April 2005 Archives

Fellow TMC blogger Tom Keating seems to hate Burger King Fries and mentions he would go to Duchess or McDonald instead. How could he leave out Swanky Franks, the famous hot dog stand a stone's throw from TMC? This artery clogging establishment has been building Fairfield County waistlines for decades.

An interesting discussion among Cybertelecom members says that we should have ISPs help determine which PSAP to send calls to. After all, the ISP knows where the customer is and therefore in the best position to determine which PSAP is closest. By focusing on the ITSP we are effectively reducing the need for VoIP providers to do a job they can't do well. At least not with current technology. I think within five years or so every device will have built-in GPS and this wont be an issue but today it is and focusing on the ISP to help determine caller location makes the most sense to me.

One of the brightest people in the VoIP business has to be Faraj Aalaei the CEO of Centillium Communications, a leading silicon supplier to box makers and service providers worldwide. Aali is a Bell Labs alumni and isn't bashful to tell me that his company is the only public corporation to be focusing on these areas. The company's SOC or system on a Chip design lends itself well to high density apps. For example the Entropia III platform allows 1,000 channels to be carried on a single chip.

In case you aren't aware, Japan is far ahead of the US in VoIP deployment and this market is dominated by Centillium's products. The company is seeing more and more integration of VoIP into the various broadband access devices their customers sell. The company also sells complete systems with integrated routing and VoIP for ATA-like devices. These chips have full security built in allowing box vendors to quickly design and get product to market.

The Palladia chip for example supports ADSL a data rates of 50 Mbps with a WiFi and VoIP interface. Their chips can be used to allow CLECs to offer home users and business WiFi telephony phones.

Where does Aali see the future of communications going? Stereophonic and CD quality VoIP are two areas he thinks will be explored soon. As his company makes the chips that make these sorts of forward-thinking ideas possible, I am glad to see he is forward thinking as well.

I wrote about Hushmail years ago and I figured they were gone as I haven't heard much about them lately. Turns out they are alive; doing well and recently had their website defaced by hackers. The company is accusing Network Solutions of giving out confidential information via their customer service center. This information was used to alter DNS settings so that visitors to Hushmail were taken to a new site with the following text:

The Secret Service is watching.
-Agent Leth and Clown
Jeet 3k Inc

Look for some new products from IP Unity next month (in June). The 3.0 version of their media server platform will be coming soon including unified messaging and conferencing. Expect a rename of the product line from Harmony to something else.

I recently had a chance to meet with execs at Zultys in Silicon Valley to see what they are up to. This is a company that launched an IP PBX a few years ago while the rest of the market was hiding in the shadows of post-bubble bursting depression, Zultys decided to throw their hat in the ring at what seems to have been an ideal time. The company is now selling IP PBXs internationally and growing quickly in the US, Asia and other parts of the world. One part of the conversation that struck me was when I heard that Zultys is back in the IP phone business. You see, the company had decided not to be in the phone business for a while but all the challenges of SIP interoperability made this impossible. So they have some pretty interesting phones that also act as hubs allowing a single wire to the desktop.

Zultys MX30 Front View



Zultys has also launched the MX30 which is aimed at ITSPs who in turn are looking at small businesses as their customers. The small device packs all the punch of the larger MX-250 with a nice GUI and excellent presence integration. The MX30 uses SIP to connect to service providers so no PSTN lines are required. The device is based on Linux, a more common trend these days.

Thirty users will be supported by the IP PBX which has a bundled firewall, NAT and VPN capability. The most amazing feature of his device is its ability to grow... You just keep linking them together, in any geographic configuration. If you have an extremely large amount of bandwidth, greater than seven megabits per second you may want to consider an external firewall to handle the load as the internal firewall won't support higher speeds. Of course having so much bandwidth is a rare situation except in large cities where bandwidth is cheap. Fax integration is included as is unified messaging.

Zultys MX30 Rear View


There is a microdrive in the box for voicemail storage and there are ACD features that should satisfy 80% of all call centers (according to the company). There is an optional backup PSTN card as well (a more common trend among box makers). The VPN is fairly robust allowing 10 IPSec VPN connections with IP phone sin use. The systems can also be degugged remotely in case of problems. Expect the box to be priced at under $1,100 with a phone and software. Please see Zultys for details.

I think we really nailed this week’s communications and technology podcast. It might be the most professional one we have done to date. Of course I noticed that I didn’t mention who I was throughout the entire recording but at least I mentioned my blog is at Tehrani.com. Some of the topics discussed are iPod thefts on NY subways, the Qwest saga, VoIP videogames, Cisco and IBM focusing on speech technology and finally, bicycle powered VoIP. Take a listen. I Hope you like it.

Probably the best product around that no one knows about is SERoutlookAccess. I love this handy utility but have a few caveats about it. Let’s start off by saying I have a mailbox on a busy server with about 500,000 e-mails on it and I receive up to or more than 1,000 e-mails daily. I live in Outlook so I need a powerful search utility.

I used LookOut for over a year and it was very helpful. Recently it started crashing often so I switched to Google desktop search. Google has a great product but the interface is lousy. I am in Outlook and have to go to a browser to get access to Google’s results.

What SER does that the others don’t is they return the results of your query in Outlook. You can use a viewing pane to sift through results. Both Google and LookOut require you to open the e-mails to achieve the same effect.

The one drawback is speed. The software runs too slow on my machine to be the only search mechanism I have. The reason is it autoupdates frequently on my machine. This could just be my machine – I am investigating this mystery.

The company has been great about supporting me but my schedule has been too hectic to get back to them about whether there is a setting I can modify to make the product work better on my PC.

Searching in Outlook is a nightmare and SERoutlookAccess has the makings of a killer e-mail companion. If the speed can be improved, it will be a necessary requirement on every desktop. The company offers a 30-day trial and after that the price is $99 with the potential for lower pricing in volume. Is it worth it? If you live in Outlook and it runs quickly on your machine, spend the money. It is indispensable.

The show it seems is no longer N+I but now Interop. The changing name is like a changing era in networking. I wish the event good luck with its new name and new branding. I am happy to be speaking next week. Tuesday in fact. Here are the details. Hope to see you there.

NetWorld+Interop - Las Vegas, NV "The Role of Security in Achieving Five Nines for VOIP" - May 3, 2005, 11:30-12:30

VoIP applications require more advanced network services than regular data applications in order to be implemented successfully. And voice applications require a secured network environment to ensure a level of availability that satisfies the familiar "five nines" telephony performance metric. This session will describe new product, service and architectural best practices that can better protect IP telephony systems against threats, and what is required to assure that VoIP satisfies critical infrastructure criteria.


The link above wasn’t working for me at “blog time” so try this link instead. SC02.

That videophone is such a differentiator and the company claims the $99 price-point is what was needed to create strong demand. What was an introductory price is now sticking. In order to take advantage of the offer, you need to sign a 2-year contract at $19.95/month.

No I am not kidding. I just heard from a reliable source that a company called Inveneo is working with charities in Uganda to allow for pedal-powered bikes that allow the rider to communicate via VoIP with others. The next time you hear heavy breathing when you pick up the phone – don’t hang up… It could just be a friend or relative from Africa phoning to ask about the weather.

Here is a diagram of how it all works:

An interesting article from Forbes.com details a new sort of offshoring:

Why send software work to India when you can have it done on a cruise ship 3.1 miles off California?

Whether you think Eliot Spitzer is doing a great job or you think he is overdoing it by suing what seems like a record number of companies... You have to put your hands together for his latest suit where he accuses Intermix Media of redirecting users to a number of sites owned by the company. Here is an excerpt from Yahoo News which has a really new and interesting interface BTW:

"Spyware and adware are more than an annoyance," Spitzer said. "These fraudulent programs foul machines, undermine productivity and in many cases frustrate consumers' efforts to remove them from their computers. These issues can serve to be a hindrance to the growth of e-commerce."

Christopher Lipp, senior vice president and general counsel for Intermix, denied promoting or condoning spyware, saying its toolbars and redirect applications do not collect personal information on computer users.

He added that "many of the practices being challenged were instituted under prior leadership, and Intermix has been voluntarily and proactively improving these applications and related consumer disclosure and functionality for some time."

According to Spitzer, Intermix owns and operates such Web sites as mycoolscreen.com, cursorzone.com and flowgo.com, which advertised screensavers, games and other software available for download. Though those programs are free, they often carry other software for delivering ads and can interfere with normal computer use, he said.

One of the company's ad-delivery programs, "KeenValue," delivered pop-up ads while another program, "IncrediFind," redirected Web addresses to Intermix's own search engine, Spitzer said.

The ad software sometimes comes without notice, or if a user was asked permission, it was often through a vague reference in a lengthy licensing agreement that could be misleading or inaccurate, investigators said.

The programs sometimes omitted "un-install" applications and couldn't be removed by most computers' add/remove function, Spitzer said.

Spitzer's civil suit accuses Intermix of violating state General Business Law provisions against false advertising and deceptive business practices. He also accuses them of trespass under New York common law.

Spitzer, after taking on Wall Street and the insurance industry, is taking a harder look at Internet companies he believes are stunting the growth of e-commerce.

"We are looking across the industry at these practices because it really does go to the core of e-commerce," said Kenneth Dreifach, chief of Spitzer's Internet Bureau, "Increasingly, people don't feel in control."

The advertisers, which include Fortune 500 companies, aren't targeted.

Dreifach said negotiations with the company didn't result in a settlement, and more cases are possible.

"One of Internet users' biggest frustrations today is unwanted software that sneaks onto computers without their owner's consent and cannot be uninstalled," Ari Schwartz, the Associate Director Center for Democracy and Technology, "The practices alleged in this case are widespread on the Internet."

I am not a financial expert but I have a blog and write for a living so that means I can basically sound off on anything that annoys me, will interest you or just makes me feel better to get out of my system. I had to share the following with you. I received two news alerts from MarketWatch. The first one said that Exxon Mobil profit jumps 44% (I recall last year’s profit growth being similar) and now the GDP is growing slower than at any time in the past 2-years.

What does this tell us – again, I am not a finance major – tech, I know, but macroeconomics I don’t -- It tells us we are being screwed by Exxon Mobil.

Am I too naive? Perhaps I am not a “big picture” person. The whole situation seems ridiculous. The economy of the world is linked to this precious commodity and in the last few years the price of oil has mirrored Al Jazerra’s ratings more than anything else. This is not a supply and demand economy anymore it has become “screw the consumer” instead.

Perhaps I am wrong.

I remember the world telling the US we were going into Iraq for Oil. I always assumed this meant the world thought the US would be taking Iraq’s oil for free. Apparently this isnt the case. Well at least the American consumer isnt taking the oil. Oil companies? Perhaps.

The Democrats have really lost their way as of late and the Republicans seem to really be invulnerable. If there is a weakness the Republicans have now, it is the price of oil. A Democrat that is strong on energy and can map out a way for us to reduce oil prices and find alternatives to petroleum should be a shoe-in for 2008. A politician from Texas, regardless of affiliation just can’t do what is needed to lower energy prices.

The concern I have now is that the oil companies have so much money they will be lining the pockets of politicians on both sides of the aisle.

The only savior we can hope for is some hungry start-up in Silicon Valley that comes up with a way to solve our energy problems and doesn’t sell out to big oil.

It was only a matter of time before cell phone companies came out with devices comparable to iPods in functionality. Today is that day as Nokia announced its N91, a phone with a 4-GB hard drive. Although the device will be priced between $500-$900 it gives you a phone and a music player in a form-factor about the size of a an iPod Mini.

What remains to be seen is which carriers will want such a device. Carriers are looking for ways to generate revenue from music and such a player could conceivable allow users to download songs without making use of wireless networks. The holy grail for cellular companies is to get people to pay to download music, radio and TV. A device like the N91 may sidestep what these companies see as a lucrative business model.

Will The Nokia N91 Become an iPod Killer?

Moreover, Apple iTunes service is slick and the songs from the service won’t work on the Nokia device. Still, there are an abundance of ways people can download music these days so the lack of iTunes support may not hamper the Nokia phone which the company hopes to sell 40 million of in the first year. Analysts think at the price of $500 or 2.5 times what an iPOD Mini costs, this target is over-ambitious.

In the end there is a coolness factor to the iPod which doesn’t exist with Nokia as of yet. Even the device name, N91, lacks coolness. Steve Jobs deserves a great deal of credit for naming products, amazing design and marketing. Will people want to pay hundreds more for a music player that has a phone and tell people it is called N91? I think the name limits the appeal but if enough service providers get behind this new device it could really revolutionize the cellular market.