Digital Common Sense

Filed by Ken at 5:59 pm under General
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Those of us who work closely together and use Facebook have been really active with a daily industry conference call called Squawkbox hosted and moderated by my good friend Alec Saunders from iotum. It’s an awesome forum with loads of fun, but also becoming a really important daily event in the industry.

My partner Sheryl and I count Alec and Howard at iotum among our close friends. Recently we had a chance to test this new feature as they were doing some preliminary testing of the inner works. Thanks also to Julien and Noam for spending some time with us on a call the other day.

More comments below the news. Here’s the news:

FREE Conference Calls on Facebook goes global Press release

iotum is announcing global availability of its popular FREE Conference Calls application on Facebook under agreements with Internet communications partners Truphone in the U.K., Abbeynet in Italy and MOI Telecom in France.

And here’s what you’ll see:

Why us this such big news? In the past to participate in the alls you had to dial in with some kind of telephone. Any phone would do. Sheryl and I often join the calls via Skype using SkypeOut so we can participate conveniently from our PC. Now we get more options. Solutions that deliver power and options to users are powerful tools in today’s environment.

New options, Sitofono from another friend, Luca Filigheddu, at Abbeynet. This solution sets up a free incoming phone call to your phone. While it works great to a direct dial phone, it’s less optimal if you’re inside a corporate PBX with an extension or at a hotel. But there’s more.

Truphone, from another friend, James Body, at Truphone (ok, we have several friends) lets callers set up a VoIP call via Truphone from your PC. At last, a PC call from right inside the Facebook app with no need to use Skype,

This stuff works great. In fact it’s awesome! Thanks to our friends for pulling together to build a fantastic solution. And thanks to the iotum gang for letting Sheryl and I help with testing.

That’s right. now you don’t need a telephone to participate in Squawkbox or any other FREE Conference call

Technorati Tags: iotum, Sitofono, Abbeynet, Truphone, unified communications, FREE Conference Calls, Facebook

Filed by Ken at 5:54 pm under General
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One of the VoIP bloggers I’ve watched from the early roots of where the industry is today is Eric Lagerway. He doesn’t blog nearly as much that I’ve seen lately. He’s pretty busy with his latest venture at Lypp these days.

Eric may not blog as much, but when he sends email about something going on in the industry, we all sit up and pay attention. Eric knows where the action is and he’s always somewhere at the heart of something exciting. Here are two blog posts about Eric’s latest.

37signals and Gaboogie Mashup Contest

By Erik Lagerway

 

We have been exchanging some ideas with the guys at 37signals and we have come up with what we think is a very cool mashup contest. Here is what we came up with…

Developers, build a mashup application or mashup your existing application using both the Highrise API and the Lypp API and win stuff.

Best app:

• $3000 Apple gift certificate
• 20,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $1800)
• 12 months subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $1800)

Runner-up:

• $1500 Apple gift certificate
• 10,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $900)
• 6 months subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $900)

2nd Runner-up:

• $500 Apple gift certificate
• 5,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $450)
• 3 month subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $450)

Application for entries: April 1 to May 1
[Read the full post]

And the other post from 37Signals

Mashup Lypp and Highrise for fun and profit 

Gaboogie is organizing a contest for developers to mashup their voice-application Lypp with Highrise. There are some cool prizes up for grabs including a $3,000 Apple gift certificate for number #1 and free service from Lypp and Highrise.

They got some cool ideas to get you going, like “Integrated Conference Calling within Highrise, Scheduled Calls, Click to Call Contacts in Highrise, Call-back Task links, just to name a few”. Get programming!

Technorati Tags: ERic Lagerway, Lypp, 37signals, mashup

Filed by Ken at 5:00 pm under General
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We’ve been working toward our live Internet TV show, GeekSpeakTV, for a while now. In the long run, we’re aiming for a weekly technology and human interaction show that we plan on broadcasting on BlogTV and PulverTV. We weren’t quite ready for live broadcasting, but wanted to get our first episode done. We’ve posted it on Seesmic, Blip.TV, Google Videos and YouTube. We’ll post and publish however we can until we’re all equipped and ready for live broadcast.

Filed by Ken at 6:04 pm under General
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I’m going to cross-post this on the Realtime Unified Communications Community, Stardust Global Ventures and my Digital Common Sense blog because it’s relevant to each.

Among the conferences my partner and I had high on our list to attend, VON.x in San Jose was one of the most important. Due to scheduling, spring break, and cost, we sadly came to the conclusion we just couldn’t attend. When your work is focused on a particular area and you have to miss a key event, it’s a deflating feeling.

Yesterday, in a message exchange with our friend and colleague Jeff Pulver sent us some real encouragement about GeekSpeakTV. That’s a new weekly Internet video program that we’re getting ready to unveil. In the course of conversation, Jeff prodded us in just the right way that we decided to rearrange things so we can get to Von.x.

Here’s some event info for any of you who don’t really understand what VON is all about.

VON.x has set its sights on the continuing evolution of Internet Communications. It’s no longer just voice or video, it’s everything over the Internet, commonly referred to as XoIP.

Covering Internet voice applications, wireless trends and technologies, presence, video and Internet TV, instant messaging, social media and more, VON.x is about predicting, disrupting, educating and gathering together the people who shape this ever-changing landscape, along with those who have a vested interest in partnering to help re-shape the future of Internet Communications.

With a targeted conference program for vertical industry segments and business communities along with an integrated exposition for those seeking to create powerful business relationships, VON.x is the ultimate gathering place to gain knowledge and realize profits from the Internet Communications Continuum™. It’s the ONLY event of its kind dedicated to all that encompasses Internet Communications.

So in the past day, we’ve been shuffling schedule and putting things in place to be at VON.x in San Jose. We’ll be arriving on the 16th and leaving the 19th. We will have to miss the last day.

Because we fill so many roles - writer, speaker, blogger, podcaster, videocaster, analyst, industry watcher, “first couple of voice“), Sheryl and I will be doing briefings, podcasts, video, taking pictures, and making the most of our time among industry leaders, colleagues and friends. We’re tickled to finally get to attend one of the Breakfast with Jeff events with Jeff. We’ve been prodding him behind the scenes to come hold a breakfast in Seattle so we could attend. Now we get to attend at VON.x, but we still want Jeff to come to Seattle.

We’ll be at the Unconference too.

What is Unconference (code named VONCamp) all about?

For years Jeff Pulver has been running executive summits and other get togethers with the idea of having a free exchange of ideas. This dialogue has been at the heart of VON. These two tracks are intended to pump up the volume of the dialogue.

The Innovators Forum is a series of sessions that show case companies in our more traditional format. However dialogue in these sessions is encouraged. The VONCamp Unconference is harder to describe, because it gives people a chance to self identify as a speaker. At the present time there are 12 speaking slots. If you’ve got something you want to discuss that’s outside the formal program, VONCamp Unconference is the place to do it. We also have a SpeedDating session.

If you’re going to be at VON, drop us a line or look for us there. We’d love to meet as many new people as possible. We’ll be playing many roles at the conference, but it’s certain that we’ll be easy to find. We hope to see you there.

Technorati Tags: VON, Von.x, Jeff Pulver, Conferences, VoIP, Video, unified communications, Ken Camp, Sheryl Breuker, Stardust Global Ventures

Filed by Ken at 12:57 pm under General
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Last week Sheryl and I had the opportunity to see a demo of something new. Many of our friends and colleagues use an array of what we affectionately refer to as social networking tools. Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter, Hictu, and Seesmic are great examples of social networking tools that are used primarily for social interactions. With a bit of focus, they can be used as business tools as well. On the other hand, LinkedIn is almost exclusively a business tool, but has very limited social networking capability. Each have their focus, and each present some features that can be very useful depending on the user’s individual needs.

As social media expands and grows, we might think about how collaboration fits into the sphere of social media. Participating on Alec Saunder Squawkbox call this morning brought that point to light as we all collaborated on the phone, but talked about various news on the web.

Social media as we’ve thought about it up to this point is a broad and general genre of application and network service. From a tactical perspective, in the day-to-day operation of many specialities, there’s a collaborative aspect to our work that requires integration of social media tools to effectively use technology.

We had the pleasure of exploring an example of that in a solution that was quite impressive (thanks JP). It’s called GeoConference. from TGIS Technologies . TGIS Technologies Inc. is a 100% Canadian-owned company. It was founded in 1990 under the name Consultants TGIS Inc. and is legally incorporated under Canadian law. Its headquarters is
located in Chelsea (Québec). We had the chance to chat with Yves Carbonneau, President of TGIS.

Here’s some of the basic background we learned:

Overview
The GeoConference is a multi-tiered client/server application. It was created in C# and C++ and
functions in the .Net Framework 1.1+ environment. The Server can easily support several
hundereds of users simultaneously in different sessions.

The GeoConference system is constituted of the following modules:

• GeoConference Server
• GeoConference Client Application
• IIS Plug-in
• DataProvider
• BasicVector, GeoTiff, RasterImage, Photo and WMS Connectors
• GeoConference Remote Admistrator Tool.

Technological Innovation
The GeoConference system is innovative. No other equivalent commercial civil product exists at
the present time. It is the only product on the market that allows users to hold a “live
conference” in real-time using geospatial data. The unique technology that we have
developed lets us protect the geospatial data, pass through firewalls and install the client
application without IT assistance. Thanks to our technology, it is as easy to participate in a
GeoConference session as it is to make a phone call.

In business terms, the solution offers:

• Improved crisis response time(s)
• Better access (to information) and team co-ordination
• Availability of a shareable, real time COP (Common Operational Plan)
• Better preparedness for future situation management
• Improved cost control.

That’s what we learned. What we experienced was far more compelling. Anyone who’s ever worked with geospatial data knows that the tools are cumbersome, and provide only rudimentary useful information unless they’re in the hands of a power users. GIS data holds a wealth of information, but the tools fo extraction and analysis of that data just are not user friendly.

We joined a GeoConference and looked at a real-world example of how GeoConference might be used. Here’s a picture of what we saw.

What was most notable was the ease with which conference particpants can chat and ask questions, pass control back and forth, paint boxes and annotate areas on the screen and collaborate in a very comfortable social media-like setting.In short, Sheryl and I were in the drivers seat in a collaboration session that let us explore how physical disaster response teams might quickly and easily collaborate with extremely friendly tools to work the logistics of a disaster response.

I’ve done some work with GIS solutions and geospatial data in the past. I’m a novice at best, but I was positively wowed by this solution. It delivers the power to actually use GIS data in a practical way into the hands of incident managers and responders with a very minimal learning curve. No training. No huge downloads. No pain.

What struck me quickly is the wide number of uses this solution can have across a number of business sectors:

• Disaster response - Fire, flood, earthquake. Whatever the physical incident might be, coordinating logistics quickly and effectively is a challenge. Recall the deploreable response from FEMA during the Katrina disaster, and you have a sterling example of why tools are needed.
• Incident response - Think about fires and th elike in crowded cities. GIS data contains far more information that shown in the one screenshot I’ve invluded. High rise building sprinklers, electrical systems, plumbing and the like are all built in layers with the geospatial data schema. Imagine a fire truck en route to a scene with full GIS data about all the floors of the building, where the hot spots are, where the people are likely too be, Coordinating on the run via wireless broadband with an incident commander who’s remotely looking at the big picture.
• Transportation - Whether it’s mapping truck routes or railways, or planning a new highway, geospatial data plays a vital role. Here’s a solution that lets designers work with field engineers to collaborate effectively.
• Telecommunications - Think about the challenge of mapping antenna footprint coverage with geopspatial data. This tool could provide huge felxibility in antenna positioning for a wireless carrier simply exploring the “what if” questions of what it might take to deliver service in a new market.

The opportunities here are positively mind-boggling to me. It’s made me step back and think more about how social media can move into a tactical role, providing tools that we use in our everday lives in a number of different way. I think what we’re seeing in social media today is barely scratching the surface of where solutions like GeoConference are going to take us.

Technorati Tags: GeoConference, TGIS Technologies, GIS, geospatial data, incident response, collaboration, social media

Filed by Ken at 11:44 am under Tech in General, Technology
2 Comments