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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 just got my iPhone 3G S up and running and am blown away because as a power user - even using the new OS 3.0 on an iPhone 3G I had to wait 5 or more seconds for an email address to resolve. Multiply this by 100 times a day and you can imagine the frustration. I also was not satisfied with the browsing speed of the 3G with the 3.0 upgrade. The new S model is blazing fast compared to its predecessor. It is highly recommended.

Here is a quick video clip of traffic on I95

But if you want to know what the most important feature of the 3G S is, it could very well be video. You see this phone is not the first to shoot video but it does shoot great quality video and possesses a screen allowing an enjoyable playback experience.

If you track the rise of social networking the natural evolution of sharing everything via photos, video snippets and text is to share all aspects of your life via video in real-time. Also this will be done from multiple points of view. So I will be able to watch what happens to the left and right of people I track at all times. I realize how ludicrous this sounds but I don't care - I know it will happen. Oh, and the archives will be available forever as well. Data center owners must be salivating.

The iPhone 3G S which has video quality which rivals standalone video recorders could be one of the catalysts which moves us into this new world of always-on mobile social video. For more on the ramifications of video on the iPhone 3G S check out this article from Todd Krieger.

Better M&A, management and marketing skills always win the war

As Ron Gruia pointed out this morning, the Nortel fire sale continues and a once-great company with a market cap of $250 billion is effectively being sold off at bargain-basement prices. In fact NSN picked up the ailing Canadian company's CDMA and LTE business for about one times revenue or $650 million. At this rate the entire company will be sold off for a total of $2 billion. The silver lining in this dark news is that customers will be able to have a solid company behind them in NSN and thankfully at least 2,500 employees working in Canada, the U.S., Mexico and China will be able to maintain their jobs working for NSN.

As a show of support for the deal, EDC or Export Development Canada is throwing in $300 million toward an NSN credit facility - a full 10x more than the agency was willing to commit to Nortel!

For NSN the deal means a stronger North American presence and also they go from not having a CDMA business to becoming number two. They will have to work hard to maintain this business as Asian rivals are coming on strong. An additional benefit of the deal is a number of LTE patents, technology and expertise which will come in very handy as the world transitions to faster wireless broadband networks.

I have seen some surmise Nortel went down because of open source and the Internet and to some degree this is part of the problem. But perhaps the biggest problem at Nortel was failure to adjust to a market that moves faster than ever coupled with the inability to effectively integrate acquired companies. Some Nortel employees told me the company was too flexible with the companies they acquired and should have set tougher rules regarding integration.

The major take away from this ordeal is how a company with superior technology got beaten by other companies with inferior technology but better M&A, management and marketing skills. At the end of the day the products are important but as Nortel continues to show us, having great technology alone does not a long-term successful strategy make.

I have to admit I was impatient and when I learned I could follow some easy steps to upgrade to the shipping version of the iPhone 3.0 software before the June 17 general availability date -- I just had to try it. Of course it helped to have fellow TMC blogger Tom Keating there to step me through the process. You see Tom wrote a piece yesterday detailing exactly what you need to do to get ahead of the pack and be the first in your neighborhood to type emails on your iPhone in landscape mode.

The instructions are here but I should warn you that although the process is dead easy it can take many hours to go through the upgrade. It took me about six hours for the new OS to be downloaded, the software to be restored, the apps to be loaded, the podcasts to be downloaded and the photos to be synced. Then again I have thousands of contacts and photos and over 50 applications.

Apple has done a wonderful job of backing up and restoring the iPhone devices so OS upgrades are smooth. However, one past pain point of iPhone OS upgrades was having to reenter the WEP keys needed for secure WiFi. To my happy surprise I didn't have to reenter a single WEP key as a result of this upgrade.

So is the upgrade worth it? I have to say yes. The push email works great and the landscape keyboard in email makes typing on this device infinitely better. It is also less clunky when sending a URL to someone as in the past you had to switch from landscape to portrait when opening the email application for a send. In addition, when looking at a list of emails you can now tell which is a Cc, Bcc or direct send which is signified by a "To" symbol. Ironically there is no Bcc symbol meaning if there is no symbol you have been Bcced. This is an important addition to the OS as quite often mobile devices make it more difficult to know if you have been Bcced meaning users can accidentally reply to all without realizing they probably shouldn't.

There is also MMS support but this won't work on AT&T Wireless for now. Copy and paste is a much-needed function and works as advertised - the fact that one of the most advanced smartphones on the market "forgot" to add cut and paste sooner still baffles me and I am sure I will be telling my grandkids about it someday.

Spotlight search is another much-needed function - especially when you realize there is no way to organize applications, and is activated when you scroll all the way to the left from the home page. Searches will sift through contacts, programs, calendar, email, songs and other data on the phone but unlike the Palm Pre will not check the web if the device search comes back empty.

Voice Memos are a great addition allowing you to record your voice and send the recordings via email if desired. Third-party apps did this in the past but like many other operating systems, upgrades entail taking popular software packages and replicating their functionality.

The calendar has been improved as well with the ability to add repeating reminders but these are limited to fixed time periods like every week, 2 weeks, month or year. Ideally you would be allowed to enter recurring reminders for selected days - like every Monday or the first Wednesday of the month. In addition - what if someone wants a three-week reminder? You may think at first that they just don't have three-week recurring meetings in Cupertino... The reality of course is this was a design decision which gives most of the functionality you need in a clear and uncluttered interface.

Then there are calendar reminders... I would have preferred to have the ability to set a reminder more than two-days before an appointment and a version 3.0 upgrade would have been a great opportunity to add this option. Microsoft Windows Mobile has had this ability for years so there seems to be no technical reason to exclude such a feature.

Safari is supposed to be faster and it may be I haven't been able to verify this- likely because with push email turned on the device is constantly getting new emails so I am getting less processor for my foreground applications. I did check out the browser's ability to remember passwords - this worked out fine and is a welcome addition.

Internet tethering could not be tested because AT&T doesn't allow this functionality. I will be in Europe tomorrow and if the carrier allows it I will give this a try. I gave Bluetooth stereo a shot and found it paired with both the Plantronics Pulsar 590 stereo headphones and Sharper Image Bluetooth Speakers. For some reason the sound would not come out of the Sharper Image speakers but the Plantronics headset worked fine.

Other functions such as accessing multiple iTunes accounts, shake to shuffle, notes syncing, syncing multiple email folders and YouTube login were not tried. Remote wiping wasn't tried either for obvious reasons.

Apple took a very good phone and made it much better with this upgrade. Typing emails in landscape mode is a veritable pleasure compared to portrait and when you combine this function with cut and paste and push email the iPhone becomes a more credible corporate smartphone meaning Palm, Nokia, Microsoft and RIM have more to worry about.

So now heavy iPhone users probably don't need to be concerned about the keyboard as much as before but they will need to start thinking about spare external batteries. The reason is simple. The iPhone 3.0 is more usable and with push email and bluetooth stereo enabled, you can expect even less battery life.

It is worth explaining that Windows Mobile also drains battery life quickly for heavy email users in push mode. The alternative is RIM devices which do much better in push mode and are optimized in many ways to maximize battery life regardless of mode.

Should you upgrade? Yes. Should you do it early? That is up to you but you should be really happy with the new iPhone 3.0 software, it is a winner.

Having never had a chance to write a review about a satellite phone I was pretty motivated to respond yes to the good people at Iridium when they asked if I wanted to run their newest device the 9555 phone through its paces. In order to do a thorough review I took it with me on my travels and made calls in various places where there was typically no cell coverage.

The device itself won't get mistaken for an iPhone - it is many times thicker and has a smaller black and white screen. But what it does do better than any gadget you might read about on popular gadget sites is work everywhere - except indoors. It is a bulletproof device which was designed with users in mind. Iridium execs explain that reliability is key with this phone and so is durability.

It seems like it is made of the same material as the black box on an airplane.

It is also interesting to note that when a company is sure about their market they can really cater to it. The evidence is the company's terminology in their brochure:

 THE ULTIMATE SATELLITE PHONE

The Iridium 9555 is the ultimate in dependable mobile communications. It is a ruggedly built tool, not a toy. It won't play games, take pictures, or play MP3s. What it will do is work. Everywhere. Without exception. Small, sleek and easy to use, it is waterproof and dust and shock resistant. Engineered to withstand the world's toughest environments, Iridium phones have never been more efficient, reliable and effective.

When you open the box the phone comes in you are presented with adapters for every country in the world and just trying to figure out which would work in Sardinia presented me with a challenge. Hint - it was of the two-prong variety.

Here are some shots of the Iridium 9555 from Sardinia

So is it easy to use? Dead easy, yes. I was impressed with the call quality and it even worked when I went indoors - as long as there wasn't a lot of steel over my head. There is also data modem connectivity I didn't get a chance to try.

Other than that there are the standard mobile phone features like SMS, voicemail, address books, etc.

As you might expect, Iridium hasn't launched an app store but one wonders if there isn't an opportunity for specialized applications pertaining to the markets they cater to such as military, oil and gas, etc.

If I had to ask for more features, a camera would be high on my list as sending MMS messages from remote locations back to the home office could be useful. Video too is another area the company will have to deal with eventually as there may be an opportunity to stream video or send clips in places only this device has connectivity.

Other than that, the Iridium 9555 just plain works. It's looks won't make you the envy of the patrons of your favorite bar or dance club but you will certainly be the popular one later that evening when the party moves to a place with poor or no cell phone reception.

We are in a time of unprecedented financial turmoil and it is apparent to me that productivity needs to increase to help us stabilize the job losses and hopefully get our economy back into growth mode. It is devices like the Pre which will in fact help corporations boost productivity tremendously. Improved communications flow is the lubrication economies need to operate at peak efficiency.

Palm Pre

It's been an event-filled couple of weeks with the rollout of the Palm Pre and new iPhone 3G S and the new 3.0 iPhone OS/software version. I did get a chance to use the Pre and am impressed with how much it reminds me of the iPhone but with more functionality - multitasking and a menu system which makes it much easier to switch between apps. I would venture to say the Pre design allows you to be more productive than the iPhone. Of course the iPhone has more apps (50,000 and counting) but you can run old Palm apps on the new Pre webOS meaning there are more apps available for the new gadget than you may have thought. In addition, the Pre webOS allows traditional web apps to run on the device meaning we can see many new Palm apps that won't take a great deal of time for developers to roll out.

The keyboard is another big differentiator of the Pre and most people have no problems using it based on my informal questioning at the event last week. Personally the keyboard was too small for my fingers and I had to use the fingernails on my thumbs to type. I do remember having to do this on an old Blackberry as well and I am sure over time I would get pretty good at typing on the Pre. Also it is a bit awkward to hold at first but Sprint employees assure me over time it becomes very comfortable to handle.

My informal tests show the Pre is not quite as fast as Safari on the iPhone at rendering web pages. But the flipside is the Pre is pretty snappy when you rotate it - the screen rotates more quickly than the iPhone. I also sense the Sprint EVDO network is currently faster than AT&T 3G.

iPhone 3G S (Yes -- looks just like the iPhone 3G)

So now that the new iPhone is out which device would I choose? First I should say Nokia, RIM and others have solid devices as well but for now let's focus on iPhone versus the Pre. Apple has now fixed a number of problems with the iPhone such as cut and paste, better search, MMS, landscape keyboard and there is now a video camera as well. So the choice is difficult. I would say the iPhone is still the winner for now. I despise the keyboard on the iPhone so you can imagine how good the rest of the device is for me to say the iPhone wins.

However it is worth pointing out that part of the reason the iPhone wins is because of the slew of apps on the market which run on the device. If the Pre can gain traction and wee armies of developers rolling out software which runs on it then it is possible I could be neutral on this race.

There is also the issue of the screen size. I believe every square inch of real estate is crucial on a mobile device. The iPhone is marginally larger at 3.4 inches vs. the Pre's 3.1 inches. The resolution is identical but the added real estate does help when playing games, reading and displaying menus.

One last thought is I am thrilled with the new Apple Find My iPhone feature which will prevent others from going through he lost iPhone ordeal my wife recently dealt with.

Although no one would go on record, my informal Q&A with people familiar with the matter leads me to believe the Pre will soon have a version with a larger keyboard which comes out of the device in landscape mode which will make it competitive with devices like those from HTC - the XV6800, G1, etc.

I should this comparison end by saying the Pre is very impressive based on my quick use of the device. I expect to explore it in more detail as time goes on and give you my feedback.

Regardless of whether you think being green is the right way to live because of the environment or you think it makes sense to save money in a tough economy you should be keeping a close eye on Microsemi, the leader in the PoE midspan market allowing traditional networking equipment to be upgraded to PoE without a forklift.

In a recent conversation with Daniel Feldman, Telecom Marketing Director for the company we got to talking about the company's new high-power midspans the PD-9000G family.

Feldman pointed out that when the company first started producing PoE products they thought the midspan opportunity would be short-lived as all switches would eventually incorporate PoE natively meaning additional equipment would be unnecessary. As luck would have it MTBF times were reduced by half in equipment with powered Ethernet as heat dissipation became an issue.

Feldman equates a switch with integrated PoE to a TV with a built-in DVD player - if the DVD player fails you have to get a new TV making the combined product less desirable.

The even better news for the company is that PoE standards call for increasing wattage with the current 802.3at standard calling for 30W - up from 15W. The next stop is 60W and I have already heard of some vendors pushing higher wattage in specific PoE applications. As wattage increases, so does heat so you can expect the appetite for PoE in switches to decrease as MTBF times decrease in lockstep.

Regardless of how you achieve PoE, rest assured that there is tremendous potential to use the technology to save electricity as you can intelligently control the power to devices on your network when the power is being provided by an intelligent device. For example Feldman tells me his company came up with a way years back to turn off power to phones if a user was not in the office. He further went on to explain you can use PoE to determine machine failure and even determine if a computer has a virus if there is a power spike on a machine with no related change in user behavior (such as plugging in a USB-powered fan, etc).

The company is actually promoting a green PoE standard which they say is quite simple - efficiency is calculated by taking output PoE power and dividing by input power.

Obviously being able to intelligently control power through midspans and other methods can lead to tremendous power savings. One would expect all devices on networks of the future to be powered by PoE but the challenge today is with ubiquitous wireless connectivity, portable devices are proliferating more quickly than wired meaning less of a target market. Still, even if 10% of all computing devices get connected to intelligent PoE switching devices we can make a serious dent in computing power consumption and in the process Microsemi can only expect to grow much larger.

If you ask Cisco publically what they think of IBM you will get nothing but praise. In fact Cisco counts IBM as a major partner and IBM does the same with Cisco. Oftentimes the companies even promote technologies like collaboration together.

But more recently this alliance seems to be facing a challenge. Cisco as you may recall launched blade server technology recently aimed at IBMS's sweet spot. Some even called this an act of war.

Cisco of course will tell you publically that the relationship is as strong as ever but the concern for the networking giant has to be the $2-3 billion dollars in business directed towards the company by IBM consultants and other divisions. IBM says even more about their relationship through silence. In fact that is what Peter Burrows got when he was writing an article about the relationship and asked for a quote from IBM.

At Interop 2009 in Las Vegas I had a chance to sit down with executives from Brocade to learn about how IBM will be rebranding the company's products under its own name with general availability being May of 2009. In addition, we can expect this relationship to expand according to Brocade.

• Brocade NetIron MLX Series to be rebranded IBM m-series Ethernet routers
• Brocade NetIron CES 2000 Series to be rebranded IBM c-series Ethernet switches
• Brocade FastIron GS Series to be rebranded IBM g-series Ethernet switches
• Brocade FastIron SuperX Family to be rebranded IBM s-series Ethernet switches

To be fair, there are some who think this new relationship doesn't affect Cisco and instead is a shot at HP. You can decide that for yourself but in the mean time here are some of the other products Brocade rolled out at Interop recently.

First up is a suite of application delivery controllers known as the ServerIron ADX Series. The product has three initial flavors the ADX 1000, 4000 and 8000 and the size of the units corresponds to the first number meaning they come in 1U, 4U and 8U sizes.

The company also rolled out a new TurboIron GbE switch for top-of-rack server connectivity and a FastIron PoE switch delivering 30W of power per port.

In my meeting some of the main takeaways were that the products are full-featured and cost half of comparable Cisco products or less.

Over the next twelve months we will be able to watch and see exactly how the IBM/Cisco relationship unfolds. In addition, now that Oracle is acquiring Sun, it will be worth noting that the database leader and HP are also worth keeping an eye on. If IBM does start pushing less Cisco product it may lead Cisco down the path of acquiring a consulting company to combat the loss in sales.

• BLADE Unveils FCoE-Ready Blade Switch for IBM BladeCenter
• Brocade Buys Foundry for $3 Billion
• IBM to Rebrand, Sell Brocade's VoIP-Enabling Enterprise Switches, Routers

The drive for more bandwidth does not slow - even in a global recession some reports show bandwidth needs increasing at rates higher than 100% per year on carrier and enterprise networks. The trend towards more collaborative applications, video, VoIP and cloud-based services are no doubt just a few factors in what seems to be just the beginning of a global bandwidth binge showing no sign of slowing.

Enter Expand a company focusing on application acceleration over WANs who is looking to help solve the branch office bandwidth drought. The company makes its living selling a variety of appliances which they say will increase ROI and stretch IT budgets further. These devices are optimized for datacenters, branch offices and regional offices.

The company counts Fidelity National Insurance, Piconol, Antarctica NZ, Targus, DISA and Evans Fruit Company as some of its customers and has partnered with Vision Solutions to provide more efficient disaster recovery services.

At Interop 2009 in Las Vegas, the company unveiled a new solution they hope will become widely deployed on global networks. Simply put they have unveiled a free Mobile Accelerator Client which gives some of the benefits of an appliance but at a much lower cost. Well actually it is free so you don't get much cheaper. The catch? There is always a catch right? Well not really - you just pay for maximal concurrent users.

How is the performance you wonder? The graph below was provided to me to give an indication. Freestyle means you are alone, Collective means you are sharing a virtual cache and Slipstream means you are utilizing an appliance.

In order to get an idea how the mobile client works you need to better understand Expand Networks and their approach to WAN optimization. They have developed a technology called HIVE which is a clever acronym which stands for Heterogeneous Intelligent Virtual Environment.

The H in Hive tells us that the solution works on various platforms. If you are hoping one of the platforms supported is Apple, keep waiting as XP, Vista and Windows 7 are the only ones on the list so far.

The I standsfor intelligent and of course the software is smart - butone could argue in fact that all software is smart. Except perhaps for applications that let you turn your mobile phone into a virtual beer.

The V standsfor virtual and in this case is actually a solid descriptive word - not just marketing as the mobile client uses p2p technology to enable a branch office with multiple clients to take advantage of a pooled virtual cache. So if Donny in HR downloads a 10 gigabyte video file which five other users need later in the week, you can all tap into the file from Donny's computer rather that all wasting network bandwidth by downloading the file again and again. And you thought Donny had nothing to offer.

I almost forgot - the E stands for environment meaning the software knows if it is in a branch office without a nearby appliance or in the home office where there is an appliance or alone by its lonesome. In each case it adapts and utilizes a byte and object level cache to maximize performance.

As you might imagine, the system knows how to allocate bandwidth according to your QoS policies - it is Intelligent after all.

I spent some time with company representatives David White, Efi Gatmor and Adam Davison as they told me about their product and shared the benefits of their HIVE technology for information technology decision-makers worldwide and mentioned that the software can be rolled our via silent install using an MSI package if desired.

One point the trio made which is important to repeat is that in a typical branch office which does not have technology to take advantage of a shared cache, you can have clients competing with each other for bandwidth as they are utterly blind to the needs and presence of the other clients. When you think about it, a shared cache is infinitely logical and as the need for more bandwidth increases we can expect this sort of technology to be deployed in more and more corporate branches.

As companies roll out more cloud computing applications and install IP communications solutions, focus on compliance and centralized backups, we can only expect the opportunity for Expand Networks dare I say - to Expand?

As the networking landscape gets more complex through the addition of remote computing, WiFi, cloud computing and virtualization, it is becoming more of a challenge to determine who is using what services and how much aggregate bandwidth they are consuming. Moreover as the need for ever-more bandwidth shows no sign of slowing, companies need to ensure they have an adequate way of charging departments for their bandwidth usage.

One company looking to fill the void is eTelemetry whose self-described goal is to extract real-time business information from network activity. I recently sat down with Ermis Sfakiyanudis CEO & President and Jennifer Silate - Marketing Manager of the company to learn about their products.

To get started I should introduce Metron to you - it is a 1-2U (depending on model) rack-mounted device which monitors and manages bandwidth usage, time spent surfing and chatting by department. Other nifty features include the ability to track computers powered on during off-hours and the ever-important alerts you need to be sent when an employee uses Remote Desktop (if they aren't supposed to of course) or if they exceed their time or bandwidth allotment, etc.

In my conversation I learned the company now has the ability to track virtualization on the desktop allowing network managers to monitor the bandwidth use and websites visited by virtual instances on devices/computers on the network.

The company has technology which maps IP addresses to users meaning their products can help you get a better indication of who is doing what with networking resources. As you might imagine this technology can be important in helping companies track who is using what cloud computing services as well. Another logical area for the company to play in is E911 where the company's Locate911 product helps companies figure out where VoIP callers on the IP network are.

It is obvious that as networks get more complex, the ability to track usage across virtual sessions will only increase. Moreover, we can't expect E911 on enterprise VoIP networks to become less important. To that end, the company seems like it is solving some important networking problems which will only become more important over time.