VoIP – Page 86 – Graves On SOHO Technology

New Gadget: Plantronics .Audio 480 Headset

January 12, 2009
Michael Graves
Video, VoIP

plantronics-audio-480-headset My wife is a very patient woman, well much of the time. And I am very grateful, well most of the time. This past Christmas she gifted me a new Plantronics .Audio 480 wired headset. This week is my first business trip since the holidays so I decided to bring it along.

This trip finds me in Toronto. Normally I’d just use my cell phone for everything but international roaming rates are very high. Most typically a week in Canada adds $100-150 to my monthly T-Mobile bill.

Gigaset DECT Line Announced In The US

January 11, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

In all the activity of CES last week one could be forgiven for missing this press release from Gigaset Communications.

Gigaset Communications Announces the Launch of its Popular Gigaset DECT 6.0 Line of Phones in the U.S.

New, sleek versions of the Gigaset A580 and S675 IP, along with the Gigaset SL785, now available in North America

The award-winning Gigaset SL785 embodies the highest level of design and technology innovation seen in a cordless phone. This new design has already been recognized with an international Red.Dot Honorable Mention award, receiving rave reviews for its metal handset frame and charging cradle. The SL785 also includes user-friendly features such as an ergonomic keypad and large, icon-based color display. In addition to its award-winning form, the SL785 is also an eco-friendly phone with reduced power consumption.

Can You Hear Me Now? VoIP Bloggers Decide: VoIP Undead!

January 8, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

The past few weeks the blogosphere has been alight with the conjecture that “VoIP is dead.” A great many have weighed in with opinion on the matter, including; Alec Saunders, Andy Abramson, Dan York*, Ken Camp, Jon Arnold, Irwin Lazar, Om Malik, Tom Keating, amongst others. And a little unexpectedly, Jeff Pulver joined in on the conversation.

All of this seems to have culminated in a Calliflower conference call the evening of Monday January 5th. Those in attendance (39 people!) were essentially the most respected folks in the VoIP blogosphere. The debate was interesting but nothing I care to comment on here. The call is available as a podcast. It’s a good listen.

Truphone Extends Reach With IM, Twitter & Skype Integration

January 6, 2009
Michael Graves
mobile, VoIP

Truphone issued a couple of press releases today. The first release announces full interoperability of IM with MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and GoogleTalk in its iPod Touch and iPhone applications. They have also integrated Twitter into the TruFriends view of the Truphone application.

In the case of GoogleTalk users can also make and receive voice calls using the Truphone application. Similar voice capability is in the work for users of MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.

David Pogue On VoIP & VoWifi (amongst other things)

January 5, 2009
Michael Graves
mobile, Telco, VoIP

New York Times Gadget Guru David Pogue gives a presentation including VoIP, VoWifi, Skype, T-Mobile, voice mail, cell carriers Apple, the iPhone and Google. He's funny, too!

Controlling Applications From Asterisk

Many thanks to Dave Michels who earlier today passed a link to this blog post from New Zealand’s James Forman about Controlling Applications With Asterisk. James’ project is an excellent example of the sort of thing that sets Asterisk apart from everything else. He used a multi-step process to have DTMF tones issue commands to control a VLC VideoLAN media player.

His approach is very similar to what I had initially envisioned for my home automation project. Where James is dealing with the VLC commands I was going to have the IVR process call AGI scripts that would cause xsend.exe to send predefined commands to various X-10 home automation modules. That was part one of the project.