We're very excited to announce that we'll be offering call park to all of our customers starting today. Our call park app, which we call Parking Lot, is easy to use. Each call park channel is an empty spot where you "hold" a call, allowing you to move your conversation to any other phone in your OnSIP phone system. The process of parking is as simple as transferring:
James Breeden, CEO of LiveAir Networks, one of our customers and also an agent, recently read Larry Browne's blog post about his volunteer work with the fire department and responded with this account of how OnSIP helped the City of Smithville's response to the Bastrop County Complex Wildfire.
Gartner released an interesting report stating that the role of IT should change from one of implementation to one of planning. With the abundance of cloud-based applications, I can't agree more. The build-vs-buy scenario doesn't even make sense any more. There is such a plethora of cloud-based applications, like the OnSIP Hosted PBX, that running your own in-house service, in most cases, does not make fiscal or strategic sense. The gist of the Gartner report is that IT departments should shift their focus to one of planning and implementation of cloud-based applications and let the cloud-based companies focus on what they do well, namely run the application.
We recently updated the software (SIP.ld) on the Polycom boot server to version 3.3.1. The new software is more in line with Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) standards. In the older version of SIP.ld, the program was reading the NTP server from the config file. However, the proper behavior is for the phone to use the NTP server as defined by the DHCP server, regardless of what's in the config file; the config file entry is only supposed to be used if the DHCP server fails to supply an NTP server. 
The new version of SIP.ld corrects this and behaves properly. There is one downside: If the DHCP server is handing out an NTP server, and the IP address it's handing out is non-existent or invalid, then the phone has no NTP server and does not display the correct date/time.
Customers often ask us if we offer voice talent to create customized Auto-attendant recordings, e.g. “thank you for calling Widget Co. For sales, press one….”
While we don’t have professional voice talent here, we can recommend a great service to get this done. It’s called Voices.com.
Voices.com is a marketplace for professional voice talent. There are thousands of talented voices ready to quickly record any message you might like for your OnSIP account.
Using Voices.com, you can listen to several voice talent samples, choose one, contact that voice talent, send your script for recording, and receive your recording all in an intuitive interface. (The service takes a cut of the fees you pay to professional voice talents via the service.)
Many people have speculated why Google is giving away free voice calls from Gmail. “SKYPE killer!” “A shot across the bow of Facebook!” “The beginning of the end of every non-Google social anything!”
But maybe it’s just more of the same from Google.
According to Google's First Quarter 2010 10-Q, 97% of revenue comes from advertising. No matter how you slice it, Google is in the advertising business, not the telephone business, or any other business for that matter.
By allowing people to make phone calls out of Gmail, is it possible Google is simply trying to get people to stare at their open Gmail web pages, filled with ads? Consider this:
I’ve thought long and hard about the proper role for a CEO. At Junction Networks specifically, the main focus of that role has changed over the years, but I like how Fred Wilson puts it at the AVC.com blog:
This post is by Mike, CEO of Junction Networks Over at the American Express OpenForum site, Guy Kawasaki wrote an excellent post about how too much money can be a bad thing for startup companies. Ed Sim who runs the Beyond VC blog wrote a similar article back in 2006, which I've kept bookmarked. 
Guy Kawasaki takes the argument one step farther than Ed Sim; Kawasaki outlines specific examples of what too much funding can do to a company. He makes many great points, but I'd like to focus on those regarding human resources:
This blog is by Brian, Software Engineer here at Junction Networks. This is a good read about adapting a product to the iPad; it contains some tips for developers and is the first of a series Brian will write about updating my.OnSIP for the iPad.
In the previous installment of this series, I mentioned that audio in my.OnSIP wasn't working on the iPad. In this installment, I'll go over the issues and workarounds.
We've hit an important milestone here as depicted in this photo from my office yesterday. I wonder if anyone can tell. A little help with some of the artifacts in this photo: 
Polycom phone: No, we're not celebrating our acceptance into the Polycom Field Verified Partner Program. That happened last year. Also Polycom phone: It's an HD phone. Pretty unbelievable sound quality on OnSIP. But as a standards based SIP provider, we've always supported HD calls. Nothing new here. Apple Laptop: We're an Apple shop, always have been. You can't see my Windows laptop under the desk which has a fried hard drive for the second time in less than two years. Steve Award Trophy: Unusually heavy. Not sure why, but it came with white gloves. Ho Hum. Nothing new here, though; we've blogged about how happy we are to win this trophy a few times now. What's left?
