Archive for July 24th, 2008
New Content on Tech Target - Unified Communications
I recently started contributing to Tech Target, which is a pretty rich source of content for all things IT and enterprise communications. One of the features I support on occasion is called Ask The Expert, where I provide brief replies to questions submitted by readers. It’s not a forum for in-depth analysis, but it creates some dialog among a wide range of industry experts. My latest set of replies was just posted, and if you’re interested, you can read my take on three topics - sh...
Run VoIP in your House - get arrested
Apparently, in Bangladesh if you try and resell VoIP services out of your house, you’re apt to get raided. Hope what happened to American Eliadah “Lia” McCord (forced to smuggle drugs, caught by Bangladesh airport security, gets 30-year sentence, but eventually pardoned thanks to help from Gov. Bill Richardson) doesn’t happen to people who run VoIP services out of their house. I happened to see the Eliadah “Lia” McCord story a few nights ago on TV. It was a tr...
iFund Has Invested in 5 Companies So Far
I am hanging out at the MobileBeat conference in Sunnyvale, Calif., today, watching Erick Schonfeld grill panelists on the “Bang or Bust” panel. One of the panelists is Matt Murphy, head of the $100 million iFund at Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers. “We have invested in five companies so far,” he told the room. He named iControl, which brings home automation to the iPhone, as one of the fund’s investments, and said the names of three more would be revealed som...
Open Web Foundation can clear the way for innovation
Open Web Foundation launched today. Anything that helps more projects survive the path from concept to adoption is fantastic. The OWF is tackling several human barriers to technical success. Legal barriers. Great projects have been stalled for many quarters because contributions to their work product (designs, sample code, specification, etc.) were not cleared. OWF will host projects where all contributions are cleared up front. So the final product arrives unencumbered by patents, trademarks...
Open Web Foundation can clear the way for innovation
Open Web Foundation launched today. Anything that helps more projects survive the path from concept to adoption is fantastic. The OWF is tackling several human barriers to technical success. Legal barriers. Great projects have been stalled for many quarters because contributions to their work product (designs, sample code, specification, etc.) were not cleared. OWF will host projects where all contributions are cleared up front. So the final product arrives unencumbered by patents, trademarks...
Voodoo PCs Undergo HP Mumbo-Jumbo
It’s a sad day when Hewlett-Packard decides to merge its Voodoo PC business unit with its consumer business. This were the ultimate gamer PCs from a one time stand-alone company that put a unique business model into play — high-end performance, outrageous design and high-end prices. I mean, take a look at that box above! Now, Voodoo’s laptops and desktops will be sold alongside HP’s consumer Compaq Presario and Pavilion PC lines — sort of the opposite of ...
Is Now the Time for e-Book Readers?
With Sony announcing today that its Reader Digital Book will be able to read electronic books published using the .epub format — the same that many of the largest book publishers are using — ring in a new age for e-books? Until now, Sony’s e-book reader could only read books available from the Sony e-book store, PDF documents and digital rights management (DRM)-free text. Starting next month, the new PRS-505 Sony Reader will be able to access secure DRM- and non-DRM-prote...
Blogging 101 ??? The Importance of Links
An old friend recently started blogging and was kind enough to ask my advice. Bonus hint #1: whenever you are about to write something that isn’t a secret and isn’t boring, turn it into a post on your blog. I’m taking my own advice. The world wide web is all about links. Blogging differs from offline writing mainly in its use of links. Every two weeks I select one of my posts to run offline in some Vermont newspapers. Many of them simply can’t be considered because they...
A Personalized/Customized Browser
For whatever reason, I’m fascinating with Flock. Perhaps it has to do with the tremendous amount of hype Flock received before launching a couple of years ago. Its unveiling was a disaster with an alpha that should probably never have seen the light of day. For all intents and purposes, Flock should have been dead in the water. Rather than fade away, Flock kept on moving forward by introducing an array of new features and raising another $15-million of venture capital. In a sense, it has ...
The Jeff Pulver Show: My Advise to PR Firms on How to Pitch Bloggers
Phil Campbell (@philcampbell) joined me as my in-studio guest and he brought with him: Patty Hartwell (@Pishba) and Toby Moores (@sleepydog) who were our “in-studio audience.” The show covered a lot of ground including: - Recap of Billy Joel “Last Play at Shea“ - Advice to PR Firms Looking to Pitch Bloggers - Podcamp Boston 3 - twitter, Life 3.0 and the evolution of Presence Please feel free to share your comments about the show below. Feel free to find me on twitter ...
Vonage UK launches new low cost V-Plan calling plans
Vonage today announced two new low cost call plans for their Vonage UK subsidiary. According to Vonage UK, “Following customer research and reacting directly to consumer concern about increasing household costs and spiraling business overheads, Vonage has created two new fixed rate call plans.” They added, “Vonage subscribers report enormous savings on their monthly bills and comment on the speed and ease of swapping providers as well as installing Vonage. The new call plans f...
Kevin Johnson Joins Juniper as CEO
Is Kevin Johnson Good For Juniper? Yes, he brings a new perspective No. Selling Routers against Cisco isn’t like selling Windows. I am going back to sleep Update: Juniper has officially announced that Kevin Johnson is going to the CEO, Scott Kirens is going to be the Chairman. The lack of response from their PR department shows that they are woefully out of date in this “immediate news age,” ironic for a company that makes equipment to enable...
Packet8 675xi VoIP for the SMB
I missed the 8×8/Packet8 news on July 16th about its new hosted small office “key” system and plug-and-play IP phones. Joan Citelli, Director of Corporate Communications emailed me asking for a briefing, but apparently I never replied since her email was still marked as unread and nothing in my Sent Items. Email overload I guess. The news was about 8×8, working with handset maker Aastra Telecom to provide a key system to the SMB market,which is part of the new Packet8 675xi...
14 Things Corporations Can Learn from Seasoned Web Workers
As travel costs continue to rise, big corporations are looking for alternate ways to get their employees in front of one another, including investing big bucks in things like teleconferencing systems. But while the giants are just waking up to this new world of distributed and remote work, web workers everywhere have already spent years perfecting it. And Web Worker Daily has consolidated the knowledge gleaned from those years into a 14-point prescription. ...
Life on the Other Side of the Digital Coin
So, my hunt for Wi-Fi in Bayfield, Ont. was finally successful as the public library offers free access. What’s interesting is it seems to be the place in town where most people go online. With a large retirement community that only need occasional access to the Web the library’s computer and its Linksys router meets the needs for many people who may not have a computer at home. When I told the librarian how it was difficult to find Wi-Fi in town, she said so many people depended on...
Why Facebook Connect Matters & Why it Will Win
Facebook kicked off their second annual developer conference in San Francisco this afternoon with a keynote by founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The overproduced keynote with too many words repeatedly incessantly, seemed like a lullaby sung by a nanny in language alien to yours. There were some who compared Mark with Steve Jobs after last year’s presentation. Now, having watched the two weave their spell, I would say the comparison would be as exaggerated as equating the thespian abiliti...
Telerupted: Worldwide Communication
The disruption potential of VoIP lies not so much in its ability to push down the cost of telephone service than in its ability to get consumers to ignore the telephone business altogether. The nature of the Internet makes VoIP advantageous even after the cost of plain old telephone service goes to zero. For while the network determines all the essential features of traditional telephone service, from audio quality (low) to addressing (telephone numbers), the Internet asserts few constraints ...
Malware & Hackers Heading to Mac Land
News that I’d rather not think about, but have to, is the new upsurge in malware written specifically for Apple users. Still a drop in the bucket compared to Windows vulnerabilities, but Mac nastyware is on the rise. Two new Mac-ware Trojans that emerged in February and June ought to shake Mac users of their misconceptions that their computers (and, eventually, iPods and iPhones) are impenetrable. To put this in perspective, the first really pernicious piece of Mac malware e...
Can We Do Anything about iPod Audio Quality?
In the iPod age, music sound quality has been dumbed down to “Fisher-Price toy” levels, said one of my all time favorite rockers, Neil Young, at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference. “Apple has taken a detour down the convenience highway,” he said, talking about what he considers to be the poor audio quality of MP3. He’s currently working on a multimedia archiving project of his entire career, which he says should be available as a series of Blu-Ray discs...
Calling All Spies!
Now you can take care of your inner spy in grand fashion! BrickHouseSecurity.com is like being inside Q’s lab in all of those James Bond movies. Take a look at this, for example, the DVR Pen. It looks and feels like a regular pen — it even writes like a regular pen. But beware! With the click of one covert button you can begin recording color video for up to eight hours. When you’re ready to review your video, simply unscrew the pen and plug it into a standard USB port t...
Answering the call for breakthrough 911 advances
Today President Bush signed into law hugely importantly legislation that finally provides VoIP providers with better tools for direct access to the 911 network and the liability relief necessary. The VON Coalition’s press release is below. This is the first major piece of telecommunications legislation signed into law this year — and it happens to be a bill designed to help advance VoIP. The bill provides tools that the FCC failed to provide 3 years ago when first adopting rules for...
Playcrafter: Social Web Game Platform With Physics
<img src=”http://gigaom.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/playcrafter-game.jpg?w=251&h=170″ alt=”" title=”playcrafter-game” width=”251″ height=”170″ class=”alignnone size-medium wp-image-15232″ / Bay Area startup Bay Area startup ZipZapPlay has launched the latest entry in the quickly growing build-and-share-your-own-game space in alpha this week, a service by the name of Playcrafter. ZipZapPlay CEO Curt Bererton and Chief Creat...
Cisco Buys Pure for a Smarter Home Network
Today Cisco Systems said it plans to spend $120 million to buy Seattle-based Pure Networks, a company that makes software to manage home networks. Pure’s network management software and underlying protocols, which make a connected device visible to a network, are becoming more important now that devices beyond computers and their peripherals are networked in the home. Cisco has already tried to address this trend by using Pure’s technology in its Linksys Easy Link Advisor program, w...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.