Archive for the ‘Unified Communications’ Category

« Previous Entries

Office Communicator clients cannot communicate with AOL Contacts Problem Solved

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Scott Oseychik over on the MSDN blogs has a good post today about federation issues between OCS 2005/2007 and AOL. Apparently, American Online changed their root certificates on their SIP Access Gateway at approximately 12/2/2008, 4:00 AM EST.

Via Scott’s post:
If your organization leverages Public Internet Connectivity (aka: “PIC”) in conjunction with their Live Communication Server 2005 and/or Office Communications Server 2007 servers, you may not be able to successfully communicate with (or see the presence status of) America Online Instant Messenger users.

Read more (including a video walkthrough on how to resolve the issue)

Tags: , , , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Office Communicator clients cannot communicate with AOL Contacts Problem Solved


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in AOL, American Online, PIC, presence, Public Internet Connectivity, Office Communicator, OCS 2007, VoIP, Microsoft, SIP, Unified Communications, TMCnet | No Comments »

Nimbuzz VoIP app on Apple App Store

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

nimbuzz-iphone.jpgNimbuzz is a free app that lets you call (VoIP), chat, message, and send photos, music and video on your iPhone, which was recently made available on the Apple App Store. Using a centralized contact list you can connect with all your buddies on Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, Gadu-Gadu, StudiVZ, Hyves, Jabber and Twitter, plus popular social networks including Facebook and MySpace. It features presence (who´s online and where), group calling, chatrooms, and more.

If your buddies are offline, let them know you’re trying to get in touch by sending them a “Buzz”. It will start Nimbuzz Mobile on their mobile phone. Nice feature.

Nimbuzz is pretty similar to fring, which I’ve used extensively. One thing Nimbuzz has up on fring is that it supports regional social network support including German StudiVZ, Dutch Hyves and Polish Gadu-Gadu.

Go download your copy on the Apple App Store today!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Nimbuzz VoIP app on Apple App Store


Copyright VoIP &amp Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in ICQ, Hyves, GoogleTalk, Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, Nimbuzz, store, Yahoo! Messenger, Twitter, StudiVZ, AIM, social networks, Apple, Skype, VoIP, TMCnet, Facebook, Mobile Phones, myspace, Windows Live Messenger, Unified Communications, SIP, Wireless | No Comments »

VoxOx 1.0.1 Released

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

voxox3.jpgVoxOx just released a new version of their “Universal Communicator”, which aims to combine VoIP, video, and social networks. VoxOx aims to take on Skype by offering more social networking features. Last year, I wrote an article titled Skype Could Trump Facebook in Social Networking, but Skype still hasn’t added social networking functionality.

In any event, today version 1.0.1 was released, less than a month after their initial launch. I was never able to get the Facebook integration to work, but it was a beta release, so I′m hoping they worked out the kinks.

Here are some new features:

New Additions
• Status field set to your auto-response message when away
• Facebook icons link out to friends’ profiles so you can write on their wall, private message them, etc
• View Facebook contact photos from their VoxOx Profile
• Text Message window remembers Mobile Numbers
• Chat to Email window remembers emails addresses

Bug Fixes
• Call-Back (Web and SMS) fully functional
• Fixed Crash bug when ending calls
• Added default group for new contacts to be saved
• Login screen text updated to “Login Automatically”
• Web Portal login back online

Some of the major updates they are working on include a new and improved user interface, more efficient memory utilization, smoother and faster SMS functionality, enhanced Facebook integration, MySpace integration, and Outlook & Mac address book integration.

Tags: , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: VoxOx 1.0.1 Released


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in VoxOx, integration, social networks, Unified Communications, Facebook, TMCnet, VoIP, Skype, social networking | No Comments »

PIKA WARP Appliance Adds FreePBX Support

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Thumbnail image for pika-warp-appliance-1.jpg
When I met with PIKA Technologies  at ITEXPO they told me support for FreePBX was coming. Well today, PIKA Technologies announced that PIKA WARP the Appliance is now compatible with the Asterisk-based FreePBX GUI (Graphical User Interface) application. I reviewed the PIKA Appliance recently and was pretty impressed with it. Having FreePBX support is a huge milestone for the PIKA Appliance. FreePBX is a popular user-friendly web application  that makes it easy to setup and configure Asterisk.
freepbx-logo.png
According to PIKA, “While customers often develop their own GUIs, many have told PIKA that if WARP were compatible with industry-standard GUIs like FreePBX, they would be much more inclined to adopt the portfolio. With today′s announcement, PIKA has once again demonstrated its responsiveness to the needs of its user base.”

“We are very pleased to have supported the effort to adopt the FreePBX application to run in the PIKA Warp environment,” said Terry Atwood, vice president of sales, marketing and customer care at PIKA Technologies. “Used in many Asterisk implementations around the world, including Trixbox, FreePBX has proven its value, time and again. When the FreePBX team expressed their willingness to work with us to port to the Warp Appliance, we jumped on the opportunity.”

“FreePBX has become the de facto standard for enterprise grade PBX functionality delivered to the SMB business and includes a very rich set of functionality and customization potential,” said Philippe Lindheimer, open source community director of Bandwidth.com and leader of the FreePBX project. “But no GUI is complete without a wide range of hardware options to complete the package. We are delighted that PIKA can now include FreePBX in the PIKA WARP and bring our two eco-systems together.”

Today′s announcement from PIKA follows news of a new partnership between FreePBX and Bandwidth.com, a complete business communications provider offering advanced VoIP, Internet services and managed network services to small and medium businesses. Bandwidth.com will devote significant resources to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to remain open source and free.

“The partnership with Bandwidth.com is great news as it gives FreePBX the support it needs to grow while ensuring it remains a free GUI for the entire open source eco-system,” said David Clarke, business development manager at PIKA and director of the PIKA Warp Community. “I know the choice of Bandwidth.com was a decision that Philippe made only after months of consideration and sound input from the key developers and contributors to the FreePBX project.”

Out of the box, FreePBX provides a long list of features including many typically found only in an enterprise-grade PBX, some examples are:

• Unlimited number of voicemail boxes
• “Follow me″ functionality
• Ring groups and call queues
• Unlimited number of conference bridges
• Paging and intercom functionality
• and much more

The PIKA WARP Appliance product portfolio is ideal for deploying small- to medium-sized IP-PBX systems, IVR self-service systems, predictive dialling systems, fax servers and many other features typical of a traditional, purpose-built business telephone system that are often lacking in a computerized system. Compatible with a variety of open-source development platforms, including Asterisk and Linux, the Appliance offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional off-the-shelf computers and plug-in-card network connectivity in a smaller footprint.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: PIKA WARP Appliance Adds FreePBX Support


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in David Clarke, Bandwidth.com, PIKA WARP Appliance, Terry Atwood, appliance, freepbx support, Philippe Lindheimer, FreePBX, SIP, VoIP, Unified Communications, bandwidth, Asterisk, TMCnet | No Comments »

Ribbit Launches out of Beta

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Ribbit, which was recently acquired by BT, today rolled out its developer platform out of beta at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbits extensive APIs allow you to integrate voice communications into business applications such as Salesforce.com, CRM systems, call center applications, and even social networks.

Ribbit launched its programming platform for developers today at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbit likes to call themselves “Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company”. Post-acquisition, BT and Ribbit are taking the platform public with “Bring Your Own Network” which they claim is a telecom industry first. Ribbit said, “Carriers around the globe can tap into the power of the Ribbit platform and active developer community, to create new revenue streams and provide their customers with more choice and function through innovative voice-enabled applications.”

As seen by the charts above, Ribbit has extensive support for industry standards, including SIP, XMPP, XML, Flash, and more. When I spoke with Ribbit Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs he compared their software platform to Amazon’s cloud computing, enabling programmers to build powerful integrated telephony applications for Web sites. A proprietary softswitch (the Ribbit SmartSwitch) mediates communication across protocols, networks and devices. That includes MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and Skype. As I have previously written, the Ribbit API functions include call control, authentication, billing, messaging, and more. The Ribbit API abstracts the protocol inter-communication between MSN Messenger, Google Talk, and even Skype. Ribbit has reverse-engineered the Skype protocol to provide the ability for Skype users to receive calls from MSN Messenger users, Yahoo! Messenger users and Google Talk users by leveraging the Ribbit SmartSwitch.

Their most famous application to date is their use of the Ribbit API to integrate with Salesforce, a popular hosted CRM application. Also, Oracle On Demand support in ̫ 2009 is forthcoming. Ribbit told me they’ve done a lot of work to simplify and automated the process to make it easier for developers to get started. They explained you can sign up, access the APIs and documenation, and play with them for ‘free’ in a sandbox before deploying and charging for the applications. When I asked if the highly successful iPhone apps sold by third parties on the Apple Store was a good analogy for their applications being developed and sold by developers they agreed that was an appropriate analogy.

BroadSoft and Sylantro Systems are two of the first VoIP providers to leverage the Ribbit platform, which Ribbit now claims has 7,500 developers.

Tags: , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Ribbit Launches out of Beta


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in Sylantro Systems, Salesforce.com, platform, applications, Messenger, Ribbit, developers, TMCnet, VoIP, Unified Communications, BroadSoft, Wireless | No Comments »

Bandwidth.com invests in FreePBX

Friday, November 14th, 2008

freepbx-logo.pngbandwidth-logo.gifBandwidth.com has just made an investment in FreePBX, the popular front-end interface to Asterisk-based distros. I discussed this news with Philippe Lindheimer just a couple hours ago. One of the questions I asked was if Bandwidth.com would get “preferred treatment” within the FreePBX interface, since Bandwidth.com offers SIP trunking. Obviously, if FreePBX gives Bandwidth.com a prominent position in the GUI or they make it “easier″ to configure FreePBX (i.e. plug-n-play) that could be a huge boon to Bandwidth.com Philippe said that that isn’t part of the investment announcement being made today, however, that is something they are looking at.

As for the purpose of the investment, Philippe said it was mostly due to Bandwidth.com’s desire to grow the market and help build the FreePBX community. The idea is that the more IP-PBXs out there, the more SIP trunks, and hence more revenue for Bandwidth.com. I have some further thoughts on this, but I′m pretty busy today and wanted to share the news.

Philippe Lindheimer said, “Part of assuring the success of FreePBX is to make sure that we continue to have strong leadership, community participation and a thriving eco-system of users and partners. I would like to announce a new partnership that will help the project tremendously. I have joined forces with Bandwidth.com as their Open Source Community Director, where we will be devoting significant resources and effort to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to make sure it remains open and strong.”

One significant piece of news is that Bandwidth.com helped protect the FreePBX’s project several months ago when the FreePBX trademark (which FreePBX.org nor Phillipe never owned) was “being shopped around to parties that did not have this project’s best interest in mind″ according to Phillipe. Thus, Bandwidth.com preemptively purchased the trademark with Phillipe’s blessing in order to assure FreePBX was not jeopardized.

You can read Phillipe’s blog post about this here which has more details.

Tags: , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Bandwidth.com invests in FreePBX


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in FreePBX, Philippe Lindheimer, philippe, phillipe, com, Asterisk, VoIP, SIP, Unified Communications, bandwidth, TMCnet | No Comments »

Calling All Bloggers! Free Blogging on TMCnet.com

Friday, November 14th, 2008

This is a call out to all bloggers out there - Rich Tehrani, my boss has extended an open invitation to bloggers interested in blogging for TMCnet.com, a leading communications/telecom site according to Alexa, Quantcast, and others.

Today, TMC launches its Blog Aid program to help people out of work stay in the public eye - in order to improve their hiring prospects in a tough economy. In the last few months, many good marketers, PR people, engineers and others who have been laid off. These potential Blog Aid bloggers have a good deal of quality commentary and information to share which could be very useful to the TMC community of online readers.

TMC is offering these new bloggers - especially those working in the communications and technology industries, a venue to voice their thoughts on the spaces where they have expertise so as to allow them access to the 2-3 million global visitors who come to TMCnet on a monthly basis.

So if you enjoy writing about communications, telecom, VoIP, wireless, unified communications, mobile, etc. and want a wide audience, go check out Rich’s blog for more details.

p.s. The blogging platform is Movable Type 4.21.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Calling All Bloggers! Free Blogging on TMCnet.com


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in blog, MovableType, Rich Tehrani, blogging, movable type 4.21, bloggers, telecom, communications, Unified Communications, Skype, VoIP, TMCnet, News, Internet, SIP, Mobile Phones, Wireless | No Comments »

TMC Launches NGN (Next Generation Networks) Magazine

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Today, TMC announced the launch of NGN Magazine focused on next generation networks and how service providers and carriers can build these networks and what they will need to know to maximize savings and ARPU (average revenue per user).

“We′re in an interesting time,” says TMC President and Group Publisher, Rich Tehrani. No, he’s not referring to the American political scene or the chaotic American economy. Rich is referring to Next Generation Networks, which Rich believes will be critical to the future of service providers and carriers. Certainly, in these tough economic times, squeezing the most efficiency and most value-add services is critical. Verizon is probably the best example of that. They’ve been investing billions in their fiber-based FiOS service which supports high-speed Internet, voice, and TV/video/HDTV.  They are no doubt also looking to tie in their considerable wireless/cellular network with their FiOS network to offer customers a competitive advantage over competing solutions.

In his video interview with TMCnet Group Managing Editor Erik Linask, Rich discusses NGN Magazine. [click to visit video link]

erik-rich-ngn-magazine-launch.jpg

The topics TMC’s NGN magazine will address, some of which Rich mentions in the video interview:

» How do you deploy new services and applications ?
» What technology should you consider ?
» How do you integrate new technologies with legacy elements?

Erik points out that a lot of publishing companies have been cutting down on staff and even folding print publications. Rich addresses this point by pointing out that 2-3 million executives visit tmcnet.com to read the content digitally. He also discusses how TMC offers digital (PDF) versions of the print magazines which greatly reduces costs. Thousands of people subscribe to the digital PDF format.

While all facets of the economy seem to be slowing down, TMC continues to grow — not only launching a new magazine, but recently adding new telecom/wireless industry talent such as Carl Ford, Scott Kargman, and more. Newspapers may die, print magazines may fold, but good information and news will always be needed. And where there is a need for good information, people will pay for it. Publishing companies which are nimble enough to adjust to the trend towards online news dissemination will survive, while those that can’t will die.

Case in point is the NY Times, which must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009 or face bankruptcy. But if you’re a New York Times fan, don’t worry. I’m sure President-elect Barrack Obama will add them to the $700+ billion bailout. Can’t have the NY Times go bankrupt, can we? Don’t answer that question…

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP &amp Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: TMC Launches NGN (Next Generation Networks) Magazine


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in Rich Tehrani, NY Times, NGN Magazine, next generation networks, service providers, generation networks, print, times, magazine, networks, ARPU, video, VoIP, TMCnet, Mobile Phones, Technology and Science, Erik Linask, Video Conferencing, Unified Communications, Wireless | No Comments »

Microsoft and IBM Announce Sametime and Microsoft OCS integration

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

As one of my sources told me a few days ago, IBM and Microsoft planned on offering Sametime and OCS 2007 integration to be announced at VoiceCon. Three days ago I wrote:

Rumor has it that Microsoft and/or IBM will announce integration between Office Communications Server 2007 and IBM’s Lotus Sametime “Unified Telephony” platform at this week’s VoiceCon show. If true, this would combine approximately 20 million Sametime users with Microsoft’s fast growing OCS 2007 user base creating the largest unified communications user base.

Well, it just hit the newswires. At Voicecon, IBM and Microsoft announced that IBM Sametime and OCS will offer Interdomain Federation in Q4 of 2008, using SIP/SIMPLE.

The support will require an update to the Sametime Gateway 8.0.2. It will support OCS 2007 and OCE 2007 R2.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP &amp Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Microsoft and IBM Announce Sametime and Microsoft OCS integration


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in IBM, sametime, Microsoft OCS, integration, voicecon, OCS 2007 R2, OCS 2007, VoIP, Microsoft, SIP, Unified Communications, TMCnet | No Comments »

Sony Reader PRS-700 — Great, But for One Thing …

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Sony Reader old_new.jpg Yes, there was a commuter this morning waiting for the 7:17 reading his Kindle.

And that’s all I needed to start thinking about ebooks and ebook readers and how maybe someday all printed material will be digital and there will be no more newspapers or magazines.

Wait! I′m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Do find the whole thing pretty cool so was intrigued by this piece of writing today.  

So all you ever wanted to know about the Sony Reader PRS-700 is here at Mobile Tech Review. A very positive review, but there is something amiss …

What’s the catch? The touch screen layer reduces contrast. Yikes!!!

Digital readers like the Reader and Amazon’s Kindle use e-ink technology, a very low power, paper-like display that’s non-glare and high contrast (much like a book’s pages).

Touch isn’t part of the e-ink technology, nor is backlighting, so we rarely see a reader offering these. Sony, cutting-edge company that they are, found a way to add these two desirable features.

Sony added a touch layer on top of the e-ink display and embedded LED side-lights into the frame that surrounds the display. Clever.  

That’s the good, and like I said, check out the whole story at Mobile Tech Review.

Tags: , , , ,

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Sony Reader PRS-700 — Great, But for One Thing …


Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Posted in , , , , , , Computer Hardware, Unified Communications, freepbx support, review | No Comments »

Sansa Fuze updated to support Ogg and FLAC

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

Filed under:

SanDisk just released a firmware update for the Sansa Fuze — pretty minor, except it adds in support for FLAC and Ogg, which should make fans of jam bands and lossless music encoding extremely happy. Nothing much else of note here apart from some UI tweaks and big fixes, but Fuze owners will be appreciative, we’re sure.

[Via DAPreview]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Nilay Patel

Posted in , , , , , , body, Cyber Monday, , Unified Communications | No Comments »

Kingston following Intel into the SSD game

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

Filed under:

Kingston has announced it’s teaming up with Intel — new to the SSD market itself — to market flash memory-based drives for laptops and servers. This is a bold move for Kingston, which is usually known to stick to mature markets; clearly, the company sees the technology’s potential. The effort “almost flies in the face of the usual Kingston model,” said spokesman Dave Leong. “We are large and in charge!” (OK, so we made that last part up.) This is all set to pop off in Q4 2008 — Samsung, you’ve been warned.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Joseph L. Flatley

Posted in , , , hacking, Unified Communications, gamepack, intel | No Comments »

SanDisk fesses up to 16GB microSDHC and M2 memory cards

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Filed under:

What’s been keepin’ ya, SanDisk? We knew these little buggers were legit late last week, but for whatever reason, the outfit chose to keep its trap shut until today. Finally, SanDisk has confessed in painful detail that its 16GB microSDHC and M2 cards are for real, marking the largest capacity available in both formats. Of note, even Sony doesn’t have a 16GB M2 card on the market, though it’s possible the firm is too busy dealing with all those other proprietary formats to mess with this one. At any rate, Best Buy Mobile and Verizon Wireless stores will be your go-to place for either one, though we’d be prepared to shell out $99.99 (16GB microSDHC) or $129.99 (16GB M2) when they land in November.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Posted in , , , , , flips off IBM, 1804, , Unified Communications | No Comments »

SanDisk’s 16GB microSDHC card slips into retail, T-Mobile’s G1

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Filed under:

Shhh, keep this on the down low: SanDisk’s 16GB microSDHC card is now available for purchase — the first to reach that capacity. At the moment, it’s only been spotted at a few on-line shops in the UK for round-about &pound45 with VAT (about $70 pre-tax in the US). Exactly what you need for your new T-Mobile G1. Hey Sandisk, you want to chime in and make this official or what?

[Thanks, L.Rawlins]

Read&nbsp|&nbspPermalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Thomas Ricker

Posted in 1804, 193, flips off IBM, Unified Communications | No Comments »

Dell Mini 9’s secret 3G not all it’s cracked up to be

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Filed under:

Well, it looks like anyone hoping to give their stock Dell Inspiron Mini 9 a 3G boost is in store for a bit of disappointment, as the netbook’s supposed unofficial 3G-readiness is apparently not as exploitable as some had assumed. While the netbook does indeed have a vacant WWAN slot, as Gearlog learned from Anne Camden of Dell Corporate Communications, “the Mini doesn′t have the internal antenna infrastructure needed to support mobile broadband,” which makes that aforementioned WWAN slot quite useless. As you might have guessed, the antenna was simply left out to keep costs down. So, if you do want a 3G-equipped Mini 9, it seems like you’ll just have to wait for a non-hindere