Friday, July 20, 2007

Google Follows The Golden Rule

I was chatting with my father this morning about the upcoming spectrum auction and how the potential "open-access" rule marks a bit of a departure for the FCC with regard to their treatment of the big telcos thus far. My father, as keen and jaded a political observer as you will find, commented that these sorts of things usually come down to "The Golden Rule" as in "He who has the gold makes the rules." Prescient as always. The fact that Google was willing to open its coffers to ensure that the open access rules were met appeared later in the day. Here is OM's always insightful take on the news:

GigaOM Google will bid for Wireless Spectrum �

Friday, July 13, 2007

Pocket Dialing - Mind Your P's and Q's

I have noticed that my Blackberry 8830 has a proclivity for Pocket Dialing - a phenomenon for which I just learned the name:

Pocket Dialing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The P and Q keys are the most commonly pressed which pulls up contacts beginning with one of those letters. This morning it accidentally dialed a sales contact in my address book and we ended up discussing potential firewall solutions that his firm is offering.

Lesson for sales people - change your name to Pamela or Quentin.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

The 700 Club - Members Only

So GigaOm reports that Verizon is opposed to the "Google Block's" recommendations for the 700 Mhz auction rules. Big surprise.

GigaOM Verizon: Play fair in wireless auctions, as long as VZ wins �

I think it is very likely that this upcoming auction will be the defining moment for the current regulatory regime. The opportunity exists to set standards for the next decade. As the date approaches things will only get more interesting. Keep your eyes and ears open...

Tailgate Party

So TechCrunch highlighted this new product today:

Tailgate: Fully Transactional Web 2.0 Banners

One of those lightbulbs went off in my head - "Why didn't I think of this..." Really slick way to embed ads that I can interact with in another page. I hate advertising, of course, but if I was reading about Bob Dylan's latest tour on a news site and an ad appeared allowing me to buy tix to Red Rocks without leaving the page, that would be a useful service, indeed.
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