News
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Internet phone service provider abbeyphone has just released a new beta with Firefox VoIP (above) and Thunderbird VoIP extensions.
Cernio of abbeyphone notes that these extensions fix an abbeyphone bug that I was the first to report late last year.
The bug appeared when working with blogs and content management systems. As cernio wrote as a […]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 23rd, 2007 with no comments.
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Skype for Mac 2.5 Goes Gold
Last day for 50% discount on North American Unlimited Plan
Skype for Business Updated
Skype for Mac 2.5 went Gold this morning; download it here. It brings Skype for Mac much closer to the feature set of Skype 3.0 for Windows. Key points:
- Send SMS messages to any mobile phone worldwide
- Host conference calls with up to nine other participants
- Takes full advantage of the built in webcams on recent Macs with upgraded video (one-to-one calls only); SightSpeed remains the market leader for multi-party video conference calls.
- Added a birthday reminder feature (which requires the Pamela Call Recorder for Skype for Windows users).
Also, if you are located in the U.S. or Canada note that today is the last day to get a 50% discount on the North American Unlimited Calling Plan. So while the link will remain live, expect those US$14.95 per year sunshine spots to disappear tonight.
Monday, Skype surpassed 9 million users online for the first time. Jaanus gets kudos for tracking this milestone.
Finally, last week Skype announced new features for Skype for Business; according to the press release this includes:
- easy installation on multiple computers within an enterprise
- via Skype Control Panel, allocate SkypeOut credits to individual users while providing a consolidated overview
Partner offerings include Unyte's Desktop Sharing (more information in a story later this week), Convenos web conference and collaboration service and the ACD Call-Centre offering from On-State. These are all available for trials via Skype's Extras Gallery.
We hope to have a more in-depth review of Skype for Business shortly. I have been constantly amazed at the number of Skype "business" stories that have come to us; we certainly would be willing to share your experience to provide more real life cases. Skype has issued a press release on one case.
Other bloggers' comments on Skype for Business:
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Written by Skype Journal on February 1st, 2007 with no comments.
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Mike Robertson of SIPphone just wrote to tell me that his company will introduce Gizmo Call tomorrow.
Gizmo Call will be an online service that will enable Internet calls from any browser. This will be accomplished via a Flash plug-in gthat will enable calls by typing a number into a field that will live on the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 30th, 2007 with no comments.
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What you are seeing up there is a grab of Dell letting you know they are now selling Vista-enabled PCs and notebooks. Final preparations are being made to formally activate the order process.
Went up just a couple of hours ago, with the best info available this link.
I stayed up on Saturday night to bring you [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 28th, 2007 with no comments.
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Parsing Skype parent eBay's 4Q and 2006 earnings reports today, we learn that:
Skype net revenues totaled $66 million in Q4-06, a growth rate of 164% over the $25 million reported in Q4-05. The Q4-05 revenue amount represented the operations of Skype from the acquisition date of October 14, 2005 through the end of Q4-05.
Skype [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 25th, 2007 with no comments.
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As many of you know by now, Cisco filed a trademark infringement suit against Apple for the iPhone today.
Details here.
My colleague Larry Dignan got an advance warning earlier this morning:
In an email to me earlier today, Cisco spokesman John Noh said:
"The fact is that we have not received the approved agreement back from Apple as [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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Cable tv publication Multichannel News reports that gunshot damage to Comcast's fiber-optic main service line took down cable service for some 7,500 customers in Palm Beach county, Florida.
Service disruptions lasted from New Year's Eve until early on January 3. Some 20 separate nodes were affected.
It wasn't an overly ticked-off customer (as if) but drunken revelers. Reportedly, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 9th, 2007 with no comments.
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As The New York Times noted earlier this week, defunct video-on-demand company Intertainer filed a lawsuit asserting that Apple, Google and Napster are infringing on a 2005 patent that covers the commercial distribution of audio and video over the Internet.
Based on that information I decided to look at that patent and see if there [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 4th, 2007 with no comments.
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It’s a new year and I’m happy to report Skype Journal is back online, although funny looking for a few days. We’ve moved to a new technical setup (hosting, software, template structure) that should be much more stable and convenient.
Meanwhile, any of you going to the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas next week? Jim Courtney will be there. Join the CES 
backchannel if you’re using Skype 3.0.
If not CES, how about MacWorld in San Francisco? If you’re blogging on Apple’s new iPhone (or its absence) or updates to iChat, Skype me.
2007 is the year we move Skype Journal from a full-time hobby to a thriving business. More on that soon.
Written by Skype Journal on January 4th, 2007 with no comments.
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Well, we're almost to #1.
Checking our server logs for 2006, we find that our second-most read post on this blog in 2006 has been iPod podcast menus, navigation depicted in new Apple patent app.
This one caused quite a stir. In fact, it was our #1 most commented-on post this year.
Even just a cursory review [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 27th, 2006 with no comments.
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APC magazine and other outlets report that Office for Mac 2004 users who intend to install Office 2007 are not in for a pleasant experience.
That's because Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 now all use different file formats: .docx instead of .doc, .xlsx instead of .xls and .pptx xlsx in lieu of .ppt.
Because Word 2007 [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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A number of you are questioning my judgement about why I devoted such a significant amount of real estate here to the Apple podcast navigation patent app.
Quite a few of your comments came in the guise of "this is nothing new."
Well, whether there is anything new here or not has nothing to do with [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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EXCLUSIVE: A new Apple Patent application just published this morning provides insight into how a series of hierarchical menus displayable on an iPod could guide a user to select podcasts for play that are already stored on the device.
The Patent Application is 20060265637, Utilization Of Podcasts on Portable Media Devices. And by PDMs, Apple [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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According to Florida Public Service Commission numbers published in today's Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, Vonage had 148,936 subscribers in the state of Florida as of September 1 of this year.
Given Florida's population of 17 million, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 30th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on November 28th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on November 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Earlier this afternoon, Universal Music Group sued MySpace for copyright infringement.
The problem seems to be that Universal believes that MySpace facilitates conversion and upload of copyrighted videos and music files of their artists to unauthorized third parties.
No dollar amount on the suit yet, but Universal says that of the "thousands of links" it says it [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 18th, 2006 with no comments.
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Just got a tip that as of an hour ago, 174 Sony Playstation3 consoles have sold on eBay for an average selling price of $2,618.47; since its availability on eBay in pre-sale [10/17- today], 3533 PS3 have been sold in pre-sale to date for an average sold price of $1,788.88.
You're looking at a [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 18th, 2006 with no comments.
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Well, our best information is that iPhones are on the way. This time for real.
Bloomberg News reports that Taipei, Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world's largest contract electronics components manufacturer, has signed a contract to make 12 million mobile phones for Apple in 2007.
The phones, which will include iPod music player functionality, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 16th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on November 16th, 2006 with no comments.
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While I am here in my office making tea, I'm also trying to read tea leaves about why a group of Vonage's largest shareholders asked the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday to postpone a regulatory step that would make it easier for these execs to sell their stock.
This request relates to the expiration [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 15th, 2006 with no comments.
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And so, as Rich Tehrani reports, it played out in a Texas courtroom yesterday when Comcast successfully defended itself against a $2.2 billion lawsuit filed by Caritas Techologies.
Dave Farber, who is often cited as the "grandfather of the Internet," holds a series of VoIP-related patents. That was, and is, not in dispute.
What was in [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 15th, 2006 with no comments.
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iPod lovers=Zune haters. They are out there in the teeming millions.
I am convinced that a significant proportion of these Zune debunkers are really Microsoft haters. If MSFT developed a cure for cancer, then maybe folks like this would hate Microsoft somewhat less.
At roll-out ceremonies for the Zune today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the […]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 15th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on November 13th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on November 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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I know that many advocates of meaningful Congressional action on net neutrality are hopeful that tomorrow's elections will result in a shift of power to a Democratic party that generally seems to be more sympathetic to pro-net neutrality arguments than the Republicans are.
There's two reasons why tomorrow's results are not going to shift things.
First, althought [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 7th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on October 24th, 2006 with no comments.
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Well, there are video teleconferencing solutions over IP, some of which are more dependable and advanced than others. But the point of all of these are, as collaboratively well as they work, you kind of know the people you are videoconferencing with aren't really there.
It's not just the quality of the connection, or the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Last week, as the "GooTube" moniker began to be applied to Google's acquisition of YouTube, I posted that there actually is a "GooTube."
Founded a year ago by Internet marketer Eric Watson, it provides a search engine for glue-related tube type products. Keep in mind that Eric secured the gootube domain a year ago, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on October 10th, 2006 with no comments.
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OK, first the details: announced yesterday, the JAJAH Mobile Suite will enable free cell-to-cell calling among JAJAH customers with Symbian and Java-based J2ME phones.I have to admit that sounds kind of cool. If I had such a phone, I would certainly try it. Now before JAJAH- a company with a highly proficient promotional apparatus- [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 26th, 2006 with no comments.
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In what strikes me as both a paranoid and Luddite move, San Jose State University is seeking to block the use of Skype on campus.The issue first came to light in last Monday's Spartan Daily, when reporter Stefanie Chase wrote that Don Baker, interim associate vice president of university computing and telecommunications, who alluded to the memo [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Namibia is the latest nation to go absolutely convulsive over the prospect of some of its citizens bypassing the local phone monopoly by selling and using VoIP. Five people have been busted. Mike at TechDirt has the story.Then, as Mike also points out, there was a bust two years ago in Belarus, and there's an [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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HP board chair Patricia Dunn, she of privacy-invading and quite possibly illegal investigatory practices against fellow Board members and several journalists, has resigned from the HP board effective immediately.Now, I wonder how many other HP board members and execs who had knowledge of these disgraceful tactics are going to be kicked out on their ass. [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Does the name Kurt Eichenwald ring a bell?He's the New York Times reporter who, before, during and after the Enron trial, helped inform the nation about the shenanigans at the ill-fated utility.When Eichenwald reports something, I believe it.Even if what he is reporting is unbelievable.Like, for example, the well-sourced assertion in today's paper that to [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 20th, 2006 with no comments.
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ADTRAN today announced the introduction of the NetVanta 3400 Series of Multiservice Access Routers. The series delivers up to two T1s of wire-speed performance, even with advanced services like Firewall, Access Control Lists (ACLs) and IPSec Virtual Private Networking (VPN) enabled. I've always been a fan of ADTRAN's "all in one" networking solutions, which often give you not just a router, but PoE, firewall, VPN, built-in SIP server, CompactFlash for backup, and more. Back in May,
I wrote about ADTRAN's 7100 IP-PBX, which I thought was one of the most comprehensive, plug-in-play, all-in-one IP-PBXs in the market. Similarly, I was
impressed with ADTRAN's Total Access 900, which is also a comprehensive solution.
Well, the new NetVanta 3400 series includes the NetVanta 3448 and 3430, each a modular, 1U-high, rackmountable metal chassis that also follow Adtran's "all in one" model. These products are targeted at the Small and Medium Business (SMB) or enterprise applications requiring high-performance throughput for bandwidth-intensive applications. Each offers a single-slot to house any of the NetVanta Network Interface Modules (NIMs) for WAN access and Dial Backup Interface Modules (DIMs) for disaster recovery applications, two 10/100Base-T Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN) interfaces that allow for broadband backup or DMZ, CompactFlash for configuration backup and storage of multiple firmware revisions, and support for up to 500 simultaneous VPN tunnels. Each is RoHS compliant making it ideal for both domestic and international applications.
The NetVanta 3448 includes the addition of a fully managed, non-blocking, eight-port 802.3af-compliant Power over Ethernet (PoE) Switch delivering a full 15.4 watts of power per port. This allows you to power any PoE device, including security cameras, SIP phones, or wireless access points.
These products also offer a five-year warranty and free firmware upgrades for the life of the unit.
“As the demand for bandwidth-intensive applications continues to grow so does the need for greater throughput and processing speed,” said Rick Schansman, senior vice president and general manager, ADTRAN Enterprise Networks Division. “The NetVanta 3400 Series clearly addresses these needs by allowing businesses to fully utilize a complete arsenal of security and performance features without degrading throughput performance.”
The NetVanta 3430 has a list price of $895, while the NetVanta 3448 has a list price of $1,045. Both models are currently shipping. The Power over Ethernet option for the NetVanta 3448 has a list price of $345 and will be available in Q4. Enhanced VPN capabilities can be activated through a software upgrade for $395.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on September 19th, 2006 with no comments.
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According to a
CNet article, a U.S. District Court in Illinois has ordered
Spamhaus to pay $11,715,000 in damages to e360insight and its chief, David Linhardt, who had sued Spamhuas over illegal blacklisting. e360insight by all accounts a known spammer and therefore Spamhaus refused to remove them from their blacklist - used by thousands of organizations. In fact, TMC uses Spamhaus on our email server to filter spam. It's one of my favorite email blacklists since it is very accurate with very few false positives.
Spamhaus didn't mount a defense in the case so the ruling was a default judgment in absence of any counterarguments. Now get this - the court barred Spamhaus, a U.K.-based organization from causing any e-mail sent by e360insight or Linhardt to be "blocked, delayed, altered, or interrupted in anyway" and ordered Spamhaus to publish an apology for that states that Linhardt and his company are not spammers, according to a copy of the order.
What a joke! A U.S. court ordering an independent company from maintaining a list of IP addresses and domains? I should point out that blacklists in themselves DO NOT BLOCK email. Companies voluntarily SUBSCRIBE to these free blacklists in order to filter out the massive spam that is becoming an ever increasing problem. If you ask me, Spamhaus could have easily won this court case had they decided to mount a defense. For one, the
1st Amendment would trump just about anything the plaintiff claims. Secondly, they are spammers, so what judge would want a legitimate blacklist company from protecting their subscribers from these vile spammers?
I love this quote from the spammer sent to CNet. "This ruling confirms e360insight's position that Spamhaus.org is a fanatical, vigilante organization that operates in the United States with blatant disregard for U.S. law," Linhardt wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com on Thursday.
I have had the same corporate email address for 12 years, longer than most people and therefore my email address is known to just about every spammer in the book. I get over about 200 spam emails a day which does affect my productivity. Even though I have filters and I tag blacklisted emails, it still takes time to sift through them all to make sure there are no false positives. This is why I passionately despise spammers.
Fortunately, Spamhaus isn't taking this ridiculous U.S ruling lying down. In fact, they're ignoring it. According to CNet,"Default judgments obtained in US county, state or federal courts have no validity in the UK and can not be enforced under the British legal system," Spamhaus said on its Web site. "As spamming is illegal in the UK, an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to UK law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place."
You go Spamhaus!
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on September 15th, 2006 with no comments.
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The mainstream media, and sad to say, most of the blogosphere, are getting this story of Patricia Dunn's "ouster" from the chairpersonship of Hewlett-Packard completely wrong.First, the quickest of backgrounders: Dunn is front and center in a full-blown scandal that has involved HP using investigators using shady "pretexting" practices to pry into the personal calling [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 14th, 2006 with no comments.
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I'm a big fan of the open source Asterisk platform for developing and facilitating VoIP applications. It logically follows that I am pumped about Asterisk-leader Digium's announcement at Fall VON 2006 that it is getting ready to launch Asterisk Appliance.Front and center in the Appliance will be the $3,995.00 Asterisk Appliance Developer Kit. This will enable components [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 12th, 2006 with no comments.
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Five years is a long time.
Yes, it's easy to take everything we have for granted, from the large to the small, but five years ago today being in New York City meant being on your own -- there were no means of personal communications; the infrastructure needed to support wireless and wired technologies had been suddenly blown apart.
It was a return to the days of mass communications solely -- there was no such thing as personal communication. And being unconnected on the street really meant not knowing what was going on -- word of mouth ruled and that lack of knowledge fueld speculation on what was occurring and how to react to it.
Wired News has a good article on how 9/11 gave birth to the blog -- among other things ...
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on September 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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So now it comes out that investigators working for HP (that'd be Hewlett-Packard) have been using phone pretexting to investigate reporter's records to track down a leak believed to come from the corporate boardroom.The leak angered HP Chair Patricia Dunn enough that she reportedly authorized this pretexting. Or, at least didn't put a stop to [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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