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Companies that I truly admire. Products & services that I both use and recommend. In no particular order, and by no means a complete list. I’ll add to this list is as the thought occurs to me, or remove offenders as necessary.

Comcast Business Class Internet Access has fundamentally changed how I think of Comcast. Their service offers several key advantages over consumer cable modem service: better performance, a local sales rep to handle all contacts, and no transfer caps. At $99/mo it costs 40% more than top tier consumer services, but it’s worth the price for a home office dweller.

I’ve been using Junction Networks myself since June 2006, initially just for terminating calls from my Asterisk server. Later I transitioned my employers US operations to their OnSIP hosted PBX service. The service is great and their support, when required, has been exemplary.

SmallWall is the logical successor to m0n0wall, one of the most successful open source projects ever launched. A brilliantly simple, yet powerful router/firewall it’s extremely reliable. Community support is great and I’ve even contributed some details about traffic shaping for VoIP. It runs on any PC with two network ports, or various embedded hardware platforms including Soekris and PCEngines hardware.

Polycom is IMHO quite simply the leader in desktop IP phones. For years a SoundPoint IP650 graced my own desk. More recently I’ve used the VVX Series Business Media Phones. For my money nothing else comes remotely close.

Words cannot express how much I admire my Slim Devices Squeezebox3 music players. In fact, we have five. They are central to how we listen to music and radio here in our home. Each Squeezebox is paired with a set of self-amplified monitor speakers. All five can play the same playlist in sync, or each play a separate track. While no longer offered for sale, they remain an outstanding product!

If you’ve not experienced a truly high-quality audio conference service then I recommend ZipDX.

If you are in any way involved in desktop video production you need to check out vMix! It’s the superlative software toolset for real-time desktop video applications. I used it every week to produce aspects of the VUC sessions from 2014 – 2019. Also in the production of Cluecon live streams in 2018 & 2019.

Raves

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