Archive for August 12th, 2008
SDForum Corporate Innovation and Research Fair
SDForum will celebrate the innovation processes at Silicon Valley tech companies at its first annual Corporate Innovation and Research Fair this Friday, Aug. 15, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Companies including HP, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Sun will present their learning lessons and best practices in an effort to strengthen an open, collaborative exchange with the entrepreneurial community. Go here to register for the event, for which GigaOM is a media partner. ...
LG: #2 in Mobile and Trying Harder
LG Electronics, the South Korean mobile phone manufacturer, has overtaken rival Samsung to take second place in the U.S. handset market behind Motorola in the latest quarter. The figures, prepared by Strategy Analytics, a Boston-based research firm, underscore the popularity of several touchscreen-based handsets made by LG, including the Vu and Voyager (photo above). Both are sold by Verizon Wireless in competition with Apple’s iPhone offered exclusively by AT&T in the U.S. M...
Is anyone really surprised the iPhone has a “kill switch”?
Are people really surprised that Apple has a the ability to remotely kill applications? Based on news reports about Steve Jobs statement that Apple does have a way to remotely remove/disable software on users’ iPhones, there were a good number of blog posts diving into the issue. Several posts seemed to view this as a way for Apple to remotely disable your entire phone… but let’s look at what was actually said: But the real controversy started when Jonathan Zdziarski, author ...
Speaking at SpeechTEK next week in New York on voice application security…
On Sunday I’ll be boarding a train bound for New York City where I’ll be attending SpeechTEK for Monday through Wednesday. As I mentioned previously, on Tuesday, August 19th, I’ll be giving a presentation on “Securing CCXML and VoiceXML Applications“: How secure are your speech applications? As the usage of both VoiceXML and CCXML continues to explode, and VoIP usage continues to grow dramatically, especially within enterprise environments, it is increasingly import...
Should Your New Web Business be Ad-Supported?
Contrary to popular belief, the ad-supported model for a web business is very, very hard to succeed at. I’ve underestimated the difficulty of living on ads a couple of times in the my investment career. Wouldn’t want you to do the same either as an investor or an entrepreneur. Google, of course, is advertising-supported and is a huge success; that’s bad news for you - and Yahoo and Microsoft. Google is consuming most of the free oxygen in the ad-supported cave. If someone want...
RoofRay Launches the Zillow of Solar
What do you get when you cross Zillow and Lending Tree? Online solar clearinghouse RoofRay. The site, created by entrepreneur Chris Bura, launched this morning; it offers users satellite imagery and drawing tools based on Google maps to help solar fans find and buy the best solar rooftop solutions. Cause you know you don’t want to buy a house that’s got poor solar potential. Read the full story over at Earth2Tech.com. ...
Follow Me, Follow You
It’s with mixed emotions that I read Twitter is now limiting people to following a mere 2,000 people. On one hand, it’s good to see Twitter do something to control its growth and, as David Risley suggests, it could create a way to charge people who must follow more than 2,000 people. On the other hand, it seems completely unfair. It’s like telling someone they can only have 15 friends even if they meet someone new and interesting. “Sorry, you’ve already reached you...
Newsflash: Congress Discovers that Web Firms Track Data
For any of us who recognize that personal privacy on the web is an illusion, the response to a Congressional inquiry asking how various ISPs and online portals target advertising and collect data will come as no surprise. Aside from the use of deep-packet inspection technology used by ISPs to insert advertising based on surfing habits, Congress discovered cookies and data retention policies. In a shocked tone, the Washington Post reported that Google is using DoubleClick’s tracking cookie...
3G iPhone Connection Problems Chip-Related?
Om has complained about his frustration with the 3G iPhone, which has poor reception and forces him to spend more time on the 2.5G EDGE network than he thought, but the issue may be with Infineon’s 3G chip, according to an analyst from a Japanese financial conglomerate. Richard Windsor, from Nomura Securities, said in research note, “We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain Infineon is the 3G supplier.”...
twitter: The Ham Radio (two way radio) of Today
The more I use twitter, the more I feel twitter is becoming the two-way radio of the Internet. Comparing twitter to a two-way radio may seem like a strange comparison, but given my personal history of using a 2-way radio to communicate with others, to me it seems like a very logical conclusion. Back when I was 11 years old, CB radio gave me my first chance to define myself with a social identity. Back then I was known as Wildcat and Tranquility Base. Most of the time when my CB radio was...
OpenID’s Struggle for Acceptance
OpenID is one of those concepts that, in theory, sounds good but in practice has failed to gain much traction. Sure, OpenID has gained some high-profile supporters such as Google, IBM and Yahoo but there doesn’t seem to be much, if any, enthusiasm among consumers. In other words, there’s few people clamoring for a single sign-on system to replace the username/password regime that currently exists. A couple of days ago, the New York Times had an opinion piece that dismissed OpenID as ...
Ev Williams: Twitter Not Limiting Followers
Updated with comments from Twitter: Dave Winer points to a series of discussions and blog posts about Twitter allegedly limiting people to 2,000 followers. In his opinion, it is a good idea, because “the expensive thing in Twitter is distributing status messages to large numbers of queues.” Actually, Twitter isn’t doing anything formal. Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter left a comment in response to an earlier version of post that explains it all. I’m afraid this has gotte...
Gaming Console Sales — Who’s on Top?
It’s always interesting to me to keep tabs on what’s selling and what’s not — the proverbial what’s hot and what’s not. Let’s take a look at a favorite topic — video gaming consoles. Amid a long rant on Advertising Age about how Sackboy has a good shot at lifting PS3, we learn that (drum roll please!) according to noted analysts NPD Group, through June, PS3 — which got a later start than chief rival Xbox 360 — had sold...
The Apple Is Never Dull …
Never a dull moment in the land of Apple. (Who said tech is dull?) Just take a look at just some of the recent news (most of it today, in fact): 3 million iPhones sold in the first month (more here) iPhone 3G issues (more here) Problems with MobileMe (more here) Steve Jobs‘ health (is there a succession plan or does the company start and end with him?) You know, this is like an Apple headline news digest, but very easy on the system. Tags: apple, iphone 36, mobileme, steve jobs Relate...
Airport Gadget Kiosks from Best Buy
I’ve always enjoyed gadget browsing at airports (and maybe buying) and now Best Buy has upped that ante by announcing plans to add a dozen self-serve vending kiosks inside major airports across the country as part of a new pilot program called Best Buy Express. Best Buy is partnering with ZoomSystems, a San Francisco-based vending machine company, for the project that will install the small automated stores at eight airports by September 1. The machines will stock cell phone a...
Gmail’s Out…Again
It’s almost becoming routine, these outages at Google’s Gmail service. After we reported last week that there were some problems with Google Apps, today a much bigger outage hit Google’s email service, taking down the entire system, it seems. Given that our company relies on Google’s Gmail and GTalk service, our operations came to a standstill this afternoon. We aren’t a large company but the losses are very real, especially in productivity. I wonder how the big cu...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.