Ap2Ap Sample
Ap2Ap
About a month and a half ago, Kevin Delaney from KhaosLabs (the guys behind ActiveS ) gave me a fantastic Ap2Ap sample called TicTacToe that you can play across Skype.
]]>As Kevin is in Canada, I sat up until early AM on a Friday night, forsaking all beer and alcohol while I interviewed him over the design and building of Ap2Ap applications. Unfortunately the software we used to record the session didn’t actually record anything, the record now button only pretended so we lost the interview. However I still have the sample from Kevin which you can you find in the Extras Gallery.
What is Ap2Ap
If you build an application that communicates though Skype, then you will probably have noticed that all communication goes thought the chat window. ie, when you application posts a notification to your other application, the Skype chat message window appears and the text you sent can be clearly read.
Ap2Ap messaging is a way to communicate directly with another instance of your application running on a Skype user’s machine. You connect to the instance of the application, and the user accepts the connection, from that moment on the messages are passed directly to the application without going through the chat message window.
Useful if you want to send confidential data that you don’t want to appear in a chat window, game data when you don’t want the other player to see your next move, or just if you want to keep the chat window clean for application specific data.
Verosee will change the way we work forever. Dynamic remote group collaboration with real time on line file sharing is here now.
Do you need to discuss & edit documents with associates who are in remote locations at the same time?
Can Customer Service in Singapore help a shipper in Hong Kong correct documents in real time, while your client in Dubai joins the conference call?
Can a Cell Center do more than just talk to customers?
Do you need to show solutions on line in real time?
Why play email ping pong when you can work together now?
Verosee is the tip of an iceberg which can sink Titanic.
This solution can propel Skype into the premiere VOIP solution for business
It says above that Verosee is free but many of the most useful features are quite expensive and aren’t available yet. For instance, the desktop sharing tool is listed as costing $149.
I downloaded Verosee last night (Nov 29) and it has the embarrassing “feature” that it prefaces all workspace invitations with the phrase “I love you” – reminds me of the “I love you” virus from 2001.
The Verosee download is huge, but that’s because its loading down the complete Java runtime – not sure why it needs to do this since you have to have Java installed before you can install Verosee since it uses Jave Web Start.
Just to clarify a few things:
- The free aspects of Verosee are like those in MS Groove’s $67 version. Verosee obsoletes FTP and VPNs, for starters. Verosee makes it free to manage folders like the big boys
- The desktop sharing is $149 per year, and it is contextual and therefore better than Webex, which costs up to $200 per month once encryption upgrades are in place
- Verosee will no longer say ‘I love you’ in invitations, as per customer feedback. We were testing an idea by Tim Draper (Hotmail and Skype investor): http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/13/BUGQQBND5L1.DTL
The Verosee Team appreciates your constant feedback as it is making the product better–automatic upgrades are available every Monday. Keep it coming!
Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept of Verosee, that’s why I was anxious to download and try it. But it has a long way to go to be as rich as Groove, even the $67 version. And Groove’s charges are one-time, not per-year.
That’s a funny story about “I love you”. Glad you removed it!
Looking to seed fear, uncertainty and death into the Verosee Product is easy for “doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
Let’s remember that Groove does not integrate with Skype, provide web meetings, nor enable remote access. Verosee will deliver all of these functions to our users before end of year.
So, let’s go on the record for downloading java as part of the Java Web Start. See the following blog:
http://bertorello.blogspot.com/2005/11/joys-and-tribulations-of-massive-java.html
I’m looking forward to seeing the web meeting capability in Verosee, however Verosee is in a different league than Webex for holding web meetings. Webex scales to hundreds of participants and works via a very simple and quick setup process in the browser. For critical meetings Webex is hard to beat for ease of setup and reliability.
I don’t know what “remote access” is (that Groove does not have), but there are many things that the $69 version of Groove has that are not in free Verosee:
1) offline access
2) discussions
3) file folder synchronization
4) calendar, sketch pad, image viewer
5) rich text editing
6) shared web links
7) awareness at the tool level eg who is doing what in Groove
Powerpoint and Word application sharing
9) Outlook integration
The more expensive versions of Groove give you enterprise manageability in addition to application development capabilities, Sharepoint integration, and tools for project and meeting management.
You’re right, Verosee is not comparable to Webex or Groove. It is the ONLY application that can do the functionality of both these applications, and more, at a fraction of the cost.
What is being described as lack of features Verosee, is in fact cramming of features of little relevance by competitors. It is only a matter of time until Verosee matches “shared web links” and such. Groove and Webex will simply not not be able to match P2P pricing or integration of: Skype, File Versioning, Offline Synch, Desktop Sharing, Remote Access, operating systems. This is not for lack of capability or funding by competitors, rather for lack of commitment to the Skype user base. God bless Webex/Groove’s focus on Fortune 500s.
Also, if I were a gambler I would not bet against Verosee scalability–there are smart ways to have P2P scale to hundreds of people on the line, so watch for that from Skype as well. Competitors will ultimately be disrupted.
That is not to say that competitors or partners thereof have nowhere to go, I sense there are some .Net/Groove fans that will never see the light. That’s OK. Verosee is not the tip of the iceberg sinking the MS Titanic, Verosee is the tip of a bright new Skype world.
From the recent passing of “New Version Monday” we have added Verosee FileVersioning and VeriSign capability.
To see the rest of the change log, please click on over to:
http://www.verosee.com/site/actionDownloadChangeLong.do
We will have some new changes (maybe some free trials) on the way for next week, so visit often or contact me…
New Version Monday — I am happy to report that we have another change log available at:
http://www.verosee.com/site/actionDownloadChangeLong.do
What is new this week is the availability of yet another mind-blowing service — OfflineSynch.
Also, there is tighter functionality with Skype alarms etc.
There has been some confusion regarding the pricing for the value-added services. We price them low for 3 months at a time — OfflineSynch is U$5 per month. Please note the 30 day breakdown: Fileversioning is U$3 per month. That is one trip to Starbucks.
Were did Verosee come from?
Please read blog:
jimasiano.blogspot.com
Verosee is a pest and besides trying to hijack your contact lists and spam them it is almost impossible to uninstall. I hate programs that grab my contact list and even though I ticked the “do not show this again” box it did show again and even though I tried to close it it spammed three of my contacts before I could stop it. Then I had to spend time apologizing to them. Right now I have three frozen uninstall windows and this is the second restart – trying to get rid of this virus is almost impossible. It will not uninstall if you are not online, and they use their own uninstaller and not XP, and when even the uninstaller has bugs. How I can fix my machine at this point I don’t know, but it is about 2 hours wasted so far trying to get rid of it ….
THREE HOURS and I still cannot get Verosee off my machine!! It is really frustrating because I am travelling and need to get my machine cleaned up so that I can get back to work.
It’s new version Monday, and today’s goodies are: DesktopSharing now available, group purchasing enabled, and multiplePCs functional…and yes, a new uninstaller.
That is the beauty of dynamically upgrading Verosee, it can provide more features, and fix previous bugs, unlike anything you’ve seen before.
The full change log is at:
http://www.verosee.com/site/actionDownloadChangeLong.do
The ‘buzz Verosee’ popup that doesn’t go away issue will be fixed next Monday.
Thank you for your feedback, it keeps making Verosee better. Newt week, a nice treat with a big reduction of download size.
Sadly, he’s not joking about the alcohol lol
-kevin
New Change Log for Monday, December 19, 2005:
December 19, 2005 — Verosee for Windows Beta: 80% reduction in download size, small form factor, friendly invitation process
# enhancement: small application size when workspaces are not open
# enhancement: desktop sharing activities can be managed from the Interaction tab
# enhancement: user can conference workspace participants with a single click
# enhancement: desktop sharing can be paused and restarted with a single click
# bugfix: buzz window opens only as desired, disappears if user does not want reminder, has contacts unselected by default
# bugfix: workspace invitations vastly more reliable
# bugfix: user match in Skype phone configuration
# bugfix: user can now make call from voicemails and missed calls
# bugfix: resizing of window upon calls
# bugfix: File-> Change Phone opens the correct configuration window
# bugfix: green button can be used to accept a new call when there already is an Active call
# bugfix: service levels only provision users with active servers
# bugfix: all presence pulldowns now disable the currently selected option