Monday, October 20, 2003 at 12:58PM If you've already been using Google as a dictionary, you'll be pleased to know it now is designed to work that way. Works swell with legal terms too, and the "more definitions" link lets you triangulate. [Via Evan Williams]
Monday, October 20, 2003 at 6:12AM Andrew McLaughlin, Harvard law professor and senior Berkman fellow [via Donna and Dave], provides a detailed analysis of the recent Minnesota VoIP decision:
So how can Judge Davis conclude that Vonage is not an phone-to-phone IP telephony provider? His opinion is less than crystal clear, but the answer appears to center on the fact that the Vonage system provides computer-to-computer or computer-to-phone service (keeping in mind that the Cisco box that sits between the customer's broadband connection and her telephone is a computer), but never phone-to-phone. ...
Stressing that information services can legitimately be deployed on top of telecommunications infrastructure without being pulled into the orbit of telecommunications regulations, Judge Davis finds that Vonage uses telecommunications services, but does not provide them. ...
In my judgment, this a fantastic victory for the Internet, and a hugely significant precedent.
Also weighing in on the Minnesota decision is Doug Simpson, who wonders whether c | net was correct in suggesting a conflict between the case and the 9th Circuit's recent Brand X decision. JD Lasica offers an enthusiastic response concerning his experiences with Vonage competitor Packet 8. (See also "http://www.inc.com/magazine/20031001/rcringely.html">Cringely's Inc. column.)
Sunday, October 19, 2003 at 9:24AM Grant Perry is a former CNN correspondent, lawyer, and media consultant in Washington, DC, and writes Political Winds [via Bob Ambrogi, who met Grant at BloggerCon]:
Utopian visions aside, there was an enormous amount of useful, and yes, exciting, discussion [at BloggerCon]. There was a considerable amount of talk about how blogging is and will affect journalism and mainstream media. There is no question that blogs have already had an impact, certainly in terms of stories that swirl around the blogosphere before percolating "up" to the mainstream news organizations. And that's coming from a tiny percentage of the general population. When blogs become a form of mainstream media, their power will be manifest. I thought Doc Searls put it well when he said, "What Web logs have done is equip the demand side of journalism. We've had enough equipment on the supply side."
Speaking of Bob Ambrogi, congratulations to Sabrina Pacifici and LLRX for their well-deserved spot on his list of Ten Best Legal Sites of the Decade. Bob also has a current article on the future of legal technology featuring insights from many of your favorite blawgers.
Saturday, October 18, 2003 at 6:23PM Ernie, who is providing some fascinating PopTech! coverage, writes of good news on the legal front for VoIP phone services:
A federal judge in Minnesota has ruled that Vonage's VoIP phone service (which uses broadband internet connections to handle phone calls) is an "information service" rather than a "telecommunications service." I'll bet the traditional phone companies won't like this. But consumers will.
Yeah, I'll say. The current Robert X. Cringely column in Inc. explains many of the reasons this technology is droolworthy, including the following, which gave me a big "Aha!"
But wait, there's more! I can unplug my Cisco box in California and take it to the little house we have in Charleston, S.C., where every year I try to perfect my heat rash. I plug it into the Charleston DSL line and my business line and fax line ring there instead of in California. I could do the same thing on a trip to Japan, too, and soon even that won't be necessary, because I'll be able to replace the Cisco box with software on my notebook computer—so my office line will ring at my hotel in Tokyo. I can use a computer headset to take the call or, even better, by next year I'll be able to plug a special phone into the USB port on my notebook. I completely bypass the hotel phone system. Not only am I saving on hotel charges, but my virtual phone doesn't know it's in Japan at all, so all my calls back to the U.S. are free.
If your business is bigger than mine is, an affiliate of Vonage called Vontek can route the Internet phone right into your phone switch. It can even set up a virtual PBX so people working at home can all have extensions on the office phone systems no matter where they are in the world as long as they have broadband Internet service. I might never get out of bed.
Add some well-considered digital identity to this scenario, and you're looking at the future of telecommunications.
As far as telecommunications present go, I'm happy to see that the new releases of iSync and iCal almost give full support to the Sony Ericsson P800. I can't get the calendar to sync for some reason, but the contacts are doing it nicely and that's a big step in the right direction. Web enabled phone-PDA combos are definitely the way to go if calling or emailing anyone you know without having to hunt for numbers and addresses is important to you, and the P800 1) syncs via Bluetooth with OS X, and 2) lets you wirelessly surf the Web from your Bluetooth/OS X enabled laptop in WiFi free zones. (Has a camera too, of course.)
[Update] Checking the Apple discussion boards, apparently there's a bug when it comes to recurring calendar events. After several tries, for no apparent reason (no configuration changes), mine finally synched. From the iSync team: "We are aware of the issue with recurring events syncing to the Symbian phones but we need to collect some more data to isolate and resolve the issue."
