Intel.
Intel recently released Beta 2 of their Internet Phone software product. Their latest version addresses some of the early bugs and their G.723 audio sounds pretty darn good.

Netscape.
Netscape recently released CoolTalk for the Mac. If you have a Mac, I'd appreciate receiving your feedback on this product.

Netspeak.
Motorola recently invested in the company. Creative Labs recently announced a bundling deal and PC Magazine recently awarded WebPhone 2.0 their Editor's Choice. Rumors continue to fly about an upcoming IPO. While the technology marketplace has slightly recovered now may not be best time to go public. Then again....

Voxware.
Looks like Voxware has started their roadshow. Look for VOXW to start trading on NASDAQ in the next three to five weeks. Speaking of Voxware - last week they announced they licensed some of their technology to AOL. The only question on some investors minds is what price VOXW will come out at and where will it be trading at one day, one week and one month later.

VocalTec.
At Interop they were not doing any demos of Internet Phone. Instead they focused on their two other products - their Gateway and their Conferencing product. From what I observed there was a tremendous amount of corporate interest in their Gateway products. VocalTec also recently started selling a voicemail product in their retail sales channel. While the concept behind voicemail works - the question is how long it will take for the targeted consumer marketplace to take off.

VocalTec has also recently hinted that the animation in the top part of IPhone 4.0 will one day be replaced by live video. While there may be a coolness to videophones (see CU-SeeMe and VDOPhone for example), I have to wonder how many additional sales they will get just because they support video. Years ago there was a famous commercial on Saturday Night Live where something was both a Dessert Topping and a Floor Wax. Hopefully IPhone won't fall into the same trap.

Microsoft.
Last week Microsoft released their SDK for NetMeeting. With the release of the SDK there will be at least a dozen more companies entering the VON Space in the next ninety days.

Lucent.
Earlier this year there was a lot of noise generated about Inferno. Many people may have ignored it - but sometime in early 1997 Inferno will be hot amongst the RBOCs. Seems that the boys from Murray Hill engineered some pretty cool technology into the heart and soul of Inferno which makes it an ideal operating system for companies which are forward thinking but need to support legacy devices and code.

Lucent also announced their entry into the Internet Telephony space during the Fall Interop show. Their call center should be one of Lucent's top sellers in this space during the next twelve months.

Nuera Communications.
At Interop they were allowing people to make free phone calls around the US. I'm not kidding. They were demostrating their Voice over Frame Relay solution. Their product sounded pretty good to me. During the two days in Atlanta I must have spent at least two hours at their booth making free phone calls in and around the US. Who ever said that is nothing is free anymore?

TV Traffic Reports.
It wasn't always this way. During the past 18 months a new fad has started in New York City. TV Traffic reports? I just don't get it. For years I've listened to these traffic reports on the RADIO when driving in my car. And that concept works for me. But what is the REAL value of having TV traffic reports which I can watch in my bedroom? By the time I dressed and onto the highway the traffic patterns have already changed. While TV Traffic reports may be catering to drivers who have TV's in their car, I feel that even with all of the Limos in and around NYC, the marketplace is too small to bother with it. Maybe it is about time somebody told the TV producers that this concept just doesn't make any sense. The only idea worse than TV Traffic reports are the Traffic Reports which are viewable from a Traffic Control Website in Seattle.

Space. Convergence. Ubiquitous.
These three words are growing tired real fast. Three months ago I hardly used any of them. While at times I can't avoid the use of these words myself - just for fun - the next time you attend a related trade show or conference, just count the number of times the speaker uses these words.

Next to Web Browers the most popular application in use at Interop was...
Telnet. That's right. An unofficial Pulver.com survey of 45 machines which were made available for public use at Interop revealed that 8 out of 10 machines had the Win95 Telnet application run during the day...looks like some people have also discovered the concept of walking up to a net connected device, telnetting to the office and then running Pine or Elm to catch up with their e-mail.

The Free World Dialup Project...At the Crossroads
In October 1995 during Internet Telephony's infancy and while some of the major software companies were developing their approach and strategies for this space, a group of people, literally from all over the world - Jakarta (Izak Jennie), Tokyo (Brandon Lucas) and myself in New York, got together in an attempt to foster a new breed of internet community which could benefit from the interconnection of regular telephones to the net.

From my vantage point as the FWD project manager, it is evident that due to the lack of support from the original developer to fix what has become a very well known list of bugs, I am only kidding myself to think that the project should continue in its current form.

I will be forever grateful to Izak Jennie for spending his time, effort and energy in developing the original FWD software, and to Brandon Lucas for donating his time, effort and energies in coordinating the FWD server operators.

But since March '96 when Izak started his own software company there have not any significant updates to the software. Quite frankly, without his support and access to the source code, the current build of the software is really the last anybody can realistically expect to see.

From an end user perspective, I really can appreciate how frustrating it must feel to run into a stone wall.

In the beginning providing support was easy, but without a formal technical support team and the ability to scale myself, I have not been able to provide the needed level of assistance to all the people who have e-mailed me looking for help. To date the FWD client has been downloaded close to 100,000 times.

Even today, there is still an incredible effort being made by a very small support team which, without ever asking to be thanked, have provided whatever level of support they could. Some of these people prefer to remain anonymous, but nonetheless it is because of these unselfish visionaries from Guam, Tacoma, WA, Vancover, B.C., Washington, D.C. and Hollywood, FL that the project still has a heartbeat. It is truly amazing what some people can accomplish because they care.

The Global Server Network (GSN)
will be active at Pulver.Com at least through the end of 1996.

And while there have been well over three hundred people who came forward and stated that they were going to run a FWD server from their home or office, in the end less then fifty people were able to maintain a FWD server.

In my opinion, if this project is going to have any chance of becoming a real net resource, the primitive gateways which we have been assembling by interconnecting a soundcard with a Yokohoma modem need to be replaced by the new commercial gateway products which are currently available on the net.

Standard protocols also need to emerge between the various developers of the commercial gateways so that in the future gateways from different vendors can interoperate and share detailed accounting information.

This is not to say that the FWD project should become commercial - far from that - and since there are people who really would like to use the service, the best thing to do is work with the commercial gateway developers and offer the developers an open environment which the net community literally could participate in a beta test of the latest and greatest versions of their hardware and software solutions.

Ultimately this may never happen - but if some of these companies wanted to donate their hardware to some of the sites which have dedicated their heart and time into the FWD project, I believe there are people would gladly run the commercial servers at their sites...Once again, I'm willing to help coordinate this if there should be any offers.

While some people wanted to believe that the Free World Dialup project was the cover for a "NextGen" Telco - the truth is that it was really just about a group of people experimenting with an enabling technology and in most cases looking for ways to provide a not-for-profit ham radio-like phone patch over the net.

The Free World Dialup server never attempted to be scaleable or address the technology needed for echo cancellation.

To date the FWD project has been a tremendous learning experience. I, for one, can appreciate the tremendous opportunities which the commercial gateway products offer those who know the secrets on how to successfully role them out within a corporate environmen or amongst ISPs.

Anyway... as Jerry Garcia once sang, "What a long strange trip it's been".

For now, my personal involvement in the Free World Dialup project has ended. The Pulver.Com related FWD resources will continue to be available, but I'm going to focus on the commercial opportunities which the FWD project foresaw.

I have already setup a mailing list for emerging gateway products and related discussions. If you are not already on the list and would like to subscribe, send e-mail to majordomo@pulver.com, leave the subject blank and in the body write: subscribe gateway.

In closing,
I'd like to extend my personal heartfelt THANKS and GRATITUDE to everyone who has put an ounce of energy, love or dedication into the Free World Dialup project. I don't want to forget any individual so I'll simply say, Thank You - One and All.

1. www.wackeypacks.com - For those of us who grew up in the early 70's and remember Wacky Packs...well they are back. Just in case you no longer have your stickers - just go to the Wacky Packs website and check it out. For some it might just bring back some memories...

2. www.PYST.com. Sounds like...MYST. The perfect CD-ROM Parody.Should be a best seller this holiday season. This product was created with Firesign Theater's Peter Bergman with help from John Goodman.

3. www.cybermedia.com - Oil Change. Now you can subscribe to a service which monitors which software applications you are using on your desktop and for a small fee it will automatically download the relevant updates for you. A pretty cool service. Yet another way somebody is trying to make money on the net. Better yet - maybe they will be an aquisition target of Individual, Inc.

Two Upcoming Pulver.com Conferences:

a. Fall Internet World Show

December 12-13th at The Fall Internet World in New York City, Pulver.com is producing \"Internet Telephony Days\" - a conference within a conference at the Jacob Javits Center. More information is available at the website - http://events.iworld.com/fall96/iw/sponsored/pulver.shtml

b. Pulver.com's VON Industry Conference

April, 1997

Three Main Tracks: