I won’t publish posts in this blog anymore.
Feel free to browse the blog history – I’ll add a reference here to the new blog.
Cheers,
Giacomo
UPDATE: Please give a look to my new blog and subscribe to its RSS if you want.
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Archived Posts from this Category
April 20, 2009
December 23, 2006
I wish you Happy Holidays, and I really thank you for reading my blog, giving your contribution with public and private comments, creating a lot of ideas and thoughts in these 7 months (already 7 months since I started?).
… and Happy New Year! See you in 2007, hoping to be together witnesses of great events in the Telecommunications world.
Giacomo Vacca
November 22, 2006
I can’t see the need for anonymous comments in my blog, in which I leave every one write their opinion. So I decided that I will not publish anonymous comments anymore: leave a name and an email address and I’ll let you write here.
Now let’s think about positive behaviors: thanks to all my readers! I see a lot of interest in the arguments I propose. At the same time, I will continue to write about less followed topics, because everything I report here really matters to me.
October 9, 2006
An article on IM in the enterprise and related security issues, by John Dickinson (I quote some sentences):
[...] last year’s IM traffic averaged 13.9 billion instant messages per day [...]
Radicati’s traffic number includes 12.5 billion messages, or 89 percent of the traffic, sent on the three public networks, while the remainder of 1.4 billion messages per day went through enterprise networks operating inside company firewalls.
[...] 71% of corporate IM users are using a “sanctioned” service.
The so-called enterprise IM services that serve as an alternative for companies wanting to eliminate the use of public networks in their shops are provided by IBM/Lotus’s Sametime, Microsoft’s Live Communications Server and Jabber Inc.’s Jabber server.
[...] both companies (IBM and MS, ndr) are among those pushing hard at something called “unified messaging” which includes e-mail, instant messaging, VoIP telephony and online text, audio and video conferencing, in a singly interfaced environment.
The primary disadvantage is that unlike the public networks, the enterprise IM products are not free [...]
About IBM Lotus Sametime:
[...] the key is IBM’s use of the Java-based Eclipse platform for developing extensions.
Sametime uses the SIP/SIMPLE [...] to establish presence information and for transmitting messages. The presence information is made available not only in the Sametime IM environment, but also inside applications, including both IBM office software and Microsoft Office products. Its new presence implementation also includes location information, which is very handy when someone is trying
to initiate a physical or combination physical/online meeting.
About MS Live Communication Server:
LCS also offers some security features, including encryption and message logging.
The system is based on SIP/SIMPLE, which offers a level of software access and flexibility sufficient for development of additional applications. Microsoft also offers a software development kit (SDK), and the company has a partner program that encourages ISVs to develop collaboration tools based on LCS.
About Jabber Inc.:
Jabber, Inc. and its Jabber Extensible Communications Platform, better known as Jabber XCP. The company likes to describe the product as a programmable messaging and presence framework that can link existing or new applications, networks, and protocols. But it’s also, at its core, a well-regarded enterprise instant messaging system.
About Barracuda IM Firewall:
Another hardware product comes from Barracuda, a company best known for its success in the e-mail security market. It has taken a similar approach to IM security by putting its spim and virus protection technologies into a box, however in this case it has included a full-on IM server based on the XMPP protocol.
MessageLabs EIM Communicate and Antepo OPN System are also mentioned.
Here Ken Camp comments this article.
Interesting Ken’s point of view on security policies:
Strong policies within the company that don’t permit using these tools for transmitting sensitive business information. Policies are people-oriented, not system controls. Policies only work when the corporate culture of an organization creates a sense of owernship or stewardship for the security and protection of corporate data as an asset across the board with every employee.
Every employee from the CEO to the temp staff. A failure to spread this corporate culture anywhere, is a failure everywhere. In other words, corporate cultures and policy enforcement work, but it some ways they’re quite fragile.
Technorati Tags: Giacomo Vacca, IM, John Dickinson, IBM Sametime, MS LCS
September 19, 2006
The number of companies which are using their web sites to increase sells and support is growing, and online customers are every day more comfortable with online payments.
But one element has to be taken into account: when a customer is going to spend a lot of money buying something through Internet, it happens that he wants to know more about a product or a service.
And rather than waiting for an email reply, the customer is more comfortable in communicating directly with the vendor. He has already searched inside the site for an article, and perhaps he will find some troubles in finding it again the next day, or the next week: he wants information now.
- What kind of information?
- In which language?
- Through text messages or voice? Or even video?
- Does he need to talk to a sell person or a technician?
The vendor is not able to know what kind of potential customer will reach its web site, but he can adapt it to the customer needs. The vendor can provide an online operator, with specific skills, and speaking specific languages: this is the future (and in some cases the present).
One example is Live Person, which offers several different solutions for CRM, with live chat, voip click-to-call, online help, email management, etc.
Offering a similar solution is also Helpcaster.
Here Presence is important, and it must be seen in a larger view: the information that an operator is available, the description of his skills and knowledge, the list of available communication means (chat, voice, video, etc), the language, etc, are all presence information.
Technorati Tags: Giacomo Vacca, Presence, CRM, Live Person, HelpCaster
September 7, 2006
Today Jeff wrote an interesting comment on the AIM Developer Program. Here are some citations:
At Spring 2006 VON, AOL’s Senior VP, Ragui Kamel began talking to some trusted industry insiders about his desire to build an ecosystem around developers who could support AIM PhoneLine, the VoIP softphone based on AOL’s Instant Messenger (AIM)[...]
Kamel’s idea was to find companies who could be part of an ecosystem which he and his team are building around a set of API’s. It’s those API’s that make it easy for developers to be able to leverage and easily reach the AOL installed user base of AIM Instant Messenger users.
One of those new services is AIM Presence, a way to easily display your own AIM presence status on a web page, using some HTML code lines or an XML document.
You can see on the right of this page an example: if you click on the icon, depending on your browser settings, the default AIM client is open and you can chat with me.
Technorati Tags: Giacomo Vacca, Presence, AIM, Pulver
September 5, 2006
Starting from a post by VoIP Central, I was curious to see what’s going on in the VoIP concerning RFID technologies.
Looking into Google search results for “RFID VoIP”, not so much. As I wrote time ago here:
Today I was reading about VeriChip Corporation, which produces RFID implantable (don’t worry: also “wearable”
) microchips for several different applications: medical monitoring, emergency management, and so on.
The big deal is about privacy, I know, but I’m very confident that advanced presence services based on positioning will be available soon.
I consider RFID a good technology to be observed from the VoIP (+ Presence) market. It is highly available, reliable, cheap, and at the same time can offer a lot of geo-related, user-specific information.
Imagine your mobile phone with a SIP/SIMPLE client for chat and VoIP, and a RFID reader. In this way you could retrieve information about a movie, a monument, etc, and add this info to the ongoing communication…
Just to complete, here’s the post that made the discussion start, from “Store Front Back Talk”:
In a dressing room in the huge Japanese department chain Mitsukoshi, half-dressed customers scan RFID-tagged jeans and then use an IP telephone to check inventory and call for more clothes to be brought in.
“For them to have put in a touchscreen kiosk, that would have run about $20,000 to $25,000,”[...]. The VoIP setup costs about $700 to $800. “That’s a lot cheaper,” he said.
[...] claiming a 15.8 percent sales increase compared with the prior year’s identical month.
Technorati Tags: Giacomo Vacca, Presence, VoIP, RFID, Mitzukoshi
September 1, 2006
Nimbuzz – Chat for mobile phones (and for free)
Posted by Giacomo Vacca under UncategorizedLeave a Comment
A company called Nimbuzz has launched a free program that you can install in a few seconds in your Java-enabled mobile phone, allowing you to chat with your buddies.
It uses the data connection available on your mobile phone – GPRS or UMTS – so as soon as you have a flat fee you don’t have to pay any extra money to use it.
You can also interact with MSN and GTalk users, and presents an interesting idea with its “Buzz” feature. Graphics is good.
Talking about Presence and Mobile-Internet interaction all I have to say is: Nice Job!
Technorati Tags: Giacomo Vacca, Presence, Nimbuzz
August 31, 2006
Last Monday Smith On VoIP posted an article ranking the best 30 VoIP-related blogs. Well, brilliant idea.
More than commenting how this ranking could be assigned (Luca in his blog shows an interesting different point of view), I’ve noticed that most of those blogs (that are also blog that I read) were, in some way, “generic”, and just a few of them (including Irwin Lazar’s) talks about Presence and real-time applications associated with VoIP.
I think that a comprehensive and long-term view of VoIP cannot be faced without involving Presence technologies and the associated market opportunities.
That’s why I try to give my contribution with “The Presence Of Presence” (and I’d like to thank all my readers).
Technorati Tags: Giacomo Vacca, Presence, VoIP, SmithOnVoIP
August 31, 2006
Hi everybody. I’ve been out of office enjoying the fascinating Barcelona and a wonderful place in the south-east coast of my island: Villasimius (here you can find some nice public photos). I’m back with a lot of enthusiasm (and reading a lot of interesting news in the Internet and VoIP market): let’s see what happens!
