Michael Graves

This author has written 1385 articles

Staying Frosty Through A Texas Summer

Nexus4-HighTemperature.pngSome time ago I characterized a high quality coffee machine as essential equipment for home office dweller. That remains true, but given the last four weeks straight of 90+ degree days, culminating in a daytime high of 107 F (!) last weekend, I’m revising my stance to nominate the air conditioner as technological king of this hill.

When my wife and I bought this property some dozen years ago we were specifically looking for a home with a garage apartment that I could adapt into a home office. The one bedroom, ground floor, garage apartment here seemed the perfect candidate.

In general, my home office has served me well. In fact, I’m truly blessed to have such a space. Even so, over time I’ve made some changes to enhance my productivity, including replacing the air conditioner…twice!

The path by which I can to have the current air conditioner was not simple. Along the way I have learned a few lessons. Since the major purpose of this site is to share such experience I thought it about time that I addressed the matter of keeping my cool.

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Oh, Yeah: DIY Room Systems!

DIY-Room-System-200pxPrognosticator extraordinaire Dave Michels recently post some observations of things he saw at InfoComm. In so doing I think that he may have coined a new buzz-phrase, “DIY Room Systems.” I must admit that I am smitten with the concept.

For those not versed in enterprise video conference jargon a “room system” is a video conference end-point of the sort that might be found in a meeting room. That covers a broad swath of territory, basically everything between desktop video conference clients and telepresence suites.

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Augmenting An Ultrabook

Lenovo X1 Carbon and Docking StationWay back in January when I bought a Lenovo X1 Carbon (X1C) I was a bone fide corporate road warrior. The decision to move into an ultrabook was motivated largely by the desire to have less to carry.

More recently I’ve transitioned into a more stay-in-the-home-office role. Sooooo, I’m not carrying things around very much…but I am living with some of the compromises entailed by the ultrabook class of device. All of this has me wondered when it’s ok to spend a bit more to augment the X1C vs going in another direction entirely?

Allow me to share some of the things that have come to light about the X1C. These are not so much defects as practical realities attached to the ultrabook form factor. For example, there aren’t very many ports. To be more specific, there’s one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port and a displayport.

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Audio Codes Offer First Signs Of Hardware Support for Opus Codec

AUDIO-CODES-420HD-300pxOne of the first interesting things to arise out of this weeks WebRTC conference in Atlanta is an announcement from Audio Codes that they will be adding support for the Opus codec to their 400HD series of SIP desk phones. Here’s the press release.

There seems to be a little confusion about what’s actually going to be offered.  The title of the release states, “AudioCodes Announces WebRTC Phone.” The copy goes on to describe that the hardware will be extended to provide native support the Opus codec. This capability is projected to be deliverable in Q4-2013.

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Video Calling 1: People Just Don’t See Me In The Right Light

polycom-hdx-4500-photo-01-300pxSince taking up my new gig with ZipDX and Polycom a splendid HDX-4500 has graced my home office. It’s without question the most sophisticated end-point device that I’ve encountered. It’s a real treat to use, especially since I do so many calls using video these days.

The HDX is large enough that it gets a desk of it’s own, located across the room from my primary desk, desktop PC et al. When I’m using the HDX I always have my laptop on that desk as well.

The trouble is that I’ve had some difficulty getting the lighting correct for video calls. I’ve muddled along trying different solutions with what I’ve had on-hand, and playing with moving things around the space. Recently I’ve come to think that I need to take more significant steps to provide consistently good lighting.

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