Matt’s Daily Diigo Post 07/20/2007

NewTeeVee Chuck Olsen, Minnesota’s Video Ambassador «  Annotated

• Straight from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Good interview. Check out Minnesota Stories, too.
   - post by telecommatt

Chuck Olsen, Minnesota’s Video Ambassador

Not since Purple Rain has Minnesota been so artfully chronicled in motion pictures as it is on Minnesota Stories, which celebrated its second blogiversary this week. A daily videoblog, it features all sorts of great content from, in, and about the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. The impresario behind it, Chuck Olsen, has been blogging since back in 2002 and produced the first documentary about blogs, Blogumentary, which I’ve written about before here at NewTeeVee.

GigaOM Ooma wants voice to be free «  Annotated

• I would love to be on hand to try this out! Those who know me know I was in the telecom world for years, and developments there still fascinate me. Essentially, you purchase a Oooma box that plugs into your router. The box handles switching locally. The more boxes, the more local switching. Say you dial a number in the 303 area code. Your call is routed from a box within the 303 area code, so the call is considered a local call.

  Not sure how this would work in places that have tiered calling rates like Chicago. Also not sure how the company plans to monetize the service. The article mentions add-on features, but I can’t see how they can rely on optional features for revenue. You must purchase the box at $399. Launch is scheduled for 7/07.

   - post by telecommatt

Voice over the Internet, so far, has been a game of cheap minutes, shoddy quality, and unreliable connections. It’s also been a money-losing proposition. The promise of voice being free has remained just that – a promise. Palo Alto-based startup Ooma promises to resolve those frustrations in September 2007 while offering free voice calls for life.

Mozilla based browser for Nokia N800 – Download Squad  Annotated

• Sweet! A maemo browser that supports AJAX and Flash– now we’re talking! The Opera default browser is pretty solid (except when it crashes randomly) as long as you’re viewing HTML. The previous Mozilla port, Minimo, is pretty, well, minimal. Leaves much to be desired. I have a feeling I’ll have to upgrade to OS 2007, but when I eventually get this installed I’ll do a short review.
   - post by telecommatt

The maemo development team has released a new open source browse engine for N800 units running the Internet Tablet OS 2007. The browser supports AJAX, Adobe Flash 9, and RSS previews.