VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Effectively Telling Your Product's Story

By Rich Tehrani on Tuesday, Jun 18

One of the most interesting aspects of my career is watching the thousands of companies I have met over the years make...

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Tagged advertising, kodak, mad men, marketing

Dialogic and Cisco Round Out Day's NFV News

By Rich Tehrani on Tuesday, Jun 18

It’s been a busy week regarding NFV and the software telco (R)evolution. First off Dialogic had some solid thoughts on six of...

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Tagged cisco, dialogic, network functions virtualization, nfv, software telco

The Big Deal about Big Data Analytics

By Peter Bernstein on Tuesday, Jun 18

By Greg Owens, Senior Director Customer Experience Solutions Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

The rise of big data is causing service providers to ask some big questions: How should we store our data? How long should we keep it? What parts of it are relevant to our business? Most importantly, how do we get value from it? To turn big data into a big deal, service providers need to extract insights that can help them make smart business decisions and improve the customer experience.

The value of big data is all in what useful and actionable information it can provide. I find it exciting to see how service providers use big data analytics to gain new insights and solve complex problems. With this post, I’ll look at some new research by industry analysts and three key opportunities that big data analytics presents to service providers.
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Tagged Alcatel-Lucent, analytics, Big Data, customer expereince, Greg Owens, QoS | Responses

WebRTC: The Revolution Won't Occur Without a Media Server

By Jim Machi on Tuesday, Jun 18

Next Thursday at the WebRTC Conference and Expo, I’ll present a conference keynote that might not be exactly what attendees expect...

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Tagged Atlanta, Internet Protocol, Media server, PSTN, Public switched telephone network, Voice over Internet Protocol, Web browser, WebRTC | Responses

Software Telcos Based on NFV Want Less Equipment Provider M&A

By Rich Tehrani on Tuesday, Jun 18

Mergers are nothing new but about a decade ago in the telecom market they reached a fever pitch when SBC purchased AT&T...

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Tagged at&t, etsi, nfv, sbc, sdn, software telco, wireless

Linux Foundation Embedded Solutions Director's Case for Open Source and Connected Car

By Suzanne Bowen on Monday, Jun 17

The car of 2013 is different from the one I learned to drive, a 1974 Ford Maverick with rear federal bumpers, aluminum...

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Tagged Connected car, Ford Maverick, Ford Motor Company, Linus Torvalds, Linux, linux foundation, Mercedes Benz, open source, Original equipment manufacturer, rudolf streif, Tata Elxsi | Responses

Business Video and Queen Lead Guitarist Brian May

By Suzanne Bowen on Monday, Jun 17

"A good video can make all the difference," says Brian May (Ph.D. Astro-Physics and Queen lead guitarist). Such is true for business!Even...

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Tagged Bohemian Rhapsody, Brian May, Business, Complete History of the Universe, Muntwo, Queen, Video, Youtube | Responses

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Microsoft front-facing cameras, Skype & Lync Mobile client Coming Very Very Soon

August 25, 2011

Microsoft confirmed Mango Windows Phone 7 handsets would sport a front facing camera as well as Skype integration and a mobile Lync client. The confirmation came via the TechEd event in New Zealand, where two Microsoft employees mentioned that Microsoft's Lync VoIP client also be available on other mobile platforms, including iOS, Android and Symbian. But the Lync client would be first available on the soon to be launched Mango Windows Mobile 7 software.

The employees stated that the mobile Lync client would support both voice and video on Android, Apple's iOS and Windows Mobile 7, explaining "it will dependent on the device, but it will be enabled at some point at time." They pointed out that some devices don't have a front-facing camera so having a videoconference via a mobile Lync client wouldn't necessarily make sense.

The Microsoft Lync client for mobile devices is a long time coming. I was actually told by Microsoft in NYC during a live demo of Microsoft Lync that mobile versions of the Lync client would be coming out "very soon".

Posted in Android, Apple, Gadgets, Lync, Microsoft, Mobile Phones, Skype, TMCnet, Video Conferencing, Wireless

Tagged: android, apple, google, ios, lync, mango, microsoft, mobile phone, video calls, video conferencing, voip : Related Tags: windows mobile, windows phone, facing camera, mango windows, mobile, microsoft

Skype Click to Call Add-on Now Supports Firefox 5 & 6

August 24, 2011

If you're a fan of Skype's Click to Call browser plugins for Windows, you probably know back in January Mozilla "soft" blocked this toolbar because "Skype Toolbar is one of the top crashers of Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, and was involved in almost 40,000 crashes of Firefox last week." The Skype Click to Call add-on/plugin auto-detects phone numbers on web pages and lets you dial them via Skype. Personally, I see this as a bit of an esoteric feature of Skype, but perhaps a lot of people do use it?

In any event, Skype just released new updates to the Skype Click to Call as part of release build, 5.6.0.8153.

• Support for Firefox 5 and Firefox 6 on Windows
• Minor improvements to Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox on PC

Here's to hoping they resolved the crashing and performance issues.

Posted in Microsoft, Skype, TMCnet, VoIP

Tagged: browser, chrome, click to call, firefox, microsoft, plugin, skype, voip : Related Tags: skype click, skype, firefox, click

Sporadic Cell phone outages due to 5.9 Earthquake

August 23, 2011

There are reports of sporadic cell phone and perhaps even landline outages after an unusual 5.9 earthquake hit Virginia at 01:51:03 pm, with the epicenter located 41 miles northwest from Richmond and 83 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.

A few co-workers and I were unable to get through to some phone numbers. According some reports the carriers are experiencing peak usage related outages. Could be people checking in on loved ones similar to the 9/11 related phone outages.

I felt the earthquake in my office located in Norwalk, CT and have read friends' reports on Facebook that states as far away as Massachusetts, Michigan and Ohio felt it. There are also unconfirmed reports that the Washington Monument is leaning.

Posted in TMCnet, Wireless

Tagged: 5.9, cell phone, earthquake, east coast, outage, phone, virginia, washington monument : Related Tags: phone outages, phone, outages, earthquake, reports

Physicists build first single-photon router - Positronic brain next?

August 23, 2011

Cool - the first photon router! From PhysOrg.com:

By demonstrating that an artificial atom embedded in a transmission line can route a single photon from an input port to one of two output ports, physicists have built the first router working at the single-photon level. The single-photon router could one day serve as a quantum node in a quantum information network, in which it could provide basic processing and routing of data.
...
As the scientists explain, controlling and directing photons is more difficult than controlling and directing electrons, which are used in most of today’s routers.

Well done physicists! This is one more step in the Star Trek timeline when Dr. Noonien Soong will be able to create Data's Positronic brain, which features a storage capacity of 100 Pb (800 quadrillion bits) and a total linear computational speed of 60 THz (60 trillion operations per second)!

Posted in Internet, TMCnet, Technology and Science

Tagged: brain, cisco, data, electrons, internet, photon, physicists, positronic, router, star trek : Related Tags: single photon, photon router, controlling directing, positronic brain, photon, router

Skype (Microsoft) Blows $85 Million on GroupMe

August 22, 2011

Skype was in talks with GroupMe to acquire them before Microsoft's (pending approval) bought Skype. With Microsoft purchasing Skype you would have thought Microsoft would have squashed any pending purchases by Skype or at least approve them. The fact that Microsoft didn't stop Skype means Microsoft must agree with the GroupMe acquisition. I'm honestly not sure why though.

GroupMe is simply a group SMS platform that enables you to create group messages leveraging SMS.

Posted in Microsoft, Mobile Phones, Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: apple, facebook, google, groupme, instant messaging, microsoft, mobile phone, skype, twilio, voip : Related Tags: skype microsoft, group messages, voice message, skype, microsoft, group

Home Surveillance using Dropbox Catches Possible Thief in the Act

August 20, 2011

I've been meaning to test out my home surveillance recipe which combines a standard webcam, Dropbox (hosted backup solution), iPhone & iPad mobile Dropbox app, and the free Yet Another Webcam Software (Yawcam). I went to Cape Cod last week and hired a pet sitter to watch our family's dog (Jessie) and cat (Boaz), which offered a perfect opportunity to test out my "poor man's home surveillance" setup. What I found happening in my house while on my vacation shocked me!

But first, my home surveillance recipe:

Setup and install Dropbox (comes with 2GB free).

Posted in Digital Cameras, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Internet, Personal and Humor, TMCnet, Video Hardware & Software

Tagged: camera, cape cod, dropbox, home surveillance, ipad, iphone, streaming video, surveillance, webcam : Related Tags: dropbox homeimages, motion detection, click settings, surveillance recipe, users tkeating, dropbox

The Demise of the HP TouchPad Plus "The Value of VoIP"

August 19, 2011

I wrote this morning about HP's surrender to Apple in the PC, laptop, and tablet space. Ironically, I just happened to glance at a CDW catalog sitting on my desk and saw this:

Click for larger view

A now defunct HP TouchPad 16GB model is prominently displayed on the back cover of the CDW catalog. The front and back cover are "prime" positions that in the publishing world command a higher premium in advertising rates. This is also sometimes true of catalogs.

Posted in Computer Hardware, Gadgets, PDAs & Handhelds, TMCnet

Tagged: apple, catalog, cdw, hp, sports illustrated, touchpad, voip : Related Tags: click larger, catalog, cover, touchpad

The Apple Downgrade Kills HP

August 19, 2011

We all know about the S&P downgrade caused by the rating agency's view of U.S.'s debt and debt ceiling. S&P saw the writing on the wall that U.S. is on the road to insolvency and default on the debt. Well, apparently the Apple iPad tablet has had a similar downgrade affect on HP's PC, laptop, and tablet business.

Posted in Android, Apple, Computer Hardware, Gadgets, Google, News, TMCnet

Tagged: android, apple, dell, hewlett-packard, hp, ios, itunes, laptop, mobile, pc, tablet, webos : Related Tags: operating system, proprietary operating, mobile operating, closed proprietary, android based, system

BT Kills the Rabbit, err Ribbit

August 10, 2011

Ribbit, which was acquired by BT, and which Ribbit claimed was "Silicon Valley's First Phone Company" has been killed. Ribbit was a cloud-based phone system with APIs to integrate voice communications into business applications such as Salesforce.com, CRM systems, call center applications, and social networks. It was a promising concept.

So is cloud-based voice dead? That'd be too bad, since Fonality just released a Cloud VoIP for Dummies book just yesterday. Well, one defunct hosted voice platform doesn't make for an industry trend. We've still got Google Voice, Phono, Twilio, TeleSocial, and others that are going strong.

Posted in Internet, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

Tagged: api, british telecom, hosted, ribbit, silicon valley, telesocial, twilio, voice, voip : Related Tags: cloud based, ribbit, voice, cloud

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