After much consideration I’ve found that I am able to attend Astricon 20011. I’m already committed to a series of meeting in Burbank, CA Monday-Wednesday, so I’ll be making a stop Boulder on the way home. I plan on arriving…
In my travels there have been times when I’ve engaged in some very long phone calls. It may be that I’m speaking to my wife while killing time in some far off hotel, or perhaps consulting with an associate on a tech support matter. In such circumstances I’ve come to believe that a USB attached speakerphone and a soft phone can be a very convenient combination.
USB attached audio devices are handy when you have a computer readily available. Being USB attached they save you the trouble of finding a way to provide network connectivity for a traditional IP conference phone.
At lasts years visit to Astricon it became clear that it would be good to “tool up” for having conference calls at remote locations. As I described previously, the ClearOne Chat 50 USB speakerphone that I had brought along was not really adequate to the task of a conference call with a number of people scattered around a hotel room.
I can’t fault the device as it, like most USB attached speakerphones, are intended as personal audio devices, to be used by an individual at a desk. It’s microphone pickup pattern describes a 120 degree arc across the front of the device. That means that fully two thirds of the room are off-mic and won’t be heard very well.
Doug Mohney is spending this week in Las Vegas at DEFCON 18. I understand that today he was to give a presentation entitled "HDVoice - The Overdue Revolution." I surely do wish that I was able to attend DEFCON and…
There’s a little leather-covered box that sits at the back of my desk. It’s the recipient of small items of technology that for some reason I can’t really use but also can’t stand to just throw away. It held until recently an impressive selection of Bluetooth cordless headsets.
Seriously, I bet I’ve purchased eight of those little beasts over the years, ever hopeful that each would be the one that was actually usable…possibly even a pleasure to use…but I was always disappointed. This cycle has gone on for long enough that I’d pretty much written off Bluetooth devices as a pointless waste of time.
This is one last thing from the Astricon '09 presentation. With this slide set all the material created for that presentation is now online. View more presentations from mjgraves.