Archive for November 18th, 2008
No More Landlines - Discussion
“Don’t hold your breath,” says Ted Wallingford in his post replying to my assertion that there won’t be any more copper landlines by the end of Obama’s first term as President. Ted continues: “I can easily counterpredict that there will be plenty of landlines left in the country by the end of Obama’s term, and if he goes eight years, there will still be plenty of good old copper dial tone… “There are several more reasons why. First, reliable...
Xbox 360 as Internet-to-TV Portal
Hoping to provide viewers with an easy way to move Internet-based video onto TV screens, GridNetworks has announced a new service that would do just that by routing the content through an Xbox 360 gaming console. The service is designed to work with any device that uses Universal Plug and Play protocols and, in the future, GridNetworks wants to be able to use Sony’s PlayStation 3 as the conduit as well. More at Multichannel News. Tags: gridnetworks, internet-based video, PlayStation 3, S...
SC08 Video: How Ethernet Plans to Conquer the World
I spoke with Brad Booth, chairman of the Ethernet Alliance, at the SC 08 conference here in Austin, Texas today, and he noted that while Ethernet is entrenched in the corporate data center, it is the interconnect standard for little more than half of the Top 500 supercomputers. Other standards, such as Infiniband and proprietary cables, still hold sway over the high-performance computing set, but the Alliance hopes to change all that. To that end, Booth was happy to talk about how Ethernet is...
SC08: Michael Dell Details Everyday Supercomputing
Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Inc., in a speech at the SC08 Conference in Austin, Texas, today highlighted the democratization of supercomputing thanks to the use of standards and off-the-shelf parts. That democratization, he noted, blurs the line between high-performance computing and corporate computing, which powers services such as Facebook and Microsoft’s cloud computing service (both of which are built on Dell hardware, of course). It also means high-performance computers ...
Carphone Warehouse Will Split Off Broadband Business
Nothing like a deep recession to get a company’s management to focus. Carphone Warehouse, a major retail chain in Europe, is going to de-couple its broadband (telecom) business from its retail operations, according to various press reports. In the UK, spin-offs are called “de-mergers.” Funny how a downturn prompts companies to change their tune from “free broadband forever” to “get me outta here.” Some analysts estimate that Carphone’s Talk Talk ...
Ifbyphone Funding News Roundup
Ifbyphone has received a good deal of press surrounding our funding announcement. GoMoNews.com One if by land, 4.6 million Ifbyphone. Internet start-up gets multi-million dollar VC investment Chicago Tribune Ifbyphone, which provides Web-enabled phone services for small and midsize businesses, on Tuesday will announce $4.6 million in new funding from five venture firms. Crain’s Business Chicago The money is coming from Chicago-based Apex Venture Partners and Blue Crest Capital Finance L...
mesh ‘09 Now on Sale
Since mesh was started three years ago, we’ve been focused on being more organized - not always an easy thing when you have five people involved who have other things on their plates such as day jobs and families. So, we’re excited to take a major organizational step forward by putting tickets for the mesh ‘09 conference on sale today. mesh is happening April 7 to 8, 2008 at the MaRS Collaboration Centre. Tickets are $469 (plus the evil GST). There are also 30 tickets availab...
PIKA WARP Appliance Adds FreePBX Support
When I met with PIKA Technologies at ITEXPO they told me support for FreePBX was coming. Well today, PIKA Technologies announced that PIKA WARP the Appliance is now compatible with the Asterisk-based FreePBX GUI (Graphical User Interface) application. I reviewed the PIKA Appliance recently and was pretty impressed with it. Having FreePBX support is a huge milestone for the PIKA Appliance. FreePBX is a popular user-friendly web application that makes it easy to setup and configur...
Service Provider Views - Managing in a Down Economy
My latest column for TMCnet is running now. This edition of Service Provider Views picks up from last month’s theme about how carriers are being impacted by the economy. The health of service providers determines the health of vendors, and I have some thoughts on what’s happening with both. The main idea I’m trying to get across is that despite all the bad news, there are a number of companies bucking the trend, and are doing just fine. Apple is a a true anomaly, but there are ...
Amazon’s CloudFront Could Storm Rival CDNs
Today Amazon Web Services launched the beta version of its content delivery network service called CloudFront. As Om mentioned in September when the service was announced, this is a good move for Amazon, and something that may put the hurt on fellow CDNs such as Limelight and Akamai. Amazon will charge a usage based fee, rather than a long-term contract, bringing CDN prices even lower for smaller web players who don’t have the scale to negotiate lower prices. Here’s how it works fro...
Sometimes We Need to Do Things Alone
One day you may wake up and realize that now is the time for you to make your move. But, when you look around, you may find people who are there to support you, but who really dont understand what you are trying to do or how you are going to make something happen. One look into your eyes and they know you will be able to do whatever it is you want to do. They see and sense your passion. And thats where their connection ends. There comes a time where you need to go out on a mission and do it...
Desktop Tower Defense Creator Launches New Game Site
If you obsessively played Desktop Tower Defense last year (and really, who didn’t?), you’ll love this news: Paul Preece, creator of that insanely viral real-time strategy classic, has a new game site: Casual Collective launches today, backed by $1 million in seed funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. It’s the brainchild of Preece (who’s CEO) and co-founder David Scott, a fellow UK game developer. (Scott’s Flash Element TD is even more popular than DTD.) The s...
Event: The Green Geek Unconference - Nov 28th in Israel
My friend Eviatar Tron is the driving force behind a new unconference, The Green Geek Unconference taking place on November 28th from 9:00-16:00 in Bank HaPoalim Training Center, Shefayim Hotel. Greek (Green Geek) is a user generated event where great minds encounter great issues. Participants are encouraged to share their ideas and thoughts, creating an open, positive environment where creativity can flourish and technology can thrive in the face of global and local environmental and soci...
With Jerry Yang Gone, What Yahoo Should Do Next
Jerry Yang, after a tumultuous reign as the chief executive officer of Yahoo(s YHOO), the company he co-founded with David Filo, announced today that he is stepping down from the top slot. The news was first reported by Kara Swisher and later confirmed by Yahoo in a press release. He is going to make way for someone else, but will stay on the board of Yahoo and will be known as Chief Yahoo. More importantly what does Yahoo need to do in order for Jerry to hang on to the title of Chief Yahoo! Ya...
Tencent’s QQ: 45 Million Simultaneous Online
Tencent Holdings (SEHK 700), one of Skype’s biggest competitors, had a great quarter. From their 2008Q3 financial release (pdf): 856.2 million: Total registered Instant Messaging (“IM”) user accounts, 4.1% growth QoQ [quarter over quarter] 355.1 million: Active IM user accounts, +3.9% QoQ 45.3 million: Peak simultaneous online user accounts for IM services recorded, +7.9% QoQ 4.4 million: Peak simultaneous online user accounts of QQ Game portal (for mini casual games only),...
Say Goodnight, Jerry
Jerry Yang’s ride as Yahoo CEO was short but, sadly, not so sweet as he’s finally been pushed aside. The sad truth is Yang should never have succeeded Terry Semel as CEO in the first place. He’s a nice guy, clearly very smart and a die-hard Yahoo-ian but he doesn’t/didn’t have the experience to be the CEO of a multi-billion dollar, multi-national company. Before taking the reigns, Yang was doing was he was supposed to be doing - supporting the Yahoo cause, advising ...
Why The Case Against Cuban Smells Fishy
It’s a classic PR play: When you start to look like the bad guy, call out a bigger bad guy. And it seems to be the strategy that the Securities and Exchange Commission — besieged by accusations of lax enforcement before and during the credit crisis — is using in going after Mark Cuban for insider trading. It’s too early to say definitively whether Cuban is guilty of insider trading in Mamma.com (now called Copernic), a search also-ran whose management has, in Cuban’...
Image Sync’ing All Your Gadgets?
Researchers recently completed work on a networking solution that will synchronize the myriad personal electronic devices (aka gadgets) people will use in the not-so-distant future. The group, called MAGNET Beyond, was composed of researchers from 35 companies who developed an architecture to harmonize devices such as laptops, telephones, MP3 players, games and a variety of sensors. And why is this networking project called MAGNET Beyond? No it’s not a take-off on Bed, Bath a...
Imbedded Social Networking
The Facebook/MySpace model is wrong for most groups, we all agreed; it’s inside out. We is VC and blogger Fred Wilson, FeedBlitz CEO Phil Hollows, Return Path CEO Matt Blumberg, and me. The venue is a panel at a Return Path sponsored event at the Museum of Natural History in NYC. Phil Hollows took our conclusion to heart. He went home and changed the FeedBlitz interaction with readers so that interaction occurs inside the context of the publisher’s site rather than on the FeedBlitz ...
Pioneer Stores Coming to a Mall Near You
Don’t know why gadget companies want to open up their own unique stores, but Pioneer has opened its second U.S. retail store in Phoenix. The 3,200 square-foot store showcases Pioneer’s state-of-the-art products in a comfortable home environment with six vignettes, each featuring unique themes and different technologies, as well as a revamped mobile electronics section bringing an interactive shopping experience to customers. Well, I guess I do know, but don’t think that Pionee...
Anatomy of a Gadget Fail
A study out on Sunday from the Pew Internet and American Life Project took a look at a computers, Internet access and cell phones to figure out how often such devices failed in the last 12 months and what people do when those failures happen. Unsurprisingly, such failures were pretty common, with 44 percent experiencing some kind of web connection failure, 39 percent experiencing a computer failure and 29 percent experiencing a cell phone issue within the last 12 months. Surprisingly, reboot w...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.