Alec Saunders SquawkBox

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’ll be moderating the cable providers session at VON next week.  It’s happening on Tuesday at 2:00 PM in the afternoon.  Here’s a little podcast previewing the session, which I recorded with Laura Nembach from Pulver last friday afternoon.

http://vonradio.pulver.com/podcasts/VONradio-alec_saunders_von_preview.mp3

One of the things I’ve always admired about Microsoft, both during my time as an employee there, and after, is the incredible sense of civic duty the company has.  Annually the employees give 10’s of millions of dollars to their favorite causes and charities.  Corporately, the annual United Way campaign used to raise in excess of $20 million during the time I was there.  And the company generously matched the first $12,000 that any employee chose to contribute.

So, without further ado, I give you this piece of Microsoft internal email, which appeared in my inbox forwarded through several people who are indirectly connected with the company.  It’s an inspiration, and a reflection of an unbelievably generous spirit.

I’m cleaning up some old postings on my blog, and came across a link to Ray Ozzie’s Dynamics of Platform Businesses from 2002.  This is excellent, and carries the credibility of having been written by the creator of the Notes and Groove platforms.  Recommended reading.

Gosh we live in interesting times.  Light Reading reports that AOL is set to launch a freestanding VoIP service at next week’s VON. AOL Internet Phone Service will be available to AOL and non-AOL members.

AOL’s free instant messenger (IM) client, AIM, is the most popular IM client in the US with 41.7 million users, well ahead of MSN and Yahoo IM services. But AOL now appears ready to pursue new VOIP users far beyond its existing user base.

MSN?  Yahoo?  Who’s next?

The Register has published a scathing critique of Meg Whitman’s lead generation plan for Skype / EBay. 

However it’s eBay’s initial explanation of how it intends to use Skype that will give even VoIP’s most passionate advocates the willies. eBay hopes to monetize the user based by selling their account details to junk callers, at $2 to $12 per lead. Whether Skype users even get the chance to opt-out from this new form of "voice spam" remains to be seen, but eBay’s Whitman could have chosen a better example of ’synergy’.

As we’ve seen with the internet, with its junk email, blog comment spam, and machine generated pages stuffing the search engines and diluting the search results - anything left open and untended simply becomes the next technological arms race. Closed networks rarely have this problem. Now eBay is handing the beleagured incumbents a marketing gift.

SPIT (Spam on IP Telephony) is going to be a huge problem, no doubt.  However, the Register is off base here.  EBay hides buyer / seller details today, precisely because disintermediating the buyer and seller is key to their business model.   It’s more likely that the incumbents are going to be the source of SPIT, in my opinion. 

And that is part of what Iotum is about… stay tuned.