I got a note from my good friend Pat Phelan, CEO at Cubic Telecom, yesterday afternoon while out running an errand about a new service called Twitterfone. You can see the press release down below. It isn’t VoIP, but this is a really fascinating example of where voice services are heading.

Please bear in mind that I was out in mobile mode, with only my Blackberry, so all I’d actually seen initially was the flurry of chatter on Twitter about Twitterfone and the expected flurry of test posts as people try it out. Sheryl and I got invitations to join the beta, but weren’t back at the office until last night to actually get that done. For those of you who follow me at all, you know I’m an avid Twitter user, and have been since it was Twttr, long before it caught the wave of popularity. Sheryl and I use Twitter as part of our work at Stardust Global Ventures, and it’s an integral part of our daily life.

When I started using Twitter, it was SMS only, so it required a mobile phone to use. Now it seems to have come full circle, as Twitterfone enables people to use their mobile phone rather than the browser/. Huh? Yep/ The difference is that you can now phone in a message and have it post rather than key in an SMS text message. It also posts a short URL that links to your recorded audio.

Like a great many people, I use Twitter almost entirely via mobile on my Blackberry, and I like the raw simplicity of the SMS interface. I find many add-on tools make Twitter more complex and are something of a nuisance. The web interface enhancements seem to wipe out the simple elegance of Twitter with undue complexity. But adding voice to the mix is a very different enhancement and opens new vistas in human-to-network resource interaction.

I’m not sure the concept bedazzles me initially, but it’s interesting. I’ve played with SpinVOX and Utterz in the past. Both can do a similar type of thing - variations on a theme. Both of those implementations work pretty poorly in my experience. Speech recognition software however is improving at a rapid rate and if Twitterfone can do speech to text conversion cleanly, there could be some real value. Given the global audience on Twitter, the language and pronunciation variations could prove challenging.

That challenge was on my mind while I out in mobile mode, only on my Blackberry. That’s when I got this message via Twitter on my mobile -

To be fair, it’s the only one of those I saw, but very few of the people I follow on Twitter are using Twitterfone so far. I know it’s in invite-only beta mode, so I expect some glitches.

This morning I tried it out myself for the first time. Here’s what Twitterfone posted. If you click the graphic, you can hear what I said.

Twitterfone did a reasonable, but not quite perfect job of speech-to-text conversion.

Given that both Twitter and Twitterfone are free services, and Twitter has proven time and again that it’s not entirely reliable, they make an interesting match for social networking tools. Now it’s pretty easy to make a phone call and post to Twitter. You can actually speak a three minute message and the beginning will post to Twitter (140 character limit). People who want to hear the whole message can click through on the web to do so. On my Blackberry, I can click through and read the transcribed text, but not play the audio.

Being able to post to Twitter via a phone call somewhat troubles me as much as it intrigues me. The stream of Twitter messages is filled with useless drivel as it is. I’m as guilty as the next of posting useless information that’s only noise to the world at large. Now we all have an easier way to post as we drive or are otherwise occupied. That’s a mixed blessing.

I know two of the founding investors, both friends I think highly of. I’m really curious what their long range plans are. Is this for publicity or do they envision a monetization scheme that enables monetization. So far Twitter doesn’t have any monetization mechanism, so now we have another free service enhancing a free service. I’m not sure where the survivability might be. It seems potentially rather tenuous. But Pat and Florian are very bright guys with a great handle on the business, so I’m interested in what their vision is.

Pat and Florian, how about a podcast briefing on here?

Twitterfone inaugurates voice-to-Twitter service

• Allows anyone to send updates to Twitter by calling a number
• Voice is automatically transcribed to text

Twitterfone www.twitterfone.com - an Internationally backed voice to text message service launched today in the US, UK and Ireland.

Twitterfone voice-enables Twitter, a text message rebroadcast service and the hottest social networking service at the moment. With Twitterfone, people can dictate text messages via their mobile to be sent out to everyone on their Twitter social network.

Twitterfone investor and Cubic Telecom President Pat Phelan stated “Right now the million active users of Twitter use cell phones or computers to send and receive short bursts of texts to each other. Millions of messages each day are sent like this but while Twitter is one of the truly mobile social networks out there, there are times when users on the move cannot stop what they are doing to key in a message.

Twitterfone improves upon Twitter by allowing us to make a voice call which is turned into text and sent out to our network of friends. This only costs the price of a local call, no matter how many it is sent to. With hands-free kits common in cars it now means we can text each other without taking our eyes off the road and our hands off the wheel.”

How Twitter works:
Once people sign up to Twitter, they can subscribe to receive updates of users and receive them via the web or a text message. Web gurus Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble have over 20,000 subscribers each and even the Los Angeles Fire Department and the English Government are now sending out text updates to people via their Twitter account.

An alliance of international high-tech and telecom companies provide the technology platform behind Twitterfone. Geneva-based VOX telecom provides calls routing, Redwood City, California-based Zong powers mobile enrollment and transactions, MAXroam powers the telephony intelligence system and Dublin firm Dial2Do supplies the core speech recognition which is at the heart of Twitterfone. Dial2Do CEO Ivan MacDonald stated

“We’ve been involved in the space where the phone system meets the web for a long time now, and naturally we’ve been fascinated by the rise of Twitter. Increasingly, we’ll see “web 2.0″ services that people use primarily from their phones. Projections are that mobiles will become the dominant way of accessing the Internet, and a lot of this will be done via voice interfaces. We are very pleased to see Dial2Do add even more value to an already extraordinary service.”

Phelan added “We built this because we are all avid users of Twitter and have made some excellent business connections and friendships from it. We decided to see what we could contribute to the service and with our telecoms backgrounds the Twitterfone idea fitted perfectly”.

Twitterfone is in invite beta at the moment meaning that only those that have been sent invites can join up. There will be regular releases of invites and Twitterfone says they have planned for a million sign-ups over the next year.

Twitterfone inc is a privately owned corporation

Twitterfone investors are Pat Phelan, David Marcus, Florian Seroussi, Sean O Sullivan and Ivan MacDonald.

Technorati Tags: Twitterfone, Pat Phelan, Twitter, speech-to-text, voice recognition

Filed by Ken at 2:49 am under Mobility & Handheld, Unified Communications
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I’m not always keen on copying and posting a complete entry from another site, but since this is really a commercial for an upcoming free webinar in which I’ll be one of the panelists, and since my pals over at TMCnet are putting this on with sponsorship from other friends at Jaduka, copying seems best. The webinar is on Tuesday, April 29, 2008, 2:00pm EST 11:00am PST.

You can find the TMCnet page here.

Free Webinar Register Now!

Communications Enabled Business Services Tuesday, April 29, 2008, 2:00pm EST 11:00am PST Companies are more productive and more successful when their employees and customers are better connected to the processes that drive business. Communication Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) combines communication technologies with business processes and applications to more effectively communicate between customers, suppliers, and employees. And, integrating new tools shouldn’t be a difficult or risky proposition. It should be easy to implement and compatible with the latest technologies. By connecting people, information, and the workflow process, a business can streamline operations, provide better customer service, and make a positive impact on its bottom line. After the presentation, the Webinar will be open for a live Q&A. Be sure to have your questions ready! Register Now! PRESENTERS: Trevor Baca Vice President of Software Engineering Jaduka Trevor Baca is Vice President of Software Engineering at Jaduka and oversees software engineering, real-time systems engineering, telephony services development, information architecture, usability, and user-experience engineering teams. He has ten years’ experience in telephony and software development and has held senior leadership roles in software development, systems engineering, strategy, product development, and human-computer interaction. Baca also holds a similar title at NetworkIP, the parent company of Jaduka, and a leading platform provider of prepaid telephony since 1998. At NetworkIP, he led research and development of the second-generation Kodiak services platform. He was instrumental in bringing both metrics-based and user-centered development to the product life cycles of the different parts of the Jaduka technology portfolio. Baca also researched and directed the development of the NetworkIP iQT® realtime QoS analysis and correction system, registered as U.S. Patent #6,914,967. Baca received a Bachelor of Arts in the honors program from the University of Texas. Ken Camp Independent Consultant Ken Camp has more than 25 years of experience in information technology. Ken spent 17 years with AT&T and Lucent Technologies successfully designing and implementing voice and data networks. He later worked in the security marketplace and played a key role in early IPSec VPN deployments. As an independent consultant, Ken’s primary focal areas include network performance improvement, security practices and the design and deployment of integrated voice and data solutions. He may be contacted at: ken_camp@realtimepublishers.net Erik Linask Associate Editor Technology Marketing Corporation In addition to his work with TMC’s IP Communications publications, Erik is a contributor to TMCnet. Prior to joining the TMC team, he was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, a global securities services publication, where he also managed the magazine’s survey research. Erik began his professional career at management consulting firm Leadership Research Institute.

Filed by Ken at 4:05 pm under Unified Communications
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That’s probably not a fair question, but let me step back a moment. You might want to take a look at two earlier posts I wrote -

Yoohoo Yahoo. Where are you?
Hey Yahoo - Knock, knock. Is anyone home?

They were posts moitivated, at least in part, by comments from friend and colleague Stuart Henshall. I link to his comments in both.

Stuart and I were sharing observations about Jerry Yang at Yahoo and his plan to spend 100 days in silent reflection within Yahoo to sort out their plan of attack. Now it’s perhaps time to reflect on the outcome.

First, 100 days was far too long. In Internet time, that’s the life of some companies. To think time would stand still for Yahoo to spend 100 days contemplating its navel was ludicrous. Secondly, we’ve gone well beyond 100 days. Laughably beyond.

In the time that’s passed, now we hear rumblings of layoffs at Yahoo. I don’t have any direct confirmation, but certainly there are a lot of rumblings. And I have enough connections who work at Yahoo that the barometer shows there’s a climate of change sweeping in, but it seems mostly unknown. I get the feeling that for many Yahooligans,, they’re like mushrooms - being fed manure and kept in the dark. That’s just a sense I get from casual conversation.

In one of my earlier posts, I aimed this comment at  Jerry Yang:

I hope while you’re radio silent you’re talking with and listening to
people like Jeff Bonforte and Daniel Raffel and not just talking in an
echo chamber. If you’re staring into the abyss with a deer in the
headlights look, please don’t let the great people at Yahoo all ride
that train until it derails. I hope you aren’t doing all the talking
and failing to listen to the people who made Yahoo what it was. Because
it can be again, but not if you fail to act.

From the outrsiders perspective, when Yahoo went radio silent, they went comatose. They’ve failed to act, failed to plan, failed to think. None of those may be true. What they’ve really failed to do is provide a clue. They’re pretty much stuck in radio silence.

When you’re a company like Yahoo, competing with the likes of Google and Facebook silence isn’t a weapon. It isn’t a defense. It surely isn’t an attack. Silence is tantamount to cowering in fear.

I said Yang could revitalize Yahoo by talking and listening to the right people, but it’s something that had to be done in a timely manners.

The question in my mind now is whether or not Yahoo has any relevance at all. Is there enough left to salvage and maintain some degree of leadership. For me personally, I’ve realized that I use my Yahoo ID for one thing and only one thing. It’s my Flickr identity. If not for FLickr, Yahoo wouldn’t exist on my personal radar.

So here’s a question for you  - do you Yahoo? How and why? What is it you use Yahoo for these days. And if you don’t use it at all, I’d like to know that too. I can identify a number of things most of us don’t use Yahoo for -

• It’s not the search engine of choice. Google has that.
• It’s not the social network of choice. Facebook seems to have that, although I wouldn’t discount MySpace just yet either.
• It’s not the IM chat medium of choice. With Gtalk, AIM, MSN and Jabber, the real leader is probably a cross-platform tool that let’s us chat on multiple networks. If we’re talking pure messaging chatter, I don’t think we can discount either Twitter or Jaiku.
• It’s not the video tool of choice. Sure lots of people used Yahoo video, but I think Skype has actually overtaken it, and SightSpeed has a continually growing use base.
• It’s not the default home page. My Yahoo just isn’t. The most common home pages I see are Google, MSN, news or sports pages. I can’t remember the last time I saw Yahoo come up as anyones default home page.

If we don’t live in Yahoo, and we aren’t using Yahoo, how sustainable is it? And frankly, what the heck is Jerry Yang doing about it?

As an interesting comparison, there’s been a lot of talk about the senior leadership team at Skype and what’s been going on over there. Is Yahoo as interesting as Skype in terms of what lies ahead? Not in my book. And not if you read the chatter on the web.

Yahoo has lost relevance and is still in decline. The question for me is whether Yahoo is sliding into the abyss or will be able to pull out and salvage a respectable leadership role in any segment. Or will we simply write them off as another also-ran?

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, relevance, Jarry Yang

Filed by Ken at 10:37 pm under Tech in General, Technology, Unified Communications
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Last year the O’Reilly ETel event was perhaps the most exciting conference venue in the industry. O’Reilly wasn’t able to continue the event, but that’s not enough to let something so exciting and powerful fade away. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Lee Dryburgh, this year we’ll see the kickoff of eComm2008. It’s what I believe will be the first of a revitalized, high-energy conference that will set the industry aflame with passion and innovation.

The conference takes place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA from March 12th-14th.

Established in 1996, the Computer History Museum is a public benefit organization dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history. It is home to one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world, a collection comprising over 13,000 objects, 20,000 images, 5,000 moving images, 4,000 linear feet of cataloged documentation and 5,000 titles or several hundred gigabytes of software. The mission of the Computer History Museum is to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age. As such, the Museum plays a unique role in the history of the computing revolution and its worldwide impact on the human experience.

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Here’s just a small sampling of speakers on the agenda. These are just a few that are my personal highlights. Check the speakers page for a complete list.

Bob Frankston

Frankston Innovating, Achieving connectivity from the edge.

Bob Frankston may be best known for writing VisiCalc. He has been working on online services and networks since 1966 and while at Microsoft initiated the home networking effort. Since then he’s focus his attention on a post-telecom model that builds on the Internet dynamic to achieve connectivity from the edge rather than the center.

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Brough Turner

NMS Communications, SVP and CTO

Brough Turner is SVP, CTO and co-founder of NMS Communications wherehe oversees evolution of technology and product architectures andworks on business strategy and new market development. Brough writesand is quoted widely on telecommunications topics in trade and generalbusiness publications and he is a frequent speaker at telecom industryevents around the world. His current interests include mobilewireless access, broadband policy, mobile video, and user createdcontent and communities. Brough blogs athttp://blogs.nmss.com/communications/ on the technology, economic andsocial issues of communications at the intersection of telecom,mobility and the Internet.

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David Isenberg

Awaiting…, Founder

David S. Isenberg spent 12 years at AT&T Bell Labs until his 1997 essay,”The Rise of the Stupid Network,” was received with acclaim everywhere in the global telecommunications community with one exception — at AT&T itself! So Isenberg left AT&T in 1998 to found isen.com, LLC (an independent telecom analysis firm based in Cos Cob, Connecticut) and to publish The SMART Letter, an open-minded commentary on the communications revolution and its enemies.

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Jeff Bonforte

Yahoo! Inc., Vice President, Product Management

Jeff has founded a few startups including i-drive, an online storage pioneer, in 1998. He served as President for SIPphone, where he lead the development and release of Gizmo Project (www.gizmo5.com). He began working at Yahoo! in 2005, where he initially lead Voice. Shortly after, he was promoted to run Messenger, Voice and Chat. He was promoted to Vice President in 2007. Today he works in early product development in Search.

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Lee S Dryburgh

SS7 Networks Limited, Director

Lee S. Dryburgh is a person-to-person communications technologist. He is an engineering doctoral candidate at UCL (with sponsorship from Cisco), SS7 consulting engineer via his company SS7 Networks and the initiator of the Emerging Communications (eComm) conference. He has performed work for numerous operators including British Telecom, O2, Sprint, T-Mobile, Orange, Verisign, Hutchinson, as well as vendors including Marconi, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, and Cisco. He is an acknowledged expert in the telecommunication protocol suite Signaling System #7 and lead-authored the bestselling book on the topic. His research focus is the future of telephony and enabling conversation between relevant strangers.

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Martin Geddes

STL, Chief Analyst

Martin Geddes is author of the popular telecom strategy blog Telepocalypse, as well as chief analyst at STL and co-instigator of the Telco 2.0 initiative (www.telco2.net) — helping network operators and vendors make money in an all-IP world.

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Thomas McCarthy-Howe

The Thomas Howe Company, CEO

Thomas McCarthy-Howe has nineteen years of experience in telecommunications product development. He is currently an independent consultant to service providers, enterprises and equipment vendors in the design and development of next generation communications equipment and services. Thomas has held senior management and engineering positions at industry leaders such as Comverse, Versatel Networks, PictureTel and Aware. As a member of the PictureTel engineering team, Mr. Howe designed audio and video software of the first PC-based video conferencing system, as well as software for the original version of NetMeeting, and as Aware Inc.’s software architect for the first commercially available ADSL chipset. In 2007, Thomas won the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Mashup Contest. In addition to his writing and teaching, he currently serves on several technical advisory boards and boards of directors.

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That list is just a few of the fabulous speakers on the eComm agenda. Yes, those were chosen because they represent some personal friends we look foward to spending time with, but they’re also trusted colleagues who represent the voice of wisdom in the industry. The speaker’s list for this event is incomparable with that of many conferences.

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Looking over the agenda yields such a depth and breadth of conversations that this is truly an even not to be missed.

My partner Sheryl and I are making sure we won’t miss it. We’ll be there, and expect to be presenting one of the lightning talks on the last day. We’ll be talking about why enabling a hyperconnected state with voice and data services is one of the most vital competitive differentiators in the industry.

We’re also lined up to speak should schedules change or anyone’s travel plans go awry. We will definitely be there blogging, interviewing, podcasting, doing video, and sharing the excitement and frenzy of action from the conference.

We hope you’ll look for us and come say hello. We want to meet and talk with as many of you as possible.

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Special Bonus

The cost of this conference is already low, one of the lowest cost conferences in the industry. Early bird registration is still in effect right now, for another $300 off.

As a special bonus if you email either Sheryl or Ken, we’ll provide a special discount code that will get an additional 15% discount. The early bird registration will end soon, so make your plans now.

Drop us an email to let us know if you’re going to be there so we can set aside time to meet in person.

Technorati Tags: eComm, Lee Dryburgh, Ken Camp, Sheryl Breuker

Filed by Ken at 4:43 pm under Mobility & Handheld, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications
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Art Rosenberg always writes some pretty thoughtful pieces over at Unified-View. I’ve only met Art once, but have read his work for a long time. The other day he posted his thoughts on How Mobility and UC Will Really Change The Pace of Business Communications in 2008.

Art’s post set me thinking about unified communications, mobility and social network attributes in a slightly different want as I look ahead to 2008. I really encourage you to go read Art’s full post, but in the meantime, I’ll share some thoughts.

UC Means All Business Communications
Now that the term “unified communications” (UC) has subsumed real-time telephony, wired and wireless connectivity, and all forms of messaging, it has become synonymous for all aspects of business communications. It has also become increasingly difficult to define everything that UC is really supposed to do for the enterprise. Microsoft and its Alliance partner Nortel wisely recognized this problem last year, and proceeded to establish hundreds of demonstration sites around the world in order to show business management what UC does for business operations and end users, rather than just explain how the technology infrastructure works.

This is a call to the burgeoniong unified communications community. Business communications and real-time telephony are what business cares about. I’ve written recently about VoIP being pumbing, or simply more infrastructure. Art’s saying something very similar. It’s not about technology. It’s about business. The industry has to wake up to that.

Simplifying The User Perspective of UC – Contacting People Quickly Any Way
…UC is all about making contact and communicating with people easily, flexibly, and quickly in a variety of ways.

What a great summary right there. Simplify. That sounds easy, but I realized how hard it is. Let me give you my perspective. Simplification is something that small, creative innovators do well. Simplification comes from companies like MOBIVOX, iotum, Cubic Telecom, GrandCentral, and the like really provide powerful tools that simplify life for users. When’s the last time you really say Cisco, Nortel or Avaya simplifying things for your communications needs? Really?

That’s part of the changing landscape that will impact unified communications and social networking in 2008. More powerful tools with simpler interactions are going to be a very hot item. They’re where the quickest successes will be found. That means the majority of innovative changes, the ones that catch our attention, will still be coming from small innovators next year. They’re the people to watch.

Here’s Art’s take on the traditional industry -

On the other hand, traditional telephony will be a big target for the most drastic changes in business contact procedures, since it has traditionally been based upon the inflexibilities of wired connections, restrictive user interfaces, and location-based devices. So, not only will business calls “integrate” with flexible messaging facilities, but, from a user perspective, all aspects of traditional call management will be changing as well. Much of what will happen to business call management will be derived from the experience of traditional customer call center technologies that can now be implemented more efficiently through IP telephony infrastructures and multimodal endpoint devices.

My view is more direct. Traditional telephony is a dead business that hasn’t keeled over yet. When I left Lucent Technologies in 1996, I told friends that I thought the old AT&T, Lucent and everything that spun out of that was a dead industry. But that like a large animal shot on safari, it would run for miles and miles before it finally fell over dead. It’s an industry that was repeatedly shot and has been running for a long time now, but still bleeding profusely. The traditional carriers are flagging and faltering. They haven’t innovated in years. That ability is gone from their genetic makeup. Sure, they may have divisions or business units that offer wireless and innovate a bit, but let’s face it, the traditional telcos aren’t she sharpest knives in the drawer. They only surprise with the stupid things they do.

When is the last time a traditional telephone company surprised customers with something really new and innovative? Think hard. Real hard. Was it direct dial long distance? or touch tone dialing? Look at your phone. Unless you have an iPhone, you’re using a very old and tired UI to do anything with it. That ten-digit touch pad was an interface to an old network. The new network of today really needs a more useful interface - one that’s simple and powerful.

Here are some areas where Art sees unified communications impacting business communications -

• “Contextual” Presence and Availability
• Proactive Notifications From Automated Business Process Applications
• Multimodal Messaging Communications
• “Instant” Conferencing

These are important because they’re all about the things we’ve been watching for a while now.

Presence and availability aren’t new concepts, but they’re becoming key attributes that successful business people have to manage. That’s a social media overlay into business service networking that’s on a collision course. It’s what I’d call a cataclysmic event on the horizon. And my prediction is that Microsoft will be a non-player, fumbling with how to get in the game and own that segment. They want it badly. I don’t believe they have a clue where to begin. They may indeed become a dominant player at some point but Microsoft is like the traditional telcos when it comes to innovation - it simply isn’t there.

Proactive notification is a vital part of the evolution to a Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) in some fashion. It’s all about making business processes and workflows interact easily with network communications services (voice, video and data). This is the convergence we’ve been talking about for ten years now. Tight coupling between business applications and network services will engender a change in corporate culture that will enable some companies to become the new enterprise we’ve never seen before. Some enterprise will become the nimble, innovative giants that have only been dreamed of. They’ll dominate their respective markets. They’ll also be incredibly vulnerable since they can be leapfrogged by a competitor at any point. That’s going to drive a time of mergers, acquisitions, and bloodletting across the industries involved.

Multimodal Messaging Communications speaks to me as mobility. What to we really want? Ubiquituous, easy access, anywhere, any time. We want always on, always connected, always ready to go services. This is a combination of mobile computing services and enhanced wireless networking. Technologies that couple with tools to give us powerful resources. I like to call it casual computing, but mobile computing will also do. It’s the always on mentality. That’s something my life partner Sheryl and I experience every day of our lives as a hyperconnected couple. I believe, Sheryl and I believe that the world is becoming more hyperconnected. We realize that our particular integration of mobile and network technologies into our daily lives isn’t the norm today. But we believe that’s changing for many people.

Instant Conferencing that Art mentions is a sore spot for many. Anyone who’s ever had to set up a conference call on the fly knows what a nightmare that can be. Even when we set one up in advance, the industry is fraught with a feature set that’s daunting and and uses an arcane set of keystrokes (mostly on that obsolete ten0digit dial pad) to operate. The conferencing segment of the industry really needs to be wiped out, and a fresh start. But there’s hope and light. iotum recently put up a free conference calling application on Facebook that gives a glimmer of hope to how conferencing might be set up in a business environment one day soon in an SOA world.

I think the key point, the real power in Art’s post, comes in the closing section - Managing The New I/O For Business Process Applications – People!. Then again, he’s a great writer who knows how to set us up. It also made me think of one of my favorite books of all time, Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology by Darrin Barney. The core concept is that we, as humans, are now really an I/O tool of the network, the large I Internet that collects and gathers information about everything on our planet. In short, we feed the machine. And after all, isn’t the Internet really a large data collection engine gathering input from all of us for the biggest data warehouse ever imagined?

Technorati Tags: unified communications, mobility, casual computing, always on, hyperconnected couple

Filed by Ken at 10:42 am under Mobility & Handheld, Tech in General, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications
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My friend and colleague Matt Lamber over at Conversationware posted this yesterday in response to my post A Brief Look at 2007 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s a worthwhile read, and I ose Matt a note of thanks. Unknowingly, it was an email exchange we shared that led me down that line of thinking.

I thought it was worth revisiting this, especially after reading my friends at FierceVoip claiming VoIP crusader recants.  (And a small ego note, it’s Ken Camp, not Champ).

VOIP is just plumbing

More and more it has seemed to me that VOIP doesn’t matter. I don’t see this discussed on mainstream communications news sites, presumably it’s a question of who pays their bills through advertising.

First, I don’t think I’ve recanted much, but I will explain. Second, the plumbing analogy is certainly getting a bit long in the tooth, but this seems a good time to elaborate.

The post on FierceVoIP says

Don’t know if I would call all those edge controllers, QoS monitoring, security systems and media gateways mere plumbing, but I do agree that selling voice as a service rather than a technology is where the market is heading.

‘m not sure I’d either agree or disagree, but what I will say is that infrastructure, whether it’s SBCs and gateways or VoIP in general, isn’t what customers want. I think the FieceVoIP piece actually supports the point I’m making.

VoIP is not disruptive. It’s over ten years old. It isn’t innovative today. VoIP is a tried and true technology. It’s tested and proven. It’s been carrying massive volumes of voice calls for a long time now. It’s almost what I’d call a legacy technology at this point.

The failing of the unified communications industry segment has been that solution providers aren’t selling comprehensive integrated solutions yet. They’re still selling technology widgets. VoIP is a technology widget that is simply part of the established infrastructure. It’s not new. It’s not sexy. It’s not disruptive.

Customers don’t want to buy VoIP any more than they want to buy frame relay. Customers want solutions to business problems. Selling VoIP is still leaving it up to the customer to solve their own problem by peace-mealing together their own suite of solutions.

In 2008, I expect to see more VoIP companies that can’t move off of selling technolgy into designing and selling integrated business solutions fail in the market. That’s right, fail. And they should fail.

Plumbing parts are a commmodity. You can go to Home Depot and buy everything you need to pipe a house. Great for the do-it-yourselfer indeed. But most enterprise businesses, especially in the SMB space, aren’t looking to become DIY voice providers. They’re in a core business and they’re looking for solutions to their business problems.

So a word to the solution providers out there. Think long and hard about how you really integrate technologies to provide comprehensive solutions. Whether you call it Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) or Software as a Service (SaaS), the focus for the year ahead has to be on business solutions for business problems.

Integrating services, voice - video - data, with business applications like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management and Human Resources Management are going to be the really hot focal points in 2008. That’s where the real need is. And to succeed - to thrive - solution providers can’t offer widgets and plumbing and still win business.

Technorati Tags: VoIP as Plumbing, VoIP, unified communicatoins, SOA, SaaS, convergence, integration

Filed by Ken at 6:49 pm under Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications
4 Comments

For those of you who didn’t follow the sage of the imploding O’Reilly ETel conference, I won’t bore you with the details. Rather. let me just make you all aware of the replacement eCommMedia conference this coming March in San Francisco.

My friend Martin Geddes just posted the first blog post I saw about this. He’s going to be speaking at eComm 2008, which takes place on 12-14 March.

Lee Dryburgh is behind it all.

The cost of the conference is already low. (You’ve no idea how expensive it
is to lay on one of these events until you do it!) Early bird
registration is still in effect, for another $300 off.

I honestly can’t tell you at this point whether I’ll be there or not. I had a proposl on the table to speak and moderate a panel at ETel, but to this point, I haven’t been involved in anything to do with eComm. I can tell you I won’t be paying to attend, but if the opportunity arises to speak or join the conference as a member of the press/analyst corps, I’ll likely be there.

Technorati Tags: eComm2008, Emerging Communications Conference, unified communications

Filed by Ken at 7:56 pm under Unified Communications
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I’ve hinted many times on Digital Common Sense over the past few months that I was working on something new. Something looking forward to the future.

Today, my partner in life and business, Sheryl Breuker, and I unveiled the first peek at our joint venture, Stardust Global Ventures.

Sheryl and I share many interests in broad areas of technology, its impact on society, how human behavior adapts to use technology and the aspects of both mobile and casual computing.

Our focus will shift and evolve, but we’re going to be actively engaged at the center of how social media, communications technologies, and the evolution of the Internet are used by people across all walks of life. I’ve focused for years on enterprise business needs. We believe that we can help business enterprises large and small better understand how to embrace and adopt emerging technologies to compete in new, stronger ways. The work force of tomorrow will demand access to the tools and resources they’ve grown up using. Corporate culture, for many organizations, must shift to a new paradigm of embracing social networks, instant messaging, chat, video and mobile solutions.

Just as business must adapt, society also evolves. These tools are used by kids in school, with their friends, educators, non-profit organizations, churches and families. As a hyper-connected couple, using leading edge technologies and tools ourselves, our mission is to help others understand how to embrace change, incorporate the tools in ways that make sense, and maximize the value of a constantly shifting technology.

I will continue to blog here, but Sheryl and I hope you’ll come follow us in our new home together at Stardust Global Ventures.

Technorati Tags: Stardust Global Ventures, Sheryl Breuker, Gabby Geek, Ken Camp, social medai. mobility

Filed by Ken at 4:38 pm under General, Mobility & Handheld, Portable Pleasures - PDA/Smartphones, Tech in General, Technology, Unified Communications
1 Comment

I got this in email yesterday from my friends over at Jajah. They’ve news about a product launching mid November and also about a partnership they just entered to enroll “Google Adwords for telephone calls”.

They’ve developed a non-intrusive approach and powerful platform. It’s an opt-in solution where users hear and see very targeted advertising content and receive credit in their JAJAH accounts for each message provided. Users can effectively earn back their entire phone bill, or even make money while talking to their friends and family.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this beyond having heard words like this before, but targeted advertising always seems to have viable potential, far beyond the mass market of just capturing eyeballs to ads at random.

With their new in-call advertising, businesses of any kind can target their audience on any given scale. Small, local companies can play their messages to the local JAJAH users. “

I’m going to see about setting up a briefing with Roman Scharf or one of the other Jajah execs to hear straight from them. Maybe it’s a good time to do a podcast chat to hear what they have to say.

Online Advertising Good - Telephony Advertising Better

JAJAH’s new, patent pending in-call advertising engine: Advertisers to overlay messages on phone calls. Consumers and telecommunications companies to benefit.

Ad:tech, New York, NYC - November 5, 2007 - JAJAH, the world’s most innovative phone company, today revealed an extension to its business model that is likely to effect the advertising business on a global scale. JAJAH’s patent pending in-call advertising platform turns the inventory of the world’s telephone calls into an advertising market place.

“We spend more time on the phone than consuming all other types of media, TV, reading papers and radio included. However, advertisers spend very little budget advertising on telephone calls - phones haven’t been considered as a viable channel yet. We are going to change that.” says Roman Scharf, JAJAH’s co-founder. “In tests over the past months we have identified a method to overlay advertising content on phone calls in a way that users find acceptable. We turned it into an open platform so that everyone can benefit. Consumers get a better deal and telecommunications companies monetize their inventory.”

How does in-call advertising work? JAJAH has developed a non-intrusive approach. Whereas in-call advertising would normally interrupt a call and disturb the caller, JAJAH simply overlays the messages above the ring tone right before the call starts. Businesses get guaranteed caller attention, whilst at the same time not alienating the consumer with intrusive messages that break the rhythm of a telephone call.

“Google paved the way around a decade ago with Google AdWords. Their approach was revolutionary, as they respected the users’ common sense and reactions. We are now trying to do the same for the massive amount of phone call inventory. Think AdWords for the phone.” says JAJAH co-founder Daniel Mattes.

JAJAH in-call advertising will be made available to JAJAH users shortly. It’s an opt-in solution where users hear and see very targeted advertising content and receive monthly credit. Users can effectively earn back their entire phone bill, or even make money while talking to their friends and family. “In a next step we will increase the reach of JAJAH in-call advertising by allowing telecommunications partners to use our platform to monetize their inventory as well”, says Trevor Healy, JAJAH’s CEO. “Operators will have the opportunity to install our advertising appliance in their environments and connect to the platform. We will turn call wait time into value add, and the end user and partner will both see a return.”

With JAJAH’s new in-call advertising, businesses of any kind can target their audience on any given scale. Small, local companies can play their messages to the local JAJAH users. “If you own a furniture store that you want to introduce to your local community, your messages will be played to your prospective customers next door - not someone a thousand miles away.” explains JAJAH co-founder Roman Scharf.

In a separate press release today JAJAH announced a strategic partnership with Oridian - Online Media Solutions, Ltd., the largest privately-owned advertising network. By partnering with Oridian, JAJAH gets immediate access to a large number of companies to introduce and jump-start the new service.

About JAJAH
JAJAH, the world’s most innovative global communications company, is dedicated to bringing consumers, enterprises and telecommunications companies vastly improved telephony solutions to allow them to embrace the next generation of IP communications. JAJAH’s open telephony 2.0 platform combines the best of the Internet with the best of the existing telephony infrastructure, to remove the barriers to communication and makes it easier for people everywhere to stay in touch. JAJAH is headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more information, please visit: www.jajah.com

Technorati Tags: Jajah, advertising, targeted advertising

Filed by Ken at 11:16 am under Unified Communications
2 Comments

Posting this here to get the podcast live in the absence of the webmaster at the Realtime Unified Communications Community.

I wasn’t able to get to the fall VON conference that’s underway in Boston this week. I’ve been doing the next best thing by talking to people who are there. This morning my partner and colleague Sheryl Breuker and I spoke with our friend Stephane Marceau, CEO from MOBIVOX. Stephane’s at VON and we always love the chance to chat with him.

You’ll also be hearing Sheryl more and more as we do a growing number of team podcasts and interviews.

Please join us and listen in as we chat with Stephane Marceau at MOBIVOX

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Note: The Realtime Unified Communications Community podcast is now available via iTunes and Yahoo! Podcasts

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Technorati Tags: MOBIVOX, Stephane Marceau, podcast, interview, unified communications

Filed by Ken at 8:53 pm under Unified Communications
1 Comment

Back some time ago, Jerry Yang at Yahoo said he’d be off spending 100 days seeking answers internally. It was a bad idea at the time, and several of us chided Yang in blogs for taking a vague and ambiguous approach that pretty much showed that Yahoo was lost, adrift, and hunkering down to their own internal dialogue.

The other day Stuart Henshall posted this -

Yahoo 100 Days and… We’re at 98!
98 days and counting. Just two to go. I doubted Yahoo’s hundred day plan on day two. Over the weekend I linked to two posts that further compounded my doubts. If we get a plan I still suspect it will be very 1.0 and not 2.0 focused. Why? It’s in the language.

• Still no cure for what ails Yahoo | CNET News.com
• Hey Yahoo - Knock, knock. Is anyone home? - Unified Communications (My earlier post)
• BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Poor Yahoo
• Yahoo Still Struggling to Please Shareholders

Well, we’re beyond 100 days now and Yahoo is simply becoming a bigger non-event every day. Hey Jerry, what the heck is going on inside there. Judging from the stories about, Stuart and I aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed Yahoo’s in trouble.

100 days in Internet time is an eternity, but it’s workable if something comes out of it. So far, nothing’s coming from Yahoo but silence.

Some of us are watching to see how Yahoo is going to re-emerge, but the truth is that if they don’t pull out of that funk they’re in pretty quick, there won’t be a whole lot left. The competition is moving forward while Yahoo appears to have its head up its in the sand.

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, crisis, lack of direction

Filed by Ken at 12:14 pm under Tech in General, Technology, Unified Communications
2 Comments

I don’t know all the details. I don’t really think anyone does. But what I did learn this morning is that Jaiku has been acquired by Google. Jaiku is a fascinating lifestream management tool that I’ve been using for several months. I’ve also had the pleasure to be one of the beta testers for the Jaiku Symbian client on the Nokia phones.

Here are some of the write-ups I’ve done about Jaiku -
“Jabbering” Jaiku - Unified Communications
Unveiling the new Jaiku Client for Nokia - Part 1
Unveiling the new Jaiku Client for Nokia - Part 2
Unveiling the new Jaiku Client for Nokia - Part 3
Jaiku Symbian Client - Out of beta and into the light
Coming in Social Networking Tools from Jaiku - Soon

This is great news and a huge win for the Jaiku team. Congrats to Jyri, Petteri, Teemu and all the rest!

Technorati Tags: Jaiku, Google, presence, availability, lifestream management

Filed by Ken at 9:51 am under Unified Communications
1 Comment

Just wanted to share a few pictures quickly of some ITExpo highlights.

This album is powered by BubbleShare - Add to my blog

Technorati Tags: ITExpo pics, ITExpo

Filed by Ken at 3:49 pm under Unified Communications
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Posting here will be light and sporadic for the next few days. Off to the Internet Telephony Expo in Los Angeles

Filed by Ken at 4:02 am under Technology, Unified Communications
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What is INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO?

ITEXPO
is the event with an educational program that teaches enterprises,
SMBs, and Government Agencies how to select and deploy IP-based voice,
video, fax, and unified communications. It’s where service providers
learn how to profitably roll out services their subscribers are
clamoring for. The vibrant Exhibit Hall features solutions for
enterprises, SMBs, government and service providers. ITEXPO is where
buyers, sellers, resellers, and manufacturers meet to forge
relationships and close deals.

In another  day or so the geniuses and magicians of the unified
commIunications sector will all be gathering in Los Angeles for the
Internet Telephony Expo. There will be hundreds of things to see and do. I’ve been listing the hot things I’m hoping to see for quite a while now.

Recent posts
The CorporateRat at ITExpo - Unified Communications
Sipera VIPER Labs - Blogging, podcast ahead and ITExpo

As a reminder I’ll be hosting two panel discussion again this year. Here are the details on the sessions.

I’m plan to record both sessions for podcast later. And I expect to record snippets from other sessions as well.
I’ve got several
meetings and briefings scheduled and will be doing some planned and some impromptu podcast chats from the show.

Blog posting here may be different over the next few days. I don’t really plan on live blogging sessions. I may well do some photo posts on the fly as the opportunities arises. I’m hoping to do some video as well. Podcasting requires some production time and the publishing process is more detailed than for a written post.

Rest assured there will be lots of news coming from the ITExpo.

Technorati Tags: ITExpo, Internet Telephony Expo, panel discussion, Ken Camp, unified communications

Filed by Ken at 8:56 am under Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications
1 Comment

My pal Dameon turns the tightest phrase I’ve seen with this question -

Who Will Be Smart Enough To Hire Dan York?
Inter-Tel and Mitel just recently finished merging. As is the case with many mergers, some people are let go. Unfortunately, Dan York was recently thrown overboard from the good ship Mitel.

I’ve been “laid off” in corporate reorganizations several times in my life. It’s never a good time. Even when handled well, it just plains hurts. As an outsider looking in - watching Mitel - I can’t help but believe they’ve made a serious mistake. But for a company in that mode, mistakes are common too.

Dan’s speaking at the ITExpo in Los Angeles next week, and frankly, I’ll be quite surprised if people there aren’t in pretty aggressive courting mode trying to woo Dan’s talent. He’s one of the sharpest knives in the technology drawer. He’s got uncommon breadth and depth, coupled with superb writing skills and stage presence that aren’t always present in a technologist.

I’m really interested to see who’s lucky enough to win Dan over. That’s going to be a company to watch.

Technorati Tags: Dan York, VoIP, security, unified communications

Filed by Ken at 12:07 pm under InfoSec, Information Security, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications
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One of my favorite bloggers, Arjun Roychowdhury (aka CorporateRat), just posted this. Arjun and I are online contacts, but other than an occasional email, have never spoken or met. I’m really looking forward to meeting at the ITExpo. Keen insights and a great perspective on the industry. Arjun is someone I pay close attention to.

Speaking at Internet Telephony and our latest IMS report
Hi folks,
My apologies for the lack of postings. It just so happens that Sep/Oct/Nov are the worst three months for travel for me. I have been on the road for most part of this month and will be all over the map till the end of November.

If any of you are going to be at the Internet Telephony Conference in LA, I hope to see you there. I will be speaking on Monday about “IMS vs. WiMAX” there. So if you are attending, would be good to meet. On another note, I’ve been speaking and attending at the Internet Telephony show for several years now, and I must say, Rich Tehrani and the team has done a great job over the years in being innovative. For this show, as an example, they have come out with innovative interviews, video clips and press releases which help in advertising both their name and the participating company’s name. Good on you, Rich! I hope other setups pick up a bit on the ideas these folks have implemented.
[Read full post]

Technorati Tags: Arjun Roychowdhury, CorporateRat, ITExpo, IMS, unified communications

Filed by Ken at 6:46 pm under Unified Communications
1 Comment

We’ve been working behind the scenes at the Realtime Unified Communications Community with NetIQ in preparing a series of four webinars.

In this series, I’ll be talking about some of the challenges of moving from the planning stages of VoIP deployment into the operational phase. Each brief talk will be followed with live product demonstrations by NetIQ showing their comprehensive suite of solutions.

The first episode of this four-part series will take place live on the web on Wednesday, August 29th, so you have plenty of time to sign up and come join us. I hope to see you there.

Ken

Ready. Set. VoIP.
The VoIP life cycle from Pilot to Production

In the “Ready.Set.VoIP.” web seminar series, Ken Camp, noted author of IP Telephony Demystified, and Mark Slavens, NetIQ Corporate SE for VoIP solutions, will take you through management of the VoIP life cycle—from network assessment, pre-deployment and ongoing monitoring to reporting and future expansion plans.

In part one of the series, Ken and Mark will focus on network readiness assessments and how taking stock of your resources will help you:

• Know your potential VoIP capabilities by provide a network inventory
• Warn you of potential shortfalls and measures to upgrade your network
• Set quality expectations for the network currently in place
• Avoid project paralysis before the pilot program begins

Too often organizations deploy VoIP without fully knowing the impact of converging voice and data traffic on a shared network. Don’t be left with dissatisfied users and system downtime. Whether you have already deployed or are just considering an implementation, listen to find out how a VoIP network assessment can benefit your enterprise environment.

* Register Now

Technorati Tags: NetIQ, webinar, live events, partical pointers, Ken Camp

Filed by Ken at 9:53 am under Unified Communications
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Owen Linderholm is one of the most widely respected folks in the tech sector. I’ve only met Owen once, at the O’Reilly ETel conference last March. We’ve not traded a lot of email or ever spoken about anything of substance. But his work at tippit reaches far and wide. If you’ve ever read VoIP-News, DailyWireless, Dailyiptv, ITSecurity or ITManagement, you’ve seen representative work.

Recently Owen gave me the great honor of asking me to join in a webinar presentation as part of the ITManagement efforts. I couldn’t be more pleased. I hope you will all check the headline link below and come join us on August 23rd at 1PM Pacific time.

Webinar - Network Tsunami: The Coming Wave of Video, Audio and Rich Media that will Wash Away your Corporate Network in 2008

The latest generation of highly interactive applications and rich consumer content is already causing problems for corporate networks. Video blogs (vlogs), hosted business applications, YouTube, ever-larger presentations attached to emails and videoconferencing are starting to clog up corporate IP networks designed for simple data exchange. This will only get worse as rich media become part of more business communications.

Join ITManagement.com and Nortel Networks on August 23, 2007 at 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET as networking technology experts Ken Camp and Dan DeBacker share their knowledge of rich media and their effects on corporate networks, including strategies for avoiding catastrophe. They will address major – but manageable – risks that enterprises will encounter with the newest generation of media-enhanced applications. Sign up today for this exclusive webinar.

Technorati Tags: unified communications, video, Ken Camp, webinar, Owen Linderholm, ITManagement.com

Filed by Ken at 2:42 pm under Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications
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I recently killed off a tag meme that hit me because I just don’t really care for those tagging games. Instead, I want to point you to two blogs I discovered as a result of an earlier tag meme. Both are ones I added to my regular reading and now watch closely. And what follows is from the “about” pages from the two blogs.

Conversationware
Unifying Communication
My name is Matt Lambert, I’ve been spouting on about unified communications software for about 12 years.

I’m interested in the convergence of communications applications for business and their users.

With a background in unified messaging, I hope that I have at least some perspective on the unifying of communication modes, and it would be good to contribute to any discussions I can find. There are so many new developments lately, by some very clever companies, so material shouldn’t be far away.

I work for a U.C company based in Winchester U.K, but this is very much a personal project, which means I should be able to say what I like.

Having said that, in full disclosure I market best of breed solutions including AVST CallXpress, Captaris Rightfax, Avanquest TMS, Alcatel My Teamwork and so may be somewhat biased, in spite of best efforts.

I’ve been reading Matt’s writing for quite a while now. He brings a real voice of reason to the Net and presents soem very well-balanced, and well-founded observations.

Gokul Blog — A conversation on VoIP, IMS, Cisco and Just about Anything
Gokul is a VoIP/IMS professional and has been in this field for the last seven years.  He has worked in couple of startups EdgeAccess Inc in Florida,USA and Nexge Technologies,IIT Chennai, India. In between these assignments, he was working with HCL-Cisco for couple of years. He hopes to run his own company someday. Gokul has a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering majoring in Telecommunication from University of South Florida,Tampa.

He is currently working in Chennai(India) as a Technical Specialist.

Gokul writes in other places, but this is, for me, a new place to pick up some great insights.

Just a couple of pointers to places I find interesting that I think you might like too.

Technorati Tags: VoIP, unified communications

Filed by Ken at 5:48 pm under Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications
2 Comments