Category: Phones
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Seeing IP Phones In Hotels, Banks, Offices…
Continue Reading: Seeing IP Phones In Hotels, Banks, Offices…“Hey, that’s a Mitel IP phone… I remember when that handset was introduced. It was very different from the previous one but had better ‘shoulderability’ … it created a bit of a stir among customers, though. Hmmm… I wonder what model IP phone that is……”
All of this was running through my head during a routine visit to my bank this morning while waiting at a counter talking to someone. He had to call another office so there I was looking at his desk phone.
It happens to me all the time!
Even though I left Mitel way back in 2007… and really left IP telephony when I left Voxeo in 2011… IP telephony hasn’t left me!
I’ll be at a hotel… and I am checking out their phone system. A bank… an office… Wherever! There’s a Cisco IP phone… there’s an Avaya… there’s a Mitel… a snow… a I-have-no-clue…
I guess it’s just an occupational hazard of having been a product manager for IP phones during my time at Mitel… or maybe just the 6 years I spent there learning about IP telephony… but I just always see the IP phones. 🙂
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Facebook Rolls Out Free Voice Calls In The US On iOS – A Quick Walkthrough And A Big, Huge Caveat
Continue Reading: Facebook Rolls Out Free Voice Calls In The US On iOS – A Quick Walkthrough And A Big, Huge CaveatFacebook today rolled out it’s free voice calling in the US via its Messenger app for iOS (iPhone/iPad). The Verge was the first I saw with the news and a great number of sites are now following.Voice calling through Facebook has the potential to be hugely disruptive… rather than calling on your phone over your regular phone connection – or even rather than using Skype, you can just call from directly within Facebook. This is the kind of “Over-The-Top (OTT)” app that gives telco operators a fit… goodbye, telco voice minutes!
Plus, it’s using some HD voice codec so the sound quality is outstanding.
And since the folks at Facebook want you to live your life inside of their very pretty walls, this just provides yet one more reason for you to stay within those walls.
BUT… there’s a big huge caveat that I’ll get to in a moment.
A Quick Walkthrough
First, though, let’s look at how it works. When you go into the Messenger app and open a chat with a friend (in this case, Jim Courtney), all you have to do is click the “i” button in the upper right:
After you do that…
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Are They Crazy? Digium Enters The Phone Game With Asterisk IP Phones
Continue Reading: Are They Crazy? Digium Enters The Phone Game With Asterisk IP PhonesWhen I first saw the news today, my immediate reaction was:Seriously? Digium is coming out with phones???
In a rather fascinating move in an already extremely crowded market, Digium announced today that they will be producing “Digium Phones“, a new line of IP phones specifically targeted at users of Asterisk and Switchvox (both Digium products). They tout among the benefits:- Crystal clear HD Voice
- Simple setup and installation
- Tightest integration with Asterisk
- Built-in & custom applications
- A built-in “app engine” JavaScript API
There will be three models available:
- D40—An entry-level HD IP phone with 2-line keys. Priced at $149.
- D50—A mid-level HD IP phone with 4-line keys and 10 quick dial/BLF keys with paper labels. Priced at $179.
- D70—An executive-level HD IP phone with 6-line keys and 10 quick dial/BLF keys on an additional LCD screen. Priced at $279
The news release indicates they will be available in April and are currently on display at ITEXPO this week down in Miami. A datasheet is available
Application Platform
What is perhaps most interesting to me is the “app engine” included in the phone. From the news release:
Digium phones include an app engine with a simple yet powerful JavaScript API…
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Yep, They’re Buying SmartPhones! Great stats from Black Friday…
Continue Reading: Yep, They’re Buying SmartPhones! Great stats from Black Friday…Great stats out of the Silicon Alley Insider’s Chart of Day for this past Tuesday:There was a 31% increase in active smartphones over the Thanksgiving weekend compared to the week prior…
The SAI post explains the chart and how the data was gathered:
Cool info to see!
(Although the paranoid security guy inside of me is admittedly wondering how many of the apps on my iPhone include Flurry’s “analytics software” and what exactly it is sending to them… )
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Meet My Spam Honeypot for Telemarketers (Otherwise Known As My Desk Phone)
Continue Reading: Meet My Spam Honeypot for Telemarketers (Otherwise Known As My Desk Phone)The phone on my desk rang a second time today. I glanced at the console, didn’t recognize the Caller ID and simply ignored the call. A minute or two later a text message buzzed on my iPhone with a transcription of the voicemail left by the caller. I took one look and knew right away:
Yep, another telemarketer!
Just like another call earlier today. As I did my little glance-ignore-wait-for-text-message routine I realized yet again how my communications channels have changed over the years. Here is the reality:
I pretty much NEVER answer my desk phone.
Why not? Pretty simple, really:
The people who I want to speak with already know how to get in touch with me!
And the “how” comes down to: unified communications and mobile.
Unified Communications
For instance, we’re huge users of Skype internally at Voxeo. I have everyone in the company as a contact, and am in a zillion various group chats with internal employees. If someone within the company wants to reach me, they will:
- Check my presence on Skype. Am I online? If so, am I “away”? or “busy/Do Not Disturb”?
- Send me an IM – asking if they can call me if…
- Check my presence on Skype. Am I online? If so, am I “away”? or “busy/Do Not Disturb”?
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The New Breed of Tablets from Cisco, Avaya and RIM – will they matter?
Continue Reading: The New Breed of Tablets from Cisco, Avaya and RIM – will they matter?Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all rushing out “tablet” devices now for the enterprise market – but will they actually matter? Will enterprises really want to use these high-end and high-priced tablets versus all the new consumer tablets like the iPad and all the various Android and Windows tables in the queue?
Don’t get me wrong … it think it is awesome that Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all coming out with new tablets. Ever since getting an iPad back in early May it has become a constant companion on my travels around and I use it for so many different purposes.
The touch interface is also so incredibly “natural”… I watch my daughters using the iPad and just have to think: “Why shouldn’t computers just work this way?”
Any user interface improvements that improve the communications user experience are very definitely a GOOD thing!
So I commend Cisco, Avaya and RIM for coming out with tablets.
I just still find myself wondering why I might want to pay to buy one of these tablets. I had this exchange yesterday with analyst Brian Riggs on Twitter:
As I said, I already have a SIP client on my iPad (and there…
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Paul Thurrott believes Android will conquer iPhones…
Continue Reading: Paul Thurrott believes Android will conquer iPhones…I own an iPhone. We have two, in fact… one that is my corporate phone provided by Voxeo and one that we bought for my wife as her personal phone. In the couple years I have been using it I have come to truly enjoy the user interface, the AppStore, the ecosystem, etc. It truly has changed how we as a society think of mobile devices.
But though I may be a Apple “fanboy” in many ways, I do have some grave concerns… such as the lock-in to the closed system controlled by Apple, which I wrote about at length related to the iPad. As a believer in open standards and an advocate for the open Internet, I’m glad to see Android out there… even as I read about it on my iPhone.
So naturally I was intrigued to read Paul Thurrott’s piece titled “Droid Attack Spells Doom for iPhone“. I’ve been reading Paul’s writing for years related to various Microsoft and Windows topics… so when one of the chief Windows evangelists I know writes about Android… well, I pay attention to it a bit. Paul relays the story of his wife’s move to a Droid phone and his…
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iOS 4.1 *does* help make the iPhone 3G faster
Continue Reading: iOS 4.1 *does* help make the iPhone 3G fasterAs readers know, my upgrading of my iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 was one of the dumbest IT moves I’ve made in ages and turned it into a virtually useless piece of junk. (This video someone made sadly shows how bad it was.) Rather than undertaking one of the various processes to downgrade my iPhone to iOS 3.1.3, I decided to wait a couple of weeks to see if either: 1) Apple released a fix; or 2) my number would come up in Voxeo’s internal queue of upgrades to the iPhone 4.
As it happened, both events happened near the same time. 🙂
Just in time for my next trip when I would need to be using the iPhone 3G, I did upgrade it to iOS 4.1 and was delighted to find that:
IT WAS A SNAIL NO MORE!
The phone got back its snappiness and it no longer took forever to open up applications or even let me answer a call. It still didn’t seem as quick as it might have been before… but it was now in the realm of USABLE.
So if you made the mistake of upgrading your iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 and have…
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Video parody: What happens when you install iOS 4.0 on a iPhone 3G
Continue Reading: Video parody: What happens when you install iOS 4.0 on a iPhone 3GAs readers know, I recently wrote about how upgrading my iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 was one of the dumbest things I’ve done and also recently linked to Lifehacker’s post about downgrading your iPhone 3G. So naturally you can expect that I’d be amused by this recent parody of Apple’s commercial:Sadly, it’s far too true… (although I haven’t yet personally experienced the issue with not being able to accept a call)
Kudos to “adamburtle” for putting the video together.
P.S. I learned of this video through the ZDNet article, Apple should advise against upgrading iPhone 3G to iOS4… and yes, Apple should make it clear that you will severely degrade the performance of your iPhone 3G by “upgrading” it.
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