Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast

Our Blue Box Frappr map has grown to 315 member!

We've pretty much ignored our Frappr map for probably most of the last year after Frappr went from AJAX-based Google maps to Flash-based Yahoo!Maps that took forever to load (and didn't show the world outside of North America). Today I randomly happened to look at it and found that Frappr's back to using Google Maps and that our map had grown to over 315 members! Very cool to see! If you haven't joined the map but are open to doing so, you can go to the map or click on the embedded map here:

NOTE: One of our listeners commented in the Blue Box Skype group chat that you do need to be careful about how you are signing into Frappr as it sometimes will add you with your email address versus your Frappr ID.

Technorati Tags: bluebox, frappr, blue box

Blue Box podcast #70 successfully recorded... on *conference WiFi*!

I'm delighted to report that Jonathan and I successfully recorded Blue Box #70 this morning. It was a bit surreal, actually. There I was at the Javits Center in a vacant room on conference WiFi and Jonathan's audio quality was outstanding! In fact, when I listened to the recording afterward his audio sounded far better than my audio that was recorded off of my local USB headset! Of course, in contrast to the stats I showed yesterday, here's how our call looked today:

0.0% packet loss on receiving Jonathan's signal! Very cool! And a 94ms round trip sure beats a 200-300ms round trip, eh?

To get this good quality on a conference WiFi really speaks to the efforts of the Interop NOC team to deliver this kind of network. Kudos to them!

For those curious, I recorded the show locally on my MacBook Pro using WireTap Studio from Ambrosia Software. Given that our recording levels were quite different, I'm probably going to need to run the recording through the Levelator in order to bring the levels in line.

It should be posted probably some time early tomorrow. I'm at Interop all day today and so the post-production will probably be done during my time out at JFK and flying home later today.

Technorati Tags: bluebox

Blue Box Comment Line number changed - now +1-206-350-7280

Unfortunately, the comment line for the podcast has had to be changed. The new number is:

+1-206-350-7280

We use a free service from K7.net and unfortunately if no one calls the service for 30 days, they terminate your user account. You have no way to get back the phone number that you previously had (which, okay, it's a free service, so I can't complain!) and you have to register a new one. I keep using it primarily because it's simple... people call and leave a voicemail - and a WAV file shows up in our inbox. Simple. Easy.

But it does have this 30-day rule. Given that we've had a stretch between shows, there haven't been people calling in. Usually I call it once a month just to make sure that we keep the number... but I've been a bit distracted lately and forgot to do so. So we lost the number, which is too bad because the old one spelled out "blue" with the last 4 digits.

Somewhere in here I'm going to set up a local Asterisk server with an inbound phone number and at that point I'll move the comment line over to it and stop using K7.net. However, until that time, we've just got to make sure that someone leaves an audio comment at least once a month!

(Disappointing that this happened just as I announced the call-in contest for the book for our anniversary show...)

Brief Break in Blue Box Schedule

Blue Box listeners - I'm on vacation this coming week and Jonathan has been travelling, so we're taking a brief break. We'll be back the week of June 25th with a regular show. We've also got some great Special Editions in the queue:

• Martin Davies has put together a great interview show about Session Border Controllers (SBCs). I think you'll definitely enjoy this one!
  
• New contributor Frank Leonhardt has an interview with some of the folks involved with Facetime about their new firewall that includes Skype management.
  
• Martyn Davies also received permission to run the audio of the panel on VoIP security that he moderated at VON Europe last week in Stockholm.

I think you should enjoy them all and I'm looking forward to making them available once I'm back from vacation.

Talk to you soon...

Facebook group for "Fans of Blue Box" now created...

If any listeners use the Facebook social networking site, I have now created a "Fans of Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast" group which you are welcome to join.  I have no idea, really, what we will do with the group and whether or not we'll even use it for anything at all.  Largely, I suppose, that depends upon how many people join the group.  It's all just part of our continued experimentation with "social media"... and anyone who wants to join in the experimentation is welcome to do so.

Technorati tags: blue box, facebook

Crossing the 100,000 download mark!

Sometime this morning between about 7 and 8am Eastern US time, this podcast crossed a major milestone.... the 100,000th download occurred!   

Now in the world of "mainstream" media this is a trival number that would hardly merit attention.  But in the new and emerging medium of podcasting, I, for one, will celebrate that milestone... especially for something that is admittedly as niche of a topic as "VoIP security"!

To look at it another way, we've put out 74 shows since we started about 1.5 years ago.  That works out to an average of 1,351 downloads per show... for a show that averages 45 minutes in length!   

That there are that many folks interested in our show and topic continues to be a very humbling fact.  It's an honor for us... and a responsibility that we don't take lightly.  We know that just as easily as you have subscribed and downloaded our show, you have an amazing amount of choices out there and you can just as easily go elsewhere. 

Both Jonathan and I THANK YOU for your continued support and participation!  We have been delighted by the community of listeners and contributors that has grown up around the show and we do look forward to the continued growth of that community and to reaching many more milestones in the months and years ahead.  Thank you all.

Read on if you have interest in statistics...

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Continue reading "Crossing the 100,000 download mark!" »

If you downloaded Blue Box #56 and wound up with a PDF file, here's why - as I noted in an "UPDATE" section at the top of the show notes to Blue Box #56, I inadvertently deleted the "enclosure" link attribute that clues podcatchers in to which media file to download.   Without an enclosure link attribute, podcatchers seem to download the last "media" file.  Normally, this might not have been a problem as we usually just link to other web pages, but because we linked later to the SAGE Journal PDF file, that file was chosen as the one to download.  (Although it still boggles my mind a bit that podcatchers couldn't be designed to download only MP3 files or others from a range of audio/video formats.

I've fixed the link and podcatcher downloads are now working, but if you wound up with a PDF file instead, you'll unfortunately need to download the audio file directly from the Blue Box #56 show notes.

In browsing Digg.com this morning, I noticed that Blue Box is listed in the Digg podcast directory, but it only has a very few "Diggs" (4 before I added my own).  If any of you are Digg users and would be so inclined to go to that page and "digg" the podcast (the count at the top for the overall podcast versus the individual episodes), we'd appreciate the votes.  If enough listeners do this, it might move Blue Box up some of the lists of podcasts (note the "Up and Coming Podcasts" sidebar) and attract additional listeners that way.  Comments are also of course welcome.  Many thanks to the folks who have already "dugg" Blue Box and are responsible for it being there in the first place.  Thanks!

For folks wondering whatever happened to the ability to listen to Blue Box podcasts over the phone, the person running the service, "natas", let me know that he had a situation where the provider of the DID phone line stopped providing that service.  He's got the server back up now with a new provider and a new phone number:

  +1-218-339-8544

Now that it's back up, he's going to be updating it with new shows as he only has up to Blue Box #40 in there right now.  So the question of the moment is... who will get done first?  Will natas update the server up through show #48?  Or will I post shows #49 and #50 to the blog?

Seriously, we do appreciate and thank natas for providing this service and we would still be curious to hear people's feedback about whether or not this service is useful to them.  (It's all part of the grand experiment here...)

If you are wondering why their haven't been any Blue Box episodes since January 3rd, don't panic, we haven't "podfaded".  Shows 49 and 50 have both been recorded and are sitting in a certain producer's queue for audio post-production and editing.  Unfortunately, that producer, who shall remain nameless but whose last name starts with a "Y", has been a wee bit buried and show #49 ran a bit longer and needs some more editing than many of our episodes.   But they will be out soon....  my apologies for the delay!

If you subscribe via RSS, you may need to re-download Blue Box #56

If you downloaded Blue Box #56 and wound up with a PDF file, here's why - as I noted in an "UPDATE" section at the top of the show notes to Blue Box #56, I inadvertently deleted the "enclosure" link attribute that clues podcatchers in to which media file to download.   Without an enclosure link attribute, podcatchers seem to download the last "media" file.  Normally, this might not have been a problem as we usually just link to other web pages, but because we linked later to the SAGE Journal PDF file, that file was chosen as the one to download.  (Although it still boggles my mind a bit that podcatchers couldn't be designed to download only MP3 files or others from a range of audio/video formats.

I've fixed the link and podcatcher downloads are now working, but if you wound up with a PDF file instead, you'll unfortunately need to download the audio file directly from the Blue Box #56 show notes.

If any listeners use Digg, Blue Box could use some more digging...

In browsing Digg.com this morning, I noticed that Blue Box is listed in the Digg podcast directory, but it only has a very few "Diggs" (4 before I added my own).  If any of you are Digg users and would be so inclined to go to that page and "digg" the podcast (the count at the top for the overall podcast versus the individual episodes), we'd appreciate the votes.  If enough listeners do this, it might move Blue Box up some of the lists of podcasts (note the "Up and Coming Podcasts" sidebar) and attract additional listeners that way.  Comments are also of course welcome.  Many thanks to the folks who have already "dugg" Blue Box and are responsible for it being there in the first place.  Thanks!

Blue Box "Podcasts by Phone" is back up with a new phone number

For folks wondering whatever happened to the ability to listen to Blue Box podcasts over the phone, the person running the service, "natas", let me know that he had a situation where the provider of the DID phone line stopped providing that service.  He's got the server back up now with a new provider and a new phone number:

  +1-218-339-8544

Now that it's back up, he's going to be updating it with new shows as he only has up to Blue Box #40 in there right now.  So the question of the moment is... who will get done first?  Will natas update the server up through show #48?  Or will I post shows #49 and #50 to the blog?

Seriously, we do appreciate and thank natas for providing this service and we would still be curious to hear people's feedback about whether or not this service is useful to them.  (It's all part of the grand experiment here...)

Shows 49 and 50 are in the queue...

If you are wondering why their haven't been any Blue Box episodes since January 3rd, don't panic, we haven't "podfaded".  Shows 49 and 50 have both been recorded and are sitting in a certain producer's queue for audio post-production and editing.  Unfortunately, that producer, who shall remain nameless but whose last name starts with a "Y", has been a wee bit buried and show #49 ran a bit longer and needs some more editing than many of our episodes.   But they will be out soon....  my apologies for the delay!