VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Rich Tehrani points out a cool $10,000 developer contest being announced at TMC"s Communications Developer show. Rich says, "The contest will be formerly announced next week at the Communications Developer Conference and you have until July 31^st, 2007 to submit your application. The winner will be announced at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo this September in Los Angeles, CA." The contest is sponsored by Voxbone, but you can read more about it here, on Rich"s blog.

Unfortunately, I won"t be at the Communications Developer show, since Rich (my boss in case you didn"t know) is keeping me busy testing products for TMC Labs. In fact, I just finished up a review of a cool Linux-based VoIP appliance. No, it"s not the Digium"s Asterisk Appliance and no, it"s not Fonality"s trixbox appliance either. It"s scheduled to be published in the next issue of Internet Telephony Magazine, but perhaps I"ll post a "sneak peek" on my blog today or tomorrow.

I will of course be at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo, since I attend every single ITEXPO. As Dana Carvey would famously say in his President George Bush Sr. impression "Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn"t be prudent to miss ITEXPO!" 

I"m not eligible for the $10,000 grand anyway, but at least I"ll get to see who wins when I attend the Los Angeles ITEXPO show in September, which will be here before you know it.

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Tags: Communications Developer, Internet Telephony Expo, ITEXPO, TMC, VoIP
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Microsoft"s PR rep recently emailed me with the following:

Subject: Tom , Didn"t Realize You Had "Gone Hollywood"

I just heard a commercial for a new blockbuster movie coming out this spring called "Breaking VoIP Barriers" — Produced by Microsoft Unified Communications — and it"s starring someone named Tom !!

Have you "gone Hollywood" in your spare time... without telling any of us?!?!

To hear the movie trailer (it"s really funny), click: http://www.voipwithoutbarriers.com/receiver.php?key=7A142D47B1AE16193E6CDDCEB73D8CAB

Yes, it"s true - Microsoft and I have been secretly working on a movie production and I have the starring role. Microsoft approached me to star in "Breaking VoIP barriers" since I"ve written about Microsoft Communications Server 2007 several times in the past.  At first, I declined, but then Microsoft used one of my favorite movie lines of all time - from Young Guns -  "C"mon Tom. Yoohoo. I"ll make you famous!" Me? Famous? Cool! So anyway, I accepted the movie role.


I am posting here an exclusive sneak preview of the movie. When you click the link you will hear a quite recognizable voice speaking - Don LaFontaine, also known as That Announcer Guy. According to Wiki, Don is famous for recording over 5,000 movie trailers, television commercials, network promotions, and video game trailers. His signature voice is ominous and has often been nicknamed "The King of Movie Trailers", "Mr. Voice," "Thunder Throat" or "The Voice of God".

Here"s a transcript of the movie trailer in That Announcer Guy"s voice:

melodramtic music in background.
 "In a land far far away called Connecticut there is only one engineer you need to know - Tom. By day he solves problems, by night he sings karaoke. But right now an email he never expected will reveal a unified communication power he never imagined. This Spring on his quest for voice over IP prominence - in his battle to streamline communications - one man with the click of a mouse and a simple download will unleash the ultimate tool - Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. From award winning director, Bill Gates, comes the year"s nominated performance that"s breaking voip barriers - Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Tom, to experience the blockbuster Download of the Year and be the superhero of your organization, boldly go to microsoft.com/UC and let the VoIP adventure begin. Microsoft.com/UC. This motion picture is rated I for all Intelligent lifeforms."
melodramtic music ends



HA! Good stuff. As funny as the text reads, you have to check out the site to get the full effect of the "The King of Movie Trailers" speaking. Good stuff!

Update: Looks like the link to my movie trailer (just audio) no longer works, so i will share it here. Click to download. Or you can click Play below:

Finally, here"s the movie poster promoting my film with Microsoft: (p.s. you too can star in this movie - since it"s in pre-production. You can even have the famous movie preview guy speak your name, title, and more)

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Tags: IM, Microsoft, Office Communications Server 2007, presence, UC, UM, unified communications, VoIP, Young Guns
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Packet8 has a planned maintenance tonight between 11pm and 3am. Talk about last minute notice! And it"s a potential 4 hour outage? Ouch! Here"s the email I received.

Dear Virtual Office Subscriber, We will be performing scheduled routine maintenance on Packet8 Virtual Office service on Friday 05/04/07 between the hours of 11:00PM and 3:00AM Pacific Standard Time. During this maintenance window, Virtual Office customers may experience intermittent service interruptions affecting dial tone or the ability to make and receive calls. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience. Sincerely, Packet8 Customer Service

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Tags: Packet8, VoIP
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China, not content to copy/rip-off electronics designs, router designs,  and is one of the larger counterfeit purveyors of software, has decided to ripoff Disney with a "clone" of Disneyland. Are you kidding me? Feel free to rip off all the electronics designs you want, but don"t be copying an American icon. Some Japanese bloggers posted some photos, which you can check out here: http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1678
(site appears down at the moment)

Park officials deny their characters having anything to do with the official characters, claiming everything in the park is an "original design". The site even shows a photo of what looks exactly like Minnie Mouse, but the park owners claim "is not a mouse" but instead "a cat with very large ears."

Walt Disney must be rolling over in his grave.



Source: Engadget

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Tags: China, Disneyland, Walt Disney
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Yesterday, I was in Best Buy (Norwalk, CT store) walking past the TV section when I was approached by a guy standing by a table. He handed me some AT&T U-Verse literature and proceeded to pitch me on signing up for U-Verse. I mentioned that I didn"t live in Norwalk, he asked where I did live and then he told me they didn"t offer U-Verse in my area yet.

However, he stated that AT&T is offering a nice incentive - 1 year FREE of DISH Network service if I signed up now for AT&T U-Verse. I said, "Well, what if in one year from now you still aren"t offering U-Verse in my neighborhood? Do I still get free DISH Network service?"

He didn"t really give a good answer to the question, but did say that AT&T is going gangbusters to rollout U-Verse in Fairfield County, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation and also very densly populated. So I asked "So you"re focusing on deploying in Norwalk and Stamford first is my guess, correct?" He responded, "That"s exactly right. We"re targetting Norwalk and Stamford first, but plan on quickly moving to other towns." He briefly mentioned New York - not sure if he meant NYC, but that would put AT&T in Verizon"s home turf with their FiOS service.

I expressed my skepticism that AT&T would reach their goal of 18 million homes back in March. However, when compared to the $20 billion Verizon is spending to rollout their FiOS fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service, AT&T"s fiber/copper-hybrid rollout is a bargain. AT&T can more quickly recoup their investment faster than Verizon since Verizon has to dig fiber all the way to the home where as AT&T only needs to draw fiber to the neighborhood and then use copper the rest of the way to the home.

As I wrote previously, this hybrid fiber/copper approach gives AT&T a 20Mbps+ link to customers, enough to offer high-speed Internet, VoIP, and the company"s IPTV service. The problem is getting towns to grant public right of ways for these massive 52B boxes, which hold DSLAMS, batteries, and cooling gear in rugged, weatherproof cases. Many towns objected or wanted AT&T to sign video franchise agreements. Lawsuits were filed, including cable companies that want to classify U-verse service as a "cable service" to force AT&T to abide by the same build-out rules, which has drastically affected U-verse deployment . In addition, the IPTV service uses proprietary set-top boxes from Microsoft, which had their own share of problems - mostly software related.

What is interesting is that today I read about Microsoft and Yahoo! are in talks for a buyout or merger to better complete with Google. So let me get this straight. AT&T and DISH Network have a deal. AT&T and Yahoo already have a close partnership deal with AT&T Yahoo DSL. AT&T is using Microsoft"s software for their U-Verse set-top box.

Let me summarize:
AT&T - DISH Network
AT&T - Yahoo
AT&T - Microsoft
and now potentially
Microsoft - Yahoo

Which makes it a AT&T,  DISH Network, Microsoft, Yahoo conglomerate! That just might be big enough to take on Google. Might need to add in Walmart. Maybe Home Depot as well (just to make it a fair fight).

The brochure he gave me has 4 TV pricing models, titled U100 (110 channels), U200 (190 channels, 34 digital music channels), U300 (240 channels, 31 premium movie channels), and U400 (300 channels, 49 premium movie channels). For the data portion they have Express (up to 1.5Mbps), Pro (up to 3.0Mbps), and Elite (up to 6.0Mbps). Prices range from $59/month to $129/month. At $59/month for 110 channels and 1.5Mbps bandwidth is a steal! The brochure states you can record up to 4 programs at the same time. Wow! My DirecTV TiVO receiver can only do 2 programs simultaneously.

I asked the U-Verse rep about getting voice using U-Verse and he said you could bundle a traditional AT&T landline. I couldn"t believe this, so I checked AT&T"s website and this link says:

"Can I order phone service with AT&T U-verse?"
Answer: Please visit http://www.att.com for information on classic landline services and calling features.

What the hell is that? I"m getting high-speed internet from AT&T and yet I still need a separate landline? I could of course separately sign-up for AT&T CallVantage, a VoIP service, and use it over the broadband connection, but then I lose any sort of bundling or pricing reductions. This is ridiculous and once again reiterates my rant about AT&T and all the carriers doing a terrible job of bundling their services.

In any event, I"m not sure if  the 1 year free DISH Network service is being offered nationwide, but if you"re interested in FREE DISH Network service, it can hurt to head over to your local Best Buy and see if an AT&T U-verse rep is there. Or you can call 877-MY-UVERSE.

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Tags: AT&T, Best Buy, DISH Network, FiOS, IPTV, Triple Play, U-Verse, Verizon, VoIP
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While many mobile carriers have raised their per message rates for both sending and receiving SMS, Skype announced today that it plans to slash 50% off the cost of sending SMS messages using Skype. More information about Skype’s half price SMS promotion can be found at skype.com/campaigns/halfprice. Now if only the Skype software was available on more mobile phone devices, then Skype could really "hit" the teenage demographic - the largest users of SMS text messaging.

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Tags: mobile phone, Skype, SMS, text messaging, VoIP
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Yahoo just launched Yahoo! Messenger for the Web, an IM client that has no downloading - zilch - nada. Launch any browser (PC, mobile phone, etc.), and sign in using your Yahoo account and voila - instant access to over 350 million users (when combining Yahoo Messenger users + Windows Live Messenger users due to their federation deal). Apparently, they worked extra hard to make sure it works on all the most popular browsers, including IE, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, and Opera.

Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo"s VP of Product Management, writes on his blog:

That’s right, today we launched the all-new Web-based Yahoo! Instant Messenger. In fact, it’s the first brand-new Messenger in over six years.

Yahoo! Messenger for the Web is live, and folks, it’s about to blow up. Feedback from initial users is so crazily positive, I expect this will become the primary IM service for millions. See for yourself at http://webmessenger.yahoo.com, or simply http://web.im.

The other advantage of a web-based "no download" IM application is that it bypasses IT security restrictions. Unless of course you"re an IT administrator looking to prevent co-workers from slacking - i.e. instant messaging all day long. Still no word on when Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft Live Messenger will interoperate for voice over IP calls. The first  time I asked Microsoft about it (2005) they hinted VoIP interoperability with Yahoo Messenger was coming. Then in September 2006 Yahoo and Microsoft announced that their interoperability was "out of beta". If and only if they interoperate for BOTH IM and VoIP, then we"ll say it"s out of beta. Mmm k?

It"s been 2 years, that"s like 20 years in Internet years, so what friggin gives?

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Tags: IM, instant message, Live Messenger, Microsoft, VoIP, Yahoo Messenger for Web
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The Da Vinci code has been solved. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0 - the HD-DVD decryption key that Hollywood doesn"t want you to know about. This number will let you copy your HD-DVDs as well as play them on Linux. This decryption key was posted on Digg.com and quickly attained elite status, with over 15492 Diggs before the story was pulled.

After Digg pulled the HD-DVD decryption key article and banned a Digg user, that riled up the Digg community and soon the entire Digg home page was filled with stories containing the decryption key. As Mike over at TechCrunch says, "The users had taken control of the site, and unless Digg went into wholesale deletion mode and suspended a large portion of their users, there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop it."

Jay Adelson, Digg CEO, after stating he has to abide by Digg"s terms of use in order to avoid a lawsuit by Hollywood didn"t anticipate the massive firestorm caused by this decryption number and did a quick turnabout when he said:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won"t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

More around the Net:
How I got banned from Digg
Spread this Number
How this kid lost 80 million in 18 hours or not

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Tags: 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0, decryption key, Digg, Digg.com, HD-DVD
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Tags: AT&T, CallVantage, Cingular Wireless, Packet8, SunRocket, VoIP, Vonage
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Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Well, TalkSwitch has initiated the TalkSwitch Challenge, a checklist of several items to look for when comparing VoIP phone systems. TalkSwitch writes, "Ready to rumble? We are. We"ve seen a lot of phone system manufacturers making a lot of claims these days about their small business systems, and we"re ready to take "em all on. We"ve specialized in the small business systems for more than 15 years, and we can prove that our systems have what it takes to knock the competition out cold. How can you tell which system is really the best for you? Easy; take the TalkSwitch Challenge. Don"t take our word for it, or anyone else"s; just compare our systems to any others, and you"ll see why, point for point, we"re still the undefeated champs."

All this trash talk is making me want to go watch Apollo Creed in Rocky II where Apollo is ticked off that people are saying Rocky won the first fight and Apollo then proceeds to talk smack against Rocky Balboa while sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital. Actually, I did just get Rocky Balboa (Rocky 6) in the mail via NetFlix, so perhaps that"ll do. In the meantime, if you"re up for the TalkSwitch challenge, go here.

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Tags: Apollo Creed, Rocky Balboa, TalkSwitch Challenge, VoIP
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