And, when Michael Graves provides criticism, it’s generally constructive and well written… so, with this long winded introduction, we invite you to read:

• Soft Phones: An Opportunity For Someone — A well-written constructive “rant.”

First, Apple posted a new HD Star Trek trailer… the movie is looking pretty good so far.

And lastly, Rafe Needleman wrote a nice post on cnet.com about testing network connectivity in Space.

With those 2 links and a cup of Joe, any geek is ready to start the mid-week morning!

So anyway, news outlets throughout the world reported on President-Elect Obama receiving congratulatory calls from World Leaders. Normally, news like this will only make Fred and Patrick hungry — but this time, it also made us curious. Do world leaders still use the telephone? And if so, do they use some sort of high-tech encrypted device like Tony Montana?

The State of Telecommunications actually appears to be, well, quite outdated. Pranksters have been able to successfully call the President of France, the President of Venezuela, Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John Paul II, Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Fidel Castro. Not to mention the recent prank phone call against Sarah Palin. Most of these calls were made using regular POTS lines over the Public Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN.

So, using our 8th Grade logic skills, we can say:

1. World Leaders received calls using PSTN
2. World Leaders received calls using PSTN that they assumed were other World Leaders
3. Therefore, World Leaders must typically use the PSTN

Surely the PSTN will not be utilized for all telecommunication within Political arenas. Back in the late 60’s the US and Russia integrated a Moscow-Russia Hotline, aka the Red Phone, to allow for direct communication between the two nations during the cold war. The hotline has been upgraded throughout the years and is still in place today.

PSTN with Human Roadblocks

Basically, World Leaders use the PSTN to communicate. However, the chances of you picking up the phone, dialing +1 (202) 456-1414, and having Mr. Obama answer the phone are about as good as having Fred and Patrick visit a buffet and only make one trip to the bar.

In between the phone on the President’s desk and the main switchboard of the White House are many levels of Operators and Screeners working to ensure only the “proper people” can speak to our illustrious leader.

Now of course, the US is the country of NORAD, so we hope (really, really hope) that there are advanced, encrypted telecommunications equipment transferring our national information from point to point. We also know that the Social Security Administration made a great decision and started the switch to VoIP. Fred also chatted with reps from the FAA during AstriCon (they are looking to replace the entire FAA phone system with Asterisk or another VoIP system).

But, for World Leaders to speak with other World Leaders, the method of choice seems to be the PSTN. And if the government’s reaction to Obama’s blackberry is any indicator, it would appear as if this will not change anytime soon.

Wouldn’t it be great if all world leaders embraced Unified Communication? Imagine the tweets! Or even making a direct SIP to SIP call using your favorite VoIP equipment. Ah, the future… we can always dream.

So Motrin (yeah, the pain reliever) just a little headache today courtesy of Twitter. They launched a new ad campaign targeting the pains of moms… however… the campaign did not sit well. Not well at all.

Mothers took offense to the add (perhaps the claims that carrying a baby is in fashion now) and posted complaints on twitter. Motrin ended up blogging an apology:

McNeil Meets Twitter - We Hear You

November 17th, 2008

By Kathy Widmer, Vice President of Marketing, McNeil Consumer Healthcare

This weekend, a lot was said about Motrin on Twitter and in the blogosphere. Unfortunately, it was not the kind of conversation that we here at McNeil had hoped to be at the center of.

For those who haven’t been following this, it all began when we ran an advertisement online over the weekend that talked about babywearing - which is a term that we used to describe carrying a child in a sling or wrap.

It was meant to engender sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their kids, but did so through an attempt at humor that missed the mark and many moms found offensive.

Now as you can imagine, we certainly didn’t mean to offend moms through our advertising. As a mom of three girls, I understand many of the comments made and agree that we know what’s best for our kids and for ourselves.

On behalf of McNeil, I’m sorry if you found this advertisement insulting. We are are in the process of removing it from our website. Unfortunately, it will take longer for us to remove this advertisement from magazines as several are currently on newsstands and in distribution.

One bright spot is that we have learned through this process - in particular, the importance of paying close attention to the conversations that are taking place online. It has also brought home the importance of taking a broader look at what we say and how it may be interpreted

Our take? Very interesting on how Twitter can create quick impact… now it’s time to move on to something better… like the economy, Darfur, domestic violence, or anything else.

Links:

• Controversial Motrin Moms Commerical on You Tube
• Follow Fred on Twitter

The SEC believes that Cuban allegedly sold his 6% ownership just before a public announcement which saw shares of Mamma.com drop 10%. The sale of shares saved Cuban around $750k.

For more info, go directly to the source and read the Wall Street Journal’s post.

Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet. Appropriately, his post recent blog post is titled, “I hate to lose.“

In order to “accelerate the introduction of compelling open source innovations,” Sun will be restructuring the company into new business groups:

• Application Platform Software (JAVA, MySQL, etc.)
• Systems Platforms (Solaris Virtualization, Open Storage, etc.)
• Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms (StarOffice, NetBeans, etc.)

The restructuring aims to remove costs by 700 - 800 million dollars each year. Of course, there is also a human price tag — a reduction of 15 - 18% of the workforce (about 5000 - 6000 employees).

Sun provides popular open source software and promotes itself as a leader in the open source community. Popular Free, OpenSource Sun products include:

• Java
• MySQL Database Software
• OpenSolaris OS
• OpenOffice (Compare to MS Office)

A University of Florida College of Dentistry server containing sensitive patient information was compromised; providing access to more than 344,000 current and former patient records. What type of information? Names, birthdays, social security numbers, addresses, were just some of the information compromised.

The Gainesville Sun states:

While UF officials have no evidence the intruder used the information for fraudulent purposes, letters were mailed to 336,234 people who had information on the system to alert them. The university lacked mailing addresses for nearly 8,250 additional patients with data on the server and is seeking help in locating them.

A hotline, 866-783-5883, has been established for patient inquiries.

Although the FBI and Police are investigating, the University of Florida needs to raise their hand and say “My bad.” As an institution of higher learning, the Univeristy prides itself on leading the way. Having a security breach to sensitive systems that’s noticed only during an upgrade is consistent with and organization that places a low value on the privacy of their “clients.” From a hospital this would be unacceptable. But from the “flagship” of the State University System of Florida, it’s truly inadmissible.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the University of Florida has allowed access to sensitive data. As we said on June 12th:

The time for excuses is over. After all, our hero Benjamin Franklin used to say, “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.“

The products affected:

• Office Communications Server 2007
• Office Communicator
• Windows Live Messenger

These products deliver software-powered VoIP, presence, instant messaging and audio/video/Web conferencing functionality to end users. Microsoft estimates that over 250 million computers worldwide run these applications. All use RTP to deliver the content of the message; therefore all are vulnerable to this class of attack.

“Most of the attention in enterprise VoIP/UC security has been paid to the control channel, where SIP and other signalling protocols are used,” said Ken Kousky, CEO of CISSP certification training company IP3 Inc. and advisor to the VoIP Lab at Illinois Institute of Technology. “Until now, the media stream has been largely ignored by the security community as a source of malicious activity.  But attacks from these vectors have the potential to be dangerously persistent and widespread.”

The Microsoft vulnerabilities announced today, if exploited, cause a Denial of Service (DoS) condition against not only the stated applications but the entire desktop environment.

“Today’s announcements are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Andriy Markov, director of VoIPshield Labs. “Although they are specific to Microsoft’s applications, similar flaws exist in other VoIP vendors’ products. And many other media stream attacks exist that have more severe implications than service availability. We’re presently validating new research that shows an attacker can gain unauthorized access to an unsuspecting user’s laptop by manipulating the packets of a VoIP phone call. We believe that these attacks can even be made to traverse a PSTN gateway.”

VoIPshield has not publicly released the “full details” of the Microsoft VoIP vulnerabilities. VoIPshield, through it’s standard operating procedure, will first confidentially disclose the details to Microsoft and work with them to fix the applications.

VoIPshield Systems is a VoIP security solutions company founded in early 2005.  Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, VoIPshield develops and markets the VoIPshield Security Suite, a set of security applications purpose-built to protect VoIP networks.

iNum stands for international Number. It is a new kind of global phone number for a new kind of world — a world with a new geography that’s about local presence and global relationships, not about distance or national borders.

Currently, telephone numbers are assigned to countries. Countries then usually divide this further into city codes, area codes, etc. For example, New York City is area code 212 in country code 1 (USA), which is represented internationally as +1212, Buenos Aires is city code 11 in country code 54 (Argentina), which is represented internationally as +5411.

With iNum, users receive a number in the global country code of +883; newly created by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). The global exchange, theoretically, allows the number to stick with you for life. No matter if you move to a new Continent, your number will remain the same. Of course, using a VoIP provider will almost certainly be required.

Many companies provide free routing to iNum including Jajah, Gizmo5, Truphone, and Voxeo. And should your provider not offer free routing, world wide local access numbers  should help.

For more information, check out these links:

• iNum
• E pluribus unum (for those who don’t understand the title)
• VoIP Watch: One Country Code The World Over (Andy Abramson)

snom markets the 820 as reflecting “the 8 experience:”

The snom 820 is a new step in combining high class telephony with an extraordinary design. The snom 820 is the beginning of a superior line of business VoIP phones. It´s extraordinary elegance and performance combines both: latest technology and well known snom features. The snom 820 is an amazing experience for everybody who is used to the basic world of telephony.

The telephone boasts an impressive array of features such as:

• high resolution color display
• wideband voice
• integrated WiFi
• 5 way conferencing
• for all features, download the datasheet from VoIP Tech Chat

Pricing seems to range from $375.00 - $500.00.