Andy has blogged about a potential bug in the new Gizmo Project which he and I spotted yesterday. If you’re a PC Gizmo user who has to communicate with Mac Gizmo users, you probably shouldn’t upgrade until this one is fixed.
The feature in the new release which I was looking forward to the most (Outlook import) is still a little unfinished. I loaded my 2300 name contact database from Outlook into it, which was great, but there is (a) no way to dial by name, and (b) no way to search the list. It’s not a problem if you have a small contact list, but for my contact list it’s not useful yet.
I remain a huge fan of Gizmo Project, by the way. If you haven’t tried it, you should.
UPDATE: I have heard from Jason Droege at Gizmo that this issue isn’t a client issue. Rather, it’s a problem with their Jabber back end. A fix is on the way.
UPDATE: Fixed.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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Gizmo Project leaves still has a long road to hew to get to the UI capability of Skype and its Skype for Outlook Toolbar where I am finding I simply go to a contact, select which phone number (or skypename) to use and the call starts. True Voice 2.0 "directory" (and "presence") operation with Outlook! Don't even need to touch the Skype client.
On the other hand Skype does need to fix its problem where calls over SkypeOut just drop off of their own volition and the variable call quality with some SkypeOut calls.
Based on Alec's recommendations I have signed onto Project Gizmo and its CallOut service. The call quality and call stability are excellent. However I stopped my >900 Outlook Contact import when I realized there was no selectivity or ability to easily access names; I would probably only use about 100 of them.
Now if they just had 50 million registrations, an API-based developer program and some peripheral uitlities … a la "Skype for Outlook".
I agree that Gizmo needs a developer program, and some third party utilities. I'd really like better Outlook integration too. However, I find I've almost completely moved to Gizmo from Skype because of the call quality. Skype-Out call quality is so unpredictable that it's impossible to have a business conversation with it, and that's simply not the case with Gizmo.
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