Squawk Box April 9 was huge fun. The topics were:
Google’s App Engine. Who’s it for, how does it differ from Amazon Web Services, and where’s Microsoft? It got downright ugly for a while as people jumped on the bash Microsoft wagon, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the critics who mockingly refer to Google as SkyNet may not be that far off either.
Skype’s Carterfone application. Everyone agreed that FCC Chairman Martin was wrong to deny the petition. Perhaps the most interesting part of the call though was James Body telling us the tale of how Truphone won their petition in the UK. Carriers argued that they weren’t a “proper” wireless carrier because they had no spectrum or towers, but Truphone’s logic prevailed in the court!
Also, the call gave me a chance to try out some audio enhancements we’ve been working on. The recording should be cleaner, individual speakers should be volume equalized to other speakers, and clipping (which has plagued some of our previous calls) should be substantially eliminated.
Enjoy the call!
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.






{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think that Google has just shaken up the small web hosting market.
It's the 500MB, 10G/day for free part.
How hard is it to write a little python application that serves up web pages?
Google will win the market simply because they already have a relationship with these people. Everyone has experience with bad hosts… I went with Amazon because it was a single click to sign up and get started. Now with Google, it will be just as easy, and FREE!
I attended a Google presentation this monrning at IT360 in Toronto. It would be more appropriate if they had mockingly referred to Google as CloudNet since the theme of the presentation was “Cloud Computing”.