Tuesday Roundup
A few morsels of interest:
- The Mac was hacked? Really: Everyone blew this supposed “Mac” security issue out of the water, it seems. The Mac was “hacked,” but it wasn’t exactly specific to the Mac as the issue could be replicated in any browser on any system. It was a local exploit, at best, and it involved cross-site scripting, something that is inherently dangerous on all computers. Please let me know when the Mac can be remotely rooted, though. That will be some serious news.
- Voce: Pat Phelan gets credit for finding this one. I certainly like it for the simplicity: $200 a month, all you can stomach for voice, data and SMS. You get a personal assistant as well. And there is no contracts. The $500 initiation fee is a little steep, but if I were using that much stuff, it’d be a good deal. The phones they offer are swank, too.
- Vonage Wins Permanent Stay: Paul Kaputska, Jon Arnold, and others noted the big news of the day: Vonage got a permanent stay against Verizon regarding their patent dispute. Basically, it means they don’t have to give Verizon anything while the issue is under appeal. However, they do have to put up the $66 million and the 5.5% royalty fees in escrow in the meantime. The first oral arguments in their appeal will be taken in late June. Not quite “business as usual” as Jeffery Citron is saying, but at least it gives Vonage some breathing room while the wheels of justice turn.
- Hictu! Goes Social: It looks like the folks at Abbeynet are trying to take advantage of some of the buzz behind services like Twitter, which I use way too much, and integrate some additional “social networking” aspects into their Hictu! contact manager. For the full Twitter effect, they’ll need SMS and IM update capabilities. For better contact management, they need some kind of Outlook plugin that automatically syncs the relevant data back and forth between Outlook and Hictu. Certainly a way to bring some attention to your service.
