October 30th, 2007

Live Blogging Von Fall 2007: Triple-play service providers reflect on business models

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 11:13 am

Categories: Comcast, Cox, Verizon

Tags: Mobile, Blogging, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Marketing Research, Digital Video, Strategy, Internet, Marketing, Personal Technology

I’m attending a major break out session at Von on Triple-Play services and bundling.

Up there on the rostrum: 

• Brian Angiolet, executive director of marketing for Verizon FIOS;
• Christopher Alband, director of product engineering at Comcast;
• Mark Chinn, vip marketing and product development, RCN;
• Mark Kaish, vp voice strategy and development, Cox Communications.

Chinn: I don’t know that a lot of customers know the difference (bundling vs. convergence) today. 70% of customers have two products, 40% have three products. Said sometimes customers don’t know what to ask for. Fixed mobile convergence, caller ID to the tv even streaming video applications- all those things are happening, but I don’t know if we have even a half-converged experience right now.

Albano: We look across the industry - worked for Vonage- the idea of using voice portals to route traffic through telephony interface. As we look forward to find what’s next, it is probably making the three services work better together. Give them ability if phone rings, it pops up on their PC.  

Angiolet on revenue potential: YOu build this network to build this stuff,and you definitely charget for it. More a strategy decision from marketing standpoint about what we want to (promote) and what we want to charge for.

Kaish: Talks up the promise of fixed mobile convergence offers tremendous capability of buildingout a single phonenumber over time. Going to share applications were ever you go. 

Asked about wireless for quadruple-play:

Kaish: I don’t think the underlying technology and underlying platforms are ready to go yet. For mass deplyment not ready to do yet, to go yet.

Angiolet: You define bundles different by your segment. Wireless (costomers) going to be seeking bundles different than the old telco bundles.

October 30th, 2007

POLL: When do you think Google Phone will be released?

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 9:30 am

Categories: Google

Tags: Google Inc., Phone, Telecom & Utilities, Russell Shaw

In my previous post I quoted The Wall Street Journal as saying:

“Within the next two weeks, Google is expected to announce advanced software and services that would allow handset makers to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year, people familiar with the situation say.”

Now we are going to turn to you for your crystal ball:

 Loading ...

October 30th, 2007

Google phone said on target for mid-2008, software a lot sooner than that

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 9:24 am

Categories: Google

Tags: Software, Google Inc., Phone, Tools & Techniques, Telecom & Utilities, Management, Russell Shaw

This just in from The Wall Street Journal site:

“Within the next two weeks, Google is expected to announce advanced software and services that would allow handset makers to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year, people familiar with the situation say.”

That’s all the news of substance related to this.

October 30th, 2007

Collaboration consultant: the "vendors don't understand what we mean"

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 9:09 am

Categories: Enterprise IP/VoIP, Fall Von 2007, General

Tags: Desktop, Collaboration, Trader, Russell Shaw

Here at Fall Von 2007 we now have Chris Fine, vp-Global Technology Solutions for Goldman Sachs.

Noting “the world is a workplace… working globally different timezones,” Fine lists collaboration uses and how they can be improved:

Desktop to desktop> Messaging, sharing, conferencing 1X1. Feedback: when I need to see somebody’s face the visual dimension really really helps.

Group desktop conferencing. Similar to today’s NetMeeting-wants high-end version on the desktop.

One-to-many. Looking for better easier technologies.

Floor-to-floor. Traders in two different cities want to see trader floor. Want to see hand signals, trader body language.

Audioconference back channel. Share thoughts during a conference call-often used in coaching junior people.

Single person missing from the room, allow remote participants to participate via multimedia.

The vendors don’t understand what we mean, to them “collaboration is one big tent.” Mentions spongy standards and proprietary standards that cause difficulty.

“However, ‘difficult is not impossible.’…”

October 30th, 2007

Alcatel-Lucent: WiMAX "somewhat overhyped," but coming along

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 8:48 am

Categories: Fall Von 2007, General

Tags: Lucent Technologies Inc., Alcatel, WiMAX, Wi-Fi, Wireless, Russell Shaw

Paul Mankiewich, CTO for North America Alcatel-Lucent:

“I think WiMax is somewhat overhyped, but we just deployed mobileWiMAX in Dominican Republic and going fine. With any of these technoogies you have two years of growing pains. I believe the vendors they have building it will make it work:

October 30th, 2007

Alcatel-Lucent offers view of stabilizing Skype and other high-bandwidth traffic

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 8:44 am

Categories: Fall Von 2007, Predictions and Observations

Tags: Lucent Technologies Inc., Network, YouTube Inc., Skype Technologies S.A., Alcatel, Networking, Russell Shaw

Here at Fall Von 2007 we now have Paul Mankiewich, CTO for North America Alcatel-Lucent.

His speech is entitled “The Network-’a plumber’s view.’

Paul points that: 

The network will become more mesh-like. The major trends, you don’t see the major telecoms on it.

YouTube is 25% of all http traffic.

Goal: “The “converged” end user is not aware of the network.”

The telcos will have to work with the market. Things are going to be in mesh form. A lot ofmashup technologies going on. What is gong on putting many more types ofboxes in the network, making sure it gets to you.

The trend toward mesh-shaped structures is a driver for

• More symmetric network usage
• Direct network connectivity between access ISPs.
• Distributed services environment

BitTorrent steady-state performance independent of system load but comparatively poor.

Lists modern content dissemination techniques set fort players at various layers:

• Network providers such as AT&T and BT
• Overlay providers such as Akamai
• Application-specific providers such as Joost, Skype Google.

Conflicting objectives.

So we use Multi-Player InteractionProblem game theory to bypass the problem through hostile networks.

More on that later… 

October 30th, 2007

Intel exec: after Menlow comes Moorestown

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 8:26 am

Categories: Fall Von 2007, Mobile

Tags: Mobile, Intel Corp., Shane, Chipsets, WiMAX, Keyboards, GPS, Advertising & Promotion, Internet, Handhelds

Here at Fall Von in Boston, Shane Wall of Intel is now talking about a newer platform beyond Menlow. This one will be called Moorestown.

No release dates but I’d guess fall 2008 or early 2009.

Will shrink chipset by a factor if 10. Faster rendering of web pages, improved GPS. with Google StreetView-like photo integrated within.

Shane says Moorestown will be “fully PC-compatible with Mobile WiMax integrated within. He called Moorestown a “wide implementation” with full-page width browsing, with soft keyboards and unleashing the full Internet in a mobile handheld device.

October 30th, 2007

Fall Von live: Intel mobile CTO: Menlow platform to improve mobile device performance

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 8:12 am

Categories: Fall Von 2007, Mobile

Tags: Performance, CTO, Mobile, IEEE 802.11n, Mobile Device, Intel Corp., Performance Management, Wi-Fi, Human Resources, Workforce Management

I’m here at Fall VON 2007, listening to Intel’s Shane Wall, CTO of the Ultra Mobility Group.

We want to make sure we maintain performance compatibility. We want to make sure we deliver lower thermals, power consumption and package size.

In 2008 Intel will introduce Menlow, will drive power levels down by 10x. Will fit into small handheld form factor.

Showed a current wafer, over 2,500 dyes, 45 nanometer process. We don’t expect with Menlo it will stop at just a processor.

Shows a half-mini card, willintegrate WiMax, GPS 802.11n and Bluetooth. We will also be offering 3G solutions. All of these together, a Silverthorne Processor, mini card options, will be offered in an integrated package.

Wall said a series of enabled devices will be announced and shown in January at the Consumer Electronics Show

Intel has started mobile internet device alliance.

October 28th, 2007

Red Sox sweep assures more businesslike atmosphere for Von

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 9:06 pm

Categories: General

Tags: Restaurant, Boston, Games, Personal Technology, Russell Shaw

Just now, the Red Sox have captured Major League Baseball’s World Series Championship with their fourth straight win over the Colorado Rockies.

If the Rockies had won last night and managed to win tonight, they would be going back to Boston for Game 6.

The same Boston I and 9,000+ other conventioneers are in for the Von show.

But with the Red Sox sweep, we no longer will be faced with a city where every tv in most every restaurant is tuned to the Series, and barleybuzzed types drown out our business dinner conversations with pro-Sox war whoops.

We’ll even be able to catch taxis!

Now if the attendees can find restaurants and bars where masked and buzzed out Halloween celebrants won’t invade and spoil the mood.

October 28th, 2007

Hobbyist Skype statistician: Skype now exceeding 10 million concurrent sessions

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 7:28 pm

Categories: Skype

Tags: Skype Technologies S.A., Jean, Blogging, Internet, Russell Shaw

Jean Mercier of Oostakker, Belgium has this real serious but frankly, real useful obsession.

He runs the Skype Numerology blog, a resource dedicated to the evolving and statistically quantifiable aspects of Skype’s download, usage, and related metrics over time.

Yesterday Jean figured out that last week, Skype attained 10 million concurrent users at the same time. And this week, that number went as high as 10,270,000 concurrents.

Jean thinks the Skype mashup with MySpace could be having an effect.

Me? That’s probably a bit too early- more like natural growth of the Skype user base.

October 28th, 2007

Popularity of these 10 posts tells me you hate it when big companies screw consumers like you

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 7:10 pm

Categories: Apple, Comcast, News, Predictions and Observations, SprintNextel, microsoft

Tags: Firing, Server, Apple Inc., Servers, Hardware, Russell Shaw

 I was going through some server logs of our most-read and most-popular posts, when this realization hit me:

You’re really, REALLY interested in those cases when big business, dumb corporate policy, or the errant actions of incompetent customer “service” types screw consumers.

How can I count the ways? Over recent months, some of our most clicked on and commented-on posts have been:

Dell’s offshoring of Tier 1 tech support and that policy’s inconsistency with their stance as a patriotic company;

SprintNextel’s policy firing customers (including military members) who roam too much and/or ask too many questions;

Comcast’s apparent packet-thwarting, and in an unrelated incident, how one fed-up Comcast subscriber unilaterally decided it’s Hammer Time;

Verizon’s opt-out policy about selling customer (that could be you) data to third parties;

An airline employee telling a passenger to turn their iPhone movie off- even though the device was in airplane mode and posed no threat to pilot-to-Air Traffic Control communications;

Big Music obtaining a $222,000 judgment against a making-ends-meet, young single mother of two children;

AT&T’s (now revised, thankfully) contract language indicating subscribers could be terminated for actions that “tend to damage” the company’s reputation.

Apple’s inconsistent, and arguably customer-screwing iPhone pricing.

Dish Network/AT&Ts initial demands (also rescinded, thankfully) that a customer with a home trashed in the SoCal fires pony up $300 for a Dish Network receiver lost in the fire

I could name more, but I don’t really need to in order to make my point.

I have to think a common thread runs through your interest in all these posts.

My server logs tell me you are highly interested in such reports.

It is easy for me to suspect you are, because in your comments as well as your clicks, you tend to root for the consumer against arbitrary big companies.

Is that the reason you click on these types of posts?

More important, what does that tell us as a society about how big companies sometimes are not nice to us? 

I’d love to read some of your responses.

October 27th, 2007

Google Patent app describes efficient database storage of Google Maps, Google Earth objects

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 1:40 pm

Categories: Google, patents

Tags: Google Inc., Database, Data, Google Maps, Google Earth, GIS, Storage, Databases, Software, Hardware

A new Google Patent application entitled Ranking and Clustering of Geo-Located Objects appears to describe a method in which geographical location objects of the type seen in Google Earth and Google Maps would be more efficiently classified in a database.

This is potentially very helpful for third-party licensors of Google mapping tools, and perhaps even for power mashers who work with these utilities.

From reading the Patent application Abstract and accompanying literature, the problem is more intense than you might think.

Unlike what I usually do with patents, I am going to skip over the Abstact’s arcane (what in the heck is a “leaf node,” anyway?- and go to the areas that are easier to understand.

The literature here notes:

GIS systems can provide particular challenges for proper database design. That is because GIS information does not fit nicely into a single data type that can be stored in one type of flat-file or relational database.

Rather, GIS systems often involve use a variety of data types, such as imagery, maps, and tables. GIS systems may also be very large, such as when they cover a large area and include expansive amounts of information about various points in an area, or cover a very large area like the entire world.

Addressing, topographical, or demographic data for various areas may be stored, and may be fairly large to store. In addition, GIS systems that provide graphical representations of data (such as on a map or a 3D representation of the globe) have even more challenges in organizing data, and storing massive amounts of data.

Graphical data, such as 3D structures to be placed on a geographic representation, such as on Google Maps or Google Earth, may be especially large and unwieldy.

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