Alltop - My Blog Added to VoIP Blogs Category

Many of you know Guy Kawasaki, and if you don't, you should. He's on my blog roll and I've blogged about him a few times. Guy always has a lot of interesting things on the go - and his books are highly recommended. The latest thing I've come across that he's involved with is Alltop.

What is it? Well, it's another blog aggregation site - in this case, "all the top" blogs and news sources for a variety of categories. Their team picks what they feel are the top blogs in each category, and each is featured in a microsite. For each of the blogs, there's a running feed of the most recent posts. This makes it a pretty convenient place to get all the latest from the top sources within a given topic. Of course the quality is only as good as the blogs they've chosen, but that's no different from any of the other industry blog lists out there.

There are dozens of categories at Alltop, and VoIP is one of them. Alltop launched in March, and they've been adding all kinds of topics, including other topics of interest to me, such as Canada, Hockey and Baseball. I've got a fair bit of exploring to do here - and am sure you'll enjoy poking around too.

The Alltop VoIP microsite launched last week, and I'm pleased to say that my blog has been included. Thanks Guy! It's great to be in this grouping, and there are lots of familiar and worthy blogs there as well, including Andy Abramson, Alec Saunders, Garrett Smith, Tom Keating, Skype Journal, Jajah Blog, along with news sites like VoIP News and Fierce VoIP.

So, if you're not RSS'g these blogs already, Alltop's VoIP site is a pretty good Plan B. Because it's so new I expect to see other blogs added, and if Alltop starts drawing good traffic and feedback, perhaps they'll add some other telecom/tech topics. They do have sites for Gadgets, Social Media and Mobile, so they are on this track already, and perhaps others are in the works. Check it out!


Technorati tags: Alltop, Jon Arnold, VoIP blogs, Guy Kawasaki

June Media Roundup

Not sure why I didn't do this sooner, but I've been wanting to post a monthly roundup of my recent media citings. A number of people keep mentioning articles where they see me cited, and sometimes I'm not even aware of them.

I try my best to post media citings in the right column of this blog page, but also thought it might be helpful to summarize recent citings in one post. June was a particularly busy month for being quoted in the tech/telecom media, as I was included in stories in both the U.S. and Canada, along with a TV appearance.



Business Week - "Home Phone Service for $10 a Month?"

BNN TV - RIM's Earnings/Outlook for Smartphones

ITBusiness.ca - "Cisco's Former Number Two Becomes Avaya's Number One"

ComputerWeekly.com - "VoIP Supplier Guide Essentials"

Macworld - "Wireless Broadband to Drive iPhone 3G Sales"

U.S. News & World Report - "Look Out, Vonage. Here Comes magicJack"


Technorati tags: Jon Arnold, J Arnold & Associates

The Future of Home Phone Service - Ari Rabban

For long-time VoIP followers, you'll likely know Ari Rabban. I've known Ari from my earliest days of tracking VoIP at Frost & Sullivan. He was with industry pioneer VocalTec for many years, and most recently is the CEO of startup Phone.com.

The company has an interesting pedigree, and I'll leave that for you to discover. My post is more about shining some light on Ari and what the company is up to. They recently launched a corporate blog, and I want to steer you to Ari's latest post.

In this post, Ari talks about trends he's been seeing to support the notion that landline telephony isn't going away as fast as you may think. Sure, there's a strong trend towards wireless substitution, but his point is that much of the landline loss hitting the incumbents is going to cablecos, not wireless operators. Furthermore, he points out to the launch last week of the @Home landline telephony service from T-Mobile. This made a splash not just because of the low price - only $10/month for qualifying customers - but because it's coming from a mobile operator.

Of course, Ari would be remiss not to also mention his own company Phone.com, and in this case it's quite appropos. I've been trialing their Virtual Office service a bit, and it's a great alternative for small businesses, plus they have Home Phone as a residential offering. By all means, you should explore their offerings - they're a great example of how effectively landline services can be provided via the Web.

So, the main takeaway here is that landline telephony isn't going to disappear, and that when packaged right, VoIP can provide a lot of value. I still think voice is still a race to zero, but we're not there yet. As long as that's the case, I agree with Ari that there will still be a viable market for lower priced alternatives for voice service.

We all know how hard it is for any pureplay VoIP provider to make money, so the challenge is to maintain low operating costs and reasonable customer acquisition costs. In that regard, that's where the Web-based model of Phone.com comes into play, allowing them to be a low cost provider. Once that's in place, it's really a marketing issue, and that's where the Phone.com namesake comes into play. In the world of Web marketing, that's a key part of their brand, and from what I'm hearing, it's working pretty well. This is a different model, for sure, but in a Web 2.0 world, it just might work. I for one sure hope so, and to see for yourself, I'd suggest you RSS their blog.


Technorati tags: Phone.com, Jon Arnold, Ari Rabban, VoIP

Technical Difficulties - Please Stand By

For those of you who know me well, at some point you've heard me talk about how my relationship with technology is not always healthy.

Well, today has probably been the worst example of this ever. If something goofy or never-happened-to-anyone-before can occur with technology, just put it in my hands. I guarantee within 5 minutes, I'll have cracked the silly code that no Engineer could possibly envision.

Ready for this???

As a matter of course, bloggers get their share of trashy comments and trackbacks, and I'm pretty good about cleaning these out a couple of times a day. Well, that's what I set out to do this morning --- and all it took was 3 harmless keystrokes and boom! Just like that, my last 75 blog posts were deleted. Somehow the deletions got done for the blog posts instead of the trackbacks.

Three and a half months of daily blogging flushed away with 3 keystrokes. I'm not going to repeat or elaborate, but let's just say it's thrown off my day a bit.

I've been trying things off and on in between everything else that's been keeping me busy today, but so far, no luck. The posts have disappeared from the server and now from the blog itself, which you are reading now.

So, apologies if it looks like I've taken a long blogging break, or you've been trying to find my recent posts.

Three keystrokes - that's all it took. Can you believe that? For something that could be so monumentally destructive, you'd think Movable Type might have the standard "Are You Sure?" popup to alert you before making that final fateful entry. How about "Are You Freakin' Crazy?" - wouldn't that be a more suitable warning? Whatever.

In the wake of this mini-calamity, though, I'm not about to walk into heavy traffic or anything drastic to end it all in the true romantic style of a doomed writer. There is likely a silver lining that may save the day yet. I've got no online trace of these posts, but I did manage to retrieve them in my cache and make backups as Word documents.

So, with a little help from my friends, I'm hoping to get these posts restored, at least to this blog site ASAP. Until then, please bear with me, and hopefully we'll get things back to where they were soon.

Onwards....

Max's Updated Blog

Well, here's the new and improved Max Arnold blog. My oldest son and geek-of-the-house has been blogging for a while and he's just taken things up a notch.

Max has gotten the blogging bug lately and has showed it first by giving his blog a re-do. It's got a whole new look and feel - not that easy on the eyes - but pretty sleek. You be the judge.

Second, he's been adding a fair bit of new content lately, based mostly on his revolving door love affair with smartphones. Over the past few months he's gone from using the iPhone, the Nokia e61i, the BlackBerry Curve 8320, the Samsung BlackjackII, and now it's back again to the iPhone. Have you got that?

Anyhow, he's been writing reviews for each of these, with his most recent post being his take on the just released Apple iPhone 3G. Max's writing has been steadily improving, and I think you'll agree his views are more advanced than

most 15 year olds.

He's also started using Twitter, and with school ending this week, I think he'll start becoming a power Twitterer (is that a word?) pretty soon.

So, I'm just puttig the word out that Max is blogging more regularly now, and I'd urge you to check it out, especially if you're a fan of smartphones - and a smart guy.

Technorati tags:

Max Arnold, Jon Arnold, iPhone, Twitter

Thomas Howe Writing now for Fierce VoIP

Am on the go a lot this week, and I'm trying to keep up with my posts as best I can. I was offsite most of the day, and it looks like the tech space is drowning with reviews and blog posts about the iPhone launch, especially here in Canada where we finally get the iPhone legally starting July 11. Well, I didn't tune in to Apple's launch, but have seen enough posts and have spoken with the media a couple of times. But I'm not about to post - enough has been said already, and I really don't have much to add.

What I do want to say here is a shout-out for colleague and fellow blogger Thomas Howe, who is now contributing to Fierce VoIP. Was just speaking with him, and didn't realize until now that he was doing this.

His debut article ran on May 28 and is titled "Congratulate Failure". I for one am glad to see him get a wider forum like this, which will allow Thomas to get his 2.0 message beyond our inner circle of bloggers. His article talks about the recent demise of startup Jangl - many of whom have since gone to work for Jajah. The more important message around which the title of the article revolves is that failure can be a good thing.

In the new world of "Telco 2.0" - or whatever else you want to call it - the name of the game is innovation. I agree with Thomas's view that it's a sign of health that companies like Jangl come and go. Not everyone is going to make it, but if you don't succeed, try and try again. There is tons of opportunity for 2.0 applications, and we'll see lots more failures along the way. But we'll also see lots of successes - some will be ho-hum, but some will be spectacular, and if you follow where Thomas is going, you'll see why it's a great time to be an innovator in telecom.

So, welcome to the publishing fold, Thomas, and I look forward to your upcoming articles!

Technorati tags: Thomas Howe, Jon Arnold, Fierce VoIP, Jangl

VoIP Now - Am On Their "Top 100" Telecom Blogs

I'm having a good week. Yesterday, VoIP Now posted its list of Top 100 Telecom Industry Blogs.

Not sure why this list is coming out at this particular time, but it's always a good time be included in these things. Am happy to say that my blog made the list, and is in the group of 24 blogs categorized under VoIP. The blogs are listed alphabetically, so there's no rank-ordering here. They've wisely stayed away from that, so I guess they like us all, which is fine by me.

The top 100 blogs are spread out over 7 categories, of which VoIP is the largest. There are a few anomalies to the list and the groupings, which I've shared with VoIP Now, but I'll just leave it to you to make your own assessment. On the whole, the list includes just about everyone I can think of, but I have passed along a few who are conspicuous by their absence. By all means, have a look, and feel free to do the same.

If you follow my blog, you'll know that I also got a #1 rating the other day from Blogged.com, so I'm on a bit of a roll right now. No industry list is perfect, but it's great to get some recognition from more than one place. Good things often come in threes, so maybe there's another list coming around the bend...

Technorati tags: Blogged.com, Jon Arnold, telecom blogs, VoIP Now

Posted by jonarnold at May 8, 2008 08:57 AM

Comments

Holy Moley!!!

Fantastic news!!

(hug)

:-)

Posted by: jules at May 8, 2008 01:39 PM

Blogged.com Rates My Blog #1 for Telecoms

I was contacted the other day by Blogged.com, saying that they've been following my blog, and it looks like they like it. So, I've got two pieces of good news to share on that front...

1. Blogs are rated out of 10, and mine rated 8.3. This puts it in the "Great" tier, which is the third highest tier, behind "Excellent" and "Superb".

Only the top, top blogs get the Superb rating, which is a perfect 10.0. How hard is that to get? Well, they've tracked and rated 17,149 blogs under the "Technology" banner, and only 2 rated Superb. One is TechCrunch, which should be pretty familiar to readers of this blog, and the other is WiredScience (from Wired magazine), which is a bit off-center from my day-to-day coverage. Following "Superb", anything between 9.0 and 9.9 is "Excellent", and "Great" covers blogs with a rating between 8.0 and 8.9.

2. My blog is rated #1 among all the Telecom blogs they're tracking. Telecom is a tiny subset of all the Technology blogs, and only includes 84 blogs. While there are roughly 550 "Technology" blogs with ratings higher than my 8.3 rating (hey, I'll take that among 17,000+ total blogs!!!), there aren't any rated higher among Telecom blogs - I'll definitely take that.

There are a few familiar blogs in this category for what it's worth, including VoIP News, Jajah's blog, Brough Turner and IP Business Magazine. These are all pretty good blogs, so I consider myself to be in good company, and it's great to get such a positive rating among this crowd.

So, what does this mean? Lots of ways to look at this. First, it's great to be recognized at all, and second, it's also great to get a solid rating amidst so many good blogs and bloggers. If you're curious, I urge you to scan through the top blogs, whether the Telecom blogs, or the massive list of over 17,000 Technology blogs. The list of Tech blogs is as interesting for who is there and who is not. I had a quick scan of the blogs with ratings of 8.3 or higher, and aside from TechCrunch, I really only found 3 that I follow regularly - Jeff Pulver (9.2), Ken Camp (8.7) and Tom Keating (8.3). Interesting, huh???

How do they rate these blogs? Well, I can only go by what the website says - the ratings are done by sector-specific editors, and they base these on four criteria: "frequency of updates, relevance of content, site design, and writing style". As you can see from the site, all readers are welcome to rate these blogs, but I'm not sure how much impact these ratings have on the editors.

You can also suggest other blogs for evaluation, which is great since I suspect they're missing quite a few very good blogs that we all follow regularly. I haven't explored the Tech blogs rated below mine, so there could well be many familiar blogs there, so I urge you to look for yours if you're wondering. Are there better telecom blogs out there than mine? Absolutely. Blogged.com is a work in progress, so by all means suggest other blogs you'd like to see them rate.

For someone like me, Blogged.com is a good story. As you may know, my blog is 100% content-driven - there are no banners, ads, sponsors or Google links. As such, my traffic is minuscule compared to most - if not all - the bloggers I follow, and I suspect my blog is invisible to a big swath of the market. I'll never generate the kind of traffic that most bloggers have, and I concede that my following will be small, but hopefully loyal.

Furthermore, I'm a writer at heart, and take a lot of care in what I say and how I say it. I'm at ease saying that most bloggers are not great writers, and their notoriety comes from other competencies. So, I like what I see with Blogger.com, as their criteria is based more on what the blogger is creating rather than how many people link to them, or how well their blog is search-optimized.

So, who is Blogged.com? Well, I've been asking the same question myself. Their site launched in February, so it's pretty new, and you can read a brief review about them here from Webware's Rafe Needleman.

For those of you into social media, what makes Blogged.com different from things like Technorati is that it's based on expert evaluation of the content itself as opposed to key words or tags embedded in the content. It's a bit like Digg in that it makes use of crowdsourcing - a big buzzword in social media - which draws on input from readers to gauge the importance and relevance of a blog within its peer group. So, it's very Web 2.0 by nature, building on sharing and mass collaboration, but with a judicious mix of editorial objectivity (or so we'd like to think)and collective input from readers and other bloggers.

I really can't say how much stock you should put in these ratings, but Blogged.com seems like a pretty good barometer to me. Sure, they're new, and their universe of blogs will continue to expand, and whether you agree or disagree, you have plenty of opportunity to speak your mind and recommend other blogs for them to evaluate.

And if nothing else, I love their website because it's a great collection of blogs, and I'll use this as a regular resource now when I need to drill down for granular industry research.

Technorati tags: Blogged.com, Jon Arnold, telecom blogs

Posted by jonarnold at May 6, 2008 08:50 AM

Comments

Congratulations Jon!

What a great news story! (Plus, thanks for all the new telecom content I've got to pour through!)

Posted by: jules at May 7, 2008 07:41 AM

Interesting that blogged.com put me under Gadgets and not Telecom. Gadgets has a heck of a lot more blogs & competition, i.e. Engadget, Gizmodo, etc. So I'll take my 8.3 against that category any day! :)

Posted by: Tom Keating at May 7, 2008 05:25 PM

IT-Finance Connection Launches

Carl Weinschenk is a veteran tech journalist I've long admired and have done a number of stories with. I know him best through the publication IT Business Edge, and he's now got a portal of his own, called IT-Finance Connection.

He just gave me the news about it yesterday, and I'm happy to give it some attention. Carl covers a lot of ground, and as the name implies, he's using this portal to build a better bridge between the Finance and IT functions within organizations. They have long operated under different sets of rules, but as IT becomes more of a strategic resource on many levels, it's important that these two groups work more closely together.

I get that, and think that Carl is on to something good here. Hopefully he can build a business model around it, at least enough to build a base from which to grow. I'm not quite sure how he's going to engage these communities, but I'll certainly be willing to help, and would urge you to do the same if you like what he's doing here.

Technorati tags:

IT Finance Connection, Jon Arnold, Carl Weinschenk

Mobile VoIP Review - New Site - Cool Idea

Blogging colleague Garrett Smith has just launched a really interesting site, and is a side venture to what keeps him 110% busy over at VoIP Supply, which is booming in its own right.

His new site is called Mobile VoIP Review. One reason I like it is that the name says it all - nothing obtuse here. Very simply, it's a portal for people to post their own reviews about mobile VoIP services they've been using. There are placeholders there for all the major offerings - Truphone, Mobivox, Skype, iSkoot, Jajah, Fring, Rebtel, etc.

I should add this is very timely with CTIA happening this week!

Definitely a Web 2.0 idea here - let the reviewers provide the content, and if there's enough traction, the site becomes a great magnet for very useful information about these offerings. And of course, if that happens, advertisers will follow, and then Garrett just may have a nice business on his hands.

It's not totally commerce-driven, as there's a very handy FAQ section where the basics of mobile VoIP are explained in plain English (with a few typos along the way). So, the site can also be a vehicle for educating the market, and if this starts to build a following, I can see all kinds of potential for online demos, community building and richer content from across the industry. Plus, the site has a section for comparing mobile VoIP services, which will be quite interesting once it's developed.

So, if you're a mobile VoIP user, the site is open for business, and I'm sure Garrett would love to get your reviews! Great idea, Garrett - not sure if there's anything like this out there, but the time is certainly right.

Technorati tags: Mobile VoIP Review, Jon Arnold, Garrett Smith

Jeff's Social Media Breakfast - Toronto Edition

Bright and early today, Jeff Pulver brought his world tour social media breakfast to Toronto. Lucky me, it was held at my neighborhood deli, so it was a quick 5 minute walk. I'll take that commute any day.

Jeff has been doing these for a while now, and even a casual visit to his blog will tell you how important these have become for his regimen as well being an incredible way to leverage the energy he has been putting into Facebook.

The turnout was great - about 40 or so came, including a number of familiar faces. That said, there wasn't a lot of social media going on, but the traditional sitting at the table over breakfast human networking was just great. Many of the people attending were new faces for me, and they looked to be more of a Facebook crowd than a VON crowd. Jeff is a master at creating grass roots communities, and this was a great example. If there was time I would have eventually gotten around to everyone, but I ended up having productive chats with just a few people.

The takeaway for me was having more inspiration and purpose for making greater use of Facebook, and I hope to use it soon to connect with some of the people I didn't spend time with this morning.

Jeff, thanks again for bringing this event to town. Funny how it takes a New Yorker to come all this way to get a bunch of local techies, bloggers, VCs, etc. together in one place. If that's what it takes, so be it - beats staying here at my desk all day!

Photos courtesy of my Nokia N81...

Jeff welcoming us in his standard issue attire - Hawaiian shirt - summer or winter, you can bet on him wearing one...

Jim Courtney chatting with Dan York via Skype on his Blackberry 8320. Love it - hi Dan!

Technorati tags: Jeff Pulver, Jon Arnold, Toronto, Facebook

Squawk Box - Telecom Conference Roundup/IP Comm Insights Launch

Marc Robins and I were guests on today's Squawk Box call, hosted by Alec Saunders. This was my first time on as a guest, and it sure was fun. The turnout was great, and the discussion lively - and quite earnest, especially regarding the state of the VON conference.

We went on almost an hour, first talking about our new venture, IP Communications Insights, and then about the recent conferences we've been attending - eComm, VON and Voicecon.

Many in the audience had been to these events as well, so if you want a good roundup of how a mini-sample of the market is feeling about them, the podcast is time well spent. Alec has posted the link to his blog, and I sure hope you give it a listen.

CODA: given the circles many of the people on today's call travel in, today's conference roundup was eerily timely given what a number of well-informed sources tell me is unfolding as I write with one of them --- and by the time you read this post, this won't seem so cryptic.

Technorati tags: Alec Saunders, Jon Arnold, Marc Robins, Squawk Box

How VoIP Bloggers are Using VoIP

Call me old school, but I have my share of issues when the lines between blogging and journalism get blurry. That's a very subjective topic, but I wanted to share an experience with you that speaks to a lot of my concerns and values. I'm not going to identify the parties by name - there's no reason to - and I think to story will speak for itself.

I recently attended an analyst event put on by a vendor, and we got a pretty good overview of their plans and how they intend to do things. There's a tacit understanding that the details remain in the room and are not for public consumption - fair enough. I'm in the minority of analysts who blog - most do not or are prohibited as such - so I'm often an anomaly, and need to be extra careful when blogging about these things.

Well, the day after this event I spoke with a couple of people from the media doing stories on this vendor. I always follow up on these a few days after, and one of them told me that his/her story ran but chose not to cite me in their article. Fair enough - this happens all the time - there's never a guarantee that you'll be quoted when talking to the media.

The reason given, however is what got me, and is what prompted this post. He/she explained that while I was carefully sharing high level insights about the event, he/she was not at the event, and therefore not privy to what I was seeing and hearing. Even though I was providing further insight that would have made for a more interesting story - presuming it was handled professionally - the journalist couldn't use it, since he/she wasn't getting it first hand. This may well be their standard Editorial policy, but regardless, it was a highly principaled response.

That really struck me, not just because I hadn't heard that from anyone before, but because it really speaks to the heart of what makes journalism different from blogging. Journalism has a pretty clear code of conduct and while journalistic integrity can be a slippery slope, anyone who does this for a living knows first principles and tries to abide by them. I certainly do, even though I'm not a trained journalist.

Reflecting on this, I asked myself "would a blogger ever say this?", and I think the answer would be no. A good journalist can easily defend this position - know your source, and only report what you can back up yourself. I totally respect that, and that's why they get paid to do this - and why we pay money for newspapers and magazines - well not so much these days.

As we all know, anything goes with bloggers, and believe me, it's not a stretch to imagine analysts attending events and blogging the hell out of them just to break some interesting news or share some juicy tidbits. We all know about media embargoes not being respected, and I suspect the ones breaking them are bloggers, not journalists.

There a lot of tangents to this topic, and I just wanted to touch on one of them here. I don't know about you, but that experience for me reinforced the respect I have for real journalists, who do their work based on professional principals. Sure it's old school, but I'll take it any day.

No doubt, bloggers are often the best informed people - I support that notion in spades - but they are not usually journalists, and are not subject to the same criteria and editorial standards. For every bang-on blog post, there are lots that don't hold up, and journalists just have to be very careful who they lean on and what they can use.

Care to discuss?

Technorati tags: blogging, Jon Arnold, journalism

Posted by jonarnold at February 27, 2008 01:35 PM

Comments

Excellent points, Jon. Unfortunately, your views don't seem to be shared by many in the technology blogging world.

I've participated on a number of journalism panels relating to blogging, and have argued, often to much vocal opposition on the part of journalists, that bloggers are indeed journalists and should be accorded similar accommodations (press passes, etc.). I'm beginning to change my mind.

The other day, I read a snippet of a blog from a CEO within the VoIP industry in which he admitted to having attended an international mobile technologies conference using a press pass. It got me to thinking: would this individual, whom I personally respect, be willing to take the sacrifices a journalist is asked to make. For example:

1. Protect a source at any cost, including going to jail rather than divulge it;

2. Give up any financial interests in any company that is either directly or indirectly affected by what the blogger writes about. I personally do not believe that declaring those interests is enough because we have no idea what ancillary interests may lurk in the background. The concept of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" could be at work; divulging only one of those "legs" does not give the reader a true picture of the potential conflicts.

3. Refuse to accept gifts (including the right to keep hardware meant for reviews).

The three above are (just a few) fundamental tenets of journalism. I don't believe they are applied by most bloggers. And until bloggers adopt well-defined standards and fundamental ethics policies by which they are held accountable, they are not journalists.

Posted by: Marcelo Rodriguez at February 27, 2008 08:55 PM

There are some bloggers who act like good journalists. Conversely, there are some journalists who act like bad bloggers.

When I hear journalists denouncing bloggers as not being journalists, it sounds a bit like sour grapes. Here are these riff-raff that weren't J-school trained and don't necessary adhere to journalism tenets and they're encroaching on the journalist's turf.

Let's be clear about one thing: nobody holds a monopoly on sharing the truth with as wide of an audience as possible. Whether the information comes from a blogger or a member of the press, one always must consider the source of the material. Journalists are human, just like bloggers, and are subject to being influenced by external forces, for example the organization that employs them.

Unlike the megaconglomerates that employ the vast majority of journalists--and can and do influence how stories are reported--at least a good blogger discloses their potential conflicts of interest.

Posted by: PhoneBoy at February 27, 2008 10:21 PM

Geosign - what a story!/Welcome Kevin Restivo

This is a two-for-one post. First item is Geosign, a very mysterious company based in Guelph, Ontario. I posted about them last March after they quietly received a humongous funding of $160 million. This kind of money is unheard of in Canada, especially for an obscure company in an obscure town. In the IP communications space, most ventures are lucky to scare up a few million, and this raise is probably more than the whole space has received combined. I've never seen anything so out of whack at this level of magnitude. It just didn't add up.

After hearing about the funding, I approached them for me to come out and do an interview with their CEO. Initially, they were receptive, but suddenly the trail went cold - they were no longer giving interviews. Over the course of last summer, I had a dialog going with a journalist who was trying to get the story, and she had all kinds of interesting tidbits that were difficult to substantiate, but you just could tell something wasn't right. We fell out of touch, and Geosign has been off my radar for a while - but I've always wondered what the real story was.

Well, the other day I got my answer. Last weekend, the Financial Post Business Magazine ran a cover story on Geosign, penned by Robert Thompson. It's one of those you-have-to-read-this-to-believe-it stories, and I'm not going rehash it all for you here. I'll just say this was the classic Google pay-per-ad-click model on steriods, with hundreds of bogus websites set up as landing pages with nothing more than online ads on them. The scheme worked well enough for Geosign to attract $160 million - incredible! - but once Google caught on to their M.O., they changed the rules of the game, and the whole thing collapsed practically overnight.

Someone should make a movie of this. Canada is such a nice, modest, polite place, and you'd hardly ever suspect something like this would come out such a wholesome place like Guelph. Incredibly, as you read through the story, no crimes were committed, and the founders have simply moved on to other things - as if nothing ever happened.

I just want to say enough here to tempt you into reading the article. It's a great read, and I don't want to take away from Robert Thompson's good work.

Now for Part 2 of my post. I never would have seen this if it weren't for fellow analyst Kevin Restivo. He actually used to cover tech for the same paper as Robert, the Financial Post here in Toronto. He left a few years back for the analyst world, and is currently at IDC. We see each other at local events, and more recently, he's made me aware of his blog, which was started back in the summer.

While scrolling through his recent posts yesterday, I came across his post about Geosign. That was the first news I'd heard about Geosign in ages, and I'm so glad he referenced the magazine article, as I never see the Post. So, now I have the full story, and am happy to share it here.

More importantly is a shout-out here to Kevin and his blog. It's really good, not just for local and Canadian coverage, but Kevin is a strong analyst, and has keen insights on technology trends in general. We have very few analysts blogging about the Canadian market, and I'm glad he is. We have reciprocated links on our blog rolls, and I'm happy to introduce Kevin to my readers.

Technorati tags: Geosign, Jon Arnold, Kevin Restivo

Posted by jonarnold at March 19, 2008 11:53 AM

Comments

Jon: Thanks for the kind remarks. The story was very well received -- and what a tale it is!

Posted by: Robert Thompson at March 23, 2008 07:31 PM

Russell Shaw - Podcast Tribute

Alec Saunders hosted a thoughtful, heartfelt Squawk Box segment yesterday dedicated to Russell Shaw. I had PC problems that prevented me from joining the call, but he got a really nice turnout.

The podcast runs about 30 minutes, and has several remembrances from Alec, Jim Courtney, Andy Abramson, Jeff Pulver and others. If you ever met Russell or just read any of his well-regarded blogs and journals, you'll come away from this with a warm feeling and sense of community that runs deeper than our everyday interactions. You can download the podcast from Alec's blog, and my thoughts were posted yesterday.

Technorati tags: Russell Shaw, Jon Arnold, Alec Saunders

Russell Shaw

Definitely the saddest news I've ever posted about, and the hardest blog post I've had to write.

The news - Russell Shaw passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Friday in his San Jose hotel room. He wasn't with us at eComm last week, but was planning on attending - as usual - VON, which starts today in San Jose. Phew.

We got home Sunday morning, and I got the news first from Andy Abramson, and as I'm catching up on email this morning, others as well. You don't have to look far to find remembrances of Russell on the blogs, but a good starting point would be ZDNet's Larry Dignan.

What can you say? I'm just so surprised and saddened by the news. That's a given. I didn't know Russell personally, but will certainly express my condolences to his family, and companion Ellen. Russell was always one of my favorite bloggers. His posts were very wry, witty, and always had the hard edge of a seasoned journalist. They don't make 'em this way any more, and Russell always knew how to get a story, and to the heart of the matter. Just as importantly, he knew how to give the story, and how to tell the story. Those are subtle things that are very apparent to me, and you're not likely going to find them from everyday bloggers.

As a writer, I'll miss this from him in a big way. As a human being, I'll also miss Russell and his presence. He was always there in the press room at conferences, and always happy to talk about his stories or whatever I was working on. Always great to be around, whether at a conference, or at one of Andy's blogger dinners. Good memories, but a hard act to follow. To share that memory and keep it alive, I will keep Russell on my blog roll, and hope that others will visit and read him from time to time. I sure will.

Postscript. Mortality and Internet DO NOT MIX. I find it very odd talking about this on the Web, and as our lives become increasingly digitized, I guess we just learn on the fly how to deal with issues like this. The Internet is a virtual world - when you're online, you're somewhere else - you're not here - you're out there, somewhere. Real life is here and now - there's nothing virtual about it. As virtual as the Web is, though, it's permanent - it just goes on and on - or so we think. I don't really know what the etiquette is for death in the online world, but I know how I feel - sadness and a sense of loss. And I can't help but think of my own mortality - we'll all get there in due course. So, live each day in the here and now. You never know when your time is up. Adieu, Mr. Shaw.

Technorati tags: Russell Shaw, Jon Arnold

Nokia Reviews on Nokia's Blogs

Just a quick note about the Nokia Blogger Relations program. Over the past couple of days, I posted my review of the Nokia N95, and Max's review of the N81.

Andy Abramson has been running this program for a while now, and I just wanted to share that our reviews have now been posted to the Nokia Blogs sites, where there's one for each model - the N95, and the N81.

I always post about the Nokia Blogs when our reviews are posted, simply to support the initiative. It's a great use of the Web as a marketing tool, and am sure you'll see a lot more of this as mainstream companies discover the value and power of online sharing and collaboration tools. And, of course, these blogs are a fantastic place to get lost and hear first hand what engaged users really think about these phones. So, please, go visit, and get lost.


Technorati tags: Nokia Blog, Jon Arnold, Max Arnold, Andy Abramson

How Bloggers and Journalists are Different

Call me old school, but I have my share of issues when the lines between blogging and journalism get blurry. That's a very subjective topic, but I wanted to share an experience with you that speaks to a lot of my concerns and values. I'm not going to identify the parties by name - there's no reason to - and I think to story will speak for itself.

I recently attended an analyst event put on by a vendor, and we got a pretty good overview of their plans and how they intend to do things. There's a tacit understanding that the details remain in the room and are not for public consumption - fair enough. I'm in the minority of analysts who blog - most do not or are prohibited as such - so I'm often an anomaly, and need to be extra careful when blogging about these things.

Well, the day after this event I spoke with a couple of people from the media doing stories on this vendor. I always follow up on these a few days after, and one of them told me that his/her story ran but chose not to cite me in their article. Fair enough - this happens all the time - there's never a guarantee that you'll be quoted when talking to the media.

The reason given, however is what got me, and is what prompted this post. He/she explained that while I was carefully sharing high level insights about the event, he/she was not at the event, and therefore not privy to what I was seeing and hearing. Even though I was providing further insight that would have made for a more interesting story - presuming it was handled professionally - the journalist couldn't use it, since he/she wasn't getting it first hand. This may well be their standard Editorial policy, but regardless, it was a highly principaled response.

That really struck me, not just because I hadn't heard that from anyone before, but because it really speaks to the heart of what makes journalism different from blogging. Journalism has a pretty clear code of conduct and while journalistic integrity can be a slippery slope, anyone who does this for a living knows first principles and tries to abide by them. I certainly do, even though I'm not a trained journalist.

Reflecting on this, I asked myself "would a blogger ever say this?", and I think the answer would be no. A good journalist can easily defend this position - know your source, and only report what you can back up yourself. I totally respect that, and that's why they get paid to do this - and why we pay money for newspapers and magazines - well not so much these days.

As we all know, anything goes with bloggers, and believe me, it's not a stretch to imagine analysts attending events and blogging the hell out of them just to break some interesting news or share some juicy tidbits. We all know about media embargoes not being respected, and I suspect the ones breaking them are bloggers, not journalists.

There a lot of tangents to this topic, and I just wanted to touch on one of them here. I don't know about you, but that experience for me reinforced the respect I have for real journalists, who do their work based on professional principals. Sure it's old school, but I'll take it any day.

No doubt, bloggers are often the best informed people - I support that notion in spades - but they are not usually journalists, and are not subject to the same criteria and editorial standards. For every bang-on blog post, there are lots that don't hold up, and journalists just have to be very careful who they lean on and what they can use.

Care to discuss?

Technorati tags: blogging, Jon Arnold, journalism

Bloggers 1, Rest of World 0

On last week's post about Test the Nation, I posed the question - are Bloggers smarter than Backpackers? Turns out it was the right question to ask, and it turns out to be true, at least according to Test the Nation. Among the 6 teams competing on last night's show, we came out on top - whooo hooo - and those pesky Backpackers came in second. Take a hike, guys. We may be pale and enjoy the great indoors, and some of us have never kissed a girl, but on this stage, we da man......

It took a lot to give up a Sunday afternoon/evening to do this, especially with the Patriots game, but this sure was a fun experience and definitely worthwhile. Got to meet some other interesting bloggers, and it turns out that the guy who got me into this - Rick Spence - came away the big winner. He had the top score of everyone on the show, acing 57 of the 60 questions - way to go Rick! He won a great travel package worth $5,000, and I think the first word out of his mouth was "Disneyland!"

Live TV is such a bizarre experience, and the CBC knows how to do this very well. The show definitely has a fun format, and I can see more of the same for all kinds of variations on the theme - hockey players, gardeners, cops, robbers, etc., etc.

Anyhow, before the show we spent a lot of time hanging around doing nothing, and without the celeb look-alikes, it would have been pretty dull. Not much of a crowd around the cabbies or chefs, but the faux celebs were more than happy to have our attention and preen for the camera on a moment's notice. Why not?

So, here's a taste, courtesy of my Nokia N95.....







A bit like a seating plan at a wedding - nothing left to chance here - turn your gadgets OFF...



Oh, be-have.....



The pride and joy of the UK - Austin, Mick and a not-so-convincing Keith




Mick and Pamela - let's spend...some time together...



Borat and Shania Twain - very nice......




Kiss and their willing starlets - Pamela, Shania, Shakira and Paris - is that hot or what???



The Odd Couple - Man-Cher (and maybe a little bit of Howard Stern on acid) and Drew Cary




Down home country heaven - Elvii - husband and wife Elvis team, and Shania. The King was not happy last night - no peanut butter sandwiches in the dinner buffet....




And the best for last! A healthy dose of reality - Rick Spence, all smiles with the Test the Nation cup awarded to our team. Bloggers rule.......







Technorati tags: Test the Nation, Jon Arnold, J Arnold & Associates, CBC TV

Are Bloggers Smarter than Backpackers? Find out Sunday Night!

I recently posted about how getting on TV was a nice benefit of blogging. Well, it's coming - this Sunday night - 8pm on CBC television. The show is called Test the Nation, and if you live in Canada, you can watch it then - it's live, coast to coast. It's a quiz show using a team format and I'm on the Blogger team! Don't ask how or why - it's happening, and it should be fun.

So, there are 6 teams squaring off - Bloggers, Backpackers, Celebrity Look-Alikes, Flight Crews, Cab Drivers and Chefs - and beyond that, I don't have much else to say.

Well - the only downside is I miss the Patriots/Chargers game - we need to be at the studio in the afternoon to prepare. And there's no live blogging onsite, so there won't be any posting on the fly.

Somehow, I think we're gonna win. Why? Well, the show has its own blog page and a Facebook Group. These are tools of the trade for us bloggers - not so sure about all those other folks - and the CBC people are pretty smart, and of course they look to us for all the latest in modern ideas...... hmmm, let me re-think that one...

Well, don't listen to me - you can vote any time for which group you think will win - the poll is on their site and blog page. So, speak your mind, tune in, and watch us prove what know - or don't know.



Technorati tags: Test the Nation, Jon Arnold, J Arnold & Associates, CBC TV