Enum
ENUM is a protocol that is the result of work of the Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF’s) Telephone Number Mapping working group. The charter of this working group was to define a Domain Name System (DNS)-based architecture and protocols for mapping a telephone number to a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) which can be used to contact a resource associated with that number. ENUM was developed as a solution to the question of how network elements can find services on the Internet using only a telephone number, and how telephones, which have an input mechanism limited to twelve keys on a keypad, can be used to access Internet services. ENUM at its most basic is the convergence of PSTN and IP networks; it is the mapping of a telephone number from the public switched telephone network to Internet functionalities.
ENUM enables Internet-based users to make a selection from a range of services available for communicating with another person when the caller knows only a telephone number or has access only to a telephone keypad. ENUM allows users to access Internet-based services and resources from Internet-aware telephones, ordinary telephones connected to Internet gateways or proxy services, and other Internet-connected devices where input is limited to numeric digits. ENUM enables users to specify their preferences for receiving incoming communications, and gives greater user control over communications. For example, a user can specify a preference for voice mail messages over live calls during certain times of day, or may indicate a destination for call forwarding.
The potential applications of ENUM are far-reaching; however, the principal applications for ENUM have centered on two areas. One is Voice over IP (VoIP) and the other centers on Voice Protocol for Internet Mail (VPIM). The long-stated goal of the VoIP industry has been to make a phone call over the Internet as easy to make and as high-quality as a regular PSTN phone call. The goal of the VPIM industry has been to develop a comprehensive mechanism by which voice mail systems could exchange messages over IP networks. ENUM enables carrier and enterprise voice mail systems to find each other, interoperate, and exchange messages.
Although VoIP and VPIM are the most widely discussed applications, other application possibilities for ENUM, including but not limited to Internet Fax and Instant Messaging, exist.
ENUM has started user trial registrations. I have already got mine :-).
C.R.U.D.E.
A Charlotte, NC, lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars then insured them against fire among other things. Within a month having smoked his entire stock pile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost ‘in a series of small fires.’
The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason: that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer sued… and won! In delivering the ruling the judge agreed with company that the claim was frivolous. The Judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable fire, and was obligated to pay the claim. Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the rare cigars lost in the ‘fires’.
After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!!! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.
This is a true story and was the 1st place winner in the recent Criminal Lawyers Award Contest.
MyLifeBits Project
MyLifeBits Project is an initiative currently underway at Microsoft’s Media Presence Research Group, and is directed by Gordon Bell, who was instrumental in creating the first commercial minicomputers in the 1960s.
According to Microsoft - MyLifeBits is a lifetime store of everything. When you are dead and gone maybe your descendants will be able to go thorough minute details of your life, your conversations, e-mail exchanges and the pictures and video highlights of your existence. That’s the idea behind MyLifeBits, which aims to record the essence of a person’s life on computer disks. Every photograph snapped, home movie filmed, Web page browsed, e-mail scribbled, phone call made or bill paid would be there in the storage space.
There are two main parts to MyLifeBits: an experiment in lifetime storage, and a software research effort. Both of them seem to be the most challenging. Because, firstly, searching this huge chunk of information would be a very task-intensive procedure. However, future technologies might make this possible. Secondly, documenting such a huge information base is a very tedious affair. Our lives maybe on the digital road but there is no way to organise all the pictures, e-mails and documents that form everything about our existence.
Still the project is being pursued with full enthusiasm. Cheers to Bell and his team.
QuickTopic
Quicktopic is a very useful document review site, which allows others to comment on your work.
Imagine that you have authored a document and you would like your peers to review it. This site gives you an instant private space for gathering comments on any HTML document (Microsoft Word documents too). Your group can comment on each paragraph, directly within the document, and you can also display, sort, and print the comments separately. Comments are all in one central place.
This is true collaboration, much better than mailing documents around and having people make comments in isolation. And it’s private, but still easy to access.
Something really interesting that I picked up from Seth’s Blog. Seth Godin is a Marketing ‘God’ in his own league. He is the author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow and the most popular e-book on innovation, Ideavirus. He is an MBA from Stanford and a very renowned speaker.
“I just finished giving a talk to a group of 400 high-powered (high-leverage, high-paid) credit card execs. As I left the hotel, I passed a much smaller room, where a seminar for local CPAs was going on.
The snacks didn’t seem as good. The booklets weren’t that interesting either. apparently. But what occurred to me is that the folks in the second room were just as smart and just as talented as the execs in the first room.
The first group was enjoying the benefits of aiming high. They didn’t get these jobs because they were arguably smarter or had better connections or had gone to Harvard. No, they were starting with the same raw materials as the group in the second room. The difference, i think, was that a long time ago, the people in the second room had made a decision about what they deserved, or what they were capable of, or what they were going to stick with. And it was a bad decision.
No, not everyone should be a banking executive. But no one who aspires to be a bank executive should sell themselves short because of a decision they made a long time ago. In a world where the past matters a lot less than it ever did before, where it’s easier than it ever was to hit the reset button, it’s sad to see someone choosing to be stuck. So, if you want to, switch.
Hey, the snacks are better.”
Canon Powershot A60
The old kid in fresh hands. Under trial :-).
This site is steaming up the anti-India outsourcing propaganda by selling T-shirts like these.
Their site reads, “Help us to pressure Congress and our state governments to stop doing business with companies that outsource their jobs to offshore companies”.
Further I came across Blame India Watch, a site concerned with the increasing anti-Indian/anti-India sentiment among tech workers, as well as media coverage that focuses disproportionately on Indian workers or propagates anti-India(n) sentiment.
It looks as if the Outsourcing issues are hotting up once again, and this time on the net.
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