Qwisk is a new social browsing tool that launched yesterday at the TechCrunch Real-Time CrunchUp. Qwisk lets you quickly and easily share content with your social networks (Twitter and Facebook supported, plus the Qwisk network). It inserts a messaging pane on the left side of your screen to give [...]
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing with the Yamaha SoundGadget PSG-01S – a Skype-certified speakerphone provided to me for evaluation. This pint-sized device provides business travellers with a high quality portable alternative to the conference phones that can be found in boardrooms everywhere.
The SoundGadget packs an [...]
Last week rumours circulated (again) that Nokia might acquire Palm. Palm shares rallied, but seem to have settled back down this week. The “deal”, after all, is a Wall Street wet dream, and not much more.
It’s true that Nokia’s stock price is suffering and that Nokia’s share is [...]
My venerable BlackBerry Curve has just come out of contract with Rogers, so I’m in the market for a new BlackBerry and my pals at RIM tell me that the BlackBerry 9700 “Onyx” is the one to have. Not only that, but here in Canada Telus and Bell have both [...]
Infoworld’s product review format in the 1990’s was famous. It consisted of a detailed and hard hitting qualitative review, accompanied by a grid rating the reviewed product on a number of different critieria. Finally a weighted average of those criteria scores produced a single numeric score. Many a company was [...]
Boingo’s sponsored Wi-Fi program caught my eye earlier this week. I’m a student of marketing programs, especially when quantitative measurement is involved. Boingo claims to have increased revenues by up to 35% at selected airports by allowing sponsors to subsidize internet access for travellers. The program requires the user [...]
Last week a pretty interesting little web startup called Blabbelon debuted. Think of it as a CB radio for gamers. Using high quality audio, provided by Skype’s SILK codec, and a basic flash interface, it allows you to instantly invite pals to “blab” using a push-to-talk metaphor. Wanna talk? [...]
Since the late 90’s, my family has owned spring timeshare weeks in Cancun. We’re heading to the west coast next summer for a family reunion and to see friends from our days living there. As a consequence, we won’t be spending our usual weeks in Mexico during March.
Today I’ve [...]
Yesterday the end came to the Skype / JoltID lawsuit. Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström have taken a 14% stake in the company, Index Ventures and Mike Volpi got the boot, and Skype users all across the world breathed a sigh of relief.
One thing that was [...]
Here at eComm, the last demo of the conference is one of the most impressive. Voxygen’s “next generation Caller ID” revolutionizes customer service by linking actions on a web site to a click to call button. The example they showed included a customer who browsed a camera shopping website, [...]
Yesterday’s eComm saw an emphasis on value creation on telecom networks. Talks ranged from Dean Bubley’s instructive and provocative discussion of LTE and how it is being held hostage by ordinary telephony, through to demonstrations of applications that embed voice into the new categories of “flow” applications. Stuart [...]
I’ve spent a little over a day at eComm meeting people, listening to the conversations and presentations happening and reflecting on what I’ve heard.
During the panel yesterday afternoon, I noted that I spend less on voice, data, and text messaging each month than I ever have, but more money [...]
Toktumi’s Peter Sisson asks Is the BlackBerry Doomed? and goes on to compare his recent experience of developing for BlackBerry with his experience as an iPhone developer. Many of his complaints – non-standard hardware and OS versions in particular – are the same issues we ran into two years [...]
At eComm this morning, Martin Geddes kicked off the event with a talk on what the world looks likes when the value of minutes disappears. He cogently makes the argument that business models based on charging for minutes leak cash for corporations that buy those services – the call [...]
Today is Windows 7 launch day, the day that Microsoft hopes to erase the ghosts of Windows Vista, and move forward. After many months of using the beta versions of Windows 7, I feel confident declaring it the best Windows yet. Windows 7 is solid, it performs well, and [...]
In advance of next week’s eComm Europe in Amsterdam, organizer Lee Dryburgh has posted a fascinating interview with BT’s Martin Geddes on business model innovation. Martin’s thesis? The bulk of the profits from the technical innovations in the telecom industry will come from business model innovation, and the [...]
The Ottawa Network is hosting a Startup Bootcamp this weekend at the University of Ottawa. The idea? Get together with like minded people, design and prototype a business, and pitch it… between Friday evening and Sunday evening.
The most promising proposal wins $5,000 in seed funding, when they [...]
Gizmodo’s Brian Lam is ticked off. The Blackberry PR team didn’t provide him with a review unit of the new Storm 2 before launch, and consequently he didn’t write a review. Only the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal got the units, apparently.
RIM has consistently ignored [...]
It’s eleven days until the eComm Europe show in Amsterdam. Lee Dryburgh has done an unbelievable job of getting a stellar line-up of speakers, showcasing Skype, and in a rare appearance, members of the Google Wave team will be coming from Australia to give three separate talks on Wave, [...]
I’ve become a fan of Battle of the Blades, a new reality show that matches up retired hockey players, and retired Olympic figure skaters in pairs competition. Eight pairs, and each week one is eliminated – a Canadian version of Dancing with the Stars. I love it because:
the hockey [...]In a vintage Microsoft moment, Steve Ballmer has said that Microsoft doesn’t need to build an e-reader, because the PC is already the most popular reading device in the world. “We have a device for reading. It’s the most popular device in the world. It’s the PC”, said Ballmer. [...]
There was big news here in Soviet Canuckistan today. Next month, Bell and Telus will both start selling the Apple iPhone. What? “How is that possible”, you ask. “Aren’t Bell and Telus tied to ancient CDMA technology?”
Both are rolling out network upgrades to HSPA technology in time for [...]
Adobe’s on a roll, putting flash into all kinds of devices. Expect lots of announcements this week as the Adobe MAX Conference gets underway. For example, over the weekend, news reports said that Adobe would extend flash to just about every phone in the market – except iPhone. [...]
I’ve just booked my tickets to the upcoming eComm Europe show in Amsterdam at the end of this month. This show is a continuation of the super successful eComm (formerly eTel) events that have happened in Silicon Valley over the last three years. eComm is about the future of [...]
Google and AT&T are having a spat over “Net Neutrality”. Google Voice doesn’t pass calls to certain rural carriers because of the high cost of termination in these jurisdictions. That includes, I’ve been told, our Calliflower conference service which is hosted at a rural carrier as well. AT&T [...]
"Slick". That’s what I said when I powered up the Polycom phone that the folks at Junction Networks sent me in order to be able to review their new My.Onsip user interface. Truly plug-and-play, the phone immediately found the Junction Networks hosted PBX, configured itself (even through my NAT and [...]
In a speech glutted with market data, Skype CSO Chris Dean began his remarks at VON by saying that there is an ongoing sea change in the telecom market, and it’s only accelerating. The macro trends are around wireless, wireline, emerging applications and service models, the economy and the [...]
The democratization of the news took another step forward yesterday when Livestream announced Livepack. A backpack sized turnkey hardware solution that marries HD video to six load-balanced 3G modems with encoding hardware and 30 hours of uplink time per month, this solution promises to replace the ubiquitous broadcast [...]
Montreal based Mobivox announced this afternoon that it had been acquired by Indian / MountainView California startup SabSe Technologies. The brainchild of Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia, and serial entrepreneur Yogesh Patel, Sabse first launched the Sabsebolo.com conferencing service in India, then acquired Jaxtr in June of [...]
Since its launch last year Calliflower has captured a base of customers who use our service to run events – multi-person podcasts, distance learning sessions, teleseminars, coaching calls, and more. Our unique mash-up of a web based dashboard and collaboration tool with the humble conference call has captured the imaginations [...]
I’ve been at the VON show in Miami Beach the last couple of days. This has been the first VON since the show was acquired out of bankruptcy by Virgo Publishing. This VON lacks the panache of VON founder Jeff Pulver. Attendance, at 3,000, was lower than in the past, [...]
Friday, Skype killed off the Skype Extras program for developers. The Extras program was a storefront, attached to the Skype application, that allowed developers to publish and monetize their applications via Skype’s own channel. Announced in 2006, it was visionary for its time, but there wasn’t a lot of [...]
This morning I’ve been reflecting on the debate about health care that’s happening south of the border. Like many Canadians I’ve been in disbelief watching the rhetoric escalate. The outright lies, and Orwellian double-speak by special interest groups in the US have me wondering how my American friends will ever [...]
This morning I’ve been reflecting on the debate about health care that’s happening south of the border. Like many Canadians I’ve been in disbelief watching the rhetoric escalate. The outright lies, and Orwellian double-speak by special interest groups in the US have me wondering how my American friends will ever [...]
The Progress Project is a joint venture between Nokia and Lonely Planet designed to highlight the amazing and diverse ways that mobile technology can impact ordinary people’s lives. It’s a grand vision of mobility, ranging from the ways that mobile devices can be used in urban settings to predict [...]
I’ve been sitting in a session at ITEXPO on Applications in the Cloud. What’s striking to me is the divergence of opinion on what a cloud application is. Opinions range from IfByPhone’s Irv Shapiro talking about IVRs, to Voxeo’s Dan York talking about communications enabled business processes. Moderator David Yedwab [...]
The rumours have been flying for a week or so that Skype was to be sold. Yesterday the rumour became fact, as eBay unloaded a 65% stake in Skype to a consortium of investors, including some of the original Skype investors like Index Ventures. eBay gets to keep [...]
What would the world look like if cellular networks were open-sourced? That’s the question that the OpenBTS project is attempting to answer by building a GSM base station from open source components like Asterisk. To highlight how the OpenBTS team believes that this technology will be used, this week [...]
Unified Communications is the melding of all forms of communications that we use – email, instant messaging, voice and video – into a single client and platform. The holy grail is one application that functions as inbox, text chat client, telephone and video call client. Toss in the concepts of [...]
I was feeling my oats yesterday when I twittered a CBC piece on the high cost of mobile service in Canada. The CBC piece struck a nerve, as I had just read Andy Abramson’s comparison of US and European mobile operators approach to service. I have to say, [...]
When was the last time you got paid to upgrade your phone?
If you were one of the folks who rushed out and bought an iPhone 3G a year ago, and then watched with dismay as Apple delivered the faster, better, stronger iPhone 3GS this past spring, then you’ll be very [...]
So there you have it. RIM acquires TorchMobile, putting to bed the endless complaints about their browser, and fulfilling the promise made just days ago that they would provide an iPhone class browser on BlackBerry by next summer. TorchMobile are none other than the creators of the WebKit-based Iris [...]
August 13 we had the opportunity to chat with Jim Courtney about the FREETALK Everyman headset. This low cost headset provides a consistent level of audio quality, including full support for the SILK technology included with Skype for Windows 4.1 and Skype for Mac 2.8, in a format that adds [...]
I’ve spent the day painstakingly digging through our affiliate lists, checking out websites, and sending feedback to our affiliates on how they’re doing. Not only is it a good relationship building exercise, but I’m also really enjoying seeing how different folks are taking advantage of the Calliflower affiliate program.
For [...]
The first George Carlin routine I ever heard was the Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV. Carlin made a point of skewering television’s language police in a foul-mouthed stand-up routine that was simultaneously shocking and brilliant in its logic. He must surely be laughing in his [...]
Are you frustrated by the ubiquitous “phone tree” at major corporations? “Press 1 for customer service, 2 for sales, 3 for…” was bad enough. But with the advent of the mechanical voice, it’s only gotten worse as customers are now supposed to guess the magic words that will make “Emily” [...]
Apple is taking a lot of heat for rejecting Google Voice from the iPhone application store. The move is widely seen as anti-competitive, and by most commentators as further evidence of Apple’s servitude to AT&T.
But so far, nobody really knows. Apple isn’t talking, and AT&T would only [...]
Sunday morning the new Gizmo5/Google Voice mashup debuted. Out in beta, it lets you make a phone call, via Wifi/Gizmo5, using your Google Voice account. This new capability is in addition to Google Voice’s existing ability to route an incoming call to your Gizmo5 account. In the US, that means [...]
The rumours have been flying about the iPod Touch equipped with a camera and microphone built-in. Yesterday Andy Abramson talked about the potential for this device on WiFi networks as a communication product. Andy’s thesis is that this new iPod device is the disruption that will unleash Voice on [...]
When we moved into our current home, we had the place wired for ethernet. The state of the art for WiFi at the time was 802.11b – 10 Mb/s, short range. I had ethernet cabled everywhere, and then used WiFi for devices that were better mobile – laptop computers initially, [...]
Over at TechCrunch Mike Arrington has had a mass of over 310 documents internal to Twitter show up in his inbox. He’s planning on publishing some, but not all, as the bulk are uninteresting, and perhaps maybe embarrassing to some people, including senior industry folks that [...]
GigaOm’s Stacey Higginbotham interviewed Verizon’s Ryan Hughes yesterday about the mobile application store that Verizon is building. Developers will be able to build applications for whatever platform they want from Windows Mobile, Palm, Android and BlackBerry and receive a revenue share for whatever is delivered on the Verizon network. [...]
After a couple of successful shows in North America, Lee Dryburgh et al are taking the eComm show to Europe October 28 to 30 in Amsterdam. This will be the third show under Lee’s wing, and if it’s anything like the first two it will be a thought provoking [...]
en·tre·pre·neur
n. A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Blazoned across the front page of the local rag, the Ottawa Citizen, this morning’s headline read Billion-dollar business fund overlooks city tech firms. It seems [...]
We’re going into a summer weekend here pretty satisfied with the last week. Last night we rolled out some changes to Calliflower that will really help our business.
First, we’ve made it easier than ever for customers to participate in a Calliflower call. Participants (as opposed to organizers) will [...]
About a month ago, Shozu announced that their formerly free iPhone application would have a price hike. Intrigued, I plunked down the $4.99 needed to buy it, and gave it a whirl. It works well, allowing you to shoot photos or video, and upload them for sharing, immediately, to [...]
Nokia’s N97 is the latest in their range of high end smart phones. The first N-Series phone with a touch screen, the N97 also hides a flip-out keyboard. Laden with 32G of storage, a 5 megapixel camera, Nokia Maps, Nokia’s Comes with Music service, and more, this phone is [...]
The Boy Genius has published an angst filled missive directed at RIM on the future of BlackBerry OS. Here are a few choice quotes:
“RIM’s OS is more than antiquated, it’s borderline laughable.”
“There’s so many limitations to RIM’s OS, and even RIM’s data network that it offsets all the wonderful [...]
In The Ideal Task Manager National Post writer Danny Bradbury highlights iPhone applications that are big for small business. The lede for the story? Calliflower. Last week Danny asked us if we had any small business users using Calliflower for iPhone. I made a few phone calls, and [...]
This may be the ultimate wireless mash-up. The photographs below show a wireless interface developed at UC Berkeley, which is implanted in flying beetles. It’s part of an experiment designed to create “cyborg beetles” which can be controlled in flight. The plaque reads, in part:
“The miniaturized thorax-mounted system consists of [...]
Yesterday YouTube doubled the upload limit available to users in response the increasing number of high definition videos that are being sent to the site. Now you can upload a 2G file, instead of a 1G file. YouTube has made it easier to upload a high definition file as [...]
Many folks assume that iPhone’s location services are GPS based. In fact, they’re not. They use a complex amalgam of WiFi hotspot location, cell tower triangulation and GPS provided by Skyhook Wireless. GPS service, by itself, is vulnerable to overhead obstructions, and can take as long as 5 minutes [...]
The customer service fairy seems to have paid a visit to Rogers recently. Yesterday, I called and inquired about roaming rates to the US for my trip next week. I was pleasantly surprised to find that roaming data rates to the US have dropped from $6,000 per gigabyte, and [...]
The team at Truphone has been focused for quite a while on their iPhone products. Yesterday, however, they made an announcement that hearkens back to their roots. 11 new Nokia devices have been added to their list of compatible devices, including the N96, N78, N85, N79, 5630, 5800, [...]
It’s been famously said of Microsoft that it takes them three tries to get anything right. In actual fact, it probably takes every company three tries to deliver a truly great product. Release 1 – get the product to market. Release 2 – listen to customers and correct the biggest [...]
I dread getting email on Facebook.
How is it that Facebook, with 200 million users, still suffers along with the same broken email client as two years ago. With no folders, no offline mode, slow search, no forward, no ability to add people to a thread, no archive capability, and [...]
Late last week, we crossed another milestone with Calliflower. As customers have discovered the tremendous savings Calliflower can deliver for international conference calls, plus the rich and engaging Calliflower feature set, they have driven demand for new points of presence. We’ve been only too happy to comply, adding local dial [...]
I spent much of my weekend glued to the Internet, transfixed by the images and words coming from Iran. Unable to keep up with the flow coming from Twitter, I turned to Andrew Sullivan’s excellent Daily Dish, where he has published a digest of the more reliable Twitter sources, [...]
Interested in the new iPhone 3GS, but still under that three year contract with Rogers? Good news. Last night, via the @RogersHelps twitter account, we learned that Rogers has stepped up and offered some very aggressive discounts.
Here’s the message trail from last night that caught my attention.
Opera Unite launched overnight. A browser with a built-in web server, and some services like file, photo and media sharing, chat, and a web server, Unite is touted as a game changing “reinvention” of the web. The idea is that instead of uploading your photos to Flickr to [...]
VoIP on Facebook – Is it Worth? asks whether, after all of the hype months ago about Voice on Facebook, it makes sense to integrate voice applications with the platform. The writer observes that it’s relatively easy to simply exchange phone numbers.
I can’t speak for the other vendors [...]
Late Friday afternoon, “Mookie” from Rogers called to talk about our phone service. Rogers is pushing to convert as many of their customers from the incumbent Bell Canada over to Rogers Home Phone. Rogers has a plan for $30.95 per month which gives you 5 calling features, and 1,000 minutes [...]
That’s how the MC for this afternoon’s joust at the Upper Canada Village Medieval Festival described what they were about to do. It was certainly thrilling. Four “knights” in authentic armor charged at each other through the lists with enormous Douglas Fir lances, bent on unhorsing the other. Points [...]
This morning I’m glad I don’t live in the EU. Apparently caught between their desire to ship Windows 7 by October of this year, and the EU’s intractable stance on including the browser in the operating system, Microsoft has decided to ship European specific Windows 7 SKU’s with no [...]
Household maintenance has never been one of my strong points. I’m not the handiest guy in the world. I’m not that precise at cuts, joins, and glueing, and frankly, I’ve never really enjoyed it that much. I do alright with electrical work – connecting wires and switches is pretty easy. [...]
In April of this year the Ontario Government passed hands-free legislation. It is likely to go into effect some time this fall, and when it does all forms of handheld devices that can be used in a car will be banned – this includes GPS receivers, satellite receivers, iPods [...]
I had a good chat with Jeff Pulver last week. We were long overdue. Since the beginning of the year, Jeff’s been a whirlwind announcing no fewer than 4 events in the last six months. Among the many things we discussed was his recent HD Communications Summit. The [...]
Friday, Spymaster debuted on Twitter. At this point in time, according to bit.ly, nearly 200,000 people have signed up. Spymaster is turning into Twitter’s first viral social game. I saw my first invite yesterday morning. Happily, I haven’t been deluged as some folks have. However, the application is very [...]
In It’s time to venture ahead on technology, Barry Reiter makes the distinction between research and development spending and venture spending, venture spending being the money spent to actually commercialize the fruits of research and development. Canada tends to fund research spending well but when it comes time to [...]
It caused a minor ripple in the VoIP blogging world today when free conference call provider Foonz threw in the towel. It’s no surprise, however. Free conference call services (including our own Calliflower) have been under enormous pressure from unhappy long distance carriers.
Background: The “free” business [...]
It caused a minor ripple in the VoIP blogging world today when free conference call provider Foonz threw in the towel. It’s no surprise, however. Free conference call services (including our own Calliflower) have been under enormous pressure from unhappy long distance carriers.
Background: The “free” business [...]
It caused a minor ripple in the VoIP blogging world today when free conference call provider Foonz threw in the towel. It’s no surprise, however. Free conference call services (including our own Calliflower) have been under enormous pressure from unhappy long distance carriers.
Background: The “free” business [...]
It caused a minor ripple in the VoIP blogging world today when free conference call provider Foonz threw in the towel. It’s no surprise, however. Free conference call services (including our own Calliflower) have been under enormous pressure from unhappy long distance carriers.
Background: The “free” business [...]
It caused a minor ripple in the VoIP blogging world today when free conference call provider Foonz threw in the towel. It’s no surprise, however. Free conference call services (including our own Calliflower) have been under enormous pressure from unhappy long distance carriers.
Background: The “free” business [...]
It caused a minor ripple in the VoIP blogging world today when free conference call provider Foonz threw in the towel. It’s no surprise, however. Free conference call services (including our own Calliflower) have been under enormous pressure from unhappy long distance carriers.
Background: The “free” business [...]
It caused a minor ripple in the VoIP blogging world today when free conference call provider Foonz threw in the towel. It’s no surprise, however. Free conference call services (including our own Calliflower) have been under enormous pressure from unhappy long distance carriers.
Background: The “free” business [...]
It caused a minor ripple in the VoIP blogging world today when free conference call provider Foonz threw in the towel. It’s no surprise, however. Free conference call services (including our own Calliflower) have been under enormous pressure from unhappy long distance carriers.
Background: The “free” business [...]
Acer is diving into the Home Server market today with the Aspire easyStore Home Server. The server is powered by an Intel Atom processor, runs Windows Home Server OS, and comes with 1 TB of storage out of the box, expandable to 7TB. Price? $399. The target market is [...]
Acer is diving into the Home Server market today with the Aspire easyStore Home Server. The server is powered by an Intel Atom processor, runs Windows Home Server OS, and comes with 1 TB of storage out of the box, expandable to 7TB. Price? $399. The target market is [...]
Recently one has the impression that the Canadian tech sector is willing itself back to life. After the meltdown last fall, there have been numerous events in recent weeks that seem to be indicators pointing in the right direction. For example:
May 19, the Canadian Advanced Technology Association held its [...]
Wondering how to build an audience on Twitter? Over the weekend I added hundreds of new followers using a handy application called MyTwitterButler. This little tool filters tweets based on keywords you supply, and then automatically follows people who meet your criteria.
Let’s say, for example that you’re [...]
A few minutes ago I unboxed a new LaCie external hard disk. A sweet 1 tera-byte monster of USB 2.0 storage, for a mere $169 Canuck bucks. I picked it up at Future Shop on Yonge Street in Toronto Wednesday night. It’s the companion to my new Bell TV 9241 [...]
I can’t decide whether Apple’s response to Microsoft’s Laptop Hunter series of ads is smart marketing, or an indication that the folks in Cupertino don’t know how to respond to the head shots that Microsoft is dishing out.
Smart marketing says if you have a winning message, stay on message. [...]
Ever wondered what advantages and disadvantages of free conference calling services might be? Every so often a customer asks me, especially after getting a large long distance bill from their carrier. Over on the new Calliflower blog I’ve written a guide to evaluating conferencing pricing models for yourself [...]
![windows_logo_200[1]](http://saunderslog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/windows-logo-2001-thumb.jpg){kind=logo}
As I’ve written before, I really like Windows 7, and the new release candidate is adding to my enjoyment of this new OS. It’s what Windows Vista should have been.
Over the weekend I installed Windows 7 release candidate on four computers chez Saunders [...]
Image via CrunchBase
Fans of Steve Gillmor’s Gillmor Gang podcast will know that he’s had a bee in his bonnet about “real time” for quite a while now. In Steve’s world, communication on the web must be [...]
Ontario College of Art and Design President Sara Diamond weighed in on the state of innovation in Canada yesterday. In the Globe and Mail she asks Will Canada miss the next wireless revolution? Asserting that Canadian carriers are lagging their counterparts [...]
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