October 17th, 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from the VoIP Digest written on October 17th, 2006.
Disclaimer: I don't understand the virtual world phenomena. Living in the real world with all its ups and downs is a full-time job. Still, millions of people are - for whatever reason - spending time living in virtual worlds such as
Second Life. If that isn't weird enough, they're spending real-world dollars to dress their virtual selves, pimp their cars and buy real estate. Never ones to miss out on a marketing opportunity, a growing number of companies are establishing virtual ventures - Toyota's Scion being one of the more prominent. So does it surprise anyone that
Reuters will start publishing text, photos and video on Second Life? Reuters also said its reporters will wrote financial and cultural stories about Second Life. "In 'Second Life,' we're making Reuters part of a new generation," Reuters CEO Tom Glocer said in a statement. "We're playing an active role in this community by bringing the outside world into 'Second Life' and vice versa." Granted, there's lot of money being spent in these virtual worlds, and I suspect there will be opportunities for investors interested in buying Second Life shares (if and when they go public) but I don't get this trend (other than, perhaps, people playing fantasy games against each other online). In fact, when I think of these virtual worlds,
the quote: "A Fool and his money are soon parted" quickly comes to mind.
Written by Mark Evans on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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A poll of 500 users is hardly indicative of anything statistically relevant in most parts of the world, but according to a survey of 500 broadband users in South Africa, Skype beats MSN, Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger as the most popular VoIP/ VoIM soft client. [via VoIP Central, The VoIP Weblog]
Not a surprising verdict, given the cheap and free calls, but Skype is actually behind MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger in total downloads around the world. So technically, Skype is not the most popular in the world, although I think that may change, especially in North America, where Skype-to-phone calls are free until the end of the year. (There are similar promotions in Hong Kong and Paris, but with some limitations.)
That said, I’d pick Skype as my fave for calling pc-to-phone, Google Talk for pc-to-pc calls, and SightSpeed for video calling. Still, because of clients, friends and other contacts, I also regularly use Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and AIM Pro or variations of it. Finally, I’d also be using Gizmo Project and Hullo if I actually knew anyone who uses them. Not dissing them, because I do like them, but they simply are not used as much. Yet.
Written by staff writer on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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The maverick French broadband service provider, Iliad, and the company behind the Free, broadband service has made a habit of anticipating disruption; embracing it and then extending. Cheap broadband - they did that. Cheap (and almost free) Voice - they did that. Cheap IPTV, check. So what’s next to do? Open up wireless (WiFi) networks for one and all, and thus create one giant mesh.
Here is how it is works: the new set-top box from the company, called (what else) Freebox, has FoN like wireless network sharing features built into it, and thus every one of its 300,000 boxes can become part of a big wifi mesh. They are using WiFi with MIMO technology in their boxes. Basically if you have a wifi phone (or a laptop) you can hop on to one of these networks and stay connected.
The company is also introducing two special phones - one pure WiFi phone and the other is a combo WiFi/GSM phone.
Our friend, Yannick Laclau thinks that in one swoop, FON is squashed. “I think all this highlights that operators still have a lot of leverage here to make things happen, and quickly, if they have the will to do it,” he writes. Or perhaps, this means FoN could become a quick way for an incumbent to do roll out their own network. Not taking sides, just taking into account Martin Varsavsky’s ability to flip companies.
Written by Om Malik on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Sun Microsystems is putting an entire data center in a shipping container, betting that it could help overcome the escalating real estate costs, and can (literally) provide computing on demand. The $500,000 “data center in a box” is going to be available in second half of 2007, reports John Markoff of The New York Times.
The water cooled system is painted black, and has seven racks of 35 server computers based on either Sun’s Niagara Sparc processor or an Opteron chip from Advanced Micro Devices, the New York Times writes. Sun’s new box was designed by W. Daniel Hillis, co-chairman of Applied Minds.
The expandable computer system, called Project Blackbox, is based on a standard 20-foot shipping container and can be deployed virtually anywhere there is electricity, chilled water and an Internet connection.
This reminds us of a speculative post by Bob Cringley, back in November 2005.
Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We’re talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig.
Maybe there is something to that Sun Microsystems-Google relationship after-all. Still, despite Sun’s optimism, we wonder how many will buy into this version of computing on demand. Connecting data centers to the internet is not a trivial task, and our friends who are savvy in the ways of routers and switches often share their woes over a pint.
Written by Om Malik on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Google's purchase of YouTube last week for $1.65 billion in stock dominated last week's tech news. That's a lot of money for the leading video hosting site with many copyright violations. In this PodSession Om and I pick our favorite companies we think big Internet players could purchase for less than the New York Yankees' $200 million payroll.
Om's picks for Yahoo!:
- Photobucket photo hosting and sharing
- Video hosting site Metacafe for their international audience.
- License the Yahoo! Music API like crazy.
Niall's picks for Google:
- The Coding Monkeys, creators of collaborative editing software SubEthaEdit and Plazes.
- AdMob for mobile advertising.
- Collaboration company Zimbra for Google Apps in the enterprise and strong Java and DHTML technologies.
This week's PodSession, Startup Buyer's Guide, is 23 minutes in length, a 11 MB download.
Written by Om Malik and Niall Kennedy on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Some of us were consuming the ol' liquid barley the other night, talking about everything from Podcasting to politics.
I then raised the subject of Friendster. They were the social Web before MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, you name it.
But that was three years ago. And as the New York Times' Gary Rivlin brilliant piece emphasizes, Friendster [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Memos and follow-up bouncing around between AT&T and the FCC appear (keyword-appear) to have AT&T pledging that if the FCC breaks its 2-2 deadlock and approves the acquisition of BellSouth, then AT&T will be good.
Broadband everywhere, free broadband modems handed out like Santa on Christmas morn, a pledge to hold the line on rate requests, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Not all of my VoIP blogger colleagues get turned on by network IP performance measuring tools. I mean, packet analysis is not the "sexiest" part of the IP phone resolution.
At the IP Telephony show in San Diego last week, I was given a preview of Qovia's new edition of its IP Telephony Manager.
Due for [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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We’ve been talking for a while about doing an infographic/flowchart/pretty diagram of the PayPal mafia, but haven’t made it happen just yet. Since being bought by eBay in 2002, former PayPal employees have funded, employed, and advised each other at a whole bunch of Valley startups, including YouTube, LinkedIn, Slide, and Yelp. Others outlets have tackled this story, but the New York Times adds some nice chains of favors in a piece on the topic out Tuesday.
For instance, the genesis of Yelp (the main character here is Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, but there are so many names we’ll refer you to the NYTimes piece for the rest):
On the walk back from the restaurant to their offices — an incubator for start-up companies run by Mr. Levchin — Mr. Stoppelman and Mr. Simmons discussed the idea further. “We were bubbling with excitement,” Mr. Stoppelman said. “As soon as we got back to the office, we pulled Max aside and pitched him the idea.” Mr. Levchin liked it, and the next day he agreed to back the project with $1 million.
When Mr. Stoppelman and Mr. Simmons were ready to look for venture capital, Mr. Rabois helped them put together a presentation. Mr. Hoffman has frequently offered guidance to the company. And Mr. Thiel also gives Mr. Stoppelman business advice, sometimes when the two jog together along the San Francisco waterfront.
Fun game: search LinkedIn for PayPal.
Also interesting: Although many of the people mentioned here (especially the ones who ended up angel investors) were PayPal executives, a couple of the non-execs (who would have made less off the eBay buy) — Chad Hurley and Steve Chen — just pulled off an acquisition whose price narrowly beats that of PayPal. Are we in for another round of incestuous investing?
Written by Liz Gannes on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Mike Moritz, general partner with Sequoia Capital has a habit of investing in high growth consumer Internet properties, putting business model on the backburner and instead focusing on market share. He did it with Yahoo, and then with Google. (Okay we won’t hold Plaxo against him just yet.)
In fact this is the investment philosophy that drives Sequoia Capital’s consumer facing investments; one that has made them the big daddy amongst Silicon Valley VCs. (YouTube-Google is further proof, but that’s a well known fact by now.)
That is why it is interesting to figure out his next big play. And it is PopSugar, a site that is one of the fastest growing properties on the Internet. Disclosure: PopSugar’s parent company, San Francisco-based Sugar Publishing was started by two-and-half of my very good friends, Brian, Lisa and Katie Sugar. I apologize for intruding on your time.
The news of the investment first appeared here, and since then we have been scrambling to get some details. The focus of PopSugar is a demographic that is attractive to consumer advertisers - women. Moritz has invested close to $5 million in the company. Brian Sugar, who runs the company declined to comment and offer further details. (Michael Arrington and I had to share our resources in digging up information on this one.)
What is amazing is that PopSugar started as a lark! It was at a BBQ for Oscars, when I had casually asked Lisa why doesn’t she put all her knowledge about celebrity gossip to good use, and start a blog. Who knew she would take it seriously, and well, now PopSugar has close to 1.5 million visitors a month. They have plans to launch a series of other web properties and staying focused on the same demographic.
Sugar Publishing is not the only start-up going after the same demographic. Accel Partners has funded Glam. Most of these new companies will be going up against already established brands owned by CondeNast and Time Warner. The old media titans are being proactive in protecting their turn, and turning their consumer/women brands into Internet brands.
Written by Om Malik on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Municipal wireless networks are a polarizing technology. In any given Google search you can find some championing the benefits of city-wide networks, while others just as loudly decree the business model as shoddy. That doesn’t seem to stop cities from wanting the networks — today Boston turned on a section of its downtown WiFi network, built and run by SkyPilot Networks and Galaxy Internet. Foster City also launched a network from MetroFi today. Tomorrow the Riverside city council will consider the muniFi bid from AT&T and MetroFi.
Meanwhile we’re still wondering if the Sevin Rosen dissolved fund will affect MetroFi’s city bids. Some say no, and that the fund will still support MetroFi. But there are a lot of definitions of “support.” For some of MetroFi’s deals, like Riverside, cities have the security of AT&T’s coffers. But what about Portland? We’re thinking that Portland could be the next city that MetroFi partners with AT&T, or even Earthlink. While that might start the contract bidding process all over, Portland might be risking a lot by depending on MetroFi’s VC-raised funds alone.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Tailrank, one of a few services which tracks online conversations, launched an overhaul today, adding useful personalizable research tools. I like two features in particular: the archive, which extends the idea of “what’s being talked about right now” to “what were people talking about last week.” Nice to have a longer view on these things, rather than just a dynamic snapshot. Another is the ability to subscribe to a meme via instant messenger (through Feed Crier). Every time Tailrank detects a new post on that topic you get alerted via IM — helpful for tracking the hot story of the day.
Year-old Tailrank is a tiny, self-funded shop consisting of founder Kevin Burton and four part-time contributors. Its competitors include TechMeme and Megite. Burton says he hopes to reach 250,000 blogs indexed in the next month.
Written by Liz Gannes on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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According to
a new survey, 69% of people who plan to vote in next month's municipal election in Toronto would prefer to vote online if it was available, while 82% of people not planning on voting could change their mind if they could vote online. Given voter turnout was only 38% in Toronto and 32% in the Greater Toronto Area in 2003, anything to get more people involved in the demographic process has can only be a good thing. In particular, it might encourage younger people, who feel disengaged with politics or, worse, uninterested in politics. The survey raises two intriguing and complex questions: will online voting really bring out the vote by making it easier/more convenient than trudging out to the polling booth - usuallyafter work when you've got kids to feed, hockey to play, television to watch, drinks to drink, etc. Second, why is there such apathy about voting, particularly at the municipal level where elected representatives live in your neighbourhood? (See this
Toronto Star story for one take on the apathy issue) Maybe the Web will become a tool to spark interest in politics and voting through sites such as MySpace, YouTube and blogs. MySpace, for example, just launched
a Web site where people can register to vote in the U.S. (of course, you have to be a U.S. citizen). Then again, maybe people lost their faith in politics because no one really seems honest and/or real. Maybe what we need is more politicians such as Tom Dobbs in
Man of the Year.
Written by Mark Evans on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, Chuck E Cheese, and more than a dozen other game-related ventures (including many lovable duds like AG the Talking Bear) plans to open the first of his game-themed restaurant outlets called uWink Bistro in Woodland Hills, California this morning.
Bushnell spent $10 million over 4 years on building the chain and technology, which is a group of restaurants where customers play games and order food from touch-screen tables, which are all connected over a network. It sounds a little too Max Headroom 80’s-style for me, but what would you expect from the guy who created Pong — and who could have predicted huge mechanical rats could sell so much pizza?
Bushnell no longer owns any part of the publicly-traded Chuck E Cheese — he left when it was in bankruptcy - and now is a profitable restaurant chain traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Perhaps this is his way to get in on the missed action. I interviewed Bushnell earlier this year for Red Herring and he said uWink emerged out of his belief that games can ease social interaction. He thinks games are such a cure-all he plans to open game-themed schools in low-income areas (really, no joke).
He’s also one of my favorite entrepreneur interviews ever — he has one crazy idea after the next, his ideas are completely nontraditional and unfundable by VCs, and yet he has had a few large successes. He sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 for $28 million. Though he also told me he regrets selling Atari too early and seems to miss out on the pay outs of the really big wins. I have a feeling uWink won’t be one of those massive hits, but if anyone in the area has a chance to check it out, send us your thoughts and photos.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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This has to take the honors in the coolest device sweepstakes. Berlin-based 4S newcom GmbH has created iBlue, a tiny IP-PBX, that comes on an Apple iPod Shuffle.
It has to be the smallest smallest IP PBX. (of course they could have put it on a USB drive, but would not have received any attention.)
The iBlue is based on the 4S IP PBX, a software-based IP PBX. It uses SIP for VoIP and runs on a Mac mini. The device boots off the iPod shuffle, and basically turns the Mac Mini into a PBX. I am guessing it could work on any old Mac that can support OS-X. You can install the software on a Mac as well. The 3000 Euro version of the package (including Mac Mini and iPod shuffle) can support 250 users and 30 parallel calls. I guess, if they offered a smaller, cheaper DIY package for say $100, they might get more takers.
The system provides a slick and intuitive configuration front-end, which is purely web-based and accessed by simply pointing a web browser to the IP address of the IP PBX. With just a few clicks, the system administrator can configure inbound number blocks, users, extensions, outbound routing and advanced features such as auto attendant, voicemail, conferencing etc.
Written by Om Malik on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Copper is the cockroach of the telecom world – it just doesn’t go away. And if telecom technologists have their way, it could soon be carrying data at speed of gigabit per second.
Last week, ECI Telecom and a bunch of other companies announced a new consortium that would work on a technology called the Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM). The Chief Scientist Office of the Israeli Government has financed the consortium with a grant of about $10 million. DSM is widely viewed as the next evolutionary step after VDSL2. DSM, when commercialized could help provide fiber optic like speeds over copper, the consortium says. DSM addresses one of the biggest issues with the DSL technology – interference also known as crosstalk.
“The main obstacle for the advancement of DSL technology is the interference (”crosstalk”) generated from different DSL lines that share the same telephone cable binder,” said Professor John Cioffi, Professor of Engineering at Stanford University, a pioneer of DSM research, who is also recognized as the inventor of the DMT line code. “DSM is a promising technology for the future evolution of broadband access networks using existing copper infrastructure.”
People should pay attention to what Cioffi says.
He was recently awarded the Marconi Prize (and is the 2006 Marconi Fellow.) He is a soothsayer when it comes to all things DSL. According to DSL Prime, in 1990 he predicted that DSL could deliver between 5-to-10 megabits per second. Then in 2002 he predicted 100 megabits per second over copper. That happened. By 2004 companies like Ikanos and Metalink were showing off chips that could do 100 mega up and down. So now lets take what he is saying very seriously.
“Phone lines are big antennas that radiate into one another,” Cioffi says. “They are their own worst enemies when they are all bundled together. Any kind of [electromagnetic] noise from AM radios, fluorescent lights or your vacuum cleaner can get into these things and cause problems.” (via Stanford Report.)
Back in the 1990s his solution was to transmit data between two modems – say one at home and one at the telco central office – and connect them with each other via 256 different 4 kilobit per second channels. The traffic would flow over the less congested channels, and interference would be overcome.
With DSM, Cioffi is taking copper to the next level. DSM packs more channels and also uses the higher frequency bands that have not been useable because of extreme interference. He is betting that DSM is going to be big, and has decided to start a new company, Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment (ASSIA) Inc. (more details to follow!)
Written by Om Malik on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Last week, as the "GooTube" moniker began to be applied to Google's acquisition of YouTube, I posted that there actually is a "GooTube."
Founded a year ago by Internet marketer Eric Watson, it provides a search engine for glue-related tube type products. Keep in mind that Eric secured the gootube domain a year ago, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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For the life of me, I've long failed to understand why every single darn social software website and program doesn't have an officially sanctioned IP talk client.
We're so into "well, duh" territory here. Social networks are not only about posting your photo and engaging in forum discussions. They can, if you so choose, lead [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Fellow blogger PhoneBoy offers a detailed but quite comprehensible explanation of why the decidely improved NAT (Network Address Translation) capability of Internet calling proivder SightSpeed's SightSpeed 5.0 (shown above) is so noteworthy.
First, he defines NAT, which is a technology that lets hosts transparently talk to each other with mutually agreeable addresses. He correctly mentions [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Earlier this year, pundits were questioning the practicality of Skype's conference call capacity upgrades. Who would use Skype for a conference call when there are more robust conference-friendly solutions out there?
I have to confess I was one of the skeptics. My reason for skepticism is that the more participants on such a call, the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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At the IP Telephony show in San Diego last week, I was given a demonstration of a technology that might well facilitate ease of enterprise deployment for Skype.
I am referring to the $999.99, Actiontec VoSKY Exchange 9040 and 9080 PBX gateways. In new four and eight-port rackmountable versions, that are significant improvements over the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Update: Dave went nowhere, as he lets us know and he is still the boss at Technorati.
The New York Times discovers Technorati, and writes a generally positive article about the service. Guess, they haven’t used it much, have they? Regardless, buried in the story is this little nugget…“said Peter Hirshberg, chief executive of Technorati, a blog-tracking service.”
Last we heard, Dave Sifry was the CEO. Either The Times is wrong or, Sifry has left the building. Technorati management page lists him as the founder/CEO, so it might be just a mistake. Where is Nick Douglas when you need him?
Written by Om Malik on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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