Gizmo Gets MySpace IM Support, More IM Platform Than Skype These Days
Duncan Riley
15 comments »
When Michael profiled the Gizmo Project in July 2005, he noted that it had more features than Skype, but lacked instant messaging. The one time Skype competitor has become the Jaiku to Twitter, having pretty much dropped off the radar as Skype was acquired by eBay and went on to become the leading desktop VOIP/ IM solution.
The open source SIPphone owned Gizmo has continued to be developed, and this week added MySpace IM support on top of support for MSN, Yahoo, AIM and Jabber (including Google Talk). Today’s Gizmo is more IM platform than predominantly VOIP platform, and it makes for a fairly decent product.
Gizmo offers an attractive feature set. On top of the wide IM support that makes it a competitor to Adium and Trillian, the VOIP side offers competitively priced calls to external numbers, as well as free calls to those using the SIPphone platform. Services such as file transfer are supported, although video calling is only supported between Gizmo users, and not with users on other services. Cross platform voice chat is supported however.
Notably Gizmo 5 can be installed on a range of mobile phones and run locally, complete with VOIP calling, a decent value add if you’re on an unlimited data plan with your mobile phone. Unfortunately there isn’t a version (site or download) for the iPhone yet so I was unable to test it.
Gizmo has long since lost the battle against Skype to become the dominant VOIP service, however if you’re looking for a fully featured mobile IM client that also offers cheap calls it might be worth a look again.
GizmoProject is by far much better than Skype. It is cheap and it is based on SIP technology. Just because Skype was first and more people use Skype therefore doesn’t mean GizmoProject is not better than Skype.
Raphael
I’ve always though highly of it, and indeed in the early days I used this over Skype, but the killer (like Twitter) is that Skype is where all the users went, and ultimately it became the serious IM/ voice tool. With the multi-platform IM support though this becomes a lot more appealing again.
A competitive market is the better solution for the user. Even if the popularity of Gizmo is not big - the qualities of this product are the top ones. So maybe with a killer marketing campaign this application can become more popular.
Skype showed somuch promise.
Why is it that when apps get acquired they become doomed?
Skype would have probably faired better if they remained independent, competitive and hungry.
http://www.gabbr.com
Hit me up when an iPhone version comes out!
Gizmo has one advantage over Skype - in combination with Google acquired Grand Central you can get a free “in” phone number in the USA.
A minor correction to the article: according to the support forums, Gizmo Project is not open-source software but the service uses open standards.
Also, it’s worth noting that it was mentioned on michaelrobertson.com in December that the name of the company and all of the software products it produces will soon be changing to Gizmo5.
well done for them
http://mateame.corank.com/
Gizmo has one “killer” advantage over Skype - if you need help, you can contact Gizmo support and they will actually answer, in a timely fashion, rather than waiting FOUR DAYS to send rubbish for a reply, as Skype does. They also don’t play stupid games with your money, as Skype does, continuously blocking your account and withholding services without explanation.
that’s kinda cool!
Duncan, you mentioned Open Source.., while Gizmo uses open source components to build its software, Gizmo itself is not open source.
Why are we stuck with box-comparing Gizmo vs Skype?
1. Gizmo use of SIP protocol for voice means that its users can talk to any number of clients using the SIP protocol. SIP reach has to be pretty close to that of Skype reach as Skype can only talk to other Skype clients.
2. Gizmo IM reaches not only it’s own clients but those of Yahoo, MSN, Google. Together that crowd has to be at least as big as the user base of Skype.
Maybe we should look at it in terms of the size of audience accessible by the client. I would almost bet that Gizmo would come on top!
I have tried to chat with an msn user but the gizmo messenger wasn’t able to locate the msn user?!!
Gizmo works together with Grandcentral so you actually can make free call from grandcentrals address book all over the US and Canada.
Hate to spoil the love fest, but Gizmo’s chat interoperability is marginal.
While on the surface they offer chat w/all the services you mention, getting it to work is crazy. It reminds me of trying to understand how to set up Jabber 2-3 years ago.
I love Gizmo’s SIP/voip features, GrandCentral connectivity (only in current version, beta version does not support it), but the chat features leave a lot to be desired.