DeepDarkSee

From jkOnTheRun:

Opera is a cool browser that normally costs $39 for the ad-free version but today only Opera software is giving the full version away for free! All you gave to do is download Opera and then send an email to registerme@opera.com to obtain a registration code. This offer expires August 31, 12 a. m. PDT.

So I’ve been using RegisterFly for several years, and other than their site frequently being slow, and not well organized, I’ve been fairly pleased. It’s cheap and I get what I need. I’ve been tempted a couple of times to switch to GoDaddy, usually after a poor customer service interaction with them. At the times that I checked, they wanted way too much for their whois identity blocking service (only costs a buck a year at RegisterFly).

But RegisterFly keeps sending me all these damn marketing emails. They are way too frequent, and don’t add any value other than pushing spam-ads my way. They are abusing their relationship with me. Earlier tonight I spent half an hour looking for a place on their web site to turn off promotional email - no such luck. The I called the toll free 24/7 support line, and was disconnected after listening to more promotional material on the phone while holding for 20 minutes. OK, so now I decide to use their “Rapid Response Support” web form, which claims “1-2 Hour Responses”. Think I believe them at this point?

So I fill out the form, and get this confirmation screen. Note the radio button promising 1-2 hour response, and the message above promising 2-4 hour response? It’s like they are trying to drive me away!

Hmmm…. while writing this I just got another “RegisterSpam” telling me about an increase in hosting disk space. There is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page. I used it. Let’s see what happens NEXT. I don’t think they really want me as a customer. You wouldn’t do this to someone you cared about, right?

UPDATE: Got my response, took 5 and a half hours.

Joshua Ellis (excerpted, and via several blogs): “So everybody pretends they don’t know what the future holds, when the unfortunate fact is that — unless we start paying very serious attention — it holds what the past holds.”

Did you know that here is a HUGE variation in the amount of radiation created by the highest and lowest radiating cell phones? Huge! My Moto v710 seems to want to burn a hole in the side of my head with a SAR (W/kg) of 140, and it’s not even on the worst 10 list.

VoIP (Voice over IP) is here. Over half the corporate telephone sales in 2005 will be VoIP phones. Michael Stanford, Intel’s director of VoIP strategy speaks to this as just the beachhead for Services over IP. Think ‘presence’, video conferencing, shared work environments and collaboration at new levels.

I’ve written before about my view that what’s most exciting about VoIP is our ability it integrate it with other aspects of the IP infrastructure, specifically coordinated voice and web interaction (and Web is A LOT more than HTML pages). I’ve been experimenting this year with “poor man’s presence” - leaving the phone line and/or iChat connection open between coworkers in different states. This is just the beginning.

A campaign encouraging people to enter an emergency contact number in their mobile phone’s memory under the heading ICE (i.e. In Case of Emergency) has rapidly spread throughout the world.

Originally established as a nationwide campaign in the UK, ICE allows paramedics or police to be able to contact a designated relative / next-of-kin in an emergency situation. Almost everyone carries a mobile phone now, and with ICE they would know immediately who to contact and what number to ring. The contact person may even know of your medical history.

By adopting the ICE advice, your mobile will help rescue services quickly contact a friend or relative - which could be vital in a life or death situation. It only takes a few seconds to do, and it could easily help save your life.

Simply select a new contact in your phone book, enter the word ‘ICE’ and the number of the person you wish to be contacted. It really could save your life, or put a loved one’s mind at rest. For more than one contact name, use ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc.

I’ve been experimenting with VoIP for almost a year using several VoIP service providers and the Asterisk open source PBX software. I’ve setup Asterisk on a Bones in Motion server and created a virtual company PBX, with IVR and voice mail, and auto-dial out to employee desks and cell phones to connect calls. I’ve also setup a server at home and done experiments with conferences and other test and development work in the Asterisk environment.

Along the way I’ve experienced line quality and echo issues from DID providers (companies that provide you with a local number that forwards to your server, as well as outgoing calls to the normal phone network). I’ve seen long delays in getting inbound numbers working, lines stop working intermittently, echo on the line come and go, router/nat issues, DTMF transmission problems, impact from internet connectivity, and more. I’ve used SIP and IAX from DID providers, soft (PC based) phones, and dedicated VoIP phones. I’ve also had one Vonage user experience inconsistent DTMF transmission to Asterisk IVR (menus).

I find this area fascinating, and the ability to integrate incoming voice and web in a Linux/PHP environment opens incredible opportunities. These opportunities involve both the web and voice ends, and interaction between the two, driven from either or both ends. I also find it complex, fraught with complications, and more an emerging opportunity than a mature platform. I find myself driven to experiment in this space, have 101 ideas, and am poking around a lot lately.

So in this context, I decided to subscribe to Vonage and see how they are doing with things. I’ve heard rumors that some of Vonage’s back end is Asterisk based (along with Avaya), although they aren’t verifying this publicly. It’s still early on, I’m really impressed.

Early last week I signed up for the Vonage service. Got may email confirmation and account info. On Friday my premise equipment showed up. It was a Linksys router with two phone ports on the back. The fold-out quick install guide showed two configurations…’be the router’…and ‘connect to your existing router’. I used the latter, just plugged it in and connected the phone per the picture. I fully expected it to NOT work. I’ve got port 5060 forwarded to another system, and firewalling turned on. I did, however, recently update my existing router with the latest firmware image, which included in the notes a reference to fixing some VoIP issues.

So anyway, it worked! I just plugged it in and it worked. It has to be this way for Vonage to be successful on a broad commercial scale, and it’s clear that with things like DUN it’s all possible, but… it worked! I’m blown away. Maybe I’m just jaded from doing ‘do it yourself’ VoIP, but I’m still very impressed. Inbound and outbound calls, and all I had to do was plug in the cables per the picture. Vonage may just pull this off. Oh, and I was also really impressed at the low delays introduced by Vonage, and virtually immediate connects of inbound calls. Sound quality was good too.

Update: I am seeing randomly dropped DTMF characters in the IVR menu handling.

The San Francisco Chronicle as started offering podcasts. It’s a pretty impressive offering, with podcasts corresponding to different sections of the paper and lots of special features referenced from the Chronical Podcast Blog. Very cool!

Friday night, Palo Alto. Join me there! Info Here
Update: er, that’s Friday the 19th

Info World has a set of featured articles on Open Source Software (OSS) alternatives to commercial products. It’s a bit Java centric, and misses the boat on stronger Content Management Systems and Portals, but has some valuable info. It’s great to see the mainstream press looking in this direction.