VoIPWatch

The Comunicano for Friday February 17 2017

Last night I dined out using Feastly for the first time. It was the way to book seats at a “pop up” dinners across the USA. The dinner was the debut of former Herringbone LA chef Jason Witzl, who is in the process of opening up his own Cal-Ital place, Ellie’s, in DTLA. Not only was Feastly a cool app/service experience end to end, but the communal dining experience made it easy to make new friends, hang with old friends, eat very well and of course BYOB.  Alexa-can you come with me? So many times i wanted to take Alexa with me, so while Telzio had voice enabled access to my Amazon Echo first via their mobile app, almost a full year or so ago, there wasn’t a lot of use. Well the game just changed as Rain Labs has launched Reverb with apps for the Mac, iOS and Android. It’s all made possible by Amazon Voice Service.  As I wrote on the Xceptional Blog a few days ago, Amazon keeps looking more and more like a telco/information services competitor to AT&T, Verizon, H-P and more…. So with that, let’s dive into the news in today’s extended edition of Comunicano.

Facebook just changed its mission, because the old one was broken WWW.THEVERGE.COM – Share Facebook used to repeat its mission statement so often that most tech reporters could recite it from memory: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” And it’s…

Here are the details of Uber's disastrous public Q&A session with drivers on Facebook THETECHPORTAL.COM – Share In this Q&A session, the complaints against Uber varied from low fare prices, even lower earnings, and hated services like UberPOOL.

App Watch

Messaging Tech Expert: The Year Messaging (Actually) Matches its Hype WWW.PSFK.COM – Share Anurag Lal explores how messaging platforms function as productivity tools, encompassing a wider variety of services and capabilities.

White House Staff Are Using A "Secure" App That’s Really Not So Secure WWW.BUZZFEED.COM – Share Some senior officials are using a new messaging app that may not be as secure as it claims. “We would not recommend this app to someone…

23 Must-Have Alexa Skills for Your Small Business WWW.PCMAG.COM – Share Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa can help streamline your day-to-day business operations with voice-activated skills across communications, logistics, productivity, scheduling, and much more.

Money Watch

Uber Gives Restless Employees a Way to Cash Out WWW.BLOOMBERG.COM – Share With no public offering imminent, the $69 billion ride-hailing startup is buying back shares from longtime staff.

Airbnb buys Montreal-based Luxury Retreats to bolster high-end vacation offerings WWW.THEGLOBEANDMAIL.COM – Share Acquisition of Canadian company gives San Francisco firm access to luxury rentals

Verizon acquires Portland startup Skyward, a maker of drone management software WWW.GEEKWIRE.COM – Share Verizon is bolstering its efforts in drones with the acquisition of Skyward, a Portland-based startup whose software helps commercial drone operators in in

Daimler’s MyTaxi acquires Greek rival Taxibeat for undisclosed amount TECH.EU – Share Greek taxi hailing app Taxibeat has been acquired by German competitor MyTaxi, which is owned by Daimler. No financials have been disclosed.

Soundtrack Your Brand has raised $22 million for B2B music streaming WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Soundtrack Your Brand thinks music streaming for business is worth billions.

Apple Watch

Apple Vowed to Revolutionize Television. An Inside Look at Why It Hasn’t - Bloomberg WWW.BLOOMBERG.COM – Share The company is testing a new Apple TV capable of streaming ultra-high-definition 4K. It may not be enough to take on Amazon and Roku.

Apple may cut the (charging) cord completely with the iPhone 8 WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM – Share As some industry experts wonder whether Apple will add wireless charging to its next iPhone, others believe it will go all in – cutting the charging cord completely, just as it cut the analog audio port in the iPhone 7.

Cool Things

The Piaggio Gita Is a Futuristic Helper Bot From the Makers of the Vespa WWW.WIRED.COM – Share Piaggio’s Gita follows you around. It goes with you, turns with you, stops with you.

A breakthrough in Alphabet’s balloon-based internet project means it might actually work WWW.RECODE.NET – Share The Loon project says these advancements shorten their timeline for deployment.

Private Astronaut Taxis by SpaceX, Boeing May Not Be Ready by 2019 WWW.SPACE.COM – Share NASA intends to put a backup plan in place in the event that SpaceX and Boeing are not ready to fly humans to space in 2019, according to a new report.

Where is Zealandia? Geologists say they have discovered eighth continent WWW.CSMONITOR.COM – Share A new study argues that a mostly submerged landmass about two-thirds the size of Australia meets all the usual criteria for a continent.

Odds & Ends

AT&T’s new, new unlimited data plan eliminates an annoying requirement WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM – Share The move comes days after Verizon launched its own competing offer.

Jack Dorsey: Twitter Lacked 'Focus And Discipline' For Growth WWW.FORBES.COM – Share On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Dorsey offered some insight into the source of Twitter’s user growth problem, which has haunted the company for years.

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The Comunicano for Wednesday February 15 2017

FEBRUARY 15 - ISSUE #23 HUMPDAY…….and there’s tons of NEW and that makes NEWSsurrounding new services releases that are making the rounds today from the likes of Facebook, Signal, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. They all have decided to unleash new “stuff” that changes the way we consume, communicate, create and deliver information today, and after a wave of non-news of late, it’s nice to see NEW back in the NEWS.. Let’s start with Facebook, which is going to become a bit more “annoying” as they start with sound on within their video news content. Their claim is more people prefer that, but thankfully there are ways to turn the audio off…Microsoft makes its biggest move to take on Gmail with a more complete Outlook Premium offer…In some cases I’ve included the official announcement as well as a news item about what’s new, in an effort to provide deeper transparency and insight.  After all that, there’s a few perspectives on the new data plan wars happening in the USA that’s waging between the mobile operators that will help you decide what plan and what changes are right for YOU….That and more are all in today’s COMUNICANO. New Release Watch New Ways to Watch Facebook Video from the Facebook Newsroom NEWSROOM.FB.COM – Share   Facebook is launching an app for Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV WWW.RECODE.NET – Share The new app will let users kick back and watch Facebook videos from the couch. Outlook.com Premium Comes Out of Preview WWW.THURROTT.COM – Share   Introducing Cloud Spanner: a global database service for mission-critical applications CLOUDPLATFORM.GOOGLEBLOG.COM – Share   Signal Adds Video Calls, Better Quality---And a New Privacy Tradeoff WWW.WIRED.COM – Share You’re about to be able to turn on new encrypted calling features. But you may also want to turn off one that could leak your metadata. Video calls for Signal now in public beta WHISPERSYSTEMS.ORG – Share   Yahoo Mail now syncs photos across devices and IDs who's calling on the phone VENTUREBEAT.COM – Share Yahoo views its mail service as being something more than standard email — its senior vice president for communications products Jeff Bonforte once described the inbox as “the database to the user.” Our lives reside in this software that tells us when not only someone messages us, but when our next meetings are, and it has become our main address book, replacing the paper version. Yahoo Mail Update: Never Guess Who’s Calling or... YAHOO.TUMBLR.COM – Share Yahoo Mail Update: Never Guess Who’s Calling or Email Yourself a Photo Again By Michael Albers, VP, Product Management Get excited! Two unique features are coming to Yahoo Mail: Caller ID and photo… Dataplan Watch Expect T-Mobile to Continue Inflicting Pain on Verizon and AT&T REALMONEY.THESTREET.COM – Share The carrier’s results and guidance show that its aggressive pricing is still fueling share gains, and that it’s not coming at the cost of profit growth or needed investments. Experts warn businesses not to over-buy on unlimited data plans WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM – Share Smaller businesses that think they could benefit from an unlimited plan from wireless carriers need to calculate their costs carefully. Your complete guide to choosing an unlimited data plan WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM – Share And how to make sense of the competing offerings now flooding the market. Unlimited plans comparison: Verizon vs. AT&T vs. Sprint vs. T-Mobile WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Verizon and T-Mobile recently updated their respective “unlimited” data plans, so we put all of the offerings from the big four carriers head to head. Odds & Ends This sick Valentine's day ad shows people getting naughty with their phones MASHABLE.COM – Share OnePlus’s Valentine’s Day #LickofLove ad is extremely cringeworthy – be warned! How To Create A Killer Logo-Two Experts Weigh In WWW.STARTUPS.CO – Share   Do you enjoy receiving this? Please share it:     Tweet     Share   Carefully curated by Andy Abramson with Revue If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.

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The Comunicano for Friday February 3 2017

 

FEBRUARY 3 - ISSUE #15 The big news, especially here in the Southland, is SNAP and their 3 billion dollar IPO. There’s lots of coverage on it, with some deep insight from the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern and the Business Insider as well as the L.A. Times. The stories around the story is also interesting so there’s six for your reading pleasure.  Beyond SNAP, we have news about Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber, the Sharing Economy, Microsoft and a bit more.  Lastly, next week is IT Expo Week in Fort Lauderdale. I’ll be there so find me in the media room, or up on stage on any of my three panels. That’s all in today’s COMUNICANO!!! Snapchat company's IPO filing might be L.A.'s biggest ever WWW.LATIMES.COM – Share Snapchat maker Snap Inc. filed papers to move forward with what’s expected to be the biggest initial public offering ever for a Los Angeles company and one of the highest valued in U.S. history. What’s So Great About Snapchat Anyway? WWW.WSJ.COM – Share As Snap Inc. files its IPO, here’s what grown-ups need to know about Snapchat, the social network millennials love so much. Upcoming Snapchat Lenses will be Able to "Interact" with Objects WWW.DIGITALTRENDS.COM – Share Work-in-progress Snapchat Lenses will reportedly “interact” with real-world objects and scenes, according to reports. Snapchat paid third cofounder Reggie Brown $158 million to disappear WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Snap Inc. has disclosed that it paid a total of $157.5 million to settle with its ousted third cofounder Reggie Brown. Snapchat IPO: Inside Snap Inc.'s company culture WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Thursday night’s filing of Snapchat’s IPO papers was the largest data dump we’ve ever received from the company. Here’s what we learned. Snap S-1 Filing WWW.SEC.GOV – Share   Uber Watch Uber C.E.O. to Leave Trump Advisory Council After Criticism WWW.NYTIMES.COM – Share Travis Kalanick plans to step down from the president’s council, after internal pressure from employees and a social media backlash. Sharing Economy Goes Mainstream in Business Travel — Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report SKIFT.COM – Share   Odds & Ends The Best Drone Photography of 2016 WWW.CNTRAVELER.COM – Share You’ve heard it from us before: Drones can take your travel photography to (literally) a whole new level, offering a perspective on a place that has long been out of reach to most of us. As drones become more commonplace, it is harder to stand out. Amazon's advertising business is growing fast - WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Amazon’s fastest-growing business is its advertising business, which is a direct competitor to Google and Facebook. Facebook’s AI unlocks the ability to search photos by what’s in them TECHCRUNCH.COM – Share Initially used to improve the experience for visually impaired members of the Facebook community, the company's Lumos computer vision platform is now.. How Twitter took on Trump's bot army—and won MASHABLE.COM – Share A small change got real people’s voices heard. Why augmented reality will be big in business first WWW.ECONOMIST.COM – Share The technology is coming. But it will take time for consumers to embrace AR With Chrome 57, Progressive Web Apps will appear in Android’s app drawer, settings, more 9TO5GOOGLE.COM – Share   Microsoft Outlook for iOS now supports add-ins like Giphy and Trello WWW.THEVERGE.COM – Share Microsoft is bringing apps and add-ins to its Outlook for iOS email application today. The software giant has partnered with Evernote, Giphy, Nimble, Trello, and Smartsheet to bring the first… Business Ops is the New Sales and Marketing Ops. Why Consolidation is Crucial to Your Bottom Line. MATTERMARK.COM – Share   We’re probably underestimating how quickly electric vehicles will disrupt the oil market WWW.VOX.COM – Share Unpredictably rapid growth happens pretty predictably. Catapulting Europe’s brightest FinTech startups from Singapore to Asia with The FinLab TECH.EU – Share FinTech startups are invited to apply for The FinLab’s accelerator programme in Singapore to help bring their ideas to market. Verizon Restructures Small Business Segment, Launches Verizon Business Markets WWW.CRN.COM – Share   Do you enjoy receiving this? Please share it:     Tweet     Share   Carefully curated by Andy Abramson with Revue If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.

The Comunicano for Friday January 27 2017

 

JANUARY 27 - ISSUE #10 It’s only been a few months since cableco Charter gobbled up Time Warner Cable, but now it looks the buyer may become the bought which becomes a big win for Charter’s largest shareholder, Liberty Media and John Malone. That’s because Verizon is reportedly in talks to buy Charter, largely as a defensive move against both Comcast. That’s because Comcast is rolling out wireless phone service and also due to AT&T trying to buy up Time Warner for all their entertainment properties.  In other news we have good news for rural New York State when it comes to broadband; why video streaming is so easy;  a Facebook/MailChimp ad match up; a look at a lot of e-commerce tools; how to increase sales; plus those hotel thermostats and you, along with a short item on Starbucks and its customers. Those stories are all in today’s Comunicano. Verizon Watch Speculation builds on a Verizon-Charter tie-up, no offer made WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share (Adds analysts’ quotes, context, updates share… Verizon Wireless and AT&T see value perception decrease TODAY.YOUGOV.COM – Share Two of the four major wireless phone brands have experienced significant value perception declines with consumers for the last 30 to 60 days, which may create opportunities for their rivals. Rural Broadband to Keep Growing (in NY) New York to keep $170M to expand broadband access WWW.WASHINGTONTIMES.COM – Share New York state will get to keep $170 million in federal funding for broadband access after all. Video Streaming Watch 5 Ways to Use Live-Streaming to Amplify Offline Events WWW.SOCIALMEDIATODAY.COM – Share While there’s some hesitation from event organizers, live-streaming can be a great compliment for offline conferences. Oscars 2017: Where to Stream the Nominated Movies WWW.NYTIMES.COM – Share Several Oscar-nominated films are still in theaters. Here’s where you can stream the rest. Marketing Watch Facebook Ad Campaigns for MailChimp BLOG.MAILCHIMP.COM – Share With Facebook Ad Campaigns for MailChimp, you can grow your audience and sell more stuff in the same place. Find new subscribers and reconnect with others. Gorgias - E-commerce Stack. Top 100 e-commerce apps. GORGIAS.IO – Share E-commerce stack: Top 100 e-commerce apps and tools for Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce How Tech Companies Double Annual Sales with Three Words MEDIUM.COM – Share It’s January, which means increasing sales and growth targets for emerging technology companies for the new year. With more venture capital funding comes higher expectations. How do private B2B tech… Odds & Ends It’s Not You: Hotel Thermostats Really Are Rigged WWW.WSJ.COM – Share Systems can leave guests pushing buttons in vain. Now some travelers have started resisting, scouring thermostat manuals to uncover secret overrides of the override. Starbucks: Crowded stores turned off customers WWW.USATODAY.COM – Share The chain reported disappointing sales growth and partly blamed store “congestion.“ Do you enjoy receiving this? Please share it:     Tweet     Share   Carefully curated by Andy Abramson with Revue If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.

Amazon and Home Delivery -Winds of Change

So if you're an Amazon customer for a few years you likely have been noticing how many times a day a different delivery person shows up with your Amazon delivery. If you dig deep you'll see that the deliveries come via various delivery companies, some of whom are really giant logistics companies. Here in Southern California I've counted no less than five different delivery services who bring my Amazon orders, sometimes on-time, sometimes late, sometimes to my door, sometimes to the building office or sometimes in my mailbox. Let's first breakdown who delivers what (at least here)

• USPS-aka the Post Office. They deliver Amazon Fresh to the door (sometimes or to my building).
• USPS for Amazon Packages that are mailed or via FedEx Smartship and international shipments. Sometimes left in the building office. Sometimes in my mailbox or a key. Never to my door. No real clue a package is here except if I look at Amazon web site or receive an email and then need to hunt around for it.
• On Trac - Packages that usually are fulfilled via a local Amazon Distribution Center (later in the day) To my door when home, to the office when I'm not with a door sticker.
• Amazon Delivery - Packages that usually are fulfilled via a local Amazon Distribution Center-To my door when home or not regardless of signature required or not.
• Amazon Prime Now-an on demand delivery team ala Postmates or Uber
• FedEx-hardly ever.
• UPS-to my door. Signature always. If I'm not home, note on my door, package in left in building office.

Hands down the best experience today is UPS that I've seen over the past year but I see that being challenged by Amazon's own delivery team.

Today with all these companies in the mix Amazon has a consistency problem, and it's what I think they are trying to address more and more with their own Amazon Delivery team. I say that because having conversations with the delivery team from time to time reveals a lot about what's going on. You can see a more UPS like approach evolving, and it's obvious Amazon is learning.

But to grow, Amazon is going to need to create its own infrastructure, not only buy airplanes and drones. This makes companies like OnTrac, a regional delivery company in the western states, an endangered spices, as the level of consumer complaints never seems to quiet down (do a google search). In essence, Amazon could easily hire away executives and a labor force from UPS, OnTrac and FedEx, and create their own supply, logistics and delivery business.  What's more, since Amazon is all about data, they can build one massive "when and how" to deliver to you database better than anyone. If they link up with Uber or Lyft they could even begin to offer "personal" delivery using the micro distribution centers for on demand, something Amazon Prime Now is deploying.

To me, Amazon is a company that really disrupts markets. They know how to do it, and do it with consistency and end up doing it very well, with real world trials, not concepts simply on a white board. I see delivery as their next big frontier.

 

Incompatabilities In The New Battleground in Telephony-Broadsoft vs. Cisco/Apple

Yesterday I wrote about Verizon's OneTalk, and the very pithy press release put out by Broadsoft to support the move into MUCaaS (mobile unified communications as a service.) After I posted it I did a bit more digging around and realized that Verizon Wireless' sales team is going to have a battle on their hands to get even Verizon's existing PBX customers to add on or switch to One Talk quickly. And that problem is Cisco.

Right now, Verizon has many customers running Cisco Call Manager and Call Manager runs a version of SIP affectionately known as Sip-Skinny for Call Control and, it's proprietary to Cisco so for customers this becomes a rip and replace vs. an add on.

But let's get past the Verizon customer fit, and look at what Broadsoft is really doing. They are. as I hinted in the post, chasing the mobile operators who have lacked an enterprise solution since day one of the first cellular call. Attempts to break into that market have largely been by underfunded startups. What Broadsoft is hoping to do is in essence be the mobile operator's Cisco vs. letting Cisco get into the space.

Cisco, with their Spark initiative is going in a whole other direction, playing the OTT game, and which may be far more cost effective for both them and customers.

My take-Broadsoft can win as long as mobile operators control the handsets. What Cisco and Apple are doing with their "enterprise relationship"with the opening up of the dialer has seriously challenged the ability for the mobile operator to keep that lock in. In turn with LTE becoming so stable, VoLTE has become as high quality for any VoIP provider with an app over the Verizon network. So as Verizon keeps touting their amazing network quality and footprint, they've paved the way for all VoIP providers to be able to ride on their highway at the same quality. 

Apple's CallKit is in essence "equal access" on mobile to any telephony provider. And just as "Equal Access" pretty much changed who we use to make calls, and impacted the likes of Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel and others, providing opportunity for Broadsoft and FreeSwitch, Apple and Cisco's Callkit efforts are going to do the same to Broadsoft.

When The Giants Are Scared There's Opportunity

Over time in the USA, opportunity has created lots of wealth. Railroads. Oil companies. Transportation systems. But when it comes to broadband, the oligopolies in the country have always seemed to want to hold others back. 

In the dawn of the Internet, DSL came to fruition a few years ahead of cable modems. But DSL providers where tied to the legacy carriers who had to allow them to connect to the Internet. Those connections could take weeks or months for customers who were forced to pay for higher priced ISDN and T-1s. Over time most of the DSL providers evaporated or were rolled up to where they are now almost invisible. The telcos for the most part have stopped rolling out DSL, and instead, with only four real players in the USA left standing (AT&T, Verizon, Century Link and Frontier) pretty much trying to do with DSL what they did with land lines. Milk them for all they're worth before finally going all in on fiber (FiOS being the best example).

Enter muni-broadband. Perhaps it should have been known as muni-broadbad as the first attempts last decade were largely fraught with less "doing things the right way" and more of  "doing things the wrong way." That's what happens when big telco can sway thinking, influence the process and cause things to be done wrong through FUD. The approach is let others leave carnage and they'll come in and do it right. But something happened along the way. Cable broadband. As soon as @HOME came into being, the telcos and DSL providers had a real threat they couldn't reign in. The threat was not from some small group of upstarts, it was from some of their biggest customers on the data transmission side and from some of the richest media companies in the country. Cable broadband trumped DSL from day one. And today, it still does with speeds of up to 350 megs being offered and soon one gig. Along the way, Muni-Broadband got lost but it never died.

Today's New York Times writes about muni-broadband and it's as important as ever. The jockeying we're seeing in the courts isn't about what's good for America. It's about what's good for the telcos, and to some extent, the cable operators. While the latter is more in a back seat to the telcos, the reality is that Muni-broadband done right, is good for everyone, as it fosters competition. 

Our country was built by competition of newer technology replacing the old. The train replaced the stagecoach. The plane replaced the train. We were also built with local governments starting quasi-governmental authorities to deliver power, oil, water, gas which in time became private enterprise or public-private partnerships. Rural telcos need to work with government, support municipal efforts, and be cooperative so they can move their communities they serve forward, as without a cooperative approach, rural America will be stuck in the last century, not help drive us to the next. To me, broadband, unfettered and at the best speeds possible isn't a right, it's a necessity, and no court, law or organization should stop another group from moving it forward so those who made pioneering moves in the past could continue to hold the reigns.

Been Quiet Too Long-Time To Speak Up Again

Yes, I've been quiet lately. Perhaps it's the summer. Maybe it's just as Dean Bubley and I were talking over dinner in London. The world of VoIP, Unified Communications and Collaboration has hit a point of being a bit of the same or a repeat of what was originally envisioned finally becoming commonplace. In my view after almost 17 years in the space since I first learned what VoIP was, had my first VoIP client (Comgates) and have been writing about the sector since 2003, it's kind of old hat to me. Seriously though, it really takes something to get me excited to bang away with what the news means.

That said, I haven't exactly been silent. I've been penning a piece each week for my friends at Xceptional, the San Diego Managed Service Provider with a kick - butt team of real pros in more than just voice/video and collaboration. Founder Chris McKewon and I have been friends for 12 years or more and I've watched his biz blossom over the years. The team there are great at networking (the set it all up at my old house), Wi-Fi, cloud and more. And, what they don't know can't be done. If you need what they do don't look any farther.

So what has me excited these days? Well, API's and WebRTC for sure. There's so much that can be done and is being done with WebRTC by so many companies. API's are hot and getting hotter. When you think about it, they are a major part of the new tech led economy. I'm also high on bots and messaging platforms and apps.

The more I use Slack the less I like email. The more I use Telegram the less I like SMS. The more I use iMessage, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp the less I want to even be paying for SMS from my mobile operator. Oh, and the more I travel, the less I care about voice from any mobile operator, when I have Dialpad and Telzio each with VoIP calling over 4G/LTE...now I guess if I was in places without killer LTE an Wi-Fi I may feel differently, but both on my iPad, iPhones and even my One Plus Two Android, I'm not touching the PSTN to originate or terminate on my end.

Most of all what I'm looking more closely at remains the idea of Working-Anywhere. Over the past five weeks I've been on my second "workcation." A workcation is where you go someplace that feels like a vacation, allows you to do the best of that while still getting work done. The more I travel, the way I travel, the more I find the whole idea of people stuck in offices, having a daily place to call "work" so outmoded for those who are knowledge workers.

As long as you can run your calendar, schedule your day around your "work" you can have a "-cation" every day. In the course of a 15-18 hour day I'm enjoying more of life than those who fight traffic, deal with internal gossip, or have to be somewhere physically. It does take planning, but being connected and knowing when to disconnect is the key.

Alas it's Sunday here in sunny Portugal. Time to enjoy some of the "cation" time..

 

 

 

 

Skype Meetings is A Me To, Me Also Service

We who hailed Skype, saluted and praised it, now are mostly part of the world that damns it. The service under Microsoft has become more challenging than useful. Calls don't always connect. Billing issues with credit card fraud turn off services of the legitimate user and with so many other options, Skype of old is much like AIM or ICQ (remember them)..

This week, the Skype for Business team unveiled Skype Meetings. If it reminds you of Google Hangouts, it should. A free offer, all designed to get you to subscribe to Office 365. It is also like the offer from Citrix for GoToMeeting. After a while you can have three people on a call, but no more.  Personally I find conference calls with more than five people to be few talkers, mostly listeners. But the real sadness here is that Skype and Microsoft have so much technology and talent that they acquired (Sunrise team being one) that you would think there would be more than a "me too" or "me also" type of product offering with Skype Meetings. Can you say, MSFT is feeling the heat from Slack and HipChat, which via their Jitsi purchase is able to do all this and more via WebRTC..Come one Microsoft, do something good.......

Well, I need to run..Time for another Zoom.us call.....cheerio...