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If you spend much time on Facebook and don’t want to switch tabs of your browser too many times, Fmail brings Gmail straight to your facebook account.

It works really well and all your folders and contacts are properly imported. Unfortunately you loose all the ajax features you are used to.

If you want to try it out, just search for Fmail on Facebook. You are also prompted to match your Gmail contacts with your Facebook friends, something I find very useful.

Check it out and leave your comments here. Do you like this approach or you prefer to use the original GMail?

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The popular Israeli Mobile IM/VoIP service Fring is slowly introducing banner Ads inside their mobile clients. It seems not all the users are affected, but only a selected group. 

I don’t really know if it will work, anyway praises to Fring to be one of the first players to introduce this approach in the mobile VoIP space. However Fring is not alone since Talkster is another player which announced a similar strategy at the beginning of this year, despite the approach is different (ads into the call stream).

I think 2009 will be a “show me the money” year so I bet many players in this space will launch similar or alternative initiatives pretty soon.

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I just got a Nokia E65 for my wife. Yesterday I wrote a post where I was asking for advice since I had to quickly find a new 3G phone with a very good signal strength.

According to the advices I got, the Nokia E65 turned out to be a very good choice. Moreover, just by chance my sister-in-law just bought that phone two days ago and the performance in the basement of our house was great (I’m always speaking about the signal reception).

Unlike all the Nokia N series I got from the Nokia Blogger program, the built quality is way better, very solid plastic and very well designed keyboard. It’s pretty clear it’s an E-series, designed while keeping in mind a typical business usage. 

I’m playing with it right now (and syncing my wife’s address book) and after a couple of hours of usage, it’s definitely a thumb up.

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A couple of days ago I noticed Jeff Pulver was putting together a new conference in the field of social communications. 

Today he announced it officially: The Social Communications Summit will take place in New York next February 10-11 and he’s looking for talented and passionate speakers to bring their experience and standpoint of the current status of the intersection of IP Communications with Social Networks.

Deadline for the submission of speaking proposals is Dec 5th, so please get in touch with Jeff if you want to be part of this event.

This latest news confirms that February and March are going to be very hot for the IP Communications industry, starting with ITEXPO East in Miami on Febr 2nd to 4th, going through  this new event by Jeff in New York and ending with the second edition of eComm by Lee Dryburgh in San Francisco.

I like being part of this!

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I’m looking for a new mobile phone for my wife and the must-have features are:

1) 3G (must be used with Three)

2) very robust signal reception

After the birth of our second son we moved downstairs in a cellar-like floor, with many windows but underground, so the signal reception is not that great. Different mobile phones had quite different behaviors in terms of signal strenght:

Nokia N93: 1-2 bars, overall good, but now broken

Nokia N95: unusable

Nokia N73: unusable

Nokia 6120: 1-2 bars, not bad but the N93 was better

Any idea on the best 3G mobile phone in terms of signal strength? I look forward to your comments and recommendations! It doesn’t have to be a Nokia, whatever brand is fine.

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I read today about an interesting iPhone application which basically changes the natural behavior of the iPhone and lets VoIP applications use the 3G network instead of the default Wifi.

This application, Voipover3G, works with the alternative installer Cydia, specifically designed for jailbroken iPhones 3G.

After installing this app, VoIP apps which used to use the Wifi connection, like Fring and Truphone, will be forced to use the 3G data channel. Not having an iPhone 3G I couldn’t test it out, anyway I find it useful in certain contexts even if limited to jailbroken iphones only.

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Since the death of my faithful Nokia N95, I was wondering whether an iPhone 3G could be both a replacement and a good companion when it comes to use it for business.

When I say for business, I mean full access to email everywhere and a deep usage of voice calls. At the same time, the BlackBerry Bold is a smartphone I saw the first time in the US thanks to Jim Courtney who showed it to me during one of the famous wine dinners organized by pal Andy Abramson.

My experience with the iPhone is limited to the 2G version I gave to my wife a couple of months ago, bought in Cupertino. That model is not bad, battery duration is enough and overall experience is not bad. On the contrary, feedbacks I got from iPhone 3G users are not that great, aside from Dan York who seems much satisfied about that (his company, Voxeo, replaced Blackberries with iPhones).

The question is: what’s a better choice for business usage? Honestly, I never had a Blackberry myself but the feedbacks I’m getting everywhere is that those are solid and fully functional devices which make your business day really effective, regardless the location you are staying in. The new Bold seems to be a major upgrade of previous models and with a high definition display, 3G and Wifi included it offers you a wide range of possibilities when it comes to manage your business life on the go.

The new Storm, at a higher price, offers you an iPhone-like experience too, with a touch screen in place of the standard qwerty keyboard. Jim Courtney pointed out that a BlackBerry App Store will be available in March ‘09, making the gap between RIM smartphones and the iPhone even smaller.

What do you think? For business, BlackBerry Bold/Storm or iPhone3G? 

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Technorati Tags: jeff pulver, luca filigheddu

In a nutshell, according to this agreement, Junction Networks has been selected by edgeBOX to be the preferred voice provider for their “office-in-a-box” solution. edgeBOX is “an integrated device aimed at the SMB market and including a full-fledged IP-PBX, wireless access point, router, file, e-mail and VPN server”.

In this story what caught my attention is the following paragraph:

Calls between edgeBOX extensions, whether on-premise or around the world across Internet connections, will incur half-cent-per-minute charges. 

What? IP to IP voice calls are not FREE? Guys, I love this. Praises to Junction Networks and edgeBOX for this brave choice! While someone could see this as a downside of this service, I look at it as a great innovation and potentially the beginning of a new era for VoIP.

On-net VoIP calls have always been offered for free, without any charge. To my knowledge, every VoIP service out there doesn’t charge for IP to IP calls. This could work in the past, but in times where there is a new VoIP service coming out every day and when you offer SMB services to companies whose traffic is mainly on-premise, how can you make money and make your customers happy at the same time? 

This is a great way to lower monthly fees and avoiding long term contracts, something companies don’t always want to deal with. Small companies sometimes don’t trust on VoIP services completely, thinking quality could be an issue. With this approach they don’t feel to be bound to a certain service for a long time, so it definitely helps to shorten the sales cycle. And, we are not talking of a fortune, it’s half-cent per minute

For more information about this new collaboration, take a look at the official press release.

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Lee Dryburgh, man behind the eComm conferences, hosts a private dinner for everyone involved in this space, a sort of kick-off meeting for the upcoming eComm Conference taking place on March 3-5 2009 at the San Francisco Airport Marriot.

Only 80 seats are available and 50 are taken already. If you want to attend, please get in touch with Lee through the eComm Facebook group.

The aim of the dinner is to simply be a light-weight social-networking
gathering of those interested in emerging communications. By
light-weight I mean zero organisation except for lets meet at this
time and place for dinner. The hotel informs me that the charge for
the three course meal including two alcoholic beverages will be 75.00
USD/head. It’s cash only but the hotel have informed me they can
provide individual receipts.

The room is booked for 7pm.

Unfortunately I cannot make it this time (next trip to the Bay Area should be in January), but I wish all the friends and colleagues attending a pleasant and enjoyable time together.

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