Category: VoIP
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Telephony is disrupted because voice no longer matters… (as much)
Continue Reading: Telephony is disrupted because voice no longer matters… (as much)Does “voice” communication really matter as much today in business communications?
Think about it. When you need to reach someone today, what do you do? Do you call them on the phone? Or do you send them email? Or a text message? or IM?
I know personally that my normal communication flow usually goes something like this:
- Instant Messaging – I check first to see if I can reach the person on some form of IM. For me, I usually use Skype, GoogleTalk or WLM/MSN, although I do have accounts on other services as well. I use IM because I can see the presence of the other person. If they are online and available, I’ll shoot them a message. Sometimes the question may be dealt with entirely within an IM exchange. Other times I use the IM chat as the precursor to initiating a voice call, i.e. “Ping… do you have time for a call?”
- SMS – If the matter is relatively important and I want to talk to someone, I might send an SMS next to their cell phone, again often to see
- E-mail/Facebook/Twitter/other – Unless the matter is really urgent, the next mode I’ll use is some…
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Facebook group created for ETel conference… please join if you think you might go to ETel!
Continue Reading: Facebook group created for ETel conference… please join if you think you might go to ETel!For those of you using Facebook, we have created a Facebook group for O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony Conference (ETel) coming up in March 2008. Please feel free to join the group if you are planning to go to ETel – or at least thinking about it. We’re hoping to use it to connect people to each other in advance of ETel. We’re not entirely sure exactly how we’ll use it… it’s all part of the grand experiment in social networking. Please join us in that experiment!
Technorati Tags: etel, facebook, conferences
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Heading out to Astricon 2007 next week to talk on VoIP security…
Continue Reading: Heading out to Astricon 2007 next week to talk on VoIP security…Well, I just confirmed my travel schedule – I’m going to go have a bit of fun out at AstriCon 2007. AstriCon, for those who aren’t aware, is pretty much the premiere event for Asterisk developers. I’m scheduled to speak on Thursday about (surprise!) VoIP security. My talk is an “industry perspective” in my capacity as a board member of the VOIP Security Alliance and won’t be specifically Asterisk-focused, although I will include a few pieces about what you need to think about with Asterisk and the holes that Asterisk still needs to fill (like, oh, SRTP, which I know is coming). I know Mark Spencer and a good bit of the Digium crowd, so it will be fun to hang out with them (especially given my new independent status).
If any of you reading will be out there, please do feel free to drop me a line so that we can connect.
P.S. After AstriCon, I’ll be heading over to the Podcast and New Media Expo in Ontario, CA. If any of you will be there, please do drop a note as well.
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FWD rolls out a "Voicemail" Facebook app… with the promise of calls to the *external* FWD client going to FB voicemail soon (i.e. FB becomes voicemail for SIP connections)
Continue Reading: FWD rolls out a "Voicemail" Facebook app… with the promise of calls to the *external* FWD client going to FB voicemail soon (i.e. FB becomes voicemail for SIP connections)Another new “voice” application for Facebook come out today, this one from the 12-year-old FWD (the service formerly known as “Free World Dialup” and backed by Jeff Pulver, who recently teamed with Daniel Berninger to relaunch FWD – read Daniel’s perspective here and also Jeff’s post about FWD’s beta of a tunneling service )
This first Facebook app, called simply “Voicemail“, was announced to members of the FWD group inside of Facebook with a message from Daniel Berninger providing the URL and stating this:
We are particularly interested in novel uses enabled by the several differences with traditional telephone voicemail.
1) CD quality audio
2) Messages public or private
3) Ability to re-record message without sending
4) Sent messages remain accessible
A direct integration with FWD will be available shortly allow you to pickup and leave Facebook voicemail via FWD.My initial response was admittedly a bit of a yawn. Back in June, I had written about the existence of several Facebook apps that allowed FB users to leave each other voicemail messages. The last sentence, though, was enough to intrigue me:
…A direct integration with FWD will be available shortly allow you to pickup and leave Facebook voicemail via FWD.
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Skype Journal: "The Dawn of the Mashup World"
Continue Reading: Skype Journal: "The Dawn of the Mashup World"For a couple of months now, a post has been swirling around in my brain that I was tentatively titling “The Dawn of the Mashup Culture” in which I wanted to talk about “mashups” and why they are so incredibly important. Unfortunately I just haven’t had the time to put all those thoughts into the written word.
Well, in the meantime, Jim Courtney went off and wrote something very close to what I was intending to do: “The Dawn of the Mashup World – Part 1: Challenges, Why and Expectations” followed by “Part 1a: What is a Mashup?“
Read them. (And the follow-on posts that Jim indicates he’s writing.)
Mashups are fundamentally changing the way we can use and control services. It’s the remix culture.
You need to understand it… because if you don’t, your products and services will be left behind.
Open APIs win. Mashups win.
Technorati tags: mashups, apis, skype, skype journal, jim courtney -
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O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony (ETel) 2008 Conference – I’m on the Program Committee and we’re looking for submissions (due by September 17th)
Continue Reading: O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony (ETel) 2008 Conference – I’m on the Program Committee and we’re looking for submissions (due by September 17th)Prior to getting distracted last week by employment issues I was intending to post here about the upcoming ETel 2008 conference on March 3-4, 2008, down in San Diego, CA. For two years in a row, ETel has been my favorite conference to attend, primarily because it’s all about the wacky stuff people are doing on the edge of telephony. Unlike VoiceCon, VON and ITEXPO, it’s not a trade show. There’s no real exhibit hall (or hasn’t been)… it’s all about the content. And there have been been some great sessions showcasing projects and products people are doing that really push the edge of what we are calling “telephony” today.
Two reasons to post about it. First, I’m on the ETel 2008 Program Committee along with a number of others who may be familiar to people in this space. (Note to self: I’ll need to update that bio in two weeks.)
Second, and the main reason I wanted to post – the ETel 2008 Call for Participation is open and we’re looking for submissions!
PROPOSALS ARE DUE SEPTEMBER 17th
As the page says… are you a:
- Technologist, strategist, CTO, CIO changing the world with your ideas?
- Technology evangelist, scout, entrepreneur…
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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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iLocus – 2.23 million licenses of pure IP PBX sold in 2Q07 (Cisco, Mitel are the market leaders)
Continue Reading: iLocus – 2.23 million licenses of pure IP PBX sold in 2Q07 (Cisco, Mitel are the market leaders)Just out on WebWire today, research firm iLocus indicated that 2.23 million IP-only PBX lines were sold in the second quarter of 2007, apparently generating revenues of over $208 million. Cisco was the market leader and then, according to the news release, Mitel (my employer) was the leader of the non-Cisco shipments. Mitel apparently had 42% market share (of non-Cisco shipments, I presume), followed by 3Com, ShoreTel and Inter-Tel (now part of Mitel).
Now the point of this news release is obviously to entice people to buy iLocus’ research report, but I do find the data rather curious. Mostly due to the fact that there is no mention of Avaya and Nortel, two of the other major competitors in the IP-PBX space. Now perhaps this is due to this statement:
“iLocus has discontinued coverage of shipments related to legacy PBX upgrades or the hybrid systems. We focus on only the pure IP PBX shipments in the enterprise VoIP equipment quarterly tracking service.”
I don’t know. I do just find it curious. (Not that I’m complaining, mind you.) In any event, this research is now out there and available to purchase.
It would be interesting to know how this 2.23 million…
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RebTel’s "Reb Me" VoIP/telephony application for Facebook let’s you easily make cheap calls
Continue Reading: RebTel’s "Reb Me" VoIP/telephony application for Facebook let’s you easily make cheap callsAs I’ve written about previously (here and here), with all the excitement about Facebook’s application platform there haven’t been a whole lot of apps focusing on VoIP. Back on August 15th, though, another VoIP/telephony app did emerge, although at the time I was too caught up with VoiceCon travel preparations to blog about it.
The application is “Reb Me” (actual FB application here) from the folks over at RebTel. Essentially it allows RebTel users to very quickly call each other at cheap rates. (With RebTel, you get a local phone number to call international friends. You therefore only pay the costs for your local call, and some small rate to RebTel (or free).) Given that I’m rather “late” to the game on this app, I’ll point to other coverage for more details:
- RebTel blog:
- A developer’s take on our new Facebook app
- Reb Me brings mobility to the party
- blog of some of the developers of the RebTel Facebook app
- Jeff Pulver: Rebtel: One Year Later. And now available on Facebook (Q&A with RebTel CEO Hjalmar Winbladh)
- Russell Shaw, ZDNet: Rebtel adds Facebook calling capability
- Facebook Observer: Facebook Gets Another VoIP Application
According to the Facebook stats…
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Given that we already have Jajah, do we really need nonoh?
Continue Reading: Given that we already have Jajah, do we really need nonoh?Given that there was a service called Jajah, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would come up with a competitor called nonoh whose main point seems to be “We are cheaper than Jajah”! Indeed, if Jajah could run a table like this on their website:
You can pretty much expect that a site like nonoh is going to run the inevitable comparison to Jajah:
The race to the bottom and the commoditization of all phone calls (at $0) continues… who will get to the bottom first? (And what, exactly, will their business plan be?)
Tom Keating has more info about the difference between Nonoh and Jajah.
Technorati tags: voip, jahah, nonoh
