CMP Media

CMP Media: "Unified Communications (UC) promises to change this time-drain. By blending a company's wireless and wireline communications with unified messaging, presence intelligence, and user-provided routing instructions, companies can improve customer response time, reduce message overload, eliminate phone tag, and enhance remote collaboration. "

SAD: Although the title indicates unified communication, it is an interesting read on SIP and presence as well...

Akonix Nabs $11 Million

Akonix Nabs $11 Million: "Enterprise instant messaging gateway player Akonix Systems has $11 million in new financing to help it continue making a name for itself in the hotly competitive arena for business IM solutions. "
...
In connection with the broadening interest in enterprise IM solutions, the cash injection also comes following what Akonix said was a record third quarter, in which it added more than 50,000 licensed customer seats and doubled revenue from the previous quarter.

At the same time, the new financing also continues the hot interest in enterprise IM solutions from the venture capital arena. Early this year IMlogic closed $14 million in new financing. In late 2002, FaceTime landed an undisclosed amount of new funds in November from Bank of America, bringing its total backing to more than $40 million.

SAD: The interesting parallel to follow for similar industry growth would be that of the early email infrastructure add-on vendors, those that provided SMTP gateways, security services, management tools, etc. Most of the add-on market products will eventually have to be features of the core IM platform so it will be interesting to see these companies adapt accordingly.

AOL Preps Live Video IM

AOL Preps Live Video IM: "America Online is poised to unveil the next version of its client software, and which includes an enhancement to its built-in instant messaging that offers streaming videoconferencing.
The Dulles, Va.-based Internet giant, a unit of New York media conglomerate Time Warner (Quote, Chart), plans to launch the next version of its flagship client software, codenamed Tahiti, early into 2004. With that release, the AOL software should include capabilities enabling AOL subscribers to initiate streaming video sessions from within an IM conversation. "

Yahoo! News - IBM taps FaceTime to support WebSphere portal

Yahoo! News - IBM taps FaceTime to support WebSphere portal: "He added that this level of functionality in IM systems has been around for a while, from companies such as FaceTime and its rival IMlogic Inc. However, IBM has now decided which company it's going to work with. FaceTime was the obvious choice, said Gardner, because IMlogic is pretty rooted with Microsoft. "

Microsoft Connecting Web Conferencing with IM

Microsoft Connecting Web Conferencing with IM: "The Redmond, Wash., company plans to go as far as to introduce in 2005 a server-based version of Live Meeting, something the company hinted at when it introduced Live Meeting 2003 in September. While details are still being worked out, the server version will either be a stand-alone offering or a feature within Microsoft's Office Live Communications Server presence and IM software introduced with Office System 2003 in October, said David Hastie, product manager in the real-time collaboration group. "

SAD: I'd be expecting much more news on the integration front - there is a lot of low hanging fruit for Microsoft to act on that will be very useful and competitive in the marketplace...

Macromedia Adds AIM, ICQ to Central

Macromedia Adds AIM, ICQ to Central: "'This is huge for us,' said AOL spokesman Derick Mains. 'Flash developers are the third largest community of developers behind Windows and Java, and this gives us access to that entire community. And for the Flash developers, it gives them this great tool for building in presence and messaging.'
Additionally, it's also a plus for Macromedia, which becomes the first channel by which independent developers can gain access to an AIM/ICQ SDK and APIs. Until now, most independent development work has been subject to retaliation by AOL because it leveraged AIM's OSCAR protocol without permission.
'This can help AOL and Macromedia, but it also helps the whole developer community,' said Lea Hickman, senior director of market development at Macromedia. 'It's added functionality that they could do in Central that they couldn't do anywhere else ... This is the first time that AOL has opened up and licensed out their messaging, so it's actually a huge deal.' "

SAD: Saying it's a huge deal is an understatement, speaking from personal experience...

Yahoo! News - SCO Escalates Linux Legal Battle

Yahoo! News - SCO Escalates Linux Legal Battle: "'When SCO bought [Unix System V rights] from Novell, there was non-compete language that would prevent Novell from competing against the core offerings of SCO,' McBride said during the conference call. 'Linux is a knockoff of Unix. There can't be a more straightforward reading [of the non-compete clause].'
McBride noted that SCO won't retreat from its position unless Novell changes its plans to buy the Linux distribution. 'There's nothing [for us] to respond to yet, but when the transaction is complete, they will be violating the non-compete. And if they do what they say they will do--go out and compete [with SCO]--then yes, we will take the appropriate measures to enforce that non-compete.' "

SAD: This is why you need to have strong strategy and business development folks. I hope for Novell's sake that they really didn't sign the non-compete that SCO asserts here...

Daily Times - Site Edition

Daily Times - Site Edition: Google unveils browser-free Web search: Google Deskbar, released the other day, appears as a search box in the Windows toolbar. After the search words are entered, a resizable mini-viewer pops up with the results. Users can jump to the site within the mini-viewer or launch their browser. Unless a program is filling the screen or the user has set the taskbar to automatically hide, the search box is always visible. With a keyboard shortcut, the cursor can be moved to it without moving the mouse. Though the software is free, Google does get some exposure on the desktop: The company’s logo appears faintly in the search box when words aren’t being typed into it.

Mercury News | 11/15/2003 | Google puts coders to the test

Mercury News | 11/15/2003 | Google puts coders to the test: "Thomas Rokicki, 40, director of technology at Sunnyvale's Instantis, was the oldest finalist. He faced long odds, competing against the young ``savants,'' he said. So he took a risk, trying the hardest problem first to gain more points. The gamble failed, and he tumbled to around 20th. Still, he insisted that coding skill doesn't decline with age. It's just that older folks get rusty with lack of practice. Besides, he'd almost cracked the toughest problem: ``If I'd had five to 10 minutes more minutes, I'd be the one sitting up there with a big smile and a check in my hand,'' he said."

SAD: The OLDEST finalist --- at 40? I think there was a typo.......

EBay's Founder Meets an Idea That Reminds Him of His Own: "Like eBay, Meetup is turning out to be a bigger idea than it may have appeared at first. The concept is to use the Internet to set up face-to-face meetings among people of like interests, rather than the pseudonymous message boards that are considered communities on the Internet. "

What Mr. Heiferman did not expect was how the Web site would become instrumental in Howard Dean's presidential campaign. In January, Joe Trippi, Dr. Dean's campaign manager, heard that a small group of Dean supporters was arranging get-togethers using the site. Soon he persuaded Meetup to let the campaign formally use the site to organize supporters and to get their e-mail addresses - with permission.

"We hadn't realized that we had created a great user mobilization tool," Mr. Heiferman said.

silicon.com - Apple 'world's fastest' ad banned from UK TV

silicon.com - Apple 'world's fastest' ad banned from UK TV: Television regulators have banned an ad for Apple Computer's Power Mac G5, saying its claim to the title 'world's fastest personal computer' is not fully supported.

"While reviewers initially gave the ad the OK, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) this week decided to take action after receiving eight complaints from viewers. The agency concluded: 'There was insufficient evidence to support the claim 'world's fastest, most powerful personal computer'.' "


SAD: Tough audience...I guess someone actually pays attention to ads, go figure!

IMPlanet News Briefs

IMPlanet News Briefs: "'With the number of IM sessions taking place in the business sector expected to almost triple this year, and so much uncertainty regarding IM products, integration strategies and business value, there's a significant need for comprehensive research examining these issues,' says Paul Ritter, Yankee Group program manager for collaboration research, said in a statement released earlier in the week. "


SAD: I imagine we'll see more comprehensive research reports on IM, dynamic collaboration and more importantly the 'P' word -- presence...

Cisco Joins Conferencing Battle

Cisco Joins Conferencing Battle: "While Cisco examines ways to tie MeetingPlace into its offerings, Latitude has made some recent steps of its own toward integrating the product into related technologies. In August, the firm struck a deal with FaceTime Communications, an instant messaging management gateway vendor, that sought to create an MeetingPlace add-on enabling users to launch Webcollaboration, document sharing and voice conferencing from IM sessions.
Slated to be launched later this quarter as the MeetingPlace IM Gateway, the add-on would provide these capabilities to business workers using the major public IM networks -- such as AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger -- or enterprise IM solutions like Lotus Instant Messaging, Microsoft Exchange Messaging and Live Communications Server. "
...
The Redmond, Wash., giant recently released a new version of LiveMeeting with the Office 2003 package. "Microsoft's desktop franchise provides a big competitive advantage through integration with Office and Outlook," SG Cowen analysts said.

Cisco's arrival on the scene is likely a negative for WebEx, the San Jose, Calif., company that controls about 65 percent of the Web conferencing market, SG Cowen analysts said.

SAD: I would be looking for an extended relationship between Yahoo and Webex at this point...desperation isn't a strong basis for a relationship, but that hasn't stopped others from using it as a model...

Boston.com / Business / Technology / Free calls? So what's not to like?

Boston.com / Business / Technology / Free calls? So what's not to like?: "'If I were running an incumbent carrier, I don't think I would be terribly concerned about Skype at the moment, but I'd have it on my radar screen,' said Nancy Kaplan, a vice president with Adventis, a Boston telecom consulting firm. 'Having it be strictly computer-to-computer is somewhat limiting, but I think anybody who has to make a significant amount of international calls will find this interesting.'
Even if Skype is not a silver bullet aimed at the heart of conventional phone companies, Kaplan and other analysts expect it can be one more factor accelerating the erosion of their business. Skype could make deep inroads in certain now-lucrative markets, such as college students who make long phone calls or people who call family and friends overseas."

SAD: The title sums it about here. It's true that the short-term threat is for long distance services, but it's too easy to see the long-term threat against the Bell companies and cable companies (who want to extract dollars above the IP packet traffic). The quality, which I'll continue to crow about, is simply amazing - with only brief annoyances that, when you're paying nothing, are very easy to deal with.

"Linux is great" says Microsoft That magpie attitude, according to Microsoft, is mutual. Red Hat’s decision to end support for its free software and the Novell-SuSE link-up have put the last nail in the coffin of the free software model, the Redmond behemoth believes - even going so far as to speculate that the move from free to paid-for open source software is a validation of Microsoft’s way of doing business and the only way the open source movement can survive.

SAD: Sometimes there are a few things that only your competitors can answer for you...such as this

Forbes.com: Your Own Digital Master Clock

Forbes.com: Your Own Digital Master Clock: "The latest version of Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Windows and Apple Computer's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) OS both have a 'date and time' settings control panel that lets you synchronize your computer's internal clock with time servers. Both run their own time servers: Apple's has an address of time.apple.com, while Microsoft's is at time.microsoft.com. You also have the option of selecting the time server of your choice, including those run by the chief time keepers of the U.S., the National Institute of Standards and Time or the U.S. Naval Observatory."

SAD: A nice feature that I probably should have known, but didn't, was built into Windows XP. I was doing a search on what time sync software I wanted to install on my system (for purposes of digitally recording material based on time) and, voila, something else the OS takes care of automatically.

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "CERN, whose laboratories straddle the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, said it had sent 1.1 Terabytes of data at 5.44 gigabits a second (Gbps) to a lab at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, on October 1.
This is more than 20,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection, and is also equivalent to transferring a 60-minute compact disc within one second -- an operation that takes around eight minutes on standard broadband."

SAD: I can see the headlines arleady: "Hollywood goes way of the music companies filing lawsuits to stop pirating"

Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check

Via Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: "'Microsoft has won a patent for an instant messaging feature that notifies users when the person they are communicating with is typing a message.
The patent encompasses a feature that's not only on Microsoft's IM products but also on those of its rivals America Online and Yahoo. The patent was granted on Tuesday.'"

SAD: Referring to the news summary of notifying "users when the person they are communicating with is typing a message," IBM Instant Messaging (formerly Sametime) had this feature when it shipped in December 1998. Beyond that, Lotus had prototype versions in development with this feature back in mid 97'. I don't know the prior art that exists within Microsoft but the filing of December 2002 indicates there was known prior art.

The changing face of dot.comraderie | csmonitor.com

The changing face of dot.comraderie | csmonitor.com: "The leader among these virtual fraternities is Friendster. Launched in March, it is still in a testing phase. Over the summer, its servers sputtered under a surge in traffic. Some 2 million users have caused high-profile players in Silicon Valley to take notice, collectively investing $1 million earlier this month. Also in trial mode, Tribe.net, the newest in this spate of sites, has attracted 15,500 users since its launch in August."

"Tribe is trying to reconcile the technology with the sociology. Unlike Friendster's, Tribe's users can adjust the size of the community they're looking through, so someone looking for a loan can restrict the search to close friends, and someone searching for a couch could hunt through their extended network."

Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die

Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die 2. Coal-Based Power Coal isn’t so much a “technology” as a whole school of them, all of them bad or worse. Coal was the primeval fuel of the industrial revolution. Coal powered the first steam engines, whose killer app was pumping stagnant water out of coal mines. It powered the railroads, whose killer app was moving coal.

Unfortunately, we’ve been doing this coal trick for some two hundred years now, and coal is getting uglier by the day. If your accountants rival Enron’s, you can claim that coal is a cheap fuel. Add in acid rain, climate damage, and medical costs, and it swiftly becomes dead obvious that coal is a menace. Coal spews more weather-wrecking pollutants into the air per unit of energy than any other fossil fuel. Extracting coal destroys vast tracts of land. Coal mining is one of the world’s most dangerous jobs.

If coal vanished tomorrow, we’d miss it: the U.S. would lose a quarter of its energy supplies. But that shortfall, daunting though it is, cannot compare to the ghastly prospect of blackened skies over China and seas rising out of their beds. The sooner we rid ourselves of this destructive addiction, the less we will have to regret.

SAD: An interesting list that includes the combustion engine, incandescent light bulbs, manned space travel, nuclear weapons among others.