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Look Out Google Fiber, $35-A-Month Gigabit Internet Comes to Vermont

Shalini Ramachandran — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 18:00:31 +0000

Heads up Google Fiber: A rural Vermont telephone company might just have your $70 gigabit Internet offer beat.

VTel’s Chief Executive Michel Guite says he’s made it a personal mission to upgrade the company’s legacy phone network, which dates back to 1890, with fiber for the broadband age. The company was able to afford the upgrades largely by winning federal stimulus awards set aside for broadband. Using $94 million in stimulus money, VTel has invested in stringing 1,200 miles of fiber across a number of rural Vermont counties over the past year. Mr. Guite says the gigabit service should be available across VTel’s footprint in coming months.

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Verizon Expects "Significant" Impact on Results From Superstorm Sandy

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:55:17 +0000

Telecom giant Verizon Communications, whose headquarters at 140 West Street in lower Manhattan were flooded Monday night by the storm surge brought on by Superstorm Sandy, has no idea what it’s going to cost to get its communications network back up and running.

In an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions today — primarily devoted to announcing the savings Verizon had garnered as a result of contract negotiations with its unionized work force — the company said its wireless and wireline businesses had experienced an impact from the storm. It didn’t put a dollar amount on what it expects, but the fact that it is softening up the Street for a big one-time charge that will affect its results is telling. It next reports earnings in late January.

Last year, Verizon reported $250 million in combined one-time charges related to Hurricane Irene and a two-week strike that knocked five cents off its earnings per share in the third quarter of 2011. The impact from Sandy will no doubt be much bigger. Even so, Verizon shares rose by 15 cents or less, to $45.29, by mid morning Friday.

Here’s what Verizon said in its filing:

Hurricane Sandy

In addition, Verizon’s wireless and wireline businesses have been impacted by Hurricane Sandy through a large portion of the Northeast. Verizon is currently directing its resources toward significant remediation efforts to restore communications services to affected customers, which may take some time. It is not possible at this time to estimate the impact that the storm and the required remediation may have on Verizon’s operating results for the fourth quarter of 2012, but we expect that it could be significant.

Twilio Taps Say Media Vet Kirkpatrick as CFO

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:37 +0000

Something is going on at the telephony software start-up Twilio, and I guess the word to use is “growth.”

Barely two weeks after hiring former Jive exec Lynda Smith as its chief marketing officer, today it will announce that it has a new CFO. It’s Lee Kirkpatrick, and he’s leaving Say Media, where he had the same title. He started his new job on May 7.

Twilio is growing so fast that it’s a little hard to keep track of all the news coming out of it. In his new role, Kirkpatrick will be responsible for Twilio’s finances and worldwide strategy. The company recently added Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden to the steadily growing stable of countries where it is operating. It also recently struck a deal with Microsoft to add telephony features to its Azure cloud computing platform, so, yeah, maybe now might be the time to add a CFO.

What’s Job One? Well, here’s a funny tradition at Twilio: Every employee, no matter their level or level of technical ability, is required to build a Twilio application in order to become familiar with how the service works. So, part of this week will be devoted to that. Companies like eBay unit StubHub, Salesforce.com and Airbnb have used it to create some custom apps that include the use of a phone.

It’s a very Twilio sort of thing to do. When the company was in the process of raising its most recent funding round — a $17 million series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures — Bessemer partner Byron Deeter created a Twilio-connected number and asked CEO Jeff Lawson to call it. As VentureBeat reported at the time, when Lawson called, he heard an automated voice message asking him to press 1 for $5 million, press 2 for $10 million and press 3 for $15 million.

It turned out that C round topped out at $17 million late last year, bringing its total capital raised to about $34 million, so there’s a decent-sized pile of money to look after. Before Say Media, Kirkpatrick held executive jobs at Ofoto, the Kodak Gallery and Reuters.

Cloud-Based Phone Software Start-Up Twilio Taps Former Jive Exec as Its CMO

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:30:54 +0000

There’s a certain kind of geek who gets excited about Twilio. Who among software developers wouldn’t jump at the chance of adding voice-calling and text-messaging options to a public-facing application? Companies like eBay unit StubHub, Salesforce.com and Airbnb have used it to create some custom apps that include the use of a phone.

This creates curious opportunities for fun. When Twilio was in the process of raising its most recent funding round — a $17 million series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures — Bessemer partner Byron Deeter created a Twilio-connected number and asked CEO Jeff Lawson to call it. As recounted by VentureBeat, when Lawson called, he heard automated voice messages asking him to press 1 for $5 million, 2 for $10 million and 3 for $15 million.

Hijinks like this say a lot about the culture that surrounds Twilio, but it’s not well known outside the developer community. Addressing that will be job one for Lynda Smith, its new chief marketing officer, who joined the company on April 23.

Smith is joining Twilio from Jive, the social enterprise software concern, where she was senior vice president of marketing until last fall. As CMO, she’ll be responsible for Twilio’s marketing strategy around the world.

“I think the Twilio brand is huge among developers because it gives that community a chance to play with something they haven’t had before,” Smith told me. “But it’s also getting a lot of traction within the telephony industry. … Voice and messaging are still a big part of the worlds that we live in, but they’ve been difficult to bring into new-world software applications because it’s still tied to some old-world things like hardware and protocols.” First priority, she says, is making sure that people outside the developer world know what Twilio is and what they can do with it.

Before Jive, Smith held a number executive slots at Genpact, Nuance, Genesys and Lockheed Martin. She’s a graduate of Simpson College, and has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. She’s also on the faculty at Stanford University, where she lectures on global entrepreneurial marketing.

Twilio is definitely on the move: It landed $17 million in that C round late last year, bringing its total capital raised to about $34 million. It also just announced its second conference in San Francisco, in October. Time to get serious about marketing.

Obama: I Want YOU to Crash John Boehner's Web Server

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:40:12 +0000

Last night, with the clock ticking toward a default on the national debt and talks over raising the debt ceiling at an apparent standstill, the president of the United States urged Americans to do something: Call their representatives in Congress. Boy, did they ever.

President Obama made the appeal in a prime time address to the nation from the White House last night, and it appears that the American people listened. The Washington Post reports that the telephone switchboard at the Capitol is being flooded with calls. And there are reports that the Web servers for certain members of Congress have crashed under a surge in traffic.

Among the sites that went down: That of Speaker of the House John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who addressed the nation after the president. Others down as of 8:30 am Pacific time were those of Elliot Engel, Democratic representative from New York; Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican senator from South Carolina; and Rep. Michelle Bachmann, the Republican from Minnesota now running for president. (Bachmann’s appears to be variously up and down, but slow to respond.) The Wall Street Journal has more.

Meanwhile, the president’s Web site is operating normally.

What's on Osama bin Laden's Hard Drive? Hopefully a Lot.

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:31:26 +0000

Can you imagine what evil yet useful informational treasures might be found on Osama bin Laden’s computer?

As details about the daring raid on Abbottabad continue to emerge, we’re learning more not only about how Navy Seals found and killed their target, but about the potential for further clues that may help catch yet more terrorists still on the loose.

Historically, obtaining a computer used by a terrorist is almost as important as catching or killing the terrorist himself. When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was nabbed in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in 2003, agents with the CIA and Pakistani intelligence seized a computer whose hard drive was said to contain, among other things, three letters from Osama bin Laden, a list of safe houses that bin Laden had used, a pilot’s license belonging to 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and information about the four planes hijacked that horrible day.

In Iraq in 2005, a seized computer found after a close call played a role in ultimately running to ground the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After being pulled over in a pickup truck by U.S. forces, he managed to get away, but was in such a hurry that he left his laptop behind. (I wrote about it at the time.) The computer yielded financial information and recent pictures of Zarqawi. It took another year, but he was eventually killed in 2006.

Clearly the walled compound wasn’t some Luddite hut where modern conveniences were banned. In some of the images of the compound you can clearly see a satellite dish, probably for TV. The Journal’s Tom Wright was among the reporters who got to tour the site. Initially described as a “mansion,” it seems from his description to have been nothing of the kind.

Among the items seized at Abbottabad, according to numerous reports, are hard drives, DVDs and other “electronic equipment.” CNN has a more detailed inventory here. The amount of information found is being described as “impressive” by CIA Director Leon Pannetta, and analysts are digging through it now to see who they can smoke out next.

Often it turns out that terrorists are just as sloppy as the rest of us when it comes to using computers. They make up easy-to-guess passwords, don’t go to the effort to encrypt their sensitive files and leave unencrypted documents in directories where they’re easy to find. With any luck, there is among the collected digital detritus something that will lead to several repeat performances by Seal Team Six.

It’s all part of the wider implications stemming from the dramatic close of the biggest manhunt in American history. I discussed them with Simon Constable and Spencer Ante of The Wall Street Journal during an extended all-bin-Laden edition of The News Hub yesterday. We talked about my story from yesterday on how it appears that bin Laden’s efforts to forgo the use of telephones and the Internet may have been a key clue that helped bring his hiding place to the attention of intelligence analysts. By trying to make himself digitally scarce, bin Laden may have ironically raised a red flag.

In the End, a Lack of Tech May Have Helped Bring Bin Laden Down

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 02 May 2011 13:00:16 +0000

Osama bin Laden met his end yesterday in a raid on a luxury compound in Abbottabad, a city north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. His remains, according to numerous reports emerging this morning, have been buried at sea.

Details are beginning to emerge of the painstaking detective work that led to the raid, and one fact that has caught my attention is this:
The property where he was hiding, while valued at $1 million, had no phone service, nor any Internet connection. This turned out to be a key red flag that helped bring an increase in scrutiny that in time led to the attack on the compound that President Obama ordered yesterday. A report in The National Journal mentions that it was the National Security Agency, which gathers America’s electronic intelligence, which determined, in some secret manner that didn’t tip off the government of Pakistan, that the compound had no phone or Internet.

I find it ironic that among the clues that led to this important victory was a lack of technology infrastructure. Consider for a moment the untold billions of dollars in electronic intelligence-gathering that has gone into the effort to finding even the vaguest clue as to bin Laden’s whereabouts since 2001, with no result.

Add to that the years of legal and moral hand-wringing that U.S. citizens have endured after learning that their own government was illegally monitoring their phone and email communications. This collection, disclosed by the New York Times in 2005, was part of a broader effort, the argument went at the time, to collect any information that may reveal a threat to the United States. Perhaps some terrorist operative inside the U.S. would call, or send an email or text message to a handler. And it wasn’t just eavesdropping. As USA Today reported in 2006, the NSA also built a massive database of American’s telephone calling patterns using data provided by the phone companies.

It would have seemed reasonable were it not for the fact that the government didn’t follow the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that sets out the conditions under which the government may eavesdrop on the communications of U.S. citizens. The revelation that it was eavesdropping without authorization by the secret FISA court naturally led to lawsuits. In 2010 a federal judge ruled that the government had overreached its authority.

Ultimately the eavesdropping efforts contributed little. In practically all cases, the information gathered under the program led to dead ends, and the sheer volume of information forwarded by the NSA so overwhelmed FBI investigators that they complained.

Meanwhile, bin Laden himself has been described numerous times as eschewing electronic communications. The story has been repeated many times that bin Laden had been an active user of satellite phones until sometime in 1998. In fact, the Inmarsat phone’s number was published in a fascinating book entitled “Body of Secrets” by the intelligence expert James Bamford. Following a 1998 missile attack on camps in Afghanistan thought to be frequented by bin Laden–and which he narrowly escaped–he severely curtailed his satellite phone use in order not to make himself an easy target for another missile strike. Some reports have said that since then he relied instead on an elaborate system of human couriers and opted not to use electronic communications at all.

Over the years there were numerous video and audio tape message. Intelligence analysts sought to pick out what clues they could from these. At one point in 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies turned to geologists to try and glean clues about his whereabouts. It wasn’t by accident that later video messages showed him speaking in front of a cloth background and that later messages were only audio tapes.

One has to wonder if bin Laden had chosen instead to be less careful, whether he might have been discovered at all. Presumably he had been able to purchase this property though intermediaries without raising attention, and had lived there for some time. Had he or someone living with him engaged in routine communications with the outside world, making the occasional local and international phone calls, he might have been safer, ironically more camouflaged amid the background noise of modern life in urban Pakistan.

There is still a lot we don’t know about the events leading up to the attack that ultimately killed bin Laden. But looking ahead I have to wonder if his choice to forgo all the modern communications technologies that so permeate 21st century life may in the end turn out to have been his biggest strategic mistake.

(Image from Google Maps.)

SurveyMonkey Buys Online Forms Start-Up Wufoo for $35 Million

Kara Swisher — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:28:31 +0000

SurveyMonkey, the quiet but profitable and fast-growing Web survey company, is buying online forms start-up Wufoo.

While the terms of the transaction for the Tampa, Fla.-based Infinity Box–makers of Wufoo–were not disclosed, sources said the price was $35 million in cash and stock.

Besides bringing together two delightfully kooky start-up names, the acquisition gives the Palo Alto, Calif.-based SurveyMonkey another tool to expand its offerings.

The Silicon Valley company’s most recent purchase was telephone-polling firm Precision Polling. And, in January, it acquired a minority stake in ClickTools, a U.K.-based survey provider on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.

Here’s the official press release:

SURVEYMONKEY ACQUIRES WUFOO

Leader in online surveys adds leader in online forms to expand services for customers

Palo Alto, Calif. and Tampa, Fla., April 25, 2011– SurveyMonkey, the leader in Web-based survey solutions, today announced the acquisition of Infinity Box Inc., the makers of Wufoo, a web application to create online forms. As part of the transaction, the entire Wufoo team will relocate to Palo Alto to join the combined company and help fuel SurveyMonkey’s continuing growth. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Wufoo was created in 2006 to provide an easy and efficient process for creating online forms, one of the most essential and commonly used interfaces for collecting data on the web. The application’s HTML form builder automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to collect and understand data so users can create surveys, contact forms, registrations and other forms without writing code. In addition, customers frequently use Wufoo’s forms to process online transactions. With Wufoo, a process that previously required hours of work by web developers can now be done by anyone with web access in a matter of minutes.

“Wufoo is the market leader in online form creation and a perfect fit for SurveyMonkey,” said Dave Goldberg, SurveyMonkey CEO. “From the product and business model, to the team and culture, we are absolutely delighted to welcome the company into the SurveyMonkey family and look forward to increasing the reach and scale of an already outstanding product through our platform.”

“Everyone at Wufoo is very excited about joining the SurveyMonkey team, and the expansion opportunities for our business that will result from this combination,” said Wufoo co-founder Kevin Hale. “By leveraging SurveyMonkey’s international resources, knowledge scaling infrastructure and expertise with large data collection systems, we will be able to increase the scope, performance and reliability of Wufoo’s services.”

The acquisition will allow SurveyMonkey to offer online forms, in addition to surveys, to collect users’ insights and data. Over the past two years SurveyMonkey has continued to enhance services by actively evaluating opportunities to partner and invest in complementary businesses. In January, SurveyMonkey announced it had formed a strategic partnership with ClickTools, a leading survey provider on salesforce.com’s AppExchange. In 2010, SurveyMonkey successfully completed a $100 million debt financing and also acquired telephone-based survey company Precision Polling.

SkypeOut: Service Is Down for Millions

Ina Fried — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:23:35 +0000

Skype users were sent scrambling for one of the few remaining pay phones on Wednesday as the Internet telephone service experienced a widespread outage.

A page deep in the company’s support site confirms the issue, but appears to significantly understate the problem.

“We are aware that some people are encountering difficulties signing in to Skype,” reads the company’s response on a FAQ page for those having connection issues. “Rest assured, we are working hard to fix this. In the meantime, we apologise for any inconvenience this may be causing you.”

Maybe the company was just trying to reinforce its warning that Skype is not a replacement for the telephone in an emergency:

Needless to say, this isn’t the kind of conversation the company was seeking to spark as it tries to build momentum for a pending stock offering.

Update, 10:45 am PT: A Skype representative said in an email that the company is examining the cause and extent of the outage and again apologized to users for the inconvenience. Skype said to follow its Twitter account (@skype) for updates.

If Speed Matters, Why Is American Broadband So Slow?

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:57:11 +0000

The Communications Workers of America have completed their latest survey of broadband connections in the U.S., and if the point wasn’t already well-established, then they’re here to remind you: Broadband connections in America are slow and service availability is lousy or non-existent in many areas, and that’s leaving a lot of people–millions actually–at a severe educational, economic and cultural disadvantage.

Here are a few highlights:

Half of all U.S. residential broadband connections fall below the minimum speed established by the Federal Communications Commission of four megabits per second down and one megabit up. That definition of what constitutes “broadband” is however all of six months old.

The median download speed was three megabits per second and 595 kilobits up, and these have only improved a little bit since the 2009 survey. At the rate the U.S. is going it will take 60 years to catch up with South Korea, where broadband network speeds are legendary, averaging 34 megabits per second.

Only one percent of broadband connections in the U.S. run at 50 megabits per second down and 20 up, meeting the FCC’s goal for the year 2015.

The report points out a few other findings from the FCC’s research: As many as 100 million people–roughly one in three–don’t have access to broadband at home, and of those, 24 million can’t get it if they want it, usually because they live on the wrong side of a seemingly arbitrary line on some map. Others say it’s too expensive or that they simply don’t know how to use it.

The 68-page report (PDF) goes on to break down the broadband situation in each state and a few U.S. territories.

The CWA released the report at a press conference in Washington, D.C., today, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was on hand to lend his support and talk about his plans to reform the Universal Service Fund so that besides funding telephone service in rural areas, which was the reason it was created, it can be used to help fund broadband deployments in markets where service is limited for one reason or another. He also talked about getting some of the hurdles out of the way of private companies, so that when they choose to build infrastructure they can move fast. Simply cutting red tape can reduce the deployment costs by 40 percent.

Below is a grab of the CWA’s speed map of the U.S. (Click on it to zoom in.)

Update: And here’s a video of today’s press conference at the National Press Club. Genachowski is the second speaker.

Viral Video: Dancing Soliders in War Zones Meme Gets a Little Creepy

Kara Swisher — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:41:52 +0000

Like the Hitler meme and others, the dancing soldiers of Afghanistan have set off a lot of military moves of the hip-swaying kind in online video.

Case in point, the latest one from a group of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank’s Hebron while on patrol with big and decidedly scary guns, using them as props in order to boogie to Ke$ha’s hit song “TiK ToK.”

There’s more controversy with this one, of course, given that it begins with a Muslim call to prayer in the background and those guns are part of the, well, fun. The incident is being investigated by the Israeli Defense Forces.

The holding hands move at the end was a nice touch though.

In any case, you apparently can’t stop the march of our armed forces.

Here’s the video, as well as the original video of the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, shaking their considerable booty to Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”:

ITC Probing HTC's Patent Claim Against Apple

John Paczkowski — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:29:53 +0000

Apple and HTC’s dueling lawsuits now have dueling ITC investigations to accompany them.

The U.S. International Trade Commission has announced plans to formally investigate HTC’s allegations that Apple (AAPL) infringed upon its mobile phone patents.

“The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has voted to institute an investigation of certain portable electronic devices and related software,” the ITC announced. “The products at issue in this investigation are portable electronic devices that utilize certain power management methods and may incorporate hardware and software for telephone directories within mobile telephone systems….The complainant requests that the USITC issue an exclusion order and a cease and desist order.”

The agency is already investigating HTC for a similar but broader complaint filed earlier this year by Apple, so this is familiar territory. A decision against either company could see some or all of its phones and mobile devices blocked from import into the U.S., though that seems unlikely.

Why Ma Bell Got the Ill Communication

John Paczkowski — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:00:56 +0000

Nearly one in four U.S. households has abandoned traditional landline telephones in favor of their wireless brethren. That’s the word from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says in a new study (PDF) that 25 percent of the households it polled for its Wireless Substitution survey are wireless-only, while just 15 percent are landline-only. Quite a change from 2006 when 11 percent of homes claimed to use only cellphones.

And the trend here is self-evident. In the last six months of 2009, the number of households with no landline but at least one cell rose 4.3 percent year-over-year. It’s no wonder the telecom industry is seeing ugly and continued losses in traditional landline service revenue.

Clearly, the mobile phone is increasingly viewed as a necessity and the landline a luxury. As well they should be: The former let’s you make and receive calls to and from almost anywhere, check e-mail and take pictures; the latter allows you to make and receive calls–nothing more. Given that, why bother with a landline? And given the obvious answer to that question, how long will it be before the landline goes the way of the rotary dial phone?

HTC Sues Apple: The Complaint and Patents [DOC]

John Paczkowski — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:45:54 +0000

Earlier this morning, HTC said it has filed suit against Apple (AAPL), accusing the company of infringing on five HTC patents. Below, a copy of the suit and a list of the intellectual property at issue in it, which, frankly, pales a bit in compared with the patents in Apple’s complaint against HTC.

U.S. PATENT NO. 6,999,800 Method for power management of a smart phone
A method for power management of a smart phone having a power system, a mobile phone system operated in a standby, sleep, connection or off mode, and a PDA system operated in a normal, sleep or off mode

U.S. PATENT NO. 7,716,505 (granted yesterday!)
Power control methods for a portable electronic device
A power control method for a portable electronic device. The portable electronic device comprises a power supply unit and a volatile memory for storing data when the power supply unit supplies power thereto. First, the portable electronic device is set to enter a deep sleep mode. Then, data accessed from the volatile memory is transferred to a non-volatile memory. Finally, except for maintaining sufficient power to restore the device, the power supply unit is turned off.

U.S. PATENT NO. 5,541,988
Telephone dialler with a personalized page organization of telephone directory memory
An advanced telephone dialler has been described, incorporating a fast retrieval and dial telephone directory. The system simplifies the use of the telephone directory by using a single sliding or rotary key for scanning and selection of the name and number to be dialled and one button for speed dialling of the selected number.

U.S. PATENT NO. 6,058,183
Telephone dialler with a personalized page organization of telephone
An advanced telephone dialler has been described, incorporating a fast retrieval and dial telephone directory. The system simplifies the use of the telephone directory by using a single sliding or rotary key for scanning and selection of the name and number to be dialled and one button for speed.

U.S. PATENT NO. 6,320,957
Telephone dialler with easy access memory
An advanced telephone dialler has been described, incorporating a fast retrieval and dial telephone directory. The system simplifies the use of the telephone directory by using a single sliding or rotary key for scanning and selection of the name and number to be dialled and one button for speed dialling of the selected number.

HTC ITC Complaint Date-Stamped Copy –

BoomTown in D.C. to Say Happy 25th Birthday to .Com and Wary Hello to Broadband Plan

Kara Swisher — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:54:33 +0000

Last night, I jetted east to Washington, D.C., for an unusual confluence of events: The 25th anniversary of the .com Internet domain name and the Federal Communications Commission’s release of the much anticipated National Broadband Plan.

Both are set for tomorrow in the nation’s capital and both concern the impact of the Web on the United States in the past and the future.

Incredibly, .com was almost .cor, for corporate.

And the first .com address handed out–Symbolics.com–belonged to a now-defunct Massachusetts computer company.

(It signed up via the domain registrar, Network Solutions, which was bought by VeriSign in 2000. The Symbolics.com domain was sold in 2009 to Missouri-based XF.com, which “operates commercial real estate and premium domain properties.”)

In honor of the anniversary, VeriSign (VRSN), which administers the .com registry, is hosting a policy forum in D.C. It includes a keynote address by former President Bill Clinton, as well as some panels.

I will be moderating the one in the afternoon titled “The Next Generation.” The panelists, looking to the future, include, among others: Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post; Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO of the U.S.; and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures.

There will be another gala event to honor Internet innovators in San Francisco in late May.

While the growth of .com was slow until the browser became popularized–numbering under 15,000 in 1992–there are now close to 85 million .com domains. This commercial one is clearly the most important of the designations, both financially and perceptually.

Still, despite how much impact the Internet has had globally, spurred mostly by innovation in the U.S., this country still remains woefully behind in high-speed access to the Web.

While it is easy–and fun–to blame the greedy telcos and cable companies (and they do deserve some of the blame), the lack of a federal imperative has been the most appalling explanation.

It is as if the federal government had decided dirt roads were preferable to the highway system or tin cans and string were better than universal telephone access.

Will making broadband access easy, fast and cheap for most people in the U.S. be the end result of the National Broadband Plan, to be officially unveiled by the FCC tomorrow?

As I wrote last week:

“The two key questions about the effort to get the United States up to speed, so to speak, with decent digital access: Will it be toothless or not and will there be any money to pay for it, given the cash-strapped federal government?”

A possible highlight of the plan concerns whether spectrum should be allocated for a free or inexpensive high-speed wireless service, as well as restoration of some regulations lifted in the previous Republican administration.

But the main focus will be that the U.S. needs high-speed access to improve dramatically across the nation, especially for poorer citizens and in rural areas.

After a quarter-century of .com, the growth of a trillion-dollar industry from one punctuation mark and three letters, and badillions of page views, you would think this would be glaringly obvious to our federal government.

You should think it would.

Weekend Update 2.20.10–Set It and Forget It Edition

Drake Martinet — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:33:18 +0000

We’re all about value and ease of use at AllThingsD. That’s why, if you keep reading right now, you’ll get all of the following at no extra charge. You’ll get the Walt’s Personal Technology column with the full line of Mossberg’s Mailbox and Mossberg Solution accessories. You’ll also get a full installment of Boomtown, complete with the snark and analysis you rely on. But wait, there’s more! If you call in the next five minutes, you’ll also get the matched set of Peter Kafka and John Paczkowski, perfect for an evening at home or a night on the town. Yes, that’s the complete set of AllThingsD for the incredibly low price of however long it takes you to read Weekend Update. So order now and get expedited shipping right to your screen. Offer not valid in some states, Weekend Update bears no affiliation with Billy Mays, Ron Popeil or that ShamWow guy.

Whoa! Sorry, we may have gotten just a little over excited about Walt’s Personal Technology column this week. He responded to popular demand and submitted a full review of the magicJack. Yes, that magicJack. No one can ever accuse Walt Mossberg of not being a man of the people. So what did he find? Well, the little plastic USB dongle that ranks up there with rotisseries, Chia pets and The Clapper in the pantheon of hard-sell TV adds actually delivered on its promise. MagicJack connects via USB to a computer, and has a standard land-line telephone jack on the other end. Walt started it up, made some calls, and even tried out the customer service center, which turned out to be efficient and helpful. Among the few drawbacks were the need to use the phone number that comes with the device and the fact that it only works when your computer is on and connected to the Internet. Mossberg’s Mailbox was full to the brim this week with some pretty targeted questions about security, the grim future of the dedicated PDA and e-readers for libraries. As it turns out, running a virtual Windows machine on a Mac can lead to a very real virus if you aren’t careful. Katie’s piece at Mossberg Solution made sense of this week’s biggest question mark. What the heck is Google (GOOG) Buzz? She broke the new social network from Google down to its bare bones and explained some of the controversy surrounding how it decides who’s added to you Buzz list. The new social feature is now built into Gmail, but it seems the exact relationship between your Gmail contacts and Buzz is still being worked out. Katie nails it all with an expertly simple explanation of the service and controversies.

BoomTown started the week off with a little insider info about Micheal Dearing, the hottest angel investor you’ve never heard of. Dearing, a former eBay (EBAY) exec and current professor at Stanford’s design school, has been inside early on high-profile start-ups like Aardvark, Xoopit and Mixer Labs. Kara shared a meal with the start-up whisperer and got more out of him than most, even if he still kept pretty tight-lipped. Kara also shared some viral video love featuring some hardcore Avatar fans. We can’t tell if these live action Na’vi role players are kidding. Maybe we’ll ask their king, James Cameron, when he joins Kara on stage at the next D conference. Toward the end of the week, Kara posted about what may be the strangest love triangle of the modern era. The Facebook-Snickers-Betty White trifecta is so strange we can barely even comprehend the letters in it. It seems that Facebook users loved the Betty White Super Bowl ad for Snickers so much that they held a social media gun to Lorne Micheals’s head until he got the Golden Girl to host “Saturday Night Live.” The only thing that could unseat the Betty White triangle from weirdest social media moment of ’10 is the much rumored Barry White-KFC-America’s Next Top Model episode we’ve been hearing about. There: Rumor started.

MediaMemo led off the week with Weekend Update’s favorite sort of post. It was yet another beautiful e-mag concept, this time from Condé Nast’s Wired. The mag looked snappy, beautiful and functional–even if no one, besides maybe Stephen Colbert, has a device that can display it yet. Peter also covered the second instance of an emerging trend in the video rental business. It looks like Redbox, the ever-present rental kiosk company, has agreed to go the way of Netflix (NFLX) and keep recently released DVDs out of the rental pool in exchange for a cash break from Warner. Peter rounded things out with a post about Web TV service Hulu and the likelihood of a Hulu player for the iPad. Peter’s post explores the probability that an iPad Hulu would not be a free Hulu. This situation is pretty bounded and specific, but the deeper question is one facing a great many media companies right now. Will users be willing to pay for convenience of displaying a service on the iPad that they can get for free on there home computer, and by extension, will they pay by the app or pay for the content? Weekend Update can’t wait to see how that one shakes out.

Over at Digital Daily, John started early in the week with a quick peek at Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone, the new smartphone operating system from the maker of Windows Mobile and Windows Vista. As it turns out, Windows Phone looks pretty slick. The interface isn’t a shrunken version of the desktop OS, which is a very good thing. Midweek, John scaled a mountain of tweets to report from the very top. It seems that Twitter’s traffic has grown over 1,000 percent since last year, according to comScore’s (SCOR) January report. It may now be impossible to shut the flock up. To button up the week, John covered a decision by the Federal Trade Commission that allows Google to buy and sell power wholesale, just like an energy utility. Google execs insist that the move doesn’t signal their intention to enter the power arena as a utility. They just want to buy power like anyone else. After all, electricity is the raw material of Googling.

We’re so confident that you’ve enjoyed this Weekend Update that if you aren’t 100 percent satisfied, you can send it back for a full refund of your purchase price, no questions asked. You can look for all your favorite AllThingsD accessories next week. John, Peter Kara and Walt will be back to ship top-quality content directly to your door at no extra charge. Top quality, easy to use and in a variety of colors, there’s something for everyone at AllThingsD.

And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

How Badly Do You Really Want Your MTV–Or Your ABC or Fox or Your Food Network? Cablevision Wants to Know.

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:37:54 +0000

Now this is a telephone survey I’d love to answer, and I bet many of you would too: Cablevision, the Long Island-based cable operator, has been polling subscribers and asking them how much they’d like to pay for various channels.

From Broadcasting & Cable’s report:

Among the most surprising set of questions to consumers: “Do you watch broadcast TV?” If customers responded yes, then they were asked how much they would pay for Fox, or ABC, in particular. The multiple choice offered was: pay nothing, 50 cents, or one dollar? Customers were also asked if they’d be upset to lose either of those channels entirely….Cablevision customers were also asked if they mostly watched shows on cable or on broadcast TV and how upset they’d be to lose particular cable services.

As Claire Atkinson notes, Cablevision’s (CVC) likely aim here is gather ammunition for license fee battles like the one it just had with Scripps (SNI) over the Food Network and HGTV. And the one it is about to have with broadcasters like News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and Disney’s (DIS) ABC.

But it would be fascinating for the rest of us to see just how much value cable customers really assign to various channels.

The conventional wisdom among the kinds of people who read this site is that TV watchers only care about a few channels and are willing to do without the others. Using that logic, the argument goes that the cable industry should embrace “a la carte” pricing instead of the package deals it promotes now–or risk getting eviscerated by Internet video.

Maybe. My suspicion is that most TV watchers like a lot of the channels they have–maybe not all six versions of ESPN, but at least a couple dozen different networks–and would be loath to give them up, which real a la carte pricing would require.

For instance, ESPN currently gets something like $4 for each subscriber, but only about 25 percent of cable subs actually watch the network. So in an a la carte world, Disney would end up charging something like $16 per ESPN customer to keep its revenue steady. ESPN is at the top of the food chain, but still, you can see how an a la carte bill could jump up fairly quickly.

In any case, I don’t think we’re going there anytime soon. In the meantime, I’d love to see that polling data. What do you say, Cablevision?

magicJack: Cheap, Way Overhyped, But Really Works

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:06:20 +0000

When I see a high-tech product that’s advertised mainly via frequent hard-sell TV ads, as if it were a diet pill, I tend to assume it can’t be very good, especially if its price is absurdly low. So, I haven’t paid much attention to a product called magicJack, a small $40 adapter for your computer that claims to let you make unlimited domestic phone calls over the Internet with your home telephone free for a whole year—and for just $20 a year thereafter.

But after receiving reader requests to review magicJack, I decided to do so. To my surprise, it worked pretty much as advertised. It has a few drawbacks, and extra fees for added services, such as vanity phone numbers. But I found magicJack easy to set up and easy to use, and it yielded decent, if not pristine, call quality. I even tested customer support—a source of complaints online—and found it friendly, fast and responsive.

[ See post to watch video ]

MagicJack looks like an oversized USB flash drive. On one end is a standard USB connector for the PC; on the other is a standard phone jack to plug in a phone. It’s compatible with PCs running Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, as well as with all Intel-based Macs. It works with both corded and cordless phones, and comes with software for dialing, though you can also dial directly from a connected phone.

The low annual fee covers calls to and from any phone on any telephone network—landline or cellphone—not just phones connected to computers or to other magicJacks. The only restriction is that the numbers called must be in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands. You can also buy low-cost prepaid international minutes, or take your magicJack abroad to make free calls home. You can move it among different computers and locations.

MagicJack can also be used without a phone handset, via a computer headset or the computer’s built-in microphone and speakers.

YMAX’s magicJack

There’s nothing new about Internet phone calling. Companies like Vonage and Skype have been doing it for years. But magicJack is different. It emphasizes calling to and from phones on regular wired and wireless phone networks, and its prices for calls to and from such non-Internet-connected phones are much lower.

For instance, the lowest plan advertised on Vonage’s (VG) Web site for calling regular phones in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico is $17.99 a month, or about $216 a year, versus magicJack’s $20. And Vonage gives you only 500 minutes a month, while magicJack sets no limit. Skype charges per-minute or monthly fees for calls to regular phones and an added fee to receive incoming calls.

The maker of magicJack says its low prices are possible because the product is produced by a privately held Florida company called YMAX, which is also a phone carrier. The company also runs ads inside its software. You can buy the device at a wide variety of stores, even drugstores and convenience stores.

I tested magicJack on both a PC and a Mac. The software resides inside the magicJack itself and installs each time you connect it.

In my tests, I made and received calls on both computers, using a single landline phone and using a cordless-phone system in my house after plugging its base station into the magicJack. In the latter case, I could make and receive calls from cordless phones all over my house. I exchanged calls with both landline phones and cellphones from the magicJack.

The call quality was good, except for a few times when the connection got scratchy for a second or two. Most of the people I called said they couldn’t tell I wasn’t on a regular call. The system offers voice mail, call forwarding and conference calls, and you can save contacts.

A couple of times I didn’t get an immediate dial tone, and had to hang up and try again.

The biggest downside of the magicJack compared with regular phone service is that you have to be running an Internet-connected computer, with a magicJack installed anytime you want to make or receive calls. Also, as with all Internet phone systems, you have to register your address with 911 emergency systems.

With magicJack, you get a new phone number. The company says it is working on allowing you to port your existing landline number. You can keep your landline number for use on some phones or when you’re not using magicJack.

I found magicJack worked better on Windows than on the Mac. At one point, magicJack customer support had to send me software to patch the Mac version. But the company claims it is fixing that with a new Mac version coming soon.

YMAX also says it plans to roll out this year a Skype-like service that won’t require any magicJack hardware, just a PC or an iPhone. It also plans a new version of magicJack to turn cellphones into wireless magicJack handsets.

I don’t know if those diet pills in the TV ads work. But magicJack does.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Lawmakers Ask FCC to Probe Google Voice

John Paczkowski — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:59:54 +0000

Should Google be able to offer voice services unfettered by regulations that apply to broadband carriers simply because Google Voice is a free Internet application? AT&T certainly doesn’t think so, and it seems at least a few Congressional representatives agree.

Yesterday, A group of House members from rural districts called on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Google’s practice of blocking calls to numbers that use rural exchanges to charge inflated prices–something regulation prevents traditional telecom carriers from doing.

In their letter to the FCC, the lawmakers–among them Reps. Steve Buyer (R., Ind.), Charlie Melancon (D., La.), Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) and John Barrow (D., Ga.)–claim that rural consumers will be harmed if Google is allowed to “evade compliance with important principles of access and competition.”

“We understand Google has asserted Google Voice is not a ‘traditional’ telephone service–despite its use of 10-digit telephone numbers and its ability to connect calls between telephones through a local exchange carrier,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “Instead, Google maintains it ought to be allowed to block calls to rural telephone exchanges–a position we find ill conceived and unfair to our rural constituents.”

This, of course, is pretty much what AT&T (T) said in September when it slagged Google (GOOG) as “one of the most noisome trumpeters of so-called net-neutrality” and asked the FCC to order it to “play by the same rules as its competitors.” Google, however, insists those rules don’t apply in its case.

“The FCC’s open Internet principles apply only to the behavior of broadband carriers–not the creators of Web-based software applications,” Google telecom counsel Richard Whitt wrote in response to AT&T’s complaint. “Even though the FCC does not have jurisdiction over how software applications function, AT&T apparently wants to use the regulatory process to undermine Web-based competition and innovation.”

Unlike Google Voice, Vonage Now Available on iPhone

John Paczkowski — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:00:54 +0000

Apple seems to have gotten over its aversion to apps duplicating core iPhone functions. This morning Internet telephony company Vonage released an app that allows iPhone users to make calls over Wi-Fi and AT&T’s voice network. Place a call in range of a Wi-Fi signal and it will be routed over AT&T’s (T) data network; place it out of range of Wi-Fi and it will be routed over the carrier’s voice network, where it will consume minutes from the caller’s AT&T service plan

Interesting, given the recent flap over Google Voice for iPhone, which Apple (AAPL) hasn’t yet allowed into its iTunes App Store because it “appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voice mail.”

How is Vonage’s (VG) app different? Its features and functionality are certainly very similar to those of Google Voice.

Apple won’t say, but the company did tell the Associated Press that Vonage’s app falls under the same category as other VoIP applications that have already been approved for the iPhone.

Google to AT&T: "Noisome Trumpeter"? Takes One to Know One.

John Paczkowski — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:46:00 +0000

Google is violating the Net neutrality principles it so strongly advocates–according to AT&T, anyway. In a letter to the head of the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau Friday (see below for full text), the telephone company described Google (GOOG) as “one of the most noisome trumpeters of so-called net-neutrality” and asked the FCC to order it to “play by the same rules as its competitors.” (As folks are noting in the comments below, AT&T, by describing Google as “noisome” is either using the word incorrectly or being extraordinarily honest about it’s opinion of the company)

Seems AT&T (T) feels that Google’s Google Voice Internet call-forwarding service violates federal rules designed to ensure that phone companies connect all calls. From the company’s letter:

Numerous press reports indicate that Google is systematically blocking telephone calls from consumers that use Google Voice to call telephone numbers in certain rural communities. By blocking these calls, Google is able to reduce its access expenses. Other providers, including those with which Google Voice competes, are banned from call blocking because in June 2007, the Wireline Competition Bureau emphatically declared that all carriers are prohibited from pursuing “self help actions such as call blocking.” The Bureau expressed concern that call blocking “may degrade the reliability of the nation’s telecommunications network.” Google Voice thus has claimed for itself a significant advantage over providers offering competing services. Google casually dismisses the Bureau’s Order, claiming that Google Voice “isn’t a traditional phone service and shouldn’t be regulated like other common carriers.” But in reality, “Google Voice” appears to be nothing more than a creatively packaged assortment of services that are already quite familiar to the Commission….

[The FCC] cannot, through inaction or otherwise, give Google a special privilege to play by its own rules while the rest of the industry, including those who compete with Google, must instead adhere to [FCC] regulations.

AT&T’s letter comes just days after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed six Net neutrality regulations that will apply to both wireline and wireless platforms. Interestingly, it also follows an FCC investigation into the rejection/delay of Google Voice for the iPhone.

UPDATE:

Google’s responded to AT&T’s letter in a post to the company blog, pointing out the differences between Google Voice and traditional phone service and questioning AT&T’s motives for appealing to the FCC.

“AT&T is trying to make this about Google’s support for an open Internet, but the comparison just doesn’t fly,” Richard Whitt, the company’s Washington telecom and media counsel, wrote. “The FCC’s open Internet principles apply only to the behavior of broadband carriers–not the creators of Web-based software applications. Even though the FCC does not have jurisdiction over how software applications function, AT&T apparently wants to use the regulatory process to undermine Web-based competition and innovation.”

Google to AT&T: "Noisome Trumpeter"? Takes One to Know One.

John Paczkowski — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:46:00 +0000

Google is violating the Net neutrality principles it so strongly advocates–according to AT&T, anyway. In a letter to the head of the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau Friday (see below for full text), the telephone company described Google (GOOG) as “one of the most noisome trumpeters of so-called net-neutrality” and asked the FCC to order it to “play by the same rules as its competitors.” (As folks are noting in the comments below, AT&T, by describing Google as “noisome” is either using the word incorrectly or being extraordinarily honest about it’s opinion of the company)

Seems AT&T (T) feels that Google’s Google Voice Internet call-forwarding service violates federal rules designed to ensure that phone companies connect all calls. From the company’s letter:

Numerous press reports indicate that Google is systematically blocking telephone calls from consumers that use Google Voice to call telephone numbers in certain rural communities. By blocking these calls, Google is able to reduce its access expenses. Other providers, including those with which Google Voice competes, are banned from call blocking because in June 2007, the Wireline Competition Bureau emphatically declared that all carriers are prohibited from pursuing “self help actions such as call blocking.” The Bureau expressed concern that call blocking “may degrade the reliability of the nation’s telecommunications network.” Google Voice thus has claimed for itself a significant advantage over providers offering competing services. Google casually dismisses the Bureau’s Order, claiming that Google Voice “isn’t a traditional phone service and shouldn’t be regulated like other common carriers.” But in reality, “Google Voice” appears to be nothing more than a creatively packaged assortment of services that are already quite familiar to the Commission….

[The FCC] cannot, through inaction or otherwise, give Google a special privilege to play by its own rules while the rest of the industry, including those who compete with Google, must instead adhere to [FCC] regulations.

AT&T’s letter comes just days after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed six Net neutrality regulations that will apply to both wireline and wireless platforms. Interestingly, it also follows an FCC investigation into the rejection/delay of Google Voice for the iPhone.

UPDATE:

Google’s responded to AT&T’s letter in a post to the company blog, pointing out the differences between Google Voice and traditional phone service and questioning AT&T’s motives for appealing to the FCC.

“AT&T is trying to make this about Google’s support for an open Internet, but the comparison just doesn’t fly,” Richard Whitt, the company’s Washington telecom and media counsel, wrote. “The FCC’s open Internet principles apply only to the behavior of broadband carriers–not the creators of Web-based software applications. Even though the FCC does not have jurisdiction over how software applications function, AT&T apparently wants to use the regulatory process to undermine Web-based competition and innovation.”

U.S. Broadband Growth Slowest in Eight Years

John Paczkowski — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:30:35 +0000

The U.S. government broadband stimulus program couldn’t have come along at a better time. Leichtman Research Group said Monday that the country’s 19 largest cable and telephone providers added a net 634,000 broadband subscribers during the second quarter of 2009 (see table below; click to enlarge). That’s 29 percent fewer than were added in the same period a year ago and the lowest number of net additions of any quarter in the last eight years.

The reasons for the decline? Seasonality, the econalypse and the maturation of the market. “The second quarter has proven to be traditionally weak for broadband growth, but with the market becoming more mature, broadband adds further waned,” Bruce Leichtman, LRG’s president and principal analyst, said in a statement.

Poor broadband infrastructure and limited access to it in rural areas clearly also played a role. In rural America, just 31 percent of residents have a broadband connection, as opposed to more than two-thirds in the rest of the country, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. No wonder America now ranks 15th in the world on broadband access, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

So that $7.2 billion in broadband investments the Obama administration recently pledged stands to do a lot of good–assuming it’s put to use by the right folks. It’s not yet clear that will happen, however, because the large network operators best positioned to roll out access to underserved areas are afraid of taking stimulus money for fear of net-neutrality conditions that might be attached to it, as well as of unwanted government scrutiny.

And as Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, notes, that’s really too bad. “If you want to get broadband out, you have to do it with [those] who brought you to the dance in the first place, and in this case it is the incumbent cable and telephone carriers who have 85 percent of lines in the country,” he told the Washington Post. “This is not basket weaving. This is really complex and intensive technical stuff that takes a fair amount of sophistication and scale to be able to do right and to continue to upgrade.”

[Image Credit: Flickr/alan i am]

Dear Tim: Here's a Tour of the It-Takes-a-Licking-but-Keeps-on-Ticking AOL Brand

Kara Swisher — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:02:42 +0000

What’s next for AOL?

Reviving the “You’ve Got Mail!” motto?

Or: “The Future. Now Available.”–set to music from “The Jetsons”?

What about: “So easy to use, no wonder it’s #1!”

Or maybe, it should just use a nice loooooooong busy signal as its calling card again?

Well, it could happen, now that new CEO Tim Armstrong has fallen prey to the siren call of the AOL moniker, as have many–way too many–before him.

After years of seeing the company wander in the anything-but-the-AOL wilderness, Armstrong has decided to try to welcome the prodigal brand back home, even as he prepares to spin it off in November from Time Warner (TWX), trading on the New York Stock Exchange once again under the AOL stock ticker.

Thus, he has renamed the Platform A advertising unit AOL Advertising; changed its unfortunately named People Networks–which is made up of the communications and community properties–to AOL Communications; and done the same for its MediaGlow, which is now under AOL Media.

There is also in the new AOL-centric universe: AOL Local & Mapping and AOL Ventures, where all the bad acquisitions–like the Bebo social networking service–go to die.

While BoomTown admires Armstrong’s moxie, there is some dicey past history related to the AOL brand–which I lovingly call the “Christine” of the Internet industry–that he might want to be aware of:

* The start-up from which AOL first sprung was named Control Video Corp., which was founded to create a device that would allow users of the Atari 2600 videogame machine to download games over telephone lines.

* After it tanked, CVC was reborn in 1985 as Quantum Computer Services, which had offerings with names like Q-Link for Commodore computers and AppleLink for Apple (AAPL) Macintosh computers.

* In October 1989, the-AOL CEO, Steve Case, announced a company contest: What should Quantum rename its main online service?

The suggestions that came in—Crossroads, Explore and Infinity—sounded like drug treatment programs or new car brands.

Dismissing them all, Case offered a bland creation of his own: America Online, with a second option of Online America.

Other staffers understandably derided it as hokey, but Case essentially stuffed the ballot box and voted his suggestion the winner anyway.

Later, he would change it to just its initials, AOL.

* Case also hit on the idea of attaching voice files to the software with cheery little sound bites that would make the service feel homey.

The team settled on four phrases: “Welcome,” “You’ve got mail,” “File’s done,” and “Goodbye.”

A customer service representative named Karen Edwards had mentioned that her husband, Elwood, was a professional broadcaster, so for testing purposes, Case asked if Elwood might read those four phrases into a cassette tape.

The test tape was put into use, and Elwood Edwards, quite by chance, ended up having one of the most listened-to voices on the planet.

* In July 1993, AOL marketing chief Jan Brandt supersized the AOL brand by asking Case for permission to spend $250,000 on a direct-mail campaign.

She recalls him telling her it wouldn’t work. He told me in an interview he did no such thing.

Whatever the case, she got permission, and thus began the very low-tech marketing blitz of hundreds of millions of disks that would make AOL a household name—and annoyance.

There were even AOL disks flash-frozen in Omaha Steaks.

* In a 1993 meeting between Case and then-Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Bill Gates, annoyed by the innovative start-up, Gates famously told Case, “I can buy 20 percent of you or I can buy all of you. Or I can go into business myself and bury you.”

None of those ever came to pass, which is a reason to cheer the AOL brand. But–given Microsoft’s weak record in the online business–this is also not saying much.

* AOL’s brand has gone through a lot of name-calling, some of it quite deserved. Here are some: “The Online K-mart,” “America On Hold,” “The Giant Sucking Sound.”

But this one from its earliest days is my favorite: “The Cockroach of Cyberspace.”

* AOL did a lot of television commercials to hype the service, some of which you can see below. In one especially weird one, AOL hired Adam West of the goofy “Batman” television series.

* When AOL and Time Warner announced their merger on January 10, 2000, and renamed the company AOL Time Warner, AOL owned 55 percent and the combined market valuation was thought to be in the hundreds of billions.

Today, with Google (GOOG) selling back its five percent stake in AOL, AOL’s value has plummeted to about $6 billion. Time Warner is currently worth just over $33 billion.

* When Jon Miller–now digital head at News Corp. (NWS) took over at AOL in mid-2002, after said merger failed miserably and the brand was taken off the corporate name, he spent some time visiting the company’s other divisions, and related an anecdote to me that he’d told them, to try to help move the relationships forward.

“Have you ever had your car towed in New York?” he said he’d ask executives in other divisions. “When your car gets towed, there’s a sign at the place where you go to pick it up that says, ‘The person behind this window did not tow your car. If you cooperate with them, you will get your car back quicker.’”

Tim, Time Warner is still waiting for Christine to be returned, so good luck with that rebranding!

And, while we await the turnaround, here is a little video I did for Tim about my (lack of) AOL branding expertise with my assistant Ed, and also some of the better AOL television commercials:

[ See post to watch video ]

The Entire D6 Interview With Sony's Sir Howard Stringer (4 of 4)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:04:28 +0000

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Unfortunately, due to issues too complicated to go into, we have to post all the D6 interviews in several 15-minute parts (I know, I know).

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s the fourth and final part of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Sony Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer. (I posted one video part of the discussion with Stringer every day this week except Monday, starting Tuesday and concluding today.)

Sony (SNE) has been under enormous pressure to innovate and compete better in all its many businesses, and the consumer electronics giant still has not proved that it can knit them all together into a cogent whole.

In this video, Stringer takes questions from the audience about audio quality, cable versus telephone, software and iTunes.

[ See post to watch video ]