Smartphones

Beware the Ides of May: It's Hammertime for Google Voice

Beware the Ides of May: It’s Hammertime for Google Voice

Thursday, May 1, 2014

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyEE0qpfeig You don’t have to be a soothsayer to appreciate what’s about to happen in the VoIP community. In just two weeks, millions of telephones in the United States are about to go silent. Let’s begin with what we know and don’t know about Google Voice and Google’s May 15 deadline. Google has made it crystal clear that XMPP connectivity to Google Voice is going away on May 15. What that means is that inbound and outbound calling using an… Read More ›

netTALK to the Rescue: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day

netTALK to the Rescue: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

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The Google Voice Adventure with Asterisk® has been disappointing to put it charitably. Google never really saw the benefit of providing free phone service to millions of Americans because they never could quite figure out how to monetize the project. In the meantime, shady call centers were eating them alive with dozens if not hundreds of Google Voice trunks that were placing endless calls around the clock. The final straw was Microsoft deciding to keep Skype proprietary while adding free… Read More ›

The New VoIP Frontier: Meet the iPad Mini with Retina Display

The New VoIP Frontier: Meet the iPad Mini with Retina Display

Monday, November 18, 2013

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Last week was interesting if for no other reason because Apple released an amazing new product without tooting a single trumpet. In fact, the iPad Mini with Retina display was quietly made available on Apple’s web site in the middle of the night. Most believe that the rationale was that the devices were in such short supply that Apple couldn’t afford the PR nightmare of releasing a new product that very few could buy. Guess what? It’s still available. You… Read More ›

Meet the Goophone: It Walks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck For Under $100

Meet the Goophone: It Walks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck For Under $100

Friday, November 8, 2013

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If you didn’t cheat and hover over the images above, then you’d be wrong if you guessed that you now can buy Apple’s shiny, new iPhone® 5c for less than $100. From first-hand experience, I can tell you that the price of the 32GB model without a contract remains $649. You can add another $50 for tax in most states. And you can add another $99 for AppleCare® and another $79 each time your daughter drops the phone on the… Read More ›

Finally a 100% Portable PBX: Introducing GoIP, a SIP-GSM Gateway for Asterisk

Finally a 100% Portable PBX: Introducing GoIP, a SIP-GSM Gateway for Asterisk

Monday, September 30, 2013

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How far we have come! The original Asterisk® claim to fame was its ability to interface with proprietary phone systems and legacy telephony hardware, the glue that literally kept companies stuck to their overpriced PBXs. And, just as wired phone systems began to lose their edge, along came the Bell Sisters to introduce cellular communications with billing that began when the phone started ringing and an end to toll-free calling and extra fees for text messaging on top of exorbitantly… Read More ›

Programmer's Paradise: Introducing the VoIP Phone of the Year, Yealink's T46G

Programmer’s Paradise: Introducing the VoIP Phone of the Year, Yealink’s T46G

Monday, July 15, 2013

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If you’ve been missing the Aastra programming platform these last couple years while America’s patent trolls continued to destroy the software development community in the United States, then you’ll be excited to learn that there’s a new kid on the block with a revolutionary phone. One can’t help wondering what the heck we are doing to ourselves. First, we destroy the programming community with tax breaks for off-shore developers, and then we grant bogus software patents for "inventions" that have… Read More ›

The Future of VoIP Telephony in an Asterisk World

The Future of VoIP Telephony in an Asterisk World

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

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If you don’t think there’s a telephony revolution underway, then take a look at this year’s crop of new VoIP telephones. No doubt that Alexander Graham Bell would be a happy camper. We’ve picked three of our favorites to take for a spin this week. Pictured above (left to right) are the Mocet Communicator, Grandstream’s GXP2200, and Yealink’s T46G. These three devices offer three dramatically different, but equally effective, approaches to the future of VoIP telephony. The Mocet Communicator is… Read More ›

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: 2013 Cellphone Navigation Guide

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: 2013 Cellphone Navigation Guide

Thursday, June 6, 2013

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Every year or so we like to take a fresh look at the cell phone landscape and reassess what makes the most sense for business, personal, and family use in terms of cost, functionality, and performance. Last year’s favorite based upon both cost and feature set was StraightTalk which offered unlimited talk, text, and data (sort of) on either the AT&T or T-Mobile network for $45 a month. Since that article was released, StraightTalk has quietly dropped the AT&T offering… Read More ›

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