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July 30, 2007
Head For the Hills! Protect Your Computers! It's BLACKHAT/DEFCON!!!
Yes, the drumbeat of potential security threats is getting louder as Black Hat goes into session, followed by the some-what-less professional and more drama-scene laden DEFCON.
At Black Hat, Sipera's (www.sipera.com) VIPER lab is going to demo a VoIP exploit through an enterprise softphone, showing how hackers can take control and delete/steal data from a laptop. They are also going to review various Wi-Fi/dual-mode phone threats presentation on Wednesday. Expect to see a lot of headline grabbers on that presentation.
There's a whole day's track at Black Hat dedicated to VoIP/voice security on August 1. I'll have to make nice with the PR people at B-H and see if they'll send me the hardcopy conference notes (Nico! Oh, Nico!...)
Posted by dmohney at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2007
HDVoice - The Next Big Thing
Vanilla VoIP providers (VVPs) have a hard time differentiating themselves from the pack. They all offer cheaper rates, the same package of services, so they're left to compete amongst themselves to offer the lowest rate to Bombay or Shanghai or Hanoi and that's about it.
It gets worse because the phone companies and the cable companies have figured out that they can simply offer an all-you-can eat dialing plan for calls (local/North America long distance), effectively cutting the legs out of cost for a lot of people (Add up hassle time to switch, perceived QoS problems, maybe $10-15/month over the VVP isn't so bad).
Cable companies and VVPs need to upgrade to a better product. That product is HDVoice or BroadbandVoice or whatever you want to call it, but it is an effective UPGRADE when compared to the '50s era POTS quality phone call.
As a society, we want better quality media, be it on the TV, radio, or whatever. It's why we're moving from NTSC analog TV to HDTV. Why the radio industry has moved from AM (scratchy) to FM (better) to satellite and HDRadio.
Broadband Voice/HDVoice would bring to conferencing and phone calls the simplest upgrade of all -- moving from the 300 to 3500 Hz. of the POTS-era call to a full range of between 100 to 7000 Hz. Better call quality means we can hear the under-5 year old set better than on the clipped/crunched codecs of mobile phones. And a lot of other things.
Polycom says that people are more attentive with their HDVoice product on conference calls; I can believe that without getting into a long discussion of human factors issues.
Posted by dmohney at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2007
Everyone wants the questions beforehand.
In school, getting the questions to a test beforehand was cheating. PR people seem to think it's quite alright to get interview questions before the interview.
What's the point of being on the phone, then?
Much more often than not, when someone asks me this question, I usually don't have the questions all lined up nice and neatly because I've got twelve other things I have to do and whatever questions I am going to ask on the phone aren't that difficult.
Still, PR flacks HAVE to ask the question, feeling they have themselves covered, but that doesn't prevent me from adding, deleting, or otherwise changing whatever questions I might have jotted down in the first place.
It's not like we're into "60 Minutes" journalism chasing people with cameras, but from the way PR people act, I wonder...
Posted by dmohney at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2007
Corpses or Collaboration? SunRocket v. Sprint/Clearwire
I'm going through my mental "Hmm, what should I put in the FOCUS e-newsletter?" prep today and find myself torn between discussing the demise of SunRocket vs. the collaboration between Sprint and Clearwire.
SunRocket hadn't even locked its doors before Vonage sent out a press release saying they had a "deal" for abandoned SunRocket customers, and Vonage's offer was quickly followed by ViaTalk and at least two or three other companies. One service provider sent out a "We'll help you, wayward customer" release today - 4 days after SunRocket had closed its doors.
Packet8 has laid claim to being the "official" something or another for SunRocket users; how much that will be worth is unknown given the other vultures, er companies circling around trying to pluck off the 200,000 or so people that SunRocket left high and dry.
ViaTalk claimed they had already "successfully" switched over "thousands" of SunRocket users within a 48 hour hour period, according to their their press release. Also in the release, the CEO says that "he has been in regular contact with executives throughout the VoIP industry" to make sure former SunRocket customers are treated fairly.
Hmm. Fairly?
Of course, this begs the question of why anyone who was once burned by SunRocket's (really dirt cheap) VoIP service would take a chance on signing up with another VoIP-only company rather than a cable company or one of the flat-rate all-you-can eat plans from the local phone company.
Consider that SunRocket was credited with being the second-biggest independent (i.e. not infrastructure bound) VoIP provider at 200,000 subs, Vonage being number #1 at 2M or so subs pre-Verizon lawsuits.
Take the 200,000, knock off embittered/jaded users who will "come home" to their own phone companies and/or give cable VoIP a go, then divide the unknown rest among 5-7 others...
It's a mess, no matter how you slice it.
Posted by dmohney at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2007
A unique way (well not) to spot SPAM
I have an interesting window on spam through the news@vonmag.com alias.
The news@vonmag.com alias is used for press releases -- not my private mail -- but spammers and evil-do-ers will send everything from "Your classmates at
The most amusing e-mails to news@vonmag.com get are the ones that say "You have subscribed to this newsletter via opt-in" -- what junk. I've never put down news@vonmag.com as a contact e-mail address and none of the other editors subscribed to it would have a reason to put it down as an opt-in address (and if they have, well, it could get ugly).
Now, if I had a little more free time on my hands (ha!), I'd write a spam-filtering program against the junk that shows up at news@vonmag.com. Do that after I cure the common cold...
Posted by dmohney at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2007
What's wrong with this picture?
I've reviewed my blogging history (i.e. how many times I've been blogging) over the past two weeks and have come to the somewhat counter-intuitive realization that I've been able to blog better when I'm out of the "office" (i.e. not at work) than in the office.
Does this mean that I blog better with less stress? Have more time to blog when not "on the clock" because I don't say to myself "Hey, I forgot about this, I'll work on it now..." ?
Of course, the blog is a FREE thing. Scott Kargman nudged me into doing a blog a while back and I finally gave in.
Ah well, off to return the Holter monitor....
Posted by dmohney at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2007
Femtocells in the Enterprise?
Currently, the 3G world is going ga-ga over femtocells - basically, a mini-GSM access point that goes into a residence (House,apartment) and plugs into a broadband connection. Mobile users get the benefit of dedicated broadband to download stuff (music, videos, whatever) and better in-home cell phone coverage while the carrier is able to squeeze some more billable minutes out of phone (because of the phone).
It is likely that enterprise-grade (whatever that means) femtocells will start popping up to act as a quick-and-dirty way of extending in-building coverage in offices -- or people will just start buying consumer femtocells in at work and see what happens.
Currently, femtocell technology is a 3G thing, but I'm hoping it catches on in the CDMA-based/US space. Cell phone coverage on the first two floors of my house is, shall we say, less than adequate. There are various boosters one can buy, but a femtocell would seem to be a more elegant solution in some respects (i.e. I don't have to fight the cell tower for bandwidth).
Maybe femtocells will be a thing that brings cable and wireless carriers together...
Posted by dmohney at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2007
Of Bears and Blogs
This morning I was thinking about my experiences at Philmont Scout Camp (yes, a long, long time ago).
We had settled in for camp and our team leader was up a tree trying to straighted out the rope for our bear bag when someone actually spotted a young bear in a hollow nearby.
We all scrambled for a better look, except for the team leader, who shouted "Don't leave me stuck up here with the bear coming!" (Ironically, he was in the safest place).
Quietly we passed the word among our group and others near by, carefully positioning ourselves for a better look at the 200-300 pound or so critter.
Suddenly, breaking the silence was a rush of feet, and a "A Bear! Hot D*mn, let's stone him!!!" A group of young lads from North Carolina rushed to get closer and in their haste made so much noise that the bear looked up and around, then casually shambled off into the woods and away from the campground.
The next morning, the North Carolina group awoke to find a bigger , older 600+ pound bear had located and took down their hanging food bag (Bears are smart), and shambled off into the woods to chow down on the yummier bits (Being packed with a lot of dehydrated food, I doubt Mr. Bear ate it all; but then I wouldn't put it past one to figure out how to cook it up).
Since we were on our last day or two of the trail, we loaned the noisy North Carolina boys some of our food and wend home.
Is the moral of this story "Don't shout too loud?" "Never threaten to stone a bear because he'll tell his peers?" Or "Anyone can write anything in a blog without having relevance to a topic you are really interested in?"
Posted by dmohney at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2007
I love a good bus wrap!
Hanging out here in Ocean City, Maryland, the coolest thing to catch my eye down here have been the freshly done "bus wraps" for Candy Kitchen.
A bus wrap takes your generic dull white bus and puts a full-sized commercial or "wrap" on the outside. Done well, the colors pop, and it catches the eye. You get a rolling 3-D billboard at eye level.
To ensure exposure and success, wrap a bus or two or three on a frequently used route. For example, at CES and NAB, there are buses running all over the place between the display floors and the hotels. Consider that a bus creeps along in traffic when getting close to a stop, then parks for 10-15 minutes as it loads and unloads passengers. So people waiting in line or outside walking to and fro between see it as well.
In Vegas, I'm not sure if I have the same love for the monorail wrap. Getting on the monorail is a bear when there are exceedingly high crowds(i.e. CES, likely NAB), it's above ground level, covered for parts of its journey, and sometimes moving too far too fast to make out what is on the side.
Posted by dmohney at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 08, 2007
This week's .PDF blitz
If you've received a blitz of spam e-mails with .PDF attachments, hopefully you didn't open one.
I don't know what they do, and have no desire to personally find out, but it couldn't have been anything good.
A lot of people have assumed that .PDFs are "safe" but some reporters at the New York Times discovered that .PDFs can be used to carry "payloads" for snooping. Looks like someone in the generic world of evil-doers decided to take a crack at it.
*sigh*
Now the anti-virus/anti-spyware checker has to sweep another file type for another profile.
Posted by dmohney at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2007
DEFCON 15, here I come (Well, in August)
I've been going to DEFCON for some obscene number of years.
Doug Humphrey asked me to tag along when he went out sometime in the mid-90s and I've been finding excuses to go every since. (Oops, did I say that out LOUD?)
Seriously, there are a lot of smart people, presenting a lot of interesting and sometimes Very Important information about technology and security. The Media tends to focus on the sideshows of spiky-dyed hair leather-clad youth, a loud but small percentage of the attendees.
The ones you really have to worry about are those who don't stand out in a crowd, but you catch eying you like a pit bull does a chipmunk.
This year I've got a speaking slot to talk about TV "White Spaces"; the current efforts to cover over the empty TV channels on your dial into usable broadband. It's 700 MHz, the mythical "beachfront" property, it's cool, and it's likely to be approved for use by the end of the year.
Posted by dmohney at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2007
Am I a "good" blogger or a "bad" blogger?
Is there some sort of subtle ratio of number of blogs per week/month that puts me into the category of a "good" blogger or "bad" blogger?
I mean, I'm not a soopoer blogger, like Chris Brogan, who just gotta blogs at least twice a day. I bet he blogs before breakfast and then blogs during lunch. And then, when he's on a roll or had too much coffee, he probably throws in another couple of blogs before b-ed time.
I'm happy enough to blog 3 to 4 times a week, and start to feel guilty if I haven't blogged in three or four straight days.
Chris and Jeff (Pulver) fall into the Blog-is-Life category but I am not sure I am comfortable with that sort of frequency. Right now I'm blogging because I have a break between work pieces at the moment. But I wouldn't be blogging while catching up on "Battlestar Galactica" on the couch. But I have been tempted to do a posting entitled "BSG vs Trek Officers" because it would just be AMUSING to see what kind of fallout I would stir-up in the geekdom world.
Posted by dmohney at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2007
(Truck) Driver Management Software???
Just when I think it's safe to stop complaining about PR firms...
I get a call from a rep from a two-name firm. Wants to know if we cover driver management software. As in vehicle driver.
"Uh, what's that have to do with IP Communications?" I ask, perplexed.
"Well, the software is being used by Time Warner Cable and the company wants to reach telecommunications firms..."
"OK, driver as in, truck driver?"
"Yes, is that something your magazine covers?" (OK, I'm simplifying here, but you get it).
*sigh*
If we were in the business of covering telematics, I might be able to stretch things such that it might fit. But we don't, it doesn't.
*sigh*
Posted by dmohney at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2007
Got a new monitor - Samsung 22 inch widescreen
It's the Samsung SyncMaster 226bw, a 22 inch widescreen LCD, 2 ms response time, 3000:1 or so contrast, blah-blah-blah-blah. Bought it for $349 list on Friday, shows up at $319 list at Best Buy on Sunday.
*sigh*
Anyway, it hasn't been too long since I had a 19" Samsung LCD plugged in, so I felt a little guilty about buying a new monitor so soon, but after about 15 minutes, I'm hooked baby! I'm doing side-by-side web pages/editing/prep and everything just seems so much faster; a lot less clicking through open windows, a lot more point-and-click.
Things just seem... faster. It's a user usability issue with all the new real estate to spread things out and it feels a lot more efficient.
Man, I'm probably going to pull my hair out when I next go out on the road with my paltry 15.4" laptop.
Posted by dmohney at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)