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This article first appeared in my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=269

http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196603857

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/technology/13skype.html

Skype had been offering free VoIP calls within the United States and Canada since May 2006.

In 2007, users will have to pay a $30 annual fee to make unlimited SkypeOut calls to landlines and cell phones in these two countries. The current SkypeOut plan charges users about 2.1 cents per minute.

Calls outside these two countries will still incur the usual Skype fees.

Skype is offering a special until January 31. The US$30 fee is reduced to US$14.95 and includes 100 minutes of SkypeOut service, which can be used for international calls.

Skype has been working with mobile phone and computer manufacturers to offer Skype services on mobile handsets. This service makes sense when the handset has 802.11 features, as I discussed on November 27. The mobile phone network is still too slow to support Skype’s VoIP services. Next year, Skype is partnering with Google and Yahoo to offer a Skype WiFi phone.

Still, analysts are wondering how Skype fits into eBay’s corporate strategy. eBay spent US$2.5 billion to purchase Skype in October 2005. Given Skype’s roster of 136 million registered users, eBay paid about US$18 per user.

Today’s New York Times features an article on WiFi telephones. These are mobile devices that can place telephone calls over an 802.11b connection by using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). While these are similar to Skype phones that connect to a computer with a USB plug, WiFi phones are cordless. Here are some links to WiFi phones from Netgear and Belkin. The current models run Skype.The battery life of a WiFi phone is somewhat limited, because WiFi signals require more battery power than cell phones. A user might get only one or two hours of talk time on a WiFi phone. On the other hand, if there are free WiFi networks available, the user may be saving a lot of money on their calls.

WiFi phone users may have problems roaming from one access point to the next. The cell phone network is built to handle mobile users, as the network can hand-off a call from one tower to another as the caller walks, rides or drives across a coverage area. WiFi networks assume that the users will stay within the access point’s coverage area.

The article offers some compelling reasons why anyone who owns a WiFi access point should encrypt its signal. Encryption doesn’t stop other people from seeing or using your signal. WEP or WPA just makes it less convenient for a freeloader. Running an unencrypted WiFi router is like keeping the front door unlocked.

As I discussed on October 31, only about 10 percent of WiFi access points included in a recent survey ran WPA. Sixty percent of the access points found in this survey were unencrypted.

Users should run WPA in its pre-shared key (PSK) mode at home if their computer and WiFi access point supports that standard. The older WEP standard is what the university uses on its wireless network. However, WEP is almost trivial to crack with freely available software. Once someone gets the WEP key to a connection, they can monitor data sent to and from the connected computers.

Check the router’s documentation to learn how to enable WPA encryption. Before doing the setup for WPA-PSK, check the computers that will be connected, as older models may not support WPA without a software or hardware upgrade.

From the New York Times and Yahoo: Yahoo has announced a partnership to share news and advertising content with 176 US newspapers. Several newspaper publishers are included, including Belo, Cox, Hearst, MediaNews and Scripps. The largest newspapers in the deal are the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post, San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Daily News. The deal covers 38 states and a combined daily circulation of 12 million readers.Google had announced an advertisement placement deal with 50 US newspapers earlier this month. Local advertising is a fragmented market, with national and regional advertisers exerting more pressure on small newspapers for simplified media purchasing and consolidated reporting.

The new Yahoo agreement started with an existing deal among HotJobs, Medianews and Belo. HotJobs is owned by Yahoo, and holds a 9% market share among online job sites. CareerBuilder and Monster.com are virtually tied for first place with 32 and 31 percent shares respectively.

The newspapers will use Yahoo’s technology and content to place ads, maps, calendars, local listings, and search features on their own web sites. News stories from the local newspapers will be posted on Yahoo, and local newspapers will have access to Yahoo’s news content.

“The bottom line is that these newspaper companies have decided to answer the ‘friend or foe’ question that all traditional media companies face regarding online players,” wrote UBS analyst Brian Schachter. “They have decided it is better to be friends with Yahoo.”

This is an interesting business model that has already failed in earlier attempts. Yahoo may be able to learn from other companies’ mistakes.

An earlier attempt by newspapers to form an Internet alliances failed after three years. The New Century Alliance was formed by the New York Times, Times Mirror, Gannet and Knight-Ridder in 1995 as an early entrant in online news content and advertising. The owners dissolved New Century in 1998, before Yahoo, Google and other sites found their online news audiences.

Microsoft also attempted to develop its own local content sites in the 1990s. Sidewalk bled cash as Microsoft struggled with establishing relationships and branding in major US cities.

This article appeared in my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=206

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060208_760555.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

Peter Burrows of Business Week reports on Cisco’s recent performance. Cisco is the dominant vendor of networking equipment worldwide. I think of Cisco as the Internet’s plumber. Your packets moved through a Cisco switch or router at some point in their journey.

If you use a Linksys router or network appliance at home, you’re using a Cisco product. Cisco purchased Linksys in 2003, and has been integrating operations and marketing ever since. Linksys is positioned as an entry point for SOHO (small office and home office) users who need networking equipment, and who may need higher-powered Cisco equipment when their business expands. At the same time, Cisco engineers have been remaking the Linksys line, using best practices from Cisco’s enteprise networking equipment.

A virtuous cycle occurs when a company moves from one “favorable circumstance” to another over time. Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Intel, Google and Apple have all benefited from the creation and maintenance of their own v-cycles.

One might argue that Nintendo and Sony are risking their v-cycles, at least in the video game market. Wii and PlayStation 3 each have their own issues.

Cisco has apparently built its own v-cycle around advanced networking technologies, including VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol). VoIP telephones are connected to an RJ-45 jack, not a telephone RJ-11 jack. Remember that RJ-11 also provides electrical power for telephones.

So how does a VoIP telephone get enough power to operate? Users could plug the telephone into an AC outlet, but there’s a neater way. Through a handy protocol called Power over Ethernet (PoE), special switches can connect these phones to the network and deliver 13 watts of power, which is enough to keep a telephone and a small display screen running.

PoE can’t deliver enough power to keep a laptop computer running, which is one reason why laptop computers need their own power source - either AC current or batteries.

PoE features aren’t built into most older network equipment, so any company that wants to deploy VoIP in its offices has to buy PoE switches from Cisco, Foundry or another hardware vendor.

PoE and VoIP adoption are powering Cisco’s virtuous cycle - at least for now.

From CIO Insight: John Parkinson asks an important question - how well can business schools prepare their students to take leadership positions in information technology and innovation?

Graduate education emphasizes meta-learning, or the ability of learning how to learn. A successful master’s degree candidate has demonstrated that they understand and use the course material, and that they can continue to learn and grow as professionals and scholars.

The MBA degree program is fundamentally different from more specific degrees programs. I speak from experience - I earned an MBA as a full-time student at Rollins College in 1988, and I’ve been program chair of an MSIS program for the last 3 years. I also teach dozens of MBA and MSIS students every year. I have a bio page here.

MBA programs provide broad cross-training

An MBA program provides cross-training over several required topics (finance, accounting, marketing, management, law, technology, strategic management) and a handful of specific electives. However, some MBA programs have no electives at all. Other MBA programs have specific areas of interest, such as entrepreneurship, technology, or vertical markets.

A major part the MBA program’s value lies in the integration among the courses. As this is a master’s program, students must do the integrative work themselves, using the frameworks provided by their faculty. This represents the integration of functional areas into business, corporate, and enterprise strategies.

MSIS programs provide managerial and technical preparation

An MSIS program tends to focus on technical skills (telecommunications, software, hardware) and management skills (project management, knowledge management, strategic management). Again, the students follow a framework provided by the faculty as they integrate their knowledge.

If we treat IS as a functional area, and innovation as a process to be managed, the role of the IS professional is to help the organization deliver more value and effectiveness through technology and innovation.

Parkinson’s thesis - that deep scholars are difficult to find - has some merit. Many organizations select CIOs who have demonstrated management ability, but who have limited technological experience. These CIOs are expected to be “quick studies” as they master the technologies and processes that provide value in their organizations.

The MBA degree has often be derided as the “quick study” certificate. Because MBA students get only one or two classes in each of the core functional areas, they learn how to perform rapid analyses that may be sophisticated, but may also lack detail and rigor.

On the other hand, Herbert Simon pointed out that decision-making is usually constrained by the bounds of time, space, and our own cognitive abilities. Managers want to optimize, but they end up satisficing, or making do with less in oder to complete the task at hand. This Wikipedia article has more information and links about Simon’s work, and any good principles of management textbook should discuss Simon as well.

Information systems and technology allow managers to extract more precision and process more data in their everyday work. While IS professionals are essential to this task, they do not necessarily understand the strategic value of the systems they develop, implement and maintain.

In the end, MBAs depend upon IS professionals, and vice versa.