Needed - Director of Web Development, if you're still interested after seeing the video. :)

Probably one of the best lipdubbing's I have seen, Connected Ventures is looking for a new top dog to look after front-end development. Here is a video of an average day there. Do they look like they have any fun at work?

Vonage Patent woes, solved by 3COM?

Andy has a very interesting post, regarding (what appears to be) a solution to Vonage patent woes. Looks like 3COM thought this 'VoIP' thing was going to be big as well, and patented their own PSTN/IP termination solution. Neither the Verizon or 3COM patent reference each other, so this could be the 'grail we are looking for'.

As always we can expect a follow up from Mr. Abramson with the results.

Interesting.

Rogers 1 MB Data plan is $40.00 in Australia 3 cents !!!

Skype Lifestyle

Thanks to Jim, for pointing me to Ike's Blog re: the announcement 3 in Australia is offering a 1GB data plan with unlimited Skype calling for mobile, for 30 AUD$.

So just to illustrate how badly CDN wireless providers are taking advantage of us - Rogers charges $40.00 CDN for 1MB of data on a Blackberry Calling plan, in Australia the same amount of traffic is 3 cents!!!

More to follow.

Rogers Data Rates are LUDICROUS

Write to your MP. The CRTC needs to be taken out and shot*
Originally uploaded by Tom Purves.

I have been screaming about this for months now, and thanks to Tom Purves we have a visual representation of how bad we are getting screwed by Rogers Wireless in Canada.

$ 1600.00 for 500MB of Data. It is no Joke! they really charge that and think it is ok. I just checked out Tmobile USA, they have a 79.99 Unlimited World Data plan. We need to call Rogers to task on this, what is the best way to do it?

Rogers are you listening? This has to stop and stop NOW.

Update - I just rec'd my Rogers Bill which included a recent trip to CeBit and had with it a ridiculous charge for Data (about $50.00/mb). Needless to say I immediately called Rogers to inquire what plan would have been the right one to have for international roaming (knowing full well they don't offer that service) after the CSR failed to find a plan that would have covered me they acknowledged the issue and removed the charges from my bill, this time only.

To quote Peter Finch "I'm mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore"
.

Vonage/Verizon Patent Dispute Dissected

Ipurbia has a great post on the details (sadly unavailable on the web) about the Vonage/Verizon patent dispute.

It appears that Skype and other VoIM clients are in the clear, but Level 3 and other Termination providers might be in the crosshairs in the future.

Worth the read.

Skype.com Traffic Ranking by Country (US = 13%)

Alexa's new features (announced last week) sort traffic on a website by country now. It is a very handy feature and a welcome improvement.

Here are the traffic rankings for Skype.com per country.

I have been searching for an updated list of 'Skype users by country' and 'revenue by country' but haven't been able to find anything recent. It would be interesting to see how the two statistics correlate with 'traffic by country'.

Usually in business 20% of your customers represent 80% of your revenue (if not higher) but in Skype's case - no one country (I am guessing) overwhelms the rest, the top 25 are listed which make up 70% of Skype.com traffic, and the rest of the world = 30%. It poses an very interesting and challenging task for Skype Marketing. How do you market to the entire world if you don't have the budget like Coca Cola, and do you concentrate on the 25 countries that make up 70% of your traffic and forget about the rest of the world? Neither of which is an easy task.

The solution it seems would be to co-brand your client and work with as many #1 and #2 portals worldwide to get it out there. Something that Skype has done in the past (China, Japan Poland that I know of), but you don't hear much about anymore. The revenue numbers from co-branding partners would also be very interesting to see - maybe it isn't worth the work.

Skype and Spinvox... I guess it's sort of cool

via Andrew Watson @ The Independent

According to a news story from The Independent, Skype has announced a deal with Spinvox which is a UK based company with a reported 130K users. Spinvox converts voicemail (VM)messages to text messages that are then delivered to the users mobile phone. This will be handy for avid Skype users who (at this point) don't have a method of retrieving voicemail from any source other than the Skype client.

I am lukewarm to this service, mostly as Skype seems to have jumped a big step in the evolution of VM. Simply having the VM messages delivered as mp3/wav attachments via email would be a welcome addition for Skype VM. Currently messages are proprietary in nature and only available through the Skype p2p network, which to be blunt - sucks - and is a huge limiting factor to Skype VM adoption and usage. A web interface and portal of my messages would really tie me to Skype as a communication tool, even when I am not logged onto the p2p. Every other VoIP solution currently offered in NA provides this basic form of Unified Messaging.

Personally I wouldn't pay for the SpinVox solution, if it was free I would probably use it - I imagine more text/SMS centric people will think differently. But as a member of the Blackberry faithful I would rather just get an attachment sent to my mobile/email, that I can then store and forward a la' Apple's new Visual VM for the iPhone.

There is no mention of the deal on Skype's website as of this writing, but I will update if they release a press statement regarding SpinVox.