SiteSpeed 5.0 beta released

SiteSpeed just released their new beta version (5.0) of their video/voice over-IP software. The beta release includes significantly enhanced video quality, as well as PSTN Out calling and new Voice only PC to PC calling. They are also supporting Macs in this beta. I actually tested an older version of SiteSpeed which had excellent voice and video quality, so I can't wait to check out the latest version.

SightSpeed's Phone Out, can be used to make low-cost PSTN calls from both PCs or Macs to anywhere in the U.S. for 2 cents per minute. You can also make calls to the United Kingdom or Japan for 3 cents per minute. They use Kayote Networks for termination. SiteSpeed informed me that SightSpeed’s Phone In is coming soon, so SightSpeed users receive calls to their PC or Mac from within SightSpeed. As part of this release, SIP signaling for PSTN termination support is added as well as enhancements to its SOAP based interface for working with partners.

Now if only I could marry the best of Gizmo (Asterisk support, slick interface, call recording, XMPP support) with the best of SiteSpeed (excellent video quality) along with the ability to interoperate with Skype and the ability to stream my videos to others (think Slingbox or Orb Networks) I'd have the perfect softphone! Alas, that day has not yet come, so we still have a fractured market with many softphones each with their stengths and weaknesses.

Nevertheless, the SiteSpeed client is pretty impressive. Just check out the synopsis of the new features:

PC-to-PC-Voice Only Calls
This new mode is perfect for those times a user doesn't want or need video, these voice calls are always free to other SightSpeed members.

Improved Video
SightSpeed significantly enhanced its video quality through the addition of a new advanced beta codec found within SightSpeed by clicking Settings and selecting Optional Settings. The new video codec is the last option on this list and will be standard when the 5.0 release comes available in July.

Enhanced Contact List Display Options
The new contact list manager provides multiple ways to see who is online and offline and provides the choices available for how to contact them. They also announced they will be working with Plaxo for contact management integration.

Finally, is it me, or does it seem like everyone in the VoIP space is now integrating with Plaxo for contact management? Jajah, a VoIP client uses Plaxo. I'm one of the beta testers for AOL PhoneLine and it too features Plaxo integration. Soon Plaxo will become the online Yellow/White Pages to find anyone in the world with instant click-to-call. Once everyone uses them for easy VoIP click-to-call functionality, the NSA will coming knocking on Plaxo's door - "We want to know who Tom Keating has been talking to. He's Irish, so we suspect he's part of the IRA terrorist organization."

Kidding aside, I have no problem with the NSA tracking who I call. I have nothing to hide. From what I understand they are only tracking numbers dialed and are not recording the content of the calls. After they find suspicious patterns for an individual they then have to get a court warrant. So NSA, you have my permission to track and find the terrorists any which way you can (legally under the Constitution), then send in the Predator drones to kill them dead. (yes, I know 'kill' and 'dead' in the same sentence is redundant).

ACLU members and libertarian readers feel free to blast away on my views of privacy, your interpretation of the Constitution, and the legality of NSA "wiretapping" (though 'wiretapping' is a misnomer since they are acquiring call records).  Flame away!

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us

Tags: nsa, plaxo, sip, sitespeed, softphone, voip, wiretapping

Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on VoIP and SIP and nsa and plaxo and sitespeed and softphone and wiretapping.

Del.icio.us Redesigns, Adds Hotlist

Del.icio.us has redesigned its home page, and add a new hot list feature. I like this hot list feature!

You’ll notice that the del.icio.us homepage now features a hotlist which is updated every hour to show you the top three most popular links as of that moment. These links are taken directly from the popular page, and we never show the same link twice. This guarantees that every time you visit the homepage, you’ll see something new (well, at least every hour).

What do you think about the redesign, and the new hotlist feature?

(Poll is below the screenshot!)

Written by Om Malik on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on yahoo and Web 2.0.

Dell Does (A Little More) Retail; Dell Dude, Where ‘R U?

Seems like Dell, which defined a new direct sales ("pay for it and we will build it for you") model is now moving away from that a bit with more retail presence.

Apparently, Dell is adding to their kiosk presence in various spots, but will not actually sell products from these larger retail spaces (don't want to copy the failed model of the Gateway stores, I'm sure).

Failing to meet Wall Street expectations is behind this latest move -- retail customers will still have to order online and buy a Dell (sure they want move away from all of those HP and other computers begging to be bought at Circuit City, Best Buy, etc.).

BTW, whatever happened to the Dell Dude? (Clue: Adweek blogs have a not-entirely up-to-date update.)

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us

Tags: adweek, dell, dell dude, gateway

Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Computer Hardware and dell and dell dude and gateway.

Wi-Fi Was Meant To Be Free (in NYC)

According to a variety of published reports, including Internet Week, Central Park in New York could have wireless access as early as July. 

City leaders are trying to provide public access to wireless networks in parks in all five boroughs, not just Manhattan (yes, there is life outside of Manhattan).

Several open outdoor areas, including Bryant Park and the South Street Seaport, already have public wireless access through private companies and the government is still not funding these public projects.

The city is relying on private companies, which could advertise to Web surfers connecting to their wireless services, as well as non-profits. In some cases, the city will collect a nominal fee from Wi-Fi providers.

San Francisco is leading the pack for providing wireless access to the public, and Philadelphia recently approved a plan for citywide wireless access.

 

 

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us

Tags: central park, internet week, new york, public wirless access

Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless and central park and internet week and new york and public wirless access.

Vonage IPO Results are In…

I won't call the Vonage IPO a miserable failure, but it certainly underwhelmed with a 12.65% drop from the target price of $17 and closing at just $14.85. Still, I'm sure Jeffrey Citron made millions. Good for him, bad for any Vonage IPO investors, including the loyal Vonage customers that invested. Ironic - Vonage customers use Vonage to save a few bucks and those that invested in Vonage probably lost more money that if they stayed with their traditional landline phone carrier. Ouch!

Here's the final tally according to my real-time stock quotes:

VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP COMMON STOCK (VG)				As of: 05/24/2006, 4:02pm
Last Trade [tick]	14.85[-]		Volume	33,250,100
Net Change	-2.15		52 Week High	0.00 on 00/00/0000
Net Change %	-12.65%		52 Week Low	0.00 on 00/00/0000
Bid	14.75		Ex. Dividend Date
Bid Size	2		Dividend Pay Date
Ask	14.85		Dividend Rate
Ask Size	1		P/E Ratio	0.0000
Bid Exchange	NSX		Yield	0.00%
Ask Exchange	Pacific		Split Factor	0.00
Last Trade Exchange	NYSE		EPS	0.00
Open	17.00		Currency	USD
Day High	17.2500		Primary Exchange	NYSE
Day Low	14.4900
Prev Close Price	0.00
Prev Close Date
Quotes are displayed by Date/Time in Eastern time.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us

Tags: ipo, vonage

Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and ipo.

How To Build A Bullet Proof Start-Up

New technologies are creating new business opportunities on the Internet, on mobile phones, in consumer products, and in information services. At the same time, many of these technologies have radically reduced the costs associated with launching a new venture. While birthing a company is easier, succeeding is as difficult as ever.

I teamed up with my long time colleague and comrade-in-arms Michael Copeland and talked to seasoned entrepreneurs, early-stage investors, venture capitalists, and first-time CEOs—to understand what they’ve learned about the art of getting a new company off the ground. This is a 16-step guide for building a start-up, and what are the things to avoid. Read this month’s Business 2.0 cover story, How To Build A Bullet Proof Start-Up

Perhaps, it will be something you will clip-and-save.

Also, check out B2.0’s 100 Fastest Growing (Publicly Traded) Tech Companies.

Written by Om Malik on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Articles and Start-Ups.

Vonage IPO Failing - Trading $2 lower so far

The Vonage IPO is faltering, trading at $15.10 or $1.90 below the opening $17 price. This is a 11% price drop. I just did a Yahoo! Quote lookup and pasted the chart to the right. Not looking good even though it has ticked up a bit. Too bad Skype didn't do an IPO instead of selling to eBay. Now that would have been an IPO that would have rocked the VoIP world and perhaps setup Vonage for a much better IPO performance.

According to the WallStreet Journal, "If the stock's losses remain at this level, it will be the worst IPO debut since wireless equipment maker Gigabeam Corp. lost 21% on its first day of trading in 2004, according to data tracker Thomson Financial."

I'm not one to say I told you so, so I won't. Many in the VoIP blogosphere called this Vonage IPO failure, so I'm not the only one. The stock stading day is still young, so it's possible Vonage could rebound. Although I have access to the Vonage IPO since I am a customer, I'm passing on this one.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us

Tags: ipo, vonage

Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and ipo.

Startup Do’s and Don’ts

Last night Om and I sat down with Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of open-source blogging software WordPress and a recent founder of Automattic. Automattic is a software services company centered around the WordPress blogging platform. This podcast is a little geeky and aimed at entrepreneurs just getting started

What does it take to launch a successful startup? In this week's PodSession we discuss identifying your customers, how to build to scale, how to decide on a programming language (Rails vs. PHP vs. ?), how to design for your users, and what concepts (such as spam) you cannot afford to overlook. Matt jumps in with some stories from the front line of software development with close to 200,000 active users on hosted blog site WordPress.com and about 40 million blog spam messages blocked on Akismet.

During the podcast we mention Cal Henderson's new book, Building Scalable Web Sites, about designing hardware and software systems for web applications with Cal's work on Flickr as a solid example.

Om recently wrote an article for Business 2.0 titled How to build a bulletproof startup. Also mentioned in the podcast are PHP, the Ruby on Rails web framework, script.aculo.us JavaScript library, and Eclipse and TextMate code editors.

This week's PodSession, Startup Do's and Don'ts, is 22 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.

Written by Om Malik and Niall Kennedy on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on session.

666 6666 Phone Number Auctioned

The world's most expensive phone number 666 6666 was auctioned for charity yesterday in Qatar.  The phone number 666 6666, sold for 10m Qatari riyals or £1.5m. Who would pay this kind of money for a phone number? Of course, 666 is known as the number of the beast. Rumor has it that the number is to be transferred to Iranian President "Israel must be wiped off the map" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad so the U.N. knows how to quickly reach him after he nukes Israel.

U.N.: "You said you were enriching uranium for peaceful energy purposes"
Mahmoud: "And you believed me? hahahaha. Stupid U.N. You're so gullible. But don't worry, I won't blow anything else up."
U.N. "Really?"
Mahmoud: "Fooled ya again! Let me see here... The American-loving Saudia Arabian royal family or New York City? Eenie, meanie, miny, moe!"



The number 666 has some interesting history. Former U.S. president Ronald Wilson Reagan had six letters in his first, middle, and last name. He also live in house number 666 when he lived in California until Nancy Reagan changed to 668.

The anti-impotence drug Viagra has a molecular weight of 666.7g/mol. In 1999, Intel marketed their Pentium 666 Mhz chip as 667 Mhz, conveniently rounding up. Some other wacky theories about the number 666 include Microsoft's Bill Gates whose real name is William Henry Gates III, but he goes by Bill Gates III. By converting the letters of his name to the ASCII-values (which are used in computers) you will get the following:

B    I    L    L    G    A    T    E    S    3

66 + 73 + 76 + 76 + 71 + 65 + 84 + 69 + 83 + 3 = 666

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin also convert into 666. (65=A, Z=90)

One interpretation makes 666 equal the summation of the Greek Numbering of the Arabic word "ELLAH" (synonym of Allah) which means "GOD" in the English language. Does this make the Arabic god "Allah" the anti-Christ predicted in the Bible? Who knows? 666 could simply be a number that humans attach symbolism to and look for patterns - just like the number 13. But I'm going to play it safe and make sure to never anyone to put the number 666 on my right hand or forehead.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (2) | Tag with del.icio.us

Tags: 666, antichrist, mahmoud ahmadinejad

Comments on this Entry:

(MadVoiper on May 24, 2006 12:40 PM) So, this is all well and good to see the evil of Bill Gates or Adolph Hitler via numerology. But it's flawed. Recently some ancient Greek manuscripts were found that showed that in the book of revelations, the number mentioned was actually 616, not 666. I find it an unendingly funny thought that all the so called Satanists have been worshipping the wrong number, and the equally hypocritical religious fundamentalists have been scared and put up in arms by the same wrong number. I did a google search for "number of the beast is not 666" and got 805,000 hits. Oddly...any of those hits from a valid news source that I tried to click didn't work...hmmm...another da vinci code style cover up???? :)

(Tom Keating on May 24, 2006 1:05 PM) True, 616 is sometimes mentioned, but it is much more obscure. 666 is much more prevalent and mentioned in various Bible versions. If memory serves me correctly, 7 represents God, and 6 represents man - one short of God, demonstrating man's shortcomings. Three 6s represents man making himself God (three representing the Holy Trinity) Here's a good backgrounder on the number 666 and 616. number of the beast Wiki

Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and News and mahmoud ahmadinejad.

And In Other VoIP News

• Streamcast, makers of Morpheus have sued eBay, claiming that Skype is using their technology. Andy had this information way way back, but there have been some amendments to the suit. It all about squeezing out some dollars from eBay. Nothing more, nothing less.

• Sequoia investments - Plaxo and Jajah are playing nice with each other. It will be more impressive if the two companies didn’t have “synergies.” Now Plaxo users can use Jajah and click to call those in their address books. (More on this later… too much going on today.)

• Like AOL, United Online is giving away free local numbers as well.

Written by Om Malik on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on VoIP (the New Phone) and Skype.

ICANN .tel domain names approved for Web calling

Marc Robins, TMC's newest blogger has the scoop on the approval by ICANN for .tel domain names which will enable you to reach call people by using a web address instead of a phone number.

Give Marc a hearty welcome by checking out the ICANN post and his other posts and post a comment.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us

Tags: .tel, icann

Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and VoIP and icann.

China’s Taxation Bureau Adopts VoIP

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Taxation Bureau has adopted Cisco's Unified Communications solution. This up gradation is being regarded as the largest Unified Communications project based on IP telephony within China's taxation system. Around 2,600 Cisco Unified IP phones are being installed at fifteen state level and one hundred and fifteen country level offices. The completion of the installation was done at the end of March 2006 and the bureau is expecting the project to bring profits within one and a half years.

It is expected that the system would reduce the communication costs of the taxation bureau and would increase its operational efficiency.

Via: [VoIP Central]

Written by gautam.chabbra on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Solutions.

Spring VON Europe - ENUM Now? - The Panel

Written by VoIP and ENUM on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.

Tony Li Joins Vyatta Board

Router guru and networking industry veteran, Tony Li, has joined the board of advisors of Vyatta, an open source router company I had written about earlier, here and for Business 2.0 magazine. This is quite a coup for the tiny company, since Li is widely regarded as one of the smartest guys in routing, having worked at Cisco and Juniper Networks. He was working on his own start-up, Portola Networks alongside former Procket executive Vito Palermo, but now his bio says he is working as Software Architect for Tropos Networks. Whatever happened to Portola?

Written by Om Malik on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wired.

Vonage Struggles on the Open Market

Shares fall 10% in morning trading.

Written by VoIP Magazine Featured Stories on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.

Spring VON Europe - ENUM Now? and what ENUM?

I know this is a bit late, but I still owe you a report from the ENUM Now? panel I moderated. I opened up with a short presentation setting the scene. Here a more detailed explanation:

User ENUM as defined in RFC 3761 and to be used in e164.arpa is around quite a long time already. The up-take is quite slow, although there are already over 40 countries delegated in e164.arpa. But only two countries have noteworthy commercial operations (Austria and Germany), a few others are soon to come. Most countries are still in different stages of trials, stuck into legal, regulatory, privacy and validation discussions, thwarted by the existing PSTN operators (not only the incumbents), other countries seem even to have no idea yet what to do with ENUM.

How long can you trial that the DNS works? Of course this is not the real reason. Nowadays in any new development all concerns have to be taken into account up-front and solved, including world-hunger. And if the trial is nearing the end, it is very easy to raise another concern. Existing commercial implementations are of course suffering from Metcalfe's law. If GSM would have been introduced in this way, we would still have trials only, not to mention the Internet itself.

Country opt-in and especially end-user opt-in seems not to be the best idea (yet). So in the mean-time ETSI TISPAN started to investigate Infrastructure ENUM. The basic idea of Infrastucture ENUM was to provide a separate tree for service provider opt-in, without user opt-in and country opt-in.

This approach had three serious draw-backs:

• first, all service providers need to agree on ONE common tree and
• second, to be globally available, the tree need to be public
• and last, but not least, to be reachable via the public Internet and also via ENUM, service providers need to provide their users with SIP URIs.

So also this initial try went nowhere. And anyway, one could always use the PSTN to interconnect. In addition, the idea was also (at this time) a no-no in the IETF, because it was not end-to-end and not invented here.

But in the meantime more and more providers got the idea that peering via IP networks for VoIP applications has some advantages. And since E.164 numbers are still the main vehicle for public user identities (and not SIP URIs), some kind of mapping is necessary. So there was a requirement and a market for ENUM technologies and service providers looked around and started to joined private clubs enabling them to peer (or interconnect) via IP.

These ENUMs have many names (carrier, operator, enterprise, etc. ENUM). The generic term now is Private ENUM. Companies started to offer such "services" in the public Internet, some with restricted access and also within private networks. For more information see here.

These implementations work fine (showing also that no more ENUM trials are needed), but they all have a serious drawback: you may only reach the E.164 numbers hosted by the members of the club. This can be quite a large number, e.g. if one considers GSMA, but nevertheless. To reach other numbers, you may either use again the PSTN, which reduces service availability and QoS and requires transit charges per minute, or a provider needs to participate in quite a number of such ENUM trees.

One solution to this problem could be to provide a globally accessible Ueber-ENUM tree e.g. Infrastructure ENUM in ie164.arpa.

In the second half of 2005 IETF finally got the message, gave up the resistance and re-chartered the ENUM WG to deal also with Infrastructure ENUM issues. In the meantime and after some discussions a (stable) requirements draft exists and also a proposal for an RFC to create a parallel Infrastructure ENUM tree in ie164.arpa. There exists in addition a proposal for temporary national solutions to be implemented immediately during the time the negotiations with IESG, IAB, RIPE and ITU-T may take, but still keep a linkage with e164.arpa. Some trials are already in preparation and I will report here about their progress.

How comes the ITU-T into play?

As mentioned above, the ETSI TISPAN idea failed because a global service provider club defining the policy and also having the responsibilty for the root of a common Infrastructure ENUM tree simply cannot be established at all, or at least in a reasonable timeframe.

So the second choice was to involve the ITU-T and the national regulators again and go down a parallel path as was done with RFC3761 and e164.arpa. The draw-back for service providers is that again a country opt-in is required. It is also up to the national regulators to define what the rules are for service providers to be able to opt-in. That is to define what a "Carrier-of-Records" is within the given country code.

So we may be back again in future from Private ENUM to Infrastructure ENUM. Infrastructure ENUM has to potential, together with the work of the IETF WG SPEERMINT to provide a global framework for IP-based peering or IP Interconnection for real-time and multi-media communictions, helping to migrate finally all communications from the PSTN to IP. Infrastructure ENUM is also the ultimate number portability solution, allowing a global all call query (ACQ) for any E.164 number.

Are we going a full circle? So what about User ENUM?

If Infrastructure ENUM is implemented by the service providers, is there still room for User ENUM?

Yes.

Infrastructure ENUM will be the default routing used by service providers to provide basic connectivity for all their end-users (no end-user opt-in) based mainly on SIP.

User ENUM will not be used by all end-users, it still is opt-in, but it will be used by power-users on the Internet and especially by enterprises to provide them with an overlay network. User ENUM allows additional applications (basically any application locatable via an URI) to be linked to E.164 numbers. One type of power users are the communities now emerging on the Internet. At the last two IETF meeting a number of new innovative Enumservices where proposed and I expect more to come.

So User ENUM is not dead and may be revived soon.

I think I got carried away a bit.

And what about the ENUM now panel? - see next post ;-)

Written by VoIP and ENUM on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.

Spring VON Europe - Waiting for Dinner

Written by VoIP and ENUM on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.

Plaxo Planning To Enter VoIP Market

Plaxo plans to enter the VoIP market. Plaxo has unveiled its plans for moving beyond the synchronized and centralized online address book and calendar and become a communications provider. Company’s Click to Call feature enables users to make calls by clicking on a phone number in their Plaxo address book.

The screen pop asks the caller to confirm the number and when the screen is clicked the phone rings. When it is picked by caller, the system automatically initiates the call to the other person.

This move marks Plaxo’s first foray into allowing its customers to communicate by phone with people listed in the contact management service.

via zdnet 

Written by gautam.chabbra on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Business.

Startech Selects verso For Deploying VoIP in Nigeria

Startech Connections has selected Verso technologies for deploying its MetroNet VoIP Overlay system which includes the I-Master prepaid platform which would run over a WiMAX-based radio system enabling services to both residential and business markets in Nigeria.

The system can be deployed into a metropolitan market over any broadband medium including xDSL, cable, wireless, satellite, fiber and microwave. The integrated system also consists of the I-Master which is a real time authentication and rating engine that enables carriers to deploy the complex rating system which is required for securing new market opportunities.

Via tmcnet

Written by gautam.chabbra on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on AT&T.

Comverse Completes Netcentrex Acquisition

Comverse Technology has completed the procedures for acquiring Netcentrex for around $159 million in cash. With this the companies would be combining Netcentrex’s software for IP based triple play and fixed mobile convergence services with Converse’s set of billing services for targeting operators deploying services in the VoIP and IMS markets.

Raz Alon, interim CEO, Comverse commented:

The acquisition of Netcentrex is yet another example of our strategy to augment the strong product portfolio and market presence of our business units with talented people and leading technologies focused on emerging growth opportunities. We believe this combination opens new avenues of growth for Comverse, and strengthens its position as a leader in VoIP and IMS-related solutions.

Via tmcnet

Written by gautam.chabbra on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Business.

Gizmo’s Robertson: new Gizmo 2.0 will “displace” ConnectPath, SJLabs softphones

 SIPphone CEO and chairman Mike Robertson wrote me yesterday to tell me that Gizmo 2.0 is now live, and I should try it.I just have, and I like its attractive User Interface and general ease of use.But what's more interesting is something Mike told me.He views this build as in essence, a SJLabs and CounterPath-softphones [...]

Written by Russell Shaw on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and Softphones and SIP.

These photos illustrate AT&T’s phone, Internet tracking activities for NSA

  Wired Magazine has obtained, and has posted, the complete text of a document that attempts to chronicle how AT&T equipped a "secret room" at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco to track domestic and international phone calls made by American citizens and others. That's the entrance to the [...]

Written by Russell Shaw on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on News and General and Regulatory and Security and SBC-AT&T.

Office 2007 takes first VoIP integration baby step: but it’s not enough

  I've been looking at our Gallery of screen captures from Microsoft's just-released Windows Vista beta 2 and Office 2007 beta 2.  Beyond intense curiousity,  I have been looking for some sort of VoIP-powered click-to-call feature that could bring up Messenger and initiate a call to converse about, or collaborate on, say, a just-saved [...]

Written by Russell Shaw on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and Microsoft.

Why Vonage IPO day is like a cult film’s opening night

Late yesterday, Vonage priced its Initial Public Offering at $17 a share, and expects to raise $531 million from the IPO shares. The shares will start trading this morning.Thus far, the most loyal contingent of Vonage users eligible to buy these shares as part of the IPO-associated Directed Share Programming have reported that on [...]

Written by Russell Shaw on May 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and General.