Industry

A memorial to the Bell System: the world's largest computer.

5:16:46 PM #
categories: Industry

Provider of Network-Aware Applications, not Provider of Network

John Robb talks about the differences between "broadband" ISPs and Old-Style ISPs. Let's cut out the confusing "service provider" jargon crap and call it like it is. There are software vendors and network vendors. Network vendors sell you a line and lease you an address. Software vendors sell you software, whether as a service or not doesn't much matter — unless you are a confused software vendor who doesn't recognize that you no longer need to offer access as well as software. Or if you're a network vendor who thinks that the applications are in the network.

4:23:18 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry

A Simple Join

David Fletcher points out Maporama. I like this one. MapQuest used to provide the latitude and longitude for the point mapped, as part of the graphic, but stopped doing that. Maporama provides it, in text!

Paul Shane and I once discussed linking phone numbers to GPS information. Towns pay big bucks to do this for 911 implementations. Emergency services should be able to find their way to the emergency given just a phone number, if necessary. We were disappointed to find that while MapQuest provided latitude and longitude, and let you search by them, it did not provide a means to search by phone number. Nor do Maporama or Yahoo! Maps. What Google does is join the information in the telephone directory with the information in the geographic directory, mapping a phone number to a place, or a place to its phone number.

Can you imagine how joining these databases could change caller identification? Ignoring the unreliability of the Caller ID information for the moment, consider what you could do with CTI at home. Suppose your phone could speak to your computer, and you have a persistent Internet connection. A call comes in, carrying Caller ID data. Your system takes the data, maps the phone number to an address and a name, shows you where the call originated, checks your address book for more personal information, locates the web site related to the calling number, and the next thing you know you're watching the web cam of the little twit who thinks he's being funny by prank calling during dinner.

But then, that's a typical CTI fantasy.

9:18:11 AM # Google It!
categories: Directories, Industry