Defining the Line between the Carrier and the Mobile Device Vendor

By on October 7, 2006

One of the toughest challenges I encountered in managing the Canadian operations of a PC hardware and, later, PC software vendor was to ensure that customer support flows seamlessly between the resellers and the vendor. It is the responsibility of the vendor to set up training and support programs that provide appropriate tools for the [...]

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Silent Skype, Naked Skype

By on October 6, 2006

Earlier this week Skype announced a new Skype 2.6 beta release for Windows. Two new features: Skypecasts controls are now directly available within the Skype client A bandwidth indicator is enabled via the Advanced Options (Tools|Optiions|Advanced) However, the most interesting for partners is this line in the announcement: For developers, there’s a feature here that [...]

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Skylook 2 – Building Business Processes Around Skype

By on October 5, 2006

Last weekend Netralia launched Version 2 of Skylook – a tool that links Skype to that ubiquitous contact management and email tool, Outlook 2000/XP/2003, and extends facets of the Skype experience to your mobile phone. In an interview with Jeremy Hague, Skylook’s CEO, I learned that Skylook is rapidly becoming a key business tool for [...]

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Beyond what Reuters Told Us .. More details of Niklas’ interview with Helsingin Sanomat

By on October 3, 2006

During Canada’s Centennial Year (1967) I was host for a student exchange with Finnish students; we have kept up contact over the past 39 years. Last week I asked one of them if s/he could translate the actual Helsingin Sanomat article reporting on their interview with Niklas Zennström (registration required) or at least give me [...]

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Friday Update II – Struggling to Break the Mobile Oligopoly

By on October 1, 2006

[Yes, I know it's Sunday! But I started to write this up Friday.] The past couple of weeks has seen much higher visibility for attempts to duplicate the landline long distance calling revolution generated by VoIP technology in the wireless space. First Jajah launched Jajah Mobile at DEMO Fall 2006, where a Jajah client on [...]

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Friday Update I – Video Communications

By on September 29, 2006

I just reinstalled SightSpeed on my “rebuilt” laptop and am always impressed with the video quality. It is reminiscent of the days about 25 years ago when the first color monitors became available for the mini-computer-based instrumentation I was selling at the time. My budget-limited customers (mostly university based researchers) thought they could get away [...]

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Eight Ways to File Transfer Using Skype

By on September 27, 2006

One of the nifty features of Skype is its ability perform File Transfers almost on demand. I find several time a day I need to transfer a file to a Skype contact but how I do it could happen in one of several ways. Peter Kalmström has posted on six ways to perform File Transfers [...]

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VoIP Phone Services — Let’s Keep It Simple

By on September 25, 2006

Yesterday Andy posted a reference to an article in today’s San Jose Mercury News about various new “mobile lifestyle” companies that want to change the way we are using phones. But Michael Arrington has made an excellent point in stating that: A bunch of VOIP services have launched to help people make cheaper calls from [...]

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Sony Mylo – In Stores Now…

By on September 22, 2006
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After a lunch today at the Metreon entertainment complex’s food court in San Francisco, Phil and I walked into the Sony store and found the new Mylo available for purchase. Yesterday was the launch day. While we did not have an environment for any full testing (and the WiFi access was a bit flaky) three [...]

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Embedded Skype: Is It Powered by Veri-Call or GIPS?

By on September 21, 2006

Since its inception the secret sauce that results in the excellent voice quality of Skype-to-Skype calls and facilitates quality in Skype-to/from_SkypeIn/Out calls has been the Voice Engine for PC and Voice Engine for (Windows) Mobile licensed by Skype from Global IP Sound (often referred to as “GIPS”). Monday came the announcement that Skype has licensed [...]

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