With a minimum help from us, they could develop an entire voice application in few hours. In contrast, they took few months to develop the same application in VoiceXML which they feel is not maintainable and had high learning curve.

Their only concern is this moment is their existing investment and we will work with them to resolve that. In fact, some of the concern they raised are the same which Yusuf blogged earlier - VoiceXML - Good, Bad & the Ugly.

And as I expected, they loved our VoicePHP - code-a-day website, check it out.

We’ve tried to minimize the impact to our customers. Inspite of it, please be aware that there might be a 1 hr downtime today and tomorrow between 2:30AM - 3:30AM EST. For any questions, please contact support@tringme.com

http://tringme.com/silverlightdemo/

It demonstrates the ability to make a call directly from the Microsoft Silverlight applications. To try it out, just enter a phone number and click on “Call Now” button.  Since this is a demo, the call will automatically be disconnected in 30 seconds. You can verify this to be a Microsoft Silverlight Widget by right-clicking on the widget.

Supporting VoIP over Silverlight required us to employ a neat little trick due to the current limitation of Silverlight - Silverlight does not provide access to the microphone. The trick was to use a backdoor flash widget to access the microphone.

So, although from a purist point of view, this may not be entirely done in Silverlight, nevertheless, it does opens the VoIP door to millions of Silverlight developers. There are silverlight developers who like to create telephony applications but due to the Silverlight limitation, it wasn’t possible so far. However, with this, they can now easily integrate telephony functionality in their Silverlight applications.Even though it uses flash on backdrop, Silverlight developers does not need to worry about it. All they have to do is to include a javascript in their HTML code which hosts their silverlight widget and call.

We welcome any comments & feedback.

As we know, Flash & AJAX have changed the way Web (2.0) has evolved. There is an entire new breed of interactive applications making web much more than just a set of pages. Similarly emerging VoiceXML & CCXML gave the interactivity to the voice world; unfortunately the later remained an isolated technology for the masses due to various reasons.

One of the key reasons for the popularity of Flash, RIA, AJAX has been the built-in support of the technology in the browsers. However, voice did not get that attention; mainly because a lot of infrastructure is required to build voice application, because of the complexity involved in building interactive voice applications and the need for optimum performance and carrier grade reliability. Even with the innovation on both voice and RIA fronts, something is required to bridge the gap and make voice accessible from RIA in a simple manner effectively.

With TringMe, we have tried to bridge this gap. With extension of our platform, TringMe opens up VoiceXML accessibility to millions of flash and web developers to easily, yet, tightly integrate voice and telephony without having to know the intricate details of call-signalling, routing, billing etc.

Developers now get virtually the same out-of-the-box experience since using the TringMe platform. They do not require anything else besides Flash and Web technologies to create rich voice and telephony applications. Whether it’s speech recognition, DTMF or Text-to-speech, TringMe’s solution provides it all so that the application can be really rich is providing the best possible user-interaction. Given the presence of flash all around, the simplicity of ‘distributing’ such widgets without any additional software download or installation makes this solution even more attractive.

Alongwith Flash, the VoiceXML capability is also accessible from Instant Messengers, TringMe MobileVoIP, Phones. In other words, one can use a phone, IM, Browser or any such means to interact with VoiceXML and TringMe platform.

We are working with key VoiceXML technology vendors to provide a fully integrated solution. Currently, we have launched this solution in private beta and is available for evaluation. We will be happy to enable it from our portal to select interested developers.

TringMe Developer resources, API documentation and sample code is available at http://tringme.com/developers.html

At this point, we are running into a strange issues with the Gtalk based telephony service with “tringme@gmail.com” ID. Our engineers are working on restoring this service at the earliest. Any inconvenience is highly regretted. As a workaround, you can add “tringmegtalk@gmail.com” as your friend in Gtalk and use that to make and receive calls as usual.

We will update the blog as soon as we have more updates regarding “tringme@gmail.com” id.

Thanks.
TringMe team.

Same discussion was carried out earlier today during a Alec’s squawkbox. Dan York wrote a lengthy post analyzing TringMe’s traffic pattern.  While all VoIP gurus have already provided a good information on traffic patterns of TringMe,  here is the insight directly from TringMe designers for the benefit of  the community:

TringMe uses TCP and it was a conscious decision. We developed a sophisticated congestion control and packet handling algorithms which allowed us to achieve the advantage of UDP over a reliable TCP connection at good extent. As Dan and others would have noticed, we send traffic in varying small and larger blocks depending on network conditions which is way different from a typical VoIP traffic patterns.  This kind of pattern was not meant to break any VoIP blockages,  however the goal was to get the best quality even on slower or congested links & we were able to meet the design goal successfully.

While we understand that TCP has its own overheads, a right algorithm can get the most juice out of it (sliding window is an example). We cater to Worldwide users calling from different networks and speed, using different technology (PPP, DSL, satellite etc), different MTU etc. TCP is better suited for such varied condition than UDP despite of its overhead. On today’s faster links - overhead can be ignored easily. On slower links, TCP stands out due to reliability and less retransmission and hence relatively better clarity.

As Andy Abrahamson pointed out in Alec’s Squawkbox call, TringMe’s quality was even better than Vonage which further validates our decision and algorithms. As you may already know, we are not alone in using TCP as there are companies like Yahoo which uses VoIP over TCP.

There are other reasons for using TCP like security (TLS) but we will share more details on it in future once we have released new updates which leverage those capabilities.

NAT is another reason where TCP has edge. As mentioned, this was a design goal of TringMe and our users or developers do not have to worry about NAT traversal or firewall when using TringMe Flash Client or API. TringMe’s design takes care of it beautifully. TringMe is NAT free.

In passing, please note that TringMe supports SIP and can interact with IAX2. As a matter of fact, we interconnect to various protocol including SIP, IAX2, Jingle, Skype (in lab) etc.

What TringMe offers to developers?

Phweet is a brilliant example of how a disruptive application was created using TringMe. Given TringMe’s platform capabilities, various innovative apps, mashups can be built. Whether you want to build a Web 2.0 application or a mashup that integrates voice or telephony from a PC or a phone, online or offline, TringMe can support all of that and more.

Whether you are a VoIP expert and need a specific codec or all you care about is a high quality voice, TringMe supports it all. Whether you have a billing backend or you want to not deal with it, TringMe can be used in either modes.

TringMe brings Voice 2.0 to you - All that matters now is the way you can use it.

However, good part is that TringMe is not completely blocked and you can still access TringMe in China by adding tringme.com to your hosts file. If you are Windows user, hosts file is located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc directory. For Linux users, it is located in /etc directory. We also have other workarounds for our users to access TringMe serivces and we will publish those too if requires. We will try best to let our chinese users ‘Happy Tringing!!!’

Update: We just got a message that block on TringMe has been removed. Thank you all who helped us.

Here is screenshot from China firewall test service

But that doesn’t mean you cannot do VoIP :). All you need to do is use TringMe’s flash-based widgets and flash-based phone. As captured by Andy Abramson, he made a call using TringMe’s flash widget using Phweet. Joanna comments on her blog that:

“It turns out there is a way to crack the VoIP calling restriction in the air. VoIP guru, Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch just had to speak to me on the phone (even though I had just seen him before taking off in San Fran). Since calling over Sightspeed or Skype didn’t work we tried a Flash based solution through Phweet (you use your Twitter account to sign in). Andy sent me an invite to talk and there he was. We had a 5 minute phone convo for free (beat that MagicJack!). He sounded great and there was no choppiness on his end“.

So, unless Aircell blocks TringMe, stay voice connected to the while you are flying in cloud.

It’s tringing high ..literally !!
 

For most of you who requested the presentation and those who couldn’t attend, here is the presentation:

| View | TringMe Website

Presentation can also be accessed and downloaded here

Even though TringMe offers a pure web-based Push-n-Talk widget (single call-leg) which addresses the above deficiency, we still see a need for a service which offers callback-based Click-2-Call service in a manner that’s relatively much cheaper.

That’s exactly where TringMe’s new product comes in. It attempts to handle the need for an innovation in this space head-on and assures to reduce the cost of Click-2-Call telephony by more than half, thereby accounting for substantial savings over recurring use. This new product is focused towards the enterprise Click-2-Call users who can tremendously benefit from it. TringMe employs a very simple, yet an innovative patent-pending technique which enables the call-back based Click-2-Call solution to be relatively cheaper when compared to the existing callback-based solutions.

How does it work? Instead of originating multiple calls (call-legs), TringMe intelligently notifies the called entity about the caller. Notified entity then automatically initiates a call back to the original Caller. The method of notification can be of any type, including sending an SMS containing the caller details OR using the data network.

For example, when a website visitor clicks on the click-2-call link on a website which uses TringMe’s solution, it will simply notify the caller’s phone by a special message using SMS or data network. Once the caller’s phone receives the message, it will automatically initiate the call to the caller and hence meet the same goal at a drastically reduced cost (refer to diagram below). The call can be either cellular or using our MobileVoIP or a combination of both depending on the cheapest method to the caller’s destination. For example, a local call could be cheaper by cellular, and long distance by VoIP (a typical scenario in markets like China & India) and hence be routed accordingly.

Although, this may sound like a very simple extension to how Click-2-Call solution works, it’s an important one since it caters to the mass market. For any decent size business website which uses Click-2-Call solution, the savings will be tremendous. For example, a website in India deploying Click-2-Call solution will have to pay massive 11-15 cents per minute (based on existing rates from TringMe and other Click-2-Call services) for India-India calls.  Whereas, using our new Click-2-Call solution, it may cost just as low as 2-3 cents per minute.  As you can see, the savings are substantial. India is just one example. Given that the solution can be applied worldwide and the solution is flexible enough to be applied in varying scenarios, the overall savings would be phenomenal.

All that a business website owner needs to do is to install our software on their mobile and specify the security and other call preferences. Our application works in the background and processes the notification messages from SMS and data network and make appropriate callbacks. We currently support Nokia Symbian 2nd and 3rd Series phones. Support for more phones and a desktop application is in progress. If privacy of number is required by the caller, it is also achieved by our MobileVoIP solution wherein a random phone number is generated on the fly which is then mapped to caller’s number.

We had already announced the API and additional APIs will be announced soon.

While the overall solution is catered towards the enterprise use, even individual users can make use of it to meet their personal needs.

Since we have filed for the patents on the key concept, TringMe will be an exclusive company which can offer you this solution and help you reduce the costs drastically. This new service is ready to use for any business and we are running a ‘launch special’ for the next few days that will essentially give companies who deploy our solution right away a ‘first to the market’ treatment including special services and rates from our end. We will infact customize and brand the solution for the first few companies at no cost. 

There are several companies who may be offering some flavor of Click-2-Call solutions but TringMe’s portfolio contains a broad range of products backed by patent-pending technologies to offer world-class, cutting-edge solutions. Because of our extensive portfolio, we can combine these services and products in innovative ways to cater to varying needs. For example. MobileVoIP in addition to the traditional calling support in Click-2-Call, Integrating Instant Messengers and other termination options etc.

As demonstrated in the past, TringMe will still continue to provide other innovative solutions in the overall next generation telephony paradigm. TringMe’s complete capability and products are available at tringme.com. If you have a unique requirement, let us know and we will work with you to provide a custom solution as well.