Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Topic #1: We started off with the TED Conference.The conference and website are subtitled "Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers", and there are some truly amazing videos up there this week.  Have you seen any of the remarkable video coming out that event this week?  Two of my favorites are educator Roy Gould previewing Microsoft's World Wide Telescope, and Steve Jurvetson talking about his weekend hobby "Model Rocketry".

Topic #2: A week ago a US judge certified a class action suit against Microsoft that claimed Microsoft knowingly allowed computers to be labeled Windows Vista Capable in the fall of 2006, despite the fact that the hardware being sold would never be capable of running the most desired Windows Vista features, like the AeroGlass interface.  This morning, damaging internal emails were published on the Seattle Post Intelligencer website, which show that Microsoft employees were debating this campaign pretty extensively among themselves at the time. One of the claims being made is that Intel pressured them to lower the requirements so that Intel could make it's quarter. We discuss where the guilt actually lies… Is it with Microsoft for misleading with it's logo program, Intel for pressuring Microsoft to lower requirements, the PC manufacturers who took Microsoft incentives to put the logo on the PC… or the consumer for not doing enough homework before buying the PC?

Topic #3: Yesterday blogs were aflutter over an announcement that Apple would hold an iPhone Software Roadmap event on March 6. Clearly a big deal.  By late in the day, however, BusinessWeek columnist Peter Burrows had written a piece basically saying that this was the start of a war between Apple and RIM for the consumer.  We discuss who Apple's target is… RIM, Nokia, or Microsoft?

 

 Squawk Box Feb 28 [23:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Join us for this morning's Squawk Box call, where we'll have a little fun talking about

• The latest presentations coming from the TED Conference.  
• Microsoft's latest woes - a class action suit alleging that the company certified PC's as Vista Capable when they weren't.
• And the upcoming Apple SDK event.  Is it really an opening shot in the war vs RIM?

11 AM EST, on FREE Conference Calls on Facebook.   

We had an enjoyable, and eventful call this morning with Yugma's Karel Lukas.  Karel explained their company's products, and business models as well as their vision for the future of web sharing.   We also had the opportunity for people to try out the new international calling features on iotum FREE Conference Calls on Facebook.

Enjoy! 

 

 Squawk Box Feb 27 with Karel Lukas [34:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We have some big news today.  iotum's FREE Conference Call application on Facebook has gone global.  In combination with our partners Truphone, Abbeynet, and Moi Telecom, we have provided options for people who want to use the FREE Conference Call application that will allow them to participate in a call from virtually every point on the planet.

Now, you have three calling options available to you:

• Direct dial from home, office, or mobile, in the United States, Canada and France.  Use this option when you're out of the office and need to call from your mobile, or if you just feel more comfortable using a telephone handset.
• VoIP. From anywhere in the world, you can call using a PC.  Use this option in countries where we don't have dial-in access, or if you don't want to tie up your home phoneline.
• Call Back. From many countries in the world, you can select a phone number and get called back on your telephone.  This is a great option if you have one of the many plans where you don't have to pay for incoming minutes.

If you have a look at the application on Facebook, this is what the call dashboard looks like now.  Pretty easy, right?

As Andy Abramson noted, this is a great example of how relationships created in the blogging world pay dividends.  My friend and Abbeynet CEO Luca Filigheddu and I have been talking for ages about how to do business together, but it wasn't until VON last fall that I did the initial meetings with companies who might be able to help us extend our footprint internationally.  Those meetings were driven largely by relationships that Andy helped foster in the blogging world… a little wine never hurts the cause.    And here we are four months later rolling out the services.

We also explicitly took a partnering approach to build out the FREE Conference Calls service. We did not want to build out a network the world over, nor did we have the expertise to interact with carriers all over the world. Instead, we chose to work with companies who had already built those relationships.  Moreover, this is just the start.  As we move forward look for more relationships like these that will help our users, wherever they are, have local access to what I think of as the best conference calling service on the market today.

And on a personal note, thank you to the iotum team; my great friend and business partner Howard Thaw plus Noam, Saad, Tom, Julien, Rob and our newest member, our Chairman Randall Howard, for the hard work that has gotten us here. 

When I had Peter Csathy from Sightspeed on Squawkbox last week I asked him about small business uses for his services.  Sly fellow that he is, he essentially said "Stay tuned".  Yesterday Sightspeed and VTel announced a partnership targeted at small and medium business.  Under the terms of their deal:

1. “SightSpeed Business”, their SMB focused offering, will be installed on the VTEL conference room systems. What that means is that VTEL systems will be able to interoperate with all SightSpeed client endpoints (including all consumer endpoints).  Now small businesses can have the benefits of video conferencing with remote workers, without having to install a conferencing system in every site.
2. In addition, VTEL will introduce and market SightSpeed Business into its reseller channel — a significant broadening of the Sightspeed distribution channel.

This is an interesting and logical counterpoint to a lot of the video activity we've seen coming from Sightspeed's chief competition in the desktop video space — Skype.  By partnering with an established standards based player in this way, Sightspeed is creating new value and a new price point for professional multi-point video conferencing, and they're taking advantage of established standards in a way that Skype may find more difficult to emulate.