In previous posts I have mentioned how the iPad is an ideal form factor for a “Desktop phone” experience, whether using CounterPath’s Bria, as a business phone extension, or Skype for iPad, targeted largely to the consumer and small business market. This is especially true for video calling where the 10” screen combined with the iPad’s portability is an ideal format.

Today at DEMO Fall 2011, a new player, but with lots of veteran IP-communications experience, announced their forthcoming entry into the fray with an offering targeted at the small-to-medium business and enterprise market. Hookflash has been designed from scratch to take full advantage of the iPad’s display format and touch screen features to provide a unique business class video calling experience.

According to Trent Johnsen, Hookflash’s CEO and co-Founder, in a press release today:

“With Hookflash, millions of iPad users will immediately have access to the powerful communication capabilities previously limited to expensive corporate telephone and video conferencing systems.  Leveraging the iPad’s size, touch-based controls and connectivity allowed us to create an integrated experience that will dramatically improve how people work.”

In addition, Hookflash will offer a docking station which hold the iPad but also provide a familiar phone handset for picking up the voice channel of a call. When away from the office, the iPad (say, with a mounting case) remains a convenient form factor for handling video calls.

Hookflash does not simply provide voice, video and chat support with a heavy focus on collaboration, including group video calling, but also leverages social networking tools to provide unique “participant profiles automatically created from information extracted from business and social networks — all seamlessly integrated within an intuitive interface.”

The touch screen user interface allows swipes to be use for activities such as exiting and entering a group video call without killing the conversation. There is also a feature where two video calls can be brought together.

Other features include:

• One-on-one and group video, voice and chat;
• View all active conversations in one place;
• Merge together or divide active group text, voice and video conversations, with a simple swipe of the finger;
• View real-time social and business profiles right inside Hookflash;
• Transfer calls at the click of a button;
• Record and share previously captured conversations–voice, video and chat.

In effect Hookflash proposes to offer a social media-enhanced business video calling experience where participant background, through social networking services and contact information, is available by simply by touching on a participant’s picture. Hookflash’s key value-add appears to be the comprehensive user interface and its ability to quickly show participant information, merge calls, make call transfers, peer into the cloud for background information, and manage other aspects of the call, including recording for later recall.

But what are its chances for market adoption?

• Do business users want the level of information being offered? Can it become distracting to the call’s primary agenda?
• How will it build up a user base? Being targeted to the business and enterprise market requires management endorsement and support.
• What is the level of interoperability? Can multi-party call participants be brought in from, say, the PSTN or other platforms such as PC’s and smartphones?
• How quickly can it become available on other platforms? While certainly the iPad has had huge adoption, how soon will it be supported on other platforms that may be more convenient to some users?
• What are the demands on the network connection? Especially when it comes to considering 3G/LTE data plans and roaming charge issues?

While Hookflash looks to be an alternative to Skype here are some issues they need to address:

• the network effect. How will Hookflash build a user base or will it be restricted to participants within an individual business’s ecosystem?
• platforms: at the moment it requires all participants to have an iPad. While expansion to support iPhone is fairly obvious, what about PC’s, Android devices, TV’s?
• what will the Microsoft acquisition of Skype bring to the table in terms of offerings for the small-to-medium business and enterprise market? Not to mention that Microsoft has already built up a significant business and enterprise customer base.

And finally, where is the revenue model? According to their Home Page “Hookflash for iPad is a free communications app that makes working together easy.” In the long term “free” does not pay the bills.

From reviewing their website, which appears to be incomplete at this point (the video and trial “sign up” is not available for instance), Hookflash overlays social networking for contextual information about participants, end-to-end call management (set up –> call with management –> archiving) and integration with other key services (Outlook Calendar, YouTube, Plancast) onto an open source peer-to-peer voice, video and text chat communications platform. It really remains to see it in action to determine its ease of use, level of market adoption and potential for revenue generation.

Bottom line: based on the limited information available Hookflash layers significant user interface features onto voice, video and text conversations. However, given Skype’s network effect and broad platform support, I can see Hookflash being considered as an acquisition by a post-Microsoft acquisition Skype business unit to provide a richer video calling experience.

Related articles

• Demo: Hookflash aims to make phone calls at work more productive (venturebeat.com)

Since the launch of Skype for iPhone over WiFi connections more than two years ago, Skype has evolved its mobile offerings to add support for calling over 3G and video calling. They have added to the mobile platforms with Skype for Android and Skype for iPad. However, Skype is also recognizing that, while the basic Skype algorithm for text, voice and video conversations certainly has a significant role in mobile communications, users also want to go beyond that basic algorithm with supporting and managing persistent video messaging and group communications.

Skype’s acquisition of Qik and the subsequent offerings on iPhone and Android was the first step in this direction offering not simply live communications but also video messaging and archiving for later recall. Yesterday Skype recognized the potential role of persistent group communications with its acquisition of GroupMe, providing managed and hosted group messaging services on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows 7 platforms. According to Skype CEO Tony Bates:

The GroupMe team has created an incredibly sticky group messaging experience that works across mobile devices and platforms, making it a perfect addition to our voice, video and text products. We’re excited about introducing their disruptive product to our global user base.

There has been a plethora of text messaging services emerging over the past year or so. Kik Messenger, Beluga and TextMe are three platforms where I installed the application, signed up but have never used it. Why? While initially they are widely praised for their algorithms, the bottom line is the number of users who are actually using it. RIM continues to build a lot of its appeal around BlackBerry Messenger; they have over 40 million accounts.

With Skype’s acquisition, GroupMe will soon have access to over 170 million users (they need to transition from their Twilio backend). Only then will we see if this has become a significant acquisition for Skype.

Other questions:

• Can and, if yes, how will Skype monetize the service?
• How will GroupMe be positioned with respect to any Microsoft offerings such as Live Messenger?

As with Qik, Skype intends to continue GroupMe as a separate branded service with integration into other products and services as appropriate.

The challenges for GroupMe now becomes one of integrating the Skype technology into its backend and then building user experiences that encourage viral adoption and sustained usage across Skype’s 170 million users. The challenge for Skype is one of positioning and promoting GroupMe such that it contributes to Microsoft’s justification for its pending $8.5B acquisition of Skype.

Other posts:

• Skype Journal: Skype to buy GroupMe texting service.
• GigaOm: Why Skype bought GroupMe and why it isn’t enough
• TechCrunch: Skype To Acquire Year-old Group Messaging Service GroupMe
• VoIP Watch: Skype Buys GroupMe

Skype Premium upgraded for North American users along with an early summer special offer.

While I did some testing of Skype Group Video (on both Windows and Mac) during its beta period last fall, yesterday I hosted my first “business meeting” Skype Group Video call with a mentoring group in which I participate.They had been using HotConference, a push-to-talk collaboration service where only the speaker is on video, but the service went down in the middle of a weekly conference call. So I created a Group on Skype and launched a Skype Group Video Call.

Most noticeable was that the dynamics of the video conference call changed somewhat:

• Whom we saw: we could see video of each of the participants (except one who had no webcam and one who had Internet connection issues – they were audio only)
• Ad hoc and informal: Anyone could start speaking at any time without the “pregnant pause wait” that is inherent to a push-to-talk service.
• There is a blue halo around anyone who is actually speaking (see Megan in the image below)
• Change video image size: One of the participants wanted to demonstrate his new beach accessory. We could blow his image up to a “full size” while the others remained on the screen in small images (scroll to end to view).

The major feedback from this call – the participants did not realize that Skype Group Video could be so effective and powerful yet so easy to set up. There is definitely a need to generate first-time user experiences; Skype’s challenge remains building market awareness of the effectiveness and power of the group video calling experience.

A seven day trial is available; but somehow its awareness generation needs to go viral. (I do notice that launching skype.com these days does feature Skype Premium on the “Home Page” – at least for U.S. and Canada site visitors but experiencing it in operation is everything.) Certainly one member of that discussion was going to purchase a Skype Premium subscription as a result of this experience.

Where’s the Skype Chat pane?

One feature that gets lost when, on launching a voice or video call, the big black blind comes down to show who is on the call. Any other feature available during the call is left to guess from the icons on the call bar. Yet a complementary live chat session has become critical for any conference call these days, whether voice only or video.

This group missed out on the function of the blue icon third from the right which will open a (Group) Chat text entry pane. The chat session content can be seen by all call participants during and after the call. Several participants on this call were not aware that you could expose the chat session when I wanted to share a URL associated with our discussion. Just reinforcing the point made in my post on this topic yesterday.

One other hint that may encourage trials: while Skype Group video supports up to ten participants on a call, only the host needs to have a Skype Premium subscription. A Skype Premium subscriber may also receive a 1:1 Skype video call from a non-subscriber; the Subscriber can then Add Contacts to the to build up a Skype Group Video call.

Skype Premium Update

Skype Premium has always included Group Video Calling and Live Chat support. Recently Skype announced changes and a special offer (expires July 31, 2011) to its Skype Premium service for North American customers:

• Added unlimited calls to U.S. and Canada if a 3- or 12-month subscription is taken out.
• Offering 50% discount on a 12 month subscription and 25% discount on a 3 month subscription to July 31, 2011.
• 25% discount on a FaceVsion N1 HD video webcam.

Bottom line: at $4.50 per month the incremental cost for Group Video Calling beyond the basic 12 month Unlimited North America Calling Plan Subscription becomes $2.00 per month. While there is no benefit for those of us who already have paid for this calling plan or have a Unlimited World Calling Plan, it may be an incentive to drive the Group Calling user experience by Skype users who have been wary of the $8.99 per month cost. Now they can get to experience the power of Group Video Calling at a very low cost; once experienced they won’t go back.

And here’s the re-configured Group Video Call screen when Kurt demonstrated his beach accessory (Kurt found that a hard floor is not as comfortable as a sandy beach):

Ever wonder how those “free” conferencing services work? Why did Magic Jack offer such a low price compared to legacy landline service providers? And why did this only work in the U.S.? Yet, how can Skype and other IP-based communications service providers continue to offer “free”?

Seem like the U.S. had developed subsidy programs, of which the Universal Service Fund (“USF”) was the main culprit. Idealistic politicians wanted to ensure universal access to a variety of constituencies including “High Cost” rural markets such that small service providers could offer conventional phone services at rates comparable to urban rates. So they came up with this Universal Service Fund whereby the “large” carriers would collect an additional fee (or tax) which was then paid out to the hundreds of smaller service providers in “rural” states such as Iowa and Minnesota.

But then some smart people in Iowa caught onto something. The 150+ small carriers in Iowa formed a co-operative that applied for and obtained $80MM of USF monies to set up one of the most powerful fibre networks in the U.S. Of course this meant Iowa had significant extra capacity for terminating calls.

But there was another catch.

The North American numbering system means that a minimum of 10,000 numbers had to be tied up with each “exchange” or central office (the first three digits of the local telephone number). But some of these rural service providers, each of which was assigned an “exchange”, may have had a very low number of actual customers (as low as 150) and certainly many fewer than 10,000. So they ended up with a huge surplus of unused numbers that could, however, be used to collect revenue through access charges and they had the call load capacity due to the fibre installation.

Basically if a caller made long distance calls into these “excess” numbers, the local “rural” service provider could collect, from the larger carriers, termination fees (access charges) which they, in turn, supposedly would collect from the call participants. However, the larger carriers had invoked fixed price, unlimited minutes North American calling plans; this limited their additional customer revenue while driving up their costs. Not a great business scenario.

Once the “local” providers received their funds, they would pay a portion to the conferencing service providers. Effectively it was these access charges that would generate revenues for the “Free” conferencing services. There was one major problem; suddenly larger carriers such as AT&T were getting bills for several million dollars per month; they objected and took their case to the FCC.

And the gravy train has run off the tracks … largely at the behest of the FCC according, in one case, to the Telecom Law Monitor. Two stories corroborate this:

Calliflower, a conferencing service which I have covered often, has eliminated their free calling option. According to a recent post:

There’s an old saying that you have to break an egg to make an omelette.  Today I have some sad news as well,  which is that that we are eliminating our free conference calling offering on March 25th. Eliminating the free offering has been a tough decision, and one that we’ve given a lot of thought. We’re doing it because it is simply impossible for us to continue to offer that service reliably in the face of continued opposition at the FCC in Washington DC from larger, incumbent carriers.

You’re probably asking “what do these carriers have to do with anything?” A lot, it turns out. We were able to offer Calliflower at no charge by sharing a portion of the long distance fee you paid to your carrier in order to access the conference service. Those carriers don’t want to pay anymore. In fact, we haven’t been paid by them in two years. Unfortunately, we can’t operate the service any longer without any ability to recover our costs. That’s the reason we made this very difficult decision.

And this past Monday it came out that Magic Jack is in a position to lose its “Magic” because their parent was providing services not listed in their tariffs filed with the FCC. To quote Andy:

Basically  YMAX, the CLEC, was planning to make money on access charge compensation. AT&T said, we’re not paying the rates you want to charge. Well it seems the FCC agreed. That means that MagicJack’s model of cheap no longer means, almost free or at breakeven to them, and brings to light the fact that they may now see the possibility of losing money on every call without their sister company making a profit on the access charges which subsidized what they have been doing.

Read the posts for more details. But the bottom line is that, if you want to host a conference call, you’ll pay. However, even at the rates charged today – and most are at fixed monthly rates — conference calls are orders of magnitude less expensive than ten to fifteen years ago when the telcos would charge $0.50 to >$1.00 per participant per minute.

Nobody in his right mind is going to start a service today that relies on these “subsidies”. The dilemma for Magic Jack and their parent is that they have effectively offered one year contracts to their customers and must deliver on them or otherwise compensate their customer base. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

And how can Skype continue to offer free Skype-to-Skype calling? Because at the most basic level Skype calls are peer-to-peer between or amongst participating PC’s (or other Skype-enabled devices) with no intermediary beyond a directory service to establish the initial connection – and no termination charges. The “carrier” is essentially your Internet connections which see voice “packets”, prioritized but on a peer level with the data packets that deliver web pages or your email. But then they add in – at no cost to the user – chat and multi-party voice calling along with other services such as one-to-one video calling and file transfer. And it’s all encrypted. The user’s real costs are your local PC or other terminating device hardware cost and having a broadband or faster Internet connection. Other than for directory servers and, as a result of a recent Skype outage, super node servers, Skype has very little capital costs associated with these services.

Bottom line: even at today’s rates hosted and managed conferencing services are a bargain compared to a decade ago or earlier. But, without the cost drivers, it appears that Skype can continue to offer all its services with the only costs being for connections to the PSTN and multi-party video calling.

So where does Skype gets its revenues? Check out the most read Voice On The Web blog post (even after two years): Skype Business Model Revealed at eBay Analyst Event.

Related articles

• FCC Finds MagicJack Can’t Collect Access Charges From AT&T (blogs.forbes.com)
• Update: MagicJack Responds To FCC Ruling In AT&T Case (blogs.forbes.com)
• MagicJack trips on tariff ruling (calliflower.com)
• NetTALK positions against MagicJack and Skype (skypejournal.com)

Skype has always had a multi-party conference call feature (for up to 25 participants) but it was always a little difficult to set it up. Select “Conversation”, select “Add people …”, scroll through the Contact list and select the participants you want in the call. Tedious and time consuming, to say the least, especially if you have a large number of contacts (say, >20). One alternative: in Pamela you can create conference call “Groups” that then require a single click to launch the call.

It turns out that Skype for Windows 5 and Skype for Mac 5 have an “Easter Egg” experimental feature whereby one can very simply set up an ad hoc conference call from a simple “/” instruction in a group chat session. The instruction generates a link from which all those in the chat session, who wish to, can join an audio (or, if there is a Group Video Calling subscription available, video) call.

Skype’s Raul Liive has provided detailed instructions in his post: Easily host big conference calls in Skype:

We have developed an experimental feature to allow you to host big group conference calls in an easier way, with no need to rely on people picking up the call when you start.

All you have to do is distribute one easy link to all participants – for participants, it’s just one click to join the call.

By default, an audio conference call will be created, but if any of the participants has a Premium subscription for Group Video Calls then you can easily turn on video at any point in the call.

Over at Disruptive Telephony, Dan York has expanded on the feature in Skype 5.0 Easter Egg: Super Simple Way To Launch Conference Calls! where he points out that, using one simply created link, one can pass along a URL to anyone via Skype chat, email or Twitter as an invitation to join the call. (The only caveat is that the invitee must have a Skype account with an open Skype client in order to join the call.) He goes on to point out two ways to create a URL and provides some examples of how the call appears in the Skype client.

Dan goes on to list three use cases for this feature:

• Internal Collaboration where it may become obvious that a chat session should be escalated to a voice conference call.
• External Collaboration where one can easily bring outside parties into the call, and
• Public Calls where one may wish to announce a call via email, Twitter and/or Skype chat that would be activated at a specific time.

Along those lines, I could see someone giving this out as a URL for a “support line” or something like that.

What I like is the merging of the connections within Skype and also outside of Skype, i.e. you can pass the link in Twitter and have people join in.

Dan finishes with two caveats: the need for a host to be using Skype for Windows 5 or Skype for Mac 5 (although call participants can be on several other versions of Skype) and recognition that the Host’s PC will needs to have the processing capacity to support a multi-party call:

For this reason, it’s important that the host of the call have:

• a good Internet pipe into their location
• a decent computer, without a zillion apps running on it
• preferably a wired connection versus wireless

Check out Raul’s and Dan’s posts and give it a try. It’s has the potential to create ad hoc conference calls when required in the context of a conversation. It eliminates the need to “add” individuals tediously to a conference call while providing an externally accessible “Single click” URL to participate in a conference call.  I’m given to understand this may become a more obvious feature in future versions of Skype.

Related articles

• Skype for Mac 5.0 Goes Gold: Incorporating Beta Feedback and More (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype for Mac 5, Skype for iPhone 3.0.1 – Upgrade Wednesday (voiceontheweb.biz)

Over the past two years I have been occasionally reporting on Tungle, the meeting accelerator that facilitates scheduling meetings and conference calls. Tungle’s goals as a service are:

• bring down barriers, such as different calendar programs, between companies and work teams
• share availability (Busy/Free status only)
• respect privacy and user control

In summary Tungle wants to be “the last mile” for booking a meeting.

Since my last report a year ago on the introduction of the Tungle.me feature, Tungle has added several features including:

• a BlackBerry client available via the BlackBerry app store,
• participation in Google Apps Market Place
• addition of Plancast to its existing social networking integrations with Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn, Ning, etc. and
• integration into Lotus Notes.

Basically Tungle has been building up an infrastructure and partner relationships that accelerate meeting scheduling across your email contacts and social networks. Key to its success is that individual users of Tungle can be agnostic with respect to their calendaring program. Tungle works with Outlook, Google Calendar and Lotus Notes as well as iCal and Entourage on the Mac. And it adapts to a user’s local time zone; Tungle has users in over 100 countries across all the world’s time zones.

At the same time Tungle has evolved its various user interfaces to make Tungle much more readily accepted by both the meeting organizer and the invitees. Key here was the removal of the need for an invitee to actually be registered with Tungle. Simply receive a Tungle invitation via email, click on a link, show your available times and the meeting organizer can move ahead with scheduling a meeting, including sending meeting time confirmation emails.

But there were still many opportunities to improve Tungle and further accelerate meetings. Today Tungle is announcing Tungle.me 2.0 with several new features that “extend the application’s social networking features with the addition of a public directory, search functionality, and group meeting capabilities”.

Modify Your “Weekly Availability”

A year ago Tungle introduced Tungle.me where you could, at your discretion, show times you are available for meetings on a “weekly” basis from a URL, “tungle.me/username”, that could become, say, part of an email signature. Your Tungle.Me availability would automatically be modified as you reserved times slots in your calendar application. As the first of several new features introduced today, users can also edit or customize those availabilities on a daily basis should you decide to take time off for a golf game, have a “must attend” family event or have the boss second you into a short term project.

Tungle.Me Public Directory and Search

Since introducing Tungle.me Tungle has also discretely developed a Tungle.Me public directory accompanied by Tungle.me Search. Provided a user gives appropriate permission, you can now search Tungle’s public directory for a particular user and see if they have made their availability information accessible to schedule one-on-one meetings. Over 85% of Tungle users have given the appropriate permission; recall that only your “Free/Busy” time availability is shown – with no details of why a time slot is tied up or an associated meeting location. But Tungle Search simply becomes one more contributor to a key new feature.

Accelerating Meeting Scheduling Through Aggregation

A major issue that has held up the time taken to schedule multi-participant meetings was the need to have responses from at least a significant portion of the potential participants. This could take two or three days waiting for responses while others are tentatively holding time slots open in the back-of-their-minds if not on their calendar.

Yet, as mentioned above, the information of their availability, if a registered Tungle.me user, is accessible. Today’s announcement is about accelerating meetings through aggregation. Simply go to your Tungle.me Home page (www.tungle.me/username), select contacts who have made their information available and you have an overlay showing what time slots are available. Bingo! Set either the suggestions for a meeting time and send an invite email with pre-qualified time slots or just set a meeting time, if appropriate in context. (Another hint: cursor over an individual contact’s name to overlay a view of the individual’s availability.)

In the graphic below, purple represent my own committed time slots for this week, light blue represent committed time slots of three other invitees to the prospective meeting.

Tungle.Me Groups

While the above process helps to set up one-time meetings, for teams or groups that meet frequently, Tungle.me’s most powerful new feature is the creation of contact Groups. Much like the Group Contact feature in Skype you can designate the members of a group and create the Group as an additional contact. Want to see when your group can get together, simply click on the Group’s name in your Tungle Contact list. You will immediately see the available times at which your Group can come together. Best part of Groups: you can create a URL, “www.tungle.me/username/groupname”, so that all members of your group can quickly see the group’s availability from any web browser.

Two overriding guidelines to Tungle.me’s new features:

1. Privacy – you only make public your available times. No information is provided about why your time slots are tied up or where you will be physically.

2. Aggregate availability to show common times available for meetings with one or two mouse clicks.

Tungle CEO Marc Gingras has provided a short demonstration video to provide a more dynamic introduction:

Bottom Line (and Full Disclosure): I have been using Tungle and Tungle.me for the past two years, witnessing its evolution into a fully featured, easy-to-use service. Consistently their goal has been to improve the user interface, making it a “no-brainer” service to use whether a meeting participant is a registered user or not.

Fifteen years  ago I was taking up to a week to schedule cross-company meetings via emails. Tungle brings the process down to a few easy to follow steps that pull together readily accessible user information and time slots through one service platform such that a meeting can be scheduled within hours, if not minutes. No longer simply an aggregator of user availability, Tungle, incorporating its own social networking ecosystem, has become a key social networking tool that can facilitate the real time “social sharing” envisioned by Skype’s Jonathan Rosenberg at his recent eComm keynote.

Tungle CEO Marc Gingras has also put up a few blog posts with more details on these new features:

• Search and Directory
• Tungle.me Groups
• More new features
• Concerned about privacy? Don’t be

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tungle and Plancast Partner to Bring Together Social Calendar Sharing & Scheduling (eon.businesswire.com)
• Tungle makes scheduling meetings a bit easier (bbgeeks.com)
• Cloud Synergies: Lotus Notes Adds Tungle, Tripit and Gist (readwriteweb.com)
• Tungle.me for IBM Lotus Notes Collaboration Software Now Available; Makes Scheduling Meetings Easier for the Many Millions of Lotus Notes Users Worldwide (eon.businesswire.com)
• InnerPass 2.0 – Exposing Skype’s Collaboration Potential to Over Two Million Users (voiceontheweb.biz)

Last fall Phil Wolff at Skype Journal mused on the topic of “Why Collaboration is Strategic for Skype”. His conclusion – collaboration is a competitive edge:

Skype could advance the best collaboration practices and technology. And with Skype’s distribution (one billion accounts by 2013), could easily become the tool of choice for producing results, enjoying your job, and building economic security.

While I am not holding out any hope for the full collaboration amongst Skype, Facebook, MySpace and other social networking platforms that many would like to see, I have long seen the potential for a product that supports Skype voice, chat and video conversations, presence, persistent file transfer and document management along with desktop or screen sharing – all managed from a single client. Of course with any collaboration a degree of enhanced Contact management also helps simplify a worker’s daily activities.

My original exposure to online collaboration goes back to my Quarterdeck days when they had developed VoIP software and whiteboarding services. (The latter later became the foundation technology for Webex.) In the early 2000’s I did some work with a desktop sharing service; more recently, over my four years of covering Skype, I have seen a few collaboration services come and go. Unyte has become integrated into IBM’s LotusLive while a couple of Skype-enabled offerings have gone out of business (not for lack of support from Skype). Citrix “Go To” services (Go To Meeting, Go To Assist) have become popular collaboration services at $49.95 per month per host (in fact, last year Citrix Online acquired HiDef Conferencing to have a consistent audio component for these services).

Yet, business’s appetites for collaboration services continues to grow, probably accelerated by not only the cost of travel but also the security issues surrounding air travel today. And they are certainly looking at cost versus value-add in the feature set as one component of their decision making.

A year ago January InnerPass launched their collaboration offering that integrated Skype with basic business-class hosted document management services targeted at business and work teams. In one sense InnerPass could be considered a persistent version of Skype’s file transfer feature; recipient users do not have to be present when files are added, modified or downloaded. They can readily be accessed at any time by any of the designated participants in a Room. The service provides more value-add through the ability to manage multi-party team calls via Skype and/or the PSTN complemented by the ready availability of the team’s documents during the call.

The recently launched InnerPass 2.1 expanded on these services with:

• a new user interface that improves navigation, especially when it comes to working with document “rooms”, their associated user groups and screen sharing
• contact import integration with Skype, Outlook and 50 other services such as GMail, Hotmail, LinkedIn and MySpace.
• call scheduling and management, incorporating the ability to access a multi-party conference call via Skype or a conference bridge

But the launch of InnerPass 2.0 last fall appears to have accelerated growth of the user base; last week InnerPass passed above the 2 million downloads mark, about one year after launching their service. While initially attracting many downloads via the Skype Extras program, viral adoption as users invite participants into rooms and meetings now has taken over as the leading source of new users.

While there is a free “Personal” service, any serious user will easily pass its 2 room, 5 guests per room limit; this service basically serves as a trial offering. In fact, I purchased a $4.95 per month Professional plan some time ago and quickly ran my usage up to its limits. As result any serious user should expect to quickly get to the $14.95 per month Business plan where business teams have more flexibility for both managing and operating both their dynamic and ongoing collaboration activities.

Bottom line: InnerPass provides a low cost collaboration service for work teams who need to be persistently in contact across team members via shared documents, text chat and voice. Definitely a tool to consider when it comes to increasing team productivity while keeping sharing costs under control.

Click here to download InnerPass for either Windows or Mac.

Since its launch about two years ago, I have blogged several times about iotum’s CalliFlower Conference Calling service. More significantly I have used it for several conference calls of up to 25 people, including a couple that ran for over two hours. While permitting up to several hundred participants into a conference call, Calliflower’s primary unique feature is the “portal” created for each call along with the long term archiving of a call and its associated “portal”. Other features include:

• access via the PSTN in over 100 cities in 30 countries (using phone numbers supplied by Voxbone)
• ability to display (and share) documents supporting the conference call’s agenda
• a common chat window, often used to share URL’s, provide information complementary to the primary discussion or even ensure all participants have correct spellings of key words used in the discussion
• a complete service that supports the entire conference call process from initial invitations to the final archiving of the call
• an iPhone client for setting up and accessing a CalliFlower session
• sessions can be either private requiring invitations or public; the archived content of public sessions is searchable

Today iotum has announced the addition of Skype as a way to access Calliflower conference calls; from the press release:

Previously, participants could only dial into Calliflower conferences through PSTN access numbers, potentially incurring local charges.  In regions or countries where no such access numbers are available, customers would incur long-distance and even international charges, or use up Skype-out minutes calling access numbers overseas.  Now callers can access Calliflower through a Skype ID – CalliflowerSkype – or via a web button in the Calliflower UI, overcoming this disadvantage.

“We’ve had many requests from potential Calliflower customers who had no local access numbers, especially from  parts of Africa, India, China and the Middle East,” said Alec Saunders, iotum CEO. “Now, as long as they have Skype, that doesn’t matter anymore.”

In addition, users gain from the better audio quality they will enjoy through direct Skype access¹, as well as from all the visual information, documents and presentations that are shared through Calliflower’s interactive dashboard. These tools go a long way toward improving understanding on international conference calls.

Available on PC, Mac and iPhone, Calliflower makes organizing and participating in multi-party calls simple and engaging.  It allows participants to see the status of other callers and raise hands to request the floor, while also providing interactive chat, document sharing, intuitive conference controls, call recording, invitations and reminders, integration with calendars, and more.

On your initial access to a CalliFlower call you will need to add CalliFlowerSkype as a Skype Contact. But then recall that Skype allows you the option of using your Skype Online number or a designated mobile phone number as your caller ID for SkypeOut calls. When accessing a CalliFlower conference call on Skype, CalliFlower will look at your callerID in place of entering a PIN number to provide authentication for your access. iotum is looking at adding the ability to use your SkypeID as a participant identifier.

As with access in over 30 countries via the PSTN, Skype Access in CalliFlower is included in the monthly Premium service with a monthly charge of $50 for the first two moderators or organizers within a company and $25 per additional organizer.

Bottom line: Skype Access opens up lower cost access for participation in a CalliFlower conference call in every country where Skype is available. Incorporation of Skype access also fits into Skype’s “Skype Everywhere” goal. In this case calls can be accessed not only via Skype on a PC but also from any Skype offering on a mobile platform. This is enhanced for iPhone users where they will also find an iPhone client for setting up and managing a CalliFlower conference call.

¹I asked iotum CEO Alec Saunders to clarify the statement re improved auido quality; his response:

1. Better quality hardware. Skype users tend to be using better quality equipment than POTS callers.  In particular most PC headsets have a better microphone than the cheap microphones in telephone handsets.
2. 2. Fewer transcoding losses. Internally, Calliflower is VoIP.  When a user calls Calliflower from the PSTN, those calls transit a media gateway where the media is transcoded and presented as G.711.  Prior to the direct connection we’ve initiated, media coming from Skype would be transcoded at least twice – from Skype to the PSTN, and then PSTN to G.711.  The result was a noticeable degradation in quality.  Now Skype presents the media to us directly as G.711.

Other posts:

Check out Tom Keating’s post over at his VoIP and Gadgets blog on TMCNet where he interviews iotum CEO Alec Saunders about how CalliFlower implemented its Skype access via Skype for SIP, involving Skype for SIP’s addition of IP address authentication.

Full disclosure: the author has followed the evolution of CalliFlower over its three year development process, and was a frequent participant in iotum’s SquawkBox calls where not only did we discuss technology news of the day but also contributed ideas and suggestions for improvements and enhancements to the CalliFlower service. You can access the archive of the SquawkBox call discussing the FREETALK Everyman headset at the time of its launch here.

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Over the past eighteen months I have often reported on iotum’s Calliflower voice conferencing service as it has evolved and matured. For the first time in a few months I had occasion to use it once again yesterday evening. Connecting  11 participants in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto triangle, New York and Virginia, I can report on an excellent quality, two hour and ten minute call with no interruptions where everyone was clearly understood. (Even the dogs co-operated by not barking in the background although someone’s cell phone did ring at one point.) And it’s archived for access by all members of the group, including those who could not participate in the call.

However, not only has the overall consistency of call quality improved but calls hosted by a Premium Service subscriber ($50/month for two organizers, unlimited calling and participants) can now be accessed “locally” from over 100 cities in 30 countries:

Calliflower flat-rate conferencing services are now available in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

If there was one improvement that could be made it would be to make it more obvious on the invitation emails that a participant should RSVP whether they will/may/will not attend. As demonstrated with recent enhancements to Tungle, the meeting scheduling service, invitation emails must clearly explain all the steps to be taken to respond to the invitation appropriately. In my case yesterday, I was sending invitation emails to “newbies” unfamiliar with the service; some did not know how to respond. As a result I had to send separate emails to non-responding participants to ensure they knew how to access the service.  The issue has been reported to iotum personnel who now have this issue as a “ToDo” item on their action list.

And how much of a value is this service? Ten years ago, using Bell Canada conferencing service, the 11-party call I mentioned in the introduction would have cost $787.00 with additional minutes at a cost of $0.55 per minute per participant just for the voice service. How business models change! But with Calliflower you can also see who is on the call, manage participation through muting and hand raising, share documents, augment the conversation through a chat window and record/archive the call.

Bottom line: with a rewording of their email invitations, Calliflower certainly delivers on its offering of unlimited calling from over 100 cities worldwide along with tools that enhance the conversation. During last night’s call, Calliflower went into the background and was transparent to the discussion; we accomplished our meeting agenda and objectives uninterrupted by the technology.

Overlooked: Calliflower conference calls can also be scheduled, accessed and moderated via their iPhone application.

Click here for more details about the Calliflower service

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• Calliflower expands: Flat Rate International Conference Calls now available from 30 Countries. (saunderslog.com)

I first met iotum CEO Alec Saunders as a competitor in the Canadian PC software market back in 1994. I was Canadian Country Manager for Quarterdeck whose QEMM-386 memory manager had been the tops-selling utility for DOS-based PC’s; Alec was Microsoft’s Canada’s Product Manager for DOS where they were introducing some memory management techniques into DOS 5 and DOS 6. (All to deal with the violation of the Bill Gates’-attributed memory maximum statement “640K is more memory than anyone will ever need.”)

But Quarterdeck’s development team kept coming up with ingenious ways to move drivers and other small utility programs outside the “640K” limit. QEMM-386 allowed users to, say, connect to networks while running multiple programs in this memory constrained environment using Quarterdeck’s DESQview. With the introduction of DOS 5 in 1991 and DOS 6 in 1993, QEMM-386 sales actually increased as awareness of memory management as a resource issue increased. Of course the introduction of Window 95 in August 1995 killed the need for a memory management utility altogether. But the point here is that Alec and I participated in a competitive environment that was actually mutually beneficial to us both; thus defining “co-opetition”.

We both moved on – Alec to Microsoft headquarters to become the original Internet Explorer Product Manager, myself to Los Angeles to work with a restructuring team at Quarterdeck. We would meet at conventions (usually Comdex) and occasionally exchange emails and phone calls for whatever business reasons. Alec returned to Ottawa in 2001 to take up product management and marketing positions with a couple of startups.

In April, 2004 I received a phone call from Howard Thaw, another acquaintance from my days involved with distribution of PC hardware and software in Canada, asking me to have a coffee with him during one of my trips to Ottawa on another project. He presented me with documents supporting his and Alec’s proposal to start up a new venture involving “applications that take advantage of the opportunities opened up by the emerging IP-based communications space”. The philosophy behind this goal is summed up in Alec’s Voice 2.0 Manifesto, pointing out that the value-add going forward in the communications space will be the applications.

After several iterations and developing some unique software, as well as winning a DEMO God award in 2006 iotum launched in the fall 2o07, initially as a Facebook application, Free Conference Call, a multi-party conference calling service which evolved over time into supporting the complete conference call process; the outcome then relaunched as CalliFlower in June, 2008. Through all this time I have also been privy to many of the financing trials and tribulations Alec and Howard have encountered as a startup.

Fast forward to the fall of 2008. iotum had decided there was an business opportunity in making an iPhone application for participants in CalliFlower conference calls.

Update, April 22, 2009: The posts previously linked here related to an issue that has subsequently been resolved satisfactorily with the developer who was the subject of the posts; the posts have been removed. However, I leave the remaining content in this post as it does make a point about how any outsourced service or outside contractor needs to be viewed as a team member even though they don’t have full “employee” status.

However, Alec sums up the situation very succinctly in the third post:

The lesson to be learned here is pretty simple.  When you bring a contractor into your organization you’re adding that person, albeit temporarily, to your team.  You expect to be able to work with them, through good and bad. To do that demands a certain generosity of spirit from all members of the team.

All across America, businesses are waking up to the reality that in this economic environment, team work is the key to getting through this crisis.  Whether it’s GM and their unions, the banks and their mortgagees, or the tech start-ups in Silicon Valley, businesses are learning that accommodation, flexibility, and sacrifice, not egos, are the formula for success.

When [a contract developer] failed on his first deliverable as part of our team, we simply worked through it with him.  But when we asked him to return the favour, he refused.   That’s why, in my opinion, he [was] not [at the time] much of a team player.

And that’s the reason I couldn’t [at the time] recommend [developer name] to my friend.

We had a similar experience at Quarterdeck when developing a Voice Over IP application called WebTalk in 1995. We needed additional resources beyond our internal development team, including a developer company to develop the codecs. Part way through the project, they tried an “extortionist” play. They quickly learned that, if you take on a development contract, it’s not about just delivering code; it’s also about demonstrating that you have the business smarts to realize that, even when you’re not an employee, you – as a contracted developer – better be prepared to play as a member of the team contracting your development expertise. And, as a team member, you work through the problems, including the financial issues, with from the perspective of being a team member.

There are many opportunities arising for developers in today’s communications markets, not only in the smartphone app store space (Apple, BlackBerry,etc.) but also with other platforms such as Skype and WordPress. If you’re a contract developer with this expertise, ensure you are comfortable, not only with the thrill of technical development but also the ride of working with startups who may be otherwise resource challenged, including financially – especially in today’s economic environment. You never know when your co-operation may result in having been a participant in that breakthrough “brass ring” opportunity.

In my thirteen years of running a consulting business, my clients have occasionally been challenged financially. Yet, in all circumstances, they brought their issues to me, we worked out a payment or compensation plan and I eventually was paid. (Some careers died in the process where a management change was involved.) But without that flexibility, I would never have received in one case, about two years later, funds that I needed to help my oldest son complete his medical degree at Stanford.

In today’s environment, rife with both opportunities yet significant economic challenges and barriers, it’s about building relationships for the long term, not burning bridges for short term gain.

Thursday evening I was checking out Truphone’s latest release only to learn that their somewhat delayed version that provides access to Skype is still on hold. At that time I went browsing for other applications on the App Store and came across one that I have had previous experience with on the BlackBerry: IM+ for Skype for iPhone (and iPod Touch). And, on further investigation I also found an upgraded version of IM+ for Skype for BlackBerry.

From my iPhone I made a call to Ken Camp who received it on Skype on his PC. Call quality at my end was excellent, given the audio bandwidth limitations of any mobile phone. I also did some IM activity to check that it worked.

The latest release of IM+ for BlackBerry not only allows you to make SkypeOut calls but also to access the native BlackBerry address book. This is the first “Skype on Mobile” BlackBerry offering to have such deep integration. I will be looking to see what impact this application has on battery life as RIM has recently provided new API’s to incorporate battery management into third party applications. This version also has the ability to set up and participate in multi-party calls.

On initial glance, IM+ for Skype on the iPhone does not have the ability to access your Address Book for contacts’ landline/mobile phone numbers.

Given that I really need a few days to fully experience all the features and warts of these two applications, I’ll withhold further comment at this time; this situation does present a unique opportunity to evaluate how an application integrates into the iPhone and the BlackBerry platforms respectively. In the meantime, however, if you try out these applications and have some experiences to report, please post them in the Comments.

Keep in mind that, when making calls with IM+ for Skype, at a minimum you will be using local minutes on your mobile phone plan. The data channel is used for Instant Messaging activity, Contacts and setting up a voice call to a Skype or SkypeOut contact. Further information on charges. Especially be aware that calls made when “roaming” outside your home country or region may incur significant charges.

One caveat: all this access to Skype requires that you keep a handle on how many platforms are logged into Skype. At one point, being concurrently logged in on a laptop, a desktop, an iPhone, a BlackBerry and a Nokia E71 (using Skype Lite), I found that presence was not consistent across platforms and some IM chat messages were not getting to all the platforms. But then again coordination of presence and setting priorities for multiple login situations is something that I hope Skype is investigating as they roll out Skype Everywhere.

(Yes, I am aware that Skype can also be accessed on the iPhone via Fring; however, call quality has not been consistent enough to consider it a reliable service.)

When Skype’s Unlimited Calling Plans were modified last May, the only “Fair Usage” limitation was 10,000 minutes per month on any of the plans. Recently my attention was drawn to a modified Fair Usage policy. Primarily it would appear that the new Fair Usage policy would apply to businesses using SkypeOut for customer service and customer acquisition activities.

The new policy adds:

• calling to a maximum of 50 numbers per day
• maximum six (6) hours of SkypeOut calling per day
• each subscription is to be used by one person only and not to be shared with any other user (whether by a PBX, call center, computer or any other means).

On considering these further:

• a user can make repeated calls to a single number without impacting the “50 numbers per day” limitation
• each employee using call center or PBX services, such as OnState’s Call Center or Virtual PBX requires a separate Skype calling plan subscription for outbound calling
• the six hour per day limitation could build up quickly on a Skype multi-party call with multiple participants connected via SkypeOut
• these limitations only impact Skype services where third party termination charges are involved – all Skype-to-Skype calling remains free
• they would not appear to affect services such as Skype Trunking via a Vosky Exchange where they talk only about “call Skype users for free” and “low cost SkypeOut rates as low as 2.2 cents per minute to most landlines worldwide”

Upon exceeding any of these limits, normal SkypeOut rates and connection fees will apply for additional minutes, Of course this requires that you have Skype credits available; otherwise you may find a call cut off in the middle of a heavy conversation.

Two observations:

• When business is generating revenue or providing support via Skype’s outbound services, one should expect some cost. Skype continues to provide competitive rates for reliable, robust business calling.
• New Skype management is obviously reviewing all its business activities with a view to ensuring that consumer users can continue to benefit from the low cost of services available via Skype Calling Plans while those who are incurring heavy termination fees (and other costs) will support the cost of such usage levels.

Hat tip to participants in the Skype 4.x Discussion Public Chat for bringing this to my attention.

Update: UberOverLord developer Don Kennedy has published “Subscription Monitor for Skype” to track your Skype subscription usage in real time.

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Over the past eighteen months CalliFlower has evolved into a complete audio conference call service. While they still offer a basic free service, in January they launched a premium service that provides document sharing, local calling numbers in North America, Europe and Australia as well as a feature that allows administrators to set up, but not necessarily participate in, a conference call. The most important feature is “no per minute charges”; you get “unlimited calling with an unlimited number of participants”.

Last week, over at Web Worker Daily, I wrote a post “Search Transforms CalliFlower Sessions from Events to Social Media Elements” where CalliFlower had announced that they had made all public CalliFlower sessions searchable such that they become part of an ongoing social networking conversation. My conclusion:

If you are into social networking by engaging your customers through blogs, Twitter and/or Facebook, check out CalliFlower as one additional element for carrying on your ongoing public customer conversations.

Yesterday the CalliFlower team woke up to learn that their CalliFlower for iPhone had been added to the Apple App Store overnight. (Yes, apparently “it just happens”; Apple uploads new or upgraded applications with no notice.) The iPhone application provides access to all of CalliFlower’s features with the exception of document sharing (which requires Adobe Flash – an issue for all smartphones). Set up a call, see your upcoming calls, see who’s on the call, participate in the chat wall and, of course, call in from your iPhone – they’re all there providing a unique mobile smartphone conference call experience. iotum CEO Alec Saunders provides more details in his post “CalliFlower on iPhone releases“  where he states:

And Calliflower on iPhone – well, let me just say that you’re going to love it.  We’ve remained faithful to the Calliflower experience on the web, while taking full advantage of the iPhone experience giving you the hands down BEST mobile conferencing experience ever.  Here’s a few examples of what I mean.

Check out my Web Worker Daily post and Alec’s full description of CalliFlower for iPhone. Also note that CATA makes Calliflower available to 28,500 members. If you have not signed up for the service, give it a try. Or install on your iPhone via iTunes here.

Full disclosure: the author is a user of the service for a non-blogging related project with great success. I call in to CalliFlower calls via SkypeOut.

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At CES 2009 COO Scott Durchslag spoke about “liquid communications” and “Skype Wherever, Whenever”. InnerPass has developed a business-class hosted document management system; they have been marketing it via private label to over 3000 businesses or project teams on several continents.Over the past year the InnerPass team has developed a Skype Extra application that introduces real time communications, and serves as an interface, into this system.  From their website:

InnerPass helps companies control their business critical files from anywhere and anytime. Our applications are delivered thru various Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings that are entirely web-based. InnerPass primarily offers its applications to end users through a network of partners who can private label and embed the software service into their own solutions or provide as a stand alone service.

InnerPass Share and Collaborate Home Page

InnerPass starts out its communications enhanced service, called InnerPass Share and Collaborate, by building persistent document “meeting rooms” that store mission critical documents such as FDA filings, engineering and architectural drawings, legal agreements, real estate papers and other business documents which require:

• access across a geographically dispersed team of project stakeholders
• persistent storage for asynchronous 24/7/365 access
• version management

amongst other features. InnerPass has taken their document management service experience and gone a step further to support file sharing, collaboration and real time communications. They embed, within their own Skype Extra client, the ability to launch and hold real time voice and/or chat conversations, whether informal ad hoc sessions or scheduled conference calls, to discuss the underlying projects, sales meetings or other business team activity.

Using InnerPass Share and Collaborate, a user can set up a “meeting room”, store documents, launch conversations and share a designated screen for presentations or demonstrations. The room’s host can designate and invite team members from amongst his/her Skype contact list, grant permission to their team members to contribute or modify room content. From anywhere in the client, any team member has the ability to schedule and launch conference calls or group chats using the integrated Skype services.

InnerPass offers three levels of their collaboration service. A free service supports up to 3 meeting rooms with a maximum of 3 participants and 1GB of file storage (max 25MB per file). Offering perpetual file storage, the Professional Plan at $4.95/month supports 10 meeting rooms and up to 10 participants in each. The Business plan, at $12.95/month, allows up to 40 rooms and 40 people per room. Their last plan, launching in March,  is designed for the SMB (Small to Medium Size Business) will offer additional features including access to their hosted full document management service. Update (May 2009): Inner Pass also offers a “Custom” service with the potential to host a webinar with hundreds of attendees, record calls and other features.

Over the past few weeks I have experienced a few sessions using InnerPass; the InnerPass  team has been very responsive to suggestions made for improvements, especially with respect to some speed issues that are now resolved. It now works reliably with both Skype 3.8 (still Skype’s latest release for general use) and Skype 4.0 Beta 3.

Since obtaining Skype Certification and its subsequent launch last fall, InnerPass has registered over 270,000 users (as shown in the graphic) growing virally amongst Skype users with little publicity. You can download via Tools | Do More | Get Skype Extras using Skype 3.8 or Tools | Extras | Get Skype Extras under Skype 4.0 for Windows beta 3. Normally it should show up as “InnerPass Share and Collaborate” under the “Sharing” category but until a bug is resolved by the Skype Extras team, you may find it as “Share, Collaborate, Communicate”.

InnerPass CEO Steve Parsloe has written a more detailed post for Skype’s Autumn 2008 Developer Newsletter. And in early December Steve along with his colleague Bill Trail, Vice-President, Business Development discussed InnerPass as a guest on SquawkBox.

As mentioned at the beginning, InnerPass’s Share and Collaborate service is a representative example of making Skype available anywhere there is an opportunity to benefit from real time conversations. Skype has enabled InnerPass to offer real time conversations to virtual meeting rooms incorporating file and desktop (or screen) sharing. And it brings large enterprise services down to a cost level such that any individual, mobile professional or small business can afford to benefit from a collaborative document management service.

Tags: InnerPass, Skype Extras, collaboration, file sharing, Skype, Steve Parsloe

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When Skypecast was shut down at the end of August, I suggested three alternatives that can be considered as cost effective replacements for those serious about multi-party discussions.

iotum CalliFlower serves as the host for the daily SquawkBox conference call discussing communications news of the day as well as featured guest interviews. (Full disclosure: I usually participate.) But it also is building a user base who hosts a wide range of audio conference calls for business meetings, interviews with prominent personalities, training and enhanced social networking amongst other audio conferencing requirements. CalliFlower’s key feature, aside from the “Free” aspect, is its rich web interactive interface that supports the call through a “chat wall”, seeing who’s on the call and hand raising.

However, sometimes users get stumped in setting it up. Monitoring “CalliFlower” on Twitter via either Tweetdeck or TweetBeeps, iotum CEO Alec Saunders encountered one of those frustrated users, Steve Pohlit – a blogging for business consultant, and made contact with him. In Alec’s subsequent post, A little twitter karma, he comments:

The lesson here is pretty simple. In today’s world of social media, news travels near instantaneously. And in the world of twitter, an idea can propagate and mutate at unbelievable rates. Steve wasn’t asking for help, but by offering it I turned what was a bad experience for him into a very positive experience. He rewarded that effort with something special.

And what was that “something special”? Steve has produced three instructional videos on how to use CalliFlower.

SkypeOut subscribers can readily call into CalliFlower calls; in fact, if you have setup your mobile number as your Skype callerID and registered that same number with CalliFlower, you bypass the need to enter a PIN number. This became very useful last week when my broadband Internet service was down. From my Blackberry I called into SquawkBox via iSkoot, which cannot currently pass through DTMF tones. But since my SkypeOut callerID is my mobile number CalliFlower immediately admitted me into the call. In this case, since I had to hold the Blackberry to my ear (and had no broadband Internet connection), I accessed the call’s web page for the call via my iPhone. Is this convergence or divergence?

While there has been lots of dismay about the discontinuation of Skypecasts (Skype’s blog posts: here and here), it had appeared for the past several months that the service just did not have the robustness to provide the reliability and quality of service that users would expect. Being a free service, it was obviously placing resource demands with zero revenue potential on Skype developer and support personnel that hopefully can be diverted to bringing feature equality to Skype’s basic service, whether on Windows, Mac or Linux.

There are alternatives; in fact, this decision provides a unique opportunity for two third party conference calling services:

1. Skype Multi-Party Calling:

For up to 25 participants on a call, Skype has recently expanded its multi-party calling capacity. The caveat here is that the host must use a multi-core Windows PC and a reliable broadband internet connection (preferably cable). Participants can be on any version of Skype or be accessed via SkypeOut. In this case the host must set up the call and call out to all the participants. More details here. A unique feature of Skype’s multi-party calling is its ability to show which participant is actually speaking at any given time. But keep in mind Skype really offers multi-party calling, not a full conferencing service.

2. iotum CalliFlower

iotum’s CalliFlower has the benefit of no charge other than whatever it costs to make the connection to one of their access points. I often participate in their daily SquawkBox call via my SkypeOut account; the recent availability of SkypeOut CallerID, displaying my mobile phone number when I make a SkypeOut call, has allowed me to participate in these calls within my SkypeOut subscription without even using the provided password for each call. In fact, there are four options for accessing these calls:

As an example of building communities, iotum has worked with Alan Hunkin to provide a weekly interview session, CalliFlower Communiques, with notable personalities such as William Shatner. Immediate future guests include Ken Blanchard, author of “Being a One Minute Entrepreneur” and actor Alan Alda discussions his recent memoir “Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.” Recordings of previous sessions are available at the page linked above.

3. HiDef Conferencing

Vapps’ HiDef Conferencing (formerly HiSpeedConferencing) provides high definition (HD) voice quality calls for participants accessing via Skype. Their business grade service involves fixed rate monthly hosting subscriptions involving unlimited Skype access, dial-in to specific numbers in several countries and toll-free numbers. Obviously this involves some ongoing expense to the host but their infrastructure supports providing the best possible voice quality, depending on access mode. The host uses their web controls to set up calls, manage call participants as well as record and archive calls.

Looking at the options it appears the best conference experience comes when:

• hosts are able to setup and fully manage the calls, including an open access invitation;
• users can participate through a web-based experience not only via voice but also via chat.

The good news is that Skype provides either free or low cost unlimited access to any of these services. What will be most interesting is to see if iotum and/or Vapps rise to the opportunity here and and is able to provide encouragement to the many communities that were supported by Skypecasts.

Tags: Skype, Skypecast, iotum, CalliFlower, Hi Def Conferencing, CalliFlower Communique, Vapps, multi-party calling, Alan Hunkin

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CalliFlower: iotum rebrands its Free Conference Call service with a focus on a rich user experience not only for conference call moderators but also for participants.

Value-add in the Web 2.0 world comes primarily through the user interface. There’s a plethora of great technology innovation happening out there. But it’s becoming acknowledged that ease of installation, implementation and operation has been one reason for many services’ success to date, including Skype’s. Yet with only 30-35 million “Real users” out of 300 million registered accounts, Skype has embarked on a new beta program designed to improve on the user experience and ongoing adoption rate for both new users and power users. In the end it’s viral user adoption that builds a business.

Last fall iotum launched its Free Conference Call for Facebook service; over the intervening months, participants on iotum’s daily Squawk Box conference call, using their Free Conference Call service, have seen the evolution of a user interface that has set a standard for enriched conferencing services. While the host or moderator tools have established call recording, participant management and a comprehensive invitation process as basic requirements for any complete multi-party virtual meeting, it is the interactive participant interface that has made Free Conference Call popular with not only the regular attendees of Squawk Box but have also found Free Conference Call being used for other series of regular Special Interest Conference Call events.

But Free Conference Call initially required you to be a member of Facebook; later a separate web-based user interface, independent of Facebook, was introduced to allow participation and hosting outside Facebook. On the participant interface itself we started to see pictures of all the attendees if fewer than 20 participants are in a call; otherwise there is a text indicator. Hand raising, muting and a chat wall all made the calls a richer, more vibrant yet still manageably spontaneous experience. And the calls are stored in perpetuity for later recall. Oh, and, other than being an Unlimited Skype user, I have never paid a cent to attend these Squawk Box calls. (Seven years ago I was paying $200 for a five party, one hour conference call.) Conference calls are as much about organizing, moderating and archiving as they are about the actual call connection.

And, with over 200,000 registered users, iotum learned:

• the need to focus on the participant experience as much as on the moderator experience
• participants valued the rich user experience
• every participant is a potential organizer or moderator
• its most active users were small business entrepreneurs

Building on this feedback and introducing additional features, iotum took on a mission to reinvent business conversations. Today iotum launches the beta of its rebranded conference call service, Calliflower, with two user interfaces – one for the moderator and one for the participants – that deliver an even richer user experience. A interactive dashboard for call moderators, calendar integration, a selection of call-in options and an interactive chat wall all contribute to establishing a new benchmark for a complete conference call experience.

Calliflower is targeted for small businesses who wish to conduct a more interactive and complete conference call experience for both the moderator and the participants. Their longer term goal is to have “open access” via any social network or any device. Yesterday I saw a demonstration of the service running through the iPhone browser but they are still working on the adaptation to the iPhone format. Certainly Nokia and Blackberry smartphones are also in their sights, provided they have appropriate advanced browser support.

But most importantly, iotum has demonstrated that an engaging, interactive, yet simple user interface is key to mass adoption of Voice 2.0 services. It’s also a business fundamental being encountered by other service providers, such as Skype and the revamped SightSpeed for Business about which I’ll be posting in the next few days.

Try out a demonstration of CalliFlower here; or sign up and organize your own CalliFlower conference call here. If you have a Facebook account, you can use your Facebook login information. You can access CalliFlower conference calls via SkypeOut; if you have a Skype Unlimited plan that includes either North America or France, that connection comes at no additional charge..

This morning Squawk Box turned the tables. Adam Somer acted as a guest host and interviewed Alec Saunders and Howard Thaw of iotum about the new CalliFlower service and their experiences leading up to its launch. Alec is putting up a recording of the call here (awaiting posting); listen in for more information.

Tags: iotum, Free Conference Call, Calliflower, SkypeOut, Squawk Box, Facebook

Over the past few months I have had reason to host, or participate in, voice calls involving more than two parties. Product demonstrations, daily Squawk Box sessions and weekly “broadcast” calls involving 200 or more participants have become part of my routine. But each is a different type of multi-party call.

Yesterday, along with several of my Contacts, I was involved in a test, initiated by Borderless Communicator’s Hudson Barton, of several of these services:

• Skype’s “Conference Call”: hosted through the Skype Windows/Mac/Linux client where a Skype user can host a Multi-Party call but use of the term “Conference” call is a misnomer. Free for Skype participants; SkypeOut charges apply to participants on the PSTN. Up to 25 participants
• HiDef Conferencing: hosting business grade conference calls with a user management interface operated by the call’s “moderator” or “host”. Monthly subscription required to host; unlimited free access for Skype participants; toll charges may apply for participants calling in via the PSTN. Up to 500 participants
• iotum Calliflower: again hosting a multi-party calls that can be managed by a “moderator” or “host” party. “Free” participation; however, participant responsible for any toll charges to reach Free Conference Call server, and
• Skypecast: a Skype service for hosting public “voice chat” rooms where participants can discuss a topic of interest. Public access; free but only accessed as a Skype user; no PSTN participation. Up to 100 participants. Popular use: learning English at Kantalk.

I can see four types of multi-party.calls:

• Ad hoc multi-party calls, such as what is misnamed Skype Conference Call. Informal, host can easily add/remove participants, but no other participant management features. All participants are active; no agenda (think the “UNconference” call)
• Conference calls which are often scheduled, usually have an agenda and where participants are all active but can be managed by the host (and/or other designated participants).
• Broadcast calls, such as training presentations, news and analyst conferences, large audience sales presentations, etc. where there is a call administrator and usually one or two active participants who will make a presentation to an audience of several hundred or even a thousand passive participants.
• Public voice chats, such as Skypecasts where any Skype user can join provided they find the link (either by email or text chat invitation or from a directory of Skypecasts).

While all these types of calls use technology that merges the various voice streams to be heard by all participants, the user interface and degree of active participation are the key differentiators:

• Ad hoc multi-party calls: you can host a multi-party call simply by selecting multiple Skype and/or SkypeOut contacts and starting what is labeled as a Skype Conference call. If you see a need to add another participant, either add a Skype/SkypeOut Contact or call up an additional SkypeOut number. The host can also remove participants from the call at will. In yesterday’s call we had excellent HD Voice quality, we could see who was speaking (see halos around Dan and Hudson, only is Skype for Windows) but individual participants manage features such as muting their own microphone. You can definitely detect who is on a SkypeOut connection due to the more limited audio bandwidth of a SkypeOut connection. Since the host is operating the call through his/her local PC, these quality of these calls can also be subject to variables such as the host’s CPU power and Internet connection (especially the upload speed). Good enough for consumers and internal business calls but definitely not business grade. In a different graphic format, .Skype for Mac lets you see who is talking, including individual volume levels. Requires third party product, such as Pamela or Skylook, to record a call.

Free Conference Call Participant View (pre-Calliflower)

• A true Conference Call is one where an administrator or host effectively “chairs” the call, has the option to schedule the call and provide an agenda, can manage each user’s level of active participation (mute/unmute, hand raising) and provide a hosted recording capability. Also these business grade calls are server-hosted to provide a consistent and manageable level of robustness and reliability as well as overall voice quality. Both HiDef Conferencing and iotum’s Free Conference Call have these capabilities.
  • While HiDef Conferencing provides excellent HD Voice quality for all participants connected via Skype and has a Host user interface to manage the call, it could use a web-based interface for participants to see who is on a call, who is speaking and provide a common chat “wall”. At one point during the test call, one participant went over to a PSTN connection and there was a very noticeable deterioration in his voice quality while on that connection.
  • iotum’s Free Conference call has the above-noted participant user interface features but is difficult to enter (while not a requirement, having a Facebook account makes it easier to access). Limited by its architecture to the legacy PSTN audio bandwidth, call quality is acceptable but not HD Voice. It had a significant call quality issue for one participant and needs a “Leave Call” button on the participant user interface. On the other hand iotum’s Free Conference Call has been shown to be robust and reliable enough to handle their daily Squawk Box conference call with relative ease; the ability to see who is participating and a chat “wall” are major benefits.
• In a Broadcast Call there are usually one or a few presenters while an audience passively listens unless they “raise a hand” to ask questions or make a point. When HiDef Conferencing calls get to the 100 participant level, it has usually become a Broadcast call. (In fact, VAPPS hosts the voice component of several other conferencing and meeting services, such as InstantTeleseminar)
• Our experience with the Skypecast trial today was one where there were significant difficulties joining the Skypecast (only four of our seven participants successfully got in) but where there was excellent voice quality. Limited participant management by host who can mute/unmite and eject a participant. Requires third party product, such as Pamela or Skylook, to record a call.

Some conclusions:

• Skype should rename their basic “Conference Call” to “Multi-Party Call”. Its service is effectively a multi-party scaling of my former Bell Canada “3-party call” service. The initiator of the call hosts the call on his/her PC and does not always have complete control over call quality and robustness of the call.
• Conference calls are hosted calls with “moderated” participant management. The key differentiator here is the user interface for both the host and the participants as well as the ease of call access by the participants. While the ability to link the voice streams of all the participants is common to all these services, overall call quality itself can be another differentiator.
• Hudson measured some call parameters during each call. Basically all services were in the same ball park for jitter and packet loss (none to <1%) – most participants connected to the calls via either Skype or SkypeOut; on the Skype Conference Multi-Party Call latencies were definitely related to the distance of the participant from my hosting connection.

Tags: Skype, Conference Call, Skype Conference Call, HiDef Conferencing, iotum, Free Conference Call, Skypecast, Borderless Communicator, Hudson Barton, VAPPS Inc., Instant Teleseminar

Recently I reported on plans for VAPPS to rebrand its business grade conference calling service as HiDefConferencing. Well last week it happened. And the plans have been renamed to Pay-As-You-Go, HiDef 10/25/50/100 and HiDef Ultra for 500 participant calls. Each plan has Unlimited minutes for those accessing the call via Skype. A new plan, High Def Toll Free can support a call of up to 500 participants @$0.07 per minute per user but with no Skype access.

So why would you use HiDef/10 when you can have ten participant conference calls within Skype. It’s about who is hosting the conference. With Skype Conference Calling, the host’s PC is hosting the call and subject to interference arising from a range of issues from connection speed and quality to PC configuration (especially processor and RAM) to giving way to Outlook downloads. With HiDef Conferencing, VAPPS is hosting the call on one of its servers which is solely dedicated to managing the call. For $25 per month you can ensure VAPPS’ business grade conferencing for up to ten participant calls.

A ten day free trial for a HiDef/25 account is available.

And recall that the reason for the HiDef rebranding is due to the service’s support of HD Voice (wideband audio) for all participants who access a call via Skype. Fewer misunderstood words, inflections and accents as well as a high quality listening experience.

Related post: HD Voice: Priceless

Tags: HiDef Conferencing, High Speed Conferencing, VAPPS Inc., Skype, Conference Calling

Recently I reported on plans for VAPPS to rebrand its business grade conference calling service as HiDefConferencing. Well last week it happened. And the plans have been renamed to Pay-As-You-Go, HiDef 10/25/50/100 and HiDef Ultra for 500 participant calls. Each plan has Unlimited minutes for those accessing the call via Skype. A new plan, High Def Toll Free can support a call of up to 500 participants @$0.07 per minute per user but with no Skype access.

So why would you use HiDef/10 when you can have ten participant conference calls within Skype. It’s about who is hosting the conference. With Skype Conference Calling, the host’s PC is hosting the call and subject to interference arising from a range of issues from connection speed and quality to PC configuration (especially processor and RAM) to giving way to Outlook downloads. With HiDef Conferencing, VAPPS is hosting the call on one of its servers which is solely dedicated to managing the call. For $25 per month you can ensure VAPPS’ business grade conferencing for up to ten participant calls.

A ten day free trial for a HiDef/25 account is available.

And recall that the reason for the HiDef rebranding is due to the service’s support of HD Voice (wideband audio) for all participants who access a call via Skype. Fewer misunderstood words, inflections and accents as well as a high quality listening experience.

Tags: HiDef Conferencing, VAPPS Inc., Skype, Conference Calling