General Update and VoIP Panda

Another large gap in my posts.  I had to delete a bunch of spam in my last post, and while I like people to be able to post anonymously, I think I need to switch posting to only be allowed via authenticated Google accounts (like who doesn't have a Google account these days?).

I continue to consult with different carriers and solution providers.  I had dabbled with SMS in the past, but I really think it's the next industry to be revolutionized.  Right now though, SMS is still oddly expensive for consumers and SMBs even though it's quite cheap for the carriers who aggregate enough traffic.

Carriers for wholesale telephony, like VoipPanda.com, are another fun business.  I've done a lot of the carrier side of things for the past few years and VoIP Panda is just one example of that.  They seem to understand correctly how to reduce costs, so it gets harder for me to find easy solutions for them to cut things even more.  But I still try.  Their LCRs right now are just fine for the traffic they're seeing, but one way to cut costs would be to double or triple each of their capacity.  So while I continue to explore multiple avenues, increasing capacity and adding a few missing features will likely be my focus for the next few months.

GrandCentral and HelloHunter VB

Wow, it's been a very long time since I've posted here. I'm doing some consulting at www.hellohunter.com with product development (mostly cost cutting). It's an interesting company that does wholesale voice broadcasting as well as some predictive dialing. Just amazed at how easily customers figure out the system, don't bother anyone for support, and it seems to make a lot of money for the clients. They seem to also be the cheapest around. It's one of the first companies I've worked with that even has international support (http://www.hellohunter.com/dialer_software/).

So I noticed my last post was about GrandCentral. Well, years later Google turned it into Google Voice, so I didn't need to wait super long. I love my Google Voice account still.

GrandCentral

All I want in life is a GrandCentral account :(

The iPhone Wait

Well, I ordered an iPhone from Apple on the release date of June 29th. A little over 2 weeks later I now have one in my hands. They shipped it from China. So I quickly unbox it (the material is all over the floor) and connect it to iTunes. iTunes says "please wait up to 6 minutes for activation". I'm at 67 minutes right now. I'm tempted to use DVD Jon's Activation kit, but I worry that will cause a problem once AT&T gets around to properly activating my phone. Eh, we shall see. 68 minutes now.

Asterisk with CRM Support

I'm a big fan of VoIP technologies and also these AJAX systems. So what I did was use a great open source product called Asterisk (it's a PBX system) to create an AJAX CRM database with a direct tie-in for auto-dialing. I'm testing this with a mortgage company that wants a system to auto-dial prospects and bring up their information upon someone answering. It's been a great few week learning experience but I'm finally close enough to being done that I'm happy with it. If anyone cares about learning about this or looking at my code, write me.

I'm free-eeeee!

Hey guys, I'm out. Give me a call or e-mail me or just message me. I'd love to hear from everyone. WRITE!

New Address!

Hey guys, here's my new address. Send me letters!

Nicholas Blasgen
14699-097
3600 Guard Road
Lompoc, CA 93436

This address will be good until some time in 2007.