Ann Arbor Blocks My Parking App

Ann Arbor DDA, you massively fail. If you were a ship, you’d be the titanic…

Can you believe in today’s world that a government agency would conspire and discuss the control of public information? What if that information was a top secret as… parking space availability?

I’ve posted an article on VoIP Tech Chat detailing the Ann Arbor DDA doing just that. My response to them is at the end… Please enjoy.

Read the article on VoIP Tech Chat

Geeky Item of the Day – Free CNAM

Ok, if you use Asterisk (or a Do It Yourself type VoIP service), you sometimes do not receive the CNAM (think Caller ID with Name data) from your carrier. Well, since geeks like information and anything “free,” there’s a simple way to use the internet to do a reverse number lookup query. So, if you’re a technical type, keep reading… otherwise, non-geek posts will return very soon.

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Geeky Item of the Day

Yeni Weather Script

Yeni Weather Script

I have a new phone on my desk (or as Yeni calls it, the mesk). Why mesk? Combines messy and desk… but I digress (as usual).

As I was saying, I recently purchased a Polycom Soundpoint IP 450 phone. The phone is great — small foot print, clean, great speakerphone, and enables HD Voice. HD Voice is going to change the way we think of how phone calls sound. I admit, I was reluctant at first, but then I got to know Michael Graves; and after listening to him praise the benefits of HD Voice for many, many months, I decided it was time to embrace the technology.

Let me say this — HD Voice is amazing. I won’t say too much more, because I’m planning to write about it big time on VoIP Tech Chat and Team Forrest; but bottom line: HD Voice = amazing.

So the other nice thing about the phone? It has a little micro-mini browser. Which means what you ask? It means that know whenever Yeni asks me the weather… I can answer. A nice little Perl script checks the local Ann Arbor weather and gives me the temp (in F and C), current condition, and quick day’s forecast. The phone reads the website every 5 minutes and constantly displays the results. It’s nice. :)