IE7 Beta Blues
I'm going to play with the the beta 2 version of IE7 but ran into an installation problem when the validation process wouldn't work because I'm using Firefox. Not that the work-around was difficult but…..
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Google-VOIP Inc.
January 31st, 2006 | No Comments | Posted in Google, VOIP Services, Competition, VOIP Services, Competition/Skype
As we anxiously await Google's fourth-quarter results later this afternoon, VoIP Inc. disclosed an intriguing agreement to provide Google with Internet telephony services. When asked about the deal, VoIP founder and corporate strategist Steve Ivester said he was unable to disclose the specifics. Instead, CTO Shawn Lewis said one could read into what Google may be doing by looking at the services that VoIP offers to carriers, cablecos and CLECs. These include the ability to terminate and originate calls, phone numbers, 911 and 800 services, and unified messaging. In other words, VoIP provides the back-end technology while its partners, which include PacWest and Broadwing, can focus on marketing and sales. So how does that fit into Google and, presumably, its Google Talk service? Perhaps Google Talk will be beefed up to become more Skype-like with SkypeIn and SkypeOut-like services as well as access to 911 and 800 service. As it now stands, Google Talk is not the most thrilling or compelling service in the world unless you're a die-hard Google user. If Google is serious at telephony, then Google Talk needs a serious make-over. Maybe the deal with VoIP Inc. is a sign of things to come.
Update: Here's an interview that Rich Tehrani did with Ivester last year and a story by Light Reading two years ago.
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55M VoIP Customers by '09
The number consumer VoIP subscribers is expected to more than triple to 55 million by 2009 from 15 million in 2005, according to InStat. Oddly enough, the research firm believes VoIP still had a low profile among consumers last year, even though the market grew by 62%. InStat said the expected growth will be driven by competition in the broadband and new entrants such as Google and eBay. In another study, Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine found that 53% of VoIP minutes in North America were service provider-branded (cablecos, carriers) while Vonage had 21.% market share and Skype 14.4%. In Europe, 51.2% of minutes with service provider-branded while Skype had 45% share.
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Canadian Carriers Attack Net Neutrality
The hounds are starting to bark louder at the net neutrality door in Canada if a recent Montreal Gazette story is any indication. Most telling - and troubling - are comments made by Telus spokesman Shawn Hall who said the Burnaby, B.C.-based carrier is looking at QoS fees, as well as hitting online service providers such as Google and eBay with downstream tollgate fees for using its network (sounds a lot like SBC and BellSouth, doesn't it?). Meanwhile, cableco Rogers Communications concedes its “shapes” traffic (a.k.a. prioritizes) - something that BitTorrent and iTunes users have long suspected. The Gazette story, which touches upon many of the same issues that I covered in National Post story last month, is just more evidence North American broadband service providers are serious about changing the rules to offset the loss of local telephone revenue to cablecos, Vonage and Skype. If the FCC and CRTC don't step into the breach, the whole idea of net neutrality could soon disappear and broadband service providers will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Update: Here's what (hat tip to Good Morning Silicon Valley) from AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre told the Financial Times on this company's approach to net neutrality. It's very clear and troubling: “We have to figure out who pays for this bigger and bigger IP network. We have to show a return on our investments. I think the content
providers should be paying for the use of the network — obviously not
the piece from the customer to the network, which has already been paid
for by the customer in Internet access fees — but for accessing the
so-called Internet cloud. If someone wants to transmit a high quality
service with no interruptions and 'guaranteed this, guaranteed that,'
they should be willing to pay for that.”
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RIM Myths
You want an example of something-to-be-desired business reporting? According to Reuters, Research in Motion's rivals are “muscling into the wireless e-mail market” as RIM grapples with its legal battle with NTP. The story cites Clyde Foster, chief operating officer with RIM rival Intellisync, who claims there are growing alternatives to the Blackberry. Other sources in the story are executives from Visto and Good Technology, which also happen to be rivals of RIM. The hole in the story is there's nothing concrete to suggest Blackberry users are fleeing to these alternatives or that new mobile e-mail users are gravitating to Good, Visto or Intellisync. There are no statistics to suggest this is happening. If RIM reports in March that its subscriber growth in the fiscal fourth-quarter plummeted due to its legal woes, then I'll believe the “alternative” story. Until then, it's just idle speculation fueled by rivals looking to get a foothold in the market.
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Blogging Using Voice Recognition Software
Anyone out there blogging using voice-recognition software? It's a thought - albeit one that's a little geekie - that struck me while riding the Lifecycle at the gym and an idea for blog post bubbled up. Given blogging can sometimes be a rambling thought process than a structure composition, it would seem a natural vehicle for voice-recognition software. Rather than sitting down in front of your computer, you could simply say "new blog post" and start talking when the kernel of an idea pops up. This make any sense?
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Spotwave Raises $10M
A VC deal ( non-Web 2.0) I should have mentioned earlier was Ottawa-based Spotwave Wireless raising $10-million from a group of investors that includes Motorola Ventures. Spotwave makes hardwave and software that improves the strength of wireless signals inside offices and homes. As wireless devices become de rigeur for most people, bad reception anywhere is unacceptable so there's fertile ground for companies such as Spotwave to fill the void.
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Media Bubble: Intriguing and Troubling
January 30th, 2006 | No Comments | Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Blog Services, Main Page, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, Web 2.0
In the wake the Web 2.0/VC dialogue over the weekend, there are a couple posts (Scott Karp, Jack Shafer exploring how blogs are maybe attacking the foundations of the newspaper industry because of bloggers ability to establish themselves and reach out to millions of potential readers at little cost. Karp focuses on how the proliferation of choice is making life more difficult for the user and the media because it's difficult to capture the users' attention and, as a result, a tough to build a viable business that will attract advertising. The solution to leveraging the “attention economy”, Karp says, is creating a “personal killer app” (editor's note: a personalized portal such as My Yahoo?) that will be perfectly tailored to each user. Shafer adopts a more Luddite approach and wants newspapers to get better by making cartoons bigger again, writing editorials signed by the authors, getting great writers to write columns, and improve the newpaper's look and feel - a strategy he believes is more effective than bolting on a couple blogs and adding an online comment section. So where does the Web 2.0/VC talk fit over the weekend fit into the media world? As a newspaper journalist, the Web 2.0 is a fascinating issue and one that warrants coverage because it could be an important financing trend. But I have absorbed tons of insightful, provocative, intelligent information over the weekend on this trend on the blogosphere. Now I'm wondering if still makes sense - and there's still time - to write about it in the newspaper. If most people who would be interested in the Web 2.0/VCs issue have already read about it online, why bother do it in print? I'm probably giving the blogosphere too much credit for being a widely consumed, mainstream medium but hopefully you get the point. Over the past few months, I've used my blog as a testing tool for story ideas and column before deciding whether a particular topic makes sense for the newspaper. The more popular blogs become, the more I think this technique may not work anymore. As for how newspapers should respond, let's just say that's another discussion for another day - probably when I'm doing something other than writing for a newspaper.
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A New VC Model?
Web 2.0 may not be a bubble yet but there are intriguing, if not troubling, signs that the inmates want to take over the prison. Dave Winer's call to remove VCs from the formula has some merit but it assumes investors in a publicly-traded venture company will have faith that the people running it are smarter than VCs. So, Dave, who are these people and what makes them more insightful than VCs? Before anyone gets carried away about turfing VCs from the equation, let's concede there is a role for VCs within Web 2.0 but it will have to evolve because many start-ups don't need much of what the biggest thing VCs bring to the table: money. Given development and distribution costs are modest, and the best services will market themselves virally, where is the VC's value that will get them a piece of the action? Rick Segal is among many people trying to figure that out. It may be that VCs “invest” in start-ups in different ways by offering services such as networking, headhunting, technical, marketing etc. as well as a small amount of capital ($1-million to $5-million). Rather than getting a 30% equity stake out of the gate, they would get 5%. And rather than investing in four or five start-ups a year, they would invest in 10 to 20 companies. As a result, the name of the game would be deal-flow. This new landscape would make competition for deals extremely competitive, which would be good news for start-ups who could choose their potential partners carefully. In other words, it could totally reverse the courting rules. The big question is which VC steps up first to seize the opportunity? Maybe it won't be a VC because it's too dramatic of a shift to do quickly. Maybe it will be Rick Segal - backed by some institutional or high net-worth money. What about Mark Cuban? He's got enough cash, energy, ideas and an appetite for start-ups (Ice Rocket, etc.) to pull it off. Maybe Dave Winer will walk the walk, rather than talking the talk by tapping some of the money sloshing around Silicon Valley these days. Or maybe it will be someone such Niklas Zennstrom, who has the required rebel DNA and oodles of eBay cash/stock to finance something disruptive (I assume Tim Draper would throw in a few bucks and ideas.) So who's game?
For more thoughts, check out CrunchNotes and Robert Scoble.
Update: If you're at all interested in this New VC dialogue, a must-read is Rick Segal's lengthy post, which clarifies his cryptic post of a few days ago. Rick has obviously been doing some deep thinking and talking with plenty of people recently as he works through his New VC theory.
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Boom vs. Bubble
Chris Anderson has a thought-provoking story in Wired
arguing the technology sector's revival is a boom, not a bubble -
citing the industry's maturity, the lower cost of bandwidth and and
computing, and lower capital requirements. It's a reasonable argument
but I would suggest no one in Silicon Valley should pat themselves on
the back too heartily for being so pragmatic and/or rational this time
around. While it may not be a bubble, there are plenty of signs a
bubble be closer than many people think. A regular check with
TechCrunch and SiliconBeat, for example, offers a steady stream of news
about cool start-ups with questionable business plans (Does AdSense
count as a business plan?) raising several million dollars. Sure, many
of these start-ups are lean and mean operations that require little
capital to develop a service and distribute it, but if the path to
becoming a viable business is still very much work in progress. As a
result, I would argue many VCs are speculating on these start-up
investments even if these services have thousands of enthusiastic
users. This sounds a lot what I heard during the dot-com boom. If more
VCs jump into Web 2.0 with more enthusiasm and dollars, then the whole
speculation argument begins to gain credibility. I do concede, however,
that one thing that does make the current high-tech revival different
from the dot-com boom is the absence of IPO fever. There just isn't the
enthusiasm for high-tech IPOs - look at the muted reception Traffic.com
received recently and Vonage's oh-so-slow IPO plans. This environment
can only be viewed as an extremely encouraging check on the boom
becoming a bubble. As long as this situation exists, you will keep
unsophisticated investors and taxi drivers from catching a bad case of
Web 2.0 fever. So what does it all mean? I would argue Anderson's
thesis is right for the time being but there are very few barriers
(more VC activity, Nasdaq gaining strength, successful IPOs)
between a boom and a bubble, so let's not get too carried away with the
idea everyone that everyone learned so much during the last dot-com
boom there is no way it could happen again. Nicholas Carr
believes a flaw in Anderson's argument is he focuses on the supply side
but does not address potential demand from stampeding investors who
could easily “render Anderson's arugment moot”. And I totally agreement
with Om Malik that the bubble will really break out if Gigaom.com is bought for $150 million. When's the Giga IPO, Om?
Update: Blogspotting's Heather Green makes a good point about about the proliferation of “me-too companies” with uncertain business models other than Adwords. “That kinds of seems like the definition of a bubble. I don't know, maybe i am just being a curmudgeon”. No, Heather, I think you're being realistical and cautious,” she says.
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