bt

Marry your home and cell phones with Xlink

A few years ago, I bought a fancy home phone so I could set it to forward calls to my cell. Not long after, I found a better and cheaper solution by ditching the landline completely.

I am not alone. According to Nielsen, 17 percent of U.S. households--some 20 million homes--are without a wired telephone, instead relying solely on mobile phones.

This brings up a question of what we should do with that fancy home phone. I do miss the comfort of using the big handset rather than fumbling on the tiny, onscreen keyboard of my iPhone.

Xtreme Technology … Read more

BT to begin third Phorm trial

BT is to perform another trial of Phorm's ad-serving technology, after delays of more than half a year.

Phorm's technology, which BT will use under the brand of "Webwise," has attracted protests from peers, politicians, technologists and think tanks, who have expressed concerns over legal and privacy issues. The technology is also the subject of a probe by the European Commission.

Phorm's ad-serving technology works by assigning a user a unique identifier, through which the user's browsing habits are observed so as to target advertisements at them.

BT will commence the third trial of … Read more

BT bets on open development

BT, long considered a risk-taker in the telecommunications market, has laid a $105 million bet to open its network to application developers in the hopes of creating innovative voice services. But will other phone companies take a similar gamble?

Eventually, they will. But it will take time. Experts such as Will Stofega, a research director for IDC, say that phone companies must evolve beyond simply delivering phone and data services. In an age where voice has become just another application delivered over an Internet-based network, phone companies need to be at the forefront of developing new services and applications. And … Read more

Why BT spent $105 million on Ribbit

JP Rangaswami, managing director of service design at BT (British Telecommunications plc), has a vision for the future of the telephony industry.

"The telcos have lost control of the device. When you start building genuinely agnostic services, when you don't know the target device, it requires a different form creativity," he said. It's a move from closed networks to more open software platforms, and part of BT's transformation from a telco to a platform-based, software-driven services company. "Everything we do at BT is embeddable as workflow for customers. Voice is a feature embedded in … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 754: Molly.wood, here I come!

ICANN approves its plan to totally overhaul the Internet domain structure, but all we can do is make fun of the name "Winklevoss." Hee. "Winklevoss." Also today, Microsoft wants to shut off your gadgets from afar (or at least, their patent filing suggests that they do), the Samsung Instinct is totally the new iPhone, and torrent freaks think JJ Abrams' new show, Fringe, will be a hit. Phew! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 754

Judge Ends Facebooks Feud With ConnectU http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/judge-ends-facebooks-feud-with-connectu/

Facebook suspends app that permitted … Read more

Pioneer's in-car AVIC F-Series unveiled

Pioneer's AVIC Z-Series has set the standard for in-dash navigation devices over the past couple of years, and so the release of a new line of a new family of products in the AVIC series is big news for car tech fans. The line-up starts with the entry-level AVIC-F700BT, which features a single CD/CD-R/RW playback mechanism, followed by the AVIC-F900BT and the AVIC-F90BT, which are both capable of reading MP3, WMA, iTunes AAC, and WAV audio formats as well as DVD, DivX, and MPEG4 video files.

Unveiled this week, all of the F-Series include flash-memory-based navigation and … Read more

British Telecom drops Siebel for SugarCRM

On days when your belief in open source may wane, things like British Telecom's (BT) news that it will be distributing SugarCRM Professional and Enterprise editions to its 1.2 million business customers will replenish that belief. And then some.

This is a win for the SugarCRM community, as Sean Michael Kerner notes, even if it's not an automatic win in terms of downstream deployments, as The 451 Group points out.

And lest we forget, it's also a big upfront revenue opportunity for SugarCRM. I'm not privy to the deal, but I know from having done deals like this at Alfresco that the numbers often exceed $1 million. This is particularly rich when it likely comes at the expense of Siebel, which used to be BT's CRM provider of choice. … Read more

Review: Sony MEX-BT5100

With California set to join other areas of the country in banning cell phone use while driving, 23 million more drivers are going to have to figure out how to stay connected while on the road. They could do a lot worse than Sony's all-in-one car stereo and Bluetooth hands-free calling interface. The MEX-BT5100 comes with a built-in microphone, a good range of digital audio support, and a stylish form factor. Check out our full review right here.

Jabra BT4010 has a LCD display

Jabra has just announced the Jabra BT4010, which is the latest Bluetooth headset with a LCD display to hit the market. Sometimes we like headsets with displays, since it can help in displaying caller ID, but the BT4010's screen is so small, it looks as if it can only show battery and pairing status. We'll have to wait until we get more information about it to know for sure. It has the usual digital signal processing and a rated six hours of talk time, though we don't know the availability and pricing yet. [Source: Phone Arena]