VoIPWatch

Preserve The Net

Long time Pulver blog readers will recognize the name Jonathan Askin, the former FCC Staff Attorney and Pulver lawyer. Recently Jonathan came back to the blogosphere and his presence will clearly help clarify a lot of "legal" and legislative matters.

Today he posted on one of the burning issues that ties into the whole net neutrality initiatives of the last few years, none of which has really gathered any steam. In his post today, Askin calls for the online community's support for a Congressional bill that's in all of our best interests.

CounterPath's FMC Play

I got to see the CounterPath (i.e. BridgePort Networks) Fixed Mobile solution in action.

It worked. Calls went seamlessly between desktop computers, mobile phones, with a one number solution, installed at the carriers network operation center. Unlike prior demos when BridgePort Networks was an agency client pre-acquisition, this was a real live deployment that is being sold by a carrier in Eastern Europe.

Now only if more carriers would realize the value proposition this has to offer:

1) The Internet becomes a giant roaming cloud.

2) Customers, especially enterprise customers, get a single solution for laptop and mobile calling.

3) The idea of Presence really gets delivered.

There's a lot more to this, but it's one of my favorite "new" technologies at the show...

Nokia Press Day - News and Notes

Sitting in the Nokia Press Conference here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this morning, I ran into ex Skype Developer program lead, Lenn Pryor who moved over to Nokia's new OVI group. Lenn's group is part of the transformation becoming product and service reality that has been happening within Nokia for the past three years or so.

Nokia's showed a whole new direction in mobility, making significant moves with Navigation, GPS and personalization all tied together. The whole idea is about "Mobilizing the Web 2.0" using a combination of devices (both Symbian Series 60 and Series 40) by marrying services and devices together. As a client of my agency, it is most rewarding to see how a game plan that we've seen coming for a while, become reality.

Nokia has basically entered the word of "It." If you want it, can shoot it, share it, send it, stream it, map it, find it, etc., the complete experience will be Ovi powered. Under Ovi, Nokia has brought together a platform that includes Web, Mobile and PC/Mac allowing people to access their content they way they want to. It is most importantly an open platform that lets people use Ovi the way they want. Its both a platform and a service. New services like SHARE with Ovi are coming out. But Ovi will be a living service. In the UK music is live on Ovi. N-Gage in beta. The key is as each new service is added, the experience has to be really solid.

The Nokia Music Store goes live in 10 countries in the next few months.

Personal Media Sharing is based on the Twango acquisition. Share.Ovi.Com is a personal media sharing and storage service, that works from desktop or mobile. The smart thing here is you don't have to be using a Nokia device. It is based on open standards so any net connected device works. It supports over 100 different file formats. This allows the user to really mix between different file types. Multiple ways to upload are being offered. N Series phones will have a specific client that makes the upload process easy. All the effort has been geared around saving time, and eliminating the hassle. To make it easy, Nokia has taken the very successful N73 and come up with the new N78 that will have 3G, WiFi, 3.5g, HSDPA and GPS. It does Geo tagging, has a built in FM transmitter so you can play music on your car radio or home stereo. The GPS makes it a personal navigation platform which means you can get maps, real time directions and lay over context sensitive content so you can really see where you're going. The maps work for both cars and walking.

The new N96 is the N95 on steroids. Bigger display. More memory. Better for video. More applications. It comes out later this year. Video and Live TV. It stores 16+ gigs which means you can store over 24 Hollywood movies. It has Flash video, supporting real Flash video, not simply mobile mobile Flash.

Key points:

Nokia is about the integrated experience combining the device and the service.

Nokia introduced 4 device that support Maps 2.0

The Ovi Share service is supported by the four new devices, as well as any device that supports a standard web browser.

Nokia looks at 2008 as the year of the complete (i.e. Integrated) experience.

Pal and client with iotum, Alec Saunders has a very good summary as well on his blog too.

Cisco Looking At Unified Communications, Video and More For Enterprise 2.0 World

David Greenfield at ZDNet has a wonderfully insightful post about Cisco's moves to enhance their collaboration efforts in big ways.

What's interesting is many of the moves they are making are exclusive of their WebEx franchise. Rumors have long made the rounds internally and externally about the WebEx product suffering from a bad case of success driven ego-brashness and NIH (not invented here) syndrome when new ideas have been brought to them. It looks like the Cisco approach is let WebEx be what it is, while adding other services and platforms that can take advantage of 2.0 thinking and technology.

Apple Ups The Ante with iChat Patent Applications

It looks like Apple is taking some protectionist steps around next generation enhancements to iChat.

The folks a MacNet News have dug into some recent patent application filings by the crew in Curpertino and found some revealing details.

Mobile World Congress Looms

With the Mobile World Congress looming next week, and a busy travel schedule you've noticed the blogging has been lighter than usual.

Well, I've been boning up on what's happening at MWC next week. In my view the best coverage will come from three areas:

1) The analysts who blog

2) The bloggers

3) The core media who regularly cover the wireless world

The sheer volume of events, announcements and of course parties is overwhelming. I've tracked over 1000 press invites received, more than 500 meeting requests, and dozens of "can you meet me at this party..." type of invitation. Popularity aside, the wine and beer will be flowing in Barcelona.

While I'll be there for Nokia and Vringo, both agency clients, I'll be keeping an eye peeled on Mobile VoIP and FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence). The recent CounterPath acquisition of recent client Bridgeport Networks shows that FMC is more than just a vision, someone clearly has an idea on how to make it work.

Along that same line of thinking, yesterday Cicero Networks and Boingo hooked up for a wireless calling play in Boingo's hotspots. They'll show off the potential next week.

My view is that FMC and VoIP over WiFi are going to become part of mobile carriers offerings as they seek to head off in to the 4G world.

Vonage Legal Leader Says No Mas

Sharon A. O'Leary Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary for Vonage has reportedly turned in her resignation today. After all the battling she's done with the likes of Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and many others she's calling it a day I hear.

Skype May Be The Next Item Up For Sale At eBay Using Buy It Now

When eBay put started their search for a new CEO for Skype, one of the slow down messages was that eBay was pursuing strategic alternatives for the disruptive service. Skype certainly hasn't been the boon they expected it to be, and now with Meg out of the way, a new CEO in place and a lot of strategic thinking having taken place (translation Investment Bankers and M&A guys went to market) it's time to consider what may be the deal of the day.

A rumor coming out of the UK is that eBay is about to sell Skype to Hutchison Whampoa, the company behind 3, which is also the brand that has the Skypephone I use so much in London.

Most of these rumors are just that, but this one makes a lot of sense. Hopefully as the day goes on some light gets shed on this.

Me Too, Me Also, Me Different--Add Me Copy

J.A. Watson's musing about client SightSpeed, and in turn Peter Csathy, neighbor, friend, colleague, client, got me thinking about my philosophy of Me Too, Me Also, Me Different.

I want to add, Me Copy.

Me Copy is the concept of taking an under exposed feature of a successful product and exploiting it as "New" when your company goes after funding from Angels and VC. This is the point I think Peter is making in his back and forth with Mr. Watson which is a very delightful and professional dose of banter.

In an era where lawsuits are a regular thing, usually related to Me Copy, and tied to Me Too, Me Also, one has to wonder if the investment community that asks for Me Different, but buys so much Me Too really go through the due diligence the right way, especially with Intellectual Property such as patents. One also has to ask, how does the market differentiation of the services come into play because so many are marketed exactly the same way.

So add Me Copy into the lexicon of companies, products and services as a way to bring something to market. Thankfully, SightSpeed can back up their claim and so can I. I recall when long before they were a client, and when i was on a PC not a Mac, that pal in Australia Jason Romney suggested a SightSpeed call and he sent me the link that J.A. Watson refers to. That was pre-Skype and certainly, pre-TokBox. Heck it was even pre-Google Click to Call.....

Three Devices That Do Cool Things

I'll admit upfront to being a Gagdet Guy, aka as a Toy Idiot by some who are less inclined to care about having all the latest, and sometime simply, one hit wonders. This story in the India Tech Times profiles three devices that on the surface converge functionality and make things simpler for consumers but also fit my criteria for both "casual computing" and device divergence.

In many ways the Mylo and the Nokia N810 would look to be similar. But the Linux based Nokia N810 is so much more open and powerful that you have to look really closely at the specs to see the difference. On the other hand I've yet to find a device using Skype with the audio clarity of the Sony Mylo. Sony's use of a third party codec was brilliant.

Read all three reviews and I think you'll see that consumer friendly WiFi devices are certainly getting much closer.