Gizmo Project on Nokia 770
By Vivek Puri | August 28th, 2006 at 09:37 pm ET
Gizmo Project, the new challenger on the VOIP Inc block and seems like it will stay there for a long time. Last week I got my new and long awaited Nokia 770, charged it up, loaded Gizmo Project’s client, connected to my WiFi, and for the first time felt that I might not need my verizon-blackberry anymore. Although that time is still far away (unless I move to Mountainview), I must admit that the voice quality and features of Gizmo Project are the best in the market and not to forget the free calling to Gizmo buddies in 60 countries.
Features: After installing the gizmo client, you need to signup with Gizmo Project and get your free SIP phone number and you are all set. Gizmo has all the bells and whistles for the VOIP game including great voice quality, free calling, free voicemail, free voicemail-to-email, free conferencing, list of All/dialed/received/missed calls, and account management from Nokia 700 itself. From the IM side you can chat with other Gizmo users, other SIP-based networks users, as well as your Google Talk buddies. You can create and join conference calls from Gizmo, which can be attended by people using Mobile phones/ Landlines/SIP Phones/ Gizmo. At most 100 people can attend these conference calls, which should be sufficient in most cases.
One of the smart and tiny feature is being able to set the Subject of your call, so that you can remember what you really talked about. You can change your Gizmo account setting and status from Nokia 770, including presence. One security issue I noticed was that in Gizmo account settings, the account password shows up as plain text. Hope they get to it quickly.
Cost: Gizmo to Gizmo user calls are free, but calling someone without Gizmo you need to pay (See Catch22 below). To receive calls to your Nokia 770 you need to pay $3/month
Catch22: Everything is great about this product except for calling non Gizmo users. For you to be able to call free in the 60 countries the person you are calling should be registered to Gizmo, otherwise you need to pay 1cent/minute. I know its a great plan and nice thinking by gizmo guys, but getting all our friends to sign up for gizmo so that we can call them for free is a tough call. I already need to login to Yahoo IM and Google Talk, so will be many other users, to get their complete friend’s list. A third IM client is bit too much. Let’s hope Gizmo gets on the other side before Google or Yahoo also come with the free PSTN calling plans.
Future: I think Gizmo on Nokia 770 is the perfect combination possible for truly mobile pros. It needs to be seen how many developers try building more applications on the top of Gizmo Project API. We definitely need more mashups like SKY-Click.com or eqo.com. Since developer community is not really happy with Skype API, maybe they can channel their energy into Gizmo.
Links:
Nokia 770
Gizmo Project
Gizmo Download
Gizmo API
