Cross Talk

Available in 70 countries but NOT the U.S. is the new iPhone 3.0 feature of teathering your iPhone to your PC for internet access. So, before you get too excited about the new iPhone tell AT&T to let Pinnochio go free!

After waiting the weekend, I spoke with support and got some more details and got it working. Its so sad that there is not a troubleshooting guide which would have saved me a lot of time and anguish. But now its working so back in love with wireless headphones. The sound is really cool too. Now if the Altec PR would respond back, it would be nice. So go ahead and get them but realize you may have some funky issues which if you get them let me know. Ever since I heard of the Apple iPhone, stood in line to get one of the first ones, now with the 3G, looking forward to OS 3.0, the impact of a 1,000 new APIs and resulting applications, I have been more than thrilled with the iPhone. The iPhone is not a phone it is an important computing-communications platform for next-generation converged communications. With 30,000+ applications it rivals more advanced other OS available. Now back to what I wanted to write about. The promise of wireless communications has until this point gotten to the handset but alas, no much farther. Bluetooth headsets got you one ear of audio but no music. But wait. Coming to the rescue, Altec Lansing BackBeat 906 www.alteclansing.com (not 903) give you two earfuls of telephony, music and more. It also has dual-microphones for improved outbound voice transmission. There's even an "open mic" which turns off the music or the phone so you can listen to conversations. It works great eliminating the "last foot" of wiring cable which often gets caught nearly everywhere. Speaking of cables, there must be a secret sex life of cables because when you put them neatly in your bag at night you find the next morning a tangled mess. Meanwhile back at the BackBeat, it works very well with tests so far. However, with or without the 906 everyone complains about cell-to-cell phone calls. Presently you need to use the Bluetooth adaptor for the iPhone which will be eliminated when iPhone 3.0 software comes out but makes a great plug-in so you can still use the 906 with your desk/laptop. Of course, I need to complain about something. The documentation is weak as usual but when I called support they were great. The website has great interactive visuals so you can see the products up close. Having been a fan of Altec Lansing since the 1960s as the owner of the Voice of the Theatre speakers now called the A7, the company has been a leader in sound systems. Now iPhone addicts you now have another great toy to die for. In addition, this is yet another reason to dump your desktop telephone for a softphone.

Get smart on media gateways in 60 seconds, click here for the tutorial: http://www.ocsforum.com/news/gateway/ OCSForum.com presents some critical "actionable" tips on SIP/OCS. Here's the details. 1) Gateway uses LDAP to access AD-Active Directory to route calls Gateway sends caller information to AD-Active Directory. a) If user is on the PBX, the Gateway will connect call to PBX. b) If user is on OCS, the Gateway will connect call to OCS. If OCS fails, the Gateway will access AD-Active Directory to determine alternate routes and then connect the call to PBX, cellular or others. 2) Gateway includes built-in SIP proxy server which does routing supporting different SIP configurations. 3) Gateway translates both SIP/UDP and SIP/TCP and G.711/G.729 transcoding. 4) Gateway integrates non-standard/compliant SIP systems, applications & service providers. This and other details can be found on OCS Forum SIP/OCS courses. About OCS Forum OCS Forum is a vendor-independent laboratory environment designed for learning, technical guides, knowledge resources and online "live" services. OCS Forum provides consulting, training, case studies, white papers, speaking engagements, market/customer research, network planning and other services. For more go to http://www.ocsforum.com.

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC), announced today that their TMC University division will offer a Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) training course at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO West 2009 (ITEXPO) in Los Angeles. The day-long course, which includes a 30-minute certification exam, will be held Tuesday, September 1st, day one of the three-day conference. Titled, 'Introduction to Microsoft OCS', this TMC University course offers an initial training session teaching users how to integrate Microsoft's new enterprise OCS into their existing infrastructure. According to TMC President and conference chairman, Rich Tehrani, TMC University is the only independent program of its kind. And this revised OCS course is a critical exploration to the series.

Get SIP/OCS Smart Before You Buy or deploy Microsoft OCS-Office Communications Server R2 OCS Forum (http://www.ocsforum.com) announced new Top-10 Best Practices tutorials in its SIP and Microsoft OCS-Office Communications Server Release 2 (OCSR2) classroom and webseminar training. Five of the Top-10 Best Practices include: 1 - Locate PBXs physically close to your IP gateways. 2 - Locate IP gateways and Unified Messaging servers on the same VLAN (with 802.1p/q) and the same physical site. 3 - Located Unified Messaging servers within the same physical site as other servers that have Exchange 2007 server roles installed, including Mailbox, Hub Transport, and Client Access servers. 4 - Terminate your WAN network connections physically close to where all SIP/OCS equipment is located with both diverse (separate trench/aerial) and redundant physical and wireless routes. 5 - In branch office scenarios or over WAN connections, create VLAN set routers to prioritize voice and use the G.723.1 codec where feasible instead of the G.711 codec to minimize voice network traffic. The remaining five "best practices" are only available in OCS Forum classes. OCS Forum provides classroom and webseminar training as well as a non-production environment for those IT departments without additional equipment, budget or time. This allows planners and users to test ideas, dial in and dial back out, IM file transfers, remote desktop sharing, video conferencing, run scenarios, break linkages and learning about new telephony features and network access. OCS Forum is also designed for both the system integrator/consultant who wants to learn about OCSR2 without having to build their own system as well as the enterprise customer who doesn't have the time, resources or time to develop one. OCS Forum Labs are designed to be "hands-on" or "over-the-shoulder" with experts available for Q&A and classes for feature-specific review. About OCS Forum OCS Forum is a vendor-independent laboratory environment designed for learning, technical guides, knowledge resources and online "live" services. OCS Forum provides consulting, training, case studies, white papers, speaking engagements, market/customer research, network planning and other services. For more go to http://www.ocsforum.com.

Let's do a little time-management analysis. How much time do you think you spend commuting to and from work - the total drive time? Our survey indicates that the average time we're stuck behind our "windshields" has almost doubled for many from 1-2 hours to 2-3 hours, per day. And, this represents only the average commute. Run a year-end total and compare it with your drive time. Our survey shows that people spend an average of 21 days a year commuting. That's 21 days of down time, wasted time, gas-consuming and air-polluting time. How does that compare to your total? The next question I'd like you to think about is how much uninterrupted time you have at work. That is, the actual time you have to get your work done. Our survey says, that, on average, its less than four hours a day. For many, it is often less than the time than they spent commuting! Now consider the wasted time spent at the office. Now let's consider dialing-in instead of driving-in. In other words, if you spend two hours a day commuting and only have four hours a day concentrating on your work, then if you telecommuted you would gain a 50% increase in your productivity and have an extra amount of time for other projects. If you did this more than once a week, the gains are pretty significant. However, there are many opponents to being "green" and so I say, telecommuting is not for everyone but everyone can do it.

OCS Forum (http://www.ocsforum.com) announced today integration of Microsoft OCS-Office Communications Server Release 2 (OCSR2) Planning Tools into classroom and webseminar training. Microsoft offers a number of OCS planning tools such as OCS Capacity, VOAT (OCS VOice Assessment Tool), VIRTUAL OCS R2, Edge planning and others. "These tools are helpful but if you don't know why you are using them or what the concept means, then it's just clicking on radio buttons," noted Matt Jolly - CTO OCS Forum. In addition, these tools don't tell you how to install, configure or manage OCS. "What we have done is integrate these tools into our OCS indepth classroom or webseminar training. The student gets not just smart but job-smart," Jolly remarked. OCS Forum provides classroom and webseminar training as well as a non-production environment for those IT departments without additional equipment, budget or time. This allows planners and users to test ideas, dial in and dial back out, IM file transfers, remote desktop sharing, video conferencing, run scenarios, break linkages and learning about new telephony features and network access. OCS Forum is also designed for both the system integrator/consultant who wants to learn about OCSR2 without having to build their own system as well as the enterprise customer who doesn't have the time, resources or time to develop one. OCS Forum Labs are designed to be "hands-on" or "over-the-shoulder" with experts available for Q&A and classes for feature-specific review.

Another great series of tv stories about how Verizon's go-green strategy saves money and a lot more: http://www.youtube.com/user/VerizonCSRVideos

Ever since BellSouth in 1990 built the first all-fiber Central Office in Sawgrass, Florida and the VP of Network told his engineers that they had to justify why they were using copper, it marked the end of the copper era in telecommunications. Nearly 20 years later, the use of copper has diminished but not as rapidly as one would have thought. Now entire the world "Going Green" might finally kill copper - well at least give it yet another good push out the door. Verizon is showing how optical fiber saves car trips. In their Go Green PR blitz they said, "Verizon Business will continue upgrading its fiber-optic network with equipment that is four times more efficient and also reduces cooling costs. This could be equivalent to keeping as many as 16,000 cars off the road annually." There's much more in their PR but this is really cool stuff. For more amazing things Verizon is doing go here: http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2009/verizons-green-initiatives.html Along with many other companies, telecommunications is essentially a green strategy - moving information not people to anyplace they want to be anytime they need to be there. Having written the first book on Telecommuting in 1985, I have long hoped for a better world and telecommunications is new highway to get us there.

Presenters: John Endter, President, E Squared C Ed Carnes, Carnes Group LLC, Managing Partner and CIO Dave Bainum, Founder & Principal Consultant, RiteTech LLC Rex Backman, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Abstract: Please join us for this webcast as we explore sales and marketing strategies for making Microsoft Response Point a profitable addition to your business. You'll see why this small business phone system won the 2009 Technology of the Year Awards' Best Small Business Phone System award. Hear directly from your peer VARs on how they use Response Point to grow their business and improve satisfaction with their clients. After attending this webinar you will understand the significant market opportunity for Response Point with SMB customers as well as discover the successful sales strategies for making Response Point a ongoing profitable part of your network infrastructure business, and how it can help build new customer relationships http://blogs.technet.com/rp/archive/2009/04/14/april-30th-webinar-a-var-s-view-successful-tips-for-selling-response-point.aspx

Anyone doing OCS-Office Communications Server? We are building a system and would like to hear from others experiences. @ www.ocsforum.com

Hands-on Labs, Learning, Solutions, Guides and Hosted Microsoft Office Communications Server R2 BOULDER - February 5, 2009 - OCS Forum (http://www.ocsforum.com) was launched this week simultaneously with the release of R2 of Microsoft's OCS-Office Communications Server. "R2 is a total new product requiring 64-bit hardware upgrades," noted Matt Jolly OCS Forum CTO. "R2 is having a significant impact on corporate voice telecommunications strategies indicating the end of the TDM-time division multiplexed PBX-Private Branch eXchange is now insight. Microsoft is also driving companies like Cisco, Nortel, Avaya, NEC, Mitel, ShoreTel to rethink their featuresets and capabilities because while R2 is a new game when R3 is released in 2010, their days are numbered," Jolly commented. OCS Forum is intended to be OCS "sandbox" and "toolbox" allowing users to test ideas, run scenarios, break linkages and learning about features and network access. OCS is designed for both the system integrator/consultant who wants to learn about OCS without having to build their own system as well as the enterprise customer who doesn't have the time, resources or time to develop one. OCS Labs are designed to be "hands-on" or "over-the-shoulder" with experts available for Q&A and classes for feature-specific review. About OCS Forum OCS Forum is a vendor-independent laboratory environment designed for learning, technical guides, knowledge resources and online "live" services. OCS Forum provides consulting, training, case studies, white papers, speaking engagements, market/customer research, network planning and other services. For more go to http://www.ocsforum.com.

With the plethora of all the providers, agents, VARS, system integrators, brokers, master agents, channel partners and others, there is really no vendor-neutral, unbiased database where SMB-small medium businesses and enterprise customers can shop for services without feeling their wallets being grabbed from their pockets. Now there is a really cool web site with a growing list of providers and channel partners that can help bring solutions to customers. Business TECH Guides at http://www.businesstechguides.com is one unique solution source. Providers and channel add your products and customers go see if there is a solution for you.