Friday, September 7, 2007

What's the purpose of Lypp if GTalk2VoIP already does the same?

VoIP veteran Erik Lagerway, co-founder of softphone maker XTen (today CounterPath), sent me an invitation to participate in the beta test of his new service Lypp.
Lypp is a new calling service that uses IM and command line commands to create one-to-one calls and group calls. By sending a simple command from AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, Gtalk, or ICQ like "call 6045551212, 7035551212", users can create a quick group call. It will be launching in September. It will be Free.

Lypp uses your existing landline or mobile number, but calls are initiated using Instant Messaging. To make that possible you have to add the robot lypp@lypp.com to your Jabber/GTalk IM buddy list. Currently they support AIM / iChat, Google Talk / Jabber, MSN and Yahoo! The answer to the signup e-mail explains it more:
Once you've added the lypp@lypp.com buddy to your Jabber/Gtalk IM contact list, here's how you use the service:

1. Send commands to the Lypp buddy using the following syntax:

call 6046297990 8774730516

You can enter up to 10 phone numbers (remember we currently only support US and Canadian phone numbers).
2. Your phone will ring, the other participants' phones will ring and you'll all be connected.
3. We've kept it simple. There is no step 3.

For help is using the service just text "help" to lypp@lypp.com.

Enjoy!

The Lypp Team

PS: If you invite friends to use Lypp and if they sign up, we'll add 10 bonus minutes to your account for each friend. Refer a friend by texting "invite user@service.com" to lypp@lypp.com.

Lypp's concept sounded directly familiar too me, because I know it from the Russian company GTalk2VoIP.

Although they are located in the remote Siberian city of Tyumen GTalk2VoIP has a famous name in the VoIP industry, providing for instance the bridge to make calls from Gizmo Project to MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and Google Talk.

You just have to accept a robot called service@gtalk2voip.com or gtalk2voip@yahoo.com as buddy on MSN, Google Talk or Yahoo. Then you can make phone calls with these chat programs by texting messages like "call 1-650-253-0000" to the robot. More information can be found here.

Sounds similar to Lypp, doesn't it?

GTalk2VoIP does this already for 1,5 years, so I wonder what is the purpose of Lypp. A copycat? I already asked this question in the regarding group at Facebook, but I still have to wait for an answer.

It can't be the conference calls, because GTalk2VoIP also states on their website that "any IM user can create one or more conference rooms and invite his/her friends to join the conference".

So let's see what the beta test brings.

5 comments:

  1. Markus,
    I responded to your post on the Facebook group, but here's what I said:

    Markus; GTalk to VoIP is really about interoperable IM-to-IM calling, and IM-to-PSTN calling. Lypp is about using IM to initiate calls between your existing PSTN or mobile phone, and any other regular North American phone number. An important distinction since that means it is (a) completely mobile, and (b) completely ubiquitous.
    Daniel Gibbons
    Co-Founder, Lypp

    ReplyDelete
  2. Is this really different from GTalk2VoIP?

    Their
    website
    explains about GTalk2VoIP's voice conferencing service:

    Outgoing telephone calls can be made and join outside of a conference session by a room master. These calls are placed and charged as described in "Outgoing calls service" above.

    This sounds to me like setting up a voice conference with various PSTN callees from an IM. You can use your own VoIP provider at GTalk2VoIP. I would, again, recommend a Betamax because their are cheap and allow to make many calls from one account at the same time.

    If you use Fring to talk to the service@gtalk2voip.com bot it's also "(a) completely mobile, and (b) completely ubiquitous".

    Isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Markus, thanks for the post! I think the point of Lypp is that you do not need to combine services or use room moderators to get the same experience.

    I have posted a more detailed response on my blog:http://erik.lagerway.com/archives/conferencing/preview_of_lypp.html

    I might suggest that you get yourself a North American number and try it yourself. I think you can get North American SIMs over there right?h

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think the real distinguising point of Lypp from GTalk2VoIP is, what Erik says in his
    blog post:

    "We do not send media (calls) from/to the IP endpoint (IM client) from/to the PSTN gateway."

    With the Lypp service people get real phone calls to their cell phones. With my outlined GTalk2VoIP setup the convoking caller would have to attend the conference over Fring, with all the disadvantages that IP calls on mobile phones can have.

    Thank you for the explanations. I have learned a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It's a well written article. It is really booming these days.Hence, we must try it out....

    ReplyDelete

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