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Tweets from Showstoppers at CTIA 31 March 2009


We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is Futile.

Zannel pulls together video, photos, text and pushes it to your social nets. Take video on phone, upload to Zannel, push it to Facebook.

Zannel site provides portal for video, photo, text microblogging, can mash it up, for example on map via geotagging.

Supported sites include twitter, facebook, blip, blogger, wordpress, flickr.… More

Maybe they meant stimulating conversation?

13 March 2009 by Steve Blum
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Following a couple weeks of meetings and conference calls with industry, government and community people, and doing some reading, the broadband portion of the stimulus package isn’t looking so stimulating…

  • The real fight is on now. Lobbying groups are fully engaged as the NTIA determines the scoring criteria it will use. The process will continue over the next two to three weeks. There are more hearings scheduled for Washington, plus two others next week, one in Las Vegas and one in Flagstaff.
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When they say shovel ready, they mean real shovels

Notes from the Silicon Valley Telecom Council’s Policy Luncheon

The prevailing view amongst the private sector people who have been talking to contacts with the Obama team is that the lion’s share of the broadband money will go to incumbent carriers. “Jobs are created through the existing structures,” was how Mike Masnick put it, quoting a highly placed source in the administration.

Yesterday’s Silicon Valley Telecom Council policy luncheon in Santa Clara was sponsored by AT&T, but big carriers by no means dominated the panel.… More

Real-time tweets from the Silicon Valley Telecom Council's Spiffy Awards Gala

  • At Silicon Valley Telecom Council Spiffy awards, a comedian is warm up act for a venture cap presentation. Who will be funnier?
  • VC won’t have to be too funny to win, I think.
  • Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners up now, says trends are good for telecom.
  • Says U.S. consumers are spoiled, over-entitled and living beyond their means. Recession is good time to reset.
  • Says in recessions “good enough” is good enough for consumers, hard times for premium or leading edge plays.
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What the gods would destroy they first give to corporate brand managers


That’s a TikiTag there.

Took a first look at TikiTag. It’s perfect for Santa Cruz. It could put geeks on the beach. If we can save it from the suits.

Saw it at the Showstoppers event at CES last month, and the TikiTag people were kind enough to send me a demo kit.

Technically, it’s simple. The kit contains a USB-enabled RFID reader and ten sticky RFID tags. Download the app from the website, set up an account, plug in the reader, swipe a tag and something happens.… More

Eye contact is next teeping opportunity

Telepresence is to teleconferencing as dining is to eating. One is a mechanical process, the other transforms the simple act into a complete social experience. Or so the hope goes.

Also known as teeping, the idea is to create a completely immersive environment where you forget that the person you’re talking with is not physically present. Cisco is pushing this technology hard, but hasn’t crossed the line from teleconference to telepresence.


Teeping opportunity

I spent some time in a Cisco telepresence demo room this week, during a small business symposium co-hosted by the TIA and Cisco.… More

Confronting the killing ground

Start up companies looking for traditional “A” round financing in the $4 to $8 million dollar range will be left to die over the next 18 months. In fact, the financial killing ground will stretch from the $1 million level up to, and perhaps past, the $10 million range.

That was my take away from yesterday’s small business symposium sponsored by Cisco and the Telecommunications Industry Association. One of the highlights (from an information perspective, anyway) was a panel discussion with three venture capitalists (Ajay Chopra, Trinity Ventures, Michel Wendell, Nexit Ventures, Eric Zimits, Granite Ventures), and moderated by Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat.… More

Live from CES, Friday, 9 January 2009


Last to first, real-time tweets from Las Vegas

  • On my way home, via Virgin America. An excellent CES, could have stayed longer.
  • TEC seminar takeaway: development needs financial, institutional, information & energy infrastructure.
  • Chambers’ development keynote devolved into a tacky Cisco sales pitch.
  • Cisco CEO John Chambers, standard corporate stump speech, interesting but generic.
  • Windmill powers mobile phones & radio, info gained lets farmer grow & sell crops efficiently.
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Tweets from Showstoppers at CES, 8 January 2009

  • New adult IPTV platform Fyretv.com sez 5K subs at launch a month ago, 27K more signed up & waiting for equipment. STB, basic lineup: $10/mo. Some biz models are recession proof.
  • HD downloads caching on 1GB USB stick on Fyretv roadmap. Subs buy content but store it on Fyretv servers. Miami HQ, headend in Dallas colo.
  • Fyretv OEMs STBs in China: Broadcom 7401 chip, mostly text & menu-based inhouse user interface on Linux kernel.
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Live from CES, 8 January 2009

Last to first, real time tweets from Las Vegas…

  • WirelessHD press conference. Certification ready. 60GHz standard to link devices inside the same room to HDMI standards.

  • Clear thinker: Paul Liao, CTO Panasonic. Uses Maslow’s hierarchy to rate & rank tech features.
  • Clear, though, that there’s still a battle to be fought over how to split up content and application revenue in the wireless world.
  • Recognition that consumers will have lots of devices, but don’t want to pay lots of money to connect them all.
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