VoIP Tech Chat » tech

Shooting: It’s Not Just for Zombies, It’s for Other Trouble Too…

patrick — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:33:31 +0000

A few months back my car’s flaky ignition switch gave out and literally fell out of the steering column. The replacement works great, but it has a quirk that you have to turn to exactly the right spot to take the key out without leaving the radio on. A few days ago, while traveling for work, I did this part of the procedure wrong and left the radio playing all night. When I came out the next morning to go to the office, my keychain buttons didn’t respond and I could hear the radio playing from ten feet away. My immediate assumption is that the battery would be too dead to start the big engine. I sat down, put the key in, turned, and the car just wheezed without turning at all. Clearly my initial assumption was correct, so I dialed up roadside assistance and waited.

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.

Tropo Pushes International Development

Fred — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:54:48 +0000

Tropo Go Global

Tropo, a voice application platform, announced yesterday availability of local numbers in more than 40 countries. Tropo previously had offered local numbers limited to the United States, but now launched the program internationally.

Need to test an app that makes calls? Those have been 100% free in development for calls to US numbers. We’re expanding that support internationally as well. In addition to the free calls to US mobiles and landlines that you’ve always had, our developer program now supports free calling to landlines in 17 other countries.

Although SMS may still be limited to US numbers, the availability of International local numbers to developers makes testing voice applications incredibly easy and affordable (as in free).

More information can be obtained directly from their release announcement.

Cn I by a vwl?

patrick — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:34:02 +0000

Dear Children of America,

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.

I’ll have clear skies, personal conversation, and hold the technology, please.

patrick — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:50:04 +0000

"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.

We made it look all different

Fred — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:08:57 +0000

Sometimes, you just get sick of looking at the same thing over and over again. Of course, the one exception to this is our wives. Of course. See honey?

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.

Spam wars

patrick — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:33:57 +0000

^{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.

There are still websites and advertisers who rely on pop-up ads for revenue and click-throughs. Since every major browser now suppresses these, and for years we have at least had add-ons and 3rd-party apps to do it, it seems counter-intuitive for a company to advertise this way.

In both cases, an advertiser is hawking goods or services in a way that is obnoxiously intrusive to the end consumer. This isn’t necessarily new, even as far back as 1959 there were clearly critics of television advertising, but this somehow seems more offensive. In the case of television, you are getting a fairly expensive product in exchange for your watching advertising. These days, if you want to avoid the ads you can pay more, as it should be. In the case of spam and popups, there is an additional element of outright malice. Never has a television ad, even if it did involve sexual innuendo, been blatantly destructive to the television, the cable box, or the viewer.

In the end, in a survey of “every person I have ever met ever, for real, in my whole life,” it was revealed that everyone openly and unabashedly despises both spam and pop-up ads. The most ironic part of the whole spam / pop-up controversy is this:

They work. (Yale even said so.) If 0 people clicked on the links in the messages, if 0 people saw the banner and said, “OMGWTF!! IHTHT!!” There would be no spam. It would end. Not immediately, but it would decline abruptly. The solution isn’t lawsuits, or government action, it’s each and every end user, every consumer, every man, woman, child, and elderly person on the internet NOT clicking the virus, the ad, the porn.

0 people click, 0 companies pay, 0 companies make money off of spam and pop-ups, 0 spam messages and pop-up ads exist. By maintaining a base-level of plankton-esque internet users to blindly click everything that pops up, the bottom-feeders (who in this example fall ABOVE the clickers) are able to keep making money, and the cycle continues.

Break the cycle. Talk to your mother, grandmother, grandfather, nieces and nephews about clicking stupid things on the interwebs box. It starts with you. And them. And the entire human race.

AVG Rescue CD for Virus Removal

Fred — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:27:47 +0000

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

At Least the SPAM is Friendly

Fred — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:19:12 +0000

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. Most often, we see spam from sites selling Viagra, Weight Loss Meds, and other ingestible health aids. Sometimes, the spam comes from sites just trying to cash in with online advertising. Either way, spammers constantly craft their comments in order to get “accepted” into your comment stream.

Which actually brings me to my point…

Killing Them with Kindness

Lately, spam comments have become nothing short of complimentary. For example, the following comments appeared in today’s spam repository (unedited for spelling, grammar, etc.):

Heard about this site from my friend. He pointed me here and told me I’d find what I need. He was right! I got all the questions I had, answered. Didn’t even take long to find it. Love the fact that you made it so easy for people like me. More power

i’m almost always bouncing across the web the majority of the evening so I choose to browse a lot, which unfortunately isnt always a beneficial matter as most of the internet sites I view are composed of unproductive trash copied from different web pages a million times, on the other hand I gotta give you props this site is truely half decent and possesses a lot of authentic content, so many thanks for removing the trend of solely duplicating other folks’ blogs, in case you ever want to have fun with a couple of hands of zynga poker with me just email me – you have my email

How often do you write your blogs? I enjoy them a lot

Superbly written article, if only all bloggers offered the same content as you, the internet would be a far better place. Please keep it up! Cheers.

Reading this reminds me of my previous room mate. That guy was one of the smartest people I know, but he was a little too original for my tastes though. Anyways I enjoyed reading this, thanks. Will give me something to discuss when I see him.

Thanks for sharing, please keep an update about this info. love to read it more. i like this site too much. Good theme .

It’s not common these days to find this type of information. I’m glad I stumbled upon your website. Keep up the good work!

I am really enjoying reading your well written articles. It looks like you spend allot of effort and time on you blog.I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!

Is it probable for us to follow you actually on Twitter?

Superb site,Thank you regarding this good post – I will certainly be sure to look at your website more often.Just subscribed to the RSS feed…

nice fantastic blog yea nice job our website will soon be adding reviews on websites and add them to our websites as the top best 25 blogs to visit we also do reviews on Customer Reviews all types of reviews thanks

I added your blog to bookmarks. And i’ll read your articles more often!

One thing I really like about website blogs is that they trigger a thought in my head. The moment that happens, I feel as I have to respond with the hope it’s pleasant to other people. Simply because there are many blogs and forums with many points of view, they question your comprehension. It’s at these occasions when you have crucial insignt many others may not have had, and this includes the blogger him/herself. I find myself coming back to to your weblog only because you have numerous wonderful insights and also you happen to be at this a while, that’s very exciting and tells me you know a lot. Keep triggering thoughts in others!

Does it Work?

If you “google” some of the comments, you will find a lot of sites that allowed the comment to post. Which brings me full circle to the title… At least the SPAM is friendly.

Perhaps some site owners don’t use comment moderation. Perhaps the owners received the comment, became entirely excited with the compliment, and happily approved the link. But one thing remains certain — the spammers simply do not care. As long as the link to their site goes live, the spammer received exactly what they wanted.

And we’re back!

Fred — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:53:49 +0000

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
Download audio file (09MAR2010VTC.mp3)

Links of “Interest:”

How to annoy customers and irritate users

patrick — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:29:48 +0000

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:You should want to watch an ad. You should want to share it with your friends. You should be ABLE to share it with your friends.

When I see a clever ad on TV, regardless of if I like the product or want to buy it, I will send it to my friends. I tell two people, they tell two, etc. Maybe I have a blog with three regular readers and I want to show them. Which leads me to two questions:

1. Why pay to produce an ad and air an ad on television, but not upload it to video sites like youtube where people can view it and share it for free?

2. Why would Youtube, of all places, have clever ads in front of videos, but not a link to the ad itself?

When creating an ad-supported service, whether it’s a “free” calling card, “free” conference server, “free” social networking site, “free” blog, the key test should always be: is this advertising content either useful, entertaining, or both for my users? Can my users easily share this advertising content with their friends on an entirely opt-in basis? If people are interested in the ad and sharing the ad, the chances become much higher they will buy the product or service being advertised. If it’s not useful or entertaining, why would you put your reputation behind it?

Many companies have failed at their attempts to artificially create viral content, now companies are actively hindering it to their own detriment.