Just an update for regular readers. Sheryl and I have been moving for what seems an eternity. I've posted some of the story here. We are finally on what we see as the home stretch this weekend.

Sheryl moved down to Washington last October from northern BC. She still has things in storage up there. Tomorrow we're driving north, about 1200 miles over a couple of days, to load her things up and bring them down. Obviously, we'll be a a couple of days coming back with trailer in tow.

In the process, we've moved from one house in Olympia, to another, to a temporary apartment, and finally to our current home. It's been a real upheaval being in ths process of continually moving. And Sheryl's had the added challenge of not having all of her things.

I'll try to post an update here and there as we travel, but posting here will be light until Monday when we get back home and life finally finds its way to normalcy.

Posted by Ken Camp | | Permalink | Comments (0)

Congrats to Adobe on what is truly a major win.

I've been a huge proponenent of industry standards in all different forms. PDF files have been a de facto standard for several years when sharing information electronically. To become the de jure standard from ISO is a big thing, really.

PDF format becomes ISO standard

2008-07-02

The Portable Document Format (PDF), undeniably one of the most commonly used formats for electronic documents, is now accessible as an ISO International Standard - ISO 32000-1. This move follows a decision by Adobe Systems Incorporated, original developer and copyright owner of the format, to relinquish control to ISO, who is now in charge of publishing the specifications for the current version (1.7) and for updating and developing future versions.

"By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness", says Kevin Lynch, Chief Technology Officer at Adobe. "As governments and organizations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organization will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years."

PDF, a digital form used to represent electronic documents, allows users to exchange and view the documents easily and reliably, independent of the environments in which they are created, viewed and printed, while preserving their content and visual appearance.

[Read full ISO Release]

Technorati Tags: PDF, ISO, Adobe, standards, ISO standard

Posted by Ken Camp | News and Trends | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've been in the midst of moving madness for far too long now. There's a fascinating company that I'm working with in the VoIP space. I think we should all keep our eyes and ears open about Jazinga.

Here's what it says on their web site:

• Jazinga will enable you to look like a bigger company to the outside world with features such as automated attendant, company directory, individual voice mailboxes, voicemail to e-mail and the ability to integrate remote users.

I was fortunate enough to get one of the Jazinga pre-production units for testing and evaluation, but because of the moving and network issues in our home lab network, have not had a chance to get it set up and tested yet. I'll be doing that real soon, but we have one more road trip first.

In the meantime, I'd like to suggest that you take a look at these posts by two guys I know and trust and get their views on Jazinga's solution.

Head-to-head: Jazinga vs. Asterisk Appliance, Part 1 by Ted Wallingford
Jazinga Might Have The IP PBX Right by Dameon Welch AbernathyTechnorati Tags: Jazinga, VoIP, hardware, Ted Wallingford, Dameon Welch-Abernathy

Posted by Ken Camp | Practical Pointers, VoIP | Permalink | Comments (0)

My pal Luca Filigheddu over in Italy is one of those quite movers and shakers in the industry. The Sitifono work he's been doing has been enabling some pretty slick click-to-call solutions for a couple of years now, and it gets stronger all the time.

He dropped me a note this morning to let me know that Fiat chose Sitofono for their web services customer interface to improve sales and customer satisfaction. That's a nice big win.

Congrats to Luca and the Sitofono team!

Fiat gets Sitofono

I'm really glad that Fiat, the leading italian car brand, chose my company's click to engage service Sitofono on their websites in order to convert more visitors into potential customers, letting them ask real time information about their cars, book a test drive or simply get a question answered.

[Read Luca's post]

Technorati Tags: Sitofono, Fiat, Luca Filigheddu, click-to-call, unified communications

Posted by Ken Camp | Unified Communications | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the people I've never met, but read daily is Ike Elliott. He describes himself as a technology geek, but he's one of the most insightful people I read. He's got a keen, analytical mind and writes some thoughtful and compelling pieces on the industry. His background at MCI and Level 3 give him the chops to really understand the industry, and that's something I appreciate.

He just posted a great piece on business VoIP based on survey information that's well worth a thorough read. Go check it out.

Business VoIP Survey, July, 2008

It's time to publish the first Telecosm Business VoIP Survey, in which Business VoIP companies self-report about the rapidly growing Business VoIP segment of the market. This is a little experiment I started about a month ago, when I published a blog post asking Business VoIP companies to give us a little more insight into their business.

This market segment is served by many regional players and many of them are privately held, so it's sometimes hard to get a handle on how the segment is growing. I hope this little survey will help to shine a little light on the industry. This should be the first of many periodic editions of this survey, and I hope that other business VoIP providers will join in. I am very thankful for the nine companies that did respond.

There were nine responses to the survey, but since CBeyond is public and an ackowledged leader in the space, I added them to the list as if they had responded to the survey. Ten companies does not make a very comprehensive industry survey, but it's a good start and begins to paint the picture of this emerging market segment, and I expect that the publication of the first survey will attract the attention of other companies in the space and the survey will grow as I publish it again each quarter.

Here are the size rankings of the 10 companies in the report:
[Read full post]

Technorati Tags: Ike Elliott, VoIP, Business VoIP survey

Posted by Ken Camp | VoIP | Permalink | Comments (0)

• Truphone
• Truphone summer credit giveaway
• Truphone-supported handsets
• Truphone blogTruphone press office
• Truphone Facebook group
• All Truphone pictures
• All Truphone videos

Posted by Ken Camp | Mobility/Fixed Mobille Convergence, VoIP | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vapps is announcing the addition of an Outlook
plug-in so users can now coordinate and schedule their HiDef conferencing
services. The press release with the
details of the Outlook feature appears below. I've been very favorably imporessed with the sound quality and this added feature functionality is a real boon to Outlook users.

VAPPS RELEASES HIDEF CONFERENCING PLUG-IN FOR OUTLOOK

Audioconferences With In-the-Room Sound Quality Can be Scheduled, Invitations Sent Through World Leader in E-mail/Calendar/Contact Software

HOBOKEN, N.J.-July 1, 2008--Vapps, Inc., provider of affordable, flat-rate audioconferencing services with lifelike, in-the-room sound quality, today announced the release of the HiDefConferencing.com plug-in for Microsoft Outlook®, the e-mail/calendaring program open and running on more desktops and mobile devices than any other.

With the new plug-in, two buttons link the Outlook client to the HiDefConferencing.com service and its functions:

• "Schedule HiDef Conference" opens up a regular Outlook meeting invitation. From this familiar interface, users can see in-company contacts' availability; select attendees from in-company and Outlook Contact lists; select other attendees; set the meeting time; and send invitations with automatically entered meeting details.
• "Manage HiDef Account" opens up the www.hidefconferencing.com Web site in which HiDef Conferencing plans can be chosen, payments made, and conferencing preferences chosen.

During the meeting, the moderator has full use of conferencing controls and preferences via the HiDef Conferencing Web site. These include such choices as mute/unmute and record, and whether conferences should remain open after the moderator has left.

Meeting details typically include both Skype and PSTN conference numbers for attendees to call, since Vapps' HD-C service uniquely conferences in both PSTN and Skype endpoints. Those attending via Skype enjoy unprecedented sound quality through the Vapps platform's wideband connectivity.

Better-than-phone sound quality
"Wideband" connectivity transmits a frequency range of 16 KHz, more than four times richer than the 3.5 kHz of traditional PSTN copper wiring. Result: attendees hear four times better than they do over traditional telephones, feel more "present" and can better detect who is speaking. And as with any IP-to-IP voice call, they avoid local and international calling charges, a particular benefit to an international phone conference.

The expanded audio range also helps listeners understand speakers who have accents, and non-native speakers understand the conference language. In any language, it promotes comprehension and retention by alleviating the ear fatigue of long phone conferences, and transmits more of the speaker's inflection, nuance, attitude and even physical motion at a table or around the room.

"Outlook is by far the environment best known and most used for scheduling meetings all over the world," said Ben Lilienthal, Vapps CEO. "People already know how to use it to choose attendees, send meeting invitations and accept them. Because of this--and because a growing number of those meetings will seek to avoid actual travel--it is the logical place for us to put links to our groundbreaking, great-sounding conferencing service."

About Vapps, Inc.
Vapps, Inc., based in Hoboken, N.J., provides managed audioconferencing solutions to the SMB, enterprise and service provider markets using its patent-pending, wide-band audioconferencing technology. Founded in 2003 by Ben Lilienthal and Jerry Norton, Vapps' flagship service is its High-Definition Conferencing (HD-C), the first and only high-definition, flat-rate audioconference offering that can conference together a mixed-participant group of PSTN phone and Skype users.

For Skype-using participants, HD-C transmits a much richer, more "in-the-room" voice quality than can be achieved with traditional phones, dramatically improving the productivity of team collaboration. Vapps' fees for an unlimited number of conferences and conference minutes start at a fixed $25 per month for 10 attendees and scale with the number of participants. For more information, please visit Vapps at http://www.vapps.com.
# # #

Posted by Ken Camp | Unified Communications | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friend Thomas Howe pointed out at nice ZDne roundup on the current smartphone players that I think points out some interesting market potential.

• Apple: The 3G iPhone will move units because it has an enthusiastic customer base that will continue to buy the latest from Apple. That's powerful. Meanwhile, international expansion and enterprise interest keeps Apple rolling.
• RIM: RIM isn't going anywhere and will maintain its share and strength. In the enterprise, RIM is entrenched. In the consumer market, RIM is pretty interesting. As far as buzz goes, look for RIM and Apple to be the leaders.
• Nokia: Was the Symbian deal savvy or desperate? Time will tell, but there are a lot of financial types saying that Nokia shares are a value. Nokia is a big dog globally and has a nice mix of high-priced and low-priced devices. It sure would be nice if Nokia were more of a player in the U.S.
• Palm: It's a bit depressing when Palm's big plan is a refreshed Treo line powered by Windows Mobile. There are a ton of devices powered by Windows Mobile. Where's the differentiation? And that's the problem. There is little to differentiate Palm's devices-except for Centro's price. That's not a great model.
• Sony Ericsson: This device maker moves a lot of units and has some Walkman mojo courtesy of Sony. However, the company will have an increasingly difficult time differentiating itself.
• Samsung and LG: Both are big. Both can be trendy. And both can play the price game.
• Motorola: No groundbreaking designs. Commodity handsets. Still decent market share. Even when Motorola spins off the handset division it's questionable whether the unit can stand alone.

It was enough to make me think about these players a bit. I'm a huge Nokia fan, but they seem unfocused in the US market. I wish that would improve. I think they stumbled by doing a blogger program for the N-series and not including the E-series. Too many of us business oriented bloggers have commented on the shortcomings of the N-series for business. Some good buzz and an effort could have gained Nokia a far stronger base of loyal customers in the US for their business products. They're sadly behind the curve.

Apple will continue, and while they'll make inroads, I think the iPhone still has at least two generations of growth before we see anything that's enterprise business class. Right now it's mildy interesting and highly annoying to the enterprise. And the shift is going to take time and a larger wave that I think exists of pent up demand.

RIM will surely remain the leader in my view. And they're going to be making inroads that will cut into Nokia's space in the high end consumer space.

Palm is, in my view, a dead end. I used Palm devices for years and my primary phone for 2-3 years was a Treo. I doubt I'll ever look at them seriously again, and everyone I know looks askance at WINCE Windows Mobile on anything. Having used it for a couple of years, it's an OS I'll avoid with even more fervor than Vista.

Motorola is a strong company that appears to have ceded the market to other companies who want it more. A shame, but unless they do something cutting edge (remember when the StarTAC was the hottest thing on the planet? That was their last real innovative market maneuver.), they're simply toast.

Posted by Ken Camp | Mobility/Fixed Mobille Convergence | Permalink | Comments (0)