Communications

Applying Email Marketing Features to Personal Email

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:00:00 +0100

A standardized element of modern email marketing services provides statistical results of the campaign - what % of messages were opened, what % were forwarded. These large campaign services struggled with being able to scale their service to the point where they could enable or justify this functionality for the casual or individual emailer who might value knowing that the one addressee of the message had in fact just opened the email in question. No doubt, competition for the high volume email...

Taxes and Telecommuting

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:37:49 +0100

Surprise! Some states may claim that simply having an employee telecommuting from that state qualifies your business as 'doing business in that state.' in the past, a business had to have offices in the state to qualify, but in the Internet age that's all getting blurred, and in the slow economy, economically weak states are getting more aggressive and creative in discovering new revenues. According to this WSJ post, the only appropriate answer is to have the telecommuter resign and form a consul...

Breaking News - Avaya to IPO

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:19:30 +0100

For the third* time in 16 years, Avaya will be going public to sell $1 billion worth of the company (how much of the company that represents is not clear) as announced in a press release earlier this afternoon. Avaya is not the same company you might recall in recent times. It is the combined entity of Avaya and Nortel Enterprise with a much larger sales footprint in North America channels, managed services including telepresence professional services and the recently announced discontinued BCM (...

Innovations in Screen Technologies

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:23:12 +0100

This Austrian startup and university spinoff has a compelling technology sure to stretch the imagination of display and interaction engineers. Debuting in the US at the InfoComm show later this month, isiQiri (pronounced eye-see-keer-ee) brings its patented Q-foil technology to bear in the Q-Screen. Based on thin-film optical-sensing technologies coupled with triangulation-oriented software, the Q-foil enables large screen interactivity with laser pointers or user touch. The company's website s...

GiveBackMail - a New Class of Email Service

Mon, 02 May 2011 15:00:25 +0100

Email is probably the oldest Internet communications service, and today is considered among the most mature of the wide range of services used in business and in personal life to share ideas and digital artifacts such as photos, PDFs, documents and presentations with coworkers, customers, partners, friends and family. The 'free' web-based email service, supported by display advertisements is a staple of many users' online communications experience and starting today, a new entrant promises to ch...

47.xxx.xxx.xxx Now Microsoft

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:28:35 +0100

As reported in domain incite, Microsoft paid $7.5 million for control of the 700,000 IP addresses that had been assigned to Nortel. I remember that there was a time when Nortel Networks was responsible for an entire class-A IP address space. As the company's Internet Evangelist from 1995-1997, I used this fact in my regular presentations, talks and writings at the time about how the Internet was going to change the industry and society. Despite the ignomy of being bankrupt and then sold for par...

Cisco Doesn't Get It

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:57:05 +0100

Cisco's dropping the price of Umi by 20% and cutting the monthly service fee by 75% to $499 and $9.95/month. These price reductions came with an announcement of support for interoperability with Cisco TelePresence rooms and a Mac and PC clients. The Mac and PC clients are useful so travelers could video home from a hotel and say good night to their spouses and kids while on the road without having to bring a redundant box and camera with them. The interoperability with TelePresence rooms is a li...

WiFi in cars, trains, buses and planes

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:51:50 +0100

Over the past several weeks I've had the chance to travel by limo bus (via the Boston-New York Limoliner) and today by plane where WiFi is complementary. This flight, Delta 1001 from Boston Logan to Atlanta is packed but comes with complementary WiFi from GoGoInternet. In fact this post comes via aircraft WiFi and satellite (I believe). Slow, but great for lumpy transmissions like this posting process. In fact the most painful part of this process is the fact that I have to turn off the WYSIWY...

Avistar Brings Video to Virtual PCs

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 18:49:29 +0100

The PC video conferencing company, Avistar provided a recent update on their latest announcement of support for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), the classic method for delivering PC-class of services to many users without the cost or hassle of issuing each user a PC. VDI avoids assigning each user a Windows license or providing a hard drive. In VDI there is still a need for mouse, keyboard, monitor and a low-cost device at the terminal that provides the high speed networking of the presentat...

Cisco and Home Telepresence

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 14:09:10 +0100

Well, the rumors are flying that Cisco's statement that they'll be debuting a major new consumer product in October means home telepresence at $500/unit. The pundits point out that the Cisco unit responsible for the Flip video camera is the likely starting point of the product. My concern is three-fold: a. an October announcement is likely to miss the critical consumer Thanksgiving - Christmas shopping period, or worse starve or stuff the consumer channel with product they can't get enough of o...

Stop the Presses! Avaya Enables Connections to Carrier!

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:30:03 +0100

What? Avaya announced yesterday with some attempted fanfare that they've signed some kind of strategic agreement to interconnect their products with the global telephone company, Skype. Yawn. Isn't that what IP PBXes are supposed to do?Next. Thankfully, I was being briefed by a few really innovative companies and missed the all hands on deck presentations. Instead, I spent my time reviewing features that very few companies are doing - not wasted listening to the trivial feature described as ext...

DexRex Brings IM & SMS to Highly Regulated Industries

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:25:48 +0100

I had a briefing with the founder and CEO of Massachusetts startup DexRex, Derek Lyman earlier this month and discussed the company's upcoming announcement of ChatSync Mobile Enterprise for BlackBerry. Founded in 2006 by Derek and Richard Tortora, two University of Massachusetts Computer Science students, the company has steadily grown to engage with 70+ enterprise customers. The ChatSync product and service involves a software agent that plugs into your PC or mobile device and securely forwards...

Fashion Industry Shows How Tweets Make an Impact

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:44:33 +0100

The fashion industry has hit a vein and it's full of gold. Leaders such as the fashion giant, Oscar de la Renta has managed to cook up excitement, and intrigue into their new products and have used Twitter to help with the enduser 'noise' momentum. But let us be clear, not by just giving out raw information, but by cleverly mixing 'business with pleasure'. The Wall Street Journal writes about how Erika Bearman (Oscar de la Renta Director of Communications), did not just give raw information ...

Avaya's New Tablet Positioned as a Video Device

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:24:44 +0100

Leveraging the coolness of a tablet computer, Avaya's new Personal Video Conferencing Device is a 9" Google Android tablet with 3 USBs, WiFi and Gb Ethernet. A front facing HD 720p video camera is capable of 30 fps transmission and the touch screen can support 720p 30fps presentation. It comes with a nice pullout u-shaped stand for desktop/tabletop stability, freeing up hands for doodling, note taking or presentation support. The newly shipping device also sports a new UI called Avaya Flare, sho...

WHAT? Cisco Wants to Buy Skype?

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:05:54 +0100

I almost fell out my chair today. I heard from a friend (incidentally over Skype) that Cisco was planning to pre-empt Skype's IPO and wanted to acquire the service provider for as much as $5 billion. Then, I read about it on the Wall Street Journal, and over at CNet. What a joke. I am down on this initiative for a couple reasons: Cisco-Skype would be competing with Cisco's biggest channels and customers, who have been loyally purchasing Cisco's margin-rich routers and switches for years. Those c...

Research Shows Dogs Help Collaboration

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:55:40 +0100

Does the presence of a canine make people collaborate more effectively? This is the question researchers at Central Michigan University studied in an advertising development experiment. A dozen groups of four persons were asked to build a 15-second advertisement. Although everyone was asked to contribute ideas, the groups had to choose one. Half of the groups had a dog present during the brainstorming meetings, while half had no access to an animal. Effectiveness of collaboration was measured i...

Email Cache Is Evidence

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:07:37 +0100

Paul Shin Devine, the former Apple manager who is facing charges of wire fraud used his company computer to provide information about pricing, product specifications and sales forecasts for products not yet released and allegedly profited some $1 million in kickbacks. Apparently the use of so-called freemail Hotmail and Gmail accounts didn't hide from prosecutors the cached messages confirming his fraud. Even the use of the Microsoft Entourage email client for Mac provided the necessary details a...

Employee-Employer Trust and Privacy

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:05:22 +0100

The relationship between employee and employer is a unique one. It is unlike any other relationship in ones life. Since the time of Henry Ford's great paternalistic employer experiments we've come to know that the employer is not like your mother and that there shouldn't be sentimental attachments or expectations that might prevent the business from progressing in its competitive market. Customers pay the company, which in turn provides the paycheck that allows your family to eat. However, it i...

Debunking Broadband Hysteria

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:07:14 +0100

Proponents of a [[National Broadband Plan]] argue that our national competitiveness depends on the deeper penetration of high speed Internet services, which can only be achieved with massive subsidized investments to the local, rural telephone and cable companies that service remote and rural markets in the heartland of America.

Skype Statistics 1H2010

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:16:53 +0100

Further to Paul's note about the upcoming Skype IPO, here's the statistics update as of June 30, 2010.