By David Sims
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Willie Nelson’s 1978 album Stardust,
his heartfelt tribute to Tin Pan Alley:
The next version of Microsoft
Office will center on VoIP, IM
and XML technology, according to Ina
Fried.
It adds up to an emphasis on collaboration, Fried thinks, and
Microsoft’s “gotten some help in that effort from Groove Networks, the Ray
Ozzie-led company that Microsoft acquired earlier this year, strategy executive
Bill Hilf said at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in San Francisco.”
Hilf says Microsoft is building the ability to handle VoIP
technology as “one of the core features in the next version of Office.”
Microsoft promises that the so-improved Office 12 will ship
next year, and First CoffeeSM knows how reliable Microsoft ship
dates are, of course.
Hilf refused to discuss details or specifics, but said for
an idea of what Office is going to look like consider Microsoft Office
Communicator 2005, the instant messaging add-on currently in beta.
Fried notes that with the program, “out-of-office messages
pop up automatically, as does a user’s IM presence information. If companies
integrate the software with their traditional or VoIP gear, workers can also
start phone calls through their PC and redirect incoming calls when they are
going to be away from their desk.”
…
Disturbing little news bit on the invaluable Engadget: Donald
Melanson posts that “a Redwood City-based tech start-up called Rosum has found
a way to track individuals using television signals, reaching places even
GPS can’t (like inside buildings).”
Melanson claims that “Q-Tel, the
investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, is one of the investors in
the company.” The first actual working device using this capability is still in
prototype, but Rosum does expect “commercial navigation products using the
technology to start showing up next year.”
So the CIA gets this technology,
but when an organization that knows what it’s doing gets ahold of it, such as
New York City parking enforcement, First CoffeeSM will be concerned.
…
The Israeli telecom provider ECI
Telecom is opening a subsidiary
office in Moscow, in the words of company officials, “to further broaden
and establish ECI’s direct presence in Russia in addition to a local support
company.” The office should open in June.
ECI, which has been working in Russia for twelve years, says
there is “increasing customer demand for ECI’s solutions in the Russian market,”
a market which has grown extensively over the past few years.
ECI must think pretty highly of the Russian market, they
held a recent Board of Directors meeting in Moscow, and it probably wasn’t for
the food or scenery. The company specializes in metro optical networks,
broadband access, bandwidth management and carrier-class VoIP solutions.
…
Continuing with First CoffeeSM’s coverage of the
former Second World (you knew what First World and Third World were, “Second
World” was used to refer to the Soviet Union and its satellite states), Teleunit Spa, an Italian telecom wholesale
service provider has signed a direct
interconnection agreement with Albania
Online SP Ltd.
Albania Online, frequently confused with America Online, was
founded in 1997 and provides Internet connection through dial-up, leased lines,
ADSL and Wireless, VOIP, VPN, E-mail and hosting solutions. It’s the only
private entity in Albania that has fiber-optic interconnection with state
operators Albtelecom and Telecom Montenegro, which in that part of the world is
technically known as “one heck of a competitive advantage.”
Teleunit and Albania Online will exchange international
voice and IP traffic, and Teleunit has put in place a new Internet Protocol gateway
direct to Albania to transmit voice data using VOIP technology.
Gianfranco Cimica, Chief Executive of Teleunit explained
that “a large amount of voice traffic is directed to Albania due to the
historical relationship between Italy and Albania and the large Albanian
population in Italy.”
…
Shifting back to the First World, in an interview with Renai
LeMay security vendor Check Point’s Australia manager, Scott McKinnel, argues that voice and Internet “camps” have different
security priorities.
According to McKinnel, when implementing VoIP-based systems
traditional telephony experts “try to address the primary concerns as they
would see them in a telephony world – which are latency, PABX and voice-mail
functionality, quality of service, things of that nature.”
McKinnel doesn’t see security as a pressing issue, saying
that telephony gurus “haven’t even had encrypted voice circuits,” let alone
anything more sophisticated than that – “there’s never been a shared network
infrastructure.”
In his completely unvendorly-influenced opinion, Internet
security experts could show their telephony counterparts the way. Even if VoIP
software was adhering strictly to standards, he tells LeMay, malicious binary
information could still piggyback on connections.
First CoffeeSM fervently desires greater
telephony security, wishing the world to be spared replays of such gruesome
security breaches as the contents of professional rich airhead Paris Hilton’s mobile
phone address book being hacked and posted online.
…
Happy 36th World
Telecommunications Day! After the keg party you might want to, well,
call someone. How exactly is World Telecommunications Day celebrated, and when did it start? First CoffeeSM
finds the answer on that bastion of truth and honesty, China’s People’s
Daily Online:
“On 17 May 1865 to realize a smooth telegram communication
in the world the ‘International Telegraph Convention’ was undersigned by some
20 such European countries as France, Germany, Russia, Italy and Austria in Paris.
This announced the establishment of the International Telegraph Union (ITU).
“In 1932, representatives from over 70 countries held a
meeting in Madrid, Spain and decided to change the name into the ‘International
Telecommunication Union’ as from January 1, 1934 onwards. On 17 May 1969 the
24th executive council meeting of the International Telecommunication Union
passed an official resolution, deciding to make the date of May 17 the ‘International
Telecom Day’ and requesting every member country to conduct commemorative
activities on every May 17 since 1969.
“To make the commemorative activities more systematized
there is a theme topic for every May 17 – the International Telecom Day. The
theme topic for this year is ‘to get mobilized for creating a fair information
society’ and activities are conducted every year in China in commemoration of
the International Telecom Day.”
As part of the gala festivities Chinese officials promise
that the approximately 28,384 administrative villages in China without
telecommunication services will be so equipped by the end of this year, “thus realizing
the objective of the Tenth-Five-Year plan.”
So there you have it, and everybody, let’s go get mobilized
for creating a fair information society – just like China’s.
...
First CoffeeSM would like to reassure readers
that neither Michael Isikoff nor Newsweek
magazine were used as sources for this column.