03 April 2007

Spam Costs $712 Per Employee Annually
InformationWeek, NY - Apr 2, 2007

As a luncheon meat, Spam is a bargain. As unsolicited marketing, spam is a rip-off: $712 per employee per year, or $71 billon to all U.S. businesses annually.

That's the cost of spam in terms of lost productivity, according to a survey released Monday by IT research firms Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm.


Spam Soars In Q1, Small Businesses Under Fire
InformationWeek, NY - Apr 2, 2007

Despite a small dip in March, the year's first quarter saw spam levels spike, slamming small and midsize businesses.

MessageLabs, a messaging and Web security company out of New York, released a report Monday showing that spam levels jumped 76.3% in the first quarter of 2007. And that's despite a 2.6% drop in March from the month before.


FON to team with Time Warner Cable
GigaOm, CA - Apr 2, 2007

FON, the share-your-Wi-Fi service company, that recently announced a new round of funding and partnership with British Telecom is rumored to be in close talks with Time Warner Cable, where FON software and service could be bundled with TWC’s broadband residential gateways. The news could be announced later this week.


VoIP Provider SunRocket Amasses 200000 Subscribers
TMCnet - Apr 2, 2007

Each day, new subscriber are signing on with VoIP providers, and those providers are all introducing new features and services to attract even more new customers. Those include major service additions like IPTV and FMC (fixed/mobile convergence), or they may mean expansion of service offerings as a whole into new territories, or it may mean the availability of new hardware, like a new wireless router. Regardless, each of these service enhancements is drawing the attention of new subscribers. In addition, subscriber numbers are being boosted by consumers tiring of paying exorbitant rates to their cable MSOs and local telcos and are switching at least some services to lower cost ISPs.


VoIP Phones, Round Three
PC Magazine - Apr 2, 2007

We've seen a lot of VoIP handsets pass through our labs in the past few months. Back in mid-December, we took a look at three Skype-friendly phones, for our "Movable Skype" round up. Late last month, we broadened our scope a bit, with two Skype-specific and one Vonage-friendly phone for "VoIP Phones, Round Two." Since then, we've been bombarded by even more handsets, and with these five new phones, anything is fair game in terms of VoIP services—though, not surprisingly, given Skype's massive popularity, handsets for that service continue to dominate.


Google vs. Microsoft: Vying for DoubleClick
BusinessWeek – Apr 2, 2007

Google and Microsoft are squaring off in a fight for the online ad outfit DoubleClick that shows Internet advertising is moving far beyond search. The three leading search engines—Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Microsoft (MSFT)—are competing to become one-stop shops for companies that want to advertise across the Web. To achieve that goal, Net players need more than a ton of traffic on their own online properties and the ability to match up tiny text ads to search queries. They also need to sell ads on popular Web sites beyond their borders and obtain more user information.


Mobile Telcos Rush to Social Networking
BusinessWeek – Apr 2, 2007

As the social networking phenomenon continues to gather pace, mobile-phone providers are champing at the bit to become members of the club. On Mar. 28, France Telecom's (FTE) Orange UK mobile arm said it would begin offering its customers access to social networking site Bebo this summer.