The PhoneBoy Blog

grandcentral does support inbound sms - to the extent that it supports inbound calls. you just tell it to which registered phone service you want the sms routed. outbound? well, the issue there is really that when you send an sms, you need to find a way to alter the reply-address, so that a reply will filter through grandcentral. in the same manner, i want to alter my outbound CallerID such that my grandcentral # appears to be the source of all my outbound calls - that way if someone saves my info from their call log, they are saving the number i want them to call in the future.

sadly, this isn’t in hte hands of grandcentral developers. the best they can do is offer to place the call for you - and they do this. you can goto the site and select a contact to call, grandcentral will then call you and them like so many other services. i hate this method. personally, i just send my contact info to people via SMS as a vCard - now they’ve got my info stored properly.

by the way, i find that truphone has exceptional voice quality. i agree that gizmo fails in that regard, but it’s not a problem with the spec, its a problem with their implementation. much like having a standard PC that runs horribly slow sitting next to one with the same advertised specs, running much more smoothly. the problem is that gizmoproject connects to the POTS system using a very crummy codec. i’ll repeat myself for clarity, since i seem to be rambling a bit, truphone has amazing audio quality. sadly, there service is only offered to users of highend smart phones. fortunately, buying one of these phones can make your phone bill cheaper, since you can save on roaming and int’l calls. i liken buying a SIP compatible smartphone to paying a premium price for a hybrid car: pay upfront for the future savings, and do the world a favor. in the end, for many people, neither path is much more expensive than the other. if you roam internationally just ONCE with a standard AT&T contract, you would have broken even by buying, say, the Nokia N95 that i use.

(sidenote: i’ve owned a Honda Insight since April 2001 - my hybrid car analogy came to mind months ago when i signed up for truphone and stopped using minutes on my GSM plan)

you want your phone calls integrated with your social networking? wow - thats not for me, but i’m not a big fan of social networking in the first place i suppose.

i just thought i’d chime in regarding SMS - i’m not sure that this is what you meant, but it’s the best i could figure from your post: truphone gives SMS over IP, just like voice over ip, SMSoIP is free from one truphone user to another - or it costs some $$$ to send to a normal mobile phone over GSM or CDMA. i use it - matter of fact, i’m heading to serbia for a week in februaury and i’m having my grandcentral number forward inbound SMS to my truphone # instead of my normal GSM because, well, i won’t be bringing my sim card with me. i wont need it. i’m going to have 100% free calls back home to the USA while i’m gone, and i’ll send and receive SMS for, i think it was $0.15 each. not the cheapest rates, but for short term use its admirable.

oh, and skype? are you crazy? you demand a SIP URL for any open SIP client to connect from - which is good - but also demand a proprietary hack of SIP to also be included? how about this: stop. using. skype. switch to ANY sip-compatible service. gizmoproject, truphone, whatever. just use SIP to start with and, well, be happier. if you switch to gizmo, and get the other end to switch as well, then even your calls from gizmo to their POTS numbers will be free. yeah, check it out. skype is a bad thing for the VoIP industry. it is preventing other (superior) service from attaining the limelight they should have.

just my 2 bits.
-jared

My sentiments exactly. 2008 will be another year of UC hype but little reality, at least for the vast majority of us outside a walled corporate IT garden.