Sorry for the drop out in posts… just been working really hard. So, as a complete dodge of my blogging responsibilities, let me clue you in to Tom’s favorite, but probably useless, mashup of the day… Twitter Vision.

Twitter vision mashes up Twitter text messages with google maps, so that when anybody sends a message, it shows up with their picture on a world map. It’s really pretty cool, and in some small measure, what it must be like for God to be listening in on our thoughts. (Shoot… God, ignore that last thought.)

I suppose the general concept is pretty cool, and may even have some applications in a battlefield sort of scenario. Each soldier has a headset, it runs through speech to text and a GPS unit, and the commanders get real time, geo located battlefield intelligence. But, for Twitter Vision, it’s more about hearing twenty somethings whine about their hangover.

I’m sort of fascinated. I wonder how many ignorant Americans are wondering why there are no Twitter messages coming from Nigeria. Like my friend Auri says, all these personality disorders are an American invention. In Belarus, people are too busy trying to find something decent to eat to worry about being depressed. Suppose they’re too busy to Twitter too.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 11:14 am | Filed Under Twitter, programmable web, thomas howe | Leave a Comment

Given the exploits of my ancestors, you might think that I would be a big fan of patents. In fact, I am, but I have to admit, some of the patents I see look pretty darn sketch.

Which brings me to this wonderful analysis of the patents that Verizon used against Vonage. The most troubling one is the thought that Verizon actually patented the TDM to Packet Gateway. Remember that story about the guy who patented the XOR chip that made the blinking cursor? I can just imagine that “Can you hear me know?” guy knocking on every gateway and service provider door saying something different.

I should thank all those customers who have retained me in the last few years to work on their defense against the VoIP patent trolls, but that fact is that I am not, nor will ever be, a patent attorney. (Unlike patent attorneys, I laugh. A joke! It’s a joke! You gotta tell them when it’s a joke.) If I wasn’t so darn busy, I would read it through and figure it out. Anyone out there bored? Let me know.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 4:24 pm | Filed Under elias howe, patent, thomas howe, verizon, vonage | Leave a Comment

Gosh, I don’t even know where to start with this one….

So, my mother calls me up a few weeks ago, before I left Comverse, and says, “Tom, I’m really confused about the differences between the P-CSCF and the S-SCSF… I know one is has something to do with replacing session border controllers, or is it a replacement for the HLR? No, that can’t be right, can it? You really need to help me. I gotta get this done before my bridge game tonight.”

“Well, Mom… I’m not quite too sure myself, as I don’t even know what rev of IMS I’m designing to. Besides, why don’t you leave all that IMS development to the Tier 1 NEPs. It’s why they invented IMS in the first place, so that the smaller vendors could get locked out, while at the same time, locking in those large carriers to many more years of big, expensive iron. Besides, IMS is just an architecture, not a definitive specification, so why don’t you call your bridge game an IMS compliant activity, and everyone will be happy. “

The title is so true, in so many ways.

p.s. I am pretty sure that if you took the entirety of the IMS specifications, in all the variances and splendor, and printed it out and put it in a big pile, the average human being standing upon it would not be able to survive the fall.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 12:59 pm | Filed Under IMS, thomas howe | Leave a Comment

Now that I’ve stuck my foot firmly in my mouth, it’s time to come clean on what I think the future of our industry is. I’ll put together a comprehensive article about it soon, but as a preface to it, here’s my “Next Generation Communications Primer”. Each item in the list is critical to understand, because I believe it will have a deep impact on every aspect of our technology and our business. You may not agree with some of the items on the list, but I encourage you to at least become passingly familiar with them, so that your head will be clear when the arguments are made. This list is not exhaustive, and I cannot say which are the most important things on it, but I can say that each is critical to understand.

1. Web 2.0 : This takes the cake for the most overused marketing term of the decade, I know, but the concepts behind Web 2.0 are absolutely critical and real. Tim O’Reilly wrote “What is Web 2.0” more than a year ago, describing what it really means. Read this article, and commit it to memory. When Om recently said that there was nothing Web 2.0 about Grand Central, this paper describes what Om meant. Even though the paper itself doesn’t address voice specifically, it does provide a basic understanding of the current state-of-the-art of web technologies. Web 2.0 does not mean “whatever we do next on the web”… it has a specific meaning for the design and deployment of web applications.
2. Amazon Turks : I’ve been blogging on this for a while. The concept behind turks is that it is artificial artificial intelligence; it’s a way for a computer program to call a function that is performed by a real, live human being. Even more so, it does so in a way that can use a thousand people for a single hour, and then never again. Amazon Turks makes human labor available at Internet scale. The implication for telephony? Here’s a quick one: how about professional receptionists that you rent out for a minute at a time? Another one - do you want to test out your new service with ten thousand people calling at once? Another one - how about near real time transcription of conferences and messages? Another one… do you get my point? The applications are endless.
3. The rest of the Amazon Web services : It is important that you understand the implications of storage and computing power on demand. So much of our industry depends on capacity… both over and under. With the Amazon Web Services, you only need what you need. You can nearly instantly ramp it up, and down. You may argue that Amazon will not be the final vendor for this sort of technology… whatever. Somebody will.
4. New Presence : Alec Saunders and his crew at Iotum developed an application that finally gives presence back to the user, and away from the service provider. Presence is so earth shattering because it’s the first time human beings can express, in real time, their preferences for how, when and from whom they would like be contacted.
5. Long Tail : The long tail refers to the phenomenon for large distributions, where there are a small number of very heavily weighted items in the distribution, and the rest of the items in the collection have, by comparison, a small weighting. As an example in music, something like 80% of the sales used to be in the Top 40. Since the Internet radically lowers the barriers to entry and costs of sales, it becomes possible to be profitable with a much smaller audience. In addition, since it’s possible to offer a wider selection of products and services, increasingly larger amounts of sales go to the tail than the head. The implication for telephony is clear - services like voicemail which are big sellers remain that way, but the bulk of revenue is in the smaller services, now possible because of VoIP.
6. Ruby On Rails and The Geeks : The technical and cultural shift of web development outside of our industry is massive. I could go on about how blindingly fast web development has become, but it’s only half of that story. Today’s geeks live with a different ethos about asking permission, content ownership and architecture, which results in massively scalable applications which are simple to write and deploy. Because of web services and VXML, telephony development is now web development. You don’t need a million dollars or months of development to deploy innovative services. No one does.
7. The carrier-class argument no longer holds. It used to be that innovative applications for telephony were difficult to scale because you could only stack so many Dialogic cards in a server, and so many servers in a rack, before it became silly. Packet based architectures are intrinsically more stable and robust than TDM architectures, scale better, are easier to deploy and are less expensive to develop and maintain. In fact, architectures such as TDM and (in some ways) IMS actually contribute to lower reliability and innovation. Pure SIP, and it’s son P2P SIP, are systematically better.
8. Programmable Web : Please visit programmable web. The web is now the platform, not a 2 million dollar piece of iron. When’s the last time you heard of an interesting application being delivered on any other platform? If you think that mashups are the province of geeks, I would remind you that every successful travel site is now a mashup. If you think there are no good web APIs for telephony, I would have you visit PhoneGnome, TellMe, Voxeo, FlatPlanetPhoneCompany, JaJah, Jaduka…

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 10:23 pm | Filed Under Alec Saunders, mashup, programmable web, thomas howe, web 2.0 | Leave a Comment

I realized I only told half of the story during part one, but before I get to that, a little bird told me that my last post about VON might upset Jeff Pulver. Let’s hit that one right away.

If your name ISN’T Jeff, then let me be absolutely clear that Jeff is in every way a decent and talented man, in my own personal pantheon of gods, a visionary, brilliant and worthy of every respect he’s given and worthy of every dollar he makes. I have the deepest respect for Jeff, and don’t challenge me on that one. I’m a wimpy geek by day, but I’m a Tang Soo Do Cho Dan by night.

If your name IS Jeff, and my post upset you, then I have wronged you in the most egregious way, and please accept my deepest apologies. I draw a clear line between you and the show, and even though the show isn’t where I’m at, it is clearly where a lot of people are productive, happy and fulfilled. You are the reason the show exists, and in large measure, why our industry exists. My family, and the families of thousands of others, have, in part, you to to thank for the jobs we have due to your vision, hard work and good character. Truth be told, I am growing more upset by the day that I am not out there in California, as I miss seeing all of you. Andy is quite right - VON is still where business is done. But there are dark clouds on the horizon, and I don’t think I’ll hang around for the rain to come.

The second half of the story is filled with negative emotions. Scared… upset… blind-sided. I feel as though I’ve woken from a fog. There’s a market force that’s growing outside of our VoIP world that will wash away those that aren’t looking for it, and will challenge those that do. Since the mashup camp this January, it’s come into clear focus in my vision, and I’m afraid for my career, and those of my comrades. It’s time to move, and move right now. My honest, strong and deep feelings are that the majority of players in our market are really missing what’s happening in communications today. From my view of the speaking topics and theme of this VON show, I can only assume that this problem extends to the show itself. I understand why the show has taken the direction it has, especially into Video, and far be it from me to criticize that. There’s a lot of money to be made in them hills… I wish all of those involved good luck. My blog, and my day to day work, are to educate those around me about the future of communications. It’s what I do.

For me, from the very first day of my career, and I hope every day since, I have constantly sought out ground zero of communications technology. In my opinion, I am sad that it’s no longer at the VON show, but I’m speaking more about my needs and opinions than my estimation of others. The VON show, Jeff Pulver, and all of my friends have their own agendas, needs and wants. God bless them.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 6:36 pm | Filed Under VON Show, jeff pulver, thomas howe | 2 Comments

Fantastic post this morning from Jon, speaking about Keith Weiner’s work on second life. You should really check it out to get a flavor of what’s new in the gaming space. And, if Brant Helf, Peter Chu, David Lindberg or any of the old PictureTel gang’s out there… check this out… they are using Siren!!! Sweet.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 9:34 am | Filed Under DiamondWare, Peter Chu, jon arnold | Leave a Comment

It’s the end of an era for me…. for the first time in a decade, I am not going to the VON show. For the first time since my nine year old daughter was born, I am not attending. And that’s not just the US shows, throw a couple of VON Canada’s and Europe’s in there, too. It’s a bit sad, but we all have to move on sometime, and my time has arrived. Although it’s partially because I’m doing a lot of traveling lately, and some is because I’m swamped with work, it’s mostly because VON has failed to rise above the noise in my technical life. As a (hopefully) cutting edge technologist, the VON show is simply not where it’s at, especially with regards to communications. Today’s VON show is ruled by business development arms of increasingly larger companies, not by thought leaders driving real communication innovation. I’ll miss all my friends, heck… I’ll even miss Jeff Pulver’s stupid purple shirts. I probably won’t miss the Herding Cats. (Are they playing again?) I’ll miss Carl Ford’s witty banter and I’ll miss giving Diana my presentation about five minutes before I give it to the audience. But more than that, I miss the feeling of walking around technologists that are doing things that blow my mind, which is why I’m hanging around the O’Reilly show these days.

And there were some pretty good times :

• I remember the first time I was a speaker in 1998, where I was director of engineering for NetPhone, and gave the talk for the CEO about RTP header compression in H.323. (Boy, was I wrong. For a goof, I gave the same talk in 2005. That was a hoot.)
• I remember in Fall 1999, where my teams were doing the user interface work for PingTel, and the H.323 stack for e-tel, the two leading IP phones at the time. Talk about Chinese walls. Ralph Hayon from Congruency would come by the booth for a one-stop-shop for competitive information, which we never ever gave him, but he would try.
• I remember in the Fall of 2000, when we were working full scale on commercializing the SIP code from Columbia, and I had those horrible talks with a senior manager about why trying to patent SIP was a bad idea.
• I remember the fall of 2001, where flying to the VON show was the first flight I took after 9/11. You know, that’s how important VON was back then.
• I remember the lean times, where our industry was devastated, but VON was a place to go to commiserate.
• I remember seeing the market come back in 2005, and seeing the show floor fill back up, and talking about “remember when”
• I remember last spring looking at the Acme Packet booth, and seeing something like 19 of the top 20 carriers had purchased their equipment, and how good I felt for Andy and Pat, two of the best guys in this market.

I’ll see all of you on the other side. Maybe I’m too old of a PictureTel veteran to really get excited about video now, or maybe it’s just that I’m more about creating a new world than milking the old one, but either way - I will miss the people.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 8:51 am | Filed Under VON Show, jeff pulver, thomas howe | 1 Comment

As you’ve probably noticed, I love to find an image to go with my posts. Often, I can’t really convey my emotions so well in words, and pictures seem to do the trick.

Anyways, I thought I’d post something for St. Patrick’s Day, as I am now “Irish-by-marriage”, and I wanted to show my Irish pride and spread a little cheer. So, I’m searching for a good picture of a leprechaun, and I’m not satisfied. You get the stupid line-art leprechauns, first of all. They look really dorky. Sort of this awful combination of twelve year old girl cute and trailer park dorky. (If ANY person who reads this lives in a trailer park, I apologize. However, I think the chances of that are vanishingly small). Then, you get some pictures of a drunk guy in a green suit passed out in front of a bar. Not cool for St. Paddy’s day. But then, genius hits. Lucky.

In my Irish house, we have two visitors: Lucky and Seamus. Lucky is the evil one. He tips over chairs, turns the milk green… stuff like that. Seamus is cool, and leaves gold chocolate coins all over the house. So I thought, hey! Lucky. Lucky charms. Always after me Lucky Charms. So, I search for it, and that’s when I find me pot of gold.

How cool is this picture? It’s like I want to make that devil sign with my hands, nod my head up and down, and remember that time in 1987 when I saw Ronnie James Dio at Oxford Plains, Maine in the Monsters of Rock Tour. It’s so cool that I forgot all about those kids chasing Lucky, and that’s how cool I want your St. Patrick’s Day to be.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 12:36 am | Filed Under Ronnie James Dio, St. Patrick's Day, thomas howe | 2 Comments

As I restart my consulting and custom development practice, I find it useful, at all times and everywhere, to chant my new mantra. After being in the traditional carrier space for so long, feeling the suffering that only comes from seeking satisfaction from something inherently unsatisfying, I feel as though I have finally achieved enlightenment. Just like Buddha, after achieving inner clarity, I spent a few weeks ambivalent, just sort of hanging around with this new knowledge. But now, my compassion is getting the better of me, and I wish to share this inner knowledge with all you, Buddhas to be.

Sit down in a quiet spot, turn down the lights and center on your breath. Feel the breath on your upper lip as you breath out. As you sit, repeat the following mantra, keeping it close to your heart.

Integrating real time communications with the business process makes businesses faster, saves money, and increases customer satisfaction. Integrating real time communications with the business process makes businesses faster, saves money, and increases customer satisfaction. Integrating real time communications with the business process makes businesses faster, saves money, and increases customer satisfaction.

Remember, pain is unavoidable, but suffering is your choice.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 12:17 am | Filed Under buddha, mashup, thomas howe, voip | Leave a Comment

Seems as though everyone wants to jump on the current “JetBlue really screwed up” bandwagon-to predict its imminent demise. You know, I don’t think so.

I’m sitting in the Oakland Airport waiting for my flight back home to Cape Cod. I’ve been away quite a bit lately, and I miss my bed, my wife and home cooking. Unfortunately, I also missed my flight. You see, today is the 15th, and yesterday was the 14th, and my ticket said 14, not 15. For Caeser and I, the ides of March suck. Et tu, Brutus?

Armed with a long and honorable past of high school screwups of this very nature, my dog face was on. I shuffled up to the agent, threw myself on the counter and asked for mercy. Now think with me. If you had to pick ANY airline in the world in this situation, who would you pick? I am willing to bet that anyone who’s flown JetBlue more than twice would pick JetBlue. Of course, they got me on tonight’s flight, window seat and all, even though it took the manager’s permission, a baggage handstand and some quick typing. Ruthie, my agent, tried to help me. She really did. And even if she couldn’t pull it off, you could tell she’s trying.

JetBlue isn’t going anywhere but up, because Ruthie and all her clones work there. Good service is all about caring about the customer, and having the power to make them happy. For me, this is what JetBlue is. So, when I go up, I’m going JetBlue.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 11:57 pm | Filed Under JetBlue, thomas howe | Leave a Comment

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