Vapps Updates Skype Extra: High-Definition Conferencing Tool Launches within Skype in Nine Languages
With Skype’s Contact List, a Click and a New Multilingual Interface, Users Create Audioconferences in Which Two to 500 Sound Live and In-Person
Vapps, Inc., provider of affordable, flat-rate audioconferencing services with in-the-room sound quality, today announced an update of its Skype Extra, a plug-in that launches the full feature set of its High-Definition Conferencing (HD-C) service from within the globally adopted Skype™ internet communications application.
Vapps added HD-C to Skype’s Extras Gallery in October 2007, uniquely conferencing together public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Skype users for a value-priced flat monthly fee ranging from $25 for as many as 10 users to $200 for as many as 500. The convenience of Vapps’ Skype plug-in—with 100,000 registered users to date—encourages frequent, ad-hoc use, and along with the flat-rate pricing makes it easier for growing companies with remote teleworkers to manage costs.
Those on Skype may click on the “Do More” menu option to open the HD-C plug-in, which will now appear and operate in Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish, in addition to English. From that interface, they can start meetings on the spot, inviting fellow Skype users by sending automated chat messages. (Should Skype contacts be caught with their headphones unplugged, the chat invite offers a telephone phone number for joining the conference as well.) They can also click on the interface’s “schedule” button, auto-logging into the HD-C site, to schedule meetings of as many as 500 attendees and send e-mail invitations to others, as well as their Skype contacts.
Better-than-phone sound quality
Skype-connected participants enjoy unprecedented sound quality through the Vapps platform’s wideband connectivity. The traditional phone system, with its century-old copper wiring, transmits a frequency range of only 3.5 kHz out of the 20 kHz or so the human ear can hear. With a range so clipped, “f” and “s” are indistinguishable, singing is tinny and people feel distant. Through the wideband data lines used by Skype and other VoIP providers, HD-C can fit a voice frequency range of 16KHz. Result: Attendees hear four times better, feel more “present” with more true-to-life sound and can better detect who is speaking. And as with any IP-to-IP voice call, they avoid local and international calling charges, a particular benefit to international phone conferences.
The expanded audio range also helps listeners understand speakers who have accents, and non-native speakers understand the conference language. In any language, it promotes comprehension and retention by alleviating the ear fatigue of long phone conferences, and transmits more of the speaker’s inflection, nuance, attitude and even physical motion at a table or around the room.
Vapps’ Skype Extra plug-in allows meeting coordinators to see who has joined or left, to mute and unmute participants and to record the conference. Attendees have their own HD-C browser-based controls with which to raise their hands, mute themselves and see who is on the conference.
To demonstrate high-definition voice quality to a conferencing public that has only known the phone, Vapps is offering a free, 10-day trial of its 25-user package. This provides unlimited conference calls for as many as 25 people on Skype and on the telephone. After ten days, users may sign up via credit card. Without sign-up, any further use of HD-C will be charged on a pay-as-you-go plan in cooperation with Skype, which will deduct four cents per minute of use from users’ Skype Credits on Vapps’ behalf.
“Millions of people have come to use and keep Skype running all day, every day,” said Ben Lilienthal, Vapps CEO. “The update of our plug-in in the Skype Extras Gallery encourages more people to use High-Definition Conferencing to the fullest extent and as often as possible, for the same monthly price. It attaches in-person-quality, crystal-clear audioconferencing, scalability, recording and playback capability, and professional moderation controls to the Skype contact list at a time when more and more business people are using Skype.”
About Vapps, Inc.
Vapps, Inc., based in Hoboken, N.J., provides managed audioconferencing solutions to the SMB, enterprise and service provider markets using its patent-pending, wide-band audioconferencing technology. Founded in 2003 by Ben Lilienthal and Jerry Norton, Vapps’ flagship service is its High-Definition Conferencing (HD-C, http://www.highspeedconferencing.com), the first and only high-definition, flat-rate audioconference offering that can conference together a mixed participant group of PSTN phone and Skype users.
For Skype-using participants, HD-C transmits a much richer, more “in-the-room” voice quality than can be achieved with traditional phones, dramatically improving the productivity of team collaboration. Vapps’ fees for an unlimited number of conferences and conference minutes start at a fixed $25 per month for 10 attendees and scale with the number of participants. For more information, please visit Vapps at http://www.vapps.com.