How to use Flashphone and Nonoh for free calls

We discussed about Flashphone last week and how they restarted their "free calls" service. Unfortunately the service somehow never worked for anyone. We told Flasphone team about this bug and waiting for them to update us on this.

In the mean time, Flashphone team has shared with us a video tutorial to use Flashphone with Nonoh to make free calls.

Here is the video tutorial :




The video unfortunately doesn't have audio enabled (only occasional). However its pretty much self-explanatory.

To quickly summarise, I am putting down some key steps.

1) You need to register at Flashphone
2) You need to then visit your Flashphone account Manager.
3) Now Add Nonoh SIP account details.
Nonoh SIP server: sip.nonoh.net. Use your Nonoh username and password.
4) Once added, you would see a new SIP provider profile in account page.
5) Now go back to flashphone homepage and login.
6) Flash phone will launch. Enter your number and make calls.

Note: Nonoh calling rates will apply. Please check nonoh fair usage policy if you exceed free calls limit.

On a sidenote, you can achieve the same thing with Tringme and Gtalk2voip. Both works absolutely similar to Flashphone. In gtalk2voip, you can even set dialing pattern for each country.

Hope you enjoy the Flashphone Tutorial. If you have any suggestions, Please drop under comments. Flashphone team visit VOIP Guide often and should be more than happy to implement some of them.

Talkonaut native Symbian S60 Mobile VOIP Client released

The good old Fring and Truphone is about to get some serious competition from the new players
such as Tringme and now Talkonaut. Tringme Mobile VOIP client is almost ready and currently being tested in-house. Today we discuss about Talkonaut native (SIS) Symbian S60 edition.

Now you must be wondering why we should install another Mobile VOIP application when I already have Fring and Truphone? Well the reason being, each mobile voip application has it's advantages and disadvantages. Largely, I would disqualify Truphone being a Mobile VOIP application developer for the simple reason that their application doesn't work with other providers. The reality is truphone is a mobile voip provider and heck they are good at it. Fring is a truly mobile voip application developer and now Talkonaut (sounds like a russian name to me) will directly compete with them.

As Ruslan (Founder of Gtalk2voip & Talkonaut)noted down,

"During last 6 months our team had been working on two major improvments to our Talkonaut mobile application:

1. Moving Talkonaut application to native Symbian S60 platform, and
2. implementing real VoIP stack that allows Talkonaut users to make voice calls over most data connections your mobile phone might have, such as: GPRS, EDGE, 3G and WIFI. With this new 4th release of Talkonaut we present our achievments in these directions, we believe all they make Talkonaut more consistant, outstanding and break-through mobile VoIP + Chat application ever available.

Lets look at what features they offer in Talkonaut:

1) Talkonaut 4.0 was entirely rewritten in C/C++ and now runs on Symbian S60 2nd and 3rd edition based Nokia smart-phones. Moving from Java to native platform allowed to reduce memory usage, improved speed and to add some functionalities that were not previously available for Jave applications, like VoIP, access to file local system (improved file transfer) and interaction with other applications (Web Browser for opening URLs right from chat window).

2) Using a set of narrow-band Speex codecs and relying on Jingle Audio extension to XMPP protocol (same as implemented in Google Talk), Talkonaut now brings to the world a very powerful combination of IM chat, Presence and VoIP calls made over data connection. Unlike standard SIP stack, that is available on some Nokia smart-phones, Talkonaut is not bound to WIFI only, and can make calls over GPRS, EDGE, 3G or WIFI. Talkonaut does not require to do any VoIP configuration and overcomes all the hassle with SIP settings.

3) Talkonaut 4.0 allows to make or receive free VoIP calls to Google Talk users, to SIP phones, to MSN, Yahoo, AIM and ICQ voice capable IM clients, as well as to other Talkonaut fellows.

4)*Highly Recommend Feature*: Talkonaut 4.0 allows to define any number of SIP accounts and use them to make free or cheap calls over third-party VoIP/SIP carriers. A flexible Dialing Plan feature is helpful for choosing routes to destinations between different carriers.

5) Talkonaut 4.0 runs on the following sets of Symbian S60 based Nokia smart-phones:

2nd Edition: 3230, 6260, 6600, 6620, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6682, 6682, 7610, N70, N72, N90 3rd Edition: 3250, 5500, 5700, 6110, 6120, 6121, 6290, E50, E51, E60, E61, E61i, E62, E65, E70, E90, N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N80, N81, N81 8GB, N82, N91, N92, N93, N93i, N95, N95 8GB

Besides the standard Mobile VOIP client feature, Talkonaut really impressed me with their Flexible dialing plan feature. I still remember using Gtalk2voip dialing plans to make free or cheap worldwide calls. You don't have to maintain 10000 SIP accounts and of course you can route your calls via specific provider for specific country. Great feature.

If you are already bounching on your chair to try talkonaut, then give them a shot. Download Talkonaut from Mobile
Download talkonaut from Web

Call from Google Talk with Tringme VOIP

Is Web based or Soft phone based calls stopping you from using VOIP? are you

going mad at downloading large SIP softphones to make free voip or cheap calls? The time has come, now you can make calls via your Google Talk. There is no need to download any additional softphones or add-ons to make calls.

TringMe now allows making calls from Gtalk. Gtalk doesn't have native support for making phone (PSTN/Mobile) calls. This is yet another feature which underlines TringMe's core philosophy of not requiring any software installation for purposes of using TringMe. If you already have Gtalk installed, then with this capability, making a worldwide call to any phone or SIP URI from Gtalk is as simple as sending a message using Gtalk. Calls made from Gtalk can be terminated on all devices that TringMe currently supports.

Although this feature is currently under test and is scheduled to be commercially released by February end, it's available for you to try it. Please note that you will need to sign up at TringMe with a gmail ID so that we can associate a TringMe account when you make a call from Gtalk (signup with TringMe using same email id as Gtalk). As you may already know, worldwide calling rates offered by TringMe are very competitive and almost half than Skype or other VoIP providers.

Lets see how you can use TringMe from Google Talk.

Note: This will only work for Tringme users signed up with gmail.com IDs. This wont work with Yahoo/AOL userids. You need to have a Tringme Account in order to use Tringme service. Go get a TringMe account if you don't have one.

1) Sign in to Google talk and add tringme@gmail.com as friend. Within 10 seconds, you would notice a new friend Tringme@gmail.com in your google talk contact list.

2)To make a call, all you need to do is send a message to tringme@gmail.com from Gtalk. To make a call to a number, merely send a message - call - to tringme@gmail.com. For e.g. call 18585551212 would initiate a call to 1-858-555-1212.

3)You can also call other TringMe users by merely using their email address. For e.g., call abc@xyz.com would connect user abc@xyz.com to whatever destination the user has chosen to terminate upon.

4) You can reach more than 40 million worldwide SIP users using Gtalk just by typing their SIP URI. For e.g call greg@somesipserver.com will connect you to Greg’s SIP server.

In all cases, you will get an inbound call from TringMe and once you answer, the call to the intended party will be initiated. This also opens a new way for developers to integrate core TringMe functionalities using Google or Jabber APIs.

Tringme offers industry leading Softswitch solution which is core engine behind Tringme VOIP service. TringSwitch is a commercial product available to small, medium and large businessed to integrate VOIP into portals, voip businesses and you can kick start your own VOIP business within a short timeframe.

To know more about TringSwitch for Business, you can email me at vinay (AT)tringme.com. I officially handle marketing at Tringme.

Fring VOIP releases new version

The undisputed leader in Mobile VOIP applications market, Fring has released a new version of their client adding more features to the already bulky feature list.

Fring's new version now makes Fring Mobile VOIP application a file transfer utility. The new version allows fringsters to swap music tracks, pictures, video clips and other files between each other, from mobile to mobile and mobile to PC quickly and reliably without the need for MMS, cable, Bluetooth, or Infrared connections and without additional cost as it uses the phone's internet connection.

As you may already know, Fring integrates almost all popular IM client such as Google Talk, Yahoo messenger and Skype. On top of it, Fring allows you to setup a SIP provider and make calls via that SIP provider. Technically extending the Fring Mobile VOIP capability to make calls to PSTN and Mobile networks.

Fring Team released 3.30 and later found issues with WIFI connectivity. They immediately released a newer version called 3.30.6. The latest version 3.30.6 addresses the issue they had with WiFi connectivity.

I myself didn't yet test the latest version but will be doing so next week. My VOIP testing lab is currently full with huge list of VOIP products/services to be tested.
My good old N95 crashes sometimes when it can't take the load of latest beta releases :-) Fring has however never crashed my N95, Fringers crossed :-)

I will soon be posting my wish-list for Fring including some of the latest Mobile VOIP products/services.

So if you want to test the new Fring Mobile VOIP before i do, Hop over the Fring and Download Fring 3.30.6