I’ve been lucky enough to meet with a swath of companies this year, almost all of which excite me on various levels. One of the more interesting infrastructure conversations I’ve had is with a company called Bandwidth.com, who this year in Austin launched a new service over at Phonebooth.com. The service, like much in the telephony business, isn’t immediately exciting (due mostly to the utilitarian nature of telecom), but is really quite interesting at first brush, and looks to have the signs of a service offering with staying power once you delve beneath the service. Bandwidth is a company that’s been around for ten years, involved (unsurprisingly) in the bandwidth business. Starting out as a reseller, they’ve long since transi

Lunch with the greatest podcaster of our generation? Why not. He tweeted. “Lunch at Ironworks.” Leo Laporte and his entourage and some fans are in Austin for SXSW.  It’s Leo’s first.  He’s already boggled at the myriad of events and choices.  What party to go to?  What panel? Leo will be tricasting his “This Week in Google” (TWIG) and “This Week in Tech” (TWIT) from TexasCoworking at 200 E Sixth Street in Austin, TX on Saturday, March 13, 2010 and Sunday, March 14, both at 5 pm CST.  Texas Coworking provided the equipment and space and both SiliconAngle (Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and Michael Sean Wright) and NewTek Tricaster provided expertise, production and equipment for this event and their

John McCrea and Chris Messina are joined by special guests — Don Thibeau of the OpenID Foundation and Drummond Reed of the Information Card Foundation — to discuss the launch of the Open Identity Exchange, the result of a year-long collaboration between the two foundations. Watch HiRes. Links related to this episode PC World's coverage of the announcement: Open Identity Exchange backs U.S. gov't privacy guidelines From the Financial Times blog: One step closer to a single sign-on for the web The official press release from the Open Identity Exchange: Open Identity Exchange Launches at RSA

When asked the biggest challenges in online video advertising this year, top executives at media agencies like Starcom and MediaVest say they're most eager to target audiences better and to access more sophisticated data around viewership. At last week's 4A's conference in San Francisco that drew top brass at ad agencies and brands, Daisy Whitney caught up with MediaVest's President Donna Speciale, Starcom USA CEO Lisa Donohue and 4A's Managing Director Harold Geller. Here's what they had to say about hurdles in Web video in 2010 in this week's New Media Minute.

Jonathan Boutelle and Rashmi Sinha, founders of the presentation-sharing site SlideShare, describe the entrepreneurial process as a series of pivots. Boutelle explains it's not just a jump, but an evolving growth of stages that leads to an idea that can start a business. From there, Sinha says that focused execution keeps the vision moving forward. By continually measuring the activity, they both believe that entrepreneurs can better recognize the growth stages of their company. Here is the audio from eCorner Stanford Technology Venture Program (STVP) that SiliconAngle contributor Tina Seelig runs with Tom Byers. Full link http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2338 The lessons on doing a startup can be learned

Each year at CES, queues for taxis, coffee, and lunch always seem to take a month, particularly during the first two days of the show. Pretend it’s still CES…it’s been a long month.  As Editor Rizzn says, you don’t read us for quick snippets, you read us for analysis.  Maybe even insight, at least occasionally. When we left off four weeks ago, I’d just broken the news that magicJack was stirring up the telecom market once again, with the announcement of their forthcoming femtocell, which I (and now most others) call the “femtojack”.  After Dan’s team published their release on the femtojack, I was inundated with a ton of technical and regulatory questions.  I’m not going to attempt to answer them here

Every so often I stumble into an interesting + funny blog with the potential to stick around for a while. The moment I heard about Build-a-Beard, I knew I had to find out more about this “movement” and “organization” led by Kristina Weise and Alex Aizenberg. Please check them out on Twitter and Facebook, and attend the Beard Ball NYC on Feb 4th (with proceeds going toRightRides). 1. Build-a-beard has been getting some much deserved attention. What’s the story behind it? When and how did you get started? The idea for B-A-B came when I was admiring Paul Bank’s new band, Julian Plenti, at the Guggenheim in August 2009. I (Kristina) found myself in a sea of bearded hipsters.  To keep myself amused that evening, I started pick

Social media is a fast-growing advertising and marketing medium and it's one that media companies, brands, producers and individuals want to better understand and leverage. If you're keen to grow your Twitter following, use the platform most effectively, and analyze your tweets, then you'll want to hear from Chloe Sladden, the company's director of media partnerships. Daisy Whitney interviewed her for the New Media Minute and Chloe discussed efforts the company is making on measurement and partnerships with media firms this year.

Jason Calacanis gave us a peek into what he calls his latest neurosis on This Week in Startups that I caught from a clip featured this afternoon on PaidContent. Jason is upset about the prospect of the New York Times taking themselves into an Apple-only distribution model.   From Jason’s rant: If you are a publisher of a newspaper magazine or book and you sell your product through the app store, you’re a fool. You’re an idiot, and you’re going to give your entire circulation to Mr. Steve Jobs. Let me explain to you that what you’re about to do is destroy your entire business. as a publication, your business is predicated on having a relationship with the reader. That reader gives you their contact information. And you

Jason Calacanis gave us a peek into what he calls his latest neurosis on This Week in Startups that I caught from a clip featured this afternoon on PaidContent. Jason is upset about the prospect of the New York Times taking themselves into an Apple-only distribution model.   From Jason’s rant: If you are a publisher of a newspaper magazine or book and you sell your product through the app store, you’re a fool. You’re an idiot, and you’re going to give your entire circulation to Mr. Steve Jobs. Let me explain to you that what you’re about to do is destroy your entire business. as a publication, your business is predicated on having a relationship with the reader. That reader gives you their contact information. And you