IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband

Russell Shaw, rest in peace

David Grober — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:07:17 +0000

Editor’s note: Russell Shaw passed away on March 14. For more information, see Between the Lines. His family requested that we post this notice so people know that all scheduled meetings are canceled.

Sorry, Gizmodo, VoIP over iPhone isn’t going to be “huge”

Russell Shaw — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:26:41 +0000

Gizmodo’s Brian Lam (no, not the C-SPAN guy, that’d be Brian Lamb) notes a snippet from Apple’s SDK-coming-out-part press conference in which one Mr. Jobs noted that any third-party iPhone developer cooks up a VoIP program for iPhone, the utility will be allowed to work via any Wi-Fi hotspots that might be in range. VoIP over [...]

Over WiFi at DIA, free speech is DOA

Russell Shaw — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:07:07 +0000

SI model Jessica Gomes, if you must know. Our own Maggie Reardon expands on a Denver Post story that notes the Denver International Airport has chosen to block Wi-Fi access to such sites as boingboing.net, the website of Vanity Fair magazine, and even the web link to Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. Maggie notes that the airport’s spokesman [...]

Exclusive: iPhone DevCamp’s Raven on iPhone SDK and what it means

Russell Shaw — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:19:09 +0000

Just a few minutes ago, I had a most enlightening email conversation with someone who knows as much about the new iPhone SDK, and its effects/potential, as anyone who doesn’t work at Apple. And probably know more than most who do. That’d be Raven Zachary, who you may know as key force behind the iPhone [...]

Is proprietary iPhone video player on the way?

Russell Shaw — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:14:59 +0000

In remarks to analysts yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs clarified why the iPhone does not support Flash. Jobs said a key reason is that Adobe’s Flash Player is optimally built for laptops. Because laptops are larger than the iPhone, the performance of Flash on the iPhone would be too slow. “There’s this missing product in the [...]

Truphone cuts international rates with new Tru Zone offering

Russell Shaw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:09:01 +0000

Today, Wi-Fi centered mobile Internet service provider Truphone announced a pretty significant per-minute calling cost reduction on calls from the U.S. to 40 countries. Marketed as Tru Zone, these calls will be USD0.06 per minute to landlines and USD0.30 per minute. The 40 countries in the “Tru Zone” include most EU countries, as well as Australia, Japan [...]

Score one for the little guy: FCC entirely backs consumer in Sprint slamming case

Russell Shaw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:21:11 +0000

The meme that this FCC is highly partial to the interests of large broadband service providers and telcos has often been hammered home on these screens. While I am certainly not ready to contradict those overarching feelings, I nevertheless feel enthusiastic and obligated to tell you about those FCC decisions in which the consumer wins. One of [...]

Fonality boosts presence detection in new PBXtra4.0

Russell Shaw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:32:59 +0000

Got a guided tour the other day of business phone system solutions provider Fonality’s new PBXtra 4.0 phone system. Announced this morning, the new rev offers enhanced presence detection under the aegis of FindMe with Boomerang Mobile Integration. The sell here is a new ability to automatically find employees on their mobiles, offering them the option of [...]

Uh-oh: Oprah’s streamed New Earth Event runs short on bandwidth

Russell Shaw — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:33:31 +0000

Last night’s inaugural, Skype co-sponsored webcast of Oprah Winfrey’s Oprah.com New Earth Event scored 500,000 simultaneous log-ins. That would be all well and good, but the gathering multitudes resulted in 242 Gbps of information moving over the ‘net at the same time. This morning, Oprah.com is posting a statement acknowledging resulting delays in viewing the webcast, and [...]

Reader: AT&T tells me Time Warner Cable is blocking his VoIP

Russell Shaw — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:34:10 +0000

A reader and information technology professional in the New York area sent me an email this morning that raises the possibility that his high-speed Internet service provider Time Warner Cable may be blocking his AT&T CallVantage VoIP service. Not only does the reader wish to describe his issue, but he would like to hear from [...]