"E.T. PhoneGnome" ~ he should have called Iotum.

Remember E.T. that beloved alien, that wanted to do nothing more than 'phone home'. Well that tearjerking little movie from the 80's would have had a quick finish if E.T. had the PhoneGnome - enabled with Iotum's Relevance Engine. He wouldn't have missed the call to get back on the damn ship, as that call was very 'relevant' to his situation - and the Engine wouldn't have given up trying to find him.

So what is a PhoneGnome? - simply put it is a next generation voice platform solution, it requires no LNP, new hardware or complicated installation and opens real "VoIP" applications to anyone with a broadband internet connection, and now Phonegnome and Iotum have bumped uglies and resulting offspring is a true Voice 2.0 solution that really can't be matched for features by any of the big boys; Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and even my beloved Skype :) ...

However all is not lost in the world of VoIP communications, the seas need not boil, and locusts need not fly - as both PhoneGnome and Iotum are platforms; which means they are designed to enable other solutions - just as a PhoneGnome is provider agnostic, Iotum is network agnostic - it works with VoIP, celluar, PSTN etc., any SIP friendly gateway. Skype, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have an opportunity to embrace this now before they are looking over there shoulder saying "I wish we had that".

Just talking about next generation voice services isn't enough, listen up kids, I don't want to wait 10 years for my phone to know whether or not I want to take a call, I want it today and there is no reason why I can't have it, the tools exist right now.

Nortel, Cisco, Mitel, Avaya, Panasonic, NEC all have a need to offer this - interoperate with Outlook; and secure a place on the business desk, Iotum provides a tool to do it. Eventually (I think) they will all do this, it just makes too much sense - but the fun part is the first one to take advantage of this technology wins BIG.

"it's not the big that beats the small; it's the fast that beats the slow"~ Niklas Zennstrom

Firefox Contest winners

The video entitled Daredevil, won the Fireflicks contest as announced last week. Of all the submissions it was hands down the most artistic, and told the message the best.

The tagline at the end, really nailed the Firefox community. "My other browser is a surfboard"



Click to see the winning video.

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Naked, barefoot and invisible Skype

An interesting post today on the Skype Dev Blog, has generated a fair bit of discussion in the blogosphere. Essentially it broaches the concept of a naked, headless, Skype client. Skype announced last August, the SkypeNet API, (Vaporware to this point btw) which was along these lines, but the concept of a 'Naked Skype' as discussed today goes much much further.

Alec weighs in with his Voice 2.0 manifesto musings, and they are bang on. Jim has a follow up post on SkypeJounal. This idea; creates and solidifies Skype as a platform for voice communication. Developers would flock to have access to the Skype communication network. I could see "Skype Inside" stickers popping up like Intel Inside, or "powered by Skype" etc., all driving a healthy and expanding developer community and enlarging the userbase for Skype paid services.

It seems pretty apparent that these are the tools the dev. community wants - and on the heels of a Techdirt analysis that Skype is far from reaching its earn out clause numbers, I would think they would jump at the chance to start offering robust, enterprise tools for the loyal community to start driving real numbers to the bottom line.

Ringtones are so last Tuesday.


Developer, Developers, Developers....

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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?