Most things work, and have the right time. That is unless you have a 797x color phone. You know one of the ‘good’ phones, the expensive ones.

If you have one of these, check the time. Is it right?

It probably is because when you did your update you rebooted all of the phones right?

Now reach around back and unplug it (if you are using this powered over Ethernet simply unplug the cable, if you have a power brick, just unplug that).

Let the phone boot up.

What time does your phone say now? Yeah, that’s what I thought, it’s back to the wrong time.

Now simply reset your phone, ‘hit settings, **#**’ and viola!, you’re back to the right time.

So what’s the difference from a ‘powered-off boot’ and a reset/reboot? And why does that screw up the time? Who knows, but it’s stuff like this that drive us absolutely crazy.

So it’s well known that Cisco through Linksys/InfoGear has had the trademark for “iPhone”.

Everyone was amazed when Master Jobs declared “and we’re calling it iPhone”.

It wouldn’t surprise me that Steve is this “Pompous” to move forward without a deal.

Now maybe, just maybe they _do_ have this worked out. Any press is good press no? Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this is just being played out the long way just for press coverage.

http://cciev.wordpress.com/

Technorati Tags: VOIP, IT, Cisco, Cisco_Unified_Call_Center, CCIE, Notes

Right now we’re in the midst of dealing with software bugs in IPCCX (oh sorry, Cisco Unified Call Center Express) Which the TAC expects us to UNINSTALL and REINSTALL in the middle of the day, taking my queues off-line and leaving my inbound customers just hanging the wind.

Oh, we can run the complex script we’re working on but we can’t “Debug it” because it crashes. The TAC and Development Engineers have alluded to seeing this before but the only fix apparently is to reinstall. They aren’t *sure* that will fix our problem but what the hell. We’ve already wasted an entire day, what are a few more hours? Why they wouldn’t want to take a look at what’s actually going on and try to correct it I’ll never understand.

This wouldn’t bother me so much if the box we were developing on was a backup to the production box (i.e. the HOT stand by box), but it’s does because NO such functionality exists. Ok there is warm standby now, but that’s not the same, and it didn’t exist until 4.x which we _just_ upgraded to. Callers in queue would still be lost. But at least our agents wouldn’t be down for the hour and a half while we reinstall just to get the script development environment working again, if that in fact solves our problem.

Can you tell we’re just a tad frustrated?

John Chambers and the Magical “Baseball and Technolgy” Demo.

Uhm, John, put the crack pipe down please.

First you talk about all these wonderful technologies. These vaporware things running across the ‘Network’, which is now the ‘platform’, and on the 2nd day; we Networker attendees couldn’t check our schedules or reliably log into the provided wireless network. That’s a big oops.

The entire Networkers scheduling infrastructure was down in the Hilton end of the conference before and after the keynote. *Most* of them were down in the Conference center as well too. Now granted this was an impressive thing to pull off, but this is “The here and now”, and that’s what the 10,000 attendees are hear to deal with, and Cisco and the partners failed to deliver that at the conference.

Mr. Chambers started off strong, explaining how Cisco was right in 1996 when nobody else was. So basically we need to listen to them now. Setting the stage so that when the demo commenced and we watched all the nonsense, we could reflect back and say, “Well, they were right 10 years ago, so they must be right now”. But now isn’t 10 years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot right in what Cisco is doing. Being hell bent on video though, just drives me crazy. I’m happy for you Mr. Chambers that you find video conferencing a great productivity enhancement. That for you it’s a wonderful tool. But most of the world doesn’t want it, and/or isn’t ready for that just yet. A lot of people just don’t want to be seen. Especially when dealing with strangers. But that’s another point and I don’t want to get off topic.

This crazy demo…

Let me set the stage first. In order to bring into focus something we can all relate too, Cisco chose baseball.

It starts out with a guy (baseball is a guy thing), who’s on his way to a game, but he’s late of course… But since all devices are now part of the ‘platform’, and assuming since he already has tickets to the game, and magically MLB knows this, he can start getting the streaming video of the game directly to his magical Jack Bauer CTU issued PDA. (but these are mainstream now so don’t worry, everyone has one.)

While watching this video of course, he doesn’t run off the road, or crash, or anything else because it’s perfectly safe to drive and watch TV. On the way he picks up his buddy and they head to a restaurant. (They are running late but what they hey, it’s a demo). While in the restaurant, they just happen to have a table in front of this HUGE High definition TV screen. On the table is a Cisco phone or device of some sort. He logs in and decides to have the screen emulate that he’s in a Sky-box. Magically he’s getting a High-definition feed of the game he’s supposed to be attending but isn’t there yet.

Pretty cool eh? No. The cost of this would make that $50 steak cost $250. I don’t want that. Of course, that screen will have advertising all over it too. User specific, personalized advertising, because as we learned yesterday that TIVO is evil. Yet Cisco has its own TIVO device(Another pos coming later).

After they eat, assuming there’s still some time left in the game, they make it to the stadium, whereby his $99, everyone has one PDA, with built in RFID changes LCD displays as he walks through out the ballpark changing advertising that’s targeted to him.

He decides he wants to upgrade his seats and meanders to a kiosk who, through the power of RFID, and WiFi, knows who he is and where he’s supposed to be sitting and just how many tickets he has. It magically offers him some alternatives, as well as the opportunity to buy some fan paraphernalia. Joe end user upgrades his tickets and used his credit card information already on file with the vendor, in this case MLB or the team at hand. The tickets are automatically updated to his PDA/Cell phone. (remember he’s still watching the game on this device if he wants to be). I assume it has its own nuclear power plant that comes with it.

When they get to their seats, there is someone waiting with food and popcorn, etc, because they ordered that on their way to the seats. (OK).

But in front of them because of course they upgraded to high end seats is a Micro Laptop or nice handheld (an upgrade from the standard PDA) that lets them score the game, and get replays on demand, etc, etc.

Better than that, they can surf the web, watch movies, email the replays (with the consent of MLB I assume), shop on-line or do what ever. Basically the ballpark becomes an super-sized internet-café with a baseball optimized front end for those actually interested in the game.

Nice, until someone spills a beer on it, drops it, breaks it, etc. etc.

This is the future no doubt. Chambers is right. We’ve all seen Star Wars, Blade Runner and every other Sci-Fi movie out there. We will get there. But It’s not happing during my IT career.

First, generally speaking I can count on both hands the number of people at a ballpark who give a crap these days about keeping score. Those that do keep score, don’t want to do it on anything electronic.

Second, you have to consider the consumer these days. The generation that will use this type of technology and will easily accept it, hasn’t been born yet.

The current consumers, the baby boomers, the ones out there in droves are my parents, and my parents parents don’t want this stuff. They are just now embracing cell phones, and they don’t use any of the stuff that’s on them other than basic call functionality.

They can barely use their digital cameras, and attaching photos to an email is a major ordeal.

The worst part about all of this is the software, the end user software is where Cisco sucks the most. They are great at building robust, back end solutions. Things you can burn into hardware, but when it comes to end user experience, they simply don’t have a clue. Just look at any of the administration software for any of the devices. It’s getting better sure. But give me a break John.

There are so many holes in your demo, that I’m embarrassed for you. We looked and talked about this stuff in the 90’s with Apple technology and the Newton. None of what you’re proposing or talking about today wasn’t talked about then. Certainly Cisco networks can enable it in the future and that’s great. But we all work in the here and now.

Video has its place there is no doubt about that. But it’s not necessary to be shoved everywhere. Voice/audio is adequate in most situations. One thing we consumers hate is being pushed into things we don’t need or want.

Cisco is clearly beating the Video drum, loud and clear. But I think you’re way ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to portable devices.

As for Cisco direction? How about cleaning up the messes in the current products like the voice products before we go and hang a bunch of other less than ideal systems off of it?

Tags: 2006, Cisco, Cisco_Networkers, Demo, Demo_Ware, IT, John_Chambers, Opinion, Startups, Vaporware

This weekend CmdrChalupa and I took home remote office routers and phones to test remote the remote site setups that we’re adding to our current infrastructure. I haven’t chatted with him yet but mine is working well. I have the the 2800 series router with Call Manager Express. He took home the soho Cisco 871 with wireless.
We’ll be shipping my configuration to a small office over seas. They’ll be connected back to us over the Internet through a VPN tunnel.
This tunnel will connect into our new Cisco 2801 VPN box. Both providing Voice QOS back to the Call manager.

The remote site will be survivable and has room to connect up-to 8 analog lines. This new (split)VPN tunnel will allow them to access services on our network they haven’t been able to run easily in the past like our CRM client as well as have their phones connected real time. A Visio is shown below.

The current office will support 2 people to start with hopes to expand as growth allows. Again ‘best effort over the Internet’ has so far worked well for us. The have been using the ‘Soft Phone’ or IP communicator on their laptops. The problem however is if they don’t have it fired up, you get a fast busy when you dial them and they aren’t there. Now having real phones in place should at least alleviated that problem and they’ll more easily be able to use voice mail.

We’ll report back after implementation.

New features added in the last few weeks:
-Logging in via Active Directory
-Admin page for customizing settings (but only if you are a Domain Admin)
-User editable fields for domain admins and self-administration.

Coming soon:
Cisco phone quicksearch via numpad initials (might need some explaining, but should be fast)
Printable option for web portal

More on the page.

Yeah I can see myself doing that.

Who wants to see all those ‘other’ Active Directory accounts when searching for an extension?

Want search by department? No problem!

You should have control of what information is displayed and how you want to search for it.

Directory Express is the answer. Fully Active Directory, and/or any LDAP server integrated.

You decide what to publish, or allow to be published to Cisco phones.

Details to follow.

a product.