Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
CTO
| VoIP & Gadgets blog - Latest news in VoIP & gadgets, wireless, mobile phones, reviews, & opinions

News

News

EnThinnai the un-social networking application

October 17, 2007


Aswath Rao, one of the brightest minds in VoIP points me to a new web application called EnThinnai that offers many of the features of social networks. Aswath was kind enough to invite me to be one of the beta users back in March, but alas, it's one of the many things I'm asked to check out and alas it fell through the cracks. So many things to test, so little time.

In any event, as part of the EnThinnai team, Aswath emailed me recently to tell me that they are allowing the general public to register for the service and it will undergo public testing for a limited period.

Probably the best explanation of EnThinnai comes from here, which also explains the veranda/porch graphic above:
EnThinnai is your front porch on the web where you can store and display information that you can share with your designated buddies.






InfoWorld in trouble?

October 16, 2007

InfoWorld may be in trouble. According to Folio Magazine, "The top editor of IDG’s InfoWorld, Steve Fox, resigned yesterday, becoming the latest in a string of high-profile InfoWorld departures in recent weeks including CEO Bob Ostrow and vice president of online sales Kate Hobbie last month."

Say it ain't so! I love infoWorld. It's one of my favorite tech magazines and I love reading the insightful columns.

Technorati outage

September 27, 2007

Digium Acquires Switchvox

September 27, 2007

Switchvox, a provider of Asterisk-based solutions, has been acquired by Digium, the founding company of the open source Asterisk software solution. This is the second recent acquisition since Digium also recently acquired Astricon. Switchvox, with 1400 Systems Installed and over 66,500 handsets deployed, is an interesting acquisition for Digium. At first I was taken aback by this announcement since Switchvox took the open source Asterisk GPL code and added their own proprietary code.

Jack Bauer arrested for DUI

September 25, 2007

Jack Bauer (aka Kiefer Sutherland) was arrested on a DUI charge earlier this morning in Los Angeles after the police noticed he made an illegal U-turn. He tested over the state's legal blood alcohol limit of .08 percent. C'mon California police, don't you know Jack Bauer is still getting over his drug addiction problem from 24's Season 3 where he went deep undercover and had to use drugs? Cut him some slack, will ya?

Besides, this season Jack moves to New York City, so perhaps he was simply "role playing" as an alcoholic since he will be so far away from his daughter Kim Bauer.

USB 3.0 Standard Coming

September 19, 2007

USB 3.0 connector prototype

Intel, Microsoft, and other industry leaders have formed the USB 3.0 Promoter Group to create a superspeed 4Gbps USB 3.0 standard that can deliver over 10 times the speed of today's USB 2.0 connection. The current USB 2.0 version has a top data-transfer rate of 480 megabits per second. Others involved in the technology include HP, NEC Corporation, NXP Semiconductors and Texas Instruments Incorporated, and will target fast sync-and-go transfer applications in the PC, consumer and mobile segments.

Fortunately, USB (Universal Serial Bus) 3.0 will backward-compatible with current USB devices.

New Yahoo! Mail integrates IM and text messaging

August 26, 2007

Tomorrow, Yahoo! will announce the general availability of the new version of Yahoo! Mail. The new service includes two new major features: free text messaging to mobile phone numbers (available in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines), and integrated instant messaging (IM) with users of Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

Website blocks Firefox users due to Ad Blocker

August 24, 2007

According to InfoWorld, a blogger is blocking Firefox users from visiting his site in protest of the 2nd most popular Firefox plugin called AdBlock Plus, which strips banner advertisements from websites. His rationale is that when you use an advertisement blocker you are stealing.

According to InfoWorld, he stated, "Accessing the content while blocking the ads therefore would be no less than stealing," wrote Danny Carlton, a Web site designer and author, who runs both sites. JackLewis.net is his personal blog site.

Pew Internet Quiz - How Techie Are you?

May 7, 2007

Greg Galitzine has an interesting post about a Pew report. According to Greg, "The Pew Internet and American Life Project have released the results of a survey entitled A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users. The survey was designed to classify Americans into different groups of technology users so as to determine which groups were most inclined to take advantage of information technology as might be presented under the umbrella of Web 2.0.

The report breaks down respondents into several major “subspecies,” including Elite Tech Users (31% of adult population); Middle of the Road Tech Users (21%); and those classified as Few Tech Assets (49%)."
You can even take the Pew Internet Quiz.


China knockoff of Disneyland

May 4, 2007

China, not content to copy/rip-off electronics designs, router designs,  and is one of the larger counterfeit purveyors of software, has decided to ripoff Disney with a "clone" of Disneyland. Are you kidding me? Feel free to rip off all the electronics designs you want, but don't be copying an American icon. Some Japanese bloggers posted some photos, which you can check out here: http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1678
(site appears down at the moment)

Park officials deny their characters having anything to do with the official characters, claiming everything in the park is an "original design".


Featured Events