skype

VoIP IM’s have become part and parcel of enterprise communication environment. The acquisition of Skype by eBay for a whopping $2.6 billion some years back also point to maturation of PC-to-PC VoIP market and threat its poses to incumbent telecom players.

The trend quite reminiscent of the dotcom era, is witnessing a huge traction for the PC to PC VoIP players who all of sudden are becoming a hot property and an essential part of any Internet company’s communication strategy

Yahoo VoIP IM, Gizmo Project, Damaka, Jaxtr, to name a few are some of the PC to PC VoIP players that are getting traction in the market and pose a serious threat to Skype in the near future.

In the first part of the series, we take a look at Gizmo Project.

Gizmo Project is a peer-to-peer Internet telephony (VoIP) network and has till date 2 million downloads. Gizmo Project works on open standards based SIP protocol and has been conceived by its makers to meet the need of developing a SIP standard client.

Gizmo Project's soft phone comes with one-button call record, call mapping, voice mail chat and integrated weather info.

The company also has a free conferencing calling to at least 99 people for conference call with high quality conference call with ten to twenty people.

Gizmo Project is available today for the Macintosh, Windows and Linux based and also has jabber based instant messaging system. Gizmo does call in and call out to the PSTN much in the same way that Skype in and Skype out does. 75% of calls emanating from Gizmo Network are PC to PC based while the rest 25% are PC to PSTN based.

The company is licensed with the GIPS technology and boasts of very high voice quality.

Michael Robertson, CEO, Gizmo Project, says this feature is makes it a big bet against Skype.

"We have high-end quality voice is possible as GIPS code has a sophisticated ability to handle network conjunction, jitter call control", says Micheal.

GIPS codec adds Micheal "actually tunes up and down to the bit rate of the call. On noticing the slow network, GIPS codec actually slows down the words of the caller and let the network catch up".

“Since both SIP and jabber are both open standards, consumers are able to use any directory and any software to be able to call each other. Being SIP based, Gizmo Project works today with Wi-Fi SIP routers, SIP adaptors”, explains Michael.

Other than the features offered by Skype, the company offers call record which is very popular with the people for it allows people to create broadcasts The company offers free voice mail. Incidentally Skype charges for voicemail.

On the security front, Gizmo continuously monitors the behavior of networks and if it sees any suspicious behavior on its networks or network abusing, they block the person from its network.
In the second part of the series we will focus on damaka.

According to F-Secure, the new worm targeting Skype users creates several startup keys for itself in the Windows Registry and even modifies the Windows hosts file to block access to antivirus vendor sites. The new Skype worm also terminates processes belonging to antivirus software and copies itself to removable drives so it can replicate.

"Hey, where I put ur photo ;-) now u populr. oops sorry please dont look there. look what crazy photo Tiffany sent me, looks cool." Skype users were seeing variations of that innocent-seeming text message Monday and Tuesday, as a virus targeted the peer-to-peer telephony network.

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

You get great internet features too, such as search, chat and instant messaging, built right into the program - so you find shows quickly and talk to your friends while you watch. And with no schedules to worry about, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you like - as often as you want. Joost is completely free, and works with most modern PCs and Intel Mac-based computers with a broadband connection.

Miscreants have again adapted the Warezov Trojan horse to target Skype users, Websense Security Labs warned on Thursday.
The attack is similar to threats that target instant-messaging applications. A targeted Skype user will receive a chat message with the text "Check up this" and a link to a malicious executable called file_01.exe on a website, Websense said in an alert. If the user runs the file, several other files are downloaded and run, it said.

Hutchison Whampoa announces the global launch of the X-Series from 3
3 Group, in Partnership with Skype, Sling Media, Yahoo!, Nokia, Google, eBay, Microsoft, Orb and Sony Ericsson, unleashes the true power of broadband internet over the mobile

16 November 2006 - Hutchison Whampoa Limited today announced the global launch of the X-Series from 3. The X-Series from 3 marks the beginning of the internet via mobile broadband, and heralds a new way of doing business for mobile network operators. It will extend several of the core applications and uses of the broadband internet to the mobile handset, with a new pricing model. The X-Series from 3 will be supported by the leading internet companies, cutting-edge handsets from the world's leading mobile manufacturers and premium customer service.

U.S. and Canadian Skype Users Can Make Free International SkypeOut Calls to the United Kingdom, Mexico and Japan for Three July Weekends

SAN JOSE, Calif.—July 10, 2006—Skype®, the global Internet communications company, today announced that U.S. and Canadian-based Skype users can make free calls to traditional landlines and mobile phones in the United Kingdom, Mexico and Japan during three ‘Skype Days of Summer’ weekends, starting Saturday, July 15th. The three countries represent some of the most frequently called countries by Skype users and are among the leading destinations for all international calling originating from the United States and Canada.