VOXOX Blog

The past couple of months we've been busy making some back-end API improvements to the Voxox beta desktop app and today we've released a new version that boasts not 1, not 5 but nearly 200 tweaks and fixes. The latest build addresses defects and introduces enhancements that boost stability, software responsiveness and general user experience.


Check it out for yourself…





P.S. Have suggestions?  Submit feedback to our user forum.


UPDATE: Twitter glitch has been fixed! New report: some users have been having difficulties with 10-digit dialing. We are working on a fix. Apologies for any inconvenience and thanks for using Voxox!

Have you ever needed to make an international phone call and had no idea how to dial the international number?

Say you’re planning a trip to the U.K. You google around for some places to stay / things to do in London and find some very odd-looking phone numbers -- some have 11 digits and some have 13; some start with 020 or 07 and others with +44; in some there’s a pesky (0) right in the middle of the number.

If you're in the U.S., like me, you might think -- what the heck am I supposed to do with this?! Luckily there are a couple of tools that can help get you unfrazzled:


(1) TimeAndDate.com

This site has an interactive web page that shows you the exact sequence of digits you need to dial.

On the bottom of the homepage, you'll see "Travel Tools" -- select “International Dialing Codes.” Fill out the form that asks for your location and where you are calling; paste in the number you're trying to call. Then, hit “show dialing codes” and it'll show you the number you need to enter into your phone. Here's a screenshot from TimeAndDate.com:

(2) Voxox Call for iPhone

Now it's time to make the call. You don't want to overpay, so... there’s an app for that! If you have an iPhone, get yourself the free Voxox Call app by Telcentris, Inc. With this mobile app, you can pay pennies per minute to make international calls from your iPhone. This is SO handy for travel planning, you wouldn't believe! 

Check out this video on how to use the Voxox Call app to dial abroad:




NOTE: When using Voxox Call (or the Voxox desktop app) to make calls, please enter San Diego, U.S. for the “where you’re calling from?” question on TimeAndDate.com, even if you're not in the U.S. This is how our calling format works because we're U.S.-based.

Don't have an iPhone? Click here to check out how to do this with our Voxox desktop app.


What tips, challenges or complaints do you have about international calling? We want to hear from you! Comment on this blog post or on the Voxox Facebook page.

Calling all ghouls to the Voxox Facebook page this Halloween!!

Aloha! In the spirit of saying goodbye to summer, our love of tacky Hawaiian shirts, and well, the fact that we just like to have fun, the Voxox team got together for an end of summer luau!

The Voxox team isn’t just your ordinary group of geeks, we’re a group of wild and enthusiastic people who love what we do! “Just another day at the office” doesn’t apply here. Whether it’s Nerf gun wars, free ice cream extravaganzas, or Monday morning bagels, there’s always something for us to get excited about! Get to know the team with our  behind the scenes, Q&A style blog series, “The People Who Make Voxox Rock”…



Nickname: Beers



Department: Operations



What is Operations?:  It’s a team that facilitates everything from Voxox consumer support; to customer service for our business clients (our Voxox In Business division); to the deployment of physical hardware, phones, servers, etc. here at Telcentris Inc. We solve problems, analyze data, identify trends, and whip up charts to show execs financial performance. I also like critiquing the bagel selection. Gotta wear a lot of hats in a start-up, yanno?



When you joined the Voxox team, what did you expect?: Well, not this. The office will sporadically blow up with Nerf gun fights, we celebrate birthdays, and have fun together. Working at a start-up that’s family-run lends itself to a more relaxed attitude. I can wear what I want, and I think the perception that dressing like you’re a businessperson isn’t what makes you a respectable employee here. It may seem unconventional, but it’s nice.



What’s your favorite part about working here?: Not the Nerf guns. I personally have a lot of freedom to develop my skill-set how I feel fit and for what best suits my team. I learned mySQL, and am in the process of teaching myself Perl and PHP. There aren’t a lot of jobs that would give you the freedom to learn these programs, so for my team to be OK with me spending time broadening my skills is pretty cool.



What are your hidden talents?: I’ve played bass guitar and sang backup in a few bands; a 3 piece grunge band, Pariah Piranha, and rock band, Via Satellite. We toured around a lot on the East Coast, playing in places like Baltimore, the Carolinas, and D.C. I actually ended up moving to D.C. after our tour because I just fell in love with the city and the people I met there. I’m also really good at video games – I like Assassin's Creed and Little Big Planet 2, which is a child’s game, but Mario 3 is my favorite game of all time. It reminds me of being a kid and it’s still challenging. When I was 8 years old, I could beat it, but I can’t beat it today. How is that possible? I get caught on the desert and water worlds; all the quicksand, and the sun with the armadillos. The desert levels kill me.



What’s your greatest personal accomplishment?: My parents are very proud of me and I’m really happy about that. I moved to California by myself, without anything, and that was really scary. I have a 2-year Associates Degree in Electronics Engineering, which isn’t really related to my role with Voxox, so I’d say I’m most proud of my work life. It’s nice to enjoy work and feel like I’m good at something.



What’ve you learned since you’ve been with the company?:  So much it’s hard for me to speak to it. But most importantly, my confidence level in general has improved since I’ve been forced to interact with customers – it’s not easy to talk on the phone with people!



If you could witness any event past, present, or future, what would it be?: I would like to have been at the Roswell crash.



What’s your least favorite chore?: I hate doing dishes. For real, they smell bad. I just got a dishwasher, actually, so that’s a big upgrade in my life. At first I didn’t know how to use it because I’ve never had one before - give me a break, I grew up in a log cabin in the middle of the woods.



If you were reincarnated as a color / drink / ice cream flavor, what would it be?: Green / Beer / Peanut Butter Ripple



Which animal do you least resemble?: An African Swallow



Mario or Luigi?: Mario 4 Life



Is it a pizza or is it a pie?: Where I'm from, it's pizza, but during my recent visit to New York, I repeatedly heard it referred to as 'pie'. However, they also say 'standing on line' instead of 'standing in line', so that sort of negates all of their preferred vernacular.



What should people know about Voxox?: Our rates are awesome. If you're calling someone internationally, it’s a super affordable way to get in touch with them.



If you're feeling in the dark, like we left you hanging, and you just can't get enough of "Beers," ask your questions here or on the Voxox Facebook page! We promise to answer them, so you can sleep at night...

There are a few things in life we all (or most of us) love, crave, and sometimes need, like chocolate, coffee and well... um, you can fill in a few blanks here. However, according to a recent survey commissioned by TeleNav, Inc., a good number of us would be willing to go without these guilty pleasures for a week rather than give up our cells for the same duration of time.

Before you tell us what you'd be willing to give up in order to keep tabs on our phone, let us blow your mind with these interesting stats and survey results:

Picture courtesy of bgr.com /2011/08/03

So what's it going to be; chocolate, sex, shoes, coffee? (If you work at Telcentris, creators of Voxox, it probably isn't coffee!!) Let us know which precious pleasure you would give up for a week in order to hang on to your mobile phone...


Find out how your friends rank, share this on Facebook and Twitter!

The Voxox team isn’t just your ordinary group of geeks, we’re a group of wild and enthusiastic people who love what we do! “Just another day at the office” doesn’t apply here. Whether it’s Nerf gun wars, free ice cream extravaganzas, or Monday morning bagels, there’s always something for us to get excited about! Get to know the team with our  behind the scenes, Q&A style blog series, “The People Who Make Voxox Rock”…







Nickname: [>Bowtie<]



Department/Position: Director of Quality Assurance



What is Quality Assurance (QA)?: Quality Assurance is one of the tools we use to measure how effective our software is. We are constantly measuring our products and services to ensure that we are consistently maintaining or adding to the value that Voxox provides. One thing not well understood about QA is that it's a very broad discipline: it's not just about testing, but I must also be familiar with multiple platforms of technology, networking, infrastructure, implementation and delivery--working in QA keeps my chops warm in all of these areas, and then some.



What’s your favorite part about working here?: For the first time in a long time, I'm working with people I really like--every one of them, from every part of the organization, we have great talent and fun, focused energy. I love startups, but we have something special here with the Voxox team, and I think it's one of our greatest hidden strengths at our company, Telcentris, Inc.



What are your hidden talents or hobbies?: Almost too many to name: I'm a musician (bass player), a photographer, a serigrapher (fine art screen printing), a hiker/backpacker, and a poker player. But I've always been a computer geek. My dad ran a Radio Shack, and brought home our first computer when I was twelve. I immediately took it over, teaching myself to program that summer. I started coding games--my first was a port of Donkey Kong--and by the time I was 16, I had over 20 games on the market. But I soon branched out into other software types, building word processors, music transcription, sound wave analysis and language compilers. I also ran The Boardwalk Bulletin Board System (BBS). A BBS was a kind of local precursor to the Internet, using home computers and modems and phone lines. Currently, I’m working with textfiles.org to try to archive the history of The Boardwalk, as we think it is one of the earliest examples of what would eventually become an MMORPG like Everquest or World of Warcraft."



























How did you get your nickname?: It’s kind of a long story, but it came about when I was running The Boardwalk BBS from 1982 to 1986, which at its peak had over 300 paying users. It was modeled on (my fourteen-year-old imagined) 1920's-era Atlantic City, and had casinos, games, gangs, hotels--everything I could think of. Users would sign onto the BBS and take on a character with a name and character details and money (kind of like a role-playing game). Users would have to treat their character like an actual person--you couldn't just sign off and leave your character wandering The Boardwalk--that was the fastest way to get mugged, lose all your money, and find yourself in the sand under The Boardwalk the next time you signed in.  On the BBS, I was [>Bowtie<] -- shortened to [><] -- a mob boss that ran all of the casinos, and the guy behind the scenes on all of the weird happenings on The Boardwalk.



Who is your doppelganger?: Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller (but I have to grow my hair out and pull it back in a ponytail).



Shaken or stirred?: Tossed out and filled with Long Island Iced Tea.



How do you take your coffee?: Tossed out and filled with Pepsi.



When you were little, what did you want to be?: An Architect! (I'm being serious, but that's also my Monty Python reference for the day).



What should people know about Voxox?: The message of unification is really important. Looking across the landscape of communications, the rest of the industry is bent on building "walled gardens" designed to lock you into *their* tools and *their* way of thinking. I think this is a real danger to the open nature of the Internet and to real freedoms--people can get locked into these gardens without really understanding the implications, and not all of these companies have the best of intentions. Voxox turns all of that on its head by reaching around those walls and allowing our users to consolidate and own their communications entirely, and I think that's more in spirit with the notion of an open and democratic communications platform.



Think you've got what it takes to ace this quiz? Show off how well you know "Bowtie"...



[polldaddy survey="8053D4D65D6D8724" type="button" title="TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE" style="rounded" text_color="FFFFFF" back_color="851CD6"]



If you have questions for “Bowtie” or for our next Voxox rock star, post them here or on our  Facebook page!

In the spirit of Bad Poetry Day (which is today!) and for your reading pleasure, the Voxox team got together and wrote an awesomely bad poem on the benefits and features of VoIP service.

How did such a beautiful composition come to be, you ask? Over the past few days, a paper has been floating around the office requesting that each team member to write a line based only upon the line before it.  This has been a masterpiece in progress and we're pleased to share with you our ode to Bad Poetry Day:


 

The Wonders of VoIP

 

If you know what VoIP is, you know of its wonders,

No more crazy phone bill and/or cell tower blunders.

So many cool features, you can call all the zones,

Hosted, SIP Trunk, white label for so few bones.

We’re battling the clones with service that totally pones,

At prices that mean sweet service without any loans.

 

All Poems should rhyme, especially when they’re about VoIP.

Who needs the competition? Don’t give into the hype,

Get to picking now, while the pickings ripe,

Unify your communication! Unify your life!

Ask for VoIP, then watch and learn how simple it can be,

You’ll love G722, the HD codec, when called on-net it’s FREE!

 

I talk, I chat, I live in a numberless landscape of your whispers,

I thought to text you, but it was fleeting, like the cooling of Las Vegas misters.

Instead, I called you and your "Find Me" was set to every phone device nearby,

Creating a ringback racket louder than the introduction of Pink Floyd’s “Money!”.

 

‘Cause I’m out in the club and I’m sippin’ that bubb, and you’re not gonna reach my telephone --

You’ll reach my personal assistant!

That’s what they (girls) all say, it’s a good thing I’m persistent.

When life’s lemons get in my way, just make an adjustment,

With calls that cost just cents, even from a tent!

 

VoIP is the flower like bees makin’ honey,

 

And if you live in Australia, you can call from the Dunny*,

So keep usin’ Voxox, if you like savin’ money!

 

*Definition of Dunny: Dunny or dunny can is Australian slang for toilet, either the room or the specific fixture, especially an outhouse or other outdoor toilets. It is often used to specify a distinction between a flushing toilet and a non-flushing toilet (e.g., a longdrop or thunderbox). (Source: wiki).

 

"The final product. Crumpled and perfect!"


Poetry at it's finest, right? We've gotten in touch with our Shakespearean side, now it's your turn! Share your bad poetry right here or on our Facebook page...

If you've seen our Facebook page, you've noticed VoIP, the Voxox Alien, in photos with landmarks, famous paintings, and in cool spots all around the world. These photos are part of the "Where in the World is the Voxox Alien?" game, a contest where we post a picture of VoIP, the Voxox Alien, and you try to guess where he is based on written clues and hints in the photos.

Can you believe it's already Labor Day weekend?

It seems like it was just Memorial Day and everyone was getting psyched for the beach, barbecues, and cold dips in the pool; now we're digging out warmer clothes, buying back to school gear, and making plans for the holidays. As you celebrate the coming of fall and bid farewell to summer, we wish you a safe and happy weekend from all of us on the  Voxox team! Oh, and a special thanks to all the hard workers out there... sit back and relax, it's Labor Day!!

Take a load off, happy Labor Day!


Do you have any fun plans for the long weekend? Share them with us here or on the Voxox Facebook page... we'd love to hear from you!!