Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Julien and Steve have taken the initiative to restart the Ottawa Asterisk Users Group.  Details are posted over on Simply Relevant.  The kickoff meeting is going to be Wednesday at 5 PM at the iotum offices.  See you there!

We’ve just announced an introductory special offer for iotum with Phonegnome.  Until the end of June, you can purchase the iotum enhanced call screening service for your Phonegnome-enhanced home phone and save $80 off the retail price.

Phonegnome and iotum have teamed up to bring you the world smartest call screening service at an incredible price. This isn’t just a typical call screening service. iotum pays attention to your schedule, IM presence, calling habits, your location and your personal priorities to help you manage which calls are important and which can wait.

Moreover, you only need to give out one number for people to reach you.  Phonegnome and iotum send you your important calls, wherever you are, without you having to think about it.

When you sign up before July 1, 2006, iotum costs you just $40, for 12 months - a savings of $80 off the retail price of $120. 

Visit the Phonegnome Store to find out more. 

So, SkypeOut calls, inside North America, are free, at least until the end of the year.  That means you can call any landline, or cellular phone, from Skype, at no charge.  I just chatted with my mother in Victoria for 20 minutes (forgot to call yesterday, although we did send flowers). 

Readers of this blog will be unsurprised.  If you live in the US, go get yourself an AOL free DID, too, and now you have toll free telephony.  The Voice 2.0 Manifesto predicts that this will happen.

Skype is calling this a promotion.  They’re reserving the right to go back to a toll based service at the end of the year.  They’re obviously hoping that a promotion will result in a flurry of new sign-ups. Two questions immediately come to mind: what do they have in their backpockets to replace the lost revenue, and what will they do if this promotion has now established the new baseline for long distance as free? 

And how will AOL respond?  AIM Phoneline is a free DID (which costs about $4 / month on Skype), but unlimited LD costs $14.95/month. 

Me? I plan to attach my Skype ID to Phonegnome using the new GnomeLink, and have unlimited LD, plus all the great PhoneGnome features.

PhoneGnome has announced a feature called GnomeLink that allows calls to and from Skype via Phonegnome.  I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but this promises to be hot.  Press release below:

TelEvolution Announces Skype Support

( DANVILLE, California, May 15, 2006) TelEvolution (http://www.phonegnome.com), developer of PhoneGnome(TM), the telephony industry’s first true PSTN to Internet telephony solution, today announced the newest capability of the PhoneGnome family, GnomeLink(TM) for Skype.GnomeLink extends the capability of PhoneGnome, adding interoperability with Skype. GnomeLink allows PhoneGnome users to call Skype users from their PhoneGnome-enabled home phone, and to answer Skype calls on their PhoneGnome-enabled home phone.

About TelEvolution (http://www.phonegnome.com/)Founded by David Beckemeyer, an entrepreneur and former CTO of EarthLink, TelEvolution has developed a new technology that seamlessly joins Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications with a customer’s existing Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) service. TelEvolution was established in 2004 and is headquartered in Danville, CA.

From the Seattle Times:

Harry Santamäki vows to take a sip of cod liver oil from the bottle on his desk if he ever utters the word phone.

That’s odd, considering Santamäki works at Nokia, the largest mobile phone maker in the world.

“We are forbidden to call them phones,” said the vice president of multimedia strategy and business development. Instead, they’re “multimedia computers.”

And so they are.  Nokia’s products are some of the sharpest looking, most capable and popular phones in the world.  They’re also full blown multimedia computers, as are Microsoft’s Smartphones, the Treo, and (to a lesser extent) Blackberry.  Blackberry has most of the capabilities I use on a day to day basis: email, voice, contacts, calendar.  Do I need a PC?  For storage, certain applications, and lengthy document composition, absolutely.

The Times piece is worth a read.  Nokia’s vision is large, and compelling.  As a user of their very popular N70 and N90 products, though, I can tell you that two things are holding them back:

1. Metered wireless internet access.  Rogers ridiculously low cap on their “unlimited” plan, combined with their egregious overage charges makes the it costly to take full advantage of the capabilities of Nokia’s products. 
2. User experience.  These are complex devices, with many capabilities, that users are expected to manipulate with a standard 10 digit keypad and a few soft-buttons.  Most people won’t have the patience to delve deeply into the capabilities of the product.  Nokia has the right idea with the cameras in both of these phones — they come on automatically when the user manipulates the lens or lens cover.

Despite these flaws, Nokia’s N-series products are beautifully made “multi-media computers”