Guilty as charged.

The Lighter Side Of The Cloud – Piggybacking

by David on October 27, 2011 at 8:18 am in Cartoon, Cloud Computing, Images, IT

Used to be that I’d chafe at attending some social events because they took me away from my work.  Usually, though, once away I’d step into the moment and enjoy the company and time away from my desk.

That’s not always the case anymore.  Seems more and more I find myself in social situations that are ‘intermittent’ – periodically, and frequently, interrupted for bursts of work activity over the cloud.  We used to call the devices that made this the case “crackberries”.  RIM may have started it, but the cloud has been embraced by every device manufacture now.  And with the shift of applications to the cloud, Dropbox, browser apps, and more… well, we can “work from other peoples homes as well.”

We may not chafe as much when asked to leave our desks anymore, then again, we’re not really leaving our desks anymore are we?

Attention, Angel Investors: You Have Until Jan. 1 To Lock In 100% Tax-Free Capital Gains On Startup Stock | TechCrunch

Attention, Angel Investors: You Have Until Jan. 1 To Lock In 100% Tax-Free Capital Gains On Startup Stock | TechCrunch.

 

Angel investing has been on the rise over the past few years (see Crunchbase chart below), and this year is no exception. A quirk in the tax laws is helping. Any “qualified small business stock” purchased between September 27, 2010 and January 1, 2012 and held for at least five years is 100 percent exempt from capital gains. After January 1, the tax exemption reverts to the normal 50 percent.

So individual angel investors have a huge incentive to invest in startups before January 1 (if they plan on holding onto the stock for at least 5 years). If you are a startup raising an angel round and your investors are rushing you to get it done before the end of the year, now you know why.

The tax exemption is a result of the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. It applies to many kinds of small businesses, as long as they have less than $50 million in assets at the time the stock is issued and more than 80 percent of its assets are used in the “active conduct” of the business. However, it doesnot apply to S corporations. You can read more about the details in this article or on the IRS website.

Between Feb. 17, 2009 and Sept. 27, 2010, the tax exemption was 75 percent. The time period these tax loopholes were in effect coincided with a general increase in angel and seed investing. Once the loophole goes away, will we see a corresponding drop in angel investing? Congress should make the tax exemption permanent to encourage the creation of more startups.

The Griggs – Skype – Google Voice – Call Forwarding Smash-Up

Here’s a way Teg Griggs is recreating Ribbit Mobile:

I think I've recovered the key functionality: Call from home phone with mobile number, voice to text voicemail transcriptions, and softphone.

Here's what I did:

• Subscribed to Skype unlimited nationwide calling for $2.99 a month (+15% discount if you buy for a year).
• Changed the outbound caller-id to my cell phone (SMS verification required).
• Got a Skype In number ($60/year - 50% discount = $30).
• Purchased Connect Me Skype ATA ($50 - $2 Skype Out Credit = $48) - http://www.freetalkconnect.com/me/
• Got a Google Voice Number.
• Added my Skype In number as the number to forward to (call back verification)
• Added my Mobile Phone and set it to receive Voice-to-text voicemail as SMS (call back verification)
  
• Turned off forwarding to my Mobile Phone from Google Voice
• Forwarded my mobile phone's conditional call forwarding to the Google Voice Number

Ta da!  Ribbit Mobile using two fully supported voice services!

Let us all know how it works Ted!

Ribbit Mobile Coming to an End?

First, let me say thank you to all of you who have written and called about the end of Ribbit.  

No matter how much we mentally prepare for the loss of Ribbit Mobile, there is no amount of preparation we can do to deflect the blow.  When the e-mail hit our inboxes this week, the sentiments of loyal – and dare I say addicted – users poured forth.

It’s no small matter to those who really use the service.  One woman wrote:

I’m heartbroken…

Gotta start researching alternatives. I can never go back!

It’s true.  There is no service like it out there.  Yes, one can cobble together Skype + Google Voice + PhoneTag …. and almost get there.  There just isn’t a full replacement.  Period.

Will BT Reincarnate Ribbit Mobile?

There is talk.  Rumors really – that there is more fire than we can see from the smoke of the dying embers.

Ready for a Ribbit Mobile resurgence?  Here’s you can do:

BT is considering releasing a successor to Ribbit Mobile and is running both a pre-release sign up and a poll to determine what features we value.

Fill out the Ribbit Mobile successor form.  Go to http://www.ribbit.com/contact/form_699.html and fill out the form, choosing the features you value most.

Here’s what it looks like:

I the mean time ….. 0ne user wrote:

Could you write a paragraph or two on options for those of us addicted to Ribbit?  Then we can all just forward it on to our friends.  

The options for Ribbit users depend on how each of used the service.  Here goes a pass at alternatives.  Any readers out there with other suggestions, pipe in!

• Transcription:  If you are really addicted only the transcription and e-mail/SMS delivery of voice mail, you have several choices.
• PhoneTag:  Ribbit uses PhoneTag in the back end.   As Ribbit users, we’ve been getting a $10-$30 per month service for free.  The service is still there…. it’s just not free any more.  Switching to PhoneTag is painless… and it will work (almost) as well.  (almost because PhoneTag limits transcription length.  Ribbit effectively did not allowing up to three minutes of message length).  I like PhoneTag and the founder, Jamie Siminoff, is a good friend.
• YouMail:  YouMail (I think) also uses PhoneTag in the back end for their premium service.  YouMail comes with a bunch of other bells and whistles so it’s worth checking out.
• Carrier:  Check with your carrier.  Many of them offer transcription (often also powered by PhoneTag).
• Google Voice:  I was at Google today and even they laugh about the “transcription entertainment service.”  If free is your thing, then Google is your answer.  You just won’t get  premium transcriptions.
• What you wont get:  is the searchable UI, integration of address book, long transcriptions, and free service.

• Call Routing:  If you don’t know what this is, you may not be using it.  Ribbit directs calls to your mobile phone to any other phone you choose – home, office, etc.  As far as I know, no other service does this.
• Google Voice:  Google voice will give you an additional telephone number that, when called, will route the caller to one of your other phones – mobile, home, office, etc.  For this to work, the caller must call the Google number.  If the caller dials your mobile number, then the routing Google offers does not work.  So this is a partial solution only.

• SIP, ATA, VoIP, Telephone adapters: If you don’t know what these are, you won’t miss them.  For the rest, loss of SIP endpoints – telephone adapters, soft clients, mobile handset clients – is devastating.  I know people who use Ribbit to power home phones, office phones, PC phones, and ,mobile soft-clients for use over wi-fi when travelling internationally.  The great thing about Ribbit mobile is that all of these phones behaved as if they were your mobile number.  They’d ring when someone called your mobile, and when you called anyone from these phones, your mobile number would be your caller ID.  Awesome.  Gone.
• There is no direct substitute.
• There are numerous VoIP providers from whom one can buy service.  They all come with new telephone numbers and do not work with your mobile.  The closest you can get is using missed-call forwarding on your mobile to send calls placed to your mobile over to your new VoIP number when you don’t answer your mobile.  You’ll need to use the VoIP provider’s voice mail, and when you call from your VoIP phone, it will present your VoIP phone’s caller ID – not your mobile number.
• Skype ATA:  Skype is cheap.  $2.99 a months for 10,000 minutes of calls per month.  Wow.  If you buy a Skype Telephone Adapter from Actiontec and set up Skype to use your mobile as the caller ID,you get pretty close.  Outbound calls from you home/office phone will present with your mobile caller ID.
• Skype IN:  You can also buy a telephone number from Skype.  If you then send your missed-mobile calls to this Skype IN number, then calls to you mobile can be answered on your new Skype home/office phone connected to the Actiontec telephone adapter.  Getting complicated – I know.
• And that leaves Skype as your voice mail provider.  However, you may still want transcriptions… so then tell Skype to send unanswered calls to your Google Voice or PhoneTag account and BAM! you’re back in business.
• YIKES!

• Click to call:  Now we open a whole can of worms.  Ribbit Mobile web did this better than anyone.  You could import you contacts from Plaxo, start to type a name in Ribbit, and the number of the person would be filled in.  Then choose what phone you want to use, mobile, home, work, even Skype – and dial.  Ribbit did the rest.  I’m afraid this capability is going to be sorely missed.

• Search Voice Mail:  Google voice does this.  Probably YouMail too, though I don’t know for sure.

I’m glad BT found in Ribbit the core telephony technology they needed – truly glad -

And I hope BT reincarnates Ribbit Mobile soon.

Ribbit Mobile 1.0:  Feb 2008 – Jan 2012

Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company, Demo 2008

“Smog check” for computer Bots?

Why don’t we do for our personal computers what we do for our personal vehicles?

Everyone agrees that polluting cars are a public menace. They use more gas, more oil, foul the air, and help destroy the ozone layer.

So we, as a society, agree to both “tax” and “trouble” to ensure our cars are running cleanly for the collective good (especially here in California).

Tax: We pay biennial service station and smog abatement fees for the privilege of having our cars checked by State certified mechanics and registered with the State.

Trouble: We go to the trouble of scheduling and complying or we lose the public privilege of driving a car on the roadways we all share.

Why don’t we do the same for Computer Bots?

Certainly computer bots are a known and acknowledged public menace.

According to Norton, “Bots are one of the most sophisticated types of crimeware facing the Internet today. Bots are similar to worms and Trojans, but earn their unique name by performing a wide variety of automated tasks on behalf of their master (the cybercriminals) who are often safely located somewhere far across the Internet. Tasks that bots can perform run the gamut from sending spam to blasting Web sites off the Internet as part of a coordinated “denial-of-service” attack.”

And millions upon millions of our computers are infected. According to the APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report for Q3 of 2009, 48.35% of computers scanned were infected. That means that if you have two in your home, odds are tilting in favor of one being infected.

Mandatory Bot Checks for the good of All?

So why not impose a Tax and Trouble for our community of computers running on the public Internet – just like we do for our smoggy cars?

Let us propose that if you have Internet access from any publicly accessible Internet service provider (ISP), your computer must be “certified” bot and virus-free annually.

Oh the hue and cry!

Is it really that much to ask?

Imagine an annual $10 fee imposed on every computer connected to the public Internet through commercial ISPs. The ISPs would collect the fees and pass a portion on to the State.  Users would have to run State-certified software to remove bots and viruses which would in turn update the State data base with the “verified” status of the computer’s MAC address.

The ISPs already know the MAC addresses of our Internet connected computers (except of course, of those owned by folks with sophisticated firewalls – and those folks are more likely to have already taken measures to minimize infection by viruses and bots).

Each time a computer attempts to connect to the internet, the ISPs would simply check a State data base before allowing Internet access for that MAC address.  The State would manage the annual certification program to be administered by the ISPs on behalf of the State.  The State would maintain a centralized database to manage the verification tracking program allowing users to switch ISPs freely.

Does everyone win in this scheme?   It seems so.

Users pay for the privilege of connecting the public Internet on accounts registered to addresses with a specific State physical address.  This compensation is collected by the ISPs who share the compensation with the State to cover operating and administrative costs.  Users who do have bots or viruses end up having their computers cleaned up.  Users who do not have bots or viruses benefit by the reduction in spamming bots and communications from virus laden neighbors.

Is the problem big enough? 

Just follow the latest in cyber crime – state-sponsored or driven by illegal cartels.  The problems are both real and big.

As I was writing this post, news broke that $2.7 Million was funneled by hackers in a cyber crime against Citigroup.  Is this a direct result of personal computer infections – perhaps not.  It’s not been revealed whether bots played a role in the crime.

Is this solution technically feasible and would it be effective? 

Let’s assume that for some significant portion of the population this proposal is both feasible and would be effective.  The U.S., Western Europe, and Japan account for about 58% of the world’s approximately 1,500,000,000 computers.  Verifying no bots or viruses once a year in only 25% of the 48% infected U.S. computers  could eliminate infection of as many as 36,000,000 computers (1.5B x 20% [20 of 58] x 48% x 25%).

What do you think?  Worth looking into or completely insane?

Photo Check Deposit – Now I Need a Shredder?

I’m fanatic about financial automation. I hate keeping track of recurring payments. I hate paying interest. The whole process is an exercise in restraining creativity in favor of rote tedium. Yuck.

As a kid working paper routes and running lawn care businesses, I learned how important financial records are. Who paid? Who didn’t? When? Whom do I owe? Whom did I pay? … and so on.

Banks “in the day” were nuts about paper work. Deposit slips, bank books, check registers, pass books, yada yada yada. And there were errors.  Lots of human errors. If you were banking then, you’ll remember having to go through and double check every line entry on your bank statement against your check stubs – because people were doing the entries and people make mistakes.

And we had to write check after check, month after month, licking stamp after envelope, to distribute our hard-earned cash. Only way to send payment was by going to a Western Usury, er, Union location!

Thank the Dis Pater for electronic banking.

Now I pay all my bills paid automatically. Mortgage, utilities, tuition, credit cards, insurance; all. I almost never see a single piece of paper anymore … except for the occasional PAPER CHECK.

Who sends checks now? Mothers and grandmothers sending birthday money. People paying for their share of group expenses. And government unemployment offices.

I let out a cheer for Photo Check Depositing announced last year and now available from many banks including Schwab, PayPal, BofA, Wells, Citi, etc.

 

Using your 2+ mega pixel smart phone (don’t try this with an iPad – that’s another story) and bank app, take pictures of the front and back of your checks and as Emeril says, ‘BAM!’ – check deposited! How great is that??

No envelope, no stamp, no snail mail!! Schwab posts within 24 hours. PayPal takes six days. Regardless, you get you money in your bank to make all your automated electronic payments with no sticky tongue and no worry that the check gets lost in the mail. What’s more, you get a visual record of the checks – awesome.

Except on thing…   Now I need a shredder for the checks!

The 2nd Derivative of Innovation

This week I was fortunate to attend a private conference of telecommunications and Internet executives from around the world.  A group of CEOs and senior executives from device and equipment manufacturers, global carriers, venture financiers, and entrepreneurs assembled for 24-hours to share views, discuss trends, compare industry interactions, network, and learn.

My own awareness was heightened – and I share a summary of my thoughts here:

• Positive 2^nd Derivative of Innovation – The rate of change in the word of ICT is increasing at an increasing rate.  As astute as we are, and as aware as we think we are of the magnitude of upheaval before us, we will inevitably underestimate the unprecedented changes before us as our globally connected world is instantly aware of every innovation, and every innovation is instantly consumed, begetting ever new innovation at an ever increasing rate.
  
  The first derivative of innovation has been positive since Gutenberg enabled mechanical reproduction, distribution, and consumption of knowledge.  It wasn’t until the industrial revolution and the harnessing of mechanical energy that the 2^nd Derivative of Innovation, the increasing rate of the change of innovation, took a positive turn.  We are now far enough up the curves of Moore and Metcalf that the rate of change of innovation facilitated by compute and transmit is visibly positive.  The rate of change innovation itself increases with each innovation – and innovation is happening at a massive global scale.

• Distance to the Future is Shortening – As corporate entities, we nearly always underestimate the future.  If for a moment, we hold the “future” to be a fixed point in the distance, a positive 2^nd Derivative of Innovation means that each step in time we take toward that future point will decrease the distance to that point by more than the length of the step.  As we approach the future, the rate of change that defines that future state increases; and therefore, the future we envisioned becomes closer to us than the distance away we perceive the future to be as we move toward it.
  
  The future we historically underestimate will become nearer to our present at an increasing rate – and we will increasingly underestimate the time it will take for our expectation of the future state to arrive.  Recognition of this fact is a critical enabler for grappling with the changes before us.  We must train ourselves to operate with a postitive 2^nd Derivative of Innovation.
• Deregulation was nothing in comparison to what’s occurring in ICT now –

  • “Phone” will cease to mean phone.  The industry has maintained control over customers’ devices, despite deregulation, through strict enforcement of standards and with closed and closely controlled markets (in the case of mobile devices).
    
    That control is nearly gone – Mobile handsets are transitioning to mobile computing devices. Open operating systems change the relationship from carrier-customer to developer-user.
    
    The word “phone” will come to mean small computer.  Our children will ask for to use your Droid, your iTouch/Pad, your Pre.  And odds are high they won’t be using it for a ‘phone’ call.
  • Handheld computers will connect to any network.   The “carrier” network will move from monopoly provider, to provider of convenience.  Though carriers will sell devices that will attempt to connect to their own networks by default, the devices will be able to connect to multiple wireless data networks using various protocols.
  • Applications will be network aware.  Applications will have the ability to choose from available networks and behave differently depending on available network resources.  They already do.  SIP handset applications preferentially connect to Wi-Fi networks today.  Verizon phones connect to the “Skype virtual netwdork.”  We can conceive of today a point in the future when devices preferentially make connections to the “Google Voice Network.”
  • Customer will become users.  Customers will leave the carrier-controlled communications environment, abandoning their carriers’ carefully created handsets and opting instead for their own preferred hand-held computing device and then choosing from a variety of over-the-top services that meet their needs whether or not provided by the carrier.  This will happen.  This is happening.
  • Voice is a choice.  There is a future without TDM voice (albeit, TDM will hold its own for a very long time).  I just travelled from San Francisco through London to Berlin, stayed three nights in a hotel, and returned to San Francisco logging hours of asynchronous and synchronous communication using three different devices, with text, voice, and video – and never once used the TDM network.   This has happened.
  • Consumers are like rain drops.  They fall everywhere, seek the lowest cost path to their destination, and flow past points of friction freely.  For many, the hand-held computer with open OS and unconstrained choice of network will be the path of least friction.
  • The “voice plan” will disappear.  AT&T is already there.  Unlimited voice is included with a choice of data plan.  That the two are itemized on my bill is a legacy.  It would make just as much sense to me to have a choice of (1) a data plan with video and (2) a data plan without video.  Think of it as the choice between a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder.  They both come with a wrapper.  Voice is the wrapper to data.

• Brace for change:
  • Praise and fear the company that:
    • Makes Data the platform.
    • Makes Voice an application on the Data platform.
    • Positions Voice as the ‘wrapper’ for higher value menu items.
  • Prepare for “handset” makers to look like Dell, HP, or Sony
  • Measure the transition to “Voice as a Choice”
  • Anticipate the affect of a Positive 2^nd Order Derivative of Innovation
  • Experiment with ‘mobile home phones’ – hand-held computers without TDM voice
  • Expose TDM identities in the all-IP world
  • Embrace the next generation’s use of the word “phone” to mean computer
  • Acknowledge that communication will all be done in software.

Ribbit Powers Microsoft Converged Communication Desktop

I’m very pleased to be able to reveal today work that Ribbit has been doing with Microsoft to power their Converged Communications Desktop application to be demoed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

Come see us in the Microsoft pavilion in Barcelona!

Ribbit’s Converged Communications Desktop for Windows 7 Helps Transform Provider Revenue Model

February 11th, 2010 by Kristie Wells | located in Partners, Platform, Telephony | trackback
Ribbit for Windows 7 (code name: Meridia), will help carriers leverage their existing customer base and network assets to boost revenues and add more value to their subscribers. Co-developed with Microsoft, Magpie and Amadeus – this customizable desktop interface consolidates communications in a single place.

Built as a proof-of-concept, Ribbit for Windows 7 demonstrates how carriers can apply trends impacting the telecommunications industry to increase average revenue per user (ARPU). As a branded desktop application, Ribbit for Windows 7 brings the carrier brand to the forefront of the customer experience, and provides a revenue-generating vehicle through local advertising and international call termination. Using an opt-in model, the companies who own this data can market and advertise based on their understanding of their subscribers tastes, geographic location and social graph.

Ribbit for Windows 7 is compatible with Windows Live Contacts, and provides new ways to stay connected in a rich mobile desktop experience. It offers click-to-call/click-to-conference functionality, visual voicemail, SMS and instant messaging (IM) via an intuitive, customizable, drag and drop user interface using touch-screen features from Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Carriers and service providers are struggling to maintain growth and relevancy in an increasingly mobile-dominated world. In fact, according to a March 2009 IBM Global CEO Survey, more than half of the telecom executives surveyed plan to open their networks to external application providers, and a third of them are considering ways to capitalize on existing customer relationships and mobile networks to help boost ARPU.

Voice as an Application Drives Increased Revenue and Decreases Subscriber Churn

As a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT, Ribbit understands how to help carriers improve subscriber productivity, sustain high value margins and reduce subscriber churn through bundled services. Ribbit’s open, cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model allows telecom companies to eliminate the tremendous cost associated with building out a network that would otherwise require 24 – 36 months to build, deploy and market.

Quotes:

• Joe Black, Ribbit VP of Strategy and Business Development: “This emerging monetization model will enable providers to deliver bundled applications and services that will yield a higher margin and reduce subscriber churn. By leveraging Ribbit’s powerful platform based APIs, providers can enter markets they were once unable to reach due to regulation of the telecom industry and the cost-prohibitive nature of building out networks.”
• Joseph Hofstader, Telecommunications Industry Architect and Evangelist, Microsoft Communications Sector: “Over the last couple of years, we’ve watched a number of trends create an environment that is now revolutionizing the communications industry – among those is voice as an application and communications networks as programming platforms. Today, network carriers have an opportunity to increase their revenues by applying the economic model of the Web to the telecommunications industry. By offering value-added communications services, they can capitalize on technological advancements. The application of the still-evolving Internet business model to a century old industry may seem contradictory to many passive observers but a closer look reveals that the main revenue drivers in both industries are remarkably similar: subscriptions, transactions and advertising—and that is where the opportunity lies.”

Ribbit for Windows 7, will be demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (taking place February 15-18, 2010) in the Microsoft booth #1D19. Ribbit is focused on helping carriers integrate rich communications into existing networks, build revenues and attract and retain customers and we feel Meridia is exactly the solution the telco industry has been looking for.

PG&E UPDATE – When do bad practices become “incompetence”?

Two weeks ago, I posted, PG&E, They MUST have a REASON

Recall at the end of the post I’d contacted a very nice and supportive customer service representative that explained it would take only two business days to reactivate my on-line account access, which had been suspended due to inactivity.

Eight business days later now…. still no access!

PG&E – They MUST have a REASON

Then again —  as a monopoly service provider, they don’t have to.

Go ahead, try it.  Try logging into your PG&E account.  If you’re like many, you set up automatic payments months ago.  Maybe even more than six months ago.  So you won’t be able to log into you account either.

“We are passionate about meeting our customer’s needs.”

 

So I called.

Problem one:  After navigating the voice prompts, I was connected to an agent who then informed me I CALLED THE WRONG NUMBER.  OK.  bad enough I have to call in the first place.  You’d think that PG&E would at least publish the right number.  They wasted $1.00 of customer care agent time tell me the Internet services number and transfer my call.

Problem two:  The Internet services agent IS UNABLE TO REACTIVE YOU ACCOUNT!  Get this, the agent submits a request that TAKES TWO BUSINESS DAYS TO PROCESS!

Amazing.  Two customer care agents at $1.00 a minute to tell me that in two days I’ll be able to log in.

The story is actually sadder still.  My wife burned through all kinds of customer care agent time trying to cancel service over the phone.  Because the service was set up in my name, PG&E wouldn’t take the disconnect order from her.  They told her that I should do it on-line because it would be faster and easier.

I told my agent this bit of the story.  She then suggested that I call in instead of waiting for my account access to be restored.

Go figure.

Good news for us, we’re moving to Palo Alto.  Palo Alto has its own city utility company.  My fingers are crossed.