CEBIT 2011 in Hannover (can also be spelled “Hanover”) had something for everyone to be inspired and actively involved. I.e., each year businessmen and women who happen to also be running enthusiasts participate in CEBIT’s RUN of anywhere between 3.5K to a 1/2 marathon. 

“The CeBIT RUN is a unique combination of sport and IT during CeBIT. The people who we want to target are often poised for action in a sporting sense, too,” explains Ernst Raue, Member of the Board at Deutsche Messe AG.

The race takes the runners right by hundreds of trade show stands, through exhibition halls and around the the exhibition grounds. With a maximum running time ceiling of two hours, a person could do the 3.5K and take a little nap at the end of each K. This year, the race was a test bed for a new timing device, but they still used chips in the shoes of the runners.

Watch for more and more business conferences to integrate sports, health and other types of activities that get participants actively involved. The resulting potential for new friendships and business development can not help but happen. During the VON 2007 show in San Jose, DIDX organized a run each morning. Dozens from BelgaCom, DIDX, MCM Telecom, Orange, AT&T … showed up at 6 AM to trek 6 miles.

Moving into a different direction of great experiences at CEBIT 2011 … CeBIT hosted Intel’s Extreme Masters League of Legends Invitational Tournament. Winners would walk away with $13,500 USD. The “Intel Extreme Masters Hall” had over 270,000 visitors last week. First place winners were Natus Vincere (Ukraine) – $35,000, Shane ‘rapha’ Hendrixson (USA) – $8,500, and 1. myRevenge (Germany) – $4,750.

Eye-controlled laptops and eye trackers? Yes, they are real. Eye-controlled laptops enable users to complete tasks on the devcies such as select, point and scroll. Even games use the technology. Play them with your eyes. Eye trackers can be used in retail store security, sports research, social interaction studies, driving/vehicle research. Give thanks to Lenovo and Tobii Technology.

Techistan’s CEO Rehan Allahwala met with some “IP and rich communications industry” friends at CEBIT 2011 for the first time such as Daniel-Constantin Mierla of Kamailio, openSER, and ASIPTO and others again such as VoIPSWITCH team including CTO Chris Oglaza and CEO Michael Bibelman. We invite you to enjoy some of the pictures taken in Hannover where CEBIT took place.

Next conferences to find us at … our Rani Wemel at 4th Mobile Commerce Summit Asia in Kuala Lumpur March 12-17 Rehan Allahwala at Eurasia com in Istanbul March 29-30;  Maria Weisnicht of CED, Kim Clark of Westower Communications, some of the guys from Overgroup, Inc., Max Glucksmann of Comtel-Networks and Suzanne Bowen of DIDX and Techistan at booth 3782 CTIA Wireless March 22-24 in Orlando … plus Yahya Sabir and Apoorve Dubey at 19th Convergence India in New Delhi.

Learning English? Here you can watch the video, listen to the audio and/or read the transcript! Be sure to pass this around the world and add your own techie guffaw humor in comments at the “endive” of this article, on Twitter tagging #Techistan or Facebook.

British Blackberry customer: I bought something from you last week, and I’m very disappointed.

British Shopkeeper: Yeah, what was the problem?

British Blackberry customer: My Blackberry is not working.

British shopkeeper: What was the matter? Did you run out of juice?

British Blackberry customer: No, it is completely frozen.

Blackberry shopkeeper: Oh yeah. I can see that. I tell you what. Let’s try it on Orange.

British Blackberry customer: That Orange has a few black spots. 

British shopkeeper: Oh, dear. Sorry about that.

British Blackberry customer: Do you think you can get my Blackberry working?

British shopkeeper: Where do you store that Blackberry?

British Blackberry customer: On my desktop.

British shopkeeper: Well, you could try using a mouse to drag the Blackberry to the trash. Then, after you’ve done that, you might want to launch the Blackberry from the desktop.

British Blackberry customer: Well, I’ve already tried that a few times. All that it would do is mess up Windows.

British shopkeeper: It might be worth waiting a couple weeks. They have got the latest Blackberrys coming in then.

British Blackberry customer: Could you give me a date?

British shopkeeper hands him a date.

British Blackberry customer: Thank you for that date, my darling. (Puts the date in his wallet.)

British shopkeeper: Anything else I can help you with?

British Blackberry customer: I also have a problem with my Apple.

British shopkeeper: Oh dear. Oh dear. That is an old Apple, isn’t it? When did you buy that?

British Blackberry customer: Last week.

British shopkeeper: Last week???? They brought out two new Apples since then. What’s the problem with it?

British Blackberry customer: I tried to put my dongle in it. It won’t fit.

British shopkeeper: Oh yeah. How big is the dongle?

British Blackberry customer: Well, I don’t know much about these things, but my wife says, “It’s a little bit on the small side.”

British shopkeeper: I’m afraid there is not a lot I can do about that. Tell you what. Let me try booting it. Oops. Now, it’s crashed. Anything else I can help you with?

British Blackberry customer: My grandson’s birthday is soon. He has already got an Apple, a Blackberry … have you got anything else he might just like?

British shopkeeper: I have a special offer on these. I can make heads or tails of them, but the kids seem to like them. Eggs box 360.

Where could you take this humor from here? Add your comments here, on Twitter tagging #Techistan or on Facebook. Photography credits to http://www.informedvitality.com/Laughter_Yoga.html.

Obion is a free mobile communications application that can be downloaded from the iTunes App store. This mobile communication tool was created by Obihai Technology of Cupertino, California which was founded by who some say were the inventors of the first analog telephone adapter that enabled calling over the Internet without a computer. (Others say that Nettalk’s Mark F. Rodriguez, Anastasios Takis Kyriakides, Kenneth Hosfeld, and Leo Manzewitsch were the first with the concept and idea.) Obihai’s founder and CEO is Jan Fandrianto while with Komodo Technology in the late 1990s.

In addition to the mobile application to make and receive calls from Apple products, Obion offers the OBiTALK web portal and some cool hardware called the Obi110 Voice Services Bridge. Users use the Bridge to make calls from local landlines and receive calls from local or remote landlines. The Obi110 Bridge is around $60; whereas, the Ooma is about $180, Lingo adapter is around $75 (waived when signing up for service), and the 8×8 adapter is $30 also waived with signup.

Lonnie Lazar, a CultofMac writer says, “Obihai Technology is a start-up making improvements to the OBiTALK web interface and to OBi110 firmware on an ongoing basis as a result of feedback from users such as this reviewer and others who are active in the company’s online forum. In nearly two months of playing with and testing various aspects of the service, Obihai engineers and customer service personnel proved themselves open to hearing about problems and difficulties with the technology and keen to make it as user-friendly as possible. Is it perfect? Not yet. But it’s definitely an intriguing and potentially disruptive development in voice communications. Those who choose to explore it as it continues to evolve are bound to have fun.”

Services and devices like the Obion mobile app and the Obi110 make it possible for people all over the world to talk to each other practically free. Calls between devices have no per minute charge. In cases where an Obion user (let’s call him Jari) hasVIP (very important people) such as Mom in Venezuela, girlfriend in Pakistan, and business partner in Japan, he can ask his Obion representative what is the SIP address. Then Jari can buy a virtual phone number of Venezuela, Pakistan and Japan from a company like JetNumbers, MyDivert or VirtualPhoneLine. He lets his Mom, girlfriend and business partner the local number they can call. They call him any time, and the call rings on his cell phone, his Obion device or in some cases, depending on the virtual phone number service provider … on his Skype, Gtalk, Yahoo instant messenger, fring service, Truphone, Nimbuzz, or another SIP service, etc. etc.

Based on a survey of Techistan friends, many of the ladies stated they like the terminology used by Obion such as “Circle of Trust” for the requests and invitations feature of the Obion mobile app … especially the auto-attendant, that can be configured to answer “trusted” endpoints (based on CallerID) and/or require a special PIN to be entered by the person calling the user. A majority of the men say they enjoy the PC software OBiAPP (available for Windows, with a Mac Beta due by beginning of 2011). The software enables calling from softphones like Counterpath’s popular X-Lite. Both genders mention quite often they like the ease of updating firmware.

Are you a DIY (do it yourself) type person? Obihai Technologies put you in the driver’s seat to do exactly that and have fun!

The private mobile phone company Unitel launches this past Tuesday, in Luanda, the “Facebook SMS”, a new service for the country, that allows customers to get access to the Facebook social network from their cell phones, any time and place. This may not seem to be anything special to areas of the world where this has been taken for granted for a few years already, but this means more information and collaborations are suddenly available for a whole new sector, Angolans.

According to a press release from the company, which was sent to ANGOP, the Facebook SMS service enables access to various functions of Facebook to Unitel, through SMS and MMS.

The document explains that with this new system, through SMS, customers can update their status, write messages, add and accept invitations from friends and comment on their friends’ walls and photos, via MMS. They can also upload photos and videos, in real time.

To have access to Facebook Mobile and benefit from these services, Unitel customers should visit the site http://m.facebook.com in their mobile phone.

Other new features that can be added for Unitel customers include virtual phone lines connected to their Facebook accounts, either directly to consumers or via Unitel with its own rebrand of a hosted service. In addition, other mobile applications can be created or rebranded and used such as those related to banking, games, music, weather, and news that will help to continue to enrich the lives of Angolans.

Has anyone tried RockMelt? Is it really another Flock?

Contact www.voipswitch.com. Join the Facebook business group for VoIPSWITCH.

VoIP over data connections (3G, Edge) are now authorized on the Apple AppStore finally! Check for example, VoIPSWITCH’s Vippie for IPhone/IPod. Other voip applications (not an all-inclusive list) on AppStore include Sipphone’s Gizmo (now with Google), pjsip, Skype, and Truphone.

Until very recently the Apple Store allowed only for SIP client applications which were limited to WIFI. The policy has changed and now Voipswitch customers can download the softphone that supports, in addition to WIFI, 3G and Edge data connection. Download and test their new version of Vippie softphone. Search for the Vippie or VoIPSWITCH name on the Appstore. The dialer works with their demo server www.callto.net.  To receive a free test account please contact sales at voipswitch dot com.

Another reason to meet up with wireless experts, developers, entrepreneurs, exhibitors, presenters, and sponsors of CTIA Wireless International in Las Vegas, NV Mar. 23 – 25, 2010. VoIPSwitch will be at booth 6574 in North Hall 1.

VoIPSWITCH's CalltoNet VoIP Dialer

The new release of Symbian dialer is available for demo on VoIPSWITCH www.callto.net website. The dialer uses special compression algorithm which allows for 50% saving in bandwidth consumption. The voice codec remains the same, it is g729. The improvement helps clients making calls using very low internet bandwidth, often from blocked areas, for example UAE. The transmission uses only 10kb/s. To get a test account please register online on http://www.callto.net/ or contact sales@voipswitch.com. The dialer can be downloaded from http://www.callto.net/VippieSigned.sis.

VoIPSWITCH and DIDX continue the offer to VoIPSWITCH wholesale clients who leverage http://www.didx.net to purchase 1000 Ohio, USA DIDs (direct inward dialing phone numbers) with one Benjamin Franklin.

VoIPSWITCH Video Phone

Moving professional video over IP networks has special challenges compared to most non-time-critical IP traffic. Video quality problems are similar to what happens with voice over IP, but to an even great requirement of bandwidth and engineering. What many do not know is that there are quality of service requirements which must be fulfilled for use in professional broadcast environments.

As VoIP services evolve globally, demand for Video over IP services is increasing dramatically. This trend is driven by the increase in business and residential customers using their DSL connections for voice communication. An additional important factor is the high quality Voipswitch service combined with the affordable price of the video phones. The device is robust and can meet the demanding expectations of even the most sophisticated customers. Typical customers will include Hoteliers, IP-PBX clients and even residential users.

VoIPSWITCH’s VP 2009 is a 7″ lcd touch screen with graphical user interface” allowing intuitive navigation through the menus. The screen size and its resolution are very practical for comfortable, high quality video conference. The phone supports h264 and h263 video codecs. In addition there is audio/video output for connecting external display (for example a TV screen). Other exemplary applications include online/offline advertisement, color media ring, SIP doorbell systems, video monitoring.

For more details and pricing please contact sales@voipswitch.com. Enjoy podcasts with Michael Bibelman and soon with Michal Koslowski (both with VoIPSWITCH) on DIDX podcasts.