How many times have you picked up your VoIP phone and not had a dialtone and said, “damnit, service is out again.” I can’t count the number of tech calls I have been a part of or heard about where a piece of equipment suddenly stopped working and the user declared, with passion generally reserved for Samuel L. Jackson and Al Paccino at the climax of a movie, that they were positive it was plugged in and it just stopped working. After a long line of troubleshooting, unplugging and replugging it in miraculously cures the ailment, clearly a function of some latent factory problem.

Since purchasing my 1994 car some three years ago, I have on three different occasions forgotten that it has a kill switch on the ignition. If it sits for some small period of time, the kill switch engages and the engine won’t turn over. Lights work, radio works, but trying to start it results in a non-response. If the ignition is not fully disengaged, for instance if it is slightly on and leaves the radio playing, pushing the unlock will not disengage the kill switch. After forty-five minutes of non-response from Verizon’s roadside assistance, I walked out to the car, pressed the unlock button, heard the familiar “BEEP BEEP”, started the car and drove to the office. Even the pros sometimes forget to follow the basic troubleshooting steps and end up falling into the assumption ravine.

Two minutes of stepping back, forgetting that I know everything, and following a basic checklist would have saved me a lot of time and embarrassment.

TAM. UR Shrt hnd SMS wil mak it ezer 2 cmpt 4 jobz.

Lol.

-People Who Write in English.

P.S. It’s 2010, phones and computers both have full keyboards, and vowels are free. There is no excuse for writing like an idiot.

P.P.S. We are working to form the LOL Verification Network, where a random sample of LOL posts will be validated to ensure the poster is actually laughing out loud when posting. Those found to be claiming to have LOL’d while not actually laughing will be fined and could face punishment up to and including revocation of speaking privileges and other penalties by the cyber police.

You know, Levent-Levi’s 50+ non-Top blogs actually feature some of our must read blogs. We’re listed along with Michael Graves, Dave Michels, and even Jeff Pulver (all required reading).

About Tsahi Levent-Levi

Tsahi Levent-Levi is a seasoned product manager and system architect at RADVISION. His experience includes product management and development, project management, with a strong background in development and management of complex VoIP projects. Tsahi currently manages a wide range of VoIP and 3G client products, which enjoy significant market share in the industry.

"Put down the phone. Slowly walk away. Say hi to the person next to you. Yes, that's a human. Yes, they are real."

Too much technology consumes our daily lives.

Ironic topic for a blog post? Probably. Blasphemous for a guy whose entire livelihood depends on the fact that internet connections barely even dreamable ten years ago are available at his house? Sure. True? Absolutely.

Last week I took four plane rides (thanks Usairways* for $27 first class upgrades) and spent four days on a cruise. In the airport, my disappointment towards people engaged in asinine, pointless conversations simply to avoid feeling disconnected made me sad. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide* they talk of a planet where the inhabitants need to talk constantly in order to keep their brains from working— well friends… we are there. Today, planes offer cell and wi-fi service so you can stay connected on the go. As a DBA, server admin and technology leader in a small team handling high-transaction, high-availability systems, I understand that emergencies happen. I have solved many problems driving 70+ mph down I-75 on my Verizon aircard (Passenger seat). That said — in over ten years of “mission critical” system responsibility, I have never had a business need that I couldn’t defer or delegate for less than six hours to take a flight.

On the cruise, we left the technological world behind. When I wanted to meet up with my friends, we had to pre-arrange it or just *gasp* roam around and find one another. We couldn’t call or text or tweet or blog. For almost four entire days, we used nothing but direct, personal communication. It was glorious.

No conversations were interrupted by an “urgent” phone call. No one secluded themselves in a private world by clinging to someone on the other end of a mobile phone. People actually interacted with new people. People made new friends. People spent time with old friends. Relationships were formed. Some of them ended with departure from a foreign port, some when the boat docked, some will end next week, or next month, and a precious few will last a lifetime. This is the silent victim of the new media revolution.

Email, blogs, Facebook, geocities, etc. were a way for friends to network and keep up with one another across great distances. Even when I was young (and using BBS‘s), the virtual world was a gateway to making real-world relationships. Now it’s the replacement. We use instant messaging, text messaging, Facebooking, MySpacing and Youtubing to avoid real, meaningful human contact. We don’t make friends anymore, we make virtual acquaintances.

Technology becomes cheaper, faster, more accessible. The disease spreads. The art and beauty of human contact dies an unceremonious death. We won’t even notice till three weeks later, when the smell is finally enough to tip someone off. By then, it will be gone and there will be no bringing it back.

Is it too late? Am I overly dramatic?

I take comfort in the backlash…could this bring the next next step,  marketing of premium, anti-technology travel?

“For every market, a sub-market grows…” -Grave Robber

*Footnote: Apologies to Fred for shout-outs to two of his nemeses, Amazon and USAirways.

Anyway, as we were saying… every now and then you just need to go ahead and make a change. After all, it was the greatest musical act of all time that told us:

When it’s time to change, then its time to change
Don’t fight the tide, come along for the ride, don’t you see
When it’s time to change, you’ve got to rearrange

Yes, that group was The Brady Bunch. Peter, Greg, Marsha, Bobby, Cindy, and Jan were right. When it’s time to change you’ve got to rearrange.

Today, we rearranged our site. Nothing crazy. In fact the only really crazy aspect is the homage to Mr. Ben Affleck. If Ben Franklin is the patron saint of VoIP Tech Chat (and he is) then Mr. Ben Affleck is, well he’s just the baddest man in the whole town.

Thanks for reading.

Atlas heard about this venture and shrugged...(cause he had the whooooole world....)

I was introduced to a fun little “tool” today: Find the shortest route between two Wikipedia articles.

The first thing I tried was an analysis of the path from Death to VoIP, and I discovered Death to VoIP takes a direct path through my hometown of Chattanooga, TN. So then I became concerned with my own mortality, and found:

• Patrick’s path to death is via Christianity.

If I am going , I want to know about Fred:

• Fred’s path to death is via marriage.

From Patrick to Fred is just a simple set of name shuffles:

• Patrick -> Rick -> Fredrick -> Fred

Fred to Patrick is a little more complex, and involves Spongebob Squarepants.

For the wealth-minded:

• Rags to Riches requires a path through Boston, MA.

And the often inquired about connection betwen VoIP and Ben Affleck?

• VoIP -> Caribbean -> Turks and Caicos Islands -> Ben Affleck

Turns out anything can be connected via wikipedia…try it! Leave comments on the ones we might find funny!

I R Eatz U R Dataz!

I love my netbook. I love my netbook so much, I have two of them (okay, one is the wife’s). Surprisingly, I managed to survive months on nothing but my netbook doing fairly intensive SQL / VoIP / Web work. The hard drive is a little slow, but the overall performance is outstanding.

When I travel, I can use Skype to video chat with the built in webcam and get great quality (both ways) for both picture and sound. It’s like a giant smart phone. It reminds me of the $1000+ “video phones” that were supposed to be the future of talking on the phone… then people realized they really didn’t want to “get pretty” to use the phone. Now, for around $250 a unit, you can have that and so much more.

Recently, my wife’s netbook gave an error on boot that had something to do with a missing windows file (system32\ntoskrnl.exe). Apparently, she’s not the only one with this issue… it seems to be quite common. Of course, as the techie/geek/nerd of the castle, it was my job to slay this dragon and I came across the only problem I have had with this magical mini machine. Not so much a problem… more like open questions to Acer.

1. To access the hard drive, you have to remove 17 screws (maybe more, I think I lost some extras), you have to remove the keyboard, you have to remove the top, you have to remove this little card on top of the mother board, this side circuit board, the motherboard. Then you slide the hard drive out, reverse. Why not put a panel on the bottom to access the hard drive directly?
2. Why can I find nothing in your documentation about Alt-F10? This is a handy mode that lets you recover the operating system to factory defaults, but I don’t see it in my Acer manual.
3. In line with question 2, Why is the only recovery option to completely reset to factory? Since this is basically a stripped version of the OS, why not offer an explorer window so I can copy files to an SD or USB drive before formatting, or just backup the user files to another partition?
4. What degree in sadism lead to the design of the three little clips that hold the keyboard in place?

All told, from error to recovered could have been done in < 30 minutes, and I HIGHLY recommend Acer products to everyone I know. From their higher-end Ferrari laptop to the humble netbook (go with XP home, Windows 7 netbook edition is crippleware garbage), I have never had a problem with their hardware or software that made me lose respect for the brand, which is saying a lot.

For More Information:

• Acer: Acer Aspire One Website
• Skype: Free PC to PC Video Calls

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.

This week, we discuss such great things as Harley Davidson Motorcycles, Skype, Asterisk (briefly), the Boy Scouts, and more!

As always, VoIP Tech Chat can be accessed from:

• VoIP Tech Chat (download mp3)
• iTunes
• And, thanks to popular request, you can also stream the chat by pressing the play button below
  Download audio file (081105_01.mp3)

Have thoughts? We’d love to hear from you.

Related Links:

• Boy Scouts Webelos
• Harley-Davidson
• The “Millennials” Are Coming – 60 Minutes
• Obama Change
• Clearwire and Sprint
• Skype
• Japanese man petitions to marry comic-book character
• VoIP Tech Chat Script

Well, we have only 2 comments:

1. No Star Wars or Dungeons & Dragons references?
2. Two Words: Ben Affleck

Seriously, it’s a nice post. And if you liked it, please check out:

• What is a VoIP?
• What is POTS?
• What is DTMF?
• How does 911 work with VoIP?
• and the opinion piece, Mommy, What’s a Phone Cord?