Alec Saunders SquawkBox

I gave an interview to Bruce Stewart of O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony website, yesterday.  He was apparently impressed, and wrote about it on the website today.  Thanks Bruce!

OpenZoep launched yesterday.  Zoep is a Dutch group which has built an open source client side call platform.  I had a chance to chat with Willem-Jan Schutte, one of their directors, yesterday.  He showed me a browser based softphone they’ve built with their platform that runs as a FireFox extension.  These guys really get Voice 2.0.  They’ve put their platform into the wild, and will find ways to monetize the apps built from operating the network. 

Just sat through a short presentation from FON.  FON has developed a downloadable ROM upgrade for WiFi routers that allows you to share your WiFi hotspot securely.  It’s a pretty interesting push.  What they’ve done is built a business model which allows you, if you wish, to charge for access to your router.  Or, if you wish to provide it for free, to be able to authenticate and use for free and FON hotspot.

I’ve been thinking about doing this at my house for some time.  Perhaps the time has now come.

I have a lot of sympathy for Michael Arrington.  Yesterday he posted a relatively minor criticism of Tello’s launch. Tello didn’t court the blogosphere.  Personally, I agree with his critique.  Working with bloggers has been one of the most successful and lowest cost strategies which iotum has executed to date.  The resulting conversation enhances our product, and builds awareness, not to mention building some good friendships along the way.  So, Tello could have done itself some favours. From talking with people I know at Tello yesterday, it sounds as if it was just a mis-step — Tello’s a small company trying to execute a big strategy.  Stuff happens, or in this case, didn’t happen.

The reaction to Michael’s critique is way over the top.  As I write this, there are 92 comments, including a substantial percentage of really negative comments, to the original post.  A lot of them are personal attacks — he’s been called pompous, biased, and many worse things. 

Keep your chin up Michael.

I spent yesterday at the pre-show for ETel.  This truly is a VoIP hacker-fest.  Part way through the day, for example, someone came running out with a Treo running a Linux shell. 

There are a lot of old friends, and new faces here.  For instance, I had dinner with Phil Wolff from SkypeJournal.  We had a spirited discussion about the future role of the incumbents in a Voice 2.0 world.  How long, I asked, until they are simply resellers for content coming from the portal players?

I also ended up in a deep discussion of identity with John Todd, and some folks proposing a new identity standard. 

The next two days are looking very meaty, and very interesting.  The focus here is a contrast to the other VoIP shows I attend (VON, and IT Expo).  This event is very much about the possibilities of emerging VoIP apps — tomorrow vs today.