Archive for July 17th, 2008
Elemental Technologies Nets $7.1M
Elemental Technologies, a startup focused on faster transcoding, has raised $7.1 million from General Catalyst Partners and Voyager Capital. The company’s software uses the graphics processor rather than the CPU inside a computer to handle the work of ripping a DVD or video file to another format. It’s one of several startups using Nvidia’s GPUs for tasks once allocated to the CPU, and bolstering the idea that GPUs might be better suited than the CPU to some tasks, such as sc...
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Free Tech Support
In a rare move, Microsoft is now offering free unlimited installation and compatibility support for Windows Vista, but only for Service Pack 1 (SP1). This even includes FREE phone support! So fear not upgrading or installing Vista SP1 - Microsoft’s got your back! Note: Chat and e-mail support is available only in the United States and Canada. This support for SP1 is valid until March 18, 2009. Here’s a screenshot of the Microsoft Help & Support page: Tags: Microsoft, SP1, te...
Dream your dreams. And Remember to Make a Wish or two.
Next time you are up in the middle of the night, close your eyes and visualize the things you have been wishing for. Even if your dreams don’t come true during the day, there is no reason they can’t happen at night. And you may want to be careful what you wish for, as sometimes, our wishes really do come true. Tags: Entrepreneurship, leadership, Entrepreneur, Jeff Pulver ...
Why Metered Broadband Is Bad for Microsoft, Google & Us
Here’s a horror scenario for everyone on the content side of the Internet: A consumer comes to a web site to download a movie, work presentation, software update or photos, and just before they commit to the download they pause and wonder: Am I over my usage quota this month? How much will downloading this new HD movie from Netflix on my Xbox cost me? We’ve all been there before — with cell phones, about a decade ago. Usage-based pricing tiers started out with very limited mi...
Memo to Jerry, Steve and Carl: Just Do It!
Summer is generally a slower time for news and this summer is no exception. But the kind folks at Microsoft, Yahoo and Carl Icahn’s investment firm are charitably offering up a form of entertainment with their ongoing Let’s Make a Deal saga. The latest installment is a letter to shareholders from Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang that accuses Microsoft of flip-flopping, creating confusion and generally not wanting to make a deal. The letter also also reiterates Yahoo’s desire to sell the e...
The Resurrection of Henry Blodget
The rehabilitation of Henry Blodget has officially been completed with the news Silicon Valley Insider has raised some seed capital. From a high-flying Internet analyst on Wall St. to an international disgrace sanctioned by the SEC, Blodget’s resurrection as a respected and insightful technology voice is pretty impressive. You have to give him credit for hunkering down and then building his credibility from scratch. Meanwhile, the another notorious Wall St. Internet analyst, Mary Meeker, c...
New Mobile VoIP Market Study Released
I was recently contacted by a U.K.-based consultancy called Technology Appraisals Ltd. about a new study that I’m pretty sure you’ll want to learn more about. I don’t often talk about industry reports - especially those that aren’t mine! - but mobile VoIP is such a happening market right now, and I don’t think there’s anything out there like this. They’ve just released a report on the mobile VoIP landscape, and for anyone following this space, it’...
These Ads Are Just About Everywhere
Earlier this week, Delta Airlines announced plans that will turn its boarding passes into advertising opportunities, or billboards, hawking destination-specific businesses and products. An Omaha-based startup, Sojern, is behind this advertising offer, which is going to be adopted by four airlines in addition to Delta: American, Continental, United and US Airways. Given that airlines are in such a desperate position, mostly because of their incompetency, they are ready to try anything, however ...
Thinking Digital, Acting Personal
If there’s one thing striking and perhaps puzzling about the Toronto high-tech community - and, for that matter, tech communities around the world - it’s how everyone is so digital/wired but so hungry to be personal. For all the e-mail, Twitter-ing, Facebook-ing, IM-ing, Blackberry-ing and text-messaging, and all the time spent hunkered over computers, many people have this innate need to be together. It’s not enough to communicate digitally through various mediums; there mus...
One of the Reasons Why I Host Breakfast Events:
During the past few months, I have lost track of the number of people who have asked me Why I decided to host breakfasts in 16 cities around the world? Other than having a gut feeling that it was the right thing to do, at times I also questioned my rational for making the effort to fly around the world to host these breakfasts. And then a few days ago, I received a message from my friend Melanie Savvy Auntie Notkin whose message below is my inspiration for producing more breakfasts in th...
Low Cost and Mobile VoIP
A new industry standard looks at the disruptors in the moble VoIP business… Read More… ...
Click-to-Call Measures Value for Advertising Dollars
Chances are that belt-tightening is in your budget for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t leave much room for anything that can’t be justified in cold, hard numbers - including advertising. You have to demonstrate results for every dollar spent. That’s why the advertising experts at Impact Branding and Strategic Marketing Solutions emphasize that each and every campaign must be measurable. Impact Media suggests: “If you have the availability of an additional phone line,...
What Do the All-Star Break & Blogging Have in Common?
Baseball’s All-Star Break this week proved to be quite special - not because this was the last All-Star game at The Yankee Stadium, the cathedral of baseball and a place where I fell in love with this distant cousin of cricket. No, it was not special because the All-Star game went into the wee-hours of the night and took 15 long innings before the American League took their rightful place in the winners’ circle. No, it was not special because Josh Hamilton put on an awesome display ...
Five Multicore Chip Startups to Watch
As semiconductor firms get around the limitations of making individual processors faster by putting more cores onto a single chip, the mindset of today’s software developers and engineers mindset needs to adapt. For to really take advantage of multiple cores, a programmer needs to look at ways to make her code parallel, splitting jobs into different parts rather than the step-by step instructions delivered to single-core machines. There are also energy and communications issues that can c...
One Small Step Towards VoIP for Cellcos
The GSMA’s trial of SIP-I is a first step to VoIP federation between operators, and higher voice quality. Read More… ...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.