Jaxtr, Free voice calling service bites the dust?

Jaxtr, the VoIP widget company, has been acquired by Sabsebol, a free conferencing startup. (Hotmail cofounder saber Bhatia is behind the startup SabseBol) To me it looks like a firesale. I have always been critical about jaxtr revenue model. Free model doesn’t work. Voice 2.0 is not about giving away free stuff, it’s about innovation. The irony is that sabsebol has been around less time than Jaxtr. So Is this a good news or bad news. Depends on how you see the deal, Good that the technology and some folks will be saved from disaster. Bad that another startups bites the dust in the Voice 2.0 arena.

Venturebeat talks about merger between Jajah and Jangl, which is not Completely true . There was no merger between jajah and jangl. It was the demise of jangl that triggered the acquisition of jangl’s technology and hiring of some key folks.

The concept of Call-me-Widget for blogs, social networking seemed like a huge idea. Alas, there was no revenue model around this cool idea. Jaxtr, for instance, had raised more than $21.5 million dollars. So where did all this money go? It was all used for supporting Free international calls. I’m guessing they ran out of money and the inevitable happened. The fundamental business model behind free service is weak. The users who like free service will always look for free service. Free doesn’t generate revenue. I have written about jaxtr and their business model many a times in the past. Check out these links here and here.

I still don’t see a synergy between a free conference call provider and call-me-widget startup. To me, it looks like the deal is all about the 10 million users that Jaxtr has amassed all these years. And Maybe, sabsebol wants to penetrate social networking arena. It will be interesting to see if sabsebol will continue to provide free international calling.

I hate to write sad things about Voice Startups. Will I ever get to write about a Voice 2.0 startup that really makes it big? Please no skype; there are enough folks out there to rave about them. Maybe ifByPhone, Jaduka, Voxeo, Iotum,Phweet etc. What do you guys think?

The wait is over, the New iPhone is here

Ok Folks, the cat’s finally out of the bag. Apple today announced the most awaited iPhone 3GS , the newer, faster, most powerful iPhone yet, packet with incredible features. Oh BTW, the “S” stands for speed. Looks like Palm Pre is déjà vu now. Everyone is talking about the new iPhone. It’s a repeat of Google Wave vs. Microsoft’s Bing. Blame it on Apple.

Lots of interesting features with the new iPhone 3GS:
• Upto twice as fast as iPhone 3G. A new processor built in. Launching messages is 2.1 faster.
• Longer Battery Life
• 3 Mega pixel sensor
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA for faster networking speeds
• With iPhone 3GS you can send photos and video by email or MMS and post them to MobileMe or YouTube with just one tap.
• Camera with auto focus, auto exposure, and auto white balance
• Special macro and low light modes
• iPhone 3G S takes advantage of the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard for stunning high-quality 3D graphics, making mobile gaming and other graphic intense applications better than ever
• Hands free operation using Voice Control feature.
• With voice control you can play your favorite music by artist, album or playlist.
• iPhone 3G S features a new built-in digital compass for instant navigation. The Compass app shows you which way you are headed and rotates as you change direction.
• Nike + built in
• Zooming of text, inverting video, and voice over support

Price and Availability:
• $199 for 16GB version.
• $299 for 32GB version.
• Available on June 19th.

If you don’t find the features that you wished was part of the new iPhone, Don’t worry, there is an app store with more than 50,000 applications. Hmm. Makes me wonder who the hell needs so many apps.

IEEE’s Change the world Competition

I got a mail from one of the representative of IEEE mentioning about “Change the world Competition”, for which 15 finalist have submitted their ideas. I was really impressed. The reason being, its not one of those regular startup PR pitches. This is a contest that gives students from across the world an opportunity to demonstrate excellence in the development, design and implementation of technology that solves a real-life problem, and ultimately benefits humanity.

Listed below are some of the projects:

Guide Robot for the Blind
This project is trying to improve the dynamic of the blind people when traveling from one point to other and while they are in a building or group of facilities.

AGROBOT
The idea of applying Robotics in agriculture is very new. The main area of application of robots in agriculture is at the cultivation stage. The agricultural industry is behind other industries in using robots because the sort of jobs involved in agriculture are not straight forward and many repetitive tasks are not exactly the same every time. In most cases, a lot of factors have to be considered (i.e.: Environmental conditions and nature of crop) before the commencement of a task.

Project Spread The Light
The Nigerian state has over the years been experiencing an epileptic power supply, transmission and distribution problems. The spread the light project is an initiative we developed to address the electricity problem in Nigeria from a small scale perspective. due to the abundance supply of sunlight in Nigeria a tropical country we designed a solar energy generation module which utilize this abundant sun hours ( an average of 9hrs) to provide electricity in a small settlement in the eastern part of the country. The settlement has been off the grid with no plan of being connected in the near future.

I know these projects are not as fancy as twitter/facebook/myspace apps, but they are done for a noble cause. So if you guys have some spare time, go ahead and vote for the best project.

Tungle.me, scheduling meetings made easier

We have used Click-to-Call technology and now here is Click-to-meet technology from Tungle, the intelligent meeting scheduler. The new service helps scheduling meeting very easy. Tungle.me gives users a personalized URL where contacts can see a user’s free/busy calendar and quickly schedule a meeting by proposing multiple meeting times without ever having to sign up to Tungle. When the meeting is booked, everyone gets a meeting confirmation and their calendars are automatically updated. The personalized Tungle.me URL can easily be sent to anyone via email, IM, Twitter and other networking and communication outlets.

I have not used the service yet, but it definitely seems like a very useful tool. In addition to tungle.me URL, it support facebook and web widgets using which users can display their availability real-time. The Tungle.me Facebook widget gives an “at-a-glance” view of the availability of all friends that have the Tungle.me Facebook app installed, making it easy for users to connect with their network

Check out the video below:


I can see a lot of potential in this application. In a corporate world, not a day goes by without a meeting being scheduled. In fact, this is something Microsoft should have supported themselves. Well, no complains, we have tungle for help. Tungle allows people to share calendars across companies and platforms, easily schedule meetings with individuals or groups inside or outside their company, propose multiple meeting times in invitations and much more. It currently syncs with Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal and Entourage for Mac. Tungle is also working with IBM to accelerate Lotus Notes.

So folks go ahead and Tungle, it’s free

Google Wave, Communication or Messaging 2.0

Google’s Wave is surely creating wave. When I quickly glanced over the news of Google Wave, it didn’t entice me all the way. But my curiosity didn’t die. So did a little more digging and watched the launch video. Hmm... I have to admit, it just blew me away. It’s a bold thinking and just awesome. I guess only Google has the audacity to think beyond the ordinary. This is what I call the new Communication or messaging 2.0. Email was considered so offline and thanks to Google’s Gmail, which did change the perception a little bit. And now, Wave is the gone change the way group communication, sharing and editing is done. Welcome to the New World of Communication!


Here is what Google description of “wave” is:

A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

As always, wave has exposed API’s using which developers can add lot of innovative features. Wave uses XMPP (RFC 3920) protocol to allow near real-time communication between two wave servers. The Google Wave APIs come in two flavors: Embed and Extensions. With Embed, developers can bring waves into their own site via a simple JavaScript API. With Extensions, developers can write programs, which can be packaged as Robots or Gadgets that provide rich functionality inside the Google Wave web client.

Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:
• Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.
• The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service.

Check out the video:



For additional information, check out the links below:
Wave Protocol
Google Wave Developer Blog
Google Wave

Stay tuned for technical details of Wave.

Free Conference Calls, Who pays?

We all have used free conference feature and iam sure we love it because it's free. Ever wondered how these companies survive providing free service. It’s a little tricky and complicated. Thanks to the Telco regulations. Apparently the whole free conference call business model works by arbitraging inter-carrier termination fees. So big Telco operators were picking up the bill for all these free conference calls. According to the Telco regulations, long distance carriers need to pay huge per minute fees to terminate calls to small rural carriers. This is required to support those rural carriers help pay for their infra-structure in order to provide good quality phone service.

Things were hunky dory until the operators realized that they were paying huge money to these rural carriers, who were partnering with free conference vendors and sharing the revenue. So lately, big operators have refused to pay these rural carries for free calls, terming them as “illegal”. So it comes as no surprise that Foonz, a free conference call provider, hung up their boots. It’s definitely a wake up call to all those free call service provider that rely on inter-carrier termination fees. Things have changed a lot. Big Telco’s are very watchful of their termination fees and would do anything to block these kind of services. Don’t be surprised if you hear “All circuits or busy” when u dial those free conference call numbers.

What changed the whole game plan is the unlimited nationwide calling plan. With an unlimited voice plan, users can dial these rural carrier numbers for conference calls and still pay nothing. However, operators will have to pay exuberant termination fees to the rural carrier. The regulation as such was intended for good. But this loophole has been exploited by some of these free voice calls companies. Couple of years back, ATT filed a lawsuit in IOWA “deceitful and unlawful schemes” like FuturePhone’s caused a jump from $2,000 per month to $2 million per month in the fees billed AT&T by an Iowa rural Telco.

Here are some of my thoughts:
• As fellow blogger Alec suggested, operator should come up with premium numbers for conferencing features, the price could be a little higher. The revenue from these numbers could be shared between operators and the vendors
• Nationwide unlimited calling excludes these premium services. Consumers interested in using these premium features pay the extra price per minute. Again, the revenue shared.
• Freemium model. Some x number of minutes free every month and charge for the additional minutes used by consumer. Hoping the extra minutes that users buy shall cover the free usage.
• Skype model, Free VoIP conference calls, for PSTN/Mobile origination/termination, charge the users.
• Buy Whole sale bundled minutes from operator.

Next iPhone coming this July?

There have been constant rumours about the release of new iPhone from apple. Earlier it was supposed to be announced during the WWDC conference scheduled next month. Later this date was changed due to Steve jobs unavailability. So here is the latest scoop? According to Appadvice , the next iPhone is gone be launched this Jul 17th 2009 . A lengthy list of specs has been listed by the source. ( Apparently the site has gone offline due to huge traffic. Looks like any rumors about iPhone sells big-time. Hope it turns out be a worthy rumor )


Here is the list of specs:
• 32GB and 16GB to replace current capacities
• $199 and $299 price-points to be maintained
• 3.2 Megapixel camera
• Video recording & editing capabilities
• Ability to send a picture & video via MMS
• Discontinuation of the metal band surrounding the edge of the device
• OLED screen
• 1.5X The battery life
• Double the RAM and processing power
• Built-in FM transmitter
• Apple logo on the back to light up
• Rubber-tread backing
• Sleeker design
• Built-in compass
• Revolutionary combination of the camera, GPS, compass, and Google maps to identify photo and inform about photo locations.
• Turn by turn directions

Video recording and editing capabilities have been mentioned in the past by couple of sources for a while now. So looks like this one will definitely make it to the next version of iPhone.

Here are some of the features I would love to see:
• 3.2 Megapixel camera
• Video recording & editing capabilities
• Ability to send a picture & video via MMS
• Built-in FM transmitter
• Revolutionary combination of the camera, GPS, compass, and Google maps to identify photo and inform about photo locations.

For time being I have postponed my plans to buy iPhone. Hope the wait is not too long.

News for weekend warriors

Demands on Network Are an iPhone Hang-Up
More search options and other updates from our searchology event
Could this be the hardware spec for Microsoft's Pink phone?
Import your mail and contacts from other accounts
Apple has made no more than $20-45m in revenue from the app store
Apple Serious About Background App Support For iPhone 3.0
Facebook Prepares To Launch Live Video Chat Product
Facebook raises $150 million more to cash out employees
Wolfram|Alpha just went live for the very first time

Ballmer says, right time for entrepreneurs

This is one of the best videos for wannabe entrepreneurs. The advice comes from none other than Steve Ballmer , CEO of Microsoft. He says that this is time for entrepreneurs to take the plunge. Companies like Microsoft, apple were started during the recession times. Steve has some important tips for entrepreneurs. Check out the video embedded below

Mobile VoIP, heartburn to Telco Operator

According to Gartner, More Than 50 Percent of Mobile Voice Traffic Will Be Carried Using End-to-End VoIP by 2019. This poses a huge and direct challenge to the $692.6 billion global mobile voice market. I’m sure the operators would fight tooth and nail to block those applications that use end-to-end IP network for voice calls. Even the mobile application developer platforms provided by handset vendors disable any mobile VoIP access for third party developers, except for the WIFI. Earlier, it was the turn of iPhone and now today Microsoft announced that Mobile VoIP applications is a big NO NO.

I’m not surprised by this move. I had talked about this earlier. There are so many applications out there that want to use operators IP network to run voice apps. Third-Party applications like Skype, Truphone, Mig33, fring, nimbuzz etc all carry VoIP traffic using the mobile phone. These applications are very attractive to consumers and definitely a headache to the operators.

Here are some of the highlights of the Gartner report:
• Predicts that over time traditional network-based mobile carriers face the real prospect of losing a major slice of their voice traffic and revenue to new non-infrastructure players that use VoIP.
• despite this significant potential, conditions for the rapid expansion in the use of mobile VoIP are not yet right and are not likely to become right for at least five years and perhaps as long as eight years.
• Mass-scale adoption of end-to-end mobile VoIP calling will not happen until fourth-generation (4G) networks are fully implemented in 2017
• In 10 years time we expect that 30 percent of mobile voice traffic will be carried out through third-party mobile portals, such as Google, Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo, which will adopt wireless VoIP service as a voice option to their current communications hub.”
• Competing with mobile portal VoIP will be wireless carriers that offer circuit and VoIP voice and data services, and resellers and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that also offer services off the carrier networks.
• Biggest competitors to mobile VoIP may be text messaging and e-mail, as people may prefer to use these types of communication because of their non-intrusive, less emotional and less time-consuming nature.

For more information, check out the report available on Gartner’s Web site