JAJAH now enables most mobile phones to make free global calls. JAJAH will announce on Tuesday their new service which enables consumers to make free or low-cost long distance international calls directly from their cell phone. This extends their previous "free calling", to the mobile phone realm, which was previously only available via a computer browser.
The JAJAH Mobile Suite will allow virtually any mobile phone to make JAJAH calls. JAJAH is starting with Symbian and Java-based J2ME phones and soon will enable text messaging and smart-phone/browser solutions. Between all of these methods, just about any cell phone can use JAJAH. Even Blackberries now work with JAJAH, as I recently reported.
JAJAH mobile is seamlessly integrated into the JAJAH desktop solution allowing consumers to manage their account directly on the JAJAH web site. To use the service, you first need a JAJAH account. To take advantage of JAJAH’s Free Global Calling Plan, it only applies when both call participants are registered JAJAH users. In countries where free phone calls are not available, or if someone is calling a non-JAJAH member, calls are then subject to JAJAH's rates, usually less than 3 cents a minute.
According to Jajah's Frederik Hermann, here's how it works. "In short, you go to the Jajah site, look to see if your phone is currently supported - the first phones supported are Symbian based, like Nokia N70 and Java based such as the Nokia 6630 (J2ME). We are adding phones everyday and the software is done for many phones. If your phone is supported, you pull down a small plugin. Your phone will then know that when you dial an international number, it will send the call through the Jajah "network" (you can change theses preferences if you wish and make only some calls, or all calls, go through Jajah). Regardless, you just dial the number and Jajah makes the call. Thats it. The back end is all integrated with the Jajah system (billing, call history etc.). Basically its the same price structure as with a regular Jajah call - free to other Jajah users etc."
Recently we’ve been noticing more friends using video messaging via cell phones — a three-second video message sent to party-goers trying to find a beach bonfire, or a midmorning clip snapped in a cubicle to say “I’m bored.” Of course mobile video messages aren’t half as popular as photo-messaging, which only less than 13% of U.S. cell phone subscribers use today according to M:Metrics. But now that carriers are readily offering multimedia messaging packages, and the latest phones are often embedding video cameras, its easier than ever for startups to start building services over a standardized mobile video sharing platform.
One of those startups is the stealthy Veeker, which we wrote about in July. Based in San Francisco, Veeker is building a mobile video-message sharing service targeting young users. We stopped by their South of Market offices last Friday and co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Rodger Raderman told us that Veeker recently acquired San Francisco-based mobile software development company ThumbJive, looking to bring in both the company’s mobile developers and mobile development technology.
The two startups wouldn’t disclose the terms of the deal, or even show me their application yet (even though they are showing it off to VCs, come on guys!) but the ThumbJive deal could be a good sign that the application will be pretty slick. ThumbJive helped build Tiny Pictures’ Radar application (which I am a total sucker for) as well as the Entourage mobile game for HBO, and applications for Digital Chocolate, among others.
ThumbJive founder and now VP of engineering at Veeker, Daniel Raynaud, said that his company was attractive to Veeker in part because of its technology that helps standardize the development of mobile applications on cell phones, including technology for video-capture and camera-capture applications. The other part was ThumbJive’s 8 local employees and 8 developers in Beijing. Veeker’s service isn’t likely to launch until at least October, but the company is busy trying to raise funding and has been making the rounds on Sand Hill Road.
It shouldn’t be too hard to get some cash in the valley, VC’s are readily funding mobile content sharing companies, and many startups are launching services. At DEMO, the startup convention that opens in San Diego today (which Liz will be attending this week) mobile content sharing companies are in full force. Among the list is Eyespot, which enables users to upload mobile video clips, Pixsense, which has a mobile messaging platform for carriers and Photocrank, a startup that creates captions and personalized messages for camera phone photos. Pixsense has raised an angel round of $1 million and is in the process of closing a series A, says Pixsense CEO Faraz Hoodbhoy.
The mobile startups at DEMO are also looking at mobile music sharing: startup Fonpods has the tagline turn your cell phone into an ipod (I guess they’re ignoring the iPhone rumors, or the recent Apple pod-trademarking), and online music company Mercora launched a mobile music service called M today (these guys are unbelievably trying to push the tagline ‘we beat Steve Jobs to the iPhone.’)
Then there’s the straight mobile messaging startups at DEMO, like mobile instant messaging company Pinger, which is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers, mobile email company Flurry, and group text messaging company 3Jam. DEMO has almost more mobile than pure Internet companies this year.
Rightly so, cell phone users are starting to send more messages — text, photo and video — while media and entertainment companies are rushing to find the best way to sell stuff over cell phones. Interestingly Veeker won’t be at DEMO (do the organizers know something we don’t?). But Liz will be, and she’ll bring us her thoughts tomorrow on how the mobile players fare.
After seven months since they launched, Mino Wireless has reached 100,000 users. I wrote about Mino Wireless
last month. Of all the mobile VoIP solutions I've tried, it's the only
one that actually worked for me on my Palm Treo 650. Not only did it
work (I used the complimentary free minutes), when I called my father
on his landline (cordless phone), he said the call quality was far
better than when I called him on Skype or even Hullo from my computer.
Given that that's the case, I'm surprised more people have not signed
up.
Despite Mino being the only one that's worked, EQO has
promised me that in an upcoming revision of their service, they should
be supporting Palm Treos as well. Like many mobile VoIP services, Mino
works by temporarily using your Java-enabled smartphone/ PDA's cellular
wireless connection to access the Internet and establish a call. It
then gets off the Internet and gives you a chance to switch your phone
back into cellular mode. You then receive a call from their VoIP
bridging service. Once you answer, it calls your target party.
Paragon Wireless is announcing what they claim is the world's first SIP-based dual-mode [MS Mobiles] Wi-Fi and GSM cellular
phone that runs on a Windows Mobile 5.0 handset. Cool. except they're
calling it the "hipi-2200". It appears that they're aiming this handset
at enterpise, and pushing the fact that workers can access email and
web, play MP3/ MP4 audio/ video files, has camcorder/ recorder
features, receive and review pictures, and more. The Li-ion battery
lasts for four hours of talk time or 100 hours standby, and both
network modes operate simultaneously. While the phone claims roaming
features, there is no indication of whether it has UMA
(Unlicensed Mobile Access) features, where the phone can transfer an
initiated call from one network to the other, in both directions.
It would be a wonderful world (apologies to Louis Armstrong) if we didn't have to load up our computers with all kinds of software to protect us from worms, viruses, Trojan horses and other computer nasties that keep bombarding our computers.
(Don't these people have anything better to do?)
While we can only hope that these folks will curb their evil ways, we have to take all of the necessary steps to protect ourselves.
Now, I've already blogged about my great affection for Norton Internet Security, and now I want share my great like for another fine, very fine Norton product, the simply named SystemWorks.
Norton SystemWorks 2006 is the latest versions of Symantec’s award-winning data protection and problem-solving solution that provide greater, more adaptive information protection with minimal user interaction.
SystemWorks 2006 is the first line of support for diagnosing, repairing and maintaining computer health and keeping data safe. The Norton Protection Center, for example, provides an intuitive dashboard that gives a clear, concise summary of what's neded regarding system and data security.
I could go on and on about all of the features included, but take a look at this summary instead:
Protects against viruses, spyware and other threats
Undoes system crashes, failed software installations and user errors
After the arrest of five foreign nationals in Namibia providing VoIP service
without a license, as well as goings on in various Asian and African
countries in regards to VoIP, you might be wondering if VoIP is under
attack there. Marcelo Rodriguez takes a crtical look [Voxilla] at what Russell Shaw [ZD Net] and Rich Tehrani [TMC Net] are saying.
Rodriguez
points out that both Shaw and Tehrani mention "Third World" countries
as locales where VoIP seems to be under attack, possibly due to
affiliations between the government and the traditional telecoms, but
that they leave out the US as being in a similar category. (Examples: Korea and the UAEblocking Skype.) He then goes on to reveal several examples of lobbying, campaign contributions, and all-expense golf vacations.
The
Voxilla piece is very revealing and extremely politically charged. I'm
going to take my cue to up the voltage. Let's take a few separate
scenarios. First scenario, conspiracy: the entire telephony system in
North America is fully wiretapped and all calls are monitored either by
humans or machines, for whatever political purpose the real men with
power wield. Second scenario: the first scenario is crock, but phone
calls are a valuable commodity and thus extremely lucrative. Third
scenario: a combination of both the first and second scenarios.
Choose your scenario. Either way, VoIP threatens the status quo, and hence spawns acts like CALEA, possibly attacks on Vonage's share price, and debates like neutrality vs tiered Internet
service. Everything that is happening politically in telephony
satisfies one of those three scenarios. Let's face it: VoiP is a threat
no matter how you slice your political pie.
A recent study [via SDA Asia] by Keynote Systems indicates that the IP phone call quality of the twelve leading VoIP providers is better than that of regular telecoms. In general, VoIP quality has improved since last December. The study compares Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger (soft phone) against 11 VoIP providers from both pure play (adapter-based hard VoIP) and broadband (digital cable) categories.
The list of VoIP providers, based on subscriber numbers, consists of AT&T, Comcast, Lingo, Packet8, Skype, SunRocket,
TimeWarner Cable, TrueVoice, Verizon, Vonage, Vonics and the
aforementioned Messenger. A separate but related study compares
end-user experience of Messenger and Skype based on usage in New York
and San Francisco areas.
According to the first report, where VoIP seems to lag behind PSTN
is in audio delay. However, I think that as more powerful computer
chips and voice processing algorithms are employed, this will improve
as well, in all categories. The full report is available for purchase.
Keynote, by the way, has several free white papers
(registration required) on VoIP and voice data applications in their
resource library. A couple of the papers discuss "load testing" for
websites and web applications. I haven't read them yet, however, I've
quickly scanned the one entitled "Enterprise Load Testing for Web
Applications". While it is a technical paper in terms of topic, it
seems accessible to someone comfortable around computers and savvy
enough with some of the intracies of the Internet and web servers.
Proper load testing and load balancing on larger VoIP telephony systems
will definitely go a long way towards keeping call quality high. What's
more, load-balanced VoIP systems are less susceptible to DDoS
(distributed denial of service) attacks.
Last year small and medium sized businesses spent nearly $2.1 billion on telephone service, about half the amount spent by large corporations, reports the Wall Street Journal.
While the number is almost half that of the big players, the SMB sector is where folks are most dissatisfied with their phone service, making them ideal customers from a burgeoning ranks of VoIP service providers. Unlike consumer market, SMBs buy more than one phone, and are happy to spend more (as long as its less the old phone company) and are more long term customers. No wonder, everyone from M5 Networks (the one I use) to Covad, everyone wants a piece of this action.
Smaller providers “have cracked the code to a degree,” John Macario, president of Boston-based consulting company Savatar tells WSJ, and points out that the cost savings message resonates with the smaller businesses. Venture capital investors are savvy to this trend and have been funding start ups that address this opportunity. Fonality and Digium are two examples of companies that are riding the SMB trend with Asterisk.
Today, Whaleback Systems announced that it has raised $7.5 million in Series B round of financing from Castile Ventures, Egan-Managed Capital and Ascent Venture Partners. Roger Walton, a partner at Castile Ventures in a press release says, “No small or medium business wants to become its own phone company.”
While, the trend remains strong, a nagging worry is that there will be too-many of these SMB focussed VoIP providers, which can result to price wars, and market confusion. Many of these service providers have to show their value proposition beyond cheap calls.
Universities Banning Skype A number of universities have
decided to ban Skype, stating that it consumes bandwidth and supposedly
is an "illegal" waste of resources. (Illegal? Seriously?) Grid
computing apps are also included in the ban at several California
universities including University of California Santa Barbara, San Jose
State University, and California State University Dominguez Hills. They
are not banning GizmoProject or Wengo. [via Ars Technica] Several countries also ban/ block Skype, including Korea and the UAE (United Arab Emirates).
Telrex CallRex VoIP Call Recording For Cisco Telrex claims that their CallRex version 3.1 is the first VoIP call-recording solution to be certified for encrypting Cisco Unified CallManager 5.0 calls. [via Business Wire]
SIP Trunking Makes VoIP Telephony More Flexible Rich Tehrani reflects on how SIP trunking has made IP telephony
more flexible by reducing the amount of proprietary hardware. He points
out that not all IP PBXes are connected to SIP trunks; that over half
of them (some used by IP-based call centers) are still using PSTN trunk
lines.
For those that thought we’d dropped off the face of the planet, good news. Not yet. If you haven’t heard, there’s a new version of TrixBox, 1.2. And we’ve given it the old college try for a week or two with about that same results pictured in this old comic book. On some platforms, it runs just fine. On others, including our VMware for Windows machines, it’s a nightmare.
The voice synthesis system is again broken, freePBX can’t reload Asterisk without completely shutting down and restarting Asterisk (amportal restart). And there appear to be all sorts of interrupt or timing problems that we’ve never seen before … going back to Asterisk@Home 1.2.
We attribute many of the problems to a new version of CentOS and Asterisk, both of which are bundled into the TrixBox 1.2 package, but who knows. What we do know is TrixBox 1.2 is a little too Bleeding Edge for our taste, and most of the Nerd Vittles goodies that depend upon the Flite speech engine no longer work on many machines...
Friends in the Asterisk Video Task Force (and other developers on asterisk-dev),
I just wanted to alert you that we've set the dates for the Asterisk Video meeting: November 20-22 in Paris!
I am working on the details - conference center, hotels etc - but everything seems to be coming to a quick solution and I wanted you to be able to book these dates in your calendar.
My suggestion is that we start 10 AM on Monday, nov 20th, and continue to 3 PM (15:00) on Wednesday, November 22nd.
This is going to be a very practical meeting with interoperability tests between various devices, SIP debugging and coding. We need to figure out a way to add proper handling of video attributes in Asterisk and maybe look at additional features I know that you are working on out there
- Video on hold (streaming) - Video prompts for IVRs - T.140 text in addition to video - Integration with 3G video - Video conferencing
Let's investigate these areas together, trying to find solutions that we can work forward on - integration with other Open Source products or just experience in connections to commercial products.
There will be a very limited amount of seats. Mail me off list if you want me to keep a seat open for you. You will have to cover your own costs, but if everything works out we will have access to the conference center sponsored.
Have a nice weekend. I'm sure I will - going to the Asterisk beachcamp on the beautiful beach outside Malaga in Spain!
The Asterisk development team is very pleased to announce that we have released the first 1.4 beta packages of all four of our projects!
The beta versions are:
Asterisk - 1.4.0-beta2 (beta1 was not released to the public) Asterisk-Addons - 1.4.0-beta1 Zaptel - 1.4.0-beta1 libpri - 1.4.0-beta1
All of these releases include substantial new functionality and performance improvements. The documentation detailing these changes is still in process, so future beta releases will contain more complete lists of the new features. There are a few functionality changes still not yet complete for Asterisk, but we expect to have them finalized in the next few days and merged into the beta release shortly.
In the specific case of Asterisk, there were quite a few changes made in this release that are not backwards compatible with prior releases. Users are encouraged to read the UPGRADE.txt file very closely before starting to build, install and test this release, so that they will be aware of changes they may need to make on their systems to accommodate it.
We encourage everyone to try out these releases on NON-PRODUCTION systems and report their findings on the mailing lists and the issue tracker; we'd like to move through this beta process as quickly as possible and getting feedback is the fastest way for us to accomplish that.
As always, the releases are on our FTP servers, although there are no patch versions available since this is the first release from the 1.4 branches. The releases have been signed by nearly every member of the Digium development crew, for your GnuPG verification pleasure :-)
Thanks for supporting Asterisk, Zaptel and our other projects!
This is your humble editor Dal, back in the office from vacation. I had a great time on the Oregon coast relaxing and recharging. I will posting the most important developments I missed the last couple days and then it will be news like normal tomorrow morning. Hope you enjoy the last weekend of summer and now the fall season begins. Cheers!
Startup VideoEgg is launching a video advertising network today. The release reflects a change in strategy for the young company, which started out as a toolmaker but has transitioned to a media delivery network.
VideoEgg isn’t a CDN itself (it uses Akamai) but it coordinates video for a growing group of online social networks and tools, including AOL, Bebo, Current TV, Dogster, hi5, Tagged, and Six Apart, delivering up to 20 million streams per day. The company’s tools help members of those sites quickly upload a variety of video formats with free bandwidth and storage.
VideoEgg is now trying to build on that access by attaching permission-based video ads, sponsored content, post-roll ads, and interactive ads in Flash.
Providing ads for user-generated video is definitely a big opportunity. YouTube has the luxury of its market share and indulgent venture capitalists, so it has been moreexperimental with its advertising. But slapping on traditional ads can bring in money immediately, as upstart Postroller is showing.
The oft-repeated assumption that video advertising slots are sold out only applies to a top-tier sites like CNN and MTV, say Postroller CEO Tod Sacerdoti and VideoEgg CEO Matt Sanchez. User-generated content is a whole different story, with advertisers nervous about being juxtaposed with inappropriate, unflattering, or copyrighted content.
To assuage those concerns, VideoEgg promises each video will be reviewed by a real person before it is paired with an ad. Sounds like a fun job.
It was only a year ago that I met VideoEgg at the Demo fall conference – which I am coincidentally flying to today. Since then, the company raised money from August Capital, moved to San Francisco from New Haven, and brought in management from places like Yahoo and Organic (though first-time CEO Matt Sanchez, three years out of college, is still in power). Check out a profile I did of them at the end of last year. We have heard they have raised another funding round alongside this launch – expect an official announcement soon.
While Mountain View residents have been living under Google’s city-wide wireless for more than a month now, San Francisco is the next (if it happens) city that will go wireless via Google. In partnership with Earthlink, the duo plan to unwire SF with a free slow service and a faster fee-based plan. But the team has been facing a series of obstacles and opposition since it was chosen by the city earlier this year.
This weekend the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and the Media Alliance circulated an economic argument for a city-owned muni wireless network for San Francisco, as opposed to the corporate-owned Earthlink/Google plan. The organizations’ data states that a publicly-owned network would:
1). Payback its original investment in 4.2 years.
2). Generate at least $6.1 million in surplus revenues over the first 5 years.
3). Generate at least $16.8 million more in surplus revenue over the following 5 years (after the million debt is retired).
They say that the total benefits of the network over 10 years is $22.9 million (via Kimo’s Crossman’s SF WiFi list).
That sounds pretty good when you think about muni WiFi as a self-sustaining public service. Other cities have taken the public route, including a plan for Boston to create a non-profit. At the same time the numbers aren’t compelling enough to be considered a lucrative business model, and VCs might scoff at the return. And other often-cited cities like Chaska, Minnesota have been reportedly less successful. But perhaps making sure broadband is available to all residents should indeed fall mostly under the public domain.
And when you consider this data in relation to some of the talk about San Francisco’s current WiFi plans, it starts to look better. Even Google execs are getting annoyed by how slow and convoluted the city WiFi talks are going, with Google’s Chris Sacca expressing his frustration over the project in the Chronicle earlier this month.
This is all part of the age-old debate of whether public-good projects should be kept publicly-owned or turned over to the private sector. (That is, if you think muni WiFi is a public-good.) Later today the city plans to hold a meeting on the question of city-owned WiFi, and next week Google will hold its first San Francisco WiFi education meeting. What do you think? Who can screw up the project more, Google/Earthlink or the city itself?
OK, our Quickie Quiz for today is really very simple: Are there more television sets in the average American home than people?
What do you think?
The phone lines are open ...
(And many thanks to www.tvhistory.tv for the great image at left -- lots of great stuff, including photos of what was considered "state of the art" in its own time.
(Oh, by the way, definitely worth at least a drop-by visit when you have couple of minutes during work or play.
(Oh, again, in case you didn't recognize it, that is a television set in the image ...)
Clearly, TechMeme has a large audience; now it's rolling out a business model (note to Web 2.0 start-ups, a business model is something that generates revenue to keep the lights on) through sponsorships in which companies can have their blogs prominently featured. So why the sponsorship route over banner ads or Google AdSense? TechMeme's Gabe Rivera explains this "approach over banner advertising are numerous. "Click-throughs" can lead to the visitor browsing, commenting on, and even subscribing to the sponsor's blog. And a sponsor has direct control over what appears on Techmeme simply by posting." It's an interesting model based on three key issues: it is obviously attractive to companies that have blogs; these companies need to see TechMeme as an attractive place to advertise; and you need a pretty healthy potential advertising base to make it work. For companies with blogs, a TechMeme sponsorship deals suggests your blog better be interesting/compelling/information and regularly updated - otherwise you risk attracting traffic only to disappoint visitors. So how many corporate blogs fall into this category? Does this limit the number of potential TechMeme sponsors? Another issue is how much these sponsorships cost and their ROI. How many technology companies with high-quality blogs are willing to advertise on TechMeme. Will TechMeme appeal to Web 2.0 start-ups used to operating lean and mean? If so, will they spend money on TechMeme sponsorships as opposed to attracting blogger coverage? To his credit, Rivera has rolled out a unique business model that at first blush seems fairly appealing. For companies looking for exposure and prepared for visitors, it's yet another online advertising option. It will be interesting to see which companies embrace the model and how much attention they receive.
Fortune magazine has a cover story on Google - as if Google really needs yet another cover story but that's another rant for another time. Anyway, the story, "Chaos @ Google", gives some high profile to Canada's Shona Brown, Google's senior vice-president for business operations, who is described by Fortune as "Google's chief chaos officer". She offers up a great quote: calling Google the "ultimate petri dish" for her research into business theory. Nice profile for Brown, who was recently in Canada where she discussed the company's plan to establish a 200-person R&D centre in Waterloo, Ont. What's also interesting about the Fortune story is the first anecdote/quote features Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice-president, global sales and operations, who makes a multi-million mistake only to be complimented by Larry Page. When was the last time two women executives from a high-profile high-tech company were so prominently feature in a major business magazine? Put this attention alongside the healthy media focus on Marissa Mayer, Google's vice-president, search products and user experience, and you have a company that is hiring clearly hiring very smart women and doing a good job giving them a healthy profile.
Everyone has their own productivity hacks and tools, the ways we each attempt to augment our own lifestyles and habits with technology and planning to become more efficient in our daily lives. In this week's PodSession Om and I share a few tips and tricks as they apply to the lean world of startups.
First up is the gear bag, the set of hardware we lug around to make sure we are always connected. Our mobile phones are data-enabled, never far from our mail servers or even a quick chat.
I recommend ProCare for businesses with multiple computers as a way to skip lines and get better service from Apple for everything from logic board repairs to training new employees on productivity applications. Amazon Prime is a good way to share Internet shopping efficiency between up to 5 co-workers.
We also share typical daily schedules and daily efficiency hacks to help manage information overload.
Our digital lives are getting too complicated. We have multiple email accounts, IM accounts and ever increasing number of voice lines (cellular, landline, and VoIP) — all to stay connected. While tools like Adium help us aggregate our IM accounts, and email clients can serve as catch-all for multiple email accounts, that ability to aggregate has eluded us in the voice world.
Sure there have been attempts at unified messaging before, but none has been able to solve the usability problem. Others might remember the follow me-find me service, Wildfire, which tried to make sense of an ever increasing tally of phone numbers. GrandCentral, a Fremont, California based company is launching a brand new service that at first blush proves to be a worthy descendant of all those services, and offers an easy to use tools for the hyper connected.
GrandCentral, for those who are keeping score used to be the name of a company started by Halsey Minor, to do something. It got lot of press and didn’t really go anywhere. All that was left was the name. That was good enough for Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, former executives from DialPad, which was acquired by Yahoo back in the day when mojo still ruled.
With some investment from Minor Ventures and a name, the two executives kicked off the company on Jan 4, 2006. Their plan was to build a service that gave you a phone number for life. (Well, that is a story we have heard before, and have heard of nightmares that follow when start ups that make grandiose promises go under.)
Maybe that is why we were skeptical when we met with Walker and Paquet to get close look at their service, that is based on a special softswitch developed by the company.
So what is GrandCentral? It is as we said, a phone number for life. “The idea is to add a layer of anonymity to your real phone numbers,” says Walker. “We give you complete control over your voice services and voicemail.”
You go to their website, sign-up, and get a free account. (It comes with 100 minutes of calling. An unlimited plan costs $15 a month.) After signing up, you get a phone number, say, 415.555.1212. You add your home, office, and wireless numbers to this account.
When someone calls you on the number you get from GrandCentral, the incoming call is routed to any one of your phones. The call can go directly to the voice mail box, if you choose to do that. Voicemails can be saved for as long as you want. You get an email alert, and can check your messages from any of the listed numbers, without much trouble.
You, can upload your address book, and set rules that can help manage your incoming call flow. For instance, if you are working in the office, all incoming calls from your mother in law can be forwarded to well, a voicemail box. Similarly you can assign “people” who can reach you anytime, regardless of your location. (Your kid’s school teacher would be a good option.)
GrandCentral has taken the concept of spam list from email and has applied it to voice mail. For instance, if an annoying telemarketer is calling you, you can click on their phone number and put them in a spam list. Same holds true for banishing stalkers, but that’s a story for another day.
I particularly like the listen in feature that allows you to listen to voicemails in real time, and actually interrupt the voicemail and start the conversation - just like those old message machines. There are other nifty features, many of them which you can discover yourself, which make GC very useful. (There is an awesome feature for podcasters, and it involves #4. Go solve the mystery.)
Like jangl and iotum, GrandCentral has the right approach to VoIP. It is not a minute stealer like Rebtel, or low cost PSTN replacement like Vonage. It solves a specific problem, is relatively easy to use, and their business is not predicated on destroying someone else’s business. It can increase mobile minute use, and of course, in the end help me manage my time better.
What do you think? Is there a future for service like GrandCentral?
Rupert Murdoch seems to have fallen out of love with his satellite business, and is enthralled with MySpace and the online world, reports Fortune. He has come to this conclusion that broadband is the future, and satellite is a laggard. Here is the big question: if satellite business is bad, then why does John Malone wants to buy it, asks the question. My guess is that when dust settles, and some of phone company IPTV plans don’t pan out, they be looking to own a hybrid option.
San Francisco-based Piczo is staging its “U.S. Market Introduction†this week by doing a lot of press interviews to build hype. There’s no actual news, but we think the company is worth mentioning due to its success with an interesting methodology for protecting its young members’ privacy: near-anonymous profiles, and no search tool.
Unlike other social networks, Piczo does not default to a simple profile, but instead multiple pages (a mini-site) of loose templates centered around pictures. It looks more like Geocities or Angelfire than MySpace or Facebook. Users are discouraged from posting any identifying information. Pop-up messages warn “Careful What You Post!†telling kids not to use their real names, or even mention their schools or sports teams. Users can only find friends through email or by looking at a friend’s list of friends.
Started by an Oracle software engineer as a paid photo scrapbooking site, two-and-a-half-year old Piczo has quickly grown to 17 million registered users. It is particularly popular in UK, with 13-to-15 year old girls being the dominant demographic. It has already set up ad deals with studios and music labels (e.g. John Tucker Must Dieprofile).
Its trajectory is remarkably similar to Bebo, another San Francisco-based social network that has also taken off in the U.K. The company raised $7 million from Sierra Ventures and Catamount Ventures and recently brought on new CEO Jeremy Verba, formerly an EIR at Foundation Capital, with experience at AOL, HearMe, and E! Online.
Other privacy-focused social networks like Tagged and Facebook try their darndest to associate users with real-world identities. However, those companies seem to be revising their closed philosophies. Tagged, we had previously thought, was only open to U.S. teenagers, but this week we didn’t have a problem registering with our real birthdate. And Facebook says it will soon be opening to all comers. It seems that only extremely closed networks, like Industrious Kid’s Imbee for 8- to 12-year-olds, are sticking to their guns.
Piczo is going entirely the opposite direction by keeping things anonymous and unsearchable. In this day and age of data leaks, this makes sense. Giving no personally identifiable information means kids can express themselves without fear of stalkers and weirdos. What’s more, they can protect themselves from the embarrassment of that information being attached to their real names when someone Googles them later in life. Kids need a place to play online that doesn’t go on their permanent record.
At the same time, parents and school administrators will be less than happy with the distance this puts between them and kids’ online expressions. The site, which has already been blocked by some schools, is opening itself up for a world of backlash.
PS: U.S. launches are hot, it seems. Consider our recentcoverage of Cyworld and alsoHabbo Hotel. Look for another post Monday on WeeWorld, the European avatar phenomenon, which has partnered with AIM to get its way onto American desktops.
It would be a wonderful world (apologies to Louis Armstrong) if we didn't have to load up our computers with all kinds of software to protect us from worms, viruses, Trojan horses and other computer nasties that keep bombarding our computers.
OK, our Quickie Quiz for today is really very simple: Are there more television sets in the average American home than people?
Sure there have been attempts at unified messaging before, but none has been able to solve the usability problem. Others might remember the follow me-find me service, Wildfire, which tried to make sense of an ever increasing tally of phone numbers. 
With some investment from Minor Ventures and a name, the two executives kicked off the company on Jan 4, 2006. Their plan was to build a service that gave you a phone number for life. (Well, that is a story we have heard before, and have heard of nightmares that follow when start ups that make grandiose promises go under.)
You go to their website, sign-up, and get a free account. (It comes with 100 minutes of calling. An unlimited plan costs $15 a month.) After signing up, you get a phone number, say, 415.555.1212. You add your home, office, and wireless numbers to this account.