Disruptive Telephony

I'll be speaking today in a "Hosted Speech Solutions" webinar...

In about 2.5 hours, at 11am US Pacific / 2pm US Eastern, I (Dan York) will be participating in a "Hosted Speech Solutions" webinar sponsored by Speech Tech Magazine. I'll be joining colleagues from Microsoft (TellMe), Angel.com and Convergys. We'll be talking about each of our hosted offerings and then answering a series of questions before then throwing it open to questions from the audience.

If you would like to join in and learn about our solutions (and those of our competitors), you can register for free.

Technorati Tags: voxeo, dan york, danyork, speech, hosted, cloud, cloudcomputing, ivr, voice, voip

Explaining Voxeo in a 30-second video...

While out at ITEXPO in Los Angeles last month, I had a chance to meet up with Jeb Brilliant (yes, that's his real name), someone who I had come to know through all the various Squawk Box conference calls/podcasts that I had participated in. He joined me as I was walking the show floor and then back at the Voxeo booth he asked if he could record a very brief 30-second video interview with me talking about what Voxeo does. He has now posted that video and you're welcome to check it out.

Technorati Tags: ccxml, commdev, dan york, danyork, itexpo, sip, voicemail, voxeo

Jon Arnold interviews me about voice and web services, cloud computing and more

Is the role of "voice" diminished or enhanced by the availability of web services? How does voice fit into the "cloud"? Where do service providers fit into the picture?

Out at ITEXPO last month in Los Angeles, industry analyst Jon Arnold asked me (Dan York) to participate in a series of video interviews he was recording for his IPConvergence.TV site. In the interview, which is now available for viewing, we talked about "voice-enabling" business processes, web services, "cloud computing", the challenges to service providers and customers and much, much more. Jon also asked me to talk a bit about what I see ahead of us in the next few years. It was a fun interview to do and I appreciated the opportunity.

NOTE: There is no way to currently embed the video, so you'll need to watch it over on TMC's site. I'll also note that on my Mac I couldn't watch the video in Firefox but instead had to use Safari. Now this may be due to some local configuration issue on my system, but I thought I'd mention it.

Technorati Tags: voxeo, dan york, jon arnold, itexpo, commdev

Some initial impressions of the iPhone 3G...

As I wrote about recently both here on Disruptive Telephony and also over on the Voxeo weblogs, my employer, Voxeo, has made the switch from the Blackberry 8830 to the Apple iPhone as our corporate mobile phone. Employees in our Orlando office have already been receiving iPhones and mine just arrived last Thursday. Given that I've now been using it for a few days, I recorded these initial impressions:

Initial impressions of the iPhone 3GAs I've documented on http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/ my employer recently made the switch from Blackberry to iPhone - these are some initial impressions...

The quick summary is:

• Typing - Better than I expected with the touchpad typing and Appple's correction routines.
• Coverage - Pretty much what I expected. AT&T's coverage here in southern New Hampshire is much less than Verizon's. However, it wasn't terribly bad and I did actually get better coverage in a few places like a local grocery store.
• WiFi - Very nice!
• Camera - While it's clearly not as good as my normal digital camera, it seems to be adequate for pictures for posting to blogs, etc.
• Browsing - As expected, the browsing experience is excellent. I do like being able to switch the phone to a horizontal display. Watching YouTube videos is great as well.
• App Store - Very cool apps available. I've installed a number related to social media / social networking and so far been quite pleased.

All in all, I've been quite pleased with how well it works. I'll write more as I use it more...

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, dan york, voxeo, rim, blackberry

Voxeo switching from Blackberries to iPhones... (even as Blackberry releases the touch-screen Storm)

Over on one of Voxeo's weblogs I wrote a piece yesterday, "Goodbye BlackBerry... Hello iPhone!" that speaks to our vote in the evolving "RIM vs Apple" battle going on out there in the enterprise marketplace. It will be an interesting move that I'm very much looking forward to.

From what I've seen, we join a growing number of companies that are now using Apple's iPhone for a corporate mobile phone.

Interestingly, RIM is today announcing the impending release on Verizon (US) and Vodafone (UK) networks of the Blackberry "Storm", RIM's touchscreen entry against the iPhone. Some links today:

• Engadget review
• Comparison with the iPhone
• Boy Genius Report post with pictures and Verizon/RIM news release

Alec Saunders also has it as the topic for today's Squawk Box at 11am US Eastern time.

Will it be enough to stop enterprises from defecting to the iPhone? I don't know... I'm sure it may stop some, but until RIM can come out with a development platform and distribution system rivaling Apple's AppStore, I think you'll see more developers choosing to go the iPhone way. We'll see.

Regardless, it certainly is good for us as users to have the increased competition out there... in the end, we'll all wind up with much better devices, methinks.

Meanwhile, I'm personally looking forward to receiving my corporate iPhone and joining in the iPhone fun. :-)

What do you think? Is the Storm enough to keep you on Blackberry? Or will you (have you?) move to the iPhone? (Or don't you care?)

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, mobile, wireless, blackberry, storm, voxeo

Heading out to Los Angeles this week for Communications Developer Conf / ITEXPO...

As I note over in my Voxeo blog post, I'll be out at the Communications Developer Conference (co-located with ITEXPO) this week in Los Angeles. I will be speaking twice. First on Wednesday morning I'll be talking about SIP Trunking and security as part of the Ingate SIP Trunking workshops from 10:15-11:15am. Next, on Thursday, I'll be speaking about "Developing Voice Applications in the Cloud", a favorite topic of mine these days.

Voxeo will also have a booth and I expect to be there. I'm also doing some video interviews and other media work (actually on both sides of the camera). I'm looking forward to catching up with a good number of folks out at the show.

If you read this blog and are out there at either the Communications Developer Conference or ITEXPO, please do come by and say hello. I posted the schedule of talks over on Voxeo's blog site. You should be able to find out more about where precisely I am through either twitter.com/danyork or twitter.com/voxeo.

Technorati Tags: conferences, voip, itexpo, communicationsdeveloperconference, los angeles, dan york, voxeo, danyork, cloudcomputing, sip, sip security, voip security

Voxeo's CEO interviewed on SquawkBox...

Given that I've written here a good bit about Voxeo since joining the company 11 months ago, I thought I'd point to an excellent interview that Voxeo's CEO, Jonathan Taylor, did with host Alec Saunders on Alec's Squawk Box podcast. You can listen to it by either using the audio player on the show web page or alternatively you can download the MP3 file directly and listen to it in iTunes, Windows Media Player or whatever MP3 player you wish.

It was an enjoyable call (I was listening) that went for about 45 minutes. Jonathan spoke about how and why he started the company, about the new release of Prophecy 9, the acquisition of Micromethod, our recent financial results and much more. I think you all will find it a great introduction to what Voxeo is all about.

11 months later, I'm still extremely glad I made the choice to join the company...

Technorati Tags: squawkbox, voxeo, voice, voice applications, voip

Want to learn more about Voxeo? Join Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor appearing on Squawk Box conf call tomorrow

Are you are available tomorrow, Tuesday, August 26th, at 11am US Eastern time? If so, you are invited to join in to Alec Saunders' daily "Squawk Box" conference call / podcast where Alec will be interviewing Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor about all the recent news about Voxeo, including:

• Voxeo announced record growth and global expansion
• Voxeo announced a new product release with new SIP APIs, Mac OS X and Linux support
• Voxeo acquired Micromethod Technologies
• Voxeo named 2008 Market Leader by Speech Technology Magazine

The call will take place using Alec's company Iotum's "Calliflower" conferencing/collaboration application. To join in to the call, you simply need to go to either of the following links to "join" the call and receive a PIN and call-in number for the call:

• Calliflower Facebook application - If you are a Facebook user, simply go to:

  http://apps.new.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/37402

  You will be prompted to add the Calliflower Facebook application and then will receive the call-in information.
  
  
• Calliflower.com site - If you are not a Facebook user or just don't want to add another Facebook application, you can go to the Calliflower.com site at this URL:

  http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/37402

  You will be prompted to create a free Calliflower.com user account if you have not already done so.

Both links are live today so you can go right now and RSVP to attend the call tomorrow. If you do so, you should also receive a reminder about 15 minutes prior to the call tomorrow morning.

When you join the call tomorrow, you can also use the Calliflower web interface through either of the links above to see who else has joined the call and also to participate in the "live chat" area during the call itself. Typically Alec will ask a series of questions of the guest and then open it to others who are participating in the call. If you'd like to learn more about what is up with Voxeo and/or ask questions of our CEO, tomorrow's a great opportunity for you to do so.

It should be a fun time and we're looking forward to the conversation. Please do feel free to join in!

NOTE: If you are not available to join the call, it is being recorded and will be made available through Alec's Saunderslog.com site sometime later tomorrow. We'll post an update here on this blog site as well.

Technorati Tags: voxeo, squawk box, jonathan taylor

An extraordinary week for Voxeo...

Last week was a truly extraordinary week for my employer, Voxeo. Here's a bit of what went on:

• Voxeo announced record growth and global expansion - In these economic times, it's incredible to be part of a company putting out information like this.

• Voxeo announced a new product release with new SIP APIs, Mac OS X and Linux support - To our knowledge, this is first commercial telephony voice application platform to be available on Mac OS X (as well as Linux and Windows). While our customers might not deploy production servers on Mac OS X, this means that their developers using Macs can now even more easily run our application server. Additionally, we've developed some new graphical management interfaces that are pretty incredible (and useful, too).

• Voxeo acquired Micromethod Technologies - With this acquisition of a company based in Beijing and San Jose, we've added a strong SIP Servlet (JSR 116/289) platform into our portfolio and we've already started integrating that into our core platform. Developers will now have even more ways to build VoIP applications on top of our platform.

• Voxeo named 2008 Market Leader by Speech Technology Magazine - We received an award at SpeechTEK last week in New York from Speech Technology Magazine for the best "Speech Self-Service Suite", which, when you read through the text, basically means the best voice application platform. We were pleased by the recognition. My colleague Dan Burnett also received an award as a "2008 Speech Luminary" recognizing his many years of contributions to the speech industry.

Combining all of those announcements with the crazy pace of activity at the SpeechTEK show in New York definitely made for some long days and long hours. It's certainly fun, though.

I think it goes without saying that I'm rather pleased with where I wound up last fall! (We are hiring, too, although right now only in the UK.)

Technorati Tags: voxeo, applications, voice, voip, speech, speechtek, prophecy, sip

Speaking at SpeechTEK next week in New York on voice application security...

On Sunday I'll be boarding a train bound for New York City where I'll be attending SpeechTEK for Monday through Wednesday. As I mentioned previously, on Tuesday, August 19th, I'll be giving a presentation on "Securing CCXML and VoiceXML Applications":

How secure are your speech applications? As the usage of both VoiceXML and CCXML continues to explode, and VoIP usage continues to grow dramatically, especially within enterprise environments, it is increasingly important that you ensure that applications and services are not open to attack. Learn about the potential vulnerabilities in a system using VoiceXML or CCXML, what you can do to secure these systems, and how you can develop a strong architecture.

It will be fun to expand my VoIP security commentary beyond my usual scope of networks and more into voice applications. I'm planning to record it (and have permission to do so) and potentially put it out as a Blue Box podcast.

At SpeechTEK there will also be a good number of us from Voxeo there. We'll have a booth (#804) and we've got some exciting announcements coming up... ;-)

If you are down at SpeechTEK, please do drop a note and let me know.

Technorati Tags: conferences, speechtek, voxeo, danyork, dan york, voicexml, ccxml, security, voip, voip security