Recently in im/chat Category

Tonight, Steve Case was on twitter tweeting, "Sad AOL went from being Internet pioneer/leader to also-ran. But still more there then most understand; hopeful can return to greatness." My replies were as follows: what they need are some young, hungry start-up execs, but what they will get is a stodgy exec that wants to cost cut and ride it out.

Why do I say that? Look at Embarq. Hesse had a couple months to pick a team and formulate a plan for the soon-to-be spun off Embarq. What did he do? Let's go with DSL and cost cutting. Blah! They needed that at Sprint not at Embarq. The next guy, Gerke, who took over last March, has been trying to be innovative with the eGo home phone. But EMBQ was already up for sale just trying to find a match.

Then you have EarthLink. Under Barry, it was trying everything: Muni Wi-Fi, BPL, MVNO, etc. He dies. The balls drop to the ground. The Board hires Rolla Hoff to come in, cost cut and try to find a buyer. No go. Just ride it out.

AOL has a wealth of brand recognition and content. It has active email accounts and IM users. My thoughts: go mobile with mobile IM app, definitely make the website and its content WAP based. Create MyAOL for the smartphone for $9.95 per month.

Also, I would have a premium email service that has extra value like saved address book, calendar and mobile access.

AOL has an advertising platform that I am not certain would spin-off, but if it did, there's cash and potential there, just like with the dial-up silo. And ADN, which it the AOL backbone is also something that could be leveraged.

I would even partner with ISP's to be the portal and content partner. Maybe the cable guys would like a deal like Yahoo! has with AT&T.

Anyway, there's plenty there to be worked (a social network too I think), but it wouldn't be that hard to find someone creative and passionate enough to run it. (Hey, Steve, my CV is on LinkedIn!)

What's the perfect VoIP Service?

I have seen so many VoIP Providers, I can't keep track. But that also means that the VoIP providers are not doing a very good job of Messaging, Positioning and Differentiating their offerings.

The only VoIP provider I know that has married Hosted Exchange with Broadsoft is Simple Signal. It makes to me because what is UM (unified messaging) but voicemail to email - everything in one box.

Unison Offers VoIP, E-Mail, IM to SMBs in New York City

Google Voice does it as well. One inbox for Gmail and Google Voice. And GV has some nice features like a transcript of your voicemail; recording calls;

Recently, I read that a company had instituted a who-is-calling-please response into every call before th ephone rings. I love this! No more dumb dialers. No more UNKNOWN or OUT OF AREA on the Caller ID.

Quick rant: I pay Verizon $22.35 for Worksmart which includes Caller ID, but most of the time it is Unknown. WTH? How does it not even known when AT&T calls me? Or almost any other CLEC? Lazy. That's why you are losing customers.

Presence (not to be confused with tele-presence) was supposed to integrate IM/chat, email, mobile and desktop phone. I haven't seen much of that in real world implementation. (I understand why, but I'm just pointing it out).  Skype does a decent job of video, voice or chat - plus recording.

Broadsoft has allowed many ITSP's to hook to SalesForce.com. Why not offer a hosted CRM software that is married to your PBX and email offering? VoIP is just one application.

• HD Voice
• conference-on-demand (web and video)
• call blocking
• Portal as easy as AT&T CallVantage
• call logs that can match up caller ID

Obvously, the usual features are still a must-have, including:

• simultaneous ring
• find-me-follow-me
• 3-way calling
• caller ID
• voicemail
• vm-to-email
• call forwarding
• Do Not Disturb

Chime in. I would love to hear from you:

• what you are doing
• who has the best message
• are you a cutting edge ITSP

UPDATE:
M5 announced that the marriage of the M5 Genband-based Hosted PBX with SalesForce.com and Call Metrics has been a hit.

I am on quite a few committees that meet mainly by email and the occasional  conference call. Neither email nor conference call are highly effective collaboration tools for an ongoing committee. So I have been looking at other ways to work.

One idea that comes up is Yahoo! Groups (and Google Groups). It's basically email but with the message archive. It also has a file upload area; polling; and who's online. But you have to register (using a Y! account).

I have had a cursory look at Stixy. It has notes and to-do lists, which makes it like a wiki only better. (Most committees I work with don't like wikis and have tried to use Google docs instead). We may try this one.

Another one that looks good is Genius Room.  It has a good review here.

If you have other ideas, please let me know. Thanks!

During a discussion online, some interesting items popped up.

Companies ban Instant Message. One IT Security Consultant looks at the irony of it here. Tele-Presence is all about improved efficiency in communicating -- no more phone tag, less voicemail, that kind of thing -- but how will that be implemented in a corporate environment that locks it down?

Social networking like LinkedIn and Twitter are becoming commonplace among the marketing set. Maybe instead of banning these things in a corporate environment, you embrace it and set policy. Here's an article from CIO.com on LinkedIn etiquette.

It boils down to tools. Will you give people the tools that they can use to be effective at their position?  If you are that worried about security, do an audit and train your people. Manage by walking around. Most theft is internal or social engineered. You can train against the social engineering, but if someone wants something bad enough they will figure out how to get it. It's just a shame that can't get that passionate and creative about the job.

Saw this commercial on TV yesterday for oovoo, which is a Skype replacement.

Why did I like it? Because it demonstrated what it does while doing what Ma Bell used to do in the old days with its Reach Out and Touch Somebody ads.

It makes a connection with the audience. The connection is an emotional bond. No talk of features or benefits. Perfect.

Luca says that there isn't room for any more players. To an extent that is true because the market is full and it will be a zero-sum game of take-away. But with marketing like this, I can see how oovoo could take market share -- but how do they make money?

In a discussion on LinkedIn, it seems that IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) isn't killing it in terms of measuring up to the hype. According to Ericsson, an IMS proponent and vendor,

"IMS is defined by 3GPP/3GPP2 as a new core and service 'domain' that enables the convergence of data, speech and network technology over an IP-based infrastructure. It is the operator choice of control and service logic for primarily IP/packet-based person-to-person communication but also for person-to-content communication.

For users, IMS-based services will enable communications in a variety of modes - including voice, text, pictures and video, or any combination of these - in a highly personalized and secure way.

The most widely deployed application on IMS are: Instant Messaging, Presence, Push-To-Talk and Video Sharing. There is lackluster customer appeal so far.

IMS was supposed to help to be like cartilage between the legacy telecom architecture and IP-based next gen systems. It was supposed to reduce OPEX and enable new services quickly to the end users. Likely that has not all been worked out yet, although SKT and AT&T are working on it.

Informa's IMS Conference is next month. Here's one guy's preview.

In 2007, Cisco integrated Jabber components into its conferencing platform. Today, Cisco buys Jabber, "an open-source IM and presence protocol used by Google Talk and Gizmo, for an undisclosed sum".  On our panel at IT Expo, The Role of Apps in VoIP, we talked about Gen Y not liking to talk on the phone. My conclusion is that you will need to incorporate XMPP and XML to enable chat, instant messaging, SMS messaging to IP phone - all to communicate with employees, customers, vendors - without talking on a phone.