December 1st, 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from the VoIP Digest written on December 1st, 2006.
The Smith On VoIP Word/Phrase of the Day is Power over Ethernet (PoE) Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a system to send electrical power and data to compatible devices over standard CAT5 cable in an Ethernet network. Power over Ethernet(PoE) eliminates the need 110/220 AC power adaptors. For some, this makes it possible to place devices in area where they previously could not. Power over Ethernet typically involves the use of a Power over Ethernet Switch or Injector.
Written by Smith On VoIP - Insights on VoIP Products and Serv on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Sangoma, a manufacture of a range of PCI based cards with T3/E3 , T1/E1 TDM, Analogvoice and data , ADSL and serial interfaces has announced that they are set to ship there new High Density A400 Analog PCI cards. Cindy Waxer has the full story. Sangoma has consistently surprised me with their ability to beat Digium to the punch when it comes to the next generation of PCI cards for use with Asterisk (an other open source PBXs). Makes me wonder if Digium has shifted their hardware business away from the PCI cards in favor of further development on their Asterisk appliance.
Written by Smith On VoIP - Insights on VoIP Products and Serv on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Written by Skype Journal on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Yesterday, TiVo reported their third-quarter numbers. We're talking a net loss of $11.1 millon. That's despite the fact that over the last year, TiVo-owned subs rose 24% to 1.6 millions, and cumulative total subs- including those through TiVo partners, are up 11% to 4.4 million. And churn is only 1% per quarter.
You'd think those [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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A number of you are questioning my judgement about why I devoted such a significant amount of real estate here to the Apple podcast navigation patent app.
Quite a few of your comments came in the guise of "this is nothing new."
Well, whether there is anything new here or not has nothing to do with [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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It’s hard to escape hearing about the launch of Microsoft’s Vista operating system for business customers today — especially with Steve Ballmer calling it “the biggest launch in our company’s history.” The consumer version won’t be widely available until January. With all the delays in the Vista launch, what’s a little more wait? Anne Zelenka has some thoughts on Web Worker Daily . What do you think?
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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If you haven't heard about DailyMotion.com, you probably will fairly soon, particularly if you're one of those people who wants to watch commercial-free television shows for free. I stumbled upon the video-sharing site via by brother, who read about it on Forbes.com.
So who is DailyMotion? Well, they're based in Paris and there does not appear to be any ways they make money right now: no advertising, no sponsored links, nothing. The company, which received seven million euros of venture capital from Partech and Atlas Ventures, has 18 employees, although some of them could be part-timers or volunteers as opposed to full-time staff. The company's two founders are Benjamin Bejbaum and Olivier Poitrey.
According to Forbes, DailyMotion's traffic has tripled in the past three months, albeit off a small base given it only has 0.22% market share compared with 65% for YouTube. (I'd insert an Alexa chart but you barely be able to see DailyMotion on it.)
With DailyMotion running complete TV shows, the question is whether it's violating copyright laws. Forbes quoted someone from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that DailyMotion could be protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provision, which lets sites host infringed content if they aren't aware of it, don't profit from it and remove any infringing content immediately upon the copyright holder's request. I suspect DailyMotion may start getting more of these copyright holder requests once its profile starts to grow. In the meantime, have fun. I'm off to watch some "My Name is Earl" episodes as we speak.
Note: You can read an interview with Bejbaum on seomoz.org
Written by Mark Evans on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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We’ve written a few times about the startup Meraki Networks, which is building a business off of wireless mesh hardware and software based on the MIT’s Roofnet project. Google has been very interested in the Mountain View-based startup as a way to extend its WiFi network coverage indoors. Now Meraki’s co-founder Sanjit Biswas tells us that the company completed a bridge round of funding last week, which included Google and “a few Silicon Valley angels.”
Biswas wouldn’t specify the amount but said the round was under a million dollars. “We’d bootstrapped the company so far, so this cash is really just for growth/acceleration . . .and for the development of some products we plan to launch next year,” says Biswas. The company currently sells a $49 wireless 802.11b/g router (that’s the beta price, see below) that allows users to build a wireless mesh network or extend the range of a municipal network.
Previously Biswas told us that Google had entered into a vendor/contractor relationship with Meraki. At a San Francisco WiFi community meeting Google showed off a Meraki router as a good, inexpensive way for residents to extend San Francisco’s planned city-wide WiFi network indoors. But it’s also somewhat rare for Google to invest (and not just acquire) startups. It seems like when it comes to alternative ways to extend broadband coverage, Google is willing to play investor — the company also previously invested in broadband over powerline company Current Communications.
Google’s Chris Sacca told us last month that Google was partly interested in Meraki to help the company keep its products running on an open platform. Meraki’s current product, the Meraki Minis, use an open platform and the company is encouraging users to tinker around and install their own software. But Biswas says the router isn’t completely open source and part of the software is closed. Meraki is trying to commercialize the work they did at MIT, while also trying to stay true to their open-source background — i.e. have a decent business model, but keep it as open as they can.
Meraki says their goal is to enable a grassroots movement of small wireless ISPs by providing them everything they need to get started. Those goals match to what Google has been stating about their plans for their WiFi networks — deliver wireless broadband for cheap and outside the confines of the current telco/cable industries.
Update: Meraki has been listing its routers for $49 while the company is in beta, but Biswas says the final price will likely be somewhere under $100. “Our goal is to make Meraki routers as widespread as possible, which means leaving room for reseller and
retail margins, so we have to raise the price post-beta.”
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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A hyper-hectic visit to New York, coupled with news breaking thick and fast, I almost forgot to blog about my recent book review of Invisible Engines by David S. Evans, Andrei Hagiu and Richard Schmalensee for the Wall Street Journal. The book looks at rise of software platforms including the Windows, iPod, and Sony PlayStation, and how they spawn an entire ecosystem.
One moral of the authors’ story returns us, in effect, to Mr. Ballmer’s own platform dance: Get the developers. The smart ones–helped by luck and investment capital, among much else–can make invisible engines rocket a company into the stratosphere. “Invisible Engines” offers iPod as an example.
While the book is quite academic in nature, it might be worth taking a look. If not, just read the review. 
Written by Om Malik on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Phil at Skype Journal notes that Skype has moved marketing functions from countries back to London in a reorganization announced this week. About 40 of the 516 people working at Skype worldwide are affected, 26 of those shifting roles or locations and 14 who are leaving or who have yet to [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Vinod Khosla, who recently set up his own venture firm, Khosla Ventures, has invested $6.2 million in iSkoot, the Cambridge, MA-based Skype-to-mobile extender service, according to PE Hub. Khosla has become quite active lately and has invested in companies like Slide and iLike.
iSkoot has been getting a lot of buzz, especially after cutting a deal with Skype, and 3, a 3G wireless services provider. Soonr and EQO are other applications that act as Skype-to-mobile extenders.
Written by Om Malik on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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First it was Ciena, and now Nortel is doing a reverse split, hoping to add some respectability to their stock price. The beleaguered telecom equipment maker which has been constantly resetting itself since the telecom bust, is going for 1-for-10 reverse split. The current share price is about $2.15, and after the split, the price will be $21.50 a share. The total share count will decline from around 4.34 billion to about 505 million shares.
“While nothing changes from a structural point-of-view, our analysis of companies who have recently completed a reverse stock-split suggests that the average share-price may decline up to 8% during the first-week,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Sue wrote in a note this morning to his client. Never mind all the splits — this is window dressing, and the company problems still continue, though some analysts are forecasting a 5%-to-7% increase in fourth quarter 2006 revenues.
Written by Om Malik on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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EXCLUSIVE: A new Apple Patent application just published this morning provides insight into how a series of hierarchical menus displayable on an iPod could guide a user to select podcasts for play that are already stored on the device.
The Patent Application is 20060265637, Utilization Of Podcasts on Portable Media Devices. And by PDMs, Apple [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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