August 3rd, 2006
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The stock option mess is bruising two of the biggest tech brands to date — Apple and Steve Jobs. Apple just released a statement that says due to “irregularities related to the issuance of certain stock option grants made between 1997 and 2001″ the company will likely restate past financial statements.
Apple says it announced an internal investigation into company stock option irregularities in June but has now found additional evidence to lead to a possible restatement. The company didnt give a date or amount of the restatement, but said as a result of an ongoing investigation, it will delay the filing of its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended July 1, 2006.
A line that should give investors heartburn: “The Company today filed a Form 8-K stating that the financial statements and all earnings and press releases and similar communications issued by the Company relating to periods commencing on September 29, 2002 should therefore not be relied upon.” Thanks, good to know.
The problematic grants could even touch the chief himself. This stock option debacle just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Anyone care the guess the name of hte world's largest online games website? The one with 27 million users? The one that was just honored with the People’s Voice Award for Games for the second successive year?
Well, it's you said Miniclip.com, then you are correct!
Syndicated across more websites than any other, Miniclip.com games are extremely popular because they are fun, free, easy to use and include the full range from casual games to hard-core massive multiplayer games.
(Does the game pictured sound familiar?)
And hey, there's even a John Kerry Workout game (how wacked is that?!) 
www.miniclip.com
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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VoiceOne Communications, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of VoIP, Inc., a leading provider of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications solutions for service providers, resellers and consumers, announced today that a beta version of Click4Me.Net., the world's first Web-click calling service that utilizes the web for free phone-to-phone calling.
Labs.Voiceone.Com offers an open forum for users to preview, test free of charge, and provide feedback on new IP communications services developed by VoiceOne. VoIP, Inc.'s CTO Shawn Lewis said, "Cick4Me is designed to meet the needs of active, on-the-go businesspeople. It integrates the World Wide Web, VoIP calling, mobile telephony and landline functionality all within one product. It even enables users to connect with others without giving out their phone number."
To access the Click4Me.Net service, simply log on and register at http:// Labs.Voiceone.Com or at www.Click4Me.Net Users of the service can connect from their phone to other users' phones free of charge simply by entering their e-mail address or Click4Me.Net user name. Users can then review, provide feedback on the Click4Me service or discuss additional IP communications services with VoIP Inc.'s development team. Added Lewis, "Users are not required to sign up for any type of VoIP phone service or use Instant Messaging or any special programs to make and receive phone calls through this service.
It's also customizable and has numerous exciting features and functionality, including working with cell phones and the ability for the service to be embedded into e-mails." VoIP, Inc.'s President and CEO Gary Post commented, "Click4Me.Net is one example of the many ground-breaking services being developed by our VoiceOne subsidiary that make creative use of VoIP technology and demonstrate our ability to deliver innovative solutions tailored to meet the fast-changing needs of our customers.
The services being developed by VoiceOne represent the future of telephony, and we are making them available today to consumers free of charge through our Virtual Lab." Registered Click4Me users maintain their settings online and can set their availability status to Away, Do Not Disturb and Available.
Registered users can also change the unpublished number at which they wish to be reached. Additional features allow users to apply custom filters for blocking specific callers or require special PINs to complete calls. Cell phone users can also connect to Click4Me users by navigating to the web interface for cell phones, http://www.click2me.us, and entering the user's e-mail address or Click4Me ID. There is no charge for the call.
Click4Me technology can be integrated into emails, web pages, web advertisements and more by embedding a simple hyperlink tag like "Call Me Now." Users who click on the tag are automatically directed to a web page directing them to the intended party. VoiceOne plans to add additional Click4Me.Net features over the coming weeks, including voicemail, text message notifications, and text message dialing.
Written by Dal on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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It's not suprising that a lot of readers of this site ask, via the
comments, how they can make a free VoIP call from a specific country to
another, where the callee has a phone but no computer. So I thought
it'd be worthwhile giving a summary of some of the services that have
come out this year, in terms of categories rather than specific
software.
First, let me answer the question(s) as simply as
possible. There are some countries that are less likely to have free
calling between PC and PSTN/ mobile phones - not that I've seen. Two of
those countries are India and China. Maybe it's because they're the two
most populous countries in the world, and few companies want to give up
the potential market share.
The only exception I've run across
is Jajah (see below), which is currently offering free landline and
mobile calling to/from China. But if you run their trial, you can also
make a 5 minute call to/from India as well. If I find any other VoIP
services that allow free landline calls to/from India or China, I'll
write about it on this site.
On the other hand, if both the
caller and callee have a computer with a non-dialup Internet
connection, you can make all the free VoIP calls you want, between any
two countries, with pretty much any softVoIP client. For example,
Skype, Google Talk, MSN Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Gizmo
Project, etc.
If you want to call or receive calls on a regular
phone via a VoIP network, there are SIP-based adapters (hardware).
You'll still need a broadband Internet connection, but won't need a
computer. But how many people have a broadband connection and no
computer? Not many, I'm guessing.
For many countries, there are
a few options for free PC-to-PSTN (PC-to-phone, PC2phone) calls,
occasionally including mobile. Some are time-limited promos, some are
permanent offers. Here are just a couple of options. (I'll not cover
everything here.)
(1) Skype
just finished a July promo for free pc2phone calls from Canada and the
US to Mexico, Japan, and the UK. I'm guessing they'll have other
country offers later this year. They also have free pc2phone calls
within Canada and the US until Dec 31/06. But if you don't live in
either Canada or the US, you'll need to pay for their inexpensive
SkypeOut service, which lets you call pc2phone to many countries.
(2) Gizmo Project
has a permanent offer that let's you call pc2phone between 60 countries
(but not India and China). However, both caller and callee need to
register as Gizmo Project users. (This might mean having to download
and install the software as well. So if you don't have a computer, you
may have to ask a friend. Keep in mind that you are allowed up to, I
believe, three phone numbers per registrant, so your friend may not
want to help you :)
(3) Jajah
allows PC2phone calls free for up 30 minutes. It's unclear exactly
which countries are allowed and which are not, as I've read different
things. They do have a 5-minute trial call, and their list of countries
includes India and China. But when I read their web pages, I see only
China included in the 30-minute free calls, between registered users.
You should note that Jajah allows you to make phone2phone calls, not pc2phone calls.
This is just a sampling of some of the nice VoIP plans
currently available. If you know of others, please feel free to mention
them in the comments section. I will try to put together a
comprehensive free-VoIP guide, before Christmas time, that points to
articles both here and on other websites.
Written by ewriter on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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With all the weather that we're been experiencing (hot, hot, hotter), it's a good idea to be prepared in case of a power outage or other emergency.
(And this goes out to all of you are in hurricane season now, too).
(Oh, and before I forget, how about all of those poor folks in Queens who were without power for so long -- thank you Con Ed.)
Eton's Multi-purpose Hand-crank Radio American Red Cross FR400 may be one of the longest product names you can imagine, but it does pack a wallop of features -- specificaly those features you need when you're without power. It is the one gadget you need for emergencies.
(It's like an electronic Swiss Army knife.)
The FR400 provides you with a water-resistant AM/FM/Water-Resistant emergency radio with NOAA weather channels, TV-VHF, flashlight, siren and cell phone charger.
What's really, really cool about this product is some seriously old school technology. Using the hand-crank power generator chargesthe internal rechargeable Ni-MH battery pack in times of need.
(Yes, you read correctly -- hand crank -- like in the early days of automobiles.)
Let's get to the feature set so I don't miss anything:
- AM/FM/NOAA/TV1/TV2-VHF channels 2-13
- Water-resistant body
- NOAA Weather: All 7 channels plus “Alert” function
- Hand-crank power generator
- 3 LED light system with emergency flash
- Emergency siren
- Built-in cell phone charger
- Crank-charge system charges built-in rechargeable battery
- Charges rechargeable battery via AC Adaptor (included)
- Powered by 3 AA batteries
- Can be powered with all batteries removed by continuous cranking
- Dimensions: 4.5” H x 8.6” W x 2” D (114mm x 220mm x 50mm) = small
- Weight: 1.5 lbs. (Lightweight)
MSRP: $60.00
(As a nice touch, Eton gives 70 cents of the sales price to support the American Red Cross.) 
www.etoncorp.com
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Everyone knows Google is the King of search, and Hitwise released some data to confirm the fact: Google has increased its share of volume of U.S. searches from 59.3% to 60.2% for the month of July. When Om visited the Googleplex last month, he discussed this point, of how important search is to Google, and how it’s still the brains behind the entire show.
With Google’s search share still growing, this begs the question: When it comes to search can Google get as big as Microsoft is in the desktop? Like those good ol’ standardized English tests, does the equation match? Send us your thoughts!
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Ted Shelton of IP Inferno and VoIP Magazine has been busy and proactive. First he sent a letter to Meg Whitman of eBay, urging her to open up the Skype VoIP protocol. Then he sent a letter to US Senator Dianne Feinstein, and got this positive letter about network neutrality in response.
Dal
of Asterisk VoIP News asks, is residential telephony past it's sell
date? Both mobile comm and VoIP have threatened providers of regular
phone service, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. Analysis from
Frost & Sullivan shows that the industry there reached its peak in
2005, and the subscriber base will be growing at a paltry compound
yearly rate of about 2.3 percent up until 2012. There are, however,
other areas of growth in the business. [via Asterisk VoIP News]
For those of you familiar with RSS
(Really Simple Syndication), you know that it's a handy way to consume
the content of your favorite websites, especially news sites. Well,
here's a leg up on RSS news reader software: one that reads you one
minute headline summaries via an Asterisk-based VoIP phone. [via Nerd Vittles] There's also MailCall for Asterisk, which reads you your email by VoIP phone.
New Zealand's Slingshot offers the iTALK VoiceBox to bring VoIP calling to regular home phone users. This is done by connecting a regular phone to a broadband connection via a suitable adaptor device. [via The VoIP Weblog, Scoop]
Written by ewriter on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Sprint Nextel lowered its earnings guidance for the year from $13B to between $12.6 billion to $12.9 billion (EBITDA) in its second quarter earnings report today, and reported lowered earnings for the quarter of $370 million, down from $599 million. The news led the company’s stock down over 15% to $17.07, and Moody’s placed the company’s ratings under review.
In addition to the merger costs, this could be an early negative sign of the company’s aggressive MVNO strategy. Sprint Nextel says it lost 31,000 wholesale subscribers in the quarter, which UBS attributes to weak business in Virgin Mobile. The company’s MVNO partners also includes ESPN Mobile, among others, which has not been doing so well. Year to date the total amount of Sprint Nextel’s wholesale subscribers is at 5.35 million, with less than 200,000 net adds this year.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Sprint Nextel.
What do you find more valuable to you: a smartphone, PDA, or laptop?
According to market research firm In-Stat, users of smartphones find
those more essential to their business. [via CNS Magazine] However, that's not factoring in how people use VoIP. Given that it's the SOHO (Small Office/ Home Office) and probably SMB
(Small and Medium Businesses) owners that are most likely to be the
next wave to adopt VoIP, the value of one device over may soon depend
on its ability to VoIP.
I know that when I bought my first Palm
PDA in Oct 1999, it wasn't "connected". But it was essential to my
consulting for task management (no laptop back then), as was my cell
phone - especially since I haven't had a land line in about 12 years or
longer. Of course, there was no VoIP then, so it didn't matter.
Now that I have a Palm Treo 650, which is a PDA with cell phone and
cellular Wi-Fi access, I rarely use it except to actually test VoIP
products. But that's primarily because I now work 100% from home. If I
were still travelling around, even locally, as I used to for
consulting, that'd be different.
So to me, my laptop is more
important, as I can move around the house, or go up to the university
library to do research. I do most of my softVoIP calls from Skype,
mainly because the few people that I speak to who use VoIP only have
Skype. The other reason being of course Skype's free calling within the
US and Canada (until the end of 2006).
On the other hand, if I
could actually find a VoIP service that works on Treo 650 (CDMA
network, in my case), I'd be more likely to use my Treo for VoIP long
distance calls outside of Canada and the US. How about you? How do you
use VoIP for your business?
Written by ewriter on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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The wireless spectrum auction is next Wednesday, and analysts from UBS have a taken a look at the data and given us some of their thoughts. A key point is that the analysts predict that the overall prices paid for spectrum are likely to be lower compared to prior auctions, given the large amount of spectrum for sale is bigger than the demand from wireless carriers.
“We estimate that Auction 66 will bring in net proceeds of $7 to $10 billion, which equates to roughly $0.25-$0.40 per MHz/per POP.” Other estimates had previously put the total government take away as high as $15 billion.
The report also says that T-Mobile could be an aggressive bidder, as it tries to reverse its position as the weakest spectrum holder among the national operators. And Wireless DBS (the consortium tied to Echostar and DirecTV among others) is also likely to be an aggressive bidder, says UBS.
The lower prices are good news for the bidders, but not so great news for the government, which gets the proceeds. We’ll bring you more next week, before the big day.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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In-Stat believes enterprise customers could generate $15 billion in revenue by 2010.
Written by VoIP Magazine Featured Stories on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Now that
AOL has decided advertising rather than (Internet) access is where it's at, it got me thinking about the size of the online advertising pie, and whether there are enough "slices" to go around. Assuming the Big Boys - Microsoft, AOL, Google and Yahoo, will get their fair share of advertising, how will the rest of the advertising dollars be allocated? How much will news sites (newspapers, etc.) receive and how much will be directed towards blogs and podcasts? Can an entire eco-system of Web 2.0 services be sustained on AdSense? While the online market in seeing robust growth, it appears to be more of a charge online at this point rather than a sophisticated, strategic approach (apologies for making is a massive generalization as there are plenty of savvy media buyers capitalizing on the Web). The point is it's still early days and there will be plenty of questions about who gets what and how much. One online advetising issue starting to be addressed is click fraud.
CNet has a story looking at how Google and Yahoo are working together to create guidelines for what constitutes valid clicks and invalid clicks on ads.
Written by Mark Evans on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Main Page.
Amid all the focus on municipal Wi-Fi, it was interesting read
Tyler Hamilton's post on
Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit company that provides solar-powered technology. The only thing needed to fire up the network is a broadband connection. It sounds like a good solution for emerging markets, particularly schools. Green Wi-Fi was started two ex-Sun Microsystems executives, Bruce Baikie and Marc Pomerleau. The company has received seed money from the
One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aims to
build a $100 laptop to be distributed to children in developing countries.
CNet has an extensive story on Green Wi-Fi.
Written by Mark Evans on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Wi-Fi.
Nortel posted second-quarter earnings
of $366-million this morning, or 8 cents a share
(compared with analyst estimates of about 2 cents). Before investors get too excited and storm off to jump on the bandwagon again, the bottom line was nowhere as good as it appears. For one, profits were buoyed by a $510-million gain from
shareholder litigation recovery. After accounting for charges related
to restructuring and asset sales, Nortel lost about
$89-million in the quarter, or about 2 cents a share. Another sign Nortel has yet to recover is a sharp decline in gross margins to 39% from
43%. However, Nortel remains confident the rest of the year will be more
promising. CFO Peter Currie said the company exepcts strong sales momentum, high single-digit growth compared with 2005, gross margins of 40%, and operating expenses to be flat to slightly up.
Written by Mark Evans on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Nortel Networks and Telecom Equipment Makers.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is once again catching the imagination of the venture capital community in Silicon Valley. RedSwoosh, BitTorrent, Pando, and dozens of others have come out with different twists on the core concept of peer-to-peer networking, and have raised millions. SkyRider, a Mountain View, Calif.-based start up is the latest to join the party, having raised $8 million from white shoe venture funds, Sequoia Capital and Charles River Ventures.
SkyRider was started by telecom veterans Ori Cohen and Stas Khirman (also co-founders of packet inspection company, Narus and VDOnet) in 2003, and has operated in stealth mode, finessing a new peer to peer networking platform. The company is keeping mum about its technology and strategy, and will offer its first product in Fall 2006.
“We are developing a commercial grade P2P networking platform, which we will offer to other companies,” says Ed Kozel, CEO of SkyRider, who previously had worked for Cisco Systems and Yahoo! He says that the four big P2P networks - Gnutella, Ares, Kazaa and eDonkey – continue to grow in popularity, yet there has been very little innovation around these networks. They are essentially used for swapping either music or video files.
Amongst other issues around these networks is that they still remain silos. SkyRider, has developed amongst other things a technology that will allow it to act almost like a bridge between those networks. By doing so, the company is opening up an opportunity for cross platform search – rather better P2P keyword search. According to some estimates there are 12 million simultaneous P2P users on the P2P networks, and there are nearly half-a-billion queries on these networks. That, according to ComScore data, it close to the number of daily searches on Google and Yahoo.
The big opportunity, Kozel says, is to bring the web-like ease to the P2P networks, and looking beyond video and music file sharing. SkyRider also has plans to apply P2P technology to user-generated content.
Written by Om Malik on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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GoogleFi, Google’s Mountain View network, may be good for data connections, but is it good enough for making voice calls? In order to find out answers, I headed down to Mountain View to conduct some first hand tests, and well, make some VoIP calls.
Voice over WiFi has the potential to be one of the most disruptive applications for city-wide WiFi networks, unlocking callers from expensive cellular networks. But MuniFi and even WiFi hotspots, many (including Om) argue is not yet reliable when it comes to making phone calls and the devices are still quite complex.
So during another hot daytrip to sunny Mountain View, we took our handhelds and laptops in tow, and spread out our gear under a tree in a city park. First we just tested basic Skype running over a Mac laptop.
The biggest issue is just sitting in a spot with a fast enough connection to the closest access point. After a few tries, we were able to connect and make a regular Skype call to another Skype user online, and managed to get pretty decent voice quality. It’s not as easy or clean as cellular, but it works well enough and it is free!
Test one out of the way, it was time to stress test the network using non-PC devices. We fired up the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet running the Gizmo Project application, which can connect VoIP calls to regular phone numbers. It costs a few cents to make outgoing calls, but we could call anyone over the public phone system and its still pretty cheap.
One problem we noticed with the service is there was a slight lag time between when I called and the listener got the signal. The lag time was large enough to be noticeable. Despite that the call quality was quite clear. Our Pocket PC phones did not play nice with the network, but that might be some configuration issues on our end.
So what is our conclusion? If your call is critical and you’re in a big hurry, and not willing to tinker with new technology, stick to your cellular handset.
Now, if you’re willing to give up the ease-of-use of your mobile handset, then, Google’s Mountain View network is not bad. If you find a spot where the signal is pretty strong, the calls can be as good as cellular calls. It might be just me, but the prospect of cheap or free phone calls over a free network, is something to get excited about.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and VoIP and Google and Gizmo Project and WiFi and Cellular.