End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

Power To The People: Without Interuption!

Earlier this evening Leo Laporte of TWiT fame tweeted the following:

Power is out in Petaluma. TWiT Live is down until it returns but no ETA. Thank goodness for the iPad 3G. http://j.mp/dt8Oii

I must admit that I am surprised and a little shocked that such an incident would take TWiT Cottage off-line. Leo Laporte is unusual amongst the online media community. His TWiT related endeavors are an unparalleled success. His transformation from traditional to online media is the stuff of future textbooks.

An enterprise such as TWiT should not be taken down by something so simple as a power outage when standby generators are sold at every Lowe’s and Home Depot across the country.

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Revisiting The Ipevo X1-N6 Internet Conference Station

Ipevo x1-n6 Internet Conference StationLate 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.

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Gigaset One: Bluetooth-Based Cell-to-PSTN Interface

A couple of weeks ago friend Tony up at Gigaset promised to send me a couple of the newer Gigaset DECT handsets that they’ve started to sell in the US. The box arrived and true to his promise there are a couple of handsets..but this is not about them. Left with a little space in the box Tony threw in a Gigaset One Bluetooth interface device. It’s proven to be a curious and interesting little device.

Let me be completely clear about this….it’s not often that manufacturers just send me stuff (disclosure statement). After almost 600 posts to this blog I’ve managed forge a few good relationships with manufacturers, but in most cases I simply buy whatever hardware I truly need, and that’s what I get to write about.

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PBXes Now Supporting HDVoice

A post over at the VoIP Tech Chat forum at DSL Reports points out that PBXes, a service of the German company I-P-Tel, has recently added support for HDVoice in the form of G.722. Apparently this is just a trial…

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iNum Gaining Ground With Traditional Carriers

Voxbone’s iNum service this week announced that Verizon, British Telecom and Belgacom are now supporting their +883, the country code for “planet earth.”

From the companies press release:

“Gaining recognition of iNum from traditional, non-VoIP carriers is critical to iNum’s long-term success and, more broadly, is a major industry milestone, signaling a pivotal change in the thinking of the world’s national carriers,” said Rod Ullens, CEO of Voxbone. “With short- or long-term IP conversion plans of their own, most incumbent operators are no longer fighting but rather embracing Internet-based communication services.”

You can read the entire press release here.

I would hope that if Verizon gets in the game that other North American carriers will eventually do likewise.

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Evolving The Mobile Data Billing Model

AT&T 3G USB DongleEarlier this week AT&T has its quarterly earnings call. Normally I would not give it any notice at all. It’d just be another bunch of noise in my Google Reader in-box. This week they did something that simply jumped out at me; they called for an evolution of the current billing model for mobile data plans. Oddly enough…I agree…sort of.

Of course, their perspective on this is not quite the same as my own. AT&T want to be rid of the $60/mo for all-you-can-eat billing model and charge based upon actual usage, perhaps in some sort of tiered fashion.

Literally everyone knows that the current billing model is badly broken. Their flat rate “unlimited” plans are not really unlimited at all. My Sprint 3G service was pretty plain about it being capped at 5 GB/month. Beyond that I’d guess that it gets costly. Moreover they claim performance levels that almost no-one ever achieves in practice.

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