Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
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With Steve Jobs' Passing is Flash for the iPhone/iPad Now Possible?

October 11, 2011


Everyone in the technology world - and the world in general - mourns Steve Jobs' passing. My Facebook News Feed is still filled with friends who changed their profile photo to something Apple or Steve Jobs related. But I do have a bone to pick with Steve Jobs' decision to block Flash on Apple's iOS devices.

Steve Jobs gave his thoughts on Flash back in 2010. When Steve Jobs and Apple blocked Adobe Flash from Apple's popular line of mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), Steve's main claims against Flash were that it was too processor-heavy, a battery hog, security issues, performance issues, and that HTML5 was a better standard for the future.


Netflix Abandons Qwikster DVD Name - Goes Back to Unified Netflix Name

October 10, 2011

Millions Change Facebook Profile Picture to Honor Steve Jobs

October 6, 2011

Millions of Facebook users have changed their Facebook profile picture to honor Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who died yesterday from pancreatic cancer. According to Facebook, 628 million active users changed their Facebook profile picture to a real Apple, the Apple logo, or a picture of Steve Jobs.

Actually, I made that number up. Well actually, I did a rough calculation based on my Facebook Newsfeed which shows that 11 out of 14 (78.5%) users in my Friends' list changed their profile picture to something Apple or Steve Jobs related.

11/14 * 800 million active Facebook users=628 million

I'm sure this is nowhere near accurate, but it does show the love that Steve Jobs has. Below is a screenshot taken at 10:30am today.





Cisco UC320W Review

October 5, 2011


Cisco isn’t known for hitting the SOHO/SMB space of 1-24 users, even with their feature-rich, but not entirely inexpensive Unified Communications Manager Express (UCME) product line.  UCME’s sweet spot is 30-100 users, while Cisco’s new UC 320W product works with 1-24 users, with a sweet spot of 4-16 users. Also, the big brother to the UC320W, the UC500 has a sweet spot of 12-80 users addressing the small to mid-sized market. The list price of a UC320W system with 10 users, including voicemail is just $995, which is under the psychological $1,000 price-point. 

New Xirrus XR Wireless Array - Faster Wi-Fi with Modular Pricing

October 5, 2011


Steven Wastie, Xirrus's Chief Marketing Officer informed me that Xirrus ($70 million annual revenue) today released their next-generation wireless platform, the XR Wireless Array, which is their 3rd-generation Wi-Fi modular wireless switch. Xirrus's goal is to ensure high performance wireless networks, whose explosive growth is being driven by mobile devices including laptops, mobile smartphones and tablets, such as the iPad. Xirrus products are used at high-attendance conference and events, including Dreamforce, ITEXPO, and others.

Unlike traditional APs which use omnidirectional radios, Xirrus combines directional antennas with multiple radios together with a virtualized controller in a unique modular architecture that allows you to go completely down to the number of radios installed. The It enables you to have anywhere from 4 to 16 modular 802.11n Access Points with 450Mbps throughput Access Points. Modular XR platforms supports up to 32 total internal plus external remote radios for extended coverage.


Apple iPhone 5 Coverage Brings down Engadget

October 4, 2011

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.


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.

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.

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!



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