Author: Dan York
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ZDNet blogger to return his iPhone… because it doesn’t have enough *phone* features!
Continue Reading: ZDNet blogger to return his iPhone… because it doesn’t have enough *phone* features!Interesting post yesterday at ZDNet, “Apple seems to have forgotten the phone in the iPhone“, where blogger Matthew Miller writes about his disappointment after 10 days of iPhone usage. Since I can’t get an iPhone because of where I live, I’ve only very peripherally been following iPhone news (figuring that when I can eventually get one it will be improved by then). Of course, you could not have missed the predictably huge initial reactions about the device being “magic”, but now we are starting to see real and more honest appraisals as people actually get to work with the devices. In Matthew Miller’s case, here is his list of what the iPhone is missing related to telephony:
- Low volume speakerphone (basically useless at max volume through mono speaker)
- Mid volume speaker
- Tough to speed dial (at least 5 presses/slides to call one of your )
- No smart dial (filtering of contacts as you enter letters or numbers)
- Reception issues (full signal to no signal in same area)
- No instant messaging application
- Non-removable battery that cost $86 to replace from Apple
- Weak Bluetooth radio (profiles and reception with headset)
- No DUN (Bluetooth or cabled)
- No custom ringtones
- No MMS functionality…
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Travelling to/speaking at ACUTA conference in Hollywood, Florida, July 29-Aug 2
Continue Reading: Travelling to/speaking at ACUTA conference in Hollywood, Florida, July 29-Aug 2FYI, on the week of July 29th – August 2nd, I’ll be down in Hollywood, Florida, at the annual conference of the Association for Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education (ACUTA). I will be speaking on… surprise!… VoIP security! There look to be a great number of interesting talks on the schedule, and so I’m looking forward to wearing my CTO Office hat (versus my pure “VoIP security” hat) and listening to and learning from what many of the folks involved with deploying leading-edge IP communications technologies in the education space are doing. There will, of course, also be some security talks of interest.
If any of you reading this weblog will be down there at the ACUTA conference, please do feel free to drop me a note, as I definitely do enjoy meeting with others who connect through the social media space.
P.S. And yes, Florida in late July/early August is definitely not my idea of a fun place to be… good news is that we’ll be indoors!
Technorati tags: acuta, voip security, voip, education, mitel -
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TMC.net launches "Open Source PBX community"
Continue Reading: TMC.net launches "Open Source PBX community"Recognizing the growth in open source telephony, Rich Tehrani and his team over at TMC.net today rolled out their “Open Source PBX community” at http://opensourcepbx.tmcnet.com/ . Sponsored by long-time open source supporter Sangoma, Rich says in his video that they aim for their site to be the place to go for news, commentary and documents about open source telephony. Right now it seems primarily to have some white papers, a list of resources (which seem to mostly come from Sangoma) and open source-related news and articles. Given that this just launched, it will be interesting to see what they do with it.
Rich asked for feedback about the site and my #1 point would be – could we please get some RSS feeds? Unless I missed them, I can’t see anyway to subscribe… and that’s really how I personally like to read my updates these days.
Anyway, it’s good to see TMC.net expanding their open source coverage and I’ll be watching how it evolves.
Technorati tags: voip, open source, asterisk, sangoma, rich tehrani, tmc.net -
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Skype releases new 3.5 beta that adds video into chats and mood messages
Continue Reading: Skype releases new 3.5 beta that adds video into chats and mood messagesAs announced yesterday on the Share Skype blog and in more detail on the Skype Garage blog (and also in the Windows Release Notes), Skype has released an updated 3.5 beta for Windows. Skype 3.5 beta came out earlier this month, but this new update includes several new features, most notably the ability to add video into a chat or mood message, and per the release notes it also fixes a range of bugs. Jim Courtney has more info over at Skype Journal, but I found this piece of interest with regard to the new video snapshot capability (which now allows you to take a snapshot of the remote video, i.e. the person you are speaking with):
Providing your video also implies that your provide your remote participant with permission to make snapshots. Video snapshots inherits existing privacy mechanisms associated with turning on your video.
So basically if you use Skype video, you should be aware that the person with whom you are chatting could easily capture images of you. (Obviously this has always been possible with screen capture programs, but this is now built into Skype.)
On the “adding videos to chat or mood message” feature, my initial reaction…
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YouTube video from Sun blogger sets shots of Sun/Mitel gear to hip-hop…
Continue Reading: YouTube video from Sun blogger sets shots of Sun/Mitel gear to hip-hop…Following on my previous post about Sun blogger Craig Bender, I should note that he also posted a video to YouTube that is the first time I can honestly say that I’ve ever seen shots of Mitel and/or Sun gear set to hip-hop music! Enjoy…
Technorati tags: mitel forum, mitel, sun, sun microsystems, sun ray -
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YouTube video shows the Sun / Mitel collaboration – voice/data hot desking via card…
Continue Reading: YouTube video shows the Sun / Mitel collaboration – voice/data hot desking via card…One of the many cool things I’ve been hoping to find the cycles to write about coming out of Mitel Forum last week is the collaboration occurring between Mitel and Sun Microsystems. First announced June 19th, there are really two components to the collaboration: 1) the Multi-Instance Call Server (MICS) that can have up to 200 instances of our 3300 ICP call control software running on a Sun server; and 2) a very cool integration of a SunRay thin client computer into the base of one of our phones. With the phones, a user can simply insert their “Java card” into the base of the phone and the user is automagically signed onto the computer and to the phone. Pull the card out, the user is logged out. Insert another user’s card and the computer and the phone are logged in as that user. It takes the “hot desking” we’ve had for years and extends that to now also include the PC. As I said, it’s very cool!
The good news is that I can actually share a bit of the experience with you courtesy of Sun blogger Craig Bender, a.k.a. the “Thin Guy”, who writes the Sun Ray Blog. I…
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Google acquires GrandCentral… and enters further into the PSTN side of telecommunications
Continue Reading: Google acquires GrandCentral… and enters further into the PSTN side of telecommunicationsNews breaking out today is that Google has acquired GrandCentral for something around $50 million. GrandCentral is a service that gives you one phone number that can ring multiple numbers, provide one common voicemail – and all sorts of the other features (see “howitworks” for a list of features). As the GrandCentral blog entry says:
We started GrandCentral because we wanted to create a service that puts users in control of their voice communications and not the other way around. As you have discovered, with GrandCentral you get all of your phone calls through just one number that never changes and you can link and ring up to six phones to ring when somebody calls you. But that’s just the start. You can set different rules for each caller (some ring all your phones, other can go straight to voicemail), create personal voicemail greetings for each of your callers, and even check your voicemail on the web with all of your messages in just one inbox. We’ll even save your messages for as long as you want.
I first learned of GrandCentral quite some time ago from Andy’s blog and subsequently heard GrandCentral CEO Craig Walker talk out…
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The truth about the iPhone and other devices – in the end, it all comes down to batteries…
Continue Reading: The truth about the iPhone and other devices – in the end, it all comes down to batteries…In the end, it all comes down to *#$%#$?@ batteries! I was greatly amused to read today David Berlind’s ZDNet Blog post, “iPhone redux: Is it time for the battery life equivalent of a ‘nutrition label’ (see example)“.
His statements are entirely true. We as an industry do need some kind of “truth in labeling” decree about battery life. I loved his diagram that he came up with (shown on right).
This point was vividly driven home to me a few years back when for about a year or so I was the product manager for Mitel’s wireless portfolio and was involved with the rollout of Mitel’s IP-DECT solution in Europe. Never in my life did I expect that so much of my time in the product launch would be consumed in dealing with issues around batteries! Being a “software guy”, I really had very little understanding of the nuances of power consumption and their impact on battery life. It was definitely a great learning experience! As David Berlind says:
Not only was plenty written about the iPhone’s potential battery life issues, the truth of the matter is that there’s only so much you can ask a battery to do.
Batteries…
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Happy iPhone Day! (Unless, of course, you live in Vermont, Alaska, Maine or other rural places…)
Continue Reading: Happy iPhone Day! (Unless, of course, you live in Vermont, Alaska, Maine or other rural places…)Unless you have been living under a rock for the past six months, you would know that today is the day that the Apple iPhone becomes available. Actually, it is not until 6pm local time today, which seems a bit odd but it does provide a way to hype things all day as there will undoubtedly be endless news reports about the people standing in line to get an iPhone. The hype is almost endless, it would seem. Quite frankly, I don’t see how the iPhone will even remotely live up to all the expectations that have been placed on it. It slices. It dices. It solves world hunger and cures cancer! Well, okay, maybe not… but the hype would almost bring it to that level. I have to expect that over the next few days the blog posts will naturally turn to peoples’ reviews of the product and the inevitable let-downs.
I, of course, won’t have a chance to experience an iPhone anytime soon. As I wrote previously, those of us who live in states without AT&T coverage are just out-of-luck. (Also noted by a local Apple retailer.) I guess the good news is that by the time…
