November 2008 Archives

Circuit City, the No. 2 U.S. consumer electronics retailer, has filed for bankruptcy -- just weeks before the start of the holiday shopping season.

(A sad day for the gadgets world ...) 

CC is the largest retailer to file for Chapter 11 since Kmart in 2002. (Seems even longer ago than that!)

Circuit City fell victim to tighter credit terms from vendors, a dwindling cash position and decreased consumer spending amid a deepening economic crisis.

The filing comes one week after the 59-year-old retailer said it would close 155 U.S. stores, or more than one-fifth of its retail base, and cut 17% of its U.S. work force.

Analysts said there was now a possibility the company would close more U.S. stores as it negotiates to exit costly leases in Chapter 11.

We will miss you ...

More at Reuters.

 

Rumor has it that Microsoft and/or IBM will announce integration between Office Communications Server 2007 and IBM's Lotus Sametime "Unified Telephony" platform at this week's VoiceCon show. If true, this would combine approximately 20 million Sametime users with Microsoft's fast growing OCS 2007 user base creating the largest unified communications user base.

There are ways of getting OCS and Sametime to integrate via 3rd party gateways, however it is somewhat limiting. I don't believe you can do video for instance.

If Sametime and OCS can interoperate and offer IM/presence, voice, and video, that would be HUGE.

Nortel plans a major restructuring and another round of job cuts.

From Fortune:

The Toronto networking equipment giant said Monday it would trim 1,300 jobs on top 1,200 cuts previously announced. Nortel had 32,550 employees at the end of 2007.

The company also said four top executives, including its head of sales and its chief technology officer, would leave at year-end.

The news comes as Nortel posted third quarter earnings that met lowered targets. The company warned, however, that 2008 sales would fall 4% -- at the lower end of its previous guidance of 2% to 4%.

It's too bad Nortel is a Canadian company or they could have been added to the $700+ billion U.S. bailout package. In fact, Congress is looking to add the U.S. auto industry to the bailout, so why not VoIP/telecom companies? Heck, why not foreign telecom companies, such as Nortel? Let's bailout everybody! In fact, I'm hoping they bail me out of my mortgage and offer me free gas like Peggy "the Moocher" Joseph so eloquently stated.

NetQoS today launched its first unified communications focused management tool called NetQoS Unified Communications (UC) Monitor. NetQoS is broadening the focus of its formerly named VoIP Monitor product to reflect the growing role and functionality of unified communications. NetQoS UC Monitor 2.0 supports voice and video quality metrics in a Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) environment as well as enhanced diagnostics and reporting for Cisco IP telephony environments.

In my conversation with NetQoS I asked them what the upgrade/migration path was for current customers, and they said existing customers would be upgraded to NetQoS UC Monitor 2.0 free of charge. One interesting feature in NetQoS UC Monitor 2.0 is that it can adjust the MOS alerting thresholds based on codec. For instance, Microsoft's RTAudio FEC codec can have a lower MOS score than other codecs, but sound just as good than other codecs with a higher MOS score. Screenshot of the codec thresholds:


UC Monitor adds support for monitoring both voice and video in a Microsoft OCS environment and it passively monitors call setup flows between IP phones and their call server(s) including 'call setup' and end-of-call quality statistics. It also actively queries voice gateways for end of call statistics. Additionally, it passively receives QoE reports from Microsoft's QoE Monitoring Server, including call setup failures, and audio and video metrics

Here's some screenshots of the tool in action:

Now hear this!

Researchers at Towson University in suburban Baltimore are working on new technology that will allow for closed captioning of radio broadcasts for those with hearing impairments.

(Now this is a good idea!) 

The new system, which could be marketed next year if all goes well, was tested Tuesday night in conjunction with NPR's coverage of the presidential election.

Look for this on your new HD Radio!

More at The Sun.

Just what the world needs!

Sony has launched a new audio CD format dubbed Blu-spec, which apparently allows users to burn discs with the Blu Laser Diode system without losing compatibility with existing CD drives.

(Backwards compatibility is always a good idea with any kind of new product!) 

(BTW, do you think they will try to revive Digital Audio Tape -- remember DAT? -- anytime soon?) 

Sony expects to offer about 60 titles by Christmas and holiday season shopping time, but Blu-spec discs currently are only available in Japan.

(Be great if the Blue Man Group were involved in the marketing and promotion ... I accept no fee for that free marketing advice.)

More at Pocket-lint.co.uk.

One of my favorite analysts, Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital, has raised an interesting point about a pretty obvious gap in the Apple product line-up.

Reitzes has asserted that it "makes complete sense" for the company to introduce an ultra-portable device to fill the price gap between the $399 high-end iPod Touch and the $999 MacBook.

"This $600 gap needs to be filled and we think it can be with a premium ultra-portable device using multi-touch technology," he writes. "We believe an ultra-portable can be done right by Apple and do not believe the company wants to follow the netbook model, trying to pack full PC functionality into a something small and cheap. Apple, in our view, would only introduce a premium product that doesn't dilute its brand." 

More on this at Barron's Tech Trader Daily.

Want to know the top HDTVs & LCDs under $1000? Well, Amazon has a sweet round-up of the top / best HDTVs that won't break the bank. My 480i/480p/1080i 65" rear-projection TV is getting a bit old, it's bulky, and it doesn't support 1080p, so might be time for me to buy one of these or add it to my Christmas wish list.

Read: Amazon's Top HDTVs under $1000

VoIP played an important role in this year's Presidential elections. Even notorious robocalls leveraged VoIP to blast out calls using inexpensive calling rates.

Michael Dinan has an interesting article on how the Republican National Committee (RNC) leveraged Grandstream phones for pollsters across the U.S. The photo to the right is John McCain's daughter, Meghan McCain using a Grandstream GXP2020 phone. Obviously, John McCain had to pinch pennies where he could to counteract Barrack Obama's mind-blowing $700+ million campaign funds raised - some of it via controversial credit card donations.

Well, savings from VoIP calls certainly didn't save the McCain campaign, so I guess he'll just have to continue to be a maverick in the Senate. Though 'maverick' may be the most overused phrase of 2009, so I think he needs a new nickname. Mr. Opposite (what most GOP members vote), The Independent, Mr. Bi-partisan, Mr. Reach Across the Aisle.

Got any suggestions of your own?

Read

Ericsson is predicting the future mobile device by 2012. Ericsson predicts mobile devices with 12-to 20-megapixel cameras, support for full HD video shooting capabilities, 1Ghz processors that don't suck your battery dry, 1024x768 XGA resolution, and high-speed Internet access using "HSPA evolution". HSPA evolution is the successor to HSPA, and "LTE (long term evolution)" with speeds of more than 100Mbps.


I still can't over the fact that the iPhone, supposedly the "bleeding edge" of mobile devices is only 2 megapixels. In any event, it's hard to predict the future, but I'll take a 20-megapixel camera, 100Mbps mobile device sooner rather than later thank you very much.

Read

Now you can turn your iPod into your own mini, hand-sized recording studio with Belkin's GoStudio.  It can record stereo audo directly to an iPod Classic, Nano or Video with its two built-in microphones, a mono speaker and four external microphone inputs.

The iPod slips into a holster-like setup and a recording menu appears.  Neat features include built-in gain and recording level controls as well as monitor controls so you can listen to your recording while you are doing it.

Recordings can be uploaded immediately to iTunes when your iPod is connected to your computer. You can then add that audio to your blog, web site, Facebook or MySpace pages. 

Pretty cool!  Can some pro audio recording studios be jealous of your work   

Tired of just moving the Wii control around when what you really need is something that really replicates the shooter or gaming action you need?

Well, the Rumble Blaster magically transforms your entire Wii controller into a gun system - and adds realistic rumble action to boot!

It's compatible with most Wii shooting games, such as Ghost Squad and Target.

Availability: In stores this month. 

www.dreamGEAR.net

Increasingly, Internet providers across the country are placing limits on the amount of data users can download each month as a way to curb a small number of "bandwidth hogs" who use a lot of the network capacity.

For example, 5% of AT&T's subscribers take up 50% of the capacity, according to AT&T. AT&T will initially apply the limits in Reno, Nev., and see about extending the practice elsewhere.

Comcast, the nation's second-largest Internet service provider and AT&T's competitor in Reno, last month officially began a nationwide traffic limit of 250 gigabytes per subscriber. Comcast doesn't charge people extra for going over the limit, but will cancel service after repeated warnings. Previously, it had a secret limit. (Very mysterious!)

Two other ISP's, Time Warner and FairPoint Communications, are planning or testing traffic limits as low as 5 gigabytes per month, which is easily exceeded by watchers of DVD-quality online video.

Among the largest ISPs, Verizon Communications is a holdout, and has said it does not plan to limit downloads. (All the more reason to choose this one!) 

More at Crain's New York Business.

 

AudioCodes has now entered the IP phone arena with a phone that supports wideband codecs (HD) for superior sound quality. Seems a bit odd for a company that makes VoIP PCI and cPCI communication boards and VoIP media gateway modules (PMC form factor) and Analog Media Gateways (2/4/8/24 ports) to be entering the crowded VoIP arena, but enterprise IP phone market is expected to quadruple, from $2.1 billion in 2007 to $8.4 billion in 2001, with some 63 million endpoints being shipped by that time, according the Synergy Research Group. So there is a pretty big pie to go after. Traditional network hardware vendor Adtran has also recently entered the IP phone arena with their Adtran IP700 series (see Adtran IP706 review).

The AudioCodes 300HD Series includes three models: The 310 HD entry level phone with a basic display and interface; the 320HD premium endpoint with a larger screen, and the 350HD executive phone with a color LCD screen. All three models are based on AudioCodes newly announced VoIPerfect software, and include the most commonly used wideband codecs. Of course they are SIP-based so they should work on standards-based IP-PBXs such as Asterisk and these phones are also PoE (Power over Ethernet) compliant.

For more details, check out TMCnet reporter Erik Linask's article. One interesting take Erik has is when he writes, "First and foremost, it owns the DSPs that enable the higher quality, which means it can provide its HD VOIP-enabled handsets at a price point comparable to other high-end non-HD devices".

Now I just have to get my hands on on to review. Stay tuned...

Roku representatives have responded to rumors on its online forum board regarding when it will launch streaming HD services and announced, earlier than they'd like, that it will team up with Netflix to bring HD content to its subscribers.

Compared to the recently announced Xbox and Netflix tie-up that will also see streaming HD content to the Xbox, Roku will use different Advanced Profile encoding to deliver the HD content at significantly lower bit-rates. 

In related news, CNet reports that Netflix has decided to stop selling used DVDs to its customer base, instead deciding to focus its attention on its rental by mail and Watch Instantly services.

"As you know, our core business is delivering great movie rentals to you on DVD by mail and instantly to the computer and TV, so we've decided it makes sense for us to focus exclusively on that," the company stated in a Netflix blog post.

More on the streaming from Electronista (and thanks for the photo).