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Aswath has a great recap of three posts written by some of the brightest minds in VoIP, and given I consider Aswath one of those, his post summarizing the musings of Martin Geddes, Jeff Pulver and Gary Kim is a must read.
As is usual for Aswath, he brings out some very valuable, and insightful ideas. But don't let me spoil the fun..Click over and read Mr. Rao's enlightening words.
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What I like in this post about GrandCentral Mobile is the same as what I like about VoIPGirl's writings.
They're not techy. They're consumer focused. Judi hit all the right points about GrandCentral Mobile so she's deserving of a shoutout here. For those of you who tend to think of the VoIP bloggers as a "boy's club" of pat the other guy on the back types let me tell you, that day is over here and has been for some time.
Bloggers like Leanne and Judi are bringing a very much needed "rest of us" type of approach and as VoIP and other technology heads mainstream, we as thought leaders need to recognize and draw attention to them at every possible turn.
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I first saw Vocera a few years back at one of the expertly produced Chris Shipley Demo events in San Diego.
Their Star Trek communicator badge like voice device has always captured my imagination, and now with Motorola in the WiFi Canopy business I'm not surprised to see them make an investment.
Imagine wandering around town with a Vocera device and having smart technology like iotum or GrandCentral route calls to that device only if they are essential. Or using IVR technology like Communikate or TellMe offers. Now those are hardware/software/network mashups just waiting to happen.
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If you are a average family who just wants less complications in your life, an all in one plan from the cable company really meets that goal. That's why I'm not surprised to see the numbers continuing to point out just how many customers the cable MSO's are signing up for VoIP and Digital Voice service.
One bill.
One installer.
One call to customer service.
It's too simple. And that, is what people want.
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Paul Kapustka brings up a very interesting story about what on the surface looks like editorial censorship by the Wall Street Journal. He referenced the concept of what the government sometimes does when redacting text in official documents. Paul's eagle eye gets a gold star for spotting that one.
So in looking at it from a former ad selling and buying guy's perspective, my hunch is that the WSJ has some rather strict guidelines on the concept of advotorials vs. display advertising.
The reasons for guidelines on advotorials are quite simple. People read them and think they are editorial copy. As such a line of text like he described that was written not as a quote, but as a writer's statement would make it look like the WSJ wrote that. It was a claim, possibly false, and for those reasons the WSJ said pull the text. Since it was too late to likely recompose the ad, the only solution, and actually better for Vonage, was to have the WSJ composing room redact the text.
In my mind the WSJ could have just said, no to the ad. But given the $$$ involved this was a better solution for both parties. Somehow I would think this was well planned and give credit to the folks who artfully came up with the idea...
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I don't think so. What I think they are getting concerned about are VoIP plays in the later stages of life, who have not shown progress, or who have the wrong kind of leadership at the top.
The old school type of companies, which in my mind the companies he referenced are being led by versus what they have in the executive ranks are what is turning the money folks away.
As long time reader of this blog would have recognized, I'm more impressed with the Mike Mulica, Michael Robertson, Jeff Bonforte, Craig Walker, Brad Garlingouse, David Beckemeyer type who manage with vision to get it done types, than the kind of people running things elsewhere who want to be perceived as "captains" of industry.
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My old and now long retired argumentation professor at Temple University, Dr. Towne, often referred to the class as Confusion 101, and that his title, as the sign on his office door made him "Chief of Confusion."
One of Towne's rules of argumentation, to which there were many, was when you can't win, obfuscate the truth. That means mask, hide, or cast the pebble in the opposite direction.
In reading this story about the masking of VoIP functions by some British mobile operators I couldn't but help remember back to Towne's class where all we did was focus on obfuscation. There is a direct parallel to FUD too here, but in reverse. The carriers are scared of VOIP and instead of embracing it, they want to hide it.
This line is a perfect example of Dr. Towne's teachings:
A spokesman for Orange said VoIP had been disabled to avoid confusion for customers as it was a new function that had not been properly tested.
B.S. VoIP on the N95 is tested and working every day, reliably and dependably. I've got both Truphone and GizmoProject running fine, in all kinds of WiFi environments. Maybe what they are saying is it's not tested on their 3G networks, and candidly, none of the providers have even made any claims that it will work on those networks.
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For a long time I've been a fan of the hosted model of voice services, versus the need for a lot of on premise equipment. A recent summary story in IT Business Edge seems to support that kind of thinking, which can only be seen as good news for companies like Covad, CallTower, XO.
This also is great news for early stage client company, Telephony2, whose CallButler product provides PBX and Centrex functionality, all running over .NET on a Windows XP box that doesn't have to be dedicated solely for that purpose. In many ways, CallButler is to this era what the Merlin phone system was in the 80s in premise, but uses VoIP WITHOUT a hosted model to deliver Centrex and PBX functionality for pennies a day.
Since I've got a few PC's laying around the office doing nothing, we're going to be installing CallButler next week on one of them and adding CounterPath's EyeBeam soft clients to everyone's laptops. It will allow me to create the first true Comunicano phone system and actually allow my team, which is mostly virtual to all be on one "phone system" where we can conference easily, transfer calls and talk as if they are all in one place.
In my thinking, with my new OQO I'll also have a very cool "phone" that's part of my own network, anywhere I go....as well as having my personal phone via PhoneGnome also accessible to me, on one device.
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