Archive for May, 2008
My advice to the recent college graduate still looking for a job…
Build your Business Social Network NOW. Along the way Find your Lifes Passion. And then Give yourself a Job. Recent college graduates still looking for the perfect job might want to humor me and take a few minutes and read my following proposal. While I cant guarantee that this proposal will work for everyone, or even most people, if I had a chance to apply something I know now to someone looking for a job today, this is how I would approach the situation. Build your Business Social Networ...
Road Warrioring with Blackberry: Email Access in Kyrgystan
Later today my family will be celebrating the marriage of my son, a computer engineer and medical doctor, to his fiancé, a materials engineer and MBA by training, and now employed in the financial division of a resources company. Talk about how to win over the heart of her future father-in-law — she recently traveled to the Kyrgyzstan (also known as the Kyrgyz Republic) in central Asia. She has a story to tell about how she downloaded her Blackberry email in Krygyzstan, where Rogers has n...
Net Neutrality Finally Rears Ugly Head in Canada
At one time, Canada was among the world leaders in Internet access, ranking second beyond South Korea in broadband penetration. Those days now seem like a distance memory as Canada moves ever closer to becoming a second-tier online country that discourages innovation. Case in point is network neutrality, a debate that has raged in the U.S. but has been ignored or shoved under the carpet by the federal government and regulators in Canada. Either no wants to discuss net neutrality or it’s i...
The future of chat and presence - XMPP? Or Microsoft’s OCS Bulkware?
There is a lot of talk about chat and presence in the enterprise. And of course as an IP PBX / Unified communications vendor 3CX is closely looking at chat. I am not sure most companies need chat, but definitely there are going to be enterprises using it. Right now chat in the enterprise (if allowed) is probably fragmented, with users installing clients of popular chat networks. So what are the ...
Cisco + Mobility - Get Used It
Here’s another post I’ve been trying to get to this week. These two words - Cisco and mobility - aren’t always closely associated, but I think that’s going to change sooner than later. Last week I had an in-person briefing at Cisco Canada’s offices about Motion, their new mobility initiative. It was a pretty informative session, and came in advance of their press release, which ran on Wednesday. As press releases go, it’s on the long side, and I just wanted to...
Recession Prep: Scott Rafer’s Survival Tips from 2000, or the ‘Summer of Angst’
Last October, Found|READ lunched with serial entrepreneur and Lookery cofounder Scott Rafer, who gloomily predicted the technology industry was “no more than five months away from the next bust.” Pessimistic, even for the opinionated Rafer, but then he knows a thing or two about successes (MyBlogLog), struggles (Feedster), and recessions. Rafer then generously loaded our plate with great tips for less experienced founders who might need help preparing for the market’s “hard knocks....
GigaOM Interview: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was one of the attendees at this week’s D6 Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., to be interviewed on stage, where he talked about Kindle at length. But right after his chat with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, I caught up with him to discuss Amazon Web Services and his company’s efforts in cloud computing. Here is a short excerpt from that conversation, captured on my Sanyo Xacti. In particular, he talks about… How and when Amazon began its c...
Ifbyphone’s Virtual Receptionist To The Rescue (Part II)
The ifbyphone success story continues… “Popcorn retailer finds ingredients to success”. Here is an excerpt from today’s San Antonio Business Journal: Garth Dennis, owner of San Antonio based World & Web Marketing, had been brought in a couple of months earlier to help redesign Papa Dean’s Web site. Now he was being called on to help with the spike in call volume that was threatening to put a crimp in the company’s blossoming sales. Dennis knew just who to ...
Freescale Needs to Divide to Conquer
Freescale should get ready for change. I visited the Austin-based chip maker yesterday to talk about wireless and networking chips as well as broad trends in the industry, and walked away realizing that the firm needs to split itself up in order to survive. The company has some very cool technology — especially around its multicore processors for embedded systems such as printers, storage arrays and routers — and a huge base of users for its Power architecture. But it has too many a...
To Touch TV or Not Touch TV, that is the Question…
Kfir Pravda: Please Dont Touch My TV. TV, in its purist meaning wont change. TV is a winning format. Good stories told in 22, 45 or 60 minutes slots is a great invention. Especially when channels realize the power of story again, and let masterpieces such as The Wire go on air. And you know what? The last thing I want is an interactive experience while watching high quality shows. I dont want to buy the bottle of wine people are drinking on screen. I just want to be entertained. So ...
Another Reason Not To Teleconference(!)
Continental Airlines took out a half-page ad in today’s Financial Times (page 3) that reads: “BusinessFirst. Another Reason Not To Teleconference . . . you’ll enjoy a comfortable sleeper seat, gourmet food and wine . . . warm cookies, and a made-to-order sundae . . .” Then there’s the the no-humor zone, the war against more than 3 ounces of any one moist substance, the inane announcements, the border-crossing bullsh*t, the takeoff and landing delays, the absence of ...
Moto StarTac Started It All (Flip Phone Frenzy!)
Amazing to think back to a decade ago when Motorola introduced its StarTac flip phone — great design that has been repeated over and over again until this day. You can’t even imagine how big and bulky cell phones were up until that time — like putting a brick to your ear! And thank goodness that will great design is timeless battery power has been improved from those days of 60 minute talk time? Thanks to MotorolaFAQ for the shot. Tags: flip phone, Motorola, Startec Related...
Userplane, the Really Big Widget Ad Network
When it comes to the widget ecosystem, lavishly funded companies like Slide, Clearspring and RockYou hog the limelight. But it is Userplane, now a subsidiary of AOL, that seems to be revving up the money engine without much fanfare. The company that started out offering a web-based chat system has now morphed into a many-faceted business, including owning what might just be one of the largest widget ad networks out there. At the D6 Conference this week in Carlsbad, Calif., I ran into Userplane ...
Om’s Mobilize - Are One Day Events The Way To Go?
I’ve been meaning to get around to this for a few days now. Last Friday, Om Malik announced Mobilize on his GigaOm portal. What is this? As outlined in Om’s post, Mobilize is a one day conference taking place this August in San Francisco. As you can probably guess from the name, the focus is on mobile broadband and the implications for how the Web and mobile devices can enhance our everyday communications experiences. Hot topic for sure, and I’m sure it will be a great event. T...
Yet Another Drama About Twitter
Twitter, in a post on its blog, has acknowledged that it’s been having problems. It attributes some (not all) of them to so-called “popular” users that it says overloaded the system when they sent updates in too quick a succession. In other words, it was a tactical acknowledgment by the company of problems that have already been widely reported. Of course Twitter’s most popular user is Robert Scoble, and as far as numerous successive posts have argued, he is the real sou...
The New iPhone’s New Winner
Depending which iPhone rumor you believe, the 3G version of iPhone has either been delayed or already landed on U.S. shores and is on its way to being announced at Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco next month. The interest in the 3G version of the iPhone has been building since AT&T executives “accidentally” talked about it at various events. But whether it’s a new 2G model or a super-fast 3G, there is one thing that’s for sure: The new iPhone has Global Positionin...
CloudBlue for Recycling Gadgets
With more and more gadgets comes the need to get rid of some of them sometimes! But no more just dumping them in the trash — recycle, now that’s the ticket! CloudBlue offers a suite of services that enable its customers (think corporate — and you can too at your workplace to clear room for more stuff) to maximize the financial value of their electronic assets while exceeding strict environmental standards. In other words, they help assist in proper equipment disposal. WhatR...
What About Those Microsoft Echoes
Microsoft Corp., in its effort to woo telecoms has come up with yet another project, Echoes, a services platform that will likely to be sold to telecom carriers. It combines Microsoft’s Live Messenger, with over the air syncing of people’s address books with presence and gift wraps it as unified communications platform. Mary Joe Foley points out that Bill Gates has been referring to Echoes in his speeches recently. Echoes was incubated by Microsoft Israel Research’s Corporate Vic...
Just Do It!
Sometimes the hardest part in doing something new is overcoming your own internal resistance to make it happen. And this isnt something you can outsource…this is something for you to just do. No one said it would be easy. Now is the time to just get over it and make it so! So Just Do It! ...
How Do You Hire Better and Smarter?
During the mesh conference last week, it was exciting to be the emcee for 15 Minutes of Fame - where three entrepreneurs each day get five minutes to talk about what their startups are doing and why they’ll be successful. With only five minutes to present, their focus was spent on the product/service they were developing. If they had more time, I suspect it would they all would have talked about the importance of building good teams and hiring the right people. As Wufoo.com’s Kevin H...
Kevin Martin… Unplugged
I wish Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg were harder on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin who was at the D6 conference. Look at this video and you get an idea that this is a future politician talking. I blame him and FCC for our current broadband mess. There is no running away from it, whatever he says. Too bad, I couldn’t find him lurking in the halls today. Oh well! ...
Click-to-call isn’t just for business. With the ubiquitous mobile handset morphing into an on-the-go media center, click-to-call offers a simple and elegant user-interface for any mobile Web application. National Public Radio apparently sees it that way. The recently debuted NPR Mobile Web is a partnership with ten local stations that delivers specially formatted text, pictures and audio - including streaming audio — to Web-enabled mobile phones. To listen to news stories, or pla...
Hmmm… Buy an IP-PBX at Costco
I’m on vacation at Disney World this week but happened to be checking my email and noticed a bit of interesting news involving Costco, Microsoft, and VoIP. Yes, I know, strange bedfellows, eh? Apparently, you can now buy a Microsoft Response Point IP-PBX phone system from Costco.com! That’s great news for Microsoft, though I would have liked to have seen Costco’s retail stores carry this IP-PBX system as well. After all, who doesn’t want to make a run to Costco to buy so...
The New New Browser Wars
In thinking about the desktop/web hybrid platforms that have launched or are about to be launched, I’ve decided that even if last year they were overhyped, this year we’re going to see real adoption and applications. But that presents an interesting problem for developers and eventually, for users. The vast array of options and functionalities not only makes the web experience different for different users, but it makes developing sites more complicated, much like the rise of differ...
Jajah, My Latest Article, Alec’s Squawk Box, Web Talkification
How’s that for a title? And now I’m going to skillfully - I hope - tie all these things together. Jajah is the common element to all the items in the title of this post, and let me explain why. Today Jajah got a lot of attention from Alec Saunders, myself, and by extension our audiences. Here we go… 1. My latest column for Service Provider Views on TMCnet ran today. It focused on - guess who - Jajah. If you’ve been following my columns there, you’ll know why - and...
Skype Conference Calls - Now Supports up to 25 Participants
Feedback from my recent post on the Unlimited Calling Plans: turns out that somewhere -unannounced - in a recent version upgrade release, Skype for Windows will now support up to 25 participants on a Skype Conference Call. While the host must be on Skype for Windows, participants can be on any version of Skype or be on a PSTN connection via SkypeOut. What is the impact for VAPPS’ HiDef Conferencing? HiDef Conferencing continues to have the following features: Complete bus...
Watch Jeff Pulver and Matthew Goodman on The Jeff Pulver Show: May 29 2008 Episode
Free video streaming by Ustream Matthew Goodman, Equity Stock Broker and World Traveler joined me in today’s episode of “The Jeff Pulver Show.” The topics covered during today’s broadcast included: Social Media, Life 3.0, Facebook’s 5000 Friends Limit, Sex and the City, Jeff Hibbard’s “@ Headgear”, and more. Shout outs go to: Jeffrey Sass, Kfir Pravda, Phil Campbell, Becky McCray, James Swinger, Patricia Harwell and Geo Geller. If you would like...
1TB Drive under $200!! Wow! Oh, Baby …
Samsung recently announced its one terabyte EcoGreen F1 hard drive with low power features for less than $200. Yes! Yes, you are reading correctly! 1TB <$200!! According to the company, the eco-friendly drive can be adopted as an external hard drive or internal drive for desktop PCs. It offers a 15% power savings compared to other low-powered 1TB hard drives and a 50% power reduction against traditional 1TB drives. Slated to launch Q2 2008 (like now), it will carry an MSRP of $199.00. Read a...
Are Mini-Notebooks on the Way Back?
Always loved the smallest of the small laptop PCs, but seems they never really took off for a number of reasons — form factor is limited by keyboard size (chiclets anyone), features tend to not be pushing the envelope and price is high (smaller means pricier — MacBook Air anyone). Now Acer and Dell seem to both be getting into the act. Read more about Acer’s latest offering (with photos) here on the UMPC Portal. Ah, if we could only carry one gadget that could do it all …...
Pinch Media Offers Metrics for iPhone Developers
Just as any online content producer or web site owner is hungry for metrics about their web site, iPhone application developers are bound to want the same types of facts and figures surrounding the usage of their programs. New York City-based startup Pinch Media, which has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and a handful of angel investors, offers iPhone SDK developers free code that gives them analytics based on unique users, active users ...
eBay Founder Omidyar Invests in Hawaiian Solar
Those that forged infotech are going green in droves. The latest is eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who has just invested in Hawaiian startup Sopogy, a builder of small-scale solar thermal plants that concentrate the suns rays to produce power. Unlike many well-known solar thermal startups that are building huge plants in the desert, Sopogy’s technology is on a much smaller scale, and can even be installed on rooftops. And this isn’t Omidyar’s first cleantech investment; last ye...
Google Woos Developers at I/O
The first day of Google I/O seemed like a coming out party for Google App Engine, the company’s competitive threat to Amazon AWS. For one, the registrations were thrown open to everyone, and for another, two new APIs were released: the image manipulation API, and (more interesting to web app hosting in general), the memcache API. Now the memcache API was something I expected from Amazon a long time ago, but perhaps they don’t use it themselves as much so it’s not in AWS. With...
Qualcomm Offers Carriers a Widget Plaza
I’m not sure where Qualcomm is going with its Plaza effort, a platform-agnostic widget development and delivery framework for carriers. I see why the wireless chip maker wants to appease carriers with their own set of mobile phone widgets, as they could generate higher data usage and increase ARPU, but I don’t know why a user would use them when they can download thousands of other widgets from other sites and bypass their carrier entirely. Mobile widgets are tiny apps residing on m...
Unlimited Calling Plans - Introductory Discount Ends this Weekend.
Back in April we talked about Skype’s new Unlimited Calling Plans. Just a heads-up that Skype’s introductory offer expires this weekend (June 1). They offer 3 months for the price of two or twelve months for the price of eight. For a review here are the basics: What’s Free (world wide): Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls Instant Messaging File Transfer Skype Conference calls (up to 10 participants, all on Skype) Skype Calling P...
Ifbyphone’s Virtual Receptionist To The Rescue
“Who you gonna call?” World & Web Marketing called ifbyphone to rescue Papa Dean’s Popcorn from drowning in its own success. The ifbyphone virtual receptionist success story was featured today in the San Antonio Express-News. Below is an excerpt: Staglik had gone to San Antonio-based World & Web to revamp their Web site. Between the walk-in traffic and the Internet orders, Papa Dean’s suddenly was too successful. “I called up Garth Dennis,” Staglik said, referri...
Some Geek Goodness
Here’s a shout out to the Little Geeks Foundation, philanthropic organization that collects, refurbishes and re-distributes donated free home computers (and Internet access) to underprivileged children in Toronto For those of wondering whether to buy a new MacBook or MacBook Pro or whether Vista is worth the investment, Little Geeks provides some healthy and much-need perspective. On June 12, Little Geeks will be holding an event where it will be giving refurbished computers - complete wi...
Something Nice to Start The Day: BooRah
BooRah, a semantic vertical search engine founded by former MetroFi employees, has indexed 100,000 blogs and over 100 review sites to create a nice restaurant review and search service for a variety of U.S. cities. Today, the Mountain View, Calif., company launched a partnership with online reservation agent BookingAngel that will allow folks to make online reservations with any California restaurant through the BooRah site. There’s a lot to like about this startup — namely that it ...
More Service Providers Should Consider Becoming ‘Broadband Parasites’
Back in July, 2003 in this blog post I first outlined a strategy for wireline service providers (RBOCs and PTTs) which I called being a Broadband Parasite: Five years later it turns out Wireless Providers like T-Mobile (in the US) have joined this fraternity by virtue of their support for WiFi UMA, while companies like Verizon and AT&T have not. Im re-publishing my blog post in its entirety with the hope of inspiring a conversation or two with some of the people responsible for the ...
Contrary Views at Telecosm ??? Part 2
Steve Forbes’ economic advice would be (maybe is) a great help to anyone running for President even though he wasn’t a successful candidate himself. He gave the keynote today at Telecosm 2008 which he and George Gilder sponsor. Below are the points I found most interesting; doesn’t mean I agree with them all but the depth of thought is worth repeating: "Belief" in global warming may possibly be an emotional substitute for traditional religious beliefs which many peop...
Breaking Out Blogger “Pay”
Fred Wilson sparked a nice conversation about how many bloggers get “paid” when people leaving comments, and how this payment system is breaking down as blog content and comments becomes splattered over the Web through services such as Friendster. While the idea of “blogger” and “getting paid” are an oxymoron to the vast majority of bloggers, Fred does put the spotlight on how bloggers are compensated for pounding away day after day. 1. Advertising: If youR...
D6: Rupert Murdoch for Obama? Not Quite…. But
Today at the D6:Conference, the corporate doyens and business leaders were out in full force, both on and off stage. Those who were grilled on stage showed were true to their form - Amazon’s Jeff Bezos charmed everyone with optimism for Kindle, Yahoo’s Jerry Yang was all emotion and patience, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook showed that he is still a young fella brimming with big dreams. But it was the wily old Fox, News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch who proved to the most charming, ...
Bed-bound broadband
It’s 1.17am. I’m sending a 21Mb file to a printing service for reproduction for a client workshop. It says it’ll take another 19 minutes to upload. If anyone ever asks you “what on earth will people do with all that bandwidth?”, the answer is “go to bed earlier”. Posted by Martin Geddes at 01:17 AM Comments: (post your comment) Enjoy Telepocalypse? Then try Telco 2.0™: Making money in an IP world ...
Android: Much Coolness, But 3 Big Problems
Like all the other geeks in attendance, I couldn’t help myself from letting out an audible “whooo” when Google showed off an Android phone demo Wednesday that linked Street View to a compass (see video below). Sure it was just a demo, but watching the virtual-reality performance of photo-maps linked to hand motions shows how cool new applications could be when they start by running on a high-end mobile phone. Delivering lots of cool new apps is the promise of Android, the ope...
Social Security Goes VoIP
The Social Security Administration is going VoIP and a big way. We’re talking 1,600 locations! Assuming at least 30 people per location, that’s 48,000 employees and IP phones. 48,000 employees just to manage Social Security? With computer automation, direct deposit, and other automation, the SSA shouldn’t need more than 1,000 employees. Heck, outsource to an American call center if you have to manage lots of inbound calls. It’s no wonder Social Security is going bankrupt....
Canadians Rally for Net Neutrality
As a few hundred scruffy protesters gathered in Ottawa yesterday to support Net Neutrality, busloads of teenagers on school trips to visit Canada’s seat of government walked past them, blissfully unaware that the fight to keep Facebook free was happening right next to them. Neutrality should be an easy sell: Nobody wants ISPs to be able to treat traffic differently, fearing it will lead to monthly “Google plans” or “Skype charges.” But it quickly g...
Yahoo Plans to Take on Gears, Air and Prism
Yahoo is following the footsteps of other technology giants by launching its own desktop/web hybrid application called BrowserPlus. The plug-in is only available as a sneak peak with a few demos, such as using BrowserPlus to drag-and-drop photos from your desktop into Flickr. Yahoo’s product clearly isn’t ready for prime time yet, but perhaps the excitement around MySpace taking advantage of Google Gears to improve its email capabilities galvanized them. Yahoo’s vision certain...
Zecter Invites & Our Poll About File Sharing
File-sharing service Zecter has opened up in private beta, for which the Silicon Valley-based startup that has taken funding from Y Combinator and Tandem Ventures has provided GigaOM with 150 invites that can be accessed here. The service has numerous features aimed at simplifying the sharing process, including the ability to sync files, track file access and retract shared documents, as well as to open a file directly from the browser in any desktop application, make edits, and save the chang...
Flash Exploit Shows the Dark Side of Web 2.0
Yesterday’s news of an exploit in Flash that gives hackers the ability to redirect a web site’s visitors to malware-laden servers highlights one of the biggest dangers and problems around the interactive web. Allowing third-party programs — such as Flash, mashups, widgets, or even specialized programs for activities such as bill payments — to run in web sites introduces vulnerabilities and performance troubles that are outside the web site owner’s control. The Flas...