VOIP News

>

The new efonica service from Fusion Telecommunications is promising users that its features  will allow them to place and receive calls from either a PC, landline phone, or cellphone  over dialup or broadband connections.

According to the company, the offering also features voicemail and the ability to call both landline and mobile subscribers in at least 46 countries. Because efonica is based on the SIP protocol, users will not have to use a PC and can just purchase standard telephone equipment.

ree great bits of information for you.  First, Yahoo is opening (somewhat) its I.M. and voice applications platform based around Yahoo Messenger with Voice to application developers.  C++, JavaScript, AJAX, and ActiveX are all supported frameworks for the fruit of your API labor. The extensions you’ll create are known as “plug ins”.  However, the “plug ins” that you can apparently develop might bear some resemblance to the following plug ins, available now:

In the beta version, a suite of third-party plug-ins will be available for Amazon.com, AmericanGreetings.com, Coupons, Inc., eBay, HedgeStreet, Inc., Jeteye, NewsGator Technologies Inc., Pando Networks Inc., 30Boxes, as well as plug-ins from Yahoo!’s leading Web services including Yahoo! Answers, Calendar, Finance, Music, News, Sports, 360°.

This can mean one of two things–either Yahoo Widgets (Konfabulator) has gone full circle in Yahoo’s programming department, OR the failed I.M. robots idea got carried over from AIM (actually AIM I.M. bots are really a carryover from IRC’s heyday, but whatever). 

Also new is a 1 GIGABYTE file transfer limit (YAY!) and sound effects (YAWN).  Still apparently missing from Yahoo’s consciousness is Mac OS X sensibilty.  I really don’t believe Yahoo has any desire to deliver on the Mac client they’ve been unofficially promising for the last several years.

Here’s Yahoo’s Dev Site.

>Why isn’t this a surprise? Verizon Communications is suing Vonage for infringing on several of Verizon’s patents over the technology that makes VoIP calls happen. In an otherwise run-of-the-mill patent infringement suit, a twist in the case is that Verizon IS NOT asking the Federal District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia (where the suit was filed) to put an immediate stop to Vonage’s operations. However, of course, if (and a very BIG if) Verizon prevails in the litigation, they will ask the court to place a cease-and-desist order on Vonage.

Obviously, Vonage has been having its share of troubles lately, including their IPO dropping like a rock over the last few days. However, it remains to be seen if this lawsuit has any true merit, or if this is another case of a big telco trying to put the kibosh on advancing technology, as has been witnessed in the growth of municipal WiFi networks.

I check my postal mail today, and what do I find: an advertisement for Best Buy for Business, a catalog order-by-mail scheme that uses the Best Buy logo and appears to bear all the markings of CDW or Insight. Heavy discounts. Glossy pages. No-haggle pricing.

Does this mean that, judging by Best Buy’s track record, we can expect to have our customer service questions taken by snotty high school kids who don’t have half a clue about the products in question?  I have such a hard time just getting an equivocal answer from the people that work at Best Buy.  Are the Geek Squad geeks (who have maybe two thirds of a clue) really going to steer your small business into IP telephony, as the advertisement indicates?  Doubtful… Being a Geek Squad ensign is how college kids spend their summers, and how community college kids spend their winters.

Anybody order from Best Buy for Business yet? Give me comment and let me know your experience.

dy Abramson, Ken Camp, Martin Geddes, Alec Saunders, Dameon Welch Abernathy and myself had a great chat yesterday, and Ken put the podcast on iTunes. Go check it out! Here’s what we blabbed about:

- The conundrum of network neutrality. Lots of questions, lots of ideas, and almost no answers. Seems to be par for the course at this point.

- Enterprise attitudes toward unified communications. Why are companies still dissing VoIP?

- The media para-marketing hype surrounding “Spit” and other almost-threats to VoIP.

ply to: jobs@sparkparking.com

Spark Parking http://www.sparkparking.com is working hard to “Make Parking Make Sense”. We are applying wireless sensor technology and mobile phone interfaces to solve many of the problems in parking - and if you live in San Francisco like we do, you know that parking has lots of problems that need solving!

We are an early stage company, with startup funding in place, paying customers, and a bright future ahead! You’ll be getting in “on the ground floor” and will be rewarded accordingly. Our compensation package is flexible (and will include some equity), so we can work out the terms that work for us both. We can even consider less than full time, if that is what makes us happy.

You’ll be continuing the development of our LAMP-based parking monitoring, reporting, and transacting platform. Don’t worry, we’ve got a great sensor team, so low-level hardware expertise is not a requirement, but it would score you bonus points! You will, however, be our lead technical person, which means that in addition to architecting, coding, and testing, you’ll need to occasionally do some internal IT support (on our all Mac and Linux systems) and generally pitch in around the office. You’ll help plan our IT infrastructure expansion, you’ll manage our servers, and you’ll work with management to let us know when it is time to add capabilities to the engineering team (which could include you managing some overseas engineers). If you don’t know how to do something, we expect that you’ll be both able and excited to teach yourself how!

You’ll be working directly with our very hands-on serial entrepreneur CEO / Sales Director (who is pretty damn geeky, but can’t actually code), our Finance and Marketing folks, and our future hires as we grow the team in the coming months and years. We all work in a two-room office, but we have some flexibility about where you actually do your work (partial telecommuting is OK). Everyone is expected to contribute to the discussion of major business concerns, and the best ideas will prevail, no matter their source. Basically, we all pitch in to making Spark Parking a huge success! The ideal person for this team will be smart, passionate and entrepreneurial in spirit.

Ideally you’ll already know:

- PHP

- MySQL

- Linux/Unix

- Javascript/AJAX

- CVS/SVN

- SOAP/REST

- HTML/CSS

- XML

You’d be perfect if you dream about:

- OOP

- MVC

Bonus points if you know:

- VXML

- VoIP

- Asterisk

- Java

- Propel

- Smarty

- SMS (yeah - text messaging!)

More reasons you should come work with Spark Parking:

- Our Mission district office in San Francisco - two blocks from BART, with lots of great restaurants (and bars for after work) nearby

- A nice Mac or Linux box (how about a new MacBook?!) with a big screen for you to work on in the office

- While you love coding, you need a job that lets you get into all sorts of software, architecture, integration, and support challenges - that’s what you’ll get at Spark Parking

- You might be able to bring your dog to work - as long as you’ll let the CEO take it for a walk in the afternoons

- You’ll be fixing parking - and thus an absolute super-hero to all your friends

- Super-flexible working environment - you can set your own hours, your own dress code, and your own holidays

Sorry, we do have a few restrictions:

* Must live in the SF Bay Area, hopefully in SF

* Must not require visa sponsorship

* We won’t pay any referral fees

If you are the right person for the job, please send a cover letter and resume to the address above, with the phrase “I Love LAMP” in the subject line. Please tell us about the best application/platform you’ve engineered. Tell us what technologies you used, and what role you played in the architecture and implementation. If you can, please share URLs of applications you’ve worked on. Also, we’d love to know about your startup experience(s), both good and bad, so we can do what we can to make this one great!

en it comes to VoIP, there are two issues related to burglary alarm systems. The first is that alarm monitoring itself is moving to IP. This eliminates the need for a POTS line or dry pair for monitoring. Over time, alarm systems will use IP as the new standard for communicating with the monitoring station. So the monitoring mechanism will become the Internet, not a phone line from Ma Bell.

The second issue relates to power. The power required to keep an alarm brain running, 12 volts on a lead acid battery usually, is quite similar to the kind of power required to backup an IP router and cable/dsl modem.  In fact, some customer premise devices only require 9 volts on low current, so the possibility of equipping a cable modem with a very inexpensive DC backup is quite good. For now, however, I advise most people to invest in some kind of UPS (uninterruptable power supply) for their cable modem and broadband router.

Finally, most VoIP telephone service providers are incapable of providing reliable alarm notification service because the modem in the alarm system doesn’t communicate well over the VoIP link. It is for the same reason that FAX machines can’t be used to transmit reliably over VoIP links. This is why alarm systems and FAX applications will themselves transition to IP based solutions within several years. Look for the manufacturers your alarm system firm represents to begin offering IP-based monitoring solutions.

Also, check out some IP-based alarm system monitoring  firms and equipment vendors that already have this capability:

UHS

NextAlarm

Alarm.com

Some of the implications are covered in my book, Switching to VoIP.

mg width=”400″ vspace=”4″ hspace=”4″ height=”300″ border=”1″ src=”http://voip.weblogsinc.com/media/2006/05/Photo-3.jpg” alt=”" />

Well, it’s been a long time in coming, but I am finally evaluating the F3000 phone from UTStarcom. A project I’m doing for Best Technology has me looking at all sorts of WiFi phones, and the F3000 was thought to be the creme de la creme, that is, until I actually got it and started working with it. Here’s what I don’t like about it:

- The first digit of a dialed number is often inexplicably missed as the phone transitions to its “dial screen”

- The (apparently battery-preservation related) power features on the WiFi radio seem to yield some startup problems for the RTP stream, and initial audio seems to be garbled sometimes.

- The range is lower than even the minimal range of Linksys’s WIP300 phone.

- Annoying startup and shutdown jingles. When are phone makers going to realize that these jingles are a complete and utter waste of my time an annoyance, to boot?

- Poorly designed networking options menu causes every entry that begins with “register” to just say “register”, concealing the rest of the option name, ie. “register server”, “register port”, and so on. So it’s hard to tell which option you’re actually modifying.

- Phone mysteriously becomes unregistered from the SIP registrar after certain SIP methods. Not sure of the pattern yet.

Here’s what I do like about it:

- Obvious TFTP support (where is this on the WIP300?)

- Customizable ringtones and graphics via software upload

- Network-updateable firmware

- Nice pretty color screen.

I’ll get back to you when I’ve putzed with this phone some more.

r />The other day I had the pleasure of speaking with Cooper Marcus, the brain behind Spark Parking, which promises to revolutionize the way parking systems are managed, saving you and the parking operator time and aggravation, and increasing revenues for the parking operator. So how does it work?

Well, basically, you park your car in a space and then dial into the phone number of the Spark Parking System, which identifies you and measures the length of your parking stay using an infrared sensor embedded in the parking meter.  At the heart of Spark Parking is a soft-based interactive voice response system. No more fumbling for change or running out to feed the meter. All you need is a cell phone to “log your car in” to the parking space. Very cool stuff. Check it out here.