“Un ratón en la Luna” (A Mouse in the Moon)Live Show In Malaga this Christmas

Living here in Andalucia we are always looking for events and activities that will keep our children entertained especially during the school holidays and even more so during the winter months when the weather is not so good and the children start to get bored as they can get out and play. Me and my family have lived here for 5 years now and have been settled in our town house in Alhaurin el Grande for the last 4 years, and our 8 year old boy has settled into his life here in Spain very well and has asked me what can he do during the holidays. Serching around I have found a great event which sounds like a great bit of fun for all the family at an exceptional cost The Gades hall in Malaga which is part of the Teatro Canovas is the venue for a production known as "Un ratón en la Luna" (A Mouse in the Moon) The show is an an adaptation by Julia Ruiz of a story writain by Paco and José Vigueras It tells the story of Ulises, a traveller ,glutton -and also a mouse- who once tried to eat the moon because he thought it was cheese hanging down from the sky. He turns to his friend Cali for help after failing in his attempt to eat the moon on numerous occasions . His friend agrees to help and the mouse then embarks on a space journey in search for his longed-for delicacy The two actors are Fran Machado and Verónica Pérez who together are known as PINPONCLOWN Like many performances of childrens theatre there is also a lesson to be learnt though the story and that is the lesson the  appearances can be deceiving, It is part of the "Tales of Science" programme, a wonderful project which is the brainchild of the Granada Science Park . The idea reconciles science with the performing arts The show is going to performed over two days with 1 show per day Performance Dates/Times/Cost 27th December 18.30 6€ 28th December 12.00 6€ For More Information On the Show please contact Gades Hall C/ Cerrojo, s/n MÁLAGA Or visit the website: www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/teatrocanovas

 

Dream Away in Extremadura

Though first time travelers to Spain might not get to Extremadura (which in English means "extreme" and "difficult."), a few days visit might be worth the trip. A few hours west of Madrid will put you in the province of Badajoz. This is the part of Spain that borders Portugal, and depending on the party in government at the time, might find its frontier towns under the jurisdiction of another European flag. Hidden off of the highway towards Huelva (at kilómetro 41,100) you'll find Rocamador, a hotel in its own class. Called Otro Mundo, or "Other World" by those who have stayed here, Rocamador features balconied rooms (each one different), a stone-laid swimming oasis, and billowing curtains separating adjoining courtyards. Built into the rock, the converted convent is as real as any dream you've ever had. Dismiss the hopes of seeing Spanish film stars or the social elite from the capital. Even though they're probably staying in the room next door, you'll never see them because everyone moves through Rocamador like thieves returning to their hidden layer. First timers to España might be more attracted to Andalucía or Catalunya, but just as every soul is woven of intricate strands, so too is Spain. Extremadura is the rough and quiet complement to the other, better-known provinces. Tours to Extremadura, Andalucía and Catalunya are available by Olé Spain, Cultural Walking Tours

 

Eat, drink and make merry on the Costa del Sol this Christmas

The Costa del Sol is famous as a playground for the rich and famous, one of the most modern, cosmopolitan areas of Europe and the jewel in the crown of Andalucía's coastal tourism hotspots. Millions of visitors from around the world flock to its golden shores year after year to enjoy the fabulous climate and the facilities on offer, not just in the summer, but increasingly during the winter months too, especially over Christmas and the New Year. The main attraction of spending Christmas on Europe's most southerly shore – the warm, glorious sunshine apart - is there's just so much to do; more so if you're in the mood to eat, drink and make merry. The Costa del Sol is blessed with a myriad of top quality restaurants, bars and clubs. There's enough to satisfy even the most demanding of festive fun seekers. Where to eat From Nerja to Málaga, Marbella to Sotogrande, great places to eat are in plentiful supply on the Costa del Sol, serving everything from gourmet food to authentic backstreet Spanish 'tapas', as well as traditional Christmas and New Year's Eve fare over the festive season. If you fancy mouth-watering delights to stimulate your taste buds, with a side order of cool eco edge this Christmas, Terra Sana in Marbella is without doubt the place to head for. Throughout December, they're serving delicious, freshly made, lovingly prepared healthy Christmas food for the soul, using organically grown products. Their New Year's Eve party, which includes a welcoming drink, a set menu and party goodies, is the hottest ticket in town this year. If you fancy Christmas with an Asian touch, Tikitano in Estepona offers creative and exciting dishes with live entertainment – cabaret on Christmas Day, and jazz and soul with a spectacular fireworks display on New Year's Eve. The Beach House in Elviria, meanwhile, offers sophisticated beachside dining, with fantastic views across the Mediterranean and a full Christmas and New Year's menu. A word of warning; most restaurants on the Coast are busy over the Christmas and New Year period, so it's wise to book as early as possible to guarantee your table. Where to drink Although its most famously hedonistic days are now largely over, the many restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs and the casino in Puerto Banús still attracts the 'Beautiful People' and it remains the place on the Costa del Sol where the high-life can be enjoyed to the absolute max. Over the festive season, there's an exciting buzz to the place, especially in the bustling streets around the marina area, where a myriad of funky watering holes and music bars are lively until the early hours. Chief among them are Sinatra's, Terra Blues and La Comedia, but the choice is wide. Marbella's historic Old Town district also boasts some of the best nightlife to be had anywhere on the Coast. It's said that the Old Town attracts a more discerning, perhaps even bohemian nightlife crowd than other night spots on the Coast. There's certainly a more laid-back atmosphere. That's not to say there's any less fun to be had. On the contrary, the plethora of bars to be found throughout its honeycomb of narrow cobbled streets are just as vibrant as anywhere else and most stay open until near dawn. Where to go out clubbing In Spain, a typical club only really 'gets going' around 1 or 2am, a lot later than in most Northern European countries, and usually keeps going until dawn. Most towns on the Costa del Sol have a selection of different clubs to suit all tastes. Perhaps the most famous and opulent of them all is Olivia Valere in Marbella, which is a bona fide hang out for celebrities and the well-heeled. Suite club at the Hotel Puente Romano in Marbella, meanwhile, has an ultra-hip atmosphere, where DJs from the UK spin the latest dance music. Dreamers disco just outside Puerto Banús is also extremely popular, attracting large crowds with guest DJs from around the world. You can find out more about these bars, restaurants, clubs and others complete with contact details, in the fabulous FREE 'Winter Sun and Fun Guide to the Costa del Sol' produced by HolidayRentalontheWeb.com. See bottom of page for more information. HolidayRentalontheWeb.com is a British-run company based on the Costa del Sol that offers a wide selection of fully-managed self-catering holiday rental accommodation in the most sought after areas of the Coast – everything from private villas (some with heated pools) to luxury apartments either beachside or close to golf courses. Most are within easy reach of the best restaurants, bars and shopping the Coast has to offer. What's more, for each 7 nights you book over the Christmas and New Year period, before 24th December, you'll get 1 of those nights free., so you pay for only 6. Click here for more information and to get a copy of their FREE 'Winter Sun and Fun Guide to the Costa del Sol' or call (UK) 0208 123 58 53, or (Spain) 0034 952 83 95 95.

 

Dahdi-linux 2.1.0 and dahdi-tools 2.1.0 released

The Asterisk development team is pleased to announce the release of versions 2.1.0 of both dahdi-linux and dahdi-tools. DAHDI now includes a native driver for the B410P four port BRI module. The Digium Asterisk Hardware Device Interface (DAHDI) is a collection of drivers and utilities for connecting your Asterisk installation to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)  dahdi-linux is the package that contains the Linux kernel modules while dahdi-tools contains the user mode scripts and utilities for working with dahdi-linux. DAHDI is supported by Asterisk versions 1.4.22 and greater as well as Asterisk versions 1.6.0 and greater. More detailed information about each of the packages is below: ====== dadhi-linux-2.1.0 =================== Some of the highlights of the 2.1.0 release are: * Added a new wcb4xxp driver to support ISDN BRI from within DAHDI. * Added  hooks to simplify end-user installation of OSLEC as an echo canceler. * ...and various other bug fixes and improvements. You can find the complete change log online at: http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/dahdi-linux/ChangeLog-2.1.0 Known Issues: * Reference counting is not currently done on echo canceler modules, and therefore it is possible for an administrator to unload an echo canceler module that is in use which could result in a crash. It is recommended to use /etc/init.d/dahdi start|stop to load and unload your drivers to eliminate exposure to this issue. Bug [1]13504. * If you have configured your wcb4xxp spans and receive messages that "No D-channels  available!",  you  might  need to update your asterisk installation in order to tell it to ignore the layer 1 link state on the BRI spans. Bug [2]14031. ===== dahdi-tools-2.1.0 ==================== Some of the highlights of the 2.1.0 release are: * Added support for the new wcb4xxp driver. * DTMF twist levels now meet the TBR-21 standard for EU countries. You can find the complete change log online at: http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/dahdi-tools/ChangeLog-2.1.0 ===== dahdi-linux-complete-2.1.0+2.1.0 ===== This release combines dahdi-linux and dahdi-tools into a single download, one-package installation process. Users who are installing DAHDI for the first time don't have to download and install the dahdi-linux and dahdi-tools packages separately. References 1. http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=13504 2. http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=14031

 

Linking Skype 2.8 Beta to Twitter - here's how to do it...

Wouldn't it be great if you could integrate Skype's mood messages with Twitter? So that whatever you entered in Skype could show up in Twitter? It turns out that you can in the new Skype 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X... with a little file editing. NOTE: This appears to be an experimental feature added by a Skype developer... and as I note at the bottom, it has some bugs. Here's what you need to do: 1. On your Mac, using either the Finder or the command-line, whichever you prefer, go to the directory/folder /Users/yourmacusername/Library/Application Support/Skype/yourskypeusername. (For example, my directory is /Users/dyork/Library/Application Support/Skype/danyork) 2. With some text editor, open the file config.xml. 3. Toward the end of the file, you will see a section of XML about <UI> and inside of that a subsection <General>. In that General section, add these two lines:  <TwitterPassword>yourpassword</TwitterPassword>  <TwitterUsername>yourusername</TwitterUsername> Here's an abbreviated version of what it looked like in my file:   <UI>     ...     <General>       <LastSkypeVersionUsed>2.8.0.309</LastSkypeVersionUsed>       <SmsShowNumber>0</SmsShowNumber>       <TwitterPassword>yourpassword</TwitterPassword>       <TwitterUsername>yourusername</TwitterUsername>     </General>     <Profile>       <LastOnlineStatus>2</LastOnlineStatus>     </Profile>   </UI> 4. Restart Skype. Ta da... now anything you type in your Mood Message Chat or regular Mood Message window will show up in Twitter. Now I found out about this when I sent some feedback to Skype about my initial use of the 2.8 Beta and said "I already have enough places to update status - why can't this be linked to, say, Twitter?" The email response mentioned this hack of the config file. I have no idea whether this feature will be improved in some future version (and perhaps supported) or if it will be removed... or simply remain as a hack for those who want to go through the work. A MAJOR CAVEAT - It does, though, seem to have at least one major bug. If those of you following my Twitter stream wondered why I had tweets coming out that were simply something like "Define", here's why... the Skype-to-Twitter integration seems to chop what is sent to Twitter after a single or double-quote So setting my Skype mood message to: Define "VoIP" - and then we can talk about it's death! wound up simply being this in Twitter: Define Similarly, mood messages I have entered with apostrophes (such as "Here's a link to .... ") wind up only sending the part before the apostrophe. It would appear to pretty obviously be a bug in how this code is written. Maybe they'll fix that. Maybe they won't. Still, if you can avoid apostrophes and quotes, it does provide a nice way for Skype mood messages to go to Twitter. Obviously this means that Skype is where you originate your Twitter messages (or at least some of them... the ones that you update in your Mood Messages). Going the other way and allowing Twitter messages to update your Skype mood message would also be great... but that's not this particular feature. And there you have it... have fun with it! P.S. Sorry, Windows and Linux Skype users, this appears to be another Mac-only feature...

 

Directory forming of Twitter users related to Telephony/VoIP/Asterisk/etc.

Do you use Twitter and are interested in finding people on Twitter to follow related to telephony, VoIP, Asterisk, communications, etc? Well the folks over at the VoIP Users Conference have put together a website that provides a directory of twitter users related to those topics. If you'd like, you can add yourself using this form. It's nice to see a directory like that, although it's unfortunate that you can't simply click on the person's twitter name to see their page. Perhaps this was done to counteract spammers because if live links were allowed the directory might be rapidly overrun with spammers looking for SEO. I don't know... the good news is that Twitter names are all short. Naturally I added myself, both with my personal 'danyork' Twitter account as well as the 'voxeo' Twitter account I use for our blog posts and other communication.

 

As Broadband Growth Slows, Telcos Lose Out

A new report from Pike & Fisher should strike fear in the hearts of telecommunications companies. First, it posits that broadband growth will decline by 12 percent in the U.S. (although subscriptions themselves will grow by 8 percent), and that of the 5.7 million new broadband subscribers anticipated in 2009, three fourths of them will choose cable. That's certainly not good news for carriers hoping to stem landline loss (P&F estimates landlines will decline almost 16 percent next year to 86 million). It also puts a crimp in plans to offer converged services across televisions, mobile phones and computers — something both AT&T and the cable guys are itching to do. Wireless subscriptions have helped carriers along, as the incredible growth of wireless data adoption has somewhat offset the loss of landlines and the slow growth of DSL. However, those new subscriptions may also wane. Pike & Fisher estimates that 60 percent of wireless subscribers will have a 3G handset, but the report didn't make any guesses about wireless data subscription growth. Fears of a wireless subscriber slowdown led yesterday to a downgrade of Verizon's and AT&T's shares from Craig Moffett, the communications analyst at Sanford Bernstein, who has also been less than impressed with Verizon's investments in fiber. Anyhow, new subscribers on the wireless side don't fill in the revenue gap incurred when landline and DSL subscribers leave. As for television services from the carriers, they're growing rapidly, but still will likely have a mere 6 percent of the market, according to the Pike & Fisher report.

 

Motorola Captures 3 Trends for 2009 in One Device

As part of a CES related briefing, I was turned on to a product Motorola is pushing that combines a CDMA femotocell with a software-based phone and a digital picture frame. The femotocell will connect with a user's existing broadband connection and boost cellular coverage in the home. The picture frame shows pictures and also has a video camera embedded in it. For those of you wondering why this hodge podge of functionality exists, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the trends Motorola is trying to address with this Swiss-Army type device. Femtocells: They were hot last year, and this year they may actually see some widespread deployments as carriers cop to the fact that people want decent cell phone coverage in their homes after dumping their landlines, and that means offloading some of the network traffic onto a DSL or fiber backhaul network makes sense. The Moto version is CDMA, meaning it will work with Verizon (a VZ) and Sprint's current 3G networks in the U.S. Other players offering CDMA femotcells are Airvana (which provides the silicon for the Motorola femtoframe) and Samsung. Design: Last year saw more folks complaining about their ugly routers; now, apparently, the consumer electronics industry is finally taking a page from Apple and trying to gussy up our gadgets. Turning a femotcell into a digital picture frame is one way of making an ugly black box with lots of blinking lights into a slightly less ugly black box that also shows pictures. As devices migrate out of home offices and into the living room near our aesthetically pleasing flat screen TVs, they'd better look better. User Generated Feedback Goes Beyond the Web: Sure, the web has plenty of ways for users to customize their experiences and offer feedback, but in the coming year, businesses are going to be looking even deeper. In a talk at our NewTeeVee Live event, David Verklin of Canoe Ventures detailed how service providers will use interactive IP communications to make advertising more relevant for consumers, and more lucrative for service providers. With the Motorola frame, a user can voluntarily offer details about their home (such as the number of windows, building material, etc.) to the service provider to help optimize coverage — a less invasive use of interactivity that can still benefit businesses. Motorola wasn't able to tell me how much this device will go for or even how much it might cost to make, but Rob Malnati, a senior manager at Motorola, said it would likely be offered through the carriers as part of the current subsidized model for consumer premise equipment. It will be available for trials in the first part of this year. I can't see Verizon or Sprint choosing to offer something like this if it costs a lot more for them. On the other hand, I might pay a slight premium for one less box of blinking lights on my desktop.

 

10 Stories That Defined Broadband in 2008

With every tick of the clock, 2008 is taking its final steps toward 2009, when the year starts afresh. From a broadband perspective it has been an eventful year –- one that was good, bad and ugly. Here is a rundown of 10 stories that defined the sector in 2008: 1. Optical cable cuts bookend bookmark the year In 2008 we saw undersea optical cables cut on two separate occasions, resulting in limited Internet and voice access in countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In January two cables went out in the Mediterranean Sea, and then two more went on the blink in February. Towards the end of 2008, similar cable cuts near Malta led to wide-scale problems. 2. Peering troubles disrupt the Internet Cogent Communications, a wholesale bandwidth provider, got into a fracas with two separate carriers -– Telia and Sprint — and shut off its connections with them, which resulted in many of their customers losing access to the Internet. Regardless of whose fault it was, the brouhaha brought home the fact that the Internet is really a network where many parties agree to interconnect to each other and any one party can cause the whole thing to fall apart (or slow down). 3. The unwelcome rise of metered broadband In the U.S., we started to see the asphyxiation of unlimited broadband. Limited by imagination and slowing growth prospects, and with their video franchises threatened, newly independent Time Warner Cable and Comcast embraced the concept of metered broadband. Phone companies joined in, and now we are faced with a rather bleakbroadband future in this country. Of course everyone is blaming P2P, Hulu and the growing demand for online video. But once ISPs started to block P2P traffic,they soon found themselves in trouble with the FCC. We issued our own GigaOM white paper that looked at the facts and fiction of bandwidth caps. 4. Wireless broadband takes wings, thanks to the iPhone 3G This summer, Apple released the 3G version of its popular iPhone, leading to a sharp increase in the demand for wireless Internet access. As predicted, it has tested the capabilities of AT&T's wireless network, while at the same time lifting demand for more capacity on mobile backhaul networks. AT&T had to buy Wayport, a Wi-Fi operator, to supplement its 3G networks as consumers turned to cheaper Wi-Fi for Internet access on their phones. Other wireless carriers are responding with their own devices and wireless data, turning it into a massive(and lucrative) business. Most notably, T-Mobile USA launched its much-awaited 3G network and a Google Phone to go along with it. 5. Planet Broadband There are now more than 400 million broadband users around the planet, many of them using faster (and somewhat more expensive) DSL connections. In leading broadband nations like Japan, Korea and parts of Europe, fiber-based Internet access became even more popular. In the U.S., Verizon is leading the fiber charge with its FiOS service. The U.S. remains the largest, if not the fastest (in terms of speed), broadband market. 6. Outages become commonplace In 2008, our reliance on the Internet — and web services in particular — increased, and more than once we were made acutely away of the fragile nature of web infrastructure. Google's popular Gmail service went on the blink, Amazon's fast-growing, cloud-based storageS3 service nosedived in July and more recently, DNS problems hit Yahoo and customers of its email service. And let's not forget when a simple routing change by Pakistan Telecom to block YouTube took down the video service for hours, leading to a sharp increase in productivity around the world. 7. Broadband capacity keeps growing and growing The growth of global commerce and online video will be enough to fill up all the optical pipes, according to Level 3 CEO Jim Crowe. The increasing number of mobile subscribers globally is causing an exponential rise in the demand for bandwidth, which is why despite declining prices there were several new cables installed, notably those connecting Africa and Asia to the rest of the planet. Meanwhile Google took stakes in pan-Asian cables as it tried to expand its reach eastward; it also bought a piece of satellite-based wholesale bandwidth provider, O3B Networks. 8. Clearwire & the divergent fortunes of WiMAX Sprint and Clearwire teamed up to form a new company, Clearwire, that will offer WiMAX-based broadband service in many U.S. cities. The company received more than $3 billion from backers like Google, Intel and cable operators such as Time Warner Cable and Comcast, but it needs still more, and the current credit crisis is givingcompany managementsome sleepless nights. The delay might cost WiMAX the short-term advantage it has over LTE, the rival 4G wireless broadband technology. In sharp comparison to the U.S., WiMAX technologies are taking off in emerging telecom economies such as India, a trend that is predicted to gather momentum in 2009 and 2010. 9. Troubles return to telecom land It was arguably the worst year on record for U.S. phone companies. Millions decided to cut the cord and switch entirely to mobile plans in order to save money. The demand for DSL services slowed to a crawl. Their expansion into video is going slower than previously predicted. In order to deal with slow consumer demand, phone companies are saving cash by not spending on infrastructure. But their attempts to hoard cash and not spend on new equipment is in turn sending telecom gear makers swirling down the drain. The cable operators are starting to feel the heat as well. 2009 isn't going to be easy for many of these companies. 10. Good-bye, Mr. Martin So what is it I am looking forward to in 2009? For starters, the back of Kevin Martin, the FCC chairman who in my opinion has done the most harm to broadband competition with his backward-looking, telecom-friendly policies. I hope President-elect Barack Obama looks outside the beltway to find the next FCC leader, someone who puts the people before special interest groups. This story also appeared on Businessweek.com.

 

Verizon, Why You Gotta Mess With My Settings?

Faced with a free moment on Saturday night, I succumbed to the temptation to check the GigaOM site on my BlackBerry. But when I clicked on my browser, I ended up in the Verizon start page. After checking that I had indeed clicked through the correct icon, I realized (with some irritation) that I had to go back in and change my settings to get my GigaOM home page back. A quick call to Verizon's customer service elicited no information, other than a guess that the phone had been updated and it erased the settings. Beyond the irritation, the unexpected and unauthorized change to my settings was a reminder that the phone still exists in a completely different world from that of the desktop or the notebook. If people connected to the web and found their settings changed by their ISP, there would be freakouts all over the blogosphere.But on the phone, the place where we're spending an increasing amount of our online minutes, mild irritation and a quick jaunt over to settings was all I could muster. However, with beefier computers such as netbooks relying on mobile networks (and faster wireless networks such as WiMAX that are angling to compete with cable and DSL), perhaps I should freak out. Such an update is pretty invasive, especially from a carrier that already blocks some of my smartphone's niftier features, such as navigation, in hopes of lining its own pockets. This little incident has me wondering: As we do more over wireless data networks, what rights should users expect, and how should carriers communicate the rights they're willing to give — and take?

 

On Twitter, Followers Aren’t Really Friends

This past weekend, we had yet another tempest in a teapot here in the blogosphere, this time over what, exactly, determines the authority of a tweet on Twitter. Some argued that the number of followers is the best yardstick with which to measure how important a tweet was, while others argued that it is who you follow that's more valuable. The high drama made me wonder: Why can't a tweet just be a tweet? Why does it have to be about authority? (I assume authority means "power to influence or command thought, opinion or behavior.") Nevertheless the discussion reminded me of a recent conversation I had with Bernardo Huberman, director of HP's Social Computing Lab. He (along with Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu) recently collected and analyzed information from the Twitter network to find out which people truly matter in an individual's social graph – and what ultimately influences a person's ability to absorb content. For each user of Twitter in our data set we obtained the number of followers and followees (people followed by a user) the user has declared, along with the content and date stamp of all his posts. Our data set consisted of a total of 309,740 users, who on average posted 255 posts, had 85 followers, and followed 80 other users. Among the 309,740 users only 211,024 posted at least twice. We call them the active users. We also define the active time of an active user by the time that has elapsed between his first and last post. On average, active users were active for 206 days. Huberman explained that in these time-constrained modern times, our relationships can be measured by the attention we accord to people. We do so by interacting with them — whether by making phone calls, meeting them for coffee, writing on their Facebook wall or in the case of Twitter, sending either direct or indirect replies. Interactions define the social relationship. On Twitter, he found that regardless of the number of followers or followees, there were very few friends in a personal Twitter circle. He used a very weak definition of "friend" — anyone to whom a user has directed a post at least twice. And because of that, Huberman says that in order to "influence a person's absorption of content, there is a need to find the hidden social network; the one that matters when trying to rely on word of mouth to spread an idea, a belief, or a trend." Huberman's study found that: Users with a large number of followers are not necessarily those with very large number of total posts. Even though the number of friends initially increases as the number of followees increases, after a while the number of friends starts to saturate and stays nearly constant. The number of people a user actually communicates with eventually stops increasing while the number of followees can continue to grow indefinitely.

 

Truphone Brings Skype To iPhone & iTouch

I have been a frequent user of Truphone since it launched its mobile VoIP service over two years ago. What started as a simple VoIP client for Nokia Symbian S60 devices is fast becoming a unified client that does it all. You can make low-cost calls using Wi-Fi networks, utilize the wireless networks for call-back services and send SMS messages on the cheap. The company is now taking a big step toward becoming an all-encompassing service by announcing support for Skype and other instant messaging. If you have Truphone installed on your iPhone or iTouch you can make (and receive) Skype calls and send instant messages to other Skype users by downloading the updated software on Jan. 12. So far, accessing Skype on an iPhone/iTouch has been hard. (According to our commenters, you can use Fring for iPhone or Nimbuzz iPhone apps to access Skype.) I had tried to wrestle Skype CEO Josh Silverman on when he was going to release a client, but failed to get an answer from him. So, from that perspective, this is a welcome upgrade by Truphone. The company is also adding support to other messaging services as well. You can also access Twitter using the Truphone client. The offering is exclusively for iPhone and iTouch for now.  Geraldine Wilson, who was recently appointed as the chief executive of Truphone, told me in a conversation earlier today that Truphone wants to "offer our users a comprehensive communications experience. We started out as a voice app but now we are broadening it to other applications." By doing so, Wilson and Truphone founder James Tagg believe that they will give Truphone users a reason to stay insider the application longer, creating more opportunities to make phone calls and bringing in much-needed revenues. "In a mobile environment it is hard to switch between different applications, and that is why we are creating a single application environment," Tagg says. As we have noticed previously, iPhone and iTouch have been saviors for Truphone. Wilson told me that the company has more than 100,000 subscribers who use an iPhone, and iTouch has started to see an quick ramp as well. "Since the iPhone introduction, we are seeing our subscriber base double every month," she said. In Fall 2008, I spoke with Truphone's CTO, Alistair Campbell, who told me: Truphone for iPhone now accounts for about one-half of the total number of Truphone users. And while he wouldn't disclose the total number of downloads, he did say that the company is focusing more of its resources on Apple's platform. OK, now I have another reason to use Truphone.

 

Network Cost Cutting Measures in a Tight Economy

Now is a very volatile economic time. Even with Government intervention, there is still a lot of uncertainty in the market. Whether you're a public or private company, now is the time to evaluate how you could trim your networking costs. Below are seven cost-cutting initiatives your company can take immediately to save on networking costs. 1. Bid multiple network providers It may be more comfortable to continue to go with your present provider. But don't be shy. Providers anticipate buyers will look at other providers and have set up various measures to ensure they can meet buyers' expectations. One way to have choice of network providers is to colocate your core networking equipment in a carrier-grade colocation facility that provides you with the most access options. By meeting networks at their source, you gain benefits that include "the ability to reduce costs by not paying local loops to connect directly with providers," states Joe Cooper, vice president of sales at Mzima Networks, a nation-wide Internet bandwidth provider. "By eliminating the local loop from the service providers' core routers to your primary networking equipment, companies can save thousands of dollars a month." Another way to have more network provider choice is to be more flexible with respect to the type of access and technology you require (e.g. T1 versus cable access versus DSL access). 2. Look for promotions In tough times, many companies offer promotions which provide cost-savings opportunities for buyers. As a buyer, you can leverage these opportunities to gain both short and long-term cost savings. Promotional opportunities make noise in the marketplace and may also instigate competitors to provide their own 'price-break' opportunities as a response. Don't hold back on doing your research and subsequently sharing your knowledge about promotional pricing being offered. 3. Know what you need If you are growing and anticipate buying more network services within the year, forecasting your growth and requirements are to your advantage. Buying network services on an 'as needed basis' is less risky than holding on to too much bandwidth or capacity fearing you won't be able to sell it off. However, with tight margins, aggressive pricing and the growing demand of larger bandwidth, your risk of buying more now may pay off in the end. Buying a GigE pipe now versus multiple 100Mbps pipes on an 'as needed basis' could save you thousands of dollars a month. Many companies offer a pay as you grow solution as well. Don't hesitate to negotiate from a position of power and knowledge. 4. Look at other technologies If you have an older network that is based on technologies like private line or frame relay, take a look at newer technologies like MPLS or IPSec VPN or Ethernet. Often these newer technologies come at lower price points and may also come with newer features that you may need. 5. Explore secondary/tertiary provider options as an alternative to incumbents Many Incumbents have legacy infrastructure that has organically grown over the years. Competitive providers have the advantage of deploying the latest technology at the onset, thereby offering the market lower pricing since their network costs are more efficient. So shopping around with these providers is certainly a viable option. However, there is some risk here. If you are looking at a player you are not very familiar with check references, look for complaints online, and make a limited commitment to ensure they have SLAs that back up what they say. 6. Alternative Models An alternative provider isn't just a secondary or tertiary provider in the market. It is a completely different business model altogether. These could be exchanges, agents, alternative channels as well as cooperative buying solutions available in some markets. For instance, Arbinet offers a network-neutral marketplace and managed services that enable providers to increase network utilization, achieve better pricing and improve profitability and cash flow by reducing the number of interconnections, streamlining legal, billing and collection expenses and virtually eliminating disputes and bad debt. By using alternative providers, you leverage their knowledge and skills of the marketplace. 7. Look at all the tools available Tools like QoS and Application Acceleration can wring more performance out of the network you have. This allows you to better optimize your network and put off costly upgrades. At the end of the day, it's up to you to manage your business as efficiently as you possibly can. By analyzing your cost structure, you have a better understanding of how you can price your services and where you may need to cut additional costs. Leveraging this ability by regularly inviting new suppliers to submit proposals keeps you up to speed on the latest network pricing trends and solutions and offers you the opportunity to request better service from your present provider. In addition, exploring alternative means to manage cash flow more efficiently will be a growing trend and requirement if the credit markets remain tight. For example, Arbinet offers alternative products and services to help mitigate a company's cash exposure. Its RapidClear accelerated settlements service is an option for companies who have to free up cash flow to remain competitive in an already challenging marketplace.  So stay knowledgeable, shop around and ask the hard questions to ensure your business benefits from the leading trends offered throughout the industry. Buying network services isn't complicated, but trying to shave costs can be tricky. IP Rose Klimovich is vice president, product development and product management at telx.

 

Value Added Services Make The Difference: Mobivox

Regular readers of my blog should know very well how fan I am of VoIP used not as a great way to make cheap calls only, but to provide new, innovative value added services to consumers and businesses (something my company has been doing for a few years now with our customer engagement service Sitofono). If the value of the service you provide is crystal clear, your customers are definitely willing to pay for it. A few days ago I had the opportunity to talk to Peter Diedrich, CEO of Mobivox, and it turned to be a very interesting discussion, with Peter and me perfectly in the same wavelength. I  already wrote about Mobivox a couple of times in this blog, but this is the first time since the arrival of Peter with the role of CEO, previously held by Stephane Marceau, and of the contribution of Larry Lisser, a Telecom expert I had the opportunity to meet a couple of times during my trip to Silicon Valley. In a nutshell, Mobivox is trying to leverage their voice recognition technology in order to provide users with much more than discounted phone calls. The key point is the way their are trying to reach a wide user base, that is by licensing their technology to big and small telecom operators, with different models depending on the operator they are dealing with. Peter called their technology a "Network Based Address Book" where users can easily call each other by simply dialing a local number and telling the name of the contact they want to call. I asked him about the differences between Mobivox and similar (apparently) services, like Dial2Do, and Peter clarifies that they are rather focusing on the telephony/SMS side than integrating their service with social networks (Dial2Do lets you send a Tweet, for example) and thanks to an agreement with Voxbone, they have a  huge set of dial-in  numbers worldwide. They also launched the 883 iNum Exchange, "an innovative Global Toll Free VoIP exchange (883) enables users to receive reverse-charged calls from family, friends and colleagues". What's particularly new here is that 883 is in fact a value-add service. One that supports an important social and business process (that of being reached anywhere), rather that one that simply and only reduces cost. Moreover, Peter told me they are adding new services like group conferencing and also focusing on building sophisticated integrations with CRMs, making automation, usage statistics and users' profiling a key component in their platform (Telecom CRM 2.0). A major benefit is also the ability to record the accent of the final user so that the system automatically self-trains to make sure the success in recognizing the user itself is above 99%. They already have LOIs with different telecom operators - mobile operators / calling card players and we should expect major news in the following weeks. I'll definitely stay tuned for further developments and praise Mobivox for their efforts to finally take the label "cheap calls" and "free" away from VoIP.

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Five (Cheap) Ways To Use Wi-Fi to Make Phone Calls From Home

When you spend most of your life at home in the basement and the GSM signal is not so good there, you start figuring out how to make/receive phone calls without having to install a landline (I only have an 8M Adsl at home). Fortunately, my house is covered by Wi-Fi and the signal strength is pretty strong in any room.  That said, the next step is quite obvious: I can use WiFi to make/receive phone calls. Easy, right? I already gave some tips in this space a few days ago, but now I'd like to share some more options people can use to leverage their Wifi network for making phone calls, too. Those are all quite cheap and the results really great. 1)  Belkin Skype Wifi Phone If you are a Skype user (if not, what are you waiting for?), this phone is for you. The Belkin Wifi phone offers a friendly user interface to call your Skype friends for free or make calls to landline/mobile phones worldwide at the very cheap Skype rates. Cost: $ 179,99 2) iPod Touch If you are an iPod Touch owner, this solution is for you. If you are not, you can get a lot (a fully-fledged PDA Internet Device) with just $229 (for the 8GB version). Then you can transform it into a wifi phone by downloading one of the available VoIP solutions, such as Truphone , Fring or Nimbuzz. Cost: $ 229,00 3) NetGear Dual Mode Skype Phone This solution is a very good choice for families since you can connect up to 5 handsets to the provided base station. The other additional feature is that you can use this phone as a "normal" landline phone. The cost is fair and it looks like a very good solution. Cost: $ 230,00 4) A Wifi-enabled Mobile Phone Keep using your mobile phone while at home and if the GSM signal is low, this solution sounds even better. In this case you have many choices, from the high-end wifi-enabled Nokia phones to other cheaper options like the Pirelli DPL10. You just have to configure it with the service you prefer, both for incoming (you need a phone number, then, that can be easily provided by the VoIP service you chose or by third party providers like Voxbone) and outgoing calls. Cost: variable 5)  Your computer! Easy, right? Just open your laptop or turn on your desktop PC and choose the service which you like better or which provides you with the cheapest rates. Plenty of services out there, it's just up to you! Cost: well, you already have a PC, haven't you? There are more viable solutions, of course, but I think these five options already give you a pretty good idea of the power of having a Wifi network at home. This immediately gives you access to the internet  wherever you want and the ability to easily make phone calls through VoIP. Do you need a landline anymore?

 

Where is VoIP Heading - Conversation Tonight

The VoIP is not dead discussion tonight moves to Calliflower. You can join at 6:00 PST.  Alec Saunders advocates "open communications". As I wrote the other day. It's about the "Exchange" and Alec makes this point by talking about "arbitrage". Dave Michels then left a comment on my post which took me to his blog. You should read "PBX Needs to Change (or Die)" which I thinks a great piece which points back to the mobile. Om remains skeptical and thinks VoIP is full of marginal ideas. I'm not so sure. Yusuf Motowala has just launched VoicePHP (Om already looked at it more deeply). While Andy identifies a great group of people in his "Scouting Report" and I really appreciated being one of those mentioned! The game, the discussion and the desire to have an "impact" remains with this group. After a few years beginning to wonder where  "classic blogging" went the recent set of blogs around VoIP (many not mentioned above) just shows the value created when people start to share their outlooks, ideas, and build on what others are saying. If we keep it up… then the conversation will be renewed and grow. I'd like to reinforce that "blogging" is better than "lists" from my perspective as it's "open" although I believe this actually traces to some lists and thus the hunger for better conversations around VoIP that has fueled the latest posts.

 

Skype Mac 2.8 Beta - +Sharing - Mood

Skype's taken the wraps off their 2.8 beta for Mac last night at CES and it's the first time I've felt like progress has been made on the overall product in years. Dan York's was the first review I read and very complete. I've also scanned others from Phil and Jim. In the end I want more. However on this beta two things stand out for me. 1. Video: First someone in Skype finally asked a very good question. Why can't we use Video for screen sharing? With different second party programs it was possible but never so convenient. I've cancelled my Glance Account effective immediately. It was burning $50/month hole in my wallet. Screen sharing is now possible from my Mac to any other Skype User. Window's users aren't so lucky and it is easy to see why. It's a lack of hardware standards. It's easy to swap from video to screen shot and back. It couldn't be easier. Thank you Skype. You now solve 95% of all my screensharing needs. 2. Mood Messages: Finally mood messages are beginning to learn from Twitter. Still while like the above someone is starting to ask some better questions and working to move the boundaries forward this only suggests potential rather than being a home run. Limiting it to Mac makes it useless as my own example shows. As soon as I use the mood update like Twitter I realize that Alec won't see it. In fact there is no rich language like Twitter for @ replies. DM's are easy… just open a chat window. Julian's mood updates also demonstrate that I don't want to see all his music updates. So in about 30 seconds it becomes clear that mood messages and mini status updates are not the same thing. The opportunity to "broadcast updates" to my buddies that might grow new conversations is interesting. It works on Twitter. Dan York made appropriate comments too re follow and unfollow. Mood messages as they are  fail to really reward the user. In the end that's the key. I'm sure I will forget about them again now. The Skype Mac beta also provides a "Boingo" connection although given the pricing and my general lack of need for such connectivity I don't see it as a big thing. Of note Jim and Phil have had a slanging match over the impact of this change on Skype Developers (are there any?). Jim says screen sharing is just a feature and fully developed collaboration platforms continue to offer a lot more. Phil says…. beware developers. As a user I've already voted. It's better.. much better! So bring it on Skype. As a developer I long ago gave up on Skype. If you are a mega company there are deals you may be able to do with Skype otherwise give it a pass. See also: Skype 2.8 Beta for Mac: Skype Access and Screen Sharing - Skype Blogs The update continues to leave me confused about Skype. There's a sense that there is more clarity in the direction and yet nothing major that really sets the world alight. Screen sharing will help build more users in a world where there's an economic downturn. Yet I don't see a cohesive mobile strategy emerging. As a mac user —- using the same basic platform that's on the iPhone I would have been ecstatic to see the first iPhone client. Frankly that would have had more impact and be many times more importance to the industry and to exploring the future. Skype user base continues to provide all the opportunities to be the real innovator in Telephony. The real innovations are still happening outside. I'd suggest if not already in place. Skype put someone in charge of iPhone developments. I'd also find some people that really get blogging and twitter. Skype's own site continues to hide the blogs (go to "share") and the mood message thing suggests to me that the Twitter factor isn't really understood. I'm certain I could write a killer iPhone strategy for Skype. I'm also convinced now that Skype still needs it. That means there's still hope for many others… and in that I'd include some of the other VoIP plays.