Earthling

EarthLink's Director of Web Applications Gregg Hartling borrows Earthling to share some thoughts about RSS readers, inspired by today's TechCrunch article:

"I read through today's excellent TechCrunch review of web-based feed readers with great interest. I've been championing RSS at EarthLink for a while now, so it's a subject that's near and dear.

I was glad to see Frank Gruber start by explaining why he didn't include the traditional portals, like My Yahoo. Even though these sites have RSS capabilities, they're very different beasts. I like that he's focused on sites built specifically for the purpose of consuming news instead of the swiss army knives (like myEarthLink).

What I wasn't as excited to see, but I suppose is a necessary evil, is the comparison chart. A matrix of features and check marks is fine for getting a high level overview of the many alternatives available. But it shouldn't be the case that the one with the most notches in its belt is the best. (And to be fair, the TechCrunch review doesn't use that as its only criterion.)

Continue reading "Seeking An RSS Reader For The Rest Of Us"

Posted by dave coustan at 7:05 PM |

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The schedule for the EarthLink ads on Rocketboom.com has shifted a bit. When details are finalized I’ll bring you a meatier update as well as a look back at the TRM ads.

Posted by dave coustan at 5:46 PM |

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I have to hand Amazon.com a well-earned best for shoppertainment. Their Gold Box feature feels like a free slot machine sitting there on the top right of the page. It shouldn't, and grown ups should know better, but it still compels me to click every time I see it. For the uninitiated, this is a section of the site that gives you up to ten special sale items that you have something like 60 minutes to purchase or pass up. You can only look at each offer once, and you can only open your gold box once a day.

Look at those puppy dog eyes. I'd give that gold box the shirt off my back.

Whenever I find myself on Amazon the first thing I do is hit the gold box and flip through my offers. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure if I've ever bought anything from it, but there's something about the thrill of receiving ten limited-time offers purportedly chosen just for me.

Continue reading "Amazon's Gold Box And Refrigerator Staring"

Posted by dave coustan at 9:38 AM |

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Last week, Red Herring posted a story about how the City of New Orleans could soon lose the municipal Wi-Fi network that they've been depending on as one of the only means of communication for residents and critical city services. According to the article, a third of the City still doesn't even have basic phone service, and many have come to depend on their Wi-Fi connection as a main source of information and communication with the outside world.

This is the part that really stuck out:

“If I have to go to jail, I guess I will,” [city CIO Greg Meffert] said. “If they really want to play that game, I guess they are right. But we simply cannot turn off these few lifelines we have to our city and businesses.”

A pre-Katrina snapshot

Like most people who have spent any amount of time there, I have a big soft spot in my heart for New Orleans. A few years ago my whole family surprised my dad (and nearly gave him a heart attack) by joining him there as he received an award at a meeting. My move to Atlanta two years ago was almost a move to New Orleans instead. I'd still love to set up shop there some day. So the Red Herring article really bugged me. Taking away this one piece of reliable infrastructure from a city in need feels like kicking a friend while she's down. It's not the proudest moment for the telecommunications companies seeking to remove it. What's the motivation here?

I was thrilled to find out this morning that the City of New Orleans had approached EarthLink to ask if we'd take over the network ourselves and keep it running for them. I followed up with our Muni Wi-Fi team and learned that we've agreed to the city's request, and are in the process of applying for the licensing required to get it done. I imagine most EarthLinkers thought as I did when they read the Red Herring story, which was "We build city Wi-Fi networks..They need a city Wi-Fi network...We should lend a hand here." And now it looks as though it's actually happening.

Read on for the details.

Continue reading "Working To Keep Wi-Fi In New Orleans"

Posted by dave coustan at 1:31 PM |

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Here's another salvo of links that have ended up in the heh tag of my del.icio.us account.

This guy wants his S.O.A.P. (Photo courtesy Flickr user creevus)

• Snakes On A Blog - Thank goodness for blogs. We'd otherwise have no way to get daily news, fan art, and speculation about what could turn out to be the greatest cinematic achievement of our time, upcoming summer blockbuster Snakes On A Plane starring Samuel L. Jackson.
  
• Pipecleaner Dance - Not sure how old this is, but it was new to me when fellow Revenue Avenue (where I sit at EarthLink) denizen and friend-of-Earthling Ashley Harris sent it over to me.
  
• King of Eight - I was poking around in YouTube.com this weekend looking for old commercials from the 80's and came across a ton of old Sesame Street clips. This was my favorite of the bunch. It's almost a rap by a king obsessed with eights. I can relate. When I was little I was obsessed with green twos.
  
• The FireFox - No, the real firefox. I think.
  
• Get Off My Ball - This is a panel from a daily web comic. I think I'll add it to my reader.
  
• Best Invention Ever - Meet the Bac-Spin. Are you sick of having to turn your whole hat around when really all you want to do is spin the visor? That's so late 2005. Thanks to Robert Valdes for this one.
  
• The Leprechaun - This news clip about a Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama is making the rounds via e-mail and link aggregator sites. It's good stuff all the way through. You come for the police sketch; you stay for the gold seekers.
  

Posted by dave coustan at 1:30 PM |

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Since the end of last week, a horde of bloggers have been getting in line to either condemn or lionize Robert Scoble's incendiary reaction to news reports about the delay of Windows' launch of their new operating system Vista. It feels like a compulsory writing assignment if you want to consider yourself an A-list blogger. Should I be covering this?

Meh. I can't help but feel like this is just an industry story, interesting to professional bloggers, Friends Of Scoble, and Scoble detractors. But not to the millions of regular old web readers who don't have a vested interest in blogging as a profession.

If I were to add anything to the already crowded conversation on this, it would be that this should stand as a reminder that the Naked Conversations Scoble is advocating are not fully baked yet. What it means to be a blogger in the context of a corporation is still new and to some extent undefined, though we might be tempted to feel like it's old hat by now. If the guy who is pushing for most employees and companies to have their own blogs himself stumbles a bit in dealing with negative PR around his own company, then corporate-related blogging is probably still in its infancy. And because of his status, Scoble gets more slack than most bloggers in the corporate context. It's still pretty uncharted territory.

If you live for the chance to declare blogging dead, or better than it's ever been, then I guess this is the kind of thing you've been waiting for. But to me, blogs just are. Scoble wrote what he wrote. People hooted and hollered (and possibly shot their guns in the air). Scoble apologized and reframed, which he is also allowed to do and is probably a good part of this process and something that might be unique to corporate blogging. Let's stay classy and not give it much more weight than that.

In that spirit, I'd rather share some things I love about the culture of the web today and will publish another round-up of things that fell into the 'heh' tag of my del.icio.us account for your perusal. Shortly.

Posted by dave coustan at 9:57 AM |

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Cyber Check is a new EarthLink service that remotely diagnoses and removes crippling spyware, viruses, and adware from your computer. For anyone whose virus or spyware problem has gotten the better of them, it's someone you can call who can end the frustration and bring your computer back to good health for you.

I first heard about Cyber Check when I did media training in Pasadena back in February. Senior Product Manager Tracy West was in that class as well. I ended up in an exercise where I had to pretend to co-host a press conference with Tracy about Cyber Check, and I didn't know the first thing about it at the time. Fortunately she knew it like the back of her hand, and escaped every jam I inadvertently landed her in with my vague and inaccurate answers. For example, she correctly pointed out that in most cases, simply shouting vigorously at spyware does not make it go away.

Tracy travelled to Omaha, Nebraska last week to meet some of the expert technicians that carry out the Cyber Check service. Read on for her notes from the trip.

Continue reading "Notes From Omaha: Tracy Visits Cyber Check HQ"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:52 PM |

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Several friends and colleagues have sent me the recent headline about the Vonage customer who lost their home because of a fumbled 911 attempt. Kent Newsome got it right when he wrote:

"...Someone will have to convince millions of people like me that if we dial 911 on VOIP, someone will answer who can help and knows where we're calling from. There are often no mulligans when it comes to a 911 call, so creating certainty in the minds of the masses will be critical to the trend-ablility of internet phone service."

I'm one of those people too. I use EarthLink's trueVoice VoIP service at home for my main phone line. I’m pretty much a regular customer -- I pay my own bill in full and get no special treatment. After reading the article above, one of my concerns was whether or not something like that could happen to me. This morning I spoke to Jim Bagnato, EarthLink's Director of Voice Services, to find out more about the story.

Jim took me through how 911 service works on trueVoice. All EarthLink trueVoice customers have E911, or enhanced 911 service. It's called enhanced because when you dial 911 in an E911 system, your registered address and phone number are automatically transmitted to a local emergency center called a Public Safety Answering Point, or PSAP. Without E911, a VoIP system doesn't transmit your location automatically. Not all potential phone customers in the U.S. can get E911. EarthLink won’t sign-up any customers to use trueVoice unless they can get E911. According to the information on Vonage's site, some Vonage customers have basic and not enhanced 911.

Jim also clarified that E911 is routed over standard land-line phone infrastructure. The article linked above on ConsumerAffairs.com isn't quite accurate when it says:

"The incident has raised anew the question of how VoIP services, which provide telephone services over the Internet, interface with community 911 emergency services systems...Because the calls aren't routed throught the land-line telephone system's infrastructure, there has to be a way to transfer into the 911 system that serves the nation's 6.200 emergency call centers."

Jim explained, "We're using the land-line telephone system infrastructure. On trueVoice, E911 calls are routed from our soft switch to Level3, and they route them to the standard land-line system."

Posted by dave coustan at 2:30 PM |

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Hello you. I've updated my RSS feed address, so if you currently read Earthling through RSS, please unsubscribe from the old address and subscribe to this one:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/EarthlingBlog

I've changed the buttons on the right of the home page to reflect the new address too.

If you don't currently read Earthling through RSS and think you might want to, here's how.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:18 PM |

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Whenever a new kind of web-based sharing or socializing comes out, I find I have to balance the urge to embrace the new technologies with my interest in finding an appropriate level of myself to share with the world. For Google's social networking service Orkut, I struck that balance by constructing a profile and identity online that was incomplete on facts and identifiers about me, but wholly true to the parts of me I like to share with others. I'm not talking about using a deceptively fake picture or lying about my height or weight or anything like that, I'm talking about using the profile responses to indirectly build an honest picture of myself. For example, this is the photo I used for myself on Orkut:

See what I mean? I'm not passing myself off as two swizzle stick monkeys asking a wooden cop to do a trust fall. But hopefully by choosing this photo for my profile I'm communicating something about myself as useful as a portrait, or possibly more so. I don't see that as deceptive, I see that as part of how I share with other people about myself in meaningful ways. And on Orkut, I made lots of contacts based on their interest in that photo. I had a great time on Orkut, being myself but in a playful way that didn't deceive anyone and invited everyone to play along. I found my own way to share what's important about me but remain as safely anonymous as I wanted to me, and I stayed in decent control of my information.

It's kind of like return on preferences. Things I thought would be of benefit to the social network to know about me, I shared, or found a way to share that I was ok with. Other things that felt superfluous or irrelevant to the experience, I ignored. And I grew that set of information and modified it as I got to know the site and its culture better. I think it was a good compromise, and it worked well for me.

I was just reading about the public beta of Riya, a new photo storing and sharing and searching site that has some really neat and potentially creepy face recognition ability. Right now I'm trying to figure out how much engagement I want with this thing.

Continue reading "How Badly Do You Want To Be Found?"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:30 AM |

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This is pretty neat. Let's see if it works. If you have a microphone on your computer or connected to it, try using the link below to leave me an audio message:

The good people at Odeo blogged the other day about this neat little embedded audio recorder they built. Odeo is a site that lets you record and share audio through your computer or phone, and find podcasts and other audio recordings. It's free to sign up for a membership and get access to the tools. It took me five seconds, and then I was able to get the embedded audio recorder you see above.

If a good reason presents itself, maybe I'll mess around with Odeo and try creating an audio blog entry. I've been told I have a face for radio.

Posted by dave coustan at 4:20 PM |

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It was time to get myself a DVR, or Digital Video Recorder. The night that I got my tax refund back this year, I bought a big old HD television set and a TiVo. I learned a few things that night. For one, although the TV may have an HD tuner, many cable and satellite companies still make you use a separate set-top box. For another, even when you lease the equipment, acquiring the use of a high definition DVR is expensive. Several hundred dollars expensive, and then you don't even own it. That's when I decided to get a standard definition TiVo and plucked one off of the shelf.

In a flurry of adult responsibility, saner and more mortgage-oriented thoughts prevailed and they both went back to the store the next day. I decided that my TV is stately enough already, and that I'd rather have the cash right now in case of homeowner emergency or cheaper neato gadget impulse purchase.

The HD itch subsided, but the DVR itch remained for days after. I want to have the power to stop time. I want to be able to control when I watch my stories. I want to keep stuff around on the off chance that I'll want to see it again. I want the ability not to worry about coming home on the hour to catch the beginning of something. I want to record those elusive shows that aren't on DVD and only show up in syndication on Bravo at 3 am. And more than anything, I no longer want my Red Sox fandom to interfere with my ability to go out on weeknights.

Read on to hear the observations of someone just now bringing DVR technology into his life.

Continue reading "Notes From A Late DVR Adopter"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:36 PM |

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• Instant Messaging and Peer-to-peer Security Incidents On The Rise - According to a recent analysis by FaceTime.com, reported IM and Peer-to-peer incidents rose by a factor of 100 from 2004 to 2005.
  
• Cryzip Virus Demands Ransom - Here's a new one. Researchers have discovered instances of a new computer virus that locks up your files, and then asks you to deposit money into an online payment account to get them back. Cryzip is believed to be part of a batch of e-mail spam.
  
• Security-enabled Blogging For Kids - Few details are available yet, but a company called Industrious Kid is working on a blogging tool they say will have "easy-to-use access to the necessary insight and controls related to the communications and content development activities of their children."
  
• Digital Rights Management Shortens Battery Life - All of the extra encoding and checking that portable mp3 players do to make sure you own some of the music you play can reduce the life of your battery by as much as 25%. Yahoo Executive Dave Goldberg suggested recently that maybe the music industry should think about getting rid of Digital Rights Management completely. Would anyone complain?
  
• Del.icio.us Adding A Private Bookmarking Toggle - It used to be that everything you saved in Del.icio.us was automatically shared with other users. Now each time you save a bookmark, you can choose whether to share it or not. I just tried it -- when you go to save a bookmark, if you want it to remain private you check a box that says "do not share". Seems pretty simple.
  
• Even Deleted E-mails May Be Seized - A court asked Google to turn over all of the contents of a defendant's Gmail account, including the deleted e-mails. In their privacy policy, Google is very up-front about the fact that your deleted messages may stick around. They explain, "Even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some period of time." This is apparently standard to most webmail providers. I bet most people still think that deleting e-mails from a webmail provider automatically gets rid of them for good.
  

Note: I'm home battling a cold today and may be slow in responding to comments and e-mails.

Posted by dave coustan at 9:50 AM |

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Remember the sneak preview of TV Listings last week? Well it's now out of Beta and ready to help you track the career of your favorite actors. If that happens to include rising star James Lesure of TV's Las Vegas, that's between you and your prefs.

Nobody but you, your sofa, and TV Listings needs to know that Deal Or No Deal and a tall cool lemonade is how you prefer to unwind. Here's how to go check it out for yourself:

• Log in to my.EarthLink. If you don't have a myEarthLink account, set one up for free. You'll get a bunch of other free and useful stuff with that as well, including a free EarthLink e-mail account, Vling, and the EarthLink Toolbar.
  
• Go to tv.earthlink.net. Tell it your zip code, your provider, and your favorite channels.
  
• Look at the grid view. Toggle between "prime time" and "current time" to see what's on. Click the star next to your favorite shows. They'll be added to your "favorites". You can toggle between "all channels" and "favorite channels" as well.
  
• Do a search. Look for an actor or show you like. Right from the search interface, add any of the results to your favorites by clicking on the star. It will add that particular show to your favorites and keywords. If you like, check the box to add recommendations for related shows.
  
• Check out the "favorites" tab. That's where you'll find everything you've marked, in addition to any recommendations relating to your favorites. Favorites are yours, recommendations are suggestions.
  
• Make any adjustments in the "preferences" tab.
  
• Go watch television. Come back to tv.earthlink.net when you want to know who and what is on at a glance.

As we bring more enhancements to TV Listings, I'll let you know about them. In the meantime, give it a try and let us know what you think.

Posted by dave coustan at 10:44 AM |

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This morning I woke to the official word that our DSL and Home Phone Service will be coming to eight more cities:

• Atlanta
  
• Chicago
  
• Los Angeles
  
• Miami
  
• New York City
  
• Philadelphia
  
• San Diego
  
• Washington, D.C.

That brings the total number of cities that will have access to this new broadband option up to twelve with the initial cities of Seattle, WA, Dallas, TX, San Francisco and San Jose, CA.

EarthLink DSL and Home Phone Service is different from other DSL and voice offerings in that it's higher speed (up to 8 mbps), allows you to connect your regular phones directly in to any jack in the house, offers advanced calling features, and makes your phone service work even when the power goes out.

It's like our recent addition to the family is growing up before our eyes. I'm especially excited about the announcement for purely selfish reasons. It's what I've been waiting for in Atlanta to ditch what's left of my landline usage and upgrade my broadband speeds in one fell swoop.

Read on for the full text of this morning's press release.

Continue reading "EarthLink Line-Powered Voice Coming To 8 More Cities"

Posted by dave coustan at 7:38 AM |

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Since I first started to cover the issue of Net Neutrality in December, I've seen the issue cross over from something that only broadband industry professionals worried about to something that my parents and their friends ask me about. It's everywhere all of the sudden, even on regular nightly news shows like NBC News. Back in December it looked like something to keep an eye on. With recent events like the BellSouth/AT&T merger, it's crossed over into the realm of something that anyone who uses the internet at home should probably think about.

I generally don't peruse telecommunications market share studies for kicks (some might argue that I should), but there was one released this week that's worth looking at. Om Malik summarized some of the findings of a TNS study as follows:

After the deal is closed, three of the nation’s top telecom providers - AT&T, Verizon and Comcast - will control 49% of the total consumer market and in the business market AT&T and Verizon will represent 55% of spending.

The potential problem for consumers isn't the huge market share of these companies in and of itself; after all, that's what many companies eventually want in their respective industry. They shouldn't be denigrated just for finding a way to create a large customer base. And in the business of selling access and internet services, there are certainly ways a huge company can operate so as to provide choices for the consumer and still make lots of money.

No, the risk for consumers is that with three main providers (or fewer, in parts of the country where one is unavailable) for internet access, they might be tempted to change the face of the product they are selling by infringing on the current neutrality of the internet. And with such huge market share in the hands of so few companies, their ability to reduce true choice is just amplified all the more.

Continue reading "Preserving Net Neutrality After ATT/Bellsouth"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:05 AM |

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And it is weird.

Since grad school I've thought that one day I'd love to produce local or lower-tier cable advertising for television. I've seen some low-budget gems on local cable channels that you'd never see during a high-ratings show. There's often more creativity there than you'll see elsewhere, even if it is a little ham-handed. I've thought for a while that it would be very freeing to know that your small budget is yours to do whatever you want with, so long as you meet your advertiser's objectives. In the ideal relationship you can be as conceptual and off-the-wall as you like, as long as you accomplish whatever it is that needs to get done.

This is my theory for how local mortgage and used car and furniture chain ads get to be so strange. Anyone who's lived in the Greater Boston area in the past five years need only hear the phrase "I DOUBT IT!" and they'll immediately think Dean's Home Furniture. If anyone has a recording of a Dean's ad, please send it my way.

I'm jealous of Rocketboom because I think in a way that's what they've been able to do for TRM. TRM gave them a goal, and let them loose to achieve it the best way they see fit. So far I think that relationship has produced something that's enjoyable to watch and that sticks with you. Their enthusiasm for making content shows through in the creative.

Do yourself (and me) a favor, and look at today's installment of Rocketboom. Keep watching for an ad-like thing for TRM at the end. If you want to skip the Rocketboom and get straight to the ad, here's a link directly to it. But to get the full effect, you really need to watch both together.

As I've been telling you, EarthLink will be getting our own ad-like things at the end of Rocketboom the week of April 3. I have no idea what ours will be like; I don't know if Andrew and Amanda know yet either. I'm sure it will be different from the TRM ones, but hopefully will be made of similar strange stuff.

Judging by the comment thread, most Rocketboom viewers feel good about how the new ad turned out. If you have thoughts about it, please add a comment to this entry or join the discussion over on Rocketboom.

Update: Read more about Rocketboom's new ads on Blog Herald and Wearethemedia.com.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:35 PM |

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A product called Skobee came out yesterday that's supposed to help you plan events and keep your friends in the loop. Here's how Michael Arrington of TechCrunch described it:

If you plan events with friends using email, Skobee is going to make your life a lot easier.

Instead of contacting all of the friends you would like to plan an event with through the normal channels (IM, email, phone, etc.) and trying to keep things organized, Skobee has a dead simple and better way to handle it. Create a new event, put in vague (or definite) information on location and date/time, and add emails for people you’d like to include.

The comment I made on TechCrunch is that this sounds like a great feature for some product we already use and like. But it doesn't sound like a good excuse to go sign up for a new product. I think this should become part of del.icio.us, as long as it doesn't mess with the simplicity of it.

Continue reading "Is This A Feature Or A Product?"

Posted by dave coustan at 12:33 PM |

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Product Manager Scott Frost gave me a sneak preview today of our new TV Listings application in beta, due to be released in the next couple of weeks. I saw an earlier version in Pasadena back in January, and in this short period of time it's really come together. It does all of the things you'd expect from a smart TV listings grid, and adds a few features that I haven't seen elsewhere in quite the same way. It doesn't tie back in to your TiVo or Digital Video Recorder(DVR) system yet, but that's something we're working on as part of a future release.

A slice of the TV Listings basic grid view. It gets more interesting than this.

It's our first application that showcases an idea called "Return On Preferences." I've wanted to talk about this ever since my first Pasadena visit, but it's hard to explain unless you can see a concrete example.

Return On Preferences is the idea that entering specifics about what you like and don't like is a pain. It's effort. You should only have to do it once. Every time you sign up for a new web application, or a MySpace.com account, or a Flickr.com account, you get a 3-4 page questionnaire asking you about yourself. Why should you fill it out unless you get something out of it that's really of use? I usually skip most of it unless I can see that the site knowing about me is going to make my experience better.

I'm not talking about advertising, I'm talking about functionality. If the site wants to know something about you, it should make good use of that information on the site itself. Otherwise it's not worth bothering.

Continue reading "TV Listings Beta: Helpful Without The Creepy"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:12 PM |

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First, the mini-update: Look for Rocketboom's own TRM ads to appear there starting Monday, March 13th. Watch the end of today's installment to catch a fleeting glimpse of what appears to be Amanda dressed up like a superhero. Then watch for Rocketboom's own EarthLink ads the week of April 3. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read up on it here and here.

Today Rocketboom explained the difference between comments that are the work of humans and those that are the work of robots. Any web site that has a system for accepting readers' comments is susceptible to both kinds. Human comments, even when negative, are far more preferable than robot comments. Like the folks at Rocketboom, I delete comments from robots on sight. That can be a laborious task.

Robot comments, as they appear at Earthling HQ, without the offending URLs

Continue reading "Robots Caught In The Act and Rocketboom Mini-Update"

Posted by dave coustan at 12:34 PM |

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I was just searching for a video clip on YouTube.com when I saw something I haven't ever seen there before:

This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community.

To view this video, please verify you are 18 or older by logging in or signing up.

So, what gives? We know that recently upon request by NBC they've been removing copyrighted material. Om Malik has suggested that their cache of copyrighted material is one of the main reasons for their overwhelming popularity to date. Are they now requiring that users who want to view "inappropriate content" register for an account? Is this to drive new registrations or protect the user? How are they determining what's appropriate and what's inappropriate? And do the age verification and content rating have anything to do with the copyrighted material crackdown?

Looking at their blog entry dated March 3, they have some new official partners:

You’re probably wondering about the MTV2 clip and “official partner” logo on our home page.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:32 AM |

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Cisco revealed today that their upcoming voice, data, and video suite for businesses would support SIP. Didn't you hear me? I said it would support SIP. Still nothing? If you want to impress your geekiest friends, basic SIP knowledge would be a good thing to have in your bag of tricks. And that way you'll know what it is before the first time you see "SIP:" on a business card.

There are a lot of reasons to like SIP, but the first thing to know is that it's an open standard. Anyone can build an application around it. For communications software, in theory, the more people you can talk to, the better. In the same tradition, that's why EarthLink's Vling interoperates with GoogleTalk. And wants to interoperate with the others too.

I haven't written too much yet about the voice side of Vling. Vling is a SIP-enabled voice client. So with your Vling account, you can speak for free to anyone who uses a program that supports SIP, not just Vling users. Skype doesn't work this way -- their protocol is particular to Skype, so you can only talk for free to Skype users. But with Vling, you can talk to people who use SIPphone, Gizmo Project, and eventually, GoogleTalk as well (they've said they will support SIP in the future).

That's not such a big deal yet, but what about when businesses start using SIP to talk to their customers?

Continue reading "Why People Like SIP"

Posted by dave coustan at 4:54 PM |

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Today I'm reading about many more interesting developments than usual in the world of communication technologies. AOL has opened up developer access to their instant messaging system, and Cisco is about to announce a new communications platform that embraces SIP technology. There was also news today of AT & T agreeing to buy BellSouth.

Director of Voice Product and Engineering Tom Hsieh is choosing my lottery numbers from now on, because in a way he predicted a couple of these developments when I spoke to him in January.

This entry will focus on the AOL news.

Continue reading "It's A Good Day If You Like SIP and Interoperability"

Posted by dave coustan at 11:21 AM |

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Every once in a while, usually on Fridays, I offer a round-up of web bookmarks that have ended up in the Heh tag of my Del.icio.us account recently. Today I'm instead sharing some of the more hehful bookmarks I've found while poking around in other people's del.icio.us accounts. Based on my research, Del.icio.us' heh reserves appear to be dangerously low right now. I did my best. Here are some noteworthies from the set.

• Enjoy M.C. Hammer's blog. I have to say, the man has a pretty good grasp on the medium of blogging. Hear him out.
  
• Handy Extension Handler - Ok, this one is not actually all that hehful. Or particularly useful except for maybe a handful of people. But someone did tag it "heh."
  
• GiganticURL.com - Tiny URL is a helpful site that creates a nice and short web page URL out of a long and clumsy one. Gigantic URL does just the opposite, creating uselessly long URLs out of regular ones.
  
• What Can You Do With A Dead Computer? - Here's a message board thread that discusses computer recycling in excruciating detail ( RIP my iBook 2002-2006).
  
• A Yahoo Answers Result - Mike from San Antonio asks who named the planet Uranus. Yahoo Answers.
  
• Rate My Network Diagram - I'm giving that first one a solid six. Not the best I've seen, not the worst.
  

Posted by dave coustan at 1:52 PM |

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I spoke to Andrew at Rocketboom yesterday. The hardest working pair in vlogging are busy on a ton of new efforts, including coming up with the first ads for their first sponsor, TRM, and then starting work on stuff for their second sponsor, us.

(photo courtesy Rocketboom.com)

On the content side, they've in turns disgusted, delighted, and informed recently. I'm still ill from seeing a video of bare-chested Robert Scoble and Shel Israel on February 23. I forgave them on the 24th, after they made Senator John Edwards draw his favorite moustache on a likeness of himself. They introduced us to the Muncie, Indiana response to Lazy Sunday on the 28th (more on Lazy Sunday here), and then yesterday aired correspondent Ruud Elmendorp's report on Uganda's current elections.

They've changed formats to a widescreen, high definition aspect ratio (demonstrated here ), and are working on a beta version of their site for the Japanese-speaking audience, the subtitled Rocketboom.jp. They have several new projects in the works, including a show for kids and a news-focused archive of content (also in beta) at Humanwire.org.

Click the link below to read more about what's new over there.

Continue reading "Rocketboom Weekly Check-in"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:12 PM |

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The concept of Net Neutrality usually refers to keeping your fixed internet connection (your pipe at home or at work) free from artificial restrictions and added charges based on what sites and services you want to use.

It's now cropping up in the world of cell phone internet service plans. Yesterday Techdirt wrote about how some mobile phone networks want to stop their customers from using video streaming/placeshifting technologies (like Slingbox) with their unlimited cellphone data plans. Mike at Techdirt points to an article implying that Sling Media (makers of the Slingbox) should seek permission from the mobile networks to pass data through them because their customers use so much bandwidth.

That feels awfully weird. Doesn't "unlimited data service" imply that you can use as much data as you want?

Continue reading "What Does Unlimited Mean?"

Posted by dave coustan at 12:20 PM |

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