POTD: MTV LA Operations

If you are not addicted to MTV’s Catfish, well you are ether sane or you live under a rock. The TV series exposes people misleading themselves on social media that is supposed to be a platform of full-name, and authentic, which often shows how Facebook can be known as Fakebook.

The series was based on an indie documentary, that became an offspring for MTV’s programming in late 2012, which the ratings soared during the infamous Tao story that circulated in early 2013.

The format of the program changed a couple seasons ago, kinda. You now see the very start of the show of the Skype calls and the follow up Skype calls at “Catfish Headquarters” known as the LA offices of MTV. In a 2016 episode featuring Andrea Russett, a famous YouTuber, who had her likeness used as a catfish tool, the hosts Nev Scuhulman and Max Joseph returned back to base and Nev was pretending to answer a flood of telephone calls on decommissioned Cisco 7900 series sets. (Oh and there’s some Linksys SPA sets mixed in… interesting.)

It was flipping hysterical.

This was obviously an upgrade because in future episodes, the two dudes are at said “HQ” and in the very open office environment, you can see the newer 8800 or 7800 series Cisco set in the background. I don’t use plural because they don’t use the set that much.

One upon a time, Viacom, the parent of MTV, was a heavy Nortel shop, one of their managers told Network World around 1990 about how they preferred to have the Meridian 1 PBX for the ability to have features programmed on hard keys. Obviously Viacom had went through radical corporate changes and will possibly go through some more into 2019. These Cisco phones were sometimes caught on MTV programs and had been seen for at least a decade if not more.

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POTD: Ugly Avaya Blue Conference set – Southern New Hampshire University

We’re back in business on the ‘Gram that I put on abbreviated dial that I call Instagram!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bda7P_-nPgD/?taken-by=clickfordsmuseumoftelephony

I’m not in college, and nor do I intend to. I happen to visit Southern New Hampshire University on a semi frequent basis with meeting some great people.  (SNHU if you are not aware is in fact is a non profit university that happens to be in Southern New Hampshire, for those people who learn over the Internet from say someplace like Las Vegas and claim they are an SNHU student/grad/alumni.)

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POTD: [New Generation] Avaya Red Partner 6D Telset

Today’s Phone of the Day features a [Newer Generation] ahem “Euro Series II” Partner 6D set of a place where I spend a couple days a week with some people who help me get through my life.

I have not referred this to “Euro” or “Euro Series II” because those were obscenely bad greymarket rumors spread like motherfrecin wildfire on eBay in the early 2000s (“Euro”) and the 46xx like models in 2005 (“Euro Series II”.) I am the last to defend Avaya currently, but they would frown upon infringing the brand of the phone system. While it was common folklore that it was European inspired when AT&T did the design in 1994/1995, it’s never been officially confirmed by Avaya or it’s decedents. And yes you read that right “AT&T”. This model was released about 1995, over a year before the Lucent spinoff. Some sites like my old town’s library before to moving out in 2010 had these Euro series sets but with the AT&T brand.  So people, PLEASE do not call these sets like this one “Series II”. You’re spreading lies and misinformation!

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POTD: Analog Sets, TRYP, Midtown Manhattan, NY

 

 

This is the cordless phone at the hipster hotel I had stayed when I was in New York City back in October.  As you can tell it’s one of those Teledex, analog sets. No hotel I’ve ever stayed had any native phone system’s sets in the rooms. I guess it’s above my paygrade to stay at a five-star hotel that may have digital or IP sets. I do know the Teledex markets an ‘iPhone” (surprised that didn’t hit Apple’s or Cisco’s lawyers!) that’s a generic SIP phone that functions like an analog set but works on top of an IP network.

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POTD: Urban Outfitters – West 34th Street

Being the Avaya Red fanboy that I am, I am always happy to see any phones from the legacy AT&T/Bell System days. As I have stated before, this vendor had 90%+ of the Fortune 500 and then lost it entirely with a company with legacy roots that was 125 years old.

Taken in October of 2017, I am unable to tell what set this is, it could be a 1416 or a 1616. The second digit model numbers  what type of signaling it does to make them ether be a “telephone” or a “terminal”. Please read the section on “voice terminals” to remind yourself why your desk phone is not actually that…

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POTD: TRYP Hotel, Midtown Manhattan

In today’s installment of phones other than Cisco seen in The Big Apple, this was where I and my companion stayed during the week of the NY NAB Show. Known as TRYP (probably an acronym for “trip” though my mother called it T.R.Y.P. for a while) is a hipster themed hotel on West 35th between Seventh and Eighth. An independent franchise to Wyndham, this hotel is in one little building. I think it’s like a motel in a low rise building. There are fifteen stories and you can see the flagship New Yorker from the top.

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POTD: Tick Tock Diner, Midtown Manhattan, NY

If you ever visit the West Side of Manhattan, and you like an awesome breakfast, go to the Tick Tock Diner, underneath the New Yorker on Eighth Ave between West 34th and 35th streets. Or should I say the iconic Art-Deco, classic mid 20th Century style of the Wyndham owned hotel? Anyways, I had a Smore French Toast.  Something along those lines…

Enough with food porn on The Museum, but you wanted to see their phones right?

Left looks like the one for the diner, a NEC set for their Electra line, and a Mitel 5330E VOIP set with a backlit display and perhaps a Gigabit Ethernet connection! This is probably used for the hotel communications, and for the use of room service. I can say Mitel is used at these clusters of hotels, because I stayed in TRYP, and I saw my phones on the front desk…

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POTD: B&H Store, New York City

I’ve received many B&H catalogs ether as hand me downs, and runins with people on the West Coast, or in the mailings these days, but I never made it there till October. I’m familiar with J&R in the Lower Manhattan area though.

Located on the West Side of Manhattan, just a couple blocks away from the Garment District (the off Fifth Ave stores that go from West 34th & 5th to 35th and 8th. I made the visit since it was on the way to the Javits Center, for that fluke of an East Coast NAB Show. This place is a must if you like broadcast grade A/V equipment (the enterprise class for videographers, audio, what have you.) I got studio grade headphones there, and you can buy any professional and commercial class stuff there. And if you can’t make it to New York, you can go online.

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