1000 degrees and counting...

I took the infrared thermometer gun home over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Remember, Jeff said "no", but I heard "later".

It is a cool device. First, I tested my stovetop burners, a whopping 960^O. Next, I tested boiling water to calibrate, 206^O. Not bad, off by less than 3%. The big test though was to be on my infrared ceramic grill. These are supposed to put out 1400^O. They get so hot, the instructions warn against having the lid down when at full blast. You can weld the lid closed...hmmm. I fired it up and aimed the gun learning it is hotter than 999^O. I need a bigger gun (or was that boat?).

As expected, Thanksgiving dinner was the usual fare. Cippolini onions with balsamic vinegar was the surprise dish. Very good! This weekend I decided to do something different with leftover turkey. A restaurant on the west coast makes Turkey Stroganoff and does not change the recipe from beef broth to chicken. I wanted to taste this so today's original recipe is Turkey Stroganoff. It was excellent! The turkey easily can handle the bold beef broth. I made it mostly using dark meat. This beats the usual leftover turkey fare. By the way, I develop many of my recipes by first hearing about something. We can't always get a sample.

Why do Cisco and Avaya get all the publicity when it comes to IP PBXs? Perhaps it's because most analysts work for large companies or readers relate to these icons more readily. While Broadvox certainly works with both companies' products, we also have great relationships with the smaller more fleet of foot offerings. Well known to most of us are Allworx and Asterisk. Lesser known, but excellent products are those from companies like Panasonic with the new Network Communication Platform (NCP), Sutus and the Business Central 200 or Grandstream GXE502x.

These and many other partners' IP PBX products are built specifically for the small-to-medium business (SMB) marketplace. This week I'll take a first pass at examining the needs of SMBs and how these and other products fit into their buying decisions. Too many times SMBs are lumped into the same bucket as enterprises. Broadvox has addressed this by creating products and features that can be customized to the particular telecom usage of SMBs. By combining our services with products designed to serve this market, we can jointly improve the value proposition to SMBs.