Recently in AT&T Category

Internet radio has really revolutionized the way millions have listened to music and for that I have to thank everyone in the industry for allowing consumers to mark individual songs for more or less play. The amazing thing about Internet radio is that the more you listen and mark the songs you like, the better it gets - adjusting to fit your musical taste like a custom-made glove.

Having said that, I believe we owe Tim Westergren one of the founders of Pandora a great deal for being a pioneer in the space.

To hear Tim's thoughts on 4G, iPhone/AT&T exclusivity and the growth of his company, be sure to read the interview.

Oh, and I would be doing you an injustice if I didn't mention the 4G Wireless Evolution event taking place with ITEXPO this week in downtown Los Angeles at the Convention Center. The TMC team is all here (the last few just arrived) and we are setting up for the best show ever.

I just found a new blog - Seamless Enterprise which is sponsored by Sprint and recently did a roundup of the seven best blogs in communications. Thanks to Mark Ivey for picking two TMC blogs out of seven.

Here are the non-TMC blogs on the list.

• GigaOm
• VoIP IP Telephony
• NoJitter
• Fierce VoIP
• VoIP Watch

If you want to know which TMC blogs made it please check out the entry for yourself.

I spent the night having dinner with the TMC team at the new LA Live area of shops and restaurants by the Los Angeles Convention Center and Staples Center. We were in ESPN Sports Zone which sports a pair of 103 inch Panasonic TVs with stunning picture quality.

But getting back to downtown Los Angeles, I have been coming to the Los Angeles Convention Center for over a decade and am happy to see such a large amount of investment is taking place in the area. It will probably be unrecognizable to most people who have not seen the area in a while.

Much more of the team are arriving tomorrow and there will certainly be much more to share in the morning. Good night for now.

I have said it repeatedly - the way to get the most out of any conference is to not only attend sessions and the exhibit hall but also network with people who can help you. Perhaps they can help you purchase a product or service or even land that lucrative consulting gig. Maybe you are looking for potential customers or partners at the show. Whatever you seek, if it is in the communications space, there is no better place than ITEXPO to find it.

And before the show kicks off this Tuesday, September 1 in Los Angeles I wanted to share the fourth installment of interviews from the show. These interviews provide guidance, allowing you to get a feel for who will be at the show and more importantly, who can help you learn valuable information.rise-voip/articles/63128-dangers-ubiquitous-wireless-networks.htm%20

As a reference, here are interviews, one, two and three.

Here are the details of some of the giveaways at ITEXPO West 2009 and a lot more. I hope it helps. Good luck!

Suzanne Bowen over at DIDX is a past ITEXPO exhibitor and I noticed some nice words from her about the show. In her words:

Both conferences attract a huge and robust mix of professionals, developers, early adopters, SMEs, voip companies, anything over IP companies, and more which results in exciting discussions and new innovations. When a conference only concentrates on one type of participant, the results will be the same as always.

Feel free to read the entire post and I hope to see you at the show next week. Suzanne, thanks for the nice words and to my readers - thanks for your ongoing participation.

A recent Forbes survey shows business executives prefer face-to-face meetings over those of the virtual type. As expected 58% of respondents said they were travelling for business less today than they were at the beginning of the recession in January 2008, with more than a third (34%) indicating they were travelling much less frequently.

What seems obvious (to me anyway) is that executives still expressed an overwhelming preference for face-to-face meetings, with more than eight out of ten (84%) saying they prefer in-person contact to virtual.

Even more interesting, those that prefer face-to-face meetings believe they facilitate the following: Building stronger, more meaningful relationships (85%), the ability to "read" another person (77%), and Greater social interaction (75%).

Other tidbits worth sharing, 64% of those who prefer technology-enabled business meetings like them because they allow them to multitask and 87% agree that there are tangible business benefits to in-person, face-to-face meetings that outweigh the cost savings of alternative, technology-based meeting methods such as web conferencing or videoconferencing.

I find this survey refreshing as it confirms what we may all know - that

face-to-face meetings are much better than meeting in any other way.

The timing of these survey results are interesting as I am headed to TMC's ITEXPO (Sept. 1-3, 2009 in Los Angeles) -- (This photo was taken at the last ITEXPO this past winter in Miami) to engage in a live event which focuses on virtual meeting technology based on IP communications. As it happens, the attendance to the exhibit hall portion of ITEXPO is ahead of last year and I am thrilled to welcome the global crowd to the exhibit hall and conference areas.

I take this as a sign that although IP communications technology is gaining more traction by the day, sometimes, face-to-face gatherings are the best way to learn more about how to meet virtually, save money on communications and boost productivity.

Jeff Wiener is President of Digitcom Canada and an Avaya dealer who believes that the DOJ should rubber stamp the Avaya/Nortel merger without much fuss. He explains that the field is extremely competitive and furthermore that the competition is also coming from Microsoft, Skype, Google and hosted VoIP. I agree with all of the above but would say the real challenges for Avaya will continue to be Cisco as they are such a strong data player.

In addition I am surprised open-source didn't even make the list. As I head to ITEXPO which takes place Tuesday through Thursday next week in Los Angeles, I am aware of what a large presence Digium and Fonality will have at the show. I wonder if the companies deploying open-source solutions don't appear on the radar of the typical reseller. This was a surprise to me to be honest.

I am not in any camp on this issue BTW, I say that if any company other than Cisco gets the enterprise assets of Nortel, the market will be safe and there won't be too much anticompetitive power in the hands of any specific company. Here is his letter.