Archive for November 14th, 2008
Bandwidth.com invests in FreePBX
Bandwidth.com has just made an investment in FreePBX, the popular front-end interface to Asterisk-based distros. I discussed this news with Philippe Lindheimer just a couple hours ago. One of the questions I asked was if Bandwidth.com would get “preferred treatment” within the FreePBX interface, since Bandwidth.com offers SIP trunking. Obviously, if FreePBX gives Bandwidth.com a prominent position in the GUI or they make it “easier” to configure FreePBX (i.e. plug-n-play)...
Multi Wi-Fi Wireless Internet on the Go
Wi-Fi wireless Internet connectivity has become nearly ubiquitous. Whether you’re at home, in a coffee shop or even on some commercial airliners, you can get online with a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop, smart phone or portable game machine. Now, Wi-Fi is making its way into your car. A small California company, Autonet Mobile, has teamed up with Chrysler and others to sell a service that floods any brand or model of car or truck with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity that can be used by multiple ...
Apple stock rises after Ifbyphone’s iPhone app release
Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock price jumped 4.06% Monday morning after Ifbyphone announced the release of a second iPhone app, Conference Call, and publicly shared the success of its first iPhone app, Voice Broadcast. Ifbyphone Releases Second Apple iPhone Application was the lead story on finance.google.com Monday Morning as Apple’s stock saw a higher open. Officials at Ifbyphone commented, “While correlation does not imply causation, we’re glad to see that Apple inv...
Thanks For Making NewTeeVee Live a Hit
We hosted the second NewTeeVee Live conference yesterday, and by all metrics it was a successful event. Despite the economic climate, we sold out the event that attracted some of the movers, shakers and of course creators from the world of online video. I wanted to take a moment and thank all the attendees, our sponsors (and there were many) and our speakers who rewarded us with their time and attention. The line up and editorial vision for the conference came from Liz Gannes and Chris Albrecht...
Bond Comes to Your iPhone
iPhone apps might some day be the gold mine for advertising. In the meanwhile, we are seeing the emergence of a new trend: iPhone apps as ads. Hollywood studios are the first ones to react and using free applications to promote its movies. We are totally loving the new app for the latest Bond flick, Quantum of Solace. More than just a micro-site, the Bond application lets you watch the movie trailers and read up about the movie. It also pushes you out to the iTunes music store if you wan...
Calling All Bloggers! Free Blogging on TMCnet.com
This is a call out to all bloggers out there - Rich Tehrani, my boss has extended an open invitation to bloggers interested in blogging for TMCnet.com, a leading communications/telecom site according to Alexa, Quantcast, and others. Today, TMC launches its Blog Aid program to help people out of work stay in the public eye - in order to improve their hiring prospects in a tough economy. In the last few months, many good marketers, PR people, engineers and others who have been laid off. These pote...
Callpod Drone VoIP Bluetooth Headset
Callpod’s new Drone USB Bluetooth adapter turns your mobile phone’s Bluetooth headset into a headset/mic for your PC or Mac allowing you to receive Skype or other VoIP calls using your high-end Bluetooth headset (Plantronics, Jawbone, etc.). Just connect the Drone into the USB port of your computer, and it will immediately connect with your Bluetooth headset or headphones to provide streaming music and voice over a 100 meter (328ft) range. When a Skype call comes in, Drone switches o...
A Look at the New Mobile Computer
Earlier today, I met with someone who wanted to show me the Web site they were developed. He pulled out an Acer netbook, which could easily described as “cute”. It’s small, lets you do basic computing (Word processing, Web browsing, e-mail) and sells for about $350 - although I suspect you’ll probably see on sale for $249 to $299 during the holidays. As well, there are the $100 computers from the Give One, Get One program.. Is this the future of mobile computing? Will be...
Mojo Mobility Charges Gadgets Wirelessly
Mojo Mobility Inc, a Silicon Valley-based venture firm, has developed a technology to simultaneously charge multiple mobile devices simply using a flat surface that doesn’t even to touch the charging circuitry of mobile phones, iPods, iPhones, and other gadgetry. While NFP (Near Field Power) is not a new concept, the non-contact charging system leverages an electromagnetic induction method. The system is composed of two coils, one for transmitting and the other for receiving ele...
High quality YouTube Video Hack
Sick and tired of cr**py YouTube video quality? Well, check out kottke.org’s tips on how to enable HQ video on YouTube. It’s not HD quality, but much better than the default. The specs for the Youtube HQ video is mp4 encoded using H.264 and stereo AAC sound at 480×360 resolution. Also you need to do to link to a high quality video on your blog is simply append &fmt=18 onto the end of the YouTube URL, i.e.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuqiGrWBRqE&fmt=18 And if you...
Sun to Cut Thousands of Jobs
Sun Microsystems today announced that it is going to cut between 15-to-18 percent of its work force. That’s somewhere between 5,000-to-6,000 jobs. The company plans to cut its annual costs by between $600-to-$800 million. The company blamed the cuts on the global economic downturn. I think like many other companies, Sun is using the downturn as an excuse for what have been pre-existing problems, foretold by a slumping stock price. The cuts also come with the rearranging of the executive ...
Reflections from Social Media Jungle - Nov 13th in Melville NY
Yesterday I returned to the Jungle. At pulver.com HQ in Melville, New York I enjoyed hosting the first iteration of the Social Media Jungle which brought together about 50 people from across the United States. Since 1996 I have hosted / produced quite a number of events and yesterdays Social Media Jungle is an event that ranks amongst the best I have been a part of. One of the things I have learned about life in 2008 is that it is a jungle outside, on many levels. And while I have have been si...
Is the VC Model Broken? Far From it
Adeo Ressi, the serial entrepreneur behind the venture-capital rating site TheFunded, has been getting a lot of attention for a presentation he gave at Harvard Business School in which he argued that the VC industry is “broken.” His central point is that there are simply too many venture capital funds chasing too few opportunities, with unrealistic expectations. The result, as he notes in one eye-grabbing slide, is that VC returns over the past five years have fallen below the tota...
Fiber: Thinking it through
Doc Searls has an essay about bringing fiber optics to every home in America. It is aimed in the right direction, but makes a couple of mistakes on the numbers and falls to ground way short of its target. It troubles me that I appear to be the sole source for Doc’s numbers (on the basis of some informal conversation and my Telecom Day speech in Wellington NZ last May). This post is an attempt to correct the record, and to create one where my previous thinking has been private. Doc writes...
iNum Calls 883 for Your Virtual Neighbours
Voxbone’s iNum initiative is live, with partners already terminating calls to the new virtual country code Read More… ...
Contest: What’s the word for a calling misadventure?
As ‘typo‘ is for writing, ??? is for a call made in error. I often launch a conference call or dial a contact accidentally, or get called by someone who clicked the wrong button. We furtively apologize but lack a simple word to describe our error. Nothing as simple as "typo." What should we call it? Leave your ideas as a comment or email it to tips@skypejournal.com. Most useful contribution? Win a Sony PSP, courtesy of Skype. tags: skype, sony, psp, contest, typo, er...
Entrepreneurs Ask VCs for Cash Back
This week’s $250 million funding for vacation home rental listing company HomeAway Inc. was the largest web-related venture capital investment since the bubble days at the turn of the millennium. But it also contained a provision that signals how the lack of venture exits may be causing some entrepreneurs to ask for cash now, rather than waiting for an initial public offering or sale that may never come. As part of the HomeAway financing, a portion of the money will go toward repurchasi...
Life Got You Down? Buy a Video Game Console
Despite a worsening economy, all three current-generation video game consoles had better U.S. sales in October than they did a year ago, according to the latest figures from The NPD Group. And both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii sold more units in October, a four-week reporting period, than in September, a five-week period. Wowwee! Also the worst of the economic bad news had yet to hit in September. Sony, however, saw month-over-month PlayStation 3 sales decline, while ...
How Much Is That HDTV in the Window?
New consumer research has found that 34% of U.S. households have at least one HDTV set, double the percentage of households that had such TVs two years ago. The growth of HDTV sets has largely been driven by on-going consumer purchasing of TV sets coupled with a dwindling supply of lower-end non-HDTV sets being sold, according to the Leichtman Research Group. Overall, 22% of all households purchased a new TV set in the past 12 months, with 43% of this group spending more than $1,000 on a new TV...
Gadgets Going Green
Green indeed! We can now trade our used electronics in exchange for Amazon.com gift cards through third-party Gazelle.com. This is both a convenience and additional way to save money this season. It’s also a very handy option to trade in unwanted items for Amazon.com gift cards. Gazelle, which recycles or resells the used devices depending on their condition, also provides users with the option to receive their payments in the form of a check or PayPal deposit – or to have i...
NewTeeVee Live: Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu Talks Infrastructure and Metered Broadband
After his keynote at NewTeeVee Live today in San Francisco, Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, took some time to talk with Om about infrastructure issues for the network-supported online video distribution platform. (See the embedded video here) ...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.