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Jaxtr, the dial-around service (see Jaxtr makes click-to-call really simple) that lets you make free calls to those people who have at one point called you via the Jaxtr widget, is launching a new service that lets you bypass the step of first connecting with callers via the Internet.

Now you can make "out of network" calls directly from you mobile phone to anyone in the world. These calls aren't free, though. As in Skype, if you want to use this service to call people on regular phones, you've got to buy credits on the system against them. Rates are either good or great, depending on where you're calling: For example, calling a landline or mobile phone in China is one cent a minute, but a call to a mobile in the U.K. is 15 cents a minute.

If you have the credits banked, you can now call any phone in the world from your mobile, via the Jaxtr service.

(Credit: Jaxtr)

In order to make out-of-network calls, you call a central Jaxtr number that's local to you, and then tell it who you want to reach. Then it calls you back and connects you--the typical dial-around procedure. But with Jaxtr, you can save the incoming number and use it the next time you want to reach the same person.

Skype has shown that a free telephony service can turn its free users into paying customers. Jaxtr also has another revenue stream: It has a free SMS service, in which message lengths are even more limited than normal text messages to Jaxtr can insert paid 40-character-long ads at the ends of messages.

Jaxtr is also announcing that it has closed a second round of funding: $10 million, led by Lehman Brothers. Jaxtr's first round was also $10 million, and the initial investors are contributing in this B round.

Jaxtr CEO Konstantin Guericke, who co-founded LinkedIn (and who still owns a piece of that company), believes that phone services are the best way to make money from social networks. "Business happens on the phone," he says, and "the phone is on the path of apps that are monetizable." Certainly, providing a way for users to save money in what is currently a $60 billion market, as international telephony is, according to Guericke, has some potential upside, at least until the telcos lower calling rates to more sensible levels

Lonely venture capitalist seeks chat with willing entrepreneurs.

I'm having a hard time appreciating Jaxtr's latest service, Cafe Jaxtr. It's a "talk network," where you can find people who are interested in certain topics, and then phone them to chat. If you have hobbies, and like people calling you out of the blue to talk about them, you can set up your own profile page so they can reach you.

The thing I don't get is why anyone would want this, but apparently I'm either too old or too antisocial to dig it. Konstantin Guericke, Jaxtr's chief executive officer, says his 10-million-strong user base is going to eat this feature up like candy.

All phone numbers are proxied through Jaxtr so you never know the other person's real phone number, nor do you have to give yours out. It also includes configurable privacy settings: You can have the system ring your phone whenever someone is trying to reach you, or it can send all incoming calls to voice mail, or you can let through only approved contacts.

Users get 100 minutes per month for free in the U.S. (it's different elsewhere). Premium accounts will have more talk time.

Jaxtr widgets can easily be added to social network pages, but Cafe Jaxtr is a person-to-person communications channel. For truly social chat, see the new Equals, which lets you set up a five-person voice chat via a Facebook application.

Previous Jaxtr story: Startle your friends with Jaxtr's new tools.

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."

(Credit: CNET Networks)

YackPack, the group Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) chat and messaging service we covered last month, has launched a new zero-configuration widget to complement its chatting service. The new widget can be placed in blogs, Web sites, social networking profiles, and forums--practically anywhere embeds are allowed. It's dead simple with a single button you push to talk with others. There's no registration, and no need to install any software--it just works.

The widget has three flavors: one that starts live (meaning you hear others chatting whether you want to or not), an opt-in that requires user input to begin, and a custom URL version that will work across your entire site, no matter how many different pages you embed it in. In all the versions, there's a small number in the bottom right-hand corner that will let you know how many other people are using the widget. If you've had enough of their chatter, there's an X button on the top right to put the widget to sleep.

The Walkie-talkie widget joins YackPack's YackPlayer widget, which lets users embed and share audio messages in a way similar to Jaxtr's VoiceBlast, which we wrote about earlier this week. See also Snapvine.

We've embedded the widget after the break to speed up our page load, so just click "Read More" to begin chatting with other Webware readers.

We covered Jaxtr back in December. It's a cool telephony tool that lets you put a "call me" icon on your blog page, social network profile, or your e-mail signature. Today the company added a few new features that are worth checking out.

First, there's the startler tool. Over the phone, you can record a "VoiceBlast" greeting for your Jaxtr widget that plays whenever the widget is loaded on a page. When someone visits your blog or MySpace page, they'll hear you talking to them as soon as the page loads.

That is awful.

Fortunately, the autoplay feature can be disabled, as it is in my widget below. You have to press "play" to get the voice message.

Also new: The capability to send a text message directly from the widget to the user, or to send a "stealth message" that goes straight to voice mail instead of ringing the Jaxtr user's phone.

Jaxtr is at its core a dial-around service that can let you give different phone numbers to all the people who call you, each in your callers' local area code. That's a powerful service that could save people a lot of money. The new widget functions look useful as well, which maks Jaxtr unique, I believe: It offers both cute tools for tarting up Web sites as well as a money-saving telephony application.

See also Snapvine and Ether (review), and for fun, Razz.

GrandCentral, the cell phone enhancement service we covered last year, is adding really handy customizable instant call widgets to their service next week. The new widgets work a little bit like Jaxtr's widget we checked out in December. You can create customized voicemail widgets with personalized greetings for your callers. There are three different styles of widgets to choose from, and they can be placed on social networking profiles, blogs, or Web sites.

GrandCentral is also adding a way to share your voicemail with other people by letting you embed it like you would with their call widgets. There's arguably an issue of privacy here, but on more than one occasion I've received a voicemail that I've wanted to forward to friends and family without having to deal with the cumbersome voice interface from my mobile provider.

During the demo last night at O'Reilly's ETel Launchpad event, GrandCentral's CEO Craig Walker showed the use of the new widgets in an eBay auction, which actually looked like a neat way for potential buyers to ask you questions without having to disclose your personal number. Whether answering buyer's queries over the phone compared to e-mail is a good use of your time is questionable, but the interface is very slick.

GrandCentral still hasn't sorted out some of our original qualms by employing a mobile interface or a plug-in for calendar apps like Outlook and iCal to help manage call rules. Regardless, it's a compelling service for people looking to manage their phones for personal and business use.