Archive for October 9th, 2008
Ericsson Unveils Wind-Powered Cell Tower
Telecommunications provider Ericsson is putting some wind power into its network with a new radio communications tower unveiled today. The Swedish telecom partnered with turbine maker Vertical Wind AB and Uppsala University to incorporate a vertical-axis wind turbine into the tower that houses radio base stations and antennas. The tower is now undergoing trials to see if the design will enable low-cost mobile communications to spread throughout remote regions with minimal environmental impact. ...
The Third Annual SNAP Summit
Social applications are spreading off the networks and into the web as a whole, making it a more engaging and social place than it has ever been before. But how do startups, developers, and big businesses get through all the noise and find success? GigaOM readers are invited to attend the SNAP Summit Oct. 28 in San Francisco, to learn the basics of user growth: how to attract users, retain and measure them, influence their actions, monetize them, and eventually produce a highly successful compa...
What Startups Can Learn From Sequoia Capital’s Doomsday Plans
Last night I reported on a special meeting held by Sequoia Capital for its portfolio companies, warning them about the fiscal hurricane that was going to hit them, and how they’d better figure out ways to survive what could be a big downturn. There were some gaps in the details about that meeting, but I have since been able to piece together the minutes and what folks there essentially said. Since these are second-sourced details, I cannot say they are a 100 percent accurate, so please vi...
Amazon Cuts Prices on S3
Amazon announced today that it will cut prices for its Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) offering on November 1, 2008. The company is essentially offering people who use more storage get significant volume discounts. For folks using up to 50 terabytes of storage, the price cuts don’t make much of a different. In US they pay 15 cents per gigabyte and 18 cents in Europe. If you go above 50, then the prices declines by a penny and if you cross the 100 terabytes, you see another penny per...
Five Questions with…QikCom
It wasn’t that long ago that micro-blogging within companies didn’t exist. Today, there are a growing number of players looking to become of the Twitter of the Enterprise. The list includes Yammer, Present.ly and a new entrant, QikCom. QikCom aims to be more than a micro-blogging platform by providing users with a wide variety of applications. Right now, its TabStore features three tools: Competition, a to-do list and frequent numbers for loyalty programs. The company will open its A...
Inspiring video of Skype used for augmented vision
While I write here mostly about technology, my interest has always been in the social impacts of all this communication technology. Here on the Today show was a fascinating story of someone who is blind using VoIP (and specifically Skype) to allow him to “see” courtesy of a remote person seeing his view and telling him what is there. Fascinating… P.S. Thanks to Chaim Haas for passing this along… Technorati Tags: skype, voip, video ...
Vonage slams Skype for not following emergency rules
Vonage lays down the smackdown for Skype’s refusal to adhere to Ofcom rules, an independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries. Last month, Ofcom introduced rules mandating access to emergency services (999 in the United Kingdom) for VoIP providers whose customers make calls that connect to the public switched service. The rules also specify that caller address information is to be made available to emergency services so that, as far as possible,...
Startups to Secure the Millenials
A report from Forrester out today highlighting the rise of “mobile wannabes” in the work force is a bit over-the-top in its assertion that up to 25 percent of the 2012 workforce will be folks who don’t need mobile access to company information but will want it. The report cites the example of employees angling for mobiles to complete work on their commutes. I hope these mobile wannabes are taking the train or bus to work, because I don’t want some 25-year-old admin in t...
You Can Check Out Any Time You Like But…
I’m a beta junkie. Over the past couple of years, I’ve probably signed up for a few hundred new online services just to check them out. The vast majority have received a nibble or two while a select few are in regular rotation. For the ones quickly added to “been there, tried that” heap, the problem is while it’s easy to get in, it’s pretty much impossible to get out. Have you ever tried to delete an account you created? You can’t do it. You can edit you...
Sequoia Rings the Alarm Bell: Silicon Valley Is in Trouble
Sequoia Capital, arguably the smartest venture capital investor in business, is sounding the alarm and asking its portfolio companies to buckle down for what could be the worst economic downturn of their relatively short lives. The fund organized a meeting yesterday where it invited entreprenuers/CEOs from its portfolio companies. The attendees were greeted by a cute image of a Grave Stone, with a message: R.I.P.: Good Times, my sources tell me. I was able to confirm this with at least two sou...
Aluminum: Canary in the Tech Mine
Many of us who live in Silicon Valley pay no heed to decidedly unsexy materials such as aluminum. Of course, they’ve long been integral to our economy — just look at the world’s largest aluminum company, Alcoa. It turned 120 years old on Oct. 1. A week later, however, the Pittsburgh-based company slashed its growth forecast and suspended its stock repurchasing program, battening down the hatches as the global credit crunch continues to hurt demand. As CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said: Giv...
Deflation Winners
Are American high tech companies the big winner from the current bouts of deflation? Is the US itself a winner? Remember, deflation changes all the rules we’ve been used to. You’ve got to think upside down now that cash is king, at least temporarily. Fred Wilson points out that companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple have loads of cash and no net debt. He speculates that the others will emulate Microsoft and do massive stock buybacks at the their current relatively low trading p...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.