Webware

When VoxOx was released last November, it was hard to deny that the communication tools it offered were impressive. Multi-protocol chat, VoIP, some rudimentary e-mail updates, and an SMS-callback feature to initiate international calls for the cost of a local call were all rounded up under one roof. It had a problem, though: stability.

VoxOx 2, available for Windows and Intel Macs running Leopard but no longer for PPC Macs, truly looks like it's fixed the stability issue. Along the way, its publisher TelCentris, has gifted it with a robust Personal Assistant feature, a super-address book that attempts to collate all your contact info under one pane, and fax support--unexpected, but there it is. VoxOx 2 can fax.

VoxOx's Personal Assistant lets you manage multiple phones from one number.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Perhaps most importantly, VoxOx 2 comes with claims of more stable back-end support. The best features in the world won't matter if the program crashes or the feature dies mid-use. TelCentris improved the server support by becoming a universal Competitive Local Exchange Center, owning its own infrastructure, according to Kevin Kertz, CTO and co-founder of VoxOx.

This bore out, at least with the SMS Callback feature. When you register your cell phone number on VoxOx, you're provided with a phone number to text message. Send a note to that number with the number of the phone you'd like to call in the body of the message and you're soon connected but via local numbers for both parties. After the launch of the first version, this feature experienced frequent failures, but at least for today it worked well.

The Personal Assistant is the strongest new feature, and encompasses a wide range of tools.

Notably, it doesn't offer transcription, as Google Voice does. However, Google likewise lacks many of the features in the VoxOx Personal Assistant. When a person calls the free individual phone number that VoxOx provides for you, VoxOx can be set to turn on your personal assistant. Depending on which options you've selected, you can have the PA try to find you at numbers that you've entered, take voicemails, screen calls, and customize ringback and hold waiting music. You can also personalize responses for individuals or groups in your address book, or add a recording of your name.

VoxOx 2 emphasizes your contact list in the new interface.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

This service worked flawlessly, and the options panel for configuring everything was clear and easy to understand. I was expecting a much more chaotic interface, given how many different moving parts are involved, but that wasn't the case at all. The only catch, of course, is that you must give out the VoxOx number for the Personal Assistant to work.

There's a Web-based option for VoxOx for users who want or need to manage their communications from the cloud, but it's not as slick as the Google Voice interface and logging in was buggy when I tested it.

Other new features include several skinning choices for instant messaging, drastic improvements to the previously horrendous IM logging, support for Twitter, Facebook IM and MySpaceIM along with Google Chat, Jabber, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, ICQ, and Gadu Gadu. Users can update statuses and avatar pictures from within the VoxOx Contacts window, which has been moved to a frontal position as it is in other IM clients. There's a CID Spoofer for when you place a call from VoxOx but don't want your number to appear in the recipient's caller ID, and there's the super-address book.

VoxOx's revamped apps keep users focused on the tools they need.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

It's a searchable contact list that collates IM, e-mail, and phone contacts under one pane. It's not quite where it needs to be yet, with IM broadly supported but e-mail limited to Yahoo Mail's address book. There's planned expansion for importing address books from Gmail, Mac's Mail.app, Outlook, AOL, and Microsoft's Hotmail, but that hasn't arrived yet.

Future plans include opening an SDK for developers, mobile device synchronization, and an iPhone app.

Users are currently given 100 points for signing up, and can earn an extra 120 points for each user they recommend. Points can also be purchased from within the VoxOx interface at 100 points per dollar. VoxOx has made its all-in-one feature set its key selling point, so hopefully the stability problems that the program has faced in the past will stay there. It could be an incredible boon to users to get all these toys from one provider, and largely for free.

The first 200 CNET readers who sign up for VoxOx 2 will receive 1,200 free VoxPoints, which equals 1,200 free U.S./Canada calling minutes (or free texts). VoxPoints are also redeemable for international calling and texts at various rates. In addition, CNET readers to sign up within the first 48 hours of the VoxOx 2 launch will receive 200 VoxPoints--double the standard amount of free points given to new users upon sign-up. New users must sign up and SMS verify in order to get their free VoxPoints. To take advantage of the special CNET deal, go to http://signup.voxox.com/cnet2vox.

Multi-protocol messaging and VoIP communication client VoxOx is back with some new and impressive features amid claims of a more stable platform. Available for Windows and Mac, the freeware offers a robust Personal Assistant feature that includes call recording, call forwarding, call routing, and call screening, as well as expanded social-networking features and stronger back-end support to keep its multitude of services from getting disconnected.

VoxOx 2 is a robust communication tool.

(Credit: TelCentris)

VoxOx also has made a new-user sign-up bonus available to CNET Download.com users, which I'll explain at the bottom of this story.

The Personal Assistant feature introduced in the new version underlines VoxOx's attempt to snag users from its competitors. This is a robust, useful feature for anybody who needs to manage multiple phone lines or is trying to mitigate being "on call" all day, every day. In addition to the on-the-fly features mentioned above, the Personal Assistant can be set to answer all your calls, route calls based on who's calling as well as more standard uniform call routing, "eavesdrop" on voicemails as they're being recorded, set personalized ringback tones, and call recording that can be toggled at-will and in the middle of a call.

Combining the Personal Assistant with the individual phone number that VoxOx gives to all users, and the well-planned call forwarding that allows you to switch phones at will, and VoxOx makes clear its desire to be a one-stop communication hub.

Instant messaging support has been expanded in VoxOx 2. Along with current support for Yahoo, AOL, Google Chat, MSN, ICQ, and Jabber, the new version supports Facebook IM, MySpace IM, Gadu Gadu, and Skype. The new version also bakes-in Facebook status updates, and support for Twitter.

E-mail address book support has also been expanded. In addition to being able to import your contacts from Yahoo, you can now do the same for Google, Hotmail, AOL, Mac, and Outlook address books, too. The contacts are then filtered into a single interface. There's a notification icon that tells you which service the contact originates from, but the unified interface should make it far simpler to keep track of who you know and what service you know them on.

One of the more unusual features in VoxOx 2 is its fax support. Both inbound and outbound faxes are included as part of VoxOx's free feature set. The program automatically converts text documents to fax-appropriate signals when you're sending out. Incoming faxes are received as PDFs. The fax feature does not come with a usage plan limitation.

The useful SMS callback feature from the first version of the program is back, this time with stronger foundational support. VoxOx says that stability and failed callback issues should no longer happen with their new servers.

All outbound phone-based features in VoxOx are based on the number of minutes you have with them. Users are provided with 100 minutes when they sign up, and can earn more points for free via referrals and occasional VoxOx promotions like surveys. CNET readers can take advantage of a limited-time offer to gain more minutes for free.

The first 200 CNET readers who sign up for VoxOx 2 will receive 1,200 free VoxPoints, which equals 1,200 free U.S./Canada calling minutes (or free texts). VoxPoints are also redeemable for international calling and texts at various rates. In addition, CNET readers to sign up within the first 48 hours of the VoxOx 2 launch will receive 200 VoxPoints--double the standard amount of free points given to new users upon sign-up. New users must sign up and SMS verify in order to get their free VoxPoints. To take advantage of the special CNET deal, go to http://signup.voxox.com/cnet2vox.

I'll be writing a hands-on later today, but you can read previous coverage of VoxOx here and here. Mac users should note that the publisher, TelCentris, has discontinued support for older PowerPCs and OS X 10.4.

Update: VoxOx has extended the deal from Thursday, April 9, at 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. PDT. Also, $5 normally buys 500 VoxOx points, not 250 as previously stated.

Multiprotocol chat client VoxOx is offering a deal to CNET readers until 2:30 p.m. PST on Thursday, April 9. If you buy $5 worth of VoxPoints, instead of the usual 500 points, CNET readers will get 1,500 points. This is triple the number of points VoxOx is offering readers who sign on through VoxOx's own site. Each point converts to 1 minute's worth of talk time. New users will still receive the additional 120 free points, and can earn another additional 120 free points for referring a friend.

I reviewed the cross-platform VoxOx back in November, and it's been slowly improving on its potential to compete with better-known VoIP and multiprotocol chat clients. The most unique feature that it offers is CallBack, which users can initiate either from their computer or an SMS message to make international calls for the cost of a local one.

The program still struggles with stability and sluggish start-up times, and that makes it a hard sell. Still, if you need to talk internationally from your local cell phone, VoxOx offers an inexpensive solution. To take advantage of the promotion, enter "cnet1000" without the quotes when you download and install the program.

VoIP provider Skype plans to announce Tuesday that it will be working with SpinVox to provide its users with voice-to-SMS messaging in four languages.

This adds another option to Skype's messaging notifications for both Windows and Mac, and it includes a free e-mail notification or a simple SMS notification when a contact leaves a message.

Converting the messages from voice to text won't be cheap, however. Users will pay 25 cents per message, not including the standard Skype text message rate, and long voicemails could be spread out over as many as three messages. If the entire voicemail won't fit into three texts, then the message will be cut off. Also, if the message is garbled or otherwise unconvertible--because of poor signal quality, for example--SpinVox and Skype will still charge you for the failed conversion effort.

Words that cannot be understood will be converted into question marks or spaces in the body of the message. Fortunately for the cost-conscious, there are several options for cutting down on quickly running up a massive bill. Users can configure which of their Skype contacts will have their voice messages converted, so it's not an all-or-nothing deal. Messages will also only be sent after a 10-minute delay, so you don't have to worry about getting a text if you walk away from your desk for a few minutes. You'll have the option of configuring a maximum number of voicemail conversions per day, too. An obvious problem with that is missing that must-get voicemail, but at least the option will be there.

SpinVox with Skype will support English, Spanish, French, and German, and there are plans to incorporate SpinVox's current support for Italian and Portuguese, as well.

(Credit: Skype)

You don't need a fistful of dollars to make an international call, just a computer with a microphone, speakers, and one of the six applications we gathered together for you in this collection of free voice-chat apps (some offer upgrades to premium services.) As a bonus, all of these fine downloads offer video calls to let you put a face to a voice.

Voice chat for free on your PC

What if Digsby and Skype merged into one seemingly all-powerful VoIP and messaging communications tool? It's a question which, according to San Diego-based telephone company TelCentris, can be answered by VoxOx.

VoxOx, currently for Windows and Intel-based Macs with plans for Linux and PowerPC Mac versions to be released within six months, incorporates features that have not yet been seen all rolled into one package. It's got multi-protocol chat abilities, bolstered by messaging support on the most popular social-networking sites and support for short Web mail reading and writing. It offers a telephony service that includes call encryption; mobile-to-mobile calls initiated by either SMS or via a Web site; a free personal-assistant-style call-forwarding service; and a system for earning minutes by watching ads or responding to surveys.

The main interface of VoxOx intentionally mimics the iPhone.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Entering public beta Monday, VoxOx is able to do all this because the software is being developed by a telephone company, says TelCentris' CFO Michael Faught. "Part of allowing users to take control of their interconnected lifestyle is to allow them to click a button and fire out an e-mail."

One of VoxOx's aims, he said, is to make it as simple as sending an e-mail to initiate any kind of communication. When people are forced to use so many different programs to complete similar tasks, "it has become unmanageable."

Part of that simplification process includes making VoxOx's API open source, said TelCentris' CEO Bryan Hertz. They hope to create a similar open-source community that can build out features for VoxOx that they might not have the time for or even consider. This is a playbook page that Skype also uses to great effect: Skype has several hundred "extras" that most likely have not hurt user interest.

TelCentris' interest in expanding what it can do also comes from its current customer base. Hertz notes that the company provides services to more than a dozen phone companies, and provides hosted phone services to dozens of small to medium businesses globally, with customers ranging from the Philippines to Brazil.

In addition to the features listed above, VoxOx offers 120 free minutes of call time to all registrants at the U.S. rate; a free U.S.-based phone number; international calling; pay-by-minute upgrade plans; voicemail; customizable hold music; video conferencing with VoxOx contacts; two-way text messaging; and tabbed instant messaging for MSN, ICQ, AOL, Jabber, Yahoo, and Google.

To ramp up interest, VoxOx offers all users an additional 120 free calling minutes to every person they recommend who signs up. Users can also watch short advertisements or fill out surveys to earn additional minutes. They've got a sweet deal going for CNET readers, too:

VoxOx's keypad allows for on-the-fly VoIP.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

"The first 500 users to sign up for VoxOx through CNET will receive 1,200 minutes of free calling to U.S. and Canada phone numbers. The 1,200 minutes equal 1,200 'Vox Points.' These Vox Points are also redeemable for international calls at varied rates. Vox Points do not expire, and in coming months, Vox Points will also be redeemable for free gadgets, such as a Bluetooth headset and ATA box."

Click here to take advantage of this offer.

Users can currently share files up to 100MB via a generated download link that they can then share via e-mail or instant message. Mobile access is available from a mobile browser, iPhone, and WAP, with a planned native iPhone app.

Other planned features for the near future include an ATA upgrade for physical home phones, a personal assistant, fax support, the ability to route inbound text to VoxOx or your cell phone, video conferencing with non-VoxOx contacts, untabbed IM, group chat IM, Away message defaults to Social Status, Facebook IM support, and additional IM protocols. VoxOx hopes to incorporate support for LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube on the social-networking side, and Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, and Mac contact importing.

When you install VoxOx, it's hard not to note that the main Home interface looks like an iPhone. That was intentional, Hertz says. "The interface is skinnable, but the default looks like that for continuity with smartphones," Hertz said.

From there, square icons with rounded corners and highlighted by bright colors take you to 15 program features: contacts, a keypad for on-the-fly dialing, your calling and chat history, account settings, a setup Wizard, Call-Back, Reach-Me, Vmail/Fax, Hold Music, Vox Points, Updates, Invites, Web Portal, Mobile, and the Help button, which jumps to the Web forums, the FAQ, user guides, and videos. Paying users get voice and e-mail support, too.

Call-Back lets users initiate landline and mobile calls from either their computers or via SMS.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The Call-Back feature is what sets VoxOx apart from other VoIP services. Call-Back has two tabs in it, one for Web-initiated callback and one for starting the callback with an SMS. Under the Web callback, you set the country, country code, and area code and phone number for the number that you want to be reached at, and then enter in the settings for the person you're trying to call.

Hit Initiate Callback at the bottom of the pane. VoxOx will call you from a local number. Pick up and you'll hear ringing through the earpiece as if you've dialed a number. That's VoxOx calling the person at the second number you entered from a number that's local to them. When they pick up, you'll be able to talk as if you've made a long-distance call but without the long-distance charges. The process is simpler than it sounds, and in three tests the call quality for both me and the person I was speaking to was fine. There were no instances of tinniness or echoing.

Initiating the SMS Callback is, in some respects, even easier. Once you set your cell phone number in the interface, you send a text message from your phone to the number 1-323-649-9139. In the body of the message, you must type in 011 followed by the country code, the area code, and the phone number without any hyphens.

The default chat interface.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Shortly after, you should receive a phone call from the permanent VoxOx number that you've been assigned at the top of the main VoxOx interface. Answer it, wait a few seconds, and you'll hear ringing. If you're lucky, the person you're trying to reach won't be freaked out by the unfamiliar local number that's calling them and they'll pick up. I tested this with friends in Sweden and Australia, and again encountered no tinniness, no echo, and no delays.

Unfortunately, I did encounter one angry wife who did not think highly of me waking her up in the middle of the night. My attempts to blame misremembering the time change from Boston to Melbourne on VoxOx were strangely met with extreme derision.

A Home button at the top of the pane makes it easy to jump back to the main interface. The next feature, Reach-Me, lets users configure multiple call-forwarding numbers, as well as set the number of seconds one of them can ring before jumping to the next number. You can also set the number of seconds the dialed number will ring before Reach-Me kicks in, and whether your multiple call-forwarding numbers will be attempted simultaneously or in order.

The Contacts interface.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Given how much it can do, I expected VoxOx to be a massive piece of bloatware. Surprisingly, the installation process took around one minute, and at launch it was using around 90MB of RAM. This jumped up to around 380MB while running eight simultaneous chats and a telephony session--a bit high, but not outrageously so. The computer I tested it on had 2GB of RAM, and was running a fully loaded Firefox, an RSS client, and a jukebox, so I wasn't expecting great performance. However, VoxOx smoothly jumped from pane to pane and there was no sluggishness in its response time.

As you can tell from the list of planned features above, VoxOx is still very much in beta. Many of the features that will make it stand above its competitors haven't been fully rolled out yet, so it's a little hard to judge on its merits as it is. Because it encourages such heavy cross-pollination between cell phones and computers, it'd be great if there was a way to import cell phone contacts. You also cannot, as of yet, begin an SMS Call-Back and have it forwarded via Reach-Me to a different phone.

Even with those drawbacks, VoxOx looks to force changes in the telephony and instant-messaging market that favor users more than they do now--as long as we can all remember what time zone we're calling.

At the beginning of April, I met with VoiceCloud CEO Gerald Marolda to take a tour of the company's voice mail-to-SMS service. VoiceCloud, which relies on human translators instead of software to transcribe calls, competes with Spinvox, SimulScribe, and CallWave.

A month ago at CTIA Wireless, the hatchling service was just being introduced. Now everyone is invited to try. From the Web site, enter the invite code, "cloud," and your phone details to get started. Users will be able to test the application free of charge for about a month, Marolda says, before a pricing structure is imposed.

Related: Voice-to-text services seek a human touch.

Six Apart announced last night that it has sold off its free blogging service LiveJournal to Russian Internet company Vox, the blog publishing platform TypePad, and the professional-level blog software product Movable Type. LiveJournal was brought into Six Apart through an acquisition in 2005.

LiveJournal will be run by a new company, LiveJournal Inc., out of San Francisco, but owned by SUP. LiveJournal's seven employees (transfers from Six Apart) are currently working in the Movable Type offices.

What can we expect from the remaining three products at Six Apart? Alden wants his company to focus on building "community and content management systems," not just publishing platforms. This transition is already evident in Movable Type, which has a new (and expensive) add-on called Movable Type Community Services (see story: Six Apart is fixing forums). Among other features, the product lets end users mark other people as friends and track what they're doing. Just like a social network.

The free blogging tool Vox also offers interesting community features, like the capability to define who's in your blog "neighborhood," to make keeping track of your Vox friends easier. It also has a good system for restricting who can see your personal posts.

That leaves TypePad, the paid blogging service that, while capable, isn't currently a shining star of ad-hoc community, the way a contemporary general-purpose social site like Ning is. Alden confirmed to me that in 2008 TypePad will get Movable Type Community Service features like user recommendations on items, voting, and group membership. Vox will get these tools as well. Alden also said that the Six Apart's goal is not just to give bloggers tools to manage communities that spring up around their sites, but to link these communities together.

Moving into community management is a good direction for Six Apart. Communities--not individual bloggers--are the power brokers on today's Web. It's readers, en masse, who move markets. Six Apart's goal to empower bloggers with tools that turn readers into active community participants could leverage this power shift.

I'd like to see Six Apart partner with Ning to extend this vision. I don't think this will happen, though. It looks more like Six Apart is trying to clean up its business to make the company an easier acquisition target.

Disclosure: I worked with Chris Alden at Red Herring, the magazine he co-founded, from 1998 to 2001.

FriendVox has been on my radar for a few weeks now, and I finally gave it a go this morning. Its purpose is to link up to your list of Facebook friends and act as a go-between for on-the-spot instant messaging. The entire app runs in a set of small pop-up windows, and once you've given it the good graces of accessing your Facebook data, that's all it takes to get started. Considering Facebook doesn't yet have its own official IM solution, third-party developers are trying their best to come up with their own using the tools Facebook made available earlier this year.

FriendVox avoids going with the virtual desktop route like Mosoto, which I played with in its early stages, and other Web chat services such as Meebo, Mundu, and Yahoo Web messenger. The result is a good deal of clutter, unless you're good at managing your windows. For those that are willing to stick it out, you'll get a hard line to any of your friends who are using the service at the same time. Anyone who's not simply shows up with their name grayed out in a separate list. Clicking a buddy's name opens up a new window with very basic IM functionality that's about as functional as AOL's AIM Express, with emoticons and text-formatting options.

Change your status, and IM your Facebook friends with FriendVox.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In addition to its basic IM functionality, FriendVox includes some helpful notification features, like letting you know if you've got new pokes, group and friend requests, or messages in your inbox. It also shows everyone's status update feed, including your own, which can be updated in the same window with a separate authorization. FriendVox ties in with a really cool service called Socialistics, which provides several neat data visualizations to track friends and their Facebook activity. In its current iteration on FriendVox, you can see all their names in a large tag cloud, with the bigger names being those you have more activity with. If a name is darkened, it means they're online and you can begin a chat with them right away by clicking their name.

I'm impressed with FriendVox's minimalistic approach to getting people in the door. The service requires little in the way of user know-how to operate. Where it really takes a beating, though, is speed, as IM conversations are incredibly laggy, and pulling up your buddy list (which has no quick-launch tool from within Facebook) takes a noticeably long amount of time--something I assume is simply a scaling issue with its servers. Visually it's also not as appealing as Mosoto's efforts, and is missing some of those really cool features such as file sharing and a built-in music player. Again, I appreciate the idea of giving people a simple and focused tool.

I like seeing services like this pop up, but part of me wonders if it's even worth creating a new IM network for Facebook when so many of its users already have identities on other established networks. Considering Facebook already has a tool that will find your friends based on your IM credentials, there's the potential for something official in the near future. Ideally one of these third-party apps, or even Facebook could follow suit with something that can scrape together your friends' existing screen names and let you enjoy it alongside the rest of your social networking activities.