VoIP & Gadgets Blog

10 Lessons from Volleyball, Part 2

By Peter on Thursday, May 23

Part 1 of the 10 Business Lessons from Volleyball can be found here. In volleyball, the only play you control yourself is...

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Tagged sales, strategy, volleyball

CloudTC and N-Able Acquired

By Peter on Wednesday, May 22

"Australian-owned IP PBX systems company, Vixtel, has completed the acquisition of Silicon Valley based glass phone developer, CloudTC, for an undisclosed figure,"...

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Tagged hosted pbx, itexpo, mergers, phone system, RMM

ProfitBricks: Where InfiniBand Meets Cloud 2.0

By Rich Tehrani on Wednesday, May 22

In a recent meeting with William Toll and Pete Johnson of ProfitBricks, the pair were ecstatic to explain how their company has...

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Tagged amazon, cloud computing, data center, ec2, infiniband, interop, profitbricks, public cloud, technology

Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead

By Peter Bernstein on Monday, May 20

By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent

Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.

When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.

The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.

Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.

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Tagged Alcatel-Lucent, big data, customer care, KPIs, network monitoring, procativecare | Responses

10 Lessons from Volleyball

By Peter on Monday, May 20

I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...

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Tagged hiring, strategy, volleyball

Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...

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Tagged emerging threats, interop, malware, security

NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...

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Tagged bss, carrier, ericsson, huawei, interoperability, nfv, nokia siemens networks, nsn, oss, sdn, software telco

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Kinect Grocery Cart Follows You and Helps You Shop Efficiently

February 29, 2012

Let's face it, between checking email, tweeting, updating your Facebook status, sending/receiving text messages, taking kids to soccer, etc., every second of our daily lives is precious. So if we can squeeze in a little bit more time via more efficient grocery shopping that leverages a robotic Kinect-camera-enabled grocery cart that stalks you, then by all means.

Microsoft recently demonstrated a prototype of a Kinect-enabled shopping cart that leverages a monitor screen, a motor and a Kinect sensor usually reserved for the popular Xbox 360 console. The shopping cart can recognize a membership card, pull up a customer's shopping list, speak items, offer suggestions, tell you where items are in the store, and scan objects as they are placed in the cart.

Posted in Microsoft, Technology and Science

Tagged: grocery shopping, kinect, microsoft, tabloid magazines, whole foods, xbox 360 : Related Tags: kinect enabled, shopping, kinect, grocery, enabled

maaii Review - New VoIP App Similar to Viber

February 28, 2012

maaii pronounced as “mahy-ee” or “My-ee” is a free mobile VoIP application for iPhone and Android featuring Facebook integration and it comes bundled with 100 free minutes ($1.90). However, as part of their launch they're recharging each users balance back to $1.90 each day, thus giving each user 100 free VoIP calling minutes every day!

I decided to take the app for a test drive on my iPhone 4S. The maaii app will run in the background unless you force the app closed. Thus, you can receive inbound calls very quickly without waiting for the app to load.

Posted in Android, Apple, Google, TMCnet, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: 3g, android, apple, free calls, international, iphone, latency, maaii, mobile voip, voip, vonage mobile, wifi : Related Tags: phone number, using maaii, facebook friends, friends using, voice engine, maaii

Skype For Windows Phone Available With Group IMs But No Group Video

February 27, 2012

Today Skype announced their Skype for Windows Phone Beta app, which is the last major smartphone operating system to not have Skype. Ironic, considering Microsoft owns Skype, but obviously with the relatively new Windows Phone operating system Skype had to be redesigned by Microsoft's Skype team. The new Skype follows the elegant and clean Metro tiles design.

Check out this video to see how it works.

With Skype for Windows Phone Beta you can make free audio and video calls to your Skype contacts over 3G and 4G or WiFi, and of course make calls to landlines and mobiles using your Skype Credit. Also you can create and hold one-to-one and group chats, and update your profile and account information.

Posted in Android, Google, Microsoft, Skype, TMCnet, Video Conferencing

Tagged: groups, metro, microsoft, skype, windows phone : Related Tags: windows phone, group video, skype windows, video calling, system skype, skype

Text-to-Speech (TTS) on Kindle Fire!

February 22, 2012

Text-to-speech (TTS) for the Kindle Fire is a long sought after feature. Having TTS on your Kindle Fire enables you to listen to your e-books using text-to-speech without having to buy expensive audiobooks. Some people may be vision impaired and want TTS to supplement or replace their manual reading of the text. Sure TTS isn't perfect, but it works pretty well.

Now if only the Kindle Fire supported TTS like other versions of the Kindle, then life would be grand.

Posted in Accessories, Android, Computer Hardware, Gadgets, Google, Home Entertainment, PDAs & Handhelds, TMCnet

Tagged: .mobi, amazon, android, audiobooks, calibre, e-book, e-books, kindle, kindle fire, reader, reading, speech, text-to-speech, tts : Related Tags: android market, kindle, speech, android, plugins, reader

LightSquared Gets Square Rooted - 4G LTE Network Killed by FCC

February 16, 2012

LightSquared was just dealt a death blow by the FCC due to concerns of interference, mainly with regards to GPS products:

“LightSquared’s proposal to provide ground-based mobile service offered the potential to unleash new spectrum for mobile broadband and enhance competition. The Commission clearly stated from the outset that harmful interference to GPS would not be permitted. This is why the Conditional Waiver Order issued by the Commission’s International Bureau prohibited LightSquared from beginning commercial operations unless harmful interference issues were resolved.

“NTIA, the federal agency that coordinates spectrum uses for the military and other federal government entities, has now concluded that there is no practical way to mitigate potential interference at this time.

Posted in Mobile Phones, TMCnet, Wireless

Tagged: 4g, fcc, lightsquared, lte, obama, solyndra, wireless : Related Tags: harmful interference, obama administration, federal government, waiver order, international bureau, lightsquared

FCC Now Requires VoIP Outage Reporting

February 15, 2012

The Federal Communications Commission today voted and passed a requirement that interconnected VoIP service providers report significant network outages that meet specific criteria and thresholds. The goal is to ensure 911 system reliability and perhaps customer awareness of fly-by-night VoIP operations that are just trying to make a buck. The FCC will use outage reports to "track and analyze information on interconnected VoIP outages affecting 9-1-1 service and determine if action is needed to prevent future outages." In other words you might be looking at fines if you don't have a reliable VoIP network.

According to Chairman Julius Genachowski, "With today’s action, the FCC is helping ensure that our communications infrastructure is more resilient.

Posted in TMCnet, VoIP, Vonage

Tagged: 911, america, fcc, outage, reporting, skype, threshold, united states, voip, vonage : Related Tags: helping ensure, service, outages, interconnected, ensure

Journey Releases New Video Featuring Michaele Salahi

February 14, 2012

I was scrolling through my Facebook Newsfeed when I came across a post by Journey saying they had a new music video. It read:

Sweet vibrations! Our new video for "Resonate" from our latest album Eclipse, is here as a special Valentine's Day gift to you.

Posted in Home Entertainment, TMCnet

Tagged: journey, michaele salahi, music, neal schon, rock, valentines day : Related Tags: music video, michaele salahi, video, schon, salahi, journey

KEMP Load Balancer Certified for Microsoft Lync Server 2010

February 14, 2012

KEMP Technologies today announced that its LoadMaster hardware-based and virtual appliance load balancers are now approved for Microsoft Lync Server 2010. If you recall, I spoke with Kemp last year about their Exchange 2010 load balancer, so adding Lync load balancing certainly rounds out their Microsoft portfolio. KEMP’s LoadMaster products offer server load balancing, optimized application delivery and built-in SSL acceleration. These features enable the LoadMasters to seamlessly integrate with Microsoft's Lync server pools.

Posted in Lync, Microsoft, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

Tagged: kemp, load balancer, loadmaster, lync, lync server 2010, microsoft : Related Tags: server pools, approved microsoft, loadmaster products, based virtual, virtual loadmaster, server

Watch out for Metallic Objects in IP Phones! You Could Get Hurt!

February 13, 2012

I've tested, used, and reviewed many Polycom phones over the years, but apparently I never noticed or received this warning letter with these phones. Check out this ridiculousness:

WARNING ALL SOUNDPOINT IP PHONES
With respect to section 5.4.3.10 of the Australian Communications Authority as Telecommunications Technical Standard AS/ACIF S004 2004 under the s376 of the Telecommunications Act 1997:

You should be aware that, under certain operating conditions, the handset earpiece may retain small metallic objects. If this occurs, these objects should be removed before using the handset.

Really? Seriously?

Posted in Personal and Humor, Polycom, SIP, TMCnet, VoIP

Tagged: australia, handset, ip phone, lawsuit, litigation, litigious, polycom, telecommunications act : Related Tags: metallic objects, objects should, handset earpiece, removed using, objects, metallic

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