Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Jul 03
Deutsche Telekom Partners With Tropo To Expose Developer APIs for Voice and SMS
http://www.developergarden.com/apis/apis-sdks/telekom-tropo-api/
This is part of a broad range of APIs offered by Deutsche Telekom and basically gives developers using the DT network access to the full range of Tropo.com capabilities. As they note on the page, you can:
- Make & receive phone calls from within any web browser or application
- Run Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) applications with speech recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS)
- Send SMS out of CRM applications
- Create conference calls with up to 50 participants
Basically create any kind of "voice mashup" you can think of. I would also note that Tropo supports multiple languages for speech recognition and text-to-speech, a fact that may appeal to European developers.
Now why would a developer want to use "Telekom Tropo" versus just "regular" Tropo? The answer seems to be that DT takes care of all the billing integration and makes it easy for developers to charge for their services. From what I can see, all that billing integration is handled directly by Deutsche Telekom.
Now, obviously, this only works on the DT network, but that network is quite large throughout Europe at around 93 million subscribers.
In reading the Telekom Tropo API Q & A, too, I found an interesting note:
Telekom Tropo is hosted in Telekom data centes in Germany and therefore fulfills the highest European security and privacy standards..
Which means to me that the Voxeo Labs team made it possible for the Tropo server-side software to run directly within a mobile operator's network. This could lead to very interesting business models more where mobile operators could easily deploy Tropo capabilities to their developers as the Deutsche Telekom team has done.
Congrats to the Tropo and Deutsche Telekom teams on this news and I look forward to learning about what developers build now that this capability has been brought into DT's "developer garden"!
UPDATE: BusinessWeek is reporting today that Deutsche Telekom announced a partnership with MasterCard and is in talks with Google - both about adding partners to its mobile payment system.
[Full Disclosure: I was employed by Voxeo from October 2007 to September 2011 and participated in the launch of Tropo.com several years ago. However, I wouldn't write about it if I didn't think what they are doing is cool!]
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Jul 03
Note to PR People: PLEASE INCLUDE A URL With Your News Release!
Yet again I was reminded today that so many people involved with public relations (PR)[1] simply fail to understand how media works in 2012 - and fail to understand how one simple step could help them help other people tell their story!
As is the case most days, I received another batch of news releases[2], and there was one in particular I wanted to write about... but...
There was NO URL to where the news release was posted on the Internet!
Here's the thing... I write articles on my various sites. In doing so, I like to link to original sources. I'm generally NOT simply going to post your news release verbatim... I want to provide some context or commentary - but I want to provide a link back to the news release for any readers who want to read what the company/organization said.
Usually this takes the form of something like:
blah, blah, blah... As company XYZ indicated in a news release today, they will be... blah, blah, blah...
I like doing this as a way of citing an original source.
But to do this... I NEED A URL!
If you as a PR professional do not include a link to your news release in the email you send me, that means I have to dig for one. I have to go and try to find it on your site.
Odds are with the very little time I have for most of my writing, I'm not going to do that! Unless I am extremely interested in writing about your topic. I'm simply going to move on and write about something else.
Here I am... offering to give you a free link... to send people over to your site. TO SEND YOU TRAFFIC!
And you're missing that opportunity!
Yeah, Dan, but how many people actually read your site, you say? After all, I'm not __<insert name of big site>__.
Well, while my site may or may not send you much traffic, given that you are spamming me with an email you probably sent to a thousand other potential "media", you're potentially missing out on getting easy links from thousands of other people, too!
A Very Simple Recipe
Here's a VERY simple recipe for doing this right:
1. Publish your news release on YOUR site. You do have an area of your (or your client's) site where you post news releases, don't you?[3]
2. Visit the news release web page on your site using your web browser.
3. Copy the web address from your browser. (That would be the "URL" if you don't do geeky three-letter acronyms.)
4. Paste the web address into the news release email.
5. Spam your message out to me and everyone else, because clearly you don't have enough time to do PR correctly and target your messages appropriately.
Okay, step #5 may be a bit snarky... because in truth I've seen messages that have been targeted (and even individually tailored to me) that have still failed to include a URL.
A Bonus!
Here's another tip about why you might want to include a URL. I might not have the time - or interest - to write about your news release today. But I still might think it would be of interest to my "audience" of people who follow my site.
So while I might not post my own article, I might pass along your news via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.
But to do that, what do I need???
That's right... a LINK!
So by you failing to include a URL you're missing a moment when I might, right then, tweet out or post about your news release!
Instead I'll either have to try to find a link (which I may or may not do), or wait until sometime later when I see someone's post about your news.
Either way you lost my moment right then when I might have acted and helped spread your news.
Fix The Process!
Now, when I've asked some PR people why they have failed to send out a link in their email, often the comment is that "it takes a while" to publish the news release to the company/organization's site. They've wanted to get the word out quickly when the news release goes on the wire... and don't want to wait for whenever the company's web or IT team gets around to getting the page up on the site.
So FIX THAT!
This is 2012, people!
If your website is not up to the task of dealing with real-time publishing of content, maybe you need to be asking some tough questions about your site.
Pretty much every content management system (CMS) I am aware of has some mechanism for scheduling content publishing in advance. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, others... they all have it either built-in or available as an add-on. You should be able to get the news release loaded into the website and even get the URL that the news release will be available at. Then, when the news release goes live, you can be all ready to send out your spammy email to everyone pointing them to your site.
You're already loading the news release text into a wire service web interface to distribute it... why can't you (or someone within your organization) also load it into your own site and queue it for publication at a specific time?
This is NOT rocket science or quantum physics.
If the "web team" or "IT team" won't let you load it into the site - or has some other issue making the content available at a specific time or at the very least getting you a URL - well, that is a process issue.
Fix it!
Send me and everyone else a URL to where your news release is posted on your site.
Help us tell your story!
One simple step.
Stop making excuses.
Do it!
P.S. And no, I did not write about that news release I saw this morning because the PR person did not include a URL... and I spent my time writing this rant instead! :-)
P.P.S. And for bonus points, you can even go a step above your other PR peers and have the link you send me also have links to company logos, quotes, photos, videos... other things you might want me to potentially include in my article. It could be a full-blown "social media news release" - or it could just be a set of easy-to-find links in the sidebar next to your news release. Help me tell your story! Make it super easy for me to do... and odds are I will!
[1] When I say "people involved with PR", I do not mean only people at PR agencies. It could be someone on staff or contracting for a company/organization... basically anyone sending out email messages promoting news releases.
[2] NONE of which were actually targeted to me, but rather just spammed out there... but that's another "PR101" topic for another day.
[3] Some people do send out URLs to the news release on distribution services like PR Newswire or Marketwire and while that's at least a link we can use, why send traffic to the distribution services site? Why not send it to your site instead? Where it can be surrounded in your branding and your other links?
Image credit: _maracuja on Flickr
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Jul 03
Slides: SIP and IPv6 – Can They Get Along?
Last week at the SIPNOC 2012 event in Virginia, I gave a presentation about how the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can work with IPv6 and what some of the issues are around deployment. I emphasized the fact that SIP works over IPv6 and then took a step back to talk about the basics of IPv6 before diving into more SIP- and VoIP-specific issues. There was some great discussion and I learned later that a number of people took photos of my slide about SIP and NAT. 
To that end, my slides about SIP and IPv6 are now available online for your viewing and/or downloading. I did record the event on video – and at some point here I’m aiming to publish that to our YouTube account. Meanwhile, enjoy the slides…
SIP and IPv6 – Can They Get Along?
View more presentations from Deploy360
Jul 01
Flying A Foreign Flag – One Day A Year
As we have done on every July 1st since 2002... and probably will do for every July 1st in the years ahead.
You see, today is Canada Day and our 10-year old daughter was born in Canada during the 5 years that we lived in Ottawa, Ontario. Through the beauty of the great relationship between the USA and Canada, she is both a US and Canadian citizen.
So today we proudly flew the Canadian flag to honor our daughter, to honor her birthplace and to honor all the friends we made up there. At something like 5:30am she was softly singing "O, Canada" and we all joined her in singing renditions of the tune multiple times during the day. (In English only, of course, as none of us know French well enough to do that verse, although our daughter is learning French in her school.)
This we all do gladly for her.
Tomorrow, the Stars and Strips will be back on the flagpole... for another 364 days...
Happy Canada Day to all our friends living up north of us... and to our daughter!
P.S. And I hope that any of you celebrating today up North did get a chance to have a beavertail, some poutine, or at least a double-double or some timbits from Timmy's, eh?
Jun 21
June 23 Deadline For Submissions to Invite-Only WebRTC/RTCWEB Congestion Control Workshop
If you've been following the excellent work of the WebRTC/RTCWEB initiative you'll know that developers are already using developer builds of browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox to move real-time communications (RTC) directly into web browsers - without using Flash or Java plugins.
It's a powerful step to bake real-time communications into the very fabric of the Web. It stands to open up a zillion new opportunities for innovative uses of voice and video... and can fundamentally disrupt so many aspects of today's telecommunications.
It also stands a chance of completely swamping today's networks with RTC traffic!
So what do we do? How do make sure that browser-based RTC plays nice with other traffic? How do we help it succeed?
Those are the type of topics to be discussed and debated in a "Workshop on Congestion Control for Interactive Real-Time Communication" taking place on Saturday, July 28, 2012, in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the weekend before the start of the week-long IETF 84 standards meeting.
The workshop is free of charge, and even has the possibility for remote participation, but you must be invited to attend. It is a working session and the organizers, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), are requiring all potential attendees to submit a position paper basically explaining why they want to attend. More information and details can be found here:
http://www.iab.org/cc-workshop/
THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING POSITION PAPERS IS SATURDAY, JUNE 23!
So if you want to participate in what should be an extremely interesting session, you need to go now and submit a paper for consideration.
It's an extremely important topic - and one that must be addressed for WebRTC/RTCWEB to truly be the innovative force that it can be. I hope you'll consider participating!
P.S. If you can't attend that particular day, the outcome of the event will definitely be discussed on the IETF's rtcweb mailing list (Warning - high traffic!!!). Anyone can join that list so you subscribe if you'd like to monitor what is going on. (Did I mention that the list has a high volume of traffic?)
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Jun 21
WebRTC/RTCWEB Congestion Control Workshop on July 28 in Vancouver (Featured Blog)
As we start moving more real-time communications into web browsers with the upcoming WebRTC/RTCWEB offerings, what do we do about congestion control? How do we ensure that all these browser-based communications sessions share the network fairly? With RTC capabilities now already available in builds for browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, how do we deal with the expected increase in voice, video, chat and data traffic? More...
Jun 20
Richard Jimmerson Speaking Today About IPv6 At Digital Home World Summit
Today our Richard Jimmerson will be speaking at the Digital Home World Summit 2012 in London on the topic of “IPv6: Preparing for the Future.” He’ll be discussing:
- Why the delay in deploying IPv6?
- Fundamentals of IPv6 and pitfalls of falling behind
- Activities businesses must undertake to ensure continued success
- Real-world implementations and case studies
His session will be at 15:00 London time and leads off the conference segment on “Boosting the Home Environment in the Future“. You can view the full conference agenda to see the range of topics being covered there.
As more and more network-connected devices enter the home environment, particularly with sensors and the “Internet of Things,” IPv6 will be critical in enabling all those devices to seamlessly connect with the global Internet. We’re delighted to be speaking at this event and look forward to further such sessions at future events.
Jun 20
Facebook Adds "Close Friends" List To Help Sort Through The NewsFeed Overload
Facebook has long known that the "News Feed" can easily drown most folks and it would seem that they are trying yet another attempt at helping people see more relevant info. When I logged into FB today, I was greeted by this banner on the top:
I decided to play along and added a few people as "Close Friends". After hitting "Done", I wondered what would happen.
The short answer is... nothing.
At least... nothing visible. I was back looking at my News Feed as per usual. Presumably over time as I refresh the news feed the updates from these "Close Friends" will appear more often in my News Feed.
Naturally, I wanted to know where these "Close Friends" went, and I could see no sign of them in the column on the left side of Facebook. I had to click on the "MORE" link next to "FRIENDS":
to get to a page of all my "lists" and from there I could click on "Close Friends" and view the list. Once I went through this exercise, "Close Friends" then appeared in the left menu inside of Facebook:
Once inside the "Close Friends" list I had a standard News Feed view of just the people I had added to this list... identical to the way Facebook Lists have always operated. There was this special note, though:
And clicking the "Learn More" link pops up a new wizard walking people through "Lists":
The wizard introduced me to the concepts behind Lists, mentioned "Smart Lists" built seemingly from commonalities between profiles, noted that I can keep my old lists I manually built and mentioned that I can target status updates to only specific lists. Although, unlike Google+ it seems you can only send a status update to ONE Facebook List (whereas you can include multiple Circles in Google+).
I'm guessing that perhaps Facebook felt the need to go through all of this because they knew that people were getting overloaded by their News Feed, but they also knew that many people were not using the regular "Lists" feature that Facebook rolled out some time back. With this wizard and the accompanying boxes promoting "Close Friends" they can perhaps get more people using lists.
The last page of the wizard somewhat bizarrely mentioned that I could easily "Go straight to photos and updates from the friends you care about most", using a "LISTS" area of the left sidebar that I do NOT have. Hmmm...
In looking around at settings, I can't see anywhere to enable this "LISTS" view. My left sidebar in Facebook consists of:
- FAVORITES
- PAGES AND ADS
- GROUPS
- FRIENDS
- APPS
- INTERESTS (if I hit the "MORE" link to display this)
No "LISTS" for me. Is there some configuration option I've missed? Is this "LISTS" feature still in the process of rolling out to people? Is it just some other randomness inside of Facebook? Or is really the "FRIENDS" part of the sidebar as I noted earlier? (Does Facebook need to update their wizard? or update my sidebar?)
To be honest, I don't know how often I'll really switch to the list view for "Close Friends" (wherever the link is found). I don't spend a huge amount of time in Facebook... when I dip in I usually just scan down through the News Feed. Now and then, though, I can see the value of the list.
What I'd like more is to know that all the updates and photos from the people I put in that list will appear in my regular News Feed. Facebook's annoying feature of only showing you some of the posts from people means that I do miss out on what people post. I understand that it's one of their ways of helping with News Feed overload... and perhaps this list will help in prioritizing what you see.
What do you think? Will you use the "Close Friends" list? Will this help you in working with Facebook?
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Jun 20
Webinar TODAY on IPv6 Security By Researcher Joe Klein
Want to understand the security aspects of IPv6? In about 8 hours, at 4:00pm US Eastern on June 20, 2012, security researcher Joe Klein will be giving a presentation on “IPv6 – Security Threat or Stronger Defenses?”
The webinar/webcast/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is part of a series of information security seminars scheduled through BrightTALK. We have no affiliation with either Joe Klein or BrightTALK, but we’ve interviewed Joe before about DNSSEC security and based on that think this should be an interesting presentation. The abstract for the session is:
For the last 15 years, IPv6 has been specified and tested, and is now embedded in many of our operating systems and devices. The presentation will discuss the current IPv6 threat and mitigation landscape, covering a long history of compromises while also discussing methods that allow new security frameworks and innovative defenses that are not available in the current IPv4 Internet
There is no cost for attendance, although you do have to provide BrightTALK with all of your contact information. Presumably an archive will be available for later viewing if you are unable to watch it live, as that is typically how these sessions are structured.
Jun 19
Speaking about IPv6 and SIP (VoIP) Next Week at SIPNOC in Virginia
How well does the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) work with IPv6? How do current VoIP software and systems currently handle IPv6? What does the industry need to do for SIP to thrive in an IPv6 landscape?
I’ll be exploring all those questions and much more at the “SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC)” next week in Herndon, Virginia, USA. SIPNOC is a great event sponsored by the SIP Forum that brings together network operators and many other companies all involved in actually deploying and using SIP for voice over IP. I really enjoy the event as the participants are really on the leading edge of IP communications. This year, too, the CTO of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Henning Schulzrinne, will be giving what should be an interesting keynote. (And it’s not too late – you still can register to attend SIPNOC!)
As noted on the agenda, I’ll be participating in three sessions during the two-day event:
Tuesday, June 26
10:30am-11:15am: Panel Discussion: SIP Adoption and Network Security.
Along with Eric Burger of Georgetown University (and also an Internet Society Board of Trustee) and Randy Layman of Vocalocity, I’ll be discussing VoIP security issues, a topic I’ve long been involved with.
11:45am-12:15pm: SIP and IPv6 – Can They Get Along?
My main session for the event. The abstract is as follows:
With World IPv6 Launch happening June 6, 2012, production IPv6 network connectivity will be available to many more businesses and individuals. Major web sites and content providers will all enable IPv6 access to their content. Consumer electronics manufacturers are committing to providing IPv6-enabled devices.
What does this mean for SIP-based real-time communications? How well does SIP work with IPv6 today? What are the challenges to deployment and what steps can be taken to overcome those challenges? What should operators and vendors consider with regard to SIP and IPv6? What software, devices and tools are available to assist? And what case studies and other information is available?
In this session Dan York will discuss all of these points and provide concrete suggestions for moving forward with SIP and IPv6. The session will also provide time for sharing of experiences and insight of the attendees. Please bring your questions, ideas and be prepared for a lively session looking at how SIP and real-time communications can work in the new IPv6-based Internet.
We’ll post slides and hopefully video after the event is over.
Wednesday, June 27
12:45pm-1:30pm: BoF: SIP and IPv6
This will be an open forum for discussion of SIP and IPv6-related issues. At last year’s SIPNOC event the session was very well attended and there were great discussions about issues people were having, examples of where IPv6 worked well and questions people had about tools and services. I’m hoping we get that level of participation again and that it can be a useful learning experience for all involved.
If any of you will be attending SIPNOC I look forward to meeting up with you there.
