November 2008 Archives

When I met with PIKA Technologies  at ITEXPO they told me support for FreePBX was coming. Well today, PIKA Technologies announced that PIKA WARP the Appliance is now compatible with the Asterisk-based FreePBX GUI (Graphical User Interface) application. I reviewed the PIKA Appliance recently and was pretty impressed with it. Having FreePBX support is a huge milestone for the PIKA Appliance. FreePBX is a popular user-friendly web application  that makes it easy to setup and configure Asterisk.

According to PIKA, "While customers often develop their own GUIs, many have told PIKA that if WARP were compatible with industry-standard GUIs like FreePBX, they would be much more inclined to adopt the portfolio. With today's announcement, PIKA has once again demonstrated its responsiveness to the needs of its user base."

"We are very pleased to have supported the effort to adopt the FreePBX application to run in the PIKA Warp environment," said Terry Atwood, vice president of sales, marketing and customer care at PIKA Technologies. "Used in many Asterisk implementations around the world, including Trixbox, FreePBX has proven its value, time and again. When the FreePBX team expressed their willingness to work with us to port to the Warp Appliance, we jumped on the opportunity."

"FreePBX has become the de facto standard for enterprise grade PBX functionality delivered to the SMB business and includes a very rich set of functionality and customization potential," said Philippe Lindheimer, open source community director of Bandwidth.com and leader of the FreePBX project. "But no GUI is complete without a wide range of hardware options to complete the package. We are delighted that PIKA can now include FreePBX in the PIKA WARP and bring our two eco-systems together."

Today's announcement from PIKA follows news of a new partnership between FreePBX and Bandwidth.com, a complete business communications provider offering advanced VoIP, Internet services and managed network services to small and medium businesses. Bandwidth.com will devote significant resources to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to remain open source and free.

"The partnership with Bandwidth.com is great news as it gives FreePBX the support it needs to grow while ensuring it remains a free GUI for the entire open source eco-system," said David Clarke, business development manager at PIKA and director of the PIKA Warp Community. "I know the choice of Bandwidth.com was a decision that Philippe made only after months of consideration and sound input from the key developers and contributors to the FreePBX project."

Out of the box, FreePBX provides a long list of features including many typically found only in an enterprise-grade PBX, some examples are:

• Unlimited number of voicemail boxes
• "Follow me" functionality
• Ring groups and call queues
• Unlimited number of conference bridges
• Paging and intercom functionality
• and much more

The PIKA WARP Appliance product portfolio is ideal for deploying small- to medium-sized IP-PBX systems, IVR self-service systems, predictive dialling systems, fax servers and many other features typical of a traditional, purpose-built business telephone system that are often lacking in a computerized system. Compatible with a variety of open-source development platforms, including Asterisk and Linux, the Appliance offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional off-the-shelf computers and plug-in-card network connectivity in a smaller footprint.

Researchers recently completed work on a networking solution that will synchronize the myriad personal electronic devices (aka gadgets) people will use in the not-so-distant future. 

The group, called MAGNET Beyond, was composed of researchers from 35 companies who developed an architecture to harmonize devices such as laptops, telephones, MP3 players, games and a variety of sensors.

And why is this networking project called MAGNET Beyond?

No it's not a take-off on Bed, Bath and Beyond, but the name is an acronym for "My personal adaptive Global NET and beyond."

Yikes!

How many researchers does it take to come up with a good acronym?

Definitely not this group! Better luck with the technology.

More at ZDnet.

Don't know why gadget companies want to open up their own unique stores, but Pioneer has opened its second U.S. retail store in Phoenix.

The 3,200 square-foot store showcases Pioneer's state-of-the-art products in a comfortable home environment with six vignettes, each featuring unique themes and different technologies, as well as a revamped mobile electronics section bringing an interactive shopping experience to customers.

Well, I guess I do know, but don't think that Pioneer ranks up their with Apple or Bose as a big draw.  

But maybe I'm wrong.  

Would you rather shop at an all-gadgets retailer like Best Buy or head to a unique manufacturer-only site?

Or are you comfortable doing both?

Get ready for a new look for Xbox Live this week when Microsoft debuts a completely new look for its gaming platform.

The date: November 19.

The new look will include customizable avatars, an iPod-like display and easier viewing of Netflix downloads.

According to Microsoft, the upgrades are meant to turn a somewhat static user interface into "a social media entertainment hub."

So tune in later this week and let's hear how you like it (or how you don't).

Get more at USA Today.

Ribbit, which was recently acquired by BT, today rolled out its developer platform out of beta at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbits extensive APIs allow you to integrate voice communications into business applications such as Salesforce.com, CRM systems, call center applications, and even social networks.


Ribbit launched its programming platform for developers today at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbit likes to call themselves "Silicon Valley's First Phone Company". Post-acquisition, BT and Ribbit are taking the platform public with "Bring Your Own Network" which they claim is a telecom industry first. Ribbit said, "Carriers around the globe can tap into the power of the Ribbit platform and active developer community, to create new revenue streams and provide their customers with more choice and function through innovative voice-enabled applications."



As seen by the charts above, Ribbit has extensive support for industry standards, including SIP, XMPP, XML, Flash, and more. When I spoke with Ribbit Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs he compared their software platform to Amazon's cloud computing, enabling programmers to build powerful integrated telephony applications for Web sites. A proprietary softswitch (the Ribbit SmartSwitch) mediates communication across protocols, networks and devices. That includes MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and Skype. As I have previously written, the Ribbit API functions include call control, authentication, billing, messaging, and more. The Ribbit API abstracts the protocol inter-communication between MSN Messenger, Google Talk, and even Skype. Ribbit has reverse-engineered the Skype protocol to provide the ability for Skype users to receive calls from MSN Messenger users, Yahoo! Messenger users and Google Talk users by leveraging the Ribbit SmartSwitch.

Their most famous application to date is their use of the Ribbit API to integrate with Salesforce, a popular hosted CRM application. Also, Oracle On Demand support in Q1 2009 is forthcoming. Ribbit told me they've done a lot of work to simplify and automated the process to make it easier for developers to get started. They explained you can sign up, access the APIs and documenation, and play with them for 'free' in a sandbox before deploying and charging for the applications. When I asked if the highly successful iPhone apps sold by third parties on the Apple Store was a good analogy for their applications being developed and sold by developers they agreed that was an appropriate analogy.

BroadSoft and Sylantro Systems are two of the first VoIP providers to leverage the Ribbit platform, which Ribbit now claims has 7,500 developers.

It used to be that every three years, workers would get brand new computers from their businesses' tech departments. But for many those days are over.

Many workers haven't been issued a new computer in years. 

The reason: Delaying computer upgrades is one of the easiest ways for a tech department to cut its budget. How about you working with a four-year-old ThinkPad with its maddeningly slow response times and out-of-date software ...

Now that the economy has taken a pronounced turn for the worse, more businesses are deciding to delay their regularly scheduled PC buying. In fact, 46% of businesses have either already or plan to postpone purchasing new computers, according to a survey of information-technology execs by CIO Magazine.

That's part of the reason that U.S. PC shipments will drop 1% in the fourth quarter compared to the year-ago quarter, according to research company IDC.

Now all of this bad corporate new has a shiny silver lining for us out here in consumer land --  PC makers are slashing prices, 20% to 30% in some cases, in an effort to boost demand.

Readers, how old is your work PC? Are outdated programs and hardware slowing you down?

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal (again).

Europeans will soon be able to buy their own XO laptop.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization is planning to sell the devices via online store Amazon's European outlets starting this coming Monday.

The machines will be sold under the Give One, Get One plan that the OLPC organization has already run in the U.S. Under that plan, buyers get one machine for themselves and the other is donated to a school child in a developing nation. 

More at the BBC.

Bandwidth.com has just made an investment in FreePBX, the popular front-end interface to Asterisk-based distros. I discussed this news with Philippe Lindheimer just a couple hours ago. One of the questions I asked was if Bandwidth.com would get "preferred treatment" within the FreePBX interface, since Bandwidth.com offers SIP trunking. Obviously, if FreePBX gives Bandwidth.com a prominent position in the GUI or they make it "easier" to configure FreePBX (i.e. plug-n-play) that could be a huge boon to Bandwidth.com Philippe said that that isn't part of the investment announcement being made today, however, that is something they are looking at.

As for the purpose of the investment, Philippe said it was mostly due to Bandwidth.com's desire to grow the market and help build the FreePBX community. The idea is that the more IP-PBXs out there, the more SIP trunks, and hence more revenue for Bandwidth.com. I have some further thoughts on this, but I'm pretty busy today and wanted to share the news.

Philippe Lindheimer said, "Part of assuring the success of FreePBX is to make sure that we continue to have strong leadership, community participation and a thriving eco-system of users and partners. I would like to announce a new partnership that will help the project tremendously. I have joined forces with Bandwidth.com as their Open Source Community Director, where we will be devoting significant resources and effort to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to make sure it remains open and strong."

One significant piece of news is that Bandwidth.com helped protect the FreePBX's project several months ago when the FreePBX trademark (which FreePBX.org nor Phillipe never owned) was "being shopped around to parties that did not have this project's best interest in mind" according to Phillipe. Thus, Bandwidth.com preemptively purchased the trademark with Phillipe's blessing in order to assure FreePBX was not jeopardized.

You can read Phillipe's blog post about this here which has more details.

Wi-Fi wireless Internet connectivity has become nearly ubiquitous.

Whether you're at home, in a coffee shop or even on some commercial airliners, you can get online with a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop, smart phone or portable game machine.

Now, Wi-Fi is making its way into your car.

A small California company, Autonet Mobile, has teamed up with Chrysler and others to sell a service that floods any brand or model of car or truck with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity that can be used by multiple passengers and devices simultaneously.

It's a dealer-installed option on Chrysler vehicles, but Chrysler dealers, and some independent auto electronic shops, will install it on any brand of car for a fee.

Does this make Chrysler more appealing to GM?

More at the Wall Street Journal.

This is a call out to all bloggers out there - Rich Tehrani, my boss has extended an open invitation to bloggers interested in blogging for TMCnet.com, a leading communications/telecom site according to Alexa, Quantcast, and others.

Today, TMC launches its Blog Aid program to help people out of work stay in the public eye - in order to improve their hiring prospects in a tough economy. In the last few months, many good marketers, PR people, engineers and others who have been laid off. These potential Blog Aid bloggers have a good deal of quality commentary and information to share which could be very useful to the TMC community of online readers.

TMC is offering these new bloggers - especially those working in the communications and technology industries, a venue to voice their thoughts on the spaces where they have expertise so as to allow them access to the 2-3 million global visitors who come to TMCnet on a monthly basis.

So if you enjoy writing about communications, telecom, VoIP, wireless, unified communications, mobile, etc. and want a wide audience, go check out Rich's blog for more details.

p.s. The blogging platform is Movable Type 4.21.

Callpod's new Drone USB Bluetooth adapter turns your mobile phone's Bluetooth headset into a headset/mic for your PC or Mac allowing you to receive Skype or other VoIP calls using your high-end Bluetooth headset (Plantronics, Jawbone, etc.). Just connect the Drone into the USB port of your computer, and it will immediately connect with your Bluetooth headset or headphones to provide streaming music and voice over a 100 meter (328ft) range. When a Skype call comes in, Drone switches over to the call automatically. It supports the A2DP (Stereo) Bluetooth profile.

Of course, many PCs and laptops come with Bluetooth built-in, making this device unnecessary. It's basically a $50 USB Bluetooth adapter/Bluetooth dongle, which is nothing new. Still, if you need to add Bluetooth functionality to your PC or Mac, this might be the way to go. Though, you can pick up a Bluetooth USB dongle for $20. However, they claim their software automatically switches the audio to the Bluetooth headset on an incoming Skype call. I don't believe most Bluetooth dongles support that functionality. Not sure it's worth the extra $30 for the auto-Skype answer, but you make the call.

Features:

• 100-meter (Class-1) range
• VoIP and music streaming to any Bluetooth headset or stereo headphones
• Automatically pairs with your headset or headphones
• Seamlessly switch between music and VoIP calls
• No software installation - Plug and Play
• Optional software install for advanced functions such as data transfer
• Upgradeable firmware

Read

Mojo Mobility Inc, a Silicon Valley-based venture firm, has developed a technology to simultaneously charge multiple mobile devices simply using a flat surface that doesn't even to touch the charging circuitry of  mobile phones, iPods, iPhones, and other gadgetry.

While NFP (Near Field Power) is not a new concept, the non-contact charging system leverages an electromagnetic induction method. The system is composed of two coils, one for transmitting and the other for receiving electric power.

Mojo Mobility has developed a prototype sheet-type charger equipped with multiple transmitting coils. On this sheet to the right, up to four devices charged at the same time with the ability to produce 2.5W to 4W of power ..

Read

Sick and tired of cr**py YouTube video quality? Well, check out kottke.org's tips on how to enable HQ video on YouTube. It's not HD quality, but much better than the default.

The specs for the Youtube HQ video is mp4 encoded using H.264 and stereo AAC sound at 480x360 resolution.

Also you need to do to link to a high quality video on your blog is simply append &fmt=18 onto the end of the YouTube URL, i.e.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuqiGrWBRqE&fmt=18

And if you want to embed the code on your blog/site you add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18, i.e.:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MuqiGrWBRqE&hl=en&fs=1 &ap=%2526fmt%3D18"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MuqiGrWBRqE&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Now head on over to Kottke to see the before and after video quality comparisons. Good stuff!

Despite a worsening economy, all three current-generation video game consoles had better U.S. sales in October than they did a year ago, according to the latest figures from The NPD Group.

And both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii sold more units in October, a four-week reporting period, than in September, a five-week period. Wowwee!

Also the worst of the economic bad news had yet to hit in September.

Sony, however, saw month-over-month PlayStation 3 sales decline, while sales of its previous generation (and less expensive) PlayStation 2 remained strong. Also, the PS3 saw the strongest year-over-year sales increase in October.

Nintendo was again the market leader, even though Microsoft cut prices on its Xbox 360 line in September, making its low-end model the least-expensive console on the market. 

More at The Seattle Times.

(Can you blame them for that seemingly pro-MS plug ...)

New consumer research has found that 34% of U.S. households have at least one HDTV set, double the percentage of households that had such TVs two years ago.

The growth of HDTV sets has largely been driven by on-going consumer purchasing of TV sets coupled with a dwindling supply of lower-end non-HDTV sets being sold, according to the Leichtman Research Group.

Overall, 22% of all households purchased a new TV set in the past 12 months, with 43% of this group spending more than $1,000 on a new TV.

These findings are based on a survey of 1,302 households throughout the United States.

Now if we could just get the other two-thirds to pick up a HDTV set we'd be all better off ... would that help the global economy or what?

More at Multichannel News.