2009 Goals

 

• Pay off everything except the big car
• Build an actual office space in my home, where I can have my printer, scanner, etc, set up and all my cords connected etc.
• Build two ATOM based Mini PCs for my kids to do homework on using Uber geek and friend Josh Bancroft’s videos (http://software.intel.com/en-us/videos)
• Promote the use of Asterisk for small and medium sized businesses.  If you have a company with multiple locations, and you aren’t utilizing VOIP for communications, I believe you are crazy. With an Asterisk system and a couple phones, you can communicate between the two offices for no LD charges. That means you can be working from ANYWHERE.  Can you say Telecommute and no one will know the difference?  I knew you could.
• Install a Windows Home Server to back up all the home PCs in the case of the inevitable failures.
• Simplify.

Technorati Tags: 2009,Asterisk,Atom,Goals

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Building a new phone system the open source way

 

My day job company has a phone system that was purchased and built right before Abraham Lincoln was born.

From talking to some people, he might actually have been one of the people who actually WROTE the software for the phone system.

After much debate, and much research, the company decided to purchase a new phone system.  We had a few requirements for this phone system:

• Ability to have multiple inbound queues
• Ability to have the phone not ring if you are on a call, but still leave you in the queue once your current call is done
• Ability to have your voicemail sent to your email
• Ability to forward your phone to an outside number if you are unavailable or out of the office.
• Ability to pick your desk phone up, take it anywhere in the world and plug it into a network port and plug it in and have the same phone experience wherever you are that you have sitting at your desk, including getting your phone calls at your regular desk direct dial number.

I looked at many possible phone systems, from Avaya, and from Mitel, and from Shoretel, and a couple open source Voice Over IP solutions, one called Asterisk, and another, built on Asterisk called Elastix.

In the end, after much discussion, we decided to go with the Elastix phone system and Polycom IP 430 phones.

I’m still waiting for my new T1 to be installed in my office, but I have the phone system currently set up in my office and working for station to station internal calls.

I also have it set up so that you can go somewhere (for example) my home office and plug the phone in and get phone calls.

One neat feature is that all incoming faxes come into your email as a PDF file.  It’s a really nice feature.

If you are looking at a new phone system, I strongly recommend you look into Asterisk or Elastix.  They are both ultra configurable and flexible.

Compared to the other alternatives, it cost us at least 50% less than the other alternatives, and I think in the end it will provide us with a much better phone experience.

Technorati Tags: Asterisk,Elastix,Mitel,Shoretel,Avaya,VOIP,Open Source Telephony

Blackberry Bold versus IPhone

I’ve written previously about my love for my Blackberry.  It’s a great device.

I’ve almost completely stopped using my home computer, except for photo use, and some blogging.

I’ve moved 95% of my email reading/responding to my Blackberry.  I’ve started updating Facebook from my Blackberry.  I even Twitter from my Blackberry.

Things I’d like to see:

• I really need an app that will read my email for me.  If I’m in the car, and get an email, my phone will beep.  A certain beep for home email, and a certain beep for work email.  If I’m in the car, and have my Bluetooth headset on, why can’t the phone read the email to me so I can at least know who it is from, the subject, and maybe the first few lines of the email?
• A replacement for Jott.com .  I loved the Jott.com service.  But after they went to a paid model, it become much less attractive to me.  I just don’t use it enough to justify the outlay that it would cost me.  How about an application that can be activated by calling a number and leaving a message.  Then, that message is transcribed and sent to me via email.  Great for note taking, etc, while driving.
• A decent GMail client.  The GMail client that is available for the Blackberry is pretty good.  It has a major (to me) bug in it that when you first open it up, it doesn’t do a refresh.  So the newest messages, if you have received any, don’t automatically show up until you do a refresh.  This refresh happened in previous version of the client, but with 2.0.6, which is the latest version available for the Blackberry, this does NOT happen.
• A better browser.  This is my #1 request.  The Blackberry browser really is horrible, in my opinion.  Especially if you try to view website that use Javascript.  Fix it, Fix it, fix it!

I’ve seen recent commercials about the cool apps available for the IPhone.  I’ve read about the nice new features of the Blackberry Bold.  But I still think there is  a  market for Blackberry apps, both for the Bold and for (somewhat) older Blackberries.

 

Technorati Tags: Blackberry,IPhone,GMail,Jott.com

Crappy Customer service at MilesKimball.com

I purchased an early Christmas present at the end of September for my wife (yes, I know, I started shopping early).  I ordered it from MilesKimball.com on the 26th of September. 

 

It’s now the 20th of October.

I never received the product.  I figured that it was slow shipping, as it was an inexpensive product (a Santa+Mrs Claus Salt and Pepper Shaker set), and I didn’t pay extra for fast shipping.

But I figured a month was long enough, so I called MilesKimball.com today and the nice lady on the end of the phone said:

“What is your name and Zip Code”

I gave them to her

She verified some information, and then said

“We cancelled that order, we stopped shipping that product.  We won’t charge you for it.”

Wow.  They won’t charge me for a product they didn’t ship to me.  How nice.

Nor did they have the decency to contact me via email or phone to let me know it would NEVER SHIP.

That’s crappy customer service, in my opinion.

MilesKimball.com customers, beware.

Technorati Tags: MilesKimball.com,Customer Service

Fiber to the home versus cable

I recently had FIOS installed at home.  I got the 10 meg down/ 2 meg up package, along with a phone line (haven’t had a home phone for about eight years), and TV service.

The installation was painful.  I was told that the installer would be there between 8am-10am the day it was to be installed.  So I worked from home that day, since I still had my Comcast cable installed.

At 10:30am, the installer finally showed up.

At 5pm, she finally finished.

Six hours.  She installed a ONT box outside my house, then pulled the cable inside my garage and plugged it into the electrical outlet in my garage.  It has a UPS built in, but it only allows phone calls, and only for eight hours.  No internet if the power goes out.

She then pulled coax to where my main computer is, and then coax to where my two TVs are installed.

After that, she came in the house, hooked the TVs up with the DVR that was provided, and configured the TVs so that they worked.

She said “You can plug your computer in, just don’t changed anything yet.”

The router is both a wireless router, and a wired router for four devices.  It works fine, so far.

My wife’s laptop was able to connect to it without incident.

I did have one minor issue, which was that the default IP address scheme is 10.1.1.x, which is the same as my work network.  I had to log into the router and change the scheme to something else, like 192.168.3.x, so that the VPN I use to connect to my office would work OK.

After I did that, everything works well.

I uploaded 200 or so picture this afternoon, much faster than it would have uploaded previously via my Comcast connection.  With Comcast, I would have started the upload before I went to bed and it would have most likely finished before I got up the next morning.

With the FIOS, it took about 2 hours to upload all the pictures.

Other packages are available, such as 20/5 and 50/20.  For more money, of course.

I would recommend it, if you can get FIOS in your neighborhood, you should look into it.

Technorati Tags: FIOS,Comcast,FTTH

The Netbook question – what could be done (IMO)

Many folks recently have been talking about netbooks.  A small, portable, internet capable notebook with a 5”-7” screen, running Linux or Vista, or XP.

I’ve got a better idea.  Possibly easier to implement.

Build a small Netbook, say with a 5”- 7” screen.  Don’t make it a touch device, as that just adds to the complexity.  Make it a 3G capable device, with Edge as a fallback for connectivity.

For an OS, use the Blackberry operating system.  Have a memory slot for use by the Netbook, say 8-16gig.

Enable bluetooth.  Enable the Netbook to be used as a phone.

The GMail client for the Blackberry rocks.  The Gmaps client for the Blackberry is stellar as well.

The only piece of this puzzle that needs GREAT improvement is the browser.

The web browser with my Blackberry Pearl, to put it nicely, sucks eggs.  It’s horrible.  Especially because the Javascript support is non existant or will just plain take the browser/phone down and not work at all.

So, if someone could write a decent browser that was able to utilize Javascript efficiently, in a small 5”-7” screened device, you could use it both as a Netbook and as a phone.

Most of my phone usage (95%-98% actually) is via my bluetooth headset.  So the Netbook wouldn’t even have to leave the desktop. When I’m not using the phone portion (or even if I was, in the case of 3G connectivity), I could be reading/responding to email via GMail. Or browsing the web. I could be use NewgatorGo to read RSS feeds.

Sound plausible?

 

The phone company would be happy, as they would still have a revenue stream from the bandwidth plans and the cellular plans.

RIM, are you listening?  What say you, advocate of the Netbook Kevin Tofel?

Technorati Tags: Netbooks,notebooks,cell phones,Blackberry,IPhone,Kevin Tofel,JKOnTheRun

Smart Whiteboards in schools

At my daughters elementary school, a couple of the classrooms we went to during the curriculum night had what they were calling a Smart Whiteboard.

Doing some research when I got home, it seems to be a product from a company here and what the whiteboard does is allow you to write on the whiteboard interactively.  You can also be running Windows (it appeared) and by tapping on the whiteboard, you could simulate a double click with a mouse and active menus and such.

The teachers I saw used it to control (ugh) PowerPoint presentations, but it was VERY cool looking technology.

Even my wife said “We need one of those!”

It actually reminded me a little bit of the Windows Wall software, or even a wall version of the Surface technology from Microsoft.

Neat stuff.  Not sure I see a use for it outside the classroom, but definitely in the classroom it could be useful.

There was another company, called Mimio that has/had a product like it, but with the Mimio product, you could have it send the notes written on the board directly to a PC.  Now that’s useful, especially for brain storming sessions, or code reviews, or whatever.

Technorati Tags: Smart Board,Mimio,Whiteboard