Jason Antman’s Blog

So… what’s the deal? Will anyone come out and definitively say what the fate of VoIP is?

From what I’ve read, there are two distinct issues:

1. The ease of developing VoIP applications on Android, given the lack of a SIP stack.
2. T-Mobile’s shunning of VoIP over their 3G network.

Android – obviously, if we want to see VoIP apps on the G1, Android needs to support SIP. And the best way to do this is with real, native OS support. Even if VoIP possibilities are limited to WiFi, still, it would be nice to have SIP support and let my cell double as a WiFi VoIP phone… even if handoffs between APs are still nearly impossible. The next question that begs to be asked is how well such a third-party app can integrate with the phone. Will the user experience of receiving a VoIP call be substantially similar to that of receiving a normal phone call?

T-Mobile 3G – I’ve read, so far, that T-Mobile “does not support” VoIP over their 3G network. What’s this whole “does not support” thing? I’m still a bit confused about how their 3G network works… do they actively block 3G, or just not enable it? If the latter, doe this mean that other “non-standard” things, such as SSHing to a non-standard port, won’t work? Does this mean that there will be other heavy restrictions on what types of data are sent over the network?

What about tunneling SIP/IAX/whatever else over SSH? Will the G1 be capable of handling that at a relatively good speed?

I’ve read that the G1 “can’t” be tethered. WTF? Firstly, what is this “can’t” thing? Couldn’t a developer just write an app that’s essentially a proxy server, that proxies from some sort of USB-based wired connection to 3G?

Unfortunately, as has been written many times already, less than a week from the G1’s release, it seems that the openness touted by Google and T-Mobile is much less than that. With all their claims of openness, I’d expect a phone that will do anything – especially not be locked to one carrier, given Google’s history of opposing that (their bid for 700Mhz) – and a data plan that would allow anything over the air that my home ISP will allow over the wire.

Google: Have you forsaken all of your stated ideals at the prospect of making some cash off of a phone?

Ideas and Rants cell, g1, google, phone, t-mobile, voip

It’s been a long month and a half or so. A bunch of new projects at work (and interviewing for a full-time position) and lots of school stuff, all on top of having my truck stolen, dealing with insurance and the police, and then recovering it, and dealing with insurance again. It’s a long long story, which I posted as a Note on facebook.

PHP EMS Tools is due for a major revision, and hopefully this will include, among other things, the following new features:

1. Support for i18n.
2. Install-time choice of using MySQL or LDAP as a roster and authentication storage system.
3. Some vastly more efficient changes to the database schema, specifically dealing with scheduling.

I’m still working on some other big projects, namely the migration of this blog to WordPress, the migration of JasonAntman.com to some real CMS (Joomla, Drupal, etc.), and migration of my home internet connection from residential FiOS to “business-grade” Optimum Online (cable) – which will probably see a slight decrease in reliability from the amazing levels of FiOS, but will give me five static IPs and no ports blocked.

On the other hand, there’s been a wrench thrown into all of my plans for big projects (not even mentioning the projects that have been cast aside – TuxTruck, tuxOstat which is now down, and a bunch of others. That wrench is the T-Mobile G1, the GooglePhone finally come to fruition. I was psyched about Android when I first heard about it, and the idea of finally having a phone that I can develop for without learning a new language sounds amazing. I’ll admit that at $180 with a 2-year contract, plus $80/month for service (split about 50/50 between the voice plan and the unlimited data plan) it doesn’t make the best financial sense for someone whose car was stolen and now has 2 vehicles – only one of which I can afford – but I’m really excited. I’ve heard some not-so-good things about the quality of the GPS, and some of the apps currently available, but within a few months, I’d assume that the effects of open development will cause it to greatly surpass the functionality of my current Treo 700p, running my beloved Palm OS (which I’ve been dedicated to for the better part of seven years).

While the all-around flexibility of Android and its’ apps is definitely one of the biggest selling points, my own interest is mainly in the ability to quickly develop Java apps that bring my already-existing web-based forms and data to the desktop of my phone. It’s the simplicity that is my biggest interest – even for simple purposes, like converting the web-based fuel log I keep for my car(s) to a dedicated Java-based form on my phone.

Stay tuned…

Projects android, g1, google