Gizmo Project

September 12th, 2005

Gizmo Project is a program for free internet calls, no adware, no spyware. You can also buy hardware that will allow you connect a regular phone to the network for Voice over IP. If you use the software and someone tries to call you and you’re not there, they can leave you a voicemail. It then send you an email with a wav file of the voicemail message. This is really cool, but also a potential problem.

You don’t have to give someone permission to add you to their friends list. That means someone can search for “Smith” and add everyone with that last name. Since you caninsert pre-recorded wav files into the voicemails, it would not be very hard to spam everyone on the network. You know those spammers are innovative. I’m sure they already had the idea or I wouldn’t be blogging about it.

So now I just need some friends to test this out. It’s one of those things that you can leave connected as long as you want, even if you have nothing to say. There’s an interview with the CEO on Engadget.com. This guy also founded mp3.com and then sold it a few years later for like 400 million bucks. How fuckin smart was that?

Personally, I think the coolest feature of this program is the “map it” button. That way you can see if the person who called you is really who and where they say they are. I did a test call with a friend in Norman just now, and I mapped it.

Skype is similar to this program, but it only works within its own network. Gizmo project works across different networks, so you don’t even have to use the Gizmo, you can use one of the others. Oh, and they have Mac and Linux versions also.

I’m back on movable type because I got tired of WP. It worked ok, but I’m just more used to this CMS, and it’s easier to customize templates and shit.

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