TJ's Kaleidoscope

IE 6 is not supported. I wish.

If you haven’t noticed already, CallFire is going through a major site redesign. It’s a redesign that’s very much a work in progress for it’s not just the look & feel that’s changing but we’re also laying the foundation for what we hope to be the next stage of explosive growth. But I digress.

One of the biggest challenges from a UI perspective has been keeping the site universally accessible. This is of course a breeze in FireFox & Chrome, but as any web designer will know, Internet Explorer, in all it’s flavors is a bane of any website’s existence. So, we we’re having quite a few issues with IE 6—that archaic browser that should never have seen the light of day—and yours truly decreed that we shall no longer support IE 6.0. Wishful thinking.

I got inspiration for this brilliant idea from YouTube’s message (shown above) and figured, if Google can do it, why can’t we? Small problem. Unlike YouTube, almost all of CallFire’s visitors are paying customers using computers that have software installed by change-resistant IT departments that were flooding our support lines. So as much as it would be fun to lay down the law, I’ll have to grudgingly acquiesce to reality. Influencing Change , it turns out, is hard for it seldom happens on your timetable.  Back to the testing cycle folks!

Quote of the Day

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.     

                                                                              —Andy Warhol

FriendCast Taking Off!

Friendcast (CallFire’s iPhone app) has been downloaded more than 3,500 times! It’s become popular enough for TMCnet to feature a video demo on the application. Cool stuff!

So if you have an iPhone and haven’t downloaded it already, do so. I’m sure there are people in your contact list who would love to hear from you.

Quote of the Day

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.

                                                               --Anais Nin

Friendcast Mentioned in MacWorld

Friendcast—CallFire’s app for iPhone users got mentioned in MacWorld roundup today.  As the article states, it’s an excellent way to send out a broadcast message to multiple iPhone contacts with simple taps on the screen. All the people to whom I’ve given demos seem to love the app. They see uses for it like last minute changes of venues, sending out mass greetings (the holiday season is already here folks). Those without iPhones found one more reason to get one! So I’d encourage all those with iPhones to download this app. It’s fast, friendly, and did I mention free?

Go on! Socially network using—voice—the  natural communication form.

Quote of the Day:

If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.

                                                                     --Woodrow Wilson

I Switched!

Well, long story short, my BlackBerry, much loved I might add, died a very ugly death. T-Mobile was going to charge me $177 for replacing an end-of-cycle phone with a replica on an archaic network (EDGE). I figured, better than that would be to get on a super fast network (3G) on a cutting edge phone (iPhone). So I made the switch. I am now an iPhone user and an AT&T customer. One thing the is true, the iPhone has a phenomenal interface, and the other thing is true, nothing beats the BlackBerry when it comes to email.

Three Things I Love about the iPhone:

1. 3G Network Connectivity: This is the deal clincher, surfing at speeds of most home wireless networks is a major upgrade.
2. Amazing Interface: The famed interface is every bit as good as they say it is, and then some more. Nothing beats full-feature web browsing.
3. Media Integration: I never thought I'd miss media integration until the iPhone. One click and all my music is now on my phone and I don't have to keep two gadgets, one cell phone and one iPod. One exception: The gym; I don't trust it staying in my hand when I'm running on the treadmill.

 

Three Things I Miss about the BlackBerry:

1. Push Email: Yes, the iPhone claims to have push email, but BlackBerry's email network is unbeatable. Simple: To get my iPhone to get all the emails my laptop gets, I have to tweak server settings, however, at no time I had to tweak any settings anywhere either on the BlackBerry or on my server/laptop to get my push email by the minute.
2. Keyboard: People will live without a live feedback keyboard, but yet nothing to beat a full QWERTY push button keyboard. Plain and simple.
3. 3rd Party Support: There were so many clients for the BlackBerry that were well integrated into the BlackBerry. For example, whenever my Google client got an email, my BlackBerry light would blink. Right now, for the iPhone only Facebook as a better client. To check anything that's related to Google I have to open up Safari. No google talk client, no mail client. What's up with that Google?

All in all, I think it was reasonable purchase. For those who thought I sold out, I really tried to look for a BlackBerry comparison, but no one would give me a straight up answer on when the Bold is coming out. So, here I am, joining the masses.

Quote of the Day

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

                                                                   --Ben Branklin

CallFire Products: My Obsession

Ok, the reason why I've been very quiet lately is because what started out as a cause about ten months ago, has now become an obsession leaving little time for anything else. In our quest to grow faster, stronger, and better, we made seismic changes in the way we run our business, starting from the network and server infrastructure, the application design and topology to finally the UI redesign.

As you'll notice, our new website sports a brand new look and is designed to give first-time visitors an easy way to gauge what is it that we do.

We did it in three major ways:

Simplified Top Menu

This gives people an easy way to access our products and services, including flash demos!

Humanizing the Landing Page

While the industry works on making agent-based multi-modal interfaces feasible allowing for fully personalized avatars, we've created a generic online one using a live person! All you have to do is click on the play button.

Simplified Site Map

CallFire.com has some great content, and yet few knew about it. In fact, when trying to find any of the following keywords, our own help desk would have to Google "CallFire" and then the keyword to find the link. Well, none of that anymore!

Products & Services Voice Broadcast Virtual Call Center VoiceXML Hosted IVR Hosted dialer Automatic polling Autodialer Predictive dialer Call Centers Call center dialer Call center outbound Call center popup Call center predictive dialer Call center software Call center solution Contact center outbound Contact center software Virtual contact center

Ways to use CallFire Autodialer software Automatic phone dialer Emergency telephone dialer Emergency telephone notification Political dialing Mortgage autodialer Mortgage lead generation Mortgage dialer Nonprofit dialer Nonprofit fund raising Nonprofit marketing Political dialer School telephone notification Telemarketing dialing Telephone bank Virtual telephone bank VoIP applications VoIP software development Voter Voice Connect Windows autodialer

Industry Related Broadcast messaging Custom IVR Dialer software Enterprise phone software Enterprise voice broadcast Phone autodialer Power dialing Telephony sales Telephone autodialer Telephone broadcast Telephone dialer Telephone integration TUI Virtual phone bank Voicemail broadcasting VoIP blaster VoIP software VUI

VoIP APIs Click-To-Call API Dialer API Phone call API Telephone API Call center API Voice broadcast API VoIP development Asterisk Related Asterisk autodialer Asterisk predictive dialer Asterisk click-to-call

The work of a company is not done, especially for an owner/partner, so there's still a lot more work to be done and very little time to get done in, but hopefully I'll some find time to to blog on this site. Here's a good topic, I've been at this for about ten months now, how do I like it? How different is it from working for IBM? What does it take to work for your own? Stay tuned!

Quote of the Day:

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.

                                                                                      --Albert Einstein

Apple Retail Experience

Even though I'm a Windows user and I've found my way to Mac stores a couple of times in the past years and what I've consistently noticed is that they have consciously worked to both simplify the buying and browsing process and yet keep the Apple brand hip, which as a seller of Callfire, I can tell you is not easy.

For example, I walked in knowing exactly what I wanted, so I went looking for the cash register only to realize there were none. Each Apple employee carries a wireless card reader, and my sales person just rang me up, gave me my product, and even offered to email my receipt. Which brings me to my second point--their people. The hip and cool apple image would not be complete without its employees. I am convinced that each and every Apple employee is in fact an Apple fan. My salesperson swore by her MacbookPro, and it showed (it could also be that I was enamored by her considerable personal charm, but I'd like to think I'm a logical person).

I have now three friends who own Macbooks and I have seen them rave more about their Macs than I have heard all my friends on Windows complain about theirs. I am convinced, my next laptop will be a Mac, unless of course Microsoft shapes up and gets rid of the OS known as Vista.

Quote of the Day

Everyone wants a MacBook Pro because they are so bitchin'.

                                                                   --Steve Jobs

Of Principles and Technology

I am a contributor to the ICS alumni blog, my latest post is about computing principles and their timelessness.

On a side note, the vista problems I was having (the random locking up) was it seems, a hardware problem, or should I say a user problem. Turns out, it was locking up because of heat from the processor. The heat of the processor was because the vents were blocked by dust from all the Southern California commuting. I blew air through them to clean it out, and so far the laptop hasn't gotten any hotter than warm, and my OS hasn't crashed yet. So that's my story so far, and I hope I can stick to it. As for all that angst against Vista, most of it is still justified ;-)

UCI Flashback

My friend Chad bugged me to publish a paper I wrote for my Biomorphic computing class from my Masters program at UCI. It was the first class I took that morphed the worlds of arts, computers, and engineering into one subject, and stretched my imagination to levels I had not experienced since my undergrad philosophy course.

While there classes in the Masters program I enjoyed, that one was a singularly amazing experience. It was taught by Bill Tomlinson, formerly of the MIT media lab. The whole class was filled with theory and programming challenges on replicating life-like behavior in software systems. One week we would learn flocking theory and how birds and fish seem to instinctually flock, and the next week we had to implement it in a virtual world. I'll put up the code for that later. It certainly wasn't the best implementation in the class, but from a personal perspective, still a hugely rewarding experience. For now, I'll just link to the a paper I wrote titled Perceptual Narrowing: Enhancing Realism in Autonomous Character Interactions. It is about the very human emotion of panic and chocking and outlines a way to implement it for the Virtual Raft Project.

I must point out that I was novice in the field of experts, so I approached this class a sprinter trying to better his personal best rather than get the gold medal. So Chad, I hope you enjoy reading the paper as much as I loved researching and writing it.

Ok, enough of reminiscing, back to my current pursuit.

 

Quote of the Day

I would like to thank flocks. herds. and schools for existing; nature is the ultimate source of inspiration for computer graphics and animation.

                                                           --Craig W. Reynolds

Update on the Google Reader Flap

Well, it turns out the flap was because of TypePad messing up its feeds. They have since fixed the issue and life is back to its happy self.

Many thanks to Kartik and Dan for offering their insights into this problem.

Quote of the Day:

A refund for defective software might be nice, except it would bankrupt the entire software industry in the first year.

                                                                        -- Andrew Tanenbaum

Help! Google Reader's Got My Feed Messed Up

Like many people, I use Google Reader to check all my feeds, and it does a pretty good job of it. But I got a shock, when I saw feeds tagged as coming from my blog but had nothing to do with me:

 

First I thought someone had broken into my account, but I saw that my web site was good, then I thought someone had hacked into my feed, but I added my feed to my Google homepage, and that too was fine:

 

To have a sanity check, I subscribed to my feed via Outlook 2007, and it too got the correct feed:

 

I cleared the cache of my browser, and yet the same feeds show up. I am at a loss, I'm going to start knocking some virtual doors, and let's see if something turns up.  For those of you who subscribe to my feed, rest assured, those posts are not mine, nor am I endorsing them in anyway.

Quote of the Day:

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

                                                               --Douglas Adams

Playing Catchup

This post has been long overdue. Using the frequency of posts of this blog as a way to indicate the pace of change in my life would be like comparing the growth of molasses to the speed of a Ferrari. Things have been going so fast and in so many directions that I haven't had a chance to really regroup, recollect, and recharge.

 

Regroup: Where am I know?

Well right now, I'm working at a CallFire.com a startup with big dreams and lofty ambitions to take the VoIP market by storm. This cause has consumed all spare time I have. Of course, I am not alone in this endeavor. In fact, I was the last one to join the group. Together the five of us are working our butts off to make something of this opportunity. My many subsequent posts would be about the Startup life and the differences between working for big versus a small company.

 

 

Recollect: Where have I been?

I've traveled the road of farewells and new beginnings, and during that time said goodbyes to old colleagues and welcomed new. All that while hoping I've made more friends than colleagues. The goodbye was the culmination of what has been a long series of goodbyes. I'll be blogging about that as well.

IBM Farewell Pictures, Toyota Farewell Pictures,

ICE Celebration

 

 

Recharge: Where did I rest?

During that time, I had a chance to go to Chicago (for work, but still), and went to Atlanta for one of my best friend's wedding (I was the best man). So, I had some time to get in a little fun.

Ronnie's Wedding Pictures, DMA 07 Pictures.

 

 

 

So there goes: my woefully inadequate roundup of the past three months.

Google's Secret Plan

My friend Kris Ko sent me this link about Bob Cringely's take on Google's secret new plan to provide fast, available access to anything and everything in a bit-stream. This article only elucidates what most of us have known for a while: google has not interested in creating content (like Yahoo or MSN), only in providing access. This is an ambitious agenda, for in the effort to provide access to the collective online knowledge of the world, they are trying to become the de-facto priests of the Oracle of knowledge that is the Internet. One can only think of the future consequences. Think about it, in almost all religions, the priests who control access to the deity are the ones who hold the most power.

One Scenario: Year 2015
Google has created web 2.0, controls access to all information on the web be it text, graphics, video or voice. This has made Google a behemoth of a company worth billions of dollars. As is typical of most large companies, growth becomes a problem, and many of the shareholders believe that Google should start charging for access instead of getting revenue only from advertising. The founders, strongly believing in Google's motto of "Do no evil" refuse to do so because such a method would only be taking advantage of the user's dependence on Google. In a classic replay of Silicon Valley startup metamorphosis, the founders are edged out to bring in a "professional" management team that can focus on growth and numbers, and we have our first Internet monopoly.

This scenario of course, is merely a figment of my imagination. I'd hope, for all our sakes, it doesn't come true. Moreover, it assumes that in 2018 the NP-Complete problem won't be solved by a joint team of PhDs from India and China and who will turn the entire technology industry on its head. Smart Artificial Intelligence (AI) will then have arrived.

Google tells me what I need

Here's a cool trick (thanks to my friend Justin), got to google and search for "{Your First Name} needs", and take the first couple of hits. For example, my search for "TJ needs" came up with the following on the first page itself:

1. TJ Needs TP


2. TJ needs Positive Vibes


3. TJ Needs Your Help


4. TJ needs a family


5. Tj...needs some work


6. TJ needs water well specs


7. TJ needs Winch Plate for Mounting


8. TJ needs not be setup again unless you change


9. TJ needs to be a reasonable daily driver


10. TJ needs more fire under the tires

The funny thing is, that you could probably find some aspect of your life to which the results could apply ;-)

Testing out Web Technology

I'm writing this post via a bluetooth link to my cell phone's GPRS connnection. Its not the fastest, but certainly comes in handy when your Telephones, Internet, and Cable TV is out (heard a big bang and then all three are out). Isn't technology cool? Now I never have to be out of touch. Now for that per KB billing rate!

PS: I'm going to India at the end of the year. Their cell network is more advanced than that of the US, so I guess I'd be able to do mobile blogging!

The Power of the Internet: Listener-Supported Radio

I'm a bit tired of conventional radio stations here in America. Too many are owned by media companies intent on exploiting demographics and too few are really about the music. However, a year or so ago I came across radioparadise.com an Internet-based radio station, with a real DJ putting together the playlist (not some machine-generated random list). The DJ (Bill Goldsmith) is a former radio jockey who just got tired of the commercialism himself and started this website. Over the years its blossomed into this website with a workable model (a la PBS style) where Bill plays what he wants to play (with no ads), and given the Internet's world-wide audience he gets a lot of listeners many of whom make donations to keep the servers churning and the music playing. Perhaps Tom Petty wrote this song about him:

There goes the last DJ,
Playing what he wants to play,
and says what he wants to say,
hey hey hey

A standing testament to the power of the Internet: Have something that's worth selling (in this case he's remarkable DJing skills), and the audience will find its way to you.

Silver Audi

Silver Audi..no! its not the color silver, its the metal silver! Made for a Sheikh in Dubai. We're in the wrong business I tell yah!