OpenSocial Application Update - Orkut, Ning, MySpace and more …
Posted on November 5, 2007
Filed Under OpenSocial | 2 Comments
Two minor updates based on feedback we received on our OpenSocial Orkut Application.
- We now have two separate applications, one for phone and another for voicemail.
- Works on any platform that uses OpenSocial - Orkut, Ning, MySpace etc.
As usual, we look forward to your feedback.
TringMe Rolls Out OpenSocial Application for Orkut
Posted on November 3, 2007
Filed Under Announcement | Leave a Comment
TringMe Rolls out Orkut application using today announced Google OpenSocial API (here, here & here). TringMe’s orkut application will allows you to add TringMe to your orkut profile in just two simple steps.
- Login to TringMe and get link to your Orkut application URL
TringMe announces public beta of its Live Phone Widget
Posted on October 31, 2007
Filed Under Announcement, Launch | 1 Comment
TringMe announces public beta of its live phone widget. TringMe phone widget allows you to receive calls from your website or profile visitors - directly from the web. So far, TringMe has released voicemail widget for public beta and restricted phone widget to key testers only.
To use TringMe phone or voicemail widget, just login to your TringMe account, copy TringMe widget code and paste it to your website. Do not forget to set appropriate call forwarding option in your profile (option - ‘Send my voicemails and calls to’) There is no restriction on the available talk time for receiving calls on phone and it is only limited by the phone credits in your account. In case you choose to receive calls on Gtalk, the available talk time is limited to 3 minutes per call.
As always, we look forward to feedback and suggestions.
TringMe launches Toll-free Platform for Enterprises
Posted on October 24, 2007
Filed Under Announcement, Enterprise, milestone | 10 Comments
TringMe announces availability of web-based toll-free platform for Enterprises. Key advantages of TringMe’s toll-free platform over the existing traditional (e.g. 1-800 numbers in USA) toll-free solutions are to allow enterprises to deploy toll-free services at extremely low cost and also offer worldwide reachability.
As we had mentioned in the last post, we are almost ready to release public beta of live phone widget, one of the most asked features of TringMe. In brief, live phone widget enables a user to make a phone call by merely clicking on the widget. We have been giving it to a limited set of testers so far and we are quite happy with the results.
Enterprises and call centers have shown keen interest in TringMe’s technology, especially to compliment their existing toll-free (e.g. like 1-800 numbers in USA) services by using TringMe widgets. TringMe is the easiest way to stay connected on the web, no numbers to dial – just push and talk. Leveraging this capability to implement a single click to connect to customer support can enhance the usability and value of an enterprise in the eyes of its customers. Enterprises can not only improve overall interaction with customers by providing web based toll-free access, but at the same time save drastically on telephone cost to offer such a service, a win-win situation for both the parties. In addition, unlike normal toll-free service that is limited within a geographic region, toll-free calls using TringMe can be received from worldwide users.
Advantages are obvious and easy to visualize – enterprises can setup their complete sales & support system or call center in almost no cost that replaces or complements existing toll-free service. Enterprises can also expect better response as customers do not have to dial any number neither do they have to spend on airtime if they are using cell phone (1-800 numbers are subjected to airtime charges). Imagine a customer, reading your sales pitch on your website, can merely by a press of a button talk to you at absolutely no cost, neither to you nor to customer. Enterprises can introduce custom announcements or integrate IVR with TringMe to offer a consistent and complete experience.
TringMe’s toll free platform can route calls to the existing enterprise infrastructure – SIP server, PBX that manages the enterprise wide telephony. Here are a few ways an enterprise can use TringMe to provide web-based toll-free accessibility:
TringMe route calls to enterprise SIP sever. A key benefit for the enterprise would be to offer free web based call at absolutely no cost thereby eliminating major telephony (and possibly infrastructure) costs.
If the enterprise does not have its own SIP server, TringMe offers a hosted solution. TringMe will offer dedicated or shared server for enterprise use depending on the individual requirements, thereby offering a competitive price.
Alternatively, TringMe can route the web calls to enterprise’s chosen destinations including PBX, landlines, cell phones or even Gtalk, Skype (Skype support is coming soon).
TringMe offers all necessary features for enterprise level call management, including call hunting, call queuing, resource loading, alternate call routing, etc. TringMe solution enables enterprises to create as many real and virtual extensions as required. To provide a consistent user experience, most of the features available via 1-800 toll-free lines (e.g. music on hold) are available via TringMe as well.
As always, we look forward to feedback and suggestions. Please write to us bizdev@tringme.com if you are interested in using TringMe for your enterprise.
TringMe expands reach to more countries in Asia and Europe
Posted on October 22, 2007
Filed Under Announcement, Launch, milestone | 9 Comments
We are very excited to expand TringMe’s service to several countries within Asia and Europe. TringMe now reaches millions of users in China, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and UK. This is in addition to the mobile and landline support available in US and Canada since TringMe’s inception.
Apart from the above expansion, a lot more is happening at TringMe. One of the most asked feature was the live talk from the web feature (our phone widget). In brief, live talk is the ability to use TringMe’s phone widget to make a phone call. So far, we have limited the phone widget for the key testers only. Results so far are quite exciting and we will soon release the phone widget for public beta. If you are covering TringMe or intend to blog about the widget and would like to have a preview of it before launch, do write to us.
We have two more exciting features coming…any guesses ?
TringMe Extends Service to Italy
Posted on October 17, 2007
Filed Under Announcement | 1 Comment
We are happy to announce that we have extended our service to Italy. All numbers starting with ‘0′ are supported. We are also ready to add other European countries in coming weeks.
We are constantly being asked about extension of our service to other countries. Be assured, we are working on it. We are still a very young company, not even completed a month of our service. At this moment, we are keeping a tight watch on QoS and various other system parameters to tune our system and offer best quality of service. However, at the same time, we are expanding in terms of reachability, features and QoS. So give us some more time and you will get what you have been asking for, in best possible way.
In mean time, keep sending us your feedback. There definitely going to be a reward for guessing our next feature or suggesting a new feature that may get into TringMe 
Downtime
Posted on October 17, 2007
Filed Under Announcement | Leave a Comment
Due to circumstances beyond our control (heavy packet loss on DC-CA network), TringMe was down for almost 2 hours. Please accept our apologizes for the inconvenience.
TringMe for Enterprises
Posted on October 12, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Few enterprises and websites have shown keen interest in having TringMe services with slightly different needs. While we cannot cater to different needs at this moment, we have been discussing about possible generic solutions for business users. I am happy to announce that we have added two new features to TringMe for enterprise use – one of those will also be available to individual users from their profile.
- Private SIP Server – TringMe now offers enterprises to register their own SIP server where TringMe can route calls and voicemails for a set of users. Enterprise can have their internal dialing plan for further routing of the calls and voicemails. This feature will give enterprises ultimate control at the same time flexibility of the TringMe platform. Enterprises can even develop application based on SIP to offer some innovative solutions to their users.
- REST style API to delivering voicemails. Instead of delivering voicemails to current TringMe destinations, user can provide a callback URL that will be invoked by TringMe to deliver voicemails. We plan to upgrade website in coming weeks to enable individual beta users to try out this feature.
Would you like to integrate TringMe with your website or business? We would like to hear from you.
10,000 Calls - A significant milestone
Posted on October 12, 2007
Filed Under milestone | 3 Comments
I am happy to announce small but to us, a significant milestone…10,000 calls on TringMe’s platform. I am simply thrilled and waiting for this to happen!!!
Thanks you all for your support and look forward to more participations and feedback. We are still slow in issuing invites but things should improve going forward.
It’s Tringging…
Posted on October 10, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
TringMe was covered by TechCrunch and we’ve been busy as ever since then :). We sincerely thank TechCrunch to review TringMe. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have given us their comments and feedback.
TringMe user base is increasing steadily since launch. We received close to 1800 signup requests on day-1 and have continued to receive hundreds of invite requests everyday thereafter. Our platform is coping up well with continuously increasing user base without any drop in Quality of Service (QoS) and that is definitely in line with our expectation since scalability was one of the core underpinnings of the design.
The platform on which we build TringMe was the core focus from the day we started. Once we nailed down on TringMe idea, we started looking for a suitable platform to create TringMe. Due to my experience in designing products in communication and VoIP domain, designing call processing termination on phone or Gtalk was not a technical challenge in itself. This more so since I had some existing software which we would quickly adapt to these needs. The key component needed was flash server (RTMP server). The key requirements were:
- Scalability: Can handle thousands of simultaneous call in real-time without affecting QoS
- Efficient and minimum resource usage: CPU and memory are at premium here. We required it to use minimal CPU and memory, as a good share of CPU time and memory is also required by other applications like call processing, voice transcoding, other signal processing etc.
- Integration: Integrate with call processing and other real-times applications
- Coding and Database: Interface with C/C++ and php modules. Interface with database
- Stability: High availability
Basically, I was looking for a high performance flash server with minimum resource usage and optionally also offers other telecom platform features. We evaluated few servers and as expected, my runtime and performance requirements were high to be met by any of them. It is important to stress that I am not making any comparison; merely assessing the suitability of our requirements with existing solutions. Adobe FMS is an excellent and feature rich solution but at the same time huge, resource hungry (see their system requirements), and very expensive. It also has connection and bandwidth cap for most editions. Beside these, interfacing it with call processing and other software modules (written in C/C++) was not simple enough. Hence, I was doubtful in making it a suitable platform for real-time applications like TringMe. Another very good solution is Red5, but that too is resource hungry and far from TringMe’s performance and other requirements. Eventually we decided to write our own, starting from scratch, which turned out to be the right decision.
TringMe’s platform has become one of our biggest assets. It is fast, small, scalable and extremely powerful. Memory usage is at minimum. Intelligent memory and resource allocation strategies resulted in almost no dynamic memory allocation once server is fully up and the maximum resource usage is configurable. The run time memory usage is just a few KBs per connection and IMHO, extremely good from any standard. Below is output of size that can give some idea on compactness of the server
text data bss dec hex filename
72734 7196 2020 81950 1401e tringme
Design also focused on keeping CPU usage to minimum. The buffer copy is often the largest source of CPU utilization in protocol state machines. We carefully designed and coded to use zero-copy for most parts. With all such optimization, our flash server remains light weighted even in highly loaded conditions.
While the core part of the server is RTMP protocol state machine, lot more required to make it as a platform, for example, framework for communicating with external application and modules, emails, database, buffer and memory management etc. The most complex of all is Signal Processing Unit (SPU) & Voice Engine.
Voice engine enables TringMe to use various audio formats used in telephony (gsm, g711, ilbc, and very soon speex) and jitter correction. TringMe’s platform chooses the appropriate audio codec format for the end nodes and uses voice engine for transcoding between the formats.
SPU performs many other complex functions required to interoperate with various telephony providers. For example, with one provider we had to implement complex logic of combined Human Speech Detection, DTMF detection, Ring Detection to reliably detect if phone was picked up before delivering the voicemails. There are may more functionalities in SPU that will enable upcoming features on TringMe, off course we will hold the details for now
Be assured, we are adding so many features, and I am happy to see that TringMe users are continuously feeding us with suggestions & feature requests. We continue to evaluate these suggestions to better understand the needs of the community … stay tuned on TringMe.
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