Category: VoIP
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Kishkish and the lie detector for Skype
Continue Reading: Kishkish and the lie detector for SkypeBack on Sunday, Dustin Trammell wrote about the “lie detector for Skype” over on the Voice of VOIPSA blog, and I have to say that this certainly is a curious use of the Skype API. Real Geek has another writeup along with the picture to the right. Blogs, of course, have been writing about it. Naturally, Gizmodo and Engadget weighed in. However, even though it is theoretically available from the Skype Extras Gallery, I’m not seeing people actually writing about using it. In the comments area of that page on Skype’s site, I mostly see people expressing their frustration with trying to install it. It’s strange, I was able to get to the kishkish website the other day, but not today. Perhaps they are a victim of their own success. I did notice that they had cute marketing with their use of a snippet of video of former US President Bill Clinton talking about Monica Lewinsky. It’s unclear about pricing, though… it seems to be free from the Skype Extras page but the Gizmodo article references a $49.95 annual fee. Hmmmm….
Call me skeptical… voice stress analysis has been around for a long time and, well, just consider me skeptical.…
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The “iPhone” is out this week…. from Cisco?
Continue Reading: The “iPhone” is out this week…. from Cisco?So the news floating around the VoIP part of the blogosphere is that the long-awaited and long-debated “iPhone” was released yesterday… but it turns out NOT to be from Apple! Instead, as noted by Gizmodo, the trademark for “iPhone” belongs to, of all people, Cisco! ( Tip of the hat to Tom Keating, where I first read it and saw this graphic.)
On one level, the Linksys press release seems to be mostly a re-branding exercise for their existing “CIT” Cordless Internet Telephone series but as noted over on the Skype Gear blog, there actually is some real product news mixed in with all the fixation on the name.
The CIT400 is a DECT-based cordless phone that does not require a PC to run Skype. That apparently is the function of the grey box “base station” in the picture. You plug it into your network and your phone is off and running. It can apparently also plug into your landline to give you true “dual-mode” operation. Very much like the Dualphone 3088 and other similar products.
On the other hand, the WIP320 is a true WiFi handset that again does not require a PC. So it joins the other phones…
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Note to Siemens: Need better fact-checking: your OpenStage phones are NOT the first IP phones w/WLAN
Continue Reading: Note to Siemens: Need better fact-checking: your OpenStage phones are NOT the first IP phones w/WLAN(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/258085.html)
Now I realize that often in sales and marketing, some folks tend to exaggerate claims… or split hairs to make various claims… or (more often) don’t do enough fact-checking to verify their claims… but it rather annoys me when I see someone making claims that are just wrong – especially when the claims overlook products made by my own employer! As readers know, I don’t really tout Mitel products here all that much, but in this case, I feel compelled to write a bit about one. In the recent announcements by Siemens of their new OpenStage SIP phones, which Ken Camp covered so well here, Siemens makes the claim in their PowerPoint presentation (available from Ken’s post):
The first time an enterprise desktop phone has been able to connect to both wired and wireless infrastructures.
Um… no. You see, Mitel has been shipping this little product called the “Mitel WLAN Stand” since July of this year (2006) which just clips onto the back of any of our enterprise desk phones and allows that phone to connect to a 802.11 network. I’ve got one here in my home office… I’d be glad to show anyone if… -
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Ken Camp: “I’ve been Blueboxed”
Continue Reading: Ken Camp: “I’ve been Blueboxed”(Originally posted at http://dyork.livejournal.com/257414.html)
Finally getting caught up on content recorded for Blue Box, I finished up on Monday night the interview I did with Ken Camp out at Internet Telephony in San Diego and posted the interview today. Ken responded with his post: “I’ve been Blueboxed“, which gave me a laugh because I don’t think I’ve ever seen the show name used as a verb before!
Technorati Tags: blue box, bluebox, security, ken camp, voip, voip security, voipsa, voipsecurity
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Techtionary.com provides animated “SIP Essentials” tutorial…
Continue Reading: Techtionary.com provides animated “SIP Essentials” tutorial…(Originally posted at http://dyork.livejournal.com/256998.html)
Tom Cross over at Techtionary.com dropped a note to let me know that his team had released a ‘fastcast’ on the topic of “SIP Essentials”. Not having a clue what a “fastcast” was, I found the answer in Tom’s news release:
Fastcasts are fast-track audio/video animated 10-60 second advertorials for web, webseminar, PC and iPod formats.
Not sure how much traction the word will really get, but there you have it. Tom’s SIP tutorial looked quite interesting in the bit that I explored, with sections on:- SIP Basics
- SIP Trunking
- SIP QoS
- SIP Firewalls and Security
- SIP Applications
- SIP TCO-Total Cost of Ownership
- Integrated/Converged Access
- Key VoIP Options – IAS, Hosted, Managed
- SIP Total Tutorial with Future Outlook
Tom’s making it available at no cost right now so I’d recommend people check it out.
Just one note of caution… once… -
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Skype 3.0 officially released this morning… and I learn about it from the public chatroom…
Continue Reading: Skype 3.0 officially released this morning… and I learn about it from the public chatroom…(Originally posted at http://dyork.livejournal.com/256267.html)
I have to say that it’s been rather fascinating to lurk in the “Skype English Blog Chat” public chatroom that was created as part of the beta of Skype 3.0. Many of the Skype employees familiar from the Skype blog pages have been in there, such as Jaanus Kase, and they are taking comments and questions from other Skype 3.0 beta users who have been trying out the beta and then giving the feedback directly in the chat room. Because it’s a “persistent” chat room that you always stay in (regardless of whether you are online, offline, or even whether you have the Skype client running at all) until you actually press the “Leave” button, you can always go back in and read the chat history to see what’s been going on and what people are saying. I’ll give credit to Skype for showing how public chats can be part of an effective beta process. And it’s been quite interesting to see the issues that have gone on, as well as the links that people have provided to different things as they have tried them out. I’ve really only checked into it maybe once a day,…
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Confirmed to speak at O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony conference, Feb 27 – Mar 1, 2007, San Francisco
Continue Reading: Confirmed to speak at O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony conference, Feb 27 – Mar 1, 2007, San Francisco(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/254735.html)
Just confirmed late last week that I’ll definitely be speaking at O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony Conference (aka “ETel”) this coming February 27 – March 1, 2007 in San Francisco. The topic I will be speaking on will, of course, be VoIP security. Two sessions, actually… one a 15-minute plenary session providing an overall view of VoIP security and then the second a 90-minute workshop going into much more detail, providing info about security tools, best practices and much more. Both, of course, will be later put out as part of Blue Box. Should be a lot of fun, and given that it’s in the SF area, I’ll probably be able to pull Jonathan Zar in as well, which would be cool. Now I just need to put up a picture, bio and session abstracts…
As I’ve said to a number of folks, ETel 2006 was one of the very best out of all the conferences that I attended all year. No real trade show… just conference sessions full of the “alpha geeks” that O’Reilly conferences tend to attract. People really on the bleeding edge of trying out new and different things with telephony. They had… -
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“Hacking Exposed VoIP” book from McGraw-Hill has a podcaster review quote (mine) on front cover
Continue Reading: “Hacking Exposed VoIP” book from McGraw-Hill has a podcaster review quote (mine) on front cover(Originally posted at http://dyork.livejournal.com/253120.html)
If you look at the front cover of "Hacking Exposed VoIP" (either click on the small image to the right or follow this link), you will see a review quote from a certain someone:
If you are a security professional charged with protecting a network infrastructure that includes VoIP, you definitely must read this book! Failure to do so will seriously put your VoIP systems – and your network – at risk!"
-Dan York, Producer and Co-Host, Blue Box: The VoIP Security PodcastMcGraw-Hill left out the first part of what I sent them, namely "This is a dangerous book.". (UPDATE: The full quote is on the first page inside the book.) It is a dangerous book, really, because Dave and Mark have brought into one book an amazing amount of information that previously was only found through diligent searching of many places. I stand by my quote – security professionals responsible for the security of VoIP systems really do need to read this book!
On a different note, I have to wonder if this is the first time a review quote from a podcaster has appeared on a published book that does not have…
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VoIP News in Australia picks up on VOIPSA Best Practices…
Continue Reading: VoIP News in Australia picks up on VOIPSA Best Practices…(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/251845.html)
I do not know precisely why, but the Australian VoIP media seems to pick up a lot of good news items about VoIP security, if you take a look at any Blue Box episode, you’ll often see that many of the news items we talk about come from Down Under. I don’t know why, but they seem to have security as a partial focus. It’s great to see and they are a very good source of news. One site there, VoIP News, is also the only one I’ve really seen to write a post about the VOIPSA Best Practices Project. We weren’t really expecting people to write about it on news sites… the launch is really more low-key and we didn’t do any active PR beyond blog posting and sending to email lists. Now, when we have the finished product that will be a different story.
Of course, to finish one must first start.. hopefully later today… just in time for me to start travelling for a week!
In the meantime, it’s great to see this VoIP News site writing about us… I’ve seen several subscriptions already today from Australia.Technorati Tags:…
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The Register- “VoIP – open season for hackers”
Continue Reading: The Register- “VoIP – open season for hackers”(Originally posted at http://dyork.livejournal.com/250114.html)
As I wrote about over on Voice of VOIPSA, the Register posted an article yesterday “VoIP – open season for hackers“. The article is mostly good PR by a security company promoting itself and doesn’t really seem to add anything brilliantly new to what we’ve already known in the VoIP security field… but the fact that it’s posted in the Register pretty much guarantees high visibility.
Another good reason for VOIPSA to get the Best Practices document done soon…Technorati Tags: security, voip, voip security, voipsa, voipsecurity