Instant Voice & Video in Social Networks. Finally.

When MySpace and Skype announced their intent to combine their services to allow MySpace users to connect instantly by something more meaningful than a Poke or an email, it struck me as almost late. Something that should have been here months ago. Remembers, months can be a long time in the short development cycle world of 2.0.

Yes, there are many voice related applications coming - or already - in FaceBook but we still lack the basic, presence driven voice and video communications services like Skype and SightSpeed (among others) have taught us to expect. I know you're online; lets talk or lets video. While I enjoy Facebook for many reasons, I don't like waiting for a response from people at the other end. If I see someone I actually want to reconnect with, I want to do it then. On the spot. Same goes for places like LinkedIn.

With fancy API's left and right and developers at the ready all over the world, this stuff just seems to be coming out slowly. Then again, I haven't even tried MySpace. Maybe I'm the one that's slow.

Lypp Launch.

A little while back I posted some news on a start-up out of Vancouver, my second most favorite Canadian city. Lypp was conceived on the notion that making conference calls from your mobile should be easier. And cheaper.

Well, it launched for real today. Congratulations to the founders, Dan and Erik, I know sleep has been at a premium. And to their families who put up with them over the last few months.

Lypp works. I can even get it to work. All I did was download Yahoo Messenger to my BlackBerry and I was ready to go. Send a phone number to my Lypp 'buddy' and my call is connected. Great for making group calls on the run and really great for anyone (like Canadians) still fighting long distance charges on their cell phone. Lypp eliminates them.

Lots of oil. A strong dollar. And plenty of voice technology talent. Canada's got it all.

(Oh, but it snows for the next 6 months.)

A new a-c-r-o-n-y-m.

During the glory and bust of the dot-com days, we called it an ASP. Yes, Application Service Provider, although I am quite sure that nine of ten people back then could not have told me what it meant. But man was it sexy at the time to tell someone you were working at an A-S-P!

Then, since ASP become synonymous with dot-bust (even if it they were on to something with the notion of recurring revenue business models), we started to call it Hosted. Also, unlikely at the time that most people knew what that meant. Hosted for most had more to do with entertainment that anything else.

Another change. With 2.0 in the works, the Web became cool again. This time, with still little change in what it represented, we started to have to use the term Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) in order to get funded by a forward thinking VC (aren't they all?). But for the end user, still little understanding of what we meant.

And now, just as the world is figuring out what an SaaS is, comes another new term for the same old thing. Introducing....CaaS. Communications-as-a-Service. Finally something that explains what a hosted voice communication application service provider in the SaaS business really is.

Sarcasm aside, I do like the last one. Although, like my friends at ifbyphone remind me all the time (as relatively new entrants into the telecom space), telcos have been CaaS's for a very long time...Think about that one.

Signing off.

Sorry, Bill.

While I sense - from my trusty SiteMeter stats - that Bill Gates probably didn't read my post last week venting my lack of enthusiasm for his pending OCS launch, I should apologize just the same. My said lack of excitement led me to not attend his keynote, but after calls from people in the audience, I chose to catch the whole affair online.

I don't pretend to have the technical skills nor the MSFT experience to agree or disagree with all those who suggest the OCS dream needs a few cycles before stabilizing. But I can say that it shows well. For those of you who chose only to read the reviews and not watch the video of the OCS launch, time to admit poor judgment. The video is worth the one hour of your life. After all, it probably took Bill and his team the better part of 10 years to get it ready.

The PBX is not dead, though. It will be dead when the people who sell it - as in those feet on the street - can no longer retire quota with it. In the in term, it lives. And pretty well, too.

Back to OCS. Man does it demo well (except for the speech-rec part with 20,000 people in a room). How would you like to click and drag 8 names from your address book into on-screen box and have them all called into a conference call? Sounds simple enough but is a not a feature the masses have yet to enjoy. This, and many other intersections between voice and Office applications, is what we have to look forward to. If we can get OCS installed and up and running.

My only real beef - it's not hosted yet. It will come. So Bill says.

O'Hare. O'Hell.

The Red Carpet Lounge always brings me mixed emotions. On one hand, I'm luckier that those outside these four red walls wading through delays of their own - but in the discomfort of the terminal. On the other hand, rarely I am cozy in the 'Carpet if I'm not in the discomfort of waiting for my plane to leave. If it leaves.

But today, the Red Carpet is bringing back memories of dial-up. Memories of running into the lounge, hoping to find a phone (a phone!) to plug my line cord into to begin the tortuous wait for mail and hoping that nothing too large is waiting for me. One large file, and my whole plan to download mail before the next flight could have been foiled. Thankfully, those days are behind me. You don't even have to be in the Red Carpet anymore to get mail. The gap is in fact shrinking, at least for high speed wireless.

Now if I could only get my mail on the plane.

Worth Jott-ing down.

When my friend Ramon Ray over at SmallBizTechnology writes about telephony applications, I listen. For one, Ramon tells it as it is and for two, he is passionate about bringing good small business applications to the attention of his loyal readers. I met Ramon about a year ago in New York and ranted to him about how many great telephony apps were coming to market for the SMB, so part of me hopes that I inspired him to give us more converage...

This week he brought Jott to my attention. Pretty cool, actually, if you can get past wondering how they are going to make money. Another in the long list of Web 2.0 meets voice offerings that, for some, will be practical. Jott makes it easy to 'jott' down notes and reminders but over the phone. And it also dips into the ever growing market (at least in terms of number of vendors) of group messaging. Overall, it's worth a look. Very well designed site, I would also add.

Montreal Money.

Hats off to another Canadian-based Voice 2.0 round of financing, announced earlier this week.

Mobivox - formerly VoxLib - is based in Montreal and hence, close to my heart. Montreal has long been a hub for start-up and established telecom firms alike. Canadian trivia: Nortel used to be owned by Bell Canada, headquartered in Montreal.

Mobivox makes it easy to access your Skype account from anywhere including your cell phone and enjoy all Skype has to offer from afar. It employs a slick speech-activated platform to ease the process.

Two other noteworthy bits on the Mobivox raise:

1. It tells us that when done right, meaning with a dead simple interface, free calling still has significant appeal in markets where calls are still perceived as a cost center for people;

2. The raise is led by IDG Ventures out of Boston. Having done it myself more than once, I know how difficult it can be for Quebec based firms to close rounds led by US VC's. Someone did something right.

Bon Courage to everyone there, including all the LocusDialog alumni.

Voice 'Pokes' FaceBook.

Yes, I have started to use FaceBook. Partly because I think it will ultimately be a small business business development tool (not yet) and partly because my kids are now old enough to throw a rock at their pending 'onlife'. Figured I should know what I/they are in store for. Ironically, my motivations did not include reconnecting with long-gone friends, although I have had some nice surprises.

What I did notice about FaceBook - and many other social or business networking services - is a lack of instant communications. Not for long it seems. So many legacy and Voice 2.0 applications are no-brainers for networking. People want to connect instantly. Otherwise the urge passes. Yes, our attention span is shrinking by the day.

Well, if you read this summary on what's coming to FaceBook, the urge will no longer pass. Special mention to babyTEL, a start-up from my hometown of Montreal.

See you (and soon talk to you) online.

Countdown to Microsoft.

I'm struggling to get excited about Microsoft's red carpet arrival into the UC nightlife, happening this week down the street from me. Perhaps it's because I've been hearing about it for too long. Or because I spend so much of my time these days in the SMB space.

I do admit it will be interesting to see where they are a year from now. How well will it work? Who will have bought it? Will it really be only an enterprise play? And which vendors will benefit most or, suffer the worst from it? In the last 2-3 years, every incumbent vendor under the sun moved to align themselves in one way or another with Redmond. But most of those - Avaya, Nortel and others - now find themselves in more direct competition with Bill than ever before.

Some vendors are further along the curve than others, in my humble opinion. Much of the Microsoft talk has centered around what Cisco will do or how buyers will integrate one leading technology with the other. CallTower, a hosted unified communications provider based here has been integrating Live Communication Server with Cisco Call Manager for years now. They bring buyers Cisco product pre-packaged with Microsoft and Microsoft software and services packaged with the back end telco stuff already built in. Worth more than a look for anyone trying to get the best of both these worlds - without having to be a beta site.

Oh well. I won't be at the MSFT party this week but I do get to see a bunch of old friends in town for it.

Quick Basesball Note.

I love telecom but I can't go too long without a baseball opinion or two. So here are a couple.

Firing Joe Torre is or would be ridiculous. Find me another manager who wins 100 games year in year out. And for those of you who say he's has an unfair advantage because of a bloated payroll, look at the Dodgers. Even better, take a look at any number of over funded tech companies over the years with top talent across their roster who could not make it happen. If Joe Torre gets fired, I say we (San Francisco) use the money we saved on Bonds to hire him.

A-Rod should leave New York. This is more of a selfish position than anything else. I want to get to watch the bidding war and his agent work his obnoxious magic.

There. I'm done.

Skype News. To Jajah or not to Jajah.

When this type of stuff ends up in the Skype Journal, you know the gloves are off on what Ebay should do with Skype. There are even articles circulating these days on who Ebay should sell Skype to! Funny enough, as a full time user of Skype services - well at least for peer-peer voice calls - it never even crosses my mind that Ebay owns it. So much for the planned synergies.

I have been fortunate enough to be involved at the client level with click-to-call for over a year now. I say fortunate because while it is rather simple technology it is significantly changing the Internet landscape. The phone is back. This posting at the Skype Journal on the click-to-call battle reminds me of what a client of mine said a year ago when estimating Skype's ultimate role in the click-to-call market. People still want to use a phone over a computer and more importantly, the phone will always be the universal interface. Meaning, everyone knows how to use it. And websites want to appeal to everyone.

I join everyone else is my curiosity of what Skype will be when it grows up. For the moment though, I continue to use it for what it's best at and nothing else. After all, with Jajah, Lypp, ifbyphone and a slew of others, I have no lack of options.

Voice Boom. Or Bust?

Having enjoyed the last dot.com boom and endured the bust that followed, I cringe every time I read someone suggest - or think it myself - that there are increasing similarities between the goings on of today and those of six or seven years ago. Surely, there are some things in common, not the least of which is the enormous amount of venture money making its way to seemingly anyone who asks often enough.

And while everyone remembers it as a dot.com bust - too many eyeballs, too little revenue - the fall was possibly harder for those in telecom. After all, betting on all those eyeballs meant putting enough fiber in the ground to make room for traffic. But the traffic dispersed and so did the telecom companies. Fast forward, no one can argue the nature of the telecom rebound. If anything, it has been better than we could have conceived. But if you read the USA Today article on the voice-driven dot.com boom, it helps you to realize that, albeit a totally different incarnation, telecom is again guilty of precipitating the next collapse. Did you know, for instance, that Ooma - the 2.0 named box that gives you free calls for life - has raised $27 million. $27 million, I said.

Well, I can guess we can never have it both ways. Telecom has been good to us for so many years and will again, even if we bust. But, to be sure, we can't blame it all on voice stuff. After all, there are 37 companies that do nothing but enable people to build their very own social networks...