Day: December 7, 2012

Check it out! It is available for Linux and Windows!

Ekiga 4.0 offers a fresh, Open Source Skype alternative

“Longtime users of Ubuntu Linux may already be familiar with open source Ekiga, which used to be the default Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) client in that popular Linux distribution, but late last month the telephony software got a major update.

Arriving some three years after the previous release, Ekiga 4.0—also known as ‘The Victory Release’ – is now available, offering a fresh new Skype alternative for users of Linux and Windows alike.

‘This is a major release with many major improvements,’ wrote the software’s developers in the announcement last week on the project site.

Here’s a rundown of some of the highlights.

A brand-new interface

At the top of the list of the changes in Ekiga 4.0 is a “completely new” user interface, the developers say, featuring an improved roster, a separate call window, and improved chat and accounts windows. The screenshot above offers a taste of the new GUI.

Ekiga 4.0 also offers faster startup than its predecessor did, and the software’s GNOME 3 integration has been improved with better notifications and removal of the tray icon.

A new PulseAudio plugin has been added to Ekiga along with new audio codecs such as SILK—which is used by Skype—G.722.1 (also known as Siren 7), and G.722.2 (a.k.a. GSM-AMR Wide band). New H.264 optimizations have been added as well.

Rounding out the list of key new features are call auto-answer, partial support for handling multiple video streams, improved audio accuracy on select audio cards, and a variety of usability and interoperability fixes.

Highly interoperable

Microsoft has surprised many in the Linux community by continuing to update Skype for Linux, and of course we now have offerings including Google+ chat and hangouts and Google Talk with video as well.

Still, Ekiga brings with it all the many benefits of open source software in addition to support for both the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and H.323 protocol, making it highly interoperable.”

This is bad. Even though I don’t use it, I don’t like to see a trend of free services getting cut back.

Google stops offering Google Apps for free to focus on providing a paid-for experience

“Google has announced a significant decision that will see it cease allowing users to sign up to its Google Apps service free of charge.

In a blog post, Clay Bavor, director of product management for Google Apps, explains that the move is being made in order to focus the quality of the user experience on the needs of paying, business users, with fuller support. However, those that have already signed up for the service for free will still be able to use it as before.

‘When we launched the premium business version we kept our free, basic version as well,’ Bavor explains. ‘Both businesses and individuals signed up for this version, but time has shown that in practice, the experience isn’t quite right for either group. Businesses quickly outgrow the basic version and want things like 24/7 customer support and larger inboxes. Similarly, consumers often have to wait to get new features while we make them business-ready.’

Google is now encouraging users to sign up to Gmail, storage service Google Drive and its other consumer-facing products, instead of Google Apps. Those that do want to use Google Apps can get the premium version, which remains $50 per user, per year.

Google says that the end of the free version will allow it to focus on providing business-grade service, including 24/7 phone support for issues, a 25GB inbox and its 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.

The Wall Street Journal reports that subscriptions to Google Apps and its mapping service for businesses and governments have netted the company some $1 billion over the last year.

Stats-wise, more than 5 million businesses are said to use Google Apps, but the overwhelming majority use the free version. The service — both free and paid — is said to be used by more than 40 million users worldwide.

The move to end free usage makes a lot of sense, and has been much expected, given the investment Google has made in its consumer-targeted cloud offerings, which includes the creation of Dropbox rival Google Drive. The company is also likely to make big changes to Gmail after it hired the team behind much-lauded iOS and Mac mail client Sparrow in August.

The search giant has increased the linkage between the two services lately. Last month it began allowing users to add 10GB of Google Drive files into Gmail emails, and we can expect further alignment of the services going forward.”