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Tom Keating
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November 2012

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Ogaco iKazoo, the Strangely Fascinating Gadget, Motion Controller & Flute

November 30, 2012


Ogaco reached out to me to tell me about their new product called iKazoo. iKazoo looks like a Kazoo but with a curved bump in the middle. It has several sensors and can be used as a motion controller for video games, but it is also a music instrument and a digital pen for drawing on tablets.



Two (presumably) Indian Persian sisters have a YouTube video promoting the new iKazoo.




2012 WebRTC Demo Winners Announced

November 29, 2012

Google WebRTC Workshop at WebRTC Conference Exceeds Expectations

November 28, 2012

TMC was at the forefront of covering VoIP and educating the industry though Internet Telephony Magazine (launched in 1997) and TMCnet.com. So I am excited to announced that my company TMC, along with Systemwide Media and PKE Consulting has announced that attendance at the opening workshop of its first-ever WebRTC Conference & EXPO more than doubled projections, with more than 300 registered attendees representing enterprises, and companies driving a revolution in Web communications. WebRTC is going to be a huge game changer in the VoIP space, so I'm excited that TMC is involved in educating and covering WebRTC, the next evolution of VoIP. The conference is being held this week at the South San Francisco Conference Center.

Check out a couple photos from the WebRTC Conference & Expo:
 

 

Yesterday's workshop in San Francisco was led by Google Software Engineer Justin Uberti.






HTC Droid DNA vs. Nokia Lumia 920

November 26, 2012


My personal favorite new phone is the Nokia Lumia 920, but the HTC DNA is an impressive beast sporting the same Snapdragon S4 processor that has monster performance and some impressive power, 4G/LTE, and thermal characteristics embedded on this chipset. David Anderson, a fellow technology enthusiast, asked to post a guest blog on the new HTC DNA. His thoughts on the HTC DNA follows:

For consumers looking for the next big thing in Android smartphones, the Droid DNA from HTC has a lot to offer, and a really big screen. It is one of the devices that are being talked about more in recent, because of its great design.

The HTC Droid DNA has the new Android Jelly Bean 4.1, and a lot of extras.





Brightcove to Keynote DevCon5 HTML5 & Mobile App Developers Conference

November 20, 2012

Today, TMC and Crossfire Media today announced that Ashley Streb, vice president of Brightcove, will be the keynote speaker on Thursday, November 29, 2012 12:00 p.m. at DevCon5 HTML5 & Mobile App Developers Conference, at the South San Francisco Conference Center in San Francisco, California. The conference is happening next week from November 27 - November 29.
Ashley Streb VP of Brightcove will discuss how Brightcove's App Cloud platform is designed for the next wave of app development for the mobile world in a session, titled: The Rise of the Hybrid Apps.

Streb will walk through some real-world examples of hybrid apps and look at the current landscape of both UIframeworks; Sencha Touch, jQuery Mobile, jQTouch, jo, zepto, and native containers PhoneGap, Appcelerator and Brightcove App Cloud.


Will Arnett Featured in Nokia Lumia 920 'Work for Will' Contest

November 15, 2012


In a TV commercial, Will Arnett says the Nokia Lumia 920 is the ultimate digital assistant, but as an "international / regional superstar" (his words in video #2) he needs handlers to handle it for him. He likes Todd, his current handler, but Todd is quitting so Will is looking for a new Todd. Will is holding a contest on workforwill.com where you can view two additional funny videos in addition to the funny TV commercial, which you can view here:

To enter the contest, you customize your Windows Phone 8 live tiles as well as pick a skin color for the Nokia 920, as seen by this browser screenshot:

Then you are asked to connect to Facebook to pull some information about you, which is then used in a personalized video from Will Arnett.




Fraunhofer Full-HD Voice - HD Voice on Steroids?

November 13, 2012

I was very familiar with Fraunhofer, since they are renowned for their MP3 encoder and in fact helped pioneer MP3 technology. A German company, Fraunhofer continues to do research to come up with the best sounding audio at the lowest bitrates and smallest file size. As we know, Voice over IP (VoIP) also requires high sound quality at the lowest bitrates and smallest file size. In addition, VoIP has low latency requirements, so suppose a codec exists that compresses audio 30% better than any other codec but adds 100ms latency - it would be useless due to unacceptable delay.

So I was fascinated to learn from Fraunhofer about their AAC-ELD codec library, which they call Full-HD Voice, which is one better than HD voice (G.722) we hear so much about.

Voxbone Global DID Numbers Come to Aculab Cloud Platform

November 13, 2012



Aculab Cloud enables automated telephony applications by handling all the telephony resources in a cloud-based platform. Using simple, high-level language APIs, Aculab Cloud makes it easy for developers to create telephony applications that control inbound and outbound telephone calls. Today, Voxbone announced it is providing international direct inward dial (DID) numbers to Aculab for their Aculab Cloud service.

Aculab Cloud enables functions including transferring calls, playing messages, mixing calls together in a conference, playing text-to-speech prompts/messages, analyzing call progress, detecting answering machines, queuing calls, and making thousands of simultaneous outbound calls. DIDs are another example of the ongoing industry migration to VoIP and cloud services.



Localphone.com Offering Free Calls To Taiwan

November 8, 2012


Localphone.com is rewarding customers with unlimited free calls to Taiwan to Taiwan for a week. The free offer applies to calls made to landline numbers in Taiwan and is available to all Localphone customers from 12pm GMT 8th November until 12pm GMT 15th November 2012.

After the promotion ends calls to Taiwan will be charged at the normal cheap Localphone rate of 1.6¢ USD / 0.8p GBP or 1.4c EUR per minute.

CEO of Localphone, Paul Cusack said, ‘At Localphone we like to reward our loyal customers and thank them for continuing to use the service.  This week, we’re giving away free calls to Taiwan and we hope our customers make the most of the offer to call their loved ones abroad.’

For users who are not already Localphone customers, they can sign up to Localphone for free and then they will be eligible to call Taiwan for free. 






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