eyeBeam has been selling so well that Xten is now looking to outsource X-PRO development to a few chosen partners.

Xten is currently looking for Preferred Development Partners (PDP) in countries all around the globe to continue the development of our X-PRO and X-Lite product line. To qualify as a PDP your company must have seasoned C++ developers available and be familiar with the Xten X-PRO SDK. The X-PRO SDK is available for free for evaluation.

The chosen partners will be listed on the Xten website as Preferred Development Partners and will be the only referral for X-PRO and X-Lite co-branding and private labeled business. There will be one partner selected for each region, e.g. Canada, USA, West Europe, East Europe etc.

For more information on the PDP program please contact sales by filling out the NDA and the form found here.

The FCC action came after VoIP providers Vonage and Nuvio complained to the agency broadband providers are blocking or degrading their Internet telephony services. In public comments, neither Vonage nor Nuvio named the providers blocking their traffic.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today fined a North Carolina telecom holding company $15,000 for blocking Voice over IP (define) calls to their customers.

In addition to the fine, Madison River Communications of Mebane, N.C., agreed to refrain from blocking VoIP traffic and to put measures into place to ensure that such blocking won’t happen again.

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Wow! is all I can say. When I posted the news about the Xten Linux softphone beta here about a month ago I did not expect the avalanche of requests to join that beta program that soon followed and continue today.

With this in mind the production version of the free SIP softphone “X-Lite” for Linux will be made available on or about Valentine’s Day [Feb.14]. Until then, all of you early-early adopters can send your requests to linuxbeta at xten.com in order to get into the beta program, we could sure use your help kicking the bugs out.

Early summer 2005 you will see the eyeBeam SDK for Linux [plus Mac OS X, Windows SDK available now].

We have lots in store for 2005, some VERY exciting projects that will have global impact, stay tuned for that.

Customer Inter@ction Solutions Magazine selects Xten for Product of the Year Award.

Xten’s new eyeBeam 1.1 SDK is now shipping with the LiveEye XCAP server source code and binaries for Linux and BSD operating systems. The new eyeBeam v1.1 SDK makes use of XCAP (XML Configuration Access Protocol) for storage of centralized buddy lists and remote configuration routines. The eyeBeam SDK also comes with a basic Presence Agent module for SER [SIP express Router by iptel.org].

XCAP servers and Presence Agents are necessary components for any carrier or enterprise looking to build an Instant Messaging infrastructure using Open Standards. One of the big selling points of XCAP is that it allows buddy lists to be stored centrally rather than on the local machine. WebDAV also performs this function and is another technology supported in the eyeBeam 1.1 SDK.

We are delighted to see the LiveEye XCAP server winning these awards. This is one of the only XCAP servers available today, winning this award says a great deal about Xten’s commitment to new open standards technology and the quality of our work.

We felt it was important for Xten to ship a free XCAP server with eyeBeam 1.1, mainly for testing purposes. Alternative XCAP servers are few and far betwen and very costly. Xten will eventually contribute this server to the open source community and the company does not foresee supporting this product commercially.

This is the second Product of the Year Award Xten has won for 2004. The first award was for the eyeBeam 1.1 Softphone and SDK presented by Internet Telephony Magazine, both are very well respected publications in the industry.

Just in time for Christmas, the X-Lite SIP softphone for Linux is now in beta. Those of you interested in getting your hands on it should email linuxbeta at xten.com.

The stuff dreams are made of!
Xten started in November of 2002, we had our first product in Beta trials in March of 2003. By May of the same year we were cash-flow positive! By the end of the year we had over 110,000 actively deployed endpoints, 12 people and almost cash-flow positive.

I don’t think anyone was expecting Xten to go from a 3 person startup in a tiny office in Vancouver to a 30+ person industry leader with offices in Santa Clara, Dallas and Vancouver in under 2 years.

Now look at us!
Financial Highlights for the Second Quarter 2005
Increase of revenue by 583% to $677,364 (Q2 2004: $116,014)
Net loss of $198,275 (Q2 2004: $25,938)

Financial Highlights for the First Six Months 2005
Increase of revenue by 347% to $1,164,515 (6M 2004: $335,036)
Net loss of $397,932 (6M 2004: $54,904)

With over 20 countries under our belt, more than 630,000 actively deployed endpoints and a 600% increase in revenue over last year, we certainly have nothing to complain about.

Things are going so well in fact we are moving our research and development facility to a larger office space in downtown Vancouver at the end of the year, the Sun Tower Xten is taking the entire 8th floor, the last floor before the dome tower starts. It’s a really cool old building, at one point it was the tallest building the British Empire!

Now, if anyone has questions about our future, just ask our newly appointed member to our Board of Advisors over at Yahoo!. I am sure he will be able to give you some perspective. Email your questions to yahoo@xten.com and I will be certain to pass them along to my friend Graeme Dollar.

Considering there are very few XCAP/SIMPLE servers out there [last time I checked there were NONE in production] Xten has decided to provide a free XCAP/SIMPLE server with basic functionality on Linux/BSD which will be made available at the time the eyeBeam v1.1 SDK is released in the 3rd week of December 2004.

Considering eyeBeam v1.1 will support SIMPLE/XCAP we needed to have something our customers could use that would support that technology. We do not plan on delivering this server as a supported commercial Xten product but instead it will eventually make it into open source.

Xten Video Softphone Gets IM, Presence
By Ellen Muraskin

Xten Networks Inc. has announced a new version of its Xten eyeBeam video-enabled softphone. Due in early December, eyeBeam 1.1 will incorporate presence and instant messaging along with IP voice and video.

The presence and IM features of eyeBeam 1.1 were demonstrated at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment show in San Francisco last week, using Vonage Holding Corp.’s voice-over-IP service, a PC, a headset and a 3G UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service) high-speed wireless network. Vonage, along with EarthLink Inc. and other VOIP providers from the cable operator, telco, and ISP markets, resells the softphone under its own brand with its own service. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Xten designs a different device image for each and also sells its software development kit.

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Almost over the jet-lag now and actually getting some sleep, just in time to go home and do it all over again.

Driving on the Autobahn is exhilerating to say the least! On the way from Franfurt to Darmstadt we were doing approx 180 km/hr and we were passed like we we standing still by several BMWs and Porsches. What a buzz!

Germany is pretty cool, the people are great and the beer is tasty and weather here is almost exactly like Vancouver. It is too bad we don’t have more time here as I was hoping to get over to Holland to see some of my relatives, maybe next time.

I am in Europe right now, meeting with a new customer in Germany. Jet-lag sucks.

It’s running a little past the timelines I was hoping for but it looks likes version 1.1 of eyeBeam will make it to market before Christmas. 1.1 will include 3 new major features; Instant Messaging and presence using SIMPLE and a centralized buddy list, hopefully XCAP, a record feature for local video and the entire telephony mix, including end-point conferences and users can also look forward to a Wide Band codec, namely 722.2 or AMR-WB, the codec of choice for 3G handsets.