Doug on IP Comm » Blackberry

Phone.com integrates with Mobile Office for BlackBerry

Doug Mohney — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:24:55 +0000

Phone.com keeps on adding on features and hits for the SMB crowd. The company has added Mobile Office for BlackBerry to its services.

Customers can now listen/manage voice mail, view received faxes from a phone, run Call Logs on a call extension, block calls, quickly connect to a conference bridge, and make calls from a Phone.com virtual office number with the number popping up on the inbound caller ID.

Best of all, the BlackBerry app is free to download and available with all Phone.com plans.

Digium Switchvox gets IPhone, Blackberry app boost

Doug Mohney — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 20:51:00 +0000

Digium (www.digium.com) has announced the availability of Switchvox Mobile applications for iPhone and Blackbeery. The freely downloadable apps integrate with the Switchvox VoIP/UC solution to bring “advanced UC” functionality to users when they are away from the office.

The Switchvox Mobileapps are connected to an employee’s phone extension so when mobile workers make a business call through Switchvox mobile, the call appears to be from their work phone rather than their mobile (Personal) phone, and billing can be handled like any other call made from the office.

Mobile workers can place a call through Switchvox mobile by selecting a name from the company directory, dial the employee’s extension from the keypad, or return calls from the Voicemail and Call Log tools.

Other key features thrown in include the ability to control voicemail greetings, access the full company directory, view missed calls, check voicemail, and easily return call via smartphone. Users can also set call rules while away from the office.

Switchvox Mobile for iPhone is free of charge and available now through the iTunes App Store. It is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Switchvox Mobile for the BlackBerry is free of charge and available now through BlackBerry App World. It is compatible with the Bold, Curve, Pearl, Storm, and Tour models.

Yap clouds for Microsoft and Sprint

Doug Mohney — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:00:57 +0000

Coming out of CTIA, Yap (www.yapinc.com) has announced that its automated, cloud-based speech recognition service has been selected by Microsoft for its speech-to-text capabilities in its Talk to Text mobile application developed for Sprint.

Net-net, Sprint subscribers can speak their text messages and email, with Talk to Text available immediately for all Blackberry devices running on the Sprint network. Using Talk to Text, Sprint users can drastically reduce keystrokes and time needed to compose an email or a text messaging.

Yap brags that its speech cloud provides fully automated and highly accurate speech recognition via simple web services interface, enabling Microsoft to quickly integrate Yap’s speech recognition into its Talk to Text app with just a few lines of code.

DiVitas Networks moves mobile UC client to Android, Blackberry, iPhone, desktop

Doug Mohney — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:43:50 +0000

Mobile UC solution provider DiVitas Networks continues to make steady progress. Today, the company announced it is rolling out “Enterprise Social Networking” (Hmm, I wonder if they’ve seen Avaya’s FacePhone demo) for all major commercially-available smartphones, including web client support for Android, Blackberry, and the iPhone. In addition, they added a desktop — which could just as easily go on a netbook or laptop — client as well.

Previously, DiVitas had announced support for Nokia Eseries and Nseries, along with various Windows Mobile smartphones.

And what is Enterprise Social Networking? DiVitas does a redirect of an existing desk phone number to provide business voice/PBX services to the smart phone. In addition, DiVitas has integrated business voice with IM and social networking applications to include a person’s availability, location and network. Contacts are accessed directly from an organization’s LDAP director for one-click access to any member within the secure corporate community and individuals within the secure community can check on availability of others via Mobile Presence and Status to figure out the best way to contact a person based upon a listed preference and location.

Net-net: If a corporate colleague is in a meeting and they don’t want a phone call, the client will indicate that, so you send an IM, enabling you to communicate faster than playing phone tag.

IT and service providers of DiVitas have the ability to maintain version control with the web client, allowing the most current version of the software to be provided; the DiVitas server can provide both the new web client and the native client simultaneously.

Vonage (finally) releases its Blackberry & iPhone mobile VoIP clients

Doug Mohney — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:32:15 +0000

After plenty of foreshadowing statements on earnings conference calls, Vonage has released Vonage Mobile, a free downloadable application for low-cost international calling on smartphones. The app is said to provide “seamless” low-cost international calling while on Wi-Fi or cellular networks.

Vonage says the service will have custmers more than 50 percent on calls to “dozens” of counties as compared to rates charged by wireless carriers — and no calling cards required. Vonage Mobile will be available for download on the iPhone, iPod touch, and BlackBerry and features include the ability to use an existing contact list for click-and-dial, using the existing clel phone number for caller ID identification, and real time balance updates.

By the end of the year, Vonage says it will enhance the app to include the Vonage World plan initially intro’ed for home service in August, giving mobile customers to make unlimited calls to over 60 countries for one flat monthly fee.

While the concept of a mobile app to make long distance calls sounds “old,” Vonage is the largest independent carrier/ITSP to load up the concept and cooperation with Apple to make the app available through the Apple app store implies that Vonage has played nicely (i.e. maybe some sort of recurring revenue) with Apple.

Be interesting to hear the field reports once the app is more widely deployed.