- Posted by jfarrar on October 15, 2008
So this is a little off topic of what I normally blog about, however I felt it was a cool integration. I logged into myspace a few moments ago and saw a banner on the top. I thought it was an ad, but decided to click on it. Myspace.com has Amber Alerts integrated into the platform, specifically for where you are located based on your profile information. See the screenshot below, Kudos to Myspace Profile Team
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- Posted by jfarrar on October 11, 2008
Well this was my first trip to Broadsoft Connections and hopefully not my last. I had a really good time going down to AZ. We (my family, a friend and my two business partners) drove down last Sunday. It wasn't a bad trek from Las Vegas. Going about 80mph the whole way got us there in about 4 1/2 hours. We stayed at the Extended Stay Deluxe hotel. Funny pun about that, is that the Broadsoft show had a theme this year called "Xtend".
Once we got there we had to head over to the Westin to do a dry run through of our slot on "Show Me The Apps". Almost immediately we met up with Thomas Howe (who won first place in the Broadsoft Mashup Competition). This guy really gets it when it comes to voice mashups. Yeah, so his apps may not look all graphical and stuff, who cares, his stuff makes sense. Anyhow, it was refreshing to hear some of his stories over the three days of the conference. If you have a chance to meet up with him, do so, in fact you can in November if you are up near VoiceCon in San Francisco. On top of being a nice guy he has a wealth of information regarding the ip communications industry.
After doing the prep work on Sunday there was a welcome event. It was a good networking event. Saw some old faces and new during the event. Got to meet up with some people that we had talked to on the phone as well. It was overall a fun night, well that is until this one guy got pretty drunk and was leaning on everyone and stumbling around. He was trying to talk to us about why he sells PRI's and he wasn't making any sense. LOL It was pretty hilarious.
Monday started out good, didn't get much sleep because of preparing for Tuesday morning's session. I've spoke in front of people before, but I always get somewhat nervous. I guess it's a good thing. Unless I get distracted I'm able to tune out the nerves. Anyhow, spend most of Monday networking again, getting cards and meeting people. Dr. James Canton spoke regarding the future. He started out really strong, but ultimately got less interesting as time went on. He touched on so many things that are "trends" that it made it confusing to follow. Some of the points he made I know are true and I see being the future, but I think today we need something tangible as well.
I got this great idea on Monday that I should create an IVR app that would allow you to integrate Broadsoft's XSI Platform with VXML and CCXML. That night I spent about 2 - 4 hours putting together the app and testing and modifying code and testing etc. In the end at about 2:30am I finished the necessary coding to make it stable to run. With only 5 hours left till the session "Show Me The Apps" - I got a little rest.
Come 7:30am it was time to run through the demo's. We (Len and I) were in the slot to go right after Thomas Howe's demo. Thomas appears to have done this alot, he was straightforward and very informative. After running through the demo's it was about 8:15am (15 minutes till the start). Nerves started kicking in at this point. It was good though, because it kept my adrenaline going and my excitement up.
IMO the highlights of the demos (to start with) were Omar and Wendell from Broadsoft. They demoed some really cool apps. Two of them were Google Gadgets which allow you to view your call history as well as your voicemail history. Then they showed off an iPhone app that allows you to access into the Broadworks Anywhere service. After that they showed off a pretty cool provisioning tool that would streamline the process for creating enterprises, groups and users. On a side note, I've had my fair share of coding this of app before and it takes some time but is well worth it. Anyhow, that was there demo (really cool!).
Alex Danyluk from Microsoft and Alex Doyle from Broadsoft showed off the cool integration features of the Office Communication Server and Client to the audience. I've been doing work with OCS since it was LCS. Which I guess isn't that long (2003), but its come a long way. Mobile Max also showed off their integration into Broadsoft Anywhere with their Mobile Client Application. Some great integration on their platform, I was impressed. Best feature IMO, has to be the extension dialing from your cell phone!
Thomas Howe (no I don't get paid to say his name lol) delivered a great talk on voice mashups and demonstrated the app that won him first place "Disaster Dispatcher". Interesting concept and he completely explained his intention behind it. You can read more about that here. Overall I think his message was well received.
Made my nerves even worse haha. On top of that we were trying to log into our mobile portal on the blackberry we were borrowing. We were having some technical difficulties almost right up until we went on. Despite that everything went well and without a hitch once I started talking and Len started driving. Len is the CEO of BlueVisor btw, and I'm obviously JoeDeveloper, but one thing that we released while we were there is that I've joined on to be well Chief Of Apps if you will. JoeDeveloper will still continue on as it has, you will just start seeing more and more of BlueVisor.
It appears that people liked the apps overall and not just ours. My personal favorite was by the guys at WorldxChange in New Zealand. They had a very real solution to a very common business problem; debt collection. They took an app that existed and added voice into it. Adding voice by setting up a way to allow account reps to initiate automated calls to the customer letting them know that there balance is past due. They also had it in a bulk format where you could send multiple calls at once. While they are a service provider in New Zealand and don't plan on becoming a development shop, I still think they could make money training people. Have a 2 day course on how to conceptually improve your business as a service provider. Keep it general enough so that trade secrets aren't exposed, but at least make some money off of that great internal app.
Overall it was a great experience to be down there and meet alot of people. I can't wait to meet up with everyone again. I could talk about more, but it's 3am so I guess it's time for me to say goodnight. Hope you enjoyed this random post of information!
JoeDeveloper
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- Posted by jfarrar on August 19, 2008
Well I've been pretty busy with getting things ready for the Xtended Contest. Let's just say there are going to be some pretty cool apps entered into it.The above picture shows a little bit of the latest application I have been working on for the contest. Anyone know what it is?
You'll find out soon :).
Stay tuned.
JoeDeveloper
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- Posted by jfarrar on July 8, 2008
Let me just start out by saying that today is a great day because of this contest. The reason for this cannot be better illustrated then by going to one of my first blogs on the site here. If you don't have time to read that I'll give you a quick rundown:
Broadsoft didn't used to have an easy way for any third-party developer to work with their platform.
No longer is this the case which is why I'm very happy.
I had already said that I think it makes complete sense to allow third-party developers to build against your platform. Granted we haven't seen the greatest success with sites like Facebook or MySpace and their third party developer network. However, before I get attacked for the blasphemy that I just spoke, things ARE getting better. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of good applications on Facebook and MySpace. However, by opening up your platform you do have to watch for the bad applications.
There surely are obstacles to launching an open platform, from the logistics to the legal to the implementation. However, regardless of all of these things Broadsoft has done it and done it well. Their platform is open to any developer who registers and requests a sandbox account. Additionally, there is now added incentive for the developer.
Here's the thing making applications is fun once you finish them, even fun while you are developing them. I'm definitely going to enter a few applications into the contest. I mean who doesn't want cash for what they do. Not only, do you get cash though, you get to be at Broadsoft's annual event called Connections. I've never been to it, but from what I have heard it's a blast. Additionally, it's a great way to network and show you product to potential buyers (carriers, customers etc).
In the short period that I've used Broadsoft Xtended I have been approached by several large service providers. Don't forget that Broadsoft's platform is in places like Cox, Verizon, Sprint; or as they put it:
"BroadSoft provides VoIP applications to 7 of the top 10 and 13 of the top 25 largest carriers worldwide, as measured by recent annual revenue, including Korea Telecom, KPN, SingTel, Sprint, Telefonica de Espana, Telstra, T-Systems, and Verizon"
Additionally, you (developers) don't have to know VoIP or telephony to benefit from this opportunity. Now granted, knowing some terms and how things work is important, but don't worry all of that information is accessible here.
You have until September 2nd, so get to it. Additionally, if you need any help post a question to forums on developer.broadsoft.com. The forums are very active and there are alot of knowledgeable Broadsoft engineers and developers on them answering questions real quick. I'm always interested in a cool web app, so I am looking forward to see what comes of this.
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- Posted by jfarrar on July 6, 2008
It's funny how we always used to call Win 3.1, Win 95 & 98 and even XP the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). Vista has improved, now they even call it the blue screen error lol (picture after the jump). However, you don't see the blue screen, or at least I haven't seen it yet, it just restarts and tells you it was the blue screen. Oooo "the BSOD was here".
Gotta love windows.
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- Posted by jfarrar on July 3, 2008
On a side note today was the second time that IE7 freaked out when I was on myspace. I closed one of my tabs on a myspace page and myspace (or some ads) started creating numerous tabs. So much so that my memory spiked and left me with the only option of ending the process (see image below). Take notice to the iexplore.exe process peaking my memory.
Still not sure why this happened, but it's definitely annoying and it's only happened on myspace.
Click image to view larger
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- Posted by jfarrar on June 26, 2008
Today, or I should say Yesterday, was a really cool day. Broadsoft officially launched their Xtended Platform, which includes their new RESTful API's called XSI. In my mind this is really awesome for a couple different reasons. From what I know, and what I have researched, there is NO ONE and I mean no one that is doing this in the telecom space. Especially not on the same level and caliber as Broadsoft.
Here you have a carrier-grade VoIP software platform provider who provides VoIP applications to seven of the top 10 and 13 of the top 25 largest carriers worldwide. This was measured by recent annual revenue, including Korea Telecom, KPN, SingTel, Sprint, Telefonica de Espana, Telstra, T-Systems, and Verizon.
Now any developer can access their API platform by going to here and creating an account. What will you have access to? Everything a normal Broadsoft user will have access to, however including the ability to program against their API layer.
What kind's of things can you do with this? Well you can do some simple stuff, for instance turn on or off Do-Not-Disturb. On top of that you have the full ability to build applications around the rest of the some 50+ base function calls.
What kind if things could you build?
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A service configuration portal.
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A call control virtual office.
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A click-to-dial appointment system.
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etc.
You basically have free reign to decide what you want to build. This is really going to open up the floodgate of web based voice 2.0 applications.
On another note it seems that there are skeptics out there regarding whether or not it will be successful. It also appears that the author is partial to Sylantro. Unfortunately, I can't say I had a great experience with Sylantro. Additionally, their developer program never caught traction. However, Broadsoft has already starting showcasing third-party solutions inside their marketplace.
I shouldn't even be linking to this negative article but here goes. Enough with all of the negativity. Do you homework as a blogger/editor and actually read about what's going on. I mean this guy Rich says "So-Called RESTful API".
So-called? What the heck do you mean so-called? It either is or it isn't there is not such thing called "So-Called". And I can tell you personally that it's not so-called. IT IS RESTful. Do your homework. Believe me when I say that there will be some mass market applications as time goes on the produce quite a bit of revenue. There will always be naysayers regarding whether or not something will be successful.
I for one am a developer that takes action and knows something good when I see it. Broadsoft has something good going on, don't miss out.
Go to: http://developer.broadsoft.com/ to signup for a developer account
or
Go to: http://marketplace.broadsoft.com/ to learn about applications already built.
UPDATE: Found this cool polling system called slantly, you can check it out above
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- Posted by jfarrar on May 11, 2008
I've been looking around the last couple of days at all of the announcements regarding the latest buzz word "Data Portability". It is interesting to see all of the major social players moving into the realm of data availability. This is much different then data portability, and should not be confused. Somehow it's been interpreted as the same thing. To most people it would just seem semantical, but it's really quite different.
Anyhow, it's interesting to see the competition and collaboration going on between Facebook, Plaxo, Myspace and Google in this area. You can read about facebook's platform "Facebook Connect" here. Myspace announced their platform Myspace Data Availability here. Google is planning on coming out with "Friend Connect" for OpenSocial, detailed here.
On a related note, it's ironic to see LinkedIn falling further behind the times in terms of their platform. I've really wanted to play around with their API, but it's completely closed to people that don't work for big companies. Right now they are only interested in PR. While they keep posting blogs and videos about their various integrations in to big named companies, I still have yet to see them announce (or even say for that matter) when they will open this up to developers as a whole. They have a ridiculous note at the bottom of each of these API posts that says if you are interested to contact them. However, when you do, there isn't even a generic reply sent back and I never got a reply back from a person. Logic would dictate that you have a few people dedicated to this email account, however it appears that only their lead guy gets them.
This is all well and good and I'm happy for LinkedIn. Really though, when will they learn that opening up something like this to all developers will begin to push them back into competition with the other social sites out there. Facebook has already started stealing LinkedIn users based on what I have read. Anyhow I guess this is turning into a rant so I will stop. It just frustrates me to no end when I read about an API, but it's all about PR and not really allowing developers access to use it.
On another side note. I looked around at the different LinkedIn implementations on the web. The javascript version could easily be put on any site. I tested it out from some websites I have and it worked great. They probably also have a server side API that is used by some of their partners.
Once again!
The Real JoeDeveloper
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- Posted by jfarrar on May 8, 2008
So I guess it makes sense to consume your own service and find out how it works. So I have added the click2message application to the right side of the blog. Try it out, it will actually call me (JoeDeveloper) and you can see for yourself how simple and powerful this service can be. We are underway with development to provide users the ability to manage their account on www.click2message.com and post the click2message flash application to alot of different social networking and blog sites.
Also we have updated the blog to be a little more colorful. Stay tuned for more information. We have some cool stuff on the way.
Thanks!
Joseph Farrar
The real JoeDeveloper
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