Looking for the paradigm » phone

After switching back to Cablevision, FiOS users can’t call us.

Evan Hoffman — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:39:02 +0000

So we switched back to Cablevision and it went pretty well, but apparently Verizon users can’t call our house number (ported from Verizon to Cablevision). Verizon users have to call from their mobiles in order to complete the call. I’m guessing that Verizon hasn’t updated their systems to indicate that they no longer “own” our number and is trying to route the call inside their network. Sucks because I can’t imagine Verizon jumping to help fix this since I’m not their customer anymore.

Looking into modernizing our office phone system

Evan Hoffman — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:02:29 +0000

I’m researching replacing our current office phone system with a modern one. Currently we have a pretty old system (not managed by my department): POTS lines into an old PBX, old Toshiba DKT2010 handsets, lousy voicemail, and no direct-dial to each desk. You have to call in, talk to the receptionist, and get transferred. We also have no caller ID, and when you move from desk A to desk B, your extension changes from 305 to 309 (or whatever) – your extension is not bound to the phone, but to the jack. In addition to being retarded, this means your business cards now have the wrong extension on them

If I’m going to be taking over the phone system then I’m replacing it. I don’t know anything about phone systems except that VoIP and Asterisk are my starting points. Here’s what I want:

DID to each desk
Caller ID
Voicemail emailed to your inbox as MP3/WAV
Jabber integration if possible – if your Jabber status is “away” the call goes straight to voicemail.
Extension bound to the phone… this seems like an easy one, since DHCP already does this for computers.
Faxes delivered to users’ inboxes – complete email/fax conversion would be idea.

We have Exchange 2010 which has Unified Messaging; I don’t know if we’d need to use that but I guess it’s an option. A friend pointed me at MS Response Point, which I was going to look at, but Microsoft apparently ended that product, so I didn’t bother.

Currently I’m checking out Trixbox, specifically their trixbox appliance. Though, I usually like to “roll my own” box when first playing around with new technology to learn how it works.

FiOS Ping Test

Evan Hoffman — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:07:14 +0000

Ran a ping test at pingtest.net today. Overall I can’t find fault with the FiOS service so far. Port 80 and 443 are open and I have them forwarded to my Linux box so I can actually run a webserver in my basement. I’m debating moving this domain over to my own linux box, since it’s super low traffic, but I probably won’t.

FiOS Ping Test for Nassau County, NY

Only (minor) problems with FiOS are:

With FiOS Digital Voice there doesn’t seem to be a “distinctive ring” option, which I had found handy with Cablevision.
The 10-digit dialing is annoying. It’s nice not to have to dial the “1″ before a long-distance number, but having to dial the 516 area code even for other 516 numbers is annoying. I know that’s how it is for everyone in NYC already though regardless of phone provider.

I’m waiting to see what my bill for month 2 will be. Lots of credits for month 1 so that will be extra low.

I used to love my BlackBerry Pearl

Evan Hoffman — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:19:42 +0000

I got my phone in April 2007 from LetsTalk.com. I got a good deal — a BlackBerry Pearl and 2 Motorola RAZR V3rs for… free. No rebates or anything, totally free. LetsTalk screwed up the account creation but I got that straightened out with Cingular.

The BlackBerry served me pretty well until around September 2008 when the trackball got so gunked up I couldn’t use it. I keep my phone in my pants pocket and not in some protective case, so I guess the lint and finger grease got to be too much. I dealt with it like this for a couple of weeks until I decided to try cleaning the ball. It’s pretty easy to remove the clip and take the whole apparatus out, and it was indeed very gunky in there. I went at it with a can of air (computer dusting stuff), a Q-tip and some rubbing alcohol. I got all the gunk off, put it all back together and it was pretty good for about a week or two. Then it was back to its old self – spinning the trackball didn’t do anything and I couldn’t navigate menus or use almost any of the features of the phone. Plus – this is the best part – the plastic clip that kept the trackball apparatus in place had apparently lost tension or something and would pop off, and by the end of 2008 the trackball had fallen out completely and is now lost to the ages.

Fortunately at some point before the complete failure of the trackball, when it still functioned intermittently, I had gone into the configuration and set the left-side convenience key to go to my inbox and the right-side button to go to the web browser. These two apps are navigable using the keypad, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. So my phone still has email and basic browser support, but if a dialog box pops up that doesn’t have hotkeys for “OK” or “Cancel” I have no choice but to hit the “go back/cancel” button, so e.g. I can’t accept many SSL certs.

This whole experience has soured me on the BlackBerry. I’m not buying a phone with a trackball again, and I’d like to buy something with no moving parts if possible. I had high hopes for the BlackBerry Storm – I love the BlackBerry OS – but the week the Storm was released I went to a Verizon store to play with it and I found it horrendous. The reviews that came out about the Storm since then have said pretty much the same thing – the phone is a dud.

After reviewing the options it looks like my two best choices for internet phones are the iPhone and the Nokia e71. A guy at work has the e71 and loves it, but even he has conceded that the iPhone has a superior browser. I’m not a fan of touch keyboards but the iPhone still seems like the most advanced phone available today, even almost a year after the 3G iPhone’s launch.

My contract is already up but I don’t know what I’m going to do. There’s supposed to be an AT&T-subsidized version of the e71, the e71x, coming out pretty soon that’s rumored to cost around $100, but it’s been “real soon now” apparently for several months. I’m leaning toward the iPhone but I hate to spend $200 out of pocket when until now I’ve never paid for a phone.