July 31, 2006
IM Text/VoIP Lowdown
Last week was a busy one in the IM industry, for both regular text and VoIP IM clients, with loads of announcements.
Gizmo Project, a hopeful competitor to Skype, announced permanent free calling to 60 countries, for registered members. Skype couldn't beat that, but they did come out with a new Mac version and a Skype toolbar that integrates with Office products, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Clicking on a number within one of the apps triggers SkypeOut. iSkoot offers Skype-based mobile-to-PC (and vice versa) calling.
I haven't counted how many plugins Skype has, but if it doesn't have at least 180, then they'd better move over for Yahoo Messenger 8, which does have that many plugins. Once purely a text IM, it now has even more VoIP features than the new MSN Live Messenger (which it is also compatible with).
Yahoo also recently opened their IM to developers. Could it really be? Well, don't get too excited, as they're still not compatible with open source IMs such as Google Talk, Gaim, Trillian, Gizmo Project andothers. [I'll have a review of Yahoo Messenger 8 later on today.]
Not to be completely outdone, Google Talk added a couple of new features including file transfers, voicemail, and sharing info about the music you're listening to. As Michael Arrington of Techcrunch points out, Google Talk is only available for Windows computers.
And if the IM member emails I've been getting are any indication, several other IMs will be releasing upgrades. Services to support these IMs for mobile devices are being revamped as well. More details when Ifind out more.
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