End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

How To Connect A Google+ Hangout-On-Air To a Conference Bridge: Part 2 – Interconnection

It’s worth noting that a Google “Hangout” is not the same as a “Hangout-On-Air.” A Hangout-On-Air is streamed and recorded via YouTube in real-time. This gives it the potential for much greater reach. A normal Hangout is not streamed in this manner, although it does allow for PSTN connectivity.

This difference is arbitrary, although I’m told it stems from legal concerns about copyright issues that could easily occur if Hangouts-On-Air were allowed to have broad interop capability.

The fact that the VUC uses a Hangout-On-Air has compelled my search for a reliable, high-quality means of interconnecting the Hangout-On-Air and ZipDX conference bridge. Given my long-standing and vociferous support of HDVoice even the PSTN access provided by a plain vanilla Hangout is troubling. Connecting via a pure IP means, like SIP URI, would allow interconnection with much better audio quality.

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Recent Thoughts About The Edge of My Network

monowall-pfsense-alix-kitIn recent weeks I’ve been accumulating some thoughts about the edge of networks, and the edge of my home office network in particular.

This all started last month where there was an Ars Technica article describing how someone found a backdoor that allowed an evil-doer to gain admin access to a common consumer combination DSL Modem/router/Wifi AP. The author initially proved the exploit by hacking his Linksys WAG200G wireless gateway.

The article describes how he published the script used to run the exploit. That allowed others to try the exploit against various makes/models of consumer hardware. It thus came to light that the same trick works against various products from Linksys and Netgear, amongst others.

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Video Calling 4: Can You Identify These lights?

DVE-TelepresenceIt’s been a while since the matter of lighting for video calling has been an issue around here. In general I’ve been pretty happy with the Brightlines LED Conference lamp that I had described previously. I do wish that I had a second light to use at my desk. Thus far I’ve been moving the Brightlines lamp from place to place as needed.

Just a couple of days ago Dave Michels mentioned that he had acquired some of the Videssence ViewMe Lights. The lucky devil, his were acquired on-the-cheap via Ebay. It’s curious that the web site at www.ViewMeLight.com seems to be D.O.A. even though the product page is up at the Videssence website.

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