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GENBAND UK Win
December 19, 2007
GENBAND has a nice UK win with its The M6 Communication Application Server which will help UK-based BNS Telecom Group PLC provide mobile PBX and PBX trunking services.Paul Gill, head of BNS marketing said “After one demonstration of the M6 product, we immediately saw how easy it was to use, and we recognized the revolutionary, market-moving aspect of the platform.”
BNS as an alternative to international roaming is deploying their voice over Wi-Fi service, branded WiDial, allowing users to make mobile phone calls across wireless broadband networks when in Wi-Fi hotspot areas.
With solutions like those provided by GENBAND, next generation carriers utilizing IP communications are truly able to compete aggressively against incumbent providers for customers. IP communications continues to level the playing field for the telecom market and continues to benefit consumers worldwide.
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Tech Firms Fined For Helping Online Gambling
December 19, 2007
Some of technology’s biggest players were just hit with a fine of over $30 million in total for aiding in internet gambling. Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google will all be paying varying amounts and admitting varying amounts of guilt.Far be it from me to become political here in this blog but why is it illegal to promote internet gambling but legal to have gambling in certain cities? Why are lottery tickets sold throughout the country? Why is betting on horse racing allowed?
I don’t want to get too far away from the technology roots of my writing but why on earth does the US government have different rules for different types of gambling in different places?
Imagine explaining this to a friend from another country. Well… We don’t allow gambling online because it is not good for you. But if you really want to gamble, we can all jump on a plane or in a car and head to the nearest legal casino where we can not only gamble but smoke and drink.
It’s all very confusing
If I were President of this great country… That speech will have to wait for another time. ;)
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Asterisk Hits One Million Downloads
December 19, 2007
If you have any doubt that there is tremendous interest in open source communications consider the fact that Digium has recently announced the one millionth download of Asterisk – the open-source PBX.Yes, that is “One million!”
This is a staggering number as after all; we are talking about a product which most people use as a PBX. This just shows the incredible need for this software – the brainchild of Mark Spencer.
In a press release the company made this announcement with a laundry list of other accomplishments.
TMCnet’s Tom Keating was blown away by the fact that Digium is now 24+ quarters old. In his own words, “When I heard that number - 24 quarters, I couldn't believe it's been that long. That's 6 years! Wow, how time flies!”
Yes Tom – time does fly when you are having fun. And who wouldn’t be having fun when open-source growth is just so large?
Russell Shaw too weighed in on the news mentioning how the Asterisk Appliance was a factor in hitting this milestone. Good point Russell – there seems to be a slew of open source appliances being rolled out these days.
From my perspective, it is clear that there are a number of camps looking at Asterisk as a PBX replacement or more. In some cases a person within an organization who knows Linux and has some free time, downloads Asterisk as a pet project and over time rolls it out in a department or even the company.
In other cases, resellers look to Asterisk as a way to keep a larger margin on phone systems they sell. There are also equipment companies who use Asterisk as a building block for more sophisticated or feature-rich products targeting small business, enterprise users and even service providers.
It seems Asterisk has a very bright future and many of the companies who play in this space have tremendous potential as the ecosystem of open source products and services grows and grows. Hats off to Spencer, Digium and others who have given the open source communications community a product that can expand in multiple directions and spark new waves of competition and innovation.
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Google Chat Translate
December 19, 2007
Real-Time Machine Translation now One Step Closer
Certainly a holy grail of many in the computer industry is that of real-time machine translation. While there are all sorts of translation engines out there, they generally fail at translating anything but simple phrases accurately.
Google has been a player in the computer translation market for a while now and while I would like to say they have made a translation breakthrough that would be pushing it. What they have done is create translate bots that allow instant translation of phrases via a chat window. The translation is done with their current translation engine.
At the moment the bot chats are with yourself, meaning you enter a phrase in one language and it appears in yet another.
In the future we can expect to be able to e-mail and chat with anyone in our native tongue and have the content translated to our intended audience.
Google’s translation bot shows us a baby step in this direction as one imagines soon the translation layer will site between disparate parties allowing users to communicate in real time using various languages.
If you want to try this bot for yourself just add xx2yy@bot.talk.google.com to your Google Chat list where xx and yy represent the “from” and “to” language. Examples include en for English, es for Spanish, yi for Yiddish, cy for Welsh, etc. Here is a page with the full list of 2-letter language abbreviations.
The accuracy still leaves a lot to be desired as you can see from the included example which is supposed to be translating from English to Castilian Spanish. Still, this bot can come in handy in basic situations and could be called upon as a rudimentary solution which will hopefully evolve over time.
I for one am looking forward to seeing this bot interface with VoIP through speech recognition and then back again with text to speech technology.
See also:
Mashable: Google Talk Now Translates Your Chats
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