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Jabphone announced at ETel January 25, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : xmpp, telephony , add a comment

As speculated in a previous post there has already been one cool mashup of Google Talk, XMPP and SIP announced at ETel; Jabphone allows users of any libjingle-compatible XMPP client (primarily Google Talk but since libjingle has been open-sourced others are rapidly adding support) to call out to phones. (via O’Reilly Radar)

Also check out Ward Mundy’s tutorial on building a telephone reminder system for Asterisk.

Seed Magazine’s ScienceBlogs, for the science geeks out there… January 23, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : web , add a comment

I picked up a copy of Seed magazine about a year ago. It was a great read, but unfortunately I already have one glossy monthly magazine addiction. So it was good to see that they have set up an aggregator of some interesting science blogs.

Its quite prescient that I should find this after we watched an excellent show on the ABC, ‘Race: The Power Of An Illusion’. In these times of great division amongst us, I take great comfort in the idea that there is extremely little biological difference between one person and another. This is of course in spite of numerous historical attempts to use science to justify such abhorrent concepts as segregation.

(Via MAKE: Blog. BTW, if you haven’t checked out O’Reilly’s MAKE, you really should. I might even get around to MAKEing something out of it myself one day…)

Now, where’s my DNA splicer…

Unwiring from copper, and a word on ETel. January 22, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : tech, web, telephony , add a comment

Since November 2004 I have been on the leading (and sometimes bleeding) edge of broadband in Australia. I am online via iBurst, a portable/mobile wireless broadband technology that uses an array of fixed base stations with ’smart antenna’ technology to send tightly focused beams to users within the area. I think the technology still has a few kinks and benefits from better LOS to the tower, but overall I am bullish enough to stay a user for the moment. And I have seen the mobility benefits first hand; having lived on the Gold Coast, a couple of places in Brisbane, and done a business trip to Sydney or two since I have been a subscriber. Plus its available NOW, whereas WiMAX will be available, ummm, whenever?

Well, the upshot of all this is that we are moving to Sydney within the next month and frankly we are strongly considering not connecting a fixed phone service. Assuming we live in an area with decent iBurst reception, I am going to set up a basic Asterisk@Home server, buy VOIP service through Engin or a similar provider and start living the wireless dream baby! Check back in a few months to see if it has worked out, or whether I have run back to the safety but emasculation of copper!

BTW, keep an eye on the blogosphere for reports of cool demonstrations coming out of ETel, O’Reilly’s inaugral emerging telephony conference.