Brad Ideas - Telecom - Comments

clone it

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:35:21 -0800

Just get CDMA workshop and clone it yourself, fluck the cell phone company.

The Right Mic for this

Baylink — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:12:29 -0700

is a Crown PZM Pressure Zone "plate" mic, also sold by Radio Shack for a time; lemme see who still sells them.

Here's Crown's page: note they have one that you *drill into the middle of the conference table*; if you're really serious about this, that's probably your target.

http://www.crownaudio.com/mic_web/pzm.htm

Radio Shack no longer sells theirs, and they were inferior to the Crown, anyway:

http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pzm/

What Radio Shack *does* sell that you want is this:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4252024

I have one of these on a Peavey PVM-520 that I use for some low end VO work, and it's not bad at all for $25.

I have yet to try many

brad — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 22:20:03 -0700

But we’ve done decently with both the cheap logitech desktop mic and the mic in my logitech orbit camera, though that had more reverb. They all tend to blow away any phone conference because of the wideband audio codec, but I agree a lot more could be done with multiple microphones. Skype now supports microphone arrays, and they can be found in the Facevision HD cameras for Skype but I have yet to try this or any other.

As I noted earlier, I think it would be great for Skype to support microphones scattered around the table, and to also make use of all the mics in all the laptops around the table, which would run a special mode in the Skype client to contribute their audio to the master Skype client so it can mix and use the mics closest to the people speaking.

Suggestions for microphones?

Evan Jones — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:57:46 -0700

I've started doing a lot of video conference calls like you describe, basically using some combination of Skype, iChat, and WebEx. Audio quality has been a problem. The Polycom phone we have ends up working better when there are multiple people talking, so I've been looking for an external microphone. Do you know if anyone has tested the various PC microphones that are available for this purpose? For example, Polycom has one, but apparently it needs a Windows software driver to actually use the multiple microphones in it to do echo cancellation etc, so it seems like if we are connecting to a mac, we might as well just get a "standard" external microphone and pay half the price. Any product reviews / recommendations for this space?

i agree

i agree — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 23:31:25 -0700

I totally agree you have it layer out functionally but is have to careful of the federal law. What I would want is to take my old basic reliable phone when my current phone isnt good or on a trip and such. To switch them quickly

Your cell phone at home...

Stuart Lynne — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:46:50 -0700

You can get home portables where the base station acts as a Bluetooth headset to your cellphone. So you just plug your cell into the charger next to the base station and then use any of the portables you have scattered around the house (e.g. Panasonic allows up to eight.)

multiple cell phones

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 11:32:27 -0700

Everything mentioned above to try to explain why the cell phone companies do not allow more than one phone per number is ridiculous. Software can take care of all the arguments.

But what is missed is the real reason to allow more than one. If you give up your home land-line so as to use your cell phone 100%, you must carry it constantly and everywhere in your house. And the wife does not have any access unless she has her own separate cell phone. Carry it to the garage, to bed, to the shower. If you leave it on the charger in one room you cannot answer it anywhere else.

Remember 20-30 years ago when the land-line companies pretty much did the same ? Only they could install an extension and the phone could only be bought from them. Now it is the cell phone companies doing nearly the same. They control everything about the cells.

Hopefully some day their ignorant rules and regulations will go the same way as Ma Bell.

hey i just got a new phone

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 13:01:23 -0700

hey i just got a new phone because my old samsung vice screen broke, but the funny thing is, whenever my new phone gets a text, the old vice will also ring. two phones, one number.

how about...

joe — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:57:17 -0700

I think moreso than having a second phone for emergencies in ur car or office would be for people like myself that work in maintenance and need my phone to check emails for repairs, log onto my jobs network to edit and close open requests.. I work in dust, water, gas, oil etc.. I have a blackberry right now and its only 4 months old and is basically ruined, barely works right.. It would be convenient for me to have say a windows based device that I can use for work and then my blackberry or an htc evo @ home for personal use.. I'm trying to have my company get me a paid work phone, then yeah I can probably do call forwarding.. I'd rather have one phone# for everything... Couldn't they just make it so that if both phones are on they both simply just don't work.. Basically when I get home from work I would shut my work phone off in order for my personal phone to be active and vice versa!? That would be amazingg!

Yes, Canadian plans suck

brad — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:57:26 -0700

But not because you pay for airtime rather than making calls. If you are poor in Canada you can get a prepaid account pretty cheaply, though not as cheaply as in Europe. A few carriers in Canada even offer “free incoming” but there is either a monthly fee or a daily fee, I think in some cases on the day you use it. Thanks to that there are places that do dialback, so you can do all your calls as incomings and get unlimited calling for a low fee, but carriers don’t like it.

Mobile use in NA is much higher than in Europe and I think it is due to the fact that people buy buckets and callers don’t pay extra to call you. I was arguing this with the CEO of Verizon last week, he claims it is because of phone subsidies but I disagree.

However, I think the proof is even more clear than when I wrote this. I can call everywhere in the developed world for a penny a minute or less on landlines. That’s due to competition. European mobiles cost 15 to 25 cents/minute. That’s just crazy. It’s because there is no competition, I get no choice in the matter. I don’t know how to not call that flawed.

NA model is super flawed

trfndr — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:45:19 -0700

"But I still believe the right approach is to make it "a phone is a phone" to the caller. The caller should not have to pay a different amount to call me because I happen to be on my cell at one moment and my landline the next. Especially not the ridiculous 20 cent/minute charges so many european mobile carriers charge."

Oh my. My cell carrier (Fido, and I believe Rogers as well) charges 35 cents/min (with 13% tax it's 39.55 cents) for any airtime sent or received after I finish my "plan" minutes, and that does not include the long distance charge (another 35c or 39.55c with tax) which is applied if I am receiving an unfortunate call while "roaming" outside my home area (a "cell" of ~30x30 km) or happened to call someone from outside my 30x30 home area. Total: 79.1 cents for a stupid local or semi-local minute. Isn't that super super ridiculous compared to your 20c to call a cellphone thousands of miles away?

In the EU/Oz/NZ/Somalia/Africa/Asia/ME/.... model this is not the case at all. If you cannot afford the phone, just don't call anybody and pay very minimal charges to keep the line ringing. In NA, if you cannot afford it, you have to cut the cord or your wallet keeps bleeding despite your will (minimum plan charges are much higher here plus the unfortunate received calls that you just wished never happened). In short, the NA model caters for the needs of the heavy users by selling them huge bundles whereas the other model can cater for everyone else in addition to the heavy users.
The definition of a heavy user is also different. Here means you make OR receive lots of calls, there it means you just make a lot of calls. If you happen to be popular and receive lots of calls, your "fans" pay, not you and you are still a light user.

The European GSM model allows people of lower socio-economical level have cellphones (cheap or used models) and be accessible to their loved ones as needed. This is not true here.

The heavy users of NA are subsidized by the light users because their "unlimited plans" just make it more expensive for the company to offer cheaper plans for lighter usage, which is really unfair. The heavy users should be paying much more for their thousands of minutes used, not the same as one who only use a cell phone for a few minutes of emergency (like it should be).

As a light calling user, all I need is free incoming anywhere in the country (at least with the same company) and free caller ID to know who is calling. I don't care about any free minutes or SMS. Why no company in NA ever offers that, especially as prepaid?

Paying for receiving is absurd

trfndr — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:15:22 -0700

"I don't have to explain to the caller that they should shut up cos I'm outta minutes..."

Exactly. I am in Canada and hate to give my number to anyone because they will just suck my minutes. The problem is you have to be very rude to tell your calling parties from overseas (who are already paying a premium) that they are actually costing you too much.

I hate the NA model. It's the most stupid thing I hate here. I think the idiot who designed it should be sentenced to death (kidding).

If I pay for receiving, then why pay for calling as well? Clearly it's a very flawed and unfair model!

The biggest mistake in the NA model is the choice of giving the same area code for landlines and cellphones. This is the wrong way to do it. This distinction should not be hidden from the caller so that they know if they are disturbing or not. Once they decide to disturb on my cell, they have to pay the premium. What's the point of hiding the type of your number? Portability? Useless really unless between the same types (e.g. different landline companies or different cell companies but intermixed)

I have read all the arguments of favoring the NA model and still find it non-convincing

It's of only minor use

brad — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:27:49 -0700

It certainly won’t go HD on your system and connection. It may help you do “HQ” on your lower speed system but I am not even sure about that.

Everyman Webcam

Dannie — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 06:02:41 -0700

I want to purchase the Everyman webcam, however I do not have a dual-core processor. I have an Intel 4 processor with 2GB RAM and run Windows XP Professional. My download speed is pretty good, usually 4 megabits. Upload speed is much slower, .43 megabits.

What resolution should I be able to use the webcam at?

Well its definitely easily

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:53:20 -0700

Well its definitely easily possible in voip services but GSM has certain limitations while registering in HLR, which can be overcome if the cell provider realy wants to, regarding the cloning part of it i would not buy that point as IMEIs are something that can be reprogrammed and hence this is a major issue i you want to monitor clonning, i wrk fr a telecom fraud team and hence i am aware f it. But still feature is some thing very consumer friendly.