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Paul's Time Sink

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Problem receiving calls

Paul Westbrook | 01 December, 2005 17:50

Today we had a problem receiving calls on our Vonage line.  I called their Customer support, and they solved the problem.  There were two things that they did.

  1. Added more ports to be forwarded to the Vonage ATA. (Here is a page that has the ports listed)
  2. Had me disable and re-enable the Voice Mail.  The person that I talked to said that there are some scripts that run when Voice Mail is enabled.

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911 with Vonage

Paul Westbrook | 02 November, 2005 17:57

This past weekend, we had to call 911. (It wasn't an emergency in our house, it was to report something happening outside).  We had entered our address into the online form for the 911 information.  When we called, we actually got the emergency dispatch for our city.

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More Vonage and TiVo

Paul Westbrook | 28 October, 2005 19:29

I have been having a difficult time to get my HD10-250 to make phone calls over the Vonage line.  The tips that I described before didn't seem to work.

I found this page that did have a tip that works for me.  This is the configuration that I use to dial:

Dial In Number: 1-212-277-3895
Call waiting: "*70,"
Dial Prefix: "*99,12122773895,,,,"
Tone/Pulse: Tone
Phone Detection: Off
Dial Tone Detection: Off

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Mobile IM

Paul Westbrook | 12 October, 2005 19:43

I just tried out the Mobile IM client, for AOL, MSN and Yahoo, that is available through Get It Now.  It is interesting, but I don't know if I would use it.  It pretty much just sets up a IM to text message proxy.  So once set up, it forwards IM messages to the phone with text messages, so the phone is not always using air time when using Mobile IM.

I did noticed one problem.  There is not a way in the UI for Mobile IM to disconnect from the IM services.  What you have to do is to connect to the IM services from a computer.  This will cause the IM session to be closed.

I don't see using this myself.  I don't want to be connected that much.

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Voice recognition

Paul Westbrook | 06 October, 2005 10:55

When I worked at Apple, I worked on the speech recognition software that was part of the Mac OS.  I never really did use it at home, as the recognition was never all that good, and you needed a noise cancellation microphone.  Also the size of the dictionary of the recognized words was pretty small.

I have just started playing with the voice calling on the Motorola E815, and I am extremely impressed.  I was assuming that I would have to record a voice utterance for each phone number that I would want to dial with my phone, but that is not the case. 

I accidentally pushed the button on my headset while I was driving, and I heard a voice that stated "Say a command".  It looks like you can say commands like:

"Call <person name>"

This is pretty cool, especially since it went through the whole address book to determine the dictionary list that can be spoken.  It looks like this phone is using speech recognition technology from VoiceSignal.
 (More)

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Vonage and ADT

Paul Westbrook | 28 August, 2005 19:32

Today I tested my ADT security system because wanted to find out if it is actually working with my currently wiring setup.  I have connected the phone line from the security system to our patch panel.  This is connected to our Vonage ATA. (Similar to the article in Make magazine)

Supposedly, this is not supposed to work, like modems and fax machines are not supposed to work.  If it didn't work,  I would have thought of either

  1. Buying the cell service connector for the ADT system.
  2. Buy the ABN Broadband Adapter from NextAlarm.com, and switch to using their service.
  3. Switch to using Alarm.com for service.

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More BlueTooth thoughts

Paul Westbrook | 19 August, 2005 20:50

Now that I have had a chance to play with my phone, I have thought of some things that I would love to get.  I would love to use more of the Bluetooth functionality.

I would love to use this on my computer.  I want some software that will automatically pause iTunes and lock my computer when I walk away.  Also I would like CallerID information to be presented on the screen when someone calls.  I know that Sailing Clicker and Romeo supports this, but they are not compatible with the Motorola E815.  BluePhoneElite does support the CallerID display, but it doesn't support the proximity features.

I also want to get a Bluetooth headset for the phone.  In addition to that, when I replace the car head unit, I want to see if someone makes a headunit that has a BlueTooth hands free unit built in.  This should cause the music to mute when the phone is answered.  I imagine that an external mic would be mounted somewhere on the dash.

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Motorola E815

Paul Westbrook | 18 August, 2005 20:04

Mot E815Yesterday the Motorola E815 that I order arrived.  I finally got it activated this morning.  It is exactly what I wanted.  It is a BlueTooth camera phone, that can sync with my Mac though iSync.

The interface is pretty much the same as my Motorola T730, but the screen is larger and has a higher resolution.  I had no problem having the phone recognized by my computer.

I actually took a test picture and wanted to figure out how to get it to my computer.  It looks like Verizon did not enable the file transfer profile, so I am not able to directly copy the images over. 
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More TiVo and Vonage

Paul Westbrook | 15 May, 2005 06:19

In a post I wrote a while ago, I talked about a way to make a TiVo make phone calls over a VoIP connect.  Vonage used to have instructions on dial prefixes that would work.  (It looks like they removed all of those instructions.)

I just got a new TiVo, and was trying to set it up, and the second phone call was failing.  I did a search on the web, and I found these instructions that would allow the TiVo to make the phone calls over a broadband connection.

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New VoIP WiFi phone

Paul Westbrook | 03 January, 2005 20:09

Engadget has a post that says that Vonage hs formally announced their F-1000 802.11 VoIP phone. This phone will allow you to make and receive phone calls whenver you are connected to a 802.11 network. This phone is supposed to be available this spring or summer for about $100.

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TiVo and Vonage

Paul Westbrook | 03 November, 2004 19:31

I have been having problems getting my TiVos making phone calls over the Vonage phone line. I have changed one of my TiVos to use our ethernet network, but our other one does not have Home Media Option (It is a TiVo/DIRECTV box). Vonage has posted some instructions about how to get this to work. It has been hit and miss for me. Some of calls work and some don't. (More)

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Another Vonage post

Paul Westbrook | 20 August, 2004 20:10

There is one more thing that I want to do with the Vonage phone line. The vonage phone line is only connected to the new jacks that are were wired when I ran structured wiring to a couple of places in our house. The next thing that I want to do is to wire the original jacks to this phone line. What I will do is run the new Vonage line on one of the pairs of wires on the Cat 5 that goes from the distribution panel, to the external junction box. Then I will connect this line to the rest of the house wiring.

I probably will not do this until I get a UPS for the phone adapter, and the DSL modem.

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More Vonage

Paul Westbrook | 19 August, 2004 20:32

Yesterday, I switched out phone to the Vonage phone line. Now all calls to our landline phone line will be forwarded to the Vonage phone line. The phone line is working great. In fact, the TiVo work well with the line too.

Since SBC does not have have Local Number Portabilty, I still have to keep my old line. I have cancelled all of the other features, except for Call Forwarding. I also change the line to be at a Metered Rate. So now I am playing $9.21 for a line that I had paid $60. (More)

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Vonage delivered

Paul Westbrook | 17 August, 2004 20:20

Our Vonage broadband phone adapter was delivered yesterday. The installation was pretty easy. I decided not not install it as the Vonage documentation instructed me. I plugged the adapter directly into my dsl modem, which has 4 ethernet ports. I have saveral static ip addresses, so I allocated one for it directly. I decided that I didn't want to plug my current firewall into the adapter itself because I wasn't sure about how well the modem adapter would route my non-phone traffic. Also, I didn't want to put the adapter in my internal network, becase if I had a lot of network traffic, it could interfere with the bandwidth for it.
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Local Number Portability for Campbell

Paul Westbrook | 12 August, 2004 14:55

When we get the broadband phone from Vonage, I will want to transfer our current number over to it. According to Vonage's web site, it is not possible in my area, but looking at the California Public Utility's web site it should be possible. Here is a link to a page that is supposed to remind consumers that Local Number Portability is available.

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