JAJAH and Dial2Do Bring You Hands-Free Voice-Activated Global Calling
Category: Web, HTML, Tech
I had a chat with Sean and Ivan from Dial2Do a little while ago based on an introduction by our mutual friend Pat Phelan. Sean and Ivan told me about their service:
"Dial2Do lets you do common tasks by just calling a number and speaking. Use it to send EMAIL or TEXT messages, record REMINDERS to help you remember things, initiate low-cost global calls via JAJAH or even post updates to your TWITTER or JAIKU stream. Use your favorite services just by talking. It's easy and hands-free..."
With Dial2Do you get things done, convenient, hands-free, just by talking (speech recognition).
Today I'm happy to announce that Dial2Do and JAJAH bring you hands-free voice-activated global calling – simply by saying the words.
How it Works
Using Dial2Do, you simply call a local number (+1-213-325-2615 in the U.S.), say the word "JAJAH," and then select one of three JAJAH services—call, text or conference.
- To call a contact, say "JAJAH call" - To send a JAJAH text message (SMS) say "JAJAH text - To set up a group call, say "JAJAH conference"
For calls and conferences, JAJAH initiates the call to anyone in your Dial2Do address book and rings the caller back immediately to connect the call. The service is accessible on any phone and does not require any new hardware, software or download.
The Dial2Do service is currently in private beta, but JAJAH users are being given a special invitation. As a registered JAJAH user you just visit http://www.dial2do.com/jajah, click "Register" to begin and enter the code "dial2jajah."
The calls and texts are powered by Managed Services Platform. Dial2Do uses the JAJAH API to set up a JAJAH call.
"By using their voice, Dial2Do helps people get things done quickly and communicate. Now it's even easier and more affordable to keep connected by saying 'JAJAH' to use JAJAH's award-winning phone and text services," said Ivan Mac Donald, CEO of Dial2Do. "The sheer convenience of being able to make calls, send text messages and conference all hands-free, no matter your location, is a win for busy, mobile JAJAH users."
"We are excited to work with Dial2Do and offer our 10 million users yet another way in which they can use JAJAH," said JAJAH Co-founder, Roman Scharf. "JAJAH makes it easier for people to stay in touch and now that our capabilities are voice activated with Dial2Do, making a global call or sending a message is as simple as dialing a number and saying your friends' name."
Yesterday I met with Ivan in person for the first time and he told me a little bit about their plans for the future. Great stuff, great team, getting even more things done, wherever you are, while you are on the road or just not close to a computer, making JAJAH calls, sending emails or text messages, Twitter updates or record reminders, hands-free and convenient – simply by saying the words.
JAJAH to Develop Native VoIP Application for Apple’s iPhone
When Steve Jobs announced that Apple would open the iPhone for outside applications a while ago, we too got really excited. After all, we were among the first ones to support the launch of the iPhone in June of last year with a custom-tailored website at http://iphone.jajah.com which brought VoIP to the iPhone.
JAJAH Mobile VoIP client for Apple’s iPhone
Today, we are pleased to announce that JAJAH will again possibly be the first native global VoIP application for the iPhone by participating in the iPhone Developer Program. The new VoIP application is expected to be available this summer, close to the iPhone 2.0 software release.
The new JAJAH Mobile VoIP client for the iPhone will enable two ways to make free or low-cost global calls to any phone in the world: 1) JAJAH’s known callback service ideal for low bandwidth locations and 2) the sole use of a Wi-Fi network. This blended VoIP application assures premium call quality and affordable international calling rates at any location. With Wi-Fi support, all international and long-distance callers will be able to place calls via airport hotspots, coffee shops or any other desired Wi-Fi location.
"JAJAH was one of the first in line to support the launch of the iPhone. Now with the release of the iPhone SDK, we are excited to develop a native VoIP application that will improve productivity and enhance the communication capabilities of mobile professionals with added security," said Frederik Hermann, Director, Global Marketing. "JAJAH adds global mobile VoIP functionality and with enterprise level support, soon companies will give employees a choice of an iPhone vs. the BlackBerry."
JAJAH has already proven its Mobile VoIP client capabilities enhancing the world’s first mobile broadband operator EMobile with a pre-installed native VoIP client on all of EMobile’s EM One handheld devices.
LetMeBeMobile - JAJAH Teams Up With Leading Mobile Technology Companies
We are pleased to announce that JAJAH has teamed up with Talkhouse, Elephant Drive and Tazti to introduce the new LetMeBeMobile Software campaign. This unique program showcases each partner's innovative capabilities, including our award-winning and affordable global calling solutions, which does not require a software download, a headset or a need to change phone plans.
We have collaborated through the membership in the Intel® Software Partner Program, and all share the desire to improve the way you live and work through mobile technology. The Intel® Software Partner Program provided us with the matchmaking framework for this partnership, in addition to helping with campaign planning, promotional opportunities and agency support.
LetMeBeMobile.com is targeted primarily at College Students and young professionals in the United States, but is available to anyone interested in enhancing their mobile Internet experience.
Simply by accessing one website, users can take advantage of applications or services that deliver:
· Affordable long-distance and international calling options - JAJAH
· Web-based storage options - Elephant Drive
· Voice activation solutions - Talkhouse and Tazti
For anyone who wants engaging, rich Internet experiences while on the go the LetMeBeMobile campaign offers individual software applications that provide the freedom and flexibility to communicate with others, enjoy digital media, and access information anytime, anywhere - all while using the mobile device of their choice.
"Everyone, especially students, can appreciate the ability to make a cheap phone call on the go," said Roman Scharf, JAJAH co-founder. "Now with JAJAH Direct featured at LetMeBeMobile, users don't even need to be near a computer to reap the savings and call the world like it's local."
More information about the partner software solutions
JAJAH lets you make ultra low-cost global calls right off your existing phone. No contract, no headset, no computer or Internet connection needed, just big savings. Simply receive a local number for each of your international contacts - dial local and talk global.
Talkhouse takes speech recognition for searching to a whole new level. It's mySpeak voice search engine lets you search by keywords and phrases, just like in routine Internet searches. Their next generation voice-activated music player provides users with this easy, intuitive search function. Download to give it a try.
ElephantDrive provides easy-to-use, simple click-to-start online storage and backup capabilities. Get all enterprise-level benefits at a fraction of the cost. Delivering effective and continuous data protections tools for online backup and synchronization, you can keep your stuff within reach anywhere, anytime.
Tazti, a free, Web 2.0 style speech recognition application that lets you talk to your PC to navigate Facebook, Myspace & iTunes, search the Internet, create your own speech commands and so much more! For XP, Vista, and Mac via Parallels.
Learn more about the program, activities and promotional discounts associated with this campaign by visiting our landing page at www.letmebemobile.com or join us on Facebook.
More than anything else JAJAH relies on it's development and engineering team. There is a huge technical backend to our global calling network – servers, switches, PBX's, partners, websites, quality management, research & development and so on – all of that is being taken care of by our amazing team in Israel.
Now our engineers have taken the initiative and kicked of our JAJAH Development Platform at developer.jajah.com with our "Developer Blogs". Sharing information from behind the scenes, personal experiences while developing and working in and around JAJAH, useful tips, stories from the office and very geeky things.
"There is lots of technical information that we usually teach each other, so it was a great solution to share this info with all our R&D team. Then, it turned into a contest – who will get the highest number of entries … Some of us write about our work and the stuff we bump into during the development, and some of us share some academic stuff we learned during our studies."
says Noy Itzikowitz, JAJAH Developer.
The blogs are the start of a growing JAJAH Development Platform providing more features over time, a channel to get in touch with our developers for developers, including lots of useful tips & tricks working with our API (Application Programming Interface), integrating JAJAH into existing web properties.
This is great, it shows the people behind the service you are using, people who are committed in providing highly beneficial international calling solutions to you.
Win a trip to Paris and call your loved ones on Valentine’s Day
when was the last time you have been to Paris - the City of Love?
Call your loved ones on Valentine's Day via JAJAH Direct and win a trip to Paris for two.
JAJAH Direct makes it easier and more affordable than ever to call internationally. We'll give you a local number for each of your international contacts. You simply pick up your existing land line or cell phone and dial the local number, it will immediately ring your friends phone anywhere in the world for just a few cents.
We also had a look at last years Valentine's Day call volume and apparently U.S. lovers called 30% more -- both in frequency and in duration of calls -- than those in Germany, the next most-calling country. Long-distance lovers in Italy and France earned these traditionally romantic countries ranks of only 8th and 10th respectively.
Furthermore the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships found that roughly seven million couples in the U.S. consider themselves to be involved in long-distance relationships (LDRs). Among those involved, telephone calls occur as often as once a day, with the average being at least every 2.7 days, and last an average of 30 minutes. Another study indicated that almost 50 percent spent more than 10 hours per week on the telephone and emailing with their loved ones. Telephone costs for some long-distance couples can exceed a hundred dollars per month.
"Voice communication enhances any relationship, but especially long-distance ones -- whether two people are across a city or across continents," said Rebecca Weeks, Director of Business Development at Real Girls Media and consultant to Match.com and Social Fabric Corporation. "Fortunately, people today have convenient, inexpensive options for staying connected. JAJAH's easy to use calling service is more affordable and practical than typical long-distance services."
"Our mission is to save our users as much money as possible on calls they need and want to make," said Trevor Healy, CEO at JAJAH. "And this year we decided to help our users celebrate the day. Our contest will give one of those long-distance pairs a chance to be together -- if only for a weekend -- in Paris, the City of Love."
Using JAJAH Direct, you can make global calls from any landline or cell phone simply by dialing a local number, saving up to 98% versus traditional long distance calling rates.
JAJAH and Netvibes Ginger - Create your own start or Universe page
Back in December I met Hubert Michaux from Netvibes at LeWeb 3 in Paris. At that time they launched their brand new version called "Netvibes Ginger" (still in private beta but will open mid-february). Fortunately I am one of the early beta testers and thanks to a recent post on Facebook by Orli I just created our JAJAH Netvibes Ginger Universe page.
"One private page, one Universe - Create and personalize a netvibes Universe page just for yourself or publish one for your friends, family, everyone! A Universe is your very own personal dashboard that's updated live directly from all your favorite Web services (email, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, widgets) and media content (blogs, podcasts, video). Everything you enjoy on the Web, available at a glance, all in one place — spend less time surfing and logging in from site to site and more time enjoying your web, your way."
Netvibes let's you create a personalized startpage for your browser. It is organized into tabs, with each tab containing user-defined modules. You can choose out of thousands of useful services and widgets to create a startpage which contains your most used services and information at-a-glance. And of course there is also a JAJAH widget for your Netvibes start page.
The Apple iPhone has been named the invention of the year 2007 and will be one of the hottest holiday gifts for the season. The iPhone has demonstrated its lead in next generation mobile devices and has been made available in further European countries now.
In response to our customers needs we now launched the JAJAH iPhone Web applicaton 2.0 which also supports the Apple iPod touch. The app comes with the known look&feel of the iPhone's dial pad and address book enabling users to make low-cost global calling directly from their Apple iPhone and iPod touch.
How it works
You simply point your mobile Safari browser to http://iphone.jajah.com and dial the number you want to call. Alternatively you can select the name in your JAJAH contacts and click on the number you want to call. JAJAH will call your phone, you pick up, and you will be connected to the desired international number. You can call any phone anywhere in the world (landline or mobile) without the need of an international calling plan.
"We were the first company to release an international calling application for the iPhone. We released it on the day the first iPhone was sold," said Roman Scharf, JAJAH co-founder. "It quickly became one of our fastest growing applications and we got huge feedback from the Apple faithful, who have worked with us to do a complete redesign. We encourage all iPhone users to try it and save – you will be amazed and will agree that JAJAH is the perfect app for the iPhone!"
As the iPod touch is not meant to be a phone and missing the microphone this app can still initiate a call to your regular cell phone or land line nearby. The application works especially well in Europe where all data charges are already included in your monthly plan and incoming calls are completely free of charge. The combination of the iPhone and Web app also comes in handy when travelling to avoid roaming charges, you can find a more detailed description here.
Of course all non-iPhone users can use our recently launched JAJAH Direct service. This service provides you a unique local number for each of your international contacts or the known JAJAH Web at www.jajah.com
JAJAH Eliminates Need for Computer to Make Internet Calls
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural
We started JAJAH in early 2006 with the vision of providing vastly improved global communications solutions at a fraction of the traditional. With JAJAH Web we combined the best of the Internet with the best of the existing telephony infrastructure - your existing landline or mobile phone.
We launched the first truly global "web-activated telephony" service - easy and simple with two input fields to provide your own phone number and the number you want to call plus and a simple click-to-call button - our co-founder Roman ones said "If you can Google you can JAJAH".
With JAJAH Web we took out the hassles of known VoIP services such as Skype by eliminating the need of downloading and installing software, wearing a headset and having a broadband Internet connection (see www.noheadset.com).
JAJAH works with any regular phone (landline or mobile) and you are not stuck to your computer while still benefiting from the cost savings of Internet telephony to make your long-distance or international phone calls.
JAJAH = Two local calls anywhere in the world bridged over the Internet
Following our vision of smashing the barriers to global communication there was still one small downside left, you had to initiate the call from a web browser or browser capable mobile mobile phone. With our all-new JAJAH Direct service we finally took the computer out of the equation. JAJAH Direct provides you direct access to JAJAH's known calling platform by simply dialing a local number to establish an ultra-low-cost international phone call.
2. You then enter the international number you want to call
3. JAJAH connects you.
After your first call you will receive a unique local number for your contact via text message that you can store in your phone or address book for future calling. You can manage your JAJAH account without the need of a computer or being online at all, any regular landline or mobile phone will do.
JAJAH assigns a unique local number for each of your international contacts. If you are logged in to your JAJAH account you can actually see that each of your JAJAH contact shows up with a local number now. Save this local number in your mobile phone or address book and the next time you want to initiate a ultra low-cost JAJAH call to that person you simply dial the local number given without the need of your computer or Internet connection - you simply dial a local number like you are used to and it will ring your international contacts phone anywhere in the world.
Why JAJAH Direct:
- You get ultra low Internet calling rates for global calls - International Internet calling without Internet access
- From any phone to anywhere in the world - No monthly fees, no connection fees and no hidden costs - Use your existing landline or mobile phone - No PIN codes, no pre-paid calling cards, no lengthy access numbers, no contract - No additional hardware or installation needed - Simply get a local number for your global friends
JAJAH Direct provides you a local number for each of your international or long distance contacts.
"Don't hurt us. We're only trying to help!"
Current mood: liking what we do
Have you come across a Jajah Button in real life yet? Seems like people are taking to them like fish to water. As you know, you can place your Jajah Button pretty much anywhere - websites, blogs, email signatures, social networks.
One pretty smart use is placing it in your eBay account, letting bidders get in touch with you through a Jajah Button. So that's what about a thousand eBay Powersellers did in the days after the launch.
Sez' eBay: "No way."
Sez' our graphics team:
Well, one day even the big fish will see that technological ingenuity that makes people's life easier can't be held back on account of personal lack of vision. (Or, in that particular case, the frustration of not making the most of the overpaid Skype acquisition)
We'll keep you posted how all this pans out.
Cheers from a fairly smug Jajah Team. (More on Jajah Buttons here)
"Say what?" More from the Jajah Team
Current mood: Listening.
If you have used Jajah - and chances are high you have - you have been exposed to our beautiful Jajah voices. For almost two years now, our native speakers have told you that you will be connected, informed you about impending conference calls or given you a list of options when receiving a Jajah Button call. A big thanks to Riem, Saya, Wen, Aydagül, Melanie, Soo, Anna, Nadja and many more, who have been lending their professional voice to Jajah.
Another set of kudos goes out to our very reliable and extremley competent soundguys, Max and Andi. (Pictured here in the studio a few days ago whilst recording the upcoming Japanese version of the Jajah Buttons)
It's that time of year again. Summer is winding down and school is ramping up. As a way of supporting students everywhere, we have assembled a package of web based services designed to make the transition back to school just a little bit easier and a whole lot cheaper.
Included in the Students Survival Kit are well known apps like Wikipedia, Facebook and Flickr, along with other emerging solutions like Plazes and Sputtr - check it out at www.SchoolSurvivalKit.com
Naturally, we put JAJAH on the top of the list. JAJAH saves students (and their parents) boat loads of cash, by reducing the cost of calls home to family and friends. Many students report that they use JAJAH to send their non-local calls to their dorm room phone, thus saving money on long distance as well as saving minutes on their cell phone. The further you are away from home, the more money you'll save.
This is how easy it is to make an ultra-cheap VoIP call right from your Apple iPhone. Just click the entry in your JAJAH addressbook and talk to any regular phone in Europe or Asia for 3 cents per minute.
No headset, no download, no installation.
More information and free registration at www.jajah.com
"Hello. I'm Poncho Peligroso of the Bad Idea Club, I have made the following epic story of how I ended my abusive relationship with headsets: shouting, punching, and eventually faking my own death. Thank you for your consideration."
Thanks a lot Poncho and Bad Idea Club crew for all your effort and participation in the "No Headset" movement! You earned yourself some cool "No Headset" wear and free global calling without headsets.
The iPhone truly rocks. But with JAJAH, the iPhone truly rocks the entire world.
JAJAH is the alternative to expensive AT&T long distance / global calls.
JAJAH lets you make ultra-low cost calls directly from your iPhone to virtually any other phone in the world, without needing a Wi-fi connection. Why is this important? The iPhone is one of the most innovative and elegant products ever made. Truly revolutionary. The calling plan that comes with it, on the other hand, is not innovative or elegant. It's expensive and amazingly, it wont let you call outside the U.S. unless you purchase a special international plan from AT&T. The plan alone will costs you $3.99 U.S. a month and on top of that, a call to London (for example), will then cost you 23 cents a minute. The same call using JAJAH costs only 3 cents a minute and it costs nothing to sign up for the service. An hour call to London on AT&T = $13.80 (ouch). The same call using JAJAH costs $1.80.
2. If you're already a registered JAJAH user, you use it the way it always works. Just enter the number you are calling, hit call and you're done.
If you are new to JAJAH, no worries. You can sign-up right from your iPhone. The new JAJAH Interface combined with the iPhone ease of use, makes getting started easier than it's ever been:
1. Go to mobile.jajah.com. Resize the app to fit the iPhone window using your fingers , of course. (what a great feature)
2. Enter your email and your iPhone's number (this information will never be given out to anyone)
3. Touch "Register"
4. Shortly, your iPhone will signal you that you have received and SMS. It contains a temporary password. Got get it,
5. Touch the Safari icon on the bottom of your home screen. Notice that Safari is still open to your JAJAH screen. Enter your temporary password. You're done.
6. Make a trial call. Touch the blank number window on the screen. It will automatically open the iPhones keyboard. enter the number you want to call ( be sure to add the country code even for U.S. calls (+1) . (Alternatively, you can make the test call to the JAJAH number in the address book, simply by touching on it)
7. Touch "Call". Your iPhone will ring (this may surprise you, but it's how JAJAH works) answer it. At the same time, your friends phone is also ringing. You both answer and talk. JAJAH works on calls to virtually any phone in the world, landline or mobile.
8. The trial call will last a different length depending on where you are calling. After your trial call, you'll want to put money into your JAJAH account so you can continue to make low - cost global calls. Go to www.jajah.com on your computer desktop, log in using the password you just received. To change your password, buy credit or to manage your account, his is the place to do it.
Jajah TV is online - yes, we are now broadcasting stuff. Just check it out on the Jajah TV website . As our most beloved reader, you have the opportunity to produce content too. Neutralize your headset, capture the slaughtering on tape (yes we know it´s the digital century, but tape is a nice word) and send it in at noheadset.com . If we like it, and we like a lot, you can see your video on Jajah TV and you receive a fine t-shirt, cap, whatever from us.
accomplished
