Internet-based communication is changing so quickly these days that there seems to be an endless stream of beta releases. Yesterday, Simon wrote about some of the latest browser betas; let’s look at a few products and services for interacting with social networks, Twitter and instant messaging.

I don’t generally like living on the bleeding edge, but some betas are very usable, and I’ve already incorporated them into my daily workflow. Others look promising, but are not stable or are lacking too many features right now. But all of the following are worth trying, and watching as they develop. We’ll review them more thoroughly as they mature.

Adium is my favorite IM client for the Mac OS. Its latest beta supports all of the instant messaging protocols, and also has rudimentary support for Twitter and Facebook Chat. Unfortunately, the latter is not working as I write this, although a fix is expected shortly.

VoxOx is an ambitious program combining IM; social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Twitter); SMS texting; faxing; private email; file sharing; video conversations; and voice connections. As I wrote a few days ago, it is very rough around the edges now, and desperately needs improved tools for managing contacts.

Imo.im is a web-based multi-system instant messaging client with some intriguing features, like shared whiteboards. This service is listed as being in alpha, so we can assume that it has considerable development ahead of it.

Brizzly is a web-based service that looks a lot like Twitter’s own web interface, but with improvements. It supports multiple Twitter accounts and has recently added Facebook support. The multiple accounts aren’t as well integrated as I would like, but I assume that will come.

Tweetminer is another web-based service that includes support for multiple Twitter accounts, tweet scheduling, and RSS feeds. Its interface is attractive, but features are minimal at the moment. There are also Adobe AIR or Fluid-based desktop versions, for those who prefer standalone apps.

Socialite (formerly EventBox, which Imran wrote about here) has just released beta 2, which seemingly broke support for Facebook updates. When this issue is fixed, Socialite could become my favorite, as it combines support for Facebook, Facebook Pages, multiple Twitter accounts, RSS feeds and Google Reader in one attractive interface.

Seesmic Desktop is another Twitter and Facebook program which has worked well for me, but it shares with many Adobe AIR programs some ugly screen fonts and a propensity for using large amounts of memory. Seesmic also has a promising web version, but so far, it lacks support for multiple Twitter accounts, and for Facebook.

Nambu only does Twitter, but does it very well, in what I think is the most attractive interface of any program of its type. I can choose three different layouts, and switch between them easily. Nambu’s development is very rapid, with a new beta released every couple of days.

I find the popular Tweetdeck to be totally unreadable and unusable, due to its AIR interface. I wish Adobe would make AIR on the Mac look as good as the native OS X fonts and windows.

There are lots more betas out there, of course. What beta software and services do you use?

Image credit: Stock.xchng user OmirOnia

I spend a lot of time each day communicating with colleagues and clients, by phone, email, on social networks, and via the occasional fax. But when I need to have a short conversation and get an answer right away, instant messaging is hard to beat. Unfortunately, there are several IM protocols, and most of them don’t talk to each other. That’s why I use the multi-protocol IM software Adium on the Mac and Pidgin on the PC. I can also use a web-based alternative like Meebo or the new Imo.im.

VoxOx wants to take multi-system communication several steps further. In addition to the various IM protocols, it supports social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Twitter); SMS texting; faxing; private email; file sharing; video conversations; and voice connections. VoxOx also supports Skype messaging, although you have to have the Skype software running, which sort of defeats its purpose.

When you sign up for the service, you are assigned a telephone number in southern California (other locations are apparently on the way). Incoming calls to that number, and voice conversations between you and other VoxOx users, are free; other calls are charged at rates similar to other VoIP services. VoxOx has just begun offering flat-fee voice and texting plans, at prices it claims are significantly cheaper than Skype’s. VoxOx’s other services are free.

In recent days, VoxOx has released beta 2.0.5. The software has improved since I first tried it a year or so ago, but it is very definitely still a work in progress. Its dark background with white text theme is hard on the eyes and isn’t editable, and its contact manager has no provision for importing from or syncing with other address books.

VoxOx seems to be trying to collect the useful features from Skype, conferencing services, virtual PBX services, instant messaging and file sharing services, and putting them all in one place. It’s a pretty cool idea, and VoxOx is definitely worth trying, but I’m not quite ready to make it part of my daily workflow yet.

Have you used VoxOx? What did you think of it?

I’ve been using Google Voice since it was GrandCentral, and have been quite impressed. But it’s still in beta, and while invitations to the beta are finally becoming available, I understand that they’re still hard to come by.

3jam is billing itself as an alternative to Google Voice, and it’s available today, so I’ve given it a quick spin. This is not a complete review, as there are some of 3jam’s features that I haven’t tried, such as SMS messaging, forwarding to Skype, an API that lets you write your own applications to interact with their service, and “group” numbers that allow multiple users to share voice mail and messaging.

Signing Up and Getting a Number

Signing up for the service is easy. Just select an area code where you want a number and 3jam will display a series of available numbers from which you can pick. You can also enter words to see if you can get a “vanity number” that spells something. You can also port an existing number to the 3jam service for a onetime fee of $25, something that Google Voice doesn’t yet offer. Right now, 3jam is only offering incoming numbers in the continental U.S. If you want an incoming number in another country, you’ll need SkypeIn or another VoIP service.

Pricing

In my opinion, a major weakness of 3jam’s service is its complex pricing structure. For those of us who are used to the clearly-defined packages offered by most cell phone and VoIP providers, it’s bewildering to be confronted with a choice of monthly fees and SMS packages, and to realize that the monthly fees include only a ridiculously small number of incoming minutes (just 30!) and no outgoing minutes at all.

3jam charges a monthly fee ranging from $4.99 per month for a 12-month contract, to $8.99 per month on a monthly basis. Additional minutes, SMS and even transcriptions of voice mails (over the first 30) cost extra. Additional minute rates for calls (apparently both incoming and outgoing) are competitive. The SMS prices are puzzling, though: 5 cents per message to the U.S., but only 4 cents to Uganda or Uzbekistan?

Annoyingly, information about pricing is very difficult to find on 3jam’s web site. The monthly fees are displayed during the sign-up process, but only after you’ve already selected a phone number. A more comprehensive list of pricing seems to be available only in the help section, which I found by doing a search.

By comparison, the Google Voice service does not currently charge a monthly fee, or fees for calls and SMS messages in the U.S. Google Voice charges for international calls at rates that are competitive with other VoIP services. It’s rumored that Google could make the service advertising-supported at some point.

While some people may find 3jam’s à la carte approach to pricing advantageous, I think that businesses will need to know what they can expect to pay; 3jam makes that difficult. The 3jam control panel does offer a running total of calls made and the costs incurred, so users can at least keep track of what they’ve spent.

Setup

Setting up the service is straightforward. You can set incoming calls to the 3jam number to ring on as many as six different phones, not only in the U.S., but in many other locations throughout the world. You can also forward incoming calls to Skype, something that Google Voice doesn’t offer. And you can forward incoming SMS messages to IM services like Google Talk and AIM, which is a nice touch.

3jam offers the ability to import your contacts to its address book from external email accounts like Gmail, and from Outlook, Thunderbird Entourage and .csv files. I was unable to get either Gmail or a .csv import to work, however, and didn’t try the other options.

Quality

Like many VoIP services, sound quality varies from call to call. I had several friends place test calls to me, and we heard occasional echoes, delays and crackles. But generally, call clarity was good — as good as Google Voice, if not better. The transcriptions of voice mails seem to be on a par with Google Voice as well, which is to say, good enough to get the gist of the message, even when some words are missing or incorrect.

Applications

3jam offers three applications that I didn’t try because I’m on a Mac. The first is a Windows-only desktop application for SMS messaging. (The site mentions a web version, but the link to it doesn’t seem to be working.) There is also a BlackBerry app, and a way of having 3jam send messages to you via Twitter.

For people who need maximum flexibility in routing calls and SMS messages, especially internationally, 3jam is likely to be an excellent choice. For those who need to forecast their communication costs, and those who don’t need the international forwarding options, Google Voice is probably a better choice, once it becomes more widely available.

Have you tried 3jam? How does it compare to Google Voice?

Google Voice wants to be your phone manager, SMS and voicemail provider. The service is rumored to be almost ready for public access.

Google Voice germinated after Google acquired GrandCentral almost two years ago. The service was relaunched earlier this year as a private beta for GrandCentral users. I’ve been using it for a while, and am generally impressed. Google Voice offers a number of features that should make it popular with web workers.

Incoming Calls and SMS

• You are given one phone number that can be configured to ring multiple places — office, home, cell phone or even an account on the VoIP service Gizmo5. (In the past, users were assigned a new telephone number. Apparently, it will soon be possible to port existing numbers to Google Voice.) Sound quality is quite good, although there can be a delay in transmission, which causes awkward pauses. It’s rather like a better version of talking via satellite.
• If you are not available, voicemails are recorded. They can be transcribed and sent to you by email or SMS. The accuracy of the transcriptions varies, but ranges from fair to excellent.

• You can choose to screen some or all callers, and have them speak their name before the call is forwarded to you. You can set up groups, and allow some callers to bypass screening.
• You can “listen in” on callers as they leave messages, or record calls.
• You can import your contacts through CSV files.

Outgoing Calls and SMS

• You can make outgoing calls through the Google Voice web site. Outgoing calls are free in the continental U.S. International calling rates are quite reasonable, and are competitive with many VoIP services.
• With the Google Voice Add-on for Firefox, you don’t even need to go to the Google Voice web site to make calls. You can just click the add-on and enter a number. And the add-on recognizes phone numbers on web pages and makes them clickable links, too.
• You can also send SMS messages through the Google Voice web site and the Firefox add-on. When you do so, you are assigned a number in area code 406 that allows recipients to reply.

There are a number of other useful features, including conference calling. The complete list is at Google Voice help.

Are you already using Google Voice? Will you sign up once it becomes available?

Voicemail, useful though it is, is pretty unsophisticated: you record a greeting, caller leaves a message. YouMail aims to improve the voicemail experience, making you more productive in the process. It allows you to record per-contact and per-group greetings, receive voicemail via cell phone, email and web site, and get your voicemails transcribed.

Signing up with the service is a breeze. Just enter your cell phone number into the YouMail web site to receive an activation code sent to your phone. Copy the code into the web app, and you’re in. YouMail provides excellent setup instructions specific to your phone (complete with screenshots for my BlackBerry Curve). After setup, YouMail lets you select how you want to receive alerts.

YouMail sends a voicemail alert by email

The service has three options for checking voicemail. You can program the “1″ key on your cell phone, dial the YouMail phone number that appears in all new voicemail alerts, or use visual voicemail by going to http://m.youmail.com from a web-capable cell phone. Using visual voicemail, you can view the caller’s info including location, audio file, transcribed message and photo, if available.

Checking voicemail at m.youmail.com on a BlackBerry

One of YouMail’s unique features is the ability to record custom greetings for individuals as well as groups. This feature is great for folks like me who work with a diversity of clients and teams. Rather than emailing and calling everyone on one of my teams to report that I’m out for two hours, I can customize a greeting for that specific group. You can use one of many free prerecorded messages from the service or record your own through your computer or cell phone.

The clean and user-friendly web interface makes it easy to import and manage contacts. Select a contact to choose a greeting, record a new one, or “ditch” (effectively block the caller — YouMail hangs up on them as soon as the greeting finishes playing). You can also email and text your contacts within the web interface.

YouMail's web interface

Everything is free except for the voice transcription service, which varies in price, depending on how many many messages you will have transcribed per month. Paying users can receive voicemail transcribed into text messages, emails or both, along with an MP3 file of the original audio. You can try out the voice-to-text service before investing into a premium plan with Read-It Free Favorite, which allows you to receive transcribed voicemails as text messages from one contact.

The voice-to-text messaging service isn’t perfect. This was demonstrated when I left the following voicemail: “Hi, Meryl. This is Kay calling to see if you got my email. Let me know if you have any questions about the report. Thank you.” I took care to speak slowly and clearly, but the transcribed version came out as: “Hi meryl all does is kate calling Tuesday if you’ve got my email, let me know if u have in in question about.” You can help improve its accuracy of your voice by rating transcripts and sending corrections to the service.

YouMail stands out from similar services with its per-contact and per-group greeting customization and friendly interface, and the transcription service is useful, even if it’s not particularly accurate.

Do you use visual voicemail or any other useful mobile phone applications?

I hate carrying business cards. There, I said it. While so much of my work-time is spent on-line or at various Wi-Fi shops with coffee coffee shops with Wi-Fi, carrying business cards is a necessary evil in our world. Seems like each time I don’t have any is the time I need to have them, so I don’t leave home with out a half-dozen or so.

Earlier this month at the Mobilize conference, I must have passed out a hundred cards; doing so reduced my weight by about 3 percent because I have the heavy stock card type. Towards the end of the event however, I witnessed “business card nirvana”. Andy Abramson and I were chatting about mobile technologies over drinks when all of sudden he whips out his BlackBerry to send a text message.

Note: we don’t recommend nor condone drinking and texting here at WWD.

Andy asked for my e-mail address as he’s texting something to 41411. Curious, not tipsy, I oblige. Less than a minute later, my iPhone receives an e-mail with all of Andy’s contact information. Even better, there’s an attached vCard containing that info, making it simple to import Andy’s details into my Contacts application. Drop. Dead. Simple.

Dropcard is the solution that Andy used and it’s free for a basic account. Once you sign up and enter your contact information in a virtual business card, you’re set. Using text messaging, all you need to know is someone’s e-mail address and then you simply text 41411 with a command like: “drop kevin@gigaom.com”. The “drop” command tells the Dropcard folks to shoot your contact details to the e-mail address you specify. There’s even a few shortcut commands to speed up the process: you don’t have to type the “gmail.com” bit of an address, for example. Dropcard will assume that no domain in the address means Gmail.

The free account allows you to pass 15 virtual business cards a month, offers two profiles and includes an on-line contact list. $4.99 a month nets you up to 100 Dropcards a month, 20 profiles (for you secret-agent types) and a logo or photo on your Dropcard. Up the ante to $9.99 a month for unlimited Dropcards.

While I’ll still always have a few paper business cards on hand, it’s a safe bet that most people I meet have e-mail addresses. If they have one, I’ll hang on to the physical card and shoot them a Dropcard.

Here at Web Worker Daily, we talk a lot about how we can use web technology to work more effectively and to be more productive. We think it is important work and we hope that you find our insights and reviews helpful. Occasionally though, we come across an example of just how powerful the web can be, and how it can do even more.

Today, group text messaging provider Tatango is announcing a partnership with eMail Our Military (eMOM) that will allow United States troops deployed overseas to easily connect with and update their friends and family at home. By using a customized web interface, military personnel can send SMS messages directly to their contact group who will receive the updates on their mobile phones. Replies to their text will also be routed back to their web account for viewing.

eMOM is a volunteer organization that was created in response to the cutting of similar official programs, and this is just one of many ways that they are working to make sure that troops are able to stay in communication with people at home. By working with Tatango, who provide free group text messaging features, they are able to offer this service for no charge to troops and their families.

I think it is fantastic to see technology being used in this way and I applaud both of these groups for making this a reality.

Watch the Tatango Announcement:

Military service members can create a free Tatango account with a valid military email address at http://tatango.com/partners/military

I don’t know about you, but I vividly remember the day I learned HTML. I took my first HTML course in the fall of 1994 for $10 given by a guy who was building Web sites in Santa Fe for local artists. The entire world opened up to me and that alone was worth every penny of the ten bucks spent.

Now, the whole world is going to be made compact enough to fit on my mobile phone or device so a book like Mobile Web Development (by Nirav Mehta, 2008 Packt Publishing) is a useful read even though it has been a long time since I’ve rolled up my sleeves, squinted my eyes, and dug into code.

If I were still coding, this book would probably mean as much to me today as Teach Yourself HTML in a Week by Laura Lemay meant to me back in the 90s. Even as the person who hires the coders on development projects, it was an interesting read, particularly getting a glimpse of how far HTML has taken us and where it seems to be going.

Mobile Web Development covers building Web sites, configuring SMS and MMS messaging, setting up mobile payments as well as voice call systems. The gist of the book is to help you create mobile-friendly sites and mobile-ready apps. The book covers programming in XHTML MP (Extensible HTML Mobile Profile), WCSS (Wireless CSS) and mobile AJAX (asynchronous Javascript and XML).

The book uses a ficticious pizza business – Pizza on the Run – as the guinea pig for a mobile site and mobile apps development which covers the planning process and decision-making that needs to happen before programming. An example used in the book is looking at creating Multimedia Messages for special offers for Pizza on the Run. The book is written in a conversational and accessible tone with a clear format for all of the code so while I may not be digging into this code any time soon, the basic concepts made sense to me.

While you don’t need any special software or hardware to gain knowledge from this book, you do need a Windows system to install mobile emulators and IVR software and then a PHP/MySQL setup to run any of the book’s examples.

If you are curious at all about the behind-the-scenes code that brings the Web and applications to mobile devices, this is a good primer. The book whets your appetite for upcoming trends, mentioning Open Handset Alliance and Google’s Android system, and it also lists some Web resources so you can stay up-to-the-moment on mobile Web developments.

Web Worker Daily readers are likely familiar with GrandCentral, a service that gives you a single phone number that can ring multiple phones including your office, cellular phone, and home number simultaneously.

However, if you’ve ever thought it would be nice to read your voicemails either in as a text message or email, PhoneTag has a service in mind for you.  With this add-on PhoneTag service, you can have all your phones ring at the same time, and if you call goes to voicemail – ready your voicemail through PhoneTag.

These voicemail to text services have been around for quite some time, but before this integration between PhoneTag and GrandCentral, you had to choose between the two services. No more.

PhoneTag, formerly known as SimulScribe, was among the first to offer voice-to-text transcription.  PhoneTag also gives you a wav audio version of the email, along with your text summary of the message.  The company is well established and is compatible with many mobile carriers including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Alltel and more.

After 10 voicemail tests, the PhoneTag service works very well.  All messages were transcribed with 98% accuracy.  If PhoneTag can’t decipher a word spoken to it, it puts a question mark at the end of the word to alert you.

The service is useful, but voice-to-text services as a whole are not without their flaws.  Voice recognition is still more of an art than a science, and errors can occur when a computer tries to interpret voicemails and relay them into text.

I have used a similar service from CallWave, with unfavorable results.  Voicemails were interpreted incorrectly and if you simply relied upon the text summary of the voicemail, you’d receive the wrong message.  For example, a person left me a message that actually said, “Hi Jason, this is Josh, please call me”.  The text transcription literally read, “Hi Jason, this is Josh, don’t call me”.  Luckily I had the raw voicemail to listen to and didn’t think my co-worker didn’t wish to hear from me.

PhoneTag service starts at $10/month for 40 messages or $30 for unlimited messages.