FireFlicks Contest - First Entrants are posted

The first entrants in the Firefox promotion for a Video Commercial are out, this is my fave so far.

You can see the rest and vote here.

$218 Trillion Phone Bill - Someone needs Skype!

Telecom Trends: Data Entry Error - ya think?

Mark Goldberg, caught this Fox News Story of a Malaysian man who received a 218 Trillion Dollar phone bill.

That is a lot of SkypeOut...

From the Associated Press Article.

Yahaya Wahab said he disconnected his late father's phone line in January after he died and settled the 84 ringgit ($23) bill, the New Straits Times reported.

But Telekom Malaysia later sent him a 806,400,000,000,000.01 ringgit ($218 trillion) bill for recent telephone calls along with orders to settle within 10 days or face legal proceedings, the newspaper reported.

Iotum builds - Asterisk Integration Kit

This morning, without having the opportunity to peruse my usual blog postings, I asked Alec Saunders CEO of Iotum - at the VON Toronto show, how one would integrate to Asterisk, PBX. (I swear I wasn't a plant) - co-incidentally - Iotum (earlier this morning) released a MAJOR intiative to support Asterisk Worldwide with an integration kit to Asterisk. Well DONE, smart and I look forward to seeing it work.

Embracing open standards Telephony for a startup is a risky but brilliant idea. Marketing to a niche like Asterisk, is very forward thinking and this will really showcase the power of new Voice 2.0 apps. Telco's will constantly be pushed by moves like this to embrace new apps.

Alec's excellent keynote (best so far) pointed out one thing that is ringing in my ears, Niche's can be very profitable, I am glad telco's are not thinking in this space as it opens the doors for quicker, faster and (hmm smarter) companies like Iotum to make some big gains.

China Blocks Skype and other VoIP licenses until 2008

The financial times is reporting that China; in a move to protect fixed line telecom operators, has banned free internet telephone services for at least two years.

TOM online chief Wang Leilei is downplaying this by stating "our strategy is to grow our user base. With a big user base, there is a
lot you can do. Revenue (from SkypeOut) is not important to us because
we have not put in a lot of cost," Still this is a set back for Skype in China, as the attractiveness of reselling Skype paid services for there largest partner is no longer an option. This of course applies to all VoIP services (QQ, Yahoo, MSN etc) not just Skype, but it was reported earlier this month that Skype was adding 950 Thousand Skypers monthly in mainland China.

The question that remains after this mess is whether Skype compatible hardware sales is a big enough carrot for portals to continue promoting Skype at great length given they aren't going to have access to the revenue from paid services?

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....