Disruptive Telephony

That's the question that both Alec Saunders and Ars Technica ask in regard to a news release out of "Digital Life America" entitled "BlackBerry Backlash? Americans Split on 'Always On' Culture" (PDF).   The release, timed to coincide with the 3GSM event in Barcelona last week, covers some of the group's research and includes this:

• 33% agreed with the statement “devices like BlackBerry chain you to work more than they liberate you.” 34% were neutral and the balance, 34%, disagreed.
• Surprisingly, among those who own a BlackBerry or a similar device, the results were not all that different: 34% agreed with the statement, 37% disagreed and 29% were neutral.

The news release went on to highlight other stats that BlackBerry owners do in fact work longer hours and have higher incomes... but both of these are kind of "duh!" statements to me.  Look at who are typically the ones with BB devices in any company (i.e. management, executives).  When was the last time any of us in those job roles (at most North American companies) worked a 40-hour week?  (I think I actually might have in January, but that was because we had a vacation day.)

As a BlackBerry user, I have to say that I'm in the 37% who disagree with the statement, i.e. for me the device is a tremendous liberating device.  That wasn't my initial thought.  I resisted requesting one for a couple of years when peers were doing so.  I watched some folks get into BB-driven email wars at 10pm on a Saturday night and just said "Don't those folks have a life?"  and "Why would anyone want to be that accessible?"

However, once I started using it, I rapidly flipped the other way. For me, it allows me to be connected wherever I want to - should I choose to do so! And I think that's really the key. As Mark Evans writes, it really is about how you use it and how to achieve that work/life balance.  For me, the primary reason I got a BB was for travelling where it has proved to be incredibly useful.  I can't even begin to count the number of airports I've been stuck in where having ready access to email was useful and in some cases necessary. 

Even locally, there are too many times to count when it proved to be useful.  I was driving home one morning from dropping our daughter off at school and thinking about the things I had to do as the morning got underway when one of the warning lights on our car went on.  Since I was about to go by the car dealership, I pulled in and had them check it out.  I just went to the waiting area and used the BB to work through email.  It gave me the freedom to do something like that.  And that freedom does indeed help with my own work/life balance...   but you do need to exercise that restraint and not let it interfere with non-work time. 

At the end of the day, the BlackBerry and other devices are tools that can be either liberating or enslaving.  It's all really in how you choose to use them.  (Or, I suppose, are required to use them... I could see some managers out there expecting/requiring employees to always be available.)

P.S. Sometime, though, I'll write the counterpoint argument about how absolutely annoying it is as a presenter when you have a room full of people surreptitiously (or not) sucked into their email...

As I continue to explore OpenID, one of my immediate concerns was... how do I choose an identity provider?  And if I do use an identity provider, what happens if they stop providing OpenID services?  Or what if they are bought by someone and I don't like the new owner?

Essentially - how do I create an "abstraction layer" that allows me to maintain control of my identity and not be beholden to the whims or policies (or circumstances) of a provider?

The answer is amazingly easy... just use your own domain name! As explained by Simon Willison, the process merely involves inserting two lines of code into the header of the HTML page at the URL you want to use.  So, for instance, I updated the page for www.danyork.com (which actually gets pointed to a page in a larger website) to have these two added lines:

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml">
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://dyork.livejournal.com/">

That's it.  Now on any website that allows OpenID logins, I simply use the OpenID of "http://www.danyork.com/" and I am briefly redirected to LiveJournal to approve the granting of access to my identity credentials.  Simple and easy.

The beautiful part about this is that I can switch Identity providers any time I like.  I used my LJ account here, but I actually like some of what ClaimID has to offer.  Perhaps I'll use them instead.

The net of it, though, is that it doesn't matter...   to the websites where I login, I login with the danyork.com id and all is good.  Who actually provides the request for the technical OpenID data is a different matter and should be - and is - separate from your actual identity.  Very cool to see... and nice to be able to be in control of my identity!

P.S. And thanks, Simon Willison, for writing up that tutorial... very helpful.

Scanning RSS feeds early this morning, I was pleased to see that Rich Tehrani will be speaking at our "Presence 2007" event in Costa Mesa, CA, today. I've known the tour was going on, but wasn't tracking who was speaking at the various stops.  Glad to see Rich there... I'm sure he'll give a great talk for whoever attends.  The good news for Rich, too, is that at least he was flying out of the New York area yesterday instead of the day before when the glorious storm played havoc with air travel all over the northeast.

UPDATE: O'Reilly now points over to the post from AOL's John Panzer about this with more details.  It's funny... I read that post yesterday from John, but I don't think the enormity of it sank in until about 5am this morning when I read the post from Fred Stutzman that I reference below.

Wow!  Talk about a major boost for OpenID... continuing my OpenID research, I learned from reading Fred Stutzman (also here) that all 63 million users of AOL Instant Messenger can now use their AIM account for OpenID!  Now, I don't actually use my AIM account all that much these days (my IMs of preference are Skype, Jabber and MSN/WLM)[1], but I had to try it out, so I headed over to stickis.com and logged in using my AIM screen name - as shown in the image to the right.  Simple.  Easy.

Okay, that's fairly cool. My OpenID is simply:

http://openid.aol.com/dyorkottawa

Now the only peculiar thing was that I never saw this screen to grant or deny the access to the site.  The only reason I have this screen capture is because I pressed the Back arrow on my browser because I wanted a screen capture of the login page.  In actual operation, once I was logged into the AOL OpenID page I went directly to the stickis.com page... without actually granting the site access to my OpenID.

Hmmmmmmm...

This happened in Firefox 2, so just to verify the issue, I flipped over to IE7 and tried the same procedure.  Again, I was asked for my AIM password and then... bang... I was logged into the site (without seeing the Grant/Deny screen).  Note that I am not running any AIM client on this PC right now.

Now at the second site I tried this at, schtuff.com (a wiki provider that allows OpenId login), I was prompted to Grant/Deny access... but I was apparently already logged in to AOL's OpenID server.  Of course, I can't figure out how to log out of the AOL "Screen Name Service"... I guess I have to close out all my browser windows.    So given that I can't figure out how to log out, I can't replicate this procedure again (sorry, AOL, but I am not going to exit all my browser windows right now)... so I'd be curious to know if anyone else experiences this.  If you get a OpenID login screen, do you then just go right in?

I'm not sure there is a huge issue... I mean, you are going to the site to login... to a certain degree the Grant/Deny screen seems redundant in this instance.  You still have to go through one screen to allow the relying site access to your ID.  And with subsequent sites it seems to do the right thing and pop up the Grant/Deny screen.  Is the skipping of the initial Grant/Deny screen really a security issue?  (if it turns out to be more than just me?)  I don't know yet...

Anyway, kudos to AOL for OpenID-enabling their system... even if there might still be a few bugs to iron out.

This does raise a larger question, too... who do you use as your ID provider?  There's a long list of OpenID providers, but if you use AOL most of the time for IM, might it not make sense to use them as your OpenID provider?  Or do you want the more granular control provided by some of the others?  Where do you establish your online identity?   It shall be an interesting question to continue to ponder.

[1] My AIM name might give a clue as to why I don't use it as well... I took it out during the 5 years we lived in Ottawa, and, well, I've just never gotten around to getting a new one now that left there 1.5 years ago...

I have to blame Aswath.  Back in December, he posted a short piece wondering about the use of OpenID in SIP authentication.  He contacted Jonathan and I in regard to Blue Box and asked for our comments. We discussed it on Blue Box #48 (at 15:50 in the show) and basically said "well, it's interesting, but there's no trust model so we can't see how it would really work".  I had some further brief email exchange with Aswath, and then somewhere in there he came out with his proposal for extending OpenID use into communication systems.  Again he dropped us a note, and again, even with posts like that of phoneboy, I still hadn't gotten over my concern about trust - and we discussed it again in the soon-to-be-issued Blue Box #51, along with a comment from a listener.

But there was something there that kept nagging at the back of my brain... and then as Microsoft announced support for OpenID out at RSA... and then as AOL is talking about their plans...  along with a hundred other smaller indicators... all of it has made me realize that I've needed to "go deeper" on what OpenID is all about and how it works... and how maybe, just maybe, there might be a role for it in VoIP.

I'm not there yet, but I'm definitely in the middle of the deep dive.  I've told Aswath that I'd get him a longer response - and I will - once the journey has gone a bit further.  In the meantime, those of you who want to follow along can watch my del.icio.us trail on openid... it keeps getting longer.

If you have no idea what OpenID is about at all... think about all the websites you go to and all the different usernames and passwords you have.  What if there was a way to have just one identity you could use everywhere?  That's one of the ideas behind OpenID.  Here's some good places to start if you know nothing about it:

• Screencast on how to use OpenID
• Video from ETech 2006 - "Who is the Dick on your site?" by Dick Hardt of Sxip Identity (nice history of identity efforts)

Lots to learn out there...

Fans of Blue Box have to be aware that I'm a wee bit behind in posting episodes... so I was delighted to finally get Blue Box #50 uploaded yesterday.  I still need to finish putting the show notes up there, but at least the show is out so that people can listen to it.  Given that we recorded it January 17th, it has already aged a bit.  Tonight or tomorrow I'm hoping to get #51 up... and then #52 has already been recorded as well... I'd like to get caught up before going out to ETel where I'm undoubtedly going to get more recordings for special editions.

Have you ever created a "mashup" of telephony applications? Per Surj Patel writing on the O'Reilly Radar weblog, we're going to see some "telephony mashups" out at ETel in just a couple of weeks.  As Surj says:

The competition website is here and we encourage you to enter no matter how silly or brilliant the idea may be. The idea is to spread the word outside of the phone hackers community as to how easy and fun it is to build these hacks. Everything you need to get started you can get from the website. Your phone account (VXML) is free and you have free API's and Toolkits from the sponsors.

If you can write a CGI script then you can hack a commercial style service together in a few hours. Go take a look and investigate. Step outside your daily zone. Let your imagination run riot. Have some fun.

Per the ETel Mashup Contest website, the top 3 mashups will be presented out at ETel.  As the page says:

A telephony mashup is a voice, Web or mobile application (PBX, IVR, VOIP, SMS, Text Messaging, etc.) that combines content from more than one source to create a new user experience. Qualifying entries must demonstrate how an application can use one or more sources of content in an inventive way to benefit users. Any tool or platform that involves content (see StrikeIron or ProgrammableWeb) telephony (ex: VOIP, SMS, Text Messaging, PBX, IVR) can be used to create a mashup. This is uncharted territory, so there is plenty of room to use your imagination!!

The deadline is February 20th... so you still have time!  It will no doubt be both interesting and fun to see what people come up with...

The news today out of the WiFi Alliance was that almost 100 phones have become "Wi-Fi Certified" in their testing from 2004 to the present.  What's interesting to me is that most of those phones seem to be "dual mode" sets designed for the cellular market.  The news release indicates that there are 82 dual-mode phones and 10 single-mode phones... which is a bit puzzling because the list of Wi-Fi Certified handsets shows only 89 handsets, leaving 3 unaccounted for.  Browsing down the list, I can immediately see a WiFi handset for Skype and the wireless Skype/VoIP phones from Cisco/Linksys and D-Link.  One annoying detail - all of the listed models take you to the main home page of the vendor, so you then have to dig to find the phone... would be MUCH better if the link took you directly to the product page of the specific product. I have no idea what some of these phones are (nor do I really have the time/interest to dig for them).

 I don't see the Netgear and Belkin 802.11 Skype phones, nor do I see many of the zillion wireless SIP phones that are out there.  So either: 1) those phones are still being tested by the WFA; 2) the vendors don't see the value in WFA certification; or perhaps 3) the vendors aren't really aware of the certification.  In any event, the net is that there are obviously a lot more 802.11 phones out there beyond this long list.  Nice to see so many dual-mode mobile phones... an obvious sign of the rising reality of Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC).

Jeff Pulver was in Los Angeles and visited the Apple Store there... and couldn't find someone to pay!  Ever the social media guy, he seized the moment to make this video and share the experience with all of us:

Just a note to anyone in retail... you, too, (or your absence) might wind up on YouTube someday... the shoppers are watching - and recording!

Anyone reading this blog using the ChanSkype software to connect Asterisk to Skype?  I've not played with it at all myself, but it sounds like an interesting idea.  Here's what they say it can do:

• Call online Skype users.
• Call using SkypeOut.
• Receive up to 30 incoming Skype Calls ("Skype Trunk").
• Bridge with SIP channels.
• Make any number of simultaneous calls (limited only by system resources).

Their FAQ is just a wee bit sparse on details, like, oh, precisely how many simultaneous connections will it support?  Their main page has the text above and on the Buy page they note that corporate licenses are licensed per port up to 30 users and it has this text:

This limitation is not technical, for ChanSkype's simultaneous call capabilities are limited only by system resources.

Which naturally makes me a bit more curious.  It's clear that they are using the Skype client-side API through a Linux Skype client but that's about it.  I would think to support multiple users they would have to launch multiple instances of the Linux Skype client.  Is this what they are doing?

If anyone has played with it, I'd be curious to know how it works.  It's intriguing enough to me that I might just have to revive my dormant Asterisk install.