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Om Malik sums up the problems over at Joost quite well... The company is having a large round of layoffs and is losing the video war to Hulu and others. While Om explains all the factors which led to the company's demise such as their rapid growth, lack of focus and geographic distribution, I wonder if the biggest problem isn't the lack of intriguing or popular content (which he points out and elaborates on). The few times I used the service I was amazed at how little interesting content it had.

Personally, I would use an inferior service to view better content any day. I suppose many viewers would agree with me on this point.

A long while back Niklas Zennstrom mentioned that there could be a future tie-in between Joost and Skype. This may have helped a few years back but at this point it is too late.

Then again Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Skype's founders still own some of the technology which runs the world's most popular internet telephony service and they have threatened to pull the plug on Skype. The impending lawsuit is even threatening the upcoming Skype IPO. Perhaps there will be a settlement which includes Skype/Joost integration?

One of the great things about this entry from Om is the list of mistakes Joost made. I recommend all tech entrepreneurs or those affected by technology read the piece so history doesn't repeat itself.

I came across a post from David Strom today which sums up some of his favorite web tools to increase his productivity. They are Pixelpipe.com, Etherpad.com, Tr.im and namechk.com. I would have to say for me either Etherpad - a site which allows simple document sharing and Tr.im -- an enhanced document shortening service are most useful. I haven't had a chance to try any of these services yet but look forward to giving them a whirl.

I hope you find some or all of these tools useful.

Today I am headed to the Telx CBX 2009 conference in New York followed by a Nokia launch event for the N97. Hopefully I will get a chance to post some photos from the events.

I have always been proud to be an American for a number of reasons including the fact that our great country has almost always pushed for human rights and democracy around the world. Like any country, we are not perfect but at the end of the day there is a reason some of the best and brightest flock to the United States to live.

I am prouder still that technology which was primarily developed in the US, the internet, social networking and more recently twitter have allowed people around the world to communicate more effectively.

Most recently twitter has been responsible for communications in Iran at a time when the government there has been trying to clamp down on communications.

My family comes from Iran but I was born in the US. The country claims to have the best of both worlds - a democracy which is intertwined with religion. In many respects this solution is much better than a dictatorship but if elections are not free, the country becomes ever-closer to dictatorship than a republic.

So news of twitter aiding in communications during political protests is very exciting to me. At the end of the day every country must comply with the wishes of its people. Repressive regimes know this and censor various websites and technologies to keep democracy from taking root but in the end, the free flow of information via the web and new technologies becomes more and more difficult to stop.

And as this information flows, so does the hope for more people to gain human rights and freedom.

Among the many problems we have to deal with in the world of technology such as hackers, scammers, predators, phishers, script kiddies, etc - there is something new to worry about. What if your electronic photos are hijacked from your social networking accounts and used for commercial purposes in other countries? What is your recourse?

In one of the more memorable product launches of recent times Sprint CEO Dan Hesse took the stage to speak to a packed room about the launch of the new Palm Pre and how he expects it to help Sprint grow its sales. Hesse appeared after a brief introduction from Paget Alves President Business Markets Group and once onstage he proceeded to tell the audience he has used the Pre for six weeks after using Blackberrys and Windows Mobile devices in the past. He said it is a far superior device and is great with music, multitasking, has a great touch screen and an innovate way to charge without requiring a cord called Touchstone.

It was apparent there were many comparisons being made the iPhone which wasn't specifically mentioned as some of the benefits Hesse touted of the Pre are missing only from that smartphone.  

Hesse talked about the strength of Sprint in the business space and spent a great deal of time discussing how the company's 4G network and hotspot enabling devices are extremely useful and the company's 4G network ensures you won't need a second connection like WiFi.

Hesse spent some time discussing how his company is a major player in unified communications and further pledged to have ten 4G markets up by year-end before circling back to refocus on the Palm Pre benefits while emphasizing the savings of $1,200 a year in network costs when compared to AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless.

This event didn't have the flashiness of some of the other media/customer events I have attended but this didn't lessen the quality of information shared  or the take away from what seemed to be an upbeat and positive mood in the room. Later today I expect to spend some time using the Pre and will give you my feedback.

Some weeks back I received an invitation to an event in New York City from Sprint that started like this:

This summer, the blockbusters are not just opening at the multiplex. From this week's headlines, you've inevitably heard some "big talk" about the Palm Pre from Sprint, the device's exclusive carrier, before its June 6th debut. I'd like to offer you an opportunity for an intimate look at the Palm Pre and hear from Sprint directly.

Many believe in fact the future of Palm rests on the success of this device. The early reviewers seem happy but the question many are wondering about is will this device make a dent in the sales of RIM, Apple and/or other players.

As I sit here at the pre-launch breakfast one decision-maker from a major conglomerate which owns a makeup company among others is sitting to my right and he is here to decide whether his company with switch from RIM devices to the Pre.

So many people have been asking for the functionality of an iPhone with an integrated keyboard that you have to imagine there is pent up demand for the Pre and if people believe they are roughly getting the best of an iPhone and a Blackberry they may be tempted to switch devices.

The challenge of course has moved beyond making the best device into app stores. Everyone it seems has one of these or is working on one.

But the question is who can catch up with Apple? Sure Palm was the first company to successfully roll out handheld computers and sure there are legions of developers who have programmed for Palm devices over the years... But many of the developers I have met who don't even like the iPhone are developing for it. They acknowledge you have to have your app there.

So this gets us to the Pre with a few dozen apps to begin with -- they are behind by tens of thousands. But if the early buzz, clever design and social networking integration can push sales through the roof, we can expect developer interest to grow.

Then again, Apple is expected to roll out a new OS and device this month and there will be a new Blackberry Storm as well. And as the competition heats up and consumers and businesses become accustomed to smartphones, we can only expect the market for applications to grow and productivity to increase.

In the mean time,the event should kick off in about ten minutes.

I spent much of Sunday in Manhattan with the family and while there stopped by one of our favorite restaurants for lunch. A bit later in the day my wife realized her iPhone had gone missing. The last place she knew she had it was the restaurant so we placed a call only to learn it wasn't there. We then walked back to the restaurant and conducted an exhaustive search with the help of the manager and still nothing.

On our way to the restaurant I sent an SMS to the lost phone asking for someone to call me to return it. There was no response to the SMS or the 10 phone calls I placed - the phone was on vibrate by the way. At dinner my wife began to tell me all of the personal and confidential information this phone had on it and my jaw dropped. It occurred to me that the financial damage to an individual from the loss of a smartphone is equivalent to the damage inflicted on a business. It was at this point I realized the distinction between personal and business smartphone has eroded. These miniature computers we walk around with can sink us if they get into the wrong hands.

It was at dinner where I decided to send another SMS but this time I included the offer "$200 reward." Still nothing but I got to thinking it would make sense to at least change my wife's email password so the new owner of her phone couldn't send messages on her behalf. There was no security on the phone so existing messages could not be safeguarded and Apple has no way to remotely wipe a device like RIM and Microsoft do.

Still, my wife couldn't rest till she found out what happened and she was convinced her phone got thrown away with a bunch of napkins and subsequently wanted to visit the restaurant again. I was thinking to myself, is she going to dig through the napkins to find the phone? I just couldn't see this happening - besides who would confuse an iPhone in a pink protective case with napkins anyway?

When we got to the restaurant we realized it was very busy and I thought the odds of finding it now was basically zero. Then I realized that my wife has a Bluetooth headset that she occasionally uses. I asked her to take it out and turn it on. I called her phone. Her headset rang. Bingo - the phone was in the restaurant. We told the manager who started to take the matter more seriously when he realized the headset was working.

The manager and my wife started to walk around the restaurant to determine where the phone was based on the strength of the bluetooth signal. Thankfully the signal died when they got near the dirty napkins.

The manager then went to the table where we had eaten and started moving customers around as he searched the ground. Minutes later a busboy asked what they were looking for. Once told, the busboy went to a drawer and voila - my wife's phone appeared. Thankfully we hadn't cancelled the service - we were imagining someone racking up huge international calling bills on the phone - thankfully it seemed no one touched it.

On the screen were various messages about missed calls and of course the reward. Boy was my wife happy. A subject of lively debate on the way home was whether the phone was going to end up on eBay that night had we not gone back and whether the busboy still had a job.

iPhones can track their position and if only there was a way to run background applications on the device we could have tracked the phone's location through a service like Google Latitude - which by the way is slated to be included in the next iPhone.

Determining the location of important assets will only become more important in my opinion and already there are devices which give you NSA-like security at affordable prices. Case in point is the GSM Handheld Tracker by GADGET.BRANDO.COM.HK. This pocket-sized device gives you the ability to track a car, person or any other object while allowing you to receive speed alerts, movement alerts, setting up a geofence and it can communicate via SMS.

Handheld Tracker Components

I consider this incredible functionality for $133 and I would imagine some parents would consider it a perfect stealthy addition to their teenage kid's cars.

It is worth pointing out that virtually all other phones besides the iPhone do allow multitasking so you should explore installing geolocation software in case your device goes missing. In addition you may want to take a moment and think about whether it makes sense to store social security and credit card numbers on your device. One last precaution - set security on your phone if you think it is important to protect your phone, email and other details. I would opt for a password to pop onscreen after an hour of inactivity - it will be annoying but give you added peace of mind if you and your phone do ever get permanently separated.

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.

Even before it was trendy, I was a fan of 3D HD voice - In fact back in 2004 I featured DiamondWare onstage at ITEXPO in Miami as a killer app. Over the years DiamondWare began integrating its technology into a virtual world and eventually the company was sold to Nortel and became part of web.alive which I covered here.

My last visit to the Ottawa campus of Nortel consisted of meetings with the tech team who told me they eventually see avatars everywhere - on cell phones, computers, etc.

Since that conversation I have been looking for signs of avatar/communications integration and I did compile a list of vendors who had an avatar strategy.

But here is the reality - if we are going to start seeing more avatar integration in telecom it has to come from our kids - just like text messaging, Twitter, Facebook and lots of other interesting technologies we once considered oddities.

Recently I learned that Second Life - the popular consumer based avatar laden community generates 15 billion minutes of web voice - or VoIP calls. And this reminded me of the popularity in the early days of Twitter and Facebook.

It remains to be seen if avatars will become mainstream but I get the feeling that this technology may just follow Twitter as a hot new thing everyone jumps on in years to come.

If you are looking to take advantage of avatar/communications integration the question you need to ask is whether you want to get involved now, before it becomes hip and trendy or wait for Oprah and Ashton to jump in first.