We need your help with VoipNow Automation
We reached that development stage when we add new payment plugins to VoipNow Automation. Please comment with the name of the payment gateway you want supported. Right now we support Paypal, Cybersource, Authorize.net, Psigate, Payflowpro. Do not forget to include a link to the vendor website.
Thanks!
VoipNow Desktop is Available
Essentially VoipNow Desktop packages in the same installer our VoipNow Browser modules for IE and Firefox (actually some improved versions, right now on version 2) with a modified version of the Open Source Outcall and TAPI driver for Asterisk.
There were several reasons why we decided to take these projects, improve them and bundle them in a package. The most important reason was that end-users needed click to call or call notification functions in Microsoft Windows. While we planed to have these requirements addressed by a new, larger project, we realized that there were a lot of customers with basic needs that needed a solution fast. That’s why we usually recommended one (or both) of the Open Source projects above. While it was pretty easy to make such a recommendation, it was very hard for service providers to support them, because installation was hard, confusing and in certain situations a lot of issues occurred.
That’s why we decided to fork the projects and improve them. We simplified the interconnection with VoipNow, improved overall end-user experience and added missing features. There were also many reliability issues addressed due a formal testing session. Of course, everything is free. You can also redistribute the installer to your customers as long as you do not charge them to use it.
VoipNow Automation Webinar Invitation
Question: Do you want to have a professional presentation website for your VoIP services?
Yes, I am dreaming about this!
Question: Do you want to be able to deploy this website in minutes?
This is not possible! But if I do, a lot of customers will sign-up and I will have to spend my entire day creating accounts!
Solution! You can hire a monkey to create accounts (how difficult could it be…).
Question: How do you charge these customers every month?
Solution! Hmm, you can hire another monkey to search customer accounts and charge them.
Question: But what if you reach 10,000 customers?
Solution! You can hire 50 monkeys!
If you do not want to end surrounded by monkeys, learn more about VoipNow Automation.
You can subscribe to the free presentation webinar, there are only two weeks left.
Don’t harm monkeys. Automation makes it possible.
What will be new in VoipNow 2.0.2?
With VoipNow 2.0.2 we are focused on fixing bugs that were discovered on VoipNow 2 branch and that could not have been solved on VoipNow 2.0.1 due to various reasons (usually due to major impact). We also improved system performance and improved interoperability.
- VoipNow can generate Presence events on its own. The server also supports phone generated presence messages. You can setup on the extension basis what type of presence do you want to use. This fixes issues with Polycom phones that do not send their own status.
- VoipNow can be installed behind NAT and it can also listen on two networks (and bridge messages between them). This also allows Amazon EC2 deployments.
- Number portability engine integrated in Billing. Yes, we support portability using plugins, which means that we support any portability engine!
- There are phones that do not subscribe to MWI. You can enable on each extension a feature that will send MWI messages ignoring the extension subscribe status.
- Groups can be defined with Dahdi channels. For example, if you have a 60 E1 channels on your server, you do not have to define 60 channels, you can define only one.
- Improved system performance. The system can answer to more calls per second.
- It is possible to provision based on device MAC only. The user can choose between the default (more secure) and the MAC based provisioning mode on each extension. Linksys PAP2 provisioning was added to supported devices list.
- Many T.38 bug fixes. Discovered T.38 scenarios not considered in VoipNow 2.0.1 were added.
- Postfix server added to monitoring
- Better integration with third party software, improved SOAP methods for integration with Billing platforms.
As you can see there are quite a lot of changes that will allow you to enjoy a better VoipNow.
When exactly will be VoipNow 2.0.2 released?
Short answer: We don’t know. As a first reaction a customer might say “How stupid can you be to don’t know when are you going to release a product update?“.
Long answer: the fact that we do not know is actually positive. In software it is more or less impossible to perfectly predict when something is going to be production stable. There are only two types of estimations :
- your prediction is conservative and you complete before the scheduled date. As most product managers believe that it’s right to stick to announced dates, they release on the scheduled day. It is quite uncommon to deal with too conservative predictions, in most cases it happens the other way.
- your prediction is too aggressive. As you get closer to the release date, you realize that it will be impossible to stick with it. But customers stress sales, sales stress product management and in the end stress goes on production guys - developers, qa, etc. They start to make mistakes, or even worse they agree on little compromises that speed-up the release.
Myth: There might be companies that say “We have never missed a release date.”. The truth is that these companies have never missed a release date because all estimations were conservative. Most likely they could have released the product several days or even weeks before (depending on the development cycle).
We dealt with both conservative and aggressive estimations, and each one of them was bad. Of course, the first case is preferred over the second, but if you want to send a conservative estimation you will end disappointing people and even more dangerous - you can make pm, developers, QA lose focus. That’s why we decided not to give any estimation regarding the release of VoipNow 2.0.2, we can only say that it’s going to be released somewhere in the next 30 days.
The release criteria is that VoipNow 2.0.2 will be made public immediately after all important bugs are fixed and after the product passes all the release tests.
What I can do later today is to present you all important changes in VoipNow 2.0.2. Thanks for patience.
Thank YOU for Helping us!
This message is for all VoipNow 2 beta testers and generally for anyone that had an input regarding VoipNow 2. In the VoipNow 2 beta session we got over 2,000 subscribers. According to our records, more than 45% installed the product, which is quite good. Based on their feedback we discovered two critical bugs - thank you! In the past two months many people saw VoipNow 2 and they really liked the product. Actually, the fact that we didn’t receive much criticism is quite disturbing, so please go ahead, tell us also about the bad things. We are listening.
VoipNow 2 GA will be released very soon - you will also see an update on the VoipNow area on our website. It was a long way to go, as VoipNow 2 is a huge improvement over the old VoipNow 1.x. This product also involved a huge amount of work. Translated into man-hour, VoipNow 2 means around 30,000 hours of work. For our company this is the largest and most comprehensive project to date and I am sure that more feedback on how we completed the project will be available in the next weeks. We have already started to work on VoipNow 2.0.2 and we have many things scheduled for VoipNow 2.2. So future VoipNow 2 versions will be released in the next weeks.
Once again - thank you! Also accept our apologies because we were not able to stick to the scheduled release dates. Maybe that by software industry standards we haven’t missed them much, but for us this is a very important signal that we have to better address the unexpected. 
Thank you,
Bogdan Carstoiu - CEO, Rack-Soft
Google Sucks?
I don’t think so. Only that the last Google employees I discussed with in the past four months had the same answer to a pretty common question “Do you enjoy working for Google?”. Maybe Google has a policy - “Don’t tell anyone about your work!”, but such a policy does not explain the answer “Yes, it’s very nice, there are a lot of benefits”. When I asked about benefits, not even one mention thing was related to the work. I expected at least one answer like: “I like what I do” or “I like working with smart people” or “I want to get involved in something that will charge the world”. Nope, only medical insurance, on-site meals, kindergarten, bonuses … If these guys were teached to say nothing about their work, I don’t think it’s a smart corporate move. If they don’t fell like it worth to mention the work they do there, than a bigger issue. In any case, it’s Google’s problem. What do you think?
Yes, we have a contest!
Do you want to go to WebhostingDay 2009? You will like this event because there you can really “touch” the industry:
- you will find new business opportunities
- you will meet your competition
- you will meet your vendors
- you will make new friends
- you will have a lot of fun
We have a contest where you can win an invitation to WHD 2009 and a VoipNow 2 license. You will just have to answer to five short questions. On 26 February the computer will randomly select (as randomly possible using software :)) three three lucky winners between participants that score best. Questions are really easy, you can answer them without any issue. Good luck!
We will sponsor WebhostingDay 2009, so you will be able to find us there. We will also have a hosting.SESSION presentation we promise to be interesting, don’t forget to attend it!
VoipNow 2 Beta Feedback
Several days ago we released VoipNow 2 Beta. You can register and download beta here. The received feedback, judged on the number of received bugs is good. We gathered only four bugs till now from beta testers (we got no critical bug). VoipNow 2 changes some of the perceptions about Unified Communications systems.
In the past three-four months I gathered interesting feedback from people regarding Unified Communications. Let me share some with you:
- Unified Communications are hard to implement. Not really with VoipNow 2. You can have everything running in less than 20 minutes.
- When a system has too many components, their features are poor. I have to agree on this. I know many such examples: poor PBX features, poor email features, poor messaging, etc. When asking developers why is this the answer is usually “Small businesses need only basic features”. The truth is that Small Businesses need very powerful features, because Small Businesses rely on multi-role people. These people must have top tools in order to compete with larger companies. From the developing point of view the truth is that you can not easily build top features for five different components. Take a look at Microsoft, a company with plenty of resources - although Microsoft Exchange is a reference product, Communications Server does not deserve any attention. We want to deal only with voice, video, messaging and faxing and to integrate with top email servers using the Opened API.
- There is no real demand for Unified Communications. This is a funny one, but the truth is that many do not understand Unified Communications if they haven’t ever used such functions. Once they use it, they see their productivity and user experience boosting and obviously this changes in “I can not work without Unified Communications”.
I bet on Unified Communications. Anyone wants to bet against?
On the way to Vegas
After three days in New York (business and visiting old friends), I am on the way to Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas.I will join my colleague who have already arrived there. I am pretty sure that will be an interesting gathering. The main news we have for the summit is the VoipNow 2 Beta. We will have a demo server so you can see more and we will be able to conduct some demonstrations. People who subscribed to the Beta Program will be able to download and play with the software.
We expect feedback from you. There are important changes compared to VoipNow 1.6.5 (most architectural related), therefore it is increasingly important to get your feedback.
See you in Vegas!
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