Graves On SOHO Technology

Thus far in this series I’ve looked at things common to all the Gigaset handsets, the A58H, C59H and S67H. This time I’m examining the S79H.

The S79H has actually become my favorite of the five Gigaset handsets that I’ve tried. My challenge now is to describe how it came to earn that honor.

You may look around and find it offered as part of the S790 or S795 DECT systems. These include a DECT base that provide only an analog line interface and are not SIP capable.

Like the C59H, the S79H is only being offered in North America as an expansion handset. It can be used in conjunction with any existing A580IP or S675IP system.

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Earlier this week VUC founder Randy Resnick (@voipusers) made a guest appearance on The Typical Mac User Podcast to discuss all things VoIP-ish on OSX. This is kind of funny because, in my experience, Randy is probably anything but a typical Mac User.

It’s also worth noting that Apple has done an exemplary job of handling audio for VoIP on their line of laptops. Normally I’d recommend using a headset over the built-in hardware, but Mac’s, and particularly Skype on a Mac laptops, do an unusually good job of echo cancellation.

It’s nice to see a friend and co-conspirator getting around and being recognized for not only his expertise, but his ability to convey things with both depth and clarity.

I’ve recently been reflecting upon my history as an Asterisk user and the evolution of my preference for embedded systems (aka appliance) approach to Asterisk servers.

The path that I’ve followed is probably typical of a lot of people in many ways. Perhaps by sharing my experience I can help some people avoid some of the problems that I have faced, and understand how I arrived at my personal definition of an “Asterisk Appliance.”

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Junction Network’s OnSIP service was just announced the winner of a 2010 Stevie Award for their My.OnSIP user portal. They won in the category of new telecom product or service from a company with less than 100 staff.

Congratulations to Rob, Mike & the rest of the JN team on some well-deserved recognition of their efforts!

Earlier today Skype announced the pending launch of a beta program for an SDK called SkypeKit. SkypeKit is intended to allow hardware developers to embed Skype client functionality into their devices.

SkypeKit seems to be a logical next step after having recently partnered with LG, Samsung and Panasonic to build embedded Skype clients for their newest HDTVs. I mentioned this previously.

There’s a bunch of coverage of the SkypeKit launch available at various places online. Engadget has their say and some nice pics of the Grandstream GXV-3140 Media Phone running Skype. Also a Litl webbook that looks like it’s running Skype with video.

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The team over at Junction Networks have just posed a nice review of Bria iPhone Edition.

Todd Carothers, VP of Product Management at Counterpath will be on part 2 of Friday’s VUC call to discuss this new product offering.

Since I am working in the Burbank office this week I had one of my iPhone-wielding associates purchase the software and give it a try on his iPhone 3G. We only took a few minutes to get the registration data entered but didn’t have time to make any calls yet. Perhaps I’ll have more on that later.

Earlier this week that same associate has ordered a couple of iPhone 4s. He may consign one of his older iPhone’s to me once the new hardware arrives. I have no need of another cell phone, but it would be interesting to have a iOS platform available to experiment with some of the related applications, and the price is right!