Friday, June 25, 2004

Moto/MS Get it Right (Smartphone)

Third try is a charm, the rest of the Smartphone world should really start worrying about Microsoft now. It looks like the new Motorola MPX is going to be VERY hot. Here is a fansite with photos and a description. There are 14 pages of comments so far -- it is worth going through all the pages as "Bengalboy" answers readers questions and posts more photos of the device and its capabilities throughout... THE MOTOROLA MPX

JavaOne Blogger Meetup

I'll be at the JavaOne Blogger Meetup on Monday -- how about you?

Thursday, June 24, 2004

The IM Wars

Yahoo decided to change the API for connecting to their IM service. Jim Hu of ZDNet writes "Yahoo to Trillian: Talk to the hand." Of course the change blocks other 3rd party clients such as GAIM, and the one I use on my mac Adium.

But the egg is on Yahoo's face as Trillian has already released an update to fix the problem -- according to publisher Cerulean Studios

So why continuously change the interface if it takes less than half a day for the third parties to patch their software? Someone over at Yahoo needs to get a clue -- this is a war they are going to lose. Yahoo should learn to love the 3rd parties instead of harrasing them.

Congrats to Benioff

$1.7 Billion. That is the current market cap of market innovator Salesforce.com in the second day of trading on NASDAQ. And what a coup to have scooped up the symbol CRM -- as the Wall Street Journal said, "that would be like Porsche asking for the symbol CAR." Marc and his team have proven that the application service provider model is a viable business model, if not the future of software... or should I say, the future of no software? I expect to see more companies follow in this company's footsteps.

But don't be mistaken by the name of the company or even the ticker symbol -- the magic here is not a new approach to salesforce automation of even customer relatoinship management. The secret sauce is a multi-tenant industrial strength application hosting environment. This infrastructure investment could be the launching point for hundreds or thousands of new applications - now to wait and watch Salesforce (and their development API division SForce) to see if they can break out of the narrow application specific market that they have succeeded in so far, and provide a broader platform for applications.

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

FCC Chairman Endorses IP Inferno

OK, not exactly. I think what he said in his keynote speech here at Supercomm was that "the IP market is on fire!" Which does sound like an endorsement of my proposition that IP is the fire burning down the traditional telecom industry..."

All quiet...

Its quiet over her because I am posting the results of Supercomm interviews over at IP Inferno... Come on over and read about the WiMAX Forum, Motia, SkyPilot, and Peerio... And more to come.

Monday, June 21, 2004

Taking the Plunge

It has only been a month since we shut down CallTrex and I have alreated started a new adventure. The good folks at Mohr, Davidow Ventures have asked me to join them as an "entrepreneur-in-residence." This is an exciting opportunity to pursue some of my own ideas and to learn more about how the venture community works, from the inside. I am here for my first day, learning about what an EIR can do to support a venture partnership. It will be an exciting few months!