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Free Webinar Today – “How Do You Hear Me Now? The Power of Wideband (HD) Audio”
Continue Reading: Free Webinar Today – “How Do You Hear Me Now? The Power of Wideband (HD) Audio”You know how great the audio quality can sound in a good Skype call? Almost like you are right there in the room with the other person?That’s possible because Skype uses what is called “wideband audio” (or “HD audio” by some).
In about 3 hours I’ll be presenting a Voxeo Developer Jam Session on “The Power of Wideband Audio“. The session is at:
Thursday, June 9, 2011
11:00 AM US Eastern, 8:00 AM US Pacific, 5:00 PM Central European
I’ll be talking about why you should care about wideband audio, what you can do with it, and how you can get started. Here’s the abstract:
What is “wideband” or “HD” audio? What are the benefits of wideband audio? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using wideband? With all the buzz out there, what does wideband or “HD” audio really do for you in a business setting?
In this Developer Jam Session, Dan York, Director of Conversations at Voxeo will explain the basics of wideband audio, discuss the various versions of wideband audio deployed in the industry, explain why it is important in terms of business value. Additionally, he will talk about how wideband audio is implemented in…
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Skype Is Back For Me – But Only 2 Million Users Are Online (versus normal 25+ million)
Continue Reading: Skype Is Back For Me – But Only 2 Million Users Are Online (versus normal 25+ million)Skype seems to be coming back up… s..l..o..w..l..y..My Skype client just started working again, as the Skype Heartbeat blog post indicated, I did not have to login again or do anything else. Once in, though, my Skype client shows only a bit over 2 million users online:
Considering that on a normal day there are usually 25+ million users online during the day (and often closer to 30 million), I would say that more than just “a small number” of users were affected!
As I wrote this post, though, the number of connected users dropped to 1.8 million… let’s see how this recovery goes!
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
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Skype is Having Another Outage Today – Appears Widespread (But May Be Recovering)
Continue Reading: Skype is Having Another Outage Today – Appears Widespread (But May Be Recovering)Skype is experiencing another outage today… to what extent is not clear, but my own anecdotal experience is that it could be large. Skype, of course, is claiming that only “a small number” of users are affected in their only tweet on the subject so far:They also posted this as a blog post on their Heartbeat site. On a side note, I completely agree with Robin Wauters at TechCrunch that it seems silly to say “a small number”:
Companies always say only a small subset of users experience problems when they occur.
I have no clue why they insist on pointing that out like it makes a difference.
Customers are down… and unable to communicate. It doesn’t matter if it is a “small number” if you are one of them!
But I digress… the reality is that this does seem to be a much wider outage than “a small number”:
- the comments to an Engadget article this morning show people all around the world saying Skype is not working for them;
- a Twitter search on ‘Skype’ is FULL of comments of people saying that Skype is down for them;
- my own colleagues at Voxeo are down around the world…
- the comments to an Engadget article this morning show people all around the world saying Skype is not working for them;
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An Older Version of Skype Reverse-Engineered? (And Made Open Source?)
Continue Reading: An Older Version of Skype Reverse-Engineered? (And Made Open Source?)Has a Russian engineer truly reverse-engineered an older version of Skype and made it available on the web as open source?That is what Efim Bushmanov is claiming on his new site:
http://skype-open-source.blogspot.com/
Now, as he notes in his first blog post on the topic, his reverse engineering is based on an older version of Skype and so it’s not clear to me how well it would work with the current Skype infrastructure. He claims, though, that it can send a message to Skype now.
How long the code will remain online is anyone’s guess. As TheNextWeb notes:
It is against the Skype’s terms to reverse engineer its software but both US and European laws state that it is legal if it helps in terms of interoperability, if the technology is also not patented. Whether Skype will be able to force researcher to either remove the files or put pressure on the company hosting them is not fully known.
Meanwhile, I’m sure a good number of folks will be downloading the source code to see what they can learn…
P.S. The Hacker News discussion thread on this topic is also worth a read.
If you found this post interesting or…
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How Does IPv6 Impact Telecom Networks? Join This Free Online Session Tomorrow To Learn…
Continue Reading: How Does IPv6 Impact Telecom Networks? Join This Free Online Session Tomorrow To Learn…How does IPv6 impact telecommunications networks? How will IPv6 affect the SIP protocol? If you work in telecom, what should you be aware of with regard to IPv6? With World IPv6 Day only a week away, if you have been wondering about these kind of questions, please feel free to join me live in a free session hosted by the US Telecommunications Association:IPv6 and Telecom Networks
Thursday, June 2, 2011
1:00pm US EasternRegistration is free and if you are unable to attend it will be recorded for later viewing. (And if you register now, you’ll be notified when the archive is available for viewing.) The description of the session is:
The networks that make up the Internet and IP communications are in the middle of a sea-change with the transition to IPv6. What impact will IPv6 have on telecom and communications networks?
Join USTelecom and Voxeo for a look at the various challenges that telecom and broadband services providers face in keeping their communication services working while transitioning to IPv6.
I’ll be explaining briefly why there is all the attention on IPv6 then getting into the basics of IPv6 addressing. After a brief overview, I’ll then dive into…
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What is Best? Deploying Communications Apps to the Cloud? On-Premises? Or Hybrid?
Continue Reading: What is Best? Deploying Communications Apps to the Cloud? On-Premises? Or Hybrid?What is the best way to deploy communications applications? In the hosted “cloud”? On your premises behind your firewall? Or some kind of hybrid approach? Back in February I presented in a Voxeo “Best Practices” webinar on just this topic: Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid. While a recording and the slides of the hour-long session have been available on the webinar page, it is also now available via Voxeo’s YouTube account:The great part about YouTube is that you can view it on many different devices, including mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad.
It was an enjoyable session to present with lots of great questions. If you have any feedback on the session or would like to know more, please contact me.
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
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China Passes 900 Million Cell Phone Users!
Continue Reading: China Passes 900 Million Cell Phone Users!Fascinating stats out of an article at TheNextWeb this week:China has become the first country to reach the 900 million mobile phone user milestone after amassing about 11 million mobile phone users in April alone, according to a report by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The report itself is available in Chinese. Looking at it via Google Translate did back up the numbers quoted in the article (assuming Google Translate was accurate).
By any measurement, 900 million is a staggering number of mobile phone users. TheNextWeb’s article goes on to say that India is second worldwide with 811 million mobile phone users followed distantly by the US with 303 million users.
Said another way… China has almost 3 times as many mobile phone users as the US.
Consider, too, that China’s population is 1.3 billion… and you have to imagine that like folks here in the US some % of people have multiple mobile phones… so there’s obviously plenty of room to grow.
I found this intriguing from the article:
China’s 3G networks, which launched in 2009, are still used only by a small portion of the country’s total mobile phone populace. In April, China had…
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Voxbone To Work with United Nations To Deploy New 888 Country Code For Disaster Relief Efforts
Continue Reading: Voxbone To Work with United Nations To Deploy New 888 Country Code For Disaster Relief EffortsCool news from the good folks at Voxbone yesterday that they have been chosen by the U.N. to implement a new “888” country code for agencies offering disaster relief.It’s not clear from the news release exactly how this would work, but Alec Saunders spoke with Voxbone CEO yesterday and wrote this in a post:
As Ullens explained to me, +888 is a real country code assigned by the ITU to the UN. In cases of humanitarian need, where telephone systems may be inoperable because of natural disaster, the first teams on the ground would deploy a local GSM antenna, connected via satellite to the rest of the world. Then Voxbone would simply forward calls to the +888 country code via satellite to the local GSM station on the ground. The impact is that UN inter-agency, intra-agency, and external users will be able to dial a +888 number assigned to a relief agency from anywhere in the world, and be immediately connected to that relief agency in the field, in whatever country being served. Not only that, the numbers need never change. Relief staff will be reachable on the same numbers in whatever location they are currently assigned.
If this…
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Skype Issues Official Statement About The End Of Skype For Asterisk
Continue Reading: Skype Issues Official Statement About The End Of Skype For AsteriskBefore writing my story yesterday about Skype killing off Skype For Asterisk, I had reached out to Skype’s PR agency to see if there was any statement from Skype. There wasn’t at the time, but today they sent over this statement from Jennifer Caukin, a spokeswoman for Skype:Skype made the decision to retire Skype for Asterisk several months ago, as we have prioritized our focus around implementing the IETF SIP standard in our Skype Connect solution. SIP enjoys the broadest support of any of the available signaling alternatives by business communications equipment vendors, including Digium. By supporting SIP in favor of alternatives, we maximize our resources and continue to reinforce our commitment to delivering Skype on key platforms where we can meet the broadest customer demand.
Being a huge advocate of open standards, I of course applaud Skype’s commitment to supporting SIP. However, as I noted two years ago in my detailed review of what was then “Skype For SIP” (and is now “Skype Connect”) the fundamental difference between Skype For Asterisk and Skype’s SIP offering is this:
Skype For Asterisk is/was two-way – you can make outbound calls TO Skype users.
You can’t do that with Skype Connect.…
Disruptive Telephony
Dan York on how Voice over IP is rewriting (almost) everything you thought you understood about telephony…