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The Oprah-tization of VoIP via Skype!
Continue Reading: The Oprah-tization of VoIP via Skype!Did you ever think that we would utter “Oprah” and “VoIP” in the same sentence?
Well, we are… or more precisely “Oprah” and “Skype”. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you need to head over to Skype Journal and read Jim Courtney’s piece: “Skype Sponsors Oprah’s ‘A New Earth’ Web Event”
Essentially, Oprah has taken her Book Club online to host a weekly web collaboration session for the next ten weeks with, oh, 750,000 members of her club! More information – and an audio introduction from Oprah – is available on the Skype campaign page. Monday night was the first first session and as Jim subsequently noted (as did Howard Wolinsky on the new Skype US blog), the session didn’t go so well with regard to technical issues. As Oprah’s company, Harpo Productions (Hint: spell “Harpo” backwards) said in their statement:
Monday night’s webcast was one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet. More than 500,000 people simultaneously logged on to watch Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle live, resulting in 242 Gbps of information moving through the Internet. Unfortunately, some of our users experienced delays in viewing the webcast. We are…
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Today’s Squawk Box podcast – A conversation with Jeff Pulver about VON.x
Continue Reading: Today’s Squawk Box podcast – A conversation with Jeff Pulver about VON.xFor some time now, I’ve been participating in the daily “Squawk Box” podcast hosted by Alec Saunders. These calls take place using Iotum’s Facebook app – “Free Conference Calling” – and they are, in fact, free outside of your normal costs to connect to the calls. I haven’t made it there every day, but I’ve tried to get there when I can. I know Alec well and the calls also include many familiar faces like Jim Courtney, Ken Camp and more.Anyway, the call today (March 6) was with Jeff Pulver about his upcoming VON.x show. It was a fun conversation and VON should definitely be a great show again this year. (Even if I’ll be on the other coast at VoiceCon!)
Technorati Tags: alec saunders, jeff pulver, conferences, von, squawk box
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UK suggests carrying multiple mobile phones may make you a terrorist!
Continue Reading: UK suggests carrying multiple mobile phones may make you a terrorist!
two phone
Originally uploaded by Pat2001 Over the weekend, Pat Phelan posted about a sign in the UK that asks “What if someone with several (mobile phones) seems suspicious?” (Click on the image to the right to see the sign larger.) The paragraph then reads:Terrorists need communication. They often collect and use many anonymous pay-as-you-go phones, as well as swapping SIM cards and handsets. If you’re suspicious of the number of phones someone has, we need to know. Let experienced officers decide what action to take.
On one level, I do understand the point they are trying to make. But on another level, I just think of all the people I know who travel to trade shows and conferences with a whole range of cell phones!
Technorati Tags:
security, mobile phones, terrorism, UK
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I’ll be down at VoiceCon Orlando in March 2008…
Continue Reading: I’ll be down at VoiceCon Orlando in March 2008…FYI, I will be down at VoiceCon Orlando on March 17-20, 2008. I’m moderating two panel sessions (see the schedule). First, up, bright and early at 8am on Tuesday, March 18th, I’ll be moderating a panel on “Top VoIP Security Threats“. This should be a fun one as it has VOIPSA Chair Dave Endler, Mark Collier of SecureLogix and Sachin Joglekar of Sipera Systems. I know all three of the guys, particularly Dave and Mark who have both worked on VOIPSA matters, and this session should be a good bit of fun. I’m planning on making it a rather interactive session. 🙂At the other end of the show, on Thursday, March 20th, at 11:45am, I’ll be moderating a panel “Open Source for Enterprise Voice: How Much, How Soon?“. This would should be interesting because it has Bill Miller from Digium (makers of Asterisk), who I know well, and M Raza from 3Com… and then Tony Pereira from Nortel! 3Com’s presence on the panel isn’t particularly surprising given their relationship with Digium, but it will be interesting to see Nortel’s view on the matter.
All in all it should be quite an interesting show. Lots of good sessions and, I’m…
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Attempt to join a VoiceCon/Mitel presentation on UC foiled by Real Player on Mac
Continue Reading: Attempt to join a VoiceCon/Mitel presentation on UC foiled by Real Player on MacSo today my participation in a VoiceCon webinar was foiled by “fun” with RealPlayer and my MacBook Pro. The VoiceCon team was running a webinar called ‘Demystifying Unified Communications’ and I was curious to check it out as it was sponsored by my prior employer, Mitel, and the speaker was Mitel’s Doug Micheaelides who I know well. I was just curious more than anything else to see if Mitel’s marketing had changed in the six months since I left. I’m also one to often listen to analyst presentations – it’s part of what I do.It was not to be. Now, admittedly, this is largely my fault for not checking whether the webinar system would work with my Mac in advance. But attending the webinar was low priority to me and something I would just try to “fit in” if I could do so. Since it looked like I could, I jumped over to the page, registered and clicked the link to launch the presentation…
Oops.
Turns out that the web presentation system the VoiceCon folks are using needs Real’s player and as shown in the image to the right, my browser wasn’t very happy with that.
Naturally, I did…
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Heading to Orlando for Voxeo customer meetings…
Continue Reading: Heading to Orlando for Voxeo customer meetings…In a few minutes I’ll be boarding a plane heading down to Orlando for several days of presentations to a number of our (Voxeo) customers. For a change, I’m not presenting, but rather capturing presentations! I’m bringing down all my recording gear and will be capturing both audio and video for posting on Voxeo’s blog site. It should be a lot of fun… as well as work. The temperature will, of course, be rather different! They are predicting a major storm here over the next few days, so it will be rather messy. Thankfully today I’m on a direct flight via Jet Blue from Burlington down to Orlando. No layovers… VERY nice!Technorati Tags: voxeo
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Congrats to Skype on hitting 100 BILLION minutes!
Continue Reading: Congrats to Skype on hitting 100 BILLION minutes!A huge congrats to Skype for hitting the milestone of over 100 BILLION minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls! As Skype’s Villu Aruk notes in his amusing post, it’s rather hard to wrap your head around numbers of this size. Congrats to all the folks involved with Skype… it is a milestone to celebrate.See also Jim Courtney and Jon Arnold with their views of this announcement.
Technorati Tags: skype
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Untitled
Continue Reading: UntitledAs I wrote over on Voxeo’s “Speaking of Standards” weblog, one of the ironies of the language we use in this space is that we all have been talking about “SIP trunks” for a few years now, but nowhere has there actually been a formal definition of what exactly a SIP trunk really is!Jonathan Rosenberg has now offered a definition in a new Internet-Draft titled “What is a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunk Anyway?” Here is the abstract:
The term “Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunk” has become almost commonplace amongst vendors and SIP providers. Even though the notion of a ‘trunk’ has a well defined meaning in circuit switched systems, it has never been defined for SIP. This document provides a formal definition for a SIP trunk, discusses its scope and applications, and establishes best practices for identification and security of SIP trunks.
The document makes for good reading even if you are not overly familiar with the concepts behind SIP trunks. Jonathan is looking for feedback and there will I’m sure be continued discussion on this topic.
Technorati Tags: sip, sip trunks, ietf, jonathan rosenberg
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Join us tomorrow (2/15) morning for a discussion of eComm 2008 on the Squawk Box conf call / podcast
Continue Reading: Join us tomorrow (2/15) morning for a discussion of eComm 2008 on the Squawk Box conf call / podcastWhat are you doing at 10am Eastern time tomorrow morning? (Friday, February 15th) How about joining us for a “Squawk Box” conference call to discuss the upcoming eComm 2008 conference?The call will take place using Iotums Facebook app called “FREE Conference Calls”. You can just visit the show web page and RSVP (and add the Facebook app if you need to). I’ll be hosting the show tomorrow while Alec Saunders is flying back from Barcelona and Thomas Howe and I will be interviewing Lee Dryburgh about the upcoming eComm 2008 conference… what it is, who is speaking and why people should attend. It should be a lively conversation with a great group of folks.
Bring your questions and join us!
P.S. The show will be posted later in Alec’s blog and I’ll provide a link here.
Technorati Tags: alec saunders, applications, etel, ecomm, ecomm2008, lee dryburgh, dan york, thomas howe, squawk box
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The EComm 2008 Interview with Skype’s Jonathan Christensen should be required reading…
Continue Reading: The EComm 2008 Interview with Skype’s Jonathan Christensen should be required reading…As we enter into the final month before eComm 2008, I would suggest that the interview with Jonathan Christensen, Skype’s general manager of audio and video, should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in this space. Why? Well, in part because Jonathan Christensen does provide some good information about what Skype has done and is doing but also because it provides some good insight into what one of the people driving Skype’s agenda is thinking about this space. Take one of the final paragraphs where he answered Lee Dryburgh’s question about what he saw as the the future of communications (bold emphasis added by me):Well, a big question I guess and, having worked on the space for quite a while, I think that it’s only going to get more interesting over the coming years since, well, like this open spectrum for example. You know, I just have to reiterate, I think that anybody who has not figured out that the Internet is the platform and that there isn’t any such thing as walled gardens that will survive, or sub-networks [such as AOL tried] that are going to survive, those people are doomed. The intersection of these worlds is going…
Disruptive Telephony
Dan York on how Voice over IP is rewriting (almost) everything you thought you understood about telephony…