Dave Michels
Telecom/VoIP/UC/Mobility enthusiast. Blogolyst, Consultant, and Analyst publishing independent telecom and UC research at TalkingPointz. Dave is CEO of Verge1 which offers independent analysis and interpretation of business communications systems and technologies. Dave works with the major vendors, end users, and media sources. His independent research is available for download at www.talkingpointz.com. Dave regularly contributes to this site and other major sites focused on communications. His blog PinDropSoup is one of the most popular independent telecom oriented blogs on the web.
Cisco Calls the Skype Kettle Black
I didn’t see this one coming – but it makes perfect sense. Cisco communicates to the EU that Microsoft and Skype together may not be such a good thing for the industry, and thus appealed the approval of the merger to the EU. That isn’t in itself too surprising until you consider that the EU [...]
Nest and HoneyWell
Nest hit a nerve. Thermostats are not the most popular topic for high-tech and Internet blogs – but Nest hit a nerve. Nest offers a thermostat for the home. Probably because it’s a San Francisco start-up, possibly because it has some leadership that once worked at Apple, or possibly because it has a nifty display [...]
Google Voice Offline
Evidently at least one of the engineers at Google Voice woke up and came up with a new feature…Offline Texting. It was announced with the following blog post: Sometimes the times that we’re offline can be our most productive times. However, whe…
Is the Stylus Retro?
The Samsung Note is a smartphone tablet thing. It is either the largest smartphone or smallest tablet depending on your point of view. I saw it at CES, and it was advertised on national television during the Superbowl. The ad poked fun at the hipsters …
Big Blue’s Sphere
LotusSphere is an odd name for an event about non-Lotus software. That was just one of the themes from IBM’s (presumably last) LotuSphere 2012, that it is killing the Lotus brand. Not that the show is dying – it’s a huge show. IBM has slowly been distancing itself from the name/brand Lotus – and replacing [...]
StartupCamp5
StartupCamp5 will be taking place at ITExpo Feb 1-3 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. I’ve attended the past four ITExpo’s and StartupCamps, but won’t be at this one. Feeling a bit wistful as so many people I know are heading that way. ITExpo is a good show – particularly strong for hosted service providers [...]
Contempt for Customers
Thinly disguised contempt for the customer is an easy trap to fall into, after-all, without customers our jobs would be a lot easier. There is just one problem with this line of thinking… The first time I heard the term Thinly Disguised Contempt for the Customer was from the book In Search of Excellence. The example provided [...]
10 Reasons Why RIM Won’t Die
It has been fun to kick RIM. Text book example of why incumbents get disrupted – they owned/invented email on a mobile phone. They invented the smartphone. We used to call their addicts ’”Crackberries.” But they (along with everyone else) underestimated Apple. Blackberry had a huge market share – relationships with every major cellular carrier, a [...]
The Unspoken Question
What exactly should the mute button do? Daniel J. Wakin, reporting for the NYT: The unmistakably jarring sound of an iPhone marimba ring interrupted the soft and spiritual final measures of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 at the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday night. The conductor, Alan Gilbert, did something almost unheard-of in a concert hall: He [...]
CES 2012
What a ridiculous show. The show is just too big. They say only Vegas can handle a show this big, but it can’t. Vegas has the capacity in conference and hotel space, but once the show expands into multiple locations the weak link becomes apparent: transportation. They were running large buses full time between The [...]
How I Fixed Reader
I read a lot of news – ok, I skim a lot of news – and the stuff that I find interesting should be shared. Google Reader had a great feature called Share for just that. I had a Google Shared Items page, and also used its RSS feed to share on Twitter and other [...]
When Did the Sun Set?
The story of Sun Microsystems is a great one. It has great characters (McNealy), great battles (open vs. proprietary, David vs. Goliath), incredible vision (the dawn of the dot.com), drama (the bust of the dot.com), and tragedy (the Oracle acquisition). Oh yeah, one of the best of tech logos. Well, the drama continues. Oracle reports [...]
Privacy and Loyalty Clubs
Most of us don’t know when we’ve been hacked or how much of a trail we are leaving. But our corporate secrets may indeed be much bigger than a product protype and are risk of privacy invasion is much broader than a bar.
Gartner 2012 Predictions
Forbes published an article called The Road Ahead: Gartner’s Outlook for 2012 And Beyond. It offers the reader, in summary/bullet form Gartner’s predictions for the IT sector. Some of the points are pretty obvious – a clear rise in Cloud and mobility, but there are a few surprises. In 2013, the investment bubble will burst [...]
Microsoft Killed the Netbook – not the Tablet
What we have here is a case of the victors writing the history book. We learned recently that Dell decided to discontinue selling Netbooks. Netbooks? You remember them – the small, inexpensive notebook-like computers with a lightweight operating system. They came in a few different flavors of Windows and Linux. They were the rage a [...]
