Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Rich Tehrani and Greg Galitzine were among those who heard Yankee Group’s Zeus Kerravala speak this morning at the Avaya Developers Conference.  Kerravala’s theme was that the future of VoIP is in applications. The money is in call centers, softclients, and converged mobile applications.  According to Kerravala:

“We are at the beginning of the market - where the PC was in 1982.  Imagine asking a person before 1982 what they would want to do with a PC. They wouldn’t be able to tell you. This is also the case with VoIP.”

Just as we have seen a wave of folks imitating POTS on VoIP, we should be expecting a wave of application innovation.  My sense is that we’re at the beginning of that wave now.  In silicon valley, the emergence of companies like Jajah, Radio Handi, and Tello is the beginning.  Many more  Jajah’s are just around the corner as cheap hardware, and easy access to the networks make it possible to experiment and learn without breaking the bank.

Paul Kapustka has been showing me snippets of the latest Pulver project — the VONosphere – over the last few weeks.  This site aggregates content from blogs, VON Magazine, Pulvermedia Podcasting Network, and Jeff’s personal blog.

Reading most aggregator sites is a bit like drinking from a firehose.  So far, VONosphere isn’t.  Rather, it seems to be exercising some editorial control to pick and choose stories of interest. 

Blogrolled.

In other Blackberry news, Wired reports that a Blackberry exploit, to be shown at Las Vegas’ DefCon hacker convention, allows unauthorized access to corporate networks running the Blackberry Enterprise Server.  It’s unsurprising that Blackberry would become a target.  The devices are widespread, and most serious users use the BES.  Moreover, the device is powerful enough to run some fairly sophisticated code.

Engadget has photos of the new Blackberry 8100 up this morning.  It’s pretty!  Slim, with a media player, and camera, it’s the next generation of the 7100 with the double-tap keyboard. In the center of one of the photo’s you can see a roller ball, replacing  the scroll wheel which has been a feature of Blackberry since the first products rolled out in the mid-1990’s.

I’d love to see this phone in the 8700 form factor, with a full keyboard.