Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Android Cupcake 1.5 Video Walk Through

Saturday, April 25, 2009

$62,000 Phone Bill For Data Roaming

International Roaming Plans will save you from such outrageous bills, see bottom of the post for carrier links on roaming plans.
There are too many stories about outrageous phone bills these carriers are charging these days. Not too long ago someone mistook terms on his "Unlimited Text" contract and got a bill from T-Mobile for $26000 while verizon gave a massive bill for a teen for texting and Another for watching Football or Baseball game online.
If the carriers can detect (of course they can) they also can provide a warning to users for using roaming for data or video streaming. But I think it is time for a class action suite for roaming charges.
Anyway the particular user who got the $62000 bill, downloaded a movie, (WALL-E) while in Mexico over his Wireless Datacard. Then he complained to the carrier (everyone is hiding the carriers name, including CNN which interviewed the uninformed user.) they agreed to bring down the cost to $17000. One commenter left this comment on ARSTechnica, where I got this information;
Original charge: $62,000
Claimed cost: $17,000
Charge with plan: $100
Estimated actual cost: $20

Markup:
Attempted: 310000%
Claimed to be near 0%: 85000%
Definitely profitable: 500%
Yes it is criminal!
So folks, when you go to a foreign country (or in some cases near Mexican or Canadian border, not veified) Make sure you get a roaming plan and check your bills, online to see if outrageous fees being applied. Most carriers have International Roaming Plans, here are some;
T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint
ArsTechnica $62,000 movie download a result of poor travel planning

Friday, April 24, 2009

Ocarina, A Stairway To iPhone Entrepreneurship!

Ocarina by SMULE, a 99-cent app on the iTunes App Store turns the iPhone into a virtual flute. It is currently one of the best-selling iPhone's apps and has pulled in about $800,000 for SMULE. They also make a buch of other apps like Sonic Lighter, Sonic Boom, Sonic Vox, and Zephyr. The latest the company released is, Leaf Trombone.

SMULE Leaf Trombone

presidential BlackBerry 8830 On Its Way To White House.

Presidential BlackBerry 8830
As President Obama completes a very successful 100 days in the office, a device that President Obama wanted is making it's way into the White House. That is super secure Presidential BlackBerry 8830.
According to Washington Times "the top-secret BlackBerry 8830 is in the final stages of development by the National Security Agency, which will soon begin checking to make sure its encryption software meets federal standards. The device could be ready for use in the next few months"

Other than President Obama, top aides as well as first lady Michelle Obama expected to get secure BlackBerrys.

SecureVoice, developed by the Genesis Key Inc. of Washington is a key component of the device. SecureVoice can turn any BlackBerry 8830 or Curve into a device that is designed to defeat hackers, eavesdroppers and spies.

Washington Times

App Store Downloads Top One Billion

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Apple just announced that iTunes App Store downloads has passed one billion mark. This all happened in a span of nine months and I think itself is a record!
Yes the contest for the billionth app download has been won by a 13 year old! Connor Mulcahey, of Weston, CT as the grand prize winner will receive a $10,000 iTunes® gift card, an iPod® touch, a Time Capsule® and a MacBook® Pro. The one billionth app, was Bump created by Bump Technologies.
“The revolutionary App Store has been a phenomenal hit with iPhone and iPod touch users around the world, and we’d like to thank our customers and developers for helping us achieve the astonishing milestone of one billion apps downloaded,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “In nine months, the App Store has completely revolutionized the mobile industry and this is only the beginning.”

Thursday, April 23, 2009

OS 4.7.0.132 For BlackBerry Storm 9530 Leaked!

BlackBerry Storm 9530 OS 4.7.0.132
Looks like RIM workshops are leakier than my faucets. There is another Blackberry OS leak and this time it is for Blackberry Storm9530 devices. Previous leaks included BlackBerry Bold OS 5.0.0.90 and OS 4.7.0.90 for Blackberry Storm.
Then comes the ususal warning!
This is not an official Blackberry OS release and we do not know the state of the OS. It is up to you to decide to upgrade your device and please do not shoot the messenger.
BlackBerry Storm 9530 OS 4.7.0.132 : Link
CrackBerry Forum Thread where I learned about the leak : Link

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

16GB iPhone 3G (Refurbished) For $149

Refurbished iPhones
AT&T is offering a refurbished 16GB iPhone 3G with a 2-year contract for $149 and they are not much different from the other ones! unless you want polished brand new stuff.
AT&T via Gizmodo

Apple Reports Best March Quarter Revenue and Earnings in Apple History

Apple's Financial report
Man I thought economy was bad? (Yet I bought two iPhones in this quarter) and after reading Apple's Financial report, I feel like throwing those economical worries to the air!
The Company posted revenue of $8.16 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion, or $1.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 2.22 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a three percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 11.01 million iPods during the quarter, representing three percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 3.79 million representing 123 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

“We are extremely pleased to report the best non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings in our history,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Apple’s financial condition remains very robust, with almost $29 billion in cash and marketable securities on our balance sheet. Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2009, we expect revenue in the range of about $7.7 billion to $7.9 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $.95 to $1.00.”

Apple

YouTube RealTime, Virally Social Video Watching

YouTube RealTime
TechCrunch is reporting about "YouTube RealTime" which is said to allow users to see which of their friends are currently online, the videos they’re watching, and comments they’ve left. Updates will be shown in a persistent toolbar, which means that users will be able to see them no matter where they are on the site.
Ok time to leave friendsfeed, opps got to wait a while, this is being tested on limited basis.
TechCrunch

Asterisk At Google Summer Of Code, GSOC 2009

Asterisk GSOC
Following Student / Mentor pairs have been selected and accepted by Google Summer Of Code (GSOC) to complete their proposals. Congradulations Students, and Mentors. (The asterisk itself was accepted GSOC earlier)
You can follow their progress at Google Code. I am very sure as we all set to benefit. I will try to follow these students as the time progress.1 - 4

Student	Title	Mentor	Status
Brett Bryant	Asterisk Data Storage API	Russell Bryant	accepted
eliel sardanons	Generic data export/retrieval API.	tilghman lesher	accepted
claude patry	CLI filtering	mark michelson	accepted
Giuseppe Sucameli	Customizable Asterisk Voicemail Menu	Luigi Rizzo	accepted

Asterisk 1.6.1.0-rc5 Ready For Download

Asterisk 1.6.1.0-rc5
The fifth release candidate, RC5 of Asterisk 1.6.1.0. Branch, Asterisk 1.6.1.0-rc5 is available for immediate download at Digium Downloads.
This release fixes a couple of issues with realtime music on hold that could cause Asterisk to crash, and an issue that caused hungup channels to stay up, leading to 100% CPU usage. Additionally, several minor issues and edge case scenarios have been resolved.
The complete Change Log Time to download and test!

India's Growing Wireless Market Adds 15.64 Million Costomers In March

Wireless Market
According to a report on Reuters, Indian wireless operators added a record 15.64 million customers in March, But they also added 15.41 million customers in January and 13.45 million users in February.
Then again those are not iPhones and I think Apple should get that iPhone Nano out and goto India, if they want to make numbers big, like other wireless device makers who thrive in those markets. I meant India and China, the other wireless hotspot

Time Warner Cable "No DOCSIS 3.0" We Put It On Hold Because You Said No Bandwidth Caps!

TWC No Bandwidth Cap, No Wideband!
I am twice happy that I do not live in an area where Time Warner Rules. But Even if I did, I think I will not be having their internet service that they call broadband. In any case 5GB monthly cap they suggested while back was the crux of road runner crap!
But now they seem to be laying more crap so their customers can stp on. According to Alex Dudley, VP of public relations for Time Warner, the wideband service, DOCSIS 3.0, is on hold because they could not launch tiered pricing. Time Warner planned to roll out both the services at the same time, therefore they are both on hold now.
Dudley on his twitter feed;
"@netpro2k It doesn't...just that the rollout was scheduled with the trial and now all of it is on hold"
@AlexTWC
He has also mentioned that the biggest cost associated with wideband roll-out is bandwidth allocation. Are sure it is not per house passed? I read some where that it costs us some where around $750 per house passed USA while Japanese do it for $20. I think what they refer to as bandwidth allocation is the infrastructure upgrade. They want you to pay for their network setup? I think the wolf is catching up!

All the while, Comcast started rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 last year, announcing this Tuesday that it had expanded into the San Francisco Peninsula. Yes Show them how it is done!

Good to be living in the San Francisco Bay Area!

Read more at PCMAG. "TWC: No Bandwidth Caps? Fine, No Wideband"

AT&T Sells More Than 1.6 Million iPhones In First Quarter 2009.

AT&T Sells 1.6 Million iPhones In 2009.
According to first quarter financial report, AT&T celebrated improved postpaid wireless growth with increased integrated device penetration, double-digit increases in Internet and strategic business services.
AT&T’s first-quarter revenues totaled $30.6 billion, net income attributable to AT&T was $3.1 billion, diluted earnings per share totaled $0.53 and cash from operating activities totaled $7.9 billion.
More Than 1.6 Million Apple iPhone 3G Activations. AT&T’s postpaid subscriber growth reflects continued success with iPhone 3G. In the first quarter, AT&T’s iPhone 3G activations totaled more than 1.6 million, more than 40 percent of them for customers who were new to the company. AT&T’s U.S. iPhone exclusive continues to deliver subscribers with ARPUs (average monthly revenues per subscriber) that are approximately 1.6 times higher and churn rates that are significantly lower than the company’s overall postpaid subscriber base.

“These results demonstrate focused and disciplined execution as we work through a tough economy,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and chief executive officer. “Our cost-improvement initiatives are on track, earnings and cash flow were solid, our balance sheet and credit metrics continue to be strong.

“Most important, during this down cycle we continue to invest in key growth areas like mobile broadband, more bandwidth to the home through our all-IP AT&T U-verse platform, and advanced global business solutions delivered over AT&T’s premier Internet backbone network. We have good momentum in all of these areas.

"I am particularly pleased with the success of our iPhone 3G initiative, which has driven strong high-end customer growth and delivered financial benefits ahead of our original outlook. Business and consumer expectations for mobility are on the rise, wireless innovation is flourishing and the opportunities ahead are substantial. AT&T is strongly positioned to lead in the next generation of wireless growth.”

AT&T Press Release

$26000 T-Mobile Phone Bill For Record Texting Attempt!

26K Texting Bill
According to a news item on the Yahoo News, Two friends attempted to bread the record set by 182,000 sent in 2005 by Deepak Sharma in India. Yes they did succeed and one of the also got a phone bill for $26000 from T-Mobile. At the beginning of the record breaking attempt, both the contenders assumed that their unlimited testing accouts would help the attempt. But;
"It came in a box that cost $27.55 to send to me," Nick Andes, one of the contenders said Tuesday. He said he "panicked" and called T-Mobile, which told The Associated Press it had credited his account and was investigating the charges.
Yahoo

WES2009, Eighth Annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium

WES2009
Research In Motion (RIM) is hosting the upcoming eighth annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES). The Symposium is slated to be held from May 5-7, 2009 in Orlando, Florida.
WES 2009 attracts industry innovators and leaders from around the world to share insights on the BlackBerry platform and a wide range of other wireless products and services. I have always enjoyed the symposium in addition to learning a whole lot every year.
WES 2009 co-sponsors include Cisco, Hewlett Packard, IBM, AT&T, BoxTone, Brightstar, Chalk Media, Conceivium Business Solutions, Google, Lenovo, SAP, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless, Viigo, Vodafone and Zenprise. Leading experts from Forrester Research, IDC, Yankee Group, and CCS Insight will also be presenting at WES 2009.
The Symposium also adds an impressive line-up of keynote speakers:

Mike Lazaridis: Mr. Lazaridis is recognized in the global wireless community as a visionary, innovator, and engineer of extraordinary talent. He is Founder, President and Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIM) and is responsible for product strategy, research and development, product development, and manufacturing.
Robert J. Picciano: Mr. Picciano is General Manager for Lotus and WebSphere Portal Software at IBM and oversees an extensive portfolio of collaboration tools designed to empower people to be more effective, responsive and innovative within the context of the work they do.
Laurent Philonenko: Mr. Philonenko is Vice President and General Manager of the Cisco Unified Communications business unit, which provides messaging, conferencing and desktop and phone client solutions including video and mobility.
Eric C. Haseltine: Mr. Haseltine is President and Managing Partner, Haseltine Partners LLC, as well as Former 'CTO' for the U.S. intelligence community and former head of Walt Disney Imagineering. Mr. Haseltine has more than 100 publications in science and technical journals, the web and Discover Magazine.
Shane Robison: Mr. Robison is Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer at Hewlett Packard where he is responsible for shaping HP's overall corporate strategy and technology agenda and oversees the company's corporate marketing function.
Malcom Gladwell: Best-selling author of Outliers, The Tipping Point and Blink, Mr. Gladwell has been named as one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine. He is also known to have an incomparable gift for interpreting new ideas in the social sciences and making them understandable, practical and valuable to business and general audiences alike.

WES2009
(Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM)

Facebook On BlackBerry 1.5

Facebook On BlackBerry
The bew version of Facebook for Blackberry seem to bringing many new features as well. Now the mobile version of facebook can let you know of birthdays and iconofy your contacts with photos.
The App seem to be attracting users and there is an even a facebook group for Blackberry users, exchanging blackberry pins! (There is an app for that too)
From BlackBerry;
"With Facebook for BlackBerry smartphones, you can:

Receive instant notifications on your BlackBerry smartphones home screen.
Send/receive message or wall posts, pokes and friend requests.
Update your status, view and comment on your friends’ status.
Share photos from your BlackBerry smartphone with tags/comments and post to Facebook with just one click.
Connect your Facebook friends with your BlackBerry Address Book – including profile picture integration which brings a whole new meaning to caller ID.
Stay on top of your life with birthday reminders and event integration into your BlackBerry Calendar."

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

BroadBand Recovery Stimulus! Under The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

BroadBand Recovery Stimulus
Cisco has put together a small (but large) information package on economic stimulus opportunity for broadband and if you are in the business of dealing with broadband, it is something you should pay attention to. Along with a video of about 3minutes. The presentation provide you with information and guidance as how to best utilize the opportunity. The following links are also from the site but there are many other links and papers that are accessible from the link at the end.
I have seen these information before but not collected as Cisco has done. Thanks.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009

Legislation (PDF - 1 MB)
Recovery.gov, created by Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, is dedicated to public transparency for the $787 billion Economic Stimulus Package.

Broadband Initiative Resources

Economic Stimulus Opportunity for Broadband Cisco

Collaborative Predictions From Cisco's CTO

Enterprise Collaboration
"Collaboration Networks will be to Enterprises what Social Networks are to Consumers" is the first of the five predictions that Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco will be making in a series of predictions that she has promised to provide us, about collaboration and the enterprise.
Looking at the the first prediction, I am sure the rest is going to be very interesting and promising. In this prediction she ellaborates the current state of social networks like Facebook, linkedin and of course Twitter and how these collaborative effects will filter down to business world. I have witnessed collaboration savings that could be achieved using the right tools and technology.
I particularly like the example she she put forward involving Mac users at Cisco and about a birth of a support wiki. You know this is a real business case when she ends the statement with; "this wiki has delivered an estimated $2.6M in value annually for Cisco."
"As collaboration networks evolve and proliferate, our challenge as an industry is clear. We need to develop Enterprise Collaboration Platforms that provide the same ease of use, speed and ubiquity that social networks offer in the consumer world. But we need to combine those qualities with the high level of security, availability, quality of service, and reliability that enterprises require."
Follow the link below for a very informative article.

5 Predictions for the Future of Collaboration

Cisco Edge Quest 2 Mobile On iPhone & iPod

Cisco Edge Quest 2 Mobile
The famous online game based of edge router is available for iPhone and iPod users now, fro free. You can download it from iTunes App store for free.
The mobile version of the famous online game is not different from its Web Cousin and equally enjoyable, with six lanes to jump and collect packets from!. But remember there is no leader board like on the web version where top scorers are ranked and listed.
You will be able to find the online version at Cisco.
The game is based on the versatile Cisco ASR 9000 router and I think it is a very nice way to introduce the one of a kind router capable of handling simple data packets to torrents of streaming video.
Learned about this at Cisco SP360.

Monday, April 20, 2009

QuickOffice Mobile Office Suite For iPhone, (Word, Excel, Email & WiFi) In The Apple APP Store!

QuickOffice For iPhone,
Invariably we all set to work on those dreaded application at least once in a while. Spreadsheets are more of my taste and field than word processing. Usually I hit Google Docs when I am away from my desk for my Excel, spreadsheet work and some letter or memo writing. It is great but tou loose the finesse when you try to do that through iPhone web interface. Yes I have Google Tools on my iPhone(s) but still I am not very happy like when I use them from a larger screen.
Enter the quickOffice, with QuickWord, QuickSheet, And QuickOffice Files.
So what it is so good about this app? from the look of it everything, the super spreadsheet features and word processing with cut and paste! Yep, I think that alone will bring a few customers.
There are some very attractive features that makes me want to have this app, capability to mount the device as a wireless drive via WIFi with drag and drop file transfer capabilities.
You need to check out the app and read more if you want to know about the all the features of Word and Excel capabilities. The quickoffice is available in many other flavors besides iPhone.
The app is available via iTunes and I will be downloading it soon.

Be An Astricon 2009 Speaker!

Astricon 2009
Astricon 2009, which is to be held in October 13-15, 2009 at Renaissance Glendale Hotel & Spa,
Glendale, Arizona — USA (Where I plan to be this year) is considering speakers for the event.
We all know we have a Asterisk experts and Gurus among us. There are many people who have done wonders with this great Open Source Communication Tool we recognize as Asterisk. Then again we have people who scaled Digium or other hardware in building a cluster of IP PBXs based on Asterisk.
Yes a whole world might benefit from your achievements and wonder and that could only be done if you share the story with us.
If you think you got the stuff, Astricon wants to hear from you and you can tell them what you got by filling out the speaker form, You might be telling me how to Asterisk!
Digium acquired Sokol & Associates and Astricon about two years ago.

New iPhone To Support HD Video? iPhone HD

iPhone HD
According to a post on Apple is consolidating it's Composite and Component AV cable in Simply Apple AV Cable, allowing connecting to HDtv and SDtv displays using the same cable, as the new cable will support both components and composite connection.
The phonenews is suggesting that the next generation of iPhone and iPod touch will have advanced HD display capacity on both the devices. Apple is likely to offer at least one version of the iPhone and one version of iPod touch with higher resolution screen, to attract users and would be users of Zune HD, HTC Touch HD and HTC Touch Pro2.
Current iPhones and iPods has 480i and 480p and the up coming devices are said to have 720p and 1080i like most video devices.
Perhaps this is Apple's new take on consumer video after lack luster response to it's Apple TV. Perhaps next Apple TV will be a entertainment hub to Apple's consumer video ambitions.
Phonenews.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Ashton Kutcher Bests CNN In Twitter Race

@aplusk
Actor Ashton Kutcher @aplusk beat CNN and Africa gets 10000 mosquito nets to beat Malaria on the continent!
I am also with one voter who mentioned that the race shout continue and CNN should donate $1 for each new twit (Twitter user) that follow the actor. I am not following either but it will be a big show today on Oprah as the all the tweeties will show up to see Oprah's first tweet.
I checked Oprah's twitter page yesterday but I was surprised to find that she follows Shaq but not Obama!
Will see today!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

iPhone App Give Away At MobileCrunch

iPhone App Give Away
MobileCrunch announced that they will be giving away 100s of iPhone apps tomorrow for some mysterious promotion. If I knew how to form an internet line, I would be the first. But I have done the next best thing. I have bookmarked the post ob my PC, and iPhone!
Go get your iPhone app at MobileCrunch.
PS Micheal and Greg both told us how to redeem the apps directly from your iPhone;
"You can enter the codes directly in the iTunes app (not iPod) on your iPhone by clicking on the Downloads tab and selecting the Redeem button on the title bar."

Tomorrow A Big Day For Twitter As Oprah Tweets!

Oprah Tweet
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey will be twittering for the first time tomorrow, @oprah, she announced on her Facebook today. Tomorrow she will be doing it from her show! Twitter folks are happy too as this might give them the largest jump of members on a single day.
Oprah is followed by about 37000 as of now (expect this to grow to hundreds of thousands tomorrow) and she just follows 9 people, like @EV from twitter, @Ellen DeGeneres
@ReakShaq but she is not following @BarakObama! Why Oh Why? making @ravenii
wonder!
Good for all! Let us go and make the next chiller!

Kyocera's EOS Folding OLED Phone

Image credit Sass

Kyocera EOS
This is the phone of the future and one that I would rather have than my bulky and rigid iPhone or that even bulkier and heavy Android!

"Shape memory allows keys to morph up from its surface when needed and fade away when not in use. The flexibility of the screen allows for greater adaptability of form and interaction “ it maintains a compact shape (the size of a small wallet) for simple phone calls, and unfolds to reveal a large widescreen display. The device feeds off of our physical interaction with it, translating kinetic energy into an electric charge via an array of nano-scale piezoelectric generators. The more we interact with Eos, the more energy it creates - without using batteries."
More photos and info at Core77

32GB iPhone Already In Analysts Books!

32GB iPhone
Lazard Capital Markets analyst is predicting that Apple will begin production on a high-end iPhone with 32GB of flash memory and a low-end 3G version this spring.
The recently patented technologies for iPhones will certainly be on these phones, an improvements to the video is expected.
The low-end iPhone is expected to run on a 3G network only and will not have WiFi but I do not understand the reason, to pay for a phone that only connects to a 3G network that behaves like a edge network!
The analyst predicts the shipments of new devices to be around 3.8 million to 4 million in the first quarter, much higher than the Wall Streets expectation of 3 million to 3.5 million units.
These coupled with 8GB,16GB and 32GB iPods and other iPhones should provide a busy period for NAND Flash manufacturers
Read more at Lazard Capital Markets

Apple's New Patents, Are they Android After thoughts?

Image via via MacRumors.com

iPhone Patents
"There is a need for providing a user interface in a personal media device that minimizes either or both a user's physical and visual interactions with the personal media device, especially while the user is performing other activities that require, for example, the user's visual senses"
As soon as I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was the work of TV Raman at Google doing with Android phones, the Eyes Free Project.
According to MacRumors.com Apple has filed two patent applications on features that incorporate motion and gesture user interfaces. The first was filed two weeks ago. And the second was filed Thursday.
Although fundamentally the same and different the companies will want to look what they are patenting, and I hope they are truly patentable.
Apart from motion from the motion-detecting technology, there could be a front facing camera on this iPhone, indicating videoconferencing on the iPhone, as per sketch of the device. Video Recording on iPhone is expected in the next release of the OS, iPhone OS 3.0 and the product that is rumored to be coming out this summer, of which we seem to know the iPhone Parts.

MacRumors.com

GeoCaching WIth iPhone.

GeoCaching WIth iPhone.
I have been a member of Geocaching.com for a while and when I visited today, I found a bit of news about a GeoCaching application for iPhone. I have played with a few geocaching apps for iPhone, so far was not very satisfied with the ones that I came across.
But GroundSpeak's geocching app for iPhone seems to be promising and I am certainly going to try. Utilizing the iPhone 3G use of GPS, Wi-Fi positioning and cell towers combination to determine your approximate location, Groundspeak's iPhone App finds geocaches near your location from the Geocaching.com database in real-time. The app is also capable of geocoding addresses, search using a location from your address book, or look up a geocache by its GC code.
May be this weekend will be a good time to test it out as it promises to bring some warm weather.
The App works best on iPhone 3G and iPod touch and iPhone 1G are also supported without all the jingles like navigation in iPhone 1G.
Another app for my iPhone App Collection.

Geocaching.com

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

New iPhone Parts List Leaked

iPhone Parts List
Digitimes is showing us a list of parts for upcoming iPhone and their respective manufacturers in an article mentioning who in Taiwan going to benefit from the much hyped and awaited phone.
If the list is right, there will be Memory and flash from Toshiba, Numonyx, SST and Samsung. WCDMA, GSM EDGA amps coming from Triquint and Skyworks. Infineon will provide baseband and A-GPS in addition to Power management IC. Omnivision will give the 3.2 megapixel CIS camera.

"TSMC have landed foundry orders for GSM EDGE power amplifiers, Bluetooth ICs and 3.2-megapixel OmniVision CMOS image sensor (CIS) used in the upcoming iPhone model, indicated the sources. Xintec will handle the packaging and testing service for the CIS whereas VisEra will manufacture on-chip color filters for the CIS. TSMC, Xintec and VisEra declined to comment on the report, citing customer confidentiality. "
Digitimes

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Video messaging with Google Latitude

Video Messaging
How about a simple way to send a video Message? Yes, that is what Google Latitude let you do among other fantastic stuff. You like to create a custom video to be sent via Google Latitude yourself. You can also pay a visit to the Google Mobile Blog to learn more

Official Google Blog: Send a video message with Google Latitude

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Fartweet, When You Thought You Have Seen All Twitter Apps

Fartweet
Someone with a lot of time in hand and a bellyful of gas has designed a chair that could tweet his/her farts! Pffffffffft...
Hmmm
Instructables

Getting Adicted To iPhone! And It's Apps

iPhone Apps Addict
Well it looks like the person in spotlight, Deborah is addicted to iPhone Apps, that forms and assists her with daily chores. iPhone App for every waking minutes of her life.
Initially I had also gone for a torrent of iPhone apps, both paid and free, but since the initial urges, I have settled down, picked a dozen and deleted the rest. I use iPhone, not other way around!
I have a few Apps that helps me with my work, some iPhone VoIP apps, a bunch of locations service apps, translators and a few games adorn my iPhone mobile top!
But Deborah seem to have an app for every task of her life;
her iphone "is a pedometer, a voice recorder, a gym coach and a budget tracker. It promises to find my parked car, give me a shoulder massage and even repel mosquitoes, for free or 99 cents and up."

"At 7:30 a.m., my alarm clock app, goodNite Lite, wakes me with a gentle chord. Too gentle, some might say, so it's best to turn up the volume.
.....
......
......
......

Before I hit the pillow, I listen to Custom Hypnosis Lite. A soothing male voice tells me to relax and surprisingly, I do. I'm glad it doesn't tell me to do anything strange.

After a day of wall-to-wall apps, I'm amazed at all the things the iPhone can do outside of phone calls. Now if only my iPhone can do my taxes. Wait. There's probably an app for that."

If her story is true, I think she stands to will a prize at the billionth iPhone App Download contest.
Even though I do not like to promote AP stories, this one is an exception, Mercury News, that I read or see everyday carries the story of iPhone Addict.

QIKRoam, Roam Around With Video Streaming

QikRoam
QIK has introduced QikRoam, which is a special SIM card you can order today from QikRoam. The new SIM allows QikRoam users to use Qik from anywhere in the world (The SIM supports 134 countries worldwide), without having to worry about roaming charges. The savings come through deals Cubic Telecom has forged with many partners worldwide.

QikRoam has two packages and the first one is $34 dollars which gives $20 of calling credit, the next which costs $67.50,includes $54 in calling credit. The service uses a white-labeled version of Cubic Telecom’s MAXRoam product.

QikRoam

Monday, April 13, 2009

Ooma Phone Service Goes Down And Up

Ooma Down
UPDATE:
Ooma has announced that the service failure due to the their internet service provider and the system is back up. They also requested to reboot your Ooma hub;
"As of 5PM, most service has been fully restored. Some Hubs may not recover automatically in an expedient manner - if your ooma service is still down, please reboot your ooma Hub. Unplug power from the back of the device, wait one minute and then plug the power back in. The ooma Hub may need to download a software update, but it should go into service shortly thereafter."

Ooma Phone service based in Palo Alto, went down about 11:00 AM and remained down until late afternoon. The service was partially available at 5:00 PM.
Ooma improved it's services and gained much acceptance lately. The device is offered at BestBuy and tech stores like Fry's and Micro center. It was also noted when it added extensions for Google Voice recently. (Thanks to GoogleVoice, we were able to route our phone numbers to other phones)
The internet phone service (IP Telephony) provider has lately been releasing it's performances and targets for future.
We Use the service and have been quite happy with it!, except today!

Ooma's announcement regarding the service outage

iPhone Is More Productive And Better Than Other Smartphones In The Enterprise.

iPhone in the enterprise
Like Gartner went back on it's earlier recommendation and said that "iPhone is ready for the Enterprise", another think tank / research group has gone back on it's words regarding iPhone and recommending it for the enterprise. (Why are calling these think tanks if they continue to fail?)
According to Appleinsider; Forrester earlier warned "avoid iPhones when possible" due to the high phone prices and lack of security, now playing a different tune that these worries have been taken care by Apple's iPhone 2.x firmware. They also mentiones and uses Amylin Pharmaceutical, Kraft Foods, and Oracle on iPhone as examples of how not following their warnings and permitting the phones ultimately helped their respective bottom lines.
I am sure the early look at the iPhone 3.0 features made these companies to look back at their analysis of the iPhone. Perhaps we will hear these companies telling us only to use iPhone soon!
Read the complete article at Appleinsider.

CrunchPad, Web Tablet Spy Shots!

Crunchpad
People at APC (why?) got the scope on the new CrunchPad from Arlington, TechCrunch et al. As it was discussed before, the Web Tablet seem to be what intented to be, a web surfing, music and video streaming device.
“This machine isn’t for data entry.” Arrington stresses. “The virtual keyboard will make data entry a pain other than for entering credentials, quick searches and maybe light emails. But it is for reading emails and the news, watching videos on Hulu, YouTube, etc., listening to streaming music ... and doing video chat.” “The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device. Add Gears for offline syncing of Google Docs, email, etc., and Skype for communication and you have a machine that will be almost as useful as a desktop but cheaper and more portable than any laptop or tablet PC.” quiped the boss.

The price has gone up from Arrington’s initial target of US$200 to more realistic US$300, but I am sure there will be enough buyers, you got one here, may be two!.

read more and have a look at the spy shots here!

Android 1.5, Are You Ready? Cupcake Is Baked, Almost!

Android 1.5
Android 1.5, based on the Android cupcake, that we spoke about the cupcake upgrade, wrote and captured early cupcake screens, has been released for developers to take a taste. The new Android version introduces APIs for features such as soft keyboards, home screen widgets, live folders, and speech recognition.
You can download the download the developer early adaption Android 1.5 SDK, from the developer site.
There are also information on upgrading current development platform and introduction to what's new, also ready anyone interested.
As far as User interface is concerned there are many additions and improvments like system wide refinement of all core UI elements, animated window transitions which are off by default and provisions for accelerometer-based application rotations are prominent.

The System also get s a new Linux kernel, 2.6.27 and general system performance impovments like faster GPS aquisition and speedier camera setup and image capture which is also related to Video recording and playback features.
But the most interesting part is for developers, to whom this release is intended for. The Android developer tools and the structure of the SDK, themselves have under gone changes but for better. To quote Android Blog, (Find the link below) "Future Android SDK releases will include multiple versions of the Android platform. For example, this early-look includes Android platform versions 1.1 and 1.5. One benefit of this change is that developers can target different Android platform versions from within a single SDK installation. Another is that it enables developers to install Android SDK add-ons to access extended functionality that might be provided by OEMs, carriers, or other providers. We at Google are using this feature ourselves: this early-look SDK includes an add-on for the Google APIs. This add-on provides support for the Google Maps API, which was previously embedded in the "core" SDK."
While all developers are encouraged to use, test and get familier with the new early look, it is reminded that Android 1.5 APIs have not been finalised.
Hope all will become happy Androids, and creative developers!

Android Developers Blog: Getting ready for Android 1.5

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Friday, April 10, 2009

High-Definition VoIP (HD VoIP) Say Good Bye To "What Did You Say"

"what did you say",
Jeff Pulver was interviewed by Alan Reiter and both got into a discussion about hD VoIP, and I found it very interesting even though if was brief for my liking. I too share their passion and want to say good bye to "what did you say", that I keep on repeating during many phone calls.
But Most interesting was a almost hidden announcement;
"Interested in HD VoIP? Register TODAY for the HD Communications Summit taking place in New York City on May 21st."
Too bad I will be somewhere over in Europe celebrating my Grand Pa's Birthday, during that time. But I suggest if you are or going to be around New York, on May 21, register for the HD Communications Summit!
Hope Jeff witll write about the summit so us folks who missed will know what happened!
Jeff Pulver

BlackBerry Bold OS 5.0.0.90 In The WIld

BlackBerry Bold OS 5.0
Crackberry has found BlackBerry Bold OS 5.0.0.90 online and has links for download. Reminder that this is not an official release and I have not tried it and do not know what it does to your BlackBerry Bold! So be careful
Crackberry

Download The Billionth App From Apple to Get Super Prizes From Apple

iTunes Billionth App Download
So far, all of us Apple iPhone and iPod fans around the globe have downloaded almost, one billion apps.
So Apple wants to say thanks by, when the meter hits a billion, giving you the chance to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. Just go to the iTunes Store, browse the App Store, and download your best app yet.

How to Enter. There are three ways to enter the Promotion:

You will automatically be entered into the Promotion by downloading an app from the App Store.
You will automatically be entered into the Promotion by downloading an app from the App Store using your iPhone or iPod touch.
Non-purchase method: Go to www.apple.com/itunes/billion-app-countdown/entryform/, fully complete an online entry, including your name, complete mailing address (P.O. Boxes not acceptable), telephone number, and birth date. Once your online entry is complete, hit the “Submit” button to submit an entry. Entry via this method constitutes one (1) entry into the Promotion.

Enter to win without purchase* | Official Rules**

Anti Social Smartphone Users Busted!

Renny Gleeson, Busted! The sneaky moves of anti-social smartphone users at TED

A2Billing 1.4 Beta, A Billing And Management Solution For Asterisk Released.

Billing For Asterisk
A2billing is a LAMP (Linux Apache Mysql(Postgresql) PHP) application that interfaces with Asterisk using both the AMI and AGI interfaces. A2Billing has released the version 1.4 beta for testing. The solution combined with Asterisk is a telecoms platform and/or softswitch providing converged services, with self contained billing (pre or post-paid), reporting and statistics management. Download and get more information from A2Billing site.
A complete guide to installation of A2Billing 1.4 is available as well giving instructions how to install the product on either Centos or Debian based platcorm.

A2Billing for Asterisk provides Telecom companies and VoIP Solution providers a billing and customer care platform tied to Asterisk that go beyond traditional TDM and VoIP Soft-Switches and billing solutions. But the best feature of all is that the solution is free! meaning it is licensed under GPL.

A2Billing also provides consutancy and support and you can email sales@asterisk2billing.org giving us details of your project for a quote, or if you need further information.

A2Billing is capable of providing:

Traditional Calling Card services – A2Billing can be configured to provide standard calling card services via traditional “dial through”, with PIN or CID authentication.

Callback services, A2Billing supports a number of call-back methods including ANI, DID and web based call-backs.

VoIP residential services – Customers can be issued with a softphone or hard phone and be billed for calls made via Voice over IP.

VoIP wholesale termination - A2Billing and Asterisk can be used as a softswitch to terminate and bill large numbers of VoIP minutes from a number of sources such as resellers and distributors of your services.

VoIP termination for Asterisk and FreePBX systems. – With the growth of IP based PBX systems, as well as the asterisk based systems, A2Billing can be used to provide services and billing to IP PBX resellers and Asterisk system integrators.

DID termination and redirection. DID can be redirected to any SIP, IAX or PSTN destination with monthly charges and duration based charges.

Source Venture VoIP

LG-Nortel Joint Venture Releases the IP Phone 8800 series

LG-Nortel IP8800
LG-Nortel Joint Venture is providing Desktop phone solutions for all type of business, be they enterprises, small and medium sized business (SMBs), The 8800 Desktop IP Phone series meets industry requirements and More. These phones carry a wide-band codec which enables to maintain a satisfactory voice quality at all times.
The 8800 series of phones delivers sophisticated communications features – such as multi-line support, a phone directory screen, Bluetooth wireless headset support, and more – into the hands of executives and knowledge workers.

Press Release;
SEOUL – Businesses of all sizes can empower their employees to work smarter and more effectively by utilizing high-quality audio and communications features provided by the IP Phone 8800 series by LG-Nortel*, a joint venture of LG Electronics and Nortel* [TSX: NT | OTC: NRTLQ].

Supporting a range of features at a cost-effective price, the standards-compliant LG-Nortel IP Phone 8800 series delivers IP telephony functionality for enterprises, small and medium sized business (SMBs), and carrier-hosted VoIP services. Incorporation of a wide-band codec enables the LG-Nortel IP Phone 8800 series to deliver the best voice quality at all times.

The combination of extensive functionality and enterprise value-add features has led to the selection of the LG-Nortel IP Phone 8800 series by Cypress Communications®, a leading provider of managed telephony and hosted unified communications solutions. Models in the LG-Nortel IP Phone 8800 series extend from entry-level units designed for ease of use by employees, to feature-packed models that put sophisticated communications features – such as multi-line support, a phone directory screen, Bluetooth wireless headset support, and more – into the hands of executives and knowledge workers.

The LG-Nortel IP Phone 8800 series follows LG-Nortel’s trend of supporting a range of industry standards to ensure easy installation and management of market-leading VoIP technology. Support for common protocols including Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) ensures compatibility with a broad range of VoIP call servers including Nortel Communication Server (CS) 2000 and Adaptive Application Engine platform, speeding deployment across an enterprise even if multiple call servers are installed. The LG-Nortel IP Phone 8800 series is an integral part of Nortel’s IP Powered Business solution, which is structured to make it easy for service providers around the world to sell and host pre-tested VoIP services to SMB.

“As a leading provider of hosted unified communications, Cypress continues to expand its product offerings by developing and deploying new solutions utilizing best-of-breed equipment – from the network to the phone on each desk,” said Randy Young, vice president of Engineering, Cypress Communications. “For a solution that we’ll be introducing soon, we needed SIP-supported handsets that could integrate with our advanced network architecture while offering the right mix of cost-effectiveness and functionality. The LG-Nortel phones met these criteria and more – and passed our stringent testing and certification process. We expect the phones to be a valuable addition to our new solution and a productivity-enhancing tool for our customers.”

"In an era where businesses are looking for the most cost-effective telephony solutions possible, VoIP has become the option of choice for businesses of all sizes," said JD An, vice president, Enterprise Solutions, LG-Nortel. "Estimates predict a near doubling of IP phone penetration in businesses this year, and LG-Nortel has worked diligently to meet this demand with the industry’s most feature-packed, cost-effective IP phones. The standards compliance LG-Nortel IP Phone 8800 series makes it easy to install and manage, while providing employees with the right mix of features to help them work more efficiently and become more productive than ever."

For more information about the LG-Nortel IP8800 series and the country availability list visit www.LG-NORTEL.com

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Free Press advocacy group asks FCC To Open 3G Networks For Applications Like Skype For iPhone.

wireless terms of service
Sighting AT&T's senior executives suggestion that device manufactures (read Apple) not allowing Skype -- a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application that competes with AT&T, over it's 3G network, Free Press Advocacy Group has requested FCC to look into the practices of Apple and AT&T. Net Neutrality should be applied to every medium of internet connectivity, not what carriers and vendors choose.

The new Skype for iPhone, which has been downloaded more than a million times, works only on Wi-Fi, not the cellular or 3G network.
AT&T spokesperson Jim Cicconi, has stated that, "We absolutely expect our vendors" — Apple, in this case — "not to facilitate the services of our competitors, Skype is a competitor, just like Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile," "Skype has no obligation to market AT&T services. Why should the reverse be true?"
But it is not skype, but consumers that hand over heafty fees for th services and phones. I think they have rights and that is what the free press advocacy group is questioning about.
The group also suggests that AT&T's recent change to its wireless terms of service to prohibit "customer initiated redirection of television or other video or audio signals via any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device" which AT&T hastily changed again, is a pre-emptive strike against innovative mobile video technologies.
"Wireless broadband networks cannot become a safe haven for discrimination," said Chris Riley, policy counsel of Free Press. "The Internet in your pocket should be just as free and open as the Internet in your home. The FCC must make it crystal clear that a closed Internet will not be tolerated on any platform."
You can find the letter to FCC here: http://www.freepress.net/files/Wireless_IPS_letter.pdf
The Free press press release is here.
Yes Open up AT&T!

Faxing With Asterisk Solution From Digium, "Fax For Asterisk"

Faxing for Asterisk
It has been a while a long while I wrote about faxing with Asterisk. I wrote about Asterfax in 2006 and since then there have been a few Faxing with Asterisk methods that came about. Pika offered Faxing On Asterisk sometime back. Then another solution from Pika connected Skype to Asterisk and and provided DSP based Faxing. Then Asterfax became Noojee Fax and we were all still looking for a solid solution fax with Asterisk. There were some providers offering T.38 service for faxing over VOIP.
Lately mod_fax was presented for Freeswitch which provided fax support via spandsp. But that was not all and our fascination with fax over Asterisk could be seen here.

But the reason for writing this post to let you know that Digium has released "Fax for Asterisk" for both commercial andopen source Asterisk. This completes another gap left in Asterisk as Digium is providing the backing for faxing this time. One channel fax for Asterisk is available from Digium for free and available to download from Digium Webstore. Multi channel solution could be purchased for a low one time fee of $38.50 per channel.
Either choice you select, it feels good to have Digium behind your back.
Note: Fax For Asterisk is supported only on x86 Linux environments; x86_64 is not currently supported. Users of x86_64 systems should install 32-bit compatibility modes in order to use Fax For Asterisk.

Press Release;

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—April 6, 2009—Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, today announced Fax For Asterisk, a complete, cost-effective platform for the development of fax solutions. The offering provides Asterisk users and integrators a suite of user-friendly applications and a licensed version of the industry-leading fax modem software from Commetrex. To meet the demanding requirements of business users, Fax For Asterisk provides reliable faxing across the Internet and public switched telephone network (PSTN).

Asterisk is the most widely used open source telephony platform. The software is available free of charge and has been downloaded millions of times for use by individual developers and systems integrators creating custom telephony solutions for businesses. Asterisk is also available as the professional-grade and commercially supported Asterisk Business Edition.

“Asterisk users, developers and integrators now have a toolkit allowing them to integrate fax with their phone systems,” said Bill Miller, vice president of product management at Digium. “With Fax For Asterisk, Digium offers a reliable and fully supported fax solution.”

Fax For Asterisk interoperates with standards-compliant fax machines connected to Asterisk 1.4 and 1.6 on x86 Linux systems. It provides low-speed PSTN faxing via DAHDI-compatible telephony interface cards as well as VoIP faxing to T.38-compatible SIP end points and service providers. Fax For Asterisk operates at speeds up to 14.4kbps and supports V.17, V.27 and V.29 fax modems.

Fax For Asterisk is available free of charge from the Digium webstore at http://store.digium.com/ for one concurrent fax session. Multi-session licenses are available for a one-time fee of $38.50 per channel. Fax For Asterisk is available immediately. Fax capabilities for Digium’s Switchvox IP PBX were announced in February of this year and are based on this solution. For more details, visit www.digium.com.

Help To Catch the AT&T Cable Vandals And Earn $100000

Cable Vandals
AT&T is offering $100000 to who ever is going to help apprehend the vandals who cut and damaged AT&T fiber cables. The cut cables led to wide ranging outage in the silicon valley in the bay area California. Even the 911 services were knocked down and police and fire officials had to contacted directly in order to report an emergency.

Here is the press release;

AT&T* today announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for incidents of vandalism to the AT&T network near San Jose and San Carlos, Calif.

Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, AT&T's networks were declared National Critical Infrastructures in recognition of their importance to the nation's security. Anyone who tampers with, destroys or disrupts the company's network or its components is in violation of federal and state laws and AT&T will assist with any prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

The early-morning vandalism incidents today involved cuts of fiber cables in manholes at two locations:

The intersection of Monterey Highway and Blossom Hill Road overpass in San Jose.
The intersection of Old County Road and Varian Road in San Carlos.

Restoration efforts were under way immediately.

Tips can be given to the San Jose Police Department at 408-277-4161 (ask for Detective Carlos Melo or Detective Dan Phelan);
Tips can be given to the San Carlos Police Department at 650-802-4423; and
Anonymous tip for either incident can be made to CrimeStoppers at 408-947-STOP.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T, Inc.

AT&T Press Release

AT&T, Sprint Fiber Lines In The SIlicon Valley, CA. Cut By Vandals

AT&T Fiber lines Cut

Four AT&T fiber-optic cables were cut around 1:30 a.m. along Monterey Highway north of Blossom Hill Road in south San Jose, California, police Sgt. Ronnie Lopez has told the SFGATE. Sprint's cable in San Carlos was cut about two hours later, and the exact location was not immediately known.

The customers of AT&T and Verizon Wireless and Verizon broadband customers are affected by the outage. Verizon uses AT&T's backbone to connect its wireless and DSL service to Verizon's own national network. Therefore the disruption in AT&T lines have affected a lot of Verizon customers.

Police used yellow tape to cordon off the area where the AT&T cables were destroyed, which is near railroad tracks, as investigators and phone company workers descended into an underground vault where the cables are located.

"We're treating this as a crime scene," Lopez said.

SFGate

Collaboration Everywhere With New Cisco Telepresence Systems And Applications

Unified Video Conferencing
Cisco Telepresence has introduced an array of improvements and additions to the system. These include the Telepresence System 1300, User Applications, the capability connect over T1/E1 connections and the WebEX integration. But as for me the telepresense system 1300 and the Telepresence recording studio stands out. These products clearly indicate where Telepresence is heading in the future. As we mentioned earlier, HD Online Conferencing is not only for elite is becoming clear.
From Cisco Press Release;

Cisco is delivering Cisco TelePresence technology to more users and organizations with:

Cisco TelePresence System 1300 Series: The first Cisco TelePresence system designed for up to six people in a shared-use meeting room uses one screen and three cameras. The Cisco TelePresence system 1300-65 uses a 65-inch plasma screen and is the first in a new series of products that takes advantage of existing conference room tables, providing more flexible deployment options for branch offices and businesses of all sizes.
Cisco TelePresence Extended Reach: Cisco TelePresence can now run over bandwidth connections as low as 1.5 megabits per second (T1) in 720p resolution with quality of service (QoS) while preserving the Cisco TelePresence experience. Extended Reach also supports Cisco TelePresence over open Internet connections, such as high-speed FIOS or DOCSIS connections. This capability adds to the existing immersive experience of Cisco TelePresence at 1080p or 720p resolutions.

Cisco is expanding the application of Cisco TelePresence beyond meetings with:

Cisco TelePresence Recording Studio: Cisco TelePresence customers now have a quick and easy way to create high-quality video messages or record presentations for instant, highly secure playback on Cisco TelePresence units in 1080p HD quality. In conjunction with Cisco's recently announced Media Experience Engine, users can also view Cisco TelePresence recordings at standard resolution on many other video-enabled devices, such as a PC, mobile phone or digital sign.
Cisco TelePresence Event Controls: This new application provides event managers with new tools they can use to produce internal and external Cisco TelePresence events. With a set of simple and powerful controls, event managers can create and host high-quality and cost-effective internal or external events in standard Cisco TelePresence rooms including presentations, keynotes, lectures and seminars.

Cisco is helping enable seamless "any to any" video collaboration with:

High definition interoperability: Cisco TelePresence meetings can include video from any standards-based high-definition videoconferencing system as well as standard-definition video conferencing, WebEx and other desktop video applications like Microsoft Office Communicator. This provides organizations with the ability to scale collaboration, take advantage of existing resources, and continue to provide a simple, immersive experience to Cisco TelePresence users.
Cisco WebEx integration: With "any-to-any" video interoperability, Cisco WebEx Meeting Center meetings with Cisco Unified Video Conferencing provides advanced video capabilities for WebEx® that enable more of an in-person experience. Any device that can connect to a Cisco Unified Video Conferencing multipoint control unit (MCU) can now be displayed in a Meeting Center meeting, including immersive experiences such as Cisco TelePresence as well as videoconferencing and desktop collaboration applications. The solution increases the number of viewable attendees to 16, lets you display high-definition video and adds video controls.

$4,756.25 Bill From Verizon For Teens Text Messages

Teen Texting
A teen texting on a Verizon phone that did not have a texting plan has gotten her phone smashed by her dad! and Verizon has agreed to bring down the bill to a reasonable level. As Gizmodo mentioned, I would have saved a little more by not smashing the phone but taking it away from her.
So if you do not want texting, make sure you disable it. Carriers like Verizon charges for each incoming and out going text messages if you do not have a plan.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Ranking Tweeters With Tweefind!

Tweefind
Another VoIP Blogger I follow Luca Filigheddu has set himself to the task of creating a twitter search engine based on a complex algorithm and a fine idea. Instead of just searching and presenting results based on time line, Tweefind takes in to account but not limited to;

# followers
# following
# of tweets
# of RT he/she receives
# of replies
# of distinct users who reply
# of distinct users who retweet
# of RT he/she makes
# of links the user shares

I think this should reveal good results as long as top ranked twitters provide good content. All the big boys I follow, usually does produce valuable content.
The search engine was just born and the engine has to learn an few things (Yes Add a Spam Filter, Search "VoIP" and you will see what I mean.) But generally other searches I performed gave me real good results.
If you check our the new Twitter Search engine site Tweefind out please also don't forget to visit getsatisfaction.com/tweefind inform the team your tips, suggestions and bugs.
Good luck Luca! (Tweefind Announcement)

Google Efficient Data Centers - Google Data Center Tour

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Pretty impressive and this is where you go (at least some of you) when you search or get that email;

Gmail Mobile for iPhone and Android

GMail for mobile
If you were accessing Gmail via iPhone mail program, you might want to look at the new GMail App as seen above.
Gmail team has worked hard to provide seamless experience for GMail users, either they are on a mobile device or at their desktop. Specially the new mobile interface for GMail was revamped with the limitation of connections in mind. Gmail utilizes the cache (using database storage on the iPhone and a device-local mobile Gears database on Android-powered phones) to make the user experince smoother and to make operations faster by perfoming staring and archiving on the device and later exchanging the information to GMail.
The control bar with buttons for Archive, Delete marking and spam reporting which floats in once a message is selected is a nice touch.

To get the Gmail App on your home screen or Mobile desktop;
On Android devices:
1. In the browser, go to Gmail.com (be sure you've signed in)
2. Press your device's <> button
3. Select More
4. Select Bookmark page and select OK
5. Press your device's <> button, then press the <> button
6. Select Add > Shortcut > Bookmark
7. Find 'Gmail' and select it
8. A new Gmail icon appears on your home screen

On iPhone devices:
1. In Safari, go to Gmail.com (be sure you've signed in)
2. Tap the + at the bottom of the screen
3. Select Add to Home Screen
4. Tap Add to confirm
5. A new Gmail icon appears on your home screen

After that, GMail is a breeze on your iPhone or Android! Follow the link below to read more and to watch a video demo.

Official Gmail Blog: A new mobile Gmail experience for iPhone and Android

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Fixing Skype SPAM (SCAM)

Skype Spam
Skype numerology has a good take on SCAM. If you are tired of SPAM in your email, then I think I will worry about SCAM in my Skype activities. It is basically message and call spam via Skype. About a year ago I was wondering about Skype Spam, in the same lines of Mr.Mercier and at that time, Skypes answer was fix Skype spam yourselves. I hope that stance have changed within Skype. May be Skype Numerology will inquire Skype for us! Follow the link to join the conversation.
Skype Numerology: i need a male opinion about something ...

Google Chrome For Mac

Google Chrome For Mac
Manu-J has compiled and run the Google Chrome from Chrome Developers SVN repository. I have not run it nor have compiled it on my mac but after reading the report, looks like it is something I want to try. I am currently running Google Chrome 2.0 Beta on windows.
It seems to be faster on MACs (much faster than firefox) than Windows and most parts already work for basic web browsing.
If you want to try and do not want to goto troubles of compiling the app, you can download the compiled version from Manu-J. But make sure that you have an Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”). Another reminder, this is an unofficial Chrome release.
Good work Manu-j

Video Recording On iPhone This Summer

Video Recording On iPhone This Summer
According to post and a scrrenshot above on Macrumors, it looks like we are about to get video recording on iPhone this summer. The screenshot is from the latest iPhone 3.0 beta and clearly shows a Video Recording button and a toggle switch to switch between photo and video mode.
Macrumors also mentions that they also found in the configuration files some interesting information about "auto-focus camera", "magnetometer" (digital compass), and "Voice Control".
This leads me to belive that this might be targeted towards the next iPhone that Apple and AT&T keeps hinting at.
But I guess as we have seen video capabilities of iPhone 3G with jailbroken apps, we might get to record some videos on out iPhones this summer, Now only to decide which Beach.
Macrumors

Monday, April 06, 2009

Android Goes Beyond Mobile Phones, Reaches Into Your Homes

Android Based Home Phone
The major Android Carrier in US, T-Mobile plans for other things to do with Android OS other than power mobile phones like T-mobile G1 or the forth coming T-mobile G2 manufactured by HTC and powered by Google's Android OS.
"T-Mobile plans to sell a home phone early next year and soon after a tablet computer, both running Android, according to confidential documents obtained from one of the company’s partners. The phone will plug into a docking station and come with another device that handles data synchronization as it recharges the phone’s battery." revealed New York Times, from some secret document from the partners of T-Mobile.
Not Only T-Mobile, but other carriers have shown interest and very soon we might see more cell phones based on Android. Nokia just announced an Android netbook.
Along with big companies, smaller companies and startups like Touch Revolution, is releasing a an Android based home communications device called Nimble. But as we have read and heard before we are bound to see many more devices.See the Video Below for Nimble demo.

Video: Touch Revolution NIMble - Impressionen von der CES 2009(3:38)

Import Your Contacts Into Google Voice

Import contacts into Google Voice
Of course you will want to bring your address books to Google Voice from various Email and other services. What prompted me to write this was I had to help a friend bring all his contacts from GrandCentral. When he migrated to Google Voice, for what ever the reason,his contacts did not come along.
Most email programs and personal information manager programs allows you to export your contacts to a CSV file. But if yours does not provide that capability, you will need to create a csv file so that you can import your contacts to Google Voice. You can get some help in creating a CSV file from Google help.

It is easier to export data to a CSV file from GrandCentral. You will have to log into your GrandCentral account at GrandCentral, yes your old account is still there.

Click the Address Book tab in your GrandCentral account and click Export.
Click the CSV File button.
Save the file to your desktop.

Once you have your CSV file (contacts.csv the export program from GrandCentral named the file such):

Sign in to Google Voice.
Click Contacts on any Google Voice page.
Click Import in the top right portion of the Contacts section.
Click the Browse... button and find the CSV file you'd like to upload.
Select the file and click the Import button and your contacts should be transferred to Google Voice.

Now you should be a happy camper in Google Voice with all your contacts.
I found this info at Google.

BlackBerry Magnum, BlackBerry Driftwood, and BlackBerry Onyx Are Blackberry 9000 Codenames!

Blackberry 9000
BGR has revealed the blackberry's that are to come in near future (no real dates given) and all come with 3G and a bunch of other flotilla (driftwood) that mobile phones and smartphones carry. I am waiting to see the devices as Blackberry is liked for certain qualities and the feel of them. Following are the specs given out by BGR. If you had acted fast, you will be able to unlock Blackberry 9000 when it comes out!

BlackBerry Onyx:

* GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS device
* GPS
* Camera
* Wi-Fi (no UMA support)
* QWERTY keyboard
* 480×360 resolution screen
* Confirmed carriers: AT&T

BlackBerry Driftwood:

* GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS device
* GPS
* Camera
* Wi-Fi with UMA
* QWERTY keyboard

BlackBerry Magnum:

* GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS device
* GPS
* Camera
* Wi-Fi (no UMA support)
* QWERTY keyboard
* 480×360 resolution screen
* Confirmed carriers: AT&T

AT&T Wireless Terms of Service Rules "Was a Big Mistake"

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
This is cool for me as I am a heavy AT&T user and according to news by Gizmodo, the draconian AT&T wireless terms announced by them was all a mistake!
Thank goodness.
"The language added on March 30 to AT&T's wireless data service Terms and Conditions was done in error. It was brought to our attention and we have since removed it. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."
As Gizmodo says, come smell the roses but watch out for smelly stuff on the ground.

MLB Live Streaming On iPhone!

MLB on iPhone
As the games start today, the MLB is preparing to unleash the real time baseball game experience via MLB.TV. The fans and the players who have been hanging around for a few months now without a real game, now can look into a season full of games and ways to access the game like never before.
I ran the demo at the MLB site and that was really nice and would love to have the capability to watch a few games on my iPhone. Even if I did not watch a full game, would like to have a peek, time to time if I am engaged in another business.
But that may be coming along soon. MLB live video streaming using new streaming capabilities in iPhone 3.0, we will have MLB.TV in our iPhones. Apple hurry up with the upgrade, update!
According to MLB's Bob Bowman;
"Apple's working on a technology that will allow live streams. Fortunately, that technology overlays very well with how we do our live streaming. So when iPhone 3.0 is ready, we think we'll be able to offer live streams. If there were a heaven and it came out in midseason, maybe we offer a game or two a day and that way we don't drop the price for At Bat. We would love to do live games on the iPhone. I think people would watch. A whole game? Probably not. But ten minutes?"
Thanks goes to Silicon Alley Insider and Dan Frommer but I wonder how a Chicago Cubs fan know this much about baseball!

Nokia Netbooks To Come From Foxconn?

Nokia Netbook
I had my first productive mobile computing with Nokia N800 and N810 (Which I still use for data collection for a research project) and I loved it. I had the chance to play with the mobile linux and other OS and and actually test a long range WiFi connections.
I have no idea of what to come but from past experience, it will be good, a netbook from Nokia!
The Street

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Skype on the iPhone Tested In Real Life.

Skype For iPhone review
J & K of JKontherun have tested the Skype for iPhone and the results are wonderful and it is great that James recorded the conversation on video which he posted. Follow the link below and you will be awed like I did when I used Skype for iPhone for the first time. May be I should do the same when Skype for Blackberry comes out!
Skype on the iPhone tested on video

Skype For Blackberry Beta, In May!

Skype For Blackberry
Skype is enjoying the success of Skype for iPhone and pitfalls of "not all the carriers are the same" or even the same carrier in different countries, phenomenon with countries like Germany and Canada.
I like the skype for iPhone and the performance. Within a good WIFi signal areas, the product performs well. I need to get my AT&T wireless access sorted out at AT&T hotspots.
The Skype for Blackberry should not be much different and I will be trying it out with my office Blackberry device(s) (BlackBerry® Bold™ and BlackBerry® Curve™ )as I keep a bunch of them as I upgraded devices.
The Skype for Blackberry beta also known as thin or lite version of Skype for Smartphones will have core Skype capabilities like;

Make Skype-to-Skype calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world
Send/receive instant messages to/from individuals or groups
Make Skype calls at low rates to people on landline or mobile phones
Receive calls to your online number on Skype
See when your Skype contacts are online/available to chat

"With Skype on BlackBerry smartphones, we are making Skype available in the briefcases and purses of BlackBerry users around the world," said Scott Durchslag, COO of Skype. "We have heard loud and clear that our users want Skype on whichever smartphone they choose to use. This fulfills our promise of making Skype available on the major smartphones so consumers and mobile professionals can connect to Skype whenever, wherever and however they choose."

The lite version of Skype will be available to BlackBerry users worldwide. The ability to make calls will be available in 10 countries: Australia, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro & Sao Paulo), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, the United States and the UK. English will be supported first, with additional languages to follow.

The beta of the lite version of Skype will be available as a free download to BlackBerry smartphone users beginning in May from www.skype.com/m using their BlackBerry® Browser.
Source, Skype

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Truphone Brings Low Cost International BlackBerry Wireless Calls To USA With "Truphone Business"

Truphone Business
Comunicano published a few days ago that Truphone Channel Partner Program for the U.S. is in full swing and actively reaching for partnerships to sell and distribute Truphone Business to companies throughout the U.S.
As we all know while we dangle iPhones like candy bars, we have balckberries on our hips, all the time because they are robust business tools. So Truphone is targeting these devices with Truphone Business, specifically designed for Balckberry devices.
"Truphone Business is a BlackBerry application enabling business users to make international phone calls from their BlackBerrys at wireline rates, typically saving 50 percent or more on call charges."
This program enables channel partners to earn managed service revenues with no investment in equipment, no technical staff or training. To top this off Truphone also offers free trials of Truphone Business to further support the sales process.
“The customer proposition for Truphone Business is very simple, providing a great differentiator for BlackBerry resellers. The solution is therefore easy to sell and can quickly lead to additional recurring revenues from an existing BlackBerry customer base.” said John Irvine, director of business services at Truphone , “Our channel program has been designed to take a highly active role in supporting our partners, ensuring that they can be up and running in no time at all, and focusing on what they do best - selling.”
The press release could be found at Comunicano and interested parties could email partners@truphone.com or register their interest at www.truphone.com/partners.

Does AT&T Deliver? Google Voice Rescues Us From AT&T's Failure.

AT&T Fails, Google Voice Rescues.
With All the good things and bad things with AT&T, which is my primary carrier seem to be in question.
Recently I had my phone section of the resident connection go down (Bunch of our neighbors did too). But the DSL connection on the same copper line worked. The way the line got affected, (Static, loss of dial tone, incoming caller ID loss, and finally no connection, all happened gradually) pointed to a switch somewhere than a line problem.
But try getting your information to AT&T, you have to go through very inefficient automated trouble ticket generation process which always leads to technician visit arrangement. That itself is not a problem but it takes two days to get someone over. They are rigid about times as well, four hour time slots that you need to be at home. So for a problem that started on Tuesday night, they will only attempt to look at on Friday afternoon.
Luckily we had Google Voice and were able to solve our problem by routing incoming calls to our cell phones and home phone. We also discovered that we could call Japan for less than half what AT&T charges, through Google Voice. That is another loss for AT&T as we spend 6-8 hours of calls to Japan monthly, in addition to Germany and The Netherlands.. Now All those calls might get routed to Google Voice. Thank you Google Voice and GrandCentral (Where we setup our accounts).
So continuing with AT&T, Friday comes, someone starts checking the line, realize that it is not a line problem, gives us a call saying it is been fixed. (No visits necessary) It could have been solved simply and faster with less cost to AT&T as well. What about my four hours?.
AT&T could also have solved this problem with those "Thomas Andersons" in India (No offense Indian support people, in fact I enjoy talking to them, mostly when I get help to re-register my Microsoft products when the software / Microsoft thinks they are not genuine) with simple tools and fix your switch (at least assign it to a tech), and got us talking to whomever we want in a short time. Less cost, less frustration and happy customers!
We have been a customers of AT&T (Pacbell, SBC) for more than twenty years and we have a monthly bill of more than $300 combined wireless, DSL and phone bills, (Home only, Business phones and services we pay more). Have managed to stay trouble free for long stretches. But since AT&T came on board, we have had more trouble than with both Pacbell and SBC combined for given time periods. Sometimes it helps to talk to a human, AT&T.
Lately we have also been reading those Comcast offers more closely. I will be able to get the same services for $100 less what we currently paying and even though we do not use, Comcast has already hooked us to their digital cable.
I hope Andy Abramson is right, at least regarding our AT&T wireless service.
Hope AT&T reads, it will be good for all.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Asterisk Project Security Advisory - AST-2009-003

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Asterisk Project Security Advisory - AST-2009-003

Product	Asterisk
Summary	SIP responses expose valid usernames
Nature of Advisory	Information leak
Susceptibility	Remote Unauthenticated Sessions
Severity	Minor
Exploits Known	No
Reported On	February 23, 2009
Reported By	Gentoo Linux Project: Kerin Millar ( kerframil on irc.freenode.net ) and Fergal Glynn <>
Posted On	April 2, 2009
Last Updated On	April 2, 2009
Advisory Contact	Tilghman Lesher <>
CVE Name	CVE-2008-3903

For Description, patches, fixes and more information read AST-2009-003

Asterisk 1.6.0.9 Is Available For Download

Asterisk 1.6.0.9
The Asterisk Development Team has released, Asterisk 1.6.0.9 and is available for immediate download from Digium Downloads.
This release addresses a merge issue from trunk to 1.6.0.7 that caused memory to be freed that should not be. In trunk, pkt->data is an ast_str, but in 1.6.0, it is allocated in the same chunk of memory as the sip_pkt. Only the 1.6.0 branch of Asterisk is effected by this issue.

Summary of the changes in this release

The ChangeLog

Thank you Asterisk Development Team!

meeting24.tv New Online Conferencing Service WIT A Twist

Video Conferencing
A new Video conferencing service, meeting24.tv has arrived in the scene and it is a venture by "UG Communications". Tokyo, Japan. The conferencing system allows 24 simultaneous users at the same time. The twist is the simplicity and the ease of use. The WIT is the research lab behind the companies.

Only the person hosting the meeting or conference needs to have an user account. The Host logs in and recives a web URL that could be mailed to maximum of 24 users or conference members. Other conference members join the meeting by following the URL and the site will be up for 24 hours from the time it was activated. If you need more than 24 hours for your conference, create another conference. The UI aute senses your browser language and change the menues and other texts accordingly. So international conferences should not be a problem to setup, and if you know the languages.

The users will also see ads during the conference and if you do not want those interupting you, you can get a conference room, a pro account for $100 a month. I think it is too expensive for family talks but might fit SMB or corporate settings.

They use the same streaming technology used by Utagoe.

Utagoe Live100 public beta demo video from utagoe on Vimeo.

WIT

New Rules, AT&T Version,

AT&T Wireless
AT&T has quietly revised its wireless plans to ban you from using video or audio from a fixed location or downloading movies, web broadcasting, telemetry and data acquisition (Photographs of Bar codes or simply photographs?)
Glad I did not see VoIP in the list.
Basically they are changing the plan you agreed to! So if you are sick with these and want to go to another carrier to get sick again, may be it is time to terminate the contract as terms have changed without informing the users directly. I am not a lawyer so better get in touch with one or your consumer advocate in your area before terminating the contract.
From AT&T via Public knowledge via Gizmodo

"This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, customer initiated redirection of television or other video or audio signals via any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device, web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices is prohibited."

Microsoft Office For iPhone Lives!

Office For iPhone
We keep on hearing about Microsoft Office for iPhone all the time but I am yet to see anything other than mocked up pictures and rumors.
We hear it again as CrunchGear mentions that Microsoft's Steven Elop has hinted that a Microsoft Office for iPhone in in the works at a recent Web 2.0 conference. Looks like a lot of people are waiting.
Meanwhile I am pretty happy with Google Docs on my iPhone! I always use a shared company spreadsheet on Google Docs on the Go and anchored at a desk!
CrunchGear

HTC Touch Diamond 2 Hands On

HTC Touch Diamond 2
Gizmodo has a post on HTC Touch Diamond 2 Hands on review. But I think I like the the HTC Touch Pro 2, with the keyboard, speakerphone and conference calling. I feel better when I type using a keyboard! But I think both have come long way since the HTC Touch Pro. The problem with HTC Touch Diamond 2 is that they tend to get lost!
Gizmodo

On Gmail For 5 Years

GMail 5Th Anniversary
When I got an invitation for Gmail beta 5 years ago, I never thought I will be using it so much as I am doing today!
The first email I received was a simple, Google Email Team explaining why GMail was different and how to use it. Yep it got a bit of wrangling to get used to work without folders. But after thousands of emails now I do not even think about using it, it has become all natural.
GMail for me today is my Google hub, it is inter woven with Google Apps that I use equally often and many other Google services. It is hard to think that I would be without GMail for any foreseeable future.
Google celebrated the GMails 5th birthday with launching of GMail Labs internationally.
Happy Birthday GMail!

Official Google Blog: 5 years of Gmail

Android Eyes-Free Project, Mobile Phoning For Visually Impared.

Android For The Blind
The Android eyes-free project has released the code to public and also released a few applications based on the Eyes-Free Shell fro Android based devices with a touch screen. I liked the stroke dialer for the touch keypad! Ingeneous!
The best I saw (video below) was the touch based dialing without needing see the screen of an Android phone. This could easily apply to a blind person or visually impaired person like me without my spectacles (reading glasses).
The ever so simple method developped by Google research scientist T.V.Ramen, Engineer Charles Chen and the team makes you think why didn't I think of that before. Rather than writing about it, I think it is better to see the application in action. Follow the link after the video, to read about other applications by the team, like Knowing your location, device status, date and time, all without eyes. Also you will find the links to google code project site where you could look at the code if you are so inclined. The Eyes-Free Android Project is also home to the Text-To-Speech (TTS) Library for Android. Do not forget to see the related videos.

Google Open Source Blog: Announcing Eyes-Free Shell For Android

Thursday, April 02, 2009

T-Mobile, block the use of Skype on iPhone (and on Blackberry) in Germany

No Skype On T-Mobile
After the launch of Skype for iPhone, more than 600,000 have downloaded the product from iTunes App Store, and Skype ranks as the number one iPhone download around the world, which was expected and yet impressive.
Apple App Store in Germany also ranks Skype as the number one product but according to skype, Deutche Telecom users are verboten (forbidden) from using the app. This seems moronic as other carriers like AT&T, O2 in UK have welcomed the product. Generally German mobile carriers forbid VoIP application on mobile phones.
It was the same reason, that we waited for developer version of Android G1, a statement by T-Mobile honcho at the release of T-Mobile G1;
"When I (Wired Magazine) talked to Cole Brodman, the CTO of T-Mobile, after the event about what would stop something like Skype from designing a program that could run on the phone, negating the need for a massive voice plan, he said he had "worked with Google" to make sure Android couldn't run VOIP." (Update despite CTO's comment, T-Mobile USA allows VoIP calls on phone with WiFi.)
We are happy with our open Android G1 and Our iPhone with Skype. I guess one customer is too many to have lost these days.
I have no words for mobile companies that fail to recognize oppertunities. You can read more at Skype Blog post by Robert Miller ,Skype’s General Counsel.
If it was not posted on March 30th, I would have thought it was a April Fools Joke. But looks like T-Mobile is both without April.
Tags: T-Mobile, android, google, iPhone, no voip on iPhone

iPhone 3.0 JailBoken!

QuickPWN 3.0 Beta
iPhone Dev Team has announced that The 3.0 firmware from Apple has been jailbroken, and available for download. QuickPWN for Beta 3.0 for all iPod and iPhone devices except the Touch 2G is out there in the wild.
The new exploits are said to be done at hardware level making it difficult for Apple to patch them via software uploads. So the latest threat by Apple might not have an effect.
But you may want to watch out as Dev Team suggests;
"THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THE UNOFFICIAL QUICKPWN RELEASES IS THAT IF YOU USE THEM, YOU WILL KILL YELLOWSN0W, POSSIBLY FOREVER. That’s because QuickPwn, by its very nature, requires you to already have accepted Apple’s official IPSW, along with its baseband update. If you do that, you will (possibly forever) lose your ability to software-unlock your iPhone 3G."
So the drama is not over and there are many sites doing the followups using Dev Teams tools. So watch out.
Dev Team Blog

Time Warner Caps Monthly Data Rate Beyond Texas, Switch To Lesser Devils.

Time Warner Bandwidth Cap
Time Warner is Extending the its the draconian 40GB cap test in Beumont, Texas, to other cities. According to Business week, In April, Time Warner Cable will begin collecting information on its customers' Internet use in the Texas cities of Austin and San Antonio and in Rochester, N.Y. Consumption billing will begin in those cities later this summer. In Greensboro, N.C., the billing changes will begin sooner.

May it is time to switch to a service like, Comcast (250GB cap), AT&T (150GB). I am against the caps but 150GB is better than puny 40GB.

So may be it is drive by time warner to send you to theaters to watch movies as Gizmodo explained, "Every gig you overshoot your cap costs a dollar, meaning an HD movie download from iTunes could end up costing another $5 on top the $20 you're paying for the movie. Just four HD movies (assuming a conservative 5GB per flick) would swallow half of your allowed data for the month."

Forget about HD youtube and other tubes! Bandwidth caps Suck.

Businessweek via Gizmodo

AsteriskNOW 1.5.0 Available Now.

AsteriskNOW 1.5.0

AsteriskNOW 1.5.0, the soft Asterisk Appliance, has been released and available for download and yes we all know it is after a long pause.

If you are an existing user, you will be able to run `yum update` to upgrade your server to current version. It was noted that you might need to run `yum update glibc` in some cases to update the glibc.

Following improvements and additions were added since last beta;
* Updated several packages to latest versions (Asterisk, DAHDI, etc)
* Fixed more permissions issues between Asterisk and httpd/FreePBX.
* Updated to CentOS 5.3

Please use Bug Reports and forums at Digium for reporting bugs, problems and feedback.

Microsoft Releases A New Windows Live Client For Mobile Devices

Live mobile client
Microsoft jas released the Windows Live for Windows Mobile - v10.06.0046.0800
with Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger, Contacts and Spaces integrated. I think many people will love the push / pull email and the long awaited windows messenger.
In addition to the above, Live contacts, MSN Mobile and Photos are too available via the Live mobile client.
The release notes say if your first attempt to install the client fails, try again and according ting Microsoft the second attempt, works!If you have a touch phone, the pro version is for you and if your phone is non touch then the standard version will have to do.
Please read release notes before you install the client.
Microsoft live for Mobile (mobile link)

AT&T, Verizon Looking To Be Kindle(d)

Kindle Competition
After seeing the rise of the kindle, the portable book reader that put forth by Amazon/Sprint Other carriers are looking for similar devices to promote and support our reading habits, and their pockets.
Kindle II, which sells for $359 and holds more than 1,500 books, out of more than 230,000 titles, as well as major U.S. and international newspapers, magazines and blogs.
So At CITA, Verizon has mentioned that it is working with a few electronic device manufacturers to develop a kindle like device. "We'd love to have Sony on there," Tony Lewis, Verizon Wireless VP of open development reffering to the Sony reader that is similar to Kindle but lacking wireless capabilities.
AT&T is also looking at the device to make a difference in their books (accounting) too, "The Kindle, which lets users download books over Sprint Nextel Corp.’s network, has done a “phenomenal job” and AT&T wants to be part of that market, Glenn Lurie, head of emerging devices at AT&T, said today."

I think there will be a few choices for book reader in near future. I prefer paper books yet and who knows, I might change one day.
Source Engadget

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Apple To Developers, No Jailbreaks, In The New Developer Agreement.

iPhone Developers Tiedup
Apple is asking developers to agree with them by saying that they will not jailbreak iPhones or iPods and will write applications for jailbroken iPhones. Oh the developers are not allowed to pee while developing either! (just kidding Apple stoped short of saying that.) Apple has already asked their developers not to develop apps that violate privacy, facilitate crimes, or violate intellectual property laws.
So working for or with outfits and projects such as QuickPwn or PwnageTool. Also probidden is the jailbreaking of their own iPhones nor helping others to do so.
The developers are not to develop apps for any other application delivery method (Read Cydia). The only delivery method is to be Apple App Store.
You can read portions of the agreement at ARSTechnica, who has obtained a copy of the agreement.
But I am sure this will not stop iPhone Dev Team from doing wonders with iPhone OS 3.0 and there will be a plenty of Jailbroken iPhones and iPods. But the rebelious apps might be dear as all developers will try to get their apps published by Apple. And rejected apps might lay where they are unless the developers are clever enough (Developers usually are, more than Apple lawyers) cahnge to look and feel together with ofcourse the name.
What ever the Apple is getting developers to sign, I am sure we will be writing a lot about jailbroken iPhones and apps for Jailbroken iPhones.
ARS

GMail Auto Pilot

Gmail Autopilot
If you did not have enough with Brain Search, The GMail team has implemented GMail Autopilot today. What a way to communicate. The fine service GMail extends itself beyond any email service by providing service that only back seat drivers could provide before.
The Gmail Auto Pilot can learn ways you answer, how you capitalize, how you make spelling mistakes (in my case) and write a reply to an email that you recieve in your absense. I cannot describe it enough as I am going to direct you the original site.

Google Voice And SIP Connectivity

SIP Connection to Google Voice
After checking out Nerd Vittles way of SIP connectivity to Google Voice from Asterisk, I found out that the gate has been closed by the Google Voice. (For Asterisk connectivity)
Google Voice allows SIP connectivity to Gizmo Project and only Giznmo project at the moment. But you can get Asterisk Gateway to connect to Gizmo and thus to Google Voice. But when you see all the trouble and time, and cost, sometimes it is better use Ma Bell directly.
Nerd Vittles has a piece on the subject as well.

Asterisk: The Future of Telephony Book (Second Edition) Gets A New Site.

Asterisk TFOT
One of my favorite Asterisk Books, Asterisk: The Future of Telephony has got a new site. The site is based on the another popular book, Subversion book a tool that I use extensively. I have bought both the books as they help me in my day to day dealings and the authors deserves something for their services. You can buy the books, Asterisk, Subversion from the O'reilly Bookstore. It might provide more incentives and resources for Authors to write the next edition!

This was posted on Asterisk Documentation Project site;
"NEW! Asterisk: The Future of Telephony now has a new home! You can read the book online (HTML) by visiting http://astbook.asteriskdocs.org. Special thanks to the Subversion book guys for open sourcing their build tools and website template!"

Here are the formats of the books available;
For Asterisk 1.4

View the multiple-page HTML edition of the book.
View the single-page HTML edition of the book.
Download the full PDF edition of the book.

For feedback on the book or the book website, contact [Leif Madsen].

NewsCorp Buys Twitter For $750 Million

Twitter Sold
John Battelle is confirming that he learned from a very reliable source, that the NewCorp is going to purchase Twitter for $750 Million.
""We see Twitter as a key strategic asset for Newscorp," the source told Battelle, promising "not to muck it up too badly with home page takeover ads, at least, not this year."
Man I hope Twitter will not go the MySpace way!

GMail POP And IMAP Troubleshooter

GMail IMAP POP trouble Shooter
I found a nifty tool from Google code via Google Product Compass (German, Der Google Produkt-Kompass, Link below) that helps to troubleshoot IMAP and POP troubles with your GMail. (Or any mail provider if you know how to compile code) The compiled binary is GMail specific and checks your email software configuration and and checks the individual settings, and then attempts to create POP, IMAP, and SMTP connections using these settings.
You can download the compiled binary from the project page.

The Google POP and IMAP Troubleshooter is currently compatible with the following clients:

Outlook 2002
Outlook 2003
Outlook 2007
Outlook Express
Windows Mail
Thunderbird 1.5
Thunderbird 2.0

Please note that the Troubleshooting tool generates a report detailing your settings and test results, creating a file on your Desktop called PopImapTroubleshooterLog.html. In some cases you'll need this log file to continue troubleshooting a POP or IMAP problem.

I did try the product and did work, confirmed my configuration was correct, which I knew already!

Der Google Produkt-Kompass: Der Google POP und IMAP Troubleshooter

Google Brain Search for mobile

Mobile Brain Search
I guess is the easiest way to find fools on April 1st. But I could be wrong, so watch the video and follow the link to find out more. Some people say it is very convincing.

Official Google Mobile Blog: Introducing Google Brain Search for mobile

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Fight Phone Spam With Google Voice

Phone Spam
One feature in the Google Voice (which was a part of GrandCentral as well) that is very useful is that the ability to mark a caller as spam, just like you do in your Gmail. Once tagged no more future calls from that phone to you. The caller will not be in your message list (Voicemail) but as I said, just like in Gmail, will go straight to your spam folder.
This will only affect your account and the blocked numbers are not shared among other Google Voice users.
But there are exceptions to the private list of spammers. Google Voice will block reported and confirmed phone spammers, like automated dialers that call you everyday.
One I really like to get blocked is the annoying calls trying to con you into buying a vehicle warranty. Previously I could only play along with them if I had time. Now I can block them straight away!
According to Google Voice blog post bellow, there are tens of thousands spam phone calls are blocked, thanks to Google Voice.

Google Voice Blog: Helping you fight Phone Spam

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

OpenSIPS 1.5.0

OpenSIPS 1.5.0 Released
This slipped under our notice but the OpenSIPS team released the latest OpenSIPS server version 1.5.0 on March 23rd, about six month since the last major version release.
While there are are major improvements in Database, Management interface and dialog support, the new additions to the SIP server stands out. These include cache support, Load Balancing, PrePaid support, SIP Identity , Dynamic Routing, IP geo location, to name a few but you can find all the new additions on what is new on 1.5.0.
The team has compiled a manual to help version 1.4 users to migrate to the new OpenSIPS 1.5.0 and is very helpful as there are some major changes need to be addressed such as the new database structure. (but it is much easier than it sounds!)
A set of links, release notes, OpenSIPS Download and other helpfule links are available from the release news page.

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