This weekend the Broadvox and Cypress management team met at our CEO’s home in Ohio for business discussions and dinner. Two of us were asked to cook for the 21 attendees. Frank Grillo, EVP Applications, Implementation and Support, and I accepted the challenge without pause. Please consider, we would have no time for advance preparation, work in an unfamiliar kitchen with unfamiliar tools and try to blend our styles of cooking. After deciding upon a Mediterranean Grill as the theme we proceed to put together a very awesome menu. I had the exciting opportunity of procuring the most of our ingredients at the famous West Side Market just across the river from Cleveland. With great ingredients in hand we began to feed our peers and friends. We open with a tomato based bruschetta served over grilled ciabatta bread and saganaki, the Greek flaming cheese appetizer. This was followed by grilled shrimp that had marinated in garlic, oregano and other spices. Grilled mussels and clams joined the shrimp with each served with a complementary broth. The salad consisted of arugula, grilled radicchio and grilled peaches with olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. A mid-course was a “lambpop”, or marinated lamb chop grilled to medium/medium rare served with tzatziki. The entrées were steak Florentine, grilled snapper and grilled grouper. Along with the fish was an olive, tomato and feta cheese salad, and saffron aioli/mayonnaise (fearful of using raw eggs, I substituted mayo to be safe). Finally, dessert was vanilla ice cream with balsamic vinegar syrup. The crowd seemed to be pleased with our efforts and even I was impressed with the speed and taste of the various offerings. Regrettably, it does make for a difficult week to select a single recipe as I do not know everything Frank put into his dishes and all of mine were built on site to taste. In fact, only the saganaki was a dish that I had previously made. However, it seems wrong not to leave you with a taste of the weekend. Therefore, the recipe of the week is Lambpops served with Tzatziki. Enjoy!

Surprising Purchase of the Nortel Patents

On June 27^th the Nortel group put more than 6000 patents up for auction. Given the nature of the patents IP communications, networking, wireless technology and LTE, it was interesting to see which vying companies received the most press, Google, Apple and Microsoft. Of course, several expected players were also at the table, Ericsson, Intel and RIM.

The auction was expected to bring in a billion or so dollars to the now bankrupt company but it did far better. But first how did this play out. Using code names, Google (Ranger) made an opening bid of at $900 million and that got things going. The other bidders were Apple, Rockstar (consisting of Ericsson, RIM, Sony, EMC and Microsoft), Intel and Norpax. Norpax dropped out of the bidding early. With bidding in $100 million increments, the remaining three continued. Prior to the fifth round of bidding, Rockstar decided to withdraw. This was where it got interesting. Apple decided to partner with Rockstar. With Apple and Rockstar’s combined financial strength they secured the patents. This was an important win for Apple and Microsoft as both wanted to prevent Google from securing the patents. I believe we witnessed a major throw down between the tech industry’s largest players.

Apple and Rockstar paid an incredible $4.5 billion for the patents. One wonders if Nortel squandered a chance to survive by using these patents as a way to raise money. Well, too late for that. To the victors go the spoils. However, who gets what and what do they intend to do with it?

Know this; there were also patents on Internet search and social networking, certainly of interest to Apple and Microsoft.