Signal to Noise

The Asterisk booth, easily the biggest on the show floor. Mark Spencer and the Digium gang were present, as were some Digium partners such as Aastra and Switchvox.

The other half o the show floor. Level3, Linksys, and others were on this side. If the sizes of the booths are any indication, it’s the carriers and specialized service providers, not the equipment manufacturers, with the hefty marketing dough.

The UTStarcom dual-band phone, said to be retailing for around $300 USD in another month or so. That’s Channu from UTS holding the phone.

The ClearOne USB speakerphone. Yes, it’s Mac compatible, though their mixing software is not (yet) available for the Mac. Check back with these guys in a few weeks on the Mac angle.

The “magician” from Atreus Systems. His sales pitch was unique. He used lots of card and rope tricks to convince everybody standing around that Atreus was the provisioner of all provisioners. Pretty cool.

Linksys’s new desktop IP phone. Color display, very intuitive user interface. SIP. Not sure about price and line count, etc.

Pre-show.

My first day in Boston was spent getting prepped for the conference by visiting a Mayflower grave site and some stores on Newbury St. with my wife. And lots of taxicabs. Then, it was off to a quick visit with Alec Saunders of Iotum and another visit with Bill Volk with MyNumo. The things these guys are doing are WAY cool. I’ll save the Iotum info for later. Let me post about Mynumo for a moment.

Since announcing their cooperation with AOL PhoneLine to create content for ringtones and ringbacks, MyNumo has reported record traffic on their web site. Bill Volk showed me how his service enables the community to create ringtone and ringback content that can be syndicated and publicized in a very web 2.0 fashion. Kind of like MySpace. In fact, MyNumo offers a MySpace widget that allows MySpace users to post their favorite content, and even sell it. So, now there’s a way for garage bands to sell their songs as ring tones. Bill showed me some other really cool ringtones and ringbacks. BTW, the way ringbacks work on PhoneLine, incoming callers can hear a sound of your choosing instead of a traditional ring-ring. And combined with Iotum’s technology, which AOL is also co-promoting, you can assign a different ringback sound to each individual caller, based on their caller ID. Cool stuff.

The pre-show welcome party was well-attended, and I wanted to say hi to Jeff Pulver but couldn’t catch him. As I’ve suspected is usual for Jeff, the viewfinder of his camera was in his eye and he was running around snapping photos. I also bumped into Jim from the Skype Journal and missed a chance to thank Mark Spencer for writing the forward to my first book. Incidentally, Mark was basically swarmed the whole time.

I then attended Andy’s wine gathering at the Fleming prime steakhouse. Andy had brought about fifty million bottles of (really amazing) wine from California. Many different wine types, vineyards, and vintages represented. Definitely more wine than I’m accustomed to. The party was a blast. I sat next to some folks that were involved in the carrier space, and learned I’ve got a lot to learn about that business.

The day of the show opening.

The show floor was busy, and the Hebrew National hot dog stand seemed to be one of the most popular exhibits around lunch time. Visited with the folks from Linksys, DID Xchange, Unwired Buyer, Digium, Switchvox, Aastra, Custom Call, Synchronoss, and BridgePort Networks. I then received a demonstration from Ram Fish of Fonav which blew me away. Can’t say what he show me just yet, only that is was cool, very necessary, and ready for market incubation. Stay tuned.

More news later.

…. Where were the major carriers, RBOCs, and traditional telcos at this event?