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A VoIP Spring

A regular trefor.net contributor, Peter Farmer is the Commercial and Regulatory Manager at Gamma, as well as an ITSPA Council member and Chair of ITSPA Regulatory Committee. We are pleased to present his “VoIP Week” post.

So, Trefor asked me to approach an article for “VoIP Week” from a commercial perspective as opposed to regulatory…. took me a while, but sunstroked approaching Havant cycling from Esher to Portsmouth, it dawned on me.

We’ve had our VoIP Spring. We just don’t realise it yet.

Last year, there was much furore around Ofcom’s decision (enacting an EC Recommendation) to reduce geographic termination rates to the Long Run Incremental Cost (“LRIC”). These rates were previously calculated using Fully Allocated Cost (“FAC”). Very roughly, FAC is 5x LRIC in this market, so 0.3 became 0.06 pence per minute.

All the views espoused on that subject were valid, especially as we have a diverse industry with many niche interests and many unbalanced portfolios of net termination and origination. In the same market review, however, Ofcom transferred — for BT at least — the foregone common cost (the difference between LRIC and FAC, attributable to costs such as your CEO and Finance and HR teams, etc., and not directly to each incremental unit of what you are selling) in the termination market to the origination market. Granted, this had the perverse effect of reducing the cost (through the Significant Market Power Condition that governs non-geographic out-payments), but what it did to was virtually double the per-minute cost of the origination leg of Carrier Pre-Select and Indirect Access. Granted, again, this nets off against calls to UK geographic and non BT terminating non-geographic (why BT itself is exempt is a very long story that I will tell another day), but means that calls on legacy ISDN30 estates to mobiles and international numbers increased. Markedly. We are now in a situation where the direct cost of getting a call from the Network Terminating Equipment (“NTE”) over the Local Loop to the Digital Local Exchange (“DLE”) is five times that of getting it from the DLE to a mobile in the US of A. Seriously.

If you’re an over-the-top provider, your cost base just went down. You don’t have to worry about that leg from the NTE to the DLE. Your voice traffic is ones and zeroes encoded in packets of data over broadband frequencies, not analogue on narrowband frequencies. The per minute cost of providing the service to any caller has plummeted, relative to an ISDN2 or 30 or even a single WLR line.

And that right there, Ladies and Gentlemen, was our VoIP Spring. Let’s make the most of it.

Google+ Peter Farmer

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Tags ISDN, Ofcom, voip

Bad Stuff broadband End User fun stuff internet Net UC voip

Vastly Objectionable Ignominious Phrase

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
3 Comments on Vastly Objectionable Ignominious Phrase

What the lone acronym in “VoIP Week” does NOT represent.

As a longtime fan of Marvel’s super hero comic books — 40 years and happily counting — I find myself quite satisfied with the persisting Hollywood trend of putting these Fantastic! Incredible! Amazing! Uncanny! Mighty! characters on the Silver Surfer…er, silver screen. And almost as much fun as seeing these wonders brought to life is the narrative means used to tie them all together, that being the oh-so-shadowy government agency S.H.I.E.L.D., which as acronyms go is one heckuva Marvel-ous mouthful (originally “Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division”, then changed in 1991 to “Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate”…both way-cool).

S.H.I.E.L.D.

So what does all of this have to do with VoIP? Well, as great acronyms go absolutely nothing, as S.H.I.E.L.D. is way-cool while V-o-I-P is decidedly not. In fact, though the meaning behind V-o-I-P — Voice over Internet Protocol — is a cause célèbre, worthy of consideration, contemplation, conjecture, and cockeyed optimism, the “word” verbalized evokes images of a thick liquid dripping onto a badly-tuned piece of tin poised alongside a carnival microphone.

Say it with me. Or better yet, don’t.

As awful an acronym as V-o-I-P is, one has to wonder how it came to stick as the most common reference term for the technology it represents. Could it be that as bad as it is, V-o-I-P is actually the best of a really bad bunch? Let’s see…

		IPT (IP Telephony)? Difficult double-consonant at the end, and perhaps too easy to rhyme with “gypped”…
		IT (Internet Telephony)? Taken.
		VoBB (Voice over Broadband? Again, like IPT, too easy to set a negative rhyme to.
		BT (Broadband Telephony)? Taken.
		BPS (Broadband Phone Service)? Proves that an ugly-sounding acronym is better than one with absolutely nothing going for it.

OK, so maybe I am no longer wondering how V-o-I-P took hold in the tech-y lexicon. After all, nature abhors a vacuum and all that (Horror vacui!). Also, sadly, nothing better was in the ether (evidenced above), and it isn’t as if the average man-on-the-street is going to say “Voice over Internet Protocol” every time they need to refer to the concept (of course, there is no way said average man-on-the-street is ever going to comfortably use the acronymic word “VoIP” either, but let’s not get bogged down in reality’s messy details). Still, it sure would be nice to be able to lay blame for V-o-I-P at someone’s keyboard, but unlike the massive majority of Internet-based whatever-and-whatsis there is absolutely nobody out there laying claim to originating — starting? envisioning? founding? — the term. Even if we could force somebody to take responsibility for this *four-letter-word* of a four-letter acronym, though, a proper punishment could never be levied as any attempt to do so would likely raise the ire of the Kids from C.A.P.E.R.^*

At this point the Marvel-literate among you might be gasping (Gasp!) for me to return to espousing on and praising the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe, for those of you not in-the-know who have hung on this far). It is “VoIP Week” at trefor.net, however, and other than their diametrically opposed acronym quality no other useful correlation can be made between S.H.I.E.L.D. and V-o-I-P (other than the fact, that is, that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents likely make extensive and heretofore unknown — and way-cool — use of VoIP technology). Still, you can’t beat a good opening.

^*The Civilian Authority for the Protection of Everybody, Regardless

VoIP Week Posts:

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VoIP and Emergency Services – Location, Location, Location…

Post author By Ray Bellis
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
No Comments on VoIP and Emergency Services – Location, Location, Location…

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week guest contributor Ray Bellis, Senior Researcher at Nominet UK and Director at NICC Standards Ltd.

UK Proposed Architecture

I’ve blogged previously on the UK Specification being produced by the EmLoc Task Group of NICC Standards regarding the thorny problem of Emergency Services determining the location of a VoIP caller who may be unable to disclose their location, for whatever reason (e.g., the caller is under duress and is unable to talk, or they simply doesn’t know their location, etc.). This work was driven by General Condition 4 (GC4) of the “General Conditions of Entitlement“, which apply to all Communications Providers:

The Communications Provider shall, to the extent technically feasible, make accurate and reliable Caller Location Information available for all calls to the emergency call numbers “112” and “999”, at no charge to the Emergency Organisations handling those calls, at the time the call is answered by those organisations.

At the time of publication these were draft specifications — they’ve since been made publicly available as NICC Document ND1638. For more details of the architecture please see the aforementioned blog posting and the NICC Document.

A key component of the proposed architecture is that it would require every Internet Service Provider and Access Network Provider (ANP) to operate a service known as a “Location Information Server” (or “LIS”). The protocol provided by the LIS is described in RFC 5985 and is known as “HELD”, short for “HTTP-Enabled Location Delivery”.

Whilst Ofcom has not (yet) carried out any enforcement activity on ISPs or ANPs relating to GC4, they have commissioned a report on the NICC Document that concluded that the architecture described therein is “technically feasible”. It is therefore to be expected that at some point Ofcom will start enforcing this requirement.

Work to update ND1638 to reflect recent changes to IETF standards is ongoing, and also to allow device-provided location (e.g., GPS readings) to be sent to the Emergency Services during call setup. However, even if device-provided readings were available, ultimately the Emergency Handling Authorities (EHAs) would trust the network-provided location as the primary source of location, with device-provided location acting only as a means to enhance the former and be used when consistent with it.

ETSI M/493 Architecture

The European Commission published Standardisation Mandate M/493 in May 2011, requiring European Standards Organisations to develop standards in support of a “Location Enhanced Emergency Call Service”. This work is being carried out under the “End-to-End Network Architectures” (E2NA) ETSI Project.

The draft architecture being devised by the ETSI working group builds upon previous work by the National Emergency Number Association, the European Emergency Number Association, the Internet Engineering Task Force and others, and many of the functional components are very similar to those used in the UK architecture.

The draft ETSI architecture has one very significant difference from the UK architecture that reflects the more complicated emergency call routing required in some countries. In the UK all emergency service calls are now handled by BT, so the VoIP operator therefore has no need to make any call routing decisions other than recognising that the called number is an emergency number and passing the call to BT via the appropriate interconnect. In some European countries, however, that initial call routing also depends on the caller’s location, and therefore the architecture requires that the IP Access Network must provide the caller’s location to the VoIP operator before the call can be passed to the emergency services! This makes the LIS an essential component of the architecture, and therefore safety-critical, with all that this entails.

With EC and ETSI backing for this architecture it seems more likely than ever that ISPs and Access Network Providers will have to implement additional services within their networks to support emergency service calls, even though they are just “mere conduits” for those calls.

VoIP Week Posts:

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Voice Fraud – You Need to Act!

Post author By Simon Woodhead
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
1 Comment on Voice Fraud – You Need to Act!

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP guest contributor Simon Woodhead, CEO of wholesale voice provider Simwood.

In February, we published VoIP Fraud Analysis, a white paper that details Simwood’s three years of operating a Honeypot, coloured in by many years of real-world experience servicing wholesale voice clients of all sizes and seeing them compromised. Our research has been very well received in official circles from OFCOM to ACPO, at industry events comprising scarily competent people, and we’ve since been able to compare notes with others in darkened rooms who study this for a living. Of course, I won’t repeat the full content of the white paper here — and it certainly wouldn’t be appropriate to do so — but I will be glad to share a few observations from it.

VoIP fraud — an estimated $46bn a year problem — has come as no surprise to anyone, and as we’ve run through the mechanism of attack the majority of people in the audience have seen at least parts of the behaviour we describe in the wild. If we were describing other kinds of crime most people would be looking in from outside, but VoIP fraud is pervasive and everyone in the industry has seen it at some level. Similarly, nobody has questioned the solutions proposed; some of which are unique to Simwood though they can be employed by any provider on almost any equipment. Despite this, people remain reluctant to act and, dare I say, a little complacent. It is somebody else’s problem until it is their problem, and by then it may very well be too late. Remember, $46bn is the estimated measure of the good guys’ incompetence…the bad guys’ intent is infinite and, as we’ve seen, can quite literally put a provider out of business in just hours.

The sad fact is that the bad guys are becoming far more professional. Gone are the days of script-kiddy intruding with such blunt force that it was apparent as a DoS attack. They are still there, of course, and can still be very effective in breaching completely unprepared networks, but the serious people — the professionals — are…well, professional. There’s no impatience or fervour to their attacks and they do their homework very very well. Their reconnaissance is unobservable to those not looking out for it at the packet level, and their early compromise testing is lost amongst legitimate call traffic for those unaware of the test numbers identified. Then they wait, patiently.

Christmas 2013 was a busy time for us with almost every night seeing one of our customer’s end-users compromised. Actually, we saw the same customers compromised repeatedly night after night, as the bad guys had identified a specific vulnerability present in the equipment they’d deployed to their end-user businesses. Where the customers were ISPs (with a defined block of IP addresses containing customer equipment) the attackers had been able to identify a list of similar targets on their network vulnerable to the same attack. This would have taken a long time and a lot of patience, before striking when eyes were furthest from the ball. On every single occasion we identified the incident, proactively made contact with our customers to advise and help resolve the incident. The attackers left quietly, knowing they had a long list of other targets and could come back later. They did, every night for the Christmas period.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just a “VoIP” problem. Many incidents are targeted and exploit non-VoIP technologies (e.g., those present by virtue of traditional PBXs being retro-fitted with IP capability) while many others are at other levels altogether, such as the http interface of CPE or provider admin systems. The traffic may pass over VoIP as a consequence, but in many cases once the VoIP side of it has been contained it will then pass over traditional phone lines connected to the same equipment. It must be an anxious time waiting for the CPS invoices afterwards!

My point here is not to scare you, but to highlight two trends: (1) providers are becoming more complacent, and (2) attackers are becoming more professional. A destructive combination, indeed, and one that is sure to end in more tears. Attackers are not going to become less capable and less professional, so the only option is for providers to be less complacent and to — this is critical — take action. Very few if any are doing everything they could, whereas others dismissively rely on techniques that may help but are incomplete and therefore give false confidence. The bad guys can turn on an attack at any point after the reconnaissance is complete, and if you think they cannot then how will you notice and be able to react when they do?

The solutions are often simple and free, however they require a willingness to implement and generally bring many other benefits. By way of example, the vast majority of providers operate SIP on UDP 5060 because that is the out-of-the-box behaviour, whilst you’d struggle to find equipment nowadays that doesn’t support TLS. Not only are TLS endpoints far less common targets, but TLS and SRTP also give end users the privacy I think they already expect they have. Similarly, billing more frequently and getting as close to real-time as possible not only enables fraud monitoring but provides massive operational and commercial benefits too. Your carrier monitoring and enforcing fraud controls on your wholesale account, safely away from your network, is by far the most effective preventative measure, and some of us do that to varying degrees.

There are many more solutions contained in the Simwood VoIP Fraud Analysis white paper, and we urge you to implement them, and also to lean on your carrier to help you to do so. Please note that in all the “Christmas” examples it was we the carrier — not our customers — who noticed end-user compromise.

The key take-away I want to leave you with is that if you are having no trouble sleeping at night because you believe it can’t/won’t happen to you, then you really need to act now. Your network may already be compromised, with eyes awaiting your being off the ball, perhaps over a coming Bank Holiday.

VoIP Week Posts:

Business UC voip

Microsoft Lync, Embrace or Ignore?

Post author By Peter Cox
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
No Comments on Microsoft Lync, Embrace or Ignore?

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week guest contributor Peter Cox, UM Labs Ltd. Founder and CEO

As the VoIP industry continues to grow, a new and potentially disruptive force has emerged. Microsoft Lync. While not exactly a newcomer (tracing its origins back through LCS and OCS), the latest version of Lync — Lync 2013 — is clearly making an impact on both VoIP and the Telecommunications industry in general. So the question is, should VoIP service providers and users embrace Lync or ignore it?

Microsoft is clearly positioning Lync to extend their reach from data into the VoIP world. The product is understandably popular with end-users who like the features that it offers, as well as with CIOs who see Lync’s Unified Communication services as a way of getting more out their investment in Exchange and Active Directory. Lync also provides Enterprise Telephony features, albeit at an additional cost.

So what does all of this mean for VoIP service providers and users?

One thing not in short supply is opinions on the merits of Lync. The consensus is that Lync is great for Instant Messaging and for integration with Exchange, but that it does not deliver the industrial strength telephony needed by many end-users, particularly those in call centres. Mixed deployments are the result — with Lync in the back-office, and a more traditional PBX in areas with tougher call processing requirements — and these present a challenge.

One of the hurdles facing any Lync deployment is the product’s sheer complexity. Even a simple system for a small office requires three or more servers, with scaling for larger numbers of users and multi-site deployments complicating the picture still further. But the greatest challenge comes from attempting to interconnect Lync with other VoIP systems. The Lync architecture includes the Mediation Server for 3^rd party connections, which can connect to a PSTN Gateway (Microsoft’s terminology), and as its name suggests can also provide restricted connectivity to other VoIP systems. The Mediation Server does not enable callers to be identified with anything other than a caller-ID, nor does it support presence or instant messaging, and therefore it cannot provide integrated Unified Communication services across a multi vendor network.

Lync is based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the same protocol that virtually all other VoIP products and services use. Microsoft have added so many extensions to the Lync version of SIP, though, that providing the level of integration needed for a mixed Lync and standard SIP deployment is beyond virtually all end-users and many system integrators. On the plus side, Microsoft has published details of the SIP extensions they have implemented. While these specifications will not help the average end-user, they have enabled the development of enhanced connectivity solutions for Lync. It is now possible to deploy a mixed environment, for instance, with Lync in the back-office and an alternative VoIP system in other areas.

The Microsoft marketing machine will clearly continue to promote Lync, end-users will continue praise the integrated services it offers, and CIOs will continue to value the improved ROI. Also, the ability to provide true interconnection with other VoIP products and services means that there is now an opportunity for service providers to offer new services centred on Lync, and for end-user organisations to benefit from the optimal mix of Lync’s UC services and call centre grade services from other vendors. End-users will continue to adopt Lync, and thus service providers and system integrators able to provide Lync integrated with other VoIP products and services will have an edge. As such, the VoIP industry needs to embrace Lync or become a casualty of its advance.

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TVs, lost remotes and fish tank screensavers

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 6 May, 2014
4 Comments on TVs, lost remotes and fish tank screensavers

Our TV remote control is lost. It is almost certainly down the side of the settee or one of the armchairs. I did look. It must have been a fairly cursory glance because that bit of plastic was not found. Didn’t jump up at me saying “here I am Tref”.

Not that it knows my name. At least it never got it from me. Might have heard it while we were watching the snooker, I suppose.

The fact is that the TV remote being lost hasn’t really affected me. I discovered the manual buttons down the right hand side of the screen. They allowed me to switch on the snooker. Fortunately the faff of switching channels was unnecessary. It was already tuned to the snooker.

Since then TV has played no part in our lives. It is there flat against the wall. Red LED indicating it is powered up but on standby.

I could I suppose find an app on the droid that serves as a TV remote. Not bothered. I quite like the idea of a screensaver showing fish in a tank. Tropical job. I’d like a fish tank although I don’t want the hassle of looking after the fish.

Friend of mine from University, Rhys, had an undergraduate project to observe the behavioural patterns of goldfish. He was supposed to feed them at the same time of day in the same part of the fish tank to see if they would congregate there in hungry anticipation.

The problem was we would shoot off somewhere for the weekend so on Friday Rhys would give them enough food to last until Monday morning. Totally messed up the experiment. The fish began to die and by the end of the spring term 39 out of 40 of them had died. Kicked the aquatic bucket. Rhys had to totally fabricate his experimental results:)

My other university “fish tank” story related to one of the lads who declined to come out with “the boys” one sunday night because he had a date. In those days Bangor was dry on a Sunday. The only source of alcohol was through a private club such as the British Legion or the Students Union or at a restaurant. We frequented the Taj Mahal, sadly now defunct.

On this occasion we hit the cinema and ended up in the Taj for a chicken biryani (meat vindaloo, onion bhaji, pilau rice, plain naan etc) and a few pints of lager.

Upon arrival we were sat next to the fish tank, always a favourite place to sit. Very relaxing when combined with Bollywood’s Greatest Hits. Just a few minutes later our pal was ushered, girl in tow, to the table the other side of the tank. I have no idea whether he had noticed us but we could definitely see him. He was out to impress big time and ordered a bottle of Blue Nun, in those days the height of sophistication. You have to believe he had the mickey taken out of him big time when we got back to the hall of residence. Blue Nun!

Hey. He had the night out with the girl and we didn’t 🙂

In those days I didn’t watch the TV. In fact Kid1 was thirteen years old before we had our first TV. We have one now, as you know, although we don’t watch it because the remote is lost. Feels just like the good old days:) There’s always iPlayer and tinterweb anyway and we didn’t have that in the good old days!

PS pic is totally arbitrary – fancied sticking it up

End User social networking

Pinterest blocking suspicious activity in your area

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 6 May, 2014
No Comments on Pinterest blocking suspicious activity in your area

Curious one this. I currently manually do “shares” for blog posts, one of which is with Pinterest. It’s to make sure I reach female readers.

The predominance of blokes amongst the engineering fraternity doesn’t totally do it for me. I am all for equality of the sexes etc, or so Mrs Davies instructs me. On that basis I have to reach out to demographic communities other than just the majority of attendees of UKNOF meetings¹.

So I share posts on Pinterest which apparently has more female than male users. Fair play.

This post is nothing to do with who uses Pinterest though, although in some respects it does. Just makes me wonder what the suspicious actitivity is. It’s not at all fair really. The mind is now racing wondering what they could be referring to?

Has someone been posting naughty photos? That would be naughty. I’m sure there are better places for such artefacts. I know not where, genuinely.

When mentioning “area” are they referring to my IP address, that of ISP Timico, or are they referring to Lincoln? My home town. Questions questions. Timico subscribers are in the main business customers. Surely nobody would be using their employer’s internet connection for suspicious activity! Surelement.

It’s quite disappointing really. Not knowing what the suspicious activity is/was. I have since pinned a pic (if that’s the right way of putting it) so the suspicious activity must have either gone away or determined in the end not to have been suspicious. Still makes you want to know what it was though:)

Anyone shed any light here?

¹ Yes ok girls I know some of you attend UKNOF meetings

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Irrationally looking forward to meeting Pardeep or hello Pardeep goodbye Galaxy Mini

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 6 May, 2014
1 Comment on Irrationally looking forward to meeting Pardeep or hello Pardeep goodbye Galaxy Mini

Some of you will have been following the story of me being without my phone for over a week now. I well I am irrationally excited to tell you that it is nearly here. I’m sat at home in the conservatory waiting for Pardeep.

Pardeep works for courier DPD. I know exactly where Pardeep is. I’ve been following his progress with great interest to the point where I’ve been constantly refreshing my screen to see if he is getting any nearer my house. The screen shots at the bottom of this post tell the story.

There are a couple of very slight disappointments. The first is that there is a lag between the status shown and Pardeep’s real location. As he pulled up outside my house I wanted a screenshot of him doing so. It didn’t happen and the next time I looked, which was when he had gone, the status of the delivery had changed to “your parcel has been delivered”. Not a major issue, just a very slight disappointment:)

The second disappointment was that I wanted to take a photo of Pardeep. He was a very cheery bloke. The problem was that the device I would have normally used to take the photo was the one being delivered by Pardeep. He wouldn’t have wanted to hang around while I opened the box, took out the phone, inserted the battery, SIM, SDCard, entered my credentials and waited for all the device updates to happen.

Hey, no big deal:) The updates are happening right now. I am pleased to tell you that my wallpaper and lock screen photos are back in place although little things such as the screen lock, lock screen message (Tref’s phone) and misc other settings such as which icons go where have to be manually redone.

I can tell you that the last time I used this phone appears to have been on Shakespeare’s birthday, 23rd April, because that is the date of the most recent SMS restored by my Samsung backup account. The SMS, fwiw, is from my wife and it says “Powerpoint for beginners”. What gets backed up where is something I will have to check in making any decision to move handset vendors.

All my apps are being reinstalled. I’m not totally comfortable about all the permissions I’m having to give. Security around what an app can and can’t do is is something that the Android will need to sort out. It also seems odd that the “internet” app automatically installed on the home screen is not Chrome. It must be something Samsung has chosen. IE perhaps but there is nothing to tell me what it is. That one won’t last.

Anyway follow the progress of Pardeep as he winds his way through the sleepy streets of Lincoln towards my house, dropping parcels off on the way:

UC Disappearing Like VoIP

Post author By Mehdi Nezarati
Post date Tuesday, 6 May, 2014
No Comments on UC Disappearing Like VoIP

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week guest contributor Mehdi Nezarati, President of EMEA, Esna Technologies Inc.

Communications, Then and Now

Old Cell Phone It was not that long ago that phone companies — and their charges for long distance calls — could not be avoided. We don’t often think about it now, but calling overseas used to be expensive and somewhat complicated. It would require a certain calling plan and a special way of dialing the traditional telephone. Then along came the ability to make calls over the Internet, and now we don’t think twice about having long conversations with friends traveling abroad or scheduling conference calls with business associates in other countries. Apps such as Skype, Google Voice and Tango have made VoIP part of how we live and work, and whether the call we are on is connected via VoIP or not is no longer relevant. And the fact that we know hav the ability to use these apps on any device — a phone, tablet, or computer — means we can talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Thank you, VoIP, for this seamless and standard method of communication now at our fingertips.

The same thing is happening in the field of Unified Communications (UC). What is Unified Communications, you ask? Like many people asked about VoIP in the early 2000’s. I’ll save time and let Wiki answer that. What’s important to know is that UC saves time, improves communication and collaboration, and is becoming seamless in our lives. What was once possible only by large organizations deploying a suite of tools is now quickly becoming a part of our everyday lives. Consider these likely unnoticed aspects of UC we use every day:

Visual voicemail functionality built into our smartphones

Speech recognition capability that allows us to dictate emails and texts for communications on the go

Cameras as standard issue equipment on our smartphones, tablets and computers that facilitate face-to-face communications

As VoIP replaced traditional telephony, nowadays UC is beginning to disappear into our devices and workflows, making communication faster and easier and thus improving our lives. Video calling is a natural means for communicating with one another, and talking to our phones to complete tasks is all now part of a day’s work. At UC’s maturity, where VoIP is now, we can expect to experience more benefits in the devices and cloud apps we use in everyday workflows, as both are becoming the standards for the way we work and get things done.

Tref: As a business, trefor.net does not have a landline. We primarily use Google Hangouts, and occasionally (rarely) Skype. Of course, we also communicate via mobile, though often the mobile handset is the medium for Hanging out on Google. Not to say that this would work for every business, though, as there is a massive sunk cost in Telephony equipment out there, not to mention the investment in marketing collateral that includes inbound numbers. Businesses, however, are gradually adopting Google Apps, in great part due to the powerful collaboration capabilities it makes available. For example, looking again at our own situation, last week I met with a journalism graduate who plans to put together material on the use of tech by students. I started things by creating a Google Doc in which we could jointly work, which I then shared via her Hotmail address.

Google builds safety nets into the system in the form of policies that keep staff from using Google Docs as a means for leaking company data. The point, though, is that the Google App setup is already a Unified Communication environment in every sense of the term. It is a short step from where we are now to businesses integrating Google’s functionality with their own PBX and with their existing inbound telephone numbers.

Elsewhere, the Davies family communicates mostly through Google Hangouts and Facebook, with the occasional moment of dad calling back an offspring on their mobile when they don’t want to use up their valuable credit. The Kids are mostly always on Facebook, too, where IM often initiates a move to a video Google Hangout. We have even extended this to the setting up of whole family “video conferences” (although the term is rapidly being replaced with video Hangout) with five participating laptops, three of which are in different rooms in the house, with mum flipping between these rooms. I suspect the quality of the group Hangout is driven by the uplink bandwidth available to one of the remote family members, but it is no doubt the way ahead.

IMG credits: voicemail – http://www.intomobile.com/2011/02/13/youmail-visual-voicemail-ios/ dictation – http://singularityhub.com/2009/12/14/dragon-dictation-voice-recognition-comes-to-the-iphone-for-free-video/ video – http://www.cultofmac.com/276995/snapchat-adds-instant-messaging-video-calls/

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Tags Esna, UC, Unified Communication

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The Conception and Birth of a New IP Handset

Post author By John Bennett
Post date Tuesday, 6 May, 2014
3 Comments on The Conception and Birth of a New IP Handset

Trefor.net welcomes John Bennett, Managing Director snom UK Ltd

There are five mainstream manufacturers of IP handsets active in the world today, and for the business client, service provider or reseller seeking to select a handset supplier it can be difficult to evaluate the differences amongst them. Price is an obvious criteria but that reveals little about the expected handset life, quality of voice and the durability or usability of the handset, all of which contributes to the user satisfaction and the lifetime cost of the handset. Two reliable options for evaluation are (1) references from existing users, and (2) a good look at the manufacturing process.

A reliable quality manufacturer will operate an in-house research and development team. Interoperability and the ability to work with a very broad range of PBX and hosted service providers on the market are absolutely key in the specification of IP handsets.

The design, development and manufacturing guidelines for IP handsets are quality, security, interoperability, a practical and aesthetically pleasing design, and inclusion of features that meet the needs of modern communications. Products must be stable, functional, efficient, durable, and must provide a quality in which customers can have confidence.

Defining the Designer Baby

The starting point for any new handset development is with the customer, customer feedback is key to understanding what is working, what is not, and what is needed, what is liked or disliked. It is particularly important to understand the end user experience both for handset use and from a deployment and manageability point of view. A good way to develop such understanding is to process and analyse any returns or repairs working in close collaboration with development and production teams. This has an immediate benefit for the customer as minor modifications can be quickly integrated into production. It is perhaps even more important in that a constant and systematic analysis of complaints and faults allows companies to produce reports and identify trends and issues, thus allowing for continuous product quality improvement and the development of new devices that meet customers’ requirements and deliver high levels of reliably in the long-term.

It is also important to track the changing technology trends to ensure that handsets meet tomorrow’s needs as well as today’s, and to take into account the need to easily adopt new technologies into the business. In today’s business world, key capabilities are remote provisioning, support for virtual private networks (VPN), CTI solutions and integration with Microsoft Lync.

Once the specification is agreed to the next stage is the prototype build followed by market testing. Manufacturers should maintain a close relationship with key end customers that allows for market testing of new handsets, to establish they are not only fit for purpose but that they provide customers with a solution that will excite and motivate them to continue to buy their product.

The standards of the tests to which a manufacturer will submit their products are another key indicator of handset quality. Manufacturers should have very strict criteria, and before approving a handset to move to full production the phone must successfully pass various drop tests and tests on the electrical interface. One characteristic that is of particularly importance is maintaining highest standards of audio quality, not just at first production but on-going as the handset will likely be exposed to heavy use for five years or more. Products should be regularly subjected to audio tests and careful measurements taken to determine and resolve audio deterioration.

Product Birth is only the Beginning

Once the prototype has been approved the manufacturing process goes ahead full steam. Material selection and build quality has an effect on both the audio quality and the durability of a telephone handset. Developers should continuously monitor the production process, and handsets should be spot tested to ensure that quality standards are met. During the production not only should the operational performance of the handset be monitored and tested, but also the entire response frequency of each phone. The smallest difference in build quality can adversely affect the phone quality, and this can involve anything from build impacting on the audio quality to introduction of a specialist coating that prevents the discoloration of handset keys and ensures the handset durability.

Regular analysis and systematic review of problems or complaints can ensure that product quality is maintained and improved to effectively meet user needs.

So what should you look for when evaluating IP hone handsets? I recommend you consider the need for in-house testing and fault evaluation and feedback, a process of continual improvement rather than a throw-and-replace approach, and a controlled and monitored manufacturing process, all of which will ensure a high quality and durable solution.

VoIP Week Posts:

Business voip

#voipweek on trefor.net brings diverse set of posts

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 6 May, 2014
1 Comment on #voipweek on trefor.net brings diverse set of posts

I have been involved with the VoIP scene since 1999 when my employer at the time, Mitel, decided it would “get into VoIP”. In those days the discussion was very much whether SIP or MGCP would win out. Each platform vendor had its own version of MGCP so the bet was placed on SIP.

At Mitel I developed one of the earliest SIP phones. It was a variant on one of Mitel’s standard (and proprietary) Minet phones that was sold in volume with their 3300 PBX. In those days it was the custom and practice of the great and the good of the SIP world to converge each January for the Paris International SIP Conference.

I recall that at my first year at the Paris Conference I went counted three SIP clients: a Microsoft soft client (for MSN), a Pingtel Java phone (now defunct) and if I remember right an Analogue Telephone Adaptor. The following year the number of handsets increased to around five including my own Mitel SIP phone and in year three we thought we had hit the jackpot as I counted a dozen or so clients. That was the year we considered the industry to have gone seriously mainstream.

Pingtel — One of the first SIP phones which happened to be Java based

I stopped counting after that because by year four I couldn’t fit all the handset photos onto a powerpoint slide.

The problem at the time was there were very few Internet Telephony Service Providers around to buy/sell the handsets. At the six monthly pulver.com Voice On The Net conferences only a single session was given over to talks by ITSPs. There just weren’t any and the small number that did exist had few subscribers.

Had we had a blog week of VoIP posts back then it would have contained primers on what the technology was all about, debates about which protocols would win out and wistful gazes into the future looking at a networked world that consigned ISDN and the Plain Old Telephone to the science museum. All pioneering stuff.

This week we are having a week of posts about VoIP on trefor.net. A wide range of real world subjects is on offer including the problems of VoIP fraud, how to defend against this fraud with more secure provisioning, why it is important to get your connectivity right, net neutrality, number porting in the VoIP world, how to develop a VoIP phone, designing a conference phone, location services for emergency calling using VOIP, the evolving world of Unified Communications and a look at Microsoft Lync.

The world has moved on from those early days of VoIP. In the UK the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association now numbers around 70 members and the reality is that the total ITSP count in this country is probably nearer double that as ITSPA members don’t typically include those white labeling or fronting someone else’s back end service. This diverse collection of posts has been written by C Level Executives from around the VoIP world, both from service providers and their equipment suppliers who now have a critical mass of sales to be able to support ongoing product development.

We are at the point where VoIP is no longer a hard sell. People are asking for it. They all use the tech in their every day lives and want to start seeing the benefits for their businesses. It will be a long time before the Public Switched Telephone Network disappears but you sense that time will definitely come. In one sense the only thing that is stopping VoIP from taking over completely is that you still have to have a copper line with an associated telephone number in order to carry the broadband line that allows VoIP to work. A move to a world of ubiquitous data only connectivity would kill off the PSTN once and for all. At least sooner rather than later.

In the meantime the VoIP industry goes from strength to strength. ITSPA membership is growing in number and every member is growing in size. It is a good time to be around VoIP.

Please come back and read the posts as they are published each day. For many of the contributors it is their first time on trefor.net but they are all leaders in their field and their views are worth hearing. None of the posts are intended to be sales pitches although some of them do use their own company experiences to illustrate their story.

It wouldn’t have been so long ago that these experiences would have existed only on paper and there isn’t a print edition of trefor.net:)

If you want to connect you can reach me via trefor.net on Skype or [email protected] on Google Hangout. We don’t do landlines at trefor.net…

VoIP Week Posts:

Business phones UC voip voip hardware

Ten Years of VoIP – Happy Birthday!

Post author By Colin Duffy
Post date Tuesday, 6 May, 2014
No Comments on Ten Years of VoIP – Happy Birthday!

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week guest contributor Colin Duffy, CEO of Voipfone and ITSPA Council member

ITSPA and Voipfone are both 10 years old this year so perhaps it’s a good time to look back at how the industry has developed.

Back in 2004, VoIP was just becoming sexy; Skype had made a big impact on international telephony revenues and was in the public eye — particularly amongst students and those with family overseas. Perhaps more importantly for the industry in general, though, was the acceptance of two technologies: SIP (Session Initiation Protocol, which has become the international standard for VoIP telephony) and Asterisk (the brilliant open source PBX software that allowed anybody to build a telephone switchboard either for their own office use or as a Hosted Service Provider). The combination of these two technologies has efficiently killed the old TDM-based PBX and is well on the way to killing ISDN circuits.

Of course, VoIP couldn’t have been as successful as it has become if it wasn’t for the growth in broadband provision to home and office. In the early days, ITSPA was concerned that the entire industry would be strangled if the Internet Service Providers blocked VoIP, and net neutrality was a much-discussed issue. As it turned out it, ISPs have not stood in the way of VoIP and the two industries have learned to live together fairly peaceably, give or take a few issues surrounding the routers of end-users. Now, the main net neutrality issues correlate to the mobile networks, some of which are grimly determined to keep VoIP off their networks, despite advertising the Internet as a main selling point. (The Internet minus some of the services that the Internet provides is not, in my view, the Internet, it’s Internet Light.)

We also dealt with VoIP regulation worries. Ofcom seemed determined to treat VoIP as something requiring separate legislation, in a ‘there be dragons’ sort of way, whereas ITSPA took the view that this was not necessary. ITSPA lost that argument, however, and — in one of the strangest of many strange meeting I’ve had with Ofcom — we managed to convince it that VoIP Service Providers needed to provide 999 services. Burning grannies were a big thing at the time…

food and drink fun stuff Weekend

Saturday Snapshot (3-May-2014)

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Monday, 5 May, 2014
1 Comment on Saturday Snapshot (3-May-2014)

Lest regular readership get the mistaken impression that every La Famille Kessel Saturday is filled full-up with memorable diversion, today I will not report on a Normandy beachside kite festival competition or a world-class photo exhibit attended or any such specialness. Instead, dear and generous reader, I will gladly bring you along on a short walk I took around my corner of Paris’s 18th Arrondissement in search of photographs and dinner party nibbles.

First, to set the pin on the map, the part of 18eme in which La Famille Kessel has made home since 2001 is on the arrondissement’s northern edge, and not the storied and well-trodden Montmartre (though it isn’t far removed, and we do have a view of Sacre Coeur, provided someone is holding the back of your pants when you lean out the window and look sharply to the right). It is an immigrant neighborhood in the strongest sense of the word, with over 160 nationalities represented (the most diverse such area in all of Europe, in fact…or so we have so often been told). The heterogeneousness, in fact, seeps into and around everything…streetlife, the shops, the wide disparity in the quality and condition of the vehicles…and for a person with a photography bent and a halfway decent camera, every blue-sky sunny day reeks of opportunity.

American friends living in Holland were in town over the weekend with four kids in tow, and Saturday evening we would welcome them for eats and drinks. I had the main course set and prepared — three tartes a la tomates (recipe some other time), an herb-infested green salad with pistachio and a garlic-tomato-balsamic vinaigrette — but we were were sorely lacking for food-before-the-food, so out the door I went, bang into what from my fourth floor window looked like one of the Top 10 Best days of the year.

Happily, my window didn’t lie, and from the moment my shoes hit the sidewalk I felt a bounce in my step. The day was glorious. A crisp light wind, temperature right around 18ºC (64ºF for the U.S.-bound), white puffy clouds, a screaming blue sky, and a pervasive airy mood that seemed infused into all. I could hear the buzz of easy conversation, comfortable laughter, the sounds of bicycle bells…I wasn’t sure what direction I would go in or what I would pick up along the way, but I was not the least bit concerned. I had an hour, a camera around my neck, and just enough purpose to ensure I wouldn’t wander too far.

Business Regs

Scottish Independence

The debate on the subject Scottish independence rolls on, and I don’t really have a personal view other than that the peoples’ right to self determination should be upheld and respected, however I am thinking about the ramifications right now as I train back from Glasgow.

We presently live with different rates regimes and other devolved affairs running networks between England and Scotland, but the consequences for independence are high. Will Scotland join the European Union, or will they have a special relationship like Jersey? This is important as the former protects travelers and those living on the border from roaming charges whereas the other does not (Jersey isn’t subject to the EU caps, for example). And what about VAT? What about a hosted PBX installation to an office in Scotland and one in England? How do you account for that under one contract, especially if there’s a different currency? Will there be a different Country Code and numbering plan? Jersey, Guernsey, and Isle of Man all use the UK code despite having substantial telecommunications sovereignty. Could BT and Vodafone’s nexus of Nortel DMS 100s and System Xs handle such a situation?

If there are call centres in Scotland but no EU membership, data protection legislation becomes interesting in terms of passing EU citizens data outside the EU for processing.

BT’s regulated assets are averaged out across the country, and they are less concentrated in Scotland. Thus, if an independent Scottish regulator applied the same charge control logic in Scotland we could see increases in Scottish consumers prices for broadband and WLR, and a commensurate reduction in English (and Welsh and Northern Irish) consumers.

The mind boggles once you really get in amongst the practical issues, and if there’s a “Yes” vote later this year I shall write substantially more on the subject as that would no doubt ring in a exhilarating and very interesting time for all in the sector.

Google+ Peter Farmer

Tags scotland

End User fun stuff

I bought a drill – Makita #shed #disassembly

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 5 May, 2014
1 Comment on I bought a drill – Makita #shed #disassembly

I bought a drill. No it’s not it’s a screwdriver. Actually it’s both. It’s a Makita cordless job. My old Black & Decker cordless screwdriver I’ve had for years won’t charge and therefore won’t drive screws. I only used the B&D a few times. Ah well.

I needed it because the playhouse is being moved, if it is the will of a superior being, from it’s current position astride the basketball court to the compost heap which is now no longer a compost heap.

The basketball court isn’t currently a basketball court. It’s a patio base for the playhouse but it will be perfectly good as a basketball court. It has been pointed out to me that some branches from the pear tree in the corner overhang the “court” and “can we chop them off?” We shall have to wait and see. You don’t go lopping branches off a pear tree just like that, though it’s never been much good as a pear tree and every year the leaves develop brown spots. There is a fix for this involving some sort of insect repelling bands around the trunk but I’ve never bothered implementing it. The pears were never any good anyway and there’s a Tesco just down the road.

In fact Tesco are opening a new whizz bang all singing all dancing superstore in a couple of weeks and I’ve been invited to the preview night. It’s supposed to be packed with the latest retail tech which I’m hoping will make for some good blog content.

I’m drifting off the subject here which is meant to be my new cordless drill/screwdriver.

Kid3, who with a B at GCSE in Resistant Materials (woodwork) came with me to B&Q as my qualified advisor. He was supposed to be revising for his AS levels but the lure of the tool over rode the exam pressure. A bloke called Reg helped me out. He wasn’t called Reg really but I can’t remember his real name and Reg sounds appropriate for a highly experienced assistant in the tools section. Good job he was there really because he was able to explain the different types of screwdriver bits available. I didn’t realise that there was such a thing as a posidrive. It’s similar to the phillips cross head but different. Good job he was there because it turns out that all the screws in our playhouse are posidrive and not just simple cross heads. It would have taken me hours to get the job done.

We chose the best tool in stock or so I was advised by Reg. The Makita. It has to be said that the Makita does feel good in your hand. Chunky. Blokey. Solid stuff. It has a 1.5Ah Li-Ion Battery (gives me around 1 ½ hours of constant use says Reg), 2-Speed Variable & Reverse drive and employs a 13mm Keyless Chuck.

The Makita is something that every bloke should have. Even if screwing¹ is something you don’t do that often. It just feels good in the hand.

On this occasion the playhouse would have zero chance of a new life as the garden furniture store were it not for the power of the cordless screwdriver. There must have been forty screws to remove, many of which were long, deeply inserted and difficult to extract.

My mind drifts back to the silent movie~~s of my childhood~~² era where Buster Keaton would be dismantling a barn (for some reason) only to find it collapses around him whilst the Keystone Cops drive chaotically around the wreckage.

I had to abandon the dismantling yesterday in favour of a family trip to Pizza Express (good old Tesco vouchers). Progress had very much slowed as whoever assembled the darn playhouse in the first place had used heavy nails at the base and I’m worried about wrecking the wood which is quite soft cheap rubbish really.

Anyway the roof is off and one of the side walls removed. The job will get finished today. At least the dismantling will. We will have to see how the reassembly goes not least because I probably need to do some more leveling work on the base. Don’t want to rush these things.

Photos are courtesy of Anne’s iPhone because I haven’t got my SGS4 back from the menders yet.

The Weekend section of this blog feels as if it could do with a DIY section. Only prob is I don’t want to do anything that encourages me to do more DIY, even though I do now have a spanking new cordless screwdriver 🙂

Other posts relating to the bottom of the garden:

See the site that the shed is moving to here with video coverage of the wood store
Playhouse viewed from upstairs landing window
Fire fire – woodstore the sequel

Also if I were to check buy a new drill again I would probably check out some guides like the ones from Healthy Handyman first. Definitely gives some insight into the drill buying world.

¹ fnaa fnaa

² I’m not that old

End User gadgets H/W Mobile phones

Zee — Double Oh — Em!

Regular readers — at last count there were five of you out there — are no doubt on pins and needles waiting for me to once again pick up the narrative of the search for my next phone, and today is the day I scratch the associated itch. Not that I have made a decision and followed through on it yet, mind you. No, in fact a new contender entered the mix this week, one that could very well draw out the process into early summer (though hopefully not beyond)…the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom!

In my previous posts on this subject that has all of you talking, I rhapsodize on the camera being the all-important feature for me in selecting a smartphone, and just from that standpoint the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom is an obvious entrant. The fact of that matter, though, is that I was underwhelmed and even disappointed by Samsung’s previous It’s-a-Camera-No-It’s-A-Phone (last year’s Galaxy S4 Zoom) and never figured it’s second incarnation would do anything to change my mind. Clunky, boxy, heavy, ugly, and weird (not in a good way), the Galaxy S4 Zoom is a regular Frankenstein device, one that looks like it was cobbled together from leftover state-of-the-art gadget components and made to look synergistic through the careful application of molded white plastic and polished chrome. Of course, it isn’t all about form factor (or in simpler terms, its “looks”), but the device’s technical specs and the photos that flowed from it onto the Internet were far from money enough to make the repugnant attractive.

At best, as phones go the Galaxy S4 Zoom made a marginal camera; and as cameras go, a marginal phone.

Thus, as intriguing as I continue to find the idea of a smartphone-camera hybrid — and as inexplicably pleased as I was to find a ‘K’ in its name — I approached the announcement this past Tuesday of the the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom with strong reservation. Sure, considering technology’s incessant march I figured that the concept’s second iteration would be more pocketworthy than the first (not much effort required). Also, there was little doubt that the GKZ’s extensible lens would supplant the one unfortunate hardware “Huh?” feature of it’s Galaxy S5 older brother, that being the heart rate sensor on the back just under the camera lens. Still, even the most nimble companies typically play Generation Leap-Frog in responding to critical/customer feedback (the secondary reason, I am sure, that Apple changes their iPhone numbering only after running an interim ‘S’ generation^*), so though I thought “better” was highly likely I had no expectations that the Galaxy K Zoom would begin to approach “good” prior to Gen-3.

Surprise, surprise.

Until I have had an opportunity to actually see and touch the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom, of course, the value of my take on this fingers-tingling-BIG-time gadget is akin to that of the pixels on your computer monitor. That said, the device presents as the first true realization of a smartphone-camera hybrid. It it contoured like a cell phone (and only a cell phone…no mistaking this hot number for a badly-designed compact camera…or a cheap 1970s walkie-talkie), yet has a true glass lens that delivers 10x optical zoom. And unlike its predecessor, which required that the zoom lens be extended manually, the GKZ extends automatically a la a compact camera (and wicked fast, too). Also, this very-cool-and-seeming-even-cooler-the-more-I-read-about-it smartphone offers a 4.8 inch HD display, comprised of a Super AMOLED panel protected with Corning Gorilla Glass. And the primary camera has a 20.7-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor, too!

So the Galaxy K Zoom has form and it has function. Though to make a usable value assessment — and perhaps a purchase decision — I still need some idea of the carrier-subsidized price, and at this point the number of rutabagas that will be required in exchange for the new shiny has yet to be revealed. Oh, and then there is whether the GKZ will even be available in France (as of this writing it is only set to launch in Asia). Hence, while the picture presented is quite fine, it is not quite yet in full focus. Still, this new character in the Quest for Kory’s Next Smartphone adventure — drama? thriller? comedy? — has considerably shaken up the narrative and perhaps necessitated a rewrite of the ending (gotta punch those metaphors until they cannot punch back, I always say).

^* The primary reason Apple runs an interim ‘S’ iPhone generation? Come on. So they can pluck maximum cash from the pockets of the legions of lemmings who are unable to bear life without the very latest iteration of the device in their possession, of course.

Related posts:

broken gear End User phones

Day 8 without the SGS4 – all callers are anonymous and Spitfire-less posts

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 4 May, 2014
1 Comment on Day 8 without the SGS4 – all callers are anonymous and Spitfire-less posts

There is light at the end of the dark tunnel of phonelessness. Emails have been received:

(from the insurance people) Good news, Your mobile phone has been repaired and is on its way back to you by our courier DPD.
Kind Regards,The Repair Team.

(from the courier) Your Lifestyle Services Group order is due to be delivered on Tuesday 6th May by DPD. Please ensure that someone is available to sign for your delivery. Lifestyle Services Group

(from the insurance people) Good Evening,Your handset has been repaired and will be despatched within three working days by courier and will need to be signed for.Kind Regards,The Mobile Phone Insurance Claims Team

This is indeed good news although the third email also mentioned that I “should receive a text or email from DPD confirming your one hour delivery window”. The text didn’t provide me with that window and I have a meeting in town that morning so I could miss them. Will have to look into that one.

In my Day 5 without a phone post I mentioned that screen size and response time were the two main factors going against the Galaxy Mini. A few more days and I now realise that the fact that I don’t have my address book in the phone is a real nuisance. I don’t know who is calling or anyone’s number when I want to call them. Now I could stick my Google credentials in and get all that but it will confuse the phone as it already has Kid4’s info in and I don’t want to mess it about. To all intents and purposes I’m treating it as a good old fashioned mobile phone (a GOFMP – the POT of the mobile world).

Perhaps more significantly is the lack of a camera. Yesterday I spent the day at the Lincoln RFC grand opening with former club captain and TV sports anchorman John Inverdale cutting the tape. There were loads of photo opportunities. Blokes struggling to play rugby again having hung up their boots years ago for example. It was a hot day!

We also had the best Spitfire flypast it has ever been my privilege to see. We get these a fair bit in Lincolnshire as the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight is based here. I often find mysef running out of the hause to look up to the sky when a Spit or the Lanc flies past. Yesterday we knew exactly when the plane was due and it duly arrived to order. It flew in low as if on an attack run. Did this three times then after the last waggled its wings and off it went. The Spitfire was low enough to very easily read the wing markings and would have been a perffect photo or video opportunity for sharing with (avid) readers of the trefor.net weekend section.

Alas this was not to be as I will not get my SGS4 back until Tuesday. As you know.

It has to be said I miss my phone. I realise that there was once a time when we walked the earth without such appendages. People will say it didn’t seem to harm us but consider this. Average life expectancy has gradually increased during my own lifetime. This will be down to a combination of many factors and some of these factors will involve the mobile phone.

I’m not talking about a device I can use to make phone calls on the go. I’m taking about the all singing all dancing computer I use to track my walk times to work, send highly relevant and often amusing tweets and Instant Messages to friends around the globe, monitor the movement of shipping across the maritime world, post interesting blog articles from wherever I am, read the papers, send and receive emails, mark emails as spam (:)), translate menus into a recognisable language, check my finances, help me find a destination when I’m on my way somewhere for the first time, find train times, book train tickets, plan holidays, serve as a timer for the perfect poached egg, find bbq recipes, watch TV, get involved in video hangouts, research business opportunities and contacts, take photos and make videos. I’d better stop. The list is endless. I do it all from my mobile phone. Making phone calls is a very minor part of its functionality.

I have missed my phone. The one thing I haven’t missed is checking the damn thing every other minute to see if there has been an update! Nevertheless I am very much looking forward to getting it back which will, I’m told, be sometime on Tuesday. Hooray

Yours

Seriously mixed up of Lincoln

Follow the broken SGS4 screen saga and other related posts:

Day 5 without the broken SGS4 – big screen/little screen/responsive screen
Day 3 without a phone
First night without a phone
Mobile phone insurance claims
This iPhone is dead

End User events fun stuff gadgets google H/W internet mobile connectivity UC wearable

Band Camp Coincidences

Google Glass. Telephony. Synchronicity

At my age, you would think that I would be long past adolescent self-consciousness; that I wouldn’t feel awkward with the geeky way of thinking. A girl that I had a crush on back in the 2nd Grade said to me, “You talk funny. You talk like a scientist.”, referring to my vocabulary. At that age this wasn’t a compliment, nor was it really a criticism. It did not, though, bode well for any potential romantic entanglements.

On the way to the conference I find myself sitting next to two attractive, well dressed middle-age women, three abreast in the aisle seat. We start the long first leg of the flight with a little small talk. We are flying together from Dallas to Albuquerque, where they will leave the plane prior to its flying on to Seattle (my destination).

“What’s in Seattle?” they both ask.

I feel like I’m on my way to band camp. What do I say to them? I tell the truth.

“I’m going to speak at a conference on Content Management – a technology conference.”, I say.

“Oh. Technology stuff.”, from which they return to conversing among themselves for the remainder of the flight. It’s fine. I wanted time to think, anyway, to be quiet on the plane so that I could figure out what I am going to talk about at the conference. I booked the conference before deciding to leave my last corporate job. I opted to keep my commitment, though, and now I need to put my presentation in my own voice.

The plane is landing in Albuquerque. The small talk starts again, and it turns out that the two women also live in Austin. I hear them say something about two local radio hosts known as JB and Sandy. I ask a question regarding Sandy. They fill me in. It’s friendly, partly because we’re parting way in five minutes.

Nobody sits next to me on the Seattle leg of my flight, and I have time and space to think, to figure out a theme for my talk. I’m basically speaking on the lessons learned over the last year as a software team trying to buy the next generation of the solution instead of building the next generation of solution.

“Choosing a system is like a plane trip…”

“Choosing a system is like traveling through Mexico…”

Ugh.

ecommerce End User travel

Is there a travel agent left in town? Internet upsides and downsides

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 2 May, 2014
No Comments on Is there a travel agent left in town? Internet upsides and downsides

Travel agents seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I’m not surprised. Everything like that is done online these days.

I’ve been researching the destination for a family holiday. For various reasons we can’t push the button until much nearer the end of school summer term. Doesn’t stop me looking to see what is out there though.

You can source ~~hundreds~~ thousands of holidays online. You can see the reviews, check out what’s on offer, look at average temperatures for that time of year, even see how much a pint of lager costs (we are talking overseas here).

My problem is that with of us in the family with a range of ages between 14 and 52 trying to identify a single location that will satisfy everyone is proving very difficult. Few of us like sitting on the beach but we all like nice weather though not too hot. We want to be able to mix doing stuff with lazing around, sightseeing with snorkelling, pool bars at the hotel with dinners out at great local restaurants (no doubt with a low key violinist or simlar playing away in the corner).

We don’t want something pitched at a lowest common denominator but we do want a combination of independence and hotel pampered luxury, without paying through the nose for it:). Somewhere everyone speaks English is a nono but the availability of discretely translating waiters when my own limited language skills prove inadequate is desirable. Pictures of food on the menu don’t cut it ~~j’ai peur~~ I’m afraid (pretentious moi?).

What I really need is to be able to go into a travel agent, tell her what I’ve just told you, and wait for a description of the perfect spot based on a fact finding trip made last summer where all of the above was showcased.

I don’t think I’m going to get it. I walked through Lincoln to where I knew there were a couple of travel agent shops but they are there no longer. The downside of the internet. One of them is now a Joules shop. What use is that? Probably end up camping in South Wales again! Where did I put the hammock!?

Early morning meanderings of an insomniac – for the other insomniacs amongst us

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 2 May, 2014
1 Comment on Early morning meanderings of an insomniac – for the other insomniacs amongst us

In the wee small hours of the morning when the whole wide world is fast asleep I get up and go and sit downstairs and listen to the cars go racing by (sung to the tune of “Wee small hours of the morning”). Who is about at 4.50am? Where are they off to? It’s a bit early for a shift to start or finish. They can’t all be bakers or milkmen – folk known to keep anti social hours.

It is Friday, one of the days the milkman comes but I’m not sure I’ve heard him yet. When he arrives you hear footsteps in on the drive and the sound of a milk crate being plonked down in the porch. You don’t usually hear his float because it is electric. Perhaps the soft whoosh of his tyres as he pulls up and then moves on.

When I was at University I knew a baker called Ray. He made great wholemeal bread. Really tasty, solid loaves. One or two slices were the equivalent of a meal. After finishing the baking, at around 11am, he would nip round to the nearby Globe pub for a couple of swift ones, before going to bed. Who’d be a baker?

The birds have just woken up. Must be starting to get light out. I can’t see because the curtains are closed. I am surrounded by books and the noise of the birds. It’s almost as if the books are reading out loud the words written on the spines of the books.

At this time of the night, or morning, there is the company of the internet to while away the hours. On my Twitter or Facebook timelines most of the posts in the night are from people in the USA. I get the odd British insomniac. One just now reads “Starting your day at 4.45am cos you’re bloody bat shit crAAAzy.#NightShiftProblems #WhyAmIAwake #SaveTheSquirrels “.

Looks like some people must schedule tweets for overnight posting. Who reads them? Twitter is a fleeting¹ medium at the best of times. You might catch a tweet but probably not. There are some events (eg #trefbash) that I promote like crazy in Twitter and other social media destinations and after weeks of doing so have still had people asking me when it’s on this year and why haven’t they been invited? Huh!

On Facebook a friend who has moved to India says “8.30 in the morning, driving to work and it’s 98 degrees outside and sunny. (36.6). Some days don’t you just wish it would be cold, wet and windy…………Nah. I love India.”

98degrees doesn’t do it for me. All I’d be able to do would be to sit in the shade in a pool, perhaps at the wet bar, drinking cool ones. I used to travel to the USA a lot and I recall sitting around a pool in Arizona in July. The water was like tepid tea and the pool surround was constantly sprayed with water mist which was supposed to keep the temperature 10 degrees lower. July is tourist low season in Arizona. The same is true for popular destinations such as Florida where Brits migrate in masses during UK summer holidays. The natives avoid the place in the summer.

I’ve been writing for just over half an hour. Not fast for me. It’s another hour before it will be time to take the tea up. The working day has started. Today must be an “early” which is good because as it happens I am playing golf this afternoon. Good timing that, insomnia.

The clock ticks away on the wall, the only noise when the road outside is quiet. That and the unseen touch-tapping of my Chromebook keyboard. The TV is switched off at the wall, powerless to communicate. All the actors have gone home or are sat in an all night bar somewhere in a place where only actors and insomniacs go.

We have had a few posts in overnight from guests contributing to next week’s VoIP themed week. Some of them need a bit of an edit, the wave of the magic wordprocessing wand. That’s ok. One or two guest posts look like blatant sales pitches. There will be changes. People should realise that a professional, authoritative post is a far better sales pitch than something that just says “buy my stuff”.

As I get older I notice that I seem to need less sleep. This is good although I do tend to go to bed earlier than most – 10 – 10.30pm. It’s a hangover from years of having small kids around the house. They aren’t small any more and the early morning antisocial demands for attention are things of the past. Even on Christmas Day, a time when kids have historically stretched the definition of “time to get up ” to a point where the parents haven’t even gone to bed yet, they now have a lie in which is a real result.

The getting up early to make a cup of tea has real advantages. Going back upstairs with the tea tray makes the lie in to a normal getting up time feel longer and more luxurious.

I’ve drawn the curtains and it is definitely light now. Time to do other things. ~~See you in the morning~~ Catch you later…

¹ I’m even tempted to say fly by night 🙂

Business food and drink

How to cook the perfect baked bean

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 1 May, 2014
1 Comment on How to cook the perfect baked bean

You have to hand it to the Guardian. Their lead story this afternoon, occupying a fair chunk of front page real estate is “How to cook perfect baked beans“.

At last a voice of common sense in a world full of bad news stories. The rest of the front page is either gore, boring politics or the mundane. The quality of the research that has gone into the article just further illustrates the Guardian’s leadership position the Guardian. My own attempts to describe the perfect bacon sandwich are fair enough but are a clear second best to the efforts of writer Felicity Cloake.

FC obviously had access to some of the UK’s top chefs in researching her piece – writing for the Guardian opens doors. I don’t begrudge her this. I can only stand back and admire.

This article also vindicates the trefor.net approach of chucking non tech related posts into what is meant to be a technology blog. The Guardian too has its serious side, and who is to say that baked beans or bacon sandwiches aren’t serious issues. Most of us eat them after all. In fact the humble baked bean and the majestic bacon sandwich complement¹ each other.

I may have to try the baked bean recipe. The issue is going to be time. For example this Saturday is going to be the obvious time to try it. I am attending the official opening of the new Lincoln Rugby Club ground by TV star and former Lincoln club captain John Inverdale (I name this rugby club Lincoln – gawd bless her and all who drink (yards of ale) in her).

The official opening commences at 11am. The band doesn’t come on until 7.30 pm. This is going to require significant fortitude – survival skills even. Part of the survival preparation involves the consumption of a hefty breakfast before hitting the lemonade and this is normally where the baked beans would come in. On this occasion I just can’t see there being time to cook the beans as directed by the Guardian. It’s going to have to be Heinz, again.

Someday though…

Regardless of the weather this coming Bank Holiday Monday, after publishing the launch post for VoIP week on trefor.net, the BBQ will come out again and attempts will be made to cook the perfect steak. Watch this space:)

¹They may even compliment each other – that’s a very nice looking baked bean – thank you mr bacon sandwich:)

School cricket match

I’m just off to watch a school cricket match. The weather is looking a bit dodgy but at the moment it isn’t raining so play should definitely happen.

The school cricket match is the epitome of low technology. Aside from all the expensive gear they have these days (pads, helmet, designer pants in which to fit box etc) there is absolutely no tech involved. There isn’t even a decent mobile signal at school thus rendering impotent any attempted use by spectators of imported tech (ie phones).

So all a parent can do is stand on the touchline and focus on the match. I say stand because it is too cold to sit with any degree of comfort.

A school cricket match is a nervous time for a parent. Will the kid get a chance to bat. Or bowl. Will he be out in the first over or will he settle in and provide as fluent a display of batting that ever graced the sports field thus allowing me to casually mention to the stranger stood nearby, “that’s my boy”.

Don’t worry. All will be well, as long as the rain keeps off. You’ll have to wait to hear the result, if I decide to mention it, because as you know there is no signal at school.

I wonder if they will provide cups of tea. I doubt it.

Play…

…………white noise representing no signal…………

video of rain on car>

Two Hours and 55 Minutes

I have 39 versions of the song “April in Paris” in my digital music library. The earliest recording is an Artie Shaw track from 1940 and the most recent is by Wynton Marsalis from his 1987 “Standards, Volume One” release, with many seminal versions threading in-between, delivered by a staggering array of artists that range from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald to Nirvana (OK, that isn’t true…just checking wakefulness out there)…er, Blossom Dearie. Of course, considering “April in Paris”‘s status as a 20th Century classic and the size of my jazz collection, I shouldn’t be surprised that I have 39 versions of the song, and yet seeing them all before me on my monitor (the result of an iTunes search) is really just a couple of steps shy of astonishing.

If 14+ years ago someone had asked me when I first moved to Paris in 1999 (August — not April) “How many versions of “April in Paris” do you have in your music collection?”, I could not have answered the question with any kind of accuracy or authority. Not without taking hours to thumb through my 2000+ CDs with a notepad and pen at hand, anyway.

		I never knew the charm of spring I never met it face to face I never new my heart could sing I never missed a warm embrace

broken gear End User phones

Day 5 without the SGS4 – big screen/little screen/responsive screen

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 1 May, 2014
3 Comments on Day 5 without the SGS4 – big screen/little screen/responsive screen

Almost sounds as if I’m someone talking about being in rehab when I say it’s day 5 without the phone. I still find myself picking up the temporary replacement, the Galaxy Mini, as if I’m about to use it to access twitter and my other regular internet haunts. I don’t use it for anything other than voice and sms.

Kid4, whose phone the Mini is, has now adopted Kid3’s old but cracked GalaxyS3. Kid3 in turn is using my Nokia Lumia 920 which he seems happy with (must get it from his mum – I never got on with Windows Phone). Kid4 walks around clutching the S3 in a way that he never did with the Galaxy Mini.

I asked him what was better about the S3 compared with the Mini and the answer was “bigger screen and more responsive”. I think that, in a nutshell, is also my perception. Although for me the S3 is old tech it is still better than a small fistful of a phone because it is more usable. Handset manufacturers have been pushing the boundaries of screen size because clearly the punters prefer bigger.

The limitation is the size of people’s hands and their thumbspan, if such a term exists (if it doesn’t it does now). The responsiveness of the phone is a combination of the design, processor and software, and its speed of access to the outside world, ie the internet. Using the SGS4 over 4G as opposed to 3G is generally a much better experience.

I am informed, via email channels, that my S4 is now in the hands of the repairers and expect it to be dispatched within three working days. That must mean I get it next Wednesday which will be good timing because I’m off to London on Thursday and won’t want to carry any baggage aka Chromebook – lightweight baggage though that may be.

I have generally tended to have three sorts of problems with my phones: something wrong with the USBport/charging mechanism, broken screen and recently a software issue that destroys the micro SD card. One assumes that the latter will get fixed with revisions of software. The USB issue would go away if I used contactless charging. I don’t know where that tech is at. Does anyone use it?

The broken screen could be solved by using cheap disposable screens that don’t necessarily have to be part of the actual phone itself. I assume Bluetooth has the bandwidth to manage the interaction between screen and processor. I’ve discussed this before and the more I think about it the more obvious it is.

Why do we need to bother taking the phone out of our pocket or bag? It would be much safer there. Less likely to get left on the table at the cafe and less likely to get smashed or dropped into a bucket of water.

The one scenario where this probably doesn’t work is when I’m using the phone as a camera. In this case I’ll need a bit screen on the handset. There has to be a way to make it work. I use the camera a lot.

Come next Wednesday I doubt Kid4 will want his Galaxy Mini back. It looks destined for a drawer. I will hopefully have a perfectly serviceable S4 back from the menders and move forward with a nagging doubt that what I really want is a native Android phone without Samsung software clutter but with a detachable disposable screen and a great camera with at least 10x optical zoom, though 20x would be better.

There ya go…

Engineer security

Oops – was that the red button? Nuclear near uses

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 30 April, 2014
No Comments on Oops – was that the red button? Nuclear near uses

Following last week’s post in which we discussed the precautions taken by Nominet to withstand nuclear attack we beginning to realise how sensible this was.

A Chatham House Report Too Close for Comfort: Cases of Near Nuclear Use and Options for Policy describes thirteen incidents of near nuclear use. It’s almost like reading the notes used in preparation for a James Bond movie with words like “failed coup”, “Kashmir standoff” and “Operation Anadyr”. A tale of espionage, conflict escalation and mistaken identity. In fact it’s nearer to Johnny English and Austin Powers than James bond with stories like the president leaving the secret launch codes in his trousers pocket when they were sent to the dry cleaners.

The worry is that in a world you would think totally foolproof the causes include faulty computer chip, technical error and exercise scenario tape causing a nuclear alert.

The Chatham House report names and shames those involved – you could easily have guessed:

country	times involved in near nuclear use
US of A	4
Russkis	6
us (ie United Kingdom)	1
India	2
Pakistan	2
Israel	1

It’s quite pleasing to note that we, the UK, have only been involved in one incident. We are obviously far more reliable than the Yanks or the Russins. Innit. You must also forgive me for lapsing into the language of Hollywood when describing some of the countries involved. I ws born when the cold war was still in full swing – “my name is Harry Palmer and I work for the government for thirty pound a week”.

All I can say is, that as someone working in the internet industry, I’m glad the network was designed to be nuclear bomb proof and that Nominet have taken precautions…

End User phones

The global nature of business today – Samsung Galaxy K launch in Singapore

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 29 April, 2014
No Comments on The global nature of business today – Samsung Galaxy K launch in Singapore

Just Googled “Samsung Galaxy K launch”. The first two results were websites in India – NDTV and Times of India. This surely highlights the global nature of the world in which we live in. Admittedly the launch was in Singapore but what difference should that make?

The accompanying adverts were for UK based products and services. What is amazing is that we can run a business as a global business talking about macro level subjects of interest that transcend boundaries.

The Guardian majors on this. Most Guardian Technology posts cover subjects that are a good read irrespective of where your computer is. The problem now begins when you want to try an compete in this global market. The Times of India will have far lower overheads than the London based Guardian for example. OK it can’t have lower overheads than trefor.net but then again they probably have more people writing for them.

Taking a peek at the Guardian I note that they don’t even appear to be carrying the story, certainly not at the time of writing this post. Is this a sign of maturity? The need to maintain exclusivity by keeping out of saturated blanket news items which after all the launch of the new Galaxy K is.

Most online publications will have no chance of getting to the top of Google rankings for a subject such as a Samsung phone launch. Most moneys, certainly in the affiliate marketing game, are to be made by the top ranking site in any given space. This in itself does pose a problem for the likes of Samsung. If it isn’t worth covering a story because every man and his wordpress account will be saying the same thing how do they get their message out?

For the likes of Samsung this is simple – they just chuck cash¹ at it. For Fred in his albeit hi tech shed it’s a lot harder. It makes getting noticed really difficult but I guess this makes success stories even more deserving. Your product/service/idea must be good to have hit the headlines.

The answer has to be to focus on a niche. The trouble is that there are so many niches, so much going on it is difficult to keep that focus. In the meantime I am half looking out for a new phone, at least whilst my battered and broken Samsung Galaxy S4 is at the menders. If Samsung want a review of the new K they know where to find me:)

Day 3 without a phone #broken #SGS4

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 29 April, 2014
3 Comments on Day 3 without a phone #broken #SGS4

This is my third day without a phone. It isn’t completely true to say that as in Kid4’s Samsung Galaxy Mini I do have a means of making phone calls. It just isn’t much use for anything else and even as a mobile telephone it has limits – the battery life is totally pants. I’m sure I could buy a phone that was just used as a phone without needing to even think of charging it more than once a week.

Although I normally use social media channels for communications more than voice, funnily enough I did use the Galaxy Mini a fair bit yesterday. Kids needing to talk, me needing to phone accountants & Mrs Davies for who social media is something she just uses by proxy. ie asks me to do it.

The email from the menders with instructions on where to send the broken SGS4 arrived whilst I was in the office yesterday. It has some sort of voucher for me to include when sending the phone away for repair. Not having a printer in the office I emailed it to the one at home and the voucher was waiting for me when I got home together with the form for the school trip that had needed handing in that morning but had taken quite some time to get from Anne’s iPad onto the paper.

So this morning on my way in I am swinging by the Post Office to send the phone off by registered post. It should take another week or so, if they hold to the SLA. That’s one phone charge for a phone or seven for a Samsung Galaxy Mini. It’s no wonder Kid4 wants an iPhone! My brain tells me to hold back on that one though I don’t know how long I’ll be able to do it.

Today is supposed to be the launch date of the Samsung Galaxy K – the version of the S5 with an optical zoom camera. I may yet be tempted but will wait and see. Votch zis space.

First night without a phone
Mobile phone insurance claims
This iPhone is dead

End User social networking

Death of a friend

I had a series of messages a couple of weeks ago from different social media contacts informing me of the death of a mutual friend. He became ill a month or so ago and whilst at one time they thought he might be recovering he went into a sudden decline and sadly passed away. This came as a shock but I guess these things happen and life moves on.

Yesterday I was trawling through my contacts database looking for people to invite to write guest posts for the trefor.net VoIP week next week and I came across his name. This gave me a genuine problem. Not whether to invite him to write a post but whether to delete his contact details. It didn’t seem right that he should be wiped from my virtual hard drive like that but what was the point of keeping his email address?

Obviously everybody dies and we all hope to reach a decent old age before it happens to us. He was 58. At 75 or 80 we consider someone to have had a good innings and don’t grieve so much but when it happens to a younger person it hits us more.

A school classmate of mine went in her twenties. I last saw her in a pub in the Isle of Man where she tried to persuade me to come to a reunion. It was timed for the day after our ferry home was booked so I couldn’t go. I found out a few month later that she had died of leukaemia and the reunion was planned as her last farewell. That made me pause for reflection.

An old university friend died four years ago in tragic circumstances. She was my age, around 47/48 at the time. It was a great shock and I wrote her a poem¹ which I posted on her Facebook timeline and which was read by her family and friends. The timeline began to fill with spammy trivia and invitations to play games automatically broadcast by people to all their friends. I stopped looking because I didn’t want her memory tainted by such rubbish. I’m sure social media platforms have processes for dealing with such circumstances though the notion of there being a process doesn’t quite feel appropriate here.

In the long run none of us matter. We are all mere blips in an incomprehensibly long universal timeline. But as people and communities in the here and now we have to recognise that we are all that matters and the fact that someone is no longer with us is deserving of some consideration.

My friend who just died was Simon Gwatkin. I first met him when I was developing VoIP chips at Mitel Semiconductor. He ran marketing at Mitel Telecom. We kept bumping into each other in exotic bars around the world. Singapore and Geneva spring to mind. When Terry Matthews² bought back Mitel Telecom. I crossed over to work with Simon developing SIP handsets and then systems.

Our ways eventually parted. Simon ended up working for Sir Terry at his VC arm Wesley Clover but we still contrived to “bump into each other” on different occasions and he came to one of the trefor.net UC Executive Dinners in London last year. Simon also invited me to watch the Wales Open Golf at the Celtic Manor Resort – he is the guy in the cream linen jacket sat in front of me on my right in the fourth photo in this post. As I recall in the pic we are drinking Gwatkin cider at the Clytha Arms cider festival.

This is a difficult time for his family but they should take some comfort from the fact that everyone who came into contact with Simon loved him and thought him a great bloke. He will be missed by many. I’m going to leave him in my contacts list. What’s the hurry?

RIP Simon Gwatkin. A lovely bloke…

¹ You can read the poem on my creative writing site philospherontap.com here.
² Terry together with Mike Copeland was one of the original founders of Mitel – the Terry in MIke and TErry’s Lawnmowers.

competitions events fun stuff Weekend

Saturday Snapshot (26-April-2014)

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Monday, 28 April, 2014
No Comments on Saturday Snapshot (26-April-2014)

“Honey, turn the car around! You have to see that!”

My Missus, who for a few weeks has been doing most of the driving due to some new out-of-the-blue concern over insurance coverage (I drive on a valid Texas driver’s license, not the Permis de Conduire I should have by this point, some 14+ years in-country), shoots me a hard questioning look, to which I respond with “I saw an amazing falcon, perched on a fence post by the side fo the road. You have to see it. Go back.”

No argument. At the roundabout coming up My Missus takes the full turn and heads back the way we just came. Soon enough, all four of us (The Boy has a friend visiting) catch the profile of the remarkable animal, still proudly perched on the same fence post. Maybe two minutes have passed since my initial sighting. Three tops.

A hushed “Wow.” and other such murmurs run through the car, which My Missus has pulled over to the side of the road opposite the bird of prey, but mostly we are all just holding our collective breath in awe. The falcon is truly magnificent, and his regal quality…palpable. We wait, we watch, and just as I am starting to think “Hey, isn’t that a camera on that strap around my neck…?”…he takes wing. A wildlife documentary all our own. And then time starts again, and we continue making our way to Houlgate for an afternoon of watching other things taking to the sky…kites!