Archive for September 8th, 2008
Yahoo Gets a Boost From Ma Bell
A few months back, when everyone was speculating about the sale of Yahoo, we thought that perhaps AT&T would buy them. After all, Yahoo powered the AT&T portal, and for a long time got paid for it — at least until Ma Bell wised up and asked for a piece of the advertising revenue. Well obviously that acquisition never materialized, but Ma Bell and Yahoo have just inked an agreement that is good news indeed for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search and online media company. As part of...
Voxeo’s CEO interviewed on SquawkBox…
Given that I’ve written here a good bit about Voxeo since joining the company 11 months ago, I thought I’d point to an excellent interview that Voxeo’s CEO, Jonathan Taylor, did with host Alec Saunders on Alec’s Squawk Box podcast. You can listen to it by either using the audio player on the show web page or alternatively you can download the MP3 file directly and listen to it in iTunes, Windows Media Player or whatever MP3 player you wish. It was an enjoyable call (I wa...
MAXroam Version 2 on the 1 Year Anniversary
The roaming SIM company from the irrepressible Pat Phelan relaunches at the Techcrunch conference. Read More… ...
Angstro tackles people search
"Follow the right people and they’ll lead you to the right information." — Rohit Khare Startup Angstro, launched today at TechCrunch50, takes on three challenges: Disambiguating people. There are many people named Phil Wolff. Search engines and white page directories are horrible at telling us apart. Finding news about people. It’s one thing to find what you write about yourself on your blog or facebook. What do others say about you? How are you mentioned? ...
New e-Newspaper Reader Heats Up e-Reader Market
The electronic newspaper, a large portable screen that is constantly updated with the latest news, has been a prop in science fiction for ages. It also figures in the dreams of newspaper publishers struggling with rising production and delivery costs, lower circulation and decreased ad revenue from their paper product. While the dream device remains on the drawing board, Plastic Logic is introducing its version of an electronic newspaper reader — a lightweight plastic screen that mimics th...
Avego: Carpooling 2.0 Via the iPhone
Here’s another one for Stacey’s list of the top 10 mobile applications launching at Demo — but this one’s greener than the rest. Irish company Mapflow is showing off an iPhone version of its Avego service (called Sharelift in the DEMO info), which pulls satellite navigation info and car info via cell phone wireless connection to link solo drivers with potential passengers. It’s calling the service “shared transport,” but to us it looks a lot like carpooling b...
FCC Gives Telcos Free Pass on Accountability
I promised I wouldn’t do more than two posts a day, but this one is such a doozy and so anti-consumer that I just couldn’t resist. Phone companies led by AT&T (same old company whose wireless network is breaking because of too many iPhones) wants FCC to allow them to send less information to the commission when it comes to things like customer complaints, network breakdowns and infrastructure-related investments. What’s weirder is that the great champion of phone companie...
OpenSim, IPO, Buffy: Top Three Picks From the Virtual Worlds Conference
Besides the immensely cool Earthscape geotagging app for iPhone (reviewed here), there were three other standout news items that caught my eye at last week’s Virtual Worlds Conference in Los Angeles: OpenSim Goes Big Time At last April’s VWC in New York, the young, independent developers involved with OpenSimulator, the BSD-licensed virtual world server, were relegated to presenting their work in a small backroom. Not so in L.A.: This time, they had their own booth, a conference In...
DEMO: Meet Alcatel-Lucent’s Services Play
While DEMO is primarily a showcase platform for standalone startups, well-established companies launch products there too. This year Alcatel-Lucent has brought an internal startup pushing an RFID tag reading system called tikitag that aims to bridge the online and digital worlds. The Alcatel-Lucent employees pushing this hardware platform have used less than $10 million in corporate funds. In the physical world, tikitag is a set of RFID- and Near Field Communication-enabled tags and a correspon...
Coming Soon: 1 GB Gpbs Fiber Broadband. Just Not in the U.S.
Unless you live in a part of the U.S. that has super-fast Internet or fiber connections, you’re pretty much stuck with buying your broadband connection from either a cable company or a phone operator. The download speed on either is a crapshoot. But while we wring our hands over the limits of our choices, the rest of the planet keeps getting faster speeds. In Amsterdam, where they already have a fiber optic network, they’re now thinking about upgrading it to symmetrical speeds of up...
Who and How Do You Follow/Friend People?
One of the challenges in using social media services such as Twitter, Friendfeed, Jaiku, Facebook and LinkedIn is figuring out who to follow. There’s certainly no lack of choice but it’s difficult picking people if you’re looking for friends/followers other than people you already know. In particular, what’s missing are tools that give you insight into people you might want to friend/follow based on specific interests. Let’s say, for example, you want to friend/foll...
Buying an iPhone at Best Buy
Best Buy began selling the Apple iPhone on Sunday, becoming the first U.S. retailer to do so outside of Apple and AT&T stores. The Apple iPhone will be carrier in 970 Best Buy stores. Rich Tehrani and I decided to take a walk to Best Buy which is just down the street from TMC and take some pictures of their display. Rich was also interested in buying an external battery back for his current iPhone since the battery life is atrocious. He especially wants the extra juice so he is prepared for...
IT Expo - One Week Away
Well, the TMC IT Expo - West 2008 edition - is coming next week, and it’s time to get another post up about it. According to the website, there are 14 10 x 10 booths left, so it’s not too late to exhibit, in case this was on your mind. The show is billed now as the “World’s Communications Conference”, which of course, can mean a lot of things. What I like about the event is its nice mix of education, accessible keynotes and community. In a market where shows are st...
Cops Befuddled by Vonage 911 Crying baby emergency call
According to the Seminole Chronicle, police were befuddled when they responded to a 911 call with a crying baby on the open phone line, only to discover they were at the wrong house. Apparently, the owner is a Vonage customer and moved without notifying Vonage of the change of address to update the E911 records. The article explains: Kelly informed Sanford police of the situation. Upon arrival at the family’s home, officers confronted a rather confused and embarrassed father who admitted ...
Event: The Early Stage Summit October 2nd in NYC
My friend Richie Hecker is producing the Early Stage Summit in New York City on October 2nd. The Early Stage Summit will be a startup showcase and investor conference featuring 15 highly vetted companies (seed through Series A/B) with 100 investors in what Richie is promising to be a great setting. ESS will be hosted by Pillsbury Withrop and will be keynoted by Alan Meckler. The conference will revolve around 5 tracks spanning all types of companies including, Seed Spotlight, Digital Media, Ent...
SOASTA Raises $6.4M to Test in the Cloud
Software testing provider SOASTA has closed a $6.4 million Series B financing from Formative Ventures, Canaan Partners and The Entrepreneur’s Fund, bringing the total amount of money it’s raised to $10 million. The three-year-old, 20-person startup based in Mountain View, Calif., hopes its cloud-based approach will shake up the relatively mature testing market. SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos says he realized the need for new testing methods while running SaaS provider Dorado. “QA went from 3...
Vote in Business Week “Best of the Web”
Skype is one of five finalists, along with Apple iChat, Grand Central, Vonage and Gizmo Project in BusinessWeek’s “Best of The Web” poll where results will be published in a special report in the September 29 issue. The poll itself seems to be at cross purposes when they say “BusinessWeek wants to know the sites you consider most valuable when it comes to getting informed, making money, having fun, and building your own online tools.” I think the five candidates lis...
First Blog of the Day on Apple’s Plans
Couldn’t resist with all that will be written about what Apple is planning to announce tomorrow … but here’s the first blog of the day on it. Will it be large, small, grand or tall? We will be sure to know all tomorrow. Related Entries TrackBacks | Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: First Blog of the Day on Apple’s Plans Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog ...
Will Incumbents Stifle Innovation?
Earlier today, I spent a delightful hour with Vinnie Mirchandani, a well respected analyst in the enterprise software industry, mostly because he knows how to figure out the impact of big technological trends on software. Accompanying him was George Gilbert, formerly an enterprise software analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, a Wall Street firm. While the conversation flitted from topic to topic, the main question they asked me was this: Can innovation survive against the backdrop of a bro...
DEMO: 10 Mobile Apps in 10 Words
I’m hanging out at DEMO the next few days, and wanted to start off with a quick rundown of the mobile apps launching at the show. With 72 companies to check out in San Diego, plus the competing coverage out of the TechCrunch50, I figured I should keep it short and sweet. So, without further ado, I present the 10 mobile app companies showing at DEMO in 10 words or less. HeyCosmo: Call with questions. Cosmo’s machines find answers. In 60 seconds. Message Sling: Voicemail to SMS, emai...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.