Texting 911

911 has become an almost universal phone service number where everyone know what it means. If you’re ever caught in a situation where you want to dial 911 but don’t want an intruder to hear you, a feature that will be live next week could save your life. America’s four largest carriers — AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon — will support Text-to-911 starting May 15 to provide a helpful option for those caught in dangerous circumstances. While a Text-to-911 program has been around since as early as 2011, the feature was only available on a limited basis in a few markets such as Los Angeles, Iowa, Maryland, Durham and Vermont. The FCC announced a proposed rule to make this service uniformly available via all text providers by Dec 30, 2014. Why hasn't this service been available earlier? It seems like common sense with much of the conversation going on being in the form of texting to be able to text 911. It would be interesting to see some of the cases where the texting was used and proved to be effective.

Face to Face Communication

I have come to find that technology and the advancements in communication services can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it is so much easier to be able to talk to anyone in the world free of charge whenever you want. On the other hand, it has put distance between us and the people that are closest to us. Without face-to-face communication skills, the next generation will be unable to make conversation, ask for a date, propose to a mate and, thus, create the next generation. The entire human race could die off if we don't start teaching our teens how to communicate! Ok, I relent. That was a bit over the top and I was making too many assumptions. But be honest for a second here: how far are we from that point? So here is one tip in breaking the ice when it comes to talking with strangers, which is a very much needed skill. I always enter a room with at least three topics to talk about. Always. Another tip is to always introduce yourself. This is so basic - but so often overlooked! Sometimes you've managed to actually start and carry on a great conversation and you walk away realizing that you have no idea what someone's name is and they have no idea what yours is! It can get awkward really quick but that it is life.

Sleep Deprivation

We live in a 24/7 world, I get it. But there are real dangers to not getting enough sleep. If you've ever come close to nodding off in the boardroom or behind the wheel, you know that the effects of sleep deprivation can range from embarrassing to downright terrifying. Sleep deprivation is the single most dangerous aspect of any sleep disorder, because you have no idea that you are compromised cognitively, physically and emotionally. Hopefully that will make you think twice before finishing that app development project late at night. Also, there's no one "ideal" amount of sleep. Some people function just fine on seven hours, whereas others need a heftier nine. We all need to be at our thinking, feeling and reactive best in order to thrive and stay safe. In most cases, a little extra shut-eye will get you there! Sleep tight!

Packet Switching

When cars came on the market, more people began driving to further destinations which meant that there needed to be more roads built. At a certain point, it became useless to keep expanding the roads and there was a need for more efficient transportation. In telephony, this is where packet-switching comes into the picture. With the advent of IP-based networks, Internet adoption grew rapidly; not just because the medium was new and exciting, but also because the cost to route data over these networks was almost nil. This is a very different model from telephony, where the greater the distance between callers, the higher the price you pay. Not only that, but price was also determined by when your calls were made. With all of these barriers, VoIP pioneers realized there was a great opportunity if they could figure out how to route voice calls over these networks. Whereas voice travels over the PSTN as a continuous flow of electrical signals between connection points, data travels over an IP network via a series of discrete packets. Each packet is a payload of sorts, carrying digital information, consisting of both the content being transmitted along with instructions for routing the packets.Packet-switched traffic is highly automated, and routing decisions are based on sophisticated algorithms that determine the most efficient path between two IP addresses. Instead of my PSTN call between New York and Los Angeles taking a direct path from end-to-end, a VoIP call may be routed halfway around the globe and may well traverse six different IP networks to make the same connection.

Music: One of Life's Necessities

When you are creating content management systems or creating websites, do you listen to music? Music has been around for as long as people have. It is something that society cannot live withoutand quite frankly life would be so drab and grey without it. There are two kind of emotions related to music: perceived emotions and felt emotions. This means that sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, which explains why some of us find listening to sad music enjoyable, rather than depressing. Research on the effects of music during exercise has been done for years. In 1911, an American researcher, Leonard Ayres, found that cyclists pedaled faster while listening to music than they did in silence. This happens because listening to music can drown out our brain's cries of fatigue. As our body realizes we're tired and wants to stop exercising, it sends signals to the brain to stop for a break. Listening to music competes for our brain's attention, and can help us to override those signals of fatigue, though this is mostly beneficial for low- and moderate-intensity exercise. During high-intensity exercise, music isn't as powerful at pulling our brain's attention away from the pain of the workout.

Human and Machine Intelligence

The year after his defeat by Deep Blue, Kasparov set out to see what would happen if he paired a machine and a human chess player in a collaboration. Like a centaur, the hybrid would have the strength of each of its components: the processing power of a large logic circuit and the intuition of a human brain’s wetware. The result: human-machine teams, even when they didn’t include the best grandmasters or most powerful computer systems, consistently beat teams composed solely of human grandmasters or superfast machines. Humans will find themselves working in partnership with the progeny of these supercomputers to diagnose diseases, solve crimes, write poetry and become (as the clever double meaning of the book’s title puts it) smarter than we think. The use of digital devices and social networks helps to facilitate collaborative creativity and an ambient awareness of what’s happening in the world, while reducing the need to perform simple memory tasks.What are your thoughts?

VoIP Starts

If you are looking into starting an VoIP system in your business, there are a couple of things that you need to consider first. Firstly, there should a 911 emergency services location reporting. It could wreck your voice deployment budget if you don't properly plan, but because there could be legal implications if you don’t have accurate location reporting with emergency calls. With VoIP, phones usually talk to centralized servers in the network and calls are often routed out of gateways not local to the site. This wreaks havoc on accurate 911 location reporting, so you must plan accordingly.It also has to be compatible with current infrastructure. To avoid surprises, thoroughly examine your current phone system dial plan and follow up on unknown extensions or patterns. Walk through offices and MDF closets to examine current cabling and punch-down blocks. Finally, parse the various business workflows, and look for tie-ins to phone numbers and phone system applications.

Pulver is widely recognized as a pioneer of VoIP technology and was the chief writer of the FCC’s first VoIP ruling.
His current company is a Twilio-based iOS and Android app called Zula, created to enable better communication among teams.
“It was amateur radio that unlocked by connection to voice over IP,” he said. Talking about being a lonely Long Island kid, Pulver spoke about a cable-company tour with his uncle. Using a ham radio, his uncle communicated with a queue of people all around the world. “He had discovered the cure for loneliness: It was this box.”
Licensing, however, was a three-and-a-half year process for Pulver. But since he obtained that license at the age of 12, he said, “I haven’t shut up since.”
As a teen, he started building software to track his ham radio logs. In college, he started a spreadsheet company and ended up doing financial analytics on Wall Street.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/vonage-co-founder-voip-came-from-ham-radio-big-bad-telecoms-and-getting-fired/#1tU2APDt6bUefD0W.99

Pulver is widely recognized as a pioneer of VoIP technology and was the chief writer of the FCC’s first VoIP ruling.
His current company is a Twilio-based iOS and Android app called Zula, created to enable better communication among teams.
“It was amateur radio that unlocked by connection to voice over IP,” he said. Talking about being a lonely Long Island kid, Pulver spoke about a cable-company tour with his uncle. Using a ham radio, his uncle communicated with a queue of people all around the world. “He had discovered the cure for loneliness: It was this box.”
Licensing, however, was a three-and-a-half year process for Pulver. But since he obtained that license at the age of 12, he said, “I haven’t shut up since.”
As a teen, he started building software to track his ham radio logs. In college, he started a spreadsheet company and ended up doing financial analytics on Wall Street.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/vonage-co-founder-voip-came-from-ham-radio-big-bad-telecoms-and-getting-fired/#kpZuUy7eBvjABlWo.99

Pulver is widely recognized as a pioneer of VoIP technology and was the chief writer of the FCC’s first VoIP ruling.
His current company is a Twilio-based iOS and Android app called Zula, created to enable better communication among teams.
“It was amateur radio that unlocked by connection to voice over IP,” he said. Talking about being a lonely Long Island kid, Pulver spoke about a cable-company tour with his uncle. Using a ham radio, his uncle communicated with a queue of people all around the world. “He had discovered the cure for loneliness: It was this box.”
Licensing, however, was a three-and-a-half year process for Pulver. But since he obtained that license at the age of 12, he said, “I haven’t shut up since.”
As a teen, he started building software to track his ham radio logs. In college, he started a spreadsheet company and ended up doing financial analytics on Wall Street.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/vonage-co-founder-voip-came-from-ham-radio-big-bad-telecoms-and-getting-fired/#kpZuUy7eBvjABlWo.99

Pulver is widely recognized as a pioneer of VoIP technology and was the chief writer of the FCC’s first VoIP ruling.
His current company is a Twilio-based iOS and Android app called Zula, created to enable better communication among teams.
“It was amateur radio that unlocked by connection to voice over IP,” he said. Talking about being a lonely Long Island kid, Pulver spoke about a cable-company tour with his uncle. Using a ham radio, his uncle communicated with a queue of people all around the world. “He had discovered the cure for loneliness: It was this box.”
Licensing, however, was a three-and-a-half year process for Pulver. But since he obtained that license at the age of 12, he said, “I haven’t shut up since.”
As a teen, he started building software to track his ham radio logs. In college, he started a spreadsheet company and ended up doing financial analytics on Wall Street.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/vonage-co-founder-voip-came-from-ham-radio-big-bad-telecoms-and-getting-fired/#kpZuUy7eBvjABlWo.99