June 2004 Archives

Some interested news today. Empirix has announced that Vonage is going to use its Hammer line of VoIP testing tools to stress test their equipment. I'm a huge fan of Empirix's testing tools. We have had a Hammer in TMC Labs for several years now for testing TDM and VoIP products.

Here's a quote from the news release:
"Empirix Inc. announced today that Vonage, the leading provider of broadband phone service, is using Hammer products to test and verify its broadband IP network. Vonage is employing the Empirix test equipment to stress test their network with high volume off-net and on-net traffic and to debug complex call scenarios. The carrier's aim is to ensure network availability, voice quality and correct operation of enhanced services."

You can check out the full release here:

Press Release: Vonage® Selects Empirix Hammer VoIP Test Solutions For Next-Gen Phone Service Testing And Deployment

I love Windows CE (use it for my car GPS), but if you think this operating system is used just in PocketPCs and Handheld PCs, you would be wrong. Here's an interesting video clip that demonstrates some cool Windows CE devices that are in development at Microsoft's Windows CE lab.

Clip was taken from this link:
Mike Hall - Windows CE and Windows Embedded Lab Tour

I just read a news release from Uniqall that discusses Moore's law and the affect that VoIP has had on eliminating the need for hardware telephony boards (i.e. Dialogic/Intel) and instead using software-based host media processors for all of the media processing.

This is similar to Intel's NetStructure Host Media Processing (HMP) which is also software-based and uses the Pentium chip for processing. Anything to make you upgrade to the latest and greatest Pentium, right?

It shall be interesting to see how the traditional telephony board manufacturers (Natural Microsystems, Aculab, Intel/Dialogic) evolve to meet this software-based challenge. (though it looks like Intel is adopting the software model at the expense of their existing telephony boards that they sell)

Check out the full press release here:
PRESS RELEASE: Computer Telephony without Telephony Boards

Skype has released a beta version of a Linux version of the popular Skype client.

Read the full story here:
Globetechnology

Back to the Future fans will remember the quote "1.21 gigawatts? 1.21 gigawatts? Great Scott!" I couldn't help but think of this famous line when I read about a new battery technology that generates 100 milliwatts of electricity.

Toshiba announced a fuel-cell breakthrough with a thumb-sized prototype designed to power MP3 players and cell phones. Apparently, it can power an MP3 audio player for about 20 hours on a single 2 cubic-centimeter charge of methanol fuel.

While it's not plutonium, 20 hours of playback is nothing to sneeze at!

Full story here:
Toshiba Develops Tiny Fuel Cell for MP3 Players" href="http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/25550.html">NewsFactor Network - - Toshiba Develops Tiny Fuel Cell for MP3 Players

Do you hear your PC dialing out when you're not even trying to connect to the Net? Do you hear mysterious touch tone digits being dialed at 2 in the morning? Are you wondering perhaps if there is a ghost in your machine? (btw, if interested in a thought-provoking book, check out 'The Ghost in the Machine')

Or perhaps when you try to connect to the Internet over your dial-up modem, it won't connect for some reason?

Well, it's not a ghost, but it could very well be a trojan planted on your PC that dials out to "premium" phone numbers (i.e. 900 numbers, international unregulated high/per minute rate numbers, etc.).

You get stuck with a nasty phone bill at the end of the month and the trojan author sits back on his/her PC and smiles as the bucks roll in.

Check out the full story here:
Internet News Article | Reuters.com

Ever since 6th grade I have been fascinated with computers. One of the first things I learned was the ASCII chart (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). I knew that the alphabet started with decimal 65 (letter 'A') and ended with decimal 90 (letter 'Z').

Special characters such as a space was 32 and a carriage return was 13. Ah yes, these numbers were like religion to me and I knew them like the back of my hand for writing BASIC and assembly programs.

So it is with great sadness that I learned today that one of the founding fathers of ASCII has died.

Bob Bemer, a computer pioneer who helped invent the ASCII coding system and also published warnings of the Y2K problem in the early 1970s has died after a battle with cancer.

You can read more about it here:
CNN.com - Computer pioneer dies - Jun 23, 2004

Bob Bemer

Here's some interesting news:
MSNBC - City installs 100-block WiFi 'hot zone'

Wow, free WiFi for an entire city? Boy, the writing sure is on the wall for cheap, ubiquitous broadband!

Of course, if you get a greedy power user using a P2P client such as Kazaa, eDonkey, Emule, etc. they can suck all the bandwidth. Not that I ever do that. ; )

Perhaps they are implementing some sort of traffic management/QoS to prevent bandwidth hogs?

Wow, I'm in utter shock that Comdex has cancelled their Fall Las Vegas show. I've been to that show many times over the years. Sure it has had its up and downs, especially with the .com bubble burst, but it is still considerd "the IT show" to attend for staying informed on general IT-related stuff.

You can check out their news release on Comdex's web site, which simply calls it a "postponement" by stating "MediaLive International, Inc. today announced that COMDEX® Las Vegas 2004 has been postponed in order to reshape the event with the cooperation of information technology (IT) industry leaders. COMDEX® 2004 had been scheduled to open November 14, 2004, in Las Vegas. The company has established a COMDEX Advisory Board representing the IT industry's foremost companies to determine how COMDEX® can best meet the future needs of the industry."

Postponement? In other words, it's cancelled for this Fall.

Almost nobody hates spam more than I do. I have like four layers of anti-spam protection running on my PC, including RBL (realtime black lists), iHateSpam, CloudMark, and an anti-spam software installed on our Exchange Server.

I wrote a column about my "spam rage" recently, which you can check out here.

Recently, major ISPs have announced plans to TURN OFF Internet access to any zombie PCs sending out spam. WOW! I couldn't help but pump my fist and cheer the ISPs on!

You can read about this very interesting news here:
MSNBC - Spam-sending PCs could be kicked offline

Interestingly, the ACLU hasn't caught wind of this idea and complained. I can see them arguing freedom of speech issues or "What if I lose a million dollar deal because I couldn't access my email?"

Well, honestly, I don't think they have much ground to stand on. When you sign up with an ISP, you sign an agreement form. If that agreement form states you cannot send spam (which is illegal now) and you break that agreement, then the ISP has the right to temporarily knock you offline.

I wrote about a potential solution to this problem in a column titled "IP Address? It's A Virus Calling!"

Essentially my idea was to use ubiquitous Instant Messaging clients to inform users that their PC is infected with a zombie or virus causing their PC to send out spam.

Earthlink is testing a feature whereby you can only access a special web page the next time they logon that that describes the zombie or virus problem with their computer, and provides links to software that will fix the problem.

Maybe the battle with spam has finally turned? One can only hope...

Anyone that currently uses Yahoo! Messenger knows it already has a "push to talk" capability that lets you talk PC-to-PC to someone on your buddy list.

Well, at SuperComm 2004, Yahoo announced it would be supporting "click to call" over the PSTN for making PC-to-phone calls. Two possible PSTN providers include SBC Communications and Verizon Communications, which utilize Sylantro's VoIP infrastructure that Yahoo also uses.

With Yahoo's strong presence in the IM space, seeing them getting into VoIP with PSTN access capabilities will surely cause some heads to turn, especially Microsoft (Messenger) and AOL (Instant Messenger).

People love their "free" instant messages and "free" push-to-talk capabilities with their IM programs, so whether or not a traditionally "free" IM client can finally make a profit by offering PC-to-Phone calling remains to be seen.

I'll admit it, I'm a bandwidth nut, so any news about ubiquitous high-speed Internet access always piques my interest.

Here's a snippet from LGC Wireless about their indoor 3G product.

LGC's InterReach(TM) Unison is a state-of-the-art distributed antenna system providing seamless mobile communication access for public or private venues. LGC's patented technology allows the use of fiber/twisted-pair cabling infrastructure, commonly used in Local Area Network's (LANs), for delivery of wireless voice and data applications. The InterReach(TM) Unison system supports all wireless protocols including TDMA, CDMA, CDMA2000, GSM, iDEN, 1XRTT, Ev-DO, GPRS, and W-CDMA.

Full release is here:

LGC Wireless Announces Shipment of 100th 3G In-building Wireless System; LGC's In-building Wireless Solution Chosen by Wireless Operators for 3G

There have been quite a few news stories on Microsoft's XBOX Live service doing fairly well.

Microsoft has more than 750,000 customers paying an average of $50 a year to access Xbox Live and logging approximately 500,000 hours of online game play each day. Not too shabby to think of 500,000 VoIP hours or 30,000,000 VoIP minutes per day!

I should mention that I have an Xbox connected to my 65" Mitsubishi TV set with full Dolby/DTS 7.1 surround sound and a subwoofer that makes the walls shake when I blow something up in a game... yet I have not joined Xbox Live.

I've been tempted to sign up, but I fear getting addicted and having my wife leave me. : )

In any event, here's an interesting news story about Microsoft using XBOX Live to "introduce" VoIP to the masses:

Playing games with VoIP - News - ZDNet

Invores Systems has a SIP-based VoIP VoiceXML gateway platform called EXpress2.0™ that they have integrated with Asterisk's open source IP-PBX.

Asterisk is certainly making waves in the VoIP space due to the fact that it is open source and I welcome third-parties offering solutions to Asterisk's platform.

I have no doubt that the old days of proprietary PBXs and complex integration (ala CTI) are nearly gone.

Standards in the PBX/telecom world are here to stay - they finally caught up with the data/network world. This means much easier integration by third parties to entend and enhance the functionality of PBXs/IP-PBXs.

EXpress2.0 can be used to create speech-rec directory assistance and other speech-rec applications that will work on the Asterisk platform.

See the full release here:
VoIP SIP VoiceXML Gateway Platform Integrates with Asterisk

Review: SIPphone

I'm a fan of ExtremeTech's website - they're got some great artiles and reviews - but they're latest comparison review of Skype vs. SIPphone leaves a lot to be desired.

The reviews of both Skype and SIPphone were OK, but they made a major mistake by stating on this link, "You can't use the SIPphone to call a regular landline or cell phone, you can only call other SIPphones."

This isn't true, as the SIPphone CAN dial landline (PSTN) numbers including cell phones. You just have to buy prepaid "SIP minutes" from the SIPphone website.

Then they compounded their error by posting a "correction" that is ALSO WRONG!

It says:
"Generally you cannot call landlines or mobile lines, but there are some exceptions. SIPphone users can dial 800 numbers and if they have a calling card which uses an 800 number, they can use that to call long distance numbers. However without such a service, SIP phone users are limited to calling other SIP numbers." Our apologies to our readers and the folks at SIPphone for this omission in our review.

This too is wrong. You are not limited to just dialing 800 numbers using a calling card. If you have a prepaid calling card you can call ANY NUMBER, whether it's a cell phone, landline, or 800 number!

It amuses me when journalists think they're experts in a hot technology such as VoIP, try to come off as experts in a certain technology and then fall flat on their face...