Talking bytes and random bits

Check out my freelancer page! feel free to share it with others :)

2012-04-11T11:11:00.001-04:00

Over the last 15 years, I have planted deep roots in Information Technology and Systems Security. WAN Routing, LAN Switching, Firewall and VPN Management, Telephony and PBX Administration, Systems Monitoring, Database and Web Server Administration, Storage Management, Tape Backup, Malware Protection, End-Point Encryption, Intrusion Detection, Extrusion Prevention, Packet Inspection and Vulnerability Assessment, Event Analysis and Incident Handling, Application Development and I hack code for fun. My values are centered on great customer service, honesty and safety. Current certifications: ISC2 CISSP, CompTIA Security+ and Linux+. Current projects include: PBX telephony solutions (complete, end-to-end), Asterisk and Freeswitch integration with Google Voice/GTalk, Twilio and OpenVBX, Tropo, Plivo, IVR trees, voicemail-to-email, cloud-based telephony, custom telephony applications interfacing with databases and remote web applications, database development, Amazon Web Services, Google Apps, general system administration, troubleshooting and repair, security assessments, IT architecture, project management and consulting.

Hire me for your next telephony application!

2012-03-20T15:23:00.006-04:00

Lost in the sea of contractors and oceans of freelancers? There are many qualified individuals out there, but weeding through their profiles to find the right match between aptitude and communication skills is a major challenge. Freelancer networks like oDesk and Elance have proved worthy in maintaining a framework through which employers and workers can meet on common terms; workers can earn referenced reputation for their services and employers can have their pick from hundreds of qualified applicants. Additionally, oDesk hosts subject matter groups of screened professionals - look for qualified group members whenever possible: I am a member of the Twilio developers group.

If you need a competent telephony developer who understands your requirements and communicates clearly, then look no further. Whether you are building in the cloud or developing locally, VoIP or analog circuits, voice and SMS text messaging - I can implement your solution today and maintain it ongoing. To engage my services through the aforementioned freelancer sites, please use the following links to review my profile and hire me!

I am also available outside of these networks, if you choose to contact me independently - my contact information is available on this blog, including Skype, Google Talk, Meebo and regular telephone. I currently accept the following forms of payment for consulting services: PayPal, Paxum, Amazon Payments, and soon Google Wallet. I also accept all major Credit Cards via telephone IVR - courtesy of Twilio and Stripe plugin.

If you are in the market for an IVR, ACD or inbound queue, outbound voice and SMS campaigns with list subscription opt-in/out, opinion polls, shopping with credit card payment processing, database and CRM integration, conferencing, voicemail, forwarding, or complex SMS text messaging applications with multi-level message stacking, don't hesitate: contact me today to discuss your requirements and receive a free estimate. Let me know how I can help you and let me show you what I can do; I'm always available to show you a demo of these capabilities.

Publish GTalk status to your website and chat with visitors

2011-01-27T15:12:00.005-05:00

One of the many benefits of using Google Talk is that you can publish your status to any website and allow your web visitors to chat with you. This is a great feature for service providers like daSilvaTek, where customer service is always first priority and we make every effort to make ourselves through different means. With this methodology, you can add your GTalk status to any HTML site and customize the "badge" to your liking - let me show you how.

First things first, you need a GTalk account! If you don't already have one, or if you've been hiding under a rock and don't know Google, go get yourself an account - I recommend starting at Google Mail, which sets you up universally across their product lines. When it comes to using GTalk, you have options: download client software to your PC or use the GMail web interface with GTalk enabled.

After you have familiarized yourself with the chat features and buddies list, it's time to generate the HTML code that you can use universally, further customize to your liking, and even generate multiple "badges" for different applications: http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New

Go ahead and press the Edit button and try a few different "badges" and options. When you are happy with the result, copy the HTML code at the bottom of the page and get ready to paste it to your website! If you are not completely happy with the Google-provided options for editing, now is the time edit the HTML code to your liking and test it out on your website.

For example, visitors to this blog you will see that on the right-hand side of the page, there is a Google Talk section and one of the default Google-provided "badges", which suits most folks just fine. If I was looking to add a simple "green dot" status with my name, I could use Google's "One line basic" format, copy that HTML to a notepad and customize it as follows (I edited a small portion of my token code for privacy):

<a href="http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/Start?tk=z01q6amlq925d6qk2b1k15jq6labuqf09cea0tkh4ed0v0svh58kge3f7qe3qfhrpdnq7g8lps8akareelv731nuu7adjkrju1okl93djd3w9udjdsiw9e3udkds0oswj6o22vjf0s038nuhc856ea50b01qbmhjce" target="_blank" title="Click here to chat with daSilvaTek">daSilvaTek</a>

Produces the following result:

This method makes it simpler to customize the contact list, for example if you wanted your website visitors to interact with multiple employees, or dispatch the visitor's concern to the appropriate party (eg: sales team, support group, night watchman, etc). Here is an example, assuming everybody is offline and unavailable (ie: asleep):

I hope you enjoyed this post so much you can't wait to get started on your own implementation. Merry web chatting with your website visitors and customers. Look for our next post on how to integrate Google Voice into the mix!