Clay Shirky's Essays: VoIP - Plan A vs Plan B
2003 was a remarkable year in the US for voice over the internet(VoIP). If you needed a label for the events of the year, "Collapse ofDenial" would be a good one -- after a long period of relativeinaction, the FCC and the state regulators are suddenly pushing hardfor a regulatory framework. The question is no longer whether voice isgoing to become an internet application, but when."When" could still be a very long time, however. The incumbent localphone companies -- Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and Qwest -- have variousdegrees of interest in VoIP, but are loathe to embrace it quickly orcompletely, because doing so means admitting to everyone --shareholders, regulators, customers -- that both monopoly control andartificially high voice revenues are going away. (The fact that thisis true does not much lessen the pain of saying so.) As a result, theywill likely try to convince regulatory agencies, both the FCC and thestates', to burden competitive VoIP firms like Vonage with additionalcosts and rules, while delaying their own offerings.Complicating this de facto Plan A, however, is the fact that VoIPisn't a service, it's just a set of protocols, meaning thatcompetitors don't have to buy into Plan A to deploy it. If Plan A is"Replace the phone system slowly and from within," Plan B is far moreradical: "Replace the phone system. Period." - More at http://www.shirky.com/writings/voip_a_b.txt
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http://www.shirky.com/writings/voip_a_b.txt
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MetaFilter: !ecaep rof sdrawkcab
Backwards . . . into the future A cab driver in India, who's driven only in reverse gear for the last two years (at speeds up to 85 kph, and without accident), hopes his upcoming trip will bring about peace with Pakistan.
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Tomalak's Realm
WIRED: "How Would You Redo the Google Interface?" Joshua Davis, Jenny Holzer, Shepard Fairey, IDEO. Four designers share their (re)visions to Google.
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Found this via Rajesh's site. Interestingly the headline says 16 hard truths but lists 18...
Cringely believes that obfuscation is the key to .NET’s survival and an Euclid, Ohio based company called PreEmptive Solutions holds the key to the technology. Interesting thoughts, and the technology behind the ‘morphing’ lines of code does look very interesting. If Cringely is to be believed, there may be a gold rush on to own a piece of PreEmptive…
Good to be back on the blogging scene after a bit of a break. First it was the flurry of activity related to the NASSCOM event, after which we had a weeklong training program to attend. And no Internet access during that time period (felt weird, but good.) Now I would be back to posting. Stay tuned…
Don Park's Daily Habit: Longhorn Aero UI Sampler
I just ran across this nice set of Longhorn UI related articles, officially titled Aero User Experience Guidelines: Sampler for PDC 2003. Links to the meat are under What's Inside? heading. Some good ideas, some questionable, but all good looking. I am starting to get a little sick of all the gradients though and the huge titlebar seem wasteful. I wonder what usability tests caused them to make the title bar much bigger?
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Category: Technical
Cool, Digité just made news on Yahoo! Financial News that's amazing, we've got loads of press coverage recently and the response at the NASSCOM event was tremendous, looks like the product is starting to get noticed...
Jesse, thanks for your wishes...
Brajeshwar points to the Macromedia MAX 2004 conference which will be held in Bangalore and Delhi. Nice to see India getting on the conference map, though my only peeve is that the Singapore event is a two day thingy and I'll particularly miss the 'Enterprise Application Technology' track...
Anyways, things usually begin slowly, and any beginning is good, right? ;)
Digité the company I work with has just started sales operations of our software that helps manage IT outsourcing initiatives, here in India, and looks like the news has been covered pretty well in the media...
