There are 7 ways to avoid paying this fee… Including mailing them a check via US Mail. So either we are to believe that the process of receiving mail, opening mail, finding check, depositing check, applying said check to correct account, etc is somehow less expensive or Verizon hates you.

Being a former customer, I choose to believe that latter.  Read more from ABC News.

G-g-g-g-g-g-google.

I love my Droid. That being said… my love for Google wanes like a loveless marriage from a white, suburban utopia. I’m comfortable with Google, but the love affair is over. Both of us want different things from our relationship.

I want Google to be a kinder, gentler corporation. The one that doesn’t scream M-M-M-Max Headroom and make me think that the next leader of Google, Inc. may indeed be named Darth Vader.

One of the products that I loved from Google was GooG411. Using it was simple.

1. Call +1 800 GooG 411
2. Speak what thee wants.
3. Repeat as needed.

Great service. But… the service will soon be no more. Good bye dreams of a kinder, gentler Google. Somewhere, Yahoo is smiling; getting ready for a comeback.

From readwriteweb.com:

Google just announced that it plans to shut down 1-800-GOOG-411, its voice-powered directory assistance service, on November 12. GOOG-411, which launched in 2007, was the company’s first foray into voice-powered search. According to Google, GOOG-411 “provided a foundation for more ambitious services” on smartphone platforms like Google’s own Android and Apple’s iPhone. Interestingly, today’s announcement also notes that Google plans to put all of its resources “into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.”

For those who relied on GOOG-411, Google suggests using the company’s text message-based search service (466453) for finding local businesses.

And here’s the official word from Google:

Back in 2007 we launched 1-800-GOOG-411, a voice-powered directory assistance service that connects you quickly to businesses across the U.S. and Canada. On November 12, 2010, we will shut down the service.

GOOG-411 was the first speech recognition service from Google and helped provide a foundation for more ambitious services now available on smartphones, such as:

• Voice Search – search Google by speaking instead of typing.
• Voice Input – fill in any text field on Android by speaking instead of typing.
• Voice Actions – control your Android phone with voice commands. For example, you can call any business quickly and easily just by saying its name.

Our success encouraged us to aim for more innovation. Thus, we’re putting all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.

If you don’t use a smartphone, and you’re trying to call a business, you can send a text message with the name and location of the business to 466453 (“GOOGLE”) and we’ll text you the information, or on Gmail you can use the new phone-calling features to call any U.S. business free of charge. Also, if you don’t have the free voice search app pre-installed on your phone, you can download it here.

Thanks for all the calls, and keep an eye out for all the innovation to come.

The GOOG-411 Team

RIP GooG-411. RIP.

"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.

It’s a GREAT read and I leave you with this: Magic Button. (read the article)

Related links:

• e4 Technologies
• Michael Graves on SOHO VoIP

†Yes… Wicked cool and useful. If it doesn’t meet the criteria for both, it doesn’t make his blog.

Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009 – Amends the Communications Act of 1934 to make it unlawful for any person in the United States, in connection with any telecommunication service or VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) service, to cause any caller identification service to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identification information (“spoofing”) with the intent to defraud or cause harm. Prohibits construing these provisions to prevent blocking caller identification or to authorize or prohibit law enforcement or U.S. intelligence agency activities.

Interestingly, the bill provides the FCC authority to “to collect fees from the telecommunications industry sufficient to offset the cost of its regulatory program” — a cost which is estimated at $1 million dollars per year. The only exception to the proposed law appears to be for Law Enforcement purposes, however even the CBO points out that domestic violence shelters (attempting to protect the identity of spouses) may be affected by the new regulation.

Of course, as Schoolhouse Rock taught us, the next step is for the House and Senate to resolve any differences. After that, it’s up to the President to decide if this bill becomes law. After all,  it’s a long, long journey to the capital city. Today, it’s just a bill.

Additional Reading / Links of Interest

• Schoolhouse Rock: I’m Just a Bill (Schoolhouse Rock)
• S. 30:Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009 (govtrack.us)
• HR 1258, Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010 (Congressional Budget Office)
• HR 1258, Truth in Caller ID Act (Library of Congress)
• Grammar Girl: Affect Versus Effect (Grammar Girl)

Comcast Outage?

We’ve been hearing complaints of Comcast service issues in both Nashville and Atlanta. Although the company’s network status page shows everything to be ok, reports from users indicate a severe problem affecting home, business, and voice service.

Frank Eliason posted through his @ComcastCares twitter feed the following message at 10:30am EST:

We are aware of internet and phone trouble in and around Nashville. Engineers are on it. more info soon

At this time there is no information from Comcast regarding the nature of the problem, the impacted services, or the expected resolution. As of 12:30pm the Comcast Network Health page still states “No Known Issues.” On the other hand, Comcast users report otherwise:

Search of #comcast on Twitter at 12:15pm

And…

Search of comcast outage on twitter at 12:15pm

Requests to Comcast for information have not been returned.

Additional Reading:

• Affect vs. Effect
• Comcast Network Health

Keep these simple rules in mind:

• No one from the IRS or the Census bureau will ever email you about your taxes or the Census. Ever.
• No one from the IRS or the Census bureau will call you and ask for your address, social security number, and bank account information. Ever.
• No one from the IRS or the Census bureau will ask for money, a donation, passwords, or pin numbers over the phone or via email. Ever.

If you get a phone call from the IRS and do not feel comfortable with the questions they ask to identify you, the real IRS is always willing to accept a callback. Their phone number is 1-800-829-1040 (800-TAX-1040). Doing this callback will (almost) always ensure you are talking to the IRS.

This is a good rule of thumb for any unsolicited phone call. If the questioning or “verification process” makes you feel uncomfortable or involves revealing sensitive information such as a mother’s maiden name, social security number, driver’s license number, bank information, or credit information, get a callback name and number. Anyone can spoof an outgoing phone number, so caller id is no protection here. In the case of official agencies, it’s fairly easy to verify the listed phone number before making the callback, and legitimate businesses will never try to goad you into giving information.

If you are struggling with confrontation, all legitimate businesses will also be willing to conduct business via mail. Specifically in cases of debt collection or IRS matters, request the correspondence be provided via US mail instead of the telephone. Legitimate agencies will comply with this request, anyone who doesn’t you can safely hang up on.

Further Reading:
Census on Scams
IRS on Scams

When moving between old office and new, as is my tradition in packing, I crammed everything into boxes with the knowledge that should I come to need an item, I would go searching through the boxes piled in the “supply closet” of my new “office”. In almost two years, I have not touched these boxes. Today was a day of reckoning when I was reminded of an important rule: Don’t use old Cat 5 and other copper cables.

There are people who will disagree with me, and I accept their disagreement with the knowledge they are wrong. Cat 5 (ie. network cable)  and copper coax cable (ie. cable tv cable) costs between $0.25 and $1 per foot. On a new VoIP phone, you need anywhere from 3 to 25 ft. of Cat 5 depending on the location of your phone / adapter in relation to your router and with the assumption that you are not using a wireless solution.

Many homes, like mine, have an accumulation of old cables, and when you get a new ATA (analog telephone adapter, aka. that veyeop thingy) that inexplicably comes without one, you go to the pile, untangle the least confined cable, and hook it up. Time and time again I have gone through ten and twenty minute troubleshooting sessions with people (and, in true ‘Dr. heal thyself’ fashion, spent hours myself) only to find that a strange or intermittent problem with connectivity, registration, or voice quality was remedied by putting on a fresh Cat 5 cable.

In fifteen years of working with networking setups, one in ten intermittent or quality issues end up being plain old bad cables (remember from previous posts, 50% are unplug or partially unplugged cables). Just in my five years of VoIP experience, I can’t count the number of times voice quality issues have been wiped out completely by getting fresh cables with good connectors. Considering the cost is < $15 for almost any project, save yourself the time and hassle. Throw away the old Cat 5 and coax cables, buy fresh ones for the new install, and you are eliminating a huge point of failure for years to come.

Humorous video – in how many movies is the “No Signal” theme over-used?

Its Friday, so here’s a bit of humor… I admit that I had not really paid attention to how incredibly over-used the “my cellphone has no signal” theme has been in recent movies until I saw this video. Keep watching, though, because after the “no signal” theme, it does go into other amusingly over-used themes like dropping mobile phones in water, ripping them apart, burning them, etc…

Kudos to someone named Rich Juzwiak for apparently editing together pieces of 66 movies!

Posted from: http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2009/09/humorous-video—in-how-many-movies-is-the-no-signal-theme-over-used.html

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. I, like every other person I know, receives the random yet continual undesired telemarketer call (yes, I’m on the DND databases and let’s not get into that). Thanks to Asterisk, I can send my telemarketers to a little place I call the Annoyatron.

Now, many developers and users implement their own version of Telemarketer Torture. Some like using IVR’s. Some like endless ringing. Personally, I like to keep them on the line for a long time. You see, since I add numbers to the Annoyatron after they call me, by the time they reach the Annoyatron they have already called and wasted my time at least once before. So, instead of just having them hang up and move on to the next home, I like to see if I can keep them talking for a while. My Goal? At least 2 minutes.

I use Asterisk’s “WaitForSilence” command to keep my torture conversational. When there’s a pause, the Annoyatron will play a file. While the telemarketer speaks, the Annoyatron will patiently wait. You put it all together, and wala — the Annoyatron Telemarketer Torture.

Today, I received unwanted calls regarding long distance to India. I added the number to the Annoyatron and well, the results of their continued calls no longer annoy me. Here are two examples:

Listen to Call 1:
Download audio file (annoyatron.mp3)
(or you can download the MP3)

Listen to Call 2:
Download audio file (annoyatron2.mp3)
(or you can download this MP3, too)

Ok, so here’s an example of how you would write the dialplan in Asterisk:

[annoyatron]
exten => s,1,Answer()
exten => s,n,Wait(2)
exten => s,n,Playback(annoy/annoy-hello)
exten => s,n,WaitForSilence(2200)
;...
; record a file for "your side" of the conversation
; wait for silence, and then play it
; lather rinse repeat
;...
exten => s,n,Hangup()

Simple, no? Just one of the reasons Asterisk allowed me to enjoy working with telephones. Awwww.

We’d love to hear about your fun examples with Asterisk. And you know, Leif Madsen is requesting some ideas for Asterisk Recipes himself.

Asterisk is free, open source software provided under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Asterisk is the most popular open source software available, with the Asterisk Community being the top influencer in VoIP.

Why free? It’s just how Digium rolls. They really take that GPL open source to heart.