Office Habits

The way that people work is changing and it is mostly due to the fact that workers are embracing the available mobility. More tools such as business applications are becoming more popular and more used. In order to keep up with the changes, software development and web development have to be able to keep up. We are all toting around laptops, tablets and smartphones to make every place a workplace. And so office software is changing. These days, what is important is collaboration, small screens, fast turnarounds, social media and, most of all, mobility. In a mobile world, where everyone is in nearly constant contact, speed and ease of use are more important than lots of font choices. An important part of mobile design is fewer choices: keyboard commands are often favored over icons to preserve screen real estate for the text. Have you changed the way that your office functions?

Illegal Internet Phone

So you know that lovely conversation that you just had with you best friend over Skype a couple minutes ago? Well, if you were in Ethiopia, the internet phone call would probably have cost you a very uncomfortable 15 years in prison. You read that right, 15 years in jail. Earlier this year, Ethiopia criminalized the use of VoIP for commercial use. Lawmakers are suggesting a penalty of up to 15 years of jail time for violators. Unfortunately, Ethiopia isn’t the only country that’s cracking down on internet call services. Kuwait, Oman, Belize and the UAE have all, at one time or another, banned VoIP. The officials in those countries say that it is about national security but that statement is as transparent as it gets. They are really protecting the phone companies which bring in a large percentage on the countries revenue. I guess the question is if it is right to make laws restricting VoIP calls. What happened to "the internet for everyone everywhere"?

VoIP Info

Poised as the next model of telephony, VoIP actually had its beginnings almost a century ago. In 1928 Bell Labs unveiled a technology they called the vocoder. It analyzed speech, transforming it into electronically transmitted information, and recreated it at the other end of the transmission. In principle very similar to today’s VoIP, where signals are converted into packets, sent across a network, and reassembled when they reach their destination. Data from IDC indicates that more than 1.7 billion mobile phones were shipped globally in 2012. Business was a big driver of those sales, and now more companies are looking for ways to save money and gain features by switching their mobile workforce to VoIP phone systems. VoIP can enable services on almost any mobile device, and in these days of BYOD, the workforce wants to connect on their favorite platform. The ability to choose a platform is a big plus for businesses because every employee has different preferences and needs to be able to seamlessly integrate the devices.