Archive for September 22nd, 2008
Help Us Create a Broadband Bill of Rights
On Friday, Comcast filed its network management plan, which we covered as did NewTeeVee. However, in the comments of the post, it became clear that customers don’t really know what they’re buying when they shell out $30 to $100 a month for a broadband connection. So I’m thinking that we need to create a Broadband Bill of Rights so consumers know exactly what they’re signing up for. Since we’re living in the real world we should frame our Bill of Rights with two bas...
Can the Zune Zoom?
In an industry, becoming the “default” product is a dream come true. When most people think of buying an MP3 player, for example, they immediately think about an iPod. It’s not that other products aren’t as good and/or better value, it’s just that the iPod has become so ubiquitous, it’s difficult for other products to attract the spotlight. Apple has maintained its dominance by continually pushing innovative, even if it means cannibalizing its existing portfo...
Krusell Moves into Camera Cases
Krusell is expanding its product portfolio with a new line of camera cases designed in Sweden. The Sirius and Polaris camera cases, which come in high quality leather with five different color combinations, fit most compact cameras. The Coco camera case in diamond quilted leather comes in four different colors; it’s more suitable for glamorous events and late nights. Finally, the Radical camera case comes in unique designed embroideries to match the already existing laptop...
13 million – congratulations Skype!
Jean Mercier writes the Skype Numerology blog So another million mark was reached on 15 September 2008: 13 million concurrent Skype users online. After a very strong start in 2008, where two million-marks were reached in a very short time span, we had to wait 210 days for the next million. [Skype reached 12 million online on 20 February 2008.] This was the third longest period we had to wait for a million mark. This also means there is still a good and steady growth of Skype users, and i...
Do We Need Another Format? Try slotMusic — Soon
In the latest attempt to shore up sales of music on physical media, SanDisk and the four major music companies have announced a new format called slotMusic. SlotMusic will be introduced in mid-October at such retail outlets as Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Each of these little babies will contain an album, plus extras, on a compact memory card that can be played on mobile phones, PCs and some portable MP3 players. The cards are inserted into vacant slots on phones and other devices. The slots are in...
Please send photos from Skype Beta Days in Greece
"el martes me voy a Grecia por los Beta Days de Skype, pero lo de Alitalia podria impedirlo… Y dejarme tirada en Roma. Interesante." (The Skype beta tester community convenes in the Mediterranean to meet each other and Skype’s new leadership team) (Part of a methodical campaign of stakeholder relations) tags: skype, developers, devrels, beta, betatesters Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype. ...
Lost packets
Have finally persuaded someone at a 3UK store to sell me a prepaid SIM card, topped up, and set up the self-care account. Speaking of which, why do you need to provision yourself a password via SMS, rather than just printing one on the SIM holder with your number? The whole process naturally involves putting the card into your phone, and taking it out because you didn’t realise they need the last 6 digits from the back of the SIM, and then putting it back in a phone, so you can take it out...
Will the Google Phone Give T-Mobile USA a Boost?
With its voice-related revenues and new subscriber additions slowing, and data revenues that lag those of its rivals, the U.S. arm of German phone giant T-Mobile needs a fast-acting picker-upper. Its answer may lie with the Google phone. At a special event in New York on Tuesday, T-Mobile USA will become the first carrier to show off a Google Phone — a device that is made by HTC and uses Google’s Android operating system. The much-awaited phone has the potential to give T-Mobile th...
The Real Reason Wireless Broadband Costs More, for Less
An article in BusinessWeek today claims that wireless data demand is exceeding capacity, which is causing carriers to limit services and charge higher rates. But that just doesn’t jibe with what carriers — or applications developers — are telling me. The real reason carriers are limiting services and charging more is to maintain control of what people can do on their networks. Poor network coverage is becoming obvious thanks to rising 3G demand, but that can be fixed with cap...
Skype Journal Interviews Josh Silverman: The Way Ahead - Platform and Partners
This is the fourth in a series of posts resulting from an interview a week ago Friday with Josh Silverman, Skype’s recently appointed President. In this post we talk about directions for the Skype platform and partner programs. When I first attended a Skype developer event in June 2006, there was lots of enthusiasm for the Skype partner program and for its integration into various third party applications and service offerings. Several of the feature requests, such as call transfer and acc...
Cisco Buys Jabber
“With the acquisition of Jabber, we will be able to extend the reach of our current instant messaging service and expand the capabilities of our collaboration platform. Our intention is to be the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space.” Read More… ...
Toronto Tech Week - September 22-26
Just a quick note to say that Toronto Tech Week kicks off today, and I’m doing my part here to get the word out. It’s Year 2 for this event, and by all accounts, TTW has created some strong momentum for creating a more integrated local community around tech - something that I think has been sorely lacking here. I’ll be attending all day Thursday, so if you’re coming, look for me there. I’m moderating a session on mobile marketing at 1pm, so I especially would love t...
Laughable Blog Aggregator and Linking to news sources
I’m not going to go on another rant blasting blog aggregators that steal other people’s content (aka sploggers). However, I came across one website that took my content, re-worded one sentence and tried to claim it as its own. The change is so laughable I busted out laughing! First, my blog entry titled Court Bans VoIP App on iPhone was one of the first if not the first U.S.-based news outlet to talk about how a German court banned the sipgate VoIP application on the iPhone. In the a...
cataclysm
"I’m signed in to Skype but it looks like everyone is offline. Makes me worried about some cataclysmic event I may have missed." — Rian A nod to collective presence? ...
McCain and Obama proxies debate technology policy Monday
Monday is One Web Day, the web’s "earth day." Skype is sponsoring a debate between technology spokespeople for the two U.S. presidential campaigns. The debate in Cincinnati, Ohio, will be virtual, with speakers calling in to the public access channel studio via Skype video. Three political issues directly affect Skype users. Network neutrality requires your ISP not treat your Skype bits differently from other bits they carry. ISPs in some countries blocked Skype for political a...
GigaOM Network Content to be Featured on CNNMoney.com
Earlier this summer, when we announced our content partnership with BusinessWeek.com, I hinted that there would be more to come. Today it gives me great pleasure to announce that we have formed a content-sharing agreement with Time Warner’s CNNMoney.com, the online home of Fortune magazine, Money magazine and several other top-notch publications. With more than 10 million unique visitors a month, CNNMoney is one of the biggest business-related destinations on the web. As part of the partn...
Pro vs. G.I. Joe using SightSpeed Video/VoIP App
This news about American troops using VoIP & video is a few weeks old, but I wanted to share it, since it’s pretty interesting. SightSpeed VP of Marketing Eric Quanstrom mentioned the news to me awhile ago when we were on a SightSpeed video call. Using SightSpeed, U.S. troops are able to play PlayStation, XBox and the WII against professional athletes (Philadelphia Eagles) while seeing them (video) and “trash talking” them over the Internet (VoIP). Pro vs. G.I. Joe online g...
Polycom KIRK DECT SIP Phones
Polycom today announced the launch of its latest KIRK Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) wireless products. Polycom has introduced three new products: the KIRK Wireless Server (KWS) 300, the KWS 6000, and the KIRK 5040 handset. which are all SIP-based. The name KIRK certainly evokes Captain Kirk from Star Trek and most likely intentionally, since Captain Kirk and his crew made the wireless communicator famous 40 years ago. No doubt Polycom has some Trekkies in their engineering...
Qualcomm Marries Satellite and Cellular Networks
Qualcomm said today that it will build a chipset to offer combined cellular and satellite radios in one handset. It hopes to offer them in 2010. This is a boost for the struggling satellite companies and offers up the potential for a small phone that is integrated with existing CDMA cellular networks. To build a successful satellite business a company needs access to spectrum, money to launch the satellites and a convenient handset at a reasonable price. During the 90s this last hurdle was neve...
Capping Executive Salaries in the Bailout
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson believes that his ex-colleagues on Wall Street would let their companies and the economy go belly-up if their compensation is reduced. Here he is quoted in The Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Paulson is resisting efforts to limit the pay of executives whose firms participate in the program and plans to fight it “hard,” according to a person familiar with the matter. He fears that provision would render the program moot, since many firms might choose ...
Skype and SIP interop - the two sides of the issue raised by Michael Robertson
Should Skype open up it’s network to other users? to other networks? Should Skype stop preaching about “openness” when it’s network remains closed? In the middle of last week, there was quite a little storm raised in the VoIP corner of the blogosphere after Andy Abramson published a letter from Gizmo Project founder Michael Robertson critical of Skype’s openness after Skype continued to call upon the FCC to open the wireless network to applications. (See also here...
The New PlanetEye
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned since jumping into the start-up world two years ago is getting from Point A to Point B often involves a series of zig-zags as opposed to a linear path. It makes for an interesting, educational and, in the end, satisfying ride as everyone works together to build something valuable and useful that resonates with customers. Case in point is PlanetEye’s new design, which launched today after a lot of work over the past few months. Rather than simp...
Falling for fibre
I’m using the superb Jungledisk to back up my laptop (hat tip: Andy). Because I’ve shifted my Documents folder around on my laptop from one hard drive to the other I’m having to re-upload it all. Time to complete: 1-2 days for 3Gb. Or to put it another way, I’m going to have to wait a month with my DSL line working flat out 24×7 to backup my 30Gb of family photo photos online from my home server. And they say there’s no demand for fibre? Well, I’m not alo...
SanDisk SlotMusic Cards Are Destined to Fail
SanDisk, a flash memory chip maker that has been fighting off competitor Samsung’s bid to acquire the company has launched SlotMusic MicroSD memory cards that will carry full length music albums just like a music CD or a vinyl. The albums which are going be placed next to CDs in popular stores like WalMart. Four major record labels have joined SanDisk on this adventure, that is going to end badly. Here are my reasons: CD sales according to Recording Industry of America dropped from 942 m...
VoIP Growing Really Really Fast Europe
According to research firm TeleGeography, at year-end 2007 there were 25.3 million consumer VoIP lines were in service in Western Europe, up 69% from 15 million in 2006. There were 6.5 million VoIP subscribers in 2005. That number is going to top 37 million by end of 2008, nearly 29% of the total fixed lines in Western Europe. Why this rapid growth? Better broadband speeds, carriers fully embracing triple play services and most importantly intense competition are the main reasons why Western Eu...
100 Beta Invitations for AllofMe available to the Readers of the Jeff Pulver Blog
Back in December, 2007 I first heard about AllofMe, the company co-founded by Tal Yaniv and Addy Feuerstein. AllofMe is a new web application. It’s closed Beta version was launched on September 9. AllofMe lets users to collect and share their entire collection of digital assets - virtually any digital file: pictures, videos, blog posts, pdf and more. The assets are organized on a Timeline, where you can zoom from a century to a day in a life. The same Timeline can be shared and compared a...
Call to Action Belongs on Every Communication
Would you hand out a business card without a phone number or email? Not likely. Yet every day marketers publish ads that don’t have a call to action. And that’s a mistake, writes marketing maven Jeff Bacon: “In general, I strongly recommend that everything you do has a call to action – where you tell the prospect what you expect them to do and provide the means for them to do it.” There are many avenues for communicating with customers — print, Web, email, TV, ...
MovieMobz Opens Up Moviegoing
Have you ever wanted to see an independent film but were unable to because it’s only playing in New York and Los Angeles, places you don’t live? Or wished that you could experience a classic like “The Godfather” not in your living room, but on the big screen? Well you’re in luck — that is, if you’re in Brazil, home of MovieMobz. According to founder and CEO Fabio Lima, the idea behind MovieMobz is to eliminate the traditional notion of theatrical windo...
why the frack not
why the frack notOriginally uploaded by PhilWolff ...
Australian PM uses Skype
Kevin Rudd, Australia’s 26th Prime Minister, spoke with Rove McManus on Sunday’s show. On YouTube: part 1 and part 2. This brings up one problem with simple IM ID’s. You need multiple personae for each user account. For example, one username you can give to friends, another to work colleagues, one for family, another to strangers. This tool of faceted identity helps you manage social network overload. By letting you present different aspects of yourself to different pu...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.