Word: phoning
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...warming up for his next disruptive act, hitting mobile operators where they really hurt: in the voice business. Polk is prodding consumers and businesses to make cheap Internet-based VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) phone calls through the Cloud's hot spots. VOIP has already eaten into the traditional fixed-line business. It's now poised to do the same thing to mobile operators, threatening to take a chunk of what London research firm Informa Telecoms & Media says will be a $550 billion mobile-voice business by 2010. Polk volleyed in July, when he partnered with VOIP champion Skype...
Polk is outfitting hot spots to handle the wi-fi function of those phones, forcing the hand of mobile carriers. "If they don't embrace these things, they'll lose the game," he says. That's a peace offering wrapped in a warning. He could take them head on, but he would gladly partner with mobile operators as the behind-the-scenes technology provider, wrangling wi-fi phone traffic that a mobile-phone company would front. Next up: the games and entertainment sector. In November, Polk struck a deal with Nintendo that lets owners of the wi-fi-- equipped Nintendo...
VoiceObjects has taken the same concept and made its services available through voice commands over a telephone. At chocolate maker Hershey, for example, employees can input their travel expenses by voice over the telephone. Deutsche Telekom has improved its self-service offerings for telephone customers by enhancing phone-in services with VoiceObjects technology. Postbank, which has some 3 million telephone-banking customers, says improved telephone-based self-service has freed agents to spend more time with customers needing advice on investments. "Our self-service quota has risen 10% since installing VoiceObjects," says Werner Wessinghage, 50, director of Postbank's call...
...Starbucks, ipods, playstations, blogs, IM, high-end snow gear: the anesthetizing of China's Me Generation sounds just like what's happening in the U.S. It seems that as long as we have our morning cup of coffee, iTunes and the latest high-tech cell phone, then all is well. These are the values we ourselves embrace and teach our children. Who cares about politics and civil rights as long as you have the best stuff? Nancy Levy, Long Beach, Calif...
...whole new school of Edith Wharton etiquette arises. It's O.K. for your boss to check his BlackBerry at lunch, because he's a Very Important Person, but God help you if you get caught even glancing down when yours pings. When college students meet for coffee, their cell phones are out on the table, windows facing up. Among the most e-mailed stories in the New York Times a couple of weeks back was one about the perfect vigilante weapon for the modern age: the cell-phone jammer, which silences signals within 30 feet. It's illegal and surely...