Good news! The folks from fring just announced today that the first version of fring for the Internet Tablet is now available for download. For those who are not familiar with fring, it lets you make free calls and live chat with all your fring, Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM friends.
fring is available in all sorts of platforms — Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Java ME, and now Maemo. If you are connected to a high-speed connection, calls made to other mobiles running fring is free. Calls however to landlines and regular cellular contacts can be made via SkypeOut or via SIP.
Nokia has just announced the ‘Internet Communications Software development update 2‘ for OS2008. The new update features support for more Instant Messaging protocols (mostly all of what Pidgin supports but not all protocols are currently active), local network chat, a chat log history viewer, and SIP support.
This update is BETA. Note that you have to be in ‘red pill mode‘ in order to install the update. Some limitations still exist such as, no audio/video call support for the new protocols and local network chat, no avatar support for local chat, and no new contact authorization for the new protocols.
The new list of supported IM and SIP protocols are as follows:
IM: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo
I haven’t installed this update yet on my Internet Tablet so if anyone would be kind enough to take a screenshot of the new protocols screen as well as the local network chat screen, that would be great!
You’ve heard the buzz about Mauku, the excellent Jaiku client for the Nokia Internet Tablet. Mauku v0.3.0 finally launches as an open source software tomorrow, Thursday, November 8, 2007. Hendrik Hedberg, the primary developer of Mauku, is holding a virtual celebration party over at the #mauku Jaiku channel at 16:00 GMT (11:00 am EST) tomorrow. Everyone is encouraged to drop-in and introduce themselves.
If you don’t have a Jaiku account yet, Hendrick will try his best to send invites to everyone who intend to join the party. To ask for an Jaiku invite, all you have to do is PM your email address to Internet Tablet Talk member Mauku Launch.
For me, the promised addition of Skype to the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet has meant the ability to connect to millions of Skype users for free voip calls — a network far larger than Gizmo and Google Talk offer — and, of course, video internet calls.
Maybe I’ve been missing the boat on this.
A forum post here at ITT alerted us to a post at jkontherun with a photo of Skype running on the N800 and a few pieces of information: July. No video yet.
No cam calls? What’s the point? I thought.
And then I wondered why the photo showed a “Buy Skype credit” link in the app. You only use that when you pay for Skype calls, which is only when you’re calling someone who doesn’t have Skype.
Yikes!
Will I be able to call anyone on any landline or cellphone whatsoever from my Internet Tablet? Looks like it to me.
That, I think, is maybe going to ease my unhappiness at having to wait for Skype cam calls. More than a lot, I should say.
Update: Two days a week I work from home, and I tie up the house phone for an hour at a time with weekly conference calls.
The cellphone reception right where we are (at the bottom of a hill) is poor, else I’d consider our cellphones as alternate home phones.
In the past, we’ve had two lines, but we never knew when we needed the second line and the expense has never seemed justified. But what a pain it is sometimes having just one phone line.
My “use Skype for a second line” and “well, use Gizmo then” efforts were abysmal failures. Maybe it was my cheap headset. But things didn’t work out. And I sure didn’t like being tethered to the upstairs computer anytime I wanted to make a call.
I realize now that my N800 and 770 aren’t two new phones. They’re two new phone lines. (Hey, with two children entering precocious years, I might need more than two additional lines.) Low rates, too — $30/year for unlimited calling to regular phones on Skype (eg, $2.50/month) and just 1.9 cents per minute at Gizmo with no minimum monthly.
Could be a very easy way to enable each of us to be able to talk (and wander around the house!) at the same time.
Look, to start with, the term used for the killer app for the Nokia Internet Tablet is not going to be “video calling.”
“Video calling” is so last century.
What we’ll call it when we can see the person we’re messaging is anybody’s guess. Maybe “cam calls.” Or VidIP (video over IP). Or VM (visual messaging).
“Video calling” is what the telecoms will charge hundreds of dollars for. It’s not what NIT users will be doing.
With a large universe of Skype users, NITs make dandy phones. But you know what? I’ve got phones up the, um, wazoo.
I haven’t had a tremendous experience with Nokia’s very-beta internet calling, but what I’ve had makes me think that webcam plus VoIP is less like a phone call and more like IMing without typing.
When my kids tried out the N800 look-at-me calling, they didn’t act like it was a phone. They stayed connected for forty minutes or longer and treated the NITs like video walkie-talkies, roaming around the yard (and neighbors’ yards) and even playing “you can see what I’m looking at” hide-and-seek.
I tried but wasn’t able to connect when an N800 was temporarily at grandma’s. Connecting to her, I expect, would have been more like a phone call with faces.
But I think the IM generation will make this walkaround webcam into just a really practical — no texting charges! no keying! — form of visual messaging, with bursts of messaging interspersed with periods of being connected but not communicating.
Thoughtfix advised me this week that webcams are becoming standard issue in the second-generation UMPC tablets, which means Skype cam calling will work between the Windows and Linux tablet communities.
And you put mobility + visuals + internet-pricing together and you have a killer app for the, um, VM generation.
A first for me: on the train ride in from Montclair today, the fellow sitting next to me was another Internet Tablet user, which we discovered when I pulled out an N800 to work on. Having a particular interest in the Gizmo Project, he suggested we talk later, Gizmo to Gizmo, N800 to N800 (or maybe it was N800 to 770).
As it happens WiFi is conscientiously blocked where I work, so I’ll have to try this later, perhaps tonight. But a visit to the Gizmo Project (from which I’ve been absent, lo this last half year) shows that versions for the N800 and the 770 are both available (not to mention the Nokia N80, one of the six or more WiFi-capable Nokia cellphones). (Screenshots link from here [N800] and here [770].)
Gizmo, of course, is SIP-based VoIP, with free computer-based calls (that includes Internet Tablets) to other Gizmo users or any SIP-based software, such as Google Talk. This is as opposed to proprietary approaches like Skype. The Gizmo Project’s value-add is that it offers users the option to pay nominal fees to connect to landline and mobile phones.
I’ve used Gizmo, and I’ve used Skype, and I’ve used Google Talk, and I’ve used Vonage, and I’ve used cellphones (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile), and so on, and so on. (Landlines!) We all have. I know that pointing to another way to talk to people doesn’t make your heart beat faster, even if it does use a non-proprietary protocol. And I can scarcely think of times when I’ve had fewer than 2 or 3 options available to make a call at one time or location. But …
But Gizmo lets you talk using your Internet Tablet to anyone with any phone. Now. (Actually, dating back to July. Some months yet before Skype joins the fray.) That’s a big step up from “talk to other people with Google Talk on their computer.”
Sometimes I’m so busy with getting somewhere, I don’t see that the landscape has changed. Drastically.
Maybe Gizmo will make my heart beat faster after all …
In the blitz about the new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, one thing that seems to be underplayed in my opinion is Nokia-Skype collaboration to “develop a new mobile experience.”
With the N800, Skype frees itself from desktops and laptops. Now Skype is mobile, like any cellphone.
With Skype, the Internet Tablet acquires real phone capabilities, able to connect not just to millions of Skype users’ computers but to any phone.
But beyond that, you have video with your conversation. And not at the sky-high cellular carrier prices but at the opposite end of the price spectrum where VoIP and Linux and the internet in general are camped.
See, for instance, Festoon, where there are Skype and Google Talk video plugins. Up to 8 callers with cameras can participate in a Skype video conference with Festoon without bankrupting themselves. Who knows? I expect Nokia-Skype will have its own video plugin by the time the collaboration comes to fruition in six months, don’t you? With all the software comfortably built-in, of course.
So the N800’s webcam and WiFi and mobility make Skype limitless. And Skype makes the N800 a true two-way communication device, where the walkaround web meets the talk-all-day crowd. What a combo!
The new version of Internet Tablet 2006 OS has passed from beta to release. Don’t know what date that was official, but it had been promised for the end of the second quarter, which was Friday. I consider anything before start of business today, Monday, as being on-time, so congratulations are in order for Ari Jaaksi and his crew.
The big news of this second major OS release for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is of course the capability to make VoIP calls and to use Nokia-supplied instant messaging, both via Google Talk. Users of the beta have noted faster, more reliable operation in this release as well. A large “finger” keyboard for easier input is a notable addition.
We heard about it from Ari Jaaksi’s blog, which includes five screen captures and a pointer to tableteer.nokia.com, a 770-specialized site that provides visitors who arrive there on a 770 with special content (you get the regular Nokia 770 page with other computers). It is oriented towards new users, at least at present, with guidance on how to take advantage of the 770’s capabilities.
Btw, there’s a new Flash animation showing off the 770 at Nokia.com.
We know now that the 2006 OS will come with at least one new application pre-installed — Google Talk, with its instant messaging and VoIP phone capabilities.
Since Nokia has been promising IM and VoIP by mid-2006 for 51 weeks (hey! one more week till the announcement anniversary!), we knew this was coming.
I wonder if there will be any other pre-installed applications? Maybe FBReader, the world-class e-reader, for instance. We know that the 770 is an ideal e-book reader and that e-books are becoming more significant.
Or maybe there will be some additional games — Nako, Battlegweled and IceBreaker seem obvious candidates. Maybe a sturdy text editor to supplement Notes. Or built-in XTerm and CPU/MEM load graph. I would add PIM apps to this list, if there were any such available. I’m not envisioning the Nokia developers creating new apps with so much already on their plate.
I’ve definitely made my opinion known that FBReader is a natural application for the Nokia 770. But maybe not everyone agrees. RemoteUser (aka Gene Mosher) believes in the 770 as a remote control device. A whole crowd is making it a mapping/GPS displaying device. Not to mention others developing its audio and video playing side.
If Nokia isn’t going to pre-install all of these apps, and is wary of picking only one or another of them, I hope Ari Jaaksi and his crew provide a good clean automatic way to install and update them that even a rank beginner will be able to follow, as they’ve hinted will happen. If there are “click to install” links to add some of these apps, that will be the next thing to “pre-installed.”
