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Written by Russell Shaw on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Russell Shaw on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Russell Shaw on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Russell Shaw on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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March Madness -- that great college basketball tradition -- is only one week away! Starting March 16, CBS will help us get our fill of all of the many outstanding college teams by offering free streaming broadcasts of games at NCAASports.com. Get in the game!
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Tags: March Madness, college basketball, CBS, streaming, NCAASports.com
Written by randy@strategypluscommunications.com on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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TomTom unveiled a "buddy list" GPS tracking system. Too bad it doesn't encorporate my P2P GPS traffic monitoring idea, which uses a peer-to-peer network of GPS users to track traffic patterns and alert you if there is traffic jam and automatically re-route. This TomTom GPS news simply says you can track other users, IM each other, exchange POIs. In any event, check out the news from Stuff:
TomTomÂ’s just unveiled a bunch of new and updated features for its iconic GO sat-navs, including an intriguing friend-tracking mode.
Called TomTom Buddies, the feature lets you track your mates wherever you go – and in return, they get to track you too.
All you do is invite other TomTom users – you’ll have to shun your Garmin and Navman chums - to be your authorised ‘buddy’. The idea is that the Buddies service will be like an exclusive club through which you can send each other text messages and locations you think are interesting.
If you feel like being a loner for a bit you can select the privacy option which lets you hide your location.
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Tags: TomTom, GPS, tracking, buddy list
Written by randy@strategypluscommunications.com on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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CNet has an interesting Skype vs. Vonage comparison article. The graphic above is a six round battle between Skype and Vonage. Apparently, Vonage wins the battle. Personally, I think Skype and Vonage are two different animals with vastly different target audiences. Sure, they are similar and certainly when you combine SkypeIn with SkypeOut (plus optional voicemail) you basically are mirroring Vonage's feature-set. But the big difference is that in most cases Skype users use their softphone client where as Vonage users use traditional analog phones. Sure there are standalone Skype phones, including the NETGEAR Skype phone, or even wireless Skype phones that have a base station (Linksys CIT200, RTX DualPhone) connected to the PC's USB port, but I don't think the average person is going to go this route for their home phone service. Techies - sure, but not the Average Joe (or Jane). Vonage and similar services that allow analog phones will still be the predominant choice for residential phone service.
So to me this article to me is simply trying to build some industry buzz by comparing these two big VoIP heavyweights. Still, it has some merits and some good comparisons of the pros and cons worth checking out.
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Tags: Skype, Vonage, VoIP
Written by randy@strategypluscommunications.com on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Update: My report on Microsoft Origami just went up. Here is just a tiny sample.“This is yet another failed attempt to jam everything into one device,” says Pip Coburn, technology strategist with Coburn Ventures, a New York-based investment advisory firm. “The way I see it, they don’t really know what they want it to be.” Full Story is here.
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So finally Microsoft Origami (or what it would be) has been brought to light… and my first reaction, for crying out loud, yet another digital device?
It is supposed to be the Swiss army knife of digital life, if you believe what you see in Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble’s video. If you read Michael Gartenberg hands on review, you will soon be running off to the nearest store wildly waving your credit card yelling take my money, and give me Origami.
What none of the folks who are writing about the device today address is the bigger issue: since it is an ultra portable PC based on Windows XP, how secure is it? What is the “re-boot” time? How much resources it would need and how long is the battery life. Of course the price point is even more worrisome: at $599 to $999, it is still too expensive for an occasional use device. So here is a question: will equipment makers sacrifice the margins on their thin-and-light notebooks, for Origami? After all, from the video you learn, that Origami does it all, and well, a $600 desktop at home should do the trick in tandem with Origami.
Origami, from what ever I have read, seems will be made by partners, so pretty sure, design innovation and services integration will be sub-par, much like most Microsoft Windows Media-based music players. Engadget has some photos, and from the looks of it, the device is not as sleek as it seems. It looks thick and unwieldy. I am feeling a tad underwhelmed by the ones I see (pics, I admit) online.
My view on any new digital and mobile device is that - both Microsoft and Intel - should stop thinking Windows and try developing a new platform. In other words, think different. Look even Steve “OS-X or nothing” Jobs had to go get another OS platform to get the iPod done. Imagine, the mess a OS-X Inside iPod would be. Microsoft has a product precedent - XBox 360, which does things very well, because it is not hampered by the Windows legacy. New thinking … but then that’s too much to ask from old companies.
PS: Does anyone else feel that Sony, the great consumer electronics company of the past, muffed an opportunity with PSP by not including a hard drive? I love the device, hate the lack of capacity!
Written by Om Malik on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Never thought I'd be linking to a political blog, but Drudge has a very interesting news story on NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovering water on a Saturn moon. Here it is in Drudge's glorious font size. My blog feels and looks like the Drudge Report already.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.
"We realize that this is a radical conclusion - that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. "However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."
High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting huge quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea the particles are produced or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.
"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder.
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"Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by kilometers of icy crust," said Andrew Ingersoll, imaging team member and atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "What's different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface."
"As Cassini approached Saturn, we discovered the Saturnian system is filled with oxygen atoms. At the time we had no idea where the oxygen was coming from," said Candy Hansen, Cassini scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. "Now we know Enceladus is spewing out water molecules, which break down into oxygen and hydrogen."
Scientists still have many questions. Why is Enceladus so active? Are other sites on Enceladus active? Might this activity have been continuous enough over the moon's history for life to have had a chance to take hold in the moon's interior?
In the spring of 2008, scientists will get another chance to look at Enceladus when Cassini flies within 350 kilometers (approximately 220 miles), but much work remains after the spacecraft's four-year prime mission is over.
"There's no question, along with the moon Titan, Enceladus should be a very high priority for us. Saturn has given us two exciting worlds to explore," said Jonathan Lunine, Cassini interdisciplinary scientist, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
Mission scientists report these and other Enceladus findings in this week's issue of Science.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology
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Tags: NASA, Cassini, spacecraft, Saturn, moon, Enceladus
Written by tkeating@tmcnet.com on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Sprint today launched a new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution for enterprises - essentially a SIP trunking (IP Centrex) solution. This is big news considering another big telecom player, Level3 gave up on enterprise VoIP trunking months ago when they killed 3Tone. As I said in my AGN Communications post from a few days ago, maybe SIP trunking has come of age and Level3 was just a little bit ahead of the market demand? According to Sprint, "Sprint IP Voice Connect combines voice and data communications on a single IP network while securely supporting integrated and next generation applications."
Sprint IP Voice Connect is a network-based hosted telephony product offering local and long distance services as well as PBX and traditional Centrex features over Sprint's Dedicated IP or Global MPLS network. Sprint's secure carrier-grade service is enabled by Lucent Technologies' Hosted VoIP Solution for Enterprises through its Global Network Operations Centers. It can replace or integrate with customer premises-based telephony systems. Sprint IP Voice Connect service can:
Sprint offers service level agreements (SLA) for all critical metrics for voice over IP quality items such as jitter, delay and packet loss. Sprint also offers SLAs for site implementation, mean time to repair and proactive outage notification. Sprint IP Voice Connect is a carrier grade service built with internal survivability (multiple connections between partners along with redundant data centers).Customers may maintain communications even during an outage or disaster since the customer's phone service is housed in the network rather than a physical location and no longer dependent on that physical location's availability.
Sprint offers business customers IP Voice Connect flexible and scalable migration options with simplified per seat pricing for basic or enhanced feature packages and options for more functionality based on the customers needs. More info at sprint.com/business/products/products/voip.jsp
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Tags: Sprint, IP Centrex, VoIP, SIP, SIP trunking
Written by tkeating@tmcnet.com on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Samsung B600 10 Megapixel phone launched at CeBIT. The Samsung B600 is an amazing piece of technology. It has more mexapixels than many high-end single-purpose digital cameras and it doubles as a cell phone. Convergence at its best! The Samsuing B600 camera has a 3x optical zoom and 5x digital zoom and they claim for the first time in a mobile phone - an autofocus feature. If you look at the photo you'll notice as it animated that one side the handset looks like a conventional mobile phone while while the other side looks like a digital camera. It also includes support for South Korea's satellite digital broadcasting service (DBS) for receiving digital TV and radio subscriptions. Wonder if they'll add DISH or DirecTV support for the U.S.? Check out an excerpt of the news plus photo courtesy of LetsGodigital:
Samsung introduced a 10 Megapixel camera phone at the CeBIT 2006 in Hannover, Germany. The new Samsung 10 Megapixel mobile phone boasts the highest picture resolution for a camera phone ever made and it even exceeds the resolution of mid-end digital cameras. The Samsung camera phone also has a Bluetooth wireless headset, which can be used as a remote control. "The Samsung 10 Megapixel camera phone belongs to a different level with other camera phones", said Lee Ki-tae, chief of SamsungÂ’s mobile phone business. Samsung was the first company to introduce a camera phone in the world. And we will continue to bring mobile imaging products with more advanced optical technologies.
more...
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Tags: Samsung B600, camera phone, megapixel, digital camera
Written by tkeating@tmcnet.com on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Had some fun last night and typed in the word "gadget" on eBay. Didn't think that much would come up, but I was shocked to see 3,468 items listed! That's right -- more than 3,000 items had the word "gadget" in the listing title. (Obviously there are many thousands more gadgets for sale, but not with the word "gadget" in the title.)
The most expensive: 3D glasses for $1,024.34 -- they must really work!
The least expensive: A pen lighter for a penny.
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Tags: gadget, eBay
Written by tkeating@tmcnet.com on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by VoIP Magazine Featured Stories on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Texas Instruments Incorporated announced its latest Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system on a chip, the TNETV1061 which integrates the company's Telogy SoftwareTM for high-quality VoIP with TI Digital Signal Processors for real-time signal processing.
The TNETV1061's software features meet the demands of both service providers and consumers.
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Written by gautam.chabbra on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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The two giants will work on developing open standards, SIP-based interoperability between Avaya MultiVantage(R) Communications applications and Microsoft Office Communicator, the unified communications client for Microsoft(R) Office Live Communications Server 2005.
The first solution form the Avaya-Microsoft combine will roll out by the end of this year.
Avaya and Microsoft enjoy a long, fruitful relationship.
Written by gautam.chabbra on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices LLC has entered into an agreement with Yahoo! to provide VoIP calling capabilities to Siemens' Gigaset Cordless Telephones.
The Siemens Gigaset M34 USB adapter IP-enables Gigaset telephones with the PC-to-PC VoIP calling features of Yahoo! Messenger. Now, users of Gigaset handsets can access their Yahoo! Messenger friends' lists, view contacts and their presence status and change their personal presence status.
Via Voip Magazine
Written by gautam.chabbra on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Canadian cable giant, Shaw Communications is charging consumers $10/month if they want the provider's quality of service (QoS) feature. Naturally, this has ruffled the feathers of Vonage, the VOIP provide. Ironically, QoS issues don't exist for "Shaw Digital Phone"
Bryan Richard at Voipmagazine thinks this dispute may go to the courts?
Via Voip Magazine
Written by gautam.chabbra on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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