We’ve scheduled some important maintenance activities on the core network so Spokn can work even better for you. Please make a note of the time and plan your calls accordingly.
Downtime window - 20:00 GMT to 22:00 GMT on Tuesday, 28 June 2011. See this in your local time.
This will affect all the Spokn services. This post will be updated as soon as the network is back up and running. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
Update: Maintenance carried out successfully. All services back online.
Tags: announcement, downtime, maintenance, notice, spokn
Hope i will be able to discover my friends in your database and add to my contact list (after they give their nod).
And hopefully i will have video chat and FM radio as part of Spokn.
Finally, i look forward to name based calling rather than number based.
Looking forward to this change!
Thanks,
Nitish
@nitish We’re actually moving away from maintaining a contact list at our end because no user really wants to maintain yet another contact list. Look forward to better integration with contact lists that you already maintain – such as your address book, Facebook contacts, Gmail contacts and such.
Video chat is a great feature to have but we’re again concentrating at the moment on better interconnectivity with PSTN networks. We’ve more or less got the tech in place for video and the part that needs most work now is to make the video stream flow directly between client to client and not via the server. Note that Spokn doesn’t have a peer-to-peer architecture such as Skype, which means that if the video stream does go through the server, the infra requirements go through the roof.
FM radio – I wouldn’t expect that anytime in the future. Users prefer to use apps specific to a task at hand. I’m sure you wouldn’t fire up your email client to listen to radio.
Soruk already did a great job of explaining why Spokn has number based calling. It’s a very helpful feature – have you tried it yet?
@nitish: Unless it’s implemented as an alias, someone who’s using a name instead of a number can’t be called using the access numbers, and if the name is taken from the registered display name, there’s no guarantee that will be unique.
I like the current setup – though I wish PCMA would be added as a valid codec, it sounds better than PCMU. It’d be nice to know what’s actually being done.
However, I will second the request for video chat!
@Soruk, thanks for chipping in. Right now we use PCMU and G.729 to terminate with our providers. We’re experimenting with different codecs to see what works best for our customers. If you’d like us to talk PCMA/U with your client, let me know and I’ll see what can be done.
Spokn rates make sense if it gains the critical mass. That requires ability to virally add people to my database (alias has worked for skype and it’s a matter of algorithmic thinking as to what avataar is possible and what not). Second, the java versions of the software need to be more intuitive and also functional. I struggle making a call, the savings sometimes are not big enough to keep me motivated enough. Help has to be succinct and on-screen (contextual).
PCMA or PCMU, i do not and most would not, understand the significant. Critical mass also requires the best codec surely. An article in economic times could do some service to this service.
@nitish – Spokn rates need to be low enough to be competitive and high enough for us to make money. Getting the critical mass is a different problem, to be tackled differently.
Your point on the Java version is quite valid. We weren’t too happy with it either so we started from scratch on a new version keeping usability and device support at the forefront. The best help screen is no help screen – the software should be intuitive enough for anyone to use.
Regarding integrating various services into Spokn, it depends on the vision for the product. Right now we see it as a utility product and we aim to fill that need the best we can. The mundu line of products are more entertainment focused and integrating services (such as Spokn as well) into mundu products makes much more sense.
Hi Vinod and team,
I am a spokn customer and a geodesic investor.
Thanks for this blog. I appreciate the open way you communicate about your product vision, and roadmap.
Couple of points:
A)It is quite true that there is no formula to predict user behavior.
MUNDU – for entertainment. Spokn – for utility, may be what the product management, or business unit in geodesic may think of their products. That may or may not be the way the user sees it. What studies have done you done to gauge user expectation of this product.
B) If you see this as a utility and want to address to the most basic need of cheap long distance calling, what is the visibility of the product among the masses?
For e.g, a family in Kerala who do not have Internet connection, no smart phone but who want to speak to their son in the middle east.
How do you expect them to get to know about this product, try this and continue using it for all their long distance calling needs?
Would love to know your thoughts on this.
@prabhukartik
Fair enough, it’s foolish to assume that user behavior can be predicted accurately. But why would a user expect to get entertainment in a VoIP application?
Yes, the visibility of Spokn needs work and we are working on a marketing strategy to address the same.
@Vinod,
Thanks for the response.
As you mentioned maybe they might expect VOIP in an entertainment application. What are the chances that I as a user, talk over VOIP to the folks I chat with in MUNDU IM? Very Likely, at least for me. And the management might well see MUNDU as entertainment and spokn as VOIP utility. That for the user is irrelevant.You might want to do some ethnographic studies to get more insights on user behavior.
@Prabukarthik – Yes, I did state before that it makes sense to have voice as part of Mundu IM since users would expect such a functionality to be available.
Great to realise that someone is listening. Finally
. I understand what is number based calling. Ok, you might find this ppt exciting: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B6rp_A0Y9Yo2ZmNjMDZjYWQtNTBlOS00M2FhLTkzZGMtY2I2MjgzMTViNTkz&hl=en_US&authkey=CPLIudkO
Now back to the chat, that one does not want FM on his spokn is a subjective thing. Folk lore has it that Canon founder said that users would never want a camera on their phone. And history tells you that you can never foretell user behaviour confidently. When i can have FM on my cell then why not mundu radio on spokn? Why not let users share the FM stream while they chat? Why not have mundu chat on spokn?
. And infra going through the roof would just usefully use up some of the money lying in geodesics bank account.
About contacts list, i agree with you about “another contact list mess”. However, rather than staying aloof from that ownership you are missing the bus. Imagine if skype or facebook didn’t have it’s own list for you and relied perenially on gmail and yahoo contacts. Imagine and be humble to do things that do not seem right at first.
Video streaming, i am happy to note your point. So you guys have thought about that. Via server would be great stuff if you can put filmorbit on the same video chat window. User uses the video window for any one activity – chat or subscribe for a movie from filmorbit. Unless you argue that one should use his cell phone only for talking and not for SMS, Video chat, internet, weather, news, movies…Hope you get the dig? Just being a little sarcastic
Finally, all the best to your team to make this stuff work wonderfully with PSTN. Fring is more known than spokn. Anybody working on that deficit?
I am trying Spokn. I Leive in Kerala, Thrissur . India
@wiltonandrew – Glad that you are using Spokn!!
If you need any information or have any queries on using Spokn, you can always write to us at support@spokn.org.