Posted 11:08 p.m. by Jim Courtney

As mentioned elsewhere (see the Comments here), my neighbour's son, Brad Boyes, made the Boston Bruins this year as a rookie center. Well, he was supposed to be the fourth line center.... but as the season evolved and the injuries to Bruins players built up, Brad has ended up as a right wing on what is currently their number one line. So when the Bruins came to Ottawa last night, where my son and daughter are both registered at the University of Ottawa and home of my wife's brother, it was an opportunity for a family outing to watch our neighbour of the past 19 years.

Now I have been to many NHL rinks and it is most interesting to see what is concocted for the opening ceremony. Disney used to do an interesting job at The Pond, home of the Mighty Ducks, where the mascot arrives sliding down from the roof on a wire. Well, Ottawa seems to have a fetish about the colour red (even though sometimes they wear black and their "Away" colour is white). That opening worship of the colour Red pulsating at 430 billions times a second only served to pulsate the physicist in my background! Argh!!

I was not only looking forward to seeing Brad play but also some of Ottawa's star players such as Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza, both of whom had played with Brad on National Junior teams in the World Junior Championships. My biggest disappointment was finding out that Dominik "The Dominator" Hasek would not be playing goal. Instead they played their backup Ray Emery; last time I saw Brad play against Ray Emery (Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds @ Erie Otters , March 17, 2002), Brad's team had won. This served as an omen for what was to come.


First period. Fan in (red) Senators sweater behind me keeps shouting "Com'on boys, com'on boys". So Brad Boyes pops a pass to Patrice Bergeron who promptly puts it behind a bewildered Ray Emery. This fan keeps on shouting "Com'on boys, com'on boys". So this time Brad (#26) takes a pass from Marco Sturm and lobs it into the net. The Courtneys go crazy but the other 19,545 in the crowd of 19,551 go totally silent. Call Brad's Dad back in Mississauga between periods since no Senators fan will talk to me!



Second period. Four minutes after Nick Boynton scores a short handed goal to make it 3-0, Brad takes a shot that is rebounded to Sturm who promptly pops it in to make it 4-0. Then Sergei Samsonov closes out the scoring later in the period.

Third period: Senators outshoot Bruins 16-1 but nine-game goalie Tim Thomas (6-1-2) stops them all; in the end the Senators outshot them 44-24 over the game but whereas Emery only stopped 19, Thomas earned first star of the game with his 44-shot shutout. Brad gets second star for his best output of the season (1 goal, 2 assists taking him to 14 goals, 22 assists for his rookie season). Bottom line: the Bruins are fighting to get into a playoff position; the Senators were just plain flat. Omen fulfilled.

During the third period, Senators Marketing, promoters of the colour "Red", performed the sports marketing gaff of the season. After Ray Emery had given up five goals with little support from his teammates, they put up on the centre ice scoreboard a video of Ray thanking the fans for attending the game. However, we never heard what Ray had to say as his comments were drowned out in a vociferous chorus of boos.

After the game we met a smiling Brad Boyes who was the happiest person in the arena to have led his team to defeat of his former favorite NHL team (I believe his boyhood Senators jacket is gathering dust in a closet at home). And one of my other son's high school classmates showed up as well: Shaun Majunder of CBC's "This Hour has 22 Minutes". For those in Canada (or with access to CBC via their SlingBox), you can watch Shaun's interviews (as reporter Raj Binder) recorded at this game on this Friday evening's show (8:30 p.m.).

Clarkson High School reunion: Shaun Majunder, Joanna Courtney, Brad Boyes

And I get home to find an email from Alec (who occassionally blogs about the Senators): "....hope you enjoyed the hockey game tonight. Thank goodness I had email to do... YEEESH!"

By the way, at 14 goals and 22 assists Brad is now third in team scoring. Not bad for someone who was supposed to be a fourth line center.

Posted 10:37 p.m. by Jim Courtney

I had the occasion to visit with Alec and Howard at Iotum yesterday morning. In California you will find that many cars in employee parking lots have windshield covers placed immediately behind the windshield to keep out the sun's penetrating rays. In the Ottawa winter, especially during a freezing rain storm, you don't want ice to build up on your wipers, so notice how Alec (and just about everyone else in the parking lot) set up their wiper blades .....



On entering their office you are greeted not only by a highly enthusiastic and passionate team but also with reminders of what Iotum is about:



You can read about Alec's new Blackberry 8700r here and here. Alec gave me a full scale demo well beyond what he reported here. (I definitely want one.) But then Howard showed me his Black... uh ... Redberry; the only one in the world!



You wanted a closer look....



Of course they cannot talk about their product until after DEMO next week. Suffice it to say they were quite busy getting ready.

And you can read here about the reason for my trip to Ottawa along with the content of Alec's midnight email to me.

Posted 10:48 p.m. by Jim Courtney

Ever wonder how Ctrl-Alt-Del became the default for reboots. Check this out. I love the looks on Bill's face when he says "Bill made it famous". (Needs QuickTime player)

Posted 9:12 a.m. by Jim Courtney

Over the past month I have had need to look for a voice setup that:

is simple to use by non-technical personnel in a (small) office environment

allows the user to access both conventional PSTN phone connections as well as a VoIP connection

can instantly launch a VoIP or PSTN call from Outlook Contacts or a contact information in a web page in a web browser (IE, Firefox, etc.)

provides presence status, in either Outlook Contacts and/or Internet Explorer

allows the user to also listen to their traditional audio via Windows Media Player, Real Audio, MusicMatch, iTunes, etc.

does an automatic selection of audio devices associated with, say, the VoIP service and turns off the traditional audio when a call comes in

allows the user to select which headset/phone handset to use for voice calls along with traditional (Windows) audio functions

allows the user to have (remote) wireless audio connection to the source of the VoIP or phone service (whether a PC or dedicated handset).

OK, so this is a dream configuration but came closer to reality with all the announcements at CES last week. In the course of this search I have acquired and been evaluating a Linksys CIT200 Skype phone and a PhoneGnome setup.

The Linksys CIT200 Skype Phone brought home a fundamental problem with Windows that was first mentioned by Martin Geddes in a recent Telepocalypse post:

“I bought a Plantronics DSP-400 USB headset a while back. It came ‘Skype certified’ together with a small SkypeOut credit. I’m still happy with it. But it’s also very annoying to use. Because I like to listen to music from my laptop with real, quality headphones. Sometimes I unplug the headset when I move my laptop about, or want to use it on another PC, and Windows takes note and resets my audio devices to point to the built-in stuff. No matter how often I set my preferences in Skype to “Plantronics headset”, it keeps being turned back to Windows default each time I unplug. This is, needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), not a good experience.”

My Linksys Skype Phone also came with small SkypeOut credit (which readily got added to my already implemented SkypeOut credits). However, the Windows audio setup is something else. When you install the software for the Skype Phone, it automatically changes both your Skype "Sound Devices" Options and your default Windows audio device to “CIT200” (from my normal SigmaTel Audio that drives my onboard or headset speakers/microphone. In this mode, none of the traditional audio will work (at least provide audio to my headset/laptop speakers). If I change the Windows default back to SigmaTel Audio, the Skype Phone sees the Skype Contacts; but the audio does not work. After trying various Windows Audio configurations I found:

The only way the Skype Phone sees the directory is if the Sound Devices in Skype Options is set to “CIT 200”,

The only way to get Skype Phone audio connections is to set the Windows Audio default to “CIT200”.

The only way to listen to Windows Media Player or other traditional audio players is to set Windows Audio default to SigmaTel.

Of course I also have several different physical devices for making the audio connection:

A PC headset to plug into my laptop for normal Windows Audio services

A Bluetooth headset that could work with Skype using the vitaero Skype Bluetooth headset driver (mono only with my Motorola HS820)

A Linksys CIT 200 phoneset (with a phone headset jack) for Skype use away from my PC (it does come with a wireless USB adapter)

A traditional phone handset (Nortel two-line that is about 12 years old)

Lots of audio hardware on my desk (but no DSP-400)!

I would like to see a Windows client that:

Automatically switches the Windows Audio amongst the various applications using Windows Audio as appropriate when the application comes up. (Would need rules to be setup but there can be a default set of rules.)

Automatically switches the connection to the appropriate headset that I happen to be using (in conjunction with the hardware box I am about to suggest)

And a piece of (USB-connected) hardware that can have the various headsets as inputs (microphone) and outputs (speakers or earpieces), software selectable from the Windows client above.

And, of course, to meet all my requirements, Skype for Outlook Toolbar and Skype for Internet Explorer Toolbar with appropriate API’s.

Will anyone take up the challenge? Skype (via their certification program requirements)? Linksys? Plantronics? PhoneGnome? D-Link? Creative? Any of those new (Skype hardware) vendors showing at CES? Or even Microsoft (maybe an opportunity for hardware along the lines of how the Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard products have become a market staple.)?

And, Microsoft, will you be able to address what amounts to a fundamental flaw in Windows Audio with respect to having a much more user friendly way to switch amongst audio devices than “Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices, select the Audio Tab and use the drop down boxes?” Not only for Windows Vista but also backwards compatible to Windows XP and 2000?