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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!

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.

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

As TMCnet has expanded I have to admit it is tough to keep track of all the sites we have which can help you in your job. To that end I decided to take a moment and list some of them which you may not be aware of. I thought this entry made sense as I have received some comments about how TMC should launch some of the sites listed below. This shows me there are just so many things we do that our 2-3 million unique visitors each month may not be aware of. I hope you find these sites of use:

• Europe
• Asia
• Africa
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Australia

• Mobile site
• iPhone site
• iphone news site

• Information technology
• Cable technology
• Robotics
• Satellite
• Green Solutions

• Jobs Site

The Upcoming Era of Deep Telephony Personalization and How Tellabs Wants to Help Carriers make it Happen

As the global population grows it seems the desire for each of us to do things differently from others will only grow. Just as this trend is responsible for billions of dollars on fashion spending, millions of tattoos and custom cars, expect it to take over the worlds of tech and telecom as well. Don't believe me? Then how do you explain consumers sporting music players of different colors which match their outfits?

This trend was a major theme of a recent meeting I had with Robert Pullen the CEO of Tellabs in the company's Illinois headquarters. According to Pullen, his company will help carriers succeed by assisting them as they provide customized services to their customers.

He further went on to describe the evolution of communications which started with humans sending information over water, roads, railroads and planes. He feels the internet and now personalization and customization are the most recent embodiments of communications.

Interviewing Pullen was made pretty enjoyable by his use of frequent and succinct statements which quickly show where his company adds value. For example, a one-liner which was particularly memorable was that Tellabs Enriches peoples' lives by innovating the way the world connects.

Pullen explained his company is transforming first from TDM to IP and now the next layer of applications and content. From there he touched on parental controls as a potential area of personalization.

Other important nuggets include the idea that you need to sell your way through the downturn and he pointed to emerging economies as one area where they are doing this. Latin America sales for example were up 60-70% at the time of this interview. Another interesting factoid is the company's R&D spend which is currently a significant 16-17% of sales.

Some of the focus areas of the company are mobile backhaul, optical, business and professional services. The future of the company is certainly going to be more closely tied to mobile devices and Pullen acknowledges they are positioning the company to take advantage of this trend.

This is likely one of the reasons for the recent hiring of Vikram Saksena, the ex-CTO of Sonus and ITEXPO keynoter. Saksena has impressed me greatly in the past as he understands how the next generation of services will transform telecom. Saksena and Pullen were busy strategizing when I spoke with them and I am very interested in seeing what new solutions this collaboration allows Tellabs to bring to market.

Greg Galitzine was in this meeting as well and we can expect a more detailed article from him in the May 2009 issue of NGN Magazine so be sure to subscribe today so you don't miss it.

The talk of the weekend in the world of IP communications is whether Skype would be better off in the hands of original founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. You see, the New York Times is reporting the pair is interested in acquiring the VoIP software company from eBay who says there are few synergies between Skype and its current business model.

What Skype would gain from such a deal would be the addition of the legendary leader Niklas Zennstrom as spokesman. There is value in having him keynoting as the company's head. In the past, Zennstrom wowed crowds at ITEXPO more than once.

As I read the New York Times story I just couldn't help but wonder how one of the world's largest ecommerce companies does not see synergy with the world's largest internet telephony software company. For example, the fact that I don't see ads for eBay auctions as I wait for calls to connect is mindboggling.

In my last conversation with Zennstrom he mentioned to me there could be some powerful synergies between Skype and Joost, his internet television service. An acquisition could allow him to have a ubiquitous client which could be used to gain leverage on numerous content providers. You see Joost is not achieving the mainstream traffic it needs and its alexa rank is in the 4,100 range which I estimate to mean 2-3 million unique visitors on a monthly basis. Quantcast says Joost gets 491,000 monthly US visitors while a competitor Hulu gets 13,600,000 US visitors per month.

Although it is difficult to understand how eBay doesn't see synergies, Skype itself doesn't need to go anywhere. It is doing fine under eBay IMHO and it is rolling out new features and functions at a nice clip and gaining new users by the million. If anything, eBay needs Skype to ensure it has multiple sources of revenue and for this reason, it would be a mistake to sell Skype too cheaply.

But until this happens - and I doubt it will, Nokia is adding healthy amounts of FUD on the WiMAX market and to be honest, there is likely no other equipment manufacturer in a better position to read global wireless trends.

It is worth mentioning however that Nokia's comments and pulling out of the WiMAX market may lead to a more sophisticated conclusion. More specifically, WiMAX will likely make it in poorer nations such as India, Africa, etc. Coincidentally these areas will require low-margin devices and perhaps Nokia is factoring this into their future business plan. After all, it may not make sense to focus on markets where you make a few euros per device.

Still, I don't recall a time when so many were aligned against any technology. Especially when the technology - in this case WiMAX is already up and running and being compared to little more than a paper standard in LTE.

Here is another problem. I don't want to point to any associations in particular but logic dictates when you get attacked, you formulate a response and then put said plan into action.

When Las Vegas was attacked by President Obama, Las Vegas countered with ads about how Vegas is a great destination for events - low cost, easy to get to, etc. Moreover the Mayor of Las Vegas even penned a response to Obama with the facts about this oasis in a desert location. On the lighter side when Borat relieved himself comically on the image of Kazakhstan, they took out ads to tell us how great the nation was.

The point is where are the ads for WiMAX? In the absence of any positive comments about the technology, what do you think equipment providers, carriers and investors will do? They will pull WiMAX investment and make Nokia's comments self-fulfilling. And that is too bad because competition is a good thing.

And what is the deal with WiMAX vendors in general? They seem to do no marketing at all to push the standard they depend on so much. WiMAX vendors forgot they not only needed to build products but also focus on building and protecting the market which will purchase these products. In other words industry marketing. These vendors did not position their market and now someone else did it for them.

In fact if I think quickly as to who the strongest and most vocal proponent is of WiMAX, it is likely Carl Ford, the person who has partnered with my parent company TMC to launch the 4G Wireless Evolution conference.

But then again, if LTE does indeed become the single wireless broadband standard, we will see device prices driven even lower which will be great for consumers and perhaps even good for equipment manufacturers.

Many people in the communications space have asked me recently what TMC's secret is. After all, we are in the toughest media environment of our lifetimes and we produced our best show ever and have more paying customers online than at virtually any other time in our history.

The answer may lie in a bit of luck and some skill. The lucky part is we built our first online community for a customer about a decade ago. And since this time we have invested a small fortune in building our own proprietary technology which allows us to build highly-ranked, viral, news-driven communities for customers. Well over 100 of these sponsored communities live on TMCnet and generally consist of the tabs at the top and down the left of most of our pages.

Moreover TMCnet now houses millions of pages of content which gives the site tremendous prominence. And we have ranked very high on search engines for many years which has generated a tremendous amount of links to the 100+ articles we write a day and other content such as blog entries on the site.

The community product is called a GOC or "gock" and stands for Global Online Community. When we launched the program the term "organic search results" was probably not common but now, these communities help our customers rank extremely high for a variety of keywords which are important to them.

I know what you are going to say. Rich, that is what those click ads are for. Well to be honest the value of an organic search result is much higher to the searcher because it is not blatantly paid for and moreover it is not in a sea of other ads. Most importantly, research shows less that 20% of people even click on search ads. What about the other 80%?

TMC's communities answer the request we have been hearing -- How do you recreate the best part of tradeshows online?(shots from last ITEXPO East February 2009 in Miami)

Finally, unlike search ads, these communities help your own site(s) rank high organically by providing links. Moreover they help companies build their brand and thought leadership.

In addition, as a news-driven entity, GOCs draw traffic from other pages on TMCnet, newsletters, the TMCnet home page, news search engines and traditional search services. They are multimedia in nature, allowing companies to interface with customers via audio, video and of course text.

Example of an IP-PBX GOC (click to see full screen image)

Many of you have told me over the years that there needs to be a way to combine the best part of trade shows online. The GOC program is exactly this as it brings in your potential customers from around the world and gives them a reason to come back and see your message as the news is constantly updated. It is a very busy 24x7 community consisting of the most targeted people available on the web. And it is targeted by the news you find important.

In addition, it is measurable, and includes a wealth of metrics which can be used to analyze your spend and justify it up the chain of command.

For the reader the benefit is clear. They come to the GOC and bookmark it so they can keep up to date on the latest happenings in the space. How many people come? Well our record is over 650,000 pages viewed on a GOC in one month but typical results are between 250,000-500,000 per month. Generally, each GOC will average about 100,000 unique visitors per month - and they are targeted exclusively by content. In other words, you can use this program to build a community of people interested in subjects such as colocation, IP communications, HD voice, next generation communications, fixed mobile convergence or anything else in virtually any field. Click on any of these above links to see how the design is different and mirrors the look and feel of the sponsor.

If you are interested in learning more, here is an updated (4/14/2009) video which describes the program. Feel free to drop me an email for more.

If you are interested in the stories and headlines I find useful, I invite you to bookmark my Google Reader feed which I update fairly regularly. I occasionally will add comments as well. In fact, since I started using this page, I have found myself blogging less. I hope you find this resource useful.