VOIP IP Telephony: June 2008

Monday, June 30, 2008

New BlackBerry Program for Verizon Wireless Indirect Channels

Brightstar Launches New BlackBerry Program for Verizon Wireless Indirect Channels

Partnership Leverages Long-Standing Relationships to Increase Product Access for Agent and Retailers

Miami, FL and Waterloo, ON –Brightstar and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX:RIM) announced today that they have expanded their existing distribution relationship, launching a dedicated program to increase availability of BlackBerry® smartphones in Verizon Wireless indirect channels.

R. Marcelo Claure, Brightstar's president & CEO, said "RIM is a phenomenal success story and their smartphones are in high demand by our customers and by consumers. RIM has tapped Brightstar to help increase access to their extremely popular products, strengthening their distribution strategy and improving their speed to market."

The new channel program launched by Brightstar delivers innovative marketing, sales, inventory management and credit management programs to national retailers and local agents of Verizon Wireless, one of the nation's leading wireless carriers serving over 67 million customers. The program will help bring BlackBerry smartphones to thousands of additional indirect points of sale faster, to better meet the high demand for BlackBerry products by consumers throughout the U.S.

Agents and retailers expressed excitement about the new program. "BlackBerry smartphone sales are the fastest growing opportunity for our business, and with those devices now being a part of the overall product portfolio at Brightstar, we will have better access and unmatched support for our BlackBerry sales," said Kevin Elder, president and CEO of Go Wireless, a major Verizon Wireless indirect agent.

This latest program builds on the significant success the two companies have achieved working together since 2005. To date, Brightstar and RIM have increased availability and penetration of BlackBerry smartphones serving both network operators and independent agents. Among the regions Brightstar currently supports on behalf of RIM are Latin America, the Caribbean and the U.S.

Mark Guibert, vice president, corporate marketing at Research In Motion said, "Brightstar and RIM have a successful history of working together to expand the reach of BlackBerry smartphones. Brightstar's excellent customer relationships and logistical efficiencies have been of great benefit to RIM."

Brightstar is also an authorized distributor of BlackBerry Authentic Accessories throughout the Americas. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Brightstar helps bring BlackBerry smartphones to 65 network operators in 36 countries, streamlining the supply chain and delivery of BlackBerry products.

For more information, visit www.brightstarcorp.com.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

iPhone Shuffled by INstinctiv!

Instinctiv™, a company dedicated to changing the way that consumers experience their entertainment, emerged from stealth mode today to announce its financing and the launch of its first product, Instinctiv Shuffle™. The round was funded by Cayuga Venture Fund, Rosetech Ventures and a group of strategic angels.

Ithaca, NY (PRWEB) June 26, 2008 -- Instinctiv™, (www.instinctiv.com), a company dedicated to changing the way that consumers experience their entertainment, emerged from stealth mode today to announce its financing and the launch of its first product, Instinctiv Shuffle™. The round was funded by Cayuga Venture Fund, Rosetech Ventures and a group of strategic angels.

Instinctiv Shuffle, which can be downloaded to the iPhone, helps consumers to rediscover their music libraries by learning what individuals want to hear in the moment. Consumers simply download the application, start iTunes, select Instinctiv Shuffle, skip the songs they don't want to hear at that time, and Instinctiv Shuffle does the rest, learning what consumers want to hear next.

"People's musical moods are not random and therefore we felt like their shuffle experience shouldn't be either, which is why we created the Instinctiv Shuffle," said Justin Smithline, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Instinctiv. "Instinctiv's goal was to create a way to to help consumers find enjoyable music instantly, without all of the skipping. Our application improves upon the iTunes Shuffle feature, getting smarter with every skip."

Instinctiv was founded in August 2007 by Justin Smithline and Peter Brodsky who met while earning their graduate degrees from Cornell University years earlier - Smithline an MBA and Brodsky a PhD in Neuroscience.

"We believe that Instinctiv has the potential to change fundamentally the way consumers interact with their entertainment," said Zachary Shulman, Managing Partner at Cayuga Venture Fund. "Instinctiv Shuffle is only the first of a suite of applications that will help consumers to discover and rediscover their entertainment in a new, more intuitive way."

"Cayuga Venture Fund, Rosetech Ventures and our angels have been tremendous supporters who have grasped our vision of leveraging our ground-breaking machine learning technology to deliver information in simpler, more efficient and more meaningful ways, starting with the Instinctiv Shuffle." says Smithline.

For more information on Instinctiv and its groundbreaking new iPhone application, Instinctiv Shuffle, visit www.instinctiv.com

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

T-Mobile @Home, A $10 Home Phone Service From T-Mobile.

BELLEVUE, Wash. – June 25, 2008 – T-Mobile USA, Inc. today announced a groundbreaking new home phone service that enables customers to make unlimited nationwide calls from their home phone for just $10 per month*. Beginning July 2, T-Mobile will breathe new life and value into the home phone by launching nationwide T-Mobile @Home®. The service allows customers to keep their home phone number, ditch their high phone bill and save money by adding their home phone line to their T-Mobile service.

According to a 2007 Scarborough Research¹ report, families spend an average of $65 per month on home phone service. However, for just $10 per month, T-Mobile customers can add T-Mobile @Home service to a qualifying T-Mobile wireless plan² and get unlimited nationwide long-distance calling, plus call waiting, caller ID, three-way conferencing, voicemail, call forwarding and other features. In addition, customers will have the opportunity to use features typically associated with wireless services—for instance, CallerTunes™ (ringback tones)—and port their existing home phone number so family and friends can continue to call them at the same familiar number.“For years, the traditional landline companies have been great at consistently delivering one thing to their customers—a high monthly bill,” said Robert Dotson, president and CEO, T-Mobile USA. “T-Mobile is now delivering the best priced home phone service in America for our existing and future customers. In addition, we are not only delivering the traditional features of a landline service, we are also including the innovative features consumers love in their more widely used mobile phones.”

Previously available in two test markets, Dallas and Seattle, T-Mobile @Home has proved to be a great solution for families looking for a way to save money without sacrificing a home phone. According to an internal T-Mobile study in these test markets, virtually all customers (97 percent) who had a traditional landline phone service reported dropping that service since adopting T-Mobile @Home.

To use the service, customers simply need the touch-tone corded or cordless phone they currently use, an existing broadband Internet connection, and the T-Mobile @Home HiPort™ Wireless Router with Home Phone Connection, available from T-Mobile for just $49.99 with a two-year service agreement. T-Mobile @Home is designed to be easy to set up and running in a matter of minutes. “Unlike VoIP, no special phone is required, allowing the family’s center of communications to stay in the kitchen,” Dotson added.T-Mobile @Home is available exclusively for T-Mobile customers, and will be offered at T-Mobile retail stores nationwide and online at www.t-mobile.com. For more information visit www.tmobileathome.com.

Jaxtr Gets New Funding And Goes Beyond Network For Your Calls

MENLO PARK, CALIF. - (June 24, 2008) – Jaxtr™, the company that links your phone to the Web, today introduces the freedom for members to call anyone in the world on their mobile phone without the worry of a huge bill, the hassle of calling cards, or downloading software to their mobile phone. In addition to the ability to make free in-network calls, jaxtr members can now call anyone in the world from their mobile phone for substantially less than the rates charged by most calling cards. In addition, members can make calls with the convenience of direct-dial numbers, which eliminate the hassle of access and PIN numbers required by calling cards. Jaxtr is currently used by more than 10 million users in 220 countries.

"Making international calls to friends, family, and business colleagues on your mobile phone has never been cheaper or easier. With jaxtr, it's just like calling a friend down the street," said Konstantin Guericke, CEO of jaxtr. "You simply dial a local number on your mobile, press the green talk button, and your friend's phone rings overseas. You'll never have to hassle with the inconvenience of calling cards again."

$10 Million Series B: Jaxtr also announces the completion of $10 million in Series B financing, a round led by new investor Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. "Jaxtr's market potential is extraordinarily large as the company is able to acquire millions of customers per month without spending any money on marketing. And it succeeded in monetizing its offering within 16 months of launch through two revenue streams, first advertising and now premium services," said Ben Boyer, partner at Lehman Brothers.

More Powerful Jax Credits: In jaxtr 1.5, members can now use their credits, called "jax," to call non-members. And when members run out of jax, they can now purchase more in order to meet all of their international calling needs. Since the company has grown to over 10 million users purely by word of mouth and enjoys a healthy advertising revenue stream, jaxtr can profitably offer the best rates in the business:

Canada: 1 jax/minute ($.01)
China: 1 jax/minute ($.01)
India: 6 jax/minute ($.06)
United Kingdom: 1 jax/minute ($.01)
United States: 1 jax/minute ($.01)

New Premium Memberships: Active members will now have the opportunity to earn access to new premium features, such as customizable contact pages, enhanced digital voicemail features and higher allotments of free international SMS per month. Additionally, active members will continue to receive free jax, which now can be used to call any number worldwide.

The Jaxtr Difference: Jaxtr helps users' link their phones to the Web to connect with friends worldwide, control their calls and talk at great low rates from any phone. With a personalized jaxtr link, members enjoy many benefits:

Community: Meet new people online, with whom you can actually talk, in café jaxtr.
Cost Savings: Bypass expensive international phone charges and send free international SMS.
Control: Forward in-bound calls to any phone, get PrivacyShield^TM to keep your number private and a global voicemail box online.
Convenience: Place a call from any mobile or landline phone. No need to download software to your mobile phone or to have an Internet connection to make a call.

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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Motorola, Inc. Gains complete DOCSIS 3.0 and PacketCable 1.5 certification for the Motorola SURFboard® SBV6220 digital voice modem.

HORSHAM, Pa. – 24 June 2008 – Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced that it has achieved PacketCable™ 1.5 certification for the Motorola SURFboard^® SBV6220 digital voice modem. Certified during CableLabs® Cert Wave 59, this certification marks one of the first complete DOCSIS 3.0 and PacketCable 1.5 certifications of an embedded multimedia terminal adapter (eMTA) in the industry, continuing to fill out Motorola’s industry-leading suite of customer premises equipment (CPE).

In response to the demand for integrated voice and data applications, cable operators are looking to optimize their networks by delivering DOCSIS 3.0 and PacketCable 1.5 certified technologies for subscribers’ homes. Built on the TI Puma 5, the Motorola SURFboard SBV6220 digital voice modem supports DOCSIS 3.0 data functionality and enables MSOs to provide their customers with advanced multimedia services through additional upstream and downstream bandwidth availability.

“TI is dedicated to helping Motorola and MSOs achieve quick, industry-wide adoption and deployment of standards based DOCSIS 3.0 and PacketCable technology,” said Brian Glinsman, TI's Communications Infrastructure and Voice general manager. “Motorola has reached two significant certification milestones leveraging TI’s Puma 5 DOCSIS 3.0 chipsets in the past month that will help MSOs meet the large demand for higher speeds, high quality VoIP and next generation services.”

The SURFboard SBV6220 digital voice modem was previously certified for data services in CableLabs Cert Wave 58 last month. It uses industry-standard signaling protocols to provide high-speed Internet access and up to two lines of full-featured digital voice telephone service over cable’s broadband connection to the home. The SBV6220 is backward compatible to DOCSIS 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 and can be deployed without service interruption, thus maximizing the MSO’s current infrastructure investment while enabling the deployment of value-added services. In addition, it provides MSOs with an economic option for greater than 160 Mbps of user data throughput, without the need for a hybrid fiber coax (HFC) plant upgrade. The SBV6220 supports both IPv4 and IPv6, and Advanced Encryption Services as part of the DOCSIS 3.0 standards.

“Motorola continues to be a leader in DOCSIS technology working with partners like TI to provide innovative solutions that maximize our customers’ investment in their networks,” said Alan Lefkof, corporate vice president and general manager, Broadband Solutions Group, Motorola, Inc. “By combining PacketCable 1.5 and DOCSIS specifications with innovative technology like TI’s Puma chip, Motorola is committed to bringing an unparalleled customer experience to MSOs’ cable customers to provide full-featured digital voice telephone service over their home cable connection.”

Motorola’s SURFboard® SBV6220 digital voice modem enables operators to:

Help protect their installed base of high-speed data customers
Deliver new high-value / high-bandwidth, multimedia services
Deliver competitive, high-capacity commercial services to their business customers

Designed for service assurance, the Motorola SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 SBV6220 is compatible with Motorola’s NBBS device management platform and Motorola’s eCare for remote access customer component troubleshooting and configuration, eliminating unnecessary truck rolls.

Motorola will demonstrate the SURFboard SBV6220 digital voice modem at booth #1251 at the SCTE’s CableTec Expo^® in Philadelphia June 24 – 27.

Motorola Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) and cable modems are being used in successful end-to-end channel bonding deployments worldwide. Motorola enabled the world’s first commercial channel bonding deployment through Starhub in Singapore, supports the first full-field deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 services for J:COM in Japan and delivers 100 Mbps high-speed data service to subscribers for Korea’s largest cable operator. The company continues its leadership in field deployments with the second largest cable operator in the UK, which selected Motorola’s EuroDOCSIS ^® 3.0-based CMTS for deployment in Scotland.

Nokia Purchases The Rest Of Symbian And Forms Symbian Foundation.

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced it has launched a cash offer to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own, at a price of EUR 3.647 per share. The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately EUR 264 million.

Nokia has received irrevocable undertakings from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ), Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. and Siemens International Holding BV to accept the offer, representing approximately 91% of the Symbian shares subject to the offer. Nokia also expects Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to accept the offer.

The acquisition is a fundamental step in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, announced today by Nokia, together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. More information about the planned foundation can be found at www.symbianfoundation.org.

"This is a significant milestone in our software strategy" said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia. "Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices. Through this acquisition and the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, it will undisputedly be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation. This will drive the development of new and compelling, web-enabled applications to delight a new generation of consumers."

"The wide support for this initiative, uniting the industry around the Symbian platform, reflects the strong gravitational pull it has for application developers and other ecosystem players. We will drive efficient, open innovation by unifying the platform and simplifying the software supply chain, leveraging our experience from mobile devices. Nokia is strongly positioned to realize the benefits of open innovation, as well as accelerating time to market, enabling us to meet and exceed consumer expectations for leading converged devices and experiences", Kallasvuo continued.

Symbian Limited is the software company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for mobile devices. User interfaces designed for Symbian OS include S60 from Nokia, MOAP (S) for the 3G network and UIQ, designed by UIQ Technology, a joint venture between Motorola and Sony Ericsson. A privately-owned company established in 1998, Symbian has its headquarters in London, UK and other offices in the United Kingdom, United States and Asia (Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo).

"Ten years ago, Symbian was established by far sighted players to offer an advanced open operating system and software skills to the whole mobile industry", said Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian. "Our vision is to become the most widely used software platform on the planet and indeed today Symbian OS leads its market by any measure. Today's announcement is a bold new step to achieve that vision by embracing a complete and proven platform, offered in an open way, designed to stimulate innovation, which is at the heart of everything we do."

Mobile devices based on Symbian OS account for 60% of the converged mobile device segment (source: Canalys, 12 months to Q1 2008). Symbian OS represented approximately 7% of all mobile device sales in 2007, up from 5% in 2006 (source: Strategy Analytics). To date, more than 200 million Symbian OS based phones have been shipped, over 235 models, from 8 vendors and on more than 250 mobile networks around the world. More than 4 million developers are engaged in producing applications for Symbian devices.

Nokia expects the acquisition to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2008 and is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. On a reported basis, Nokia expects the transaction to be dilutive in 2009, approximately breakeven in 2010, and accretive in 2011. On a cash basis, Nokia expects the transaction to be dilutive in 2009 and accretive in 2010 and 2011. After the closing, all Symbian employees will become Nokia employees.
More information can be found at www.symbianfoundation.org.

Cisco Learning Network! Because Networking Is More Than Ones And Zeros.

ORLANDO, Fla., CiscoLive, June 24, 2008 - Underscoring its commitment to accelerate the development of technical talent across the globe, Cisco today unveiled the Cisco Learning Network (www.cisco.com/go/learnnetspace). Designed for both the seasoned professional as well as individuals considering a career in information technology (IT), the Cisco Learning Network is a Web 2.0 community that enables networking professionals to collaborate globally through document sharing, open forum discussions and idea exchanges in a dedicated environment.

Cisco is also announcing a major augmentation to its popular associate-level career certification with the introduction of three concentrations: CCNA Security, CCNA Voice and CCNA Wireless. By expanding on the competencies and skills in the CCNA curriculum, these highly specialized concentrations offer individuals a career stepping-stone into the converged technologies that make up today's sophisticated networks.

"As networks continue to stimulate economic growth, collaboration and human interaction, the need for networking talent will grow in importance. To address the growing global demand for networking talent, we estimate that we will need to double or even triple our certified individuals over the next five years," said Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn, general manager of Learning@Cisco. "With the expansion of the CCNA portfolio and the launch of the Cisco Learning Network, we have added two more critical components to our companywide initiative to address the global IT talent shortage, accelerate the development of the information economy and improve the productivity of this vital technical community."

Cisco Learning Network

Providing social networking features such as blogs, wikis and forums, the Cisco Learning Network enables individuals to discuss top-of-mind issues and interact with thought leaders in network design, implementation and operations. The community will also directly contribute to the continued development and co-creation of Cisco's education strategies by providing real-world community feedback that can be used for training development and assessment.

With the built-in document-sharing tool, there is now a single source for the certified community to seek out product documentation, configuration and troubleshooting advice as well as expert opinions on networking challenges. As the community develops, it will become an important resource that can be taken advantage of by IT professionals to increase productivity and address critical issues in the networks they administer.

"With the demand for IT professionals on the rise, it's great to find a centralized resource that unifies industry trends, developments and certification opportunities," said renowned author and networking expert Terry Slattery, CCIE® #1026. "The Cisco Learning Network is a great tool for individuals who are looking to learn about new technology, stay in touch with colleagues, or pursue certifications."

Growing Need for Security, Voice and Wireless Specialists

A recent study commissioned by Cisco and conducted by Forrester Consulting found that there is a pervasive need for specialized networking skills. In fact, 36 percent of the global companies surveyed reported that they have dedicated wireless specialists in their IT organizations, a number that will almost double in the next five years. Dedicated network security specialists were found in 46 percent of the companies surveyed and that number is expected to increase to 80 percent in five years. Additionally, 69 percent of the companies surveyed expect to have a dedicated voice specialist in their organizations within five years up from 40 percent currently. The survey respondents also cited the importance of certifications in their professional development. In their own career history, the IT decision-makers surveyed indicated that professional and technical certifications were second only to a four-year college degree in the qualifications needed for their position.

Reflecting the increasing specialization within networking job roles, these concentrations provide a "lifecycle of learning" blueprint for career advancement. Following are the new CCNA concentrations:

CCNA Security - This certification confirms an individual's skills for job roles such as network security specialist, security administrator and network security support engineer. The certification validates the candidate's skills in the installation, troubleshooting and monitoring skills of network devices to maintain the integrity, confidentiality and availability of data.
CCNA Voice - This certification confirms a candidate's skills for job roles such as voice administrator, voice engineer and voice manager. It also validates skills in voice over IP (VoIP) technologies such as IP PBX, IP telephony, handset, call control and voicemail solutions. Candidates also get exposure to the Cisco Unified Communications architecture and design for mobility, presence and TelePresence applications.
CCNA Wireless - This certification confirms a candidate's skills for job roles such as networking associate/administrator, wireless support specialist and WLAN project manager. CCNA Wireless validates a candidate's skills in the configuration, implementation and support of Cisco wireless LANs.

To learn more about the Cisco career certification program, including course and exam availability please visit: www.cisco.com/go/learnnetspace

Cisco Press, the leader in CCNA self-study products, has products for the new CCNA Security exam already available and will publish on all CCNA concentration exams in 2008. All products will be available for purchase at: http://www.ciscopress.com/ccna

bluez-libs-3.34 and bluez-utils-3.34, (Official Linux Bluetooth protocol stack), Released To Address A Potential Security Issue

The SDP client functionality of the Bluetooth library contains a potential security issue and a new version is released after fixing the said issue. Since Chan-Mobile for asterisk uses this, you may want to check this out. The BlueZ team attribute credits for finding and fixing this issue to Glenn Durfee from the Google Android team.
The new versions are available here.

Google Talk Labs Edition, Brings The Web And Desktop Together

I just wrote about connecting Apple iChat IM Application to Google Talk and like iChat, there are many other IM clients that are able to connect to Google Talk. The Googletalk team have been working hard and the latest version, Google Talk Labs Edition, has brought forth many new advantages to the users.
The Labs Edition release uses the open source Webkit engine to host the Google Talk gadget. And by doing so the GoogleTalk team was able to bring the Talk gadget out of your browser, and onto your desktop, which is capable of runing in your Taskbar.
"Google Talk, Labs Edition combines “downloadable client behavior”, like stacking notifications and displaying presence outside the browser, with nearly all of the web behaviors of the Google Talk gadget, such as emoticons, multi-user chat, tabbed conversations, etc. It can also natively display web notifications from multiple sources, such as Gmail and calendar alerts and Orkut scrap changes. A few weeks ago we added invisible mode to the Google Talk Gadget, and this functionality immediately extended to Google Talk Labs Edition."
So go check it out! If you do you may be able to catch Diordna, our communications guy, when he is on the net.

Google Talkabout: Bringing the web and desktop together

Configure iChat for Google Talk To Talk To Your Google Buddies.

If you have got an Google Account and you may know that you can use Google talk for communicating with your pals, buddies and anyone who happened to have a Googletalk acount. iChat from Apple has been in use for ages and most Apple users have it on their desktop. But did you know that you could use iChat to communicate over Google Talk (or Gooletalk as known here!).

To set up your iChat to communicate over GoogleTalk;
1. Open iChat.
2. From the iChat menu, select Preferences...
3. Click Accounts along the top of the dialogue box.
4. Click the + button along the bottom to add a new account.
5. Select Jabber Account from the Account Type drop-down menu.
6. Enter the following information in the appropriate fields:

* Jabber ID:

* If you're signing in with a Gmail or Google Mail username, enter your full email address.
* If your Google Talk username isn't associated with any Google email product, add @gmail.com to the end of your username. For example, iloveyoko will become iloveyoko@gmail.com. (it is better to get a Google user account as you could use it for other services from Google)
* If you're a Google Apps user, enter your full email address (gordon@example.com).

* Password: Your password.
* Server: talk.google.com

7. Click Add.
8. Highlight your new account in the Accounts section, and then click Server Settings.
9. Enter the following information in the appropriate fields:

* Server: talk.google.com
* Port: 5223

10. Check the boxes next to Connect using SSL and Allow self-signed certificates. You don't need to check the box next to Warn before password is sent insecurely -- your password is always secure with Google Talk.
11. Enter iChat in the Location field. If this field is left blank, you won't be able to sign in.

Congratulations! Now you're now ready to connect to Google Talk using iChat and connect with your friends.
Ref Google talk help.

Uninstall Skype and Encrypt Your VoIP, It Is Not That Hard With Asterisk.

I have been preaching about uninstalling Skype (uninstall skype) for many years now, since 2005, How to kill a Skype® / remove Skype® installs from your network!. Even if you are the type that have to live in proprietary software world, I wrote how not to be a Skype SuperNode. There are many a reasons why you want to step away from proprietary software like Skype and here are some given by Software Freedom Law Center;
(a) proprietary software and (b) based on an undocumented protocol, (c) controlled by a company that has less respect for users' privacy than the PSTN companies themselves.
It is from an article about encrypting you VoiP Calls without having to beat a new path in the arena of communications. Like me, SFLC, uses a simple solution using simple tools, VPN and Asterisk with SIP Phones. It has worked for me for years and I preach to anyone who come close to me and utter the word VoIP.
"Specifically, all SFLC users have an OpenVPN connection back to the home office. From there, they have access to register a SIP client to an internal Asterisk server living inside the VPN network. Using that SIP phone, they can call any SFLC employee. That call continues either on the internal secured network, or back out over the same VPN to the other SIP client. Users can also dial out from there to any PSTN DID."

Asterisk has a very stable platform and many supporting organizations and groups have sprung to help you with communications future, convergence. If you care about privacy and freedom, then follow the links below to find some solutions. At least you will learn that they excist.

SFLC Article, Please read. "Stop Obsessing and Just Do It: VoIP Encryption Is Easier than You Think"
Asterisk / Digium

New Phone network With Virtual Sticky Notes.

DURHAM, N.C. – The rapid convergence of social networks, mobile phones and global positioning technology has given Duke University engineers the ability to create something they call "virtual sticky notes," site-specific messages that people can leave for others to pick up on their mobile phones.

"Every mobile phone can act as a telescope lens providing real-time information about its environment to any of the 3 billion mobile phones worldwide," said Romit Roy Choudhury, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.

A team led by Roy Choudhury has developed a new software system that enables users to obtain location-specific, real-time information – either passively or directly – from other mobile phone users across the world. It will be as if every participating mobile phone works together, allowing each individual to access information throughout that virtual network.

Interested in trying that new Mexican restaurant? Tap into the virtual sticky notes floating in the ether within the restaurant and find what other network users thought of it.

Heading to the airport and need to know where the traffic jams are? Sensors in the phones detect movement and can relay back to the network where traffic is the heaviest.

The potential of this new application, which has been dubbed micro-blog, is practically limitless said Roy Choudhury.

"We can now think of mobile phones as a 'virtual lens' capable of focusing on the context surrounding it," Roy Choudhury said. "By combining the lenses from all the active phones in the world today, it may be feasible to build an internet-based 'virtual information telescope' that enables a high-resolution view of the world in real time."

The application combines the capabilities of distributed networks (like Wikipedia), social networks (Facebook), mobile phones, computer networks and geographic positioning capabilities, such as GPS or WiFi.

"Micro-blogs will provide unprecedented levels and amounts of information literally at your fingertips no matter where you are, through your mobile phone," Roy Choudhury said. "We have already deployed a prototype, and while some challenges remain to be addressed, the feedback we've received so far indicates that micro-blog represents a promising new model for mobile social communication."

Roy Choudhury presented the details of the micro-blog application at the MobiSYS 2008 6th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services in Breckinridge, Colo.

Mobile phones are already more than just communications devices, Roy Choudhury points out. Increasingly they are coming equipped with cameras, GPS service, health monitors, and even accelerometers, devices which measure speed.

In simple terms, people who use the micro-blog application will enter information – photos, comments, videos – into their mobile phone, where it will be "tagged" by the user's location. Passive information, such as location or speed, can also be recorded. All this information is then sent to a central server, where it is available to all participants.

"So if you're planning a trip to the beach or a restaurant, you can query the micro-blog and get information or see images from people who have been or are currently there," Roy Choudhury said. Another application consists of individual, localized pockets of information.

"Say you are in a museum," Roy Choudhury said. "As you pass a particular painting, your phone could download comments from art experts providing relevant information about that painting."

The current prototype works with the Nokia N95 mobile phone, but Roy Choudhury said the application will eventually be written for any kind of programmable mobile phone. He also believes that these, and other as-yet-to-be imagined applications, will be commonplace within five years.

However, Roy Choudhury said there are three solvable issues that still need some work. The first is the trade-off between precise geographic location and battery power.

"GPS, while it can be accurate down to several meters, can also drain a mobile phone battery in seven hours," Roy Choudhury said. "On the other hand, WiFi and GSM technologies are widely available and don't use as much energy, but they aren't nearly as accurate. We believe that an approach blending these technologies will probably solve that problem." (GSM is an international cell phone standard that enables global roaming.)

Another issue is more societal than technological: What kinds of incentives would inspire users to enter information when queried by strangers, since that would involve their time and battery power.

Finally, location privacy needs to be addressed. Since mobile phones are transmitting data – including location – back to a central server, users must trust the administrator to keep this information private. Roy Choudhury believes that these issues can be addressed by assigning different modes – private, social or public – much like social networks already do.

Contact: Richard Merritt
richard.merritt@duke.edu
919-660-8414
Duke University

Monday, June 23, 2008

Andriod Delays May Shine iPhone Further. Can Sprint Challenge with Instinct?

Even though Google is not going to have significant financial problems due to Android delay, an article on WSJ makes have set the news world afire. Everyone is reporting that it might be the closest thing to the end or worse.
Android based phones were to come to market in second quarter of this year and now it seems it might get delayed until 4th quarter. But reading the article, I was not convinced that it might not either.
In any case sprint would have love to have some thunder to dim the iPhone news that is reverberating in the mobile world and die hard sprint fans will have to do with Samsung Instinct. I do not see too much difference between iPhone and the instinct but the hype.
Another matter is of course Android is an evolving platform and the base system changes and revamps may add to the developers working with brand new platform. WSJ also mentions developers feeling at ease with iPhone SDK due to familiarity with MAC OS X, well in that case Linux was not born yesterday. It is the SDK that matters and the recently released Android SDK is not prime time material either.
So we may have to wait a little longer to see an Android based phone. Unitil then it is the iPhone and somewhat the instinct that may have to market.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Open Telephony Training Seminar At Digium Head Quarters!.

UPDATE:
The dates have changed for this seminar. Please refer to this newer VoIP IP Telephony post

I have writen earlier about OTTS, Open Telephony Training Seminar by the people (Organizers) at FreePBX. After the recent hula hoop dance by Fonality crew, it is music in your ears to hear that Digium is hosting the next OTTS and it's headquarters building in Huntsville, Alabama!. I think it is very good and very good reason for you to take a trip to Alabama, you can hit two birds with one stone. You get the trining on telephony and you get to see the Digium people!.
Anyway It is a good feeling when people communicate, coherently.

Open Telephony Training Seminar
Where: Digium Headquarters, Huntsville, AL
When: August 12-15^th, 2008

This is what Philippe posted;
"Today I bring you more evidence of the synergy by announcing our next seminar to take place at the one an only, Asterisk Ground Zero, at Digium’s Headquarters in Huntsville, AL. “One of Digium’s primary goals is to expand the use of the Asterisk telephony engine and to be a good corporate citizen within the Asterisk ecosystem. To further this aim, we have contributed to the FreePBX project in various ways, including taking an active role in supporting their OTTS training program. We are happy to strengthen the relationship with the FreePBX project, and are proud to host their next seminar in our state-of-the-art training facility.” says Jared Smith, World Wide Training Manager for Digium, Inc. and co-author of the one and only Asterisk: The Future of Telephony (O'Reilly Media). We are thrilled to have this opportunity and have appreciated the support Digium has provided and the training material and presentations that Jared Smith has delivered in our sessions."

FreeSwitch Gets A Web Based Management Portal From Wiki PBX.

FreeSwitch, another big player in the open source IP PBX arena has got a web front end for management. I have a copy of FreeSwitch running (actually a dormant VM image) which I will be using to test the PBX Management front end. It is available from Wiki PBX and if you are a FreeSwitch user, I think you will be a happy camper.
According to the site, following are the prominant features!;

Multiple 'accounts' per server instance - each account is effectively a completely independent PBX. (multi-tenant)
Layered configuration - XML files goes on top of what is stored in database. Allows you to use a database, but stays out of your way if you choose to use flat files.
Configure extensions, SIP endpoints and gateways via web interface
Simple Voicemail system written in Python as an IVR (w/ source code)
View/hangup/transfer live calls
View call history (CDR records) over the web interface
Web interface for managing (add/edit/update) IVR's written in Python, Javascript or Java
Easily record "sound clips" for use in dialplan or IVR's
Inject audio or text-to-speech into live calls

Here is the link to wiki pbx.
Of course you can find FreeSwitch here.

NextPhase Wireless Adds A Wired Mesh Private Network To Network Services Portfolio.

ANAHEIM, Calif., June 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NextPhase Wireless (OTC Bulletin Board: NPHS), a nationwide developer of WiMAX-ready networks and a provider of advanced broadband solutions, today launched a suite of wired private network services, geared at offering affordable, fully meshed private point-to-point networks, minimizing downtime and providing businesses, agencies and schools with 'peace of mind'.

"With every day that passes, businesses grow more and more reliant on their ability to access infrastructure applications, carry their VoIP and Video traffic, and to communicate and collaborate with satellite offices, regional headquarters, suppliers and partners. In building these networks, businesses want a design that allows for any-to-any connectivity, but the costs of this sort of network design is often cost-prohibitive," said Tom Hemingway, Chairman and COO of NextPhase.

Continuing, Hemingway said, "NextPhase solves this problem with a unique, hosted solution that allows for a fully-meshed design eliminating network congestion allowing for greater network efficiency and bandwidth utilization over a secure private network."For more information, please visit http://www.npwireless.com.

Distributed Presence For Asterisk in Asterisk 1.6.1.

There were many occasions that we wanted presence information across multiple Asterisk servers. In the past we had to do various gimmicks to get that done ;). But going over the new Asterisk 1.6.1 Now I see that it has been made available to us, mainly due to lot of hard work by Russell Bryant.
According to a post by him on his blog, Asterisk 1.6.1 will have the ability to share device state between servers using a new module, res_ais, which uses the SAForum AIS to share events between Asterisk servers. It has been tested with and developed against the openais implementation of AIS.

You can read his post to find links to the code and follow comments that request (demand) DUNDi over XMPP and vice versa.

AA300 Appliance Added To Digium | Switchvox™ IP PBX Line

This is something I missed posting due to being busy getting ready for the NXTCOMM and since I think it is very important move in the Digium | Asterisk, I decided to publish their press release regarding the product.
I have not used the product but I will be able to witness the product being deployed in very new future at a branch office of a company I consult. If this deployment goes well, mixture of products will be deployed at other branch offices located nationwide and a few international offices.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., June 9, 2008—Digium®, Inc.,, the Asterisk® Company, today announced that it has executed on the initial planned build-out of the Switchvox™ appliance family with the release of the Digium|Switchvox AA300 appliance. The new product, a flexible, easy-to-use IP PBX, gives companies with up to 150 users a turnkey business telephone solution based on Asterisk software. It is the latest offering from Digium following that company's fall 2007 acquisition of Switchvox. The AA300 is available immediately and is backed by Digium's Exceptional Satisfaction Program (ESP) guarantee. Digium has also recently delivered two other Switchvox appliances, a free, downloadable version of the Switchvox IP PBX software and a combined reseller program.

Digium created and is the driving force behind the open source Asterisk telephony project and Switchvox is the most widely used IP PBX based on Asterisk. Last year, Digium acquired Switchvox and has quickly integrated the two companies' offerings to provide customers with a wide range of options for benefitting from the power, flexibility and feature set enabled by Asterisk. By implementing Switchvox software on Digium appliances, customers now have the ease of use and rich feature set of Switchvox, plus the reliability and convenience of appliances. The Digium|Switchvox appliance family provides options for businesses with up to 400 users, plus an easy upgrade path for growing companies, a money-back guarantee, and subscriptions for professional support and maintenance.

"The integration of Switchvox into Digium has moved ahead quickly, and the AA300 with SMB 3.5 software is the latest result of our continuing progress," said Joshua Stephens, Digium's General Manager, San Diego Operations. "Customers and our channel partners are benefitting from the rapid delivery of Switchvox on appliances that can be up and running supporting calls just about as soon as they come out of the box and that can be easily upgraded as customers need more features or add users. The result of all our work is more options for customers that let them get rid of expensive phone systems, yet keep all the functionality of a PBX designed for the largest businesses."

A Switchvox IP PBX for Every Company
The introduction of the Digium|Switchvox AA300 appliance provides a mid-sized solution for the Switchvox product family. Digium|Switchvox appliances are now available on three systems that provide a fit for a wide range of companies:

The AA60 appliance, which features Switchvox SOHO or Switchvox SMB, supports up to 30 users and is ideal for demanding small offices or home offices that need a professional phone system in a small form factor.

The AA300 appliance, which features Switchvox SMB, supports up to 150 users and is ideal for medium-sized businesses that want the power of a server-class PBX.

The AA350 appliance, which features Switchvox SMB, supports up to 400 users and is a redundant rack-mount server that is ideal for larger customers that want the highest level of performance and peace of mind.

The newly introduced AA300 is a medium-sized appliance that can be used on a tabletop or in a rack. It supports up to 150 users and up to 45 simultaneous calls. It also supports up to 10 recorded calls and up to 15 simultaneous conference calls.

Highlights of the new Digium|Switchvox AA300 include:

Full coverage by the Digium Exceptional Satisfaction Program, the strongest guarantee in open source telephony, which gives customers their money back if the product is defective or fails to perform as described. VoIP ready—No extra hardware is necessary to connect to SIP or IAX voice over IP trunks.

A standard one-year warranty and optional three-year warranty. Support for analog and T1/E1 interfaces gives customers flexibility in working with their existing network.

A choice of three subscription plans to suit every company's support and service needs.

Pricing and Availability
Pricing for the Digium|Switchvox AA300 with SMB 3.5 software begins at U.S. $4,240, with substantial discounts available when customers purchase the product from Digium partners. It is available immediately.

Two New Mail Domains From Yahoo! YMail.com and Rocketmail.com

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced the global availability of two new e-mail domains that will give users the chance to register for the e-mail address or Yahoo! ID they have always wanted. People can finally say goodbye to CutiePie4Ever80 or mattclark1977@yahoo.com and get a new Yahoo! e-mail address at

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jun 19, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced the global availability of two new e-mail domains that will give users the chance to register for the e-mail address or Yahoo! ID they have always wanted. People can finally say goodbye to CutiePie4Ever80 or mattclark1977@yahoo.com and get a new Yahoo! e-mail address at ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

Yahoo! Mail is the number one Web mail service in the world with more than 260 million users worldwide(1). As a result of its global popularity, many desirable e-mail addresses have already been taken for the yahoo.com domain, as well as for localized versions of the namespace in countries around the world. With the two new e-mail domain choices, Yahoo! will make millions of new e-mail addresses available to the online community.

Yahoo! recently commissioned a survey conducted by Harris Interactive(R) to determine what online adults look for when choosing an e-mail address and found some noteworthy results:

-- The majority of online adults (59 percent) consider the most important attribute of an e-mail address to be that it is easy to remember.

-- When asked if they could choose any e-mail address for personal use, seven in ten online adults (70 percent) would opt to have some portion of their name included - 31 percent would want their last name included, 27 percent would choose their first name, while 28 percent would prefer to have their nickname as part of their e-mail address.

-- Of online adults who indicated that they are not currently using their first choice e-mail address, over half (54 percent) agree that they want their e-mail address to reflect who they are, and about half (48 percent) would be at least somewhat likely to change addresses should their preferred choice become available.

"We recognize that people want an e-mail address that reflects who they are, whether they are signing up for an e-mail address for the first time, or simply updating their e-mail pseudonym to reflect the stage they are at in life," said John Kremer, vice president, Yahoo! Mail. "We are thrilled to be able to offer new Yahoo! e-mail domain choices to Internet users, along with the same great Web mail experience that hundreds of millions of people have already come to expect."

E-mail addresses at the new domains will have the same great Yahoo! Mail features as addresses at the yahoo.com domain, including:

-- Unlimited storage - Yahoo! Mail provides all users with free unlimited e-mail storage(2)

-- Integrated Instant Messaging and Text Messaging - Users can connect in real-time to their contacts with Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live(R) Messenger and send text messages to friends on the go, right from their Yahoo! Mail inbox

-- Protection from spam and viruses - All of the same great protection that is built into Yahoo! Mail will apply to these new domains. Yahoo! uses advanced technologies and data from numerous sources to dramatically reduce the delivery of spam and phishing e-mails

-- Country-specific e-mail account - When signing up for an e-mail account, users have the option of choosing localized country versions from each of the Yahoo! domains: yahoo.com, ymail.com and rocketmail.com

As always, a Yahoo! ID will work for everything across the Yahoo! Network, from checking e-mail to checking out Messenger, Flickr, Groups, Sports, Finance and more.

In many markets, Yahoo! will also help users transfer their e-mail and contacts to their new address and notify friends of their new e-mail address.

In addition, Yahoo! has reserved a number of desirable e-mail addresses - all related to charitable organizations - using the new domains and will put these e-mail addresses up for charity auction beginning on Thursday, June 19, 2008. Yahoo! is working with auction partners eBay Giving Works and Auction Cause. The proceeds from the auction will benefit the following organizations: The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Ocean Conservancy, Point Foundation, Right To Play and World Wildlife Fund. To participate in the online auction, please visit http://www.ebay.com/ymail.

Users can learn more about and register for a new e-mail at ymail.com and rocketmail.com at http://mail.yahoo.com.

Yahoo! recently commissioned a survey conducted by Harris Interactive(R) to determine what online adults look for when choosing an e-mail address and found some noteworthy results:

-- The majority of online adults (59 percent) consider the most important attribute of an e-mail address to be that it is easy to remember.

E-mail addresses at the new domains will have the same great Yahoo! Mail features as addresses at the yahoo.com domain, including:

-- Unlimited storage - Yahoo! Mail provides all users with free unlimited e-mail storage(2)

As always, a Yahoo! ID will work for everything across the Yahoo! Network, from checking e-mail to checking out Messenger, Flickr, Groups, Sports, Finance and more.

In many markets, Yahoo! will also help users transfer their e-mail and contacts to their new address and notify friends of their new e-mail address.

Users can learn more about and register for a new e-mail at ymail.com and rocketmail.com at http://mail.yahoo.com.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Yahoo! Go 3.0, Mobile Yahoo, Expands In Asia-Pacific.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. & SINGAPORE, Jun 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) today announced several new mobile initiatives for the Asia Pacific region, including five new Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships with leading mobile operators including Mahanagar Telephon Nigam Limited (MTNL, India), Hong Kong CSL Limited (CSL), Smart Communications Inc. (Smart, Philippines), Digital Mobile Phlis, Inc. (SUN Cellular, Philippines) and Vibo Telecom Inc. (Vibo, Taiwan), as well as strategic mobile advertising partnerships with Idea Cellular Ltd. (India) and Maxis Communications Bhd (Malaysia).

Additionally, Yahoo! announced localized versions of Yahoo! Go 3.0 for India, Australia and Southeast Asia, including a local language version for Indonesia, and an English version of Yahoo! oneSearch with voice that recognizes regional accents. The company also announced the launch of new mobile widgets for the Asia Pacific region including Yahoo! Cricket, Yahoo! Answers and Showtimes (Yahoo! India Movies), as well as a MTV Asia mobile widget featuring news updates and music charts.

These announcements further demonstrate Yahoo!'s global momentum and unveil the next phase of the company's mobile strategy for the Asia Pacific region. Today's Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships announcement brings the total number of mobile search deals signed by Yahoo! worldwide in the last 18 months to over 60.

"Sixty signed Yahoo! oneSearch partner deals is a great milestone, putting us on our way to our goal of ultimately connecting the billions of mobile consumers around the globe with the best possible Internet experience," said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo!. "Today's partnerships and product launches further Yahoo!'s global momentum and serve to reinforce our strong position in the mobile industry."

Monday, June 16, 2008

NXTcomm08, Microsoft Corp And Transition to Telco 2.0

LAS VEGAS — June 16, 2008 — This week at NXTcomm08, Microsoft Corp. will showcase its platforms and services that enable the transition to Telco 2.0, a new era of communications in which service providers will deliver hundreds, if not thousands, of new services. Through its portfolio of screens, services and service delivery infrastructure offerings, Microsoft will demonstrate how it helps service providers increase efficiency, rapidly create and deliver innovative new services, and improve the customer experience.

“Our vision for service providers is to deliver the converged lifestyle to their customers, where they can access any content, over any network on any screen,” said Martha Béjar, corporate vice president for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “By providing the three critical components — screens, services and service delivery — we are helping meet the needs of the industry that is driving toward Telco 2.0. We believe that this combination of software plus services will offer the best business case to operators and deliver the best choice to consumers and businesses.”

Screens

Microsoft will highlight the operating platforms that deliver a common experience across all screens — including those on a PC, TV or mobile device — in a user’s life. At NXTcomm08, Microsoft will showcase Windows Mobile, a smartphone platform with phones available from 160 mobile operators in 55 countries. Windows Mobile works with 50 device-maker partners and has more than 140 phone designs shipping worldwide, giving end users and organizations a wide choice of devices and services to fit their individual needs and preferences.

In addition, Microsoft announced it has added several world-class partners to its Microsoft Mediaroom Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) and multimedia software platform ecosystem, further supporting the platform’s progress in helping service providers deliver new connected TV services worldwide:

•	System integrators — HP, Tech Mahindra and 180Squared. The addition of these system integrators means service providers around the world will have various high-quality vendors to assist with deployments of Microsoft Mediaroom-powered service offerings.
•	Quality of Service (QoS) assurance companies — Agilent Technologies and IneoQuest. These companies’ solutions help service providers ensure the highest QoS for deployments of Microsoft Mediaroom without compromising security or network performance.
•	Encoder supplier — Harris. Harris’ NetVX SD video encoding lets service providers deploying Microsoft Mediaroom-powered services offer a high-quality and cost-effective platform for IPTV deployments.

Microsoft Mediaroom is now powering connected TV services on more than 2 million televisions worldwide. It took Microsoft Mediaroom 18 months to reach its first million TVs and only five months — more than three times faster — to reach its second million TVs.

Services

Microsoft will demonstrate a range of business and consumer services that can provide up-sell opportunities for operators across broadband/wireless networks. With the availability of the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration Version 4.5 (HMC 4.5) announced today, Microsoft offers service providers a robust platform to integrate into their networks and deliver streamlined communications services to businesses of all sizes.

Telefónica and Microsoft also announced today a strategic alliance to deliver convergent services for large enterprises in Spain, which will incorporate Microsoft’s unified communications and collaboration solutions into Telefónica’s Corporate IP service. Based on HMC 4.5 and Telefónica Corporate IP, the offering will allow users to easily access services such as directories, calendars, instant messaging, e-mail, presence and multi-conferencing, thereby helping boost their productivity. The alliance includes a schedule for making the new services available throughout 2009.

“The Telefónica and Microsoft joint unified communications services will allow corporations to respond better to critical situations, improve collaboration among professionals and work groups, and help reduce costs and simplify tasks,” said Javier Aguilera, general manager for Large Enterprises at Telefónica España.

Nortel is the first partner who has completed integration of HMC 4.5, and a number of additional partners are working to enhance the platform, including BroadSoft Inc., Ensim Corp., ExtendASP, implement.com Corp., Parallels, Planet Technologies and Sylantro Systems Corp. These partners have built extended solutions, which range from delivering advanced voice capabilities to empowering end customers with hosting automation tools, as well as developing consulting practices for deployments, upgrades and further customization.

At NXTcomm08, Microsoft will showcase business services including unified communications powered by Microsoft and Nortel based on the HMC 4.5 and Nortel CS 2000, an Internet Protocol multimedia softswitch. This demonstration also incorporates Microsoft RoundTable and Microsoft Office Live Meeting, which provide the ability to communicate virtually anytime, anywhere and on any device. Consumer services include Comverse Visual Voicemail integrated with Microsoft Mediaroom, which enables customers to use the remote control to access voicemails through the TV.

Also announced today, Concentric and Microsoft launched new hosted e-mail service offerings for SMBs. Concentric, a large-scale e-mail service provider, is deploying Microsoft Hosted Exchange to expand its product offering by combining the productivity benefits of Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook with its easy-to-use Web hosting services.

Service Delivery

At NXTcomm08, Microsoft will also highlight its service delivery platform, Microsoft Connected Services Framework, and its customer care offerings including Microsoft Customer Care Framework and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which, combined, allow service providers to quickly and cost-effectively develop, deploy and manage new services. Additional demonstrations will showcase Microsoft’s architecture for services syndication, and Microsoft Visual Studio with its suite of development tools for the creation of new types of services, including managed network mash-ups that combine traditional telecommunications services with Web services.

Microsoft’s exhibit will also feature its development environment, Connected Services Sandbox, including a number of partners that have created new services in the Sandbox, including Artilium Plc, Schakra Inc. and Tech Mahindra. To further promote innovation in service creation for telecommunications providers, Microsoft recently announced the Connected Services Accelerator Program, a series of projects that uses the Sandbox to incubate, and ultimately commercialize, new types of consumer, business and mobile services through collaboration with independent software vendors, developers and partners. Microsoft will collaborate with SingTel on the program’s first project, the Mobile Connected Services Accelerator, to develop a new, cutting-edge mobile application for a vertical industry.

Microsoft continues to build a thriving partner ecosystem, providing new levels of guidance, resources and support for the Sandbox. Nearly 30 premium partners have joined the Sandbox since February, including industry leaders such as Avanade, Logica, MetraTech Corp., SingTel and Wipro Ltd., which bring functionality ranging from location services and network management to billing. When combined with third-party services that also have been added to the Sandbox, such as Geocoder, ClearForest Sematic Web, Urban Dictionary, Microsoft MapPoint or LyricWiki, the partner portfolio now offers unparalleled potential for innovative new services.

Microsoft Participation at NXTcomm08

Microsoft executives will participate in the following educational sessions at the conference:

Tuesday, June 17

•	1 p.m. — ATIS TechThink 2008 conference, “Full-Scale Convergence: What Does It Look Like and How Do We Get There,” Steve Zimba, managing director for Microsoft’s Global Telecom Business
•	1 p.m. — ATIS TechThink 2008 conference, “IPTV Implemented and Deployed — Now What,” Edwin Lau, group product manager for Microsoft Mediaroom
•	4 p.m. — IEC Communications Forums, “An SDP for the Telco 2.0 World,” Steve Zimba, managing director for Microsoft’s Global Telecom Business

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

•	10:55 a.m. — NXTcomm Programming, “Connected TV — Why TV Is Joining the Internet Revolution,” Christine Heckart, general manager of marketing for Microsoft Mediaroom
•	1 p.m. — IEC Communications Forums, “Converged TV: Delivering Rich TV and Video Experiences on a Converged Platform,” Edwin Lau, group product manager for Microsoft Mediaroom
•	2:30 p.m. — IEC Communications Forums, “New Service Launches: Service Provider Lessons Learned,” Derek Turner, senior product manager for Microsoft Mediaroom

Attendees who want additional information can visit Microsoft in booths SL5916 and SL5923 at NXTcomm08.

The public transport authority of the Frankfurt, T-Systems, Nokia, And Venyon Takes Mobile Ticketing To A New Level.

RMV, T-Systems, Nokia, and Venyon set mobile ticketing to a new level of convenience
June 13, 2008

Frankfurt am Main, Germany - The public transport authority of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main region (RMV), T-Systems, Nokia and Venyon have announced the next phase for RMV mobile ticketing at the international NFC Forum meeting in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. The new mobile ticketing solution based on Near Field Communication (NFC) will offer a wider variety of mobile tickets as well as improved user experience.

RMV introduced its mobile ticketing scheme in 2006 and is one of the pioneers in this area. The main target of this enhanced ticketing solution is to enable customers to purchase mobile tickets even more spontaneously and easily. The ticket will now be stored in the embedded secure element of the NFC- enabled mobile phone, and can be inspected just by holding the device close to the inspector's reading device, which checks the validity of the ticket. This takes only a few milliseconds without any further interaction from the customer.

Soon it will be possible to store the ticket in the SIM card of the mobile phone, and then the ticket will be removable and re-usable in case the customer switches to another NFC-enabled mobile phone.

The new RMV mobile NFC ticketing solution is based on the German-wide e-ticket standard (VDV), to be used with NFC-enabled mobile phones. Thus the tickets in mobile phones and in plastic smart cards can be inspected by the same control device and the ticketing systems aligned with VDV standard allow buying tickets also in other regions in Germany. The same consistent user experience applies to the public transportation in all participating cities in Germany, which brings significant benefits for travellers who frequently use public transportation in different cities.

The mobile NFC ticketing now introduced in Frankfurt is based on the common NFC standards and enables wider selection of tickets, like single tickets, daily tickets and monthly tickets for the RMV transport network. Based on NFC standards, the new Nokia 6212 classic as well as the Nokia 6131 NFC can be used for mobile ticketing in this project.

At the same time with NFC mobile ticketing, RMV will enlarge the availability of so called ConTags, smart tags, which are installed at bus and train stops in Frankfurt. Soon the ConTags will cover all the bus and train stops of all the remaining eleven major cities in RMV service area. Touching ConTags with NFC phone enables quick ticket purchases, online time schedules, journey planners and news services. Travellers can retrieve information on departure times, possible delays or special schedules real-time just by touching the ConTag at the station with their NFC-enabled mobile phones.

Venyon is a global mobile service company which develops and operates a secure and versatile service platform to provision and manage over the air (OTA) consumer applications, such as transport tickets or credit cards on consumers' NFC enabled mobile devices. As a Trusted Service Manager (TSM) Venyon provides over the air (OTA) services to RMV in order to enable the customers from all the mobile network operators to be able to join the pilot.

The new phase for RMV mobile ticketing has been developed by T-Systems in co-operation with T-Laboratories and Deutsche Telekom. This new ticketing solution fulfils all the current requirements and security standards set by public transit authorities as well as mobile network operators.
The Rhein-Main Verkehrsverbund (RMV)

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Heart Of iPhone 3G, and iPhone Jailbreak Release for 2.0elease for 2.0

Ever wondered what actually will be driving the iPhone 3G? The folks at ZiPhone spotted snippet of code in iPhone 2.0 (link to an image of the code is provided at the end of the article) that points finger at a "SGOLD3," which could very well refer to Infineon's S-GOLD3H chip, which is also known as the PMB8878, a 7.2Mbps HSDPA chip with all the video acceleration and media playback features iPhone users have come to expect. Advantages over its predecessor include higher resolution camera support of 5 MP, a 2x speed MMC / SD interface and DVB-H module support and complete specs are below.

According to a status blog at ZiPhone, Apple's iPhone firmware 2.0 investigation has been very interesting. With ZiPhone Beta 7 (Link below), they've successfully unlocked the iPhone's baseband restrictions. This proves that Ziphone's next jailbreak release for 2.0 will be able to make the carrier lock on the newly announced iPhone 3G useless.
After jailbreaking the firmware prefixed as ICE2 version 1.43, ZiPhone managed to course through a list of carriers officially supported by the iPhone. The list provides all the 3G service carriers in each country that Apple has officially made a distribution deal with. The list matches up with the known Apple carriers.

The PMB 6592 SMARTi 3GE Chip Information
PMB 6592 SMARTi 3GE - One Chip Dual Mode W-CDMA/EDGERF Transceiver, is an industry leading dual mode transceiver based on the SMARTi PM quad-band GSM/EDGE and SMARTi 3G six-band W-CDMA transceiver architecture in a laminate based PG-TFSGA-121 package. SMARTi 3GE offers significant board area reduction for creating the smallest dual-mode mobile solutions. A standard 3-wire bus programming interface, compatible with most basebands, allows easy integration into wireless devices. A p p l i c a t i o n s ■ W-CDMA: multi-band operation for 3GPP bands I through VI ■ Quad-band GSM/EDGE (GSM850/GSM900/GSM1800/GSM1900) ■ HSDPA capable (up to category 8) F e a t u r e s ■ General – 0.13 µm RF-CMOS transceiver – 3-wire bus for control and programming – Power down modes and integrated power up sequencer – Supply voltages 1.4 V ... 1.6 V and 2.7 V ... 2.95 V – Optional additional supply voltage from 1.71 V ... 3.0 V – Operating temperature range -30°C to 85°C – 3GPP standard compliance release 5/6 for W-CDMA part, release 4 for GSM part – Low external component count ■ GSM/EDGE – Constant gain quad band direct conversion receiver – GPRS/EDGE class 1 to 12/type1 – Four integrated LNAs – Fully integrated channel filter – Highly linear RF quadrature demodulator – Automatic DC offset compensation – Very low power budget – Digital Sigma-Delta modulator for GMSK – Polar modulator architecture for 8PSK ■ W-CDMA – Direct conversion receiver, direct modulation transmitter – Independent Rx and Tx operation – Complete Rx analog baseband path including filtering – HSDPA capable

An image of code snippet that I found on the web, http://i27.tinypic.com/15o759x.png
ZiPhone Status Blog

Friday, June 13, 2008

Puma Tricks Boots, UEFA Euro 2008 and Conference Calls! Where is Asterisk!

It takes a real football (Real Football too or Soccer to you) fan to understand another. Often times watching the UEFA Euro 2008 from afar is very hard as there is no one to watch it with. Yes sometimes we have friends from South America to watch with but it is nothing like the home crowd, my brothers, sisters, and neighbors.
Watching Holland massacre the French was so much fun but I was very alone. Of course my phone would ring as soon as I answer, I have to put the caller on hold, to answer to another. Then my mobile would ring it is calling mess. I was thinking of converting my Asterisk Server to be a conference call handler when I got the news that Puma is setting up conference calls for Football fans. PUMA is talking to hearts of Football fans with their "Together Everywhere" wireless campaign. . Check it out at www.pumafootball.com.
"The program automatically connects up to 10 supporters on a free conference call every time their team scores in the European Championships. Participants sign up online or through a WAP interface to select their national side and download a free ring tone of a team chant or song. Each time their team scores, the ring tone will be triggered. If the participant answers, they'll be placed in a goal celebration conference call with other fans they've never met or with a private group of friends or family they define. According to the pumafootball.com website, the experience works like this: "Imagine you're watching the game at a local pub, your dad's watching at home, your brother's at the game in Zurich, and your best friend is studying abroad and watching in Paris. When your team scores, you'll be immediately conferenced together to share those amazing, crazy moments of goal-induced joy." Available in 13 countries, it's the first ever pan-European, event-triggered ring tone campaign. Will this open up some crazy new field of event-triggered mobile conference calling - something that could well be applied to sports, politics, and many more areas of endeavour in the future? Time will tell".
I still may have to setup my conference server because USA is not in the list, understandably, this is a Euro Cup!.
But I entered to win a pair of Puma Tricks boots at Sky Sports!

Free WiFi For iPhone Users In UK.

Perfect for the new WiFi sensing iPhone, O2 subscribers can now enjoy free WiFi over more than 9000 nodes (hotspots) in UK. This means, iPhone users with 3G capabilities and auto switching WiFi connections will have always connected, a norm than pleasant experience once in a while like some of us do. Ravenii has mentioned that he is ready to take an iPhone, since it has become sensible communications solution rather than hip novelty. It will also good for his as he will be spending a lot of time at Cambridge for the rest of this year and possibly more in the next year.
To provide this service, O2 has partnered with BT Openzone to give iPhone owners access to its 3,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. The operator has extended its existing agreement with Wi-Fi provider The Cloud to bring its total of available hotspots to over 9,000. Mobile VoIP time for IPhone, Look for those free SIP accounts now and applications for SIP on iPhone.

O2 subscribers register their phone number when they first enter a hotspot and are automatically connected to the network, and they get the new iPhone for 99 pounds (comfort in numbers) and some customers may even free depending on the contract. O2 will also offer iPhone for the pre pay customers for the first time with new iPhone.

"By working with partners like BT Openzone we can maximise the web experience for iPhone customers," said Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 UK. "Public Wi-Fi hotspots ideally complement our mobile network, providing high speed web browsing and unlimited access to services like the iTunes Wi-Fi store in a wide variety of convenient locations."

"The availability of BT Openzone on the iPhone 3G is in direct response to strong customer demand for a quality Wi-Fi service on their device," said BT Wireless Broadband Director Dave Hughes. "BT aims to keep customers best connected, any time and any place. With the iPhone set to become even more popular, BT is providing high-speed internet access at premier locations in the UK."

Come on AT&T give us some news!

Quick Conference (QC), a SIP-based Audio Conferencing Solution From CounterPath

CounterPath has announced the general availability of Quick Conference (QC), a SIP-based audio conferencing solution that allows businesses to manage their own in-house conferencing services while simplifying the end-user experience.
According to their press release, with Quick Conference any one could set up an audio conference, on-site or remotely, by dialing an extension off the enterprise PBX and then selecting an ad-hoc, four-digit bridge number of their choice. But it is also possible for a company that uses QC to reserve a four-digit bridge number permanently for each employee. The conferencing solution removes the complexity and usage limitations associated with traditional hosted conferencing services, allowing any employee to set up a conference bridge in seconds. So no more calling the company secretary to setup and assign conferences.

"In a global economy powered by knowledge workers and distributed workforces, audio conferencing has become a mission-critical service within the enterprise," said Rob Brown, Vice President of Customer Marketing, CounterPath. "Quick Conference allows businesses to give every employee access to enterprise-class conferencing services while actually reducing operating expenses by running those services off their PBX. In combination with QC's four-digit simplicity, our conferencing solution increases employee productivity, workplace satisfaction and levels of customer service, creating a winning proposition for both SMB and enterprise customers."

Quick Conference can be integrated with any PBX through SIP trunking or a SIP/TDM gateway and offers a range of security features to ensure the privacy and integrity of a conference call. QC can also be deployed as a managed hosted service, residing both inside and outside the enterprise network. The solution is available through CounterPath and select OEM partners.

Custom applications and plug-ins can be integrated with QC through the solution's Web Services architecture, designed to enable customer-driven extensibility. The solution also has flexible white-label options that allow customers to brand the offering with their own design preferences.

QC is available in eight languages: English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese and Arabic.

You can find more information here.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

iPhone 2.0 A Whole New World For iPhone.

Apple has announced some information about iPhone 2.0 specs and they will run on 1G iPhones. We the cheepos, who wait for the $199 iPhones will also have those benefits built in. But then I wonder what iPhone Nano will bring!. Who and what are 1G iPhones you may ask? Yes there are few answers to that, it could be first generation iPhone, it also could be one gee iPhone, those who paid more or nearly one Gee ($1000) or more for it!, well to be the biggest whatever (plug your own word here) on the block you got to pay!.

With the iPhone 2.0 Software Update, your iPhone will do more than what is doing now. You will be able to extend its capabilities by downloading new application from even new App Store.
Apps such as accelerometer, Multi-Touch, 3D positional sound, and GPS. And they’re only a tap away at the App Store, according to Apple.
With the push email, calendar, and contacts from your Microsoft Exchange server at work, iPhone will officially became enterprise capable in those Microsoft based corporations. Mail, Contacts, and other applications are also promised with new capabilities, free in the next update.
But I know a whole bunch that will love this feature, scientific calculator.

Palm®, We are on the way to sell 2 million Plam Centro smartphones.

Palm is joining hands with Verizon to promote it's Palm® Centro™ smartphone to the public. The phone is a versatile device and in addition what people use their mobile phone these days, it could be used as a modem to Verizon Wireless’ BroadbandAccess Connect service plan, if they subscribe to it.

But the Palm's claim that they are set to sell 2 million units might be a bit tough with new apple iPhone 3G, with it's low cost pricing and features. Palm Centro, 1 million units of which shipped through the end of March, will be sold through Verizon Wireless from tomorrow, June 13th.

Following is the Verizon's Press release regarding the Centro.

BASKING RIDGE, NJ, and SUNNYVALE, CA — Verizon Wireless, builder and operator of the nation’s most reliable wireless network, and Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM), today announced that the Palm® Centro™ smartphone will be available online at www.verizonwireless.com and in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores beginning June 13. Dressed in a crisp cobalt blue, the Centro provides customers with the perfect tool to manage the busiest of lifestyles with voice, text messaging, e-mail and the Web.

Centro runs on Verizon Wireless’ high-speed data network, which gives customers the ability to quickly send and receive e-mail messages and attachments and browse rich Web content. Verizon Wireless customers can also use the Centro as a modem for their laptops when they subscribe to Verizon Wireless’ BroadbandAccess Connect service plan. The handset sports a vibrant color touch-screen, full QWERTY keyboard and a lightweight design.

Centro’s built-in Google Maps™ application delivers quick, reliable directions and lets users perform local searches and view moveable/scalable maps, satellite imagery and traffic updates. Customers can also map a contact’s address directly from the contact application simply by selecting the “maps” button.

Customers using the stylish Centro will get access to VersaMail® 4.0 with built-in Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync® support for Microsoft Direct Push Technology to deliver e-mail and calendar updates from a home or office PC using Outlook® directly to their handsets. Centro users also have the option of using Wireless Sync, Verizon Wireless’ proprietary e-mail solution, for quick and easy access to personal or corporate e-mail, contacts, calendar and tasks from their home or office PC. Wireless Sync supports POP3 or IMAP e-mail accounts and it supports Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes® and IBM Lotus Domino®.

The Palm Centro also includes the following features and capabilities:

Text, picture and video messaging (text messages are presented to customers in a “chat-style” view so customers can see their entire conversation unfold)
Superior phone functionality, including one-touch speakerphone and conference calling, the ability to respond to a call with text messaging, and the option to use the touch-screen dial pad
Smart, fast Web browsing using the award-winning Blazer browser
2x digital zoom camera with video capture
Media player with Pocket Tunes™ Deluxe (PlaysForSure-compatible)
Bluetooth® v. 1.2 with support for hands-free car kits and headset profiles
64 MB available user storage and microSD™ memory card slot with support up to 4 GB
User-friendly, familiar Palm OS® 5.4.9, including one-touch access to key applications
Small, sleek form factor: 2.1” (l) x 4.2” (w) x 0.7” (d)
4.2 ounces with battery
320 x 320 pixel color touch-screen and full QWERTY keyboard for easier e-mail, messaging and Web use

Pricing and Availability
The Palm Centro smartphone will be available online at www.verizonwireless.com and in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores, including those in Circuit City, for $99.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers may want to pair their Centro voice plan with Verizon Wireless’ E-mail and Web for Smartphone service for $29.99. This is an unlimited monthly data plan for Web browsing and e-mail support and includes personal e-mail accounts. To tether the Centro to a laptop with a USB cable, customers may opt to include a BroadbandAccess Connect plan in their service package for $30.

For more information about Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com. Business customers may call 1-800-VZW-4BIZ or contact their Verizon Wireless Business Sales Representative.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Mobile SIP Client For Symbian, iPhone and Other Mobile Phones.

I like to let you know about another SIP client for you mobile and desktop use that is in beta. O-Phone has released a SIP client for Mobile devices and Mobile phone such as iPhone, Nokia, and HTC Touch. I was informed of the fact last night by our ever resourceful Diordna and I did not have enough time to test the client. So I would like to point you in the direction of O-Phone and let you test for yourself. Once we have tested, we will be posting a longer post.
These SIP Clients, once installed helps you to make free or low cost calls over WiFi at home or hotspots that is growing all over the world, like these hotspots in Japan. Now that WiFI enabled mobile phones are the norm, it is alway good to have a client that could be used on your mobile device. I will be testing the O-Phone client soon and let you know the results.
O-Phone also provide you with your connection needs all over the world. They have free phone calls and paid phone calls depending on who and where you call.
You will find more information and registration information here.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

VoIP Testing With Open Source Seagull Multi-protocol Traffic Generator Test Tool.

Are you thinking about testing you IMS and SIP performance?. There are many tools out there some free, some costly and some very costly. SO people tend to put IMS testing to back ground and the implementors also do a poor job of promoting testing the capabilities of environment and the networks.

So one at a time, we will bring up testing suits for VoIP IP Telephony, Starting with free testing software. If you are aware of these software please leave a comment. (We also make it easier to leave comments at this blog soon, like on wordpress!)

So today we will bring out a Seagull!. Seagull is a free, Open Source (GPL) multi-protocol traffic generator test tool. Primarily aimed at IMS (3GPP, TISPAN, CableLabs) protocols (and thus being the perfect complement to SIPp for IMS testing).

Seagull could be used as a powerful traffic generator for functional, load, endurance, stress and performance/benchmark tests for almost any kind of protocol. If you are wondering what these protocols are, you do not need this tool yet but there is always a chance to learn something. But it is very easy to use and understand.

In addition to being free (as in beer), its openness allows to add the support of a brand new protocol in very short time, - with no programming knowledge. For that, Seagull comes with several protocol families embedded in the source code:

Binary/TLV (Diameter, Radius and many 3GPP and IETF protocols)
External library (TCAP, SCTP)
Text (XCAP, HTTP, H248 ASCII)
Protocols are then implemented on top of those protocol families using user editable XML dictionaries. Those dictionaries describe how messages and parameters are encoded, allowing a great flexibility.

A Seagull scenario - written in XML - describes the messages that are sent and received. It also indicate the behavior to adopt in case a message is unexpected or a check on a parameter fails.

Seagull supports currently the following protocols:

Diameter base ( RFC 3588) and any Diameter relating application - IMS Cx, Dx, Ro, Rf, Sh over TCP or SCTP or TLS over IPv4 or IPv6.
TCAP ITU and ANSI and any protocol over TCAP (Camel, GSM MAP, IS41, Win, ...) either over SS7 (E1/T1) or SIGTRAN. For that, it relies on HP OpenCall SS7.
XCAP over HTTP over IPv4
HTTP over IPv4
H248/Megaco ASCII form over UDP or TCP or SCTP/IPv4
Radius (subset) over IPv4.

Entirely coded in C++, Seagull is optimized for performances.

Specifics regarding SIP Protocol could be found here.

So if you are the technical type, why don't you head out and download the SIP / IMS Testing Software.

Ready to install packages are available for HP-UX (PARisc and IPF/IA64), Linux and Win32 (Cygwin). Seagull can also be compiled from the source code.

A short white paper on Seagull "Seagull - Open Source tool for IMS testing" is available.

Seagull Documentation.

The Free SIP Account Provider List : Free SIP Accounts To Connect Your Mobile VoIP Or At Home VoIP Phones.

Latest and tested Free SIP Provider List is here.

There seem to a renewed interest in free SIP Accounts. I have previously written two articles regarding these. The First Free SIP Accounts Part One and the Second of course Free SIP Accounts Part Two.

So this will bring all the information that I have on Free SIP Accounts together so you can view them without having to run about reffering to multiple articles. This post will be updated and will be mentioned so with a new post in the blog.

So This will be "The Free SIP Account Provider List"

1. IPTEL, IPtel gave me the first taste of SIP a long time ago, at a time when people were asking what VoIP was. Register for an Account here.
2. Free World Dialup Pulver.com has been providing SIP accounts under the name Free World Dialup for a while as well.
3. Sip Phone Provided by SIPPhone. Sign up here to create an account on the SIPphone network. Once you have an account, you will be able to configure your SIP-based VoIP adapter, or software phone
4. SIP Simple Testbed provided by AG Projects(Really check these guys out)
5. OSIP also provides Free accounts via, AntiSIP, company created to provide services around SIP and telephony.
6.....

This list will grow as I test new services with hardware SIP Phone, Software SIP Phone and also From My new iPhone 3G that I will be getting on July 11th. (It is reserved so I will not stand on line!)

Leave a comment if you have a service or if you know of a free SIP account provider. I will be happy to add.

SIPGate Opens iPhone SIP Applications For VoIP.

If Apple, and Steve Jobs does not like VoIP applications on iPhone (old News, and I think it is mainly phone companies that does want it) it does not seem to have deterred any one. One of the first SIP based VoIP applications for iPhone has been has been released to match the time of new iPhone 3G.
Since now the 3G speeds are higher, may be carriers want you to use their lines for everything, including web browsing and email. But it remains to see what the future holds for iPnone users. Now that the 3G is available and the prices have been halved, the number of users will multiply as well. The disappearing exclusive deals for carriers should also put users at ease. Then again, other phone manufacturers will also learn from the Apple moves and act accordingly.
Here is the press release from SIPGate about their SIP application for iPhone.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - June 4, 2008 - sipgate Inc. today announces the immediate availability of a free application for the iPhone, which, for the first time allows consumers to natively use any VoIP service which uses the industry standard SIP. Consumers can now use their iPhones to make and receive VoIP calls from their devices over a Wi-Fi Internet connection using a wide variety of VoIP providers. The VoIP-enabling software is available from sipgate's website www.sipgate.com.
With the sipgate service, users can dial any number without using minutes from a wireless plan. This is particularly useful when calling to or from other countries, as call costs can be as high as $3 per minute. However, when using a VoIP service, costs can be kept as low as $0.01 per minute. sipgate is giving new users 111 free minutes for domestic calls for users to test out VoIP usage on the device*.
Another benefit of sipgate is that consumers can use any domestic or international number provided by their VoIP service on their iPhone. This means that they can make and receive calls from different domestic and international numbers, all on a single device.
Thilo Salmon, CEO of sipgate commented: "We love VoIP and we love the iPhone so we are giving people like us who always wanted VoIP on the iPhone the ability to use any SIP-based VoIP service they want. We are thrilled that Apple is opening up the iPhone and we look forward to taking part in future application development.”
Salmon continued: "As a company we strive to make useful services accessible to everyone. There will be more innovation for businesses and consumers coming from sipgate this year, so keep your eyes open for more news.”
* charges from third parties for Wi-Fi or VoIP subscriptions may apply

link for Sipgate iPhone SIP Application could be found here.

Monday, June 09, 2008

iPhone 3G coming on July 11th, for $199-299!

If your wealthy friends laughed at you for not spending $700-800 for the iPhone 2G, you can laugh and insult them on July 11th as you can get a better iPhone, iPhone 3G with of course 3G, built in GPS with tracking, and lots more. All for $199-299! for 8GB to 16GB! So who is laughing now?

Steve Jobs just confirmed at the iPhone 3G, actually two versions, 8GB and 16GB!. But the surprise is in the pricing, Apple is learning about the competition and even had competition comparisons. They will costs $199 for the 8GB version, and $299 for the 16GB one (they come in two colors, black and white).It will in the stores in the US and over 70 other countries on July 11th. They will costs $199 for the 8GB version, and $299 for the 16GB one (in black and white).

Sunday, June 08, 2008

iPhone 3G, Snow Leopards and More at WWDC

Iphone 3G is coming on July 11 the new post with photos Are you getting ready for the 3G iPhone that will be announced at the WWDC tomorrow. Accompanying this version of iPhone is the infamous Mac OSX “Snow Leopard” 10.6, that might also get announced. the rumor is that Snow Leopard might get delivered to the developers at the WWDC 2008.

Although I only have Intel macs, gizmodo says that this snow leopard will support power pc as well, infact according to information they got;
• Work has definitely been done on PPC-native drivers, which means that PPC is unlikely to be dropped.
• A number of drivers didn't load on a Core 2 Duo MacBook, because it was using a 64-bit kernel and the drivers were only 32. The kernel was not only 64-bit though.
• "uname -a" reports: Darwin localhost 10.0.0d1 Darwin Kernel Version 10.0.0d1: Thu May XX XX:XX:XX XDT 2008; root:xnu-1286~1/RELEASE_I386 i386
• Googling that kernel reveals that there might actually be SnowLeopard releases out in the wild already, processing Rosetta@Home protein folding clients.
If you want to get a live feed of WWDC, MacRumors is the place I go and it at MacRumorsLive.com. But to be fair, Gizmodo live also might do a good job. In any case it is better to have more.

Time travel With Android Phone And AndroidGlobalTime!

Apps For Android, Sample Applications for the Android platform has released a new app for you to test the Andoid (Google Phone) emulator and application building. AndroidGlobalTime is a 3D world clock for Android platform. But behind the nice and glowing 3D graphics, it is an illustrative example of how to utilize the OpenGL ES APIs in your Android applications.
Once you launch it in your emulator, you'll see a spinning globe showing day and night regions. Pressing the space bar will overlay an analog clock with the time corresponding to location you're currently examining. The arrow keys allow you to spin the Earth and traverse through different time-zones while the clock is displayed. Pressing the center key in the emulator toggles between a 3D and 2D view of the earth. Pressing the L key will turn the city lights on or off. To zoom-out
press 2 and to zoom-in press 8.

For more information on compiling and installing, please refer to the readme included with the download.
blog post: Android Developers Blog: AndroidGlobalTime

Vista On iPhone, Sliding Nightmare On Apple Way!

You can give Steve Jobs a Nightmare if you can get this on to an iPhone that belong to someone who dwells on Apple way!.

The Vista Perfection comes with;

Over 90 Icons
Better And Sharper Dock Icons
Wifi Icon
Boot And Restore Images
More Dock Icons (Text,Installer,..Ect..)
Categories Icons
Badges
Sliders
Edge Icon
Vista Login/LogOff (Unlock/Lock) Sound Scheme
Dock
Status Bar
Revamped TaskBar
LockScreen Wallpaper
Highlight Mask
Bottom Bar

You can get all the information here at Modmyifone and download the beast as well. But my question is why would you want this, I don't even have Vista on any of my PC's.

Friday, June 06, 2008

More Translation Bots! For GoogleTalk

Since the initial release of translation bots for Google Talk in December last year,. many people have been chatting in different languages in different languages.
While the translation isn't perfect, eliminating the language barrier in internet chat has brought many people together in chat world.
The bots were created following the Google Translate and as it added new languages, Google talk team created more bots.

The new bots are Bulgarian (bg), Croatian (hr), Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi), Hindi (hi), Norwegian (no), Polish (pl), Portuguese (pt), Romanian (ro), Swedish (sv) and Traditional Chinese (zh-hant) Hint Olympic time.

May be we can have group chats with different people from all over the world. To use a bot, add it to your Friends list and send it the message you want translated. For example, if you send "Hello" to en2es@bot.talk.google.com (English to Spanish), it will respond with "Hola." If you're using the Google Talk Gadget, you can also get your conversation translated by inviting a bot to a group chat with a friend.

There are 26 new bots: bg2en, cs2en, da2en, en2bg, en2cs, en2da, en2fi, en2hi, en2hr, en2no, en2pl, en2pt, en2ro, en2sv, en2zh-hant, fi2en, hi2en, hr2en, no2en, pl2en, pt2en, ro2en, sv2en, zh-hant2en, zh-hant2zh, zh2zh-hant.
For reference you can also check out the full list of supported language combinations. To add one of these bots to your contacts, remember to use the following format [from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com.

Google Talkabout: More Translation Bots!

Tags: GoogleTalk Gadget, Group chat, Googletalk

Google Labs Gmail IMAP for the iPhone

If you are a Google Gmail User, You would have noticed that there is a new item on the top menu bar, "New GMail Labs!". It is a new testing ground for new features and add-ons for GMail. There are many a features but the IMAP for iPhone caught my eye.
This new feature allows you to Sync your inbox across devices instantly and automatically. Whether you read or write your email on your iPhone, Smartphone or on your desktop, changes you make to Gmail will be seen from anywhere you access your inbox. Another way to use Gmail on your iPhone is through the browser. By going to m.gmail.com you get the full Gmail experience including conversation view, search, and more.
The Video Instruction could be found by following;
Setup GMail on iPhone (IMAP) Google Instructiona Video

Tags: iPhone, Google, gmail, IMAP, iPhone Gmail How to

"OpenSER Advanced Programming Course" Offered Free In Bucharest, Romania, 11th - 15th of August 2008

Following the OpenSER training started last year at the VON Europe, the second edition of the "OpenSER Advanced Programming Course" will be held in Bucharest, Romania, starting with 11th of August 2008.

According to the organizers the primary goal is the same: to attract more developers to openSER and build a higher development squad. Having a large developer group will promote the project so we have even stronger OpenSER product and extension.

There are three major upgrades from last edition:

free participation - there will be no fees for attending to this course; you just need to register.
there will be 4 days course instead of 3 days
the course will contain also a practical work where the students will have the chance to consolidate the knowledge they have accumulated during the theoretical presentations. The course will have a 60% - 40% distribution between theory and practice.

If you are willing to learn the inner working of openSER, this is the course to take as focused towards the people willing to learn how to develop OpenSER extensions.
The course will follow the idea of writing a new openser module from scratch, with all the dependencies it has from the core: dynamic memory usage, MI interface, registering timers, locking, exporting pseudo-variables, etc

The course is sponsored courtesy of :

Packt Publishing (donating 5% of the revenue from the Flavio E. Goncalves's "Building Telephony Systems with OpenSER" book.) (I will be writing a bit about the book as soon as I finish reading it!)
Voice System (logistics and hosting)

Teachers from the OpenSER development team will be:

As, said, the registration is free, but the class is limited as size up to 17 - 20 people. The seats will be granted on the "first in, first served" policy :).

For registration, you need to mail openser@voice-system.ro or to bogdan@voice-system.ro . You will receive a confirmation response to guarantee your registration.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Polycom Recalls SoundStation2W Batteries

The battery packs can overheat, posing a fire or burn hazard. Polycom has received one report of a battery pack overheating resulting in minor property damage. No injuries have been reported.
The recalled battery packs were supplied by Gold Peak Industries Ltd. and sold with Polycom’s SoundStation2W wireless conference phones from December 1, 2007 until May 2, 2008, and separately as replacement battery packs during the same time period. The SoundStation2W part numbers and SKU numbers are printed on the underside of the telephone and include the following models:

Part Number	SKU Number
2201-67800-022	2200-07800-001
2201-67880-022	2200-07880-001

SoundStation2W recalled battery pack part numbers, SKU numbers and date codes are as follows:

Part Number	SKU Number	Date Code
1520-07803-003	2200-07803-002	GP1207, GP0108, GP0208, GP0308 (December 2007 through March 2008)
1520-07804-003	2200-07804-002	GP1207, GP0108, GP0208, GP0308 (December 2007 through March 2008)

The battery packs have a black or white plastic coating and a white label with the following title: “RECHARGEABLE Li-ion BATTERY.” The recalled battery pack part numbers can be found on the bottom right hand corner of the white label on the battery pack. The date code can be found to the left of the part number printed on the white label of the battery.

Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact Polycom, Inc. at (800) 963-7627 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, or visit the firm’s Web site at www.polycom.com/2WBattery
Recallr: Polycom Recalls SoundStation2W Wireless Conference Phone Lithium Ion Batteries

Matt and Daily Asterisk News Reaches 2000 Posts!

Matt Riddell hard at work! He has sneaked pass the 2000th post related to Asterisk, VoIP. I have been reading him since Sinapps days!. Good work Matt, Give us more!.

Trixbox Forks FreePBX and KGarrison Forks Himself As Well.

I am a regular visitor to FreePBX site and a user of FreePBX for a long time. I have written on a few occasions about virtues of FreePBX here on this blog, actually a search on right hand side search box says that I have written about it in 57 posts!. I must really be liking them then.

Then how about Trixbox? Even though I have stopped using Trixbox in any viable way since the TrixBox phones home saga I still keep following it. I also use to write about it a lot, so I searched for it as well and found 80 instances. HMmmm. does that mean I like it better? Could have if not for some acts by Fonality. So here is the latest story/stories that would keep me away from Trixbox.

I have not been to FreePBX for few weeks and I was catching up with news (I read bottom up when I miss any news or forum site.) when I found the article "Trixbox Forks FreePBX" and I was not very sure why Fonality did it. So the first thing I did was to follow the link given by Philippe to the TrixBox announcement. Well from the post it was an explanation why fonality did it and a whole bunch of comments. I read the comments, some of which were criticizing the move, and others hind kissing the Fonality. There were posts from Kerry himself explaining the move, but I lost interest when the posts went to dogs, literally. Basically they want to take FreePBX and distribute as their own. From the announcement it is evident that there is no actual work done to FreePBX. You can read yourself by following the link above. So what I understood was that it is not a fork. They are just taking FreePBX as it is slapping it on Trixbox.
Then I got to the higher up in the news to find another post by Philippe about KGarrison forking himself in FreePBX site and posting as GPLLaw. Philippe has screen captures and laid out exactly what happened. Kerry himself tried to pass it off as a IP Spoofing and later on to say that some one on their own network did the damage.
Well I will not dwell on this too much as readers can visit FreePBX links above and read to understand for themselves.
PBX in a Flash should do the trick for me if I ever need a simple Asterisk installation. I will continue to use FreePBX and Asterisk and recommend them to people. I doubt I would ever use anything from Fonality. But I will keep people updated as how they are doing and their releases to keep people informed.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Digerati Platinum, A New Addition To ATSI Communications Global Product Line.

SAN ANTONIO, TX--(MARKET WIRE)--Jun 4, 2008 - ATSI Communications, Inc. announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, Digerati Networks, Inc., has partnered with a top tier European carrier to offer a VoIP service with global coverage that meets specific service level standards required by specialized operators. The new "Digerati Platinum" service with worldwide coverage was developed specifically for service providers directly serving the consumer or enterprise market.

Ruben Caraveo, Sr. Vice President of Technology and Operations, stated, "This product will give our customers an added high quality alternative. As new providers enter the market, the need for VoIP transport partners with superior quality has increased significantly. We see this product satisfying that demand."

ATSI Communications, Inc. operates through its wholly owned subsidiary, Digerati Networks, Inc. Digerati Networks, Inc. is a premier global VoIP carrier serving rapidly expanding markets in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, with an emphasis on Mexico. Through Digerati's partnerships with established foreign carriers and network operators, interconnection and service agreements, and a NextPoint powered VoIP network, ATSI believes it has clear advantages over its competition. ATSI also owns a minority interest of a subsidiary in Mexico, ATSI Comunicaciones, S.A. de C.V., which operates under a 30-year government issued telecommunications license.

The information in this news release includes certain forward-looking statements that are based upon management's expectations and assumptions about certain risks and uncertainties that can affect future events. Although management believes these assumptions and expectations to be reasonable on the date of this news release, these risks and uncertainties may cause actual events to differ material from managements those contained in this news release. The risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, continuing as a going concern, availability and cost of our present vendors and suppliers, and absence of any change in government regulations or other costs associated with data transmission over the Internet or termination of transmissions in foreign countries.

Contact:
Jack Eversull
The Eversull Group
972-378-7917
972-378-7981 (fax)
E-mail: Email Contact
Web Site: www.atsi.net

Regain Lost Landline Revenue Through Global-IP Services And Innovative Services, Jajah To Telecommunications Companies.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwire - May 29, 2008) - JAJAH, the world's most innovative global communication company, released its Q2 Telecommunications Industry Issues Index today that identified that the biggest concern for global telecommunications executives is the loss of landline revenue and the threat of emerging IP-based competitors. The study also found that IP-based Value Added Services, international calling and new pricing strategies are seen as the best opportunities to replace lost revenue, though many companies have yet to clearly define their IP strategy.

To gain a deeper understanding of carriers' perceptions of the ongoing shift in the global telecommunications industry and to drive product development, JAJAH conducted delegate research at CTIA and in-person one-to-one briefings with chief-level executives at telecommunications companies in the U.S. and Europe. According to the JAJAH study, new networks, competitors and connectable devices are placing an unprecedented burden on global carriers as they try to remain central to their customers' "connected life."

Consumer behavior mirrors industry trends and pain points. A recent National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control showed that nearly one in six American homes (15.8%) had no home landline, and that nearly three in 10 households have only a cell phone or seldom, if ever, use their traditional phone.

Global carriers face a new style of competition where anytime, anywhere, interconnected voice and data services put significant strain on networks and product innovation. With domestic markets heavily penetrated, international markets will play a bigger role in future revenue and market growth. Whilst IP-based operators can enter markets with little or no infrastructure the JAJAH research shows many carriers remain without a go-to-new-market strategy.

Key findings from the Q2 Telecommunications Industry Issues Index include:

--  Landline churn: The biggest fear amongst fixed line telecommunications
  companies is the loss of landline connections. Four out of five companies
  put landline replacement revenue at the top of their agenda.

--  Value Added Services the savior? The majority of carriers rank the
  addition of Value Added Services to their portfolio as a higher priority
  than their network. Two-thirds of chief-level executives state Value Added
  Services are the single most important factor for increasing customer
  loyalty and revenue.

--  Talkifying the Web: It is unclear how to deal with the perceived
  threat from "new-style" competitors, with two-thirds more concerned about
  IP-based competitors than new triple-play competitors.

--  IP telephony strategy gap: Many companies identify significant room
  for advancement in IP telephony strategy. Two-thirds stated IP telephony
  represented the future of telecommunications and are looking to carrier-
  friendly companies like JAJAH to partner with to quickly advance its IP
  offering and IP backbone.

--  The future is international: International markets hold enormous
  potential; Ninety percent expect significant revenue growth abroad, rather
  than in domestic markets in the next five years.

--  Infrastructure investment black hole: With a lack of funding for
  infrastructure investment, more than 60 percent of the executives
  questioned believe they will outsource a greater proportion of
  infrastructure development by 2009.

--  Triple play boom: Service expansion by telcos will lead to an increase
  in triple play offerings in the U.S. and Europe in the next twelve months.
  More than one-third of single and dual play companies plan to launch a
  triple play offering within the next 24 months. Of those companies looking
  to expand into IPTV, more than half will do so via acquisition.

Where once it was a race to lay pipes, JAJAH's report outlines the goals in the new battlefield -- Value Added Services, preservation of customer base and diversification of revenue.

"Service bundles, technology convergence, increasing global competition and decreasing margins are driving a major shift in the telecommunications industry," said JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy. "It is really encouraging that the biggest companies in the industry are embracing the concept of IP-telephony as a source of revenue protection and growth. With our open IP platform and managed services, JAJAH is working with a number of companies in the industry to help them embrace IP and turn competition into cooperation."

"Convergence has been the key word for the past decade, but now IP platforms are coming to maturity and many traditional organizations have yet to define their go to market strategy," said independent telecom analyst Jon Arnold. "As consumers crave new forms of communication and voice-bundled services, it's not surprising to hear many CEOs are putting these issues front and center. JAJAH's findings are a dramatic example of how under-prepared many companies are to deal with the industry shift."

JAJAH is partnering with technology companies, carriers, mobile and cable companies, including Yahoo!, eMobile and Deutsche Telekom, to provide a range of cutting edge IP telephony solutions. JAJAH's managed services platform helps its strategic partners stay at the forefront of global communications and provide their customers with simple and efficient new services. These partnerships, strengthened by its growing base of 10 million customers across 200 countries, confirm JAJAH as the world's leading open and scalable IP telephony network.

HTC Touch Pro Bridges Mobile Work And Desktop Work With Advanced 3D Touch User Interface, Sliding QWERTY Keyboard and Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro

Advanced 3D Touch User Interface, Desktop-like browsing, 5-row sliding QWERTY Keyboard and Window Mobile 6.1 create hybrid business phone

Taipei, Taiwan — June 4, 2008 — HTC Corp., a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design, today unveiled its advanced next generation business phone, the HTC Touch Pro™. Bringing a beautiful new angle to mobile business productivity, the HTC Touch Pro utilizes similar styling and functionality of the highly anticipated Touch Diamond™ and introduces a variety of business-focused enhancements that make getting work done on the go quick and easy.

“The HTC Touch Pro and Touch Diamond have created a new generation of HTC touch devices that make the promise of the one-hand, one-touch mobile Internet a reality,” said Peter Chou, president and CEO, HTC Corp. “HTC Touch Pro is for those customers that demand the ease of use and enjoyment of TouchFLO™ 3D and want the styling of the Touch Diamond but also need the powerful mobile business experience that HTC delivers.”

A New Dimension To Touch – One hand, one touch
HTC has taken a great leap forward in touch screen innovation with its 3D touch interface called TouchFLO 3D. TouchFLO 3D provides a stunningly intuitive way to zip through common tasks like messaging, calendar appointments or making calls with just one touch. Delve a little deeper to find that your music, photos, contacts and surfing the web are also responsive to the touch. In addition, the Touch Pro includes a new innovative touch-sensitive control for device interaction.

Making The Mobile Internet Useful and Fun
With the introduction of Touch Diamond and Touch Pro, HTC delivers an entirely new mobile Internet experience that utilizes broadband-like speeds with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and wireless connectivity. Committed to improving Web browsing, HTC provides a new customized mobile Web browser that enables easy viewing and effortless navigation of Websites in the way they are designed to be viewed on a PC. As part of this browsing experience users can zoom and pan Websites with one-hand and automatically view optimized content that has been specially created to fit the display. Turning the device sideways automatically rotates the web page view from a portrait to landscape view.

In addition to Web browsing, the Touch Pro includes an HTC-developed, YouTube application for watching a variety of user generated video content as well as including Google Maps for mobile for mapping and traffic data.

Unmatched Style With Complete Productivity
Like the Touch Diamond, Touch Pro is crafted with precision to fit comfortably in a user’s hand and brings together elegant touch screen response with the direct precision of HTC’s trademark sliding keyboard design. Introducing a new five-row QWERTY keyboard layout that makes typing-intensive tasks like composing email or working on Microsoft Office® documents quick and easy. Built-in TV-out functionality means users can deliver the perfect PowerPoint® presentation from the Touch Pro.

Bursting with Innovation
The Touch Pro delivers an unrivalled combination of features and functionality. The 2.8 inch display provides near-print quality viewing that enables beautiful Web browsing and viewing of photographs. The built-in camera includes an optical auto-focus lens that ensures the photos you take will be clear and consistent. Advanced wireless and auto sensor screen pivoting are just a few of the features that make the Touch Pro experience a stand out.

Availability
The HTC Touch Pro™ will be available to customers across all major European, Asian and the Middle East markets in late summer. The North American and Latin American versions of Touch Pro will be available later in 2008.

Key HTC Touch Pro Specifications
• Size: 102 x 51 x 18.05mm
• Weight: 165 g
• Connectivity: WCDMA / HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• Operating system: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Display: 2.8-inch VGA touch screen
• Camera: 3.2MP, with the second VGA camera for video calling
• Internal memory: 512 MB flash, 288 MB RAM
• Expansion Slot: microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
• Keyboard: Slide-out 5 row QWERTY keyboard
• Bluetooth: 2.0 with EDR
• Wireless: WiFi 802.11b/g
• GPS: GPS/AGPS
• Interface: HTC ExtUSB (11-pin mini-USB 2.0, audio jack, and TV out in one)
• Battery: 1340 mAh
• Talk time: GSM: up to 8 hours
• Standby time: GSM: up to two-weeks
• Chipset: Qualcomm MSM 7201A 528MHz

HTC Introduces New Accessories
Also today, HTC announced multiple accessories will be available for the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro including a similarly designed desktop cradle and travel charger accessory pack as well as an extended battery and slim collapsible case for the Touch Diamond.

Nokia MOSH, Enables Advertisers To Target Mobile Content Users

Nokia service enables advertisers to target mobile content users

Espoo, Finland - MOSH, a mobile and online content consumption, creation and sharing service, has joined the Nokia Media Network, and now offers advertisers the opportunity to reach customers around the globe who are downloading original mobile content. The Nokia Media Network provides reach to more than 100 million consumers around the globe through advertising on blue-chip mobile publishers, operator partners and Nokia properties.

"We are committed to expanding the Nokia Media Network, which is growing rapidly in both reach and quality, so we can drive greater results for our brand advertisers," said Mike Baker, vice president and head of Nokia Interactive Advertising. "The MOSH audience, comprised of the heaviest users of mobile content around the world, is particularly desirable to many of our top advertisers."

MOSH has launched its "Spotlight" program, a 'paid placement' advertising initiative, where advertisements are Spotlight-branded and placed above all organic browse, search and contextual placements. Spotlight gives brands and mobile content companies the opportunity for promotion with highlighted placements for their content. Spotlight content is always front and center for all MOSH users to see, and, as MOSH is seamlessly integrated between Web and mobile, so too are the Spotlight campaigns, including banner ads for both the mobile and traditional Internet.

MyADLETS, The Viral Frontier.: Spotlight Mobile Advertising With Nokia MOSH

BlackBerry® solution in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) From du, Alcatel-Lucent and Research In Motion.

Paris, June 2, 2008 — du, Alcatel-Lucent and Research In Motion (RIM) today announced the launch of the BlackBerry® solution in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). du customers will now be able to enjoy the benefits of enhanced communications and increased productivity by using a Blackberry® smartphone to access email, browse the web, make phone calls, send and receive text and picture messages, as well as access a wide variety of business and leisure applications on the move.

“As an integrated telecom services provider, our goal is to offer our customers the most advanced telecom solutions and the best possible user experience. Integrating email services and data on the mobile phone is a natural step for du. We selected BlackBerry smartphones because they provide the leading wireless email solution used by millions of customers around the world,” said Osman Sultan, CEO of du. “Access to email and calendar information on the go has become essential for business people. Launching the BlackBerry solution is an integral step to enrich our portfolio of integrated communication solutions to meet the market needs in the UAE”, he added.

Based on its distribution agreement with RIM, Alcatel-Lucent is leveraging its strong local presence in the region to provide du with the end-to-end implementation, integration, launch and support services for delivering the BlackBerry solution to the UAE market. With Alcatel-Lucent managing integration and deployment, du can focus on delivering customer facing services, enabling the operator to quickly meet market demand.

“Our agreement with RIM further reinforces Alcatel-Lucent’s ability to leverage our global strengths and local presence to deliver enterprise managed communications and value-added services, enabling the operator to quickly meet market demand. As a result, du customers will enjoy the freedom and flexibility of the BlackBerry solution for staying connected to communications and information whenever they wish,” said Frederic Rose, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities Europe, Africa and Asia.

“Together with Alcatel-Lucent, we are pleased to extend the availability of the BlackBerry solution to du customers,” said Charmaine Eggberry, Vice President and Managing Director of RIM, EMEA. “The BlackBerry solution is a great choice for organizations and individuals that strive to be more productive, flexible, and ultimately more successful in work and life.”

At launch du will offer the BlackBerry® Curve™ 8300, BlackBerry® 8800, BlackBerry® 8700g and BlackBerry® Pearl™ 8100 smartphones, as well as BlackBerry® Enterprise Server and BlackBerry® Internet Service.

BlackBerry smartphones available from du
The BlackBerry Curve 8300 is the smallest and lightest full-QWERTY BlackBerry smartphone. Its stylish design incorporates a large display and a range of advanced multimedia features, including a 2 megapixel camera that comes complete with 5x digital zoom, built-in flash, self-portrait mirror and full screen viewfinder. The BlackBerry Curve 8300 makes it incredibly easy to stay connected to the information and people that matter most.

One of the smallest and lightest smartphones on the market, the BlackBerry Pearl 8100 packs the power and functionality that users have come to expect from a BlackBerry smartphone. Beneath its sleek and stylish exterior, this award winning smartphone supports powerful communications and rich multimedia capabilities, which has made it popular among business users and consumers alike.

The slim and stylish BlackBerry 8800 smartphone is designed to satisfy the needs of demanding mobile professionals. It includes a full, highly tactile QWERTY keyboard with a range of features including built-in GPS, a multimedia player and an expandable memory card slot. The large, high resolution screen, with its automatic light sensing technology, makes viewing email, the Internet and other applications a pleasure.

The sleek and elegant UMTS-enabled BlackBerry 8700g includes a wide range of communications and connectivity features together with a full QWERTY keyboard. It can also be used as a wireless modem for laptops, offering mobile professionals more flexibility in how they stay connected.

du will enable customers to connect through BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, which tightly integrates with IBM Lotus® Domino®, Microsoft® Exchange and Novell® GroupWise® and works with existing enterprise systems, to enable highly secure, push-based wireless access to email and other corporate applications.

For individuals and smaller businesses, du will offer BlackBerry® Internet Service, which allows users to manage up to ten supported corporate and personal email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts) from a single device.

Alcatel-Lucent Grabs NXTcomm Eos Awards For Its Technology Innovation And Achievement In Three Categories

Paris, June 2, 2008 — Alcatel-Lucent has won NXTcomm Eos Awards for its technology innovation and achievement in three categories by a NXTcomm panel of judges.

Two of the awards were in the Technology Innovation segment. Alcatel-Lucent won the NXTcomm Eos Award in the Backbone/Edge category for its FP2 IP Service Routing and Traffic Management Silicon, and in the Wireless Mobile Technologies and Applications category for its Geographic Messaging Services Platform.

Under Special Technology Achievement, Alcatel-Lucent earned the NXTcomm Eos Award in the Strategic Support Solution category for its IMS-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for consumers that it deployed, including network design and integration, with a major service provider.

The Eos Awards will be presented at NXTcomm (exhibits June 17 – 19), where Alcatel-Lucent will demonstrate all three technologies in booth 3116 in the Upper South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

“Earning Eos Awards in three categories highlights the breadth and depth of Alcatel-Lucent’s portfolio and experience in developing new technologies, software and services and bringing them to market to solve our customer’s business challenges,” said Tim Krause, chief marketing officer, Americas business, Alcatel-Lucent. “Our thanks to the NXTcomm organizers and the Eos Awards judges for the time and consideration they gave to this selection. We are very honored that they selected Alcatel-Lucent, recognizing our leadership in these rapidly developing areas of network technology.”

Named for the Greek goddess of dawn, the NXTcomm Eos Awards honor those exhibiting companies that have developed the most promising new technologies or provided the best new network services and strategic support and for ongoing achievement.

“This year’s Eos winners demonstrated the best and most promising advancements to the network-enabled voice, video and data ecosystem,” said Wayne Crawford, NXTcomm Executive Director. “We congratulate Alcatel-Lucent for its leadership, innovation and role in driving our industry forward.”

Alcatel-Lucent’s winning submissions were the following:
FP2 IP Service Routing and Traffic Management Silicon

Announced in March 2008, the new FP2 chipset is a breakthrough in silicon innovation. The result of a three-year development effort, and representing the fourth-generation chipset from one of the industry’s most experienced teams, Alcatel-Lucent’s FP2 silicon delivers sophisticated and optimized network processing and traffic management at speeds up to 100Gb/s and provides a clear path to 100 Gigabit Ethernet, vastly improving Return on Investment (ROI). The Alcatel-Lucent FP2 silicon also provides the foundation for one of the most advanced service routing portfolios on the market delivering an unrivalled combination of bandwidth, performance, feature depth and scalability in a single routing platform, effectively providing the fabric for IP network and service transformation for all of our customers.

Geographic Messaging Services Platform
The Geographic Messaging Services Platform (GMSP) is a next-generation location-driven platform and set of applications that leverage the advanced functionality of today’s mobile networks and devices. Following user opt-in, GMSP tracks the user’s locations and preferences, based on fixed and moving ‘GeoFences’, and automatically delivers location-relevant multi-media content, where and when appropriate. Featuring innovative Bell Labs algorithms, GMSP is ideal for next-generation mobile applications such as location-based marketing and social networking, ‘kid tracker’ applications, and other opt-in mobile applications developed by service providers and third parties. GMSP was invented by Bell Labs, commercialized within Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, and will become part of the award-winning Messaging Suite in Alcatel-Lucent’s applications portfolio.

IMS Consumer VoIP
Alcatel-Lucent partnered with a major service provider to integrate and deploy an IMS-based solution that enables new Consumer VoIP service that unifies the subscriber’s communication experience across triple play services (voice, broadband and TV) over IP. Alcatel-Lucent provided the technology and network design, deployment, integration and maintenance services. The service is commercially deployed, providing a differentiating triple-play service in a competitive market. The IMS solution, which implements attractive subscriber applications, economic scaling, and proven interoperability, also enables the creation and launch of additional advanced services.

Alcatel-Lucent, globally, has more than 30 IMS customers and has supplied more than 60 customers with IMSapplication servers and services.

InfoComm08, the leading audiovisual business-to-business marketplace. For more information, go to www.NXTcommShow.com.

Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Contact the Alcatel-Lucent Press Office: press@alcatel-lucent.com

fring for Nokia S60 devices (Symbian 9), de-bugged, improved & enriched!

We have written about Fring for a long time here and it continues to give us information to write about and enhancements to it's users, Fringsters. If you did not know what Fring is an application for your mobile devices, which allows you to communicate with landline, mobile phones and other “fingsters” over mVoIP. Fringsters can communicate with contacts using SkypeOut and other SIP providers, Google Talk, MSN messenger, and Twitter, all via a single integrated contact list.

According to a post on Fring Blog, Fring for Nokia S60 or Fring for Symbian 9.X devices, Fring 3.35 has been released after being de-bugged, enriched, and improved. The version 3.35 has apparently improved stability, significantly less interruption, logouts, better quality voice all round. So if you are a Fring user you should be a happy person. This version also an added speakerphone for Symbian 9.2 if you have it, Like Nokia N95. You also get file transfer enabled on Yahoo! and Skype allowing the swapping of all sort of files like, music, images and video over 3G or Wifi from mobile to PC, mobile to mobile, without need for Bluetooth, MMS, and cable or infrared.

The easiest way to update your fring version is to point your mobile internet WAP browser at www.fring.com and download fring directly to your mobile.

If you find any bugs or other annoyances you can help Fring and other Fring users by sending Fring the information.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Tata Teleservices Deploys Location-based Service In India With Qualcomm's Assisted GPS (A-GPS) technology.

Technologies from Qualcomm and TeleCommunication Systems Enable Advanced LBS Services, Allow for Pinpoint Positioning in Urban and Rural Areas -

San Diego,CA-- Tata Teleservices, India's fastest-growing telecom service provider, today announced that it will commercially deploy a new location-based service that is the first to use Qualcomm's Assisted GPS (A-GPS) technology in the Indian market. The service leverages Qualcomm's QPoint(TM) solution and gpsOne(R) chipset technology, with hosting services from leading wireless communications provider TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) (Nasdaq: TSYS). The service is expected to be available on multiple handsets from Tata's catalog and deployment is expected in late 2008.

A-GPS technology will provide Tata with a differentiated LBS service, as it improves on previously deployed cellular LBS services in India in terms of both performance and reliability. Conventional Cell-ID-based solutions rely solely on base stations for positioning, which can equate to less than optimal functionality in areas where cellular signals are compromised. Tata's A-GPS service leverages triangulation with cellular base stations and satellite-based GPS for precise position location in both rural and urban environments, including inside buildings and structures.

"Tata's dedication to providing its customers with advanced, rich wireless services was initially evident in our implementation of CDMA technology and now can be seen with our deployment of LBS applications based on A-GPS, which provides advanced and reliable wireless navigation technologies for enriched services," said Pankaj Sethi, president of value added services and enterprise marketing, Tata Teleservices. "With Qualcomm and TeleCommunication Systems' technology and services, Tata customers will benefit from a greatly improved LBS experience on their handsets."

Tata's service will leverage Qualcomm's QPoint and gpsOne solutions, which together deliver a complete, integrated mass-market solution for enriched location-based services. Using these technologies to leverage the capabilities of A-GPS allows developers to easily create precise, reliable and compelling location-based applications. Tata plans on working with the local developer community to create both consumer and enterprise LBS applications. Consumer navigation will include friend finder and social networking applications, while enterprise customers will benefit from asset and fleet tracking applications.

"With this announcement, Tata has once again proven to be a global leader by providing advanced LBS services based on A-GPS," said Arvin Chander, vice president of global carrier relations for Qualcomm Internet Services. "Tata is working with a strong community of content providers who understand the market and have the tools to create a range of precision LBS applications."

TCS provides proven precise location technology for in-network deployments or via world-class hosting solutions. For Tata, TCS will be hosting its Xypoint Location Platform that includes a Position Determination Entity built upon the aforementioned QPoint technology from Qualcomm.

"Adding to our commercially proven location deployments in Asia and worldwide, TCS' solution for Tata underscores our strategic commitment to the Asia-Pacific market," said Joe Hannan, vice president of location products for TCS. "We are proud to be an integral partner with Tata in offering differentiated services to the dynamically expanding market of India."

Tata Teleservices is one of India's leading private telecom service providers. The company offers integrated telecom solutions to its customers under the Tata Indicom brand, and uses the latest CDMA 3G 1X technology for its wireless network. Tata Teleservices along with Tata Teleservices (Maharastra) Limited, operates in more than 5,000 towns across 19 circles i.e. Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, New Delhi, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Bihar, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh (E), Uttar Pradesh (W), Kolkata, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. The company has a customer base of more than 25 million.

TeleCommunication Systems, Inc. (TCS) (Nasdaq: TSYS) produces wireless data communications technology solutions that require proven high levels of reliability. TCS provides wireless and VoIP E9-1-1 network-based services, secure deployable communication systems, engineered satellite-based services, and commercial location applications, like traffic and navigation, using the precise location of a wireless device. Customers include leading wireless, cable MSOs, and VoIP carriers around the world, and agencies of the U.S. Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security.

For more information, visit www.telecomsys.com.

Qualcomm Internet Services enables mobile retailing solutions and Internet services that accelerate consumer adoption and usage of mobile data worldwide for its operator, brand & affinity and content provider customers. BREW(R) is a comprehensive solution for customers seeking to bring high-value wireless services to market and enhance the mobile experience for consumers. Customers also can benefit from a portfolio of adaptable, modular products that can be used to address specific mobile retail challenges from general merchandizing to personalized recommendations.

Qualcomm Incorporated (http://www.qualcomm.com) is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services based on CDMA and other advanced technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., Qualcomm is included in the S&P 500 Index and is a 2008 FORTUNE 500(R) company traded on The Nasdaq Stock Market(R) under the ticker symbol QCOM.

Except for the historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the extent and speed to which QPoint and GPSOne are deployed, change in economic conditions of the various markets the Company serves, as well as the other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's SEC reports, including the report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2007, and most recent Form 10-Q.

Qualcomm, BREW and GPSOne are registered trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated. QPoint is a trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Tata Contacts:
Rajeev Narayan
Tata Teleservices Ltd
Phone: +91 9212105151
Email: rajeev.narayan@tatatel.co.in

Suroor Hussain
Tata Teleservices Ltd

Rajeev Narayan (rajeev.narayan@tatatel.co.in)
Phone: +91 9212105151

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Microsoft’s “Echoes” To Make Telephone Numbers Disappear!

“Right now the mobile phone, the desktop phone, the e-mail that you have on the PC, or instant messaging, these are all very different things, and the issues about how much of your information or your schedule, your current activity you share with people who communicate with you is not well designed…. By bringing together all of these kinds of communication, we can greatly simplify them. We can get rid of phone numbers, have it so when you say you want to contact someone, based on who you are and where that person is, they can decide whether to take the call or take a message about that, and so a great efficiency improvement that can be made there.”

Yes that is a statement by Mr. Bill Gates, from one transcript of an early May speech Gates gave in Japan.
But exactly how Microsoft plans to make phone numbers disappear? Yes I thought about that as well but Mary Jo Foley has found out. Microsoft is going to use Microsoft’s “Echoes” services platform for telcos to do that. But at the end you might end up with a number! one from Microsoft.

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