Heard the bad news over your VoIP communications? Ottawa-based VoIPshield Systems is warning that media stream attacks could hit Microsoft Office Communications Server, Office Communicator and Windows Live Messenger. Microsoft estimates over 250 million computers worldwide run those applications, so this represents a potentially gaping security hole.
Why does it matter? Hackers can disrupt phone service, eavesdrop on private calls and of course steal private customer information.
VoIPshield has some pretty decent videos demonstrating how a hacker might be able to cause a breach. Will organizations be any more proactive about this threat than the hazards to networks and web applications? I'd like to be optimistic...
In related news, there's an excellent roundup of top 10 mistakes IT people in SMBs make. Read this BEFORE you set up your network.
I always enjoy news about big infrastructure deployments. The City of Vancouver, 2010 Olympic host city and western terminus of the CPR, has awarded a $7 millon contract to Telus to provide an IP telephony system for city services. This includes 200 sites comprising Police, Fire and Rescue, parks, and libraries. The system will be based on Cisco technology, included 6,500 Cisco Unified IP Phones.
Part of this system will include a new contact centre for the city's 311 number. Citizens will be able to dial 311 for non-emergency municipal services and information, 24/7 in multiple languages. The creation of the 311 system was originally passed by city council in November 2006, and will be launched in mid-2009.
The writing's on the wall: POTS is out, data and VoIP are in. A harsh reality for Telus, but they seem to be adapting well to the changing face of telecom.
Anyone know of other companies that bid on the RFP?
Technology is a key enabler for TELUS and our customers, providing advantage and differentiation in the marketplace. By managing the life cycle of... [more]
Verb Exchange announced the release of Tabrio's latest interface today - Tabrio Online. The new interface allows users to initiate low-cost, high-quality international calls from any Internet connection without downloading anything. By dropping the download requirement, Tabrio Online is now an option for users in emerging markets that don't have personal access to a PC or dedicated broadband which is needed for VoIP solutions. Apple iPhone users can also access Tabrio Online from the Safari browser, without having to download any additional software and Apple iTouch users can initiate free calling directly from their browser without access to a mobile phone, data plan or PC. New Tabrio users receive a $5 credit which will get you approximately 100 international minutes or text messages. Hi Mom!
Tabrio Communications, Inc. is a team of digital media professionals whose passion is connecting everyone with the people they care about. It's an... [more]
Erik Lagerway is a Techvibes Guest Contributor.
"Build it, and they will come." Suuure they will, after spending thousands per month on Adwords!
Here is snippet of my recent SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experiences over the past 7 weeks. I briefly describe how I brought Lypp.com from page 61 on Google [for keywords "conference call"] to page 1, without spending a penny on Adwords.
Unless you have been sleeping for the past decade you will know that your search rank can play a significant roll in the growth of any business.
As part of my quest to make Lypp the number one Conference Call service in Canada and the US, I knew I had to do something about our non-existent Google search results for both google.com and google.ca. "Conference call" was showing more than 55 million results, it was obvious to me that this was not going to be easy.
Adwords worked for me in the past but that was years ago and the offering was much different. I was uncertain about the kind of results we would get this time around but even if we weren't going to maintain an adwords campaign we still needed that data.
We decided to give it a go and hired an SEO specialist to assist us in organizing our Adwords program. Well, it certainly worked. He got us to the top of the search results for various terms, "conference call" being one of them. We also ended up paying more than $6k a month in adwords for that privilege. Yes, we were getting sales, nearly 3 accounts per day. That brought our COA (Cost of Acquisition) to a whopping $50-300 per sign up. Much too high for a startup with zero outside funding. Needless to say, we came to the conclusion rather quickly that we had the data we needed and shut the Adwords program down. With it went a healthy portion of our new signups.
I went back to the drawing board. I took the data we gathered and analyzed it, then I spent a considerable amount of time investigating various pay-for and organic SEO and SEM strategies.
The keyword phrase "conference call" and associated "conference calling", "conference call companies" are some of the most competitive, and subsequently expensive keywords in the biz. The data we gathered clearly showed that if we wanted Lypp to be the successful conference calling company we knew it could be we would need to rank at least within the top 10 results and more likely the top 5 results for a given keyword phrase.
In the process of my investigation and SEO research I came up an organic Google placement recipe that seemed like it should work, and it wouldn't include any Adwords campaigns. It seemed too good to be true but I couldn't afford anything else, so off I went.
I started with the basics...
As any respectable SEO consultant will tell you that there are a few major points that you need to consider when approaching SEO and making your site rank higher in a given Google search:
This in itself is nothing new. People have been saying the same thing for a while now, what they are not saying is how to do it. There are many books on the subject as well, many are again simply laying out the basics for the layman but very few will give you the actual methods used.
I quickly found out that a good organic SEO methodology is much like cooking. A good chef is not likely to give up his much sought after recipe, no matter how many times you ask him. You might get the bulk of the ingredients but never the the secret sauce or special treatments when preparing the dish. And much liking an outstanding meal, a good organic SEO strategy is worth it's creators weight in gold.
I think my SEO recipe is working... Today Lypp.com is sitting in the top 10 on google.com when searching for "conference call" and our sales are on the rise once again. My goal is to get into the top 5 for that term and a few related search terms as well. If I can pull it off I will post the results and some additional insight.
Online directory WhitePages.com has purchased Snapvine, an online service that lets users add their voices to social networks and websites.
WhitePages.com's database has grown to include 180 million names and it recently launched the ability for users to post their cell phone numbers.
But what exactly does this acquisition mean in terms of increased functionality? The WhitePages.com blog reports:
Using Snapvine’s VoIP technology, we have plans to allow consumers to create a free, private voicemail box where others can leave messages without disclosing the recipient’s personal home or cell phone number. And similarly, we also plan to launch text-based relay services based on email and SMS.
No confirmation yet, but rumor has it that the deal went through for $20 million (John Cook's Venture Blog). We'll see if WhitePages.com can really create synergy to exploit its newly acquired technology.
Sutus announced yesterday that it has raised $5 million follow-on funding from BDC Venture Capital and Working Opportunity Fund. Sutus intends to use the funding for sales and channel expansion as it continues to grow since launching its flagship product in late 2007. Burnaby-based Sutus provides small businesses with an enterprise quality all-in-one solution that delivers office network and telephone infrastructure that is affordable, robust and extremely flexible.
Sutus' growing collection of technology magazine awards likely had something to do with the continued support - they won the 2007 Product of the Year award from Unified Communications Magazine and the 2008 VON Magazine Innovator award.
Vancouver's Lypp launched an integrated conference call servicefor Microsoft Outlook users today in celebration of landing their 150th business customer. We've covered Lypp here before but for those of you that are new - Lypp is disrupting the telecommunications industry by building advanced communications software and services to give users the features and pricing that the existing carriers don’t, won’t or can’t offer.
The new Lypp for Outlook allows Outlook users to easily create adhoc or scheduled conference calls the same way they would normally schedule a meeting in their Outlook calendar. On top of that, Canadian and US businesses have access to long distance rates at 9 cents a minute.
I had a chance to get a company update from Lypp CEO Erik Lagerway yesterday and of course he used Lypp to schedule the call. We all know that conference calls can be a nightmare but using Lypp was a breeze. We scheduled the call over email, I forgot about it until I got my 15 minute Outlook reminder, and then my phone rang connecting the two of us. Lypp's call recording feature and RSS syndication is something that we'll be using in the future as it's ideal for information-packed calls that require note-taking.
In anticipation of launching Tabrio, a consumer application for mobile and online communications, Vancouver's Verb Exchange attended Ad:Tech in San Francisco last week to unveil it to publishers, advertisers and search providers. What is Tabrio? Tabrio promises to makes it easy and affordable to stay in touch with anyone, anywhere, on any device. It uses Verb Exchange's VoIP network, so people can make low-cost long distance calls with excellent call quality. It does two-way SMS, for sending and replying to global text messages at local rates. And it functions as a contact manager as well, by maintaining a global address book that syncs automatically. But why Ad:Tech last week? Tabrio's low-cost calls will be supported by highly targeted ads - their advertising engine promises to combine ad delivery, inventory management and analytics in one platform. In an effort to make Tabrio super user-friendly, Verb Exchange has partnered with Nitobi for the design for the desktop and web interfaces. The interactive user interface is being developed with Adobe Flex, a Flash-based rich Internet application (RIA) development framework, and the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a platform that enables RIAs to run on the desktop. Smart move. Tabrio is set to launch next month and will be giving away $5 in free calls to everyone who subscribes to their launch email alert.
Tabrio Communications, Inc. is a team of digital media professionals whose passion is connecting everyone with the people they care about. It's an... [more]
The 37signals VoIP Mashup with Lypp contest starts tomorrow at noon PST. Developers that accept the challenge and build a mashup application (or mashup an existing application) using both the Highrise API and the Lypp API can win some pretty cool prizes including a $3,000 Apple gift certificate, 20,000 minutes of Lypp call time, and a 12-month subscription for a Highrise MAX account for the Best App Champ (say that three times fast).
Accoring to Lypp's Erik Lagerway, the key to winning is to make it useful, make it functional, and make it simple. Submissions will be accepted up until May 10th. Full details on the contest are available here.
