So there’s this bit of software called Gizmo that’s pretty cool, available from GizmoProject.com. It’s a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) -based “softphone” widget, err.. gizmo, that allows one to make voice calls on the Internet, like VoIP, duh.

Anyway, obvious to anyone who’s paid a lick of attention the past few years, this competes with Skype. Since the Skype folk got a head start in this here land-grab internet property era we’re in, seems many of my colleagues have a skype account, but not many have a Gizmo one. So I’m posting this here to encourage folks to give Gizmo a try. Of course it offers all the features of Skype, and more (much larger concall size is one obvious feature bennie). And it is open-standards-based, as compared to Skype, which is so ridiculously proprietary they even went to enormous lengths to obfuscate their executable code, apparently in order to try stymie reverse-engineering (as I’d written about previously). So anyway, since I favor open-standards-based systems, and work in designing them (eg LDAP, SAML, ID-WSF, and now the SIP-world), I wish more folks would try Gizmo.

The only substantial complaint I’ve heard wrt Gizmo is that it can only register with Gizmo’s own SIP proxy server farms. Well, with the relatively recent version 2.x, this is remedied, and a Gizmo client can register with both the Gizmo proxies, and with any generic (and typically free, in the economic sense) SIP proxy you wish, eg iptel.org, and freeworlddialup.com, your own open-source Asterisk SIP server at home, or your company’s SIP server.

JeffH sez check it out.

ps: Of course, I’m also very supportive of open source SIP clients — I just haven’t had the time to check them out yet. There are some, though, so take a looksee here, or google for ’em. I’ll have to try some of them out and write about them. There’s also so-called “SIP hardphones” — I just got a SNOM 320 on my desk, and am exploring it. So far it’s pretty cool — although I can’t easily haul it around with me.