The Web site is gone, and phoning the group's New York office yields a dial tone.

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If I timed it right, he'd only hear a dial tone and I would be safe.

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You then had to wait hours for a dial tone, and pay exorbitant charges.

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We didn't get so much as a dial tone -- there was no longer a number to reach.

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After many, many tries, she finally found a phone with an actual working dial tone at a gas station.

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There have been a lot of reports coming out reassuring everyone that there will be dial tone on Jan. 1.

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Journalists, scientists and even mission-control operators milled about, waiting for the faint dial tone that would tell them Messenger had made it safely.

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That signal means a giant antenna in California heard Messenger's dial tone, systems engineer Michael Paul said, and the spacecraft was amazingly on target.

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When an employee makes a phone call, there is no allowance for a lack of dial tone, or any detectable latency, or poor call quality.

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Their job is to show that this interconnected collection of applications is going to become the center of integration, a collaborative dial tone for business applications.

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Its dial tone, its logo, its deserved reputation for high quality, its great CEO, all captured by its famous brand could do almost nothing when the fiber-optic disruption came.

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The integration challenge for these companies, except for Google Buzz, is to first do the integration to create the complete collaborative dial tone, then the integration with external applications.

FORBES: IBM's Strategy to Manufacture Social Networking Surprises

Rather than having to dig up the streets to lay cable or fiber, WinStar plugs in an antenna on a customer's rooftop and bingo, you have a dial tone.

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Still, getting a dial tone can be nearly impossible.

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Google Buzz could create a complete collaborative dial tone but at this point it is not possible to use it with Google Apps, which has the email, contacts, calendar, and shared document functionality.

FORBES: IBM's Strategy to Manufacture Social Networking Surprises