January 2014 archive

Jan 08

Quick Admin Update: Minor changes to Deploy360 website, sharing

Checking under the hood and kicking the tiresJust a quick update… in our constant effort to to make this site work as smoothly as possible for visitors and also to help as many people as possible  find our content, I spent some time “under the hood” today making some upgrades and doing a number of other tweaks.

You shouldn’t see anything really different about the site, but if you do see anything that acts strange, please let us know.  I’ve gone through a sample of our pages and posts, but there’s a chance I may have missed something.

The major change you will see is the “Share This:” bar of buttons at the bottom of this post.  I switched from the plugin we were using before to Automattic’s “Jetpack” plugin for WordPress and like the behavior much better. I also added LinkedIn as a sharing choice to make it easier for people to share out content out to LinkedIn.  Any feedback on the sharing experience would be welcome, either as comments here or via email/form.

Another reason for the update today was that the Jetpack plugin lets us also automatically publish our new posts out to the Deploy360 Google+ Page, in addition to our Twitter account and Facebook page. We’ve found a good amount of interest in our information within Google+ and continue to gave great conversations there. Our previous process automatically posted to Twitter and Facebook but was a manual process for Google+ that was a bit cumbersome. We like that this change puts Google+ on the same level as the others as a content distribution channel.

We also updated the awesome EditFlow editorial calendar we use for planning the content we’re sharing on the site and made a number of other minor tweaks and changes.

All in all a shiny new back-end of the Deploy360 site for 2014!  We’re looking forward to using these capabilities to deliver even more information to you in 2014… please do let us know how we can help you!

Image credit: wsdot on Flickr (I figured a photo of a snow plow was appropriate given the current weather conditions where I live in New Hampshire, USA).

Jan 07

TDYR #062 – Launching A New Podcast: “FIR On Technology with Dan York”

I'm pleased to announce the launch of a new podcast, "FIR On Technology with Dan York" where I'll be doing deeper dives into the tools and technology that people involved with communications / PR / marketing need to care about. In this TDYR episode I talk about the show, play the promo and discuss the first episode. Links discussed include: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2014/01/my-new-podcast-fir-on-technology-episode-1-about-google-hangouts-on-air.html http://forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php?/weblog/C21 http://forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php?/weblog/comments/fir_on_technology_with_dan_york_episode_1_exploring_google_hangouts_on_air FIR Podcast Community on G+: https://plus.google.com/communities/112349929544876511942 Mark Knox's music: https://soundcloud.com/xerocrossing

Jan 07

Wishing You A Very Secure 2014!

2014Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2014! We’re looking forward to more activity happening here at VOIPSA this year… stay tuned for more information! In the meantime, we hope that you all have a very secure 2014 without any major security issues with your VoIP and other communication systems!

Jan 07

May We Suggest A New Year’s Resolution? Let’s Bring Curling To Keene!

curling rocksHappy New Year! With the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics only about a month away, how about we resolve to make 2014 the year we figure out how to bring the sport of curling to Keene and the greater Monadnock region of southwestern NH and surrounding parts of Vermont and MA?

We need your help!  Right now we’d really like you to show your support for bringing curling to the region – and to let us know you are interested!  We’re looking to hold an organizational meeting soon and would like to make sure we invite people who are interested.

Let’s make 2014 the year we bring curling to the Monadnock region!

Jan 07

My New Podcast: "FIR On Technology" Episode 1 About Google+ Hangouts On Air

Firontechnology 300What are Google+ “Hangouts On Air” (HOA) all about and how can communicators best use them? How does a “Hangout On Air” differ from a “Hangout”? What kind of technology do you need to know to use them? What are some tips and tricks for working most effectively with a Google+ HOA? What is the linkage to YouTube? How do you get started?

Those were all questions I addressed with my guest Randy Resnick in the first episode of a brand new podcast I'm down doing called "FIR On Technology with Dan York". You can listen on the episode page (where there are also links to HOA resources) or here:

The interview was fun to do and from comments in the FIR Podcast Community on Google+ has already been a help to multiple listeners.

As I noted in the introduction post on the For Immediate Release (FIR) website, the goal of the overall "FIR On Technology" podcast is to answer questions such as these:

How can communicators best use new tools such as, say, Google+ Hangouts On Air to tell their stories in new ways or to reach new audiences? Are there tips and tricks they should be aware of? What is new in the latest release of WordPress? Why should someone in PR and marketing care about something like IPv6 or HTML5?

For close to 9 years now I've been contributing weekly reports into the regular For Immediate Release (FIR)podcast hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. Now, with the creation of the "FIR Podcast Network" and the launch of new shows, it was logical to launch a technology-focused podcast where I could do a deeper dive than just the 5 minutes in the regular FIR episodes.

Please do note - my regular weekly FIR reports WILL continue!

Nothing changes there... it's just that these "FIR On Technology" episodes will allow for more time to get into specific topics at a higher level of detail.  I'd love to hear your feedback about this episode or the overall idea either as comments to this blog post or via social media or email: 

In particular, if there are any topics you'd really like to see me address on future episodes... or if you want to pitch me on why it might be interesting to interview you or a client, I'm open to that as well.

The "FIR On Technology with Dan York" podcast will NOT be a "regular" podcast in that it will not be on a specific interval, i.e. weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc. It is instead "a periodic podcast" meaning that the episodes will come out whenever I have time to record and produce them. I'm aiming for at least monthly, but there may be more at different times.

If you'd like to follow along, you can:

A subscription option via iTunes will be available soon.

I'm greatly appreciative of the FIR podcast community who has been very supportive of me doing this podcast - and of course I'm deeply grateful to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson for their support and continuing to involve me in the growing world of "FIR".

Please do join in and follow along... there is a LOT of technology and tools out there to talk about with communicators!

P.S. The music I am using (with his permission) for the intro and outro comes from my friend Mark Knox in Ottawa, whose music can be found on his SoundCloud account.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Jan 06

TDYR #061 – Beginning 2014 With A New Internet Society CEO

It's my first work day in 2014 and in this episode I talk about 3 reasons why today is significant, one of which is that the organization for which I work, the Internet Society, has a new CEO. More info at these links: http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-society-names-kathryn-c-brown-new-ceo http://www.internetsociety.org/meet-new-ceo http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-society%E2%80%99s-president-and-chief-executive-officer-lynn-st-amour-step-down-february-2014

Jan 06

No Jitter: IPv6 Impact on VoIP

No Jitter logoHow well do voice-over-IP (VoIP) and unified communications (UC) systems work with IPv6?  That’s a topic that has long been a personal passion of mine – and we maintain a page here on Deploy360 specifically about IPv6 and VoIP/UC systems. So naturally I was very pleased when right before the holidays on December 20, 2013, Gary Audin wrote a piece on the No Jitter site about IPv6 and VoIP.

Gary identifies several issues that enterprises need to think about with regard to migrating their VoIP systems to IPv6, including:

  • Increased bandwidth needs due to expanded IPv6 headers
  • Upgrading IP PBXs, IP phones, softphones and gateways to IPv6
  • Running dual stack operations with both IPv4 and IPv6
  • Network Address Translation modifications
  • Port sharing for signaling protocols

From my own perspective of having worked in the VoIP field  I think his second bullet is probably going to be the most problematic, particularly the IP phones.  Many of the older IP desk phones used by enterprises are severely resource constrained and may not be able to support dual-stack operations and may not be upgraded to IPv6.  In many cases it may be the newer IP phones and the softphones that will lead the way to IPv6.

But interestingly in this article Gary is more focused on the potential bandwidth increases.  He’s right that one of the differences in VoIP traffic from, say, web or file traffic is that VoIP is composed of a zillion tiny packets. This has to do with how most VoIP systems use a very small sampling size – they slice the voice stream into very tiny pieces, typically around 20 milliseconds, and then send those pieces in individual packets.

So, given all the tiny little packets, any increase in the overall size of the VoIP packets results in an increase in bandwidth.  Gary’s argument is that the increased size of IPv6 headers will have an impact on bandwidth.  Not necessarily a huge impact, perhaps only a 10% increase in needed bandwidth, but still, there will be an impact. Though I have not done the math as Gary has to make his table, I can see his argument.

His main point, really, is that as enterprises plan their moves to IPv6 they need to think not only about potential software and hardware upgrades, but also about additional bandwidth requirements.  It’s good advice to think about.

Are you ready to migrate your VoIP or UC system to IPv6?  Or have you already done so?  If you haven’t, check out our page on VoIP and UC resources for IPv6 – and if you have already done so, we’d love to talk to you about writing up a case study! :-)

Jan 06

FIR #737 – 1/6/14 – For Immediate Release

Our 10th year begins; FIR on Technology debuts; Linked Conversations episode 5 is up; Bryan Person creates an FIR host graphic; Shel and Joe Thornley host 8-week IABC workshop; Quick News: philosophers in the boardroom, a real-time hit and a miss, Barclays CEO on building trust, sponsored photo use is surging; Ragan Communications promo; News That Fits: why hire a PR firm when there's Task Rabbit?, Dan York's Tech Report, verifying identity with Facebook, Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop, listener comments, why orgs need social media experts, Michael Netzley's Asia report, will collaborative economy tower above all other 2014 trends?; music from Plastic Sky; and more.

Jan 05

DNSSEC Deployment Statistics For TLDs (Rick Lamb)

Rick Lamb DNSSEC StatsRecently DNSSEC advocate Rick Lamb made available publicly a site he’s maintained for some time offering statistics about what top level domains (TLDs) are signed with DNSSEC.  The interesting aspect is that his scripts list the TLDs in reverse chronological order and so right now you can easily see when the “new generic TLDs” (newgTLDs) are being added as they all must be signed with DNSSEC from their launch.  Rick’s site is available at:

http://rick.eng.br/dnssecstat/

Scrolling back the site provides a useful history of when various TLDs were first signed.

Jan 05

TDYR #060 – Facebook, Twitter And Google+ Are NOT The Open Internet!

Recently Mitch Joel at TwistImage talked about why the content created by many companies is not being seen on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks: http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/almost-no-one-is-seeing-your-content/ In this episode I expanded upon this a bit to note that you have to remember that these companies are NOT the "open Internet" and are providing services based on their business plans... which are open to change whenever they want to do so.