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How Three Massive Companies Fail To Get VoIP Right

By on Jan 1, 2018 in Blog Posts, Internet, Software | 0 comments

For years I’ve been using Skype for my business telephone system. Although it’s never been perfect – the admin interface is atrocious and reliability is a problem – Skype is simple, cheap, and has all of the features I need. Well, it did have everything, until they inexplicably decided to axe custom voicemail greetings. Without the ability to have professional voicemail greetings for when customers can’t reach someone, Skype can’t really be considered a proper solution for businesses. I did a bit of research and asked around for better solutions. My needs are simple: I’m looking for a good softphone, an easy to use admin interface, the ability to import my contacts from Skype, and I need to be able to port my phone number. I came up with three companies that seemed to meet my requirements: Vonage, Jive, and 8×8. Although they all advertise...

How to Export ALL of Your Skype Contacts

By on Nov 5, 2017 in Software | 0 comments

It’s been a while since I made the move to Skype for handling all of my business calls. There have always been problems with Skype for business use, including confusing billing and an abysmal management interface, but the removal of custom voicemail greetings was the last straw. Tomorrow my number is being ported to Vonage. The most important thing to migrate over from Skype is my contacts. I’ve got years of phone numbers saved that I don’t want to have to re-enter. One would think this would be an easy process. After all, Skype does include the ability to backup contacts to a file, but this ended up exporting less than half of my contacts. When people call my phone number, which is setup through Skype, I see their number in caller ID. Then I rename it to their personal or company name for future use. Apparently, Skype doesn’t consider these to be...

Windows 8 Requires Windows Firewall to be enabled to install apps?!

By on Nov 13, 2012 in Blog Posts, Software | 1 comment

One of the first things I do to any new Windows desktop PC is disable the Windows Defender and Windows Firewall services completely. I use a real AV solution so I don’t need Defender, and I have a high quality hardware firewall in place so I don’t need no bobo Windows Firewall.Well, much to my surprise Windows 8 gives you a little extra encouragement to leave the native firewall enabled; you can’t install certain apps from the Windows Store unless it is.Today I was trying to install the Slacker Radio app and got error code 0x80073d0a “App couldn’t be installed…” That’s just great, I thought. So I went a Googling and found this. I re-enabled the Windows Firewall and the installation went through normally.I guess I’m just going to have to leave the damned thing enabled, even though it irks me. Furthermore, the Windows 8...