Who’s gonna be the Skype-killer? (updated)
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We have been wondering about what VoIP applications are available out there to seriously overthrow Skype hegemony. The competitors mainly lure users with callouts phone rate. That’s their key variable. Besides this, some softwares bundle new functionalities that Skype is still missing to integrate. And another strategy is to release the application code under a open source license. This would trigger a collective enhancement of the software and could deploy enough buzz on it.
The following isn’t complete and will be updated as we found and test the voice chat applications. Some deeper coverage will also appear in the next days.
Enough talk. Show me the stuff!
OK, let’s see what is available. Note that the list will certainly be updated in the next days. Gizmo Project: Often called the “Skype-killer” application. Above all, tt’s the latest brainchild of Michael Robertson, the found of MP3.com and Linspire, a Linux distributor. With such a pedigree, the Gizmo project couldn’t have been anything else a open source project. Now, its features: free computer-to-computer phone calls. In addition, the Gizmo CallOut service enables users to initiate calls to landlines and mobile phones from 1.8 US cents per minute using CallOut Credits. Gizmo also provides a facility to allow users to receive calls on a traditional phone number from mobile phones and landlines. The Gizmo CallIn service, which costs $5 per month, supplies a phone number from one of over 50 cities in the US and UK. Gaim: This popular open source instant messenger is evolving to its version 2 but still is on beta state hold. However, it is announced to support voice and video over IP. Google Talk: Very simple look-and-feel as usual. You can pretty much do the same things as with the others. As the Gizmo Project, Gaim and probably the forthcoming voice chat softwares, it mainly relies on the SIP protocol to achieve its goals. We haven’t tried it so far. Yes, we know, the shame is on us but it only is a matter of time, pals. Wengo: A French VoIP sister company of Neuf Telecom, one of the four French national Telcos. Quite the same functionalities as Skype’s ones. Lower than Skype costs for calls out. In mid-January, the company freed its main software source code, claiming it first developed under Linux environment but for some reasons, the Windows version came out first. Quite odd explanations. After all, Mozilla Firefox runs on Windows platform and has never close source. The open source version could be reached here. VoIPBuster: The software comes from Germany with an incredible feature. Free phone out calls to 19 countries including New Zealand, Taiwan and ― this one is quite funny ― Monaco principality. As said on their website, you should be able to grab a VoIP-in phone number. We’ll cover this deeper in a next post. TeamSpeak: It’s both a voice chat client and a telecommunication server. Call centers and companies that have a bunch of sales representatives should be interested by TeamSpeak. Innovations are not really in the client functionalities but rather in the server ones. You can decide who can to who. We’ll also cover this one a bit later. So keep reading us and thanks already for reading us now. Gtalkr: A pure Web 2.0 player. Flash and XML anywhere. The first stable version isn’t suspected to appear very soon. Some promising functionalities bundle this VoIP application, such as calling, browsing and reading news in the same place. Gmail and Google Talk users just need to enter their ID to start using their phone service.Feb 3, 2006 | By Nuno
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