Go Jenny and Cory, go!
“Have you ever been in a situation where you wished your cell phone would ring? Maybe you wanted to look extra important or popular on that hot date. Or maybe you just needed an excuse to escape from an unpleasant meeting.”
Category: Networking
Verizon DSL constantly changing IP address
So, I haven’t called support and I know that is the first thing I should do when problems like this arise but it just seems too fishy.
To make a long story short, I recently decided to switch from regular home phone service from Verizon (who also supply my DSL) to VoIP service. I have had VoIP and regular phone service for quite some time and things were well. Recently though, we had a pretty nasty electrical storm and one of the things that got zapped was my Asterisk box which handled the integration between normal phone service and VoIP.
After a bit of research, I found the Verizon does in fact offer naked loop DSL (DSL without a phone number) for existing customers and that I could continue with my DSL and transfer my phone number over to my VoIP provider and basically save myself $50 a month.
Now here is the troubling bit. After filling out the paper work and sending it to my VoIP provider who subsequently contacted Verizon to get the process started my DSL has been tremendously flaky. So flaky that my IP address is repeatedly changing. Not once a day, not 10 times a day, somewhere in the vicinity of 100 times a day! I probably don’t need to mention how bad this is for services like VoIP. Essentially making it useless and unusable.
I could chalk it up to damage from the electrical storm (but I didn’t notice it until after sending in the paperwork) or:
Could this really be a Verizon tactic to prevent people from going with 3rd party VoIP?
Dear telephone, meet the internet
Pheeder
“Pheeder is a whole new way of using your cellphone: it lets you communicate with all of your friends simultaneously, with a single phone call. To use it, you just call Pheeder, leave a message and hang up. Seconds later all of your friends, or anyone you want, receives the message at the very same instant. And if they want, they can send a reply to your message.”
Increasing cooperation in the IM space..
Yahoo, Microsoft IM Beta Joined at The Hip
Definitely a good thing. Perhaps a standard will emerge.. Nah.. That is just hopeful thinking. Besides, I would rather Jabber was the standard.
Video Comments, WordPress Plugin
Keeping the conversation alive in media blogs
Video Blogging, Vlogging or what ever you want to call it was born into a tradition of self publishing on the internet and benefits greatly from the infrastructure developed for blogging. The tools to create media and now to distribute media online are accessible and affordable. Furthermore, video blogging is often considered participatory and socially interactive. Much of this is due to what blogs have done, enabled true two-way conversation through comments and loose networking through trackbacks.
Unfortunately, while video blogging benefits from these, it doesn’t really do much to improve or enhance this capability with video.
At ITP Research, myself and a couple of others have been working to change this or at least push commenting and trackbacks a bit further. We have created a Video Commenting plugin for WordPress that allows people to leave comments in-time with a video. This, we believe is one of the first steps to allowing conversation to happen around video and furthermore enable richer conversation with video.
Check it out, download it, modify it, use it… Video Comments, WordPress Plugin
From the site:
It’s really exciting to see the number of blogs that exist today, thousands of voices are talking about every possible topic. Blog syndication and commenting allows readers to subscribe, discuss and carry the conversation further, however, with the different forms of media becoming a normal part of many blogs there’s a need to keep this open communication open. Audio and video blogs are forming communities and to encourage conversation the viewers must be able to respond, so we developed a plug-in for WordPress called Video Comments.
Net Neutrality takes a step forward
Free Press : House Judiciary Passes Net Neutrality Bill
I love how AT&T is trying to spin this:
“While we are disappointed that the Judiciary Committee chose to move toward regulating the Internet, we are pleased that the majority of the majority recognized that this legislation would deter investment in our nation’s broadband infrastructure,†said Tim McKone, AT&T executive vice president federal relations, in a prepared statement. “We are optimistic that the majority in Congress will see this legislation as an attempt to solve a problem that does not exist, and will instead focus on bringing choice to consumers by passing video choice legislation.â€
“the majority of the majority” .. That is nonsense.
“will instead focus on bringing choice to consumers by passing video choice legislation” .. Now there is a problem that doesn’t exist!
Wake-up!
Online video via RSS comes to Linux
Democracy: Internet TV
Now supports Linux..!
ITP End of Year Events – Thesis Presentations and End of Semester Show
ITP Spring Show 2006
A two day exhibition of interactive sight, sound and physical objects from the student artists of ITP.
This event is free and open to the public. No need to RSVP.
ITP Thesis Presentations 2006
ITP’s graduating students will be presenting a wide variety of highly creative and interactive projects that they have constructed over the course of their final project seminars.
Students have been encouraged to undertake projects that bring together the conceptual and design issues that they have engaged in during their two years of study at ITP.
Projects will include installation based work, digital video and audio pieces, interactive 3D, games and educational applications, to name only a few.
ITP will be providing a live webcast of all the thesis presentations.
LifeBlog doesn’t use XML RPC
Robert Price – Lifeblog Posting Protocol Example
Alas, after doing a bit of exploring, I see why LifeBlog never worked with my blog(s). It doesn’t do XML-RPC. Arrrg..
In any case, detailed on the site above, Robert Price has done the hard work and figured out just what it does and how it can be used. A bit painful but some progress..
Does anyone have a pointer to XML-RPC J2ME code for me?
Techdirt: Why Aren’t The Telcos Paying Google For Making Their Network Valuable?
Techdirt: Why Aren’t The Telcos Paying Google For Making Their Network Valuable?
It is true, cable franchises pay the networks for the privilege of carrying them. This is on a per-subscriber basis and allows the television networks to double dip in a sense, get per-subscriber fees as well as ad revenue.
The argument that Google makes the broadband networks valuable is true although there are a plethora of such services, no lack of content which is why the cable co.’s started to pay the networks in the first place.
There is NO WAY the telcos would fall for this (Verizon/CBS stupidity aside) on broadband lines unless they truly still envision the internet as 1,000,000 channels of TV.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Google should pay either. We (the consumers here) are already paying. Unless Google wants to be on the providers home page or portal there is no reason for them to pay.
I hope they do light up all of that fiber they have been buying and route around the telecos and allow me a WiFi Mesh or WiMax connection.