Enough about MAXroam and Cubic. Time to shine the beam at my old buddies at Jajah.
What a fantastic job they are doing with these buttons. Kudos to Frederick and the team. In the week that eBay acknowledge the mess at Skype -- although I have to agree with Alec, I think Skype has been a great success. The boys at Jajah do it again.
Piss off eBay and just get a pile of free publicity. And what do hits mean? Hits mean conversions to paying customers. And that's what it's all about.
I haven't been able to write anything for ages because I've been so busy.
Today we launched our new products at TechCrunch40 in San Francisco. The actual demo didn't go too well as we had no GSM or Wi-Fi coverage in the hall. Go figure! At a Tech demo event!
Anyway... the product is absolutely fantastic. I have to say that of course ;-) But really... even if I didn't work for Cubic I would want these products.
We've moved heaven and earth the past two days to get these ready. Here they are:
Today is July 1st, Canada Day.
It's also the day I start my new gig. I'm joining Pat Phelan and his amazing team over at Cubic Telecom in Cork, Ireland. A lot of you might know Pat, he is very well known in the VoIP space and is the person behind AllFreeCalls (Yak4Ever), Roam4Free and the very widely read blog by the same name.
I met Pat while I was working at Jajah. What really struck me about him was his combination of clear vision and realistic focus on revenue generation. He intuitively knows what customers want, what they are willing to pay for and how much they will pay. I've been involved with startups for a long time. A lot of people focus on raising money to achieve their vision. Pat doesn't... he focuses on selling stuff. I can't tell you how refreshing this is.
I have been offered a few gigs since I left Jajah. None of them really got me excited. Two weeks ago I went to Cork and met with Pat's team. That got me really excited. What a great group of people. For me the team is everything. It doesn't matter what you do for a living, if you're with a strong dynamic team and you're having fun, any ambitious vision can become reality.
So what am I/we going to do?
Well I can't really tell you the specifics just now. We will launch our product in September and there is a lot of work to do before then.
However, what I can tell you about is Pat's vision. He wants a world in which you can pick up your mobile anywhere in the world and call anyone in the world for as long as you like and not worry about the price.
The real beauty is that the solution is not technical. No downloads, no special numbers, no websites. It's a simple service that anyone can understand yet surprisingly, nobody has done it yet.
Given my background and experiences over the last seven years I have seen just about every proposal in this realm and Pat's approach is the best I've seen. I'm so excited I can barely stand it!
I found this via Andy Abramson's blog. I'm not a big fan of Andy but to give him his due, his knowledge in this space is extensive.
Anyway the subject at hand is Gaboogie. A truly excellent Web 2.0 flavoured conference calling application. When I was at Jajah one of the applications I liked most was scheduled calling. The team put this together with conference calling but quite frankly I don't think we/they ever pulled it off.
Gaboogie, on the other hand, really has pulled it off. A great example of focusing on a specific problem and delivering a beautiful application.
I see that Erik Lagerway is one of the founder's. This bodes well. Erik knows all things SIP. He was the founder of Xten. They were upstairs from us in Vancouver when I founded FatPort. It's funny I've had a lot of coincidences this weekend. More on that later.
Another nice feature is that they are a local Vancouver company. Get over there and give it a go. Good luck to them.
Technorati Tags:
JAJAH, Mobile, Vancouver, VoIP
I haven't blogged for a long time primarily because I didn't have much to say and because I was working on some stuff I couldn't talk about.
I still can't talk about some of the stuff I'm working on but I do have a whole bunch of things to say, so let's get started.
I like Jangl, it's a great little company that has lots of good ideas. However, after their announcement two things got me going.
(1) One of their new services; and this is how it works according to Matt Marshall on VentureBeat:
"First, let’s say you have only someone’s email address. You can enter their email address on the Jangl homepage, and Jangl will issue a new phone number to call. You call it, and leave a message. Jangl ties that message to the email you gave it, and forwards your voice message in an email (they click on a link to hear an audio message). It also issues a local number for you, so the recipient calls you back, again without having your real number. This saves money on International calls, because it’s done through VoIP. You can do the same with an IM address: Just plug that into Jangl, and it will let you leave a voice message for them via IM."
Am I completely stupid here and missing something? This sounds to me like a solution looking for a problem. So you've got someone's e-mail address and you're telling me that I'm going to go through this seven-step process to get in contact with them. You've got their e-mail address, just bloody e-mail them. There are no charges associated with international e-mail.
(2) And again from Matt Marshall:
"Here’s the tough part. There’s no clear way for the company to make money short-term. The company says it plans for mass adoption first. It will seek to make money by offering premium features or advertising, such as within the widgets, or within calls, but hasn’t made any decisions about this."
No shit, Sherlock!
Boy oh boy!
Maybe I woke up a bit groggy this morning but here's another one that's lost on me.
Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners are investing $12 Million into Zlango. This outfit want to replace -- or to be fair, maybe supplement -- SMS language with a proprietary hieroglyphic.
It's a daft idea. It won't take off. It'll be a fad. That's it.
Andy Abramson over at VoIP Watch posted this story this morning.
Maybe I'm missing something here but I've got no idea what he's talking about.
"If TruPhone, AbbeyPhone and GizmoProject can be made to run on this, and if GoodLink comes out running on it as it does on the E62 already, there may be a real threat to the BlackBerry for reasons that only a user of all of the above could appreciate."
I've got a Nokia E61 with TruPhone's excellent software running on it and push e-mail. I know that TruPhone will most definitely support the E90 when they get around to it.
So I'm using all of the above and why is this a threat to RIM and the Blackberry franchise then? Why does everything have to be a zero sum game where I win, you lose? I think the market is big enough for a few players and I wouldn't be writing off RIM or the Blackberry just yet.
We launched JAJAH Mobile Web today. Want to know more? Check out the video, it's me on the voice over:
Technorati Tags:
JAJAH, Mobile, Nokia, Blackberry, Treo, Windows Mobile, Money
In an earlier post I spoke about how I didn't really care about a new mobile from from Apple. I was wrong. I take it all back.
I want one!
This is what it will look like with JAJAH running on it ;-)
'Tis the season for silly predictions so I thought I would add mine.
Technology
1. Mobile operators won't change this year. Why should they? They have a cash cow and until they are forced by competition they won't do anything. Things that will force them to change are the services from companies like JAJAH (I work for JAJAH) and Truphone.
2. Dual-Mode handsets will proliferate but nobody will be able to use them because everyone is still looking at this issue from a technical perspective. What I mean is that until the industry begins to coordinate and cooperate nothing much will happen. You might have a Nokia E61 with Truphone running on it but that's pretty much useless if you walk into a hotspot and Truphone doesn't have a roaming/authentication agreement with the hotspot operator. The strength of GSM is all in the roaming framework. Until this is replicated in the SIP/Wi-Fi world we won't really see the sheer disruptive power of this service combination. I'm not expecting it in 2007. As a result item 1 above will remain true.
3. Because of item #2 Femtocells might get a look in. Many people have been talking about these but I have to state for the record that it was my good friend Michael Kuhlmann who first touted such an idea about 3-4 years ago. I won't disclose the full details of his idea but it would make a lovely complement to JAJAH's service.
4. Some entity will make a move on Research in Motion. It could be Private Equity and it could be Nokia but this is a great company and it's turning into a nice little cash-generating beast and I think with the Pearl they are onto something.
5. Apple will announce the... integrated home entertainment system. You might have thought I was going to say iPhone but although I'm in the wireless world I don't really care that much about it. It doesn't ease any pain I have. I'm actually quite happy with the innovative products that Nokia keeps bringing to the market. What I want, no *need*, is an integrated home entertainment system. The full shabang. Internet access, TV, movies, photos, music... all from the one box and all with one remote. I have to be able to use this thing without taking a 3 year degree. There is only one company that can do it -- Apple. It should be called the Fuji.
The World
1. Bush! I have no hope whatsoever for the man. This year means that it's one year closer to the next presidential election. I'm not sure who said this but it remains true: "...the US Presidency is just too important to only allow Americans to vote. We all need to get a vote this time around."
2. Gordon Brown becomes the UK Prime Minister and announces a troop withdrawal from Iraq. Otherwise he doesn't stand much of a chance in the next UK elections.
3. Warmest year on record yet again? What d'ya think? Global warming, is it for real? What a bloody stupid question that is. Of course it's for real. I guess it won't be until Miami is under six feet of water that people will seriously start recycling their Pellegrino bottles. Do you think Al Gore will run?
4. Valverde wins the Tour in 2007 and Man. U win the Champions League.
5. I'll actually get my kitchen reno finished ;-)
