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New Skype for SIP Features Improve Business Functionality

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:12:17 -0500

In December, Skype will announce some new features for Skype for SIP (beta), which will make it more business-friendly. Skype for SIP, which is now part of Skype's Business Control Panel (BCP). Skype for SIP will support DID routing by supporting the SIP To field. You will be able to add an extension number to a Skype name you used in the Skype for SIP profile. When a call is routed to the SIP PBX the extension number will be in the To field for direct routing of the call to an extension.

One fascinating feature Skype is working on is "silent keyboard", which will automatically silence your keystrokes from being sent to the remote party. As far as I know you can't decrypt the keystroke sounds into the corresponding keys, so really Skype is doing this for a better user listening experience. Kind of a cool feature, especially if you're half listening to the caller and are Tweeting, checking your Facebook page, and sending emails.

Tags: bcp, caller ID, callerID, sip, sip trunkign, skype, skype for sip, voipvoip.com Related tags: extension number, skype, business, extension

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NimbuzzOut Launches

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:09:01 -0500

Nimbuzz, has entered the PSTN termination business with the announcement today of NimbuzzOut. I use Nimbuzz on my iPhone because it's a great aggregator of various VoIP, IM, and social services, including Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk (Orkut), AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more. Nimbuzz had been leveraging other networks such as Skype for voice, but this marks the first time Nimbuzz offers their own termination. Finally, a business revenue-generating model??

NimbuzzOut Credits will be available for purchase at www.nimbuzzout.com, and is available on Symbian, iPhone and iPod Touch handsets and rolling out to others later this year.

Nimbuzz claims, "more than 10 million registrations of the application since launch, a current growth rate of more than a million new registrations each month (that's a new Nimbuzz user every 3 seconds!), a daily active user base of over 30% and an international user footprint covering every corner of the globe."

Nimbuzz founder & CEO, Evert-Jaap Lugt said of the NimbuzzOut launch: "High value, high quality voice calling is positioned at the heart of our value proposition, making NimbuzzOut the most natural commercial extension of our product. This offers fantastic value to our users, especially those who wish to communicate regularly with friends and family abroad at the lowest possible prices. This is all part of our strategy to give Nimbuzz users control of their mobile lives and the freedom they want and deserve."

Tags: aim, facebook, google talk, im, iphone, nimbuzz, nimbuzzout, skype, symbian, voip Related tags: nimbuzz, nimbuzzout, value

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Mashup Google Wave, Skype, and Asterisk = Ultimate Coolness

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:10:34 -0500

Skype Journal wrote about one of the coolest mashups I've ever seen. Certainly one of the coolest VoIP mashups. Skype Journal explains PhoneFromHere Tim Panton's demo that he gave at Astricon where Tim mashes up Google Wave, Skype, Asterisk running Skype for Asterisk and Ibook to make Skype calls from within a browser-based Google Wave.

Not only is it sans Skype client, but it has recordings (labeled by person speaking) of individual utterances, so you can quickly playback what a particular person said at a certain point in time.

It's amazing to make a Skype call from a browser without running the Skype client. How do you ask? Well, it uses a browser-based Skype client using a IAX2 Java client to communicate with Asterisk which then communicates with the Skype network cloud. On top of it all you get Google Wave's powerful collaboration capabilities.

Perhaps some IP address geocoding combined with Google Maps to show the speakers' locations might be nice addition to this mashup. Or even pulling down Facebook profile pictures. There is definitely some awesome potential for this. Maybe Google can even stick your Google Wave/Skype/Asterisk collaboration sessions into their newly released, centralized, Borg/hive, data-collecting, privacy-busting Google Dashboard?

Tags: asterisk, borg, google, google dashboard, google wave, mashup, skype, skype for asterisk, voip Related tags: skype asterisk, skype client, google dashboard, skype journal, running skype, google

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Comments on this Entry:

(peetee on Nov 5, 2009 5:06 PM) I would like to applaud google for creating this new products except for one. The Google Dashboard. To some - google dashboard could be a handy tool for their busy life, but to a geek who work in total privacy this could be a real threat to their security - As said from the mouth of Microsoft CEO"Google reads your gmail account once in a while" when you're under scrutiny.detailed review: DID GOOGLE LAUNCHED THEIR BIGGEST SPY ON YOU? somebody call detective now

(r4ds on Nov 7, 2009 5:49 AM) Google wave and skype are so usefull software for making online net to phone connection.Really by mixing all three software we become a cool in net 2 phone call.

Skype Battle Nears End

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:53:12 -0500

Gigaom reports that there is a good chance that a resolution of the lawsuit between the Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis and eBay's Skype could be announced as soon as this week.

According to Gigaom, a group of private equity investors led by Silver Lake Partners are close to settling their legal dispute with Niklas and Janus which will allow eBay to sell 65 percent of Skype for around $2 billion. This means that Index Ventures and Michelangelo Volpi, former CEO of Joost are on the "outs" to buy Skype. It's important to note that Joost also uses the proprietary P2P protocol that is the core engine used in Skype. With this knowledge of the core guts of the P2P engine, Volpi attempted to bid for Skype along with Index Ventures.

There is no love lost between Volpi and the founders of Skype who also founded Joltid. JoltId accused, "Volpi has repeatedly failed to comply with Joost's demands that the return his computer and all Confidential Information he obtained in the source of his fiducisary relationship with Joost."

According to Om, "Zennstrom and Friis will have a board seat on the newly independent Skype, which would be allowed to use JoltID's technology."

Tags: gigaom, index ventures, joltid, michaelangelo volpi, skype, voip Related tags: index ventures, skype, joost, volpi, joltid, phone

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(christmas stocking fillers on Nov 5, 2009 12:42 AM) I hope it ends as soon as possible. I do believe that the revolution skype bring to the communication industry is a good one for people around the world. The end of battle may also bring further development.

Skype Announces Open Source - Sort of...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:41:40 -0500

Slashdot was abuzz with the news that Skype was going open source. Not so fast my friend. Have you not forgotten Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis who now run JoltId are in a legal fight with Skype?

Surely Skype wouldn't be so bold as to release their P2P 'secret sauce' while still in court litigation with JoltId. Who would want to thumb their nose at the all-powerful judge? In fact, the lawsuit reads: "A source code version of the GI Software (Global Index Software) is licensed by Joltid to Joost, allowing Joost to be the first company to successfully deliver television and other video content in real-time over a peer-to-peer network. An executable-only object code form of the GI Software was licensed by Joltid to Skype, a well-known Internet-based company that providers users throughout the world with free or low-cost telephone services over the Internet. Skype did not obtain a license to the GI Software source code, however, and the license it did obtain was terminated based on Skype's breaches of the license agreement."

Well, it turns out Skype doesn't have balls of steel, but rather they are making the GUI open source on the Linux platform. Whoopdeedoo. So the graphical user interface is going open source. Move along, nothing to see here.

Tags: joltid, open source, skype, voip Related tags: software licensed, licensed joltid, skype, source, joltid, software

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Comments on this Entry:

(External Hard Drive on Nov 4, 2009 2:31 AM) Hi, The Skype's legal battle is in progress and now the "open-source" drama has making the situation worst for them.I think they should re-organize to live upto the trust of their users.

Blabbelon Opens a New (VoIP) World for Gamers

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:56:51 -0500

Blabbelon, the cross-platform web-based VoIP app designed for video gaming, which I tested yesterday and posted a review today released an official statement about their new offering. I thought I'd share it since it has some good info to compliment my review posted this morning:

Stop Venting: Blabbelon Opens a New World for Gamers
Free, one-click, push-to-talk chat service eliminates Ventrilo frustrations;
No downloads, server rentals or limits on groups; Super wideband audio-quality voice chat using Skype's SILK audio codec

New York, NY- November 3, 2009 - You're about to jump on a MMOG and need to bring other players into a voice chat session. After time-consuming downloads, complicated invites and discovering that your best player can't join the chat because he's on a Mac and not a PC, you finally begin playing - just as your game is rudely interrupted by loud team members. Your voice chat system, which should be providing you with a better gaming experience, has become more trouble than it was worth. Now, Blabbelon is removing the headaches associated with antiquated voice chat services and offering users a new gaming experience.

In just one click, Blabbelon users are up and running with the Internet voice chat service using Skype's SILK super wideband audio codec - offering a free, high-quality push-to-talk voice service that uses approximately 50 percent less network bandwidth than previously required. Once a user enters a chat or "Blab," they can invite participants to join in numbers far greater than other push-to-talk services and easily manage their various groups through Blabbelon's extensive built-in administration features.

"I come from a family of avid gamers, and we were all frustrated with our options for online voice chat. I didn't understand why I couldn't just register once, click and talk and at the same time have the ability to easily invite people to join me, manage my various groups, and control my game through better quality communication. And so Blabbelon was born," said Ed Ikeguchi, founder and CEO of Blabbelon.

Acting like a giant walkie-talkie, Blabbelon is perfect for MMOs and other online gaming environments. Designed to overcome the range of limitations that come with other push-to-talk systems like Ventrilo, Blabbelon offers users:

- One-Click Entry with No Downloads: Users register once for the service, and can start new chats (called Blabs) through a URL. Chats are run through a Web browser with no complicated start-up procedures and no software downloads, allowing other applications to run simultaneously while the Blab runs in the background.

- Fast Push-to-Talk/Low Lag: Blabbelon provides minimal delays in push-to-talk timing, ensuring quick reaction time to any in-game occurrences and lower lag times, while still providing superior voice quality with less bandwidth consumption.

- Party Control: Each user within a game is placed within a specific stereo space, giving administrators more control over their groups. Blab leaders can be assigned dominant push-to-talk capabilities- allowing features such as better management of unruly users and ensuring that sessions run smoothly without forcing session members to mute offending parties. Also, Blabbelon allows administrators to permanently ban unwanted users

- Party/RAID/Guild Security: Purchasing a server with other services often means that "chat leeches" continue to use the server without permission, but Blabbelon enables the administrator to set a wide-range of group security measures. Through Blabbelon, administrators can easily reset a URL, keeping leeches from re-navigating back to a voice server as with other services such as Ventrilo.

- Multi-Platform Control: Blabbelon works on Windows, Mac, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome without the need to download any content, install new browser toolbars or submit passwords.

- Scalable: Each Blabbelon session can handle several thousand users.

- Privacy: Blabbelon is a personalized and private environment. Only invited and known users are allowed to join, and users can maintain complete anonymity through the use of in-system aliases.

"I used Ventrilo for years, but since trying Blabbelon for about a month now - I've converted my entire Guild - and we're all telling our friends about it. There's no comparison, really. It's easier to use, simpler to manage, sounds great - and it's free. What more could you ask for?" said Lance Hurd, guild master of True Blood of Malkier, Alliance Mok'Nathal.

Tags: blabbelon, chat, guild, ventrilo, video games, voip Related tags: various groups, gaming experience, blabbelon opens, super wideband, audio codec, blabbelon

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Ribbit Mobile Launches

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:59:43 -0500

Ribbit today announced the release of Ribbit Mobile, a free communication suite designed for mobile professionals who need to be able to easily manage all of their phone numbers, communication devices, and how & when they are contacted.

Ribbit Mobile is a cloud-based service that lets you manage calls, messages and phones. It's hard not to compare this new offering to Google Voice. One advantage of Ribbit Mobile is that it can make calls from within your browser using their Flash-based software client. Ribbit Mobile features include voicemail transcription, smart call routing, and web-based calling. During the introductory (beta) period, Ribbit is making their "Professional" package free.

Since it leverages Ribbit's open VoIP platform, it can even call your Skype, MSN or Google Talk account, as well as SIP devices. Additionally, when a new voicemail arrives, Ribbit can notify you via email, Google Talk, Skype, or SMS. Ribbit Mobile transcribes voicemail to text and sends it to you via SMS and email. It also provides a web portal inbox where messages can be managed and stored forever. No voicemail retention limit which is nice.

Ribbit Mobile also has something they like to call "Caller ID 2.0" which links your Ribbit contacts address book with your contact's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr accounts. You can see recent updates made by your contacts to their social networks and pictures of your contacts as seen here:

Tags: google voice, ribbit mobile, skype, voip Related tags: ribbit mobile, google voice, ribbit, mobile, google, voicemail

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Continue reading Blabbelon Launches HD VoIP for Video Games...

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Comments on this Entry:

(Nikki Brown on Nov 4, 2009 10:15 AM) Interesting. Is there a side-by-side comparison with Google voice anywhere? Seems like there are going to be some good options available for our ultra-mobile society to stay in touch.

Blabbelon Launches HD VoIP for Video Games

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Video gamers love VoIP in video games but have often been disappointed with poor voice quality - including jitter, lag, and choppiness, inability to continue to talk via VoIP once you close the game and just an overall poor user experience. Well, Blabblelon aims to change all that with the launch of their browser-based VoIP application which uses a mix of Java and Flash to VoIP-enable any PC, Mac, or Linux computer. The beauty of Blabbelon is that it works at the browser-level, so you can VoIP your friends whether you are inside the video game or not. With Blabbelon, you can blab all you want - even start your own blab-a-thon if you want.

Blabbelon is not to be confused with Babylon where the story goes that God wasn't too pleased with the Tower of Babel the people built, so he took one common language and confounded it into many so they couldn't understand each other. Well, Blabbelon may not be a Star-Trekkian universal translator-- or some anti-Tower-of-Babel gizmo helping you to understand what that French guy who just fragged you said, but it will give you crystal clear wideband HD voice.

Leveraging Skype's wideband SILK codec the audio quality is superb. In fact, as far as I know, this marks the first time anyone has embedded the SILK codec into Java. When I interviewed Blabbelon, I asked them if anyone else had successfully embedded Skype's SILK codec within Java and they confirmed they are the first. They pointed out that it took serious coding and some tricks to get the SILK codec embedded into Java. Dean Elwood, CEO of telecom provider Voxygen Limited and chief technology strategist of Blabbelon explained they are using a LAMP architecture on the back-end and the front-end is a combination of Java and Flash. Dean said, "Because Skype is only releasing binaries and not source code. The naked binaries are not Java, so we had to do a few tricks to get Java to work nicely with binaries for Mac and Windows. It's not an easy thing to do. Getting it into the browser we had to do some work."

The browser-based VoIP chat tool not only leverages Skype's SILK super wideband audio codec, but it can handle thousands of simultaneous users - up to 7,000 in fact. According to Blabbelon, "Blabbelon provides a platform for a wide variety of users such as: gamers securely competing in team-based quests; businesses running 7,000 person global conference calls; or grandparents taunting grandkids over a game of Facebook Scrabble."

I took it for a test drive and it worked pretty well with very good voice quality. I was able to hit a "hot key", by default the right Ctrl-key and then talk to my other test account. Here's a screenshot (click for larger image):

Tags: blab, hd voice, jitter, lag, latency, online gaming, teamspeak, ventrilo, video games, video gaming, voip, wideband audio Related tags: tower babel, voice quality, browser based, video games, blabbelon, codec

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Comments on this Entry:

(ds r4 on Nov 4, 2009 12:21 AM) Hi.. I like to play the games and mostly find some info about gaming... Because i am fond of gaming so this article is really helpful for me...

(Ben on Nov 7, 2009 8:38 AM) Wonder whether the bandwidth is sufficient for VoIP, since HD is going to consume almost all the bandwidth during gaming.

Ring2Skype Enables Free PSTN-to-Skype calls with Local Numbers

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:15:46 -0500

Ring2Skype, a new startup, brings yet another way to have free calling by leveraging both Skype and the PSTN. Ring2Skype allows you to have a free local number (in NYC, London, Madrid, etc.), forwarded to your Skype (wherever you are) -- once again for FREE.

I should point out that Skype charges you for a PSTN telephone number while Ring2Skype offers you a free number. Also, Ring2Skype provides numbers in more than 100 destinations, while Skype only has about 20. You just need to select the city where you want the number and Ring2Skype emails you the telephone number, which you can share with family and friends. Example: 212-555-1000 x1000. The local phone number assigned is shared amongst other Ring2Skype users, so you have to enter an extension, but hey it's free, so you can't complain!

Tags: ring2skype, voip Related tags: telephone number, skype, number, local

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Comments on this Entry:

(Nikki Brown on Nov 3, 2009 9:15 AM) How is the quality of this service? It sounds interesting and I'll check into it. Thanks for sharing.

Halloween in VoIP Land

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:51:04 -0500

Fonality folks know how to work hard and play hard as they let off some steam for Halloween. Depicted here are the CEO (Chris Lyman) and Director of Engineering (Samy Kamkar) for Fonality. I'll let you guess who is who.

While we're on the topic of Halloween, here's a short video of my wearing a skeleton/Death costume with a chest piece that squirts blood when I squeeze the heart in my hand. Alas I didn't capture that in this video, but still worth a look:

If you are in the VoIP industry and have a cool Halloween costume to share, send me a picture and I'll try and post it.

Tags: chris lyman, fonality, halloween, samy kamkar, voip Related tags: death costume, halloween, fonality, costume

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Comments on this Entry:

(David Kullmann on Oct 30, 2009 5:54 PM) Thanks for putting this up Tom, and hello from the Fonality team! David Kullmann Operations Manager

Research Report Shows VoIP Kicking PSTN's Ass

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:08:20 -0500

According to Infonetics Research, VoIP services brought in $21 billion for service providers in the first half of 2009. According to their report, the number of residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers is forecast to top 225 million by 2013. In other words, with about 310 million Americans that means 75% of all residential subscribers will be VoIP by 2013. Buh bye old analog PSTN landlines!
[RE: Image - Hey just be glad I didn't pick an image of Captain Kirk vs. Gorn]

"Demand for residential and business VoIP services continues to grow even as spending in other communication areas tightens. For the first half of 2009, the worldwide VoIP services market grew to $20.7 billion. Residential VoIP services remain healthy, comprising the majority of worldwide VoIP services revenue, and subscribers are up 14% from the end of 2008. On the business VoIP side, while managed IP PBX revenue growth has slowed in line with IP PBX shipments, we are expecting IP Centrex and hosted UC service revenue to grow 26% year-over-year in 2009," explains Diane Myers, directing analyst for service provider VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research.

Report Highlights:
- IP connectivity services currently make up about a third of total VoIP business service revenue, growing to 40% of the total by 2013 (managed IP PBX services and hosted VoIP and UC services make up the balance)
- The current sweet spot of the North American IP Centrex market is small business (those with fewer than 100 employees)
> Roughly two-thirds of all IP Centrex seats sold in the first half of 2009 went to small businesses
- While the largest VoIP services opportunities are in North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), demand for VoIP services is growing fast in Asia Pacific and Central and Latin America
- For the first half of 2009, Japan's NTT, France Telecom, and Comcast in North America retain their leadership as the world's largest residential VoIP service providers, together holding nearly 20% of the world's VoIP subscribers

Tags: infonetics research, pstn, research, voip Related tags: north america, service providers, infonetics research, research report, service revenue, services

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World PSTN Call Progress Tones Database - Oct 23, 2006

Earn VoIP PSTN dialing credits by watching videos - Jul 28, 2006

Yahoo VoIP survey says people use search engines to find VoIP solutions - Jan 18, 2006

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AdMob Sees Explosive Mobile Phone Internet Usage

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:18:27 -0500

A fascinating if not predictable report from AdMob was just released yesterday showing explosive mobile phone web surfing growth. In their September 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report AdMob received more than 100 million ad requests from 14 countries, and more than 10 million ad requests from 64 countries. This data was collected using AdMob's network of more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications. Of course, just about everyone is now using their mobile phone to check email, surf the web, tweet via Twitter, check their Facebook, update their statuses, etc. So of course there will be a growth spurt in mobile data. I will say that if mobile manufacturers had come up with a decent browsing experience 10 years ago (i.e. the iPhone browsing experience) I think we would have seen a much earlier adoption of high-end smartphones and a much earlier spike in mobile Internet usage.

The report highlights the rapid growth in usage of mobile Web sites and applications on new devices in the past year. Surprisingly in September 2008, the Motorola RAZR still holds on as the "top device" in the US, and the iPhone was the only touchscreen device in the Top 10. Apparently, there are still a lot of legacy phones out there or lots of people just can't afford to upgrade to a smartphone.

In September 2009, the list of the top 10 devices includes five with touchscreens, six with Wi-Fi capabilities, and six with application stores. These devices are responsible for a much higher percentage of mobile usage than their share of handsets sold. However feature phones like the Samsung R450 and Motorola RAZR V3 still represent 60 percent of ad requests in the US. The strong mobile Web usage on these feature phones is likely driven by unlimited data plans.

Highlights from the September 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report include:
•    In September 2007 AdMob had 1.6 billion ad requests, in September 2008 5.1 billion, and in September 2009 10.2 billion.
•    Nearly every region of the world experienced immense growth in the past two years, with North America, Asia, Western Europe, Oceania and Latin America seeing a six-fold increase in traffic since September 2007.
•    Worldwide iPhone and iPod touch traffic increased 19 times from September 2008 to September 2009 in the AdMob network.
•    In September 2009 42 percent of requests in the US were made from Wi-Fi capable devices. 18 percent of actual US requests were made over a Wi-Fi connection in September 2009 compared to only 5 percent in September 2008.
•    Devices running on the Android Operating System (OS) accounted for 17 percent of smartphone traffic in AdMob's network in the US in September 2009, up from 13 percent in August 2009. The HTC Dream (G1) was the number three device and the HTC Magic was the number 10 device in September 2009 in the US. As with the iPhone OS, much of the Android traffic in AdMob's network came from applications.

Tags: admob, apple, internet, iphone, mobile internet, motorola razr Related tags: september admob, mobile phone, internet usage, number device, browsing experience, mobile

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SimpleSignal Brings Call Control Toolbar to Hosted VoIP

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:47:44 -0500

Hosted VoIP is making great strides, but there is often one problem - with hosted VoIP you don't get desktop call control. Well, today SimpleSignal introduced its Call Control Toolbar, which adds advanced business VoIP calling features while leveraging their hosted environment. Personally, I am very computer-centric and hate managing my phone calls using the phone. Why use an antiquated TUI (telephone user interface) to setup a conference when you can use a GUI and drag-and-drop conference participants? So I've enjoyed the use of several desktop call control applications over the years, including Comdial's CTI app, Artisoft TeleVantage (R.I.P), Fonality's HUD client, and more. I've also used Vonage's (hosted residential service) Vonage Pro, a feature-rich desktop call control app.

In any event, the Call Control Toolbar (image right) is an Adobe Air-based application that floats anywhere on a user's desktop for instant access to a range of calling feature controls. The Call Control Toolbar does not require users to launch a web browser.

"One of the biggest challenges we discovered in our customer research was that our Hosted PBX customers were not using incredibly efficient calling features like simultaneous ring, remote office and voice messaging, or even more basic functions such as speed dial," said Dave Gilbert, founder and president of SimpleSignal, "either because they didn't know how or didn't want to be bothered with logging into a web portal to set up or change their IP phone settings.

"The SimpleSignal Call Control Toolbar eliminates these hassles for users," Gilbert continued. "The controls are user-friendly and always available in the background on a user's desktop, so it's easy to make quick, on-the-fly changes to IP phone settings. "

The SimpleSignal Call Control Toolbar also features call notification screen pops. When a user receives an incoming call, a small window pops up at the bottom of the user's computer screen with complete caller ID information. Users can also answer the call directly from the screen pop.

The Call Control Toolbar is provided free of charge for SimpleSignal's Hosted PBX customers.

Features that can be managed by the toolbar include:

Simultaneous Ring for up to six numbers
Remote Office, which displays your office number on caller ID regardless of which phone is being used
Outbound Dialing by entering the phone number or copying and pasting into Toolbar window
Speed Dial for six numbers
Sequential Ring for up to six numbers
Voice Messaging Control (http://www.simplesignal.com/feat_Visual-Voicemail.php), including email notifications and transfer upon dialing "0"
Call Forwarding Always
Call Forwarding Busy
Call Forwarding No Answer
Do Not Disturb

Tags: artisoft, desktop call control, simplesignal, televantage, toolbar, voip Related tags: control toolbar, phone settings, calling features, settings simplesignal, control, toolbar

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(pc zubehör on Oct 30, 2009 3:52 AM) This can be petty useful for managing international calling and operate the list of recent calls. This can be your virtual call assistant. Grab it as soon as possible.

GE's Vscan Portable Ultrasound = No more OB Visits?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:09:01 -0500

GE's Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt unveiled the new Vscan an ultra-small ultrasound. According to GE, "For critical care clinicians, Vscan can offer an immediate look beyond patient vital signs with the potential to identify critical issues, like fluid around the heart, which could be a sign of congestive heart failure. And for cardiologists, Vscan provides a dependable visual evaluation of how well the heart is pumping at a glance, so they can treat patients more efficiently."

It's certainly small enough to be portable - about the size of a mobile phone and could even have some home-use potential - assuming the costs are low.

I can see it now...

Man: "Hey honey, forget about going for an ultrasound and paying a $30 copay, the wasted time and gas money, etc. I can give you an ultrasound right here in the comfort of our house! Let me slap some gel on and give this a whirl!"

Pregnant woman: "Yeah. Right... Good luck with that."

Check out the video demo given by Mike Barber, Vice President of healthymagination, provides a closer look at the new Vscan technology:

Tags: ge, jeff immelt, ultrasound, vscan Related tags: vscan, ultrasound, heart

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