Archive for July 9th, 2008
Let’s get Naked (DSL) Cowboy!
Image of the famous Times Square Naked Cowboy. An interesting new IDC Insight report reveals that although residential VoIP services have been available in Australia for the past four years, the uptake in naked DSL has been slow compared with Europe and the U.S. The Insight report titled Residential VoIP: Let’s Get Naked, attributes the slower uptake to several factors including lack of, and high cost of broadband, poor quality of service (QoS), number portability and high complexity. Ho...
Google’s Lively Is a Different Beast
Second Life is either peaking or busy crossing the chasm, depending on who you believe. IMVU stealthed its way to tons of users. Club Penguin found its windfall by figuring out how to reach children safely. Blizzard had revenues of $1.1 billion last year. Qwaq makes private virtual worlds for the enterprise. And there are dozens more. Do we really need another? Then along comes Lively. At first blush, as James points out, it’s a me-too play. But Google’s other projects may mean it c...
The Pirate Bay Wants to Encrypt the Entire Internet
The team behind the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay has started to work on a new encryption technology that could potentially protect all Internet traffic from prying eyes. The project, which is still in its initial stages, goes by the name “Transparent end-to-end encryption for the Internets,” or IPETEE for short. It tackles encryption not on the application level, but on the network level, the aim being that all data exchanged on your PC would be encrypted, regardless of it...
What’s Really New in iPhone 3G?
Amid all of the raves over the upcoming iPhone 3G, good to read David Pogue’s New York Times piece about what’s really new and exciting about the new phone. Don’t want to give it all away, but it doesn’t necessarily start and stop with the phone itself … Seems there’s a lot going on that will be a treat, though! Tags: david pogue, iphone, new york times Related Entries Everything You Wanted to Know About Smart Cards … - Jul 07, 2008 Apple iPhon...
T. Boone Pickens??? Bold Plan
Ex-oilman T. Boone Pickens has a bold plan to reduce America’s foreign oil imports by one-third in ten years. Pickens is determined to make the plan a campaign and the major part of the next President’s first 100 day agenda. The plan is simple and bold enough to succeed ??? if we are and our political leaders are bold enough to implement it or something reasonably like it. The elevator speech from the newly launched (ning-based) social website www.pickensplan.com is this: “Am...
40GB PS3 Going Bye-Bye?
Looks like more action coming on the video gaming hardware front. According to Engadget, the PlayStation 40GB model will be replaced. Based on an alleged Wal-Mart spreadsheet, the 40GB PS3 console “will be replaced with [a] new model in early August.” But just what this means is open to interpretation — maybe just a sweet plastic Olympics medallion to commemorate the occasion or a fancy new vibrating controller, so don’t go thinking that an entirely fresh form facto...
Score One for the Blogosphere - Immense PR Turmoil - Rogers Caves.
Or maybe this should be called: Neither Steve Jobs nor Jim Balsille Will Tolerate Even the Contemplation of Failure. Last week I reported on Rogers’ announcement of new data plans for both the forthcoming iPhone (available in two days) and RIM’s Blackberry. In fact, I had immediately changed my Blackberry plan to a new one where the price per MB had gone down by 96%. But the blogger and Internet response to the announcements re the iPhone turned into a huge PR fiasco for...
Who at Rogers Blew the iPhone?
In what could be described as a stroke of marketing genius or the admission of a terrible strategic mistake, Rogers has listened to the people and unveiled a $30 data plan for the 3G iPhone that will give consumers a healthy 6GB if they sign up before Aug. 31. So, you gotta ask: who was the marketing genius over at Rogers who failed to do their homework before Rogers launched its widely-criticized iPhone plans last week? Perhaps the plans were concocted by a bunch of number-crunchin’, ARPU...
Is Cable Voice Getting a Sore Throat?
The economic downturn, in particular the housing market slump, that has been pressuring U.S. telecom operators now seems to be extending to cable operators as well. After enjoying nearly eight quarters of solid growth, it looks like the U.S. cable telephony business is slowing down. The proverbial canary in the coal mine sounded the alarm yesterday. ARRIS, which makes hardware for cable operators, lowered its second-quarter forecast for both profits and revenues. Management blamed maturing ca...
Ian Rogers’ Topspin Raises New Cash
Topspin Media, a startup launched by former Yahoo Music General Manager Ian Rogers and widely regarded as digital-music maverick, has raised a new round of founding from Denver-based VCs at The Foundry Group. The news was announced on the Foundry Group blog by partner Ryan McIntyre, but the funding amount wasn’t disclosed. The company recently came out stealth and was featured in Billboard magazine. Topspin also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Redpoint Ventures. So why are VC...
Should Regulators Block Google-Yahoo Deal?
Should Regulators Block Google-Yahoo Deal? Yes, it gives too Google too much power No, since Yahoo will die as a result I don’t care either way This morning’s Wall Street Journal has an extensive report on challenges facing Google when it comes to advertising, especially with its YouTube division. If anything, the article paints a rather sympathetic view of Google and its money machine. I am surprised by the timing of this story. After all, these ...
Do it TODAY!
No matter who you are, time waits for no one. Not even You. Time is one of our most sacred resources and something that doesnt get replaced or replenished when it gets wasted. Whatever it is that is on your mind you are thinking of doing, unless you make a forward effort to actually do it, it may NEVER get done. ` You can be thinking about doing this for a day, week, month or your entire lifetime. Just thinking about it and not taking action does not always get you there. And life can be funny...
Rumor: BT buying Ribbit, takes on Skype, Google
Luca Filigheddu blogs Eric Eldon’s VentureBeat story that confirms BT, the British telecom giant, is in talks to buy Ribbit, one of the best talk 2.0 services on Earth. Ribbit spokespeople can’t confirm or deny. Parsing… Ribbit gives programmers free tools to build their own Skypes. Behind the user interface toolkit is a communications platform. Ribbit handles all the messy plumbing of connecting people to each other over many different types of networks, including Skype and...
MobileBeat 2008: Discounts & Ticket Giveaway
Our friends at VentureBeat are hosting their first conference, MobileBeat 2008 on July 24 at Plug and Play Tech Center at 440 N. Wolfe Rd., Sunnyvale, CA 94085. The conference is looking at opportunities created by the changing mobile landscape. MobileBeat 2008 speakers include Rich Miner, of Google’s Android project and Matt Murphy, of Kleiner Perkins’ iFund. They have just released the short list of 30 start-ups making a presenting at their conference, and I am looking forward to ...
Ribbit , have they havent they?
VentureBeat reported that the company was close to being acquired by British Telecom (BT), but later changed their story. Read More… ...
Why is Wireless Service so Expensive?
Having written a, well, healthy amount of posts this week on the iPhone’s inauspicious Canadian debut, one thing struck me: Why is wireless service so expensive? There are, no doubt, a litany of financial and business reasons for why consumers pay what they do for wireless service such capital and operating costs. Nevertheless, wireless service is expensive given it’s a popular service with healthy competition in most markets. A good example is data. The wireless carriers love data a...
Downsides
tags: twitter, skype, video, nose, fart, flatulence, downsides, fun Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed. ...
Was Ribbit Sold? Maybe, Maybe Not
Ribbit, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that is pushing a VoIP platform that marries web with voice is subject of acquisition rumors this evening. VentureBeat reported that the company was close to being acquired by British Telecom (BT), but later changed their story. When contacted by me, Don Thorson, Ribbit’s Vice President of Marketing dismissed the rumors but declined to comment any further. It wouldn’t surprise me if BT (or some European telecom) acquired Ribbit (or any o...
GigaOM Poll: Will You Buy iPhone 3G
Will you buy 3G iPhone? Yes, I am a sucker for Apple products I am going to skip this one I just want a simple, cheap phone. So in a couple of days the iPhone 3G is going to go on sale. Like many of you I am going to get this device as part of my duties as an intrepid reporter (and a shameless Apple-holic.) However, if you are rational, then you might want to read these reviews by the big three tech writers and their take on the iPhone 3G before you decide to ...
How Lively? Google’s Me-Too Virtual World
The other virtual shoe finally dropped today– after a year and a half of rumors, Google (GOOG) now brings us Lively, a web-driven mini-virtual world. Not a contiguous, immersive, fully user-created metaverse like Second Life, as it turns out– so it’s not really a direct competitor– but a series of virtual world chatrooms more akin to IMVU. (However, IMVU has a virtual economy of user-created content, while Lively does not, least not yet.) On first glance, Lively seems ...
Mippin Brings the Web to Mobiles
Mippin (formerly Refresh Mobile), whose browser-based site presents content specially designed for mobile consumption, says it has named a new CEO and reached a milestone of 500,000 users. But I question its ability to survive. The London-based startup’s service also learns what users like and recommends stories based on their previous interests. I call it a mobile portal analogous to Yahoo, MSN, Netvibes or PageFlakes, but Judy Gibbons, the new CEO, has a different definition. She says i...
British Regulators Prescribe More Fiber for ISPs
While we laggards in the U.S. are still celebrating the FCC decision to (finally!) up the classification of broadband speeds to a lazy 768 kilobytes per second (but, hey, that’s up from 200 kilobytes per second) and lamenting our coming bandwidth caps, the Brits are prepping for a broadband boom. The UK regulatory agency Ofcom is planning to release a regulatory framework in September to guarantee a financial rate of return on fiber rollouts in the UK. According to a story in PCAdvisor, O...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.