May 2005 Archives

This announcement just caught my eye:

Zarlink Introduces World's First Wireless Chip Designed Specifically for In-Body Communication Systems

Designed for implanted medical devices, Zarlink's ZL70100 is a low-power RF transceiver chip that allows data communications over a two-meter range, far enough to allow wireless communications between an in-body device and a base station for patient health monitoring.

Today's release provides some suggested applications for the technology:

"... an ultra low-power RF transceiver in a pacemaker can wirelessly send patient health and device performance data to a bedside base station in the home. Data is then forwarded over the telephone or Internet to a physician's office, and if a problem is detected the patient goes to the hospital where the high-speed two-way RF link can be used to easily monitor and adjust device performance."

"During surgery, a physician can use the higher data rates and longer communication range afforded by MICS technology to program the performance of an implanted device outside of the sterile surgical environment."

"The higher data rate and extended communication range of our radio transceiver enables advanced in-body communication systems, such as implanted blood glucose sensors controlling insulin intake for diabetes patients, networked stimulators restoring lost limb function or pacemakers using the high-speed wireless link to signal emergency response during a cardiac event." (Here quoting Steve Swift, senior vice president and general manager, Ultra Low-Power Communications, Zarlink Semiconductor.)

Zarlink's product data sheet suggests that this chip might be used in pacemakers, ICD’s, cochlea implants, neurostimulators, implantable insulin pumps and bladder control devices.

Bladder control devices? That last item rather sparked my imagination and encouraged me to delve deeper into the product literature. If there's a possibility that someday this chip might be used inside me as part of a bladder control device, I would be very curious to know its dimensions. Unfortunately, Zarlink's product literature does not include this essential detail. What is Zarlink trying to hide, the inquiring mind wants to know?

Anyway, perhaps you will get some idea of the nature of this component from the following photo:

AB -- 5/31/05

This announcement from Brightidea caught my eye today:

Brightidea Inc. Launches Brightidea.com, First On-Demand Innovation Management Software; Integrated Suite Helps Mid-Size Organizations Accelerate Process of Innovation

Brightidea has been providing enterprise-scale Innovation Process Management (IPM) software up to now. This on-demand solution makes their software available for mid-size companies and smaller divisions. The company says its IPM products are designed to "to assist managers in all areas of innovation with templates and workflows specifically designed for accelerating: new product development, process improvement, cost cutting, intellectual property, technology adoption, marketing, strategy, and business model innovation."

The offering consists of five integrated tools targeted at important elements of the innovation process in an organization:

-- Research - Secure, shared weblogs allow participants to track emerging trends, competition, and areas of opportunity. Research blogs ensure an organization stays abreast of market developments while maintaining a permanent record of all research.

-- Expert Location - Easy-to-use natural language search function that allows users locate experts for help with a question or problem. Users can search expert profiles as well as all content in the innovation management system to locate the most appropriate expert for their needs. Expert Location ensures that expertise is located and maximized regardless of location or department in the organization.

-- Idea Management - Highly configurable idea ranking engine allows managers to rapidly identify the most promising innovations available in an organization. Ideas are ranked based on user input and one of several proprietary algorithms and methods based on the type and scale of innovation desired. Managers can request ideas in specific areas of opportunity or collect unsolicited ideas from employees, customers, and suppliers. Idea Management accelerates identification of viable concepts and ensures non-viable proposals are discontinued early.

-- Project Tracking - Flexible, phase-based tracking system for managing projects in the innovation pipeline. Gives managers visibility into all projects underway and their progress. Project tracking ensures that on-going projects are: strategically aligned, properly vetted at each step and stay on-track throughout the implementation process.

-- Rewards & Recognition - An end-to-end solution that tracks individual contributions to the innovation program. Points are accumulated for selected activities and achievements. Rewards & Recognition tracks the redemption of points for: gifts, awards or cash to ensure that key players in the innovation process are recognized and proper financial records are maintained.

In today's release, Brightidea cites a recent report, titled "Innovate America," from the Council on Competitiveness, which emphasizes the importance of developing the "infrastructure for innovation." In case you're interested, the entire report (PDF, 68 pages) is available at:

http://www.compete.org/pdf/NII_Final_Report.pdf

AB -- 5/31/05

Irish research firm Research and Markets says they have released a new report about the application of broadband over power lines (BPL) in Manassas, Virginia. BPL promises to deliver broadband access via existing power lines. The municipal utility in Manassas has advanced its pilot program into an early commercial offering.

In its news release today, Research and Markets describes the project as follows:

"Manassas missed its goal of having the entire city -- 12,500 homes and 2,500 businesses -- wired for BPL by mid-2004. Even so, without any advertising, BPL has attracted substantial interest: There are a few hundred users on the system and a backlog of 1,300 requests for service.

"Early adopters in Manassas say the system is easy to set up, reliable, and fast. Some customers are being won over from competing broadband Internet options, all of which carry higher prices. Download speeds are comparable to digital subscriber line (DSL) service, although not as fast as the peak speeds achieved over cable modem."

At first glance, you might think this is a great idea -- taking advantage of existing infrastructure ... a potential solution to the last-mile problem .... But when we published stories about this previously, I heard back from the American Radio Relay League, who raised some interesting objections. (See my blog entry "BPL a Danger to Amateur Radio?" from 12/23/04.)

Let me re-quote some of what Allen G. Pitts, media and public relations manager for ARRL, wrote to me at that time:

"ARRL, the National Association for Amateur Radio, has participated in testing in a number of the BPL marketing trials and has seen interference to radio reception in each of the sites their staff and volunteers have examined. In many cases, BPL proponents pronounce their marketing trials as being 'successful,' but to ARRL’s knowledge, no BPL trial has included a thorough examination of interference issues, so it is premature to pronounce these tests to be a success ....

"Simply put, there is no way that radio frequency signals are going to stay contained in a wire designed to carry normal electric power. It will radiate and pollute the radio spectrum. The FCC’s October 2004 Report & Order recognized this danger to communications and totally barred the BPL companies from using frequencies associated with aeronautics and other governmental agencies. Obviously, these concerns about interference and spectrum pollution were not seen as trivial or resolved by the FCC."

ARRL is quick to say that they are not opposed to BPL per se. Recently the ARRL did issue a release about a new BPL technology developed by Motorola "designed from the start with radio interference concerns in mind.":

Hams Encouraged by NEW Motorola BPL Technology

AB -- 5/27/05

According to an announcement from TelTel, provider of peer-to-peer Internet telephony, they are adding a selection of music and audio programming to the services offered to members of their network. At more than one million members, TelTel claims that its network is "the world's largest SIP-based Internet Telephony user community."

TelTel says it is now providing 13 channels of audio entertainment in two languages and will soon be adding more. The company's press release is available on TMCnet at:

TelTel Offers New Media Channels Via SIP-based Internet Telephony

TelTel's P2P service integrates instant messaging and voice calling using standards-based SIP technology.

In case you're curious what TelTel's user interface is like, here is a screen shot from their FAQ page showing their IM and dialpad functions:

AB -- 5/27/05

TMCnet just received this announcement about an upcoming Video on Demand (VOD) demonstration from Arroyo Video Solutions:

HTLT Technologies has announced an Add-On database for its Local Call Analyzer (LCA) Enterprise product. Called VoIP-It!, the new least-cost-routing add-on is meant to provide "a unified pricing database for determining switched access rates and costs for calls by NPA-NXX within or between all calling areas in the United States," according to HTLT's announcement from today. The complete release is at:

This morning, Accurate Always announced the release of a new series of call recording systems, the Voxida 3000 digital voice recording series. Accurate Always makes turnkey recording systems for quality monitoring and recording in contact centers. Their systems are able to log digital and analog telephone and radio, proprietary PBX, intercom, turret and VoIP calls.

Today's press release is available on TMCnet at:

TMCnet's executive editor Bob Liu is in New York City today covering Salesforce.com's CustomForce Day, where the on-demand CRM provider has announced its CustomForce 2.0 customization toolkit. Bob just filed a story from the event in which he revealed that Salesforce.com has announced Merrill Lynch as its newest and largest customer. Bob says this means as many as 5,000 new seats for Salesforce.com.

Here is Bob's story from this afternoon:

Salesforce.com Debuts CustomForce 2.0, Scores Merrill Lynch as Customer

This seems especially significant to me, as Salesforce.com has received some criticism lately by analysts who claim that its on-demand CRM solution is more suited to smaller enterprises and that larger companies could incur significant costs in trying to integrate Salesforce.com. In Bob's May 3 article, "Gartner: Beware of Salesforce.com," he says:

"Gartner said that within three years of an initial Salesforce.com deployment, more than 60 percent of larger organizations will find the cost double due to integration and customization compared with the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a prepackaged software solution."

Looks as if Merrill Lynch is about to discovery whether that's really true!

AB -- 5/24/05

TMCnet received two announcements from Toshiba (i.e., Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Digital Solutions Division or TAIS DSD) today about enhancements to their line of IP telephony products:

From TMCnet's Speech-World Conference being held this week in Dallas, Texas, comes this new-product announcement:

eStara Inc., a provider of customer communications solutions, announced a milestone today in its provision of services.

A report released today by The Radicati Group says that new mainstream Internet telephony applications are about to change the way consumers (not just enthusiasts) make phone calls. (Nothing surprising there, I guess, but it's interesting to see Radicati commenting on this -- they do publish some great content about messaging trends.)

The report, called "Focus: Internet Telephony Goes Mainstream," is in the May 2005 issue of Radicati's monthly newsletter, "The Messaging Techology Report." (Note: An executive summary is available here.)

Radicati says adoption of Internet telephony was slow until recently, but the research firm believes that the technology is about to hit the mainstream thanks to its incorporation into instant messaging applications by AOL, MSN and Yahoo!, and the efforts of independent service providers like Skype and Teleo. Radicati's 12-page report reviews and compares these five services.

The report says that, while none of these services is as simple or ubiquitous as traditional telephony, they can replace landline or mobile for "certain applications." And "as the Internet becomes increasingly integrated into the daily lives of individuals," PC-based calling will "become more convenient and less costly" than PSTN calling.

In its reviews, Radicati's report says that out of the three IM applications (AOL, MSN and Yahoo!) reviewed only AOL's IM offers calling to the PSTN. However, my colleague Tom Keating here at TMCnet reported in his blog last week that the new Yahoo! Messenger beta does in fact allow PC-to-PSTN calling (see "Yahoo Messenger Truly Has VoIP?"), although apparently this capability is not easy to find.

AB -- 5/23/05

Sorenson Communications has announced that it will open new interpreting centers in Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Milwaukee, New York and Philadelphia, to expand the capabilities of its video relay service (VRS) for the deaf and hard of hearing. Today's release is available on TMCnet at:

Popularity of Videophones, Video Relay Service for Deaf Prompts Sorenson Communications to Build Six Additional Interpreting Centers

Previously I wrote about VRS services operated by Hands on and CSD in this blog entry:

Video Relay Services for Deaf-Hearing Communication

This is a fascinating class of service made possible by converged communications and is growing rapidly in popularity among the deaf and hard of hearing. VRS services allow deaf users to communicate with hearing users through a sign interpreter via videophone. Here's how Sorenson describes how the service works:

"With Sorenson VRS, a network of qualified ASL interpreters receive videophone calls from deaf or hard-of-hearing people and interpret conversations for them with hearing people. Dialogue flows spontaneously back and forth with the deaf or hard-of-hearing person signing ASL to the interpreter who speaks to the hearing individual over an ordinary telephone line."

This illustration from Sorenson is also useful in understanding the service:

Sorenson says they are opening the new contact centers to meet increasing demand for their VRS services. The six new centers were set up in key areas where qualified ASL (American Sign Language) interpreters are readily available.

AB -- 5/23/05

I just thought it was amusing that 3M issued a press release to announce a brochure:

3M Solution for Fiber to the Premises Highlighted in Brochure

Actually, it's of interest because of the fiber-to-the-premises topic -- the brochure is directed at service providers and contractors and describes 3M's capabilities in the fiber implementation area.

If you want a copy of the brochure, the press release gives an 800 number you can call. The brochure is in "full-color," so that's a selling point!

AB -- 5/19/05

Today this release arrived from speech technology company Loquendo:

Loquendo Brings Lifelike Loquendo Embedded TTS To The Symbian Market

A couple of things about this announcement spark my interest. At first blush, most of the release comes across as a rehash of the capabilities of Loquendo TTS, a multilingual synthetic speech engine. But reading the release more carefully gave me an opportunity to take a closer look at Symbian and at Loquendo itself. I've taken note of both entities in passing but didn't really know much about them.

First, about Loquendo: From what I can gather, it looks to me as if the forte of Loquendo's technology is its ability to convert text into natural-sounding speech in multiple languages. If you want to hear what Loquendo's voices sound like, they have a remarkable set of demos in different languages on their Web site:

http://www.loquendo.com/en/demos/index.htm

They even include an interactive demo that allows you to type in text and listen to it in various voices and languages. Fun to play around with.

Today's release describes some of the capabilities of the technology:

"Loquendo embedded TTS for Symbian provides full multilingual capability - more than one voice and language can be used concurrently and dynamically switched. The engine also carries out automatic language identification: the text pre-processor automatically identifies multiple languages in a text, and uses the corresponding language and voice accordingly. It also includes mixed language capability - a feature that is unique to Loquendo technology - and enables foreign words to be pronounced correctly, without switching voices.

"With Loquendo embedded TTS for Symbian, users also benefit from Loquendo's emotional synthetic voices - capable of conveying expressive intention, such as greetings and apologies, in a lifelike, expressive manner for an even more natural effect."

Symbian is an operating system used in mobile devices and known for its stability and processor efficiency. Embedding Loquendo TTS into the Symbian operating system provides text-to-speech capabilities for those devices.

This quote from Paolo Coppo, Director of Business Development at Loquendo, gives an idea how the technology will enhance the capabilities of Symbian devices: "Loquendo TTS is the best fit for a brand new set of user-friendly services such as voice feedback for the visually impaired and the elderly, navigation services, SMS and e-mail reading."

AB -- 5/18/05