Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Looking for a job in communications?  Fancy hanging out with nice guy Pat Phelan in Ireland a bit?  Good stout, I've heard.  Anyway, Pat's posted a help wanted advertisement on his blog, offering $135K US plus benefits, for a business development manager to help his company, Cubic Telecom, to move to the next level.

Check it out.

JAJAH's trajectory has been nothing short of awe inspiring.  Rapid financings, and huge growth have combined to create a remarkable success story in a very short period of time.  Today the company announced a $20 million C round led by Intel Capital. The money is a home run, and by itself speaks volumes about the company's ability to execute.  The grand slam in this deal are the other benefits that Intel brings to the table.  As part of the deal, JAJAH gets access to Intel's channel and IP portfolio.

Additionally, a business agreement was made with Intel Corporation that includes business and marketing components. Intel will provide JAJAH access to their extensive community of product dealers, OEM customers and developers, to further their reach into global development communities. As an Intel Capital portfolio company, Jajah will also be able to participate in Intel Capital's IP Access Program, which will give Jajah access to Intel's extensive VoIP patent portfolio.

While the agreement doesn't restrict JAJAH from partnering with others, it's safe to assume that any new development from this agreement will focus on Intel devices.  It apparently also signals a renewed focus by JAJAH on embedded devices.  Quoted in the press release, JAJAH co-founder and Voice 2.0 visionary Roman Scharf says:

"The deeper JAJAH can be embedded into Intel solutions, the better for customers everywhere. It is our intention to bring a best-of-class, next generation solution to the market which can be embedded and optimized for any computing device."

And now, of course, we all have an inkling of Intel's strategy for their IP portfolio.

More from TechCrunch here.  Pat Phelan reports that sources at Deutsche Telecom assigned a value of $125M to JAJAH. 

Ottawa entrepreneur Misha Nossik dropped me a note a few minutes ago to say that his company, Thintropy, as been acquired by XDS Inc. As part of the terms of the deal, Misha will stay on as President of XDS Canada Inc. 

Misha showed a rocking demo of thin client audio and video streaming at a recent Ottawa DemoCamp.  In his new role as President of XDS Canada he'll be responsible for extending that vision to more consumer "virtualization" products.

Congrats!

Is the world ready for video ringtones?  Certainly the team at Vringo thinks so.  Vringo is a new startup which has combined elements of social networking with video  ringtones / ringback tones, to create an intriguing new service.  It allows you to:

• share videos with your friends who are also Vringo users.
• specify a video to be used as a ringtone on your buddies phones when you call. 
• let your buddies specify a video ringback tone to be viewed on your phone, when you call.

The video content is either free, user created content, or licensed content from a 3rd party.  One can see all kinds of promotional and licensing opportunities in this kind of platform. 

First demoed at 3GSM on Symbian phones, today Vringo announced that they have ported their application to J2ME, which gives them access to more phones from Motorola, Ericsson, and others.

Press Release follows…

VRINGO LAUNCHES SHARED VIDEO RINGTONES ON THE MOBILE JAVA PLATFORM
Startup breaks the J2ME mobile video barrier; ports its outgoing “Vringo”client to mass-market, youth-market handsets 
 
San Francisco, May 9, 2007 —– Vringo, a company developing new applications for mobile personalization, announced today that its “Vringos”  — shared video ringtones – can now be sent and received by phones running the J2ME (Java Micro Edition) platform.  The announcement closely follows the world’s first demonstrations of Vringo at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona and at DEMO in Palm Springs in February, using the Symbian platform. In both its existing Symbian and new Java implementations, Vringo is also the first mobile phone application to automatically play the specific video ringtone (out of many shared clips) associated with the caller.
 
Beating industry predictions by more than a year, Vringo’s J2ME release now extends the service’s reach from the Symbian/Nokia and Windows Mobile/PDA platforms to Sony-Ericsson and Motorola phones, among others.  The wider range of handsets opens up the U.S. market to the viral, youth-oriented service. 
 
In a new, more socially interactive model than that of previous video and even audio ringtones, Vringos are associated with a person, not a phone. Each two-to-fifteen-second Vringo video clip is sent out to entertain a receiving Vringo buddy, not “rung” on the user’s own incoming calls.  Clips can be purchased, downloaded for free, or shot on users’ own phones.  Frequently changed and passed around the mobile social network, Vringos let subscribers share their enthusiasm for a great singer/movie/sports figure, a memory, a moment caught on the phone’s camera, or simply share a laugh, à la YouTube.
 
“When we demoed on Symbian and Windows Mobile, people loved the idea.  They said, ‘This is great stuff, but get back to us when you have Java working,’” said Jon Medved, Vringo CEO. “That’s because the great majority of ringtone consumers carry J2ME feature phones. Most of them also said that it would take years for our application to run on Java, and I think we’ve blown people away by getting it done so quickly.” 
 
The Vringo application — now in beta and to be marketed to carriers as a managed service –  will be demonstrated at the JavaOne conference May 8-11 at the Moscone center in San Francisco.
 
With the J2ME hurdle cleared, Vringo releases for additional Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung and LG phones are due soon. The company continues to work on expanding the Vringo feature set to enable more and more users to “Vringo” to the limit of every handset’s capability.
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About Vringo
Vringo is the world’s first video ringtone sharing community. Co-founded in 2006 by venture capitalist Jon Medved, now CEO, and mobile software expert David Goldfarb, now CTO, Vringo’s management team comes from leading companies such as Comverse, NMS Communications, Siemens, IDT, Earthlink and Shopping.com. Vringo’s Chairman of the Board, Dan Ciporin, was CEO and Chairman of Shopping.com, sold to eBay for $620 million. Vringo is backed by private investors.

The giants of the technology industry have some pretty fascinating bits of intellectual property lurking in their patent portfolios.  For most, patents are a defensive strategy, rather than a business in and of themselves; although in recent years Microsoft, for example, has become much more sophisticated about how they manage those patents.  Some of the patents these players are sitting on, though, are potentially very disruptive, should they ever decide to flex their muscle a little. 

Take, for instance, this little beauty that was pointed out to me yesterday. The abstract for US Patent 7120140, titled Digital Browser Phone, reads:

A telephone system wherein all the functions of a digital telephone can be accessed and implemented on a personal computer alone, thereby eliminating the need for a telephone set. By means of the computer display and mouse, keyboard or other input/output command devices, a user accesses and implement all digital telephone functions without the physical telephone set, the personal computer also providing the audio function. A graphical representation of a telephone set or other telephone-related form is provided on the computer display and accessed by the mouse, keyboard or other command device, this being accomplished by a computer program providing graphical interface implementation. A significant advantage of the system is computer access to and utilization of digital telephone functions from a remote location with communication via Internet, LAN, WAN, RAS or other mediums.

It covers softphones, generally, and more specifically softphones used in business settings.  Filed in 2000 and granted late in 2006, this is Intel property.  If you're a softphone vendor this has got to send a shiver down your spine, and then make you wonder what kind of relationship you can and should have with Intel.