Voip Blog
E911 and voip
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Most of us take for granted that when we pick up the phone and dial 911, the emergency operator will automatically know right where we are and what our callback number is. This can be critical information if you can't speak.
When you make an emergency call, your call is automatically routed to the nearest Public Safety Answering Station (PSAP), where an operator then alerts the appropriate emergency response resource, whether it's an ambulance, fire station, or the police.
This can be a real problem for voip, because numbers aren't fixed to any specific location. With voip, a person in California could easily have a New York number. Additionally, because service is tied to a portable voip internet phone adapter instead of a phone jack in your house, it's difficult for emergency crews to know where you might be.
As a result, special databases were set up to help collect this information. When a voip E911 call goes out, your information is forwarded to the PSAP on record for your area. As a voip customer, you have a responsibility to make sure your information is current and that the PSAP you'll be routed to is the correct one. Voip.com members can login to their account portal and update their E911 info quickly and easily. Checking that the PSAP is the right one is also easy; just dial 933 from your voip.com phone.
More additions to the voip docket
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
In 2004, California's superior courts grew up and moved out of mom's house. In this case, mom would be the county court systems. Just as when real, live 18 year olds move out of their parent's homes, there are a lot of details involved in moving out; including, finding a phone solution that a) will work for you, and b) is affordable.
The Superior Court of California, County of Monterey looked at a lot of different options; in the end, they chose a voip internet phone system, both because of it's inherent scalability, and its economic price structure.
While they knew they needed to replace their aging Ericsson PBX-based system that the county had been providing, they didn't want to have to replace every phone in their buildings at the same time. That's part of the beauty of voip. They didn't have to. Instead, they opted for an initial order of 100 voip telephones and augmented their existing system with voip adapters. This allowed them to gradually phase in voip phones as analog ones reached the end of their life cycle.
Not only did Monterey County's Superior Court realize a return on their voip investment within its first year of operation, they also ended up with a system that's easier to manage and make changes to. Not surprisingly, they also noted a spike in productivity and user satisfaction.
Voip has increasingly become a win-win situation for everyone.
While we're looking at shiny, cool gadgets...
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Have you seen Nokia's 770 Internet Tablet? Hide your wallet while you take a look. At $360, it's a bit pricey, but let me tell you, users can't stop raving about how great it is.
First of all, it's an internet appliance, which has a primary mission of getting you online to do common tasks, like check your email, find out where that movie you want to see is playing, surf at will, listen to music, and look at photos. The latest version also lets you IM and make voip internet phone calls.
You can get online via wireless connections or using your Bluetooth enabled cell phone, and enjoy the internet on a portable device with a landscape oriented 4.31 inch display, 800 x 480 resolution (that's been called "pin-sharp" by a number of happy users), and 65,536 colors to play with. Plus, it has a USB port, so you can connect it to your PC. Did I mention it can make voip calls?
It comes standard with:
- Key Applications
- Web Browser (Opera 8) with Flash player
- Internet calling
- Instant Messaging
- Email Client
- Internet Radio
- RSS Feed Reader
- Media, Utilities and Games
- Audio/Video player
- Image viewer
- PDF viewer
- Application manager
- File Manager
- Clock
- Search
- Calculator
- Notes and Sketch
- Games (Chess, Mahjong, Marbles)
And supports these file types:
- Audio: AAC, AMR, MP2, MP3, RA (Real Audio), WAV, WMA
- Image: BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, SVG-tiny
- Video: 3GP, AVI, H.263, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, RV (Real Video)
- Internet radio playlists; M3U, PLS
The memory situation has improved with the 2006 version:
- Memory: Flash 128MB
- Memory card: 64MB RS-MMC (Reduced Size - MultiMediaCard)
- Option for extended virtual memory (RS-MMC cards up to 1 GB)
I would go on and on and on and on, but then I think you get the point.
The funny strikes again
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Sometimes you've just gotta put your head down on the desk and laugh until you cry. Like maybe you completely lost your marbles. Let loose with a couple of those great, whole-body guffaws that, when you're done, make you feel like everything is right in the world, no matter how boggled up it's been of late.
My first reaction to the Verballs talking voip internet phone from Aardvark Innovations was, "Hunh? Are you kidding me? Is this some kind of a joke?" Here, I'll let you see what I'm talking about:
Phone? It looks like a possessed potato. That moves its mouth when someone talks to you and flaps its arms around to alert you to an incoming call. And this is necessary because...? Who knows? I checked out their website, thinking I'd missed some vital bit of information that would somehow allow the whole concept to come into focus for me.
Instead of enlightenment, I found cartoons. And more versions of the "phone." Thoroughly disgruntled, I was just about ready to throw in the towel and declare Verballs a travesty of good gadgetry, when my 9-year old son and his friend walked into the office.
"Wow! What's that? That's cool!" So I told them about Verballs, how they're voip phones, and what they do. I showed them the demo of what Verballs look like in action. And they both want one. Apparently, I'm old. Because word on the street is that Verballs are super cool.
Adventures in voip installation
Friday, August 11, 2006
No one would ever accuse my mom of being technologically adept. In fact, it's only in the last year and a half that she figured out how to use the dreaded e-mail. Naturally, I thought this would make her the perfect person to set up my voip. Heh. Heh. Heh. No. Seriously. She set up my voip.
And it works. A few days after I got this confirmation e-mail, what should appear on my doorstep but a shiny new package from voip.com??!!?? Oh the anticipation...and since my mom is visiting, we opened it up together. "What is all this stuff?" she asked. "My new voip internet phone adapter, " I replied. Blank stare and dead silence ensue.
After I gave her the thumbnail version of what voip is, she seemed to think it was pretty nifty. Until I told her she would be the one setting it up. Whereupon hyperventilation commenced in earnest. But I talked her down off the ledge and convinced her that really, it couldn't be that hard because, look...there are pictures all over the instructions. What could possibly go wrong?
She took everything out of the box and successfully matched each item to the graphic in the instruction booklet. Then she read the part that helps you figure out if you already have a router or not. "You must already have a router, "she said. Blank stare and dead silence ensue. Because I'm 100% sure she has no idea what a router is. Also, because she was right.
We flipped over to the sixth page and then she got busy plugging the Ethernet cable into the Linksys router and then unplugging the wireless router from the cable modem so she could hook the Linksys to the cable modem and then the wireless back to the Linksys and it doesn't really matter if you've lost the thread of what went where because she pretty much knew what she was doing, which is all that counts. I just stood back and watched. After everything was powered up she lifted the phone handset to check for a dial tone. "I think I killed it," she said.
Sure enough, not only was there no dial tone, but the internet was down as well. "I think we need to go to the troubleshooting page," she added. And again, I just kind of stood there and maybe drooled a little because, really, there's no wrapping my head around the part where my mom is going to willingly troubleshoot this problem.
But she did and then we shut everything down for 5 minutes, before starting the equipment up again in this very specific order: modem, existing router, Linksys router, computer. And folks, OMG...it worked. I'm just gonna say it again: my mom set up my voip.
And the crowd goes wild.
Busting up those voip myths
Thursday, August 10, 2006
My father-in-law is a 76 year old geek whose journey to the dark side, though relatively recent, is nonetheless complete. He's more than qualified to wield the mighty NerdSaber, inasmuch as he's spent the last few years happily cobbling together a series of PCs and learning how to program in various different languages. He's even built his own Linux box. Those of you who don't know what that means, let's just say it gives him some pretty respectable street cred. Especially when you consider that only 17% of the people in his age demographic even use the internet at all.
Which is why it surprised me when he started asking about voip internet phone systems. Apparently, there are some myths roaming around that need to be laid to rest.
Myth #1: voip is only for computer-to-computer calling.
Fact: voip can be used for calls that are computer-to-computer, computer to regular phone, or regular phone to regular phone. The only difference is how the traffic travels. Calls involving "regular" phones may start out and terminate on copper wire lines, but the bulk of the call's journey occurs over the internet.
Myth #2: you have to get a special phone to use voip.
Fact: While you need a microphone and speaker headset or special USB phone to make calls from a computer, your voip internet phone adapter lets you use a regular phone to make voip calls. The adapter converts the analog signals from a standard phone into digital packets that can be sent out over the internet
Myth #3: it's better to get voip from the cable or phone companyFact: standalone voip is generally a lot cheaper than the bundled voip that comes with cable or DSL service. Pure voip solutions also offer more features and bigger calling areas
Myth #4: voip sounds funny.Fact: most people have no idea that they're participating in a voip call. Digitized conversations are often clearer than analog calls running over hard to maintain copper wires.