Streaming Devices

Newbie's Roadmap to Streaming Audio and Music

Newbie’s Roadmap to Streaming Audio and Music

Monday, July 31, 2023

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We’ve been a diehard audiophile beginning with our in-person autograph from Elvis on a Sunday afternoon while he was playing touch football in the vacant lot beside his mother’s home in Memphis. My first serious setup was a law school graduation present that included a McIntosh amp, preamp, and tuner with Bozak Concert Grand speakers in the early 70’s. From there we added Revox, Tandberg, and Nakamichi tape machines. And then along came MP3, Napster and 10¢ music downloads from… Read More ›

Our Favorite All-You-Can-Eat Deals in Cyberspace

Our Favorite All-You-Can-Eat Deals in Cyberspace

Monday, May 15, 2023

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Let’s begin with a mea culpa. We’ve been wrong on a few all-you-can-eat deals over the years including the CloudAtCost switcheroo, the Google Voice fiasco, and a few other cloud provider implosions. But our overall track record has been pretty good over the past decade, and today we have some fresh deals that are worth a careful look. We, of course, would encourage everyone to perform their own due diligence and at least acknowledge the cautionary note: "If a deal… Read More ›

The All-Purpose Device for Home or College-Bound Students

The All-Purpose Device for Home or College-Bound Students

Monday, October 10, 2022

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We won’t attempt to educate you on the feature set of Alexa devices other than to note that, in the words of Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin’." What was once a device to provide a weather forecast, turn on your lights, lock your front door, and start your car can now function as a full-featured HD TV with an Echo Show 15 and one of your favorite streaming providers including Netflix, Sling, Hulu, and YouTube TV. And, if… Read More ›

Happy Fourth: Our Gift to You -- 17+ Years of Nerd Vittles

Happy Fourth: Our Gift to You — 17+ Years of Nerd Vittles

Monday, July 4, 2022

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$300 Chromebook Faceoff: ARM vs. x86? Which Is Better? Introducing Incredible PBX 2022 for the Raspberry Pi Oracle Cloud: Grab a Free Incredible PBX Cloud Server for Life Systems Integration and Public Participation with FreePBX A Walk on the Wild Side: Meet Incredible PBX for MX Linux Deal of the Year: OBi2182 Color WiFi Phones now $59.99 Interconnecting Asterisk Servers with PJsip and OpenVPN Migrating Incredible PBX 2022 to a PUBLIC-Facing Cloud PBX It’s Debian 11, Asterisk 19, & FreePBX… Read More ›

Unified Communications: Adding SMS to the Asterisk Toolkit

Unified Communications: Adding SMS to the Asterisk Toolkit

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

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As we roll into September, the VoIP landscape continues to evolve. For various reasons, SMS functionality has become a must-have with many VoIP deployments. What we’ve observed lately is that many businesses and professional offices now assume that all phone numbers are SMS-enabled which means, if your primary phone numbers don’t support SMS, you may miss important notices and reminders. Particularly in this COVID era, physicians have incredibly high rates of no-shows for appointments so you’ll typically get multiple SMS… Read More ›

Blink Cameras: The Travelin' Man's Dream Come True

Blink Cameras: The Travelin’ Man’s Dream Come True

Monday, July 12, 2021

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Okay, I’ll admit it. Our family has morphed into a band of traveling gypsies. We’re spreading our time between four cities and four "homes." Not many folks are that crazy, but many of you have vacation homes thanks to Covid. And one of the first things that pops up on your to-do list is how to secure your residences when you’re not at home. Yes, you can pay a monitoring service in every location a hefty monthly fee to do… Read More ›

Amazon's Polly TTS Returns for Incredible PBX 2021

Amazon’s Polly TTS Returns for Incredible PBX 2021

Monday, February 22, 2021

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In a word, WOW! If you’ve previously used text-to-speech (TTS) applications with Incredible PBX™ or any other PBX, you fully appreciate the challenges of getting excellent voice quality from a synthesized voice. In addition to operating system quirks, you also had to scramble to find TTS software that had acceptable voice quality without breaking the bank. Well, it’s a new day with Incredible PBX 2021. Shortly after Amazon’s introduction of Polly TTS, we integrated it into the Wazo platform with… Read More ›

Review: The 2021 Cadillac Escalade - Everything a Tesla Isn't

Review: The 2021 Cadillac Escalade – Everything a Tesla Isn’t

Sunday, February 14, 2021

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Happy Valentine’s Day. We’re on our fifth year of our love-hate relationship with Elon and Tesla. After a second purchase of a Tesla with Full Self-Driving (FSD) and no cigar, it’s beginning to smell more like vaporware. Tesla now is morphing FSD into a "feature set" that includes Automatic Lane Changes, Summon from across the garage, AutoPark (maybe and sometimes), Traffic and Stop Sign Alerts, and AutoSteer on City Streets (coming soon). You’ll note that AutoSteer on the highways and… Read More ›