Category: Travel
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For a brief bit – Skype video calls from 30,000+ feet on Southwest Air WiFi!
Continue Reading: For a brief bit – Skype video calls from 30,000+ feet on Southwest Air WiFi!Upon entering the Southwest Airlines plane this morning on my flight to Orlando to visit Voxeo’s headquarters, I immediately noticed a “WiFi zone” sign on a column by the entry door. Naturally, I had to pull out my Macbook Pro and give it a whirl… and, given the issue of Skype-blocking last summer… try out Skype.To my great surprise and pleasure, it worked great. (For a little while – see below.) Here’s Bruce Lowekamp:
As you may or may not be able to see in the graphic, our call had been up for 3 minutes and 33 seconds when I snapped the picture.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have easy access to my headset, so I couldn’t really have a great conversation. The ambient background noise in the plane was really too much for my voice to be heard unless I bent down toward the microphone… and likewise even with the MacBook Pro volume up all the way it was a bit hard to hear Bruce unless I bent down toward the laptop.
And, of course, I didn’t really want to annoy my fellow passengers. 🙂
You can see on the right the technical stats for the call. Packet loss was…
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Sprint or Verizon? Recommendations for broadband access card for my Mac?
Continue Reading: Sprint or Verizon? Recommendations for broadband access card for my Mac?Who would you recommend for a wireless broadband access service for my laptop? Sprint or Verizon? (Those seem to be my main choices here in Keene, NH.) And would you recommend the USB dongle or the ExpressCard version?In heading out the Communications Developer Conference/ITEXPO next week in L.A., the show organizers have already told me there is no free WiFi access at the LA Convention Center… but I can, of course, pay for the access through the local provider. (And probably deal with the same usual headaches of getting adequate signal strength.)
I am so incredibly sick of show WiFi, both in terms of paying for it and also just in quality, that yes, indeed, even though I am a cheap Yankee… er… “frugal”, I think I need to suck it up and pay the $720/year to have wireless Internet access over the cell networks. This will also be hugely beneficial for all the wonderful times I spend hanging out in airports.
My choice seems to be either Sprint or Verizon. (AT&T and T-Mobile don’t have great coverage in my area.) Both will cover whatever limited roaming I do in my local area… and both have coverage in the…
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Heading out to ClueCon 2008, Telephony Developer Conference, this week..
Continue Reading: Heading out to ClueCon 2008, Telephony Developer Conference, this week..This afternoon I’ll be heading to the airport to fly out to Chicago to be part of ClueCon this week. Haven’t heard of ClueCon before? Here’s the quick summary:ClueCon – is an annual 3-Day Telephony User and Developer Conference bringing together the entire spectrum of Telephony from TDM circuits to VoIP and everything in between. The presentations and discussions will cover several open source telephony applications such as Asterisk/Callweaver, Kamailio (formerly OpenSER), Bayonne, YATE and FreeSWITCH.
Billed as the “Telephony Developer Conference” it primarily focuses on the whole world of open source telephony.
I’ll be there as part of two panels. First, tomorrow I’ll be joining fellow VoIP bloggers Andy Abramson and Thomas Howe on a “VoIP Roundtable” to talk about current industry themes and trends. Then on Thursday I’ll be part of a “VoIP Security Roundtable” talking about… gee… can you guess?
It should be a fun event… I’m looking forward to catching up with Andy, Thomas, Moshe Yudkowsky, Jon Todd and several others. There are also some folks on the schedule with whom I have corresponded but never physically me, so that will be nice as well. If any of you reading this will also be…
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Walking through VoiceCon in a fog…
Continue Reading: Walking through VoiceCon in a fog…It’s been a rough week for me down here in Orlando at VoiceCon. As you’ve noticed, I haven’t really posted any blog entries. In fact, there have been a number of “firsts” down here which I really would have preferred to avoid:- first conference ever where I haven’t gone out to dinner with anyone;
- first conference where I’ve not recorded any audio interviews (or video), despite carrying all my audio gear with me each and every day;
- first time I’ve gone back to my hotel room early each day to collapse;
- first conference in eons where I’ve felt like I’m walking around in a fog.
This is all very bizarre me. Being the extreme extrovert that I am, conferences are a time to have conversations, to meet new people, to go out to dinners and lunches, to “schmooze”… “network”… or whatever you want to call it. To learn of people’s stories and try to tell those stories through all these social media. I enjoy these events and am so completely in my element. I love it! There are just so many interesting people out there.
But it’s darn hard to do all that when you feel like a truck has run…
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Heading up to Ottawa tomorrow…
Continue Reading: Heading up to Ottawa tomorrow…I’m Ottawa-bound early tomorrow morning for two days of closing off my activities with Mitel. Heading back to Vermont on Thursday. If anyone reading this wants to connect with me in Ottawa, please do drop an email, contact me on Skype (“danyork”) or leave a comment here. Will be staying out in the Kanata area.