Here at the Dialogic Analyst Day at Yankee Stadium we are listening to a presentation by RIM/Ascendent Systems Senior Manager of Marketing Heather Howland.
I have known Heather for years but have never heard her speak to an audience. This is an impressive presentation.
She started by telling us a bit about her company's mobile unified communications solutions and how Dialogic HMP solutions enabled them to deliver their products to market.
She also explained a bit about the Dialogic Media Gateway the DMG 2000 and how this device integrates with the BES to converge voice and data with any PBX.
Howland finished by saying the Dialogic partnership has been great and enabled her company to accomplish a great deal.
I am looking forward to day two of this conference which starts tomorrow morning.
Blogged via wireless handheld 
April 2008 Archives
Blogged via wireless handheld 
Thanks to our readers -- once again, TMCnet has hit a new record. In this case, we built a Global Online Community in conjunction with Interactive Intelligence and this community generated just under 600,000 page views in one month according to Webtrends, a company which measures web traffic.
As you might imagine, this is a staggering number of pages to be viewed in a month and after TMCnet, this number represents the most page views in a month out of all competitive sites worldwide. This is according to third party web measurement sites like Quantcast.
In other words a single community built on TMCnet outproduced any other single competitive site in total.
As I have promised before, as we grow we will ensure the quantity and quality of TMCnet articles and as such we recently added Rick Bye as a columnist. He wrote his first piece last week in fact.
Bye is a senior segment marketing manager with Zarlink and is responsible for leading the company’s residential gateway and consumer voice products development. He has 21 years experience in the semiconductor industry, holding strategic leadership positions with Texas Instruments, Broadcom and most recently, D2 Technologies
Expect Bye to cover the evolution of broadband.
This is in addition to Bob Emmerson who was also recently added as TMCnet European Editor.
As always we appreciate our sponsors, readers and I personally appreciate the TMC team who keeps all of our properties humming on all cylinders.
As you might imagine, this is a staggering number of pages to be viewed in a month and after TMCnet, this number represents the most page views in a month out of all competitive sites worldwide. This is according to third party web measurement sites like Quantcast.
In other words a single community built on TMCnet outproduced any other single competitive site in total.
As I have promised before, as we grow we will ensure the quantity and quality of TMCnet articles and as such we recently added Rick Bye as a columnist. He wrote his first piece last week in fact.
Bye is a senior segment marketing manager with Zarlink and is responsible for leading the company’s residential gateway and consumer voice products development. He has 21 years experience in the semiconductor industry, holding strategic leadership positions with Texas Instruments, Broadcom and most recently, D2 Technologies
Expect Bye to cover the evolution of broadband.
This is in addition to Bob Emmerson who was also recently added as TMCnet European Editor.
As always we appreciate our sponsors, readers and I personally appreciate the TMC team who keeps all of our properties humming on all cylinders.
Today I head to New York City for a Dialogic Press and Analyst day. We will be having a function this evening in Yankee Stadium which should be lots of fun. Many people have asked me to bring them some blades of grass -- which makes me wonder if there is a market for this stuff on eBay.
No time to check now... My train is about to leave.
Photos to come.
No time to check now... My train is about to leave.
Photos to come.
Radware today discovered the iPhone Safari browser is vulnerable to denial of service attack. The specific model being tested was the Apple iPhone1.1.4.
In order to experience this problem a user must browse to a website containing malicious Javascript code. Once there, the code can trip up the browser and iPhone -- making it crash.
According to Radware, the Apple iPhone Safari browser is vulnerable to DoS attacks due to a design flaw that may be triggered by a series of memory allocation operations on the dynamic memory pool, which in turn triggers a bug in the garbage collector. The security hole is currently unpatched, leaving iPhone owners vulnerable to potential attacks until Apple issues a security update.
Assuming virus writers decide to exploit such security holes we may run into a situation where handheld device makers will have to ensure their devices have enough memory to handle endless security patches. Just as laptop and desktop computers get slower over time due to endless security program updates, internet connected gadgets will likely have similar issues.
In such a scenario, the winners will be the security software writers and gadget makers as users will likely be forced to upgrade their devices on a regular basis to ensure their handheld computers are responsive.
[Press release]
According to Chris Lyman, the Founder and CEO of Fonality, the brand new Trixbox 2.0 is the "look mom, no hands, reseller version."
In fact, the company is doing its best to make sure resellers have to touch these phone systems less and less. Lyman tells me the beta of 2.0 has been out for a few weeks and this release signifies the company's renewed focus on the reseller market.
Lyman tells me candidly that resellers are their future and they are thrilled to have their margins double by selling software systems like those supplied by Fonality.
Some added features in this release are sophisticated, presence-enabled find-me, follow-me, with remote features such as call control and record.
In addition there is E1 and BRI autodetect. Think of this as the wizard-based approach to open-source communications.
So how do you upgrade? As Lyman explains, the data center gets the new version of the software and you get it the next time you log in. Of course this is one of the benefits of the hybrid-hosted model Lyman espouses.
Lyman goes into much more detail about the latest Trixbox/Fonality news and even explains why companies should be cautious when upgrading to VoIP. To get the details, check out this podcast interview I had with Chris Lyman which should answer every question you had but were afraid to ask yourself.
In fact, the company is doing its best to make sure resellers have to touch these phone systems less and less. Lyman tells me the beta of 2.0 has been out for a few weeks and this release signifies the company's renewed focus on the reseller market.
Lyman tells me candidly that resellers are their future and they are thrilled to have their margins double by selling software systems like those supplied by Fonality.
Some added features in this release are sophisticated, presence-enabled find-me, follow-me, with remote features such as call control and record.
In addition there is E1 and BRI autodetect. Think of this as the wizard-based approach to open-source communications.
So how do you upgrade? As Lyman explains, the data center gets the new version of the software and you get it the next time you log in. Of course this is one of the benefits of the hybrid-hosted model Lyman espouses.
Lyman goes into much more detail about the latest Trixbox/Fonality news and even explains why companies should be cautious when upgrading to VoIP. To get the details, check out this podcast interview I had with Chris Lyman which should answer every question you had but were afraid to ask yourself.
For years, service providers could see their competitors coming head on. For example CLECs and VoIP providers are pretty easy to spot and entrenched telecom providers worldwide have adopted different strategies to battle these new entrants.
But that was the easy part of the game. After all, playing in your home stadium is often easier than playing on the road.
But this "on the road" analogy is perfectly accurate in describing what service providers will be dealing with as they enter new markets and come up against companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google.
Recently I had a chance to see a demo of technology from Openwave Systems which helps service providers compete more effectively with the traditional web-based competitors.
I must say that I was beyond impressed with the demo I saw of a product named Openwave Mobile Client Suite, a set of products which help turn service providers into internet companies.
I also had a chance to see some of the company's network-based technology, the Openwave Rich Mail Solution, which does what Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook clients do for the typical enterprise. The application is based on AJAX which means response times are more like software than web pages.
The look of the UI is impressive and not something you might expect your typical service provider to code themselves.
For example there are contextual menus which pop on a right-click, e-mail preview, drag-and-drop, voicemail/VoIP integration and more. You can even integrate mobile messaging and television allowing the TV to act as a hub for all messaging.
As service providers begin to embrace the concept that they should be internet companies we can expect broader adoption of such services and eventually this will lead to enough eyeballs for advertisers to get excited about.
Not surprisingly, Openwave sells a suite of advertising solutions as well which can be integrated with the solutions described above.
I am not sure I am 100% convinced service providers can make a serious dent into e-mail and other businesses of the major internet companies but I see opportunity for integration of telephony, directory assistance and account management all in a single interface which will be sticky enough for users to feel there is a credible alternative to the traditional email companies.
Even if you aren't convinced, you should be exploring a web-centric strategy... I really think all service providers should take along hard look at what this company is up to as it could really help you leverage some hidden revenue opportunities.
But that was the easy part of the game. After all, playing in your home stadium is often easier than playing on the road.
But this "on the road" analogy is perfectly accurate in describing what service providers will be dealing with as they enter new markets and come up against companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google.
Recently I had a chance to see a demo of technology from Openwave Systems which helps service providers compete more effectively with the traditional web-based competitors.
I must say that I was beyond impressed with the demo I saw of a product named Openwave Mobile Client Suite, a set of products which help turn service providers into internet companies.
I also had a chance to see some of the company's network-based technology, the Openwave Rich Mail Solution, which does what Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook clients do for the typical enterprise. The application is based on AJAX which means response times are more like software than web pages.
The look of the UI is impressive and not something you might expect your typical service provider to code themselves.
For example there are contextual menus which pop on a right-click, e-mail preview, drag-and-drop, voicemail/VoIP integration and more. You can even integrate mobile messaging and television allowing the TV to act as a hub for all messaging.
As service providers begin to embrace the concept that they should be internet companies we can expect broader adoption of such services and eventually this will lead to enough eyeballs for advertisers to get excited about.
Not surprisingly, Openwave sells a suite of advertising solutions as well which can be integrated with the solutions described above.
I am not sure I am 100% convinced service providers can make a serious dent into e-mail and other businesses of the major internet companies but I see opportunity for integration of telephony, directory assistance and account management all in a single interface which will be sticky enough for users to feel there is a credible alternative to the traditional email companies.
Even if you aren't convinced, you should be exploring a web-centric strategy... I really think all service providers should take along hard look at what this company is up to as it could really help you leverage some hidden revenue opportunities.
As wireless service providers seem to be battling to see who can provide the lowest cost unlimited voice and data plans, a problem is emerging that needs to be dealt with quickly. The issue is simply, how to cost-effectively upgrade network capacity to keep up with all the growth in voice and data capacity.
Invariably much of the challenge carriers face is in wireless backhaul as so many base stations are not located near fiber loops.
Enter Ceragon Networks and the company's newest wireless mobile backhaul solutions, the IP-10 family. In a conversation with the company's CMO Aviv Ronai and Director of Communication, Yoel Knoll the pair explained to me how this new product line offers unparalleled capacity - up to 500 mbps over a single radio carrier using a single RF carrier in fact.
Ronai had this to say about the company's latest solution, "FibeAir IP-10 enables risk-free migration to IP/Ethernet while providing the highest possible capacities at any given radio-link budget. This is achieved without any need to replace infrastructure or change the size or quantity of licensed frequency channels. Moreover, by significantly reducing the number external devices such as TDM cross-connect or Ethernet switch, both of which are integrated into the FibeAir IP-10, we offer carriers the lowest total cost of migration."
As an added bonus, the solution also includes OA&M tools.
As the move to all IP wireless mobile backhaul continues, Ceragon Networks aims to be a solid choice allowing carriers to maximize the spectrum they have so as to boost efficiency and subsequently help offset the retail price reductions that seem to be continuing to happen over time.
Invariably much of the challenge carriers face is in wireless backhaul as so many base stations are not located near fiber loops.
Enter Ceragon Networks and the company's newest wireless mobile backhaul solutions, the IP-10 family. In a conversation with the company's CMO Aviv Ronai and Director of Communication, Yoel Knoll the pair explained to me how this new product line offers unparalleled capacity - up to 500 mbps over a single radio carrier using a single RF carrier in fact.
Ronai had this to say about the company's latest solution, "FibeAir IP-10 enables risk-free migration to IP/Ethernet while providing the highest possible capacities at any given radio-link budget. This is achieved without any need to replace infrastructure or change the size or quantity of licensed frequency channels. Moreover, by significantly reducing the number external devices such as TDM cross-connect or Ethernet switch, both of which are integrated into the FibeAir IP-10, we offer carriers the lowest total cost of migration."
As an added bonus, the solution also includes OA&M tools.
As the move to all IP wireless mobile backhaul continues, Ceragon Networks aims to be a solid choice allowing carriers to maximize the spectrum they have so as to boost efficiency and subsequently help offset the retail price reductions that seem to be continuing to happen over time.
At the recent CTIA show in Las Vegas, much of the talk centered around how service providers need to focus on generating revenue from advertising as companies like Google will be giving away many of the services they hope to charge for.
A good example of such a service is Google Maps which utilizes cellular tower triangulation to approximate GPS. It doesn't stop there of course… With Google Gears for Mobile, Google is in the enviable position of allowing mobile devices to utilize hosted applications whether or not there is a live internet connection.
It isn't news that Google has a head start in delivering services and advertising… Now carriers need to catch up.
But service providers are terrible at getting into new business areas and they have little experience in advertising. You know, that reads a bit harsh. Allow me to rephrase… Let's say instead, that if wireless carriers learned to sell advertising as well as they spend money on their own ads, they will be in great shape.
What is the first step in becoming a better advertising company? In my view it is mastering how to advertise your own services to your own customers. After all, the bewildering array of services providers have in their arsenal is confusing to keep track of, let alone sell.
Enter Pontis, a company dedicated to enabling service providers to target market customers on a granular level ensuring the right offer gets to the right customer. The company provides a graphical, drag-and-drop interface which allows marketers to set up multiple campaigns based on complex criteria. These campaigns can be designed in advance and events can be predicated by triggers which alert the system to take some sort of action.
Guy Talmi the Senior Marketing Director at Pontis calls this concept "managing the marketing relevance of each customer through dynamic adaptation of product offer and purchase experience." Certainly this statement effectively sums up what the Israeli-based company does.
One of the first steps in any properly customized campaign is the segmentation step which allows you to apply analytics to purchase data in order to differentiate various customer classes or subsets.
Your analysis could point out for example that mobile prepaid customers are not topping off as often as they used to. Could the problem be these customers are being lured away by another offer from the competition?
Either way, you need to respond, right? One way to do this is to segment the customers who are not topping off and come up with a way to turn your churn lemons into returning customer lemonade.
You can further segment this group into customers who use SMS, Java games, video downloads and ring tones. Now you are ready to play the game of Churn Reduction. All you need is a board, some plastic playing pieces and a friend. Just kidding, in this game you just need solutions from Pontis (or equivalent) and some imagination.
In this hypothetical example you could send messages to your selected customers offering them two free ring tones if they top off their accounts with 10 euros or more. If this works well, you can come back to this audience at a later date and offer a large discount on future ringtone purchases if they top off with 25 euros or more.
The segment that didn't respond should not be abandoned. For them you could offer a 20% bonus on top off amounts with a 10 euro minimum for example.
Using solutions from Pontis, you could achieve this marketing outreach with WAP push, SMS, MMS or other means.
The system also allows reminders to be sent before expiration deadlines.
Pontis handles the systems integration if needed and as you might imagine, this is the tough part of making all of this targeted and integrated marketing solution work.
Although I used a wireless example here, the company's solutions are also powering VoIP, cable and IPTV providers around the world.
My final thought to service providers is that you should explore the exciting world of customized advertising very soon as getting into the advertising market seems more like a mandate from an evolving market than something you embark upon when you feel the time is right.
A good example of such a service is Google Maps which utilizes cellular tower triangulation to approximate GPS. It doesn't stop there of course… With Google Gears for Mobile, Google is in the enviable position of allowing mobile devices to utilize hosted applications whether or not there is a live internet connection.
It isn't news that Google has a head start in delivering services and advertising… Now carriers need to catch up.
But service providers are terrible at getting into new business areas and they have little experience in advertising. You know, that reads a bit harsh. Allow me to rephrase… Let's say instead, that if wireless carriers learned to sell advertising as well as they spend money on their own ads, they will be in great shape.
What is the first step in becoming a better advertising company? In my view it is mastering how to advertise your own services to your own customers. After all, the bewildering array of services providers have in their arsenal is confusing to keep track of, let alone sell.
Enter Pontis, a company dedicated to enabling service providers to target market customers on a granular level ensuring the right offer gets to the right customer. The company provides a graphical, drag-and-drop interface which allows marketers to set up multiple campaigns based on complex criteria. These campaigns can be designed in advance and events can be predicated by triggers which alert the system to take some sort of action.
Guy Talmi the Senior Marketing Director at Pontis calls this concept "managing the marketing relevance of each customer through dynamic adaptation of product offer and purchase experience." Certainly this statement effectively sums up what the Israeli-based company does.
One of the first steps in any properly customized campaign is the segmentation step which allows you to apply analytics to purchase data in order to differentiate various customer classes or subsets.
Your analysis could point out for example that mobile prepaid customers are not topping off as often as they used to. Could the problem be these customers are being lured away by another offer from the competition?
Either way, you need to respond, right? One way to do this is to segment the customers who are not topping off and come up with a way to turn your churn lemons into returning customer lemonade.
You can further segment this group into customers who use SMS, Java games, video downloads and ring tones. Now you are ready to play the game of Churn Reduction. All you need is a board, some plastic playing pieces and a friend. Just kidding, in this game you just need solutions from Pontis (or equivalent) and some imagination.
In this hypothetical example you could send messages to your selected customers offering them two free ring tones if they top off their accounts with 10 euros or more. If this works well, you can come back to this audience at a later date and offer a large discount on future ringtone purchases if they top off with 25 euros or more.
The segment that didn't respond should not be abandoned. For them you could offer a 20% bonus on top off amounts with a 10 euro minimum for example.
Using solutions from Pontis, you could achieve this marketing outreach with WAP push, SMS, MMS or other means.
The system also allows reminders to be sent before expiration deadlines.
Pontis handles the systems integration if needed and as you might imagine, this is the tough part of making all of this targeted and integrated marketing solution work.
Although I used a wireless example here, the company's solutions are also powering VoIP, cable and IPTV providers around the world.
My final thought to service providers is that you should explore the exciting world of customized advertising very soon as getting into the advertising market seems more like a mandate from an evolving market than something you embark upon when you feel the time is right.
It was over a year and a half ago when I had a chance to listen to Marc Benioff talk about how his company's software would be integrating with Google to provide a mashup allowing companies to better track their Google advertising. Using the services together, companies would be able to utilize the CRM portion of the software to track where customers came from... Which ad, which keyword, which landing page, etc.
The matter was so important I made the article a High Priority column in Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine.
The two companies have decided to take the collaboration one step further and as a result, you will now be able to purchase Google Applications via SalesForce.com and there will be tighter integration between the two companies.
For example, e-mails sent to customers via Google's mail application will be connected to customer records in SalesForce.com.
While this collaboration is great, there are still companies who worry about how to maintain security when their vital corporate data is stored on the servers of another company.
Perhaps this move will manage to make customers more comfortable with the hosted approach as Google has a strong reputation and helps boost SalesForce.com's credibility -- not that the company really needed it but having such a large partner would help anyone.
In my opinion, there are many companies who don't want to worry about having idle employees if their broadband provider or router fails.
I have to say that I really appreciate Marc Benioff as a spokesperson for SalesForce.com because he calls them as he sees them. No longer having Tom Siebel to go after, Benioff has resorted to blasting Microsoft.
If you want a more specific example of what I mean, consider the memo put out by Benioff in November of 2005 where he had the following to say:
This is what Benioff now has to say about Microsoft:
But there is more... He has also said in the past:
Microsoft has proven they will not sit back and take it and in fact to me it seems the company thrives on the competition. In fact Brad Wilson, the company's general manager for the CRM unit had this to say:
But really these comments are more icing on the cake -- the fun stuff if you will.
The real meat of this news is that Google and SalesForce.com will collaborate to make their solutions better. They will integrate more effectively and do their best to ensure they have solutions that are very competitive with those sold by not just Microsoft but every other company on the market.
In addition to the obvious synergies between the two companies the real winner here is Google because as this deal strengthens they will get an outside spokesman for their applications in Benioff. This man has proven to get under the skin of the competition and he seems to drive them crazy.
Of course I don't want to make a mountain out of a mole hill but this sort of news could have the potential to unite more Microsoft competitors. It would be interesting to see Adobe, Apple and RIM somehow get involved and say they too will work with SalesForce.com and Google.
This may be a stretch of course but there seems to be momentum growing and perhaps others will see this as a great time to join the party.
Microsoft for its part has a big advantage in the CRM space due to its UC push and the mindshare it has in this market. In addition the company's close ties with Aspect are a tremendous help in the CRM space -- especially as it relates to contact centers.
The war has gotten a lot more interesting over the past month and it will be very interesting to see what the next moves are for each of the various players.
See Also:
Salesforce.com to Sell Google Apps
Google, Others Expand Online Services Offerings
Salesforce.com becomes sales channel, showcase for Google software applications
The matter was so important I made the article a High Priority column in Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine.
The two companies have decided to take the collaboration one step further and as a result, you will now be able to purchase Google Applications via SalesForce.com and there will be tighter integration between the two companies.
For example, e-mails sent to customers via Google's mail application will be connected to customer records in SalesForce.com.
While this collaboration is great, there are still companies who worry about how to maintain security when their vital corporate data is stored on the servers of another company.
Perhaps this move will manage to make customers more comfortable with the hosted approach as Google has a strong reputation and helps boost SalesForce.com's credibility -- not that the company really needed it but having such a large partner would help anyone.
In my opinion, there are many companies who don't want to worry about having idle employees if their broadband provider or router fails.
I have to say that I really appreciate Marc Benioff as a spokesperson for SalesForce.com because he calls them as he sees them. No longer having Tom Siebel to go after, Benioff has resorted to blasting Microsoft.
If you want a more specific example of what I mean, consider the memo put out by Benioff in November of 2005 where he had the following to say:
Last month, our number one competitor surrendered, and decided to take its place beside several former competitors at software's Shady Pines Rest Home, also known as Oracle. It was a merciful outcome for shareholders, but a time of con"fusion" for customers.
This is what Benioff now has to say about Microsoft:
This will make it easier for us to convince more businesses to stop buying Microsoft Office and switch to better services like this that are emerging in the cloud.
But there is more... He has also said in the past:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so that makes Google my best friend
Microsoft has proven they will not sit back and take it and in fact to me it seems the company thrives on the competition. In fact Brad Wilson, the company's general manager for the CRM unit had this to say:
Salesforce has belatedly recognized that it is important to link CRM apps to productivity tools. It has been core to our product since we launched five years ago. It validates our strategy.
But really these comments are more icing on the cake -- the fun stuff if you will.
The real meat of this news is that Google and SalesForce.com will collaborate to make their solutions better. They will integrate more effectively and do their best to ensure they have solutions that are very competitive with those sold by not just Microsoft but every other company on the market.
In addition to the obvious synergies between the two companies the real winner here is Google because as this deal strengthens they will get an outside spokesman for their applications in Benioff. This man has proven to get under the skin of the competition and he seems to drive them crazy.
Of course I don't want to make a mountain out of a mole hill but this sort of news could have the potential to unite more Microsoft competitors. It would be interesting to see Adobe, Apple and RIM somehow get involved and say they too will work with SalesForce.com and Google.
This may be a stretch of course but there seems to be momentum growing and perhaps others will see this as a great time to join the party.
Microsoft for its part has a big advantage in the CRM space due to its UC push and the mindshare it has in this market. In addition the company's close ties with Aspect are a tremendous help in the CRM space -- especially as it relates to contact centers.
The war has gotten a lot more interesting over the past month and it will be very interesting to see what the next moves are for each of the various players.
See Also:
Salesforce.com to Sell Google Apps
Google, Others Expand Online Services Offerings
Salesforce.com becomes sales channel, showcase for Google software applications
Today was apparently a bad one for GrandCentral customers as many report the service was out for hours. As mentioned by TechCrunch, if you want to be phone company you can't go dead.
There is no question Microsoft could charge more for its OS if it worked as well as products from Apple. This is the feeling of ZDnet's Robin Harris and it is difficult to agree with the many lucid points made in his article.
Still, it should be noted Microsoft now has to deal with many products which they don't necessarily control. Apple has kept a much tighter reign on the products you could get working with a Mac.
For example, Apple makes the computers that work with their OS while Microsoft does not. When you consider all the manufacturers and various types of hardware challenges, BIOS revisions, etc you see Microsoft has become a victim of its own success.
Of course all of this is known and has been happening for years.
The reason things have changed as of late is that Apple is actually the market-share leader at something again which makes people more comfortable switching over to the Cupertino-based company's products and services.
In addition, the cool factor of Apple and the look of the company's product has only improved over the years.
No company seems to be able to match Apple in design except perhaps Bang and Olufsen.
Oh yeah... Why specifically do Mac users pay twice as much for OS X according to Harris? Because people are willing to pay more for products that work correctly with little penalty for being an early adopter.
Still, it should be noted Microsoft now has to deal with many products which they don't necessarily control. Apple has kept a much tighter reign on the products you could get working with a Mac.
For example, Apple makes the computers that work with their OS while Microsoft does not. When you consider all the manufacturers and various types of hardware challenges, BIOS revisions, etc you see Microsoft has become a victim of its own success.
Of course all of this is known and has been happening for years.
The reason things have changed as of late is that Apple is actually the market-share leader at something again which makes people more comfortable switching over to the Cupertino-based company's products and services.
In addition, the cool factor of Apple and the look of the company's product has only improved over the years.
No company seems to be able to match Apple in design except perhaps Bang and Olufsen.
Oh yeah... Why specifically do Mac users pay twice as much for OS X according to Harris? Because people are willing to pay more for products that work correctly with little penalty for being an early adopter.
It seems at least one person has been thinking of all the ways a slower economy will contribute to better air travel for the rest of us. In fact this Slate.com article describes in detail what the pros are of an economy where there are less mergers, more airline bankruptcies and less of a need for executives to take up runway room with their private jets.
I have noticed my last few flights have had a few extra seats on them and the security lines have gotten shorter as well.
Few people want a slower economy of course but seems many clouds do indeed have silver linings.
I have noticed my last few flights have had a few extra seats on them and the security lines have gotten shorter as well.
Few people want a slower economy of course but seems many clouds do indeed have silver linings.
There is just something so mind-boggling about our nation's tax collection system. I was reading this MSNBC article about how New York State is looking to and likely will tax Amazon.com purchases and it goes on about how New Yorkers are supposed to be paying sales tax on these purchases already.
In fact most states require you to pay sales tax on your out-of-state purchases today.
Obviously most people do not do this and the article further describes just how confusing it would be to figure out what you owe.
In case you aren't aware, currently if a company does not have operations in your state, they generally do not charge you sales tax. It is interesting to note that if a company exhibits at a trade show in a state, the state feels the company should subsequently pay sales tax there.
In one instance, my company TMC actually had an idea to get a major internet retailer involved in a really interesting promotional idea that our ITEXPO attendees would have really benefited from. Guess what... The e-commerce company backed out because if they did anything at a trade show in Los Angeles... California would have pressured them to pay sales tax.
But I digress. We can thank Eliott Spitzer for passing a bill that will require Amazon.com to collect sales tax on shipments sent to the Empire State.
On the one hand it is extremely fair to have all retailers pay state sales tax as currently shopping online hurts local merchants who do have to collect this tax.
The flipside to this argument of course is that the federal government has passed laws against taxing the internet and this New York State Law is probably in conflict with the federal law.
There is a lot more to this issue and our entire tax code has always fascinated me as it is so complex that it requires armies of lawyers and accountants to keep track of it all. One wonders if it wouldn't be better to just have all the states work together with the federal government to simplify the mess of a tax code we currently deal with.
[Internet News]
In fact most states require you to pay sales tax on your out-of-state purchases today.
Obviously most people do not do this and the article further describes just how confusing it would be to figure out what you owe.
In case you aren't aware, currently if a company does not have operations in your state, they generally do not charge you sales tax. It is interesting to note that if a company exhibits at a trade show in a state, the state feels the company should subsequently pay sales tax there.
In one instance, my company TMC actually had an idea to get a major internet retailer involved in a really interesting promotional idea that our ITEXPO attendees would have really benefited from. Guess what... The e-commerce company backed out because if they did anything at a trade show in Los Angeles... California would have pressured them to pay sales tax.
But I digress. We can thank Eliott Spitzer for passing a bill that will require Amazon.com to collect sales tax on shipments sent to the Empire State.
On the one hand it is extremely fair to have all retailers pay state sales tax as currently shopping online hurts local merchants who do have to collect this tax.
The flipside to this argument of course is that the federal government has passed laws against taxing the internet and this New York State Law is probably in conflict with the federal law.
There is a lot more to this issue and our entire tax code has always fascinated me as it is so complex that it requires armies of lawyers and accountants to keep track of it all. One wonders if it wouldn't be better to just have all the states work together with the federal government to simplify the mess of a tax code we currently deal with.
[Internet News]
It seems TiVo is on a roll as Dish Network has failed to to convince an appeals court to overturn a previous patent win. Dish Network could end up paying from about $100 to $200 million as a result of this lawsuit.
Expect TiVo to go after service providers and also expect Dish Network to try to convince courts that they have upgraded their DVR systems in a way that no longer infringes TiVo's patents.
[Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection]
