Updates: iNum, Calliflower and Entering “Last Name” onto a BlackBerry

Monday, November 17th, 2008 1:09 pm from Skype Journal by Jim Courtney
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Topics: BlackBerry, Business, Mobile, News, SkypeOut, VoIP, conferencing, jcourtney

With both VoiceCon and Under The Radar events in the Bay Area last week, there were lots of announcements in the Voice 2.0 communications space; I wrote up some GigaOm and Web Worker Daily Posts to cover a few of them:

On Tuesday Voxbone announced the launch of their iNum Service. Basically it provides a means to have a universal worldwide “local” number that can be accessed through the recently accredited (by the ITU) +883 country code. Last Tuesday I hosted a SquawkBox conference call with Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens; a post on GigaOm with more details talks about Geography Is Dead - Thank VoIP. Two other excellent “Voxeo Talks” posts from Dan York on this topic (Voxeo is a Voxbone iNum Service Provider Partner):

How to get an iNum - a “global phone number”
iNum and “global phone numbers: a video interview with Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens.

A heads up on using iNum; access from Skype to a +883 number is considered a SkypeOut call requiring SkypeOut credits. It’s not a “country” covered under Skype’s Universal Calling Plans; check out the various alternative means to access iNum numbers here.

The following day iotum announced the official launch of their Calliflower conference call service incorporating premium options for businesses that see its benefits for more interactive voice conferencing through the Calliflower call portal. Document sharing and a much wider range of access points, including iNum access were amongst the new features. And they announced an iPhone application for accessing Calliflower calls. More details can be found in my Web Worker Daily Post: Calliflower: A Complete Conference Calling Service.

Finally, in doing some checking out of a new service, I encountered an Automated Attendant that wanted me to enter a person’s last name in order to locate that person in the host business’s extension directory. But that presents a bit of a problem when you have a BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard and you want to generate the tones where 2–> “A, B or C”, etc. But the RIM people think of everything; there is a relatively simple solution. Find out the answer over at Web Worker Daily in “Entering ‘Last Name’ From a BlackBerry”.