Rich Tehrani : Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com
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Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com

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Spreadable Shuts Down - Why?

June 10, 2011



While reading a blog post from telecom and channel partner thought leader Peter Radizeski, on how small businesses are responsible for much of the nation's hiring I learned about the fact that Grasshopper is shutting down its Spreadable company - an organization focused on word-of-mouth spreading of customer referrals.

I haven't talked with the people at Grasshooper in years - certainly not since they changed their name to Grasshopper - but I have often had conversations with others in the market about how their marketing campaigns seem to be the most untargeted in the space since much of it is being placed on satellite radio. According to the company's competitors, their marketing is as shotgun as it gets because - they seem to be purposefully utilizing mediums which are difficult to measure and they are relatively nonexistent online.

And as more decisions are being made on the web - this is quite a surprising and counter-intuitive strategy.

But when I started to read the first post from the company related to why they shut down Spreadable I could see they understand digital marketing quite well - its just surprising that you rarely see them online. Kind of a paradox I got to thinking. It is worth mentioning Spreadable too relied on Satellite radio among perhaps other mediums for its sales.

Another thought I had while reading is what company shuts down a business and then celebrates its failure in public via a four-part series?









Posted in Cloud Computing, E-Commerce, Facebook, Financial, Google, Social Networking, Technology, VoIP
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HTML5 Shines on New FT App

June 10, 2011


According to Ed Silverstein on TMCnet's sister site TechZone360, The Financial Times recently released a web app at app.ft.com based on HTML5 and in doing so has shown the Splinternet may be reversing course. As you may recall, I coined the term Splinternet in 2008 to describe the splintering of app environments on the web. Programmers currently utilize so much overhead to program for various environments that they take precious resources from differentiating their apps. The scenario is reminiscent of the hundreds or thousands of printer drivers developers had to provide with their software before Windows became popular and handled this task for the development community.


Posted in Android, Apple, Cloud Computing, Communications Developer, E-Commerce, Facebook, Financial, HTML5, SaaS, Technology, Verizon, Wireless, iPad
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Facebook's Zuckerberg, Closed App Stores and HTML5

May 27, 2011

Could you imagine being so famous that your declaration of killing all the food you eat yourself becomes mainstream news? And all this at age 27? In case you missed it - I am talking about Mark Zuckerberg - a man who in a few short years has become as popular - it seems as Steve Jobs.

And when you think about Apple and Facebook and the popularity of both, you wonder what sort of competitive conflicts the two companies will have in the future. For example, Apple's Ping is supposed to be its entry into the social networking realm.

Posted in Apple, Conference, Facebook, HTML5, Technology

Twitter Drops Tweets Term to Take on Facebook?

May 26, 2011

To manage my Twitter followers more effectively I have a rule which sweeps my followers into a directory allowing me to see them at my leisure. But in the last few days the rule stopped working. I looked into it and discovered that Twitter used to send an email message whenever a new follower is added “is now following your tweets” but has replaced this email message with “is now following you on Twitter!”

A while back I suggested Twitter purchase MySpace and rebrand the service Twitter in order to take on Facebook. Whether this happens or not is unknown but one has to wonder if this move is the first step towards Twitter broadening out its platform beyond tweets.

Posted in Facebook, Social Networking, Technology, Twitter

An Honest Critique of Microsoft and Steve Ballmer

May 26, 2011

For the last five years there have been calls for Steve Ballmer to step down from Microsoft and I have refrained from comment until today because a confluence of news and events has made commentary necessary. Specifically, David Einhorn, an influential hedge fund manager – whose firm Greenlight Capital owns almost 9M shares of Microsoft, said (video) Ballmer is stuck in the past and is ruining Microsoft’s stock.

Technologist Vs. Businessperson: One compliant about Steve Ballmer is that he is more a businessperson than a technologist and as a result, new and innovative products have been developed much more slowly. This point is very tough to argue with and more importantly, what is Ballmer’s vision for Microsoft?

Posted in 4G, AT&T, Android, Apple, Blackberry, Broadband, Cloud Computing, Consumer Electronics, Facebook, Financial, Microsoft, SIP, Search, Skype, Social Networking, Speech Technologies, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

How Sea Water Cools Google's Data Center

May 25, 2011

Google recently released a new video showing some of the details regarding how they turned an old paper mill into a data center and are utilizing a seawater tunnel which was already in existence to pump water into heat exchangers to cool the servers. The warmed water is subsequently mixed with fresh seawater to cool it down before returning it to the ocean.

A polished video of how Google is using sea water to cool their data center


There is no word on how much money this method of cooling will save Google since one would imagine there is significant electricity being utilized to pump water through the large building. Moreover, it is unclear if this new cooling method in Finland can be replicated in other areas where oceanfront property could be more expensive.

But if the price of oil and electricity continues to increase significantly, the higher cost of oceanfront property may be offset by savings in air conditioning usage.

An early look at the facility before the cooling system was completed


Perhaps the greatest irony of the story is the fact the building was once a paper mill. Paper as we know is in less demand as a result of the Internet.











Posted in Facebook, Financial, Google, Science, Technology

LinkedIn IPO Means More Public Tech Offerings

May 20, 2011

LinkedIn’s incredible IPO success tells us one thing – that many other tech companies are more confident than ever been about going public. Bet before we go there let’s take look at what happened. The company went public at $45 per share and shot up quickly past $100 and has settled around $102.39 at the time of this writing – a market cap just under $9B. The company has everything going for it – it is in the social networking space and focuses on the business side where you could argue easily that there is easier money to be made than a consumer site like Facebook.
Posted in Facebook, Social Networking, Technology, Twitter

Rich Tehrani and TMC at Interop 2011

May 9, 2011

I am here in Las Vegas getting ready for Interop 2011. I apologize for not being connected more - but I've been doing wall-to-wall video interviews all of last week as well as speaking at the Broadvox Partner Summit. Not to mention watching the gorgeous US scenery as I travel from NY to Dallas and back and then to Vegas.

To check out the videos from last week you can click on the first one and they will loop through. BTW, one of these videos is being held back because the news is embargoed.

Later today I will be at a reception with Cisco execs and at the moment my editorial team is at another Cisco event which involves a Q&A session with their CIO.

Then its on to at least 80 interviews - I am looking forward to gauging the mood of the exhibitors and speakers at the show.

Finally, this Wednesday, May 11th at 8:00 AM, TMC will host a breakfast  focusing on online community building and social networking... I will be speaking on tips and best practices and more.







Posted in Broadband, Call Center, Cisco, Facebook, IP Communications, Networking, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Bin Laden's Death, Mobile and Social

May 2, 2011

In the wake of bin Laden's death it is worth reflecting on how consumers learned about the incident which was first live reported by Sohaib Athar - an unsuspecting bin Laden neighbor who tweeted the fact that he heard a helicopter and a subsequent window-shaking bang - a rare event as he called it.



Later, a commenter @naqvi on Twitter made the connection to these events and the Obama press conference which confirmed what had happened.

Of course later - the hard news and analysis did come from the mainstream media (MSM) - with lots of commentary from the social world. GigaOm has thoughts on how social and the MSM are connected.

What is most interesting to me however is the cheering which took place at a baseball stadium when the crown learned about the bin Laden news - specifically there was TV coverage of how people in the crowd were scanning their cell phones for the news and sharing it with others in the crowd. The video below gives you a small idea of other coverage I have seen.

The concept of news circulating via social faster than TV is not something we haven't discussed before - but this this stadium example of a large group learning about an important event via people at the center of informal social circle shows you how news dissemination and the web has evolved over the years.











Posted in AT&T, Broadband, Communications Developer, Consumer Electronics, Facebook, Gadget, Social Networking, Technology, Twitter, Verizon, Wireless

Duh - Tech, Winning!

April 27, 2011

The Silicon Valley real estate market is going through a boom and you can thank the cloud, Google, Facebook and a slew of start ups for the latest wave of hiring and growth. This lends credence to my points last week that politicians should not be bashing technology like the iPad for killing jobs but instead they should be bowing down to tech leaders who allow them to live the awesome lifestyles they have. Its better than bowing down to foreign leaders - that's for sure.

I have been consistent in my concerns about how America is becoming a divided nation of people who finish high school and college and are skilled enough to hold a job in the information age and those who made it through life swinging a hammer or doing some other job which is more easily outsourcable. These jobs which rely on physical strength or are entry level factory jobs will continue to be at huge risk of elimination.

In the information age, where a replacement worker is a mouse-click away - we need America to be the best educated country in the world if we expect the entire nation to have a shot at living at a standard of living we are used to.

Oh, and just how good is the real estate market in northern California?





Posted in Cisco, Facebook, Google, Technology, Wireless
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