evolution creations
when you put your mind to it, anything is possible
when you put your mind to it, anything is possible
Sep 25th
In my professional career, getting on conference calls has unfortunately become one of those constants in my day. Whether it be conference calls with clients, or internally, this has become a business de facto standard for getting people together to discuss a topic or coordinating efforts synchronously verses an asynchronous process such as emails or online chat.
There are tools to help with the virtual team meetings, such as GoToMeeting and Dimdim, that can help with visual tools to help move a meeting forward–the ability to share a screen, share a powerpoint or whiteboard, and certainly those things have helped evolve conference calls and make them more useful for team collaboration.
But one of the fundamental challenges that I see in conference calls has been what I would call the personal touch. When we meet in a large group setting in say a conference room, we take visual queues from individuals in terms of letting them know when we want to interject with a comment, or even more basically putting a name to a voice to know who is speaking at that time. Also conversation collisions are less likely because we can see who wants to talk or talk next and prioritize our own comments based on when we think it will most appropriately fit. These are all issues that I think most people face when they have conference calls, and in my estimation is what drive people to say, “it’s worth me getting on a plane to travel to the location to avoid these pitfalls”–thus undermining the whole value of remote conference calls as a more efficient, time friendly, and certainly greener approach to facilitating this very basic and very necessary business function.
I propose that the next evolution of conference calls will bring the web into the fold but to facilitate a different medium. When you dial into a conference, you can simultanously log into a website that is unique for your conference instance. That web instance would be directly linked to your bridge, so just like most people have static bridges, the webpage would also have a static URL. Once the conference bridge is open, the webpage will allow you to log in.
When the user dials into the bridge, they will identify themselves and voice recognition will take a sample of their voice and store it. Once logged into the bridge, the user can load the webpage and user’s can name themselves, and similar to say an online poker session, you’d have a picture of a conference table with each of the participants listed. As someone speaks, the voice recognition that originally was taken will recognize the person speaking, and relate them to the person on the webpage. This way all the participants who are in the conference can know who is speaking at any given time. Also there should be functionality so a person can “raise their hand” on the webpage to let others know that they have a question–if multiple people have a comment, they can weight their requests based on real-time interactions with each other, so they can yield to another person, or ask to go first.
My thinking is that this is perhaps the next evolution for conferences that will solve the age old issues that we all go through on conference calls. Who knows, it may happen!
Sep 4th
In my line of work, I have to make quite a few calls to the UK. As part of our standard business practice, we make use of services like Skype to help reduce the costs of international calling that you would incur if you use traditional telephone providers. It occurred to me recently after a plethora of issues in getting the call quality of Skype to be what I needed it to in order for the person on the other to understand me, that I needed another solution.
So my options were:
Some of the requirements that I had going into this were:
With all of these requirements to go after lets look at each solution. So to start with you have Skype. Some of the benefits here are:
The only real downside with Skype has been the call quality. Most of the times I’m at home the calls are pretty good, and I attribute that to the firewall configurations I made and the fact that I have a fairly good speed with Comcast (15Mbps down/8Mbps up).
Now just this week I started to look at Ooma. They do have a function where you can add funds to your Ooma account and then be able to make international calls. The upside to Ooma is:
The immediate downsides were:
Then I tried Google Voice. This was a surprise to me as I have been using Google Voice since they were GrandCentral and primarily use it for US business calls. The functions of Google Voice are amazing, and I’m surprised it took me this long to use it internationally.
The upsides are:
At the present moment, I can’t see any downsides of Google Voice. This has been definitely a diamond in the rough and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t use this earlier!
Now comes the last bit which is cost. Is Google Voice a better option functionally but not so on the cost side of things. Let’s look at a comparison of rates that I have put together. Let’s start with Comcast Digital Voice as I had them before moving to Ooma, just to see what the “other” guy can do for you:
Comcast Digital Voice
United Kingdom $0.08
United Kingdom – Mobile $0.30
Clearly there isn’t a whole lot of savings here, but this is what you would expect from your traditionaly phone company.
Ooma
United Kingdom $0.028
United Kingdom – London $0.019
United Kingdom – London $0.019
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – NTS $0.33
United Kingdom – Mobile $0.33
The prices from Ooma are much more competitive than from your Comcast Digital Voice solution for land-lines, but not so much for mobile as their calls are actually more expensive. This was definitely surprising for me as I would have assumed that from a VOIP provider their pricing would be much more competitive. Let’s look at Skype.
Skype
United Kingdom $ 0.024
United Kingdom-London $ 0.024
United Kingdom – Mobile – Hutchison3G $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – O2 $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – Orange $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – Others $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – Tmobile $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Mobile – Vodafone $ 0.291
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 1 $ 0.559
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 2 $ 1.117
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 3 $ 1.676
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 4 $ 2.792
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 5 $ 3.351
United Kingdom-Shared Cost-0844 $ 0.136
United Kingdom-Shared Cost-0845 $ 0.147
United Kingdom-Shared Cost-0870 $ 0.208
United Kingdom-Shared Cost-0871 $ 0.261
United Kingdom-Toll Free $ 0.000
As we would expect, Skype’s costs are just slightly better than either Comcast or Ooma. Their landline costs are about the same, and their mobile calling is just slightly better. Still any savings is a savings! Now to Google Voice.
Google Voice
United Kingdom $0.02
United Kingdom, Mobile $0.19
Well as you can see, Google Voice comes in right at the bottom of all of the above providers. Their cost for landlines is a flat $0.02 so some savings there, and their mobile is a few pennies less than all the previous providers. The winner appears to be Google in this round! Now I will caveat this by saying that Skype does offer unlimited international packages for a monthly and quarterly fee that allow you unlimited calling to landlines in the UK along with other countries. Now I’m not saying that this is bad, as I was signed up for this service until just recently. But the downside is that the Skype call quality was never what I really needed it to be, so even though the landline calls were covered and ultimately reduced the price, I always had issues with people not being able to hear me well.
In the end I would recommend anyone who in a similar position as I am to look at Google Voice as an inexpensive way of both making international calls, but making it easier to manage your contacts and voice messages and leveraging the services within Google Voice to do your job more effectively! Post comments if you have any questions!
Aug 17th
I’m just winding down on a weekend long, partial week long marathon of Kyle XY on Hulu and I thought that I would provide some feedback as I feel just as most people have felt when the show abruptly ended after the 3rd season.
Aug 14th
What would you do if one morning you woke up and you knew nothing of your life previous to that day, and you had to re-learn what it meant not just to be a human, but to be you again. But is that even possible? What is it to be you? Can that be relearned, or is the process of many years of doing what you do to become you something so unique that like fingerprints no two are the same.
Aug 14th
So I was watching AMFix this morning, and I have to first start off by saying that I haven’t been following the Obama health care debates at all (life, work, everything else just is taking priority at the minute). But at any rate, nothing else was on the idiot tube this morning, so I decided to hear what they had to say. Obviously there wasn’t any discussions on the meat and potatoes of the health care package, the conversation was focused more on how people were reacting to what he had to say at these town halls.
Aug 13th
Have parents really just let go and decided to let the environment raise their kinds? Honestly, this gives pause for concern as parents should be more involved in what their children do both inside and outside of the house, and when there is lack of guidance and discipline, naturally kids will push the boundaries till they break. Is the only fix for those who do not agree with those methods of parent just move away–away from the kids and their clueless parents?
Jun 14th
There are many ways to improve Windows Vista’s network performance. I’ve been documenting some of the ways here:
http://evolutioncreations.wik.is/Windows_Desktop/Improving_Windows_Vista_Network_Performance
Jun 12th
As most of you know I’ve been knee deep in Atkin’s and really now seeing some major progress. But after watching a Donut paradise special on TV the other day, where they took us on a cross-country adventure looking for the best donuts, I suddenly started to crave that which we all know is bad for us–the donut!
So wouldn’t you know what I started looking for Nutritional information from websites and I couldn’t find the ingredients for a KK donut. Now as most know Atkins is all about the carbs, but getting further into your eating, you should also (regardless if you are on Atkins) be focused on WHAT is in your food. It’s absolutely surprising to know that the food that we’ve come to love and enjoy is actually pretty bad for us in many different ways, but mainly because of the raw materials that goes into making the food.
Below is what I got back from Krispy Kream regarding the ingredients that they use, and enough to say YOU SHOULD NOT EAT THESE on the sheer principle that the first ingredient is not at all what you want to put into your body!
Ingredients: Enriched bleached wheat flour (contains bleached wheat flour,
niacin, reduced iron, thiamine, mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), dextrose,
vegetable shortening (partially hydrogenerated soybean and/or cottonseed oil),
water, sugar, soy flour, egg yolks, vital wheat gluten, yeast, nonfat milk, yeast
nutrients (calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate), dough conditioners (calcium
dioxide, monocalcium and dicalcium phosphate, diammonium phosphate, sodium
stearoyl-2-lacrylate, whey, starch, ascorbic acid, sodium bicarbonate, calcium
carbonate), salt, mono-and-diglycerides, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides,
lecithin, calcium propionate (to retain freshness), cellulose gum, natural and
artificial flavors, fungal alpha amylase, amylase, maltogenic amylase,
pantosenase, protease, sodium caseinate, corn maltodextrin, corn syrup solids
and BHT (to help protect flavor).
Glaze also may contain: Calcium carbonate, agar, locust bean gum, disodium
phosphate, and sorbitan monostearate.
This isn’t to say that the donuts are terrible, but for those who are health consicous and this is going out to the majority of US folks who are considered to be on the obease side of things, you should definitely stay away from foods with enriched bleached white flour. Really where’s the nutritional benefit from that!
Apr 26th
If you are moving your Drupal site from one host to another, you’ll want to follow the steps on the wiki: