by alec on January 29, 2006
My first reaction, today, was that I must have been asleep at the wheel. On January 5th, the Skype 2.0 Beta API was released. It contains, at long last, the feature many of us have been asking for for months, and that is the ability to redirect a call. It’s hidden away in the "ALTER CALL" API, but it’s quite clearly there as a feature of the END command.
ALTER CALL
The ALTER CALL command controls call status.
Syntax
ALTER CALL xxx
{ ANSWER
| HOLD
| RESUME
| HANGUP
| END { HANGUP | REDIRECT_TO_VOICEMAIL | FORWARD_CALL }
| DTMF <0|1|..|9|*|#>
| JOIN_CONFERENCE <callID> }
Version Protocol 5
It seems I am not the only one who was in the dark on this either. Just last week at ETel I was discussing Skype’s lack of call redirect capability with folks from TellMe, who (like me) were hoping Skype would implement it soon. And nowhere, on any blog, not even the excellent Skype Journal, was I able to find mention of these APIs.
Thank you Skype for doing this. If I may whine just a little… I’d love to be notified when something of this significance ships.
by alec on January 29, 2006
Hats off to Andy Abramson. He’s spent a bunch of time over the last day or so conversing with Jeff Pulver and Doug Renert about Tello, and has posted a very clear explanation titled Tello Explained. He’s got the history, understands the issues, and explains Tello in very neat and succinct terms.
Tello provides a hosted Instant Communications and Collaboration service, with complementary client applications, that allows users to instantly locate, contact, and connect with others across their business communities over the different systems, devices and applications they already use.
Any application running on the Tello service, including their own clients, can show at a glance the availability of contacts at any time anywhere in the world and initiate multi-modal communications with the click of a mouse or push of a button.
He also wades into how Tello and Iotum are different. Tello is about locate, contact, connect — linking up disparate networks in a federation between enterprises to enable collaboration and communication. Iotum is about attention management. In a world where everyone is vying for my attention, how do I make sure that I am making the best use of my time? Where Tello is focused on where and how a communication can take place, Iotum is focused on why and whether that conversation is relevant right now. These are two different, but very complementary solutions.
Good job, Andy. Well done!
