One of my 2008 New Year’s Resolutions was to become an early adopter of new technology. If that sounds like an excuse to buy stuff, you would be right. My wife saw right thru that one too but I do get my way from time to time. I’ve shared a few of the gadgets here, though I still do not frequently qualify as an early adopter. I am pretty certain that I still lag well behind the curve.

One technology for which I certainly don’t qualify for early adopter status is VoIP. This super geeky term refers to Voice Over Internet Protocol and is telephone and related voice services carried over the Internet as opposed to the old phone system. While not an early adopter, I may, however, qualify as super creative in the category of setup. I’ll let you be the judge.

VoIP is unique in that, instead of connecting your telephone to a wall jack and getting service from the local telecommunications company. In my case we connect the telephone to a vendor provided little black box which acts as the middle man, connecting your phone to the internet.

After taking the device out of the box I soon realized that I was in trouble. You see, the device is designed to be connected directly to your home internet router.

The problem with that is my wife also has a home office and the device the router (which brings the internet into our house) is located in her office. I would be needing a really long cord to connect the VoIP device to the router in her office.

Thinking like the creative problem solver I like to think of myself as, I asked myself how I would accomplish connecting the device to our home internet wirelessly. It occurred to me that a wireless gaming router might work; similar to how we have our XBOX-360 setup with a wireless adapter. Think of the grey device like you would an antenna.

From there it was simple.

After a trip to Best Buy all that was left to do was to (1) the Cisco wireless gaming router connects to the Internet, (2) the Vonage device connects to the Cisco wireless gaming router, and (3) the telephone connects to the Vonage device. Presto! Vonage Wireless!