Archive for October 23rd, 2008
Dell To Preload Universal Music Tunes on PCs
Dell Computer today announced that it will preload music from Universal Music Group into special music folders on the computers it ships. Individuals will be able to select a variety of music bundles to be pre-installed. 50- and 100-song music bundles start at $25, each of which includes a curated selection of MP3s. These MP3 are going to cost about a half of regular prices. Pre-installed music bundles will show up as Music icons on the Dell Dock. Add-ons such as these have already come und...
VentureWire Technology Showcase
The VentureWire Technology Showcase will spotlight more than 125 early- and later-stage start-ups from the U.S., Asia and Europe, all vetted by VentureWire readers, Dow Jones editors and the folks at the Euro Tech Showcase and the Institute for Industry Information, as industry stand-outs in Advertising, Business Technologies, Media, Mobile Applications, Networking, Web and Wireless. Selected for their breakthrough technologies, the presenting start-ups are truly positioned to redefine their m...
FCC Doing Heavy Lifting
The FCC is holding a meeting on Nov. 4. On the agenda: Inter-Carrier Compensation, Alltel-VZ merger, Clearwire-Sprint merger, and a vote of White Spaces. Lots of heavy lifting on this agenda. Martin wants to give his pals at VZ one more gift before he goes. The VZ-Alltel merger is big, but the topic that can really rock telecom is the Inter-carrier Comp issue, which has been a stagnant FCC docket for years. If companies can show high costs, they will continue to benefit from the subsidy program...
Level 3 Shares Cheaper Than a Cup of Coffee
Level 3 Communications this morning reported a narrower-than-expected third-quarter net loss and revenue that — at $1.07 billion — was in line with analysts’ expectations. But even that wasn’t enough to satisfy investors, who have now pushed the share price below $1 to as low as 60 cents. You can now have a shot of espresso from Starbucks or buy three shares of Level 3. Jokes aside, Level 3 was indeed very cautious in outlining the future of its business, noting that t...
Exclusive: IBM to Partner With Chip Startups to Cut Costs
Building a chip startup is such an expensive proposition that few investors are taking it on anymore. So IBM’s venture capital group is developing a partnership program with several VCs active in the semiconductor space aimed at reducing the costs associated with chip manufacturing — and subsequently changing the financial risk associated with backing such deals. “Because we think new semiconductor investment will have extreme importance for our industry, we need collaboratio...
iSkoot for Skype on Google Android
iSkoot announced that its mobile application, iSkoot for Skype, is launching in the Android Market, Google’s new mobile application store. iSkoot for Skype is the first VoIP solution available in Google’s Android Market and of course making it the first VoIP app for the Google Android phone. I should point out that iSkoot for Skype isn’t VoIP over the data 3G connection. It actually uses the GSM voice connection for the voice and uses the 3G data stream for chat, presence, et...
Bunkum from National Association of Broadcasters
My previous post should in no way give credence to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) “emergency” request for the FCC to drop the white space issue from its November 4 meeting. The NAB is calling on the Commission to seek further public comment, but Jake Ward, of the Wireless Innovation Alliance, notes that the item has been under consideration for almost 4.5 years and the FCC has received almost 30,000 comments on it. Sorry, NAB, the FCC isn’t here to protect the b...
Analysis of a VoIP Attack
VoIP security is often overlooked by IT administrators as well as VARs and resellers that deploy VoIP in the enterprise. They do so at their own peril, however. One of the main factors behind using VoIP is to save money. Well imagine your IP-PBX has been hacked and you don’t notice anything wrong until you receive the next phone bill with hundreds or thousands of dollars in phone charges. There goes all the savings you anticipated when you decided to install VoIP! This laissez faire towar...
Letter from Pop!Tech: Tips on Persuasive Branding
This week I was in Camden, Maine, attending Pop!Tech, an annual gathering of thought leaders in technology and design launched in 1996. This year Pop!Tech inaugurated a three-day bootcamp for social entrepreneurs, called the Social Innovation Fellowship Program, the latest addition to Pop!Tech’s year-old startup incubator, Accelerator. The purpose of the program was to tutor 16 social entrepreneurs, most of whom run nonprofits, in “go to market” strategies. But many of the 22 lect...
Announcing Social Media Pizza #1: Oct 28th in Boston
I thought it would be interesting to try something new and expand beyond just hosting breakfasts. And when I think of social foods, Pizza is high on my list. On Tuesday, October 28th I will be visiting the Boston area and I had an open spot for lunch. So I decided that rather than eating alone or just trying to connect with one friend I would reach out and see who might be available to join me and some of my friends from the Boston area for a social lunch experience in Boston. Details: The first...
Amazon Opens Windows For All, and EC2 Graduates
Wow, that was fast. Amazon Web Services, which said three weeks ago it would begin offering Windows on its Elastic Compute Cloud in closed beta, has opened the beta service up for all. Even bigger news is the beta tag has been removed from the rest of the EC2 service, and users now have a 99.95 percent up-time service level agreement. Yesterday, Rackspace ran hard to keep up with Amazon’s cloud offerings — acquiring two startups — but, with a full production computing cloud o...
Broadband Caps Affecting One Million Brits
A UK consumer group has found that 1 million British broadband users have come close to exceeding, or have exceeded their ISP’s broadband caps according to the BBC. The group, uSwitch, also found that five of the nine Internet service providers that advertised “unlimited” access actually had caps, and were prepared to disconnect users who violated them. Only two out of the nine providers actually disclosed their caps (which were 30 GB and 40 GB per month), leaving 80 percent o...
iSkoot Available Through Android Market on T-Mobile’s Newly Launched G-1
The new G-1 phone based on Google’s Android platform is slowing getting out to market this week through T-Mobile stores in U.S. locations where T-Mobile supports the 3G wireless protocol. At launch there appear to be about 50 third party applications available for download to the G-1 via Android Market. One of those applications is iSkoot for Skype. From iSkoot’s description at Android Market: iSkoot for Skype puts the features of Skype in your Android handset. Acess your Skype conta...
Another Stab at the Freemium Thesis
It seems I stirred up quite the hornet’s nest last week upon declaring that freemium is not a business model. The response was fast, furious and enthusiastic -a few comments in support of my view but mostly constructive suggestions I was off the mark. It was the kind of measured, insightful response that made me think I needed to re-consider or, at the very least, think through some of my assumptions. In the end, I decided the best course of action was to reload on the thesis. Here goes:...
economic heartache
"More economic heartache! Email from Skype just notified me that my $0.18 of Skype credit will expire in 7 days!" - Scott Sorheim ...
Beyond white spaces
Back in 1999 I wrote a column that envisioned the uses of digital wireless in the home. I compared two nascent, much-touted wireless protocols, Bluetooth and HomeRF. I completely, totally, slippery-dash missed Wi-Fi. There had been a public 802.11 spec since 1997. The first 802.11b devices, which made Wi-Fi popular, burst onto the scene in early 2000, just a few short months after my clueless insights. Today HomeRF is forgotten, Bluetooth is for ugly ear jewelry and Wi-Fi rulz. Broadband ove...
Ex-Cisco SVP to Lead Andy Bechtolsheim’s Latest Switch Startup
Andy Bechtolsheim may be well known for co-founding Sun Microsystems, but the reality is that his list of accomplishments is much longer. Whenever there is a major infrastructure technology shift, you can bet that 53-year-old Bechtolsheim is starting a company — like Granite Systems and Kealia, for example. Neither one of them ever became a household name, but both were scooped up for millions of dollars, by Cisco Systems and Sun, respectively. Granite Systems went onto become the underp...
MySpace Music Offers Indies an Olive Branch With IODA Deal
MySpace Music has inked a deal with digital music distributor the Independent Online Distribution Alliance that doubles to around 2 million the number of independent label tracks offered on the site. MySpace Music’s executive director of strategy and operations, Frank Hajdu, said the deal should clear up any misconceptions about the massive online music site’s relationship with the indie music community, which took a hit after MySpace Music launched late last month. But the deal a...
Fonality Beats Avaya and Boasts 3,000 Call Centers
Fonality’s CEO Chris Lyman spoke with me earlier today to talk about the strong inroads Fonality has been making in the call center market. Chris said, “Fonality has become a big player in what I like to call the micro call center market. We launched our call center product in 2005 and we have almost 3,000 deployed call centers now.” When asked to define “call center” since many people have a different definition, Chris responded, “Anybody who purchase...
Avaya Global Analyst Conference - My Take
There was a lot to look forward to at this years Avaya global analyst event, and on the whole, Id say they lived up to expectations quite well. Yesterday I had a chance to post some photos, and now Im set to share my overall impressions. The big change is that being a private company now, there is less transparency in how theyre doing. Im not a financial analyst, so this is a bit less important for me, but still, this is a great opportunity to get an inside look as to how Avaya is fari...
HipLogic Brings Virtualization to the Mobile Phone
Newly christened HipLogic, which was formerly known as Numobiq, today launched a software development kit for its cell phone virtualization platform. The company’s product demo looks like several other mobile phone personalization efforts, but is actually a virtual machine running on top of the existing mobile operating system. The end goal, according to Mark Young, HipLogic’s CTO and founder, is to create applications that can truly interact with phones and each other, bringing the...
Here Comes the BlackBerry Apps Store …
Apple’s rivals are making moves to match the runaway success of its iPhone platform with their own versions of its store for applications and games from outside developers. Research in Motion (RIM) has announced that it would launch an “application storefront” in March next year. TIme to fill up that screen with lots of icons! Google is also revamping its Android Market and adding new applications this week to coincide with availability of the first phone b...
The Physics of Money
Money doesn’t count unless it’s in motion; that’s why governments not only can but also feel that they must create great supplies of the stuff in these deflationary times. The good news is that all this new money isn’t inflationary (at the moment); the bad news is that this new money so far isn’t breaking the deflationary cycle because it’s refusing to move. A simplistic but not inaccurate view of inflation is that it occurs when too much money is chasing too...
AudioMicro Gets First Funding Round From DFJ Frontier
AudioMicro.com, a small, L.A.-based commercial music licensing startup, said today that it’s closed its first round of funding, from DFJ Frontier. Despite an already well-populated microstock music space, the site’s simple interface and relatively inexpensive pricing — $1 for every download minute and less for bulk purchases — could make it easier for the very smallest web videographers to get inexpensive royalty-free music for their work. But while its pricing structur...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.