Moore's Law for razor blades

via Gizmodo, The Economist has predicted the future of razor blades numbers are exponential and according to there clever graph, we will be shaving with 100 blades by the year 2010.

Personally I think we will see the advent of engineered duo blades, an architecture which will allow for one blade to have two seperate cutting edges, thus doubling the efficiency of a single stroke. This new technology will only work with certain razor manufacturers, causing antitrust litigation by the smaller blade companies.

US Robotics Uses Skype for Client Support

US Robotics has embraced Skype on a few levels, it is refreshing to see leaders in Consumer Electronic manufacturing embracing the Skype phenomena. Earlier this week they released the USR9620 @ Cebit in Hanover Germany - an ATA device that allows analog telephones to use Skype like a regular phone, following others such as VoSky, VoIPVoice and Multi-link whom have competing products, USRobitics has shown an commitment to developing Skype hardware for the growing userbase internationally.

In addtion to the release of the 9620, USRobotics is now accepting calls via Skype to there main support line - as shown on their main support page - link - . I would be very interested in the numbers of people they receive calls from via Skype, it really represents how pervasive SKype is becoming in business, anyone can simply click to call from a web page, to receive support on Skype solutions and all of there other product lines as well.

Kudo's to USR, very forward thinking.

BlackBerry maker, NTP ink $612 million settlement

Well it looks like it is finally over, but it ends up costing RIM 612$ to fend of the trolls over at NTP. A group with no product, no staff, no office and up until today no money.

The sheer insanity of this ruling befuddle's me, I admit I am not an expert by any stretch in patent law, but this ruling was forced upon RIM by a US judge, with whom based his ruling on certain patents that NTP alledgedly had - ALL of which have sinced been negated.

Regardless of whether or not it makes sense, it is over - RIM shares are doing well, so the investment community see's this as a good end result.

Now, Skype please write a J2ME version so I can run it on my new 8700, that I am about to order....

Axosoft and Social Marketing experiment saves you 500$..

A company called Axosoft is running a very interesting promotion in social marketing. Axosoft makes what appears to be the most robust bug tracking and client managment software I have seen, and since I happen to be in the market for this type of solution, it just saved me 500.00 and the headache of installing and running an opensource alternative.

They are giving away there OnTime Bug Tracker/Project Management solution (normal retail $500.00) for a 5$ donation to the Red Cross, it is a great idea and a real innovative way of getting the word out on its solution.

Stickam - Video/Clientless VoIP - FREE

For the past few days I have been testing Stickam, you can see it 1/2 way down my blog under my profile. This service is really quite amazing. It is using the latest and greatest flash tricks to provide a few very compelling and usefull features. Among the most interesting is a live webcam feed with sound ! to my blog. It also allows me to store 500MB of content; pictures, video, music in my Stickam player that can be accessed from my site with a few simple clicks - and if that isn't enought, it is also a Clientless VoIP solution, and although not as good as Skype's wideband codec, it isn't too shabby, I was very impressed.

The viral potential of this tool is huge. By targeting MySpace, Xanga, Blogger etc., it will become a standard to enhance your profile and stream webcasts to the internet. I can see no reason why you wouldn't want to use it.

If I am online, you should be able to see me working away at my PC - and most likely hear me as well (haven't figured out how to mute my mic yet) Log in as a guest and send me an IM, would love to hear you thoughts.

Some Aerial Shots of Niagara Falls

I was flying this morning and captured these shots of Niagara Fall's. You can tell it was cold by the icy mist cloud that is rising from the basin. It is a pretty amazing thing to see if you have never stood and listened to the thuderous roar the falls make.

Will Microsoft make Unified Messaging Mainstream in 2006?

I have long been a proponent of Unified Messaging (UM), the idea of having one central repository for fax, email and voicemail just makes sense. I actually deployed one of the first systems in Canada for a major Fortune 5 Tech company back in 95 - then the system was based on Rhetorex cards from then Octel (sinced purchased by Lucent/Avaya), and was integrated to many PBX and KSU's available. It was pretty robust even by todays standards, but carried a massive pricetag and only the geekiest of Telco VAR's were able to figure out how to install and maintain it. UM in general, never really took off in mainstream business due to the cost and the 'forklift' needed equip most modern offices. The CPE was just too high for the benefit, even though 90% of the people you would present the idea to, thought it was the 'bee's knee's".

The rise of the IP/PBX and Intel's purchase of Dialogic and the resulting IVR toolkits that were spawned by CTI's growth brought forth a genesis of products both ASP and CPE. This allowed a more financially palatable solution for some business and UM has gained some momentum in the last 6 years but still, it isn't mainstream, even though most new PBX sold today are IP based, the manufacturers are still hoping to bank on features and apply the same pricing models that they have been "bending over" businesses with for years. ie 15K for 20 hours of VM guys? it is just a hard drive....

The Opensource Asterisk PBX has supported Unified messaging basically since its inception and has been undergoing rapid growth, Tom Keating predicts that this is the year for Asterisk as he thinks all it needs is one major Fortune 5 to deploy Asterisk company wide and the green curtain will be pulled back revealing the 'puppetry' that PBX vendors have been displaying to the corporate world for so long.

But what about Microsoft? Where the hell have they been in this UM movement for say the past decade? every UM solutions provider today supports Exchange message integration, (some exclusively http://www.excendia.com) and only now M$ is adding UM features to Exchange 12. According to e-week.com Exchange 12 (due out this year) has the following UM capability.

Essentially, users will be able to send and receive messages with a
fax or voice mail attachment that can be played or opened from any
client, be it Outlook, Outlook Web access or a mobile device, Ressler
said.

"In addition, they will be able to use any regular telephone
to call into the Exchange environment and check their messages, which
will be read to them.

"They will also be able to respond with a voice mail
attachment, look at their calendar, speak to the system, as it includes
speech recognition capabilities, and have it transcribe a message
telling, for example, all those attending a meeting that you will be
late," Ressler said.

So can Microsoft force businesses to adopt UM? I guess it depends on how they are going to handle their fax and voice resources, that stuff is pretty expensive and last I checked they don't sell fax servers so they will have to integrate to one or many as well as a voice platform (most likely Dialogic) as they are pretty cozy with Intel. Where does this leave there channel? The same problem still exists, data guys don't get voice and voice guys don't get data, although this line is blurring quickly, who deploys this solution to the end user? it could get messy PBX integrations are not for the newbie.

When you throw in revolutions like Skype to the mix and an open API, you have to ask the question - Is server based communication solutions that M$ pushes really the future? Exchange could be replicated using P2P principles, a la' Microsoft and Groove... and result in practically free business communication and messaging solution, Skype? Peerio? regardless this should be a good year for VoIP, UM and result in even better value for the end user.