RSS
 

Archive for April, 2010

OOMA – Time to take it to the next level

29 Apr

OOMA, the VOIP upstart has been selling the buy the hardware and your phone calls are free service for about three years now. I am a satisfied OOMA user myself, having owned one for about six months now and yes I am now in the ownership period where my phone calls are indeed free. I am also a regular contributor on the OOMA forums and that is why I am going to say to OOMA “It’s time to take it to the next level”. You are no longer a start-up but you’re not yet a ‘big’ company – if you want to play with the big guys you’re going to have to take your game up a notch or three:

Drop all the QOS discussions in your marketing materials – you’ve landed all the tech user, early adopters you need – QOS marketing is irrelevant as most users don’t care, don’t understand or they are just not interested. You should make OOMA as bandwidth efficient and clear sounding as possible, which you are doing, just stop positioning your box as a general network router, server and firewall where folks plug in everything else behind the OOMA. Just manage yourself and stop trying to manage and support everything else on peoples networks, your support calls will drop when you become just another box on the network and not network central.

Drop the “free phone service” line, you’ve proved your point but going forward free phone service sounds like snake-oil – consumers are very well aware that you get what you pay for and when you tie “free” to “phone service” you run the risk of losing your audience because they are now busy looking for “the catch” and not hearing your message. Get your marketing folks to create campaigns to play up the huge savings “at least 70 percent off your phone bill – guaranteed” or something similar, but lose the “free”. Read the rest of this entry »

 
Comments Off

Posted in Developer, Just Business, Observations

 

The first OOMA – Google wave?

27 Apr

I’m in the process of trying out Google Wave – It looks interesting, the functionality kind of reminds me of Lotus Notes in the mix of email, collaboration tools, document management and instant messaging of course the implementation is way ahead of Lotus Notes but this is just a very quick first impression on my part.

BTW: I started a public OOMA Google wave which appears to be the only public OOMA Google wave (are there any private ones going on?)- of course being a wave you need to have participants so if anyone is interested in testing out Google Wave along with me then just add a comment (to be clear, you don’t have to join the OOMA wave discussion to get the invite). I have only six invites at the moment (sorry) – if I get more then I’ll say so – but first six comments get them.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Observations, Technology

 

You've got Bing!

26 Apr

I wrote last week about removing the Vuze application from my system after a sneaky update by Vuze infested both Firefox and IE (but not Safari and Chrome) with the Bing toolbar. It took me awhile and more than three attempts to finally unBing my system.

clippy your base pwnedWhile I can’t drop Microsoft or the Bing website from my Windows system, just the ridiculous MSN Bing toolbars, I can lay some blame on Microsoft for their short-sighted attempt to catch up to the Google search giant.  Co-opting the browser search engine default and ensuring that the toolbar is not easily removed may not strictly speaking be malware/adware but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – theres probably another anti-trust posse lining up to go duck hunting.

How To Uninstall Bing

I ran through three different removal attempts. The first attempt was an un-installation of the Vuze application, which claimed to run succesfully. A quick check however showed that the unwanted toolbar was still alive and well in both Firefox and IE (and still sporting the blue-frog Vuze logo on the side). So much for believing vendor claims.

The second attempt was done using Revo Uninstaller (which is my preferred application removal tool) – I located a running Bing process and attempted to uninstall, this did not according to Revo completely work but it appeared to at least get rid of the running processes.

My third approach was to run ccleaner and clean Bing out of the registry. This appeared to clean Bing from several locations but still left the default search engine as Bing in IE and a  Bing Installation Directory  (complete and ready to re-install from a click) still on the hard drive. I manually deleted the directory and its contents and manually set the IE search engine back to Jawocko (a newish search engine that I was testing).

That appears to have done it and my system is once again Bing Toolbar free.

Related Articles:

 
Comments Off

Posted in Just Business

 

McAFee antivirus – Oops my bad!

22 Apr

   It’s an old Reagan saying that should be familiar to Corporate IT – “Trust but verify“  (then again with all of the IT downsizing outsourcing and re-alignment these days maybe this is a now a new thought).   Okay, McAfee has egg on the face for the botched update that took out more systems yesterday than any recent virTrust but verifyus attack that I can remember, however the IT departments at those corporate sites that were hit may also have some ‘splainin to do.

   Clearly more and more departments are taking the easy road and either letting their corporate charges go directly to the vendors sites to pull down updates whenever they (or the vendor) feel like it OR if they do install centralized update servers within the corporate network, fail to adequately test those updates before releasing them to the rest of the corporation.
   McAfee has work to do but none of the other big vendors should be resting on their laurels either, IBM, McAfee, Symantec, Microsoft, Adobe or a host of other companies can make a mistake. Even if the update is 100% correct (from the vendors point of view) without testing how does the corporate IT department know that an update won’t take out an important company asset due to an unintentional (and untestable from a vendor viewpoint) conflict?

Trust but verify guys.

 
Comments Off

Posted in Just Business, Observations, Security, Technology

 

VUZE goodbye!

22 Apr

Competition heats up and Real Estate in real life as well as on the web is precious – the key differentiator is the same location, location, location.

The problem on the web, just like in real life there is a right way to advertise and gain recognition and there is a wrong way.  Space on the browser toolbar is precious. One of the tools that I have  used for a couple of years now is called Vuze. Vuze is a bitorrent client (originally it was a pure client called Azureus) that was tied in to reasonably high quality media available over the Vuze network and it became a clean way to subscribe to internet serials, and video podcasts like the TED or even the MIT classroom lectures.

vuze browser toolbar hijack

The problem is the latest Vuze update essentially hijacked my browser added another line of duplicate search tools and “features” and adding insult to injury, designated Bing as my default search engine while giving it top billing in the new toolbar. The update itself in addition to being sneaky in its installation, is poorly written. The ‘huge’ overhead added to Firefox’s already slow start-up is intolerable. A quick peak showed java, python (jython?) and calls out to the Bing site (with a Vuze token) all while I’m waiting to use my browser.

I’m usually pretty good at not accepting offers to add extra features when installing software but this one came in as part of their update process and enough is enough. Vuze, it was a nice ride for a couple of years but you are history – there are too many good applications and companies competing for attention and browser space to put up with this kind of poor customer service on your part.

UPDATE:

I am now on my third attempt at uninstalling this puppy. The application “uninstaller” left the Vuze application launcher behind and what it terms the Bing toolbar (complete with Vuze icon) still running in my browser. I attempted to take out the application launcher with uninstall again (it doesnt show up) and then with Revo uninstaller (that failed to completely remove it as well) so now I’m going to remove Bing anything .exe from the hard drive and the registry manually and hunt don and remove any related Browser Helper Objects (BHO’s) and scripts – I’m glad I got rid of this application now, because it truly is acting like malware. 

 
Comments Off

Posted in Just Business, Observations

 

Google's changed the game – again!

16 Apr

Google just unveiled a strategy for universal printing over on its chromium blog. The technology ties in to the chrome browser but, it will go beyond that to (in Google’s words) allow printing from any web app:

Infographic from Google Chromium blog: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/04/new-approach-to-printing.html

“...design a printing experience that would enable web apps to give users the full printing capabilities that native apps have today. Using the one component all major devices and operating systems have in common– access to the cloud– today we’re introducing some preliminary designs for a project called Google Cloud Print, a service that enables any application (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer.” Read the rest of this entry »

 
Comments Off

Posted in Just Business, Technology, Web Services

 

Taking Technology for granted.

12 Apr

I was just listening to a Jean Shepherd radio program that was originally broadcast more than 30 years ago.  Jean Shepherd himself died nearly 11 years ago and his tale on this radio show revolved around influences on his writing. He mentioned a book that I had not heard of before named, “Nightlife of the Gods” which was published nearly 80 years ago.  It took me about 2 minutes, while still listening to the podcast radio program, to locate a copy of the book on a Gutenberg Australia server and a few more seconds to download it  to my Sony reader.

Woodcut Image of an old style wall phoneSo what’s so special about this? Well, this process of obtaining the book without even getting up from my chair would have been imaginative wishful thinking even as recently as when Shepherd died in 1999; it would have been pure wild-eyed science fiction speculation when the show was originally broadcast in the 1970′s and might possibly have gotten you locked up as a lunatic if spoken out loud when the book was originally written.

The rapid progression and application of technology really is amazing – we are living in the moment, sometimes even taking the rapid changes for granted and not really seeing the big picture as to how much how world has been changed and in many ways for the better  because of it.

Sometimes we really do need to take a moment – sit back and smell the roses; read a book or  listen to an old radio show.

 
Comments Off

Posted in Observations

 

Chip you are remembered March,1999 – April,2010

10 Apr

Chip, you always wanted to be top dog! You made it and we miss you. Wherever you are we hope there are lots of squirrels and rabbits to chase a nice slipper (or two) to chew on and a doggy biscuit tree with your name on it! You joined the family as a puppy and you leave having made your place in the world and in our family.

 
Comments Off

Posted in Observations

 

Its the customer stupid

06 Apr

It’s almost too easy to talk about companies that ignore their products or customers or service and in some cases all three, but to be fair sometimes companies do get it right.

Sony PRS500 e-ink readerA case in point is Sony, a company that was for a long time on my personal best  ‘A- list’ for excellent products and service. Somewhere along the way though, things at Sony went down hill – rapidly in my  opinion and I swore off buying anything Sony.  My one exception to my personal Sony ban, was a PRS500. This was one of the first near-reasonably priced E-ink readers available four years ago and I was looking for an alternative to my laptop for managing project reference documents during meetings and as an alternative to carrying more books during my commute. I was happy with the device particularly with its excellent long battery life.

Last year Sony announced that they were moving away from their proprietary LRF ebook format to support the newly standard EPUB format – to be fair SONY also supported PDF’s which worked very well on their reader when the PDF was formatted for the device specifications. What completely surprised me about the Sony upgrade was their offer for a free firmware upgrade for the PRS500 which was now a nearly four year old discontinued product. The device had to returned to Sony who provided free UPS shipping and fast turn-around (it took about a week).

Fast forward to today and Sony did it again! This time a UPS box arrived (unannounced and unexpected) at my door. The box was empty except for bubble wrap;  shipping label and a pamphlet. The pamphlet explained that their last upgrade had created a bug that caused the battery life to deplete very quickly which I had noticed but put down to the device being nearly four years old.

I shipped the PRS500 back to them (for free) and a week later my works like new PRS500 was returned. Battery life – excellent;  functionality excellent; plus- a free $10.00 credit towards an E-book purchase for my trouble. Everything that the PRS500 could do before is still there plus it now handles the rapidly growing EPUB standard documents with its aforementioned great battery life.

Okay, I know Sony is competing with the Kindle and to some extent the Apple devices but evencustomers with older devices can (and do) buy books from the Sony store so there is some incentive in keeping existing owners of older equipment happy and coming back to Sony for future products.  Customer loyalty used to be something that Sony could take for granted and this kind of service is reminiscent of the old Sony and I am glad that Sony seems to be coming back.

 
Comments Off

Posted in Just Business, Observations