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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Don't Let Wi-Fi Device Onslaught Bring Enterprise Wi-Fi To Its Knees

September 30, 2011

If you are an IT or network administrator, you already know you've lost the battle against users BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Device) to work. Now your job is to support everything from the Apple iPad, to Blackberries, to Android devices, to new tablets like the Amazon Kindle Fire. Good times, right? You're probably stressing over whether your WiFi enterprise network can handle all these new devices entering the workplace and you're not sure you have the knowledge or tools to deal with the explosion of personal Wi-Fi devices brought into the office.

Well, I have some good news for ya.

Posted in Android, Apple, Gadgets, Mobile Phones, PDAs & Handhelds, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: android, apple, aruba networks, carousel industries, erik linask, ipad, kindle fire, tablet, tmcnet, webinar, wi-fi : Related Tags: aruba networks, mobile devices, marketing manager, product marketing, aruba keyur, enterprise

Why Amazon Should Buy HBO from Time Warner

September 30, 2011

I was just thinking about how Amazon’s goal is to subsidize their new Kindle Fire by selling content – in particular video content, which can then be streamed using their Amazon Prime “Netflix-like” service.

In fact, on Monday Amazon said its online streaming service will offer Fox movies and television shows under a new content deal, so Amazon seems to be expanding their content licensing portfolio.

However, Amazon is at the mercy of whatever the content providers charge for TV shows and movies.

Posted in Android, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Internet, TMCnet, Tablets, Technology and Science

Tagged: amazon, apple, entertainment, game of thrones, hbo, hollywood, kindle fire, movies, netflix, shows, time warner, true blood, tv, video : Related Tags: unique content, offered movies, amazon should, content, amazon, netflix

Kindle Fire Silk Browser Proxying Stokes Privacy Concerns

September 29, 2011

The new Amazon Kindle Fire will use Amazon's very own completely new Web browser called Silk that leverages Amazon's EC2 architecture to proxy and cache web content for faster performance. You might think of it as something similar to Opera Mini, a former favorite mobile browser of mine, which does something similar. What I liked about Opera Mini on my old Windows Mobile phone was that it compressed images and made pages load faster on slower connections. But as 3G speeds became more prevalent, the need for Opera Mini diminished.

Posted in Android, Computer Hardware, Gadgets, Google, Home Entertainment, PDAs & Handhelds, TMCnet, Tablets, Technology and Science, Unified Communications, Video Hardware & Software

Tagged: android, apple, browser, cache, drudge report, ec2, google, kindle fire, opera mini, privacy, security : Related Tags: google mobile, something similar, cache content, privacy concerns, amazon, google

Skype 2.5 for Android Adds More Video Support

September 29, 2011

Today, Skype announced Skype 2.5 for Android added "white listing" video support for an additional 14 Android devices, bringing the total to 41 Android devices that support video. It is now available on several Motorola devices including the Atrix or Xoom.

It also adds some video improvements. You can now switch between portrait and landscape mode during video calls, and zoom in with a double tap on the screen. As with the recent Apple iOS release, this release adds advertising to non-paying Skype customers.

You can download the updated Skype for Android app from the Android Market or Skype.com/m using your Android phone's browser.

Read more.

Posted in Android, Google, Skype, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: android, atrix, google, motorola, skype, video calls, voip, xoom : Related Tags: skype android, video support, android devices, android, skype, video

Amazon Kindle Fire - Hot or Not?

September 28, 2011

The Amazon Kindle Fire 7-inch tablet aims to take on the Apple iPad, but will the Fire catch fire with consumers? Amazon has loyal Kindle e-reader users, but part of its draw is the e-ink screen which works in direct sunlight for beach book reading. It's the one-up Amazon had over the iPad which doesn't do so well in direct sunlight.

The new Kindle Fire is a color screen and not e-ink, so it loses that advantage. Further, the new Kindle Fire doesn't have a camera!

Posted in Android, Apple, Gadgets, Google, Home Entertainment, PDAs & Handhelds, Skype, TMCnet, Tablets, Unified Communications, Video Hardware & Software, VoIP

Tagged: android, apple, fire, google, ipad, kindle, netflix, skype, tablet, voip : Related Tags: amazon kindle, netflix content, direct sunlight, amazon, kindle, tablet

Toshiba Thrive 7 Tablet Impresses

September 28, 2011

Toshiba today announced the Thrive 7, little brother to their big brother the Thrive 10. Both Thrive models are based on Android and the original Thrive 10 has had some modest success, but the 10" tablet space is a bit more crowded. So it's a smart move for Toshiba to go a bit smaller with the Thrive 7. The Thrive 7 sports Toshiba's AutoBrite™ LED Backlit Display and interestingly has the same 1280x800 screen resolution as the Thrive 10.

Posted in Accessories, Android, Android, Gadgets, Google, PDAs & Handhelds, Reviews, Technology and Science, Unified Communications, VoIP

Tagged: 2, android 3, google, hdmi, nvidia tegra, thrive 7, toshiba : Related Tags: toshiba thrive, thrive thrive, right speakers, based android, screen resolution, thrive

New Skype for iPhone & iPad Released

September 27, 2011

Today Skype announced a new version of Skype for the iPad and iPhone with the coolest new feature being a anti-shake software algorithm that smooths the video even if you have a shaky hand. It only works with the rear-facing camera however.

Update:
I neglected to mention an important new feature in this release. The new version adds support for Bluetooth headsets, a feature that users have been clamoring for. Good timing to add BT support in the same release they're adding mobile ads.

Posted in Apple, Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: advertising, ipad, iphone, mobile phone, shake, skype, video call, voip : Related Tags: paying skype, skype, users, feature, shake, release

Top 50 Technology Blogs

September 26, 2011

eCollegeFinder just came out with their list of the Top 50 Technology blogs. Esteemed sites such as All Things Digital, Chip Chick, DVICE, Engadget, Macworld, Network World, and yours truly, my VoIP & Gadget blog made the list.

I received an email from an eCollegeFinder representative informing me about this award. Excerpt: "Congratulations!

Posted in Gadgets, Internet, Mobile Phones, News, TMCnet, Technology and Science, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: all things digital, blogs, chip chick, ecollegefinder, engadget, list, macworld, network world, technology, top 50 : Related Tags: technology blogs, technology, blogs, ecollegefinder, email, readers

Apple iPad - Your Next Desktop Phone?

September 22, 2011

I've been thinking about how the Apple iPad could really disrupt the VoIP space and become your next desktop phone. Think about the impact to companies such as Cisco, Polycom, Aastra, snom, Grandstream, and others. While these companies do offer low-end IP desktop phones, they have higher margins on the high-end large color screen IP phones that sport advanced features like RSS feeds (weather, news), collaboration, and video conferencing.

Take for instance the Aastra BluStar media phone, which sports a 13" touch screen that achieves true HD 720p video conferencing at a rate of 30 fps or the Polycom VVX 1500, which sports a a 7" color touch-screen and 2MP camera. Both IP phones are over $650, while the latest iPad 2 can be had for $450 (16GB model).

Posted in Apple, Gadgets, ITEXPO, Mobile Phones, PDAs & Handhelds, SIP, Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: aastra, apple, cisco, desktop phone, grandstream, ip phone, ipad 2, polycom, snom, voip : Related Tags: desktop phone, mobile phone, video conferencing, touch screen, phone, desktop

Madison Cain, Daughter of Journey's Jonathan Cain, uses Skype for Vocal Teaching

September 21, 2011

Madison Cain, 17 year old daughter of legendary Journey keyboardist and song writer Jonathan Cain apparently works with a vocal teacher via Skype to improve her singing skills. Score another useful feature for Skype! I knew Skype was used for teaching others how to speak other languages, but didn't know the "universal" language of music was also taught via Skype. You would think that the acoustics would be different speaking into a microphone which is then transmitted over VoIP to a vocal teacher wouldn't be as accurate as the vocal teacher being there in person.

Then again, sometimes a room's acoustics can "hide" weaknesses in a singer's voice, especially if they are a loud singer with the sound bouncing off the walls.

Posted in Home Entertainment, Skype, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Tagged: country music, jonathan cain, journey, madison cain, skype, vocal teacher, voip : Related Tags: vocal teacher, country music, skype, jonathan, madison, vocal

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