Kendall's Online blog

Skype out calls now passing caller ID

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 13:54:00 -0700

Previously skype out calls displayed either a Callerid "00001234" or no caller id at all, but now you can set the caller id that Skype send to a caller when you place SkypeOut calls by logging into your Skype account.
Under the "Caller identification" section click "Setup" and enter the caller id you want displayed whenever you place Skype out calls. Skype then sends a verification code via SMS to your mobile phone to verify the number specified as your caller id to prevent caller id spoofing.

Open a web page in C# using your default browser

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:28:00 -0700

Below is a code snippet to open a web page using C#
The input to the function is the url of the page to open.

private void OpenPage(string url)
{
try
{
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(url);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}
}

UPdated Bebo php 4 api

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:59:00 -0700

This is the updated php4 version of the bebo api <br />The file can be obtained<a href="http://www.kendall-online.com/blog/bebo.php.txt"> here</a> <br />Download the file and rename the file to bebo.php.<br /><br />

Bebo developer API PHP4 version

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:17:00 -0800

This is a php4 version of the bebo api and it would be easier to work with this version to develop your application if you are having the

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in /lib/bebo.php on line 19

error with the version of the api on their website.

The file can be obtained here
Download the file and rename the file to bebo.php.

My next post will be a quick tutorial on porting facebooks app quickly to bebo apps in a few steps.

How to play convert FLV to AVi for blackberry pearl

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:39:00 -0700

Install the free SUPER encoder from http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html and use the following settings in the picture

Getting paid for sharing pirated music

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:18:00 -0700

According to patents filed by Microsoft for its Zune Player. Illegally obtained music would be able to be transferred to other Zune owners and the pirated song can be played by the receiver for a number of times before being asked to purchase it.
The sender then receives a commission for the sale of the song to the receiver.

This scenario could result in a lot of people illegally obtaining music and sending it to others in other to receive a commission a better approach would have been to allow only those who obtained the music legally to transfer them and receive the payout. I guess with the proposed scenario everyone gets a chance to help the copyright owner increase sales of their songs. After all 10 legitimate sales and 1 illegal download is better than 11 illegal downloads. The question now is who is responsible if a virus get transferred along the line :)

A2billing releases version 1.3

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Thu, 31 May 2007 06:54:00 -0700

Asterisk2billing just released version 1.3 of its popular Asterisk billing/calling card application made popular because it comes bundled with Trixbox.

Most of its modules have been rewritten and some of the new features include:

Invoicing,
Template management with Smarty
New online payment modules for Moneybookers and Authorize.net in addition to the existing Paypal module
The rate engine now supports unlimited calling packages.
Additional reporting functions for High or Low ASR (Answer Seize Ratio), ALOC (Average Length of Call) and CIC (Consecutive Incomplete Calls) and many other new features.

The admin and customer demo can be found at demo.asterisk2billing.org and remember to create a customer in the admin demo to be able to log on to the customer demo.

One feature that is still conspicuously missing is a reseller module but with more contributions from other developers with the source code has been provided by Public SVN many more features are sure to be added. The code can be checked out at trac.asterisk2billing.org

Microsoft's Surface Computing

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:42:00 -0700

Microsoft just launched its new "Surface" technology which is a touch sensitive table that responds to hand movements and displays anything from pictures, videos and maps.
The UI is really great and from the Microsoft surface site you see various possibilities:

Transfer music, videos and business cards between phones, pda's and the tables or even between electronics devices placed on the table.
View pictures and watch videos.
Pay for goods with your credit card placed on the table.
Order items from a menu.
Get directions and search for local businesses on the maps and transfer these directions to your handheld.
Make paintings on the table tops.

Its pretty much extending your computer desktop to your physical desktop. The only drawback is having to lean over the table top which could become a problem after leaning over the table for extended periods, I am sure in the future the table tops wold be able to tilt to about 30 degrees to ease the strain on the back. It isn't cheap at all as early adopters would be sure to cough out between $5k to $10K and one of the first users will be Caesar's palace in Vegas and their order is expected to arrive in the last quarter of '07.

Once again the site is www.surface.com

The Venice Project

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:19:00 -0800

I haven't posted to my blog because of my new job but I resigned and now I am free to write whatever I like on the internet.
Venice project is Skype's founder new project and thanks to Gigaom I got beta invites. I had earlier signed up for the beta invites since Nov 1 and up til now had not gotten them but I guess the invites were given to the who-is-who in the Web 2.0 community.

I will test drive the software over the weekend and review it.

List of telecom blog

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Sun, 8 Oct 2006 18:57:00 -0700

www.smithonvoip.com
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/
http://blog.tmcnet.com/sipthat/
http://voip-blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
http://voip-blog.tmcnet.com/blog/greg-galitzine/
http://andyabramson.blogs.com/
http://www.voipcentral.org/
http://www.voipnow.org/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/
http://asteriskvoip.blogspot.com/
http://gigaom.com/topics/voip/
http://www.asteriskvoipnews.com/
http://www.mocaedu.com/mt/
http://pulverblog.pulver.com/
http://www.skypejournal.com/
http://blogs.pulver.com/jarnold
http://evans.blogware.com/blog
http://www.saunderslog.com/
http://www.telepocalypse.net/
http://macvoip.com/stn/
http://blogs.nmss.com/communications/
http://share.skype.com/sites/en/
http://www.phoneboy.com/?q=blog/
http://www.toyz.org/mrblog/
http://realtime-voip.typepad.com/
http://www.solokay.blogspot.com/
http://www.voipweekly.com/showBlogs.php?name=Gary%20Kim
http://www.voipsecurityblog.typepad.com/
http://www.irwinlazar.com/realtime/
http://blog.voipsupply.com/
http://www.voiplowdown.com/
http://www.voiplowdown.com/
http://www.voipsa.org/blog/
http://www.blueboxpodcast.com/
http://podcasts.pulvermedia.com/
http://www.realtime-voip.com/
http://www.skypepodcast.tv/
http://www.thevoicereport.com/telecomjunkies.html
http://lucafiligheddu.blogspot.com/
http://www.voip-sol.com/
http://the-presence-of-presence.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/blog

Reconfigurable processor for NIST Elliptic Curve Cryptography

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:22:00 -0700

ABSTRACT

Exchange of information must integrate a means of protecting data against unauthorized access.

Cryptography plays an important role in achieving information security. It is used
for
(1) encrypting or signing data at the source before transmission, and then
(2) decrypting or validating the signature of the received message at the destination. This thesis focuses on the study of the hardware implementation of a reconfigurable processor supporting elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) over prime fields GF(p).

The proposed processor can be reconfigured to work with any of the five prime fields recommended by NIST (192 to 521 bits). Our processor can be programmed to execute any sequence of basic modular operations (add, subtract, multiply, invert) used in higher level ECC arithmetic. The architecture has been prototyped on a Xilinx FPGA. Its performance is competitive with existing hardware implementation, despite the overhead needed to support datapath reconfigurations for different prime sizes.

See entire document here

Myafricasite now with embedded mp3 player and streaming radio

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 11:25:00 -0700

myafricasite now has a streaming radio player.
There are currently 6 african radio stations you can choose from. It plays one of them at random when it loads, but you can still select the station you want by clicking fast forward.

The stations are

1) Hitz Radio

2) Radio Palmwine (4 different stations)

3) and NaijaRadio

You can listen to nigerian and other african streaming radio stations as more stations will be added.

They also have an mp3 player to listen to all the music streamed off members profile. listen to the mp3's by clicking here

Meebo now offers embedded instant messaging as well as single sign-on to Yahoo, MSN, AOL and GMail

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Wed, 2 Aug 2006 10:34:00 -0700

Meebo, a Web-based instant messaging provider, was set to unveil on Wednesday the capability for people to add instant messaging into any Web page be it a blog or social networking profile like myafricasite, myspace or hi5. In fact the popular social networking site for Africans www.myafricasite.com has embedded the meebo chat widget on all their profiles to allow other members chat with them.

One other advantage meebo has is its single-sign on for all major instant messaging networks. So you can have a unified IM profile that logs into your yahoo, msn, google talk and AOL accounts. So go to www.meebomo.com to get your embeedded chat widget and chat with vistors to your website, profile or blog

read more | digg story

Quickest method to shut down Acrobat Reader.

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:22:00 -0700

A digg article described the quickest method to have Acrobat Reader open up a document without loading all the plugins before start up. Well if you noticed that your system always slows down and takes a long time when you want to close a browser which with a pdf document within, here is a quick method which I found out seems to solve my problem.

1. Press the Ctrl + Alt + Delete buttons together. - This opens up the task manager. 2. Click on the process tab. 3. Select Acrobat32.exe.

4. Click End process.

5. Click Ok to confirm shut down

6. Then close the browser.

This normally shuts down a browser with an open PDF document in less than 5-10sec which is all I am interested in. :)

Africa's Social networking site

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Thu, 8 Jun 2006 01:27:00 -0700

It is a Web 2.0 site and its objective is to provide a platform for Africans the world over to network similar to other well established Social Networking sites like MySpace, hi5 and bebo. It includes blogs, videos, forums, groups, flash games and a news feed aggregator

read more | digg story

Myafricasite.com : Africa's Web 2.0 Social Networking site

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Thu, 8 Jun 2006 00:51:00 -0700

Myafricasite.com http://www.myafricasite.com/. It is a web 2.0 site and its objective is to provide a platform for Africans the world over to network similar to other well established Social Networking sites like MySpace, hi5 and bebo.
The site went live on the 1st of June 2006 and its features include:
Friends: Set up your profile, search for your fiends and chat with them, they might have even already signed up!!!. The profiles support HTML giving the member complete control of the design of his homepage, objects such as videos from Youtube and Google videos can be embedded within the profile. The members can also edit their privacy settings to allow or deny messages from users to keep spammers at bay.
Groups: Start your own groups or join groups such as your schools group or alumni association and send invites to members and pot announcements to the shout box.
Forums:To discuss various topics notify members of events e.t.c.
Music: Videos from African artists in the Music section and you the videos can be added to your profile or request for particular songs on the forum. The videos are obtained directly added from Web 2.0 video hosting sites with African themed tags or tags from popular African artists. The videos are automatically posted each time the feeds generated from the tag is updated ensuring that the Music section is up to date
Games: Play Soccer, Mario, Sonic, Streetfighter and lots of flash games from bigger sites like Ebaumsworld.
News: The site also has the latest news items on Africa. The news items are aggregated from RSS feeds on African News thereby providing the latest news items in real time. Some of the major sources include but are not limited to Yahoo, Google and AllAfrica.com
Classified: Search for job postings or post items you want to sell or look for items to buy. Blog: Your online diary or journal, where you share your thoughts,. The members blogs have live RSS 2.0 feeds and the most exciting podcasts as determined by monthly polls are submitted to iTunes allowing creative writers reach a wider audience which was impossible since only podcasters with major credit cards could submit their podcasts to iTunes.
Text messaging: The site also allows subscribed members send SMS to mobile networks all over Africa and communicate with their friends and family.

Nigerian DIDs now available for Voip calls

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Wed, 31 May 2006 14:44:00 -0700

Callnigeriaonline.com owned by Kendall Conglomerate Inc. now provides Nigerian phone numbers (DIDs) for use with SIP phones.

They make Nigeria one of the few African countries with DIDs available just like South Africafor you as virtual phone numbers.

They offer free pc to pc calling between registered members too.

read more | digg story

Quadruple play

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Fri, 19 May 2006 06:10:00 -0700

The margin between being on top of the telecoms game and otherwise can effectively be put in two words these days . QUADRUPLE PLAY.This means a firm involving itself in four forms of media delivery to its customers .These are fixed landlines,mobile telephony,broadband internet and digital television services.And the key is being able to streamline services across these platforms so as to ensure that the consumer who already is king, as competition drives down the prices of these services is catered for, as each content is available at his own covenience

Dell appoints AMD for high end users

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Fri, 19 May 2006 05:46:00 -0700

I have just heard that Dell computers have decided to use AMD microchips in making systems for their high end users.This only reiterates the latest trend that we are seeing which is Intel, loosing more of its market share to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).I remember reading last month that Paul Otellini,the CEO of Intel revealing plans to restructure the company to not only meet with current demands but also for future challenges as its competitors,chief among then being AMD are seiously pushing them to the limits.His restructuring I believe includes the standard practices of cutting costs and evaluating staff, and then looking within for organic growth in the hope of presiding over a leaner and meaner organisation.I say Paul Otellini,I wish you all the best because growing up, I actually thought there weren`t any other microchip makers other than Intel.

Configuring Express Talk SIP Softphone from NCH Sound

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Sun, 14 May 2006 22:30:00 -0700

This is a step-by-step tutorial on installing and configuring the Express Talk SIp Softphone from NCH http://www.nch.com.au . This SIP softphone size is only 700k and it supports calling from 4 phone lines using any of the following codecs GSM, uLaw, ALaw and PCM and it uses about 5MB of memory when running

Hardware required:
For audio: A sound card.......comes with every computer these days
For communication:
- A good microphone and external speakers for handsfree operation
- Or a good headset (headphones and microphone), can be obtained from any electronics store

Instruction:
Download the file from the link above. From the 1st screen select “Run"

In the next screen select click "Run" when the Internet Explorer - Security warning appears

Next when the Windows Security Alert window Appears. Click Unblock. This step is the most important if missed, will require some above average knowledge to unblock the program

In the next screen click "Next" except you have a USB phone then you can change the "Audio Input Channel to your USB phone.

In the next screen "Sound and Playback Volume" . Click "Next" if you can hear the test announcement

In the next screen "Talk Mode and Audio Quality options". Under Communication Device. Select the button "Use microphone and speakers (turn echo cancellation on" if you are using an external microphone and speakers. If you have a headset or USB phone then select "Use a headset (turn echo cancellation off). Click "Next"

In the next screen leave the default selection "Yes, I already have a sip account". Click "Next".

In the next screen "Sip Account Details" enter your Sip Account Details.
For example under “Friendly Display Name” enter any name,
Then under “Sip Account Number or User Name)” enter the username provided to you and under SIP Server enter your server name e.g. kendall.myvnc.com
and under “SIP Password” enter the password provided to you. (The password isn’t entered twice so make sure you enter it correctly).
Click "Finish".

The final step is the Firewall Autoconfiguration and provided you unblocked the program at the third step, You should be able to connect to the SIP server using your account details. Click "OK"

Investors must cash in........

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Sun, 14 May 2006 09:43:00 -0700

The price of Gold in the international market has risen to just over 700 dollars per troy ounce .Can anyone believe it.Investors must be smiling to themselves as this is almost too good to be true .I for one dont think there is any better time to cash in as i dont forsee it getting any higher than it did last monday, May 8th 2006.It means that the price of this very highly esteemed commodity that also prides itself as a store of value has risen by over 250 percent in the last 5 years .I reiterate for one last time - INVESTORS, PLEASE CASH IN.

For more on this,see ft.com/markets

France Telecom innovates

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Sun, 14 May 2006 09:02:00 -0700

It is not easy for anyone to think that top level management is easy.How can anyone explain the constant changes that management have to deal with ?France Telecom like most other government owned telecom firms are struggling with innovation.Can I blame them?Not at all.What with all the competition from free voice over internet protocol telephony and the providers of internet services.Now they are joining the bandwagon of providing free internet services on handsets of their subscribers amongst other things.I wish them all the best .

International Compliance

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Mon, 1 May 2006 05:08:00 -0700

Its not news these days that companies try as much as possible to ensure that profits remain central to their operations.The only other concept that comes close to that is their market share .I don't blame them.Who would?

This becomes imperative more so, when it is listed on a stock exchange .That most often than not dictates that it furnishes clients,investors and potential investors with financial information regarding the firm on a quarterly basis.This is where COMPLIANCE comes in .According to wikipedia,the on-line encyclopaedia,"Regulatory compliance refers to systems or departments at corporations and public agencies to ensure that personnel are aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws and regulations".When this is not done, then everything can go haywire as we have seen with a few companies lately, with Enron being a critical example. Companies can tweak accounting reporting standards but one way or the other they cant get away with it as sooner rather than later, they are exposed.
That is why the institute that administers the Chartered financial analyst examination ensures that that is a very important pre-requisite before one is made a member of the body, and one promises to adhere by its ethics and codes of responsibility.

Frappr - Map the location of your friend, classmates, alumni

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 21:58:00 -0700

Frappr (Friend Mapper) from Rising Concepts is a social networking site that allows you to map the current location of groups of people.
The Frappr site states that ……….. “lets you see the zip code where your friends live or work, letting you find out who works in the office building next door and who lives in the apartment complex across the street.”
And the Wikipedia stub says…………“is a Web 2.0 website, currently in beta, which makes use of the Google Maps API. The site allows users of online communities to pin themselves on a map, and see other members location”

Like any other social networking site. You can send messages to one another and the email address of the users are not revealed. The sign up process is fast, you need is the current location and an email address and after registering you can join other Frappr groups or set up your own group.
One other cool feature that makes the sign up process painless is the predictive location feature that provides a variety of locations for you based on the first few characters of the city you are located in, and just in case your city isn’t in the drop down list, as id elink allows you to inform the site’s administrator. You can also apply tags to the group formed, so members can search and find the group easily.
The site is perfect for alumni groups and the maps can be easily integrated into your website as a button or thumbnail of the actual map.

Skype acquires Global IP Sound Competitor

kendall.ananyi@gmail.com (Kendall Ananyi) — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 08:15:00 -0700

Skype acquired Global IP Sound (GIPS) competitor Sonorit AB which GIPS has sued for allegedly violating GIPS’ trade secrets and engaged in acts of unfair competition.Most of Sonorit's staff them are former GIPS employees. GIPS Voice engine is in use by Skype, Yahoo Voice and Google talk

read more | digg story