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Yes, I am serious, and there is a sociological lesson to be learned here.
But first, some supportive information. There are plenty of accounts that would seem to point to Anna Nicole Smith (in that Getty images photo) as an enthusiastic Internet user and e-mailer.
Take for instance "BIG MO," an Anna Nicole Smith bodyguard who […]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 25th, 2007 with no comments.
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Today Wal-Mart Stores introduces a digitally downloadable library of 3,000 titles from the six major movie distributors. The significant majority of these titles are available for $14.88, but are tied to discounted pricing available to those who go to their Wal-Mart store and purchase the actual, physical DVD.
Others have noted the digital download bar [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 7th, 2007 with no comments.
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The VoIP Girl kicks off a rapidly morphing discussion about HD VoIP. "HD," as in High-Def."
"Is HD VOIP something that consumers should consider when choosing a VOIP service, or is it more marketing lingo to work through?," she writes. "As I understand it, HD, high definition, or wideband VOIP refers to voice sampling at 16 [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 6th, 2007 with no comments.
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One of the reasons given for Michael Dell re-claiming the CEO mantle at Dell last week was the realization that customer service standards had slipped, and need to be restored.
In our ZDNet neighborhood, as well as in the blogosphere and among friends and neighbors, this perception has taken on a disturbingly common truism: bought [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 6th, 2007 with no comments.
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Interesting thought piece from fellow VoIP blogger Andy Abramson about what he sees as a lack of sensitivity on the part of venture capitalists toward the specific resources needed to market of products and services they are evaluating for possible investments in.
That concept seems to be especially sticking in Andy's craw after he attended the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 6th, 2007 with no comments.
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NetFlix' new Watch Now service will let a select view of the DVD distributor's six million customers watch movies over the Internet.
Select view, meaning 250,000 or so additional subs per week, until a June target date for complete subscriber base enablement.
Since this content will not be downloaded but will live on NetFlix's servers, this isn't the type of [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 26th, 2007 with no comments.
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One of the most astute observations I heard at the IP Telephony Expo in Fort Lauderdale this week came from the personable and visionary (rare combo) Brett Shockley, Founder, CEO and chairman of integrated IP communications and solutions provider Spanlink Communications.
One of those industry thought-leaders able to take a ground floor and a "30,000-foot" view [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 26th, 2007 with no comments.
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Yesterday at the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo in Fort Lauderdale, I was privileged to be on a panel entitled: Quo Vadis? An IMS Industry Round Table.
OK, basics first. In this meaning, IMS refers to IP Media Subsystem, a type of next-generation architecture for mobile communications providers and carriers that, as best defined by Wikipedia:
Want [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 26th, 2007 with no comments.
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Here in the U.S., we're entering a 2008 Presidential campaign season where we will find candidates of both major U.S. political parties practicing the same every platform-all the time craze that just 'bout drove me nuts at the Consumer Electronics Show last week.
One of the first manifestations of this is the announcement that Internet [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 18th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and YouTube.
Several recent court decisions are, in my view, threatening the generally accepted notion that the Internet thrives on a "free to link" privilege between any two sites.
As rabid as some content creators, their lawyers and agents are, I fear that we may be headed into an era where these rights are challenged. Challenged to a [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 15th, 2007 with no comments.
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Earlier today, panelists at a CES session entitled "New Communication Tech: From VoIP to VoWiFi and Beyond" waved in on key advances that will push lots of VoIP users from beyond their PC to mobile environments.
Three advances:
VoIP handsets pre-bundled with cellphone-like functionalities such as cameras, video playback and even gaming. Because cellphone users are [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 10th, 2007 with no comments.
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There's a type of strange, counterintuitive faddishness at this year's Consumer Electronics Show that to me, defies all manner of logic.
Since few if any other bloggers will speak out about it, I view it as my role to do so.
I am referring to rampant, contagious "platformitis-" the mad rush to enable all types of video [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 9th, 2007 with no comments.
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I'm not pulling this one out of the ether. Or the Ethernet.
The idea is actually hinted at by Matt Wasserlauf, who is CEO of online video ad network Broadband Enterprises. Matt tells Mediaweek's Mike Shields that "such inventory (referring to ad availabilities) is ideal for less content-phobic direct-marketing brands 'that are used to late-night TV, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 5th, 2007 with no comments.
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Linden Lab CTO Chief Technnology Officer Cory Ondrejka says that Second Life is eyeing upload fees for textures.
"I like the idea of differential upload costs for textures, I’m curious what other folks think about that," he said during an SecondLife virtual town hall meeting last night. The thought is that it would […]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Andy Abramson reads some reasonably definitive tea leaves and concludes that Yahoo! is de-emphasizing the Yahoo! Voice component of Yahoo! Messenger. Yahoo! Phone In, which I show you above, is an example of a Yahoo! Voice service.
The ultimate manifestation of that de-emphasis would be the removal of the voice component from Yahoo! Messenger [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 7th, 2006 with no comments.
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When I first read my colleague Daniel Terdiman's article "IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable" early this morning, my first reaction was "what the…"
Dan's positioning of this as a very real public policy came from a Saturday panel called "Tax and Finance" at the New York Law School's State of Play/Terra Nova […]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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Obviously Cisco Systems has a dog in this hunt, but still I have to agree with John Earnhardt, who writes the Cisco High Tech Policy Blog for well, uh, Cisco.
Oh and he's also Cisco's senior manager of Policy Communications for Cisco's Office of Worldwide Government Affairs.
John's point is that the FCC's tried-and-true [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and Cisco and Streaming media.
Telecom research firm TeleGeography says that about half of Skype's voice traffic is international. We're talking about about 4.4 percent of all the 264 billion global minutes carried on VoIP as well as circuit-switched lines.
Parsing the numbers further, we see that Skype's portion of all global phone minutes increased from 2.9 percent of such [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 5th, 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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Just today BitTorrent announced content deals with 20th Century Fox (hey Rupert, its the 21st century now) G4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (including COMEDY CENTRAL, Logo, MTV: Music Television, MTV2, Nickelodeon, Nicktoons Network, SpikeTV, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 30th, 2006 with no comments.
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Those of us who are opposed to mobile carriers putting up barriers to VoIP calling can't be thrilled by Nokia's upgrade to its Nokia Flexi Intelligent Service Node (touted in the excerpt from a Flash demo, shown at top).
The Node tool, which is available to carriers, is set to offer a particularly insidious software [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 28th, 2006 with no comments.
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In The Dark Side Of Second Life, an article that was posted yesterday on BusinessWeek.com., writer Catherine Holahan explores the apparently increasing unauthorized copying of Second Life "possessions," and what if anything can be done about it.
Catherine notes that Second Life developer Linden Labs is well aware of the problem, and that the company's [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Even after several reads, I still get a rise out of Jon Swartz "Technology troubles set off tantrums, tears and tirades" piece in yesterday's USAToday.
Jon notes that a survey of 2,511 Americans polled by Harris Interactive and software company RightNow technologies revealed that "about 85% of those polled said they've become so flustered, they've ended up [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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A week ago Sunday, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales put out this enticing sounding open letter asking Wikipedia users for recommendations about how the collaborative, free online encyclopedia might spend an um, maybe-not-so-hypothetical $100 million war chest to acquire the rights to digital works.
OK, Jimbo.
First you should, in conjunction with experts, draw up a list [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 25th, 2006 with no comments.
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Thanks to all you angels and ministers of grace for the fact that the Internet has not crashed down on our heads with continuous episodes of bandwidth scarcities and resulting gridlock.
That would be one way of interpreting the worst-case- but not implausible scenario- posited by Nortel's chief technology officer, John Roese.
"The only reason YouTube [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 25th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and Streaming media and YouTube.
Simplifying fellow blogger and friend Andy's comments relating to assertions contained in a Computerworld article wrapped around some Gartner analyst perspectives:
Andy believes that advanced Internet applications are necessary to push the IP Telephony space beyond 1.0 to a type of 2.0 world.
True, there will always be users who only want cheap calls. But […]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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I am reminded of what William Shatner, a.k.a. Star Trek's Captain Kirk, once said on "Saturday Night Live."
"It's only a tv show!!," Shatner said about "Star Trek," addressing the show's many devotees.
In a similar vein, I feel that it is about time to call all this Second Life madness out.
Listen, I love Second Life. [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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Rich Tehrani believes this.
I think he is right. Let me explain why. But first, a backgrounder.
Rich writes that at the last ITEXPO (in San Diego earlier this month) he asked hundreds of people attending the keynote if they care about net neutrality.
"Out of somewhere around 500-700 people," Rich writes, "2 or 3 people [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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This weekend marks the Indian festival of Dilawi.
Calls from the U.S. to parts of India are typically priced at 4.9 cents a minute on Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.
This weekend, though, Yahoo! Messenger with Voice is running a free calling promotion to India.
What we are seeing here is just the start of a trajectory that, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and yahoo.
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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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.
Read more articles on Skype and General and Providers and trends.
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.
Read more articles on General and trends and Streaming media and YouTube.
Once again, Andy is right on target in his post about companies such as RebTel and Jajah that offer solutions that seem to sidestep traditional telephony calling infrastructures to offer attractive products and services.
Andy indicates his reservations about the likelihood for success for such offerings "beyond simply user growth without carrier cooperation (and possible retaliation) [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 2nd, 2006 with no comments.
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In a private note to several his colleagues (including your truly) Dave Burstein of DSL Prime reports this morning he has found out that Verizon is about 12 to 18 months away from executing a plan to open the set-top box to all Internet video. This woud be done by means of Verizon FIOS, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 27th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and Research and Streaming media.
Marketwatch's Bambi Francisco cites comScore Media Metrix's July numbers to make the assertion that MySpace video is kickin' YT's video content in the you-know-where."This is pretty significant considering that YouTube and Google Video have gotten all the press when it comes to who's garnering the biggest video-viewing audiences," writes Francisco, who is based [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 26th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and YouTube.
When I first learned that Apple was sending "infringement"-claiming cease and desist letters to Podcasters such as Podcast Ready my first reaction was: OK, iPod has been around for two five years, (sorry-typo) and "podcast" two years, so why is Apple doing this now? Especially when the term "podcast" conveys enhanced market familiarization with the iPod?Rather than fall [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and Products and Apple.
A newly published U.S. Patent and Trademark Office application describes a way for online poker players to "physically interact" with real, in-casino poker games. The process would involve sophisticated RFID technologies embedded in the casino poker cards, and a broadband connection powerful enough to be able to deliver the tactile sensations involved in touching these [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 18th, 2006 with no comments.
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My ZDNet colleague David Berlind offers an excellent roundup of those big Apple announcements yesterday: movies on your iPod via iTunes7 (shown above) a new iPod, easier transfer between your Mac and your tv, all that cool stuff. Once again, Apple CEO Steve Jobs makes a presentation and everyone goes ga-ga.Not me, tho'.But to me the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 12th, 2006 with no comments.
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Former Virginia Governor and presumed Democratic Presidential nomination hopeful Mark Warner made an appearance in the Second Life virtual world at the end of last month.That's Gov. Warner's avatar.All this made me curious enough to join. That's a screen from Second Life. You have to take one of the last names they give you. I chose [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Fellow blogger Alec Saunders wrote a post last week that has brought a notion from the back of my brain to the front.(Given how crowded my brain is, that's no small feat).What Alex is saying, in essence, is that the growth of open-source, do-it-yourself Asterisk open source software technology to build your own custom [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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There's some sort of a super-secret Apple event scheduled for San Francisco on Tuesday September 12. Some of us think that a wireless, cell or even WiFi-enabled iPod (maybe a bit like that patent sketch I show you up there) will be one of the announcements.But according to a survey of 3,000 people by [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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In our Digital Micro-Markets blog, colleague Donna Bogatin's "Will Netflix CDs Go The Way Of AOL CDs" post explores the risk to Netflix' competitive model from faster, movie download services.Donna makes some salient points. Heck, I've even written about my perception that Netflix's current thru-the-mail model is one with a fairly narrow time horizon [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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After reading fellow blogger Tom Keating's excellent review of USRobotics' USR Cordless Phone for Skype (due later this month at $119.99, and his comparison of this product with the Linksys Cordless Internet Telephony Kit, I immediately thought of a reason why VoIP-capable cordless phones not only seem to be sprouting up every week, but [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on September 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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Since Sony made the announcement this morning that it is acquiring video-sharing site Grouper for $65 million, I have been re-evaluating my prospectus on which company just might buy YouTube.I had Sony fourth most likely, but $65 million is a lighter bite than $1 billion, which is often thought to be the fetching price for [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on August 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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There once was a time that Slashdot was the nexus of news from the technologists in the trenches. To have your online article"Slashdotted" was akin to receiving heavy airplay on the radio. I've seen some of my posts obtain signficantly more traffic after being picked up in Slashdot threads. Increasingly, though, Slashdot's technology news and [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on August 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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TWICE (This Week In Consumer Electronics) Magazine's Amy Gilroy reports that Microsoft's forthcoming $299 Zune digital audio players will have Wi-Fi, but not for the purpose you may be thinking.Retailers interviewed by Gilroy tell her that Zune will allow users to bookmark songs that can be shared with other users via Wi-Fi, but that the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on August 11th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and Microsoft and WiFi.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting this, courtesy of a pickup from the next weekly issue of music industry bible Billboard magazine.In an email statement sent to Billboard editors, Chris Stephenson, who is Microsoft's company's new general manager of marketing for MSN Entertainment Business,said the company sees the Zune-branded portable music player and an [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on July 21st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on News and General and trends and Microsoft.
As my colleague Greg Sandoval reported late yesterday, YouTube has been sued for copyright infringement.Complaintant Robert Tur has alleged that 1992 footage he took of the beating of trucker Reginald Denny in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots has been viewed for free over 1,000 times on YouTube, costing Tur potential income from selling [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on July 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and Regulatory and trends.
Today, SIPphone announced that Gizmo Project users will be able to call other Gizmo users for free in 60 countries. The free calling is not just Gizmo to Gizmo, but Gizmo to other Gizmo users from Gizmo to their mobile phones and landlines. We now have to ask ourselves, is this yet another milestone on [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on July 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and Providers and trends and Promotions.
One key vision of the Microsoft-Nortel Networks strategic partnership announced Tuesday is the transition of traditional business phone systems into software that integrates with Nortel Internet telephony software and hardware.Sorry but I have trouble getting excited over this announcement. Cisco already does the Internet phone hardware-software integration thing, much of it very well and under [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on News and General and trends and Microsoft.
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