My first connection to the communications market came through a VON Canada event in 2004 in the Greater Toronto Area; at that time I was working with a collaboration product and wanted to see if there was a role for it in the overall communications space. One year later, at VON Canada 2005, a meeting with Stuart Henshall was my first contact with Skype Journal. (My VoIP interest started with a VoIP offering that my last employer, Quarterdeck, put on the market in early 1996, so it was not a new concept for me by any means.) And it was at the final VON Canada in 2006 that I first reported on behalf of Skype Journal as none of the Skype Journal editors of the day could make it to Toronto.

Since then I have attended several Fall VON's in Boston and this year's Spring VON in San Jose. But over the past eight weeks stories have been flowing about the demise of VON; Thomas Howe, who was an adviser to Pulver Media, provides the most comprehensive eulogy for VON as a result of developments over the past week. And Andy has pointed out that VON's investors of 2007 have been able to recover about $1.7 million for VON's assets; there was something of value to someone there.

However, as Tom so eloquently points out, the VoIP innovation community remains and lives on; we just have to find a new "venue" for meeting. Can Lee Dryburgh turn eComm into a commercially successful event? In the interim maybe it's the daily SquawkBox call hosted by Alec Saunders. But Andy needs to figure out a way to continue his VoIP blogger dinners which had become a staple of the VON ecosystem. And we wish the best to Jeff Pulver, Carl Ford and their colleagues as they begin Life 3.0.

Tags: VON, PulverMedia, Stuart Henshall, Skype Journal, Thomas Howe, Andy Abramson, VoIP Watch, Lee Dryburgh, eComm 2008, SquawkBox, Alec Saunders, Jeff Pulver, Carl Ford

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Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch has attempted to respond to last week's two stories that created a lot of buzz:

• The Skype Killer to which I responded: Much Ado About Nothing and, subsequently, The Chickens Come Home to Roost - the IP Communications Saga Continues, and
• The Clearwire/Sprint/Google/Intel story about a WiMax carrier partnership.

Andy, in his post, What's Next In IP Communications? Here's An Idea To Look At, is simply that -- an idea that, in business practice, just won't happen.

Instead of simply being another voice play to battle Skype or the mobile operators, the WiMax companies and the cable operators, and heck, even Ma Telco may all may find that they may be better off looking in another direction.

That direction is real-time video communications bundled up along with other IP related services like voice and text, all in one neat little package.

Why video when selling voice to their already installed user base is already there for the cable guys?

Because it is different.

In essence video is the next level of real-time communications to be nurtured and embraced, not only because its ready now, but because it also gives the WiMax, Telco and cable players a very different value proposition to offer and lead off with.

Too many players, too many egos, too many "ifs" and too much agreement required. And video communications really has no proprietary technology beyond normal technology licensing. Rogers launched the first North American video calling plan last week with its Rogers Vision package (which can be bundled up with voice and text) along with its launch for support of the Nokia N95 8GB. It's about who has access to the customer base; who can handle the billing readily. (I could almost see another Vonage scenario where Sprint/Clearwire would have to go out and find a critical mass of customers, incurring huge marketing costs.)

Alec Saunders says, Me Different, Not Really:

No, to really really change the game would require a leap of imagination that I don’t think Clearwire / Sprint possesses. WiMax is symmetrical high speed. Imagine a pure peer sharing network instead. Something like the TerraNet system — Skype style p2p for communications, and bittorrent style p2p for content distribution. Mesh it so you don’t have to build out a massive infrastructure. Price the whole thing at a flat rate for access only, and sit back and watch the destruction of 125 years of legacy telecom.

Sorry, Andy ... it's not a play that's going to be executed. Just look at Novell's failed attempt to create a standard UNIX consortium back in the mid-90's. Somehow a virally adopted operating system called Linux got in the way -- and it did not need "big players" to sow the seeds. Yet today Linux (and Open Source software) has become one of IBM's key resources for many of its offerings. Think of Skype's technology and ecosystem as the "Linux" of the real time communications world.

Update: Jon Arnold has just piped in with his: Skype-O Killer... que'st que c'est... He starts off with:

I can't seem to face up to the facts,
I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax...

Recognize the lyrics? Of course you do. But if you don't, it's from Psycho Killer, an early tune from one of my fave bands, the Talking Heads.

Like the title of my post? Clever, huh? Starts making even more sense when you start with the lyrics (did you pick up that other subtle Heads innuendo?). Those first two lines say it all for me when it comes to this Skype-killer storyline that started early last week with Om Malik's post.

Sorry, Jon. ... As for SIP as the common denominator for the telcos to make a play, just keep in mind that Skype is one of the world's largest users of SIP -- for its SkypeIn and SkypeOut services. They understand the technology, the protocol and where it can play a role; they can turn up the "volume" when it's appropriate in a "real time conversation" market context. Just because the technology and protocols are there does not a business make. (Skype's GM for Audio and Video was involved in the early evolution of SIP during five years spent at Microsoft. He recalls what the dream was and what today's reality is for SIP.)

Tags: Andy Abramson, VoIP Watch, Rogers Vision, WiMax, Alec Saunders. SaundersLog, UNIX, Linux, Novell

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With RIM's annual WES event starting later today we started to see announcements Monday about a new Blackberry and a new VC fund for mobile applications.

Blackberry Bold is definitely a major smartphone enhancement from the current Pearl, Curve and, most notably, 88x0 lines. Reading through the new specs, the Blackberry Bold addresses several issues that have been of concern in the past:

• triband 3G support extends support to GPRS/EDGE/HDSPA networks
• "push button" WiFI setup to readily access "protected" WiFi access points
• significantly improved multimedia support - overall (streaming) video performance, iTunes synchronization, new media player, improved display
• and, while they're still working on it prior to the Blackberry Bold's summer release, a new web browser.

Amongst the new specs:

• faster processor (@ 624 MHz, the fastest Blackberry)
• 128MB internal Flash memory but also 1GB on-board storage memory
  • expandable to 16GB via MicroSD/SDHC slot
• 2 megapixel camera
• GPS with Blackberry MapsBlackberry MediaSync to transfer media from iTunes
• half-VGA "ultra-bright" display (480 x 320)
• higher capacity battery:

Of particular note; it maintains the traditional QWERTY keyboard with ergonomic improvements - a key Blackberry defining feature relative to iPhone -- and is its "trackball ergonomics" their response to iPhone's touch screen?

With its newly enhanced, high performance browser and high-resolution, ultra-bright display, the BlackBerry Bold smartphone gives users an on-the-go web browsing experience with desktop-style depiction. The trackball mimics a mouse, making it easy to navigate sites in "Page View" or "Column View" or to zoom in on specific parts of a web page, while various emulation settings allow users to choose between the full desktop-style HTML content and layout or the mobile version. Attachments can also now be downloaded from within the browser and there is support for watching streaming videos (RTSP – real-time streaming protocol).

While the official press release talks about it as a "business" smartphone, Crackberry.com reports from the WES preview day:

Target Market? There's been a lot of talk about the target market for the 9000/BlackBerry Bold. The basic confusion to date is that it looks a bit "enterprisey", but has a camera built-in which historically screams consumer device. What it comes down to is that RIM didn't have an enterprise/consumer target in mind with the BlackBerry Bold. The real goal here was to build a high-end device that was the ultimate BlackBerry to date... the BlackBerry on Juice (err..Steroids)... putting WiFi/GPS/3G into one unit with a Speeeedy Processor and some More Memory. So there's no target market per se, but there is an Appeal...and the BlackBerry Bold is going to Appeal to BOTH Enterprise and Consumers. It'll appeal to the Business Executive and it will appeal to us Gadgetholics who just HAVE to have the best device on the market.

In addition it appears that iPhone is not the only smartphone getting VC funding support for applications. Yesterday RBC Financial, Thomson Reuters and RIM announced the Blackberry Partners Fund - $150 million "to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry® platform and other mobile platforms". Toronto's JLA Ventures, who have been involved in startups for over ten years, is a co-manager of the fund along with RBC Financial. Long time personal acquaintance Rick Segal of JLA talks about the fund and JLA's role; also Rick is interviewed by VentureBeat. Rick emphasizes that mobile applications only make business sense if they run on multiple mobile platforms, including Blackberry, and that only JLA and RBC Financial will make the funding decisions with no role for RIM.

Looking forward to using iSkoot and IM+ for Skype on the Blackberry Bold. While the Blackberry Bold represents advances in device resource issues, there are still thecarrier issues of network capacity, mobile VoIP call quality and unlimited data plan availability to be addressed before we see a reliable mobile VoIP client running on a smartphone.

Tags: RIM, Blackberry, Blackberry Bold, Blackberry Partners Fund, Rick Segal, JLA Ventures, RBC Financial, iSkoot, IM+ for Skype

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Guest post by Kent E. Soulé, San Francisco, California

It used to be possible to import GMail contacts into Skype (actually, Skype would search my GMail contacts, and identify the ones with Skype accounts).  Very helpful ... particularly when I have over 900 GMail contacts.

In November or December 2007, this feature ceased to be functional (though you wouldn't know it from the Skype website).  Instead, when I now try to import contacts from GMail, I receive a message that "Skype could not find any contacts from your address books" ... and offering to "Click here to add people to your contact list manually" .... riiiight!!  See the attached image.

The loss of functionality appeared to occur coincident with the late 2007 GMail interface upgrade (which I don't use) ... though the two aren't necessarily related.

I wrote Skype tech support, and received the advice to remove and reinstall Skype.  Sure. What I didn't tell them is that I am experiencing this behavior on three different machines: two that are XP (one of which is at the office, and maintained by the IT Department) and 1 that is Vista. 

Hard to believe that "reinstall Skype" is the solution (it wasn't). I've searched the Skype forums, and others have experienced the same problem (the nasty workaround is to export your contacts from GMail to Outlook, and then do an import from there).

Each time there is a new version of Skype, I keep hoping that the problem will be fixed.  Nope.

Rebecca before 33 days on the road for Skype

Skype Nomad's a nice mix of reality programming, travel porn, product field test, and marketing stunt. Rebecca Campbell, 26, is in motion for 33 days, going around the world Eastward from London. She's blogging her journey and posting updates flickr (you gotta see her photos), facebook, twitter (via Nokia N95), Dopplr and MySpace.

Skype had a smaller role in last summer's Blue Planet Run, a multi-country athletic event.

Titles worse than Skype Nomad: "Trolling for Outlets", "Bandwidth Tourism", "Around the World 47 Days Faster Than Phileas Fogg", "Eat, Pray, Skype", "Realtime Travel Voyeurism", "Exercises in Sleep Deprivation". 

This is a simple, direct, promotion. It brings Skype into the real world, away from desks and offices.

So far Rebecca's been to Singapore, Beijing, Yi Chang, Chongqing. (Did you know China has more Skype users than any other country?) Coming up:

• Guangzhou on May 12th
• Hong Kong from May 12th to 13th
• Perth on May 14th
• Kalgoorlie on May 15th

More points in Australia. Then California and Alaska. England, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Sweden, ending in Estonia.

I've been resisting this because, after all, it's a corporate publicity gimmick. And I'm no sucker, right?

Right. But this must be what they mean by PR 2.0.

It was very low key. Nobody pitched me. Nomad Ground Control built Skype Nomad's social media persona across multiple networks. Buzz reaches me naturally, through people I know, in contexts I trust.

Because it engages with the real world, the outcomes are unpredictable, so there's suspense, and news. It builds to a climax at the end: will she be able to finish? On time?

The stream of updates lets people identify with Rebecca and meet other fans. This 800-hour-long event also builds up critical mass, as word of mouth spreads.

I've been sucked in to the experience. Ducking security at an airport. Taking a boat up the Yangtze River. Food Porn. People watching. Trouble squatting on a train. It's fun, tiring, gritty, with a host who's ready for the challenge.

See also:

Jan Geirnaert on Rebecca's confused Skypephone presence.

Jim Courtney on Connecting and Enabling the Global Nomad.

The German appeals court almost ruled against Skype today in Skype vs. GPL before Skype withdrew the appeal of its July 2007 conviction. Skype was convicted of not following the software license that comes with Linux. Skype used Linux in PC-free Wi-Fi phones.

No news release from Skype on this. No word from Skype on what they, their suppliers, and their distributors will do to comply with the GPL, or when.

Continue reading "Skype caves on GPL appeal" »

Enough said.

We have previously posted about Jonathan Christensen's presentation at eComm 2008; here and here. As well we have referenced the transcript here. This past week eComm 2008 producer Lee Dryburgh was able to make available videos of the presentation. If you want to learn about the evolution of VoIP and how the conditions were ripe for the successful launch of Skype in the fall of 2003 as well as a discussion of the seeds of mobile Skype, take 30 minutes to watch it.

For easy follow along we have reposted the accompanying slides: (Power Point version here).

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