The Newspaper Museum

Back in the day, I was one of those entrepreneurial urchins with a burlap sack over my shoulder taking a daily walk through the neighborhood to unload sheets of inked paper on people's doorsteps. I still see a paper on the sidewalk every once in awhile but those days are likely numbered. As Conde-Nast sheds 68-year old Gourmet Magazine this week, Jim Tyree's solo bid appears to be the last hope for the Sun-Times.

Is that kind of shift in the crystal ball for phone carriers as well, to what David Pogue calls "the right thing?" AT&T has announced it will allow VOIP as a service on its iPhones, which will certainly spread to Palm and other smartphones faster than a gps app. Even more than GoogleVoice, this development promises at the very least to change the way we think about minutes and calling plans.

The Telecoms Triple Play

If you remember back in your world history class to Europe's “Triple Alliance,” Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary joined forces to create the most powerful combination of military might in the world through the start of WWI. If you hadn't noticed, another alliance of three powers is emerging recently to dominate the world of global communications.

Over the last few years, the common objectives of our three primary media of telephone, television and the internet are increasingly being combined in bundling arrangements, both from the providers' and end-users' perspectives, with significant impact to both business and residential users. Whether you’re dialing a number on keypad, pressing a channel button on a remote, or clicking a mouse, you're likely to soon be sharing the same physical cable or fiber with the same amalgam carrier.

There are a few big names duking it out in terms of dominant standards. Cisco Systems leads the charge in supporting “Multi Protocol Label Switching” platforms to allow both the new and existing services to converge and to enable a transition to an infrastructure more dependent on internet protocol, particularly in VOIP services. IBM has rolled out internet-specific management software like the Tivoli Network Manager-IP edition to monitor events, alerts and alarms across the broadened Internet-Protocol Transfer spectrum, as well as keep tabs on overall availability and reliability.

For a more in-depth look at the significance of unified communications technologies and particularly the impact on you as business or personal user, take a look at this free webcast coming out at TechRepublic next month.