VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com

January 13, 2007

I am at a good friend's house today and they have a problem with their laptop. My friend is a lawyer and while we debate the merits of the Cisco vs. Apple iPhone case I am also helping fix their new Dell laptop which seems to have frequent memory dumps. I am installing antispyware tools and for some reason Microsoft Defender won't download at all. Anyway, as I was explaining to my friend about spyware, adware, malware, trojan horses, zombies, denial of service attacks, etc. I began to realize how crazy the world of computing is today. And if all that isn't bad enough there is spear phishing to worry about as well.

 

All of this is especially as a lawyer referred to me as a layman this week and a fellow team member at TMC thought this was quite a condescending comment that many in the legal profession make. He will be happy to see that even lawyers can learn from us laymen at times. ;-)

 

But I am not writing to bash lawyers -- after all we haven’t had dessert yet. I wouldn’t want to get asked to leave before I am finished eating. :)

 

But back to security, I though it might make sense to let everyone know about an upcoming webinar TMC will be hosting called Network Security for Hosted Small Business Solutions - Are you ready?

 

In addition with all the talk on my blog lately about disabled veterans becoming call center agents because of VoIP I thought it would be a good time to introduce a webinar on home based agents which takes place next month.

 

The internet and IP communications have seriously revolutionized the business of hiring contact center agents today. You can have access to the most cost effective and most highly skilled labor anywhere in the world today because of IP networks and IP communications.

 

As I have mentioned before... The technology is very exciting but what is even better is the technology in action and how it changes lives for the better.

January 13, 2007

So it seems Cisco did not keep the trademark for the iPhone name. Why? No use. If you don’t produce a product with the named trademark you lose it. Makes sense right? Anyway it seems that Cisco may have tried to dupe or at least be extremely aggressive with the USPTO or US Patent and Trademark Office by renewing the iPhone trademark with a product that wasn’t yet called iPhone but rather the Linksys CIT200 and the Linksys CIT310.

 

Tom Keating was the first to have realized this as he has actually reviewed the products Cisco claims were called iPhone. Tom mentions in his blog there is no reference to the term iPhone on the boxes or manuals. If this is true and we aren’t all missing something obvious, Cisco may have lost the trademark on iPhone.

 

Does this mean Apple who has the name iPhone registered through a shell company could try to stop Cisco from using the name both domestically and internationally? This story is getting more and more interesting by the minute.

January 13, 2007

I thought it was interesting to read the director-general of the International Telecommunication Union, Hamadoun Toure said the agency would be just one of many organizations involved in shaping the Internet's development.

"It is not my intention to take over the governance of the Internet," Toure told reporters in Geneva at his first press conference. "There is no one single issue that can be dealt with by one organization alone."

 

He said the ITU would work with other agencies such as the quasi-independent Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which manages the day-to-day flow of data across the Internet from its Marina del Rey, Calif., headquarters and oversees key rules that govern how computers communicate.

 

He further praised the U.S. Federal Communications Commission as a model regulatory body, saying the FCC was "one of our very dynamic members ... with a very positive attitude" toward solving technical issues.

 

I was pretty impressed to hear a member of the ITU/UN backing the FCC with such a nice complement. It is so unusual to hear anyone in the UN complementing anything the US does these past years. It seems like the world is happiest when bashing – not supporting the US and its policies.

 

It is a real positive to get a complement like this and Commissioner Kevin Martin and the rest of the FCC should be proud to get such nice comments.