Webware

(Credit: JaJah / eHarmony)

Online dating services eHarmony and Match.com on Thursday plan to begin using a special version of JaJah that lets users make anonymized voice calls to people they're interested in.

Unlike streaming video, which is a hot trend in online dating sites, users are limited to standard telephone communication like voice calls, SMS, and voice mail. Both sites are using a version of JaJah that's focused specifically on privacy permissions. Users can't just call someone without the person on the other authorizing it first. The same goes for both voice and text messages. Also, neither party gets the other person's real phone number, meaning you can safely use your regular phone without worrying about your number getting in the wrong hands.

Along with the security features that let people connect for the first time, it's also simple to cut off communication entirely. If either party decides that they no longer want to talk to the other person, it's as simple as de-authorizing them. This keeps them from being able to call again, and relegates them to using the dating service's standard messaging tools.

JaJah says the service has been in limited beta testing on Match.com since early March. Several other dating sites are also providing it for some of their members, although those sites have not yet been announced.

If you're already bored of getting English translated to Mandarin through JaJah, TwitterFone, another mobile service with voice recognition savvy, has put out a neat update that's sure to burn through your mobile phone minutes. You can now listen to the last 10 tweets from your Twitter pals and respond to any of them that you'd like using the same speech-to-text system in place for publishing tweets of your own.

It's certainly not as fast or easy to parse voice messages as the mobile version of Twitter (m.twitter.com), but if you're on an older handset and don't have a data plan, this is about as easy as it gets to stay in touch with Twitter without buying new hardware. It's also nice enough to list the full names of Twitter users, not just their user name, which could be a good or bad thing depending on how well you know the people you're following.

One thing that was slightly off for me was the time stamping, with tweets from just a few minutes ago being listed as a full hour behind, at least according to TwitterFone's automated system. I'm assuming this is a kink that will be worked out in the future. Otherwise, if you're a big fan of sitting back and enjoying some blurbs from your friends while on the go (spoken like sweet nothings by a female robot), then TwitterFone is right up your alley.

TwitterFone is still in private beta.

Related: Dial2Do: Speak your Twitters, e-mails, SMS messages and more

Telephony service JaJah has launched two completely different voice tools that are both useful in their own right. The first is a new "concierge" service that lets you call any of your contacts with voice dialing using a special local access number. It works even if your handset does not support voice dialing, and will connect you to that person as long as you've synced up your address book with JaJah's.

The other service, called Babel, is more useful for people visiting Beijing as part of this summer's Olympics. By calling a special phone number you can leave a voice message that will be translated to Mandarin in just a few seconds. It's meant to be used as an on-the-go tool for English speakers who are over there to watch the games and who might run into translation issues while getting around.

Unfortunately, Babel requires calling a local U.S., U.K., or Australia local access number to access it, as there's not currently one for China. The good news is that if you're in the depths of a local Chinatown in one of these supported countries, you'll be able to ask for directions or order a dish off a restaurant menu using your phone instead of having to point to it on a menu.

I gave Babel a spin earlier this morning and had mixed results. You might as well give up for things like URLs or long words. Even when I spokes as slowly and as clearly as possible, it managed to flub up more than half of the words in some cases including classics like turning "point" into "porno" and "get" into "Georgia." Regardless, its speed is truly impressive as it spits back results in just a few seconds. You can view my trials with it in the video below, or give it a spin yourself at 1-718-513-2969. You can also find the other local access numbers for the U.K. and Australia here.

If you're a native Mandarin speaker, I'd love to hear how this does with English translations. Let me know in the comments.

Yahoo announced on Tuesday that it's no longer going to power Yahoo Messenger's Internet telephony service with in-house technology: the company has inked a deal with start-up Jajah to replace its phone-to-PC and PC-to-phone communications.

Under the agreement, Jajah will start providing the service for Yahoo's "Phone In" and "Phone Out" features, which allow members to make calls to landline and mobile phones, starting in the third quarter of 2008. Yahoo's telephony option is a paid service; Jajah will be responsible for processing the payments, and providing customer support and the network infrastructure.

Jajah's calling rates to and from the United States are about 2.9 cents per minute.

Last year, Jajah introduced an option to let users place calls without using their computers. It has partnered with would-be rival Jangl to take on bigger voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) players like eBay's Skype.

Founded in Austria but now headquartered in Silicon Valley, Jajah has amassed 10 million users in two years of operation; Yahoo Messenger boasts 97 million users but has not released data on how many of them pay for premium voice services. Terms of the deal between the two companies were not disclosed.

The "dial-around" phone service, Jajah, just launched a new service that lets you access it without going near a PC.

Dial-around services usually work by asking you what number you want to call. Then the service will make two calls, one to that number and one to your phone. The services then connect the two phones via their own VOIP networks. Calling rates on dial-around services are low since traditional telephone networks are only used to make two local phone calls.

Jajah assigns local numbers to overseas phones.

Jajah's latest trick is that it can assign a local Jajah Direct number (local to you) to anyone you regularly call. For example, if your phone is in the 415 area code and your mother is in Spain, you can tell Jajah what her number is and it will give you a 415 number for her. You program that number into your cell, and use it to dial her. You'll be charged by your mobile phone company for a local call (probably nothing), and 3.4 cents a minute by Jajah. Which is a great rate. However, rates vary. If your mom in Spain is on a mobile phone, the call is 21.8 cents a minute. Some other countries aren't a bargain to call no matter what kind of phone the other person is on. So check the rates for calls you want to make before you sign up.

You can also get new Jajah Direct numbers for your contacts without using a browser. Jajah has access numbers in 19 cities worldwide (more coming) that you can call to get a local-to-you number assigned for anyone in the world.

There are other dial-around services and many other ways to make low-cost or free phone calls. But this is a good weapon in the arsenal against overpriced long distance.

Start-up IP telephony providers Jajah and Jangl are teaming up to take on the competition, the companies said Thursday.

The companies are part of a new generation of voice-over IP providers that have crept up recently hoping to replicate the success story of Skype, which was bought by eBay two years ago for $2.6 billion. The market is already crowded with dozens of these small players. Typically at this stage of the game, start-ups are too busy duking it out against each to forge partnerships, but executives at Jajah and Jangl say it makes sense for them to partner even though some of their products may overlap.

"It is rare to see companies at this stage do something like this," said Michael Cerda, CEO of Jangl. "But it's such a confusing market out there and the press and VCs often lump all VoIP providers together. But our strategies and technologies are really very different. And when we sat down together, we realized they're actually complementary."

Jajah is focused on providing low-cost international calling. Already it has the ability to terminate calls or transfer calls from the Internet to the local telephone network in more than 122 countries around the world. Earlier this year it received funding from the German phone company Deutsche Telekom. And it has ambitions to grow into a major telecommunications platform provider in the future.

Jangl, on the other hand, is focused on providing secure phone calling for social-networking and dating Web sites. The service essentially provides alternative local phone numbers that can mask a person's actual phone number, so that they don't have to give out a personal telephone number to strangers.

But while their focuses may be different, Cerda and Frederik Hermann, director of global marketing for Jajah, say they see benefits in working together for both companies. For example, Jajah is about to launch an in-call advertising platform. The way it works is when a user is being connected to a call, he has the option of listening to a short 10-second advertisement. As a reward for listening to the commercial, the user earns credit, which can be used to defray the cost of making future calls over the Jajah network.

Jangl, which claims to be on some 40 million social-networking profiles on sites such as Match.com, says it brings an important target audience to advertisers because its service is already integrated into the media-rich social-networking world.

"Jajah brings the ads and we bring the customers," Cerda said.

Also as part of the deal, Jangl will be able to terminate calls onto the regular phone network from the Internet in all of Jajah's 122 countries. Today Jangl only offers termination service in 32 countries.

"Over the past two years, we've built a huge back-end system for terminating calls all over the world," Hermann said. "So we're able to allow Jangl to use that resource and we recover a small margin on that."

But Jajah and Jangl's main competitor Jaxtr says the companies are merely running scared. "I see it simply as the weak banding together," said Konstantin Guericke, CEO of Jaxtr.

One thing is for certain, partnerships are tough to manage no matter the size or stage of growth of the companies involved. But who knows? Maybe this partnership will be a prelude to a merger. Executives from Jajah and Jangl haven't ruled out the possibility, but they each say it's not on the table right now.

"Merging the two companies might make sense at some other juncture in the future," Cerda said. "But both companies are still so young. And they have something they want to be when they grow up. And we have something we want to be when we grow up."

JaJah is an emerging "dial-around" service. From your computer, you tell it who you want to call, and it dials your phone, then the other party, and connects you to each other. The advantage of using a dial-around product like this: cost. JaJah charges 3 cents a minute for international calls.

(Credit: JaJah)

The iPhone's strong Web browser should make it a great platform for JaJah, and JaJah just created a special iPhone version of its site, FreeYouriPhone.com. You use the slick interface and big screen to initiate a call, then wait a second for the iPhone to ring you before it connects to the other side.

Unfortunately, this is an instance where the iPhone's browser-only model for third-party applications fails us. The Safari browser does not, apparently, have access to the iPhone's contact list (or calendar). That's a good thing from a security perspective--you wouldn't want any old random site reading your iPhone's internal directory--but it stinks for communications services like JaJah. Who wants to have to enter phone numbers again into an iPhone that already has them stored?

Also, in my testing, the JaJah iPhone site wasn't quite cooked. The interface took up a tiny portion of the iPhone's screen, and was unreadable without a lot of two-finger zooming. That's fixable, of course. But the deeper integration issue may not be.

See also my favorite dial-around product, CallWave (review), as well as other creative telephony services Jangl, Jaxtr, and GrandCentral (news).