Alec thinks VoIP is hard and goes into detail recognizing companies that have made it simple.
This gets into the whole concept of user interface and to that point let me refer you to Alan Cooper and his seminal book on the subject of how to make thing better.
Basically we still suffer as Cooper pointed out in the book of techies designing for themselves. UI and functionality often are either to simplistic or way to complex. The simple doesn't let us do all that we need to. The complex makes us jump through hoops to use something.
An example is setting up SIP on any of the SIP clients. You need to have a really good understanding of terminology and then figure out what the programmers had in mind when they refer to different input fields as XXXXX server. One of my friend is an ISO9000 certification trainer and he constantly busts on companies for their lack of what he calls operation definitions, so while we have standards in the SIP and VoIP world, one persons proxy is another person's proxy server. Get the picture.
VoIP is hard because the people building it have made it hard. That's why the cable companies are winning. They don't want it to be hard. They want it to be fast, and easy....
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