August 2007 Archives

Today, Skip2PBX, an Italian-based company announced it is ready to launch its SIP-to-Skype gateway running on a PC running Linux. Mind you, this isn't the first claim of a SIP-to-Skype breakthrough, however, they claim to be the only Skype to PBX Gateway to directly support a variety of telephony hardware including Digium, Eicon, or a USB box. Unlike Actiontec's VoSKY Exchange Skype gateway products which maxes out at 8 ports where as the Skip2PBX claims up to 30 concurrent Skype PBX lines on a single serving PC. Impressive!

It features the ability to automatically finds a free line/port for the incoming or outgoing Skype call. Incoming Skype calls can ring to all lines simultaneously, even when calling the same Skype account number. Pretty sweet! With their Digium support in theory you can easily add Asterisk support for Asterisk-to-Skype calling.

“SIP functionality with Skip2PBX is here, and it’s here way ahead of schedule.” According to their press release, original estimates were promising the SIP versions of Skip2PBX by the “end of September”, while technical wizards at S2P’s Perugia headquarters confirmed early yesterday that the new update would be available in Beta by September 1st, followed with an official release before the end of September.

“We can’t deny that today Skype, acquired and owned by E-Bay, is currently the largest and most popular Internet Telephony service provider in the world today, and we have known from the beginning of our relationship with Skip2PBX that a direct SIP to Skype gateway was going to be a highly anticipated and very desireable feature for many of our clients worldwide.”  This and many other comments coming from the growing global circuit of Skip2PBX resellers and distributors.

According to Skip2PBX, "Skip2PBX Version 2.1 (with SIP support utilizing the G.711 codecs) will work in both the CLIENT and/or SERVER modes of SIP and this, once again, is another function which keeps Skip2PBX in a category completely by itself as an integrator of features which not only prove highly beneficial to today’s companies’ growing list of  VoIP demands, but also serve in maintaining Skip2PBX on very exclusive ground."

“We here at Skip2PBX” all know and realize how much this feature (SIP Support!) has been a highly anticipated and requested feature from our support team, and we are absolutely thrilled and proud to be able to provide it in advance of our own target date.

Ok, so Sony kinda sorta took my hint from yesterday and today just launched some cool combination gadgety devices - the Sony Walkman NWZ-A810 & NWZ-S610, which are portable music and video players. Now I get that Sony is trying to leverage the Walkman brand, but is that such a good idea? When I think of a Sony Walkman, I think of my old Sony Walkman cassette player NOT some new fandangled high-tech gadget device that not only plays audio but also video. Walkman just seems so 1980s -- but I digress.

Let's move along to what the new Sony NWZ-A810 and NWZ-S610 series have for features. According to Sony, the series of Walkman digital music players will "support an open platform, providing more choices for downloading and managing music and video collections online." Open? Sony is "open"? Surely this can't be true? More on this "openness" later...

The devices have a standard user interface that makes it easy to enjoy songs, videos or pictures. The video players have a large Quarter Video Graphics Array (QVGA) LCD screen that displays video at 30 frames per second. QVGA is a display mode for small screens in which the resolution is 320 pixels vertically by 240 pixels horizontally.

More importantly, Sony is supporting MP3 format on these players, so we can bid adieu to Sony's proprietary ATRAC format. Good riddance! Converting MP3 to Sony ATRAC was a PITA.

Battery Life...
The battery life allows up to eight hours of video playback for the NWZ-A810 series and nine-and-a-half hours for the NWZ-S610 series. The battery also provides up to 33 hours of music playback for both series.

Codec / Formats Supported
The players support security-enhanced Windows Media Audio (WMA), as well as non-secure AAC and MP3 music formats, plus JPEG files for photos, in addition to the AVC (H.264/AVC) Baseline Profile and MPEG-4 video codecs.

Users can download movie trailers, music videos, podcasts and video clips from the Internet and use readily-available shareware to convert the clips for use with the Walkman video players. Sony is leveraging Sony Pictures Entertainment and is providing video content for both of the new players, which is hosted at www.sonystyle.com/walkman. No word on YouTube support, but I'm sure someone will come up with a software converter if the Walkman can't play YouTube's video format.

The top-of-the-line Walkman video players (NWZ-A810 series) have a 2-inch QVGA (320 by 240 pixels) LCD screen (measured diagonally). This series of players also comes with higher quality Sony ear-buds (model MDR-EX082).

Designed with a younger demographic in mind, the NWZ-S610 series has a 1.8-inch QVGA (320 by 240 pixels) LCD screen (measured diagonally) and includes an FM tuner with 30 presets.

The Walkman video players store up to 1,850 songs on the 8GB models, 925 songs on the 4GB models, and 4The NWZ-A815 player has a total capacity of 2GB; comes in white, pink, black, blue and silver; and will cost about $140.
- The NWZ-A816 player has a total capacity of 4GB; comes in white, pink, black and silver; and will cost about $180.
- The NWZ-A818 player has a total capacity of 8GB, comes in black and silver, and will cost about $230.

The NWZ-S610 series of Walkman music players come in three different capacities and four colors:

- The NWZ-S615F player has a total capacity of 2GB; comes in black, pink, red and silver; and costs about $120.
- The NWZ-S616F player has a total capacity of 4GB; comes in black, pink, red and silver; and costs about $160.
- The NWZ-S618F player has a total capacity of 8GB, comes in black, and costs about $210.

The NWZ-B100 series of Walkman music players come in two different capacities and colors:

- The NWZ-B103F player has a total capacity of 1GB, comes in black, and costs about $60.
- The NWZ-B105F player has a total capacity of 2GB, comes in black and white, and costs about $80.40 songs on the 2GB models, for songs an average of four minutes in length at 128kbps in the MP3 format.

The NWZ-A810 series of Walkman video music players come in three different capacities and five colors.

These two new series combo audio/video portable players are a great start for Sony. But I'm still waiting for Sony to create the Sony PlayStation Portable Multimedia Video GPS Phone or Sony PSMVGP for short.

It would combine a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) with built-in GPS, GSM cellular service, and wireless Internet functionality. Then life would be good.

Garmin today launched the new nüvi 700 series GPS satellite navigation system, which includes the nüvi 710, 750, 760 and the nüvi 770. The nuvi 700 series includes enhancements to its user interface, a hidden integrated GPS antenna to make it compact and stylish, and it comes with traffic reports to tell you of any congestion ahead and safety camera alerts for mobile and fixed cameras.

Each nüvi in the 700 series has traffic alerts, with a free lifetime subscription to traffic services. This enables drivers to avoid congestion and find alternative routes via the sat-nav. Garmin uses the patented Cyclops technology to provide highly accurate safety camera alerts for all its sat-nav systems. It is believed to be the most up-to-date and reliable information available for both fixed and mobile cameras. Advanced trip planning capabilities let users input up to 200 destinations in one route – a great time and fuel saver for salespeople and delivery fleets. It also has a 10,000 point track-log which acts like an electronic breadcrumb trail, remembering exactly where you’ve been. This has many advantages including the ability to view your route afterwards in applications such as Google Earth.

All the Garmin nüvi 700s have a built-in FM transmitter, allowing users to wirelessly transmit directions, telephone calls (selected models) or MP3s through their vehicle’s stereo. Bluetooth wireless technology is available on the Garmin nüvi 710, 760 and 770 for hands-free calling when paired with compatible phones. Users can find and dial numbers stored in their phone or numbers from the nüvi’s points of interest database (hotels, restaurants, shops and more). This enables phone calls to be made easily while on the move.

Text-to-speech is also included on the nüvi 750, 760 and 770 where the actual names of roads are read out loud so there is no confusion over which turn you should take even if there are many roads close by. There is even a built-in picture viewer so you can store and look at all your favorite photos.

Like other widescreen Garmin nüvis, the 700 series boasts a bright, sunlight-readable 4.3-inch colour touchscreen display (480x272 pixels). The design incorporates a high-sensitivity internal GPS antenna that makes it thinner and even easier to mount in a car as well as carry around.

Another new feature which makes the Garmin nüvi 700 series even easier to use is the choice of keyboard style. When typing in a destination users can choose between a Qwerty keyboard or an alphabetical one. This means everyone can use the format they prefer – and speed up their search.

The Garmin nüvi 700 variations are as follows:
• The nüvi 710 has regional mapping (UK and Ireland or other region) with Bluetooth
• The nüvi 750 has UK and European mapping
• The nüvi 760 has UK and European mapping with Bluetooth
• The nüvi 770 has mapping for the UK, Europe and the United States with Bluetooth

All have safety camera and traffic alerts as well as an FM transmitter.

The nüvi 710, 750, 760 and nüvi 770 are expected to be available in October 2007 at an MSRP of £279.99/€399, €449, £369.99/€499 and £449.99/€599 including VAT respectively. (The nüvi 750 is not available in the UK) For more information visit www.garmin.co.uk

Today, TomTom launched the TomTom GO 920 T, their latest "high-end" premium GPS unit featuring TomTom's most extensive map of Europe and North America. The GO 920 T is considered TomTom's newest flagship model and features a large 4.3" touchscreen. It comes preinstalled with complete maps of Europe and USA & Canada on the 4 GB internal memory. The GO 920 T includes the new Enhanced Positioning Technology which results in a more continuous navigation experience for those pesky bridges and tunnels. An RDS-TMC Traffic Receiver to receive up-to-date traffic information is included in the box.


The TomTom GO 920 T features a slim high quality design with soft-touch finish, and a new metallic color scheme. The TomTom GO 920 T comes with an improved Bluetooth remote control and it features speech recognition from Nuance for voice address input. Sweet! To enter destinations by voice, drivers simply choose the menu option "Navigate to spoken address," and they are then able to complete the destination entry entirely by voice, without having to use the device keypad to spell out the address. To start the route calculation the driver simply says, "OK."

“The new flagship TomTom GO 920 T offers the best in satellite navigation,” says Harold Goddijn, chief executive officer at TomTom. “Pre-installed maps of multiple continents combined with innovative technologies such as the new Enhanced Positioning Technology, TomTom Map Share™ and plug & play traffic information offer outstanding quality and performance. The TomTom GO 920 T is the most advanced navigation solution on the market today.”

Unlike most competing GPS units, TomTom had decided to preload several countries' maps onto the 920 T making it one of the most complete set of maps you can get preinstalled. In fact, the new TomTom GO 920 T offers a seamless map of 41 countries in both Western and Central Europe and as well as maps of USA and Canada preinstalled on the 4 GB internal memory of the device. This is perfect for international travelers - they no longer have to load different maps onto their portable GPS unit.

TomTom’s new Enhanced Positioning Technology uses movement and gravity sensors to calculate drivers’ positions when GPS signals are unavailable. The TomTom GO 920 T also has a built-in FM Transmitter to play music and navigation instructions over the car stereo. Importantly, it has text-to-speech, to enable street names, places, traffic alerts and SMS messages to be read aloud as part of the spoken instructions.


Some other new features include:
- New smart & fun extras to personalize users’ devices, including recording your own driving instructions, view documents, exchange positions via SMS and Bluetooth™ wireless technology and select a favourite car icon on the screen; - TomTom desk dock to easily charge the TomTom GO 920 T and connect to a computer and TomTom HOME, TomTom’s free software application;
- Free TomTom HOME software to access ready to use online services such as Safety Cameras, Traffic and Weather; - Full range of accessories to match the design and finish of the new GO range, including a leather carry case, a soft touch carry case, iPod cable and a home charger.

While the the new TomTom GO 920 T has some very cool features, I still like the 3D maps of the Provia A1 but that's only available in Korea. And alas, as I mentioned in the Provia A1 post, my perfect GPS device would be a combination of the iPhone / cellphone, Sony PSP gaming, GPS, and wireless Internet access. But until my theoretical device is created, I guess the new TomTom GO 920 will have to do.

The new TomTom GO 920 T will be available in the last quarter of 2007.

I love Garmin GPS units, and I love to go biking, so why not combine the two passions with Garmin's new series of GPS units the Garmin Edge 605 and Garmin Edge 705, which lets cyclists share routes wirelessly while adding SRM power compatibility. Today, Garmin launched the Edge 705 and Edge 605 featuring  integrated personal training systems for recreational and advanced cyclists. The Edge 705 and Edge 605 provide mapping capabilities, street navigation and a 2.2” color display in addition to tracking vertical profiles, climb and descent, altitude, speed, distance, and time.


According to Garmin, "The Edge 705 represents several breakthroughs in cycling technology, including SRM compatibility and wireless unit-to-unit connectivity. Through collaborative efforts with SRM — a pioneer in mobile power diagnostics for bicycles — Garmin for the first time gives cyclists the opportunity to monitor GPS position, power, heart rate, speed, cadence, altitude and gradient on the same display"
Imagine if Lance Armstrong had this technology, he'd of won 10 in a row! Anyway, Edge 705 users will be able to share their information including courses, waypoints and workouts with each other through ANT+Sport™ wireless technology.


“The Edge 705 gives cyclists the most effective tools they need to train efficiently and share data easily,” said Andrew Silver, Garmin Europe’s Product Manager, “and these new products are further proof of how innovative technology can enrich people’s lives and help them better enjoy their exercise and recreational activities.”

ANT+Sport technology allows the Edge to interface wirelessly with a heart rate monitor, cadence sensor or other Edge units. Cyclists can share courses and workout data before, during or after a ride. When paired with an optional power meter from SRM, the Edge 705 measures power – torque and cadence for each leg at the pedals – which is often cited as a true indicator of an efficient ride.

“We are excited to work with Garmin, the industry leaders in global positioning technology,” said Uli Schoberer, owner of SRM. “Combining the SRM power measurement technology with the Garmin technology, the new Edge will be the ultimate training tool.”

The mapping capabilities on the Edge 605 and Edge 705 allow cyclists to truly get lost in their ride without losing their way. Both units come with turn-by-turn routing to destinations based on built-in maps and optional detailed street or topographical maps on preloaded data cards.

Altitude is recorded using a barometric altimeter for the Edge 705. This accurate altitude data makes it much easier for cyclists to match their altitude profile with their speed, cadence, and heart rate during post-ride analysis. The Edge 605 measures altitude through GPS positioning.



Whether you need to know where you’ve been, where you’re going, how long it’s taking or how high you’re climbing, the Edge 605 and Edge 705 offer answers. The Edge 605 and the Edge 705 display the customizable data fields on large color screens, and the addition of a click stick helps users navigate through the various options. Sleek, waterproof and durable, the Edge uses a high-sensitivity GPS receiver to sustain reception in the most challenging conditions, such as heavy tree cover or “urban canyons” created by tall buildings. It attaches to either the stem or handlebars of the bicycle, and is designed for easy removal at the end of the workout.

The Edge 705 heart rate monitor uses a robust wireless technology that eliminates cross-talk and interference and delivers real-time heart rate data exclusively to the user’s device. This data is stored with each track point for in-depth post-workout analysis. The Edge 705 with speed/cadence sensor incorporates a self-calibrating, wireless speed/cadence sensor that mounts to the rear chain stay of the bicycle. The speed / cadence sensor will also allow riders to record speed and distance data while turbo training indoors.

Customizing the Edge is achieved using several innovative features:

• Workouts: Design workouts with multiple steps based on time, distance, calories or heart rate. Establishes workout targets based on speed, calories, cadence and heart rate (heart rate is standard on Edge 705, speed/cadence sensor is optional).
• Virtual Partner: Team up with a virtual training partner that provides continuous feedback. Depicts a digital cyclist (desired speed) in relation to the user’s real-time speed and notifies if ahead or behind desired target.
• Courses: Cyclists can race against a pre-recorded course and match previously set speeds at every point of the way, or navigate a brand new route. Combined with the Virtual Partner, this means that riders can race themselves (or other Edge users) over their regular rides, and see their real-time race position.
• Bike Computer: Customizable bike computer screen shows up to 16 different data fields across 2 screens. The user may customize the display for the size and placement of the data.
• Auto Pause: Pauses the timer when the user’s speed drops below a pre-set threshold.
• Alerts: Program alerts to sound if the user strays outside the range of speed, heart rate, or cadence values. Alerts can also indicate when a set amount of time or distance has passed.

When used with Garmin Connect — Garmin’s new and improved online training site — the Edge’s benefits continue long after the workout. By pairing the Edge 705 or Edge 605 with Garmin Connect, users can join a worldwide network of cyclists and outdoor enthusiasts and log their workouts, track their totals, share workouts and participate in an online community. They can also search and download routes uploaded by other users.

The Edge 705 with Heart Rate Monitor is expected to be available in December 2007 and have an estimated retail price of £329.99 / €499.99. This device includes an ANT+Sport heart rate monitor, AC charger, USB PC interface cable, bike mounts, owner’s manual on disk and quick-reference guide.

The Edge 705 with Heart Rate Monitor and Speed/Cadence Sensor is expected to be available in December 2007 and have an estimated retail price of £359.99 / €549.99. This device includes an ANT+Sport heart rate monitor, speed/cadence sensor, AC charger, USB PC interface cable, bike mounts, owner’s manual on disk and quick-reference guide. Strangely enough Amazon is already taking orders for the Edge 705.

The Edge 605 is expected to be available in December 2007 and has an estimated retail price of £269.99 / €399.99. It includes bike mounts, USB PC interface cable, AC charger, owner’s manual on disk and quick-reference guide. Though like the 705, it looks like you can buy the Edge 605 on Amazon as well.

Today, unified communications is being touted by many, including Microsoft with their Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007) due out later this year and Cisco with their aptly named  Cisco Unified Communications. Unified communications often combines many or all of the following: instant messaging/IM with business presence, VoIP, videoconferencing, online collaboration, desktop sharing, and unified messaging (email, voicemail, fax in your Inbox). Of these applications, which all run on your network, VoIP and videoconferencing are extremely sensitive to jitter, latency, and packet loss. Unfortunately, many enterprises are beginning to deploy unified communications without performing any pre-deployment testing of their network to ensure these applications meet strict quality of service standards. Network Instruments, a provider of VoIP testing tools, has a very interesting blog post discussing VoIP pre-deployment, and the blogger (Stephen Brown) also links to a helpful VoIP deployment whitepaper worth checking out.

Not performing any pre-deployment testing is especially true of the small-to-medium business (SMB) market which often has limited IT/networking staff or none at all. Even when they do have IT staff, often times the IT person isn't knowledgeable on troubleshooting network issues using a packet sniffer such as Ethereal/Wireshark. So when network issues do strike, the IT manager is often clueless to the source of the problem. It could be that someone has a virus that is flooding the network, or someone is using a bandwidth-hungry application such as Bittorrent. But without the proper network training, the IT manager could spend hours trying to solve the problem.

Or worse, the problem could stop just as quickly as it came all by itself and the IT manager would have no clue what caused the issue and if it will strike again. This leaves the IT manager with little confidence in deploying and running unified communications applications on the network. Essentially, the corporation's entire communications infrastructure is riding on the network - so if the network goes down, everything goes down. No IT manager is going to risk his/her job if they don't have 100% confidence they can quickly troubleshoot and fix any unified communications problems themselves or with outside help.

When I spoke with Microsoft a few weeks ago and asked them who their target market was for Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft told me their target was the SMB which already has Active Directory and Exchange Server deployed with an internal IT staff. The strong impression I was left with is that Microsoft is going to rely on SMB's internal IT personnel to deploy OCS 2007, as well as maintain it.

I have my doubts about this strategy. I did a soup-to-nuts installation of OCS 2007 with a Microsoft rep assisting in the installation and giving me a full demo afterwards. Although Microsoft has done a tremendous job making the installation as painless as possible, there are a lot of components to their unified communications platform. It requires schema changes to Active Directory, installation of a Certificate Server & certificates, knowledge of regular expressions for dial plans, deployment of a Mediation Server for connecting to the PSTN, some knowledge of SIP configuration, and much more. Heck, the OCS Planning Guide is 212 pages long and that's just the "planning" stage. The Admin Guide is 249 pages long! There are a whopping 14 OCS 2007 documents all-told, though you won't need all of them depending on your requirements.

Now this is just the "deployment" part. Supposing you have IT staff with the patience to read all that documentation, you still have the problem of what happens when network issues strike. Who is going to help you? Is it Microsoft? They can give you phone support and make sure OCS 2007 is configured properly, but I doubt they'll remotely troubleshoot your network for you. You're on your own.

I don't mean to pick on Microsoft in particular. It's just they've invested so much into their unified communications strategy and are positioning themselves as the leader in the space. Let me add that I am very impressed with OCS 2007, which is one damn cool unified communications application. I just think Microsoft needs to build a support channel to help SMBs with not only deploying OCS 2007, but also performing network pre-deployment testing and also post-deployment support services for when network issues arise causing the entire communications infrastructure to degrade or go down entirely.

So many ?s...
So the question arises, who is going to provide technical assistance for unified communications in the SMB market? Who is going to ensure your telephone, email, voicemail, calendaring, fax, and conferencing are going to be reliable? Without that guarantee of technical assistance, the SMB market will be slow to deploy any unified communications applications on their network.

The Provia A1 navigator GPS isn't your typical utilitarian GPS that gets your from point A to point B. No siree, Bob! The Provia A1 navigator is more like the iPhone with it's sleek design, 7" touchscreen, and cool 3D graphics. This Provia A1 GPS just begs to be carried around just so you have cool gadget bragging rights. The Provia A1 navigator is from Korea’s HTMS and features a Samsung 800 x 480 resolution widescreen touchscreen 7-inch display. It has handwriting recognition for quickly keying in address or other other information. Navigation uses super-detailed, razor-sharp 3D maps, complete with models of buildings and other landmarks.

Since it's 3D, you can see highway overpasses/underpasses and know which road you're supposed to be on. 2D GPS navigation units can often confuse the driver with parallel roads at different height levels since they don't clearly indicate which "level" the driver is supposed to be on.

The A1 is a complete media player with audio and fullscreen video playback. Even cooler, it has a "picture-in-picture" (PIP) mode, so you can simultaneously watch a movie and get directions. It also features a DMB receiver so you can receive over-the-air (OTA) digital television broadcasts. This bad boy plays DivX, XviD, H.264, WMA, WMV, OGG, mp3, MPEG-4, and a bunch of other formats.

If Sony were smart, they'd come out with a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) with built-in GPS, GSM cellular service, and wireless Internet functionality. This hypothetical device would blow away the Apple iPhone. It would offer awesome 3D gaming, cell phone functionality, Internet/email access, video playback, and GPS navigation. The device would have everything you need for long trips with the kids. They can play videogames, watch videos, or access the Internet. What more do you need? Sony, an expert in electronics, TV screens, and gaming, is the perfect company to take on the Apple iPhone.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sony came out with such a cool converged device. Wonder what Sony would call it? Sony PlayStation Multimedia Video GPS Phone? Or Sony PSMVGP for short?

Via Technabob

Tomorrow, Yahoo! will announce the general availability of the new version of Yahoo! Mail. The new service includes two new major features: free text messaging to mobile phone numbers (available in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines), and integrated instant messaging (IM) with users of Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

According to a Yahoo! representative, the new version of Yahoo! Mail also includes speed and performance enhancements as well as productivity refinements. Yahoo! will continue to offer Yahoo! Mail Classic, its traditional Web mail interface.

The new Yahoo! Mail is faster and more responsive than previous beta versions Search refinements Users can now refine their e-mail search results using advanced search options, including the ability to narrow results by sender, folder, date, attachment type and message status to pinpoint specific queries Shortcuts (U.S. only). Users are now able to right click on underlined dates, names and keywords within messages and take additional action, such as adding events directly to their Yahoo! Calendars, adding friends to their Contacts, immediately viewing a Yahoo! Map of an address, or performing a Web search on a keyword. Also added are six color themes allowing user to personalize the look of their e-mail experience.
 
In addition to integrated text messaging and instant messaging, it features other enhanced capabilities such as tabbed navigation, a reading pane, an integrated calendar and an RSS reader. 

A co-branded version of the new Yahoo! Mail will also be available in the fall to customers using the following broadband Internet services: AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet, Verizon Yahoo! and Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet.  The new Yahoo! Mail will be available this fall to Yahoo! Small Business Mail users as well.

Both the new Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Mail Classic are free services with unlimited e-mail storage.

Update: Monday 10am - PC World has a nice writeup on the news.

According to InfoWorld, a blogger is blocking Firefox users from visiting his site in protest of the 2nd most popular Firefox plugin called AdBlock Plus, which strips banner advertisements from websites. His rationale is that when you use an advertisement blocker you are stealing.

According to InfoWorld, he stated, "Accessing the content while blocking the ads therefore would be no less than stealing," wrote Danny Carlton, a Web site designer and author, who runs both sites. JackLewis.net is his personal blog site. "Millions of hard working people are being robbed of their time and effort by this type of software," he added in a posting on the Why Firefox is Blocked Web site.

When you go to http://jacklewis.net/weblog/ using Firefox you are redirected to http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/index1.php. I figured he was blocking Firefox simply by the user agent string, which tells the remote web server which browser you are using. Knowing there are several popular plugins to change your Firefox user agent quickly on the fly, I figured this guy must be an idiot for trying to block Firefox users.

I changed my user agent in Firefox to Internet Explorer 7.0's user agent and went back to his page. I was still redirected to the whyfirefoxisblocked.com page. Hmmmm. Interesting - he's not detecting user agent strings to block Firefox. That is the most common way to block a specific browser.

Curious, I did some more digging. I talked with Vahid Hashemian, TMC's webmaster and developer about this.  We looked at the HTML source code and Vahid immediately saw the problem. In his HTML he has this code:

<script>
if(!document.all){window.location='http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/';}
</script>

Internet Explorer and even Opera returns a value for document.all, however Firefox does not. Since the '!' means "not" and Firefox does "not" return a value, it redirects the browser to http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/. So then Vahid and I got to thinking. How could we get past this code? I knew there were plenty of plugins that let you block certain strings of HTML code. So in theory, you could replace this string of HTML with "null". Greasemonkey is one of the most popular Firefox plugins that is very extensible. Using some simple Javascript code in Greasemonkey you can easily strip out this code.

You may wonder why I would go through all that trouble just to access someone's website using Firefox. I guess you could say it's part ego and part fun. He tried to stop me from doing something, so human nature is to find ways around it. It's the challenge of it all. Well, I'm off to read Jack's blog using Firefox - minus all the banner ads. Ahhh, such sweet satisfaction!

SunRocket, the defunct VoIP service provider, is suing Vonage for playing dirty tricks by illegally obtaining SunRocket's customer list. Vonage wouldn't play dirty tricks, would they? Surely, Vonage wouldn't do stuff like I don't know - charge you a monthly fee after you canceled service with them and ported your number to another phone provider. No, not Vonage. Canceling Vonage is as easy as pie.

Nonoh is a new mobile application that lets you make free calls leveraging your browser (PC or mobile phone browser). Unlike Jajah's free worldwide calling option which requires both legs of the call to be registered, Nonoh lets you dial many destinations for free without forcing the remote calling party to register their phone number first.

For instance, Nonoh lets you dial U.S. phone numbers for free while Jajah charges 2 cents per minute when dialing an unregistered phone number.

Also, Nonoh also lets you send cheap text messages using the Nonoh software or use the SMS option in your personal Nonoh pages.

Nonoh has some pretty good rates for calling across the world. Here's a chart comparison with Jajah when dialing an unregistered Jajah phone number.

Location	Nonoh	Jajah
China Fix	Free	2.9 Ct/MIN
Germany Fix	Free	2.9 Ct/MIN
Netherlands Fix	Free	3.2 Ct/MIN
Poland Fix	Free	3.4 Ct/MIN
Russia Fix	Free	3.2 Ct/MIN
United Kingdom Fix	Free	2.8 Ct/MIN
USA Fix and Mobile	Free	2.6 Ct/MIN

Go check out the rest of Nonoh's rates. Also, they're giving away 3 free minutes of calling to try the service, which you can read about here.

Fellow VoIP blogger, Garrett Smith informs me that VoIP Supply, a retailer of VoIP hardware, has made the Inc 500's list of America’s fastest growing private companies. VoIP Supply's growth rate was 783%. A hearty congrats to VoIP Supply!

Ironically, I can't seem to get to www.voipsupply.com at the moment. Web site appears to be down.Must be from the deluge of customers buying all that VoIP gear!

MySpace users will find this brand new web-based utility from TellThem.mobi useful. As MySpacers know, there isn't an easy way to connect to all your MySpace friends when you're on the go away from you PC. With TellThem.mobi, you can blast out a message to all your friends from your mobile phone. You can even send pictures from a Blackberry device (other mobile phone devices are in the works).

It's useful for quickly organizing a get-together without actually calling each person's phone number (assuming you have it handy in your phone's address book). Even if they are in your address book, actually talking to your friends is so passé.  Another use might simply be that you just saw something really cool and you want to tell everyone about it. You know, your typical important MySpace message like "Did you hear? John just dumped Cindy. Can you believe it?"

How does it work?
Well, all you have to do is point your mobile phone browser to http://tellthem.mobi, enter your MySpace email and password, select the friends you want to send a message to, enter your message and/or select a photo, and your message will be sent out.

When asked how this differs from other services, TellThem said, "Well, for one, we don't know any other service which does this right now. If there are at the time you're reading this message then they're probably copycats."

TellThem states that they do NOT store your personal information, so they must simply be acting as a go-between between your mobile phone and your MySpace account.

Frank Trama told me his horror story about how he tried to cancel Vonage and how Vonage continued to bill him even though Vonage no longer was in control of Frank's phone number. When I first signed up with Vonage eons ago, Vonage told me NOT to cancel my SBC phone service - that they would take care of everything, including porting the phone number and cancelling my service. This certainly made for a nice easy transition for me. Contact my new phone company (Vonage) and they handle everything on my behalf.

The problem is when you try and cancel your Vonage service and port your number back to a traditional phone carrier. You can't simply do the reverse, i.e. have your new phone company contact Vonage on your behalf and cancel service with them. Yes, your phone company will contact Vonage and get your phone number ported over, but Vonage will NOT automatically cancel your service with them. So basically you're paying Vonage for a phone number that they don't even own/control! Ridiculous? You bet. I can't do the story justice, so I'm going to include Frank's horror story verbatim below. I also found a copy of a video interview Frank did with a local TV news outlet as part of their "Fight Back Friday" series. I included it below as a Flash video. Fascinating how quickly after the TV story aired a Vonage executive contacted him and offered a refund AFTER Frank went to the media to complain. Interestingly, the TV news spot mentions that Vonage had its membership to the Better Business Bureau revoked due to "unanswered complaints" back in March.

Frank's email follows...
_______________________________
Tom,

Read your story and I have my own story that needs to be told. I'm sure you know the FCC better than I so humor me for the first part. Let me know if there is anything else I can do. Thanks again. It a Bit long wind with plenty of typos i'm sure.

Vonage Billing and Number Transfer Scam

Let me give you some Telecom and FCC background before I get to my story and problem.

The FCC mandated to the telephone carriers of Local Number Portability LNP, which means the consumer owns the number and the consumer can authorize the new carrier of their choice to take the number. The carriers will tell you not to contact the old carrier and they will take care of the move. Behind the scenes the carriers submit a LOA, Letter of Agency which is mandated by the FCC and below is what the LOA's intent is;

LETTER OF AGENCY
Is a document authorizing a telecommunications provider to act on your behalf. This is generally required in the United States when switching a telephone service provider while keeping the current telephone number or any other service which requires transfer of information from one provider to another. The regulations governing this are maintained by the FCC.

Pretty straight forward, you authorize the new carrier to act in your behalf. Meaning the new carrier verified all your information and confirmed you are the owner of the number.

Here is the trickery from Vonage. Vonage put this silly little blurb in their Terms of Service which states basically the account holder must contact Vonage to cancel or make any changes to their account (This is if you can get through). So even though you authorized the new carrier to take the number, Vonage says screw you you still have to call us to authorize changes. Even if the number has been moved legally based on FCC laws,

Here's the great part, Vonage will continue to bill you for a number they do not route or control. Yes believe that, so now you will be getting two bills from two separate companies for the same number and they (Vonage) do not care because they think that silly little blurb is allowing them to do that.

Here is the kicker. Vonage states in their terms of Service “the account holder must contact Vonage to cancel or make any changes to their account”, and yet makes the phone transfer to the new carrier without my phone call to them, as is in my case and many others from what I'm reading.

So basically I called my new carrier, they followed mandated laws from the FCC, Vonage moved number, four months later, they continued to bill me for that same number because I did not call them and notify them of the move and yet broke their own policies and moved my number without my so call phone call to them. Confused? Good! That's the scam!

So some poor shmo forgets to call and gets a month of extra charges from Vonage, so the poor guy calls them and he says oh well my mistake I understand and moves on. Scammed another one for $24.99. Now take that and multiply it by hundreds even thousands of unsuspecting people. That's a lot of money.

Its subtle but effective because of that silly little blurb in their terms of service, which is ridicules since they already got authorization from the new carrier and then they turn around and break their own Terms of Services by moving the number without your so called phone call to them.

So I have filed paperwork with the FCC, FTC, IC3, BBB, and various private consumer complaint agencies on the web, Attorney Generals in my state and NJ, PA and NJ congressman and every news outlet that will hear me.

I had my first news interview today Wednesday August 15th 2007 and it will be airing Friday on KDKA Fight Back Channel 2, with Yvonne Zanos.

Now here is my story!

I signed up for Vonage back in December of 2006 I researched them for a little while and thought it was a better deal than Comcast at the time.

So I went on the Vonage site and signed up. During the signup there is an authorization you had to authorize Vonage to roll the number from Comcast to Vonage. Standard practice between phone companies; what the authorization says is me the verified owner of the number authorizes the new company to take the number. This is a FCC law which allows me the consumer to move to which ever phone company provides better service and/or pricing with out losing my number.

Vonage told us not to contact the current carrier because it could delay things and that the transfer will go through without a hitch. I did not have to contact Comcast and terminate because they where already informed of the transfer. The number took about 7 days to become active on the Vonage service.

After a couple of months my wife decided that she liked Comcast better and to avoid an argument I agreed to switch the number back. Since I wanted my own phone number and I liked the idea of Vonage VOIP service for my office I decided to add an additional number to my Vonage account before she switched our primary number.

So we did everything in reverse, we contacted Comcast and authorized the move of the number back and waited. They told us not to contact the other carrier because it could delay things. The number switched in about 10 days and everything seemed fine.

Here is where it gets weird. I wasn't paying attention to the email about the Vonage invoices and just assumed everything worked as smoothly as when we switched to Vonage. Well about 2 days ago I looked at one of the Vonage bills and noticed that they where still billing me for both numbers.

I thought it was a simple clerical error and that they would rectify it. So I sent them this message;

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Subject: [vonage.com #13777846] Other

We had our 412-734-xxx transferred back to Comcast 4 months ago and I just happened to look on our bill and noticed that you have been billing me for that number. Comcast has owned that number for months now. I need credited for the 1-412-734-xxxx. The only number that should be on this account is the 412-894-xxxx. Comcast confirmed to me that they sent you all the termination/transfer and we have been receiving calls normally through Comcast. Frank
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They responded with;

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Dear xxxxxx,
Thank you for choosing Vonage, the #1 rated digital phone service!
I understand you have transferred one of your numbers to Comcast and you want credit for non usage of service.
After further review, I am unable to process a credit as requested for the following reason:
I checked our records and found that your number 1-(412)-734-xxxx is still active in your account. You will be charged for the monthly plan charges till your is Active.
I regret to inform you that we do not have the roll in porting out a number. Once the number transfer gets completed, you need to contact our Voice Support at toll free number 1-VONAGE-HELP 1-866-243-4357 to cancel your account. We apologize for any inconvenience that may have been caused.

Sincerely,
Vonage Customer Care
-------------------------------------------------------------------

I responded with;
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So let me understand this, you are charging me for a number you do not own? When I transferred my number from Comcast to you, Comcast immediately terminated billing for that number once they received the roll over notification. Vonage on the other hand continues to bill customers even when they where notified of a similar roll over request. That some how does not seem legal and is completely unacceptable. I can not believe that even now that I sent you a complaint regarding incorrect billing, Vonage would still bill me for a number they are perfectly aware they do not own if I do not call them first.

Well now I'm wondering how many others you scamming, scam a month or so from customers that are not aware or this ridicules business practice. I was going to keep my second number but given the latest I will be terminating the entire account and notifying my five friends of your business practices and lack of customer care, hopefully they contact a couple of their friends, and so forth. I'm sure they will terminate this scam.

In addition I filling formal complaints with the FCC and local internet regulating agencies because in my opinion this is a scam and last I looked I still have plenty of options to be heard and Vonage be revealed.

Frank

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Now remember that Comcast has had my number and billing me for months now. Even after I told them (Vonage) they don't own the number, they where still going to charge me for something they don't own or route. Remember Comcast has already notified them and they (Vonage) switched the number to Comcast already. So Regardless of me calling them or not is irrelevant. So Vonage is very much aware of the disconnect.

So anyways, I tried calling them this morning to cancel and the customer service was closed, so I called them around noon after I received this message from them;

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Dear xxxxxxxx,
I understand you have ported your number to another carrier and you are concerned about the charges.
Though your number has been transferred to a different carrier, you need to call us to cancel your number. This is why you are still being billed for the service. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
You will be billed for the service as long as the number is active in your account. For security reasons I am unable to process cancellation requests via email.
Please call our Account Management Department at 1-VONAGE-HELP (1-866-243-4357) to remove your number. We are here to help you Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM EST.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

So now they admitted they know it's ported, they don't run it and yet they still billed me for it.
So at this time I'm a bit angry because the logic is escaping them. They are charging me for a number they don't own and are aware they don't run. What's so hard to understand? Simple right? Wrong!

I called them and got on the phone with their rep, and she said she needed to verify who I was to cancel. I kept my cool and answered her questions. She then came to the big question “Why are you canceling?”.

Trying to be mature about this I explained to her the entire situation that although the number has been ported, they know it's ported, they where notified it was being ported, they did the porting, what's the point of calling you if I already authorized the porting? Crying out loud they already received my authorization through my new carrier.

It not like I'm still waiting for them to move it, nor have to authorize Vonage to let it go. Its already moved by my authorization that I gave Comcast.

She then paused, and said well what I can do it is credit you 50.00 or half the amount of the incorrect billing if you stay.

I responded with, why I should lose 50.00 of the 100.00 you robbed from me for? You incorrectly kept billing me for 4 months and now you want to keep 50.00 of the 100.00 that you should not have taken. I said no I want it all and if you cant credit the correct amount terminate the account and I will deal with this legally.

She puts me on hold for 10 minutes and returned to say are you sure you want to cancel, I said unless you credit me the entire amount that you incorrectly billed me for, yes terminate the account.

To my amazement and utter shock she said that there will be a 39.99 early termination fee for each phone number. One of which the they don't own and haven't owned for 4 months now.

I responded with this is going be the best legal and news story ever. Have a nice day.

I then got and email from them which stated;

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Dear xxxxx,

Your Vonage service has been cancelled and we successfully processed the below amount to the credit card on your account.

Vonage Account Number: xxxxxx
Date Processed: 08/13/2007
Debit Amount: $79.98

A disconnect fee of $39.99 per voice line is charged to all customers plus any applicable taxes per our terms of service. Your total debit of $79.98 includes the disconnect fee, all pending charges, credits and applicable taxes. For more information about the return policy, please visit our terms of service:
----------------------------------------------------------------

I think they have scammed thousands of customers on bogus policy that says you have to contact us for a roll over, when you have already contacted and authorized the new carrier to speak in your behalf. Its absurd and I bet if you look further into this I bet there will be a lot of 24.99 over billings they have over charged people for. This is not about the money with me.
_______________________________
[end story]

About a week went by from Frank's initial email and I was too busy to follow-up with him for more details. I contacted him this past Saturday to ask for any updates on his Vonage woes and he wrote me the following.

Anyways the news spot aired on KDKA and the reporter nailed it.

About thirty minutes after the spot ran I got a call from Vonage Executive care basically saying we will comply with everything I'm asking, and they sent me an email;

Oh yeah it says thank you for contacting executive support in their email, I made no such request.

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Dear Francesco Trama,

Thank you for contacting the Executive Response Team.

I understand that you were having some difficulty in receiving a refund from Vonage. This is regarding the fact that you had transferred your phone number to another carrier, and because Vonage was not made aware of it, you continued to be charged. I wanted to let you know that I will be fully cooperating with you regarding this issue. As long as I receive confirmation that the Vonage phone number transferred to another carrier on a certain date, I will refund the charges.

If you have any questions in the future, please contact Vonage at any time.

Sincerely,

Regina Evaslin
-----------------------------------------

I wrote back;

-----------------------------------------
Regina

First things first, your about a week to late. I would have gone away if you simply refunded my money on Saturday, and no one would have been any wiser on your shady business practices.

You left me a message stating that all you need is proof of the number move to Comcast? I find that perplexing because in every email up until yours states,

"VONAGE IS AWARE OF THE NUMBER MOVE, BUT WILL NOT REFUND YOUR MONEY AND WILL CONTINUE TO BILL YOU BECAUSE VONAGE WAS NOT CONTACTED."

Yes….I’m shaking my head in disbelief at your comment. Never the less, keep the money its so in the past that now. Your company has scammed hundreds maybe thousand of customers on this "You have to contact us anyways" blurb in your terms of service.

Its wrong, and its fraudulent! Unfortunately for you I tweaked lots of interest in the media and our government’s judicial sector on your shady business practices

You will answer for your money skimming business practices which Vonage has adopted.

I have accepted my 180.00 as a sacrifice to protect other unsuspecting consumers from your company. I suggest Vonage circle their wagons because a storm is coming and coming real soon.

This result shouldn’t be a news flash for you because in every email I sent and replied to you regarding this matter disclaimed a warning that I will not go away and will bring as much attention and legal action to you as possible until you stop this shady business practice.

So all I can say now is "I told you so".

Have a nice day!
---------------------------------------------

You do not know how good I'm feeling right now. Anyways I'm not giving up and taking this to the end. I'm supposed to be meeting with the Attorney generals office next week sometime to go over my complaint.

Any addition light you can shed on this to protect other consumers from Vonage would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again!

Frank Trama

The question is how many other Vonage users have changed to another phone company, thought their Vonage service had been cancelled, only to continue to receive a monthly bill from Vonage? Is Vonage playing games to try and squeeze as much revenue as possible from defecting customers? Many customers won't deal with the hassle of fighting Vonage to the end. Frank on the other hand, had no problem battling Vonage. He's even going to the Attorney General to continue the fight. Don't mess with Frank. Heck, he even looks like an former Marine - or at least a police officer. (image to right)

Do you have a Vonage horror story to share? Post a comment. And in the meantime, check out the TV interview Frank had explaining his Vonage horror story. It's good stuff!

I was too busy yesterday to blog this news, but thought it was still important enough to mention. Yesterday, I received an email stating that Avaya, a traditional PBX manufacturer had "widened its lead in worldwide enterprise Internet protocol (IP) telephony revenues." The report showed Avaya as the #1 vendor in IP telephony revenue. This caught my eye for a couple reasons. One, I thought that Cisco, a traditional networking company that became a IP-PBX manufacturer, was the #1 vendor. Second, hearing how Avaya had increased its revenue lead made me wonder how much impact open-source IP-PBX solutions such as Asterisk are truly having on the VoIP market.

After all, I would have thought by now that Avaya, Nortel, Toshiba, and other traditional PBX manufacturers would have "dips" in their revenue numbers due to inexpensive solutions from Digium, Fonality, Switchvox, and a ton of other low-cost Asterisk-based IP-PBXs, which rival the feature-set of more expensive traditional PBX solutions. As I mentioned in my Top 10 Reasons Why I love Asterisk, I'm a huge fan of Asterisk, which was founded by Digium's Mark Spencer. Although, I'm supposed to be an objective reporter, I can't help but root for open source solutions, including Asterisk.

Unfortunately, no Asterisk-based solution is a publicly-traded company, so that makes it difficult to track revenue from Asterisk deployments, which I have no doubt are growing. Now, this isn't to say I don't like Avaya, Nortel, Toshiba, etc. They have some great products that I've tested over the years. It's just fun to root for the underdog - the David over Goliath, ya know?

In any event, here's an excerpt of the release that went out yesterday showing Avaya continuing their dominance in VoIP. Any thoughts on this? Post a comment.

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Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV) widened its lead in worldwide enterprise Internet protocol (IP) telephony revenues, according to Synergy Research Group's 2Q 2007 Enterprise Voice Market Shares Report.  With this report, Avaya marks another quarter of leadership in this market, as more businesses around the globe evolve their voice networks to IP telephony. Avaya is a global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

The report shows Avaya as the #1 vendor in IP telephony revenues (as defined by Synergy), with 25.4 percent of the global market for the second quarter of 2007. In addition, the report shows that Avaya retained its leadership position in the worldwide overall enterprise telephony market in revenue, with nearly 19 percent of the market in 2Q, more than 2 percentage points over its nearest competitor.

"IP Telephony continues to show strong global growth, with the overall market growing 22.5% in revenues year over year," said Jeremy Duke, president and CEO, Synergy Research Group. "Businesses see IP as an essential part of their strategy to operate more efficiently and productively. Our report shows Avaya continuing to extend its leadership position in terms of market share growth."