Dean Bubley on The Android-Dean and I had dinner in San Diego a week ago Saturday at Flemings Steak House and Wine Bar in the Gaslamp. We enjoyed some excellent service from GM/Operating Partner Bob Andrews (he's been Flemings Top Operating Partner four out of the last five years or so) and it was there I showed Dean the new Droid on Verizon. It has become my first phone of choice (and I have many) for two reasons. It feels like a business persons' phone and the audio quality is superb. On Verizon's network nothing is slow.
Junction Networks has created a new provisioning portal that works with Polycom phones. It makes set up simple and is a wonderful compliment to their OnSip service. Can we see this expanded to SNOM, Linksys, Cisco, Astra, Avaaya and Grandstream devices please?
With his post about the Gizmo/Google Voice deal and the label of "Not That Exciting" Doug Mohney provides fodder that indicates he may well be the second coming of the late Russell Shaw as the industry's counterweight and balance of overt enthusiasm and unrelenting cheerleading by some of us who have carried on where Jeff Pulver left off in VoIP. Jeff is doing a fantastic job at evangelizing Twitter and HD Voice now (with Doug's help I might add.) Russell, who passed away a few years back before eComm and VON in San Jose was always a sense of levity and provided the kind of perspective we need to curb the runaway enthusiasm some of us have at times. Doug is providing that now and it's welcomed and appreciated.
Robert Poe, over at VoIP Evolution writes about the HD codec from client GIPS being embedded into Nimbuzz and why it matters.
Tom Keating, who must have more time on his hands to brave yet another OS, in Google Chrome, has proved out that Flash based VoIP works with it. I guess that's good news for Ribbit too, as they have a Flash based softphone working as well.
Keating also found time to blog about client Truphone's Thanksgiving Day promotion of free calling to the USA aimed at ex-pats and those away from loved one this year. He also let us know that Fring on Android (with WiFi) is also out.
Stuart Henshall calls Gartner's list of 2012 Mobile Apps "shallow" and not a "wow." Either way, the key to this list is money transfer and mobile payments in my book. Why? That's where the money is. They don't need advertising to make them profitable, and people will "pay" to get their money. Enough history exists in this area, starting most recently with PayPal.
Esme Vos -a sometimes dining companion in SF as she was a few weeks back for a fabulous meal at Luce in the Intercontinental SF-which now has one Michelin Star- has penned a wonderful piece on conference WiFi - which I was quoted in. Speaking of which, the Intercontinental, which once had enough bandwidth to support an army is in need of a boost. Now running at nearly 100 percent occupancy-because it's so darn great and close to Moscone, has 25 megs to the property, but it needs more. Up in Seattle, the amazing Hotel 1000 now has 100 megs of XO supplied fiber connectivity--and an amazing overall experience.
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