Tech blogger Dave Zatz of Zatz Not Funny today announced that he has a sample of the Yamaha PSG01s USB attached speakerphone to give away. You'll recall that I wrote about this little device earlier this year. My only reservation…
As I’ve mentioned previously, more than once, the recent release of SkypeKit seems like an opportunity for a company like Tivo to up their game. Adding video calling capability to Tivo seems like a natural extension of the devices functionality.
If you have a Tivo unit it’s already connected to your TV. It’s most likely already on your network and making use of your broadband to fetch guide info and download movies. I know that we use our TivoHD units to watch Netflix streams and download from Amazon’s Unboxed service. You might already be using it to stream music and view the family photos on your TV.
Yep, video calling on the big screen would certainly be a logical next step.
Last week longstanding VoIP blogger and fellow Canuck Alec Saunders penned a nice post on the Calliflower Blog offering a collection of guidance for podcasters called “10 Podcaster Tips!” It’s a good read…not long…you should go read it now…then come back here. I’ll wait.
Over the past few years I’ve listened to a number of Alec’s Squawkbox podcasts, even attended a handful live & in-person. I respect and admire the man.
Taken in the context of the Calliflower conference service Alec’s post provides some sound, well-considered advice. Even so, I find there to be merit recasting it in a broader context and revisiting some of his points.
By “broader context” I mean specifically considering how someone could record a better sounding podcast by bypassing the legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN).
Late in 2009 my quest for a portable conference phone lead me to try the Ipevo X1-N6 Internet Conference Station. On the surface the X1-N6 has an attractive set of capabilities and a very attractive price point. Unfortunately, the unit that I purchased from my local Fry’s Electronics did not meet my expectations, so after a few weeks I returned it for a refund.
When I posted my experience with that device it caught the attention of the manufacturer. They had some theories as to why the unit I had behaved as it did. They asked me to return to the unit to them for investigation, but by then I had already returned it to the retailer. Since they could not pursue that situation further the manufacturer promised to send me a sample unit when their next production batch arrived from the east.
If you’ve been reading here for a bit you’ll know that I like my Plantronics .Audio 615m headset. I heartily recommend the Plantronics .Audio lineup for people who need a headset for use with a soft phone.
Since back when this review was published I’ve heard a couple of times that people have had issues with the Plantronics .Audio line not working correctly on Mac systems. Most recently this comment was posted to the review:
I find that I’m simply drawn to novel and innovative approaches to problems. In the VUC post-call ramble this past week Michael White of E4Technologies described something that’s stuck in my mind as being pretty cool.
He was working with a large-company-who-shall-remain-nameless on a very significant installation. It was going along well. They had selected a line of SIP hard phones from a large, well-known manufacturer, and were generally happy with the results. That is, happy with one exception; they didn’t like the performance of the speakerphone on their chosen model of desk phone.