Wireless Entertainment

Posted on July 11, 2012 by admin

Cell phones have come to be so much more than just a telephone. In this day and age it is hard to find a cell phone just for the sole purpose of making calls. Mobile phones have cameras, the ability to take videos, send text messages, emails and so much more. Recently in L.A, entertainment executives met to discuss how mobile content will be broadcasted through cellular phones. The debate centers around whether the content should be portrayed in the same way that existing TV shows, games etc. are spun off. The L.A executives posed the question, “Should they recreate the experience of the TV, silver screen or gaming console on a 2-inch-by-2-inch screen, or should they embrace the medium as an entirely new format with unique capabilities and limitations?” There are different views to this question, many with the feeling that it is impossible to deliver the content in the same manner.

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Achieving Effective Inventory

Posted on June 11, 2012 by admin

Attaining a consolidated, accurate inventory is difficult for many communications providers. The challenges include: data housed in multiple systems (e.g., billing, CRM, ordering, provisioning) and manual update processes – both of which lead to “dirty” data. However, achieving cleaner inventory data opens many opportunities to carriers – including enhanced cost auditing, reducing revenue leakage and network optimization. And, as a survey earlier this year from Stratecast Partners reveals, most carriers view inventory management as key to managing operational and capital expenditures, launching new services, and ensuring data integrity. Continue reading →

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Effects of Mergers

Posted on May 15, 2012 by admin

As more and more companies begin to merge and acquire new companies, they are all going through the process of reducing the number of systems, reducing costs, and trying to achieve visibility across multiple, converging product lines. This is beneficial for companies to do so to be able to stay ahead of competition and reduce costs for both themselves and consumers. If companies do not try to merge their systems, according to Billing and OSS World, “the resulting entities can end up with anywhere from 5 or 10 to 50 or 100 disparate customer billing and OSS systems.”

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Pay vs. Short Pay

Posted on April 26, 2012 by admin

Every auditor – whether in a carrier or enterprise organization – uncovers instances where the billed amount is higher than is should be. Then a decision must be made – to pay the full amount paid (“pay”) or to calculate the true amount due, but subtracting any discrepancies, and pay only the amount owed (“short pay”). Continue reading →

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How to Select a Audit Vendor

Posted on April 17, 2012 by admin

As a follow up to our post on the advantages of a one-time audit, we thought we’d offer some tips on how to find a qualified vendor. Here are some of the questions you want to consider during the selection process:

Continue reading →

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VXML hacking

Posted on March 7, 2012 by admin

Today I hacked around on Voxeo’s VXML platform and managed to build a rudimentary local search voice application modeled on their screen scrape. It was surprisingly straightforward and initially used Google’s Web API for search. After finishing, I discovered Yahoo!’s API was much more complete, both in terms of what I wanted to do and in terms of future flexibility. In comparison, Google’s API seems pretty inadequate compared to Yahoo’s. Maybe it’s a function of poor documentation, but it sure didn’t seem that way based on searches of example code. Continue reading →

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Sights and Sounds at WiMAX World

Posted on February 21, 2012 by admin

Thoughts I had after WiMAX World:

Most of the executives know that they want to deploy something to offer wireless broadband. They also know how much it will cost to offer the level of broadband users are asking for. The only problem is that the assumption on cost is predicated on an old-style centralized architecture design. A move in mindset to a more distributed system of wireless peers creating a true mesh solution is not only cheaper in cost, but helps to mitigate the spectrum issues associated with the unlicensed ISM bands that existing infrastructural designs are susceptible to. Continue reading →

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Webtrends Small Business Reviewed

Posted on December 6, 2011 by admin

Project Overview
For one of our larger clients we’ve decided to move their website / database / analytics to a dedicated group of servers. While this project was fairly straight forward on the surface it became a real pain when it came time to setup their analytics software. For this project the poison of choice was Webtrends 7.5b. Working for a marketing driven company I’ve had the chance to use nearly all analytics at one point or another, however this was my first experiencing using the newest version of Webtrends. It didn’t take long before I learned to hate this application, just like its parent programs. There is one word which all computer people have learned to hate. Licensing. Nothing can drive a person insane more then having all the tools to fix something, but not having the “permissions” to use them. The worst part is we’ve spent over $1000 to be back to square one. The problem is how Webtrends handles licensing. Continue reading →

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AWStats

Posted on November 12, 2011 by admin

fter months of evaluating commercial analytics programs we found no better value for our client then AWStats. This is a fantastic open-source application written in Perl. Most of the major players are moving away from bulk hosting analytics. For example web trends now requires you pay licensing per visitor in your reports. Basically the more successful your site, the more money they want from you. Sounds like a scam doesn’t it? Continue reading →

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Making Work Easy

Posted on October 22, 2011 by admin

There are a few applications which have made my life significantly easier. I thought I would take a moment to express a special thank you to the following programs. Continue reading →

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