Snap!

Is it really true? Can it be that I haven’t posted in over a year! Wow. Ok, so the blog title is at least accurate 🙂  My coworker put it best in his blog over here. I’m going to run the 5K at work dressed in a ridiculous costume. We are raising money for the Christmas charity “Toys for Tots”. The idea just sort of came to us.

Yahoo! Widgets

I took a look at the Yahoo! Widgets API today. It looks pretty straightforward. I’m thinking: wouldn’t it be cool to have an engine in Linux that could consume yahoo widgets already built? I know there is gdesklets and adesklets, but I’m thinking about a mono app that would host the widgets on Linux (gnome).

Thought provoking at the very least 🙂

SPA3102 Voip Settings

In yesterday’s blog I mentioned that I would post the settings I’m using for my voip setup. Here it is. Below you see the settings you get on the advanced/admin Line1 tab of the SPA device:

Notice the Display Name is the same as the User ID. There is a feature in voxee’s outgoing calls that if the Display Name field contains a proper PSTN number then voxee uses that number for its outbound caller id. What you do with this information is your own business, but please use a number that you own or are responsible for. I’m tired of a few ruining it for the rest of us. The User ID and password are the ones given by MPC. (If you are porting your number you will use the temporary number here.)

Now onto one of the great features of this device. Gateway accounts can only be used for outgoing calls (unfortunately, they can’t be used for incoming calls or with SIP providers that require registration). In this example, Gateway 1 is Voxee.com. The userid is provided to you when you sign-up. Gateway 2 is my FreeWorldDialup account.

Side Note: Voxee allows multiple simultaneous calls. This is good if you want to use a PC based SIP client on the road to call out.

At this point the SPA should be ready to go. But how to you tell it to use certain gateways? That is the job of the dial plan. Although at first looks very confusing, with a little bit of experimenting, you can make it do a lot.

I have the Sipura 3102 with no PSTN service. My Line 1 is registered to MyPhoneCompany, my GW1 is to Voxee.com, my GW2 is to FWD.

Some of the stanza’s you will probably recognize from other forums or sites (I’ve broken it out into multiple lines, however everything is on a single line in the “Dial Plan:” field) Note: I’ve used 775 as my bogus area code.

(<911:7752345678>S0|
<:18003733>411S0|
<:1775>[2-9]xxxxxxP3|1775[2-9]xxxxxxS0|<:1>775[2-9]xxxxxxS0|
1800xxxxxxxS0|1888xxxxxxxS0|1877xxxxxxxS0|1866xxxx xxxS0|
<:1>[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0<:@gw1>|1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0<:@gw1>|
011[2-9]xxxxx.<:@gw1>|
*xx.|**xx.|
<#9,:>xxx.|
<#1,:>xxx.<:@gw1>|
<#2,:>xx.<:@gw2>|<#2,:>*xx.<:@gw2>|< ;#2,:>**xx.<:@gw2>|<#2,:>***xx.<:@gw2>)

– For 911, forward to local Emergency number
– For 411, forward to 18003733411 (free 411 service) or using FWD: |<:*18003733>411S0<:@fwd.pulver.com>|
– For 7 digit dialing in local area code (Pause for a bit to make sure 10 digit dialing also works)
– For 11 digit dialing in local area code 1775nxxxxxx
– For 10 digit dialing in local area code 775nxxxxxx
– For 1800, 1888, 1877, 1866
…note all of the above use the Line 1 SIP provider

– for 10 digit dialing for all other (non 775) area codes prepend 1 and use gw1 (voxee.com)
– for 11 digit dialing for all other (non 775) area codes and use gw1 (voxee.com)
– for international dialing using gw1 (voxee)
– allow *xx. and **xx. to go to Line 1 SIP provider (ie *86 for VM)
– #9, to force Line 1 SIP provider
– #1, to force gw1 (voxee.com)
– #2, to force gw2 (FWD)
– #2, to force gw2 (FWD) and allow *xx. and ***xx. (for toll free) and **xx. (for peering numbers)

I think that about covers it.

Comments, Questions?

VOIP setup

Enough with the rants. I’m breathing fresh air and hope that this little howto will be helpful to some readers. Throughout my Vonage hell I started looking around and learning about SIP, hardware, providers, etc. I feel like I’ve stumbled onto quite a nifty little setup that saves me a ton of money and keeps the WAF factor pretty high.

Summary: I’m using MyPhoneCompany (MPC) for my main registration line and voxee.com for my outgoing calling. My hardware is the Sipura (Linksys) SPA3102 purchased from voxilla.com (You need to get one that is NOT locked to a specific provider…if you do you have a YASRW4PS (Yet Another Stupid Router With 4-Port Switch)!

Details:

In order to use your own hardware you need to go with a provider that has a BYOD (Bring your own device) plan. I went with MPC because of the LNP issue. It is hard to find providers that will port in my area. MPC’s myDevice plan is not well advertised here is a link to the PDF file that you fill out and fax to them. The current price is $4.99 a month and there are no hidden fees. This includes 60 min outgoing, but I don’t use them because my outgoing calling uses a different service. All incoming and 800 number calls are free.

As I mentioned above, I use voxee.com for my outgoing calling. They currently have US rates at 1.1 cents per minute with 6 sec billing increments. They use PayPal as there payment facility which makes them like a calling card service. You add money to your account and then you use the balance to perform calls. Note: even 800 number calls are charged at 1.1 cents per minute…so I use MPC for those calls.

Hardwarewise: Get yourself a Sipura SPA3000 or SPA3102, you can find both here. (Note: The Asterisk coupon code gets 5% off: use the “*user” code ). The 3102 is currently $91.95 and is completely “unlocked”. The SPA gives you some unique capabilities. Based on the digits you dial on your phone the SPA will route the call to a particular provider. This is how I have my voxee gateway enabled. There is even a trick that will cause voxee to use your phone number in the outgoing caller id. I will post my SPA settings separately including some cool tricks like: Free World Dial-up, e164 ENUM look-up, direct dial to the SPA from the Internet.

Well this should be a good starting point for those that are tired of Vonage’s increasing prices and want to control their own hardware.

Vonage Mess, part 2

Today I spent 45 minutes on the phone trying to cancel my service. The reason for the time is that the CSR kept trying to tell me that I was going to have to pay $127.88 to cancel! Dude, you got to be kidding, right? Nope. Since my account was opened back in July, I was outside of my 30 day money back and my rebate fee deal which meant that I owed them a cancellation charge and the rebate for the now useless Motorola voip gateway.

I said that I had been a customer since April 05 and that my previous account had been closed by a CSR without my consent. I told him that Vonage FORCED me to open a new account. He asked for my previous account number and then eventually backed down and credited my account. He said anybody that has needed the “Executive Response Team” to resolve the issues is good enough justification to waive certain things. Wow…I’m really glad to be gone. If I’d been my Grandma and had not been so assertive on the fact that I was NOT going to pay anything, Vonage would have gotten $127.88.

Why did I cancel after spending so much time to get things straightened out? First, the only reason I was fighting Vonage so hard to keep my number was that it was a number I ported in from my local carrier, a metro number. For those that aren’t out in the sticks, it means that city folk can call me and it is a local call. So my number was important. Second, my number was already ported out to another provider and I was no longer a Vonage customer, in fact I haven’t been using Vonage since July. They have been my forwarding provider until the LNP was complete.

I’m now a customer of MyPhoneCompany.com I’m using their myDevice plan (which is only available from the FAQ section of their website) This plan allows me to do what I always wanted to do with Vonage: provision my own hardware. I plan on writing a post on how I configured my hardware where I purchased etc. in case you want to duplicate my setup.

Vonage Mess

OK, there are a bunch of people unhappy with vonage. But this happens with every company that has lots of customers. The noisy bunch skew the statistical average because satisfied people don’t talk near as much as the annoyed 🙂

This leads me to my little trial.

I was a happy customer for 15 months before the honeymoon ended. I had no real complaints about them. I knew that calls to customer service would be on-hold forever! Below is a letter I sent to the CEO (jeffrey.citron@vonage.com) that describes my initial phone meltdown:

I’ve been a Vonage customer for 15 months. I recently tried to cancel the softphone line that I no longer needed. When I did this the CSR cancelled my entire account. When this happened the main phone line at my house was disconnected. I noticed this fairly quickly so I called back up and waited over an hour on hold before I got someone that told me that I couldn’t reinstate my old account and I HAD to create a new account. Then the idea is that they would bring my original number back into the new account. This all happened July 19 in the morning. It is now the evening of the 21 and I have called more that 6 times to get this resolved. Everytime I call the new CSR tells me that there is no record of any “ticket” being created. The latest iteration of this is with ticket # *****. Now I have to wait another 48 hours? You would not believe how angry I am. There are no words to describe my utter disappointment and rue I have for Vonage right now.

PS oh…and BTW Vonage was NOT supposed to send me a NEW adapter because I have one already…now I find out that you shipped one anyway (by mistake) that I have to return. Dang I’m pissed.

So…what are you going to do? All I want is my phone number back, it was a port into Vonage to begin with that I’ve had for over 10 yrs.

This email essentially put me on the fasttrack for success. I was contacted by the “Executive Response Team” on a Saturday and had my original phone number back by noon. Great! I was able to receive calls from my number. Then I tried to dial-out, no joy. Hmm…they did mention I might need to reboot my device, so I did. When it came back online I could not make or receive calls. So I call Vonage back and the hold time begins again. This time both I and the executive response guy are holding for a technician together (I’m wondering if he is getting frusturated too). Eventually after firmware uploads and numerous reboots the tech says the device is “gone” and that I should use the new one they are sending me. Ok great.

Once the device arrived in the mail I hooked it up and behold, I can dial and receive calls. Now everything is back to normal.

Stay tuned for the otherside of this story….

Shame on Ubuntu…Horaay for Ubuntu!

If you use Ubuntu Dapper as your primary OS, you’ve undoubtedly been hit or are blissfully unaware of the serious X.org problem with the most recent update offered by the ‘notifier’. I say blissfully because the fix was out before I could count to 3.

In the world of software this is a bit of a paradox. One one hand — “How dare they not test their fixes!” and the other…”They fixed it already?!” The folks that are used to commercial software get a little nervous when patches don’t work as advertised or seem to cause more system problems than they solve. Why is that? It could be because they have been burned by companies that are too slow to correct problems and realize that a bad bug will be around for a long time.

I’ve been involved with Gnu/Linux now for about 7 years and during that time I’ve seen dramatic progress towards Joe Sixpack. When I started, I felt like Joe (that from a SW Eng). But now things really are looking good for Joe.

What is the point? Sure the update was a serious infraction, and many probably reinstalled because they didn’t know what to do. However the community rallied and found a fix in a matter of minutes. Maybe Ubuntu (and Linux in general) needs some kind of rollback or “restore point” that will allow Joe to undo any “damage” that may have been done by a bad update. This would really help out Joe.

Until that time, the community is there and ready to help (And perhaps you shouldn’t do an update as soon as it is available :)). Next time, don’t reinstall, just go to the www.ubuntuforums.org and see what you need to do.
j

Ubuntu update X.org warning!

Hey,

Heads up everyone…the latest Dapper apt-get update breaks x.org. You must do a:

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

to get the latest server and fix your problem! I would post to ubuntuforums.org…but it seems down.

j

Edit:

Here is the link with some more help: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=241254

F-Spot rulez

I finally did it. I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile. I use walmart.com for my photo printing needs. Not because they are the best but because they are fast and cheap. I usually pick up my prints at the local store. But until now I’ve had to mess with their website to upload each photo. Their upload utility is only for Windows 😦 So I decided it was time to add export capability from F-Spot to walmart. And now I have it. I can select all my pics from within F-Spot and voila…done. My export capability is modeled closely after the existing Flickr export module. I will post my stuff in a bit when I get it cleaned up.

Cheers.

Bigtime dude

🙂