Update on Vonage vs Verizon

This is a quick update on my 4/7/07 blog posting about Internet phone company Vonage. A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the company can sign up new customers while it appeals a patent infringement ruling. In our previous post on the subject, a lower court had ruled Vonage could only service its existing customer base and that they could not sign up any new customers. That ruling is now reversed permanently reversed, at least until the appeals court rules on the case.

The federal circuit appeals court, which specializes in hearing patent cases, put Vonage's appeal on a fast-track schedule, with arguments now set for June 25. Usually, it takes the appeals court more than a year to rule on most cases. But lawyers involved in the Vonage appeal said it could be decided as soon as this summer.

Verizon is seeking to bar Vonage from any use of its patented technologies after a jury in March found Vonage had infringed three of their patents. Verizon, through its lawyers, praised the decision by the appeals court to expedite the case, saying it would limit Vonage infringement of Verizon patents.

The extended stay ruling came about two hours after the appeals court heard arguments from lawyers representing Vonage and Verizon.

Vonage's legal team argued that the trial judge in the case had misconstrued key claims in three of the patents at issue and given the jury the wrong instructions on how to interpret technical terms such as data "translation" and "destination address." Lawyers for both companies faced a barrage of technical questioning by three judges during the hearing that lasted about 90 minutes.

Vonage said after the ruling it would pay a quarterly royalty of 5.5 percent into a reserve during the appeals process and post a $66 million bond as required by the court.

The Best Price Comparison Sites

As a frequent on-line shopper for both business and personal items, I always want to make sure I get the best possible price. I also like to make sure that the Web site I buy from is reliable. How do I do that? Of course, I use the Net, specifically price comparison sites where prices, shipping costs and vendor reliability are all available. There are a number of them out there, many of whom you find when do a Google search on a particular item.

I recently read an article in Computer Shopper magazine that compares eight different price comparison sites and rates them. I won't bore you with all the results and some of them rated pretty low and are not worth using. The two top-rated sites were both head and shoulders above the others and deserve your notice.

I've used PriceGrabber.com for several years now and found it extremely reliable and accurate. It has been, and still remains the source I use the most. From there, I can get prices usually from a wide variety of sources for any given product. Surprisingly, to me at least, this site actually came in a close second in the Computer Shopper ratings.

The winner by a slim margin was Shopzilla.com, a site that I must admit I was not aware of until I read the article. Of course, I had to try it and did. It is a good site and I have added it to my repertoire. Now, when I look for something, I use both sites to see if one might have a better price that the other missed. Both sites mostly show the same retailers in their list when looking for the same item, but I have occasionally found some listed on one that are not on the other.

Besides prices, both sites give you the ability to put in your zip code to get shipping costs. By doing that, the sites can also calculate whether or not you will pay sales tax as well as determine your shipping costs. Remember though, shipping costs might be somewhat inaccurate as many places will give you free shipping if you are buying more than a certain dollar amount. With both shopping comparison sites, you can click on the vendor to learn more about shipping.

You can also see the ratings, as voted on by users like ourselves, as to how good (or bad) a particular company might be who is listed. You can also read actual comments by buyers as to why they thought this company was good or bad. More than once I have seen the lowest price on a product being listed by a firm that had many dissatisfied customers. Fortunately, it usually doesn't work out that way.

I recommend that you give both PriceGrabber and Shopzilla a try. PS: I have sometimes used these sites to compare prices on the Net with our local stores. For instance, I found that my studio's next door neighbor the Gourmet Kitchen Store, has very reasonable prices as compared to those on the net and you can't beat the convenience of walking into a store in your home town.

Thunderbird Version 2 Now Available

Mozilla has released Version 2 of its popular (and FREE) Thunderbird e-mail software. Long time readers know that this is now (and has been for some time) my own personal choice for e-mail. This new version is pretty slick and adds some nice new features. I have installed it, used it, and really like a lot of their new additions.

Here is a list of their new features as outlines by a Mozilla spokesperson:

1. Message tagging -- users can organize emails by assigning tags like "From Mom" or "Weekend Projects" to easily track and search for information; users can choose from default tags -- such as Important, Personal, To-Do, Later, and Work -- or create their own custom tags; users can also add as many tags as they want to a message. In addition, the tags can be color-coded for easier identification.
2. Message history – Thunderbird 2 offers message history navigation similar to Web browsing history navigation; users can move backward and forward through their messages and easily browse through their message history.
   
3. Search -- the find-as-you-type pane speeds up searches within displayed messages, and a quick search feature starts showing search results as soon as users begin typing search terms; additionally, Thunderbird 2 saves users time by allowing the storing of searches as folders and facilitating the rerun of saved searches by clicking on the saved search folder in the folder pane.
   
4. Easy access to Web mail services -- Thunderbird 2 lets users integrate and access popular Web mail services simply by entering their user names and passwords.
   
5. Customization -- users can customize Thunderbird 2 with hundreds of free add-ons that change the look, feel, and functionality of the email client to suit their tastes; users can also create their own message templates to save time.
6. Visual theme -- Thunderbird 2's theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.
7. Advanced folder views -- customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
8. Updates to the extension system -- the extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.

You can get more information and download the new Thunderbird at the Mozilla web site.

Internet Sales Tax Update

Are the days of no sales tax on most purchases made over the Internet about to change and disappear forever? Frankly we are closer to that happening than ever before. A powerful alliance of politicians, including key U.S. senators and the National Governors Association, is arguing that out-of-state retailers must be required to charge sales taxes on purchases. Companies like Amazon.com, based here in Washington state, are only required to collect sales made to customers in this state. Most of its many millions of customers in other states pay no sales tax on their purchases.

Of course, there is nothing new here that we haven't heard before. Members of the the governors' association have been pressing Congress to enact such a law for at least six years. They invoke arguments, which have been unsuccessful so far, like saying that reduced sales tax revenue threatens budgets for schools and police. Of course, what has changed to make this a more likely possibility is the political dynamic. The Democrats now control both houses of Congress and they are seen as more likely to agree to the idea than one controlled by Republicans.

"When you have a Democratic majority in Congress, that Congress will be more friendly to imposing new burdens on business if it means additional tax collection," said Steve DelBianco, executive director of the NetChoice coalition, which counts as members eBay, Yahoo and the Electronic Retailing Association. They, of course, oppose the sales tax plan.

Another factor that could tip the scales in Washington, DC in favor of the pro-sales tax forces is a concept called the Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement, invented in 2002 by state tax officials hoping to straighten out some of the notorious convolutions of state tax laws. If that ever happens, they believe it will be easier to convince Congress to make sales collection mandatory for out-of-state retailers. There is very little doubt that some form of a mandatory sales tax collection law will be introduced in Congress very shortly.

Pro-sales tax lobbyists say state governments lose over $15.5 billion dollars annually from non-taxed Internet sales. They also say that local small businesses suffer because they do have to collect sales taxes and on-line retailers do not. While all states that have sales taxes also have a Use Tax that requires residents to pay taxes on purchases where no sales tax was collected (or if the purchase was charged an out-of-state sales tax that is less than their home state taxes) very few people pay it and state enforcement of these laws is spotty at best.

Of course, a sales tax law that would cover Internet sales would have to be modified a great deal to cover the differences in each states sales tax laws. For instance, while Washington residents don't pay sales tax on food, Idaho residents do.

All this may make for some interesting times ahead on this issue and we plan to watch it closely and will let you know when something important happens.

PS: Don't confuse this sales tax issue to the debate over the Internet tax moratorium, which only limits taxes on access charges such as DSL or dialup connections. Congress renewed the ban in 2004, and it expires this November.

G-Mail vs Yahoo Mail

Many Internet users are switching from standard E-mail (ie: e-mail addresses provided by your Internet provider) to Web-based mail such as GMail, HotMail, Yahoo Mail, and others. The main reasons are that Web-based mail is available wherever you travel in the world via the World Wide Web and that when you change Internet providers, you don't have to change your E-mail address and go through the hassle of notifying everyone. It is something worth considering.

I am fortunate in that I have my own domain name (Corkrum.com) complete with Web site and E-mail. My hosting service provides a fantastic Web interface so that I have both the advantages of Web-based E-mail as well as my own standard E-mail software on each of my computers. Their Web-based mail program is so good that I have even considered switching permanently to it (but I haven't done it yet). And since my Web-hosting provider has some good E-mail filters, spam is not much of a problem either.

But before I had a Web interface for my own domain's e-mail, I needed a Web-based E-mail program for those times I was traveling. Many years ago, I tried out both Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. I quickly dumped Hotmail because of the amount of spam I received. Yahoo, to this day, has always provided a superior spam filtering software so that it was extremely rare that any garbage mail slipped through. I am sure that Hotmail has improved over the years, but I have no reason to go back to them for anything and they left a really bad taste in my mouth. I feel Yahoo still has a superior product in this area, so I am a bit biased.

Still, it was with interest that I watched a video comparison on CNet-TV of the new Yahoo Mail (Beta version) and GMail (provided by Google). Gmail, although a relative newcomer, has rapidly caught on with users, especially techno-nerds. CNet compared the two e-mail providers on a head-to head basis in several categories. If you don't want to watch the 3+ minute video (see above link), I will give you the bottom line...GMail won, although not by much. Here is a breakdown of how they compare, category-by-category.

1. Interface - Yaho0 wins this one because it has a much better drag-and-drop function.
2. Features - Both have calendar integration, but GMail has the ability to to integrate chat with e-mail and save conversations. However, Yahoo does a better job with RSS feed integration. Tie score.
   
3. Speed - GMail is much faster with screen loading, but Yahoo is still in beta so this might improve with time. Advantage: GMail.
   
4. Organization - GMail wins because of its superior filtering ability.
   
5. Spam Filter - A tie score.

GMail won this competition, but not by much. If the thought of getting Web-based e-mail appeals to you, take a look at both, watch the video, set up a free account, then decide which one works best for you.

Storm Worm Warning

Yesterday may have seen the largest largest proliferation of e-mail virus attacks in more than a year, according to security company Postini. According to them, two variations of the Storm worm virus, which originally spread across the Internet in January, have quickly driven global virus levels 60 times higher than their daily average. E-mail users should be on alert for messages with "love"-related subject lines and an executable attachment that would contain a Trojan virus, as well as messages with "Worm Alert!" subject lines that contained a .zip file full of malicious code.

Postini, which is based in San Carlos, Calif., says it processes more than 2 billion messages per day in order to compile its reports. They warn that clicking on the executable file in one of the new Storm worm e-mails installs a rootkit with anti-security measures that mask the malicious software's presence from virus scans and shut down security programs that may be running. The virus then taps into a private peer-to-peer network where it can download new updates and upload personal information from the compromised computer. Additionally, the virus scans the machine's hard drive to locate e-mail addresses to which it can replicate itself. Ultimately, computers infected with this virus become unknowing "zombies" in a botnet that are used to send out spam and further attacks.

Keep up your vigilance.

The End is in Sight for Windows XP

Well, my headline may be a bit of an exaggeration, but in one case it is absolutely true. Computer manufacturers are being told by Microsoft that by the end of this year, they will no longer be able to install Windows XP in new computers. This comes in the face that consumer demand is still high for Windows XP in new systems and that Vista still has some on-going hardware and software compatibility issues.

Despite Microsoft's relentless promotion of Vista, manufacturers are still seeing plenty of demand from customers for systems preloaded with XP, especially in the finicky small office/home office market. In a recent post on its Direct2Dell blog, Dell reaffirmed to concerned customers that it wasn't about to force small business users, who typically purchase PCs piecemeal, rather than in large enterprise-style orders, to shift to Vista, which has experienced a less-than-stellar reaction from many buyers because of driver issues and moderately beefy hardware requirements.

There's general agreement amongst PC resellers that Vista has provided a minor boost to PC sales, but hasn't produced blockbuster numbers. One blogger I read recently said he thought Windows Vista should have been called Windows Edsel as it is the product Microsoft thought we should all have. Good one!

Transferring Records and Cassettes to Your Computer Part 2

Now that we have connected your cassette player to your computer, we need the right software to bring this whole project together. The right software, at least for me, came after a lengthy search, which I briefly described in the last blog. The program I found is called, "Spin It Again," and is made by a firm named Acoustica.

The good news? Before you spend your hard-earned $34.95, you get to use the program for free for a time, the only limitation being that you can only make three recordings before the free trial expired. Actually, it turned out to be four times as the software is programmed to give you one extra recording if you try to make it work after your free time has expired.

The program is very elegantly designed to make it easy to use. A lovely female voice will guide you through the whole process if you so desire. The opening screen asks you to choose whether you want to make a digital recording from a record or a cassette. There is also a helpful tutorial to help you make the proper connections from your audio equipment to your computer.

Lets say you choose to make a recording from your cassette machine. This takes you to a screen called the "Recording Wizard." The first thing you should do here is set your sound recording levels. There is an automated process to do this, which our lovely voice will guide you through. Basically, you turn your cassette player on so that the music comes through to the computer. It's best if you find a particularly loud section of your music. The program will then sample your music for 30 seconds and set the right recording levels for you. It couldn't be easier.

After you have set the levels, rewind your cassette to the beginning and push play (making sure to set your player for the proper type of tape and Dolby settings). Then push the record button on your screen and sit back. Your computer is now recording the music. At the end of Side 1 of your tape, pause the recording, turn your cassette to side two, then start the recording process up again.

Now comes the fun part. After your recording is complete, the software will ask you if you want it to divide your digital recording into individual tracks. Obviously, you will want to do this. The software does a pretty good job of doing this automatically, although it occasionally makes an error, especially when it detects a very quiet section in a song that the program mistakenly assumes is the end of a song. You can adjust your detection settings to accommodate for this.

Then the software will begin what is called a preview. It goes track-by-track, playing the opening and closing of each track for four seconds to let you see if it got it right. If it doesn't, you can use the sliders on the screen to adjust the beginning and ends of each track. If one song has incorrectly been split into two or more tracks, you can merge them back together with the click of a button. Conversely, if two songs have been mistakenly been blended together as one, you can split them into two, again by the click of a button. If there is a track that you don't particularly like, you can eliminate it, again by the click of a button. Each track is clearly marked using different colors, as you can see from the above illustration.

Once you have your tracks all set and correct, the next step is to label each song along with the artist and album, if applicable. All three of these items are optional, but you should do it for future reference. Once this is done, Spin It Again will ask you what you want to do...make a CD, create files, or both. You can choose the type of recording you want to make including WAV (the standard file structure for regular music CD's), MP3 (compressed to a smaller file size with the amount of compression set by you), and several other lesser known file types for music.

That's it...easy enough. As you close down the program, it will ask you if you want to retain the file that the software created when you were recording the music. In most cases, you will want to eliminate it as it is quite large and there really is no reason usually to keep it. You have already saved the music on CD or in files.

There is one other important part of the software that I will mention just briefly. If you are recording music that has sound problems, like clicks and ticks from records, or high hiss levels from cheap tape, the software has several automatic corrections that can clean up your sound quite nicely. But, of course, when you apply a correction, the sound of your music will change slightly. It is best to compare an uncorrected version of the music versus the corrected version to hear how much the music is changed. The program makes it easy to do while the song is playing, allowing you to switch back and forth so you can choose the final version wisely.

Incidentally, I have used the software successfully to record music off of my satellite system. You can hear some of it in my studio as I use it for background music. God bless the inventor of MP3's.

For more information on this software, please visit the Acoustica Web site. I am sure there may be some other software out there that does the same thing just as well, and if you know of one, I would really love to hear about it. Personally, I really like Spin It Again very much and was happy to fork out $35 for it.

Transferring Records and Cassettes to Your Computer

For quite some time, I've thought about copying some my music on cassettes into my computer, then burning a CD. I have some rare recordings that are no longer available in the marketplace and I was worried that some day the cassettes would break and that music would be gone forever. I knew that the technology to do this has been around for a few years, but I just never had to excess time to do it...or more correctly put, I had other things on my platter that were more important.

Recently, with the addition of a new, more powerful computer at home, I finally made time to do it, or a least make a good start at it. I thought I would share some of my experiences with you in case that is something you might want to consider.

In order to do it, the first thing you need is a special cable to connect your turntable or cassette player to the sound card in your computer (I will focus the rest of this article on using a cassette player since I don't have records or a turntable anymore). Music-playing devices have long used what is called RCA jacks to interconnect. There are usually two RCA plugs to connect each device, one for left channel and one for the right channel. On the other hand, computers do not use RCA jacks. Rather they use a smaller plug that has both left and right channels together on one plug.

So, you need to purchase a cable that has two RCA jacks on one end and a single computer-type jack on the other. And since your music system is probably some distance from your computer, you would need a long cable. While not always easy to find, they are available...and they come in lengths up to 50 feet. And the good news is that they are not that expensive. For instance, Tiger Direct carries a 12', 25' and 50' versions of this cable for under $20 (25' is $9.95). I bought mine at Fry's Superstore over in Renton, WA , although I had to pay a little more for them there (I was there, so I just did it).

Just plug the ends with the RCA jacks into your cassette player and the
other end into the input jack on your computer's sound card. But, of course, this is only the beginning. You need the right software to make this all work.

As you know, I love free software and that was the first place I started looking. And guess what...I came up empty on this one. There just wasn't anything out there that I could find that did the job. Next, I looked at my Nero CD and DVD burning software to see if it might have what I was looking for. It does...but it stinks!

Soundtrax is a small program that comes as part of the Nero package. I tried to make it work and it just wouldn't do the job easily. I even read their instructions, which were worthless. It is not a good option. So, I gave up and accepted the fact that I would have to spend some money to do this. So I started doing my research.

And to make a long story short, I found a good one. I was able to try it out for a short time with no limitations and decided I had found the perfect program for only $34.95. In the next blog I will tell you all about it.

No New Customers for Vonage

A federal judge has ordered Internet Phone provider Vonage not to accept any new customers while it continues to infringe on Verizon Communications patents covering some aspects of Internet phone calls. It's a temporary setback for the leading voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) company and its some 2.2 million subscribers. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton said it was the only fair option that would minimize harm to both companies for now.

In case you didn't know, a federal jury on March 8 found that Vonage had infringed three Verizon patents. The New Jersey-based Internet phone provider was ordered to pay $58 million in damages. Vonage is expected to appeal the decision, which Hilton plans to make effective this next Thursday. A federal appeals court could then decide to save the VoIP provider from having to deny new customers by granting a full stay of the injunction.

Verizon general counsel John Thorne said the judge was able to "craft a middle path that allows Vonage to continue serving its existing customers while protecting Verizon's patents from increased infringement during the appeal process," adding that he fully expects the decision to be affirmed on appeal.

Roger Warin, Vonage's attorney, protested Judge Hilton's no-new-customers order. Arguing the decision was just as threatening to Vonage as a full injunction, he said "it would be the difference of cutting off oxygen as opposed to a bullet to the head." He also told Hilton that "in effect, what you are doing is slowly strangling Vonage because it cannot preserve that customer base" indefinitely. He noted that Vonage's customer turnover rate is 2.5 percent per month.

Being hamstrung in this way could be particularly devastating for Vonage, as it faces stiff competition from other VoIP companies like Packet8 (my own provider) as well as cable operators, which are also targeting residential phone users with their own VoIP services. Then there are the Internet companies, such as Skype, Google, and Yahoo, that are also offering VoIP services that allow people to make calls to traditional phones as well as cell phones.

Even before the jury found that Vonage was infringing on Verizon's patents, the company was struggling to add new customers. In the fourth quarter of last year, Vonage added 166,000 new subscribers. That was down from 204,591 subscribers in the third quarter and 256,000 in the second quarter of 2006. This drop in new subscriber growth occurred despite the fact that the company spent $365 million on marketing in 2006, a 50 percent increase from the previous year.

Who knows, we might have seen the last ad featuring someone in a beat-up old orange van throwing a Vonage cardboard box and hitting someone in the head.

Wal-Mart and the Right to Privacy

Listen up all Wal-Mart employees, contractors, critics and shareholders: The chain that promises great value places no value at all on your right to privacy (at least until recently, if you believe the company). In a Wall Street Journal article that broke on Wednesday, Bruce Gabbard, a Wal-Mart security worker fired for unauthorized phone-call recording and pager intercepts, took the lid off the discount chain's Threat Research and Analysis Group, with plenty of details that the Journal confirmed with other company sources and security experts.

Here are some of the lowlights (All quotes are from the Journal story):

* After 9/11, "Mr. Gabbard says he was directed by two former FBI agents working for Wal-Mart to set up a system that could track any calls to and from Syria, Yemen and Iran, among other countries. The search was unsuccessful, only flagging an apparent call from Iran that turned out instead to be from an Indian jeweler, according to Mr. Gabbard."

* "Concerned about the leaks, Wal-Mart began working with Oakley Networks Inc., a developer of 'insider threat management' gear to track employee and suppliers computer usage over its network, according to Mr. Gabbard and an industry source. One Oakley system is able to record an employee's computer keystrokes and deliver a TiVo-like replay of his or her computer activities, according to Tom Bennett, Oakley's vice president of marketing. ... The system goes beyond keystroke capture products and e-mail filtering packages by 'providing a view of content moving over your network,' says Oakley's Mr. Bennett."

* "Suspecting that the leaks of confidential memos might have come from McKinsey employees who had been working on a health-care project at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters at the time of the leaked memo, Wal-Mart's security experts used an Oakley device to monitor the McKinsey Internet activities, according to Mr. Gabbard and others."

* "Wal-Mart also used an Oakley product to monitor suppliers' use of the Wal-Mart network. Mr. Gabbard says that using the program that can monitor flesh tones on a computer screen, his team found a vendor downloading pornography and reported it to Wal-Mart and the vendor's executives."

* "Wal-Mart sent a long-haired employee wearing a wireless microphone to Up Against the Wal's Fayetteville, Ark., gathering, and eavesdropped from nearby, says Mr. Gabbard. 'We followed around the perimeter with a surveillance van,' he says."

* "Wal-Mart also directed its surveillance operations at critical shareholders. According to a January 2007 memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, security units were asked to 'do some preliminary background work on the potential threat assessment' of those submitting proposals to its June shareholder meeting, particularly those whose resolutions the company was trying to block.

As Gabbard says, "I used to joke that Wal-Mart paid me to be paranoid and they got their money's worth." Indeed. Wal-Mart's defense came in two parts:

One, these are standard, legal security measures that any big company uses.

Two, we're not doing it anymore.

The group "is no longer operating in the same manner that it did prior to the discovery of the unauthorized recording of telephone conversations," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark. "There have been changes in leadership, and we have strengthened our practices and protocols in this area."

If true, it's not a moment too soon. "They should stop playing with spy toys and take the criticism of their business model seriously. The success of the company depends on it," said Nu Wexler, spokesman for Wal-Mart Watch, and one of the targets of surveillance.

A Look at Firefox 3

So far, the test versions of the new Firefox alpha version 3.0 have been pretty boring. You are welcome to try it out, but you won't find much new...yet.  But boring is only skin deep when it comes to this third alpha version. A revolution sits inside: It's the first browser that will enable true off-line execution of Web services.

What does that mean to you? Well, you'll be able to run applications like Google's word processor and spreadsheet, or QuickBase, or most other Web-only applications right on your PC, Mac, or Linux computer without being connected to the net. There's much more, too, including synchronization, faster performance, and better use of memory.  If you would like to read more about the upcoming new Firefox and the amazing things happening under its hood, check out the extensive story on the PC Magazine Website.