Month: September 2007
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Suggestions for a VERY small, portable, *wired* headset/mic for travel?
Continue Reading: Suggestions for a VERY small, portable, *wired* headset/mic for travel?As I packed for my travel to IT Expo early tomorrow morning, I was again annoyed that I still haven’t found a great headset (with microphone) for travelling. A little bit ago, I bought the Logitech “Premium Notebook Headset” which is in fact a very nice headset. Audio sounds great, fits well, works great with all the various VoIP softphones I use… I have no real complaints about how it functions. I bought it in part because it folds flat and has a nice hardshell case. But it has a problem – it’s still too darn big!
I never check bags when on business travel. I have my “roller” travel luggage and then my laptop bag on top of that. Space is at an absolute premium. And given that I cram a lot of equipment into my laptop bag, having a small but hard plastic case is really critical. (As previous (destroyed!) headsets without cases will attest!) An example that works is my wonderful Sennheiser PCX 100 headphones that fold up into this nice little hard case that is about 5.5 inches long, 3 inches wide and 1 inch deep. Fantastic! (Curiously, though, Sennheiser doesn’t seem to make them…
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Thanks… (and I expect my ‘light blogging’ won’t be so light)
Continue Reading: Thanks… (and I expect my ‘light blogging’ won’t be so light)MANY thanks for all the kinds words sent my way after yesterday’s post, both publicly and privately. I’ll admit that aspect of it has been a bit overwhelming! But it’s VERY definitely appreciated. Thank you.
As to this comment I made:
In the meantime, I may be blogging a little less here for a bit as I focus on what comes next.
The reality is that after seven years of doing it, blogging has become ingrained and is just part and parcel of what I do on a daily basis… already this morning I’ve started several posts. I expect that I’ll realistically just keep on posting because that’s part of what I do. Stay tuned…
And again… thanks!
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Mitel/Inter-Tel integration plan restructures me out of a job…
Continue Reading: Mitel/Inter-Tel integration plan restructures me out of a job…UPDATE – October 23, 2007 – As of yesterday, I started employment with Voxeo. MANY thanks to all of you who offered kind words, job leads, references and help in many other ways. Thank you!
UPDATE – Sept 13, 2007 – Because I have been repeatedly asked about the type of roles I am seeking, I posted some thoughts on the kind of positions I would ideally like to pursue.
UPDATE – Sept 9, 2007 – My resume is now available for those wanting more information on my background.
"Every new beginning starts with some other beginning’s end."
I found myself humming that chorus from the song "Closing Time" by the band Semisonic late on Tuesday after a very frank and cordial call with my manager (Mitel’s CTO), who has always been great to work with and with whom I’ve had a wonderfully open relationship. Some of you may have seen the news – there was a "reduction in headcount" at Mitel on Tuesday as part of the "integration plan" resulting from the merger with Inter-Tel. This is pretty much inevitable in any merger as there is always some duplication and some need to reduce the overall number of…
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Iotum improves their Facebook conference call app…
Continue Reading: Iotum improves their Facebook conference call app…What a difference a day makes. When I wrote about Iotum’s “Free Conference Call” app for Facebook yesterday, I mentioned that there were a few things still in development. Today, as shown in the image on the right (click on it for larger image), they’ve already addressed two of the issues: 1) the Agenda can now be completed (and in fact is the second step now while you are setting up the call); and 2) they’ve corrected the display issues with the participants. With a few participants, the pictures loaded in very quickly, and with a larger number of participants the pictures were removed and only the names were shown. Kudos to the Iotum team for iterating so quickly.
FYI, as shown in the image, I did participate in the “historic” public conference call hosted today by Moshe Maeir at 3:30 Eastern US time today. It was a good demonstration as at one point we had easily 10+ people involved. Very nice to see who joined simply by looking at the list of participants and seeing who was in green. (Hmmm… note to Alec, you might want to rethink the use of green and red as there is some percentage of…
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Facebook gets free conference calls with Facebook app from Iotum
Continue Reading: Facebook gets free conference calls with Facebook app from IotumConference calls – inside of Facebook? And for free?
Yes… courtesy of the folks up at Ottawa-based startup Iotum. As I’ve written before, there are tons of applications being developed for Facebook, but there haven’t been a whole lot of voice applications and there have been even fewer (in fact, almost none) voice-over-IP (VoIP) applications. Of the existing voice apps (nicely listed by Pat Phelan), most of them are really what I’ll call “consumer” apps… primarily focused on cheaper phone calls or making it easier to call people. Or “calling” other Facebook users – or leaving them voicemail. But there haven’t really yet been any interesting apps I’ve seen that could provide business features.
Until now. The team at Iotum just released their “Free Conference Call” Facebook application and now allowed anyone to install it. Until now, it’s been in a very limited test phase, but after Alec issued his request for volunteers last Friday, I naturally had to give it a try (and he asked us not to write about it until today).
So here’s the process. After you’ve installed the app, you have to go through a brief authentication process to put your mobile phone number on file with…
