October 3rd, 2006
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Fonality will announce tomorrow that they have acquired
trixbox, formerly known as Asterisk@Home, and the the world's largest Asterisk-based community. Trixbox is a turn-key, bootable .iso CD image that can turn a PC with no OS into an Asterisk server with a variety of open source tools in just a few minutes. The trixbox application lets someone download a bootable .iso image that then automatically installs Linux,
Asterisk,
SugarCRM,
MySQL,
FreePBX, and a whole variety of other applications. Trixbox fully supports the Linux
yum command and RPM ecosystem for performing updates and bug fixes.
Essentially, trixbox uses the latest and greatest version of Asterisk. Within 48 hours of a new Asterisk version, you see a new release of trixbox and they add their own host of patches they they put on top of that. These are basically patches of innovators inside the Asterisk community that didn't want to sign a double waiver. The double waiver extends the GPL agreement by stating the code has to also be given to
Digium.
I spoke with Chris Lyman, the CEO of Fonality earlier this afternoon to talk about the acquisition of trixbox. He began by wondering how I figured out Fonality and trixbox were working closely together.
Chris: I don't know how
you figured out on June 6th that we were getting involved with trixbox, but my hat goes off to you.
Tom: I recalled that I was wondering why Fonality would offer their hudlite, a real-time call control and presence management platform that works with the commercial (paid) Fonality PBXtra. I didn't understand why Fonality would want to make a "free" version of Asterisk (trixbox) more "feature-rich". Curious what the relationship was between Fonality and trixbox, I I did some detective work. Besides googling I also did registrar 'whois' lookups on hudlite.org (Fonality website) and trixbox.org and
noticed that the IP addresses were the same - in other words - the same web server. Interesting to say the least, which is what sparked my June 6th post.
In my
June 6th post, I pondered, "Did Fonality buy out the rights to Asterisk@Home and then change the name to Trixbox.org? What does this mean for the popular open-source Asterisk@Home distro (now Trixbox) considering Fonality is a for-profit Asterisk solutions provider? Is the plan to try and convert Trixbox users (generally novice Linux users) into paying Fonality users? Fonality certainly focuses on businesses that have little or no Linux experts, so there is certainly a potential synergy there. Well, the mystery continues... I'll post more when I hear back from Chris @Fonality." Chris Lyman and Andrew Gillis
responded in a follow-up article.
In any event, it appears the seeds were sown for this acquisition back in June and that I was 4 months early in my pondering whether Fonality had acquired trixbox.
Tom: So what about the double waiver requirement to give the code back to Digium? Is this an advantage of trixbox since it doesn't have a double waiver?
Chris: There are a number of open source innovators that don't like that -- like faxing. The only reason why fax isn't in Asterisk, but they are using it in trixbox, is because the smart guy that made it (fax code) didn't want to sign that waiver over to
Digium. So basically consider trixbox the latest greatest Asterisk
plus a whole lot of innovation. Tom: So what market are you going after with trixbox?
Chris: So in terms of what market we're going after with trixbox, we're not really going after a market. trixbox is really a community of Asterisk innovators and we're just going to be supporting that community. It's our way of supporting the platform that has been a big part of our success.
Tom: What is the value that trixbox brings to Fonality?
Chris: The value to Fonality is the community value. The business value that trixbox brings is that there is probably a number of IT directors lurking in the trixbox community that are sort of trying for free, but really do want a commercial company to hold their hand when they roll out. And so we just want to make ourselves known that there is an option to go fully supported.
Tom: So by working within the community you hope to build brand awareness for your commercial-based Fonality PBXtra?
Chris: Yes, we want to build some brand awareness in the Asterisk community to let them know we are a serious player that has a 100% supported, 100% service model.
Chris: The trixbox forums has over 20,000 posts in the last 3 months. It has become the defacto place to get questions answered about Asterisk. Questions answered about rolling an open-source small business environment. And that's really the value we saw is - there are a lot of smart open-source people in that community.
Tom: What are the download numbers?
Chris: 1,500 people download trixbox every day, which is more than Digium. Mark was quoted in a Forbes article as saying 1,000 downloads per day and we were surprised since we averaged 50% more than that.
Tom: Any issues with people knowing about the trixbox brand and knowing that is the latest and greatest version of Asterisk?
Chris: I would say given our download numbers and given the fact that we get more downloads of Asterisk every day more than the rest of the world combined, I would say no, there is no brand problem.
Tom: So how is Fonality going to contribute to trixbox with this investment?
Chris: There's two things that are really really important for us to let the world and the community know. Number one is, trixbox was free, is free, and will always be free. And when I say, I mean pure GPL. It won't have a double waiver, you won't have to sign over any rights to Fonality, and we're not going to get into any of those complicated licensing schemes that you see with some other open source companies. Number two, we're contributing broad financial support to the trixbox platform to continue to improve that application. This is not just a community of that site that we're going to pay the bandwidth on. We actually have a host of engineers internally working on improving trixbox.
Tom: On a different note, any thoughts about integrating SugarCRM, MySQL, etc. onto the Fonality PBXtra hybrid-CPE-hosted solution for an "all in one box"?
Chris: Now that we are very much looking into. We've had talks with SugarCRM about it. Looking at ways of linking PBXtra and SugarCRM's contact center together on one box. That is a product you will probably see in the future from Fonality. I will say, my message to any business, be careful of how much load you point on a single server since it becomes a single point of failure for your business.
Tom: I know the Fonality code is a more secure and stable version of Asterisk but running an older Asterisk codebase, yet without sacrificing functionality. So I was wondering what percentage of code that is in trixbox is going to come back to Fonality?
Chris: Today, it is 0% because our version of Asterisk has been hardened aggressively over the last two and a half years. We think there may be a time if the Trixbox community requests it where we might give our version of our code to the community and call it you know, "stable". But really, more than anything the community wants the latest and greatest features and are willing to sacrifice a little bit of reliability to get there. And so unless we see a great need, we're not going to mix the two different flavors.
end interview...One final point of note is that trixbox founder Andrew Gillis will join Fonality and continue to lead the trixbox community. The main takeways from this news is that Fonality will commit engineering resources and financial support to trixbox, and just as importantly, trixbox will continue to be 100% GPL without a double-waiver. Trixbox founder Andrew Gillis said, "Fonality shares my vision of making Asterisk free and easy for everyone. They have already proven to me how serious they are by committing a team of engineers to help create the next version of trixbox.
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MTV is looking for VJs for their Total Request live show, which often features Sightspeed-driven videos by fans. Sightspeed is arguably the best video-calling VoIP soft phone available. Andy Abramson talks about
the MTV casting call and some of the positive aspects of this
development, including a new type of social interaction enabled by VoIP.
Earlier this year, Skype promoted a special contest for fans of alt-rock band Coldplay. The two young women who won got to Skype with members of the band for several minutes. Now consider the Japanese TV broadcasting via Skype.
So there is great potential for celebrities to connect with fans via
IPTV over VoIP IMs, either live or recorded. And with video interaction
through Sightspeed, Skype or similar soft phones, citizen video could
become the source of unique TV or IPTV content, such as 11 Cameras (which is supposedly a view of the lives of several people via 11 video or webcams viewed through instant messengers).
Written by ewriter on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Ginny Granger writes about
a network of free public VoIP phones called iKiosks in Aberdeen,
Scotland. The iKiosks offer free email, videomail, internet access, and
free VoIP phone calls. Calls are based on software similar to Skype. Robert Gordon University is one of the first iKiosk sites.
This is a marked contrast to SJSU (San Jose State University) in California (and other universities)
where they had planned to ban the use of Skype on campus but later
reversed their decision. Maybe something like iKiosk would be more to
the university's liking? Free public phohes is a radical idea. In
Australia and other places, public VoIP pay phones are being rolled out.
Written by ewriter on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Software and Networks and Phones.
Well, well....the Blackberry Pearl has finally arrived in Canada after so much hype - and a huge run up in Research in Motion's stock price. The Pearl will be available through Rogers Communications, which is also the exclusive carrier for the Nokia E62 and the Samsung C907. The Pearl will sell for $249.99 on a three-year contract. It will interesting to see if Rogers - and Bell and Telus when they get the Pearl down the road - become more creative with their data plans given the Pearl is more of a consumer device. Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-CEO, has talked about how many carriers are looking at pay-as-you-go or lower price data plans to encourage consumers to adopt the Blackberry.
Written by Mark Evans on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
In spillover activity spurred on by the recent Hewlett-Packard "phonegate" scandal, Verizon is suing 20 data brokers
for fraudulent activity re pretexting. Pretexting is where someone
pretends to be someone else so that they can access their phone
records. Interestingly, the president and vice chair of Verizon is on
the HP board of directors. Verizon says it has spent $100,000
investigate the pretexting fraud.
In related news, Democrats in the US House of Representatives, controlled by the Republicans, stalled a bill
to make pretexting illegal. The activity is illegal in some states,
including California, where the alleged activities took place. As part
of an US House of Representatives probe into the pretexting scandal, five private investigators and at least two HP executives have been subpoenaed. HP is also under investigation in California.
Written by ewriter on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Drum roll and the envelope please!
According to ratings guru, Nielsen, TV sets now outnumber people in the average American home, with 2.73 sets compared to 2.55 residents.
Statistics also show that half of American homes now have three or more sets, and 19% have just one. In 1975, 57% of homes had a single TV and 11% had three or more.
(My how times have changed ...)
Can you believe it!
Thanks to USA TODAY/Associated Press for this interesting fact!
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A Bluetooth killer or an enhancer? Seems Nokia's announcement today about its Wibree technology may be either one.
A unique radio technology extending local connectivity to small devices, Wibree is an open industry initiative developed by Nokia Research Center.
It complements other local connectivity technologies, consuming only a fraction of the power compared to other radio technologies, therfore enabling smaller and less costly solutions.
Wibree is the first open technology offering connectivity between mobile devices or Personal Computers and small, button cell battery power devices, such as watches, wireless keyboards, toys and sports sensors.
With a goal of having the new technology available as soon as possible, Nokia is defining the Wibree interoperability specification together with a group of companies representing semiconductor manufacturers, device vendors and qualification service providers. These include Broadcom Corporation, CSR, Epson and Nordic Semiconductor as well as Suunto and Taiyo Yuden.
Sounds pretty cool ...
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If you have a busy company that gets a lot of calls during the day, you
know that there can be some peak times when your telephony system can
barely handle the load. You may have a trickle of callers one moment,
and a flash crowd of callers the next. Then there's the potential that
maybe someone is running a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack
on your system, to compromise it. How does a VoIP system tell the
difference? The VoIPSec site has a thread that points to VoIP sercurity company Vodasec,
who are researching this very issue. They are working on detecting
system overloading prior to its happening, as well as distinguishing
between the two types of overloading.
Their technology is patent pending, but they do give a brief description
of how their model works. The sample graphs they display show a
distinct difference between the two types of overloading. This could
definitely be useful for the next generation of load-balancing VoIP systems, and for ensuring quality of service.
The essential principle, I'm assuming, is to study long-term behaviour
of both types of overloading and refine both behaviour models as new
data is collected. In fact, statistical analysis using MMAs (Multiple
Moving Averages), or some other trend indicator, could probably deduce
the diference. But these are not the kind of models you really want to
advertise online, or you'll have another generation of smart vishers.
Written by ewriter on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Can't vouch for this myself, but a couple who have an IT security background relate a recent incident when the wife received a call from Comcast,
and all the "lies" the rep supposedly told her about Vonage, to get her
to switch to the more expensive Comcast "Digital Voice" service. This
is an interesting read, as are the comments that follow it.
The
gist is that outsourced reps who don't know better will be willing to
read off lies about VoIP from a script. As the comments after the
article show, both cable and pure play VoIP providers will lie as they
get their VoIP marketing guns ready. I had a call last Friday from a
third-party hired by my cable Internet provider, trying to sell me the
same VoIP service under yet another non-technophile-threatening name.
I'm wondering if I should not have shooed the person away, and instead
listened to what they had to say, even for a laugh. Oh well.
I still maintain that cable providers have the advantage in the VoIP market,
but that doesn't mean they're right for everyone, especially in a
business environment. If you currently are not using VoIP and do not
know where to start, then first ask yourself these questions:
(1) Am I looking for business, residential, or SMB (small and medium business) use?
(2) Will I need e-911 services?
(3) Do I need a computer? (If you don't already have one.)
(4) Am I calling local or long-distance or both?
(5) Will I want/ have to walk around as I talk? (Do I prefer a handset or headset?)
(6) Will the other persons I call be using mobile phones, regular phones, Wi-Fi phones, or soft phones? Or a combination?
(7) How many people use the system simultaneously (peak)? Will I want to spend money on load-balancing.
(8) How many simultaneous incoming calls do I expect?
These
are a few basic questions you should know the answer to before you
choose a VoIP service. Armed with this knowledge, it's much easier to
choose a suitable service. It'll also help you to avoid paying for a telephony feature that is free elsewhere.
Written by ewriter on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Standards and Business VoIP and Residential VoIP.
Internet Telephony Magazine 100th issue
(the phones are the RTX LAN DUALphone if curious)I just got my copy of the October issue of
Internet Telephony Magazine which
celebrates the 100th issue and 9th birthday of the foremost IP communications magazine. (the 100th issue is a whopping 172 pages!) In 1996, within CTI Magazine, the precuror to Internet Telephony Magazine,
I wrote the first product review of one of the true pioneers of VoIP -
Vocaltec - who invented the 1st VoIP softphone. Soon after, in 1997 Internet Telephony was launched and we were told by experts in telecom that we were crazy to launch a magazine focused on voice over IP. It's amazing to see how far VoIP and other types of IP communications has come in just 9 years.
I would be remiss if I didn't quote Rich Tehrani's Publisher's Outlook in this 100th issue where he talks about the 9 year ride. Rich posted an
excerpt of the Publisher's Outlook on his blog:
100 issues - wow - it has been an amazing ride. If you can believe it, the magnitude of this issue didn’t hit me until I sat down and started to write this column. As many of you know, in 1997 when we decided to launch a magazine titled Internet Telephony most people thought we were crazy. They told us outright that we were nuts. Certainly this attitude in the market was a bit scary when starting a new magazine as the vendors who were mocking us were the exact ones we were supposed to be writing about.
Rich also explains how this special issue includes comments from the
Top 100 voices in the IP communications space, as well as some honorable mentions that didn't make the list. Jeff Pulver earns a congratulatory remark by Rich when he writes:
Jeff Pulver was certainly another colorful figure in the world of VoIP. Jeff’s VON conference became a gathering of industry insiders trying to figure out what to make of this whole VoIP phenomenon. The event became a good partnering venue and to this day it’s still a good partnering locale for companies in the VoIP space. Jeff has also played a big part in the legal scene, advocating that VoIP should have minimal regulation.
I am extremely proud of the TMC team that helped build
Internet Telephony Magazine as one of the premiere IP communications magazines. I'd like to personally congratulate Greg Galitzine (Group Editorial Director) and Rich Tehrani (Group Publisher/President) for doing a fabulous job in steering the direction and content of the magazine since its inception.
I'd also like to thank the Art Department team, including Lisa Morris and Alan Urkawich for providing excellent graphics and art work for the magazine and for doing a bang-up job with laying out the magazine each month. Erik Linask (Associate Editor) also deserves credit for assisting Greg with the editorial content. Newcomer Richard "Zippy" Grigonis (Executive Editor) has been covering the telecom space longer than just about anyone and we're glad to have him on the TMC team.
There are too many other people in the TMC organization that help put Internet Telephony Magazine together that I would have to thank, so let me just send a general thank you to everyone on the TMC team on a job well done!
Happy 9th birthday/100th issue everyone!!!
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Fellow blogger Alec is right. I don't "get" JAJAH Mobile. As I have posted, I have trouble envisioning a compelling need for this service.
Obviously, JAJAH execs would beg to differ. They do feel their service is important.
The other day, JAJAH Mobile's Sean O'Mahony and I had a conversation in which he sought to explain why [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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As if there weren’t enough short range wireless standards to consider, Nokia announced a new one today called Wibree (not to be confused with South Korea’s Wibro), which the company says is more energy efficient than Bluetooth. The technology can be used in conjunction with Bluetooth, or on its own. If it turns out to be significantly cheaper and more efficient than Bluetooth, than it could possibly replace Bluetooth for certain applications, though some think there will be little overlap.
Companies have been trying to figure out the best way to wirelessly connect devices like digital cameras, mouses, keyboards, and cell phones for some time. Ultra-Wideband, UWB, which is supposed to be low power and high data, has seen constant delays. Zigbee hasn’t seemed to gain much traction and is aimed more at sensor networks. Bluetooth has landed on a substantial amount of smart phones and headsets, but hasn’t done as well for other devices. Maybe Nokia, in partnership with other companies like Broadcom, will be able to get more of a consensus on this standard. Do we need another short range wireless standard?
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Earlier today, Fox said it would put streamed, ad-supported episodes of several of its shows on NewsCorp.-owned MySpace.
They're already up.
The expansion of the Fox on Demand Streaming Initiative is branded as Fox Full Throttle. It includes previously aired episodes of "Bones," "Prison Break," "Standoff," "Vanished," "Talk Show With Spike Feresten," "'Til Death," "The Loop" [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Digium Inc., the Asterisk company, and Critical Links, an international networking technology company, today announced that Critical Links has become a Product and Solution Partner of Digium. As a result of this agreement, Digium and Critical Links will participate in co-marketing activities. edgeBOX provides an affordable, secure and QoS assured platform for VoIP deployment in small and medium sized businesses. It includes a feature rich IP-PBX based on Asterisk and a VoIP gateway using Digium's analogue and digital interface cards, also supporting Digium's latest echo cancellation cards (the TE411P).
“By partnering with innovative companies like Critical Links we can offer the business community more options and features when building high-end telephony systems based on Asterisk,” said Jim Webster, director of software technologies at Digium. “We look forward to working together with Critical Links to expand the VoIP market and at the same time, communicate the important role open source will play in furthering the telecom market.”
“We are pleased to be partnering with Digium, the recognized world leader in developing Linux based VoIP technologies," said Joao Carreira, Critical Links CEO. "We have been incorporating their technology in our products since the start of 2005 and, as a result, the interest in edgeBOX has grown tremendously. We can now provide a complete voice and data networking solution in a single box which greatly simplifies VoIP deployment, is cost effective, and addresses the concerns that users have over security and call quality," he added.
Source: Critical Links
Written by Dal on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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The team is a bit sluggish today after a fun night out at the True Ventures office in San Francisco. Business networking site OpenBC, on the occasion of its rebranding to Xing, helped us put on our first small mixer in style. We enjoyed fine pinots and the company of folks from Meebo, StumbleUpon, Digg, Mashery, Google, Plum, Wikia, FON, VideoEgg, Trulia, Geek Entertainment TV, Valleywag, Zooomr, and SoonR, as well as Ron Conway, Mike Arrington, Jeff Clavier, Peter Rip, and John Battelle. And I finally got to introduce Om to my dad, Stuart Gannes, a former tech reporter himself. Normal posting will resume when our headaches subside.
Written by Liz Gannes on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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STARTUP: Mixxer, based in Seattle, WA
ELEVATOR PITCH: Mixxer is trying to convince its four million users that it is more than just a ringtones site and is remaking itself as a mobile content sharing community.
WHAT THEY DO: In a former life the company was called 3GUpload and found some success selling ringtones and mobile content directly to consumers by offering online storage, which they call a locker. Now the company is remaking itself with an emphasis on user-generated, shared content, using a social network. But, hey, isn’t everybody?
PEOPLE: CEO John Dearborn, formerly at American Greetings Interactive, and CTO Michael Cockrill, formerly at Qpass.
FUNDING: $20 million, VantagePoint Venture Partners.
CUSTOMERS: They say they have 4 million young users.
COMPETITORS: Both online and mobile social networks, as well as ringtone sellers.
THE DEAL: The former ringtone seller wants to reinvent the company as a community for mobile content. To do this Mixxer raised money — a lot of money for a mobile content company — from VantagePoint, which was one of MySpace’s funders. Mixxer executives are very fond of mentioning that its funder was also MySpace’s. The problem is that a fickle ringtone-buying audience might not be willing to wait around through such significant changes.
What do you think will happen to Mixxer?
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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MySpace is working its way deeper into NewsCorp, getting access to its primetime TV. Fox has just launched FOX on Demand, which allows you to buy FOX series like Bones, Prison Break and Justice right off MySpace. In addition, the company is going to offer ad-supported programs in partnership with its local affiliates in 24 markets across the country.
Looks like Fox people agree, and are taking the big television-over-broadband plunge. It is in keeping with Rupert Murdoch’s long-standing philosophy to tap into any and all forms of distribution. Broadband is just the latest distribution channel Fox is trying to tap.
FOX claims that the video streams are going to be high definition, and users can download a special player to view these videos. “Users who frequent social networking sites such as MySpace show a predilection for online video, with 55% viewing streaming videos and 21% downloading long-form videos on at least a monthly basis,” writes Park Associates in a report titled, Internet Video Direct-to-Consumer Services.
Written by Om Malik on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Rotani's VideoPuck aims to help IPTV providers reach lower cost goals
Written by VoIP Magazine Featured Stories on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Seems like every day there's some newfandangled
Skype device that combines Skype along with some combination of a speakerphone, a mouse, a keypad, an LCD, a toaster, a blender, etc. etc.
Remember the
Sony Skype device I wrote about? Let me refresh your memory with 2 pictures...
Sony VAIO VNCX1-B Mouse
Now
word comes about a
new combo Skype device called the Skype USB Phone ASG-142 SkyGenie MouseFone.
It features an 800 DPI optical sensor, Skype speakerphone, an a 1.3-inch LCD for caller ID display. Although it is USB, it only works on Windows. Unlike the Sony VAIO Skype mouse combo gadget, the MouseFone does have a number keypad and a funky glowing green scroll wheel. Not sure how you are supposed to talk on Skype and use your mouse even if it does have a speakerphone. Some of these combo devices just seem silly to me. Who buys these things?
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Venture Beat has an interesting story about a stealth start-up called
Powerset that is apparently on the verge of raising some serious venture capital based on the promise of a new Google-killer search engine using artificial intelligence and natural language. Given Google's dominance from a market share, technology and branding perspective, the idea of actually going to head to head with it seems like a very Don Quixote-like exercise. Yet the search engine market continues to capture the imagination of bright people and investors intent on coming up with a better mouse trap. Some new search players such as
Collarity are intent on taking on Google directly, while others such as Kayak.com (travel)
ZoomInfo (people),
Topix (news)
LivePlasma.com (music, movies) and
RedToronto.com (local search) are focused on picking a fertile niche to establish a foothold. The question in search is: what would it take to knock off Google? Is it possible to develop a search engine that can produce
better results than Google and,
at the same time, capture the imagination of Internet users? The idea of developing a search engine that offers better results and/or provides a better interface is entirely possible. Imagine a user-friendly search engine that uses graphics rather than text. The hard part will be weaning people off Google or at least offering a new option that encourages Google-lovers to give something new a chance. When Google appeared on the scene, the established players were Lycos and Excite. They were pretty good search engines but not great, which gave Google the opportunity to quickly build a following as more people discovered it. While it would be wrong to dismiss Powerset's prospects, out-Googling Google is an enormous challenge but if it keeps Google (and Yahoo and Microsoft) honest and pushes the technology envelope, bring it on.
Update: Amazon's
A9.com search engine has
dropped some of its features. Speaking of Google, it has launched a new search engine called
Searchmash that appears to be a trial balloon project. In other words, Google could take whatever works well in Searchmash and adopt it.
Google Watch has a post on 10 reasons why it's almost impossible to compete with Google.
Written by Mark Evans on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Venture Capital.
Unlike some journalists, my eyes don't necessarily glaze over when a vendor states the case for his product in terms of a problem solved.
A problem, such as the potential that accelerated enterprise VoIP deployments have on identity infrastructure elements such as DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and DNS (Domain Name System).
That's why I went [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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