Image via Wikipedia

For those who had been reading this blog for some time now, you may have stumbled across my blog post from 2008, regarding me buying a Nokia E90 - http://www.simionovich.com/2008/06/06/i-finally-purchased-a-nokia-e90.

Well, it’s a fact, since the year 1998, I’ve been an avid Nokia fan. I think I’ve ranged from the old Nokia 51XX, through the 6XXX up to the E61, E62 and E90 – if it was some funky Nokia phone that gave me some new feature, I most probably had it. I guess that the time I spent at m-Wise, working closely with various mobile content technologies had put its toll on me – and I became a Nokia Cell Phone addict. For many years I couldn’t imagine myself digressing from the Nokia clan. Even when my friends moved from their Nokia/Motorola/Ericsson phones to a star spangled iPhone – I remained faithful to my old habits – and remained with my trusty Nokia.

Image via Wikipedia

About two years ago I promised myself this: “If you ever decide to move to a touch screen phone, don’t go ala iPhone, stay for a Nokia phone” – so I waited. The initial Nokia touch phones came out. The first Nokia touch phone that came out, I believe shortly after the iPhone was the Nokia 5800, also known as the Nokia XpressMusic.

I’ve got one thing to say about this phone – “What the hell were you thinking???” – it’s a phone, not a bloody MP3 player – if I wanted an MP3 player, I would have bought an iPod. Apart from being the slowest phones I’ve ever encountered, its touch interface was annoying and disruptive.

So, I didn’t buy the Nokia 5800 – I simply had no use for it. At that point I decided to wait a bit more, and see what Nokia cooks up. Shortly after seeing the 5800 in dis-action, I met a new member of the Nokia clan: the Nokia 700.

The Nokia 700 was a totally new thing, not really a phone, not really a PDA – somewhat of a cross between the two. It was big and bulky, and I couldn’t imagine myself walking around with one of these – however, it showed some promise. Sure, it was big, bulky, slow and anything bad you can say about a device – however, it had one thing – it showed potential – something to look for. At that time, I decided that I needed a proper smart phone and purchased the Nokia E90 – and I was fairly happy with it till 8 months ago.

You are probably asking, why would an avid Nokia fan become displeased with his trusty E90 phone – the answer is simple – the plastics. The plastics are of such low quality, that after 18 months of usage, the paint job starts to peel away from the phone. As you run more and more applications, or store more data, the phone becomes sluggish and slow – to the point where you have to reset it.

So, 2 months ago I gave up, I said to myself: “that’s it, time to move forward and leave the Nokia clan” – but I still didn’t want to put myself with the iPhone clan – or to be more exact, the iPhone cult movement. While at the Amoocon convention, I came across some people who were using HTC phones, specifically the HTC Evo. Well, I was somewhat taken with this snazy piece of hardware. It was fast, it was fluid and for some funky reason, I felt at home with it. Could it be, have I found a new clan for my mobile needs? I returned back home starting to examine my options. The HTC Evo isn’t available in Israel, the next best thing is the HTC Desire.

The HTC Desire is also known as the Google Nexus-1, basically it’s the same phone. I tried using the Nexus-1, but I didn’t like it. Specifically, I didn’t like the fact that the four keys are touch based – on the HTC these are real keys, making my life much easier.

So now, I’m equipped with the HTC Desire, and apart from the occasional Android crash (not too often to be honest) – it is one of the best phones I ever had. It’s fast, syncs my life into a manageable construct and most importantly, it’s become a second nature to me. The only disadvantage of owning such a phone is that you need a massive Data plan with your carrier – this little machine can gobble up ten’s of megabytes on a daily basis. My old Nokia E90 was using 25MB of data per month, with the Desire, I consume that much in less than a day – that is an amazing number.

In order to get better into Android development, I’ve ordered an Eken M002 device. This is a 7″, Android based tablet PC. I’ll be posting information about that once it arrives.

Over the years I’ve seen many scams running on the net. Ranging from the ever annoying chain mails to the ever popular Nigerian Sting – Internet fraud is all around us. Lately, I’ve been hit by a new type of fraud attack, a domain registration fraud attack – mainly located in China and Hong-Kong.

As you may know, I’m the owner and CEO of a company called GreenfieldTech, dealing with Asterisk and VoIP application and platform development. Now, we operate world wide and render services to some of the world biggest brand in the telecom industry. So, we take our copyright and brand very seriously, when we receive an indication that someone is or may be infringing our copyright or brand, we take a stand for it.

So, today I’ve received this email:

Dear CEO, 

We are a domain name registrar centre in HongKong,and in charge of the registeration in
Asia, We have something important need to confirm through your company. 

We received a formal application from a company called "Hempus International Holdings
Ltd" applying to register 

Internet keyword :     greenfieldtech 

Domain names :

 greenfieldtech.asia    
 greenfieldtech.cn    
 greenfieldtech.com.cn    
 greenfieldtech.hk    
 greenfieldtech.in    
 greenfieldtech.mobi    
 greenfieldtech.net.cn    
 greenfieldtech.tw

In China and also in Asia on January 21 2010. During our auditing procedure we find out
that the alleged "Hempus International Holdings Ltd" has no trade mark,Intellectual
property, nor patent even similar to that word. As authorized anti-cybersquatting
organization we hereby suspect the alleged "Hempus International Holdings Ltd" to be a 
domain grabber. Hence we need you confirmation for two things:

First of all, whether this alleged "Hempus International Holdings Ltd" is your business
partner or distributor in China.

Secondly, Whether do you need to protect the intellectual property right which should have
belonged to you?. (The alleged "Hempus International Holdings Ltd" will be entitled to obtain
a domain not needed by  original trademark owner.)
If you are not in charge of this please transfer this email to appropriate dept.in order to
deal with this issue better, please let someone who is  responsible for trademark or domain
name contact me as soon as possible.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
 Confidentiality Notice: This is a letter for confirmation. If the mentioned third party is
 your business partner or distributor in China please DO NOT reply.  We will automatically
 confirm application from your business partner after this audit procedure.we have to notify
 you,and our registration organization are  not responsible for any dispute questions about
 trade mark,intellectual property nor patent after they succeed in registration.hope you can
 understand.thank you.
 ____________________________________________________________________________________________

Sincerely,
  kaka.xu

Sponsoring Registrar:sk holdings company ltd 
 Web:www.sk-dns.org/www.asia-gov.com
 Tel:00852-95660489 / 00852-95660103 
 Fax:00852-30696940

Email:kaka.xu@skdns.org/

Address: 3A, Units 20/F, Far East Consortium Bldg, 121 Des Voeux Road, Central, Hong Kong

kaka.xu

2010.01.21

So, this is obviously a scam, as when I searched the alleged company, I couldn’t find anything. However, the term “International Holdings Ltd.” had produced many scam alerts and related information popped up everywhere. Now, bear in mind that this is the 10th time them past 2 months that I’m receiving such emails. So, I’ve formulated the following response to them, and you are welcome to use it:

Dear Kaka,

Thank you for contacting us in regards to this matter, to be completely frank with you,
we’ve received over the past 2 months a similar request/demand from various Asian registrars
in China/Hong-Kong. Through our contacts in the far-east, we’ve concluded that your
request/demand is fraudulent, and that the company you indicated doesn’t even exist.
Please note that your approach to us claiming that someone wants to infringe our copyright
and brand had been noted and passed to our legal department. In addition, we’ve forwarded your
email and general company information to various SPAM, Abuse and Security teams that are in
contact with us around the world (mainly, [Mention your really BIG business partners and
large customers here - also through in some ISPs in the far-east, specifically China). Should
your company register ANY of the below mentioned domain names or keywords, following this email,
we shall be forced to follow legal actions in accordance to the laws of the state of [Put your
country here] and other countries where our company has representatives or local business
engaged partners.

P.S.

[Always add a personal note - and refer to something in the mail they sent, for example]

On a personal note, when sending emails to anyone in Israel, I would suggest that you choose a
different name, other than Kaka. Kaka in Hebrew is directly related to the bodily function of
purging waste – also known as taking a dump in the toilet.

Cellcom

Since early 2006, an ever increasing competition between the local PTT carriers in Israel, had introduced an unlikely friend to the Asterisk community in Israel. While Cellcom, one of Israel’s largest cellular carriers, isn’t closely associated with the PSTN market – it’s entrance to the local PTT market, especially into the E1 PRI market, had introduced the most unlikely friend to Asterisk.

Cellcom’s highly aggressive marketing techniques, rapid deployment of skillful sales agents and a highly motivating sales campaign – had yielded a migration of many customers from the local PTT carrier (Bezeq) utilizing Analog lines with traditional PBX systems, to low cost, PRI circuits provided by Cellcom, with low cost Asterisk based IP PBX systems.

Now, coming 2009, Cellcom had sprung up a new marketing campaign for their new service line: all-in-one Internet access and telephony service for your home. The service is rendered via the utilization of an OPTION GlobeSurfer II devices, allowing you to connect your home wireless network and an analog phone directly to the device.

OPTION GlobeSurfer II

So, why is Cellcom becoming a better Asterisk friend? very simple, the usage of the GlobeSurfer II device, in an SMB environment is the ideal companion for a small time Asterisk installation – in the office. Each GlobeSurfer devices allow us up to 2.4Mbps of downlink Internet with 384kbps of uplink – and a dedicated phone line. All of this, for a low cost of 29$ per month (give or take a few dollars). By all standards, that price is lower than any of the high-power uplink Broadband connections in Israel – thus, this is an ideal choice for a small office. Now, all that we need to facilitate an office of 4-6 people, is to have two of these units, get a router that can support multiple (2 or 3) Internet uplinks – walla – we have the perfect office communications suite. Another added value is that our office is now truely mobile – we want to move offices, no problem, takes 10 minutes to move the offices and start working again. Now, the only thing that’s missing from the mix is the availability of static IP addresses on the link, and you’ve got a serious potential looking at the new PTT killer in Israel – Wireless Internet and telephony to go – at a price you can afford.

Other questions that remain are:

1. Will Cellcom allow for a single mobile number/landline number to be associated with multiple SIM card gateways such as this, allowing for office redundancy and maybe in the future true IVR capabilities?
2. Will Cellcom allow its customers to aggregate more bandwidth in the future, allowing for true VoIP services to operate using these units?
3. While the units are fully capable of rendering up to 7.2Mbps downlink and 2.4 Mbps uplink, Cellcom is limiting these to 2.8 Mbps downlink and 384kbps uplink – will they increase that in the near future?

All things considered, I believe that this unit will make Cellcom into a new contender in the market, allowing for new residential services and competition to exist – in other words, the heat in the Israeli residential and SMB market in on – let’s get cooking.

Michael Eisenberg is a well known VC partner (Benchmark Capital) and an avid blogger. In one of his recent posts, Michael refers to 8 different approaches to raising a start-up company, in the midst of an economic crisis. The full blog entry can be found at his blog, however, after reading it myself, I would like to comment on it. The below section will also be commented to Michael’s blog for reference:

“Everyone in the company is a salesman – Your R&D team should be selling too”

This is an interesting approach, however, R&D people are R&D people because usually they don’t do sales well. Actually, most of the R&D people I know are the worst sales people I’ve ever met. To be honest, in my previous position, our R&D Manager basically screwed a 500,000$ deal that we worked on for 6 months, because I said something in the form of: “It’s possible to do, however, I can’t really say what would be required to do so.” – R&D people can easily sell products that are closed, not products that are under development. As start-ups are constantly in the development phase – this is a BAD idea.

“Hire sales people on commission only”

YES! This is a great idea, although, it means that you’ll need a hell of a lot more sales people to manage. When a sales person works on commissions only, it means that while he’s selling your stuff, he’s selling other stuff too. It requires a certain degree of finesse and agility to be able to manage such a team, but the general idea is good, actually it’s GREAT!

“Virtual company”

Michael’s idea of a virtual company isn’t new, dozens of companies around the world utilize this methodology. However, this methodology sometimes requires quite some resources. For example, according to Michael, the utilization of sites like oDesk and rent-a-coder may assist in your quest to lower general spending. That is true, however, it automatically poses a problem. Let us imagine that I develop a service that is made of 3 distinct areas of expertise. I hire all coders from oDesk, now, I need to remotely co-ordinate them all, so that the code I’ll get is manageable and well documented. If not, the end result will a running service that becomes stagnant, as no one can go into the code and continue its development (seen it happen to 2 of my customers, both start-ups).

“Choose Self-PR over paid search”

Hmmm… I can’t really comment on that, as I practice it – and can honestly say, it’s very hard.

“Focus on product”

Killer applications in the web are a must, if it’s not a killer – your service is dead in the water. Killer services like PokeTalk have a great potential to become the next big thing, but they highly rely on the company’s ability to market the product correctly within the available channels.

“New distribution channels”

Michael talks about the creation of affiliate programs – that’s not as simple as it sounds. Many companies made a shitload of money out of building distribution channels and affiliate program management systems – affiliates are a wonderful idea as long as you are capable of managing these in a proper manner (See my comment about commission only sales people).

All in all, Michael surely has some valid points, however, these require delicate work and proper management in order to work right – if executed improperly, will not only end in failure, may also send you down debt country.

Ok, I usually don’t get really excited about distributions, after all, I did spend the last 10 years inside different Linux distros – so getting me excited about something won’t be an easy task. However, this time something took me a little by surprise, mainly, something that comes from a distro that I really used to love in the past.

Mandriva (Formerly Mandrake + Connectiva) had brought on to the world a distro that is bootable directly from a DiskOnKey. Well, this isn’t a new thing, I’ve created one my self a while back. The thing that I liked about this one was that it is jam packed! It booted without any problems on my IBM T42 Notebook, bringing up a cool KDE 3.5 Desktop is less than 2 minutes – which is really fast for my notebook. The 3D desktop effects work like a charm, and even the wireless network worked immediately – all in all – a very satisfying experience.

The key it self is a 4GB Disk-On-Key, with enough space to have you work on any Internet Cafe computer, and still keep your data inside a /home that has around 300MB of storage space. For a developer like myself, this environment gives a very portable computer to take with me, while I travel or when I’m on customer location.

I’ve tried booting it on several different PC hardware environments, mainly notebooks and Internet Cafe POS computers, they all worked in a more or less similar manner (well, apart from that Internet Cafe that was using old P2 computers – what a shit place!). I loaded onto my home directory on the key my Asterisk sources, and here I was sitting in a coffee shop in Tel-Aviv, working no Asterisk on a public computer – I don’t know what it means to you, but to me it means a great deal. I hope they come out with a 8GB or a 16GB version of this key, as that will enable more to be done, turning this tiny little gadget into a really portable development lab.

It doesn’t really matter if you’re a computer geek, or just an average Joe on the street, no one, and I really mean no one can stay un-affected by the 3D desktop. The slick look and the smooth operation of the environment on a modern PC leaves almost any spectator breathless.
Most of the reactions I’ve gotten in the Cafe were: “DEAR GOD – WHAT IS THAT? CAN I HAVE THAT IN VISTA?” – always ending up with a big fat “NO – YOU CAN’T – GO LINUX”.

Ok, need to move now, I don’t think the Internet Cafe attender here will like me booting something else but his silly little XP and bypassing all his Billing system – well, have to go now.

I guess that in every parents mind, their child is always a genius. The child may actually be the stupidest person on the face of the planet – however, for the parents, the child is a genius. I think this way of thinking is somewhat a constant across the universe, however, in Israel – adding the “Polish Mom” syndrome into the equation and you get a highly intense environment believing that what ever the child says, be it as moronic as a toon, is considered sheer genius.

Now, why am I ranting about this? well, in the course of my work, I meet with various people. At least once a month, I get to meet with “The next big thing” in telephony, or so it claims to be. A few weeks ago, I’ve received a phone call from a prospective customer, telling me he came up with a wonderful business model for VoIP services and he’s going to kick Vonage’s ass out of the water. While I admit that I like people that talk like that, I must also admit that the extremely young voice behind the phone got me wondering. I politely asked for the persons age, shortly to get an answer saying: “Oh, I’m 18 – my dad is the prime investor!”. I asked the kid to put his “prime investor” on the line, as I would like to talk to him…

Now, my cynic reactions are well known to people who know me well, but when it comes to customers and people I work with – I do my best to tone that down (not everybody has my sense of humor or share my views on things – you know). So, the father comes to the phone and we start talking. The following is more of less what was said:

Me: Hello Sir, may I inquire what school does your son attends to? does he study computer science?

Dad: Listen, I’m telling you, my son is a genius – he’s been using a computer since he was 10.

Me: Well, I admit that after talking to your son I’m impressed, however, you hadn’t answered my question.

Dad: Well, he doesn’t study computer science. He studies automatic services but he’s a computer genius I tell you. I’m willing to invest any funds in needs in building this service, even 2500$.

At this point in time, I had to explain to the “prime investor” that the initial investment is well beyond the 2500$ mark and that 2500$ won’t even cover the monthly operational costs for the service the “genius” intends to build. That sentence was slightly interrupted by the sounds of various loud slaps coming from the other side of the phone. However, as I do believe that computer geniuses come in various shapes and sizes, I’ve commented to the man saying: “You know, your son interests me and I’d like to meet him. I always wanted to take an intern to train and your son may fit the profile – I’d like to meet you and your son”.

A week later, we met at a coffee shop in Tel-Aviv. I sat down with the father and the son – asking the son to tell me his expereince and show me his work. The son begins telling me that he’s been using computers since he was 10 and that every year his father bought him a new computer, because the old one wasn’t enough for his needs. I asked what were his needs, he said that the recent games were no longer running smoothly on his computer and that Windows had become sluggish. I then asked him to show me his work – the kid replied that he has one of the best web sites available on the net. This interested me, so I looked deep – trying to find the genius within – guess what, I didn’t! The kid showed me a web site that was built using a free web site engine template, using an israeli service called tipo.co.il – lets put it this way, my 9 year old niece has a website in tipo.co.il that looks better and is more functional. I asked the kid if he has any experience with any type of computer programming language, to which he replied: “programming languages are in English and English isn’t really my strong point”. At this point he started telling me about his adventures into the VoIP world using Skype, and that he tried installing Linux on his Windows XP machine, but he couldn’t as it was incompatible with his Windows installation, which is 64bit (how stupid can you get), and that he downloaded Asterisk from the Internet, but couldn’t install it because he didn’t find the setup.exe file. At this point I bid my farewell from the two, explaining to the father that while his son may seem like a computer genius to him, the fact is that he’s far from it.

So, what conclusions had we come to:

1. The “Polish Mom” syndrome had been replaced by the “Greedy Father” syndrome.
2. Genius is a relative term that is thrown in the air all too often.
3. There are no free lunches (well, apart from those I take people to).
4. Before you go about investing in your child’s ideas, make sure that he is what you think he is.
5. If you have a dream of making it big, especially in VoIP – make sure you are ready to invest big.

* This post was translated from a hebrew post of mine on the cafe.themarker.com website.