August 21st, 2006
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It's great being on vacation, but there's no way to ease back to work. I've had 4 briefings today, and not much bandwidth left to get back into a working rhythm. I can see it will take a few days to catch up on news and old emails and re-energize for things like blogging. When I'm on vacation, I'm on vacation, so I have no idea what's been happening in the last week. But I'll have to work fast to catch up as back-to-school is around the corner, and when you have kids, there's no escaping what's needed to re-program them.
That said, one thing I do know is that Fall VON is coming up fast. It's certainly worth citing since this is the 10th anniversary, which I think is a pretty big deal in this space, and Jeff will receiving a healthy share of well-deserved kudos over the next while.
You don't have to look far to get a taste for the buzz around this event, which is going to be the biggest VON yet, and one with a fresh focus on video, which Jeff has been keenly focused on all year. Easiest place is to go directly to the source, as in Jeff's blog, where he posted about the show today.
I'll be attending the full conference, so feel free to let me know if you want to connect that week. You can also catch me on the Analyst Roundtable on Monday afternoon, during the FMC pre-conference track.
To close off here, I can't mention being in Boston in September without talking about the Red Sox. Normally, this creates conflicts for me at Fall VON, but not this year, certainly after today. I'm as die-hard as they come, but as of about 1:15am early this morning, I conceded the season. It's not worth talking about, but over a beer in the Back Bay at VON, I'm happy to deconstruct the season and Theo-rize about how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again for 2006. Any takers?
And to bring this back to Jeff, the Yankees are all yours. It's not going to be the 1986 Mets/Sox rematch I was thinking about, but rather another NY subway series.
Technorati tags: VON, Jon Arnold, Jeff Pulver
Written by Jon Arnold's Blog on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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I blogged a while back about Macy's plans to add kiosks to sell gadgets in its department stores.
Now (and I know you Macy's fans have been waiting for this!) comes plans for bringing back the Electronics Department! Yes, it hasn't been in Macy's since 1997, when electronics superstores (and less than stellar products, like Fisher audio) chased it away.
The plans call for a limited selections of electronics, including DVD players, iPod vending machines and other small gadgets.
For those of you who do remember, the new department will be "considerably" smaller than the old ones.
Check out American City Business Journals for more info.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Kevin Burton points out that Comcast has a new search page, and looks like it is powered by Google. I did a little test - about five different searches, and results are identical. Google, in a big to get an even bigger slice of the search pie is aggressively partnering with one and all. I had alluded to a better relationship with cable carriers a while back. What next, a Comcast portal powered by Google? That’s one way of being the next Yahoo.. no?
Written by Om Malik on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Philips is giving Australian customers a choice for combining VoIP with PSTN.
They now have a couple of cordless handsets that either use Microsoft
Live or Skype (not both). You do need a PC and a broadband Internet
connection to use the phones. [via The VoIP Weblog]
Because
Baby Boomers are expected to migrate to specific urban or rural areas
over the next twenty years or so, companies like ComSpan will beneft
from offering triple play services. [via VoIP Magazine; free registration required]
Asterisk has just release a free voicemail client, Tycho, for Win32, Linux x86, and Mac OS X computers. [via Asterisk VoIP News] I assume Tycho has nothing to do with Tycho Softworks - who offer an open source telephony stack - but I could be mistaken.
Written by ewriter on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Contract renewal focuses on creating more Skype phones.
Written by VoIP Magazine Featured Stories on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Wiretapping
is unconstitutional says US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in
Detroit, Michigan. She ordered a halt to the wiretapping program which
was apparently secretly authorized by President Bush in 2001. The actual action will be delayed until another hearing on Sep 7/06.
While privacy
advocates are no doubt happy, not everyone thinks Judge Taylor reasoned
well in her decision and have criticized her as a Liberal, despite that
her verdict was based on a number of Act violations.
One of the most important comments in her 43-page decision (or as the Washington Post calls it, "opinion") is the following:
... are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.
This
standing of hers is quite likely the primary basis for her detailed
decision, and since it is aimed directly at President Bush, is the
reason why "Congressional Republicans quickly condemned" her ruling.
See the Washington Post [via 21Talks ] for more details.
Written by ewriter on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Fusion Telecommunications International, Inc., a global VoIP service provider, today announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Jinti, a rapidly growing Chinese community services site that today attracts in excess of 3 Million unique visitors from mainland China each month.
As part of the agreement, Fusion will market its Efonica brand of VoIP services throughout the Jinti website. In addition to category exclusivity, the Efonica service offerings will be integrated into Jinti’s consumer registration process. As visitors register for Jinti services, they will be prompted to register for Efonica’s offering. “We are very pleased to enter into this relationship with Jinti, a key player in the burgeoning Chinese Internet marketplace.
Jinti’s unique community services website continues to experience dramatic growth through unique service offerings and the execution of a dynamic business model. With a growing Internet community, presently numbering over 120 Million people online, China represents a key market for Fusion in the Asian Region and a tremendous opportunity for the Company to continue to grow our worldwide community of users” said Matthew Rosen, President and CEO of Fusion.
“Fusion’s unique Efonica VoIP services are a very good complement to our community services website, giving our customers a chance to speak with one another and connect with friends and relatives for a significant savings. With over 400,000 subscribers registered in less than two months, Efonica represents a rapidly growing, cutting-edge service we are confident will appeal to the Chinese marketplace.
We also believe that Jinti’s 500,000 registered users with over 3 million unique visitors a month offers US firms like Fusion a unique opportunity to rapidly establish themselves in the China market.” said Jin Zhao, President and CEO of Jinti. Efonica offers consumers the ability to call each other for free using their existing landline or mobile telephone numbers.
Calls can be made to and from any combination of PCs, Internet phones and regular telephones (with a SIP adapter), connected to either a wireless, broadband or dial-up Internet connection. The service was introduced incorporating Fusion’s patent-pending Worldwide Internet Area CodeTM, which combined with a subscriber’s existing telephone number, further simplifies the process of making a call. Consumers subscribe to Efonica by visiting www.efonica.com and completing a free and easy registration process.
Written by Dal on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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My friend,
Mathew Ingram, has a different take on the YouTube phenomena: why do millions of people find the video sharing service so compelling. It's a refreshing change of pace from the regular stuff such as whether YouTube's worth $1-billion or
who will buy YouTube or whether YouTube will do
an IPO.
Written by Mark Evans on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Telesyte reports that Australian PSTN telcos will lose more than US$5 in revenue for every US$1 earned. [via 21Talks] So even if they start offering VoIP services, their overall revenue will go down.
As mentioned in our Show Me The Money... In VoIP and More Thoughts
posts, the money seems to be in hardware - both handsets and adapters -
and integration. But as Fonality is showing, there may also be some
revenue potential in VoIP PBXes.
Fonality is a company that
makes Asterisk-based IP-PBX systems. While Asterisk itself is free,
Fonality's PBXtra has additional features aimed at enterprise. In fact,
this is why they are purportedly tops in the Asterisk PBX market. [via GigaOm]
Overall,
though, this is still a young market providing a valuable and essential
service. Since the service is mostly free or inexpensive, it's
everything else associated with the service that will provide revenue
opportunities. But my proverbial money's on VoIP data applications.
Written by ewriter on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Hello,
We are releasing a beta version of our java eclipse based asterisk voicemail client called "Tycho". You can download the client binary at: http://sip-syndication.com.
Please note that the client needs a set of php scripts installed on the server side. The server side scripts, called "vmxml" are open source and available on the same website.
Screenshots:
MS Windows
http://sip-syndication.com/images/stories/tycho/msw-tycho-overview-65.png
Mac OS X
http://sip-syndication.com/images/stories/tycho/tycho_macosx_ppc_overview-65.png
Linux
http://sip-syndication.com/images/stories/tycho/lnx-ubuntu-tycho-overview-65.png
If you have any questions or problems installing/using the client please mail: t y c h o at sip-syndication dot com or post to the support forum on our website.
cheers,
Arnd
Written by Dal on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Editor's Note: This was sent in from one of our readers Kerry Garrison with Tech Data Pros. It's a interesting read. Please subimit any questions or comments about this article.
Excerpt: You've played around with Asterisk and set yourself up a test system and everything works but you go into production with a TDM card connected to the phone lines and now the users are complaining about echo. There wasn't any echo on the old phone system or hooking up an analog phone, and your SIP trunks sound fine, so what is the problem?
The actual number of things that can cause echo and how to resolve them all could almost fill a book, instead we are going to look at the most basic echo canceling using the Zaptel drivers. This will solve "most" echo problems but will not work in every case, regardless it is the first tier approach to solving to problem. The procedures outlined in this article will work with Digium TDM analog or TE PRI cards.
Click Here for the Full Article
Written by Dal on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Startups like Vancouver-based EQO, which have been working on getting more support from Skype as a mobile partner, got some bad news recently — competitor iSkoot scooped up a coveted deal to help Skype mobilize. While three-old EQO didn’t seem too pleased with Skype’s moves in a meeting last week, the company is already retooling itself.
On Tuesday morning EQO will release — what else? — a widget for MySpace, and other social networks Friendster and Tagworld, that will enable users to send multi media messages to cell phones with the tagline “EQO Me.” The company will also make an EQO Mobile Browser available, which it calls an “evolution of its EQO Mobile for Skype,” product. Is this a desperate move from a company that has lost its raison d’être?
EQO CEO Bill Tam doesn’t think so, and says these are just the first applications in a move that will include other services for managing real time presence, messaging and voice for social networks and communities. The company plans to detail its other services and partnerships at CTIA in September. Tapping the 100 million MySpace users with a widget is a common plan for startups these days, and Clearstone’s David Stern has some strong thoughts on the matter. Like most MySpace widgets EQO doesn’t have a specific business relationship with the company, and the tool is mostly meant to bring attention to its future premium services. That leaves the company and its business exposed to the whims and fancies of the MySpace management.
Mobilizing social networks is a sizable trend, with a crowded market of startups. MySpace already has a mobile deal with Helio, the Earthlink/SK Telecom MVNO, but that deal is expected to end as early as the Fall. EQO’s Tam describes the company’s mobile social network plans as “a juvenile blackberry experience,” and the “next generation of the mobile phone book.”
The company is venture backed by the Working Opportunity Fund, and managed by GrowthWorks Capital, and BDC Venture Capital, but doesn’t disclose the exact sum of the company’s backing. The company says it has had discussions with a number of firms down on Sand Hill Road and elsewhere and will be looking to find a venture partner for another round sometime later in the year.
The company’s MySpace and other community applications could prove popular, but the problem is for these initial basic applications there is little barrier to entry, and a lot of competitors who want to create similar services. The EQO team has a strong telecom background and says its has important softswitch proprietary algorithms that might be hard to replicate, so it could have a better chance than most. We will wait and watch!
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Back in the first bubble, you know the one with optical fiber, bandwidth and broadbandits. I remember big backbone providers sending out press releases about their deals with browser makers, software giants and what not - anything to make them look hip, and be part of the Web bubble. Now we are seeing return of the same kinda press release. Level 3 sent one over the weekend about their deal with MySpace, the social networking behemoth and how it will also provide bandwidth for MySpace’s video service. Of course no mention of how much this deal is worth…
Written by Om Malik on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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According to new research from Yankee Group, close to half of North American call centres will have switched to VoIP systems by the end of 2007. [via Asterisk VoIP News]
Given my experience with lousy call quality
while calling my website hosting provider lately, I'm hoping that the
call centres that do switch use some of the common soft clients. Say
Skype, Google Talk or Gizmo Project. But I'm thinking that if they do
even use soft VoIP clients, that they'll go the route of Leader Bank and use MSN or Yahoo! Messenger. Which given their new features may not be such a bad thing.
Written by ewriter on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Mention peer to peer and file sharing, and you can almost hear the collective groan of the entertainment executive businesses. They are quick to press the speed dial button for the $1000-an-hour law firms, who in turn work with groups such as RIAA and MPAA to sue single mothers, and kids. Well, little do they realize why people are resorting to file sharing, and that after a brief initial pain, it actually turns out to be an opportunity.
David Choi and Arturo Perez, two academics make that point in a research paper they just published and point out that online piracy is a precursor to widescreen adoption of new technologies and emergence of new markets.
For example, they have made a significant impact in the evolution of file-transferring technology, which has created breakthroughs in information distribution for both illegal and legal uses. Second, the piracy communities have been the source of invaluable market insight to the business world. Third, online pirates have contributed to new market creation.
As argument, they offer Napster as an example. Many feel that Napster was all about free music, but Choi and Perez argue that it helped establish not only the music download business, it also pointed out that most consumers wanted to buy single songs not albums. Apple’s iTunes store capitalized on that and became the pasha of digital music. Similarly, the BitTorrent and Kazaa are leading to the emergence of what we like to call the personal P2P apps.
via
Written by Om Malik on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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The Daily Deal has a piece on the recent trend of venture capital investments in the blogs and they look at Huffington Post, Paid Content and us. That is a nice surprise to get early on Monday morning. I did not get a chance to chat with Paul Bonanos, author of the piece, but he seems to understand our plans pretty well.
Written by Om Malik on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Zapr, a Sydney, Australia-based peer to peer file transfer company is about to launch and open its service to beta customers. The company is one of the latest to join a new breed of online file transfer services, we have labeled personal P2P applications.
Pando, Perenety, Peer Factor, and Wired Reach are some example of such services. I have come across a few other companies since my previous post - YouSendIT and Civil Netizen. I am also looking forward to learning more about AllPeers, a Firefox extension that will allow users to send and receive files.
Zapr, which only works with Windows XP, is as easy to use as an IM client, and mimics that user experience. Interestingly, it doesn’t make the recipient of the files download a client. You can try it for yourself. Michael Liubinskas, Zapr’s head of marketing and business development was in town last week and gave us a demo, which seemed simple enough and worked flawlessly over a Starbucks/T-Mobile WiFi connection.
Pando, seems to be the market leader in this space and has a million installs so far. That service works on Windows and Mac OS X, and has plugins that make big file transfers possible from within the Yahoo IM and Microsoft Outlook clients. We have been using it for a while now to send big PDFs and image files.
Written by Om Malik on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Ten years ago, camera companies had nothing to worry about except each other.
But poof! along came digital cameras and the Kodak, Fuji and Nikon's of the camera world had to worry about consumer technology companies like Sony or IT companies (at least back then) like HP.
Funny thing is, while the camera companies -- both old and new -- battled each other for survival (market share) their core imaging technology got scooped up as a cool feature in mobile phones.
Today, there are now more camera phones in the world than there are film or digital cameras. According to digital imaging analyst firm Lyra Research, the installed base of camera phones will reach approximately 850 million units in 2006, and this number will grow to more than 1.5 billion units in 2010.
Here's what Steve Hoffenberg, Lyra's director of consumer imaging research, had to say:
"In less than five years since the very inception of this product category, camera phones have gone from nonexistent to predominant. We're still in the early stages of market development for mobile imaging. Picture quality is still immature, and market penetration has largely been supply-side driven.
"But camera phone picture quality will improve substantially over the next several years, upstream transmission bandwidth will increase and consumers will become increasingly familiar with the incredible inherent benefit of wireless connectivity for images."
Will be interested to see what 2010 looks like ...
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Last week, I speculated as to why Rupert Murdoch would have a difficult time acquiring YouTube. I also suggested that, with a rumored asking price of $1 billion, NBC Universal was the most likely contender to buy YouTube. But my thoughts were based mostly on reasons having to do with financial/capital structural issues. With this piece, allow me add some additional perspective on the matter… but this time, from a more strategic point of view. In my view, the company that would benefit most from the prospect of buying and owning YouTube is Steve Jobs’ Apple Computer.
As most know, with the exception of iTunes, Apple has been a laggard when it comes to the web. But buying YouTube, Steve Jobs could leapfrog to the top of the heap. After all, he would end up with immediate presence within the ranks of the top 50 web properties (one that’s still growing at a rapid clip).
YouTube would also, for the first time, give Apple a platform to tap into the highly-coveted stream of online ad revenues, particularly within the fast-growth, high-CPM video ad segment. And by owning a leading platform for user-created content, distribution, and social networking, Jobs could fill in nearly all of Apple’s strategic holes (vs. web competitors) in one fell swoop.
But to assess the real (near-term, material) value of such a deal for Apple, let’s go back to iTunes. As we all know by now, the success of iTunes is rooted in its tight integration with the iPod, both in terms of its end-to-end user experience as well as its “razor-and-blade” business model. On the latter, Steve Jobs proved his brilliance by sacrificing digital music profits and making it up with sales of his high-margin iPods. The result has been market dominance… 75% market share. But sales are slowing, and he needs a new catalyst.
Enter YouTube. The online video phenom can be to the video iPod what iTunes was to the audio iPod. It’s not difficult to imagine mass consumers, especially tweens, downloading their playlists of YouTube “video snacks†and viewing them on the go with their video iPods.
And if YouTube is able to secure music videos from the record labels (offering them for free to consumers), not to mention any deals they may have with Hollywood (e.g. NBC), the promotional synergy/loop-back with iTunes (for both music and TV/film content) could be significant. In short, the brilliance behind the “razor-and-blade†business model of iTunes-and-iPod could be extended to YouTube-and-Video iPod. It also provides a roadmap for the much-speculated Apple cell phone and the WiFi-enabled iPod… both would greatly facilitate video uploading and sharing.
Jobs’ ego would benefit as well (not that he needs it). Just like Rupert Murdoch (via the “MySpace Effect”), such a deal would catapult Steve Jobs into the rarified stratosphere of being a “social media mogul.” Speaking of Murdoch & MySpace, a combination of YouTube and video iPod could also go a long way in staving off the increasing threat of MySpace Video.
So with a market cap of nearly $60 billion, should Apple go after YouTube?
Robert Young is a serial entrepreneur who played a major role in the invention & commercialization of the world’s first consumer ISP, Internet advertising (pay-per-click ads), free email, and digital media superdistribution.
Written by Robert Young on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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"Web 2.0 is a great way to raise money" - Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, at last week's Digital Hollywood Show (Source: SJ Mercury). How should one read this statement? Is Rose saying it like it is, or poking fun at all the VCs scrambling to give money to cool start-ups with uncertain business models? It's a probably a little of both.
Speaking of Web 2.0 investment fun, Friendster (remember them, one of the original
social networking services?) has just raised $10-million. Peter
Cashmore suggests the funding may be linked to a patent that Friendster was
recently awarded that may let it legally pursue Tribe, MySpace and Facebook for some licensing fees.
Written by Mark Evans on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Friendster has raised $10 million from new investor DAG Ventures as well as long-time funders Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark, says the Wall Street Journal. This appears to be separate from the company’s $3.1 million recapitalization round earlier this year. The social network, for all the hits it takes in Silicon Valley, has a pretty strong audience, especially in Asia. The problem is that they cannot monetize that demographic. Alexa gives it a rank of 35th overall and shows upward growth, outpacing Facebook.
Friendster’s new broad social networking patent, which came to light in July, and its ominous language about enforcement have struck fear into the social networking scene. The promise of an intellectual property edge must have helped out this round. Friendster’s high-profile VCs are obviously heartened by the momentum, and are hoping their darndest not to have the company be a black mark on their records.
Too Many Social Networks?
Not really, Every Niche Needs One
Stop the madness
Social network, what router does that need?
Written by Liz Gannes on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Farecast, the plane ticket price predictor site, is now live in 55 U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Atlanta.
The company is building a direct competitor to travel-oriented vertical search engines Kayak and SideStep, but with the added bonus of recommendations on when the best price for a particular trip is bound to be available. Farecast’s first public beta in June only included Seattle, its hometown, and Boston.
It’s nice to see the rapid change online travel is going through, even if we might think things are bubbly. It wasn’t so long ago that Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz were picking off the travel agents.
Now the middlemen are being circumvented again; those sites seem terribly old-school. Airlines are building out good web sites of their own, and tools like Farecast make it simple to see who actually offers what you’re looking for.
Farecast is experimenting with “flexible travel” search through a cool Flash/AJAX interface. The idea is you input some basic information, such as where you want to leave from and in what month, and the site provides a graph of where to go, when to go, and how long to stay for. I had some trouble testing this in Firefox and Safari but when it works it’s pretty (see screenshots).
The 22-person company, which is based on research out of the University of Washington, has raised $7 million from Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group and WRF Capital over the last three years. Today’s release also includes RSS feeds for tracking fares and contextual search advertising.
Written by Liz Gannes on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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