With the latest version of Messenger for the Mac, users can make free PC-to-PC calls (yes, a Mac is a PC too) to other Messenger buddies. You can also sign up for a Phone Out account to make calls to landlines and mobile phones. Or, if you want to go all the way, you can sign up for a Phone In account, which assigns you a number so people can call you on your PC.
In other words: picture Skype, but with a big yellow smiley face instead of a cool blue talk bubble.
Check out the Yahoo! Messenger blog for a complete rundown of the new features and a handy screencast.
Jott is a voice based online tool that we covered earlier this year. The basic premise is that you call a specified phone number, speak a message, and have it's transcribed and sent as text to your account on a service like Twitter, a Wordpress blog, a Tumblr blog, or even to Yahoo Groups.
Now Jott officially supports Google Calendar. Users will now have the ability to speak into the system, specify a Google Calendar, and have Jott drop in an appointment. Great for on the go and have to set something up ASAP so you don't forget!
NetZero, the one-time free ISP, which, in recent years has elevated itself to a discount dial-up provider, added voice service to its offering a few years go. This enabled its customers to make and receive phone calls over VoIP in much the same way Vonage and Packet8 provide such service.
Apparently, as Vonage discovered, it's not as easy as it looks on paper to make money competing with the local Bell. So hard in fact, that NetZero is canning their voice offering after many months of unsuccessfully trying to sell off their customer base to a competing interest. This is a harbinger of things to come in the fixed-location voice business, as even telco monster AT&T is losing wireline customers like crazy to cable companies and on account of people who have settled on a mobile phone as their "one solution".
So what's a NetZero customer to do? Well, there's always Vonage, if you must have a traditional phone in your home. But here at DownloadSquad, we prefer software-driven solutions like Gizmo Project, because it follows you wherever you go--on your laptop and on your cell phone.
Text messages are normally easy to send, but what about when you're driving or occupied and want to get something complex across? Pinger is a service that lets users call into a service and leave a voicemail to a contact, that will in turn send a text message instead of a ring. Recipients then press a button and listen to your voice message and can reply or forward the message. It's a quick alternative service that makes voice messages easy without actually ringing up and interrupting a person. Recipients are presented with a message that shows who the message is from, how long it is, and when it was sent before they listen.
The Pinger service is free to use, but is only currently open to US residents. Instead of calling a number, Pinger has a special application for Blackberry and Treo that speeds up the process and allows for a visual preview of messages, list of last 10 Pinger messages and sharing between other Blackberry or Treo users.
Meebo has just announced a new platform for their messaging system. This allows for third party developers to create applications based on the growing chat service.
The Meebo development platform launched with a set of API's that developers can grab in order to create multi user applications that Meebo users can specifically use to connect with each other. The question users must answer before the build, "I want to ______ with you. Before development begins, Meebo requires applications to be registered complete with title of application, descriptions and author's names. Special instructions and a key will then be sent out to get connected to the database. When the build is complete using either the supplied Flash or JavaScript starter files, applications will be tested in a sandbox environment before they are released to Meebo users. Developers aren't left in the shadows, Meebo will be selling advertising on the applications, and will be splitting revenue 50/50.
The two year old company is moving into the big time fast with their communication platform. They have also announced some big partnerships that allow video/audio calls (TokBox), voice chat (Pudding Media), group calling (TalkShoe), and live TV show streaming (UStream).
Twenty Five years ago, a clever University professor added a colon to a right parenthesis and thus changed the course of human events. Ok, maybe we're overstating the social and cultural impact of the emoticon but, you'll have to admit, love them or not, they're everywhere.
Scott E. Fahlman dreamed up the sideways smiley in a discussion about how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly. The message posted on September 19th 1982 on a bulletin board system at 11:44am, Fahlman floated the idea to some compatriots. Responding with statements like "OMG" and "ROTFL!", his online audience liked the idea, and the little sideways smiley that could spread quickly through an Internet the size of some current LANs. The smiley has seen many variations over the years, denoting a range of emotions from happy to sad, snarky to shaudenfrude.
To mark the smiley's 25th birthday, Fahlman and friends have started an annual student contest promoting innovation in technology based person-to-person communication. The Smiley Award, as it's appropriately called, is sponsored by Yahoo and carries a $500 cash prize.
The instigator of "LOL" was unavailable for comment.
mySay lets friends stay in touch with friends by recording voice updates and dispatching them to friends.
The update service works by dialing up a special mySay phone number and saying what you're up to, dropping your latest news, making a statement, or whatever you like. Don't want to use your own voice? Upload an mp3 or have the mySay robots say it for you. Friends can then call in to check messages, listen online or by email. If mySay users have a blog, website, or are part of a social network, a widget can be inserted so that visitors to the page can hear what has to be said.
Just another cool service that can clutter up Facebook, MySpace, and blogs everywhere. The mySay service is available is the US, Canada, Ireland, UK, France, Belgium & Switzerland, with new countries are set to be added in the future.
Google has beefed up its 411 voice search service with some directions.
Google launched a 411 voice search at 1-800-GOOG-411 in April. The service allows users to call in a search query and get the result by voice. Now Google has integrated maps into the voice search. The 411 voice search service with maps works the same way, but during your call you would say "map it" to get a text message with details of your search plus a link out to a map result on your mobile phone.
1-800-GOOG-411 is a free service, but only available in the US for US based business listings.
DLS has the scoop on a hot new Jangl feature that has just sprouted up today, a way for users to call anyone online at anytime without knowing their phone number.
If you know someone's email address, but not their phone number, it's now possible to talk to them through Jangl. Michael Cerda CEO of Jangl sees this as a way to virtualize the phone number, making them as disposable as email addresses. The new JanglService now gives people a great, and virtually inexpensive way to chat by phone in 31 countries worldwide at the moment.
The service is simple to use, users start by inputing an email address on Jangl's homepage to get connected. A phone number will be displayed with a private local number for you to call them on. The first call you make will be to a voice mail system that Jangl will deliver to the recipient via email. Once the message is received, the recipient will get a local number to call and connect to you. This all allows for a secure and safe personal number.
This new service from Jangl works on any phone and is free during the beta period, with currently no news as to the future cost of this feature, besides carrier and local airtime charges.
Jangl also has another cool feature called "Call Me". This lets people connect by phone through a safe number by appending an email address to the end of http://callme.jangl.com.
We have covered Jangl in the past, their unique service enables users to communicate with anyone through phone lines, without revealing phone numbers.
Jangl widgets came out a short while ago, and now the team has announced a partnership with Tagged, a social network that has been quickly been climbing the ranks and currently has over 40 million members. So needless to say, now members of this site can easily communicate while keeping their privacy and preserving their anonymity. Tagged will utilize the Jangl widget, enabling users to generate private phone numbers in which they can exchange with Tagged friends and contacts they wish to communicate with by voice.
Keep your eye on Jangl. They aren't a giant company yet, but are on the forefront of social communications. Their services add a tremendous amount of value to those wishing to communicate, but still want to remain anonymous.
The battle for the 411's is on. A lot of new developments are heading out the door at the Web 2.0 Conference well under way in San Francisco, and Tellme Networks has let people know about their new service, a 411 information request service called Tellme by Voice.
Microsoft owned Tellme Networks, a provider of voice enabled mobile search, believes that you should just have to say what you want, thus they have just announced a free service that expands the ways people can search for information from any phone. Similar to Google's GOOG 411 local voice search, users would simply speak into their phones, and they would be answered by hearing the result.
Tellme by Voice can be accessed by calling 1-800-555-TELL, and saying "business search" to find local business listings.
SimulScribe is offering a unique solution for users of voice mail; A way to convert voice mail into readable text.
SimulScribe transcribes voice mails and sends them directly to your mobile device as text or email messages. Its sometimes a hassle to check voicemails and write down notes from messages -- and its so much easier to take a glance at txts that come in -- so what better way than to get your voice messages sent straight to your portable device.
It is a tad pricey though at $9.95 for a bundle of 40 messages. You can try it free for a month to see if you can justify the charge. SimulScribe currently has over 5000 users, and supposedly will announce a deal with a major national carrier in April.
My Talker 1.2 is easily the simplest type and talk application available for download.
When you first get started you are presented with a large text box and a talk button. That's pretty much it. No formating tools, no option menus, nothing. The one thing you can do is select from three animated characters who will, in a very fun manner, speak what you type. The three choices are: a genie, a green bird named Peedy, and a butler named James. Each character has its own animations and slightly different computer created voice. You can also hide the characters if they become a distraction.
In addition to the characters, you can also select the Professional version which gives you an animation-free voice that you can also save .wav file recordings of. It appears that only the Professional voice can be recorded as the licensing for the other voices is no doubt different.
The application is very kid-friendly and would be an excellent resource for teachers and tutors (especially those working with special needs children). The speech works phonetically when My Talker isn't able to recognize a word and follows punctuation clues to add emphasis. A text balloon appears above the character while speaking which indicatives what is being spoken. The animations are simple yet creative, and can be rather humorous at times. Best of all, it's free!
I could have sworn that Yahoo! Messenger already did this, but according to this post from the Yahoo! Messenger blog, you can call any 800 (or other typical free - 877 / 866 / 888 / etc. call) and not use any minutes from your Yahoo! Voice account.
This announcement coincides with the upcoming Yahoo! promo for the movie "The Messengers", something to do with a 'click-to-call' (whatever that is) campaign they will be running. Hopefully, this isn't the start of getting ads played before you make a call.
In addition, the post mentions a new minor upgrade to v8.1.239. We're told that changes include voice quality improvements and minor fixes for it running in MS Vista (but why not just run the Vista version instead??)
The voice quality continues to be decent, certainly good enough that I've dropped long distance and international calling from my landline - preferring a combination of my cell & Y! IM to call around the world.
Nimbuzz has officially launched their Nimbuzz Talk beta. We originally covered the news of this back in August. Nimbuzz is a utility for your mobile phone that lets you send free text messages to contacts. The new beta brings users the ability to call their IM buddies from their mobile phone and be charged for a local rate call, no matter where they are located and as long as both parties have the client application. You simply load the application and click on the contact to start the call or chat. Nimbuzz can either be downloaded as a Java application on supported devices, or used through a mobile browser. The Nimbuzz IM client is only available for Windows 2000 and XP users.
Oliver at MobileCrunch has a full review of the beta application.
Yahoo! has just released Yahoo! Messenger Beta 3 for the Mac, with the long-awaited, much-crowed for addition of voice calling. 
