Original Article at http://www.libn.com/article.htm?articleID=38981
Tech bytes
Friday, June 1, 2007
VoIP pioneers always look ahead – not that it’s easy
Technological advances are easier to predict than the applications consumers will embrace, according to Voice over Internet Protocol pioneer Jeff Pulver.
Pulver, founder and chief executive of Pulver.com and a co-founder of Vonage, was scheduled to be the keynote speaker Wednesday at Melville-based CosmoCom’s annual CosmoCommunity gathering. In advance of the meeting of partners and customers of CosmoCom, which designs call center software based on Internet Protocol, Pulver and CosmoCom chief executive Ari Sonesh sat down with LIBN to speculate about the future of the industry.
“From a technological perspective, we can deliver almost anything,” Pulver said.
Experts working in various market niches can foresee what’s possible, but the hard part is figuring out what consumers really want and what will catch on, Sonesh said.
“Some of the best revenue sources, if you interviewed people from the past, they didn’t see things coming,” Pulver said. “Ring tones, no one saw that as big. Text messaging was seen, but no one thought it would grow into the revenue it has.”
The rise in citizen journalism, with people taking photos and video with their cellphones, is another unexpected application, he said.
Pulver was a key player in launching Vonage but left before its more recent troubles. The approach that worked for telephones using VoIP can now be applied to television and film to make content available anywhere. “You don’t need networks or studios,” Pulver said.
And many major outlets, such as NBC, ABC and Fox, have begun to circulate much of their content on the Internet.
Pulver said it’s only a matter of time before movies are available over the Internet, and viewers will have a choice of staying home or going out for a theater experience. That development will allow independent producers to bypass middlemen.
Through Network2.tv, Pulver is exploring episodic programming on the Internet, as opposed to the one-shot videos that are common on YouTube. Broadband internet may become a substitute for television – and without the need for producers to hold licenses, Pulver said.
“It’s just a matter of time before the tuner box becomes obsolete” he added, noting pervasive broadband is the key driving these developments.
In 2004, the Federal Communications Commission granted Pulver’s petition for clarification declaring Free World Dialup an unregulated information service. The landmark decision by the FCC was its first on IP communications. Now known as the “Pulver Order,” it says that that computer-to-computer VoIP service is not a telecommunications service, and indicates that the FCC isn’t interested in regulating IP communications under traditional telecommunications rules.
Along with the changes on the production side of video, Sonesh noted, is the increasing ability of consumers through greater mobility to view shows wherever they want, on a mobile phone for example.
All of the changes are being implemented in the call center sector, applications originally designed to reach customers but just as good for reaching employees, Sonesh said. He noted that Thomas Friedman, author of “The World is Flat,” was recently a speaker at his daughter’s college graduation. “VoIP is a true flattener,” Sonesh said. “It makes no difference where you are.”
And it’s not only flattened, Pulver said, it’s shrunken. “People no longer have to pay for distance, because on the Internet distance doesn’t matter,” he said, calling charging for distance a “fiction” perpetuated by the traditional telephone companies.
Demonstrating the points Pulver and Sonesh make, people who wanted to hear Pulver’s keynote at CosmoConnections had an alternative to traveling to the Hyatt Regency Wind Watch in Hauppauge: His speech was to be broadcast over the Web.
BAE wins contract to uncover concealed targets
Greenlawn-based BAE Systems has won a $2.3 million contract with Raytheon to use its high-altitude hyperspectral technology to detect, classify and identify camouflaged and concealed targets based on their spectral signature.
Hyperspectral imaging extracts unique spectral data from hundreds of visible-to-infrared wavelengths to detect objects based on their material composition.
BAE will be the sensor subcontractor for Raytheon Technical Services Company’s Shared Reconnaissance Pod Target Cueing System demonstration.
“It will demonstrate the potential for Navy pilots to identify targets in real time in daytime, at night and in bad weather, improving their safety and effectiveness,” Paul Markwardt, vice president of Identification and Surveillance for BAE Systems, said in a statement.
SHARP will be demonstrated on an F/A-18E/F aircraft in the first application
of hyperspectral technology on a tactical fighter.
