It seems as though the Microsoft acquisition of Skype was rather sudden, and took many by surprise overnight. I was certainly surprised by it when the rumours started floating around Twitter yesterday. But unlike many I've seen who are concerned or apprehensive about what it will mean, I think it's a fantastic move that makes so much sense.

At my workplace, we have implemented a full Office Communications Server 2007 R2-based phone system, leveraging Snom handsets (and our Snomtastic application) to fully replace an aging NEC PABX and deliver much needed functionality, through desktop and mailbox integration, enhanced calling capabilities, conferencing, and massively improved redundancy. We have a phone system which, for the first time, makes sense and which we can fully control. We plan to move to Lync and Exchange 2010 soon, which will only improve our capabilities further.

In hearing of a Skype acquisition, my mind immediately jumped to the benefits for Lync - particularly i ...

[UPDATED 9th February 2012 - see end of the review]

If you’ve read past product reviews of mine, you’d know that I tend to avoid reading other articles on a given product, at least until I’ve done my own. So it is with the Fritz!box, in spite of the impressive buzz that’s been going around ever since Internode announced their partnership with broadband specialist PCRange to bring the German product to Australia. I’d already known that Internode was looking for hardware that could sustain National Broadband Network (NBN) speeds of at least 100Mbps, with most routers on the market being unable to sustain these. The Fritz!box 7390 is their solution to this, along with the cheaper – and lower throughput – 7270 model, which provides sub-100Mbps throughput.

The Fritz!box 7390 has an impressive range of features that certainly make people sit up and take notice;

Leading up to today I was hoping to post some good news and outcomes after taking my complaint to the Office of the CEO at Telstra.  But todays events have pissed me off even more and ponder the value and ability of the Telstra CEO to have any significant or beneficial impact in changing Telstra’s ways.  Far be it for me to expect customer service from the telco giant.

It starts with my blog post “Telstra, shitty Service and questionable data plan charges” http://www.autechheads.com/blogs/entryid/279/telstra-shitty-service-and-questionable-data-plan-charges

Last week I had received a response to my letter to the Office of the CEO and the outcome was having a case number a person that gave a commitment to address the issues and take ownership of my complaint and furnishing me with a daily update on the progress and outcomes.  One of the commitments and outcomes was that the account was being placed on hold, which means that no disconnection a ...

My Mozart experience has been surprising. Windows Phone 7 as an OS is by far nowhere near as bad as the memories of Windows Mobile x.x - but it's no iOS. That's likely an unfair comparison though, as Apple have had 4 years to get their OS to this stage and this is Microsoft's first iteration of WP7. Sure, there are some rough edges, but over the past two weeks it grew on me.

I couldn't abide the onscreen keyboard. My fat thumbs struggled to type on it accurately, and while the autocorrect built into WP7 is very slick... re-editing a tweet or e-mail afterwards is not what I want to have to do. I prefer it to be right first time 99% of the time. A friend suggested I should just type fast and it will catch up - and it did, mostly. I still found it hard to be looking at the keyboard and having letters next to the letter I want show up in words when I didn't want them to. Oh, teh lulz.

The gaming component of this WP7 device was pretty cool. Lots of great games, lots of cool gamer points to coll ...

The Marketplace implementation on Windows Phone 7 is actually pretty good – the apps are categorised in the first instance and also listed by in other formats (new, top, etc). The background changes to promote specific apps from visit to visit too, with the same ‘peek’ navigation style as employed with other WP7 natively designed apps. And there are some cracking apps too.

I’ve download a few apps, and a bunch of games(!). While I’ve had my share of hassles in downloading them – either through the app not wanting to download at all or not being able to purchase the app – that’s seemingly been atmospheric. Wait a few minutes and start again. Similar to the AAS (Apple App Store) the Marketplace will not allow you to download a massive app when you’re not on WiFi, with the aim being to minimise your telco data usage. This is necessary as some games are decidedly sizable and you could easily eat up your monthly data allowance by downloading a c ...

 I won't bore you with unboxing details or first impressions. Enough of the Social Review team have delivered that far more eloquently than I (damn there are some good writers in the group).

I've really been enjoying following the reviewers and hearing their successes and failures. Finding the common ground. Hearing their pain. A review like this takes balls on the part of Telstra (and Microsoft) and I applaud them for having a go and allowing 25 opinionated people loose with their gear to do with as they want and say what they want. Our opinions as reviewers are what they (and I'll assume you reading this) want to hear. So hang on...

I intentionally didn't read the manual as I figured most people won't. It bit me in the bum a little, as I had some questions that I'm sure people who'd read the manual wouldn't have asked. I'm a seasoned Windows Mobile user, having owned and used a number of devices for years. This couldn't be too much different. WRONG.

The Metro UI is ...

Yesterday, Telstra kicked off its social reviewer program for the HTC Mozart mobile phones. I'm not involved (although I recognise quite a few names as AuTechHeads members!) and have already given my thoughts on one that was purchased via work for the purpose of evaluation. I certainly wish the social reviewers all the best, and will read their own thoughts with considerable interest.

It did, however, get me thinking more on a train of thought that's already been at the back of my head, especially when seeing the first sets of comments and gripes about the phones flowing via Twitter. I'm talking about, for example, "I miss X app" or "I miss X feature". And here's where the fragmentation first becomes evident.

We used to have phones where the biggest concern, when switching, was making sure your contacts were copied to SIM or to your PC somehow. It was largely seamless to transition between Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, etc. Even with the advent of Pocket PC Phones and Smartphones fro ...

Yep. I applied here, and got selected! I'll be dropping my blog posts here at AuTechHeads and tweeting somewhat obsessively about the experience over at @themolk - and I'd love to know both what you think about the HTC Motzart running Windows Phone 7 (I willingly accept tips, hints & pointers) AND what you think about my experience using it...

It's not just me invovled, either. You can see the full list of people involved over here, and keep up with the goings-on from the social review and other Telstra Exchange blog happenings here. This is gonna be a lot of fun.

Note: Crossposted from my blog

It’s raining, you know how I know it’s raining? Not because stuff falls from the sky, but because my bloody phone is not working again.

I shouldn’t be so selfish – it’s not just my phone, it’s the whole street. The 80yo widower, the 75yo couple with severe health problems, the 35yo with the 2 young children, the 60yo with epilepsy.

They are the people I worry about. Not me – I have a mobile phone an old copper line (my main line), and a pair gain telephone line (newer type), they do not. The only reason I have the pair gain is because I was told I couldn’t get ADSL, I had a 2nd line installed to enable access to the internet, which in itself was a nightmare and I had to wait 3 months for.

This problem is not something that’s just occurred. This problem has been occurring for the better part of 50-60 years. I know this because the first line installed ...

The aim of the seminar series is to generate discussion between the small to medium business owners in our target regions and their existing IT consultants around utilising Virtualisation, Cloud, Communications, Green Technology and ...

You all are probably aware of my iPhone issues.  I don’t want to go through them again, I'm over it and wanting to move forward.

Specifically my issues are with Telstra although I hear similar problems with people with other carriers.

Why do I choose Telstra, with my travelling, they are the only provider that provide the best coverage overall than any other vender out there.  I’m not talking about capital cities or CBD’s or regional hubs, most of them all have reasonable coverage by most of the top players.  When you choose to live by the coast or on an island away from major centres and hubs you limit your self straight up, but generally you can find some options.  when your clients and customers offer the same location and comms challenges your options really come down to Telstra only or change to sat phone or have multi sim devices (Happy to have that debate).

So I go with Telstra and accept I’m going to pay a premium.

For year ...

We're now more than halfway through our PABX replacement, involving the rollout of OCS 2007 R2 Enterprise Voice, with Snom 370 handsets for all. Over 160 staff are now live on our new system!

Office Communicator is very familiar to our staff, having been used broadly for instant messaging since LCS 2005 SP1 days. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has made it even more awesome, and even increased its usage within the organisation. That among other things means that it's been easy to talk to people about the many benefits of Enterprise Voice for them, including:

Today’s post is a major milestone for me (and my team at work). We have spent 18 months developing our OCS 2007 R2 Enterprise Voice solution, and the past 12 months have been particularly eventful – not to mention busy!

Initially envisaged as an enhancement for our current NEC PABX, it became clear that even our simplest goals of RCC and Unified Messaging would be made substantially more difficult by retaining the current gear. It was also clear that NEC Australia really didn’t have much in the way of ideas or direction in this space. The real clincher came when I teased out the fact that our current PABX was no longer actively being developed, and new spare parts weren’t being manufactured. It was interesting to see the look on the NEC reps faces when I asked what their upgrade path was, and if it enabled our goals better!

Coming to a dead end with NEC, we started to refocus the project toward PABX replacement. I can certainly credit some key people like John Smith ...