Pajama Entrepreneur

Microsoft launched a unified communications platform (merging email, instant messaging and telephony) that Business Division President Jeff Raikes claims will put an end to telephone tag:

“The era of dialing blind, the era of playing phone tag, the era of voice-mail jam…that era is ending . . . I don’t want to get in touch with your number. I want to get in touch with you.

Sorry Jeff, but actually most of the time, I don’t want to talk to people. I want them to leave a message in my email box which I can either read or listen to in order to determine whether it is worth responding to. Based on what I hear and read, I will respond.

Why do companies love offering products like this - a hodgepodge of stuff that does not really solve a pressing problem? Right now my problem is I get too many emails from business contacts, friends, family, email newsletters, etc. The last thing I need is people managing to reach me via phone interrupting my already busy day.

I want FILTERS, intelligent ones, and I have a few solutions already using email, but nothing is optimal. Messages from close friends and family go into a mailbox marked “read right away”. I have various mailboxes for different levels of urgency. But what I certainly don’t need is a solution that allows people to talk to me whenever THEY want, not when I want.

Orange, Apple’s exclusive partner in France, is required to sell the iPhone unlocked, if requested by a customer. The reason: French law prohibits the tying of a device to a cellular service. Operators can sell phones for a lower price if they subsidize it, but if the customer just wants the phone, they have to sell it to him or her, even at a higher price.

Law professor Tim Wu says there’s nothing illegal about an iPhone user unlocking his phone plus it’s so much fun:

The good news is that my iPhone works flawlessly. With my existing T-Mobile account, I get 1,300 more minutes of talk time than I would have received from AT&T for a comparably priced plan; I also now have a phone that I can take to Asia and Europe. I avoided a $200 termination fee, AT&T’s activation fee, and having to wait for AT&T to port my existing number. On the downside, I don’t have AT&T’s visual voicemail, and I have to stay away from Apple’s software upgrades, which might brick the phone. But it’s easy to download third-party apps, like iPong. Best of all, my geek friends are impressed.

Read the rest of Professor Wu’s article on Slate. In the meantime, Apple’s most recent attempt (version 1.1.1) to turn its customers’ iPhones into $500 paperweights has failed. Hackers have figured out a way to hack that as well, giving users, once again, the freedom to user their phones however they want to.

UPDATE: Dewayne Hendricks emailed me to say that hackers have read access to the filesystem on the iPhone, but not complete write access. They’re very close though. Click here to visit the iPhone hacker site.

The city of Paris has begun offering free Wi-Fi access in public parks and gardens, museums, libraries, and other public buildings. To find out which areas have Wi-Fi, go to wifi.paris.fr. Inspired by San Francisco, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, issued a public tender last year, seeking a provider to deploy the hotzones. SFR and Alcatel-Lucent won the bid. France Telecom, a sour grapes loser, is suing the city, saying it is unfairly competing with FT’s own paid hotspot access. France Telecom’s subsidiary, Orange, is reportedly Apple’s exclusive partner in France for the iPhone.

Ironically, San Francisco, the original model for this project, has no Wi-Fi. I guess depending too much on a private company to fund everything (in SF’s case, EarthLink) is a fantasy.

To read more about the Paris Wi-Fi project, click here. Another successful project recently launched by the city is Velib, free bicycles available at various points in the city, especially around metro stops. The city partnered with JC Decaux, the outdoor advertising company, to fund this project.

Paris Wi-Fi website: wifi.paris.fr

Blyk has finally launched in the UK, with service coming to other European countries in 2008. I’ve been waiting for Blyk to begin its service because the model is totally different from that of other operators:

• only 16-24 year olds can get the service
• they get 43 minutes and 217 text messages free every month
• they agree to receive up to 6 messages per day from advertisers of their choice

Read more on Muniwireless.

This is a much more acceptable way of advertising that Pudding Media.

I don’t know whether to call Pudding Media the most loathesome business model in the world or the most cynical, or both. Pudding Media is the latest company to take advantage of the “free services in exchange for ads” business model. We’ve seen free Wi-Fi in exchange for viewing ads (MetroFi) and free mobile phone service supported by ads (Blyk).

Now comes Pudding Media, founded by two guys who used to do intelligence work for the military. You can see where they got their ideas. This is the ultimate monetization of phone surveillance or snooping. They have a web-based phone service that lets you call any phone number for free (in the US for now), but they (or rather their software) listen in on your conversations and display ads on your browser.

Here’s what the NY Times says:

. . . Pudding Media is eavesdropping on phone calls in order to display ads on the screen that are related to the conversation. Voice recognition software monitors the calls, selects ads based on what it hears and pushes the ads to the subscriber’s computer screen while he or she is still talking . . . The company’s model, of course, raises questions about the line between target advertising and violation of privacy. Consumer-brand companies are increasingly trying to use data about people to deliver different ads to them based on their demographics and behavior online. Pudding Media executives said that scanning the words used in phone calls was not substantially different from what Google does with e-mail. Still, even some advertising executives were wary of the concept.

You might think it’s not different from Gmail, Google’s free web-based mail service that delivers ads on the side. But I think it is. There’s something very intimate about phone calls and I would be completely freaked out if strangers, even if it were a software bot, were listening in on mine. Of course Pudding’s founders don’t think so, having been in the military intelligence business. Does it help them to have the former chief privacy officer of Microsoft on their advisory board? It depends on whether you think Microsoft is a friend or foe of privacy.

I think most people will be freaked out by the idea even though Pudding says they don’t record your conversations.

Where it might work well: the sex chat industry

But I can see where it would be quite popular: in the sex chat industry. The caller dials a number via Pudding’s web-based service, sees ads on the side while he or she is chatting — although I think this destroys the pay-per-chat business model of sex chat businesses unless they offer this free version to their customers in exchange for seeing ads on a web browser (and the ads actually make up the lose in revenue).

It’s a dark, gloomy, rainy day in Amsterdam and I need a good laugh. This came in just in time to cure my blues (from Network World): Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Tuesday that it’s his company’s job to stymie hackers who try to unlock the iPhone — the first time the company has officially said it would fight attempts to use the popular device on unauthorized networks.

Why is this funny?

(1) Assuming I am an iPhone owner, which I am not, it’s MY phone. I bought it. The cellular operator isn’t even subsidizing it so I have every right to choose what I download onto the phone, how I use it, etc. When it leaves the store, Mr. Jobs has no right to tell me what the heck I am going to use it for and how. I can flush it right down the toilet, stomp on it, grind it into a thousand little pieces, it’s none of his damn business. He’s got his money, he should shut up and be happy.

(2) The hacker community “owns” the iPhone. Whatever fix Apple tries to apply to the device, the hacker community will come up with an update of its own to neutralize Apple’s “fix”. Apple is wasting time and money, and annoying its customers.

(3) Steve Jobs added: “People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in.” Wait - it’s my phone. I decided who to let in, not Apple. Apple’s “fixes” are intrusive. It’s Apple who’s breaking into MY phone.

But I don’t have to worry about this . . . for now because I don’t have an iPhone. I refuse to buy it unless it works on 21st century mobile networks - like 3G for a start.