aol
AOL To Unveil Open Voice APIs
Your bookshelf is not complete without these books! Check out the Absolutely Must Have Books List
Internetnews.com reports, “AOL plans to roll out open voice APIs today for developers and device makers to integrate the company’s AIM Call Out service into the hardware and software used to make phone calls over the Internet.” AOL “said that the Open Voice APIs will allow its VoIP service to run on softphones, the software that enables computerized calling, SIP-enabled devices, as well as cell phones with Wi-Fi connectivity.” The move “follows AOL’s opening of its hugely popular instant messaging program to developers, and echoes many of the announcements rival portal Yahoo has been making about opening its core services to developers.” The piece continues, “Just as with Yahoo, openness for AOL is a company mission. ‘Amongst all of AOL we’ve been challenged to open up,’ Brent Newsome, AOL’s director of voice services, told InternetNews.com. ‘Every product is working on bringing things out into the open.’”
Om Malik wrote at GigaOm, “If Yahoo is turning to Jajah for Voice on IM, then AOL wants to offer others an ability to integrate AIM Call Out service via its Open Voice APIs into softphones, as well as SIP-enabled hardware and cell phones with Wi-Fi connectivity. AIM Call Out is a pay-as-you-go outbound voice calling service built right into AIM.” He continued, “Jajah, AOL Open Voice, Ribbit and scores of others are taking a platform approach to VoIP, hoping that adding voice to applications will drive up minute volume and turn them into a viable business.”
TMCnet.com reports, “Many users are loathe to run multiple IM clients, so many switched from AIM to Skype because they could get IM, plus voice & video — all in a single client. Why bog down system resources with multiple IM clients? I will say AOL has done a good job of beefing up the feature-set of AIM, but one has to wonder if Skype’s momentum is unstoppable.” The piece continues, “In any event, Steve Murphy, Senior Vice President, AOL said, ‘By opening up our voice communications gateway to developers we’re furthering the mission of AIM which is to facilitate the world’s real-time conversations. We’re building on the popularity of the Open AIM program and opening up the AIM Call Out platform, enabling open standards voice communication services to proliferate in the marketplace.’”
Tags: 
Discussion
for “AOL To Unveil Open Voice APIs”