Alec Saunders SquawkBox

I had lunch (Thai, if it matters) today with my friend Linda Campbell, who runs the strategic alliances group at QNX Software Systems.  Over the lunch, I asked if she had heard about the Microsoft Research Group’s experimental OS called Singularity.  Like QNX Neutrino, Singularity is also a micro-kernal based system.  

We speculated that perhaps the Microsoft Research team was paying homage to QNX because the terms singularity and neutrino are both from the world of physics, both terms signify infinitesimal objects, and both operating systems are micro-kernal architectures.  However, it’s worth noting that a neutrino is infinitesimal and massless, while a singularity is infinitesimal with infinite mass. Somehow that seems fitting. A quick read of the whitepapers on the Singularity website revealed that, while not infinitely massive, the Singularity kernal is quite a bit larger than Neutrino.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

MSN Desktop Search really is a marvelous tool.  Occasionally it turns up the most unexpected things, such as this hilarious college admissions essay which I received in email in 1995.  It was hidden away in an email archive on my home PC.  Enjoy…

Tom Howe’s Ernie Project continues to attract attention.  The latest two posts on his blog include a high level Ernie Architecture, and some cool brainstorming ideas he’s received by email.  I think the PayPal PIN idea is pretty cool.  What I want is *P on my phone.  The scenario: I am driving somewhere, and need to make a quick purchase.  For example — let’s pretend I’ve forgotten my mum’s birthday.  So, I call 1-800-FLOWERS, and order a bouquet to be delivered and press *P, plus a short PIN code, to securely transmit payment.  This actually happened to me (forgetting her birthday) a couple of years ago, and I actually did this, but instead of *P I had to dig my credit card out of my wallet and dictate the number over the telephone while clutching the card in the center of my steering wheel, and driving on an icy street in the middle of winter.

The Voice 2.0 meme is really starting to click.  The idea that voice and the web, together, is a powerful new platform for applications is spreading.  The latest thoughts on this come from Ted Wallingford in his piece Voice Over Everything.  Ted writes:

We now see voice apps beginning to meld with the Web. Voice over Everything is a place where the conveniences of modern computing—the web browser, the mouse, the graphical user interface—are used to facilitate, speed, and optimize voice applications such as telephony.  With Voice over Everything, the lines between web browsing, telephone calling, instant messaging, and task scheduling are all blurred.  Instead of rigidly defined application boundaries, Voice over Everything portends organic, human-centric ways of leveraging voice for data, and data for voice.

Ted’s "Voice Over Everything" is another piece, like Jeff Pulver’s Purple Minutes, building on the idea that IP telephony is more than just replicating the PSTN.  Our industry has to continue to promote this theme.  Otherwise, there literally is no reason to migrate away from the PSTN.

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

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Hello Weblog,

I’m just giving you my updated contact information. Iotum has
moved offices, and since I’ve begun using the Iotum Relevance
Engine to manage my calls, I’m only publishing one phone
number: +1 613-482-9088.

To borrow from Tolkien: One number to rule them all!

Many thanks for your indulgence, and please do update your
address book with my new info.

Cheers,

A

My current contact information:

+—————–
| Alec Saunders
| alec@iotum.com
| CEO
|
| Iotum Corporation
| 6 Gurdwara Rd, Unit 205
| Ottawa, ON K2E 8A3
| work: +1 (613) 482 9088
| fax: +1 (613) 482 9098
| im: alec_saunders@hotmail.com
| web: http://www.iotum.com
+————————————-

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Would you like to be notified like this when Alec’s info changes?

Stop sending me these updates

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