Category: Business

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Vonage, 3Com Is Holding On The Line

Vonage and Verizon Battle Over VoIP Patent

Andy Abramson has just posted some correspondence between himself and an R&D Consulting Engineer. Looks like 3Com had a patent in process at the same time as Verizon’s patent.

I originally wrote up this patent for USR back in early 1996 (US patent number 6,529,501), it is now assigned to 3Com. The whole purpose of this patent was how to address mapping computers, VOIP phone devices, and regular phones to each other using the PSTN and the Internet using central lookup servers to match phone numbers and IP addresses.

As far as I can tell, it covers most of the issues that Verizon sued Vonage over. I’m a hardware/software engineer, not a patent lawyer, so I don’t know if any of has any implications.

Is it possible that Vonage has a chance at survival now?

Vonage: Do You Know What 3Com Has?

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Google Audio Ads Opens Up A Bit

The InsideAdWords blog today announced they are looking for more audio ads testers. Any of you who use AdWords may consider trying out this new ad medium.

In terms of feedback, the Audio Ads team has heard that beta testers like the simple and clean user interface and the targeting and reporting options. Beta testers also find the audio ad creation process easy and fast since it only takes them a few days to create their ads and launch their first campaigns (as compared to potentially weeks for traditional radio ads).

I’m not a big AdWords spender, so I’d not be of much use to them, but if you want you can sign up for the audio ads beta here.

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Passionate Users and ROI Calculation

Today I finally had time to read yesterday’s post by Kathy Sierra, “Inspiring your user-evangelists.” This is a must read for anyone who really wants to create a base of passionate users, rather than just increasing the numbers on this month’s campaign. What good is a 200% increase in March’s numbers if it means that May’s numbers are so abysmal in comparison that you get fired? The adage that you’re only as good as your last campaign is true when your numbers are all over the place. Consistency in performance is what your employer/client wants. We love those large spikes, but only in that we want to find out what caused them so they don’t go down.

Down is bad… 😉

More after the jump. Continue reading “Passionate Users and ROI Calculation”

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Touring Intel and PodTech

I’m still in California meeting with the Intel Software Network and even though we’ve been pretty busy thus far, I convinced Jeremiah Owyang to give me a tour of his new digs at PodTech. I’ve known Jeremiah for a long time, first as a fellow member of the Podcast Roundtable and now as a good friend and colleague, so it was absolutely great to finally meet in person.

Jeremiah was in a meeting when I got there, so Linda Furrier and Darold Massaro were kind enough to take time out of their busy schedule to entertain me for a bit while he finished up. I got to meet John Furrier for a brief minute, which was great, and I raided their snack area in the meantime.

podtech's yummy snack roompodtech's yummy snack area

Within a few minutes I got to talk with both Jeremiah and Scoble, and all-in-all, the tour was quick but fun.

Scoble even alerted me to the bruhaha he kicked off over the weekend re: Intel’s New 45 Nanometer Processors. I enjoyed the video and was impressed by the delivery by Kelin Kuhn, the head of the department that is responsible for the breakthough, in that she talked in such a way that an admittedly clueless person like myself could follow along as to why a 10x reduction in gate leakage was beneficial. I guess I missed all of the coverage (ValleyWag, New York Times, etc.) due to my trips to Las Vegas and San Francisco in the last 10 days.

Jeremiah, Scoble and I chatted briefly about ‘bad press’ and ‘good press’, and the overall effect. I think that this much buzz, whether it is over a link-love battle or not, is great for both Podtech and Intel. What do you think?

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Podcast With The CEO of Traineo

Traineo.com is a weight loss/training social network. This is an interview I did with the CEO.

I’m actually having some fun playing around with this site, and I can see a place for this in the social networking space. My mom always said she never kept weight off unless she went to Weight Watchers. It was the support and accountability, she claimed, that really helped her take it off (and keep it off).

Traineo has the potential to be a support system for people who want to lose weight, or even those who want to work out effectively and productively. I know I enjoyed scrounging through the profiles, finding other pilates nerds, so if you’re into something weird (like the Wii sports group I joined), you might find other people to help support your weird-o physical fitness addiction.

If you like 43things (and who doesn’t???), you’ll love Traineo.

Subscribe to the podcast in or grab the feed here.

A full listing of my podcasts can be found here.

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CEO of Allbusiness.com Leaves To Fill The Same Position At IAC Media

I was sad to recieve an email from my direct supervisor at Allbusiness.com, Peter Levinson, letting me know that Peter Horan, current CEO of Allbusiness.com, was leaving to become the CEO of IAC Media. The CEOs of Ask.com and Citysearch, among other properties, will answer to him.

In this role, Mr. Horan will report to President and COO Doug Lebda and will be responsible for the growth of the Media & Advertising sector within IAC. The CEOs of the Media & Advertising businesses will now report to Mr. Horan, including Jim Lanzone of Ask.com, Briggs Ferguson of Citysearch, Richard Stalzer of IAC Advertising Solutions, and Scott Garell of IAC Consumer Applications and Portals.

Congratulations to Peter Horan are in order, but he’ll be missed at Allbusiness.com, certainly.

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Friendster Partners With Google

Out with Yahoo and in with Google as search provider and ad serving technology for the ailing Friendster.

Friendster – the pioneer social network founded in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams – is going to partner with Google to place ads on the community site and to power the search technology. It’s a deal similar to the Google/MySpace partnership inked last year. The financials were not disclosed for the approximately two-year deal. Of course, Friendster’s sub-1 million monthly unique visitors pale in comparison to MySpace, so it’s hardly close to the $900 million that Google agreed to pay News Corp to be the ad provider and exclusive search engine for Fox’s online properties, including MySpace. By partnering with Google (goog), Friendster will stop using Yahoo (yhoo) as its search engine.

Bambi says Friendster is trying to establish itself as the hip ‘after college’ social network, but I think that Facebook is doing nicely in that area already. Friendster should try something innovative, like becoming a parody of itself or really making fun of it’s position. They could be the Rodney Dangerfield of social networking. Certainly they are at a point that something innovative has to be done or they will never re-succeed.

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Interview With Business Blogging Expert, Ted Demopoulos

I enjoyed interviewing Ted, author of What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting back in mid December. Ted featured roughly 100 bloggers in the book, including me, and I’ll review it as soon as I receive my copy in the mail.

You can read more about the book here (book blog) and here (on Amazon) What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting. I hope you enjoy the interview with Ted Demopoulos, author of two books on business blogging.


 or grab the feed

A full listing of my podcasts can be found here.

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Gearing Up For Affiliate Summit

While everyone else is talking CES this week, affiliate marketers are gearing up for Affiliate Summit (aff link). I’m pleased to go as press this year and I’m really looking forward to covering this event in video, rather than only by blogging.

My husband, the world’s best looking camera man, will be going as well to film me. I’ll be staying at the Palace Station Hotel, so I won’t be on site. However, I’ll be at Bally’s the majority of the time, certainly.

I’m so looking forward to meeting all the people I’ve connected with over the past almost 2 years of blogging, and I can’t wait to interview as many people as possible. How many others of you are going? Are there any companies that you have burning questions about? Any topics you want to make sure are answered?