February 22nd, 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from the VoIP Digest written on February 22nd, 2006.
Although most of the experts I interviewed this week for my previous post entitled Will there be a BlackBerry shutdown? Eight experts tell me do not believe U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer [at right] will declare an injunction after tomorrow's hearing that would suspend Blackberry services in the U.S. due to patent infringement, one [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on News and General and BlackBerry.
In my previous post entitled Will there be a BlackBerry shutdown? Eight experts tell me, I mentioned that I would be expanding on the comments made by two of the experts I interviewed about the likelihood (or lack thereof) that BlackBerry service will be suspended in the U.S. as a result of the patent infringement [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer will hold a hearing on the ongoing patent infringement dispute between BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion and patent holding company NTP.Based on Judge Spencer's findings, he may issue an injunction suspending BlackBerry sales and services in the U.S. until RIM and NTP reach a settlement. If that is [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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You know that gadgets have goine mainstream when Monster.com actually publishes an article on "Six Gadget Etiquette Dos and Don'ts for the Workplace" in one of its e-newsletters! I'm sure many of you can figure out most of them! Take a look -- it's interesting reading at http://technology.monster.com/articles/gadget%2Detiquette/.
Any you would like to add?
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Written by randy@strategypluscommunications.com on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Revenues hit $2.5 billion in 2005, a critical year for next-gen voice equipment, the research firm reports.
Written by VoIP Magazine Featured Stories on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Is there a major WordPress outage? I was on Scobleizer's blog when all of a sudden his web pages started timing out. Since he is on a hosted WordPress website (didn't he switch a few months ago to Wordpress?
) I tried going to www.wordpress.com and it too timed out. Hosted Wordpress bloggers are probably not very happy with the outage this Wednesday morning. I'm going to check out a few more Wordpress blogs and see if they are offline as well. I believe this is the 2nd major WordPress outage. I also just tried these Wordpress sites:
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/ - down
http://flocksucks.wordpress.com/ - down
Update:
It appears that some WordPress pages are loading but very slowly.
Could this be a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack? I asked Om to see what he could find out.
Update: 10:47am 2/22/06
Looks like Wordpress is back online. It looks like it was roughly a 45 minute outage.
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Written by tkeating@tmcnet.com on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Scobleizer has a great post on why he hates partial RSS feeds. He even explains why RSS advertising currently doesn't work by stating:
The reason RSS advertising doesnÂ’t work today is:
1) The audiences are too small.
2) The audiences are too geeky and too full of smart people. Hint, those people donÂ’t click on advertisements unless they are very targetted!
He then goes on to explain how even with full RSS feeds you can still drive traffic to your website and thus still incur revenue. But then plays the other side of the fence when he says "Now, the fear is that the model will go away tomorrow thanks to RSS being built into IE 7, Safari, Firefox, Opera and other browsers. Whoa! Alert, alert, if that happens that means the unwashed masses wonÂ’t be seeing your interstitial Flash advertisements anymore, or refreshing your banner ads, or seeing your
Google AdSense blocks. OK, in such a world advertising will have to change. But, letÂ’s be
honest, what percentage of people will use RSS in such a world?"
That's the question bloggers are trying to answer. Will it continue to be a small niche or will RSS be used by the masses and thus hurt web traffic and revenue?
I think if revenue starts to dip drastically I think well established bloggers may decide to risk the ire of their readership and switch from full to partial feeds. Sure it will piss off their audience, and they'll bitch and moan about it for a few days, but in the end if you have great content they'll go through the effort of visiting your website.
Content is still KING. If you write it well, they will come.The full vs. partial feed war rages on...
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Written by tkeating@tmcnet.com on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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After reading my rant about Starbucks and some of the comments on that post, Jackson sent in this guest column about how many are using indi-cafes in San Francisco as mobile office space. (Ritual is my favorite….) If you are not in San Francisco and have names of entrepreneur friendly locations you want others to know, leave the details/links to their location in the comments. If anyone wants to build a Google Map of all this, drop me a note. - Om
By Jackson West.
Forget Palo Alto garages — San Francisco coffee shops are where to get your startup off the ground. Internet cafes are emerging as an important place to get work done, hold meetings and network. Since writers, designers, developers and anyone else who can work from their laptop are going to show up, you can even recruit talent, publicize your project and even demo your product for potential users and investors.
On Charter Street, Greg Olsen writes about “Going Bedouin.” The idea is that instead of worrying about leases, infrastructure and support staff, a startup can stay nimble and focused by using third party services and mobile technology:
By focusing almost exclusively on service-based infrastructure options, a business could operate as a sort of neo-Bedouin clan - with workers as a roaming nomadic tribe carrying laptops & cell phones and able to set up shop wherever there is an Internet connection, chairs, tables, and sources of caffeine.
My own experience helping to organize the WebZine conference pretty much echoed this. No office space was rented, communication was primarily through email lists and a private wiki, and meetings were held at cafes with free internet, with notes and ideas quickly disseminated to those who couldn’t attend. When a contact was needed to help out with services such as advertising, sponsorships or donations, cell phones came out and calls were made, and issues were often resolved before the meeting was even over. Even during the conference itself, local cafes served as press rooms, panel development forums and, of course, somewhere to get some lunch.
Of course, the business of coffee shops is to sell food and coffee, not to take the place of VC-run incubator offices. While some have dealt with the problem of freeloaders by charging for their Wifi, this often turns geeks away. Coffee to the People in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury is trying to come up with guidelines, and the issue of coffee shop etiquette is a popular topic of discussion among digerati. Some cafe owners only share the WEP or WPA key with paying customers, limit the number of wall jacks to recharge batteries, or shut down wifi on the weekends to encourage offline socializing.
Niall Kennedy has proposed a number of ideas for proprietors to keep up their cash flow and the loyalty of the laptop-toting set. Other services, such as community office space offered by Coworking, have also begun to answer the needs of freelancers and small startups who need a place to plug in. Backoffice wikis, group chat and social calendars also promise to make it easier for teams of nomads to work as a group even if scattered across the four corners of the globe.
Here’s a list of cafes in San Francisco chosen by popular acclaim and personal recommendation. Any one of them will keep you fueled with caffeine, connected online and give you a chance to network with fellow travellers.
Ritual Coffee Roasters
This is the current ‘it’ cafe, and at any given time you can probably find a blogger who’s been BoingBoinged there, like Scott Beale. It’s Mission location makes the move from work to play just a short walk away.
1026 Valencia Street [map | site | yelp]
Caffe Trieste
This North Beach establishment has been around since Jack Kerouac lived in the neighborhood. Word on the street is that Wired News’ Tony Long regularly holds court there.
601 Vallejo St [map | site | yelp]
Reverie Coffee Cafe
Located in quiet Cole Valley, this is where angry newspaper publishers can find Craig Newmark on any given day. With a patio out back, it’s also great if you’re a smoker.
848 Cole St [map | yelp]
Coffee to the People
This Haight-Ashbury is a favorite of cute couple Chris Messina and Tara Hunt. Second only to Ritual Roasters in terms of Dodgeball check-ins. They even have their own blog.
1206 Masonic Avenue [map | site | yelp]
Quetzal Internet Cafe
Designer and cartoonist Kevin Cheng of OK/Cancel recommends this as an oasis is a relatively barren nexus of the Nob Hill, Hayes Valley and Civic Center neighborhoods.
1234 Polk Street [map | site | yelp]
Thinkers Cafe
Potrero is the neighborhood of choice for those who need to be close to 101 and 280. Before heading to Dogster headquarters nearby, Ted Rheingold often gets some work done there over his morning coffee.
1631 20th Street [map | yelp]
Zig Zag Cafe
With AnchorFree now providing free WiFi in a number of upscale neighborhoods including the Marina and the Castro, any cafe will do, but this is the one that Annalee Newitz recommended.
476 Castro Street [map | yelp]
Jackson West, writes for SFist. He writes about Web 2.0 and other topics for GigaOm
Written by Om Malik on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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It used to be strange looking, funky people in silver suits for the classic Intel Inside! advertising (and branding) campaign, taking a little chip that no one could see and positioning it as the center of your computing purchasing decisions.
My how time have changed -- now we have Mariah Carey (good coup after the Grammys -- three awards bay-bee!) talking about how Intel's Centrino technology is key for music downloads that can be played anywhere wirelessly.
What do you think about that?
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Written by tkeating@tmcnet.com on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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VoX Communications has launched its new retail VoIP service plans that include lower pricing on multiple lines and international calls. It has introduced VoX 1000 which offers 1000 minutes across U.S. and Canada for $ 14.95. VoX Unlimited Plus includes one VoX unlimited line for anywhere in the U.S. and Canada and also offers a second VoX basic line for $ 34.95. The company is also offering the VoX Unlimited WorldWide which includes the VoX Unlimited plan and 1000 VoX Worldwide minutes across 34 popular countries for $39.95. It has also introduced VoX Small Business which includes unlimited calling across the U.S. and Canada plus a dedicated fax line with 500 minute and 300 VoX worldwide minutes for $49.95.
via [TMCnet]
Written by gautam.chabbra on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Vonage Marketing has chosen Excell Services to provide its customers with Enhanced Directory Assistance Services which includes movie listings, sport scores, stock quotes and more. It also has regular number queries as well as address and reverse searches. Vonage customers can now access Directory assistance services for all of North America and many international destinations through the Excell Services network. Excell Services provides high quality services while leveraging its cost advantages to benefit telecommunications service providers across America.
"Vonage's key focus is to provide reliable products and services to its customers," said Michael Tribolet, president of Vonage America. "Excell Services is a great fit for Vonage and provides a high quality service with the industry's most advanced products and services."
via [Chron]
Written by gautam.chabbra on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Alcatel is planning to deliver integrated solutions that would bring together Alcatel’s leading IP telephony and applications with IBM BladeCenter servers. It is perfect for large enterprise and data centers, outsourcers and service providers who seek to centralize telephony services within their overall IT environment while providing flexible deployment models that support both premise based solutions and managed services or a mix of both.
The offering would integrate Alcatel’s OmniPCX Enterprise IP communications platform, Alcatel OmniVista management solution and Alcatel OmniTouch Unified Communications suite of applications into IBM environments. This solution can also be incorporated with various business workflow processes through a series of web service that permit a flexible and cost effective way to integrate communication interactions into business workflows which increase the speed in which business processes are completed.
via [WebWire]
Written by gautam.chabbra on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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NetHead has acquired the rights to VoIP for the United States and Canada through an agreement with Infinet Communications. NetHead has entered this market in order to serve the needs of its loyal community of users. NetHeadVoice plans start as low as $14.99 per month. Users are charged 35% less as compared to traditional phone service.
The savings would come handy at a time when utility costs have shot up leaving many families with a budget shortfall every month. It has also come out with plans for small businesses. One is not charged set up fees or purchase expensive equipments
via [XTVWorld]
Written by gautam.chabbra on February 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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