Unified Communications is Different These Days

The ability to use an existing Sprint phone number as a Google Voice number, with unified voice mail, is not a "full" implementation of unified communications. but it offers a feature that always has been a main attraction of unified communications and fixed-mobile convergence.

If you look across the range of specific applications that routinely are touted as UC advantages, you'll discover that many of the values now can be satisfied, albeit on a sort of case by case basis, and not as "unified" as a full-blown UC solution can provide.

Still, UC seems to be viewed differently than it used to. "Collaboration" sometimes is satisfied, in large part, by social networks of one sort or another, video conferencing or even some aspects of location features.

Amazon crash cripples D.C.-based Hotpads

District of Columbia-based Hotpads.com has been down all day, one of the unlucky group of web companies crippled by a crash in Amazon’s cloud service April 21, 2011.

The map-based property-search startup boasts about 200,000 daily visitors, who were today greeted with a lighthearted variant of the “technical difficulties” screen.

"HotPads is down. We'll be back as soon as possible!"

Amazon crash cripples D.C.-based Hotpads | Washington Business Journal:

Cloud Grows, Amazon Hiccups

The global market for “cloud computing” is going to increase from about $41 billion in 2011 to $241 billion in 2020, according to new estimates from research firm Forrester. But on April 21, 2011, Amazon had significant outages for customers of its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud on the U.S. East Coast.

The computing center hosted in northern Virginia, which handles operations for the U.S. East Coast, was afflicted. Websites such as Foursquare, Quora and Reddit have cited service problems. Both Reddit, a user-generated news site, and Quora, a question-and-answer service, had error messages on their sites saying their were experiencing outages.

The outage will not likely have any longer-term impact on cloud computing. Most of us encounter service disruptions from time to time for any of our cloud-based services and applications. More significantly, many of us experience "outages" that have no adverse impact, because we were not trying to use a particular application at a particular time, in a particular region.

These days, browsers, operating systems, local and remote applications can crash. It's just a fact of life.

More Predictions on the Huge Growth of ‘Cloud Computing’ - Digits - WSJ (subscription required)

Badoo launches mobile payments In the UK with Ericsson IPX - Ericsson

Social networking site Badoo, available in 180 countries, now is offering mobile payment services in addition to credit cards, debit cards, text messaging and PayPal.

Badoo is available in over 180 countries, has more than 114 million registered users and is growing rapidly. It is currently the 2nd largest Facebook Application (behind CityVille).

Badoo launches mobile payments In the UK with Ericsson IPX - Ericsson

Verizon to Launch New iPhone on LTE?

"When a new device from Apple is launched...it will also be a global device," said Francis Shammo, Verizon CFO. Some think that means a 4G Long Term Evolution device.

Verizon Communications Management Discusses Q1 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha

Major Amazon Outage Ripples Across Web

Amazon Web Services experienced a major outage on April 21, experienced as latency issues for people using resources at one of its Northern Virginia data centers. The problems are rippling through to customers, causing downtime for many services that use Amazon’s cloud to run their web services.

The sites knocked offline by Amazon’s problems include social media hub Reddit, the HootSuite link-sharing tool, and Quora.

Major Amazon Outage Ripples Across Web

Visa Delivers Real-Time Discounts and Promotions to Mobile Consumers Using SMS

Visa is working with Gap to deliver real-time discounts and promotions to consumers using text messages. Gap customers who opt-in to participate in the service are notified of money-saving discounts or promotions in real-time while shopping.

Visa Delivers Real-Time Discounts and Promotions to Mobile Consumers When and Where they Shop

Mobile Money, Apps, Bandwidth: Upside for Mobile Ops

In a video, CCS Insight analyst Martin Garner shares his thoughts on how operators can capitalize on data traffic, applications and mobile money.

He says operators to shift from flat-rate to tiered-rate pricing plans in their data traffic solutions. Operators also can profit from mobile money services and mobile apps.

Mobile operators and mobile money, data traffic pricing & applications - Ericsson

Nokia Will Get "Billions" From Microsoft Deal

Nokia's decision to support the Microsoft Phone operating system will mean Microsoft pays "billions" to Nokia, the companies say.

Nokia will deliver mapping, navigation, and certain location-based services to the Windows Phone ecosystem. Nokia will build innovation on top of the Windows Phone platform in areas such as imaging, while contributing expertise on hardware design and language support, and helping to drive the development of the Windows Phone platform.

Microsoft will provide Bing search services across the Nokia device portfolio as well as contributing assets and expertise in productivity, advertising, gaming and social media. The combination of navigation with advertising and search will enable better monetization of Nokia’s navigation assets and completely new forms of advertising revenue, the companies believe.

GoPayment App for iPad

Intuit Inc. says its iPad-optimized "GoPayment" app is now available on the App Store. GoPayment is a mobile payment app that lets anyone who sells a product or service get paid on the spot, using the iPad and a debit or credit card.

This optimized version of the GoPayment app makes mobile payments easier with a new layout that takes full advantage of iPad's large, high-resolution display and "Multi-Touch" interface.

It also includes new features such as the ability to add product photos, making it easier to find a product and complete a sale. GoPayment is also compatible with the free Intuit Credit Card Reader letting users save time by swiping credit cards instead of entering card data manually.

GoPayment App for iPad Now Available on the App Store

10 Essential Twitter Stats

10 Essential Twitter Stats

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U.S. Smart Phone Users Concerned About Location Privacy

Fully 59 percent of smart phone users who use mobile apps say they are concerned about location information privacy, says Nielsen. About 52 percent of male users also say they are concerned about the privacy issues of location data.

More and more mobile applications allow consumers to share information about where they are by voluntarily “checking in” to a location or by having their GPS-enabled smartphone automatically transmit that information via the app. Some marketers reward consumers for sharing their location with loyalty points, discount coupons for nearby businesses, or other promotional “badges” and benefits.

Privacy Please! U.S. Smartphone App Users Concerned with Privacy When it Comes to Location | Nielsen Wire

U.S. Mobile Payments: $54 Billion in 2015

Mobile bill payment, in which consumers pay bills via mobile phone, currently makes up the bulk of the United States mobile payment industry. Mobile point of sale, in which a consumer’s phone is used as a point of sale device, accounts for just over five percent of activity, but is expected to grow by 127 percent in the next five years, to $54 billion in transactions. Mobile contactless is expected to grow 1,077 percent by 2015. The gross dollar volume of mobile payments overall is expected to grow 68 percent by 2015.

Mobile Payment Set to Dramatically Increase

Why Apple Tracks Your Location

If you are wondering why your iPhone and 3G-enabled iPad are storing your general location in an easily accessible database on your PC, the answer likely is that Apple uses this information to build a cell tower and Wi-Fi access point location database.

That information can be helpful in understanding where Wi-Fi coverage is dense, where signal or coverage issues might exist, and can be helpful in designing future devices and features, one might easily surmise.

Why Apple Tracks You Via iPhone: It's Not Why You Think - PCWorld

FiOS Now 54% of Verizon Fixed-Line Revenue

Though wireless lead Verizon's quarterly highlights, as typically is the case, the company also reported continued progress with its FiOS business. In fact, FiOS revenues now are 54 percent of total fixed-line revenues. Some observers might well note that it has proven harder than anticipated to convince customers of the value of fiber to the home service.

Verizon recorded 6.3 percent year-over-year increase in wireless service revenues in the first quarter of 2011, with data revenues up 22.3 percent. Service revenues in the quarter totaled $14.3 billion. Data revenues were $5.5 billion, up $1 billion year over year, and represent 38.1 percent of all wireless service revenues. Total revenues were $16.9 billion, up 10 percent year over year.

Retail postpaid ARPU grew 2.2 percent over first-quarter 2010, to $53.52. Retail postpaid data ARPU increased to $20.51, up 17.3 percent year over year. Retail service ARPU also grew 2.2 percent, to $51.88.

Verizon added 1.8 million net new accounts, including 906,000 retail postpaid net customer addition. Retail postpaid churn was one percent.

Verizon also added 207,000 net FiOS Internet and 192,000 net FiOS TV additions, for a total of 4.3 million total FiOS Internet connections and 3.7 million total FiOS TV connections.

FiOS consumer retail revenues now represent approximately 54 percent of total Verizon consumer revenues. The company also saw a 12.8 percent increase in "strategic" enterprise revenues, which now represent approximately 46 percent of total global enterprise revenues.

FiOS Internet penetration (subscribers as a percentage of potential subscribers) was 33.1 percent by the end of the first quarter, with the product available for sale to 13 million premises. This compares with 29 percent penetration at the end of first-quarter 2010.

FiOS TV penetration was 29 percent by the end of first-quarter 2011, with the product available for sale to 12.6 million premises. This compares with 25.4 percent and 11.5 million, respectively, at the end of first-quarter 2010.

Broadband connections totaled 8.5 million at the end of first-quarter 2011, a three percent year-over-year increase. FiOS Internet connections more than offset a decrease in DSL-based broadband connections, leading to a net increase of 98,000 broadband connections from fourth-quarter 2010.

These are the most broadband net additions since the second quarter of 2009. Total voice connections, which measures FiOS Digital Voice connections in addition to traditional switched access lines, declined 8.2 percent to 25.5 million -- the smallest year-over-year decline since first-quarter 2008, the company said.

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