Related link: http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/5807/

Ever since Google threw their hat into the mapping arena - so to speak - and made available the tools and APIs that enable developers to harness the power of Google maps for their own apps, we’ve seen a steady stream of apps with that now very familiar Google map look and feel, complete with the balloon icons and “yellow page” style information box. Read on for a brief look at some cool extensions of Google maps that we’ve found on the web. These sites have been commonly referred to as Google Map Hacks!

FoundCity.Net - http://www.foundcity.net/

This nifty resource is billed as an urban bookmarking tool…. ya, that’s what I thought at first too! The concept is perhaps a bit odd, however, when you consider some of the vertical apps or extensions you could build on this API then you have to admit that its pretty clever. Registered site users can add their bookmarks to the site, complete with related info and a photo as well. Example, one of the categories is urban street art. Site users then register/add items of art that they find to be of interest. Making this even more cool, users can search for tags using a cell phone. Foundcity is currently only supporting the city of New York.

I think a great port of this app would be for use in the “Best of” awards that many city’s now conduct. Imagine viewing all the “best of” winners for any city. Show me where to find the best bloody mary in town or best pizza. At the time of writing there were 661 tags in the database. Curiosity got the best of me so I created my own homepage - See http://www.foundcity.net/maptags.php?user=gisuser

The reg. process was very simple, add a username/PW pair, upload a photo and set my home page. Now I need to create some “tags”. Since I’m not actually in New York (the site is setup only for New York at this time) I’m doing a test by adding the Hello Deli to the database. I click create new tag and associate it with a description and the address: 213 West 53rd Street. I now have my list of map bookmarks started.

So now what? Well, the database is small but consider this. If I happened to be in New York and this database was full of interesting items, I could easily query the database from my cell phone. All I need to do is send an email from my mobile to nyc@foundcity.net with a tag name of “deli”… pretty cool!

HousingMaps.com - http://www.housingmaps.com/

This resource enables users of the popular Craigslist database to visualize and map the results of their search for available housing and rental properties. FYI, Craigslist is a very well known, San Francisco-based directory of classified ads. Using the Google Map API, users can search and map rental housing by city and price range. In our example we’ve queried results for vacancies in San Francisco less than $2,000. Users can extend the scope of their search by locating listings for sale, rooms to rent, and sublets. The list of cities is constantly growing with Providence, Toronto, and Montreal being recently added. See also http://www.craigslist.org/

GoogleTraffic.com - http://supergreg.hopto.org/google-traffic.com/

This one has a different look and feel and delivers data accessed from traffic.com as well as weather information from worldweather.org. The map delivers useful, real-time traffic information. Particularly useful are the construction icons that show visitors where they can expect delays and road closures. The sample map shown below shows a screen-cap from data for Detroit. MI. Details of the road closure as well as a useful time stamp are provided in the balloon.

Need a Wallpaper? http://gmerge.2ni.net/index.php

The developer of the Google traffic maps hack has also created a nifty tool to tile/merge satellite imagery from the Google Maps database. Using a python script, the application generates a file that merges images from the specified region. Users can optionally set the output image size and zoom level.

CheapGas Maps - http://www.ahding.com/cheapgas/

One of the more popular Google hacks of late is this one querying the gassbuddy.com database. Like the name implies, users can easily see where they can get the best deal on gas. The database provides a map of service station locations, reveals the current price, and a time stamp. The list of cities is getting pretty extensive and I was very impressed to actually see some Canadian cities listed as well. More information about the site’s development can be found at http://www.ahding.com/wordpress/index.php/2005/04/google-map-hacks-gas-movie/ See also http://www.gasbuddy.com/

CheapMovies - http://www.ahding.com/movie/

Like the name implies, if you need to locate a movie theater and map it’s location then this is the resource for you. The site has been developed by the same developer who brought you cheapgas. Only several cities are available at the moment. Once again, a very simple yet useful tool.

Creating your own Google Map Hacks

Do you want to create your own Google map hacks? myGmaps enables you to create, save and host custom data files and display them with Google Maps. See http://mygmaps.com/mygmaps.cgi/

For some tutorials and programming guides we suggest you check out:

http://stuff.rancidbacon.com/gmaps-standalone/
http://stuff.rancidbacon.com/google-maps-embed-how-to/
More info also at http://libgmail.sourceforge.net/googlemaps.html
Another blogger has decided to look under the hood to see what makes Google Maps tick. See http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-google.html
Article: How to make your own google maps (Engadget) http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000917034960/
Google Map hacking wiki: http://69.90.152.144/collab/GoogleMapsHacking

You get the idea. Google map “hacks” are popping up every day and I don’t expect to see this change for some time. Unless of course the people at Google redefine the licensing arrangements for distribution of the data. These clever programmers have managed to tap into a wealth of information that is locked up inside DBs and are generating some very simple, and useful apps. Given the fact that none of these developers has paid for any of the data and are redistributing the spatial data products without paying a dime, you have to wonder how long can this go on? Will Google, keyhole, Navteq, cheapgas.com and other data providers put a stop to this? Should they put a stop to it? Personally I love seeing these apps, however, when developers start creating websites that generate millions of page hits a day without paying a dime for access to any of the data being queried and displayed in their apps will things change? Until then, bring em on… I want to see more map hacks. Of note, this article noted that Google has no intention of shutting down any of these sites until they have done something that goes against the map license/data distribution policies.

RElated info on this topic can be found at gisuser.com, lbszone.com, and maps.google.com

Are currently developing or thinking about develping a google map hack? Please be sure to share details.

Problem

Your small business is growing quickly. Your customer service department consisted of a couple people who would answer incoming calls. Now you have a half dozen support personel, and often more calls than they can handle at once. You’d like to have incoming support calls queued up and handed off to your support staff in a more orderly manner.

Solution

You need an automated call distribution system, or ACD. This was once an expensive piece of dedicated hardware or software that would be integrated with an equally expensive PBX (private branch exchange). These systems make great economic sense for larger businesses, where the capital costs can be spread across an entire organization and over many years. For less well capitalized small businesses they can be prohibitively expensive.

Fortunately ACD technology has been integrated into many small business telephone systems. Better still, hosted communication services eliminate the need for an on-site telephone system altogether.

In this article, I’ll assume that you already have a telephone system, and don’t want to replace it just yet. So without throwing your old system in the trash, how can you create a slick and efficient customer contact center?

Poor Man’s ACD

If you only have a handful of customer service people, all of whom work a predictable schedule, you can build a poor man’s ACD by exploiting your phone system’s busy/no answer forwarding settings.

Let’s say you have four extensions, 201, 202, 203 and 204 for your customer service reps. Every decent telephone system, including entry-level systems, allows you to set forwarding settings for extensions. What you want to do is to set up a hunt group with a rule such as:

• if 201=busy, forward to 202
• if 201=no answer, forward to voice mail for 201
• if 202=busy, forward to 203
• if 202=no answer, forward to voice mail for 201
• if 203=busy, forward to 204
• if 203=no answer, forward to voice mail for 201
• if 204=busy, forward to voice mail for 201
• if 204=no answer, forward to voice mail for 201

NOTE: this works best if the sales reps have two extensions on their desks, one for the call center, and one for their direct dial extension for person-to-person calling. This way people calling a specific rep do not get transferred to someone else if the rep is not available.

This approach works, but it has its weaknesses, one of which is there is no good way to do queueing, where calls will automatically be put on hold if all extensions are busy. The other problem is that the forwarding rules are static, so this doesn’t work well in an ad hoc environment where people jump in and out of this workgroup. Every time the membership of the group changes, you have to change the forwarding rules, which are also easy to break. Nonetheless, if you’re stuck with a cheap phone system, and you have fairly light call traffic to your service department, this will work well enough.

Hosted Communication Services

A better option, especially if your customer service reps work from multiple locations, telecommute, etc, is to subscribe to a hosted communication service. Some of these services offer ACD as part of their packages.

One company in particular has an especially good small business ACD solution. Virtual PBX is a completely outsourced small business telephone system that emulates virtually all of the features found in high-end PBX/ACD systems. (While Virtual PBX is not the only company offering hosted communication services, they’ve paid particular attention to ACD features). I often recommend Virtual PBX as a way for small companies to build their customer support queues (they can still use their existing office telephone system for basic dial tone, voice mail, etc). Here’s how this works.

Virtual PBX assigns you a toll-free number. Each employee is assigned an extension number on the virtual telephone system. Each extension number can be pointed to one or more direct-dial telephone numbers (e.g. home phone, cell phone, office phone). So it is not necessary for all of the employees to be co-located. The system has several workgroups (ACDs) which the employees can join or leave via a web interface. When someone wants to answer sales calls, they simply go to the ACD page, join the sales group, and begin receiving calls.

If all of the employees in a given workgroup are busy, calls will be queued in FIFO (first in, first out) order, and will hear music or a recorded message while holding, just like a high-end system will do.

Additionally, the service allows you to rank different employees by priority. This is a way of weighting the queue so that some employees will be first in line to answer calls, and then if all employees of a certain rank are busy, the system will begin calling out to lower ranked employees. This is a great feature because it enables you to send calls to front-line support people first, and then to other people when the phones get really busy.

Costs

Hosted communication services generally charge a nominal monthly fee plus incoming toll charges for the toll-free telephone number. Rates vary from provider to provider, but are generally well under 10 cents per minute. So how much does this really cost? Less than you would think.

You probably want to answer customer service calls on an 800 number anyway, since this is standard practice in almost every industry. This means you’ll be paying for 800 toll charges anyway. A “dumb” 800 number, with no ACD capability, just rings into your existing phone system. It’s a dumb pipe that delivers voice calls from point A to point B. So you still need a phone system to answer and route the calls on your end. This type of toll-free service generally costs 3 to 5 cents per minute depending on the carrier, monthly commitment, and duration of the agreement you sign.

A smart 800 number that rings through a virtual telephone system eliminates the need for you to have a hardware based ACD at your office. All you need are telephones to answer the calls with. This type of service costs more than a dumb pipe, but not much more. Market rates these days seem to be about 7 to 10 cents per minute, less if you’re doing a fair amount of call traffic. So, the actual cost of the service is the difference between a smart 800 number and a dumb toll-free number, probably about 2 to 5 cents per minute extra, and most likely about 2 or 3 cents per minute (or a couple dollars per hour).

Another benefit of a hosted communication system is that no on-site hardware is required, just basic telephones. Because there is no equipment to install, you can be up and running in a matter of hours. This is also a great way to prototype a new customer contact center before you make a big commitment to a vendor. You can test drive a hosted communication system for a few hundred dollars, sometimes less.

So if you have a bean counter mentality, you might see that as an unnecessary expense, but it helps to put this in context of what you’re paying people to answer the calls (as well as the back office people who support them in their jobs). Unless you’re running a sweatshop, a couple dollars per hour is noise level stuff, especially if the ACD improves customer service levels, allows you to turn over more sales per hour, or keeps customers from switching to other vendors.

For most customers, the telephone customer service department is their primary point of contact with your business. It’s worth paying a bit to present a good image to the outside world. So now that you have a fancy telephone system, don’t make the same mistake that big companies make by understaffing their call centers and letting robots tell customers how important their business is to you.

Do you know other hosted communication service providers that offer great ACD and customer contact center features? Post your recommendations and links here….

Related link: http://www.siggraph.org/s2005/main.php?f=conference&p=art

The SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery overall theme of Threading Time will showcase digital artwork that maps or traces threads through time and space. The SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery is collaborating with the SIGGRAPH 2005 Computer Animation Festival, Emerging Technologies, Sketches, Access Grid, and Web Programs to provide artists with a wider forum to speak and exhibit their work.

A couple of notable artists…

MY LIFE IN SPAM series and Art Under Contract… The My Life in Spam prints consist of superimposed images of every Spam email message that the artist received over a given period of time. Since deciding to save his Spam in 1998, Hoberman has amassed a large archive of useless, often offensive messages. He notes that the amount of Spam he has received has tripled (on average) each year. This piece showcases the Spam in an expressive and intuitive manner.

Colortin … his project uses GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to chart the geography of physical and psychological space. The goal is to make maps of individual and societal perceptions, views, and opinions — which serve both to unite and separate human beings from one another.

Related link: http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/1837/

Sounds pretty simple eh? Its not rocket science but its definitely pretty cool. Watchtone Studio from Makayama lets you convert existing video files (such as AVI, DV, MPEG) to a watchtone. A very easy to use application, that lets you create a watchtone in 3 clicks. A free trial is available from http://www.makayama.com/watchtones.html

If you need a development tool to help convert your nokia videos to a supported format the multi-media converter from forum.nokia will get you going… although getting ahold of an MPG shouldn’t be too difficult these days.

Said to be the first announcement today to”wow” people, virtual Earth promises high resolution imagery to users as well as 45 degree angle views (aka Eagle Eye Views) above major metropolitan areas. The data is believed to be provided by Pictometry. Her’es a blurb from the Pcitrometry PR… “With Microsoft’s use of Pictometry imagery incorporated into MSN Virtual Earth, customers will literally see around everything they search for online where Pictometry images are available,” said Richard Kaplan, president and chief executive officer of Pictometry. “MSN Virtual Earth will redefine the way people find, discover and plan activities. We are thrilled Pictometry will be part of creating these new and important experiences.”

For more, see http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000100044309/

Google Maps + Personal Ads??

In related, albeit competing news, “BoonEx Group” and “AEwebworks Dating Software Development,” two software development companies, specializing in online dating industry, announced a new cool system, which unites functionality of Google Maps http://maps.google.com/ and database of US members of 4ppl Online Personals website http://www.4ppl.com . This is yet another “hack” of Google’s map service integrated with a propritary database. This one could get people worried though as the site lets people search personal ad postings and view maps and imagery of the person’s location. Imagine.. now users can easily search a major city for a 20 year old female subscriber and view an aerial image of her house and neighborhood (if she’s provided that information to the search service). Sorry, but that’s simply too much information!

FYI, those interested in seeing similar use of the Google map API might be interested in the cheap gas mapping app described here… http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/5675/140/. Similar to the dating service, it enables users to visually see the areas that offer the cheapest gas.. it ties the google map service into the cheapgas.com database - now this is useful!

Some related weblinks include:
Pictometry PR - http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/5720/
Dating Software - http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/5719/

What’s your take… will Google start to shut down hackers who are wrapping up the code or abusing their API? Somehow I doubt that people applying for personal services ever thought that their house and neighborhood would be shown on the web along with aerial photography.

Related link: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2005/05/20/80211map.html

The 802.11 Protocol Map started life as a figure that quickly grew too big to fit on the page of a book. The curse of writing is that you need to focus, word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence, on building the result. It’s often myopic work, and it’s easy to lose sight of the end goal.

There is an old (Chinese?) proverb about not being able to see the forest through the trees. Writing is an effort to build a forest, but you need to build from the smallest detail. You don’t get to start building the forest from trees; you need to start smaller, with twigs, leaves, and branches.

Before I started writing the second edition, I tried to think about how to organize my thoughts and efforts. I kept some early sketches of the protocol map handy as a way of making sure that the book described the major blocks on the diagram. For example, the new chapter 7 is about 802.11i and the new encryption protocols that take center stage in the diagram. At one point, I even briefly contemplated attempting to have a visual table of contents, that would put chapter numbers on parts of the diagram.

As I neared the end of the revision, I received an unexpected ally in focusing on the poster. I was traveling frequently, and my laptop’s battery had degraded with age to the point where I was no longer able to work through anything but the shortest airplane flight. When the battery was dead, I could resort instead to the low-tech paper-and-pen project, sketching out alternative visualizations of the protocol interrelationships.

In March, I received a full-size printed mock-up that I took everywhere with me and used to solicit comments. When I was visiting Chris Hessing, he suggested a clarification to the way that EAP was displayed on the poster. He also read the miles of text in the sidebar, and corrected the description of SecureW2.

Most recently, the poster was printed up as a foam-core sign at the Interop Labs. Explaining the difference between 802.1X and WPA is very difficult with just words. It’s much easier to do in front of a visual representation of the protocols!

There’s also an interesting little story about the article. I wrote most of it on a flight to Japan, but I couldn’t remember which family member I’d given the book on the history of the London Underground map. At 4 am when I couldn’t sleep in Tokyo, I plugged my VoIP ATA into the hotel network and made late afternoon calls to my parents and brother to get the facts straight for the article. I talked for quite some time, and the performance of my VoIP service was flawless.

Problem

You publish a major daily newspaper or magazine. You want to have your cake and eat it too (charge for web access and sell online ads).

Solution

Instead of forcing readers to subscribe to an electronic edition, just ask them to enter an access code from a recent print edition of the news paper. The access code is one of those warped text and numeric images that websites use to thwart bots. So if you subscribe to the paper or at least buy a print copy every now and then, you can access the web archives when you need to.

Simple, easy enough to implement, and this has the added bonus of encouraging people to buy the print edition. I am a case in point, I read the NY Times pretty much every day. So I am already paying several hundred dollars per year. I don’t want to pay twice to read articles I could have read in print. Plus I’d like to be able to read the edition anonymously, something the disposable access code trick would allow.

Of course, this is not a perfect system, people can post access codes online easily enough, but on balance there are enough honest people to support a system like this, enough that maybe this is worth a try….

Most people now have several telecom service providers, including fixed-line service, one or more cellular providers, and ancillary services such as voice mail, dial up Internet, and so forth. It is common for people to overpay for service, often substantially.

Chances are you can shave at least $20 to $30 off your monthly bill if you’re using a combination of fixed-line, cellular and broadband service. That might not sound like much but thats several hundred dollars per year, money that can be spent on you, instead of the phone company.

Replace Your Fixed Line With VoIP

The first place to look to save some money is your fixed line telephone bill. If you have broadband Internet service and cellular service, you can replace your fixed line with a flat-rate broadband VoIP service (unlimited local and long distance calling) for $20 per month or less. Depending on your local market, this is probably substantially less than your local phone service by the time you add up local loop charges, long distance service and taxes. Broadband VoIP sound quality is pretty good (one potential gotcha, if you’re using DSL, the phone company will probably sock it to you if you disconnect your basic voice service and only use DSL). If you have cable Internet service, you can probably ditch your local telco for broadband.

Lingo, VoicePulse, BroadVoice and Vonage are just a few of the companies offering cheap dialtone via VoIP, some with plans starting at under $10 per month.

Use Cellular Or Bare Bones Fixed Line For Backup/Emergency Service

The problem with broadband service is that you may or may not have 911 service, and your service will not work if your Internet connection or electrical power goes down. In that case, you’ll need a backup. Cellular phones work quite nicely for this purpose, so if you have cellular and get a decent signal in your home, you can use cellular for backup/emergency telephone service. If you don’t want to cut the cord with Ma Bell entirely, you can downgrade your fixed line to the bare essentials, dial tone and nothing else. Depending on what territory you’re in, this can be a money saver as the phone companies charge for “enhanced” services like Caller ID and voice mail.

Also, if you’re unemployed or otherwise poor, you may qualify for lifeline telephone service. The telephone companies offer discounted service to people whose annual income is below a certain threshold. Take advantage of this if you qualify for it. You’ve been subsidizing this service for years without knowing it.

Selecting The Right Cellular Plan

Once you’ve trimmed the fat off your fixed line service, turn your attention to your cellular service. Pull out the last three months worth of phone bills, and study them closely to determine how many daytime, nighttime and weekend minutes you’re using on average. There’s a good chance you’re buying more service than you need. The trick with these plans is to tweak your service so that you almost use your allotment but do not go over (you’ll get dinged with high per-minute rates if you do). This used to be difficult to do, but now several carriers provide real-time tracking tools so you can keep tabs on your usage throughout the month. For example, on T-Mobile, just dial #646# to get a summary of your current usage and remaining airtime allotment. You should also play hardball with your carrier and demand the best possible deal. Thanks to cellular number portability, cellular customers can switch providers more freely. Carriers know this, use it as a lever to extract concessions.

If you use cellular Internet service, be sure to sign up for a flat rate plan. Some carriers still charge by the megabyte. This can be a serious ripoff because your email client may be polling for new messages even when you are not using your phone or PDA. I use T-Mobile, and am quite happy with the pricing for their data plan ($19.95/month for unlimited use). T-Mobile is a GSM based carrier, and delivers wireless Internet service via GPRS, not the fastest system (like Verizon’s new EVDO service), but it works just fine for primarily text mode web browsing, POP3 email access, etc.

Cancel Unnecessary Services

Do you really need your dial-up account? Do you really need all you can eat text messaging on your cell phone? Take a close look at the extras, and ask yourself if you really need them or can live without them. $5/month here, $10/month there adds up to real money.

Some service providers are notorious for ignoring cancellation requests. One well known national ISP who shall remain nameless here deserves a special place in hell for this practice.

I make a habit of changing my credit card numbers about once a year. Tell your credit card company that your card has been compromised. They’ll issue a new card with a new account number pronto. Anybody trying to charge the old card will be unable to do so, and will have to contact you to get the new account information. You’ll be surprised who’s been dinging your card for five bucks a month without your knowledge. This measure is virtually guaranteed to save a couple hundred buck per year (more if you are an avid pr0n consumer).

The Bottom Line

How much will you save? Based on my experience, most people can expect to save around $30 per month by reallocating their telecom “portfolio” and dumping underutilized services. Doesn’t sound like much but that’s $360 per year, money you can spend on yourself instead of your local phone company.

Do you have other suggestions about trimming the fat out of personal telecom bills? Post your suggestions here…

Problem

You left your theremin at home and are lacking a suitable replacement for tonight’s big party.

Solution

Place two or more cell phones in close proximity to each other, make calls to each other (works best if the phones have a speakerphone mode).

Result

Lots of distorted feedback and odd sound effects. Digital cellular phones compress and distort audio (there is also a noticeable transmission delay). Notice what happens when one handset picks up a sudden noise. It’ll emerge, slightly garbled from the other handsets a fraction of a second later, and this will continue for several more cycles until the original sound is unrecognizable.

For extra fun… try this with three or more phones. Also try with pairs of phones using different combinations of cellular carriers. In the USA, there are several different cellular systems, each of which handle audio slightly differently (different transmission delay characteristics, different compression algorithms).

I’ve been using Netflix since October 2000, so I think that qualifies me as an early adopter. I love the idea, and have watched hundreds of movies and documentaries thanks to their innovative service. I haven’t set foot in a video store in several years.

Until recently, I had been watching 5 or 10 movies per month, sometimes more, sometimes less. That is, until I got a high definition TIVO for my DirecTV system.

Since then I have watched only a handful of DVDs. The backlog of videos on my TIVO list is lengthy, and grows moreso every day. I still watch Netflix DVDs, but much less frequently, and usually when I am traveling.

It’s not that I find Netflix inferior, I still love it, it’s just that the TIVO records so much stuff, much of it quite watchable, that I don’t often have time left to watch DVDs. While people might have enough cash to pay for both, they only have so much time.

DVDs are great, but satellite television is in many respects a better delivery mechanism. A Netflix + satellite PVR combination would be a potent combination indeed. The satellite system provides the fat pipe needed to deliver content, the PVR provides the storage medium.

Netflix and TIVO are allegedly working on a streaming media service that will allow people to download videos on demand via broadband. Nice idea, but also a perilous one. I’ll explain the reasons later in this article.

Netflix is based on the concept of delayed gratification (movies usually sit in my queue for weeks, sometimes months, before they arrive, as I have such a huge list). So instant delivery is hardly necessary.

This can be improved even further by partnering with existing content providers and PVRs to make the Netflix queue a TIVO feature. Add a title to your Netflix queue and it is automatically beamed into your TIVO, which grabs it from the first available source. Netflix provides the queue management (which is the real value they provide). HBO, Directv or whoever provides the content delivery. Simple, and this concept can be applied to any PVR enabled delivery channel (satellite, cable or broadcast).

Netflix, via periodic dial-up sessions initiated by the PVR, would know which films had been transmitted to your PVR, which ones you’d watched, and how you’d rated them with the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons. Netflix would therefore know which films had not been sent, and would use snail mail as a fallback delivery option.

Customers would presumably have the option of setting delivery preferences like:

• Send all DVDs via snail mail, regardless of PVR status
• Only send DVDs via snail mail if not received by PVR within X days
• Automatically delete queue items when transmitted to PVR

This type of arrangement would change the context of usage. For at home viewing, customers would largely rely on queues videos downlinked to their PVRs, except for uncommon titles that cannot be delivered in a timely manner. The DVDs would become the take-out option, which is exactly how I use Netflix today. I watch TV at home using my TIVO PVR. I stuff the DVDs in my laptop bag for business trips.

Soon, I will not even need Netflix for take-out, as TIVO is rolling out new features to export recordings to PCs and to burn DVDs. Once the DVD burn option becomes available for Directv, I doubt I will use Netflix even for travel.

Video Almost On Demand Versus Video Via Broadband

Video on Demand has been the Holy Grail for telephone and media companies for well over a decade. It is a deceptively simple concept, but full of technical obstacles and hidden expenses. Video Almost On Demand, by contrast, is cheap, and in the case of a service like Netflix, can be done quite simply.

The problem with video on demand is two-fold. First, it is a bandwidth hog, requiring several megabits per second for standard resolution video, and closer to ten megabits for DVD quality video, and still more for HD quality video (although H.264 will deliver HD quality video at about 8-10 megabits). Delivering high quality video in real time via broadband is not feasible except over VDSL or fiber optic lines. In theory, cable modem service can deliver enough speed, but cable is only fast because it takes advantage of the bursty nature of Internet usage. If a lot of users start downloading multimegabit streams for hours at a time, the performance and economics of cable Internet service go out the window. Solving this problem requires finer network segmentation with edge servers deployed throughout the network to reduce the redundant transmission of data. Ultimately, this is a solvable problem, but the solution is costly, and it is questionable if people really need instant on-demand access to everything.

The second problem is format conversion and storage. Converting tens of thousands of DVDs and digital television broadcasts to a PC friendly format such as Quicktime or MPEG4 is time consuming and costly. While the actual disk storage is not so expensive, video compression takes both human and CPU time. One could leave the recordings in their native MPEG2 format, but that would increase transmission bandwidth requirements, which is a deal breaker for virtually all broadband users, few of whom have downlink speeds faster than 3 megabits. While MPEG2 bitrates can be dialed down, this has a direct, and negative, effect on video quality. People might tolerate blocky video in a Fox News broadcast. They won’t appreciate this when watching a movie on a high resolution TV.

Video Almost On Demand, by contrast, can be done very cheaply and using existing hardware. So let’s look at a simple solution that can be implemented entirely using existing hardware and satellite/CATV delivery systems.

The TIVO box would be modified to engage in a simple dialogue with Netflix. This dialogue would proceed as follows:

1) User authentication
2) Request recordset of titles currently in Netflix queue
3) TIVO box compares queue recordset against its to-do list, ignores titles already in internal queue
4) TIVO box attempts to add new titles to its to-do list
5) Reports success/failure to add new titles to internal to-do list back to Netflix
6) Reports user ranking for recently viewed titles, which are automatically removed from the Netflix queue

Note that this is a simple transaction, essentially no more than a login followed by a series of simple database queries. This will work on any PVR, regardless of transport media (the more channels available, the greater the odds of prompt delivery). I would estimate that once a specification is defined, the time required for software development would be pretty minimal on both ends.

The business case for doing this is pretty compelling. Reducing dependence on postal delivery reduces operating costs substantially, especially to “power users” who view a disproportionately high number of titles and are more likely to own a PVR. Piggybacking on existing content delivery systems (e.g. CATV, satellite) eliminates the need to develop a separate and expensive video over broadband system. Postal delivery becomes an fallback for less common titles, and for users who specifically want DVDs for take-out viewing.

Lastly, because this feature is so cheap to implement, not doing so poses substantial risks, because what is easy for Netflix to do will be equally easy for its competitors to do. Blockbuster and Amazon are both making forays into this space. Netflix deserves credit, and a prosperous future, for pioneering this concept. So they will do well to follow the motto “deal with change before it deals with you” because cheap and simple solutions like this have a way of upending the most carefully calibrated business plans.

Problem

You want to route interoffice calls over your company’s wide area network instead of via conventional telephone lines or point-to-point leased lines. Your telephone system is an outdated heap of junk that was designed circa 1970. How do you trick it into routing interoffice calls via VoIP?

Solution

Most newer telephone systems have embedded support for VoIP, either in the base system release, or via expansion cards that you insert into the system backplane. If your system supports VoIP out of the box, it should be fairly straightforward to configure it to route interoffice calls via your network, skip ahead to the section on Dial Plans.

VoIP Gateways

If you have an older system that is not upgradeable to support VoIP, you’ll need to buy a VoIP gateway that translates a VoIP connection into one or more circuit switched T-1, E-1, or ISDN Primary Rate circuits that can be connected to your PBX or key system. Many vendors provide conversion hardware. This capability is sometimes embedded in a router, such as with Cisco equipment. You can also buy standalone VoIP gateways from vendors such as VegaStream.

You can also roll your own VoIP gateway using the Asterisk open source PBX combined with Digium T1 interface cards. (Warning: not for the faint of heart, but if you can save a lot of money if you’re inclined to get your hands dirty). I’ll post a recipe describing how to do this in a few weeks.

Trunk Groups

Even older telephone systems support a feature called Trunk Groups. Let’s look at a simple example. You have two phone companies that you use, one for local calls, one for cheap long distance calls. When you want to make a regular local call, you dial 9 for an outside line, then the phone number. When you want to make a long distance call, you dial 8, then the phone number. The phone system simply looks at the first dialed digit, decides which trunk group to use, and connects you through to outside dial tone.

When connecting a VoIP gateway to your phone system, you want to make the VoIP interface look like a bank of regular telephone lines, usually one or more T1 or E1 digital trunks, which can carry 24 or 30 simultaneous calls respectively.

In this recipe, we’ll look at a hypothetical situation where you have four offices in San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland and Novato.

Starting with the San Francisco phone system, we’ll create three new trunk groups in addition to the default “dial 9 for an outside line” group. Trunk group 2 will map to the T1 connected to the port #1 on the VoIP gateway. Trunk group 3 will map to port #2 on the gateway. Trunk group 4 will map to port #3 on the gateway. So to dial out on trunk group 2, you’ll just dial 2, followed by the destination telephone or extension number.

NOTE: you can also create trunk groups by partitioning channels (also called timeslots) on a single T1, so for example channels 1-4 –> Oakland, 5-8 –> San Jose, 9-12 –> Novato. In this example, I use a single T1 for each trunk group to make this easier to follow.

Programming The VoIP Gateways

Next, you’ll need to configure the VoIP gateway so that it knows what to do with calls. First, you’ll need to decide what type of telephone line protocol to use. For inter-office trunking, the simplest configuration is to use what’s called wink-start DID. I’ll spare you a treatise on telecom jargon. The short description of how this works. When you place a call through a wink-start circuit, it will signal the equipment on the other side that a call has arrived, then blast a short series of Touch Tone (DTMF) digits down the line to tell it who the call is for (kind of a poor man’s Caller ID). Low tech, but it works. Avoid using ISDN Primary Rate unless you really need to use it. It’s always a nightmare to set up.

The VoIP gateways in this system are running in a simple point-to-point configuration. In our sample configuration, calls ringing into port #1 will go to novatovoip.foo.com, port #2 to sanjosevoip.foo.com, and port #3 to oaklandvoip.foo.com. For each trunk group, you’ll typically need to specify:

• The address and port number used by the destination VoIP gateway (e.g. novatovoip.foo.com)
• The VoIP protocol to be used for the call (H.323 a good protocol to use for simple point-to-point dialing)
• Default codecs (compression algorithms) to be used (use G.711 if bandwidth is not an issue, use G.729 if it is)

A good VoIP gateway that is designed to interoperate with office telephone systems should do a good job of walking you through this process.

Once this is set up, you should be able to place calls from one system to another via the VoIP gateways (assuming the system’s dial plan is correctly set up).

NOTE: try to get your hands on a T1 channel bank, this is a device that splits a T1 into 24 analog telephone lines. Hook the channel bank up to the VoIP gateway, configure the VoIP gateway to present a loop-start line protocol, and then you can test it directly using standard telephone handsets (they’ll see the VoIP gateway as a plain old telephone line). This is a good way to test that the gateways are able to ship calls from point A to B without any other equipment in the loop.

Dial Plans

Here’s where things can get tricky. If your telephone system is fairly smart and provides a centralized management interface for controlling multiple systems, it should be fairly easy to set up VoIP based interoffice calling. Unfortunately, a lot of older telephone systems are dumb as fenceposts, and you must resort to trickery to get them to do what you want them to do.

If your system presents a single system image when managing remote systems, VoIP dialing should be transparent. The system will know which switch or server a particular extension is connected to, and will automatically route calls to that extension via the most appropriate path. This type of system will make your life much, much easier. You don’t want to have to rewrite your routing tables every time you add or move users. Plug: Shoreline Communications has an especially nice VoIP-centric system that makes multi-system management a relative breeze.

The problem is that a lot of older telephone systems do not provide very good centralized management tools. Each system is its own little island. If you only need to manage say four or five offices, this isn’t so bad. If you need to manage 50 systems, good luck!

The basic trick you can use for smaller systems (up to 7 or 8 offices) is to use your system’s dialing plan. Most telephone systems are set up to key off the first dialed digit, using a set of rules such as:

• 0 : ring operator extension or group of extensions
• 1 : dial local extension 1xxx
• 2 .. 8 : may or may not be used
• 9 : grab outside line

What you’ll want to do is to create a dial plan like this:

• 0 : ring operator extension
• 1 : dial local extension 1xxx
• 2 : dial extension 2xxx at Novato office
• 3 : dial extension 3xxx at San Jose office
• 4 : dial extension 4xxx at Oakland office
• 9 : grab outside line for local/long distance call

What you’re doing here is mapping each index digit to a different trunk group. Trunk group 2 is attached to a T1 that’s connected to your VoIP gateway, which is in turn programmed to route calls to its counterpart at the Novato office. Trunk group 3 is attached to another T1 to the VoIP gateway,.. this port is configured to ring out to the San Jose office. And so forth.

Lastly, you’ll need to configure the telephone system to handle incoming calls from the VoIP gateway. If you’re using wink-start DID for the line protocol, this should be pretty easy, and may work by default. The phone system will see the DID digits (delivered in-band as DTMF/Touch Tones) as the destination extension number. You may also send the originating extension number in this packet of digits.

While this approach requires extra work, as these settings must be duplicated on each system, it will work with even the dumbest telephone systems. As long as you can have multiple trunk groups in your dial plan, you can set this up. The main limitation is that you can generally have at most 8 trunk groups that are accessible in this way. If you need to internetwork more than a handful of systems, it is probably time to seriously consider a forklift upgrade to a VoIP-centric telephone system.

This isn’t a simple, “plug and play” type of installation, but you should be able to get this running in a few days if your people are proficient at configuring the telephone system (the gateways are generally pretty easy to set up provided they can see each other across the company WAN).

Why not just replace your phone system with something newer? The answer is “you should”, but we’ll assume management, in all of its wisdom has told you to save company money by squeezing another few years out of your old system. Phone systems aren’t cheap. A good mid-range system will set you back about $1,000 per user, so if you’ve got north of a hundred people in your company, that’s a six figure outlay. It’s best to look at phone systems as investments, but a lot of managers don’t see it that way.

Congratulations… you’ve just updated your circa 70-something PBX to do VoIP calling. Now may also be an opportune time to replace the eight-track tape player hooked up to the PBX’s music on hold port.

If you have any recommendations for VoIP gateway vendors, post your suggestions and remarks here..

Related link: http://www.luxor.com/

Las Vegas is a world unto itself. It’s like a gigantic theme park, made up of littler theme parks. I’ve decided to start calling the distortion field around the strip “surreality,” because everything is so far beyond normal that you can’t even blame it on a reality distortion field. (When the venue makes the marketing at the trade show look tame, you know it’s bad!) Here are a few examples from my trip:

One of the engineers I’m working with at the Interop Labs had some trouble with the DVD drive in his laptop. (I suggested that since Las Vegas is another planet, he really had a region coding problem, but that wasn’t it.) He ordered a replacement, which was sent to him at the Luxor. The company made a mismash of his name and the other engineer he’s sharing a room with, and sent it to the “University of Utah, Las Vegas” with a street address of the Luxor. Nevertheless, it worked.

There is a wedding chapel at the Luxor hotel. Given the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, the “Chapel at Luxor” just doesn’t have that ring, does it?

Out of everything that’s weird about this town, though, the top of my list is the nightclub at the Luxor. It’s named after Ra, who is the sun god. I’d be very interested in finding out why the nightclub is named after the sun god. Is it a frustrated liberal arts major making fun of the casino? Is the nightclub where the sun god rests up before his next hard day illuminating the planet? Does it just sound cool?

Related link: http://www.interop.com

Building a large-scale wireless network is challenging. Large scale gets much worse when you have to contend with the problems of unlicensed spectrum. I’m sitting on the exhibition floor right now at Interop, and I’ve chosen to use a wired Ethernet connection because it is performing much better than the wireless network. In addition to the sponsored show network, there are several exhibitors building their own networks. In a first for a trade show I’ve been to, though, there are signs with solid network engineering advice:

Although there is no legal or regulatory way to control the use of unlicensed spectrum, there is technical authority behind the recommendations. For the most part, my extremely brief spot checks with an analyzer have found them to be followed. There is no reason not to use the lowest power settings–most exhibitors don’t need to go beyond their booths, which just aren’t that big. Staying on the three mostly non-overlapping channels is also solid advice. Just because 802.11b/g gives you 11 channels (in the U.S.) doesn’t mean that you can use all eleven. When lots of networks spring up on all the channels, everybody’s throughput suffers. Three channels might be slow, but it will be faster than using every channel.

(As an interesting aside, I found a forbidden configuration on the floor. In 2003, an engineer from a very well-known networking company had put his demonstration on channel 14 because “the rest of the channels were too crowded, and it wasn’t fast enough to use the allowed channels.”)

If you want better speed and the 2.4 GHz band used by 802.11b/g is a mess, there’s a great solution: 802.11a. The sign shows that four channels were reserved for 802.11a use by exhibitors, which I would think makes channel layout very easy.

Problem

Broadband Internet service, either via DSL or cable, is generally most economical to deliver in densely populated areas. DSL is distance sensitive, and generally only feasible within three miles of the nearest central office switch. Since utility companies are not mandated to provide high speed Internet service the way they are required to provide basic telephone service, there are many regions where broadband service is not available, and probably won’t be anytime soon.

Solution

Fortunately there are a number of ways to provide improvised broadband or “middleband” Internet service without waiting years from your friendly local telephone monopoly to get around to offering service in your neighborhood.

ISDN

While DSL is not widely available, most carriers offer ISDN Basic Rate telephone service, and in some cases an ISDN-like flavor of DSL called ISDL. It can be offered in a lot of situations where DSL will not work, and is generally supported by most telephone switches since ISDN was part of the plan to digitize the telephone network in the 1980s.

A single ISDN BRI circuit delivers 128kbps, and in some configurations 144kbps. Like dial-up connections, these can be combined into virtual circuits using inverse multiplexing (most videoconferencing terminals use this technique to combine 2 to 4 ISDN circuits into a single virtual circuit to allow high quality video calls).

ISDN is not cheap, and costs as much as or more than a standard analog telephone line. However, it is a significant improvement over dial-up, offering more than twice the downstream bandwidth, and nearly four times as much upstream bandwidth.

Obviously DSL is a better choice if it’s available, but it often isn’t, whereas ISDN may be.

NOTE: I once ran an electronic commerce website (PhoneZone, now part of Hello Direct) off a 128kbps ISDN line in San Francisco circa 1996. DSL service was not available at that time, and a T1 connection would set you back $2,000/month or more. It wasn’t fast, but it worked.

Satellite

If ISDN isn’t an option, satellite television providers also provide high speed data service to rural areas. Satellite service can provide download speeds in excess of 400Kbps (sometimes in excess of 1Mbps with some providers).

Satellite Internet service has been around for quite a while. Hughes, the owner of DirecTV, released a service called DirecPC several years ago. This was a one-way/dial-return service, meaning the download was delivered via sateliite, while the uplink was delivered via a standard ISP connection. Using this arrangement, DirecPC could provide download speeds of around 400kbps, however upload speed were limited to that of the dial-up connection.

Two-way satellite service is now available, in which both the uplink and downlink are delivered via satellite, with uplink speeds in the neighboor of 100kbps, and downlink speeds of 400kbps or better if the system is properly configured. DirecWay, Hughes latest offering, is priced at approx $60/month for home users.

If you live out in the boonies, or off the grid altogether, satellite is now a viable way to get reasonably fast Internet connectivity.

NOTE: one major problem with satellite service is significant latency due to the round trip time required for the signal to travel 44,000 miles to the satellite and back (this adds 250 milliseconds of delay). Not a problem for an email or file transfer, but this is definitely a problem if you want to do multiplayer gaming or voice over IP.

Wireless

The cost of upgrading fixed-line facilities in rural areas is an impediment to providing universal broadband service in these regions. Wireless access, however, can cost orders of magnitude less to deliver.

A rural telephone cooperative or ad hoc community organization can easily muster the resources to build a broadband wireless network using off the shelf wireless networking gear.

While Wi-Fi networks are limited to a distance of a few hundred feet, this is because they generally use omnidirectonal antennas. By refitting wireless access points and repeaters with directional antennas that throw signals in spot beams akin to flashlights, it is possible to greatly extend their range, sometimes to several miles.

A detailed discussion of wireless community networks is beyond the scope of this article (for that I recommend Rob Flickenger’s book Building Wireless Community Networks). However, the general recipe is fairly straightforward.

1) Identify one or more locations in your community where someone can get reasonably priced broadband service (e.g. T-1, Cable, DS-3), pool resources across the user community to pay for the links.

2) Use directional antennas and repeaters to build a wireless mesh network out from these terrestrial links to sites that wish to share them. For example, by mounting parabolic antennas and repeaters on the sides of homes, one can relay a wireless link, in bucket brigate fashion from house to house, several miles along a sparsely populated valley.

The challenge with this approach is that it requires the participation of people throughout a community to work. However, given that the alternative may be waiting years for the local telephone or cable company to offer high-speed service, this may be the best option (as well as a fun project).

Do you have any suggestions or vendors you’d like to recommend? Post your remarks here…

Related link: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/802dot112/

In the course of writing the just-released second edition of 802.11 Wireless Networks, I had a great deal of work to do to get the book up to date and reflecting the current reality of wireless networking. One of my favorite additions in the new version, though, is actually not something I wrote. Glenn Fleishman (of wifinetnews.com fame) generously wrote the foreword. I had started the first edition with the simple assertion of “People move. Networks don’t.”

While I still like my start (it’s still the start of the preface in the new edition), it’s amazing to read instead that “Matthew Gast was my mentor long before I met him.”

The real kicker doesn’t come until the end, though. As I shared his foreword with family and friends, the same paragraph always elicited a big laugh:

But Matthew’s new job took him allegorically from a weekend household warrior to a jack-of-all-tradesman. Matthew can tear out those inner walls, reframe, plumb, and wire them, all the while bitching about the local building code.

Glenn has not spent much time with me, but he fooled my family into believing otherwise!

Related link: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2005/05/02/80211myths.html

Like a virus, certain pieces of information enter the collective consciousness, and they grow with repetition. I recently decided to debunk wireless-related myths, inspired in part by Joel Snyder’s recent column. For my I initially thought about writing specifically about wireless LAN security myths, but tracking down all the wrong-headed data that has entered the conventional wisdom and debunking it turns out to be a bigger project than I’d initially thought.

The moral of the story is that if you run a network, be sure to check up on received wisdom before following it. Just because it was written down at some point does not mean that it is still true.

I’m not exactly sure what causes people to get into telecom, but whatever the disease, there is finally a cure!

If you are a hopelessly addicted telecom geek (or, actually, any sort of geek who enjoys communicating), you need to take a look at the new phenom on the open-source scene:

Asterisk!

Imagine the fun of being able to build the ultimate über communications engine! Your own VoIP-enabled PBX. Or how about building something like a Voice-enabled BBS?

Here’s some of the infinite things that Asterisk can do:
- Hold internet-based meetings of friends (Asterisk-based conference rooms are going to become the killer app for personal use)!
- Create ridiculously complicated telemarketer blockers (they waste your time, now you can waste theirs)!
- Send yourself telephoned reminders (it’s so much more high-tech than tying a string around your finger)!
- Have automated “emergencies” call you out of boring meetings (another killer app)!
- Have your wired lines connected to your cell!
- Play matchmaker - have your friendly date-bot connect your eligible friends together - automatically (and, for extra excitement, randomly)!
- Set up automated birthday greetings! Imagine how loved your friends will feel when they get their own personal birthday message (and, yeah, to be sure you are the first - have it call at 3AM, while you are soundly sleeping)!
- Avoid your parents!
- Avoid your partner’s parents!
- Connect your respective parents together (is this too terrifying for words?)!

Have I used enough exclamation points?

Asterisk is fully Linux-friendly, and will happily interoperate with pretty nearly anything you want it to.

This little-PBX-that-could is about to re-define all the rules when it comes to telecom.

Telecom, fun? You betcha.
Download a copy and check it out!

Are you aware that there’s a telecom revolution a-brewing?

Building a Mobile WLAN Access Point

Problem: you want to share a fixed-line or mobile Internet connection via standard 802.11b/g technology. For example, you might want to share an Internet connection at a trade show, or create an ad hoc wireless network for an outdoor meeting.

General Purpose Mobile Access Point

Solution: easy (brain-dead simple with Mac OS X), just configure your PC to share its Internet connection via wireless. Wei-Meng Lee describes how to do this in Panther.

Not much to describe or discuss here. If your OS allows Internet connection sharing via 802.11b/g, this is pretty easy to set up. So if you’ve got a wired Ethernet connection at your tradeshow booth, but no standalone WLAN router, this is simple enough to set up.

Cellular To WLAN Mobile Access Point

If your laptop has a cellular modem and allows Internet connection sharing via 802.11b/g (again this is easy to configure on a Mac), use the trick above to do this.

EVDO:WiFi Mobile Access Point

In this helpful article, Tor Amundson describes how to build a self-contained cellular (1xRTT/EVDO) to 802.11b wireless access point. Very nifty. Hopefully this type of appliance will become standard issue in the next couple of years. I can think of a lot of situations where something like this would be really useful.