OnSIP: Real PBX Flavor in the Cloud

Junction Networks is a hosted PBX app provider that lets startups and small businesses pull a VoIP phone systems out of thin air or, more accurately, out of the cloud.  The company was founded in 2004, and open standards were practically written into their constitution.  In other words, they support SIP.

Their OnSIP hosted PBX service has a maturity level that will appeal to businesses—tech and otherwise—that want a phone system and not a collection of APIs with some sample apps.

I spent a  morning setting up and testing auto-attendants, hunts groups, conference bridges, and voice mailboxes on my OnSIP demo system.  It worked without a hitch.   And it was rewarding, in a telecom kind of way, to  finally use my collection of free SIP softphones (X-Lite and SIP Communicator) as true office phones and bask in the glow of emulated message waiting indicator lights.Continue reading

Google Puts its Foot Down on Title II

The FCC just posted an ex parte filing from Google in which the search giant makes it feelings on net neutrality and Title II reclassification crystal clear. Here’s the money quote:

“The FCC needs to assert affirmative oversight and enforcement authority regarding the broadband services sector, much as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission uses its more general jurisdiction to oversee other industry sectors, such as providers of Internet applications and content. In that regard, I discussed how, in light of the Comcast decision, continued use of Title I ‘ancillary’ authority to oversee the broadband sector likely would expose the agency needlessly to repeated significant litigation risks affecting a wide range of broadband- related policy priorities. ” Continue reading

Get Ready for the Cruz Reader

First sighted back in April, the Cruz Reader from custom PC maker Velocity Micro is an inexpensive (under $200 MSRP) 7″ color Android-based ebook reader —browser included. It really is more than a book gadget, supporting full screen video (MP4), music (built-in headphone jack), and games. Velocity will also sell a sibling 7″ Cruz tablet.

Both are scheduled to ship next month. This may be the Android gadget I end up buying.

More specs below.Continue reading

Dueling Headlines on iPhone 4

Duct tape: also helps iPhone reception

I’m getting a little dizzy reading the opinionating and newsitorials on Apple’s antenna problem in its newest iPhone.  The latest data point that’s being argued about is Consumer Reports’ lab test. The venerable pro-consumer testing magazine couldn’t recommend the iPhone 4 after detecting signal degradation in their radio frequency isolation chamber.  And  CR placed the blame on the iPhone rather than the AT&T network.

However, they did suggest a quick fix: afix duct tape or another non-conducting material to the lower left hand corner of the iPhone.

In any case, the Consumer Reports story has generated some amusing  headlines.  Take a look at two Dan Frommer’s pieces today in Silicon Alley Insider: Suddenly, Everyone is Talking about an iPhone 4 Recall (this morning, 9:51 am) and Sorry, But This Whole iPhone 4 Thing is a Non-issue and Will Blow Over (11:17 am).Continue reading

Foragers and Foodspotters

So why was I sharing a picture of a roast chicken  (food source) at a Spanish restaurant in NYC (foraging spot) with Foodspotting.com (my tribe)?  I’m not getting paid for this activity, though the cost of taking the pic and uploading is vanishingly small. Am I being purely altruistic or is something else at work?

Inspired recently by Clay Shirky’s talk on his newest book,  Cognitive Surplus, I took a brief tour through some of the foundational ideas behind generosity and altruism.

Our kindness to strangers may be mostly in our genes, but as Shirky and other point have pointed out, being in a network has its own benefits.
Continue reading

Building Castles in the Virtual Air with Atmosphir

It’s been a slow Friday afternoon at the end of a four day heatwave—it’s now a chilly 84° in NJ.  When my beta invitation to Atmosphir, the do-it-yourself virtual world startup, appeared in my mailbox, I decided to take the bait and escape reality for an hour or two

I’m not really that interested in multi-player games, but after seeing what a 12-year-old boy  did with Amosphir during a what-kids-are-doing-with-the-Internet interlude at a recent New York Tech Meetup, I was impressed. At his age I was making paper-mache volcanoes.

What’s unique about Atmosphir is that it gives users a well-developed tool kit to create their own multi-level games on a 100×100 grid.   While it looked easy when demoed by that tech-savvy child, this adult was having his share of design challenges.

As Groucho said, “it’s so easy a four-year old could do it, quick someone get me a four-year old.”

After the jump, you can see a few virtual worlds built by members of the Atmosphir community.Continue reading

Deal of the Day in 2015: “No Data Limits btwn 8-9 PM”

You can sense where the Internet may be heading by looking at the bandwidth policy platforms that core infrastructure vendors are offering to carriers.

With equipment from Tekelec, a major networking equipment player, cable companies can monitor and allocate bandwidth dynamically, as well as grant special deals to subscribers.

For example, a video web site could temporarily allow downloads to not count against a customer’s data limits as set by the cable ISP.  Or the web site of a content provider could purchase better QoS—lower latency or more bandwidth—between its servers and subscribers’ endpoint devices.

Tekelec’s Camiant Policy Management platform would handle all this.

There’s nothing inherently illegal with allowing carriers to price discriminate based on volume, service, or even time of day.Continue reading

Summer in the City: Shirky, Kind Strangers, and Neat Startups

Last night was my fourth NYC Tech Meetup, and I think the first time I’ve been in Manhattan in recent memory during a major heat wave. Thankfully, the electro-mechanical HVAC at Skirball worked flawlessly, far better than this new venue’s Internet access.

One of the highpoints for me was listening to Clay Shirky talk about his new book, Cognitive Surplus. Shirky is a gifted narrator and explainer, and the TED videos I’ve seen of him only hint at the powerful thought waves he radiates during a live presentation.

He is an optimist, a true believer on the Internet’s ability to beneficially channel otherwise wasted human CPU cycles devoted to legacy TV watching into crowdsourced content creation: Wikipedia, Amazon book reviews, Aardvark experts on tap, tweets, and as you’ll see after the jump, food photography.Continue reading

Cisco Cius: Unimaginative, but Slightly Intriguing

Cisco Systems Logo
Image via Wikipedia

Perhaps only a company of Cisco’s still considerable market heft can foist its recently revealed Cius (pronounced “see us”) tablet on the citizens of cubeland. Many of the tech bloggers are underwhelmed and ask the question, “Why?”.

This tech blogger has the same query. Once upon a time the gadgets in the office were not obtainable on the street; now consumer gadgetry is far better than what’s available or officially allowed in walled off corporate castles.

For the record, the Cius is a 7” tablet that supports a multi-touch screen, WiFi/BlueTooth, HD video (720p), HD audio, 8-hour battery, and front and rear (for taking pictures of your coworkers?) facing cameras. The company expects to ship the tablet in 1Q2011.

Price? Under $1000. (long pause) Now for the intriguing part: Cius will run a modified version of  the Android OS.Continue reading

Phone in Your Blog Post With Twilio

WordPress just announced an interesting—let’s say somewhere between quirky and neat— addition to their hosted blog site.  You can now phone in a blog post!  With help from  Twilio’s unified communications APIs, the WordPress.com software will deposit an audio file attachment to the post. Now roving reporters can literally call in their stories.  Continue reading

Quirky Product Idea Factory

At Internet Week in June, I got a quick look at a 3-D printer or fabricator that was being demoed by the  folks at MakerBot Industries.  Their device is one part of a larger do-it-yourself movement in which both serious inventors and designers or ordinary hobbyists can prototype products in their own living rooms.

Inventing is a lonely process and development costs, though they have come down with this new crop of 3-D printers, is still a consideration.  So why not crowdsource the design, protoyping, and marketing phases? That’s kind of the idea behind NYC-based Quirky.  Continue reading

Kikin: Hole Filling Is Not a Business Model

Kikin is a NYC startup that, as their web copy says, “brings you more relevant posts, tweets, videos, and other cool stuff from popular sites,” by automatically displaying interesting links on your browser page.  Its proposition is that you trust your social network, so the Kikin software trolls your Twitter and Facebook streams for relevant content that has been contributed by friends, family, and co-workers.

This idea is especially powerful when making purchasing decisions, less so for knowledge areas  involving, say, the new FCC policy on cable set-top boxes.

This small company garnered some good press about a year ago.

Since then Google has been busy filling in a few of its holes, a platform tweak that will ultimately force  niche players to, well, find a new niche in the ecosystem.  Of course, Google has also been expanding the pond with products such as  Google Wave, Google Buzz,  and Google Predict.Continue reading

Non-innovative ISPs

A article in Wired by Ryan Singel does a nice job of explaining why the cable ISPs need regulation. As this blog has also been saying, reclassification of their services as telecommunications, the current FCC strategy, undoes a bad course steered by the Powell FCC with help from the Supreme Court.

Here’s the money quote:”The broadband barons don’t want to provide you fast internet. It’s too close to being a utility for their tastes (that’s boring and lacks huge profit margins) and requires too much investment.

What he said! The broadband cable providers’ business model is about restricting the possibilities of the Internet. For example, I suspect your ISP is like mine (I’m stuck with Comcast) in redirecting bad URLs (“404” errors) to their own highly-skewed page of alternative suggestions. Continue reading

And now there's a database

I had been meaning to set up a database containing all the startup companies that I’ve been following in this blog.  Finally, with enough entries and notes  in my spreadsheets, and some spare time that opened up this week and last, I was able to put something together.  You can peruse the results  of my efforts under this blog’s Up Starts category.

A word about my selection criteria:  it is not meant to  generate a list of all-the-usual well funded NYC start-up suspects (but we’ll have some of those as well).  It’s teeny start-ups, private betas, open source efforts, contest winners, or perhaps an interesting idea  that a few enterprising folks have swarmed around. Hence,  the “Up Start” label.

It will be an ongoing effort to keep this up to date. If you have a tip, email me at editor@technoverseblog.com.

T-Mobile continues to seek an alternative to subsidizing its two largest competitors, but today, AT&T and Verizon continue to supply the majority of T-Mobile’s backhaul …

Is Google Voice Net Neutral?

Not according to, er, AT&T.  “Intellectual contradiction” and “noisome trumpeter” and other mean words were lobbed at Google by AT&T in a letter to the FCC in September 2009.  You get a little dizzy reading this contrivance especially when AT&T is holding this search provider’s feet to the fire by quoting an  FCC policy statement on Internet competition: “consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service.”

Wow, so does that mean AT&T is suggesting that the FCC should be regulating Internet applications to promote competition?

This would all be another day-in-the-life of squabbling service providers—read below the he-says-she-says between AT&T and T-Mobile over competitive pricing for TDM-based backhaul — but this is Google, and Google Voice is now open to the public.Continue reading

Twilio’s OpenVBX: Open Source Attendant

I downloaded OpenVBX, Twilio’s bendable, programmable cloud-based unified communications platform, tried out a few call control flows, and then drifted off into a reverie about telecom start-ups before the dot.com crash.

When the CLECs and ASPs first came on the scene in the 90s, they were offering hosted personal attendants (or assistants)—which was the term used before “Google Voice-like”—that allowed subscribers to configure find-me/follow me schedules for cell, home, and office numbers,  set up voicemail notifications, and craft simple IVR menus. They would often  throw in  speech rec, and support virtual presence through local phone numbers.

Maybe $30 per month, with a cap on minutes. These personal auto attendants were  tasty telecom appetizers and considering what was available from incumbents at the time, practically disruptive.Continue reading