Just heard from Andy Mercker, one of the VoIP industry’s best and brightest marketing professionals, on his new gig — he’s moved on from Sphere Communications, where he was director of marketing, and has joined VoIP call recording and monitoring specialist Telrex, as its new director of marketing.

I fully expect Andy to raise Telrex’s industry profile up a few notches, and to contribute significantly to its success, just as he did at Sphere.

In addition to his move, Andy gave me an advance peek at an announcement regarding the CallRex™ Professional 3.5,  a new release that provides a bunch of enhancements to Telrex’s flagship product, including greater scalability, enhanced multi-site support and a distributed-services software architecture, streamlined storage and archiving, and additional security.

CallRex was the first VoIP call recording solution verified to record encrypted VoIP calls for Cisco CallManager 5.0, and CallRex version 3.5 now provides additional security to ensure that call recording files cannot be secretly altered.

The market for VoIP call recording and monitoring seems to be heating up significantly, and there are a few companies starting to launch major marketing initiatives looking to win business, including Telrex and Teleformix.

According to Andy, VoIP call recording and monitoring refers to the process of recording and monitoring business-class IP telephony systems, and this market segment is poised for rapid growth due to the fact that:

· IP telephony obsoletes legacy call recording and monitoring technologies, creating a new market opportunity for VoIP-based solutions.

· Call recording and monitoring is becoming a standard business application used for regulatory compliance, dispute resolution, customer service, training, security and more.

Today, I received an email from Moshe Maeir, Chief Flattening Officer at The Flat Planet Phone Company. I hadn’t heard of this company before, or such an unusual title, so suffice it to say I was a bit curious to check them out.

From what I could gather, Flat Planet offers hosted IP-PBX services, mobile to VoIP connectivity (the company is a member of the iotum Relevance Enabled Channel Partner Program), disposable numbers , virtual IVR and other hot communications services, geared for individuals and small businesses that aspire to become instant phone companies. Flat Planet offers to help you “Start Your Own Phone Company in an Hour”, and is charging an extremely low annual fee of $199 to become a Flat Planet partner (i.e., reseller.)

According to the company’s Web site, the Flat Planet Phone system includes a complete hosted softswitch, as well as a billing and customer management system — and the pitch is that no additional investment, equipment or manpower is needed to get set up and running.

The benefits of becoming a Flat Planet partner includes a custom-branded Web site, and tools to market the Flat Planet services under their own brand name. There’s a free beta program in effect for qualified resellers (although I’m not sure what makes a prospect “qualified”), and is open to resellers all over the world. According to the company, participants have applied from Australia, North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Resellers that are accepted to the program will have full access to the system for at least 6 months for free. After the beta period is over, services will be offered at a special discounted rate. Interested parties should contact The Flat Planet Beta Program at beta@flatplanetphone.com.

I’m looking forward to a little travel now, just as the weather is starting to behave wintery (pretty soon NYC will look like this).

Thankfully, upcoming travel will take me south to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO East.

I’ll be moderating, checking out the latest technology on the show floor and sussing out the latest trends,

I’m looking forward to a little travel now, just as the weather is starting to behave wintery (pretty soon NYC will look like this).

Thankfully, upcoming travel will take me south to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO East.

I’ll be moderating, checking out the latest technology on the show floor and sussing out the latest trends, holding meetings in the press room and elsewhere in the convention center (maybe out on a sun-drenched  patio) and generally enjoying catching up with folk and putting new faces to new names.

I’ll be attending from midday Wednesday, January 24th till the show’s end on Friday afternoon. If you’re also attending the show and would like to meet up, please let me know.

Windows Registry optimizer software seems to be in growing demand today. Junk Windows registry entries and a host of other registry errors appear to plague every Wintel-based PC –even brand new ones — and if you clean them up, your machine will supposedly run faster, smoother, and more reliably — i.e, with fewer crashes. (Yeh, I’ve already heard the  “Get a Mac, dummy” refrain — multiple times)

Rich Tehrani recently wrote about his experience with Registry Mechanic, and how it helped speed up a crawling laptop. I’ve also given Registry Mechanic a try, and really like it’s elegant interface and appreciate the rapid speed of the scan it performs. One relatively minor issue with the demo version of the program is that although it’ll reveal all kinds of errors, it will only repair a subset of them (how they determine which ones to repair and which to leave alone is a mystery to me.) Anyway, you need to register and payup to be able to clean all the problems the program finds.

I used Registry Mechanic on a couple of old Windows 98 machines (I keep some old but functioning machines around to use as servers and special purpose units — and to serve as emergency backups just in case.) The software found 896 errors on one desktop, and 643 on an old laptop — and cleaned up about a third of what it found.

The laptop did behave a bit better afterwards — a bit faster on bootup and a little more responsive with Web surfing — but only slightly. The desktop fared worse: it now keeps running the Windows Registry Rebuild application before it’ll boot — adding a good ten minutes to its boot up time. Once it completes the rebuild, it loads fine and runs a bit better. But still, it’s now basically junk if I can’t find a way to fix this new problem — aside from restoring the old, uncleaned registry file.

On the Windows XP machines I’ve tried it on, I couldn’t really detect any noticeable improvements, although running it didn’t create any new problems. Bottom line — Registry Optimizer software can deliver some benefits, but it can also cause new problems, so before you jump in and start using them, first spend a little time learning how they work and how to distinguish between the different types of errors the programs find — there may be some fixes you should in fact pass on.

Rich Tehrani recently wrote about his experience with Registry Mechanic, and how it helped speed up a crawling laptop. I’ve also given Registry Mechanic a try, and really like it’s elegant interface and appreciate the rapid speed of the scan it performs. One relatively minor issue with the demo version of the program is that although it’ll reveal all kinds of errors, it will only repair a subset of them (how they determine which ones to repair and which to leave alone is a mystery to me.) Anyway, you need to register and payup to be able to clean all the problems the program finds.

I used Registry Mechanic on a couple of old Windows 98 machines (I keep some old but functioning machines around to use as servers and special purpose units — and to serve as emergency backups just in case.) The software found 896 errors on one desktop, and 643 on an old laptop — and cleaned up about a third of what it found.

The laptop did behave a bit better afterwards — a bit faster on bootup and a little more responsive with Web surfing — but only slightly. The desktop fared worse: it now keeps running the Windows Registry Rebuild application before it’ll boot — adding a good ten minutes to its boot up time. Once it completes the rebuild, it loads fine and runs a bit better. But still, it’s now basically junk if I can’t find a way to fix this new problem — aside from restoring the old, uncleaned registry file.

On the Windows XP machines I’ve tried it on, I couldn’t really detect any noticeable improvements, although running it didn’t create any new problems. Bottom line — Registry Optimizer software can deliver some benefits, but it can also cause new problems, so before you jump in and start using them, first spend a little time learning how they work and how to distinguish between the different types of errors the programs find — there may be some fixes you should in fact pass on.

BTW, there’s another registry  optimizer product I was told about called WinASO that apparently performs similar scanning and removal functions as Registry Mechanic, but also includes a more comprehensive “System Mechanic” feature set that helps you delete temp files, clean caches, and perform housekeeping chores all from a single check-box screen. The program looks a little rough around the edges — there are a bunch of typos throughout probably due to an “English as a Second Language” programming staff — but the product still seems solid and capable.

Also, it’s worth checking out as an alternative to Registry Mechanic since the eval copy will remove everything it finds (although in 10-error increments.) In order to have the program clean everything in one fell swoop, you have to register your copy.)

Mobile Internet telephony start-up Truphone has announded that it has received a funding round of $24.5 million, making it the European technology sector’s largest Series A venture funding of 2006. The funding was led by Wellington Partners, a leading pan-European VC, with Independent News & Media (a global media group) and Burda Digital Ventures (a global media group) joining existing investors Eden Ventures and various angel investors.

In 2006, Truphone introduced VoIP to mass market mobile phones, enabling users to make free calls from their handsets to other Truphone users and low Internet-rate calls to any telephone worldwide. In late 2006, this was extended to free phone calls to a range of VoIP services.

Truphone’s true mobile VoIP service enables calls to be made between mobile devices entirely free of charge. Since calls are carried via Wi-Fi over the Internet, and not over a regular phone network, there are no operator charges to make or receive such calls.

As a result, using a Truphone-enabled handset to make an international call from a Wi-Fi hotspot abroad cuts out the usual, expensive, roaming charges, threatening one of the major sources of revenue for the existing cellular network operators. In addition to lowering call costs, Truphone uses Wi-Fi to provide

complementary pseudo-cellular coverage in blindspots. It is estimated that 26% of the population in the major European countries have poor/no cellular reception at home.

The new funding will provide Truphone with resources to execute its vision of fundamentally changing the economics of mobile communications and providing revolutionary new services to mobiles, increasing the base of handsets it supports and launching the Truphone service across the globe. The plan is to create a worldwide Mobile Internet Network Operator providing a free/low-cost alternative to conventional cellular network service providers.

According to Joerg Ueberla of Wellington,  “We led this round of investment because we have followed the rapid rise of VoIP on the fixed-line network and believe that VoIP will now move to mobile devices. Other players offering free/low-cost VoIP-based telephone calls require the use of a PC or a fixed-line phone. Truphone is the only player that offers truly free mobile-to-mobile calls across the world – a veritable disruption. This value proposition has been proven by thousands of users who are spread around the globe and were acquired by word of mouth within weeks of the launch of the beta version.”

Cherry Blossoms in Wintertime

January 4, 2007

Over the last couple of weeks, most of my neighbors and fellow New Yorkers have scratched their heads a few times when it came to the weather — with temperatures sometimes 20 degrees or more above normal (it almost hit 60 today), it seems as if this is the “Year of the Winter That Wasn’t”. By this time, this far into the season, we’ve usually had a few snowstorms and a bunch of sub-freezing days.

Unseasonally warm temperatures are present all across the Eastern seaboard, and Mother Nature appears to be genuinely confused. I’ve heard stories about crocus buds popping up in gardens in New Jersey, and cherry trees sprouting buds in Washington, DC. In fact, there is a growing concern that this premature growth will seriously diminish cherry blossom production in May and June — the normal season for the trees to be budding. If this keeps up, I’m sure we’ll be hearing about animals doing some strange things as a result of their winter cycles being interrupted.

Over the last couple of weeks, most of my neighbors and fellow New Yorkers have scratched their heads a few times when it came to the weather — with temperatures sometimes 20 degrees or more above normal (it almost hit 60 today), it seems as if this is the “Year of the Winter That Wasn’t”. By this time, this far into the season, we’ve usually had a few snowstorms and a bunch of sub-freezing days.

Unseasonally warm temperatures are present all across the Eastern seaboard, and Mother Nature appears to be genuinely confused. I’ve heard stories about crocus buds popping up in gardens in New Jersey, and cherry trees sprouting buds in Washington, DC. In fact, there is a growing concern that this premature growth will seriously diminish cherry blossom production in May and June — the normal season for the trees to be budding. If this keeps up, I’m sure we’ll be hearing about animals doing some strange things as a result of their winter cycles being interrupted.

Amazingly, most of the scientific commentary about our weird weather points the finger not at global warming, but normal shifts in annual weather patterns, such as a north/eastward shift of the El Nino effect.

Hmmmmmmm…

Vizio to Offer 60″ Plasma HDTV

January 2, 2007

Word from Vizio headquarters is that the company is getting ready to announce a bunch of new HDTV flat panels at the upcoming CES show. One new model that I’m quite excited about is a new 60″ Plasma, with full 1080p resolution, and even better –  a couple of new HDMI 1.3 inputs. (this is the 50″ model to the left).

Vizio has rapidly become one the biggest sellers of LCD and Plasma HDTV sets in the market, due to its low pricing and decent build quality — very much a “one-two punch” in today’s HDTV marketplace.

Word is the unit will be available in late March-early April — and although pricing hasn’t been set, I expect the company to stay true to its low-cost ways and break new pricing ground with this set. If the company also keeps up the quality, this just might be the set I’ve been looking for.

Spurious Skype Disconnects

December 28, 2006

I’ve noticed that on occasion, when I’ve been connected to someone on their mobile phone, Skype will, without warning, drop the call and end the call session. It seems that for some reason, Skype is being “tricked” into assuming the call is finished when it in fact, isn’t. Is anyone else having this problem?

Here Comes Web 3.0

December 27, 2006

Just when we started getting comfy with the term Web 2.0, along comes the term Web 3.0.

Web 3.0, according to most of what I’ve read, refers to a “Semantic  Web” that relies on attaching metadata to information residing on Web pages to create a framework for turning the Web into one humongous, relational database. The advantages are said to be much deeper and flexible Web searching, and much tighter integration between all manner of applications.

For more information, check out this piece from the International Herald Tribune.

Don’t Buy That HDTV, Yet

December 20, 2006



Here’s a good cautionary tale for those looking to make the plunge into buying their first HDTV or getting a second or third set for the bedroom and study. With prices finally coming down to earth, many people have decided they’ve waited long enough and are snatching up the plasma or LCD thin screens of their dreams.

According to this great piece on Cnet.com by David Carnoy, a new HDMI standard — specifically HDMI 1.3 — is slated for incorporation into HDTV’s starting around the second quarter of 2007. Based on this information, you just might want to hold off a little while longer before buying that snazzy new set.

What is HDMI 1.3? HDMI, which stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface, is a successor to DVI, and is the highest quality A/V connection available today that can transmit both digital audio and video signals. HDMI 1.3 supposedly supports twice the bandwidth as HDMI 1.2 (10.2Gbps vs. 4.95Gbps) and supports “Deep Color” –  10-bit, 12-bit, and 16-bit color depths — while HDMI 1.2 supports only 8-bit color. That translates into 17 million colors at 8-bit, and 1 billion at 10-bit.

Other benefits supposedly include:

• a new mini connector (for HD camcorders and still cameras)
• better backward compatibility
• automatic A/V synching (so characters’ lip movements accurately match the soundtrack)
• support for new multichannel HD lossless audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-D Master Audio