VoIP – Page 31 – 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.

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.

Questioning The Future Of Home Phones

Many folks, including Tom Keating, Garrett Smith and Dave Michels are looking for a next generation consumer electronics device. Over the past while I’ve seen some enthusiasm expressed for the Open Peak’s prototype gadget. I hesitate to call this device a phone although the Open Peak prototypes appear to be a cross between a cordless phone system, a tablet PC and an iPod Touch. I certainly agree that it’s really pretty.