk-to-Asterisk or whatever), but with some PSTN in/out capability
The list goes on and on, and I haven't even included the "landline replacement" VoIP providers. (Vonage in the U.S. is the most well known example, but most educated consumers hate them as they have some rather customer-unfriendly policies such as locking telephone adapters to their service and forbidding the use of your own telephone adapter without paying a significant extra fee). A few other providers do use other (although usually still known and standardized) protocols such as AT&T CallVantage (which uses the MGCP protocol).
See http://www.voip-info.org/ for LOTS of addition information on hardware, setup, and cheap providers.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
When this product was in beta I went to the site with IE 7 beta 2 and it did not render right for me. I had to use Firefox to see what it was all about. When I saw this submission I could not believe that MS would intentionally break Firefox knowing that most VOIP users are FF users as well.
'Same speed C but faster'