Zoep - A Free Phone for Firefox

Zoep, an Internet Telephony service, have released Zoep Browser Phone for Firefox users. Zoep Phone is a Firefox addon that lets you make free calls to other Zoep users from your Firefox browser.

PC to PC calls are free and like other popular services there is a pre-pay PC to Phone option. Zoep can communicate with other open Jabber based services like Google Talk for Instant Messaging.

Zoep Firefox extension is currently for Windows only and requires Firefox version 1.5. Voice-mail, SMS and an inbound phone number to accept incoming calls from landlines or mobile phones are expected in future versios of Zoep.

Zoep Website
Install the extension
Source of this info

IBM Instant Messenger Linked With Google, Yahoo And AOL

Customers of Time Warner's AOL, Google's Gtalk and Yahoo's Yahoo Messenger will be able to communicate freely to users of IBM's instant messaging system.

The feature will be available free-of-charge in the Lotus Sametime v7.5, combining IBM's market to Yahoo's 60 mln users, and AOL's 43 mln users.

Community Chat - multi-room cross-platform web chat application

FlashComs, a developer of flash based communications, has released Community Chat, a multi-room cross-platform Web chat application. Community Chat can be installed to any Web server both under UNIX/windows platform and does not require any additional software. The Chat can be integrated with a Web site user's database to import user login and personal details into chat. Apart from advanced text formatting, the Chat includes other user options: sound settings include volume control, mute option, different sounds choices for incoming, outgoing, private, and system messages. In addition to default rooms created by administrator, users can create their own rooms and invite chat users to join them. Community Chat users can block all incoming messages from un-welcome chatters. A user can be added or removed from a personal black list at any time. Chat availability status can be changed by clicking on one of the status icons.

List of the features:

• Advanced Text Formatting
• Users Database Integraton
• Chat Status Indicators
• Moderator/Administrator Control

and more.

Information about this product is available here.
Screenshots
Demo

Internet Call Company to Sue Google for $5bn

Google is being sued by a small New York internet call company that claims to hold patents for the technology that enables voice calls to be made over the internet. The New York-based Rates Technology said it would probably seek damages of about $5bn. It alleges that the internet search engine has infringed its patents with the recently launched Google Talk.

Jerry Weinberger, chief executive of Rates Technology Inc (RTI), said he was the inventor of software programming that allows telephone calls to be placed over the Internet. Weinberger alleged that Google has abused two patented RTI software programs in Google Talk, which enables users to talk through a computer headset or to instant message each other for free.

RTI claims companies including Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo and Lucent have made one-off payments for use of its patents and that the firm is in similar talks with Time Warner and eBay. It is in legal action with others. Google (Steve Langdon) said the suit was without merit.

Gaim - A multi-protocol IM client

As many people on the internet like applications like Trillian and IM2, there is also another very popular instant messaging client, called Gaim. It has everything you need and one of the best things is that it's open-source.

Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.

Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Gaim supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

Gaim runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Qtopia (Sharp Zaurus and iPaq).

Gaim integrates well with GNOME 2 and KDE 3's system tray, as well as Windows's own system tray. This allows you to work with Gaim without requiring the buddy list window to be up at all times.

Download v1.5.0
Beta - Gaim 2.0.0beta1
Beta - Gaim 2.0.0beta2

Google Plans to Standardize Multimedia Instant Messaging

Earlier this week, Google shared its plans for the future unification of the instant messaging (IM) market. The benevolent overlord of modern Internet innovation, Google has become a tremendous stabilizing force within the complex ecosystem of web-based services. When Google released their Jabber-based IM application earlier this year, they promised consumers that they would vigorously pursue protocol interoperability in order to facilitate communication between users of different IM systems. Since the birth of text-based Internet chat in the 1980s, countless IM protocols and applications have emerged to meet the rapidly growing demand for interactive text communication. AOL's ubiquitous AIM service is thought to have over 50 million active users, a number that continues to increase as more consumers take up the habit.

Google chose to use Jabber's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for its own Google Talk application because XMPP is a well-documented open protocol fit for standardization and extension. The broad availability of XMPP support in open source communication applications ensures that users of all common platforms, including Linux and OS X, will be able to interact with Google Talk users. Working closely with the nonprofit Jabber Software Foundation (JSF), Google plans to bring voice and video communication services to all XMPP-compliant IM utilities. Described in a Jabber Enhancement Proposal, the new peer-to-peer voice and video standard is currently called Jingle. An open source implementation called Libjingle has already been released by Google under a BSD-style license. For those not in the know, BSD licenses are very permissive, facilitating commercial redistribution even in proprietary applications, which means that closed source IM applications like AOL's AIM client can take advantage of the code.

Google recently hired Sean Egan, one of the lead developers of a popular open source IM application called Gaim. Egan and other Gaim developers have already managed to integrate Google Talk's voice features into the Gaim 2.0 branch, which is scheduled for release next month. (Interested users might want to take a look at the beta release!)

After Google's acquisition of a five percent stake in AOL last week, both companies decided that it would be advantageous to implement complete interoperability between Google Talk and AIM. Now that Google has the uncontested champion of IM technologies on its buddy list, it has the leverage it needs to get other services to jump on the interoperability bandwagon.

/arstechnica/