Yearly Archives: 2011

Q: How Will Cat-iq Help HDVoice??

CAT-iq Logo-250 Earlier this week someone posed me a question by way of twitter. They asked, “How Will Cat-iq Help HDVoice??” I responded briefly, also via Twitter, but upon reflection I think a longer answer may be in order.

Some time ago VoIP luminary Jeff Pulver started to beat the drum for HDVoice. As an initial part of that effort he organized a couple of HDVoice Summits where interested parties could meet and discuss the issues surrounding widespread adoption of HDVoice.

The first of these events was in May 2009 in New York City. I was fortunate to be able to attend. It was there that I started to track who was promoting the use of HDVoice, how, and sometimes why*.

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Get That Will You Dear? A Phone For The Door Or Gate

My efforts at blogging began on November of 2007. Since then I’ve covered a variety of topics, mostly relating to issues of home office communications and network infrastructure. In all that time one item has remained on my honey-do list; the intercom or access phone at the front gate. At long last, I’ve ordered the parts to finally deploy some kind of solution, even if  it’s not exactly what I was hoping for.

The first question to answer is why do we need a gate intercom in the first place?

Working from a one-man home office one of the biggest inconveniences I face is taking deliveries from courier companies. Like many homes, we have a fenced yard, so the delivery person cannot get up to the font door to knock. Even if they did, my office is in the back of the property, in what was once a garage apartment, so I wouldn’t hear them knocking on the front door.

Further, with our two Labrador Retrievers occasionally in the yard there’s some sense in keeping the delivery people at the gate. It’s safer, both for them and the dogs.

There’s a button for doorbell at the front gate, but it hasn’t worked in years. The doorbell mechanism in the house was long since removed, given my equally longstanding intention to install something better. I’ve been searching for “something better” for quite some time. That something better has proven difficult to find.

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T-Mobile Network HSPA+ Issue Plagues Users of HTC Handsets

T-Mobile-G2-Landscape-300 In the last week of July a number of T-Mobile subscribers began observing that the battery life of their HTC handsets had fallen away dramatically. Both my wife and I have the G2 (aka HTC Desire Z) and have found that typical battery life has dropped from 8-10 hours to less than 4 hours on a charge.

In fact, I noticed that the back cover of my G2 was warm to the touch even as the phone was sitting idle all morning. Even in a completely idle state the phone was drawing enough current to make the battery warm.

There’s a long thread about this issue in the T-Mobile support forums. Over the past few days others have noted the issue in various places, including; Phone Arena, T-MoNews & Phandroid.

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