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!

With Loudtalks Cloud update published yesterday we introduced two new features and numerous improvements, which worth some explanation. These are dynamic channels and clients remote configuration from the admin console.

Dynamic channels

Now when configuring a channel in the admin console, you can choose from using group channel and dynamic channel.

Dynamic channels have a different icon and work differently too.

1. Unlike group channels, when you add it to the user, only that channel (and not its users) is added to user’s contacts
2. You can connect and disconnect the channel from the client software in real time by double-click (tap) on the channel name. That way you can easily skip the conversations, which are not relevant at the moment
3. Since dynamic channels don’t “pollute” your contact list, they could potentially scale well beyond 100 users per channel so you can use it for broadcast to really large groups of users which was impossible before.

Along with the introduction of dynamic channels concept the group channels operations was also seriously redesigned. Both group and dynamic channels now include the following features:

1. For messages received from a channel, the channel name along with sender name appear in the notification window (only user name appeared previously)
2. Channels now have their own history display
3. When the new message is received from a channel after a period of inactivity (”new conversation” event), the channel is selected in the contacts instead of a user
4. Call setup time for one-to-many calls is faster than before and consistently under 1 second
5. There is a grace time of 10 seconds for every message sent to the channel. During that time the person speaking couldn’t be interrupted. That solves the issue when many people start speaking simultaneously but still allows to interrupt someone, who took over the channel for too long.

Clients remote configuration

If you are running a large network, you may face the problem of manual configuration of every device, which could be troublesome. With remote configuration feature the network admin can setup certain client options for all users right from the web console.

Right now we enabled the configuration of automatic updates, auto-away and voice quality.

Voice quality configuration wasn’t available before and now you can select one of standard profiles or go real hardcore and modify raw codec options. This might be especially useful if you are using Loudtalks over the satellite internet (where traffic is extremely expensive).

If you haven’t tried Loudtalks Cloud yet, go ahead and try it now. It’s free!

We just released the new version of Loudtalks Lite.

Release notes:

Windows

- Added back “Noise suppression” option — in the most cases you’ll want this on, however if you are using a noise cancelling microphone or USB Speakerphone like Polycom C100 turning it off may improve sound quality

Windows Mobile

- Unattended mode support. Now if you have Loudtalks running and press Power button the device doesn’t go to sleep but goes into unattended mode, with minimal power requirements yet allowing you to stay online and receive incoming transmissions.

- Fixed “Microphone error” bug, which showed on some devices after sending the first message

The update will be delivered through automatic updates today or you can download it manually now:

Download Loudtalks Lite for Windows

Download Loudtalks Lite for Windows Mobile

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.

This is a maintainance release, which includes the following changes:

1. [fix] Support for VGA+ devices
2. [new] Improved soft buttons use — moved menu to the right button, reserving the left one for context-dependent actions (”PTT” on contacts screen, “Play” — on history)
3. [fix] History was hard to use on devices without touch screen

This is also the first mobile release to be distributed using automatic updates feature. Please report if automatic update didn’t work as expected.

Download Loudtalks for Windows Mobile

A minor Loudtalks Lite update is published today.

Release notes

Windows

1. [new] Automatic updates configuration. You can select one of three modes — Download automatically (default), Notify only and Disable
2. [new] Recording and playback level adjustment. Use this option if Loudtalks volume is too low or too loud. This control should be used with caution because if you set volume too high, it’ll cause sound “clipping” and bad artifacts.

Windows Mobile

1. [new] Automatic updates support
2. [new] Recording and playback level adjustment.
3. [fix] Distorted graphics and icons in 320×320 and 320×240 modes
4. [new] Automatic scrolling when the UI form doesn’t fit into device screen

Loudtalks for Windows
Loudtalks for Windows Mobile

Known issues

1. The current Windows Mobile build doesn’t display correctly on VGA and higher-resolution screens. The issue will be addressed in the next release. In the interim users with hi-res screens may use Loudtalks 0.9.0.54 (download .cab)
2. AT&T Tilt users are not able to assign device’s PTT button as a hotkey in Loudtalks. If you have this device and want to help fixing this issue please contact us at support@loudtalks.com
3. Some users report that Loudtalks can’t capture sound on their HTC-made Windows Mobile phone (HTC Touch and other models). We weren’t able to reproduce or isolate this issue yet. If you experience it, please contact us.
4. When running Loudtalks under Linux on WINE, you must disable notification sounds, otherwise it crashes on the incoming message.

We’ve released a long awaited update for Loudtalks SDK, which allows to integrate push-to-talk function into your application.

New in this version:

1. Codebase is updated to match the most recent release of Loudtalks
2. Extended API to enable fully-custom GUI
3. Support for Windows Mobile
4. Added two new samples

To compile the samples included in the SDK you’ll need a Visual Studio 2008.

Learn more or download Loudtalks push-to-talk SDK.

Another big update of the mobile version, which improves reliability and makes Loudtalks play nice with non-touchscreen Windows Mobile devices.

Release notes

Windows

1. [fix] Notifications showed up sometimes, even when turned off in settings
2. [fix] Line selection didn’t work with Realtek HD Audio sound cards

Windows Mobile

1. [new] Contacts authorization alert (green flag) is clickable now
2. [new] Display tray notification for incoming and outgoing transmissions when Loudtalks is running in the background
3. [new] Support for smartphones without touchscreen
4. [new] Support for low-res screens (as little as 170×220)
5. [new] Faster re-connect after network interruptions when using mobile data connection
6. [fix] Keys auto-repeat caused incorrect operation of push-to-talk button on some devices

Windows download
Windows Mobile downloads

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

This new release (available for download now) adds support for user-definable PTT hotkey on Windows Mobile as well as “clear-to-send” sound, which makes it perfect for blind use without switching to Loudtalks app. Here are the formal release notes:

Windows

1. [new] Clear to send sound alert option
2. [new] Audio device selection now includes recording line
3. [fix] Custom alert sounds selection is lost sometimes

Windows Mobile

1. [new] User-definable global PTT hotkey
2. [new] Clear to send sound alert option
3. [fix] Random crash when pressing PTT button repeatedly

Windows download
Windows Mobile downloads