Skype, FCC, IBM and Tech News Before New Year’s

While the week before Christmas and New Year’s is typically slow with regards to news, the huge blizzard which hit the northeast really started things off with a bang. A foot-and-a-half of snow hit the area around TMC headquarters in Norwalk, CT with drifts totaling a few feet in height. Airports were backed up and some streets took days to plow well.

Skype has been busy

Ironically, at a time when so many really needed to communicate virtually, one of the main vehicles for VoIP and video wasn’t working right. In fact, Skype really stole the show in terms of news having a major outage, then fixing the outage and finishing off the week by releasing iPhone-friendly video conferencing.

The FCC too has been busy

The FCC too has been busy pushing out Net Neutrality guidelines (public response) as well as publishing a few important papers. The first discusses the problems we may encounter as IPv4 addresses are exhausted and we move to IPv6. The paper begins by discussing now NAT is a kludge and is being used to translate addresses between v4 and v6 and as such there will be performance issues which will linger until the world moves fully to IPv6.

The commission also put out a document detailing ways to watch a broadcast TV station if it happens to be dropped from your pay TV service. Certainly this document is a response to the recent fight between Fox and Cablevision where a few stations were dropped from the cable provider. Coincidentally Cablevision serves the Fairfield County area, home to TMC HQ and we missed watching Fox Business during the dispute.

VoIP and now modern man come from Israel?

Recently I went to a Middle Eastern restaurant where the falafel tasted like it was hanging around since the time modern man emerged on the scene. Perhaps my instincts were accurate as it seems according to Israeli scientists; the holy land was not only the birthplace of IP communications but potentially for our first upright-walking ancestors. There is no word yet on whether any ancient pita has been uncovered but scientists continue the dig unabated.

Microsoft, McDonalds, Mazda & CBS Used ads as cover for data mining?

A new lawsuit claims the above companies worked with Interclick to run ads which tracked consumer behavior in an extremely granular manner. Isn’t it amazing how we live in a world where one generation shares online the details of every activity they engage in from sex to drugs and other illegal activities while another generation wants to be sure advertisers aren’t aware of who is clicking on their ads?

IBM: Five predictions in five years

It is the time of year where people make predictions and IBM is no exception making five predications for the next five years which will affect the planet, your commute and 3D technologies. Will they be right? Will they be wrong? Expect me to write a follow-up piece in another half-decade with my thoughts.

ITEXPO adds speakers

The latest ITEXPO and Social CRM Expo Speakers are as follows. The show is in one month so be sure to book travel and register soon:

ITEXPO

Steven Shalita, Vice President, Marketing, NetScout Systems, Inc.

  • SP-07 “Achieving Operational Efficiency by Optimizing Service Delivery”

 

Holger Stotz, Director, Strategic Sales Support Voice Platforms, Siemens

  • V-01 “De-mystifying Hosted Communications”

 

Matt Clark (Moderator), Principal, Valuation Services, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP

  • SP-01 “Differentiating Yourself with Bundled Offerings”
  • SCRM-03 “How Social Media is Changing Customer Behavior”
  • SCRM-04 “Turning Social Media into a Business Asset”

 

SCRM

Blair Pleasant (Moderator), President & Principal Analyst, COMMfusion LLC

  • SCRM-09 “Safe and Social Web 2.0 in the Enterprise”
  • SCRM-10 “How Social Platforms are Revolutioninzing IT”

 

Cecilia Edwards, Head of Strategy, Telligent

  • SCRM-08 “Secrets to Building a Sustainable Online Community”

 

Jay Hallberg, Co-Founder and Vice President, SpiceWorks

  • SCRM-10 “How Social Platforms are Revolutioninzing IT”

The Year ahead for information technology

Lance Whitney writes an article about the year ahead for IT on TMCnet’s InfoTech Spotlight site. It is certainly is worth a read and as you may have guessed involves products which begin with a lowercase i.

There is certainly lots more – I will likely be writing and posting to Twitter and this blog all weekend long. Let me take a moment to wish you all a happy holiday season and New Year. Let’s hope 2011 is a fantastic year for all my readers – I hope all your families are healthy and happy. In addition, here’s hoping that the next year will be positive for all of us from a financial perspective allowing much prosperity based upon lots of exciting new products and services which I just can’t wait to write about.

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