VoIP Tech Chat

I r muzikal n delishus

1spam n. \ˈspam\  unsolicited usually commercial e-mail sent to a large number of addresses

Millions of dollars are spent every year by companies and individuals combating spam. Spam filters, email systems with integrated spam management, reviewing spam emails for real emails that got inappropriately flagged, storing spam, deleting spam, reporting spam, it all adds up.

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AVG posted a virus removal CD for both linux and windows systems.

The AVG Rescue CD is essentially a portable version of AVG Anti-Virus supplied through Linux distribution. It can be used in the form of a bootable CD or bootable USB flash drive to recover your computer when the system cannot be loaded normally, such as after an extensive or deep-rooted virus infection. In short, the AVG Rescue CD enables you to fully remove infections from an otherwise inoperable PC and render the system bootable again.

Haven’t tested it, but looks like a nice tool for an IT Pro’s arsenal.

• http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-rescue-cd

Friendly, yet still Spam.

We love the “blog” format of presenting information for a multitude of reasons; one big reason being the comment factor. The posting of comments to VoIP Tech Chat allows discussions to occur, posts to remain “current,” easy updates, and more. Comments also allow spammers the opportunity to increase page rankings of whatever site they are trying to promote.

What is a PageRank Anyway?

According to Google Fun Facts, “The basis of Google’s search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an “importance” value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that’s not why it’s called PageRank. It’s actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.”

The Twitter Summary: PageRank measures the importance of websites by mathematically evaluating the links from other webpages. Better PageRank, more site traffic. (SWEET! A Twoosh!)

We Post Therefore We Receive SPAM

Through a combination of social marketing, submissions, and indexing, this site (much like most others), becomes the target of spammers wishing to increase the ranking of whatever site will bring them some pocket change. Read the rest of this entry »

Can you believe that we haven’t posted a true VoIP Tech Chat in over a year? Although many of you are thankful for the break, we have decided to invade your favorite audio player once more (with feeling) with the first of (what we hope) will be many podcasts for 2010. This week we discuss Verizon Wireless, Vonage, Customer Service, and well, just a good ol’ fashioned VoIP Tech Chat.

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

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Links of “Interest:”

• Follow Fred on Twitter
• Follow Patrick on Twitter (Yay!)
• Past Post from Patrick regarding a positive experience with Verizon

Free has a price, and it’s usually subjecting ourselves to marketing based on the magic numbers games.

Here at VoipTechChat(.com!) we don’t (as of this writing, but things change…) have any paid advertising on the site, and have abandoned AdWords, since it’s giving away real estate and not getting a lot of value. While we are open to targeted advertising (if you have a phone to sell, we are available to pitch it!), we appreciate that generic revolving text ads aren’t super valuable to anyone.

Today I started noticing the heavy addition of leading ads in my YouTube videos and I realized a critical feature all ads should share, and very few do: Read the rest of this entry »

When my little girl went from being a benign, unmoving lump of sleeping, drooling baby to a terroristic unplugging, biting, chewing, eating, swallowing, gagging, breaking, pulling, tugging beast of a toddler, my home decor changed. When we moved into our excessive 4 bed / 2.5 bath home in 2007, we had dreams. We had a guest room, and a Disney room, and my home office taking up about 25% of the under A/C space. When the beast began terrorizing our home, we retreated into a fallback position and isolated her to the safest room in the house, my former office. I was relegated to Read the rest of this entry »

Note: You can play or download the MP3 audio of the “Telemarketer Torture” calls towards the end of the article.

When I first started working with VoIP, I began to hate telephony, and any and all things telephone related. This bothered me on many levels. You see, as a kid, I loved telephones. Growing up in the “big city,” pay phones seemed to be on every corner. Family stories talk about walking several blocks extra, just to avoid me seeing and wanting to play with a phone. But, as usual, I digress…

When I worked with an unnamed switch (let’s just say it rhymed with Broadmoft), I hated working with VoIP. I knew there had to be a better way and started playing with Asterisk. Soon, my memories of playing with phones started coming back and my love rekindled. Now, I look forward to working with phone systems, only because I truly feel that the use of a phone can only be limited by your imagination. And with companies like Twilio, Adhearsion, and Digium, the community of telephone developers seems only to grow.

With that long winded introduction, let’s discuss today’s topic — telemarketer torture. Read the rest of this entry »

Firefox has released version 3.5.1 to address a security flaw announced earlier this week. For more information, please read the post at Team Forrest.

Our sponsor, Team Forrest, is reporting a serious security flaw in Firefox 3.5. The Zero-day exploit allows malicious javascript code to take control of a end-user.

For more information, please read the post at Team Forrest.

Note: There’s an intro, the DDA response, and Fred’s response in this article. Jump to the end to read Fred’s response.

A few months back, we posted a nice little article on using Asterisk to get Parking Space Availability from Ann Arbor garages. The response from the VoIP community was fantastic! We received great comments and feedback from people like Jason Goecke, Dug Song, Dave Michels, Evan Cooke, and more! People not only responded, they even showed different ways of providing access to this information. And everyone shared their work in an open forum — truly a great example of open source coding inspiring innovation (albeit with Parking Spaces).

Even better was the local response in Ann Arbor. Edward Vielmetti and Fred Posner were interviewed in the local papers, appeared on a radio show, and even rode the teeter totter. Everyone loved the idea of being able to check on parking space availability… everyone except for the DDA (insert scary music).

The DDA (Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority), funded by tax dollars,  “provides a diversity of transportation and parking options to meet downtown’s [Ann Arbor’s] ever-changing needs.” The DDA does not like us making information of parking spaces available to the public via phone. Instead, the DDA wants to control this information. Seriously, they want to control parking space availability information.

Tyler Erickson helped Edward Vielmetti and Fred make this project even more fascinating by tracking parking space availability over time. The plan was to provide predictability of availability. For example, “We’re sorry, the lot at 4th and Washington is currently filled, we predict the parking lot will be available in 7 minutes. Press 1 to be notified…”

Wouldn’t that be neat? We thought so… The DDA’s response was to block Tyler’s access. Of course, since it was using Google Apps, it blocked Google, but that’s another story. We inquired as to why this blockage occurred and… well enter Susan Pollay. Susan Pollay is Executive Director of the DDA. She told us (and remember, this is a tax funded organization): Read the rest of this entry »