Loudtalks

Are you a Start Trek fan? Do you know that you can feel like on the bridge of USS “Enterprise” with a little customization of Loudtalks, which would turn your phone into Star Trek Communicator. Here is how:

1. Go to http://drop.io/ax85pip and download startrek.wav and startrek2.wav sounds to your PC or mobile phone
2. If you downloading to the phone, make sure to put them into ‘My Documents’ folder so that the app can find them
3. If you are using desktop version of Loudtalks go to step 4), mobile — step 5)
4. Open Options (via Tools > Options… menu) and activate Control tab, go to step 6
5. Open Options (via Menu > Options… menu) and activate Control tab
6. Set “New conversation alert” checkbox, then click “Change…” button, browse for startrek2.wav file and click Open
7. Next to “Clear to send alert” checkbox, then click “Change…” button, browse for startrek.wav file and click Open
8. Use “Test” button to verify that the sounds are loaded, click “OK” to close Options dialog and enjoy!

We say that Loudtalks is lightweight, but what does it actually mean?

Here is a little test.

1. Take a 5 years old laptop with 1.7 GHz CPU

2. Launch 21 (yes, that’s twenty one) copies of Loudtalks Mesh client on it

3. Launch  Loudtalks Mesh server on the same laptop (!) under VMWare

4. Test one to many messaging from the first client to 20 others

Here is how that looks:

The cpu load fluctuates in the 50..85% range and everything works nicely.

The same codebase is used on mobile devices, which allows Loudtalks enabling push-to-talk on the old Windows Mobile communicators with 200 MHz cpu and consume less power on the modern ones.

Are you a Twitter user? You can follow Loudtalks’s releases and “behind the scenes” updates at http://twitter.com/loudtalks then!

Today, three months from the first public appearance at TechCrunch40 we reached an important milestone of 10,000 registered users.

I want to thank these brave people for helping us. It takes courage to try the new software, which challenges existing communication tools with multi-million user bases.

We try to work up to your expectations. Over that time we went through 13 releases, fixing bugs and gradually improving usability. I really hope we are heading in the right direction. If you think we are not — give us a punch, we are listening.

Here is what expected in the coming releases:

• Automatic updates support
• Support of TCP-only transport
• Support of operation through a proxy
• Incoming messages and statuses history (think twitter timeline)
• Improved GUI (slimmer main window, compact contacts mode)

We also keep on adding new UI languages. Right now Loudtalks is available is English, Russian, German, Spanish, Finnish and Chinese.

We decided that it would be cool to nominate Loudtalks for one of The Crunchies awards.

If you think we deserve it, please support us by clicking on that cheesy round button on the left and entering “loudtalks” into “Best Bootstrapped Start-up” category. You may nominate us into different categories as well :)

Thanks!

We often mention that Loudtalks is faster than alternatives. What exactly do we mean? One meaning is that it’s lightweight, uses very little system resources and will work fine on older PCs too.

More importantly, it allows to communicate faster by skipping through the clutter and giving the ability to speak the very same moment you decided to say something.

Consider you want to ask co-worker a quick question. Here is how the timeline would look if you use Loudtalks, phone call (i.e. Skype), and an instant messenger (i.e. ICQ):

Loudtalks wins this case because it offers “always on” voice channel, without overhead associated with a phone call ritual.

(update 11/6/2007: Based on feedback from users, we replaced “DeepWell” build with a normal echo, which repeats back whatever you say to it. DeepWell moves over to “voices” username)

Today we launched the first bot in Loudtalks network. It’s name is “echovoices” and it’s added to all new users’ contacts automatically. You can add or remove it manually too.

The first purpose of this bot is to help users testing Loudtalks themselves before inviting friends. It does that in somewhat unusual way. The best way to experience “DeepWell” project is to login to Loudtalks, add “voices” to your contacts and tell something to it.

If you just want a spoiler here is what it does.

Read the rest of this entry »

I created the Loudtalks group at Facebook. If you are using both Loudtalks and Facebook please join.

I’m not sure how useful this would be but it won’t harm so why not give it a try.

See TechCrunch coverage here.

Unfortunately the demo was screwed by a technical issue. Loudtalks software worked fine, however the audio on the stage didn’t work at all (A/V guy said that the audio cable was broken unplugged by people stepping on it).

Alexander Vinogradov and Jason Calacanis saving the demo (photo from TechCrunch) 

Thanks for your support and I hope you’ll enjoy the product. If you have suggestions or issues to report please drop us an email at support@loudtalks.com