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Skype changes “Fair Usage Policy” to stop businesses from being too cheap…
Continue Reading: Skype changes “Fair Usage Policy” to stop businesses from being too cheap…Over on his new “Voice on the Web” blog, Jim Courtney outlines some changes Skype has recently made to their Fair Usage Policy. This subject came up on the “Skype 4.x” public Skype chat hosted by Skype Journal and in the discussion it appeared to most of us that what Skype is really trying to do is to:eliminate businesses making tons of calls on cheap monthly subscriptions.
The idea for the business is simple really… get Skype… get one of the cheap monthly plans and start dialling a zillion numbers for your business. Made even easier if you use one of the various appliances these days that let you do “Skype trunks” from an existing PBX or other call server.
The new “Fair Usage Policy” makes these changes:
- calling to a maximum of 50 numbers per day
- maximum six (6) hours of SkypeOut calling per day
- each subscription is to be used by one person only and not to be shared with any other user (whether by a PBX, call center, computer or any other means).
As Jim’s post discusses, there are a number of caveats and other points to this (for instance, you can call the same number repeatedly…
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An insanely busy couple of weeks… (and VoiceObjects training)
Continue Reading: An insanely busy couple of weeks… (and VoiceObjects training)You may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging much lately… or podcasting….. I’ve certainly been twittering since it’s fast to do… but I haven’t been writing much here or across any of my blogs and podcasts lately.Several good reasons… mostly that today is the last day of two weeks of travel, broken only by about a 40-hour visit home over the weekend. Last week I was down at ITEXPO in Miami and then spent the end of the week with one of my periodic check-ins at Voxeo’s corporate office in Orlando, FL.
This week I’ve again been at Voxeo’s office in Orlando, although not for meetings but instead to participate in a week of in-depth training in the VoiceObjects service creation environment for creating voice applications. You may recall that Voxeo acquired VoiceObjects back in December and so we’ve had a series of training sessions in Orlando for our development and support staff to learn all about the product.
It’s the first time in a while that I’ve spent a week in a training session where my time is focused on a topic (or at least is supposed to be). I’ve come away from it very impressed by…
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Voxilla Tutorial – Running Asterisk in a EC2 Cloud
Continue Reading: Voxilla Tutorial – Running Asterisk in a EC2 CloudLong-time readers will know that I have been intrigued for a long time with what we now call “cloud computing” (and have written about it and spoken about it) and also continue to find the world of open source telephony interesting.So naturally when I’m pointed to a step-by-step tutorial about running Asterisk in Amazon’s EC2 cloud, I’m interested. 🙂 It’s a nicely done tutorial and I look forward to seeing what people will do with it. (Unlike Mark Headd, who pointed to the tutorial in a tweet, I won’t be trying it out this weekend, but I will be doing so at some point soon.)
Cool stuff…
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Technorati Tags: amazon, ec2, asterisk, opensource, cloud, cloudcomputing
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FWD launches “SIP to SIP” directory of apps that work with SIP…
Continue Reading: FWD launches “SIP to SIP” directory of apps that work with SIP…If you have a new SIP service or application, how can you find other services to which you can directly connect via SIP? That’s the idea behind the new “SIP to SIP” directory launched by the folks at FWD and now available at www.siptosip.net. From the main page:Why SIP to SIP VoIP?
SIPtoSIP lists applications and content that require SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) enabled devices on both ends of the connection. Realizing the promise of VoIP requires expanding real-time communication options beyond the functions already available with traditional telephones or cell phones. The ability of SIP based VoIP to support HDVoice, video, and click-to-connect requires SIP devices on both ends of the connection. Send suggestions for corrections and additional listings to Daniel Berninger at dan at danielberninger.com.
The directory is very obviously new and only has a few entries on the various pages:
As is noted, Daniel Berninger is looking for people to email him suggestions.
I do applaud the FWD folks for looking at another way to promote the further building of SIP interconnections and so I wish them well with this directory. I’d note, though, that the VoIP-Info.org wiki does already contain a great amount…
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Heading down to ITEXPO in Miami on Feb 2-4…
Continue Reading: Heading down to ITEXPO in Miami on Feb 2-4…Will you be down in Miami at ITEXPO February 2-4? If so, please feel free to drop me a note and perhaps we can connect somewhere there.I’ll be arriving Monday afternoon and then on Tuesday, February 3rd, I’ll be donning my VOIPSA VoIP Security hat to participate in a SIP Trunking Workshop sponsored by Ingate Systems on “SIP Trunking And Security“. These workshops are always fun to do and as they are free to anyone attending ITEXPO (even just with an exhibit pass), they are usually well-attended. I’ll be bringing my recording gear, too, and the talk will eventually go out in my Blue Box Podcast feed so you will be able to hear it later.
Speaking of recording… I’ll have my video gear, too, and so if you have some new product or service in the “emerging communications” space that you think I might be interested in recording for my “Emerging Tech Talk” video podcast… well… pitch me. 🙂 I know I’ll be recording a number of videos down there and I would certainly consider doing some more.
Wednesday evening I’ll be driving back to Orlando and in Voxeo’s office on Thursday and Friday so if you’re…
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A belated congrats to Martin Geddes for joining BT…
Continue Reading: A belated congrats to Martin Geddes for joining BT…With a simple “I’ve changed jobs” blog post (way shorter than any blog post I’ve ever written), Martin Geddes let us all know that he was now joining BT. The post over on Telco 2.0 goes into more about Martin’s move and his reasons why he sees BT’s future as bright…Besides having one of the coolest blog names (“Telepocalypse“), Martin’s a great writer and thinking in our space. We’ve only met a couple of times, but I’ve always respected the work he’s done and enjoyed his writing. I wish him all the best at BT and look forward to what may evolve there!
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Technorati Tags: martingeddes, bt
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Skype used for voiceover work in an animated film shown at Sundance…
Continue Reading: Skype used for voiceover work in an animated film shown at Sundance…Having now been in the podcasting space for most of four years, I at one point looked into how “voiceover” work was done with traditional studios. To get the highest audio quality, the traditional route has been to use actual ISDN lines here in North America. This seemed to me an area that could be ideal for VoIP to disrupt… and it appears that in at least one case it’s done exactly that.News out of the Sundance Film Festival is this:
PARK CITY, Utah – Philip Seymour Hoffman literally phoned in his voice performance for tonight’s opener at the Sundance Film Festival, the animated feature “Mary and Max.”
“The cost of flying any big-name actor to Australia would be extreme,” explained director Adam Elliot, who is making his feature debut after his Oscar-winning animated short “Harvie Krumpet.”
“We didn’t have a lot of money, and it’s not like we could have flown him in on economy. So we piped him in for two sessions, in New York and London, with high-quality sound that makes him sound like he was in the studio with us in Australia. I was quite surprised at how good the technology is.”
And at the…
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The return of the Squawk Box podcast… today and next Tuesday
Continue Reading: The return of the Squawk Box podcast… today and next TuesdayAs Alec says, he “missed from the microphone” and so he’s brought back the Squawk Box podcast with a show today (also via Facebook) about the new Windows 7 beta and a show next Tuesday (also via Facebook) that will be an interview with Lee Dryburgh, coordinator of the eComm conference.The Squawk Box calls have been a great amount of fun over the past year or two. We’ve learned a lot together and shared some great discussions. I enjoyed guest-hosting and wrote here on this site about a number of the calls. I’m glad Alec is bringing them back in at least a limited form.
The conference call today (and most Squawk Box days) is at 11am US Eastern time and is open to anyone who wants to participate. They are made available later as a podcast from Alec’s blog at www.saunderslog.com. Being a “Mac”-guy these days, I don’t expect to have a whole lot to add to the Windows 7 conversation, but I’ll be interested to hear the experiences of those like Alec who are already playing with Windows 7. Next Tuesday, I do expect to be on the call with Lee…
If you found this post interesting…
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Want to learn about building voice apps with VoiceObjects? Join the “Developer Jam Session” webinar tomorrow…
Continue Reading: Want to learn about building voice apps with VoiceObjects? Join the “Developer Jam Session” webinar tomorrow…Are you interested in learning more about VoiceObjects (recently acquired by my employer, Voxeo) and how you can use VO to rapidly develop complex voice applications? If so, you can join VoiceObjects VP Stefan Besling tomorrow for a “Developer Jam Session” webinar where we will go through the new features of the recently announced VoiceObjects 7.4:Date: January 14, 2009
Time: 8am PDT, 11am EDT, 5pm CET
Topic: Introducing VoiceObjects 7.4
Speaker: Stefan Besling, Vice President of Engineering, VoiceObjects Germany GmbHAbstract: This session will give you an overview of the enhancements and new capabilities provided with VoiceObjects 7.4. Learn about 2-way SMS and Instant Messaging, security and user management enhancements, object extensions, and a lot more. Join us to stay up-to-date with the newest release of the VoiceObjects platform.
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Technorati Tags: voiceobjects, voxeo, voiceapplications, applications, voice, development, developers
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eComm Podcast: Matt Ranney on Thinking Beyond VoIP and A. Bell Telephony
Continue Reading: eComm Podcast: Matt Ranney on Thinking Beyond VoIP and A. Bell TelephonyOver on the eComm blog, Lee Dryburgh put up an interesting podcast on “Matt Ranney on Thinking Beyond VoIP and A. Bell Telephony“. It’s well worth a listen for those of you interested in the larger picture of what we are building for a communications infrastructure…P.S. And if you are interested in that topic, you really should consider attending eComm March 3-5…
Technorati Tags: ecomm, communication, telephony, rebelvox, voip
Disruptive Telephony
Dan York on how Voice over IP is rewriting (almost) everything you thought you understood about telephony…