January 3, 2013 archive

Jan 03

Facebook Rolls Out VoIP In Canada on iOS!

FacebookToday, Facebook apparently began testing of true voice-over-IP (VoIP) calling from its iOS app for all Facebook users in Canada. If you have an iPhone and are in Canada, you can update to the latest version of the Facebook Messenger app and start making free phone calls to your friends on Facebook. Two articles have more details:

I was alerted to this by (appropriately) a Facebook post from Tris Hussey, author of the iPhone Hacks article.

Since I'm not in Canada, I can't test it myself... an update to the Messenger app for me will only get me the ability to leave "voice notes". But I'm looking forward to learning more from my friends in Canada.

If this rolls out to users outside of Canada, this has the potential to be huge and a major disruption to telecom. Yes, there is Skype on mobile phones, and a dozen other apps like Viber and Voxer, but...

... Facebook has the directory and the eyeballs!

You have your friend connections already in Facebook. Plus, people are already spending a significant amount of time in the Facebook app. This just makes it simple to move into real-time communications with someone.

I'm looking forward to learning more from friends up north... and to hopefully trying it out at some point!

UPDATE: Here's the iOS update message for Facebook Messenger:

Facebook v2 1 iphone

So the way I read that, we should all be getting this capability in the next few weeks.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Jan 03

Want To Learn More About IPv6 Deployment? Join the IPv6-Ops mailing list

Want to learn more about IPv6 and how it is actually used in network operations? Want to connect with a community of people who are working with IPv6 on a daily basis?

If so, have you thought about subscribing to the “ipv6-ops” mailing list?  Just go to:

http://lists.cluenet.de/mailman/listinfo/ipv6-ops

and fill out the subscription form.  If you take a look at the archive of the list, you will see all sorts of interesting discussions that take place.  In November there was a fascinating thread about IPv6 in Windows and the beginning of a lengthy thread about IPv6 firewalls in customer premise equipment that continued on into December. This month there’s been some good discussions about IPv6-only networks and also which countries have the highest deployment of IPv6.

What continues to impress me about the list is that even as much as I work with IPv6, I’m very often learning even more from the high quality of people involved with the list.

It’s a great place to be, even if you just lurk to listen and learn… why not subscribe today?