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There is nothing that builds a resume more like an award and if you are a developer, you definitely want to keep an eye on the new Dialogic Innovator Award contest which will not only give you some great bragging rights, you could win some prizes as well.


Dialogic was nice enough to ask me to be one of the judges in fact and I am looking forward to being part of this program. Winners get a free one-year service and support contract, a $5,000 credit towards future Dialogic products, t-shirts, press releases and an Innovator logo which I imagine can be invaluable in boosting a company's marketing efforts.

Sure it isn't a $75,000 motorcycle - which makes a great gift for your favorite blogger by the way, but hey, times are tough.

The catch? None really - you have to apply of course and Dialogic wants to also take a moment to invite you to participate in the Dialogic Exchange Network while they have your attention.

At one point in my career I was a programmer and I wish I had the time to participate in this contest. If I did, I would write an app that taps into all my social networks and then monitors my cell phone's GPS to determine when I am in the car. When I am driving, I would want it to call me every 15 minutes and update me on what's happening with my friends and relatives. I would want my news alerts tapped as well in case there is breaking news I need to know about.

Oh and of course I would want WAV file to social networking integration in this app so I could speak and have the files live on the net with links from Twitter, etc.

But that's just me and you don't need to do what I said to win. It wouldn't hurt of course. You have until September 30^th 2009 to apply so open a new window right now and get started. Good luck!

Google Wave is an ambitious project from Google which allows true real-time communications by integrating chat, email, a wiki, social networking tools and more. In many ways it competes with other services such as Facebook and as such it really isn't that new. Still, it does seem slicker and it is more open than many other services which provide communications solutions (a promotional plug -- you may want to check out TMCnet's newest news-driven Global Online Community called Communications Solutions). It also allows real-time IM sessions meaning you can see what the other person is typing before they hit enter.

Some think the company is being arrogant with this launch because as usual they seem to think about products first and profits second. Others think the breadth of features included in Wave could mean that Gmail and Docs are history.

My thoughts are that Google has done a poor job in the social networking space to date and initiatives like Google Voice haven't blown us away. Gmail of course is a solid product and took share from Yahoo! and Microsoft and allowed Google to show targeted ads to millions of users while they viewed their email.

So from where I stand, if Wave becomes successful and is somehow integrated into the Google product family, it could indeed give a Google-sized boost to the bottom line because you can bet that your communications will have embedded ads which are selected based on the keywords you use in the communications.

Google still owns the world's largest ad network and subsequently has relationships with more global advertisers than any other company. This means they have all the incentive in the world to make Google Wave a very popular service and even if the new offering achieves a few percent penetration, it will offer millions and millions of new page views for advertiser monetization.

One last point - the timing of this product is especially curious as it seems to put Google more in the space occupied by Microsoft at a time when the operating system leader is focusing more on search and will launch a new marketing campaign to push it. Moreover it reminds me a bit of the Palm Pre in the way it integrates various services and is open... And the Pre should roll out next week.

Finally, today - it was announced that AOL will be spun out of Time Warner and to me AOL was the original service which allowed real-time communications between its members. Now it is a shadow of its former self.

My view is that communications is continuing to evolve and this move is good for consumers - even if Wave fails and some of its concepts get rolled into other platforms.

On a recent flight back from Europe I marveled at the ice littering the North Atlantic. A flight attendant told me it was sad as what appeared to be ice cubes from a mile or more in the air used to be icebergs. I am concerned about the environment but I am not sure I agree with the carbon cap and trade system being proposed in the US as it could adversely impact the economy.

But last I checked, regulation gets passed without my express permission and in a world where CO2 is becoming a pollutant, you need to be more aware of energy use and carbon emissions than ever before.

I am especially looking forward to the upcoming sponsored TelcoBridges webinar on TMCnet which will help educate the market on how data centers can lower their energy use.

Even if cap and trade does not become reality this year it is apparent that governments are more and more likely to impose penalties for carbon emissions. Since reducing energy use saves money as well, it behooves everyone with data center decision making authority to be part of this timely event.

For nearly 13 years, Greg Galitzine has been a tremendously valuable part of the TMC team. His career started as an editor for CTI Magazine in 1996. Where he reported on the collision of the computer and communications spaces including what we called IP telephony back in the day. In 1997 we convened a meeting with Greg to explore whether it made sense to launch a publication in the IP telephony space. The outcome of the meeting was to launch what we hoped would become a cornerstone of what we hoped would be a new industry - Internet Telephony Magazine.

Greg became the editor of this publication and had the vision to see this is where the industry was going. Many companies in the communications space told us we were nuts for launching this publication as at the time there was no industry, just a few nerds calling each other on softphones.

Lo and behold, over the past decade this nerdy, niche technology revolutionized telecom to the point where business models have changed, new entrants have come into the telecom market and entire industries were transformed through international outsourcing made possible by inexpensive VoIP-based telephony.

In the last few years, Greg did a great job helping transform TMCnet into a major web force in communications and technology news. We are grateful to him for the years he has put in.

I am very happy for Greg as recently he has been given a great opportunity which involves a move to a new industry altogether. Galitzine has accepted a position with ISA, Inc., a prime contractor to the National Nuclear Security Administration and working in about 18 countries through Central and Eastern Europe to identify and interdict the illegal movement of materials for weapons of mass destruction. Greg will be taking his analytical and editorial skills to a higher level, contributing to national-level policy and operational support analysis for these major international nonproliferation undertakings.

While we all selfishly wish Greg wouldn't move on, we are happy for him and are sure he will make a tremendous impact in his new position.

Over the past year it has become evident that deflation is a driving force of the US economy. Margins are being squeezed in virtually all businesses. Even areas of the market where you might think there is pricing pressure don't always have it. For example I queried a friend about how his low-income rental units were doing thinking that the subprime mess would definitely drive more business to him. The opposite is true. Not only is the phone ringing less often from prospective tenants, existing tenants are being laid off in bunches meaning in order to avoid massive vacancies he has to drop rental prices.

There is even pressure on real estate appraisers - many of whom are doing wonderfully due to the refinancing boom. I queried some realtors who obviously have more free time than ever and they tell me they are using it to appraise houses for free as they look to build stronger relationships with the banks that have foreclosed inventory to unload.

Recently, Paul Krugman had an opinion piece in the New York Times on falling wages and how they lead to less spending which presents an ongoing danger for the economy.

Krugman explains that according to John Maynard Keynes an expectation of a 2% wage reduction will be the rough equivalent of a 2% tax increase on an economy. A world-famous economist, Keynes advocated government interventions in recessions and depressions to reduce their ill-effects on economies.

While I agree with many of the principles Keynes espouses, I just can't help but wonder if a deflationary spiral won't do the US some good for the short term. Over the past years I have been a proponent of keeping US jobs from moving overseas and over time my research has shown me this is an ill-advised policy. The reason is that if an American company is precluded from hiring workers in let's say Bangladesh, it will be at a disadvantage when it tries to compete with the company which does employ people from this country. By forcing jobs to stay in the US in fact you would eventually drive companies out of the US or into bankruptcy as they lose marketshare to lower cost suppliers.

My research and common sense has shown that the solution to losing jobs to other countries is to allow the standard of living in these areas to improve so the competitive advantage of offshoring jobs decreases dramatically. And this is happening slowly but surely. I remember in the eighties how the US feared the Japanese would take all its jobs. Soon the Japanese standard of living improved to the point where this just didn't happen to a great extent.

But if we are to assume deflation continues to be the norm in the US and it happens faster here than elsewhere, we run into a situation where offshoring becomes a less-effective way to save money for corporate America. When you add in time zone, location and cultural differences, at a certain point it begins to make sense to bring jobs back to America. And I am seeing this happening in the contact center and tech spaces where thousands of jobs have come back from India and other countries.

Do we really think manufacturing will ever come back to the US? We can only expect this to happen if the standard of living and wages increase dramatically in China and elsewhere or average wages in the US decrease dramatically.

The irony is that real estate prices would have to fall far further to bring manufacturing jobs and others back to the US. Interestingly the US government is in a quagmire which forces it to try to put a floor under housing to save the economy and the banking sector. But how does the US get jobs back if it forces home prices higher or even stabilizes them? After all, how can factory workers competing in a global economy afford prices at current levels?

One counter to this argument is that for many, their home is a major part of their assets and the farther home values drop, the poorer consumers feel. And when consumers see their net worth fall in, they will naturally spend less. Obviously this is a complicated problem with no simple solution.

Is green energy the answer to creating much-needed American jobs? Perhaps, but it seems early to proclaim this market as the creator of the 10 million plus jobs the US needs.

So while most economists agree deflation is bad in the long-term, I submit it presents some benefits to the US economy today. In addition I credit deflation for starting to bring offshored jobs back to the US. It is rarely a smart move question someone like Keynes who was named by Time Magazine as one of the most influential people of the 20^th century, but one wonders how his theories may have changed in an age where the internet and IP communications can shift millions of jobs from a country with a high standard of living to one with a low standard of living almost overnight.

While the US government seems to be doing everything to generate inflation by printing money as fast as it can and keeping interest rates low, for now the country is going to experience deflation. While this can be very painful if you are a worker who had wages cut, it could also be responsible for adding or keeping millions of jobs in the US over the long-run.

There is no question this economy has forced virtually every household and business to economize but it has done more than that... It has made most companies think long and hard about how they can become more productive and efficient. Sometimes this is referred to bluntly as doing more with less.

Oftentimes corporations have less people than ever but have to do the same work if not more. Sure we continue to roll out divorce-creating devices that let our knowledge workers answer emails in bed but let's take a break from the gadgets (don't worry, I will write about them again soon --- I promise) and discuss the corporate software companies need to enable them to compete effectively.

Two of these categories are ERP and CRM and most companies that don't have both know they need them. But for those that do only 9% have them integrated and it seems to me just getting these systems to Interop more effectively is a simple way to turbocharge corporate productivity.

Sure it isn't easy but one of the first steps you may be interested in taking down this journey to ERP and CRM integration is this sponsored whitepaper from Sage Software which is quite informative and thankfully graphically appealing.

One reason I find it very useful is because it is chock full of research from Time Magazine and Fortune that you need to be aware of. I hope you find it useful.

If you look at TMC from the outside and find yourself asking how you can get a job as an intern at this global integrated media company which builds communities online, in print and in person while gaining marketshare regardless of economic climate, I have some great news to share. We are looking for a small army of interns who want to learn what it's like to take on major multibillion dollar media companies with infinite resources and consistently win.

We will teach you how to sell collaboratively - how to listen and to be loved by your customers (well most of them anyway).

We will teach you integrated marketing and online marketing - not theory but ever-evolving practice.

If you love media and want to work at the company that is light years ahead online, contact us ASAP. We are very picky so if you aren't a super-hard worker and collaboration and hat-wearing are not your middle names, let's end our relationship now as friends (it's not you it's me).

One last thought about TMC - our culture is unusual - we have the financial stability of a 37 year-old company with the energy and enthusiasm of a start-up.

Let's just say if you're thinking of contacting us, please don't delay


Here's more:

The Sales & Marketing internship position at TMC is designed to provide hands-on experience that will be mutually beneficial for both the intern and the organization. The internship position is designed to challenge students and provide them with practical experience in the advertising and media industry.

TMC is looking for a dynamic, creative, enthusiastic, high energy professional to support the Sales organization, to help build advertising and marketing presentations for prospects and clients.

• Work with sales & marketing team to assist in the implementation of various campaigns
• Contribute to the creative input in building campaigns and support the campaigns
• Copyediting and proofreading
• Communicate with customers and peers
• Minimum Qualifications:
• Working towards completion of a college degree program in business, marketing or communication
• Excellent communication skills verbal and written
• Proficient in Microsoft Office suite, specifically PowerPoint and Excel
• Excellent communication skills
• Detail Oriented
• Initiative and proactive thinking
• Team player
• Ability to multi-task and work in a fast paced environment meeting deadlines

For over a decade TMC has covered AVST and their wonderful unified messaging solutions - which in the nineties were the talk of the industry. But as is sometimes the case, when the industry talks about the next big thing, it doesn't always take off overnight. While UM was slow to catch on in the nineties, the last few years have seen an explosion of interest in both UM and UC. While you may think this is a long time to wait, remember some are still waiting for the glorious age of OS/2 to finally arrive.

To catch up on what the company is up to since the release of CallXpress 7.1 I met with Tom Minifie - Chief Technology Officer and Denny Michael - Vice President of Marketing.

They have spent a great deal of time, effort and energy on the latest release of their CallXpress Version 8.0 which will be available this Summer and include Neverfail technology making it more resilient to outages. The entire architecture of the product has been improved allowing multisite organizations to centralize servers or distribute them with higher levels of availability. And this is crucial for a company which provides the backbone for the communications of companies worldwide, including law firms in the UK.

One benefit of using this new architecture is users will be able to transfer calls and perform other call management tasks - even if a WAN link fails. 40,000 users will be supported and there are multiple PBX integrations as you likely know or expect.

The new architecture of AVST CallXpress Version 8.0 makes it more resilient

There are new applications available as well which support mobility - with "Wildfire-like" speech recognition/personal assistant features. Presence is also supported allowing intelligent call routing - and there is FMC - allowing calls to be transferred back and forth between cell and landline.

Users can benefit from a single mailbox and phone number and corporations can more easily integrate UC into their business processes allowing for CEBP - yes the term that has more lives than the entire global feline population. An example of the CEBP prowess of CallXpress is sending SMS alerts to people within an organization if an item is on backorder.

Personally I would like my server to be notified if something on the menu is out before I order that fancy tilapia special which I later learn is not available. I think this new version of CallXpress could be a tasty addition to the restaurants I visit.

Perhaps the most maligned term in telecom is communications enabled business processes or CEBP. It is funny how just so many companies tell me they have a new CEBP solution and then go on to say they despise the term. What is more interesting to me is how so many companies are actually relying on CEBP for quick ROI on the solutions they sell. For example doctors using CEBP to help increase the number of patients which show up to their appointments can yield an ROI of a few months.

You remember the term just in time communications I came up with years back? The term gained little traction but I still wonder if it isn't better than CEBP. Then again I am not one for an acronym urinating match. Who has time anyway -- I am too busy memorizing what every flavor of 802.11 does (The insanity   802.11z, 802.11aa, 802.11ac,802.11ad).

It does seem however, love it or hate it - CEPB is here to stay.