The Business Channel Executive Reports interviewed Suzanne Bowen via Altitude-Media on American Airlines about the business, social and personal opportunities that Virtual Phone Lines creates. Thousands of www.didx.net members buy and sell virtual phone numbers from 55 countries since 1999! Listen to find out more. It will broadcast May and June 2011 on American Airlines and at http://www.altitude-media.com/current_shows.

More information soon about our video podcast with CNN Airport Network to be aired later in 2011.

Transcript:
Q1 from CNN Radio: We’ve all experienced difficulty conducting business while traveling or in remote locations. Connecting with clients and associates on the go can be a challenge. There is a new product that enables you to have offices in every major city you need one. It’s called Virtual Phone Line. Flying with us today is Suzanne Bowen. Suzanne, would you explain how this is configured and how it works?

Suzanne’s Answer: There are a variety of ways to configure and very simple to do. To start, pick one or more cities in the world where there are people who are currently or potentially important to you.

For me, it might be Tokyo for friends, Mexico City for business and Bangalore or Karachi for the plethora of technology development talent. Share those local numbers (virtual phone lines) with people who are in those cities? How do I let them know my phone numbers that are local to them? I post them on my website, blog, email signatures, advertisements, business cards and social networking pages.

I can login any time to my VPL account and set them to forward to wherever I want to be reached at any given point in time such as Google Talk, Skype, a SIP address, a landline or a cell phone.

Q2 How does a Virtual Phone Line change things for people and organizations, especially in the areas of business? And who is your competition?

Suzanne’s Answer: The key advantage is to offer opportunities for businesses to have a market as large as the globe itself with just a small investment in a few Virtual Phone Lines. In today’s world, business is mobile. Fewer clients have to actually open the physical front door of an office or business. To enable your potential and current clients to call a phone number belonging to you that is local to them is an excellent tool.

Competition? Just google Virtual Phone Line and you may see a list of great companies providing such a service. Some of the ways that our service is different includes the option to connect the line with one’s Facebook business page and even start an audio blog with them.

Q3 How can people and businesses get their own Virtual Phone Line or Lines now?

Suzanne’s answer: Visit www.virtualphoneline.com. Sign up. Choose one or more cities important to the business. Choose where you want the numbers to ring to for your business. Let all the VIP (very important people) in business, friendship, etc. have the Virtual Phone Line number that is local to them. Now, they will start calling you which is what you need!

A fabulously freaky feat is how the story of Kolachi was created by accident, from choices of taking roads less traveled by everyone involved in the making. Filming begins in April 2011, the first science fiction film in Pakistan.

The trailer, now posted on Youtube and embedded on hundreds of other websites, starts with some great music with a sound like indie musician Sean Wright. Viewers are immediately and virtually pushed to the edge of their seat and then boom!

Feel the flight from the uncertain science fiction of the future to being plopped like in a time machine to present every day Pakistan where a young, cheeky, smarter than average college student is the DJ for a local radio station notes with a bit or sarcastic glee, “”Today instead of making fun of what happens in this great city of ours …”

People make fun of Karachi? Do the Oscars provide perfect fodder for movie critics? Du uh! What do people inside and outside Pakistan make fun of about the nation? Outsourcing such as in the FoneJacker videos, camels carrying wholesale sets of laptops, buses filled to the brim with dozens, even sitting on top of the vehicle and hanging off the sides. (Thank you, Jamal and Travel-Culture Pakistan, for the picture.)

Kolachi time-warps us through a cunning weave of reality and fiction, magically mixing possibility, culture, history and hope in the Land of the Pure.

Summer Nicks wrote the story of Kolachi, which is being made into a movie. He is one those people who one cannot be labeled, yet when talking with him, we don’t hear or see any false airs. He’s quite an entrepreneur, actor, musician, writer, and works with Bodhicitta Works, a company based in Australia.  Techistan recorded an audio podcast interview with Summer to find out how he accidentally stumbled into writing Pakistan’s first science fiction film Kolachi.

Techistan also interviewed others who were involved technically, about the use of 3DAnimation and VFx studio. Summer Nicks, for example, was also integral in the making of the trailer for Kolachi. There are two parts to Summer’s interview podcast below.

For many Star Trek, Star Wars, Twilight Zone, Asimov, and other science fiction fans in and outside Pakistan, this is exciting!

Part 1 podcast interview with Summer at

Part 2 interview with Summer at

In addition, feel free to listen to more technical talk about the type of 3D animation and vFX Studio work involved in creating a trailer like that for Kolachi at

Production Company: Bodhicitta Works (Summer Nicks, Meher Jaffri, Craig Peter Jones)
Trailer technical work: Summer Nicks
Director: Mansoor Mujahid
Country: Pakistan, Australia

Suzanne Bowen asks Summer Nicks: You’re in Karachi right now, right?

Summer Nicks: Yes, I am. Actually, I am originally from Australia. I came over here to work on a project a couple of years ago.  Unfortunately, the day after I arrived the earthquake happened in 2005. I spent a lot of time working in relief camps, helping to rebuild schools and stuff. Then, I fell in love with the country. I love the culture (pronounced “culcha”), hospitality of the people and it has been my home ever since.

Suzanne Bowen: I’ve been to Karachi and through the countryside. It is beautiful. Everyone, it seemed, was always looking out for me. So friendly, very warm and welcoming.

Summer Nicks: There are a lot of lessons in this country that the rest of the world could learn from …

Techistan commentary and research insert: And .. what about the possibility of a science fiction … Star Trek conference in Karachi? Such would build upon the growing popularity of sci fi, crowd sourcing for investment in the film and other types of participation.

Why name the movie Kolachi? It was originally named Swift Total Bang. Mr. Nicks tells about another film he wrote while in Pakistan … twin doctors working on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Summer’s professional history began at age 12. The discussion moves on to conspiracy theories and the capacity that each of us have in ourselves to do great things … the movie is about HOPE.

Switch from the verbal and creative genius behind Kolachi to one of the technical gurus Ali Asad Jafri podcast interview …

Sarah Dawood (Techistan and DIDX ‘what’s hot among colleges and universities’ reporter) and Suzanne Bowen (VP and co-founder of both) interview Syed Ali Asad Jafri who is a co-founder of Inverse Studios. They specialize in 3D Animation and VFx studio. They were the ones who did the 3D work and were not involved in the making of the Kolachi trailer that is published. (We at Techistan apologize for mistaking this in the first place.)

Ms. Dawood: Tell us about the kind of technical work that would be involved with a trailer such as that for Kolachi, Ali Asad.

Syed Ali Asad Jafri: We were basically to make CGI effects for films. Firstly, developers would create the trailer sequences and some of the shots. There are some shots they would choose not to put on the trailer because of creative reasons.

Our company Inverse Studios started in 2009. I would imagine that the overall thinking and planning behind such a fantastic trailer as Summer Nicks created was to make something that would be of interest to the audience and would boost our profile to make catch the fancy of the greater public.

Suzanne Bowen: Share with us for the more technical-thinking listeners of this podcast, especially in the areas of CGI and animation … more technical details of what might be involved?

Syed Ali Asad Jafri: Our basic pipeline for visual effects uses Adobe Creative Suite, 3ds Max, and Maya. For major effects, we use plugins like Fume FX for 3ds Max. We also use Afterburn. Overall, we composited most of our data into Adobe After Effects.

The cached data for the sequences that you see in the trailer got up to around 2-3 GB per frame. That was an issue to tackle. It was really pushing the envelope on a certain scale because when you are working for TV commercials, you are only in a certain canvas. When you are working on an HD format, renders shoot up. Your time shoots up, and you have to really make things as efficient as possible to bring it all together.

Suzanne Bowen: The trailer that Summer Nicks created has been passed around the Internet like crazy. I can see the momentum really building.  Many are poised excitedly waiting for the final results of the movie. We realize filming does not start until April and will take quite a while. My colleagues who are in Pakistan and outside … I’ve asked them to show the trailer to others … via their cell phone and Youtube, and let me know the comments or to blog on that conversation … themselves.

One quote in the trailer, “In the end, everything matters because something always come from it.”

Such a simplistic statement but true. We are really looking forward to what is going to come from this.

Syed Ali Asad Jafri: What you and I hear in the popular in the USA and in Pakistan … about Pakistan … is only 10% of what is really going on in Pakistan. For example, Pakistan is much more different from Bangladesh and India than what people think. Bollywood is not usually the kind of content that Pakistanis are looking for. They are hungry for unique content. They have already seen Hollywood, Bollywood. The industry wishes to revive itself up.

Summer Nicks is an excellent writer, technical developer, musician, and actor. He’s doing a great job. He is in the trailer, too. The bald guy you see acting in the trailer.

Suzanne Bowen: What are the most common questions that people ask you about trailers such as that for Kolachi and the upcoming movie Kolachi?

Syed Ali Asad Jafri: Yes, they often ask … what kind of software would people use? How much time would it take? At least a month and this trailer that Summer Nicks made was 2 minutes and 51 seconds in length.

Syed Ali Asad Jafri continues: We don’t really think that software used is the dominant reason for a successful trailer or movie by animation studios like ours. It is the people who are using the software and their talents and how they put them to use.

Software is often advertised with emphasis on ease of use, but it really depends on the people in production who will test and use and see if they really do work well. There are hiccups in the production pipeline that must be tackled one by one.

Suzanne Bowen: So you have to be “determined” in nature and to be brave and think “out of the box.” Don’t just follow the directions. Try this. Try that. It make not work, but if you didn’t try, you would never know.

Syed Ali Asad Jafri: Yes, exactly. Whatever movie we see today … like people usually only see the last draft, the best part according to a group of people of that movie. People usually don’t see the many nights that people spend. The “crunch hours” …

Suzanne Bowen: Another thought-provoking quote in the trailer is where one guy says to another guy, “What do you want?”

The second guy answers, “What do I want? I want to tell you what I believe.”

It’s like the second guy cannot get an audience of one or more to listen to the ‘important’ thing or things that he believes, and he wishes for this so much.”

So, Ali Asad, be sure to get all your geeky CGI friends to visit Techistan to listen to the podcasts and read about Kolachi.

Sarah Dawood: Thank you, Ali, for the brilliant technical work in the movie trailer for Kolachi. (She speaks some Urdu here. ) We wish you all the best in this project. (More Urdu …)

Syed Ali Asad Jafri: Thank you for having me. Be sure to get everyone to watch the trailer and go to the theatre to watch the movie. It will be great!

Other topics you can hear about in the podcast 1 and 2 with Summer include breaking negative stereotypes in the Kolachi movie trailer, a film studio he started with Meher Jaffri, his history as an actor and film producer, the process of writing the story of the first science fiction film set in Pakistan, film in Pakistan in general, and difference between this film and the typical Bollywood films.

Interested parties who wish to invest and participate in other ways may contact Bodhichitta Networks or Summer Nicks.

Should be a video game, too!

BTW, buy Sean Wright music at Jamendo and Summer Nicks and Essa Saulat.

Q1 … Suzanne Bowen: Congratulations, we heard you won an opportunity with Google Summer of Code. Please explain what is Google summer of code?

Answer from Muhammad Adnan: Thanks,  Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is an annual program, first held from May to August 2005,[1] in which Google awards stipends (of 5000 USD, as of 2010[update])[2] to hundreds of students who successfully complete a requested free or open-source software coding project during the summer.

The program is open to students aged 18 or over.  Let me explain how it works. Google accepts open source organizations. Students submit their proposals to those organizations via Google and in turn, Google and mentor organizations accept the students who writes code for open source organizations. People get more open source code, and students get money, learns lots of stuff about software and code.

Benefits for all

Q2 … Suzanne Bowen: Tell us about your background experience and future plans in software engineering and development. Open source? Mobile? Telephony? PHP? Android, Symbian, Linux, Windows, etc.?

Muhammad Adnan: I just left my thesis /project to earn my MS (Computer Science) degree specializing in software engineering from Virtual University of Pakistan. I completed my BS Computer Science from Allama Iqbal Open University in 2006. I have more than 4 years of experience in software development. Started my professional career in .Net Development, and soon I turned to freelancing at rentacoder.com. I make my living from freelancing.

I want to attach myself with one open source organization, i.e., phpMyAdmin who was my mentoring organization in GSoC. I have planned to start my own open source project in php/mysql. I have planned Zend Php Certification this year INSHALLAH. Future is mobile apps, So, I have planned to adopt the Android as my first mobile platform because at this level, programming language doesn’t matter; you can adopt any language or platform. Important are your concepts.

Q3 … Suzanne Bowen What was the toughest experience you had during the weeks of Google Summer of Code? Tell us all about it, especially Android.

Muhammad Adnan: During the weeks of Google Summer of Code, I had a lot of tough experiences.

A week ago right before accepting my proposal, my wife gave a birth to my daughter, and in my university there was not summer vacations, and I had to work for my clients too. So, you can understand how hard it would be for me to manage all that stuff. Studies, work, family and GSoC
I’m greatly thankful to my family who cooperated with me a lot to manage all these things.  I put my days and nights for successfully completing my GSoC Project. Alhamdolillah

(Adnan holds up the certificate for us to see in the video.)
Q 4 … Suzanne Bowen: What advice can you give to new developers getting started and for the older guys and gals who were from “old school” like Perl, Cobol and Fortran?

Muhammad Adnan: Believe me, rocket science to manage and to successfully mark all the stuff is “Passion”. My advice is to get involved with your choice of organizations early. Look at the previous year selected organizations and start communicating with them, fix the bugs/patches marked in organization software and try to understand, what would be the best rocking feature for organization’s software and write down a quality proposal. That’s it

For older guys/gals, if you have strong concepts in any old language, then you can adopt any new language. Important are concepts. Mostly concepts are same in every language, just syntax is a bit different. I give credits to online tutorial sites. They are just few clicks away and you can become software ninja even you don’t need to go to a university.

Muhammad Adnan’s blog and follow him on Twitter.

 PART ONE: Michel Poignant is the CEO of Paymotech, a service worth “paying” attention to. A large majority of people on planet Earth have a cell phone, but not everyone has a bank account and credit card. Suzanne Bowen, VP of DIDXchange interviews the astute and gregarious businessman at the beginning of a beautiful spring day in March 2011 on mobile payments and  its universal wallet solution that includes a contactless sticker option. Tap, tap. PIF (paid in full)!

Read on. Click the Listen button on this page to hear the article read to you, OR click to hear the original audio podcast interview between Michel Poignant, CEO of PaymoTech and Suzanne Bowen, Chief Editor of Techistan and VP of DIDX in part one and part two. and …

So how does Paymotech work? Michel states that the current service came originally from two different markets. One is the stored value count … debit bank cards people are using for general purposes such as receiving their payroll. The second is VoIP on mobile SIM card business. Paytoo was a pioneer in both since 2004.

After a few years, some customers for the prepaid card wanted VoIP services and also vice versa, so they started a mix of the two services.

“We started to think of providing services like an incoming phone number from anywhere the client needs even when that phone number is of a city in another country that the client is not currently living in,” states Mr. Poignant. “That is how we came to DIDX.”

Mobile payments, mobile transfers, mobile everything is in the works for Paymotech set of services. The company is an MVNO with services available with roaming in over 190 countries. They decided, why not merge all the services they are providing into one mobile wallet solution.

Why not make money available any time and not just when one wants to make a phone call?

Michel says, “Seventy percent of business in the mobile world is pre-paid. Three billion of them do not have a bank account. It is simply a matter of transferring credit from the user to someone else for anything using the mobile phone, to pay merchants, to make a payment, to have cash access! We offer a real mobile wallet (Paytoo) since November 2009. It was the first in use world-wide.”

This is at least 17 months earlier than Google who recently announced a Google-backed system for mobile payments, expected to be released later in 2011.

Paymotech has millions of users already in Asia, Middle East, Africa, Australia, and Europe and the service is catching fast in major cities of the Americas. It is not plan, not a dream. It is a real product already marketed, in use and very popular. In fact, for example, it is extremely popular in Japan in a time when services like PaymoTech’s are very important.

One guy in New York City has a Paytoo account. He has a flexible choice of using PaymoTech mobile telecom services of that of another third party. If he uses PaymoTech, he has one bill, but even if he uses another telecom, he goes to a store to make a deposit of $500 to his account. This transaction typically cost four dollars.

Now, his Paytoo account has a $500 balance. Michel adds, “Ah, I need to add $25 to my mother’s telecom service account in Mexico City. I can do this anywhere, whether I am on the street, at home, at a football game, I can do this transaction on my mobile phone via an SMS. Maybe I need to send another $50 to my daughter who is doing her masters’ studies in China. Next, let’s buy some groceries at Publix. I use my prepaid card for everything. I don’t waste time in lines to top up my card. I don’t spend $20 – $50 just to transfer money to people and organizations I need to pay.

Now, what is a contactless sticker? Paytoo’s offers end users a fast, convenient and fun way to pay. The sticker is equipped with a contactless application, allowing it to be used as a normal payment card at any point of sale terminal accepting contactless. Payments are made by placing the smart sticker a few inches away from the contactless reader. Simply “tap and go.” Just tap the device. No credit card needed.

The Paytoo “contactless sticker” is used in NYC, Japan, Australia, and more. Nepal is one of the new areas where the service is very popular. It is an undeveloped country where normal transaction fees make it not worth to even use a credit card or transfer funds via standard methods.

For a Nepalese person to receive money in standard methods, she will get a notice that her family in the USA, for example, is sending home $200 to the capital of Nepal because her village does not have a money transfer station. She has to take a train to the capital city. A big hassle which takes about 3 days round trip. In addition, typically in Nepal if someone sends you $200, you will actually receive $150 after fees.

On the other hand, with a Paytoo account, even in Nepal, will have a telecom connection on her cell phone. In fact, 35 million people in Nepal have an account on their hand set. She will receive the money through her Paytoo account via the mobile telecom network. She can use the money for things she needs at any store with the POS service compatible with Paytoo. She saves three days’ time and fees.

Michel Poignant mentions his visit with the Minister of Senegal who told him that, “We receive every month, 600 million francs. Ten to fifteen percent are spent in fees. These are not going inside our economy … The people who do not have any money are paying the most for their services.”

“You can avoid standing in lines because you have a bank account, a credit card, but the people who don’t … tend to be the ones who are paying the most for all of us,” adds Mr. Poignant.

“We need to start providing services that are fairer to all people of this planet.

Paytoo offers to Point of Sale device and the contactless sticker that integrate with the contactless technology.

According to a survey done in January 2008, there is a significant consumer interest for the sticker concept. Consumers rated “ convenience” and “easy to use” as the most important benefits of the sticker, followed closely by the ability to experience a “ faster checkout”. Moreover the contactless sticker concept has wide appeal across demographic groups, without much significant difference in demand by age, gender or income. For the first time consumers will not fear to lose cash or their card and leave their wallet at home.

Learn more about Paytoo Mobile Wallet at http://www.paymotech.com/en/services/paytoo.html.

PART TWO :

In part two, Michel Poignant, CEO of Paymotech who, as an MVNO, offer the complete Paytoo mobile VoIP, mobile international phone numbers and mobile payments answer for a complete lifestyle communications and exchange technology and service with contactless feature even … and POS at least 17 months earlier than the world’s technology giant Google.

Michel says, “We give the mobile wallet to our wholesale clients so that they can integrate the technology into their SIM card. If a bank wants to offer a mobile wallet or mobile payments system, we do the same. We look to integrate easily with existing services after you are connected to the cloud of PaymoTech. Every partner is automatically connected with other partners that we have.”

Even huge companies with the most popular brand names one can think of right now … are talking with PaymoTech about investing and/or partnering because the company has connections where they do not for SIM, voice, international phone numbers, payment exchange, contactless technology, and POS device and services.

Companies can spend time and money to re-invent the wheel or work with the pioneer, the successful veteran PaymoTech and its Paytoo wallet. Mr. Poignant is offering invitation to other parties to sign on and be immediately connected with the current list of countries now on board.

“We can implement the payroll payment through Paytoo, voice over IP services on mobile, international phone numbers, and/or other combinations. We are working on a new share revenue program for some time in second quarter 2011,” says Michel. “We do not sell the technology. We give it. Only payment needed is for develpment. Comply with necessary regulations.”

More discussion takes place about complying with regulations and the shared concern and certain measures that DIDX, PaymoTech and other companies have regarding the same such as in money laundering and tax evasion. Michel explains how they monitor which is smartly done via its combined mobile voice and mobile payment services.

Watch the video about Paytoo. Visit http://www.paymotech.com.

Music writers, entertainers and producers will want to check out a new project they have launched in 2011 that will integrate beautifully with their MVNO mobile voice and mobile wallet … music social network for those who want to sell music to the three billion people who do not have a bank account. Visit http://www.muzicol.com/. 

Customer, provider or partner, no matter who you are, go to http://www.paytoo.com. Click on Create an Account which will take you to https://www.paytoo.com/members/signup where you can sign up now! Check the mobile coverage area, mobile rates, SMS callback rates, voIP rates, and availability of international phone numbers. PaymoTech has signed agreement with over a 1000 USA stores and began massive new deployment as of March 22, 2011.

Part 3 of 4 podcast with Daniel-Constantin Mierla (Core Developer at SIP Router Project, CEO at ASIPTO, Co-Founder and Core Developer at Kamailio (OpenSER) Looks Back on 2010’s the Best in Accomplishments and Uses of Kamailio:

Open source projects entail more than writing code, Daniel-Constantin shared in this part of the podcast. Learning to collaborate with many people is integral to success; Kamailio is an example.

The product Kamailio is free to try and use. The business model is in the value added services that businesses and consumers are looking for.

Daniel enjoys reviewing the year before to see how things can be improved. The year 2010 was one of the best in the last ten years, he says. The way we communicate has changed. As late as three to five years ago, people were only thinking about voice and maybe video, but today everyone wants instant messaging and presence, so they can publish information about their location.

SIP servers such as Kamailio are busier than ever because of this fuller and richer communications experience being provided. They have moved from a synchronous information model to an asynchronous model which increases the quality of the performance. In addition, they are ready to handle new specifications delivered by standardization bodies.

They are using an XCAP server which no other open source telephony platform currently includes this. Among other advantages, it can reuse of SIP router transport layer – XCAP documents can be sent via SIP (UDP, TCP, TLS and SCTP) and via HTTP (TCP or TLS (HTTPS)). For HTTP/S, you neet to load XHTTP module to handle HTTP/S requests.

In 2010, many academic research bodies studied and used Kamailio such as the Illinois Institute of Technology http://www.iit.edu. The entire Portuguese Educational Network practically replaced their traditional telephony system with Kamailio and Asterisk (300 pairs). The deployment process of this was shared in a presentation during Astricon 2010 by Ruben Sousa.

Also Sipwise launched an open source version of their telephony appliance with a Kamailio routing engine.

Kamailio had a release in October 2010 with 16 major enhancements with new features, for example, audio conferencing to see who is speaking and the audio level of the voice.

Hear parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the podcast with Daniel-Constantin Mierla being interviewed by Suzanne Bowen of Techistan and DIDX.

Visit http://www.asipto.com, http://www.sipwise.com, http://www.kamailio.org and also the website of the wholesale DID platform that sponsors this podcast channel http://www.didx.net. Find an article detailing more on http://www.techistan.com online magazine.

Daniel-Constantin Mierla of Kamailio FKA OpenSER

Part 4 of 4 podcast with Daniel-Constantin Mierla (Core Developer at SIP Router Project, CEO at ASIPTO, Co-Founder and Core Developer at Kamailio (OpenSER))  on Rich Communications, a Party to Celebrate Kamailio Developers and More:

This is part four of four, a discussion with Daniel-Constantin Mierla, on the historical timeline that led to Kamailio, what the open source platform wished to achieve, and looking back at best results in 2010. Part four focuses on rich communications and plans for 2011.

Daniel mentions that people want to share their location and more while communicating with current and potential friends, family, research and business partners.

Some news: Many large mobile operators committed to the use of session initiation protocol during GSMA Mobile World Congress 2011, Daniel shares. Kamailio also has an embedded Xcap server. This helps users to decide how much of their presence they want to be available to any certain persons or groups of persons. SIP enables this kind of thing.

Kamailio has many extensions and modules now such as for instant messaging, conferencing, user to user presence, user to machine presence, machine to machine presence …

When a provider must deal with a large number of subscribers, there are new challenges, and Kamailio is poised to meet them. The manpower needed is amazing though.

Since October 2010 at the last release, the Kamailio depository has added 15 new modules. None were written by Daniel-Constantin Mierla.

1 & 1 VoIP services uses distribution partition location services with Kamailio which is a challenge to manage. Check http://www.kamailio.org/events/2010-linuxtag/presentation.pdf. 1 & 1 VoIP has over 5 million customers and performing over 2 billions minutes routed per month. In 2009 they merged with the Freenet service, adding extra 0.8 million new subscribers. 

More and more big companies look seriously to open source IP communications platforms … Asterisk, freeSWITCH, Kamailio, OpenSIPs, Yate … amazing features.

A collaboration was announced on March 1 perfectly timed before CEBIT 2011 between SipWise (a telecom vendor) from Austria and Asipto. SipWise has the carrier connections and Asipto the open source experience and expertise.

With Asipto’s know-how and role in the SIP routing development process, and the experience of Sipwise in integrating and operating highly available communication systems based on Sipwise carrier grade communications platforms portfolio, the newly formed joint-venture positions itself as an extremely competitive vendor in the IP telephony market. This is a solid base for further growth and adoption of new technologies to become the reference in Open Source IP telecommunication industry.

 With SIP, developers and entrepreneurs can work together to offer more than just voice over Internet to people and organizations. A rumor that Daniel said is a fact … there will be a party for sure in late summer 2011 to celebrate the successes of open source telephony and especially for those who have implemented it for business and for life. Could it be during Cluecon in the USA or will it be in Germany?

Hear parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the podcast with Daniel.

Visit http://www.asipto.com, http://www.sipwise.com, http://www.kamailio.org and also the website of the wholesale DID platform that sponsors this podcast channel http://www.didx.net. Find an article detailing more on http://www.techistan.com online magazine.

Thousands of wholesale VoIP companies, social community portal providers, virtual office providers, government entities, CLECs, incumbents , and all types of companies are buying and selling phone numbers on the platform called DIDXchange at didx.net. Why don’t iIgive you a couple of tips here?

First, sign up on http://www.didx.net and just be in research mode to start. You may want to come on board to sell phone numbers to other DIDX members on a wholesale level.

Go through Interop testing. Complete the agreement with us. Decide if you want to use our API or if you want to add the numbers you want to make available for selling on DIDX. Or … you can add them manually, one number at a time or numbers in the series. Youu can upload in a bulk through the API, in XLS spreadsheet and insert format as single numbers or multiple numbers in a series
When a buyer logs in, this is what they see … the numbers are currently added in the last few minutes in addition to what is already available. They click here and browse the countries in the databse to search for the phone numbers that they need. They can do it through the advanced search or by certain phone numbers or this way … even vanity number search!

So the next, the buyer sees the list of area codes that are available.

For Houston area 832 code, the buyers will see three different vendors. There’s a vendor rating for each from 3, 4 and the to 5. There is a setup fee, monthly fee and in some cases, the buyer can buy per minute or per channel or have a choice. In other cases, it will be flat rate per month with a certain number, including minutes or maybe 1 or 2 channels.

I hope this helps to explain who to sell on DIDX and the relationship between the Buyer, DIDX, and the Seller of wholesale phone numbers. The prices that you see include the small amount that didx adds for our cost. Buyer buys and pays total amount. DIDX keeps the small portion. DIDX pays the seller each time seller invoices in increments at least $100 total for amount due 45 days before. There is a PAY ME button on the Seller dashboard that sellers see when they first log in to their DIDX account.

We wish for you, a happy and great experience selling on a wholesale level on http://wwwdidx.net.

Several key organizations recommended Techistan to connect with Dietmar Fuchs of FancyFon on Linkedin social business networking platform. Trends in technology and business are a favorite research item on the net in any industry, and Dietmar has a keen eye trends in “mobile.”

FancyFon, with headquarters in the southern part of Ireland, provides a portfolio of solutions for the mobile device lifestyle, management and market such as in the areas of applications and security management. They work on Blackberry RIM, Symbian, Apple, Windows Mobile, and Android.

Smartphone adoption he states is increasing 60-70% at an annual rate now offering much of the same functionality of one’s laptop or tablet.

On-site behind firewall solutions were previously their main provision for larger enterprises and for the SMB market, a hosted version.  A goal is to make sure that company have access to corporate data in a secure manner on their smartphones. The issue is that there are at least ten different operating systems available.

As of recently, companies are allowing their employees to bring in their own smartphones to the workplace with access to corporate email and such.

We mentioned in the audio podcast interview that employers often expect their team to be available 24/7 even in non-critical careers. Or some employees are so dedicated to their work, that they choose to work even from home at night and on the weekends.

Dietmar said, “This is why employers are pushing for better and easier mobile access on smartphones, to be productive outside of regular business hours. This is also true while traveling, he added. This offers a great return on investment to organizations.”

Other issues that FancyFon assists with are the management of SMS, configuration, application, blocking certain “things,” remote control, backup, restore, activation and de-activation, billing, and security.

Most of FancyFon customers are government-related such as some U.S. government agencies and others in the financial sector. In addition, they serve companies such as Vodafone.

Trends that Dietmar believes are obvious? Tablets will rule in 2011, not just the iPad. There are Google, BladeBook, Blackberry RIM’s and more to come. Expect new players in the market which will result in more empowerment for businesses. Even Cisco and Avaya are getting involved.

Second, how to control mobile access in a controlled manner for organizations that need security and so on. The problem is so many operating systems. Proper handling of certificates of the mobile handsets that will enable one to define which applications are used and who has access.

Dietmar mentions tablets boot up fast, obviously because much of what one normally works with on a traditional desktop or laptop … is done in the cloud with a tablet. Less STUFF on the offline drive.

The company recently launched a Remote Access Console for iPad devices. The console will be incorporated into FAMOC, allowing administrators to manage, via Remote Access, their fleet of smartphone devices directly from an iPad, without the need for a desktop or laptop.

FancyFon will be at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2011 and Crackberry events. He was interviewed by Bnet TV in 2010 at the GSMA event.

Our interviewers mentioned to Dietmar he should consider participating in CTIA Wireless in Orlando, Florida March 21-24, 2011, too. DIDX wholesale global phone number marketplace will be an exhibitor and the company’s other services of DIDX podcasts and Techistan online magazine are media partners at CTIA.

Dietmar Fuchs, COO
dfuchs@fancyfon.com
+353-21-234-8620

Thanks to WeCreateGames for use of the image.

Max Schroeder is the Sr. VP of Faxcore, a founder of the Fax Server industry, FoIP Interopability Task Group Whip for SIP Forum, and popular speaker.  Suzanne Bowen is the vice president and co-founder of Super Technologies, Inc. and all of its services since 1999. Max and Suzanne frequent many of the same global IP telephony-related conferences since 2004. Fax is still a necessity for some industries and a preferred method of communications by us, and while it is, vendors are available to provide services that enable it, whether traditional of Internet-protocol based.

Listen here.

Faxcore, Max’s company, is headquarter in Colorado with an additional office in Kuala Lumpur as well as virtual offices in other areas. They are a believer in virtualizing and being able to work from wherever the Team happens to be.

Fax oIP saves time and money, is green, flexible for mobility and can take advantage of cloud computing.

Faxes in digital formats, take advantage of digital compression methods to greatly reduce transmission times.

Group 3 type faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendations T.30 and T.4. Group 3 faxes take between six and fifteen seconds to transmit a single page (not including the initial time for the fax machines to handshake and synchronize). The horizontal and vertical resolutions are allowed by the T.4 standard to vary among a set of fixed resolutions:
Horizontal: 100 scan lines per inch
Vertical: 100 scan lines per inch (‘Basic’)
Horizontal: 200 or 204 scan lines per inch
Vertical: 100 or 98 scan lines per inch (‘Standard’)
Vertical: 200 or 196 scan lines per inch (‘Fine’)
Vertical: 400 or 391 (note not 392) scan lines per inch (‘Superfine’)
Horizontal: 300 scan lines per inch
Vertical: 300 scan lines per inch
Horizontal: 400 or 408 scan lines per inch
Vertical: 400 or 391 scan lines per inch (‘Ultrafine’)

Group 4 faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendations T.563, T.503, T.521, T.6, T.62, T.70, T.72, T.411 to T.417. They are designed to operate over 64 kbit/s digital ISDN circuits. Their resolution is determined by the T.6 recommendation, which is a superset of the T.4 recommendation.

Fax Over IP (FOIP) can transmit and receive pre-digitized documents at near realtime speeds. Scanned documents are limited to the amount of time the user takes to load the document in a scanner and for the device to process a digital file. The resolution can vary from as little as 150 DPI to 9600 DPI or more. This type of faxing is not like the e-mail to fax service that still uses fax modems at least one way.

In practical scenarios, a T.38 (fax over IP) fax call has at least part of the call being carried over PSTN, although this is not required by the T.38 definition, and two T.38 devices can send faxes to each other. This particular type of device is called Internet-Aware Fax device, or IAF, and it is capable of initiating or completing a fax call towards the IP network.

The typical scenario where T.38 is used is – T.38 Fax relay – where a T.30 fax device sends a fax over PSTN to a T.38 Fax gateway which converts or encapsulates the T.30 protocol into T.38 data stream. This is then sent either to a T.38 enabled end point such as fax machine or fax server or another T.38 Gateway that converts it back to PSTN PCM or analog signal and terminates the fax on a T.30 device.

The T.38 recommendation defines the use of both TCP and UDP to transport T.38 packets. Implementations tend to use UDP, due to TCP’s requirement for acknowledgement packets and resulting retransmission during packet loss, which introduces delays. When using UDP, T.38 copes with packet loss by using redundant data packets.

T.38 is not a call setup protocol; thus, the T.38 devices need to use standard call setup protocols to negotiate the T.38 call, e.g. H.323, SIP and MGCP.

Suzanne Bowen discusses in the podcast with Max Schroeder, the topics of Faxcore, reseller opportunities, ITEXPO conferences, DIDX fax over IP phone numbers, and the free Reseller Week on DIDX podcasts.

Are you in senior management or among the officers or CXOs or any part of your team at your company and love to run? Join the Marathoners Group on Linkedin and consider New Orleans Mardi Gras Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon and 1/2 where you will meet thousands of leaders who run like John Legere, CEO of Global Crossing.

“I look forward to our future discussions now joining the broader conversation of the wider Web,” says Zale Tabakman, the founder of the popular Linkedin group.

I. Daniel Stark, who calls himself an old marathoner at age 73, says, “The group … welcomes other marathoners to connect.”

New Orleans, one of USA’s most international cities, in Louisiana, is a great place for international companies’ leadership teams to meet up and run together at the Competitor’s Mardi Gras Rock ‘n’ Roll series Marathon and 1/2! A whole is 26.2 miles and 1/2 is 13.1 miles. If you can finish the wholes in less than 7 1/2 hours and the Half in less than 4 hours, you can do it. Spread the news.

“The memory of getting together with runners from around this globe to run and hang out with at the New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon was one of those experiences that make my race even now. There’s music at every mile. I’ve had a few mishaps this year, but my comeback is going great under the guidance of my coach Michael Bowen. (Big smile.) Thirteen point one miles go fast when you’re doing it with new and old friends. I’m looking forward to 2011,” Suzanne Bowen, VP of Techistan magazine shared with excitement.

She continued, “I’m working hard to find more runners especially in one of the industries we work in … Internet-protocol based communications with a bit of social media thrown in. Two friends from UAE, several hundred from USA, one from Pakistan and five from Japan will be there. Help me spread the news. For now, join the Linkedin Marathoners group and the NOLA Marathon event area on Linkedin to stay in touch.”

Volunteers and also bands are needed for the New Orleans Mardi Gras Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon & 1/2. Contact information is at Volunteers and Bands.

John Legere, CEO of Global Crossing, has run several marathons, mostly the Boston and New York marathons, but he also participates in other events like the Empire State Building Run-Up, racing up the 1,575 stairs of the Empire State Building from the lobby to the 86th floor. “Trust me,” John said, “halfway up, the elevator looks more and more appealing!”

Make your plans now, sign up, and get some motivation from the following groups:

Linkedin Marathoners
Running by Michael Bowen (New Orleans’ Time-Picayune Newspaper Running Contributing Editor)
Register here: http://mardi-gras.competitor.com/
The Facebook area for Mardi Gras (in New Orleans) Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathons
Leaders who Run and how it helps them at ezine Articles

Connect with IP communications companies whose teams run and/or support marathons and other running races:
One Communications Helps Support the Boston Marathon
Smoothstone Runners in Action at the Las Vegas Marathon