Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Squawk Box May 28

by alec on May 28, 2008

This morning we’d originally intended to have Jajah CEO Trevor Healy join us. Jajah had to reschedule, so we’ll have them tomorrow instead.

We started off with Facebook’s plan to open source the Facebook Platform. This is being characterized as a nearly inevitable response to OpenSocial. The claimed effect is to allow nearly any social network to become Facebook compatible, and to create a cross platform API for apps. Facebook will apparently opensource FBML, FQL, FJS, and the FB API.

The real question will be how is it licensed, who owns changes to the tools, and how is it administered.

Yesterday at the All Things D conference, Microsoft showed video of the new Windows Multi-touch interface. Unlike Apple’s multi-touch, it actually works on the screen — pinches, squeezes and so on on a tablet size device. We talked about whether it was as revolutionary as some people seemed to think, and how Apple might respond. And, we talked about the potential contradiction that was implied by Microsoft VP Steve Sinofsky’s tight lighted approach to Windows 7 communications.

A couple of people had installed the Nokia N95 V20 firmware update. People felt that it was faster, and had new features.

And finally, we chatted about the New York Times and their announcement of an API. The Times intent is to allow programmers to easily mash up the content with their applications. Nick Desbarats from Choicebot was on the line, and he was very clear that Choicebot would find the Times API valuable.

On the call: Dave Brown, Adam Somer, Ian Hood, Frank Abrams, Nick Desbarats, Peter Childs, Brad Jones, Jim Courtney, Mark Hewitt, Jeanette Fisher, Jeb Brilliant, Bill Volk and James Body.

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Too many tweets

by alec on May 28, 2008

I suppose this is an improvement of sorts.  At this point, Twitter isn’t down.  It’s just inaccessible.

I’ll bet they’re having a whale of a time at Twitter HQ.

image

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Making two announcements from one. Tungle announces iPhone support.

May 28, 2008

Hot on the heels of their BlackBerry announcement last week, Tungle today announced the availability of support for the iPhone.  Just as recipients of Tungle invites can respond to them on BlackBerry, now they’re capable of receiving and responding to those invites on iPhone. A welcome feature, to be sure, and a hot hand for [...]

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VOXBONE powers Truphone Anywhere

May 28, 2008

VOXBONE is the network behind today’s Truphone Anywhere announcement. Each handset running the Truphone v4 software has a database of local numbers, provided by VOXBONE, that is used whenever Truphone Anywhere is invoked. In fact, VOXBONE seems to be becoming the choice for commercial provisioning of inbound telephone numbers in the VoIP world. With their [...]

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iNowCU: cheap home monitoring

May 28, 2008

Inca X has launched a new service called iNowCU. Targeted at folks who want to do some surveillance on the cheap, it uses a web camera and motion sensing software to advise you when something or someone has entered your realm. It’s dead simple to set up. Simply download the software, run it, and plug [...]

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