Archive for July 18th, 2008
Twinkle, Twinkle…Twitter Star
Yesterday evening, at a beachside dinner organized by our investors, True Ventures, I sat at a table full of relatively young entrepreneurs (I’m pretty sure I raised the average age by a few years.) Most of us had iPhones — both old and new — and most were Twitter users. So it should come as no surprise that we all had an opinion about Twitterrfic, an iPhone client for Twitter. To sum up everyone’s thoughts in one word: horrific. Scrolling through messages should come n...
Came This Close to Buying a Touch!
Given my obsession with an iPod Touch is well-known, a colleague dropped off a copy of a Wal-Mart flyer showing an 8GB model on sale for $179.83, or a $100 discount. At $179.83, buying a Touch went from a nice-to-have to a must-have-right-now. So as much as it would mean driving to a mall, it was a sacrifice I was prepared to make. Sadly, it turns out the flyer had a typo - the “1″ in $179.83 should be a “2″, which puts the Touch back into nice-to-have territory. Apparent...
ISPs Have Great Ideas for Broadband Rules
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t write a more necessary (and sarcastic) article about U.S. ISPs’ efforts to craft a nationwide broadband policy than the one over at DSL Reports. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others have signed onto a plan being pushed by nonprofit group Connected Nation to measure broadband penetration that’s aimed at increasing broadband usage. However, as DSL Reports makes clear, the package is hardly something to cheer about. As alleged by another not-for-...
Can’t Anybody Make Up Their Mind (AT&T)!!!
Free Wi-Fi access from AT&T on the iPhone? More like “now you see it, now you don’t”? Or more like, “let’s try it for a while and see” — or maybe “we can change our mind and nobody will notice” — maybe before the days of blogs and instant communications and publishing that might have held true, but not any more. If you want to see what all the noise is about, click here. Tags: apple, att, iphone, wi-fi Related Entries T-Mobile VoIP ...
Skype’s FY08-Q2 Results … Generates a Significant Question
On Wednesday eBay released their quarterly financial results, including an update on Skype usage. This chart presents the trend lines over the past year. The only other information that came out in the call: Over 25% of all Skype-to-Skype calls involve video Skype is "double-digit" profitable (along with PayPal) Comments: It is apparent that the MySpace agreement contributed to the accelerated growth in Q4-07. For the first ...
iPhone Users: Despite Rumors, AT&T Wi-Fi Not Live
The launch of the iPhone 3G can be summed up in one word, and it starts with a “c.” Instead I will go with comedy of errors. Activation delays, long lines, online issues, application roll-out issues — it has been a train wreck that makes Brittany Spears’ saga seem like a quaint Victorian-era romance novel. Today is a perfect example. Earlier today, fellow bloggers, big and small, got into a tizzy when someone got hold of a document saying that AT&T Wi-Fi for iPhone ...
iPhone 3G Now a Week Old! And What a Week!
The Apple iPhone 3G is now a week old and what a week it’s been! How about this for out of the box — 1 million sold in the first weekend! And now I’m wondering how sales kept up through the week … But yikes! Now there’s a shortage! Aren’t gadgets great! Too many, too little … it’s not easy to be a manufacturer when you can have problems about selling too little product and then too much product! Yikes again! Tags: apple, iphone 3g Relat...
T-Mobile VoIP Shenanigans - AGAIN!
I’ve written about T-Mobile’s VoIP blocking shenanigan’s here, here, and here. Not to mention their blocking of MinuteWatcher for tracking cellphone minute usage. I also wrote how Truphone won an injunction against T-mobile ordering T-Mobile UK to stop blocking calls to Truphone. T-Mobile’s heavy-handed blocking tactics is getting a bit old. Well, according to TUAW, T-mobile is at it again. Thilo Salmon, CEO of sipgate, told TUAW that T-Mobile Germany has asked his ...
iPhone Touch Even Sexier Now
Amid all the excitement about the 3G iPhone, there’s an interesting story that is getting little attention: the iPod Touch has become even sexier and more attractive. For anyone looking to buy a cheap iPod Touch from people who snapped up a new iPhone, forget about it. Rather than dumping them on the market, Touch owners are not only keeping them but falling in love with them all over again. Why? I think it mostly has to with Apple’s App Store, which is virtual buffet for anyone loo...
Venture Capital Loves Virtual
Startups selling virtual goods and offering virtual experiences are raking in the venture capital these days. Perhaps it’s the fact that virtual gifting hit the mainstream in 2007 or because people are worried about the impact of business travel on the environment, but the virtual world is beginning to get its share of real dollars. In the first half of 2008, virtual worlds raised $345 million in venture investment, according to data from Virtual Worlds Management, a media company that co...
Discover Your Personal Blindspots
Everyone has blindspots. How often have YOU been Blindsighted? It is often the people who are the closest to us who can see things that we cant see. You owe it to yourself to listen to what they have to say. With their help you will be better prepared for whatever it is that is waiting for you around the corner. Tags: Entrepreneurship, leadership, Entrepreneur, Jeff Pulver ...
AMD Has Gone From Scrappy to Sad
Confession: Back when AMD was pitching its Opteron chipset, I convinced my husband to buy shares in the company on the belief that its plans to build a backwards compatible 64-bit processor was so obviously better than Intel’s efforts with Itanium that the market would eventually see it. The market did, and AMD shares went up a bit, but we soon sold them after my company changed its policy regarding stock ownership. I say this so you guys know that I once believed in AMD. I live in Austin...
The Downside of Livin’ in a Virtual World
Anybody remember the big noise about 3D virtual worlds and how they are going to change our lives forever? Well, that may still be true today, but how about the big time scam — and big time bucks lost — with “Second Life”? The Wall Street Journal covers this very nicely and then takes us into the future for where we might be headed. BTW, what avatar were you? Tags: avatar, second life, wall street journal Related Entries More on That Second Life Thing - Jan 24, ...
What’s Your Favorite iPhone 3G App?
I know it’s still early days in the history of the iPhone 3G, but with a million sold already (and steadily counting!), wanted to find out what some of the most popular iPhone 3G apps are. Now I could go to some other places and get the Top 10 or Top 25 list, but I wanted to get some direct feedback from you. Do you have a favorite that you can’t believe you lived without until now? So let us know, OK? Tags: iphone 3g Related Entries Want To Know What the iPhone 3G Really Cost? - ...
A Bold Prediction… Blackberry Will Continue to Rule the Enteprise
I’ll be iBold enough to say that, applying physics terminology so much appreciated by RIM’s co-CEO, Blackberry Bold will reduce the half-life of the iPhone in the business and prosumer market by an order of magnitude. Tuesday evening I attended RIM’s annual shareholders meeting in Waterloo at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, initially funded by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaradis. A full house in the lecture theatre, including many RIM managers, all the Waterloo Reg...
Why Silicon Valley Should Be Worried
We have short memories in Silicon Valley, which is both a blessing and a curse. We forget the bad times as quickly as we forget the good times. At the turn of the century, everything went to hell with the dot-com bust. Then the pendulum started to swing the other way; the pessimism that once reigned supreme was being replaced by wild-eyed optimism. Now Silicon Valley is in for a long-overdue reality check, one that should worry one and all. Why? Because the news coming out of advertising-focus...
Pushing voice applications “into the cloud”… a new article series I’m starting…
So what are the steps of pushing your voice applications out “into the cloud”? Where do you begin? As you all probably know and as I mentioned over on Voxeo’s ‘Voxeo Talks’ blog, I have a fascination with network clouds (and cloud computing), and in the latest sign of that, I’ve kicked off a 4-part series over on the TMCnet IVR Community that Voxeo is sponsoring. In the first article in the series, titled “Pushing IVR Into The Cloud, Part 1: Why Make ...
Programmers Helping Programmers
One of the nicest changes to have happened since I was last an active programmer almost twenty years ago is the help programmers give each other. Programming used to be pretty lonely; it still requires unsocial concentration and lack of distraction; but we programmers aren’t alone with our bugs anymore. When we get stuck, we search the forums inevitably setup around the products, tools, and APIs we’re using or just google a description of what’s happening to us and we usually f...
Comcast on the Defensive
Two weeks before the Federal Communication Commission meets to decide whether or not to issue an enforcement order against Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer traffic, not-for-profit group Free Press has accused the ISP of throttling P2P traffic not only when the network is congested, but whenever that traffic reaches a predefined level. Sort of like a golf club that allows a certain number of women in to keep the activists at bay, but no one beyond that number, even if the links are empty. Fr...
We Already Said Goodbye to the Computer Mouse
Not that anyone can’t write about anything at any time (particularly as bloggers), but we already covered how the computer mouse may become extinct anytime soon — ah, about a week ago. See the VoIP & Gadgets Blog piece here. But if you want to read the “follow-up story” on this topic that’s making the rounds today, click here. But they really do take a look at what the future may hold … Tags: computer mouse, voip & gadgets blog Relate...
Subscribes
Archives
-
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- November 1999
- January 1970
Sipy...
-
News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.