Our economy needs your help – here is how!

By: Alon Cohen

Whenever someone has an idea, of any sort, which is any good, the most important thing is to socialize that idea with people that can help make that happen – well unless you can do it yourself. Some ideas obviously require capital, and the more socialized they are, the higher the chance that they will be funded and see the light of day. Sometimes and more often than we want, they will just see the light.

One way to socialize ideas is to enter them into an invention contest and even better win. I usually make a point to submit a provisional patent just in case someone wants this really bad, and in case nothing happens, at least I know I created some prior art so everybody will be able to use the idea for the good of others without paying anyone else royalties.

This time I am looking at an idea that I came up with many years ago, to reduce traffic jams. The US and world economy is, as we all know, impeded by the slowness of traffic during rush hours. Reducing the traffic jams problem, on existing roads, without building major new roads can have a dramatic improvement on many aspects of our lives. It can give us the time the economy needs to recuperate.

You can read all about that simple $10 per car concept, here on the competition page of the Tech Briefs site, and see other interesting ideas as well.

The idea is to try and convert regular highly "elastic" and slow line of traffic to a more rigid almost train like line of train cars without giving up control of the car (which is expensive) and by using only our basic normal driving psychology and this low cost idea of a device.

If you want to help me win, and I ask that you do, please register to the site and vote. Every vote counts.

See this video to get more understanding of what this concept is trying to solve, and understand that by dissolving the Phantom Jams as this video names them we can make a difference.

Thanks

Alon

Phone.com, two new products that I like

Dear friends,

Phone.com listens to customers and constantly improve the user experience by adding new convenient services. It is the truth regardless of the fact that I work there.

Today Phone.com introduce two new Mobile Phone Apps:

Phone.com - Mobile Office (fo Android) and Phone.com - Mobile VoIP (for iPhone)

Phone.com Mobile Office is my favorite, it is available for all Android phone users. It can be downloaded free of charge directly from the Android Market. Calls can then be placed from your cell phone but using your Phone.com phone number.

You do not need to dial differently or do anything different with the phone i.e. seamless integration.

It is easy to miss how important and how powerful that feature is for your personal productivity and lifestyle. You no longer have to tell people your cell phone number. This is huge, not because you keep your privacy and really keep the cell phone number for emergencies, but because you now get back control over your life. You can block unwanted calls forever, this is by itself something I learned to appreciate just lately as I have started blocking calls on my Home Phone which is also part of the same Phone.com Virtual Office system.

Another feature which I like in the Phone.com - Mobile Office, is that you can do the same trick spoken above with SMS. Yes, you can send SMS from your phone without showing your cell phone caller ID. And surprise surprise, you can even be text back on the same number which is again your office number.

Among all that Mobile Office also gives easy access to your transcribed voicemail messages, Faxes and SMS messages with the click of a button.

And your own conference bridge accessible with one click.

I am now completely torn. I do not like Apple that much (too arrogant of a company for me, reminding me of Microsoft when they were on the top), but, I have to admit I like the iPhone so far (almost perfect UI even compared to the new Android phones). On the other hand I like the Android approach and the openness. After all, making the same level of application as the Phone.com - Mobile office on the iPhone with seamless integration to all the phone operations (as in the android) is just impossible on the iPhone.

One thing to note is that the Mobile Office app is not a VoIP application it uses your mobile minutes as if you made a regular call but it can sure save you on international dialing. It does enjoy all the new power of Phone.com VoIP back-end.

The app supports all Phone.com services, Virtual Office, Virtual Number and even your Home Phone Plus service.

The second Mobile app that came out today is for iPhone it is called Phone.com - Mobile VoIP

Phone.com - Mobile VoIP allows you to place calls from the iPhone using your Phone.com phone number as your caller ID. Now available at no cost from the iPhone app store the Mobile VoIP app is available to any Phone.com Virtual Office customer. Simply add an iPhone Extension within your Phone.com account, and bypass the use of your mobile minutes (data minutes will apply when using a 3G connection).

This is good when you travel, imagine making international calls from your Wifi connection in your hotel in Panama. I have done it and I can not tell you how much I saved. How about 4Cent a minute for a call from Panama to the US instead of $1.5 per minute. Simply unimaginable savings.

The nice thing is that it also work in 3G so you can mask your cell caller ID wherever you are.

Since it is an extension of your Virtual Office you can use your Phone.com number to make calls where you want to hide your Cell phone number. You can even receive calls to your Phone.com number even if the app is not running since you can make the Virtual Office call your cell as well as your iPhone extension. So all in all a different but also a very powerful tool by itself and it even works on the iPad.

However the app can not stay running in the background even with the new iPhone OS since apple is still not a real multitasking OS. The future will show if Phone.com - Mobile VoIP applications and other like it will be able to have Apple change, but I doubt it will be the case.

Ohh, the app is free to download but will cost you a whooping one time fee of $3.88 :), for the creation of the iPhone extension on your virtual office account. True value in my book.

Thanks

Alon

Inside the Studio with TMC

Alon Cohen, EVP and CTO of Phone.com speaks with Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC

Saving the Global Economy

By: Alon Cohen

At the end of 2005, we started a journey with few partners and investors to create a nice web site to help people in the community, which are in need of human advice, and financially reward those who are willing to provide the advice.

The concept was simple but challenging in many ways. We set a directory of advisors arranged by ranking. We provided a solution to facilitate payment while evading fraud. We included a mechanism by which the advisor can chat, talk over the phone or do a video session with the client, while we measure the duration of the call and at the end, charge one user, and pay the other.

It was all good until we hit a speed bump. We found that it was hard to explain to the advisors that placing a page on a site is only the start of creating a business. It was hard to explain that an online virtual business is not much different from a physical business. I use to tell advisors that if you hang up a shiny plate on your bedroom door stating, “I am a certified consultant”, you will not get much action going. As in any other business, you have to go out and find ways to bring clients. To solve the problem, we gathered some online resources and communicated those to the advisors so they can use those tools to bring clients.

Our ranking system was a topic by itself, and the company is still perfecting it. It takes into consideration the positive and negative comments an advisor receives, but also the amount of money that the advisor made over time. We took the finical gains of the advisor as an indication that this advisor is providing a service valued by the community.

Moving few years forward and passing through a rough patch in the global economy, we noticed that the people that kept on moving up the ranks are not the Lawyers, not the Registered Dietitians, not the Travel Advisors, not the Doctors or Computer Support people. What we saw is that the most productive people are those who provide an online psychic reading. We also noticed that the bigger spenders are those who are not afraid, and that is most open to learning about the future.

Maybe Wall Street should learn from that, and use some of the advisors on the BitWine site to figure out where the things are going, and use that valuable insight to save the economy.

We did our part already and change the BitWine home page to point to our most productive people the Psychics.

Check this out you may discover something you already know.

Phone.com the Best Home & Office Phone Service I have Ever Used

By: Alon Cohen

If this post smells to you like an ad it probably is. I work for Phone.com and proud about what we offer. But I am also very satisfied with how I use the services every day. People who know me as a technologist know that I do not jump every time a new service comes alive. I do however likely to try new technologies more than the average person, and jump only when I know I get the best bang for the buck, and when I know that I get functionality that help me do more with less in order to feed my basic laziness.

In the past year and half I have been using Phone.com, Vonage, Cablevision triple play, Skype, Jajah, 1Voice, Google Voice and more. I ended up canceling or not using all of them (besides Skype which gives me free Video). At that time frame, I have created a monster phone system for my home based solely on Phone.com Virtual Office. I did not have to install anything just click my way on the Phone.com web.

Why? Well I started small, moved my home phone number and fax numbers, than added menus to make sure my family members get their calls directly to their cell phones, instead of me answering the home phone with calls that are not for me. Then I added support for my wife when she fly overseas so I can save on roaming, then I added a Global Number in Israel so my parents can call me as if the call a local call, then I added a soft phone so my college kid can call anywhere from his dorm using his MAC and save the cell phone plan minutes, then I added IP Phone, so business calls become simpler and so on and on. All the above is done by carving what I needed for my day to day, out of the Phone.com ultra flexible Virtual Office service.

None of the above is doable with a any single service from one company, and Phone.com delivers the goods in a single easy to use service. It is that simple!

Phone.com is in my mind the most flexible, most innovative VoIP service with the best Customer Support - bar none. And if you want to challenge that statement, just call, they are there 24*7, and very responsive.

If I think something is not clear on the Phone.com web feature description, I call the support as any other customer would. I use them to figure out how to best use some of the features we have or give them advice on the same topic. When I learn something new, I make sure it is added to the company’s web site so others can enjoy that knowledge as well.

Since I have joined, the company had created three new services: Home Phone Plus, Virtual Number and Chat Calls, added tons of features as per customer’s requests, improved reliability and much more. At that same timeframe Cablevision for instance (my internet provider) created very nice new commercials, and raised the price twice. I am asking you, does a new commercial help me if I was a customer? No! With Phone.com I know that I keep moving forward and improve my utility and as a result, improve my lifestyle.

From what I am seeing, none of the VoiP / Triple-play companies have the same level of drive to improve and innovate that Phone.com poses.

I am 100% sold. If you want to become a customer just like me, click the banner just above this blog and start your journey to telephony wonderland. Do not even worry about it, the first month is always free.