Dan Butler's
TNPC Newsletter

A Little Rant on Internet Voice Communication

by Dan Butler

While researching the HotFax featured product in the last issue of TNPC, I was reminded of how splintered many efforts are on the Internet. ICQ, PowWow, NetMeeting, Internet Phone, and others promise to let you communicate with your friends via the Internet. Now SmithMicro, the makers of HotFax, are introducing CONEXS.COM for communicating over the Internet. You can download it free from their Web site.

While the concept of talking over the Internet is good, the implementation is sadly lacking. The problem is that for me to talk to you we both have to use the exact same software. This is the antithesis of what the Web was designed to do.

The basic concept behind the World Wide Web is that different browsers can all view Web pages and those pages will look the same. HTML was supposed to be a universal standard making content available to the masses. That was Tim Berners-Lee dream when the whole thing started and it has exploded in popularity. The Internet runs because of open standards: pop3, ldap, imap, http, tcp/ip, ftp, telnet, etc.

You'd think that talking over the Internet would also be based on an open standard. But you'd be wrong. Everyone goes a different way to get to the same place. Until different programs can "talk" to each other the Internet the problem will continue, and probably worsen. And instead of the companies who make these products working towards a common standard we have AOL suing Tribal Voice and others over a nit-pick thing like the term "Buddy List."

Voice communication over the net can be very useful. A friend of mine here in Texas routinely uses PowWow to talk to his sister in Hong Kong, all for the price of their local Internet dial-ups.

To check out communication software try some of the following:
http://www.tribal.com
http://www.conexs.com
http://www.icq.com
http://www.conexs.com
Microsoft NetMeeting comes with Windows 98 and IE4 or IE5

To read about AOL's Lawsuit visit:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/
0,4586,2264211,00.html?chkpt=hpqs014
(Beware: this URL may wrap in your email reader)