Archive for September 5th, 2008
VoIP Like You Give a Damn
When I checked out Google’s blog post Tuesday about its Free the Airwaves project, which aims to convince the FCC to approve the use of the white spaces between the spectrum vacated by analog television channels for broadband access, I saw it offered the ability to phone your Congressman. I thought that was kind of cool, so I clicked through to learn more. I found myself at the master’s thesis of Fred Benenson — a VoIP-based program called Cause Caller that mixes IP telephony ...
AT&T, T-Mobile, 3 to Speak at Mobilize
As most of you know, this summer we have been working hard to put together our next-generation mobile conference Mobilize 08, which will look at the emergence of new devices and their impact on mobile data — in particular the opportunities they present for entrepreneurs. Unlike some of the existing events, which focus almost exclusively on the handset, we are taking a more holistic view of the mobile data world, devoting time to connected devices such as the Kindle, as well as new platfor...
Creating Telecom Union
A handful of telecom agents got together in Vegas in Feb. at the Channel Partner Expo to discuss the formation of an association by and for agents. Little did we know the trouble we would cause. You see, there are already three agent associations. All of the For-Profit. Ours, the Technology Channel Association, is non-profit, which is the first big differentiator. I’m not picking on for-profit. I’m just saying that the goals are different. For-profit has to earn money. Our goal at TC...
Interviews with Top 60 VoIP Movers and Shakers…
Rich Tehrani has a nice roundup of 60 interviews he’s done with many of the major “movers and shakers” in the VoIP / IP communications industry. Rich writes: Whenever I go to a conference, I learn a tremendous amount from the people I meet at the show. I really enjoy the impromptu networking which takes place at events as it allows me to learn so much about what is happening in the market….{snip} In less than two weeks the world with gather at ITEXPO — The World...
Poll: Is the New Microsoft Ad Any Good?
What’s Your Take On The New Microsoft Ad? Bill being funny. That’s good. I like it. Oh man — this is worse than their dinosaur campaign. I am Mac…I don’t PC Microsoft has launched its largest consumer marketing campaign focused on the broad potential of Windows across PCs, the web and mobile devices to date. The reviews are in — the blogging corps have given it a thumbs down. I kinda found it funny, but then I love everythin...
Harry Potter podcast
tags: skype, podcasting, secrets of harry potter, harrypotterpodcast, podcast Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype. ...
Forrester Defines the Cloud, But We Beg to Differ
A new report out from Forrester takes a chart-filled look at cloud computing, offering the analyst firm’s own definition of the cloud and attempting to dispel three myths they have noticed. Since we at GigaOM buy pretty heavily into two of these so-called myths — namely that a cloud is comprised of a scalable virtualized server environment and that it’s a low-margin business — I was eager to see where we had been led astray. But I don’t think we have been. The repo...
A Time to Listen to Yourself
When you find yourself searching for answers and/or direction, while it is easy to ask others for advice, sometimes the harder thing to do is look deep inside yourself and act on what your gut says the answer is. My friend Joe Mazzeo has an expression: Shut your f**cking Ears, Listen to Yourself! And I think he has a point. I believe that most of the time we know what it is we need to do. We may lack the confidence to go forward and do it, but we know in our gut what is needed to be done. I...
What Firefox Can Learn From Netscape Navigator
Yeah, I promised not to talk about Chrome for awhile but I’ll ask for a Chrome exemption to look at how Firefox can learn from the mistakes Netscape made in the late-1990s when it fumbled and stumbled and, eventually, lost its dominance of the fledgling browser market to Internet Explorer. This stems from comments made yesterday by Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape, about Chrome (He likes it but you wouldn’t expect him to say otherwise publicly, would you.) 1. Mozilla must n...
Dell Shrinks Computers and Operations
Just a day after Dell launched it’s own line of mini Inspirons, and after CEO Michael Dell said carriers would likely subsidize such netbooks, creating smaller price tags, the Wall Street Journal speculates that Dell will sell its manufacturing plants, shrinking its operations. This would be good for Dell because it would give it a chance to ditch an aspect of its business with diminishing returns and go after a growth area, like cloud computing. Dell already outsources some of its manufa...
Joost To Kill Desktop Client
Exclusive: In what is likely to be a major shift in the company’s strategy, peer-to-peer startup Joost is going to stop making its desktop client. The decision to suspend the client is likely to be announced soon, I am told. The company is going to a browser-only strategy, in which much of its content is going to be available through a browser-based player. Joost, I am told, will release a small plugin that would embed itself in the browser and allow you to grab files using the P2P techn...
The Putin Test
Flash forward to early next year. A new president of the United States is about to be sworn in. Vladimir Putin is planning an inauguration day test for him – perhaps another foray into Georgia, seizing all or part of the Ukraine, or just flying dangerously close to US ships at sea. There will be a test; count on it. Western Europe will be worried about its winter gas supplies and continuing to practice historical amnesia. Eastern Europe will be braver because they remember better, but Eastern...
Fonality’s trixbox Pro Unified Agent Edition integrates with Salesforce.com
Fonality’s trixbox Unified Agent Edition (UAE) can automatically match all inbound and outbound calls with the corresponding record in salesforce.com’s AppExchange, and call data is captured and logged eliminating manual entry. This is a big step for Fonality in taking their Asterisk-based IP-PBX from simply an enterprise phone system to a “true” call center platform that can compete with Avaya, Nortel, Interactive Intelligence, and other major call center platforms. Fona...
What Netscape’s Founder Thinks About the New Google Browser
Marc Andreessen, whose first startup, Netscape Communications, introduced the consumer web to millions thanks to its Netscape browser, seems to be suitably impressed by Google’s recently released Chrome browser. He waxed eloquent about Chrome during an onstage conversation with Portfolio magazine contributing editor Kevin Maney at The Churchill Club in Palo Alto, Calif. “Any desktop application that has not been implemented in the browser is now going to be implemented in the browser,&#...
Yopi Djauhari’s Flink concept phone
From Yopi Djauhari’s portfolio. Flink tackles the problems of hot ears in long calls (open area above the speaker) and storage (flexible ring bends into a hook to hang the phone on a computer display. tags: skype, flink, phone, hardware, concept, design, ergonomics, bend, hang, assembly Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype. ...
3CX VOIP phone released
We have just officially launched the new free 3CX VoIP Phone for Windows. What makes it different from other soft phones is that 3CX VOIP phone has been developed with the business user in mind - the interface is clean and easy to use. Further more it includes the all important Call Transfer, which is not available in many free soft phones. There have been quite a few blog posts about it already ...
Mobile TV Growth Will Drive Call-to-Action Mobile Advertising
There’s been a lot of hype about mobile advertising in the last few years. But the reality has left many asking with the old commercial “Where’s the beef?” In Mobile TV, says Frank Dickson of Multimedia Intelligence. In a post at RCR Wireless, Dickson says that as mobile TV grows, so will the mobile advertising opportunity. “Unlike many other forms of mobile advertising, the familiarity of the broadcasting advertising model makes mobile video advertising very ea...
SemantiNet Announces Combined $3.4M Series A Funding Round
Earlier today, SemantiNet announced the funding of their $3.4 million series A round. Ive known SemantiNet since early 2007. Im a friend and a fan of SemantiNet co-founders Tal Muskal and Tal Keinan. During my visits to Israel I have met with quite a number of startups and of all the companies Ive met with and know, I believe SemantiNet has what it takes to be a leader in the world of the Semantic Web and one day may be known as the Google of Israel. The buzz for SemantiNet will begin whe...
VCs Back Tools to Look Inside the Cloud
Enterprise software, which has gone from running on the computer to being hosted in a corporate data center, is now moving out to nebulous pools of servers called clouds. As computing clouds become part of the corporate information technology environment, making sure software hosted in the cloud is delivered as quickly and efficiently as possible will become increasingly important. Whether it’s an external cloud such as those offered by Amazon.com or an internal cloud operated by a Wall S...
Comcast’s Courtroom Drama Begins
With its appeal of an FCC enforcement order, Comcast is showing how a bunch of highly trained lawyers can overturn the spirit of the law with a focus on definitions and legalese. It’s a battle played out in procedural dramas in prime time, but in those shows the spirit of the law generally wins. The outcome of this real-life situation — in which the FCC chastised Comcast for throttling P2P traffic without telling users — is far less certain. But first, like in any courtroom dr...
Sony Laptops Heading Back to Sony — Oy VAIO!
Sony has issued a recall for thousands of its VAIO laptops because of possible overheating or short-circuits. (Didn’t we blog about another similar Sony problem not all that long ago?) The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said that the recall is voluntary, and it recommended that Vaio owners stop using the products unless otherwise instructed. The recall affects 73,000 VAIO TZ-series computers in the U.S. and apparently 440,000 units worldwide. The safety com...
Toronto Tech Week - September 22-26
For a change, I get to talk about a local event! Last year saw the debut of Toronto Tech Week, which is a great initiative to create some community here, something I have long found lacking, at least in my line of work. This year’s event is coming up, running from September 22 - 26. The program has something for everyone, including a focus on startups, career options for tech, and competing priorities facing IT. There is also quite a bit of technology-oriented content, with three strong tr...
PC Makers Give Storage Startups a Boost
On Sunday, I wrote that online back-up services are much in demand from consumers who are worried about their digital data. David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, told us that he wouldn’t be surprised that in a few years “almost every PC is going to ship with online backup built-in.” Seems like he was being super-conservative, and his vision might come to life sooner than we think, thanks to two announcements that hit the wires this week. Dell today announced a partnership with Box.n...
Dell Goes to Europe with Vodafone
Vodafone and Dell have announced that Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 ultra-mobile notebook will be sold with built-in mobile broadband, exclusively through Vodafone stores and online, and directly from Dell, in key European markets. Available in late September, the Inspiron Mini 9 is designed to deliver the utmost flexibility, reliability and speed for email and Internet browsing on-the-go without the need for an additional modem. (Or so they say.) Digital nomads and avid web surfers alike (th...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.