Small Business Tech

Vonage has assembled a web site where their customers and supporters are encouraged to contact Verizon and sign a petition. They also have information about the pending patent infringement case.

On the Vonage freetocompete.com site, Vonage really comes out shooting. The pull quote at the top of this post is what appears at the top of the home page. The site has a certain edgy voice that makes Vonage sound scrappy. I think that it is a good voice to use - The poor innocent VOIP pioneer being fought by the big evil corporation.

There might be a couple hundred thousand hardcore Vonage fans who will utilize some of the services on this site. I doubt it will sway the case, but it does give Vonage a platform to tell their story.

Labels: Verizon, VOIP, Vonage

I know that many people and small businesses use VOIP from Vonage. Fortunately the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided yesterday to allow Vonage to continue to sign up new customers. This is part of the patent infringement case brought against Vonage by Verizon. You can read more at ZDNet.

One quote struck me as odd. An analyst near the end of the article indicates that even though Vonage can continue to sign new customers they will "...be kind of swimming upstream...in terms of marketing and commercial appeal." I wonder if she is referring to this case. Only the geekiest of geekdom even know that this is happening. Most people just want to know if it works. I think that Vonage's current campaign tells that story well.

Here is the entire analyst contribution to the article...

Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus who attended Tuesday morning's arguments, said she was left with the impression that the appeals court judges were leaning toward Vonage's side in some aspects of the dispute. But until a final decision emerges, Vonage may find it more difficult to attract new customers who may fret about the service's future.

"Even though legally they can sign up new customers," Arbogast said in a telephone interview, "I think they're still going to be kind of swimming upstream over the next couple of months in terms of marketing and commercial appeal." -ZDNet

Disclosure: I have been a customer of both companies for many years.

Labels: Verizon, Vonage

CNet in the UK has compared some good camera phones against a couple of good digital SLR camera's. You might be surprised by the quality of the phone images.

I recently took a weekend trip, and I forgot my camera. I was surprised how good the photos from my HTC Dash turned out. As you can see. The lighting is the largest problem with this image, but if anyone has ever photographed automobiles knows that lighting is a constant problem.

Labels: camera, images, phone, photographs

I usually get the question once a week, but I actually was asked three times this week. Should I get a new computer?

Most of the time - No. If you are doing the same things that you have always done then you can most likely continue to use the computer. It could just require some maintenance including cleaning out any excess software or malware or a reinstall of Windows.

Reinstalling Windows should be done more than you most think. Over time, Windows begins to become clogged in the background. The internal framework that manages programs and your settings becomes filled with old data, which ultimately makes the computer unstable. It will run more and more slowly and begin acting strangely. You might be unable to visit certain web sites or open certain programs. This degradation of Windows can happen as quickly as months or could take a couple of years. Much of it depends on how many programs that you install and uninstall or if you have ever installed a virus or malware.

The process to re-install Windows is straight forward. You backup all of your data, then install Windows, reinstall your programs, and then finally restore your data. It can take hours or days depending on the amount of data that you store and programs that you use. One way to initially save time is to only install programs as you need them. You might find that you need fewer programs than you had originally installed.

It might be time to purchase a new computer when you move into new job functions or hobbies such as editing video or image editing. When your new hobby or job function requires new software, it might be time to buy a new computer. Popular software such as Adobe Premier or Photoshop take massive amounts of computing power to operate efficiently. To find if your current computer will fit the bill you can view the minimum requirements on the company web site or even the software packaging.

Bear in mind, they call them "minimum requirements" for a reason. That is absolute lowest performing computer that you should attempt to use. It will not be a picnic using software at the minimum requirements.

An example is Adobe Photoshop CS3. You can view the system requirements here. I am personally not using CS3, but I would never run CS2 without 1 Gigabyte of memory. There is no way that I have that much patience. (I even get a little impatient opening Photoshop CS2 with 2 Gigabytes of memory) As you can see, Adobe only recommends 512 Megabyte (1/2 Gigabyte) of memory. This is absolute minimum for Photoshop to just be installed. It would certainly not be very useful.

The final point is upgrading a current computer. In nearly all cases I recommend against upgrading a current computer. The prices for computers now are so low it is difficult to justify the expense of buying the components and paying for the installation.

This is a little off of the small business tech subject...

I have a rule. Do not ever leave a voice mail or send an email that you would not want the world to hear. Alec Baldwin would have been smart to follow suit...

Alec Baldwin Voice Mail (NSFW-Not Safe For Work)

Yes, he did find himself in legal trouble for this. TMZ.com