I haven't really talked about AirCell or its Gogo inflight Internet access service since it first became available on American Airlines. But Andy Abramson turned me on to a little experiment with the service that he and Laptop Magazine's Joanna Stern did yesterday that is absolutely worthy of mention.

Andy reports that he and Joanna were able to carry on a voice conversation via Aircell Gogo while Joanna was on an American Airlines flight to New York. The service was designed to make voice communication "impossible" at the airlines' requests, but Andy concluded that it would be possible if he used a Flash-based voice application like Phweet and he was right.

Joanna liveblogged the flight. Her post goes through all the different communication services she tried over her five-hour flight, and how they performed.

Kudos to Andy and Joanna for their persistence. They proved once again that "impossible" is a hard claim to make about any aspect of technology. This is proof of the old saying, where there's a will, there's a way.

Andy likes to tell people that he's not an engineer type of person, but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the wireless services and applications that are available.

I reached out to Andy over this past weekend to ask what he thought the best way to access the Internet was from a moving train along The Northeast Corridor. Before speaking to him, I was lead to believe that I needed a wireless data card for my laptop, a $60 per month service plan, and a two-year contract.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I was introduced to Truphone several months ago as a result of being part of the Nokia Blogger Relations program. Truphone makes it incredibly easy to use the WiFi feature of Nokia N-Series handsets like the Nokia N95 to make VoIP calls.

Today Truphone announced some new calling plans that provide cost certainty when making international calls. The Tru Zone is a group of 40 countries that you can call via Truphone for:

• $0.06 per minute to landlines
• $0.30 per minute to mobiles
• $0.20 per SMS message
• $0.00 for Truphone to Truphone calls

These are huge savings compared to making mobile phone calls to international numbers. I don't really know what the cost of doing this with my iPhone is, but the rates aren't anything close to this. A release from Truphone compared their prices with the Verizon Wireless prices on calls to Germany, and Truphone would save you $1.43 to $1.65 per minute!

I've been experimenting with Truphone over the past few months, calling landlines of friends and relatives in the United States. No one has ever told me that there was any clarity problem or glitch on the calls I've made. The only questions I've gotten are from people who have Caller ID who don't recognize the number I'm calling from.

I'll have to call my friend Ramona in Switzerland to see how good Truphone calls sound internationally. The only issue with that is Switzerland isn't part of the Tru Zone. No worries for me, however. The rate to Switzerland is $0.10 per minute to a landline and $0.50 per minute to a mobile. What a deal.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• The Complete Guide to iPhone Car Integration on iLounge.com: A great article that covers nearly every accessory for using your iPhone in the car without violating the laws requiring hands-free use of mobile phones in many parts of the USA. [ via TUAW ]
• MacBook Air review round-up on TUAW: "Ah, it is that magical time after an Apple announcement: the big media reviews are starting to roll in. As you might be aware Apple loans out new hardware to technology journalists to put through their paces.... The first few reviews are up, and they all pretty much say the same thing: the MacBook Air is really thin, and a great machine so long as you don't need the ports it doesn't have." Read the reviews anyway, if you haven't already.
• Junction Networks Well Positioned In Philly Burbs from VoIP Watch: Andy Abramson pointed out this cool little VoIP company called Junction Networks right up the road from me that I had never heard of. They provide SIP Hosting, Hosted PBX, and PSTN Gateway services. The Hosted PBX stuff is the easiest thing for me to get my head around. But who knew that these guys were out here (other than Andy)?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At The Home Office, the week of gadget craziness continued. On Sunday night my son Jimmy wanted to watch Teletubbies on FiOS Video On Demand before he went to bed. (Kathleen suggested it and Jimmy got excited about the idea, so that was the plan.) Anyway, we brought up the FiOS VOD subsystem on the television in the living room, and a message says that On Demand isn't available at this time. Try back in a few minutes.

Kathleen said that this happened a couple of days ago, and I should put a call in this time. I called Verizon and was walked completely through a testing process and a set top box reboot by an automated voice response system. It said that my set top box would reacquire the program guide and all would be well again in a few minutes. But, if for any reason the problem wasn't resolved, my call and the details of what was done would be noted in my account to expedite the process of speaking with a live support person.

"This is progress," I said to Kathleen.

Thirty minutes later, the program guide and our DVR functions hadn't reappeared. Jimmy was watching a DVD instead. Kathleen wanted me to call Verizon back and get the problem straightened out.

When I made the call, the computer estimated that I would be on hold for 41 minutes. The alternative offered was for the system to call me back in 41 minutes when a support person became available. That would have been too late for me, so I hung up.

The set top box didn't reacquire the guide all day on Monday, so I called support at about 9:00pm. The wait was much more reasonable. It turned out to be under five minutes, although the computer's initial estimate was longer.

I went through a guided reboot of my router and my set top box. Eventually the set top box reacquired the guide, so I ended up being happy that the problem was solved.

A new problem developed with our Local Area Network. Apparently the process Verizon used to reset my router and set top box blew away my router's configuration, including its password. I had to troubleshoot my LAN to determine that the LAN's IP address range changed, then I realized that the password on my router changed. Eventually I realized that the router had just been reset to the default settings. So I reconfigured it to the way the network was before the problems occurred, and now I hope that everything is working once again. (I know that the Internet is working, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this article right now.)

The lessons I learned from this process are:

• Don't use FiOS' automated voice response system to troubleshoot your TV while someone is watching it. You will probably temporarily lose additional services for at least as long as an automated system test takes.
• Document your LAN configuration in case Verizon decides to reset your router to its initial state.
• Keep that LAN configuration at your fingertips when calling Verizon FiOS support even if the call is about TV or telephone.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a big fan of This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, and The Apple Phone Show. They are all excellent podcasts that are have very high production standards.

What I'm most impressed with is the sound quality of each of these shows. I think that Leo Laporte, the host of TWiT and MacBreak, and Scott Bourne, the host of The Apple Phone Show, each have tremendous backgrounds in radio and TV program production, so they've had time to figure out what equipment and services work best.

I decided to do some research and see if they had ever published any how to articles on the craft of podcasting. Here's what I found:

• PodcastGearGuy.com: Scott Bourne has a blog on the subject of podcasting equipment and software called PodcastGearGuy. This blog hasn't seen a lot of entries since he started hosting The Apple Phone Show, but it makes good recommendations about semi-portable sound isolation booths to help you get clean audio, and digital recorders which podcasters use as backup devices when they are doing a multi-person podcast recording using Skype.
• TWiT's "Podcasting Equipment" Article: Leo Laporte does a good summary of the technology and services he was using during the mid-Summer 2006. I hope he updates this article if he changes his setup. From occasional mentions of different gear in his podcasts that I've listened to during the past few months, it seems like the setup he describes is pretty up-to-date.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My wife Kathleen and I have lived in a small house in Newtown, Pennsylvania since June 2005. When we moved here, I was working for myself and spending lots of time in my home office. I wanted the best, most flexible bandwidth I could get at the time ("naked DSL" from Speakeasy.net), and I wanted to save a few dollars on television (DirecTV) and voice telephone service (Speakeasy Home VoIP) for my home and my home office.

This Spring, we decided that I would go out and work in someone else's office while Kathleen stayed home more of the time to take care of our son Jimmy. As a result, I became more interested in economizing on broadband, television, and voice telephone services than I was before. This caused us to make the move to Verizon FiOS for broadband and television.

Why not the FiOS triple play? I couldn't justify spending the money that Verizon wanted for telephone service that we barely use. Kathleen and I both have mobile phones we love on AT&T and calls between us and most of our families are free with our monthly service.

The big question involved in switching from Speakeasy to FiOS was: how do we replace the phone service we got through Speakeasy? Although it was VoIP, it cost us about $30 per month per line, or about $70 including fees and taxes, for the home and office numbers. We wanted to have a home phone number and a phone number for my consulting business, but we wanted to pay closer to $0.

My friend Andy Abramson who writes VoIP Watch has advocated a number of extremely low cost VoIP-based solutions, so I decided to give some of them a try.

Kathleen and I both got ourselves GrandCentral accounts. My account will be for my consulting business. Her account will represent the home phone number. GrandCentral is great for this light to moderate inbound use, because it lets you direct calls to a mobile phone or a landline based on who's calling or on a time schedule.

The only problem with this approach that I've seen so far is that I'm using a lot more cellular minutes than I have in the past. In order to limit cellular minute usage, I want to replace that high quality $30-per-month Speakeasy Home VoIP with another inexpensive VoIP product.

As a member of the Nokia Blogger Relations Program, I got several Nokia N-Series mobile phones over the past year that have VoIP capabilities. So I decided to get a Truphone VoIP service account, tie it to one of my Nokia N-Series mobiles, and leave that phone in the house as a semi-dedicated home phone.

Right now I'm using my Nokia N95 as the home phone. The N95 has been my favorite video camera for some time, but has had trouble displacing my iPhone in my pocket for day-to-day mobile phone use. The N95 seems to be doing well as a client on our home WiFi network, and the calls I've made with it so far have been clear-sounding at my end.

The combination of GrandCentral and Truphone is saving Kathleen and me almost $70 per month and the savings may be greater over time. The jury is still out as to whether this will be the ultimate solution for our seldom-used phone numbers, but the results look good so far.

I'm going to start using Truphone as much as possible for outbound calls to friends and family at night after I get home from work. I'll report on how good the call quality is from our home WiFi network to our relatives' landline and mobile phones. Stay tuned for updates.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nokia N93 produces DVD-quality video, has a
terrific MP3 player, and includes wireless
broadband and WiFi capability. It's great for people
who want a phone that can be used in relatively
serious video production. [ Photo: Dave Aiello ]
[ Check out my Nokia N93 photo set on Flickr. ]

A friend who works with Nokia chose me to be in the Nokia N-Series blogger program and has been sending me high end phones of all shapes and sizes for several months. The latest phone I've received is the Nokia N93, which I like to think of as the Swiss Army Knife of GSM / UMTS Multimedia Phones.

The N93 folds and unfolds in many different ways. Depending on which way you choose to hold it, it can be a video camera, a still image digital camera, an MP3 player, a wireless Internet access device, and a video phone. And I forgot to mention-- it can also be a plain old voice-oriented mobile phone.

The N93 has every feature I can think of for a state-of-the-art multimedia device:

• DVD-quality video with a 30 frame per second recording rate.
• 3.2-Megapixel primary camera with a 3x optical zoom and a Carl Zeiss glass lens. (0.3-Megapixel secondary camera for video calls.)
• 2.4-inch high definition color display.
• Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 video editing software.

On top of all of that it's a mobile phone with Bluetooth and WiFi. About all its missing is a full alphanumeric keyboard.

There are way too many features and dimensions to the Nokia N93 to cover in one article. I'm planning to do a small series of articles that will appear here on Operation Gadget, including as many samples of photos and videos as I think are necessary to demonstrate the features of this incredible device.

Technorati Tags: Nokia N93, N-Series, Adobe Premier Elements, UMTS, Bluetooth, WiFi, multimedia handsets, mobile phones

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past few days Verizon has been running ads on powerful New York Radio stations such as Sports Radio 66 WFAN suggesting that small businesses shouldn't switch to Optimum Voice, the VoIP service from Cablevision.

The ads suggest that Optimum Voice is unreliable, causing small businesses that switch their phone service to them to lose business and ultimately fail.

I have no information about the reliability of Optimum Voice, but I think it's very interesting that Verizon is taking direct aim at Cablevision in the small business telephone service market. Is it possible that Cablevision has made a significant incursion into a profitable part of Verizon's core business in the New York area?

Technorati Tags: VoIP.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Brad Feld's Treadputer: Venture capitalist
Brad Feld added a 3.2-GHz IBM ThinkCentre
to his Vision Fitness T9450HRT Treadmill.
This lets him get his runs in while he's on
conference calls. [ Photo: Brad Feld ].

Brad Feld is a managing director at Mobius Venture Capital based in Boulder, Colorado. He challenges himself by running marathons, and has set a goal of running a marathon in every state in the nation within the next 10 years.

Around the beginning of the year he and his coworkers built a "treadputer", a fitness club-quality treadmill with a big, fast Windows PC, and three 19-inch LCD displays.

The amazing aspect of Brad's story is that he finds he can use his PC while walking and running on this treadmill. According to the article:

It turns out that the Treadputer is highly functional when I’m running, which enables me to do some of my longer runs during the day while I’m on a call rather than having to get up at 5am to get them in before the day starts....

When we first assembled the Treadputer, {a co-worker} was skeptical that I would be able to read the screen while walking and assumed that reading while running would be impossible. While the three monitor setup helps a lot, it was surprisingly easy to read while walking or running. We’re running all three monitors at their standard 1280x1024 resolution and haven’t juiced up the font sizes.

Brad's article includes more details about his treadputer's configuration, and what he's learned about typing and mouse / trackball use. I found it quite interesting.

At least one other person bent on improving his life has built a treadputer. Walking Guy has begun a blog discussing his experiences building and using his treadputer. He says he began this quest because he needed to take off at least 40 pounds but was stuck in front of a computer 80 to 100 hours a week. He has his treadputer setup and has already gotten himself mentioned in the Lifehacker Coolest Workspace Contest.

I wonder how many more treadputer setups already exist, and how many will be built now that these articles have appeared on the Internet? I'll have to start looking for "bikeputer" articles as well.

Technorati Tags: fitness gadgets, treadputer.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We had some nasty weather in the Philadelphia area on Saturday and Sunday. The temperature fell from 55 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit in about four hours on Saturday evening. During that time rain changed to snow, creating a scene reminiscent of Narnia. At about 9:30am on Sunday, the power went out due to downed trees in the area. Electric service wasn't restored until almost 6:00pm, so we were without electricity for about 7.5 hours.

One of the things that Kathleen and I had wondered since we moved to Newtown was, how would our Voice over IP-based home telephone service work in emergency conditions? Up to now, we hadn't experienced a weather-related emergency. This would be our first chance to see if calls could still be made after a power failure.

Since we moved in, I installed two rather large APC Uninterruptible Power Supplies from the Small Business product category. We felt we needed one in the Home Office and one in the basement where the VoIP and DSL equipment live. The UPS in the Home Office was mainly there to keep our PCs from crashing as a result of power fluctuations. The one in the basement was intended to keep the DSL connection and the VoIP lines running in the event of a power failure.

I was pleased to find out that the APC UPS in the basement kept our DSL router, firewall, and two Motorola VoIP telephone adapters running for just over three hours before the battery was drained. During this time I made several calls to the electric utility. All of those calls were connected properly. There were no call quality issues whatsoever. Kudos to our DSL and VoIP provider, Speakeasy for engineering their network so that a local power failure didn't interrupt our DSL and VoIP service. I know they use Covad for their local network services and Level 3 for VoIP network engineering. Both of these providers' local gear kept running during our power failure.

Most power failures that we experience around here are pretty short and have to do with things like automobile accidents that take down utility poles. All we're trying to do with our UPS equipment is survive this sort of brief outage, in case someone calls in to us on one of our VoIP numbers. Kathleen and I have mobile phones that we can use to make outgoing calls and that will probably keep working during extended outages like the one we experienced yesterday.

Now that we've experienced a day-long power failure, I definitely recommend that people who are replacing their old-style telephone service with VoIP invest in a UPS that has the capacity to power their terminal equipment (including their router, firewall, and TAs) for at least three hours. I would segregate these devices onto their own UPS even if you have other devices that you want to protect. This will simplify your planning because you will not have to arrange for the shutdown of non-essential electronic equipment in order to maximize the runtime of the UPS that supports your VoIP phones.

Your VoIP phones may not survive every outage with this safety margin, but they'll keep running during many of the power failures that we experience in the Continental United States.

Technorati Tags: VoIP, APC, UPS

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

miniVox MV100: Speakerphone
for VoIP is available through
Amazon.com

Yesterday, Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch pointed out a portable speakerphone for use with VoIP services called the miniVox MV100 USB Speakerphone. I had never heard of this before Andy mentioned it. He said:

If you think Polycom makes the best desktop speakerphones, these guys deliver something at a fraction of the price that goes with you and works very well. In most cases it has caused me to abandon using the headset entirely.

This little box is about two-thirds of the size of my Treo 650 and it plugs into your PC using a mini USB cable. It's used mainly as a speakerphone, but you can also plug a mobile phone headset into it for privacy.

mVox also has a Bluetooth device for considerably more money called the mVox MV900 which interests me because I'm always looking for things I can use with both my mobile phone and VoIP.

More information about both of these products is available at http://www.mvox.com/.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, VoIP, mVox

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ebay announced a formal agreement to acquire Skype International SA for roughly $2.6 billion in cash and stock, according to MarketWatch.com. Rumors of this deal were widely discussed last Thursday, after an article about the possibility appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

EBay suggested several synergistic effects that may occur as a result of Skype's integration with the company:

• "Skype can increase the velocity of a trade..., especially in categories that require more involved communications such as used cars, business and industrial equipment, and high end collectibles."
• Paid Skype services such as SkypeOut could quickly be extended to support PayPal.

A webcast detailing the acquisition will take place on September 12 at 8:00am. More information about the webcast can be found at http://investor.ebay.com/event.cfm.

Update: Meg Whitman from EBay is emphasizing the synergies between Skype and PayPal in the conference call. There's an additional earn out provision based on aggressive Skype growth goals. Rajiv Dutta said that EBay could pay up to an additional $1.5 billion if Skype meets growth and revenue targets through 2008.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal reports in its Thursday edition that EBay is in talks to acquire Skype for between $2 and 3-billion dollars. According to the article "The talks are in a sensitive stage and could fall apart, according to one person briefed on the matter."

The article goes on to talk about why EBay would want to enter the business of Internet telephony:

{EBay is} interested in entering new businesses that could open up ways for the company to generate revenue, such as pay-per-call Internet telephony, in ways that it cannot in its current structure.... EBay has long said it plans to increase its market share of Internet commerce and would explore new areas that allowed it to do so. Skype offers the Internet auctioneer a thriving e-commerce business that benefits from so-called network effect, which is a good or service that has value to a potential customer based on the number of customers who already own that good or use that service....

Skype has been shopping itself around to a number of deep-pocketed Internet-related companies. It's also exploring an Initial Public Offering.

Some suggest that a valuation of $2 to 3-billion dollars is difficult to justify, given the limited barriers to entering the VoIP market. This is illustrated by the recent introduction of Google Talk which has some of the same features as Skype. Google probably considered acquiring Skype, balked at the price, and instead rolled out its own competing service. [ Subscription required to read articles from The Wall Street Journal. ]

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Andy Abramson pointed out how he uses an out-of-market number provided by AT&T CallVantage to save his mother money on her phone bill. Andy said:

For the past few years my mom has been calling me long distance, but of late, now that I reinforced the point of my local Philadelphia CallVantage number she finally began using it. Why? She decided to trim her phone budget by some $25.00 a month eliminating unnecessary features like three way calling, speed dial and voice mail, most of which she never used....

With energy prices soaring, now is the time to help our friends and relatives find ways to economize that don't change their lifestyles. VoIP is one obvious solution.

An out-of-market VoIP number is a really attractive solution if you have a relative on a fixed-income who doesn't have broadband. If you get a number in that person's area, you can have them call that number with a local call, which is typically free. This is a way for people who don't even have broadband in their homes to reap the benefits of VoIP.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been talking to Martin O'Donnell and Andy Abramson recently about getting a Bluetooth headset in order to be able to use it with both my Palm Treo 650 and my PC when I'm using Skype and Google Talk.

Many of the Bluetooth headsets that are currently on sale will do double duty in this manner, but some of them are Bluetooth 1.2-compatible while others are only compatible with Bluetooth 1.1. I wasn't sure if it mattered whether I had Bluetooth 1.2 compatiblility, so I had to do some research.

It turns out that the Treo 650 only supports Bluetooth 1.1 anyway and that Palm says it has "no plans to upgrade the Bluetooth technology in the Treo 650 smartphone to version 1.2". In addition, most Bluetooth USB adapters like the Belkin F8T003 that I have installed on my Blogging Workstation are only Bluetooth 1.1 compatible.

If the Treo 650 and my PC had both supported Bluetooth 1.2, I would have excluded Bluetooth 1.1 headsets from my product search. I clearly don't have to restrict myself now.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I forgot to mention that yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a free article called Talk of the Internet that surprisingly focused on computer applications that support voice communications between users. The article begins by describing how users of Battlefield 2 from Electronic Arts can communicate with each other via a Voice over IP (VoIP) client that's embedded in the game itself. How cool is that?

Of course this is old hat to people that have been using XBox Live for a while, but I missed the peer-to-peer voice communications aspects of this on-line service until it was recently pointed out to me.

I keyed in on the discussion of Battlefield 2 in this article because it's a perfect example of an application for VoIP that's not simply about saving money on telephone calls by routing them over the Internet. The voice communications capability in Battlefield 2 is arguably a new dimension of Internet-aware computer applications.

Analysts like Maribel Lopez of Forrester Research believe that VoIP is overhyped because cheap long distance calling will not drive VoIP adoption as far into the mainstream as will new ways to use voice communications that come embedded in products and services we buy.

The article goes on to point out that VoIP is also being embedded in Instant Messaging and similar Internet communications apps that already have a huge number of users. The IM-feel of Skype was probably helpful in its rapid adoption. Google probably thought it would catch a wave of early adopters by designing Google Talk with a similar feature set.

I'd also like to point out that the WSJ article mentions my new friend Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch and how VoIP helped facilitate his long distance relationship with his fiancee Helene Malabed. This story has gotten a lot of play in VoIP-related blogs recently, but it's illustrative of the new opportunities that people will have to build close relationships with people who live some distance away.

I hate to think about how much money I spent on long distance charges talking to Kathleen when she lived in Philadelphia and I lived in Denville, NJ, before we got married. If that part of our relationship were taking place today, we could have saved most of that cost. It would be extremely difficult to quantify those savings without going through many dozens of phone bills, but I wouldn't be surprised to have paid a four-digit number of dollars over the three years Kathleen was in medical school.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, I was talking to Martin O'Donnell about a plug-and-play VoIP terminal called PhoneGnome. PhoneGnome is a small appliance that you can use to make Internet telephone calls, but you "buy and own it" and no monthly subscription fee is charged.

A lot of the VoIP services encourage you to use them for all of your telephone calls. PhoneGnome is designed for users who:

1. have broadband already,
2. want to keep their local phone line for basic services like unmeasured local calling and 911, and
3. want to use VoIP when it's convenient and when it results in significant savings.

The PhoneGnome appliance straddles your regular phone line and broadband connection. It extends to the local telephone line some of the advanced services that VoIP users take for granted, like voicemail with email delivery, call waiting, and three way calling. Once you install the PhoneGnome, you can drop some of these services from your local phone line. Most local phone companies charge at least $7.00 per line per month to provide voicemail service.

When a PhoneGnome appliance is installed, it gets programmed with the phone number for the regular telephone line that's connected to it. That number is registered in a directory of PhoneGnome devices so that other PhoneGnomes know to route calls to it via peer-to-peer VoIP. This is how PhoneGnome delivers VoIP calling that's free of monthly fees and per-minute charges.

If you spend a great deal of time on calls with other PhoneGnome users, you can save a lot of money by reducing the cost of those calls to $0. That's why PhoneGnomes can be purchased in a two-pack (although they can also be purchased individually). I think people with overseas relatives or friends and family members far away will save a lot of money this way.

PhoneGnome is Session Initiation Protocol-compliant (SIP), which means that VoIP calls can be placed using an SIP address rather than a phone number. This feature is unlikely to get extensive use by the non-technical portion of the PhoneGnome user base, but more computer-oriented users will probably figure out ways to put SIP addresses on speed dial and save themselves additional money.

PhoneGnome can also be used to make VoIP calls to any phone number in the world, but those calls must be routed through a VoIP service provider for delivery back to the local telephone network or a mobile phone. A list of PhoneGnome-compatible VoIP services and rates is available.

PhoneGnome seems like a very unique product that approaches VoIP telephony in a new and different way. I'm sure it will be a God-send to people who have large long distance bills today and don't have the technical skill to use Skype or a more computer-oriented VoIP service.

I hope to get a PhoneGnome for review so we can put it through its paces and report on the experience of using it.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

See also:

1. Introducing PhoneGnome on Gigaom.com, and
2. PhoneGnome: The Hot Rod of ATAs on Voxilla.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amazon.com put many APC products including Genuine APC Replacement Batteries on sale. I discovered that I needed a replacement battery the other day when the power at the Home Office sagged for a moment. All of the computer equipment in the basement including my Linux development server, VoIP Telephone Adapters, DSL modem, firewall, network switch, wireless access point, and phone system spontaneously restarted.

When I saw this I said, "I must need a new battery, but why hasn't the UPS been beeping at me?" I ordered a replacement battery the next day. That night at 1:30am, I woke up because I heard the UPS alarm beeping in the basement.

If you run your home or work phone service using Voice over Internet Protocol, make sure you have a UPS providing power to your DSL modem and VoIP Telephone Adapters. If you already have a UPS, make sure your battery is good.

I like to buy Genuine APC Replacement Batteries for two reasons:

1. Genuine APC Replacement Batteries preserve any applicable warranty coverage.
2. APC sends a shipping label with Genuine APC Replacement Batteries so you can send the spent battery back for proper disposal.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

CanoScan LiDE 500F Flatbed Scanner:
I got my new, inexpensive CanoScan
scanner on Wednesday. I bought it to
replace my fax machine in the new
VoIP-based Home Office.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

I received my CanoScan LiDE 500F Flatbed Scanner the other day. It's a very inexpensive color scanner that fits on my desk between my flat panel displays and the place where I keep my laptop.

I've opened a new CanoScan LiDE 500F photo album. This currently has a bunch of "box unpacking" photos, but I'm planning to add example scans in the near future. Check them out if you're interested.

At well under $150 this scanner is a great deal. I can use it to scan documents that I will faxed using my eFax Plus account. I can also use it to scan 48-bit color images at 4,800 x 2,400 dots per inch.

I got the idea to buy this from Jeremy Zawodny and I agree with him that the LiDE 500F is:

• small,
• quiet,
• light, and
• pretty fast.

Technorati Tags: VoIP

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As we progressed through the process of replacing our POTS lines with VoIP for the home office, we ran into a couple of issues that needed to be researched. One important one was the issue of how to send and receive faxes.

Several people who I've talked to about the trade-offs of using a single number for voice and fax versus a dedicated fax number have said that the key issue is that people using a single number are perceived to be hobbyists rather than serious business people. Also some businesses are more fax-centric than others. A good example of this is the medical field.

Kathleen needs to be able to send and receive faxes from insurance providers since most of them establish relationships with doctors on an individual rather than a per-practice basis. The effort she has undertaken to get listed as a health care provider with all of the major medical insurers that serve customers in the Pennsylvania suburbs of Philadelphia has required lots of faxing.

Many VoIP services include some fax capability. Speakeasy VoIP/Home provides the ability to receive faxes as email attachments. However, faxes must be sent to the same number that you use for voice calls, otherwise you have to buy another line at $23.95 per month. This is slightly different from how providers like Vonage handle fax, but the charges and performance of the VoIP service aren't entirely comparable either.

What I chose to do was to get a eFaxPlus account and use that as my fax solution. This gives me a separate, dedicated fax number in my area code for $12.95 per month plus $0.10 per outgoing page and provides many of the same email-integration features I would get from using my Speakeasy VoIP/Home number for both fax and voice. The big difference is that I'm saving $11.00 per month in service fees, which means I'd need to send more than 110 pages of faxes per month in order to lose money on the deal.

Once I made the fax service decision, I focused on the right device to use to scan papers for faxing. I don't want to use my Xerox WorkCentre 385 if it isn't connected to a phone line in the traditional manner. The scanning capability it has isn't very good and it also uses too much power when I use the laser printing engine in it to copy or print documents.

I'd prefer an inexpensive, compact scanner that is portable enough to use with my laptop if necessary. The one I chose is the Canon CanoScan LiDE 500F Color Image Scanner. I got the idea to purchase this from Googling around. Jeremy Zawodny's article I Like My Canon CanoScan LiDE 500F Scanner made a good case for it.

The price is definitely right. I like the fact that it gets its power entirely from the USB 2.0 connector. This means I can hook it up to my Blogging Workstation most of the time. The scanner itself is no bigger than a laptop when laid flat on the desk, so it won't take up as much room as typical flatbed scanners. I can also set it up so it sits on the desk in an upright position [ see photo on that page ], which makes it look like a partially-opened book.

At about $120, purchasing the CanoScan LiDE 500F eats into my expected savings, but I feel that its additional features make the expenditure worth it at this time. I can use it to scan documents for faxing, but it will also come in handy for scanning pages from magazines for digital storage or photos for which I can't find the negative.

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Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When Kathleen and I decided to move to Newtown, Pennsylvania, we decided that we were going to move as aggressively into the new age of telecommunications as possible. At the most basic level, this meant that all telephone service for the house and the Home Office would use Voice over IP instead of standard telephone lines. Standard phone lines are sometimes known as POTS lines for Plain Old Telephone Service.

In our old place in East Windsor, NJ, we had five POTS lines: four lines that fed into our Panasonic Digital Super Hybrid Phone System which we bought four years ago from Ablecomm and one line that was an office fax line and carried the Verizon DSL service. This system was intended to allow us to:

• run a single phone system for the house and the Home Office,
• answer any phone line on the system via any phone set in the house, and
• operate our own programmable voice mail system.

This was a good idea when I got a lot of incoming calls when I was in the office. A lot more of my business is transacted over email and IM than the phone today, and I need good phone service more often when I'm out of the office than when I'm at my desk. This is a big reason why I bought myself a Treo 650.

The first step in making this switch actually took place before we decided to move. Back in March, Kathleen and I each bought Treo 650s with unlimited mobile data service. We did this because it allowed us to access our email from anywhere and reduce our overall telecom bills by shifting a lot of our calling to free Cingular Mobile to Mobile calling which is free under our billing plans.

The intent after we got our Treo 650s was to reduce the number of POTS lines we had installed in East Windsor to the minimum necessary to operate our phone system, but it never happened because we subsequently focused on Kathleen's job search and then a search for a new house.

During the new house search we came to depend upon our Treos. We were able to call, email, and look at the web from the front seat of our car. This is really helpful when you are house hunting. Eventually we realized that we don't need our home phone for too much anymore, other than as a place for people to leave messages for us. This pushed us even harder in the direction of VoIP.

When we committed to moving to Newtown, I began doing research to see if I could get "naked DSL" at the new house. I eventually settled on Speakeasy OneLink because it was a high speed DSL service that didn't require a regular phone line and I could combine OneLink with Speakeasy VoIP/Home under one bill.

I went with Speakeasy for all of my telecom needs for the Home Office because their VoIP service was a fairly unique offering. Since they have a nationwide broadband network, they are able to manage traffic on that network to prioritize VoIP traffic. This means they can guarantee Quality of Service all along their network, where VoIP carriers that don't own a broadband network have limited ability to manage QoS.

I've asked friends who know about VoIP if they can tell that I'm calling them using one of my Speakeasy VoIP lines. None of them could tell we were on a VoIP call until I told them.

The price we're paying for Speakeasy VoIP/Home is $23.95 per month per line for unlimited calling in the USA and Canada. That's where the real savings is for us compared to our Verizon service when we were in East Windsor. We paid about $31.22 per residential line with nothing but local calls, so local toll calls and long distance added to that. Speakeasy VoIP/Home is also price competitive with Vonage, which prices unlimited calling in the USA and Canada at $24.00 per month.

At some point I'm going to try to come up with a telecommunications cost comparison, illustrating all of the services we paid for in East Windsor and what we substituted them with Newtown. In the meantime, I recommend that you take a look at Glenn Fleishman's telecom package choices and itemized list of charges. He didn't make the same choices we made, but the magnitude of his savings was one of the things that influenced us to take a look at switching to VoIP in the first place.

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Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonathan Maus told us that Inveneo has developed a bicycle-powered, Linux-based VoIP phone system for use in developing countries. No kidding.

I found an explanation of a Pedal and Solar Powered PC and Communications System on the Inveneo web site. This article does not discuss the inclusion of the Asterisk open source PBX system, so this may be an elaboration on the design.

This reminds me a bit of the ad for ESPN SportsCenter that starred Lance Armstrong that was aired in 2001 and 2002. I wonder if the folks at Inveneo were in some small way inspired by it? [ via Engadget ]

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Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Glenn Fleishman published a complete explanation of his effort to consolidate the telecommunications services he uses. His intent was to minimize his costs. He takes advantage of several Cingular Wireless services (FastForward call forwarding services and the FamilyTalk 850 billing plan), Vonage's $25 per month Premium Unimited VOIP service, and Skype's SkypeOut long distance service to save himself and his family about $130 per month. He also published a detailed breakdown of his future telecom bills.

Kathleen and I have been talking about doing a telecom consolidation like this for several weeks now. The reasons I haven't proceeded yet are:

1. I want to figure out how to connect VOIP to our Panasonic Digital Super Hybrid Phone System. Ed Anuff says he's done this at his home in California, so I need to get the details from him.
2. I am waiting for the U.S. GSM carriers to announce the availability of the Treo 650 on their network. Once that is done, I will decide whether to consolidate our mobile service on Cingular or T-Mobile.

I'd like to look at ditching Comcast cable service as well, and moving to DirecTV or the Dish Network. However, that will probably have to wait until January or February, when I will have more money and time available.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)