Archive for August 27th, 2008
That Dell-Facebook News…More Like Non-News
Last week, Dell’s PR team was busy emailing us about a joint announcement they were going to make in tandem with Facebook. They were going to announce a partnership, they said, …around the next generation of Cloud Computing. In addition to the joint announcement, the companies will also be discussing their perspectives, insights and future plans surrounding the Cloud Computing space. Since it conflicted with some of my other commitments, I couldn’t go. I am actually glad I di...
No, Seriously: Microsoft Patents Page Up & Page Down
Put this in the category of “you gotta be kidding me.” Microsoft has applied for and received a patent (U.S. Patent #7,415,666) that essentially patents “Page Up/Page Down” functionality. The patent (Timothy D Sellers, Heather L. Grantham, Joshua A. Dersch) that was filed in March 2005 is yet another proof that our patent system is as (if not more) dysfunctional as Britney Spears. Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments A method and sy...
TechCrunch Redesign A Sign of Things to Come
Big news! TechCrunch has gone through a pretty extensive redesign. In post, Mark Hendrickson explained that: “Our overarching goal was to clean things up, both on the surface and under the hood. TechCrunch had become bloated in many ways, with the homepage taking way too long to load and the scroll bar going on forever and ever.” You heard it here first but what TechCrunch just completed is going to be emulated (copied?) by many of the leading blog sites that have evolved from one-...
Evgeny Gorbarsky: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype’s fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com. Evgeny Gorbarsky is my counterpart at Skypeclub.ru, Russia’s top, independent, Skype portal. Skype means a lot in my life these days. Since skypeclub.ru was opened, Skype became not only my job, but the best hobby. It’s great that our news and reviews help thousands of Russian Int...
Dimitry Korolkov: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype’s fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com. Dimitry Korolkov works in marketing for Program-Ace LLC, a software house in Kharkiv City, Ukraine. Skype is an ultimate excitement, which not only erases the borders and brings the whole world touch-close to you, it is an incarnation of the completely new reality of communications in a digi...
How about a Blu-ray/VHS Combi?
A Blu-ray disc recorder and a VHS video tape machine may seem unlikely bedfellows, but that hasn’t stopped Panasonic from wrapping them up together in the same box for the DMR-BR630V. The 630V can write at six times speed, has digital and analog tuners, new second-gen MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 encoder chips as well as all the standard HDMI and analog connections and Panasonic’s Viera link for device interconnectivity. It also records to DVD. And there’s even a 320GB hard drive inside,...
Service Provider Views - Ribbit’s Deal with BT
For my latest Service Provider Views column, I’ve continued the theme of platform plays from the last column - this time focusing totally on Ribbit. The $105 million price tag paid by British Telecom raises all kinds of questions about the deal and what it means for Voice 2.0 in general. It’s a great story, and I’ve tried to shed more light on it in this column. Last week I interviewed Ribbit’s founders - Ted Griggs and Crick Waters, and from that I’ve written my co...
Desktop Virtualization: Where Thin Clients Meet the Cloud
Today the organization behind the popular Xen open-source hypervisor announced the latest release of its virtualization software. It’s smaller, has better power management and graphics capabilities, and can run on machines ranging from servers to laptops and mobile phones. Also, Nortel announced today a product it calls an “office-on-a-stick.” I would call it a virtualized desktop. Nortel joins companies large and small pushing products that can replicate your computer and inf...
IEEE standardizes 801.11r fast Wi-Fi roaming
The IEEE has completed 802.11r, a standard that lets Wi-Fi devices roam quickly between wireless access points (WAP) and which improves the performance of VoIP on enterprise LANs. Traditionally, 801.11 devices can roam from one access point to another, but it takes about 100ms to re-associate, and several seconds to re-establish authenticated connections using 802.1x. Not good for time-critical apps like VoIP. According to InfoWorld, “the new standard, 802.11r, known as Fast Basic Service...
What’s in Your Back-to-School Pack?
Is every kid in America (at least at a certain age bracket) heading back to High School (or even Middle School) this week with a cell phone and iPod? I’m sure there a many other variations of gadgetry in the average back-to-school back pack (or other notebook, pencil, paper, lunch carrying device), but that’s got to be the one. Wait … Maybe it’s just the iPhone without anything else, but that would seem to be more appropriate for a higher demo that what I’m given ...
How To Walk, Talk & Charge Your Mobile Phone
Everyday activities — commuting to work, walking the dog, grocery shopping — could one day help keep your cell phone charged, thanks to an emerging technology that converts regular motion into power. Boise, Idaho-based startup M2E Power announced this week it will start selling a cell-phone charger next year that can convert six hours of everyday movement (about two days of toting it around) into one hour of talk time. The company hopes to one day embed its microgenerator and a batt...
Solar Map: Over 30 Big Solar Projects in the Works
U.S. Utilities are increasingly adding solar to their power portfolios as a way to meet state mandates that call for a percentage of renewable power. So far we’ve counted more than 30 utility-scale — we’re saying one megawatt or greater — solar projects that are in various stages of development across the U.S. Big solar is only going to get bigger. Check out the map and read the full story over at Earth2Tech. ...
Microsoft develops Vi-Fi (Vehicle Wi-Fi). VoIP while driving baby!
A new technology developed by Microsoft in alliance with the University of Massachusetts (UMASS), and the University of Washington has resulted in a new technology called Vi-Fi (Vehicle Wi-Fi). Vi-Fi solves the problem of hopping from one Wi-Fi wireless access point (WAP) to another when signal strength diminishes. According to the article, the goal of Vi-Fi could be to power VoIP calls, Internet, and radio in cars of the future. Ironically, Andy wrote a controversial blog this week about VoIPin...
Everything in the World’s Going Wireless
In Singapore, the Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips is designing a multimedia server to stream audio and video through the air, from the Internet to any device in the home. In Munich, a former unit of Siemens envisions a cordless phone that would double as a music player, wirelessly drawing music from home computers. In Japan, members of Sony’s global “digital home team” are redesigning 90% of the company’s home electronics components to connect wirelessly to the...
Can Bell Canada Stay Competitive? Alec Says No.
Colleague Alec Saunders had an action-speaks-louder-than-words post yesterday that read my mind perfectly. I had exactly the same reaction as Alec after reading Bell Canada’s current position on infrastructure spending in the Globe & Mail. Basically, the storyline is that Bell does not plan to pursue a FTTH - fiber to the home - strategy to deliver the high end speeds to stay on par or get ahead of the cablecos. They’re taking the prudent approach in balancing the Capex required ...
Why Cisco Bought Mail Startup PostPath for $215M
In order to fight its ongoing battle against Microsoft and Google on the whole issue of “collaboration,” Cisco today added yet another weapon to its arsenal. The San Jose, Calif.-based company said it’s buying PostPath, which will allow it to add email and calendaring features to its WebEx collaboration software, for a whopping $215 million. The acquisition shouldn’t come as a surprise: John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, recently said: “We believe we are entering the n...
Inc Magazine - Top 5000 List/VoIP Companies
Colleague Garrett Smith had a post on Monday that I just saw and wanted to echo in case you missed it. He cited Inc Magazine’s current list of fastest growing companies. It covers the top 5000 in the U.S., which is a huge list, and it’s something Garrett has been following for a while. His post cites the rising stars in the VoIP space, and it’s worth reading to see where they stand in the rankings. Of the top 10 in his list, I really only know 2 reasonably well - his own compan...
Dmitrii: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype’s fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com. Dmitrii is a psychology student at a Bulgarian university, sells advertising for a British newspaper, and is soon to be a father. So, for me Skype is something very very special. It is the easiest way to talk with friends. For example, you are working all day and you don’t have the pos...
What Does Mozilla Do With Its Dough?
I went to a Microsoft event last night, and one of the things we talked about during drinks afterwards was what Mozilla does with all of the money it makes from driving search traffic to Google. The little search box in the upper right-hand sided of Firefox is Mozilla’s cash-cow because Google pays Mozilla a reference fee. And we’re not talking nickels and dimes. In 2006, the Mozilla Foundation made a $47-million profit on revenue of $66.8-million. That’s a sweet profit margin...
Do You Samsung Instinct?
As part of my get-well regimen, I spend a lot of time at the local gym. The upside (or the downside) of being on the treadmill or the stair-master is that you spend a lot of time watching lots of basic cable television. Switching channels, I found running across advertisements of Sprint touting Samsung Instinct, the iPhone-competitor, popping up way too frequently. Sprint must be spending mucho-dinero on these ads (they are pretty darn good) and made me want to take a second look at the Instinc...
Sneak Peek: The WB Launches Tomorrow
TheWB.com will relaunch Wednesday as an online video destination in an attempt to revive the brand (and sell a few ads). We got a sneak-peek at the new site and put it through some paces. Our initial reaction? Though the content is good, the confusing interface makes one think that the WB actually stands for Why Bother? Full Review on NewTeeVee. ...
New Sony PSP adds mic for Skype
The Sony PSP-3000 will come with a built-in microphone 15 October 2008, Sony announced this weekend. So you won’t need to carry headphones to talk. Small improvement, but a barrier to Skype adoption for many users. From the news release: To enjoy Skype on PSP, users will require a Skype account, Memory Stick Duo(TM), a wireless Internet connection and a Headphone with Remote Control (PSP-S140) or Skype-compatible headphones. Users are recommended to speak closely to the microphone...
Maren Hogan: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype’s fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com. Maren K. Hogan is managing partner at HCI, Capital Management, for Humans. Skype should be called Bridge, although that’s not as compelling as the cool name SKYPE. But that’s what it is. It’s a bridge from my children to their grandfather in New York, from my husband to his...
Ashim Roy: What Skype means to me
On the occasion of Skype’s fifth birthday, Skype Journal will publish a series on "What Skype Means To Me." You are invited to email your essay or short thoughts to editor@SkypeJournal.com. Dr. Ashim Roy is India Country Head for Stoke Networks, providing local support to network operators in the region. Dr. Roy sent this post called "Skyping at Stoke - Keeping the fire alive." While happily Skyping away, we often forget to thank the team that created Skype. Some good...
Thanks to Wi-Fi Smartphones, Mobile VoIP is Growing Steadily
Business Week today has a good summary of various mobile VoIP services that allow you to make phone calls from your cellphone over the Wi-Fi network. These apps are incredibly popular amongst people who use iPhones, thanks to services such as Truphone and Gorilla Mobile, while others like iCall will soon join the party. And that is just the beginning. By 2011 the number of mobile VoIP users around the world may rise to 100 million from 7 million in 2007, according to ON World, a consulting firm...
Back in the Hi-Tech Startup Capital of the World: Tel Aviv
Im spending this week in Tel Aviv and I look forward to spending time catching up with a number of (early) early-stage startups. This morning I hosted a successful Keiretsu meeting which brought together many of the Israeli startups Im involved with. Tomorrow morning I am hosting my 4th Real-Time Social Networking Breakfast event in Tel Aviv this year. This looks like it may be my largest breakfast to date (out of 30 that I have hosted in 16 cities) as over 200 people are registered for...
Going Without Revenue
Starting a business with no plan for revenue is always a risky approach; it’s especially so these days with no quick exits through either going public or being acquired and not much VC money available – especially for businesses with no revenue in the P&L. Some people would argue that a “business without a revenue plan” is an oxymoron. That’s NOT true; you can build spec houses for a business and know you won’t get a cent back until you sell them; that’...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.