VoIP Providers List Worldwide VoIP Providers Directory

MySpace has had a big impact on the number of widgets/wags/flakes (pick your favourite name) that have been produced by developers, both independent and commercial, in the last 12 months.

It's time for a closer look. We have, discussed some of these before; but some are new and some are yesterday's news. Collectively there's a lot out there and a lot to choose from if you want to drop something Voice 2.0 onto your web, blog or MySpace page.

Here are my ten picks, in no particular order.

Busta

Busta is an ActiveX based (so Windows only for now) widget that you can drop onto a webpage and with which you can make outgoing calls. Nick Ogden, of WorldPay fame is behind it. I I interviewed him him last year.

It's a slick network. One of the first things you'll notice is sheer speed - you dial a number and the called party's phone rings instantly. Very nice.

It's based on SIP, although currently you can only dial out to the PSTN via the Busta network. That's how they make their money, so fair enough. You can, however, call any SIP based device on any network by prefixing the call with "sip:".

It sits very nicely on a Google Personalised homepage.

Audio Quality : Excellent.

YackPack

The YackPack WalkieTalkie is an interesting Push To Talk based VoIP widget designed for group conversation embedded within a web page. MySpace and other community sites will love it.

YackPack works on a channel type system, in many ways mimicking two-way radio. Channels are set by URL and there are three flavours. The first is "live start" and audio (others talking) starts streaming immediately using the URL for the page as the "channel", the second is an "opt-in" version and finally one that works on a consistent (single) "channel" throughout your entire site.

You push the big "live" button in the center to speak and that little blue line underneath acts as a VU meter for microphone volume. The number in the bottom right corner shows the number of users connected to that channel.

We talked about this one recently in this related thread. It's an interesting piece of software that has essentially ripped up the VoIP handbook and gone for a "speak one at a time" system instead of the usual mode of telephony. Personally I think this is good. Serious applications are pretty obvious in the webinar, radio and education sectors.

YackPack also have a commercial group working tool involving video, whiteboarding, audio and file transfer.

Audio Quality : Excellent, but a bit slow. We noticed in testing substantial delays in between you talking and the other party hearing. It is beta however. It's a great concept and we'll review it again in a month or two.

vePhone

vePhone, like Busta, is a service backed widget rather than a Bring Your Own device. In other words you need to pay vePhone for outbound calls.

The difference between vePhone and Busta is that signing up for a vePhone account gives a dedicated UK phone number for your vePhone device from which you can receive inbound calls.

Again like Busta, this widget works well in a Google Personalised homepage.

It's internet explorer only at the moment, with plans for a Mozilla (FireFox/Opera) version, PDA's and mobiles.

Currently, this is the only web based widget that we've seen that allows inbound calls to it from the PSTN. Other than that it's a standard affair - they make their money on the outbound calls, offering discounted rates to landlines and mobiles.

Audio Quality : Untested, but I'm in touch with them and will update when I've had a chance to test it fully.

Jaxtr

Jaxtr is a mashup of "click and I'll call you" and community VoIP networking.

It's worthy of note that the CEO of Jaxtr is none other than Konstantin Guericke, co-founder of LinkedIn.

The page visitor enters their phone number into the Flash-based Jaxtr which then calls the owners telephone and routes the call. The true usefulness of Jaxtr may effectively be limited to the fact that the owner can keep his/her telephone number private, while still being able to receive web based calls on a regular telephone.

I'm sure there's as much application for this in online dating as there is on social networks like MySpace.

GizmoCall

Gizmocall is tightly integrated with the parent Gizmo Project/SIPphone network, currently offering free calls to 60 countries (subject to a 3 minutes per call cap and 10 minutes total per day allowance).

Like Busta, GizmoCall is based on the SIP standard and allows calls to other SIP based devices on other networks, for free. One of the nice touches with GizmoCall is the ability to set your callerID to a selection of proven-to-be-yours numbers meaning you can have your office number or home number sent out, depending on your locale.

Michael Robertson (of mp3.com) is behind this one. A nice guy with smarts (good combination).

It's one of the heaftiest plugins featured here though, weighing in at around 900k. That may be, in part, due to its use of the GIPS protocol (which Skype also uses), which provides excellent quality audio at the expense of a large chunk of code. Web page loading speed will be affected depending on where in the page source this widget is placed. Web Usability has a good article on how you can tweak your page source to order the content, including widgets, appropriately (put all the widgets at the bottom of the source).

You can extend your 5 minutes daily calltime with Gizmo to 10 minutes by registering.

Much as you would expect with a widget based phone, and unlike vePhone, it's designed for outbound calling only. There is no way to receive calls on the Gizmo widget.

Audio Quality : Excellent

Wengo Visio

Wengovisio is a Flash-based widget featuring both audio and video.

WengoVisio features a basic presence system, enabling the page viewer to see if you're online and contactable.

It's a simple solution if you just want to drop a widget on your page enabling users to get in touch. If you're not online, visitors can leave you an audio message (nice touch). I have, however, heard reports of slow page loading experienced when this widget is featured on the page. Test it first.

Visitors do not need to subscribe to the Wengo service, but the owner does.

Audio Quality : I couldn't guess (or find information on) the codec used but it's very good.

Truphone

Truphone isn't a widget in the web sense, but worthy of a mention nonetheless. Truphone is a java based mobile phone widget which currently works with Nokia Mobiles (I understand that more are in the pipeline).

Truphone uses the ability of modern dual-mode WiFi enabled handsets to transmit calls over the internet when you're in range of a WiFi access point.

Truphone issue you with a secondary mobile phone number that works with the Truphone widget when you're online, to receive calls over the internet. Truphone then utilise inbound revenue received from other networks calling that number to fund outbound calls to PSTN and cellular networks. This is the same model as we use for our experimental PSTN gateway.

Audio Quality : At least as good as your mobile.

Sitofono

Sitofono from Abbeynet is a Click to Call widget giving the viewer the ability to call you on your landline or mobile phone, or to leave you an audio message.

It's a commercial service with a one-off yearly fee. It acts in two modes : as true "click to call" using your computer with a headset, or as a "click and we'll call you" system where the visitor enters their phone number and Sitofono will connect both parties.

Audio Quality : I don't own it so am unable to test it. According to Luca they have 100,000 customers though.

Jajah

Bit of a cheat this one, as for me the real value of a widget comes from being able to "drop" it on any page of choice. You can't do that with Jajah, this one works with PageFlakes, a startup that basically wants to be your homepage.

I mention it here for completeness and for those of you that might be PageFlakes users.

Last year Jajah hired Yair Goldfinger, a legend in Instant Messaging and the brains behind IM chat pioneer ICQ.

Jajah announced that it will support the Apple iPhone when it launches this summer.

Audio Quality : Landline quality, but dependant on the QoS within Jajah's network as they proxy calls.

VonageGuage

OK, VonageGuage is Vonage specific (and who knows now how long they'll survive), but it's clever enough to warrant talking about. We also know that the Vonage network is SIP based, so it's possible that this widget could be adapted for use on other networks.

The VonageGuage let's you know how many "minutes" you have left in your account, relative to how far you are through the month, guaging both usage and rate of usage. The bulb at the bottom of the thermometer displays whether or not you have any voicemail messages (and how many).

The part that I really like is the way that this widget can monitor traffic through your router (only certain supported models at present) for Vonage traffic, and will turn the volume on your PC down when the phone rings. Very handy if you stream audio through your PC...

This widget is part of the Yahoo! specification and resides on your desktop rather than on a webpage.

Your Widget Here?

Adobe recently launched their Apollo Project.

This is a Flash based architecture/API that enables developers to "...leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop."

As part of this launch, Adobe have a committed $100m to an Apollo VC Fund to fund startups which use its technology and architecture in their products.

So don't go sitting on a good idea...

By Dean