Full Transcript:

Ed Kohler: Welcome to the Technology Evangelist new tech Tuesday podcast. Today is April 17^th and I am Ed Kohler and I am here with Jeremy Elfering and Benjamin Higginbotham as usual. Today’s topics include is the 20 gigabite PS3 dead, green computing, the Asus, the EcoBook that would fall under your dream computing category. Sony DRM, an update on what’s up with the Vonage these days and is Vinyl making a comeback in records. Why don’t we just jump right into it?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Shall we? Let’s start with the 20 gig PS3, shall we?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, what’s going on there?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, they discontinued the 20 gig model and that what is like six months after the thing was released, between the model.

Jeremy Elfering: I believe it is like four months.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Is it only four months?

Ed Kohler: That’s fast.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, really fast.

Jeremy Elfering: When was it released?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t remember.

Jeremy Elfering: I believe it was like November, when they are actually finally shipping, wasn’t it?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well…

Ed Kohler: That will be six months, then.

Jeremy Elfering: Apparently I can’t add.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I think the sales of the 60 gig model were substantially higher than that of the 20 gig model, 60 gig model, right?

Jeremy Elfering: Something like that, which isn’t saying much.

Benjamin Higginbotham: It included a larger hard drive, it included a different memory options, it was a better configuration all the way around and everyone was asking for that and I believe Sony said it out sold the 20 gig model 10 to 1, but this raises a question, are they going to stick with one sku or they are going to add a larger version, because if you are going to be downloading content of the online Sony high-def movie sites and whatnot, that’s going to take a heck of lot of hard drive room.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, they can really add up.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely, Xbox just released the Xbox Elite, was it? I am not a gamer, so I say these things and I am pretty sure this is what they are, it is the new one that has a black case and it is got 120 gig hard drive built into it and it has a black casing and I think it’s black.

Ed Kohler: OK, the PS3, can you put a…

Jeremy Elfering: Is it black?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: Can you stick an external hard drive on that thing?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t believe so.

Jeremy Elfering: I believe you can.

Ed Kohler: That sort of limiting then, so then obviously…

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, you can swap out the drive, if I remember correctly. Actually that was a feature of the larger model and may be you can, unfortunately I don’t know the answer to that, to be perfectly honest. Hey, look that up. Can you swap out the hard drive of the PS3, anyone in TalkShoe? Know, if you can swap up the drive of a `PlayStation 3? Because, if we could, you are right, then who cares right? Or add an external USB drive, may be a 250 gigger and call it a day.

Ed Kohler: Then you can at least scale the size of it there.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, exactly. That would be better for Sony, because then they have just got one sku they have to deal with.

Ed Kohler: Well, just based on the use of my own MacBook and stuff, I know 80 gigs can fill up pretty darn fast if you are doing much downloading, so when I am at home for my media center, I have a 500 gig external hooked up to that and that’s solve my problems for now, but I am sure in a longer term, it won’t, but it is a start. It is easy to scale though, keep changing them out.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but you also have firewire hard drives, right?

Ed Kohler: No, that’s running off a USB 2.0 an old Dell laptop, that’s what I use at my home, just a media collection source.

Benjamin Higginbotham: The problem with USB is that as you tack more and more on, your performance is going to get lower and lower and lower, so, yeah they claim a 128 devices, but there is certain performance threshold and it is pretty low, so you don’t have unlimited storage in that capacity, firewire is a slightly different story.

Ed Kohler: Well, there is two sides of that, there is the side of just getting the content downloaded it on to something, then there is what you are going to play it off of. So, if it takes for ever to download and as long as it ends up on a hard drive, I can then plug the hard drive in something else to actually play it or drag it over on to a computer to play it from that directly, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: True that, you are so smart.

Ed Kohler: Some of the things that I have thought about.

Jeremy Elfering: And so far we found that people have upgraded the hard drive.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But can you add an external hard drive, I knew you can upgrade the hard drive.

Jeremy Elfering: Well, it is been hack's to upgrade it, but…

Benjamin Higginbotham: I thought that 60 gig model allowed you to upgrade it, it was like an option slot?

Jeremy Elfering: No, this is people taking it apart.

Benjamin Higginbotham: You know what I determined, I need a PlayStation 3, because then I can know this stuff, yeah.

Ed Kohler: Let's get back to that, once we know more about it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, no kidding. I think that was a bad topic?

Ed Kohler: Sure, green computing?

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK.

Ed Kohler: Alot going on there. I mean it is interesting topic that there are lot of different sides to this, there is the computer itself and then there is, you need power to run these things, that’s not exactly green today, but how about we just start with, what’s the deal with Gizmodo article that you wanted to bring up here?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well in the UK, every home in 2008, you will be able to request a free home energy monitor.

Ed Kohler: So an energy monitor is like letting you know, is it based on how much energy your home uses overall or which products in your home are using all the energy or…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, that's just it, if you go with the standard home energy monitor then it is the standard version that they're doing I believe, is just overall home, how much you are using. There is a different type of energy monitor, you can get that, I will actually tell you what each appliances doing and it is also Internet enabled, I believe that’s like smart energy, something like those lines and then you can actually, view this all online and the power company can also see it as well. So, you can actually track and monitor how much power every device in your home is using.

Ed Kohler: OK, well at the household level, I have a monitor today called the bill that shows up every month, so…

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, I have pretty good idea, how much energy I am using, it is just a matter of how much each individual device is wasting, is the bigger question.

Ed Kohler: Right, if it turns out my toaster is total energy hog, I will be willing to swap it out, if I knew that, but I don’t have a way to do that today, there are tools like this in US, where I think you can plug them in between the outlet and the appliance…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Can you get them for free?

Ed Kohler: No, definitely can’t.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s the difference. This is going to be available for free to anyone who requests it in the UK, so the people who say, hey I want to know how much energy my house is pulling and you will be able to monitor that, because may be, yeah you are right, it is my bill, right, but if you are able to know at least monitor it and watch in real time, you can do little bit of testing and see what works out in your favor, where as your bill it comes at the end of the month, which means that you don’t really know. You can’t see any real time stats.

Ed Kohler: That’s interesting, because it seems like this will be something that would be really hard to get across in the United States. Where you think that just providing more information, for people shouldn’t be a big deal, but there are lot of companies, who have an interest in having you burn a lot of energy. So, would they in the US allow for something like this, I just can’t see something like this happening here.

Jeremy Elfering: I can’t see it happening either, just for the simple fact that most power companies aren’t going to provide tools like this.

Ed Kohler: There is definitely some resistance of change, to me it sounds like the same thing, as say like how people are trying to bastardize organic labels in United States or just other things where they are just trying to maintain the status quo, by making it hard for people to find out how to make smarter decisions on things like this, but Europe is definitely different from the US when it comes to things like this, so it is good for them and so we can look ahead and see where things will be eventually…

Jeremy Elfering: Can we send a mail, can we send a mailing address in the UK and possible get one of our own or…

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, I think it is highest of the power company itself, so it is not just a device you are adding to your home, it is something that’s two way communication things, how I understand. So, even if you are to do that, that wouldn’t work. The bigger question is, when we will see that here? Because, I don’t think this is a question of, “if”, I think it is question of “when”, we need to have better understanding of what device are. Actually, I like to see it in the next level, where I can see every individual device like you are talking about, how much power they are consuming and then be able to remotely control those, so that if I left something on, I can remotely turn that off from anywhere that I have an Internet connection.

Ed Kohler: That would be impressive, but that would take energy too, so is that going to be a negative there?

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, how much energy would it take, if it is inline?

Jeremy Elfering: I can't imagine that, it takes that much energy.

Ed Kohler: Yeah.

Benjamin Higginbotham: If it is inline or if it is part of the circuit and there might be a way to optimize that, so it really doesn’t take any at all, any more than you are using.

Jeremy Elfering: Here is the question, how much of an upgrade would that be? Would every line have to be redone?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, if that’s the case, then it's not going to happen.

Jeremy Elfering: Right.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, if you can, I don’t know, I have no idea how to do it? I am living in my perfect little world, where sky is purple and grass is blue.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, you live in that world a lot.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I do, I like that world.

Jeremy Elfering: It is a very interesting world.

Ed Kohler: Pretty sure, saw something on Lifehacker, like this where it was an adopter you could put between your appliance and your circuit or between your outlet and over time we will just tell you the draw of any particular application, there are appliance where something where lot of us need test at once and you get your ballpark figure and then you can make a decision on that particular appliance or at least then you have the knowledge, you don’t necessarily need a real time on everything, for every product, because it probably will tend to run very consistently, so may be you will find out that you have a space heater in your house that you had no idea what kind draw that thing had.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Those things have draw.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, those things are ugly.

Ed Kohler: Along those lines, I am using the Xcel Energy’s wind source program, where all of the energy that is used in my house, well all the electrical energy that is used in my house is coming from wind sources, where I just have to pay a premium on my monthly electricity bill, where it is obviously not like a wind mills attached to my house, but based on that people who decided that they want wind power, that number of, that percentage of the energy acquired by Xcel Energy has to be from a wind source or a clean source. They are actually, it is been very popular and I think Xcel Energy, I think I just read the other day that they are number one buyer of clean energy sources in US now, because of the popularity of these programs, but they are having hard time finding enough energy, so we need more wind mills or other sources of energy, because people, there's demand there.

Jeremy Elfering: Now, here is the question is, is it a matter of they are having a hard time getting the energy or they having hard time storing the energy?

Ed Kohler: I think they are having a hard time getting the energy at this point.

Jeremy Elfering: Because, most of the article I read, this is a while ago, said that they, it wasn’t so much they had, they had excess wind power, but they weren’t able to store it in large amounts to compensate for those days when they didn’t have lot of wind power.

Ed Kohler: Well, they have a diversified source of energy though, so on days where they have plenty of wind, they could throtle other source of energy down, so it is just balancing it out as far as in your home, it is not like the energy that’s in your home is strictly wind power, so if it hasn't been windy for a week. So I can’t vacuum today, honey…

Jeremy Elfering: That will be a cool excuse.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, until your refrigerator goes out…

Jeremy Elfering: Don’t bring logic in to these arguments.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Sorry.

Jeremy Elfering: We prove it once again, you can’t bring logic into this.

Ed Kohler: So, on the hardware side, there is Asus EcoBook

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s pretty cool.

Ed Kohler: What do you think of this thing?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, it is designed to be as eco-friendly as you can be. Laptops are very eco-unfriendly, there is lot of hazardous components inside the laptop with the silicon and the plastic boards and what not and the EcoBook is made out of bamboo on the outside, so standard wooden shell and the on the inside they are using recycled plastics and there is many recycled components as they can actually use inside this laptop and it is kind of hip and cool actually, believe it or not, if you look at pictures of the EcoBook itself, it actually looks cool.

Jeremy Elfering: I have a question…

Benjamin Higginbotham: And it is made out of bamboo which is awesome.

Jeremy Elfering: What happens when that bamboo hits a Sony battery?

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK, what happens to any laptop when it hits a Sony battery? There is no surviving, Sony batteries.

Ed Kohler: What happens to my lap?

Jeremy Elfering: I'm just asking.

Benjamin Higginbotham: They explode, right?

Jeremy Elfering: Right.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, so it dosen’t matter, if it is a wooden laptop or if it is a metal laptop, it explodes.

Ed Kohler: Well, beyond Fahrenheit 451 here, but I think there is a market research like this, because people’s laptops are, like they are accessory, they are statement type thing, I mean that’s partly why having that glowing Apple on the back of a MacBook Pro and makes them very popular, I think and when you are sitting in airport, you have your statement computer, so I think if they can do things that really bring out the fact that they are an eco-friendly computer, I think people will buy a simply for that reason, assuming they are reliable computers as well.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s an interesting observation, we should almost put like a recycled logo on the back of the screen like in the lower left or lower right hand corner and I don’t believe it has that right now. I think it just has the Asus, I don’t actually know how to pronounce the company name, so…

Ed Kohler: It actually looks strikingly like a normal computer which I would think there would be a better market for making it less like a normal computer and more like some eco-friendly tree hugging type thing.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I absolutely agree, it needs to differentiate itself from the rest of the market. So, you have that status that goes with the eco-friendliness, because frankly you are paying a premium for the eco-friendliness, at least today you are. So, you…

Ed Kohler: And there are plenty of people they are willing to pay that premium and make that statement, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, the thing is that they want to make that statement. They want to make other people aware, okay there are two types of people, but they want to make other people aware that you should be doing something like this too. You should be self conscious of the environment, no matter what the cost and if it looks like every other laptop that conversation never begins. No one ever says “Woah Dude, your computer is made out of bamboo”.

Ed Kohler: Right, so having a product that stands out logic that evangelize that particular statement that you are making there. Along those lines I saw something today’s Minneapolis StarTribune about Green computing purchasing in Minnesota, where I guess there is new standard out called EPEAT, Epeat I guess it might be pronounced.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Epeat.

Ed Kohler: It is a Environmental Product and Environmental Assessment Tool which is a program that takes a look at the environmental friendliness of computers and helps businesses and of course government purchasing decide which computers to buy from a environmental standpoint and I guess Minnesota is only the third state to implement this in the country. So, it just ranking system that looks at what components go into making a computer and how are environmental friendly, those particular applications are and just for fun, I went to the EPEAT site which is epeat.net and looked at the Apple computers and they give them all a silver rating and…

Benjamin Higginbotham:Oh, it's not a gold rating?

Ed Kohler: No, it is a bronze, silver, gold type system and I don’t know how they decide at the procurement level, which level of computers they are going to buy for their departments, but right now, no computers meet the gold standard. So, they have 426 that have been rated bronze and 375 in the silver level and zero in gold, so there is obviously some room for improvement or they have set their standards high enough where there is a bar to reach. So, that’s kind of cool.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I think it is funny, they were talking we have the eco topics today and by pure chance you brought into the booth today, some organic valley chocolate soy  milk stuff that you have been drinking all morning.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, I like this stuff, it is pretty good. It is just a way to mix it up. It is soy, it is organic soy and…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yes, it is.

Ed Kohler: If you've never tried this stuff, it is actually pretty good, just to kinda mix it up and I actually did a taste test the other weekend between organic milk and non-organic milk, blind test, where my wife swaped around  the glasses quiet a bit and I could taste difference, where to justify spending a extra $3 a gallon on milk is kind of tough, but you could taste the difference as well, so that it makes little bit easier to do, but it still that $7 a gallon at least in Minnesota right now, that’s a significant amount to pay for milk, based on how much I drink of it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Let me ask you this, you are not willing to spend an extra $3 a gallon on milk, would you going to spend extra $500 on the eco-friendly laptop?

Ed Kohler: That would be a tough one. That’s a pretty significant thing.

Jeremy Elfering: The one thing is that’s a one time purchase, how many times do you buy milk a week?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but how much milk would you have to buy to equal that same $500 that’s a lot of milk.

Ed Kohler: It is true, with the computer, if you are looking for 500 bucks and you have the computer for 3 years, I mean that’s probably worth 15 bucks a month or something, when you really look at it that way, and it would actually be less of a cost then, well you have drink like six gallons of milk or something just running those numbers really fast in my head, to achieve...

Benjamin Higginbotham: A month.

Ed Kohler: Yes, six gallons a month basically, if you are trying to decide between which of those things you wanted to do?

Jeremy Elfering: As my wife would attest that would make up for itself right there, sadly because I think we go through about three gallons a week.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I had no idea, you have very strong bones.

Jeremy Elfering: Apparently.

Ed Kohler: No doubt, that's impressive. I think there will other entries into this market, I think having greener power, something I think people are interested in having just knowing more about the components that make up their computers, I think it would be useful to a lot of people understanding the value of turning off their monitors at night or also just getting better learning how to use the green features of their computers where you can cycle them off automatically, certain times a day, that’s all really not that hard, but it is something that needs more education on, I think.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t know that a lot of people think that if I just powered on my laptop at night, it is going to make that huge difference, I mean it is just a laptop, it is running on 12 volts or whatever that get running, you know, whoop-de-freaking-do and I wonder what the difference would be, if everyone at night shutdown their laptops, I wonder how much power it actually save?

Ed Kohler: 15 nuclear power plants, that’s my guess.

Jeremy Elfering: 15 nuclear power plants, that’s a very good, that’s very interesting, guess.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, I wonder if it is going to be another DST 2007, where we, OK I am getting blank looks, the DST 2007 time change, which was a royall pain in the butt. Because, we had to do all these computer updates and…

Jeremy Elfering: And what did it net?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t think there was any change.

Jeremy Elfering: There wasn’t.

Benjamin Higginbotham: It was the same.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, they haven’t found a big difference there.

Jeremy Elfering: But, here is the trick because all the senators can now say, we were being environmentally conscious, whatever.

Ed Kohler: Made an effort.

Jeremy Elfering: They made an effort.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, their effort created a good amount of chaos in the computer industry.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah and cost money.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Jeremy Elfering: So at that point it is a net loss, isn’t it?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, it is. You don’t want to be eco-stupid either.

Ed Kohler: Well it might have been a good chance for some people who justify few upgrades they have been puting off, push those through, Y2K everyone got a new computer…

Benjamin Higginbotham: I should have done that.

Ed Kohler: Someone in accounting benefited from this.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I should have asked for new a computer, dang it.

Jeremy Elfering: Yes, that would have been brilliant.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right, let’s move on.

Ed Kohler: Sony DRM.

Jeremy Elfering: Sony DRM, you mean the new DRM that they have, that is not working anything.

Ed Kohler: Who is having problems with this?

Jeremy Elfering: Just about everyone, that’s basically new movies they implemented in new DRM scheme and they are not playing in DVD players.

Ed Kohler: On any DVD, that play on Sony DVD players at least.

Jeremy Elfering: No, Sony’s DVD players from three months ago is apparently not working with it.

Ed Kohler: I'd say that is bit of a problem.

Jeremy Elfering: That is a bit of a problem and the…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Wait, on stand... not on download content, this is on a standard DVD’s?

Jeremy Elfering: This is standard DVD’s.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, they put new DRM that’s not in the DVDs spec on standard DVD’s not BlueRay, but standard DVD’s.

Jeremy Elfering: Correct.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Why?

Jeremy Elfering: Because they are trying to be more copyright friendlier something, but it is supposedly so they can, it is harder to copy a disks.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And play that apparently.

Jeremy Elfering: Apparently.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Can you return the disk, if you get it and it doesn’t work?

Jeremy Elfering: No.

Benjamin Higginbotham: You are sure about that?

Jeremy Elfering: I will double check the story that I read, but I everything that I am seen side Sony says well, your DVD player needs a firm ware upgrade and that needs to, that could come out in next two months. So, in the mean time…

Benjamin Higginbotham: What is it with Sony, why don’t they understand this?

Jeremy Elfering: I don’t know…

Ed Kohler: Adrian Kings says that, over at ZDnet he says that, Sony just keeps on running into all sorts of copy protection hassles.

Benjamin Higginbotham: They do.

Ed Kohler: Now, the new DVDs Casino Royale, Stranger Than Fiction are refusing to work in certain DVD players.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, why would they? I am at a loss for words…it ultimately comes down to they want to protect the copyright holders, because the copyright holders don’t want people to steal their content.

Ed Kohler: That’s because they are one of the copyright holders.

Jeremy Elfering: They are the copyright holders, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, here is little secret and Sony if you are listening, listen very carefully, if consumers can’t easily buy your content and play it on their DVD players, then they are going to steal it, so they can play it on their DVD players.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, we just talked about that yesterday, the same deal, it is got to be easier to buy stuff than just to steal it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: It really does and…

Jeremy Elfering: That’s really what come down to most people will buy the content, there will always be those few people who will steal it anyway.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And there is nothing you can do about that.

Jeremy Elfering: No.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Accept it, move on. But you are not able to create a DRM that they can’t crack. Accept it, move on, make it easy. Apple has the right idea with the EMI-Apple deal, just give them a really high quality file make it easy to download, make it exactly what the consumer wants and here is a little secret they will buy it, because they want it and it is easy to get that content, it is easier to buy that high-quality content, that has no DRM, then it is to steal it. I would spend a dollar thirty, just to get it and not have to steal it, absolutely. I already spend my money in the iTunes music, iTunes store now.

Jeremy Elfering: Exactly and I would have to deal with it for long things, just for simple things I want to use this music in a video I am working on.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy Elfering: I have go through hoops just, I would love to be able to deal with that, with non-DRM stuff and I am willing to pay for it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: As long as the video is for personal use, all right?

Jeremy Elfering: Right, of course, I would only use copyright music for personal use only.

Ed Kohler: I can imagine if you have if you just bought a copy of Stranger Than Fiction, and all of your friends are telling this movie, you have to see and then you bring it home and you can’t watch it, what’s going to happen, what do they training these people to do? Obviously you got their hopes up, they brought the movie into their house and now they can’t watch it, I mean that’s not a good position to put people in.

Jeremy Elfering: I have to deal with this a long time ago, when just burning DVDs, it used to big hassle whether or not the player was going to play it and I was always know that the video works, your player just isn’t playing it, we are going backwards.

Benjamin Higginbotham: See Sony makes a lot of format decisions that are bad-bad ideas, or just bad decisions and what’s interesting is that on the broadcast television world they are the dominant player just you walk into any television studio and you can see a lot of Sony, you just going to see some Sony some where even if they are not standardized on Sony. Beta cam SP was the de-facto standard for ever, it took what 20 years? Still they are out there. Then you go down to the consumer realm and they keep trying to break in, mini disk player, who of you had a mini disk player?

Ed Kohler: Yeah.

Jeremy Elfering: I believe that was you too.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Do you still use yours?

Ed Kohler: It is a … some what, but…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly.

Jeremy Elfering: Beta Max.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Beta Max, which was a good idea, but implemented poorly. They really don’t get it, 8 track the new digital download format that they have got. That’s worse than mp3 and everything else, it just sounds awful when this gridled with DRM and then they just don’t seem to understand the consumer realm at all, they keep failing here and the only thing that seems to not be failing that I have seen lately is Blue-Ray, it actually seems to be doing pretty good, but it wasn’t just Sony and that’s where they broke from their usual, their norms like what we have to have the Sony eco-system, we have to control everything. With Blue-Ray, they opened it up and let a bunch of people in and that one actually seems to be doing extremely well and then they pull something like this, which will probably add into Blue-ray which means I am going to go buy HDVD, actually I am not going to buy one, I'm just going to download all my content online through the iTunes store.

Ed Kohler: There you go, so what’s, there is has been a lot of news about Vonage, what do you guys have in mind? Or what’s particular interesting that’s going on there for you?

Jeremy Elfering: Well, right now they got an extension they are temporary reprieve about signing up customers, now they are asking for that temporary reprieve to become permanent, so they can keep signing up customers, even though they haven’t fixed the copyright issues they have.

Ed Kohler: Patent issues?

Jeremy Elfering: The patent issues, I mean.

Ed Kohler: They are in a pretty tough position right now with that where, obviously if you can’t signup customers, you are a dying business.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, you are completely dying business.

Benjamin Higginbotham: They were dying business long ago, they have never not been a dying business.

Jeremy Elfering: Now, one note I did see is, it is possible that Verizon’s patents may be illegitimate.

Ed Kohler: Well, I am sure there are people who would like to argue that…

Jeremy Elfering: There are plenty of people especially from Vonage who would like to argue that, but there is a possibility that it may have been a lot of the stuff that they patented included in technology input from IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Nortel, a bunch of other ones during the Voice over IP forum in 1996.

Ed Kohler: I wouldn’t want to get into a patent battle with IBM?

Jeremy Elfering: No.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Or Microsoft?

Ed Kohler: Yeah.

Benjamin Higginbotham: You are kidding?

Ed Kohler: They have a lot of people working on that sort of thing there.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, how many patents does IBM have?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t think any of it is actually matter. So, Vonage when it first went out of the door, Vonage is been hurt in bleeding money from the moment it was born and now they have got this patent issue with Verizon, which basically just means that they are bleeding more money. Let’s say they win it, they will be bleeding money, let’s say the lose it, they will be bleeding money. I don’t see any difference, it is lose, lose, lose, all the way around for Vonage.

Ed Kohler: Regardless it's not a service what I would consider, because I had haven’t had a home line for about seven years now, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Why wouldn't you just, even if you wanted a home line, why wouldn’t you just use Skype?

Ed Kohler: Well, exactly you could use Skype, but for me just idea of having one phone number that goes with you everywhere, where I have a cell phone number like you should really just get your kid a cell phone number when they are born and they are locked in, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Ed, allow me to suggest to you, Grand Central, grandcentral.com.

Ed Kohler: Why would I need Grand Central, when I already have a number.

Jeremy Elfering: By the way, how is that service working for you?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Actually it is working really well, because that one number let’s say you get a job and you want people to just be able to call one number and find you wherever you are, at home or work or whatever, Grand Central will actually do hunt me, find me, follow me in all other fun jazz, because real life...

Ed Kohler: I have a job and people can hunt me down, because they have my number, it is on the website, call me. Where is the value for you? What does this change in your life?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Because, I test a lot of cell phones, so I get a lot of different phone numbers, so now, I have got one phone number everyone can call me at and no matter what phone I am testing, I can just give them all that same number, they need to have, there are few things that it is missing, like SMS support and the number of rings before goes to voice mail and stuff like that. The other really nice thing is, let’s say we are doing something like this, a live podcast, and someone calls me and they I want to bring them in a podcast and I have got my Skype number in my Grand Central, my Skype in number and I have got my cell phone number, I can from my cell phone transfer to Skype and bring it right into the board. If I picked up that phone call in my cell phone and they call my cell phone directly, I am out of luck, I am going to hang up the call and have them recall the different number, so I can bring him into this system. I can transfer among devices live, inside of Grand Central, so if I wanted to bring him into anything else I can do that including my Gizmo number, so I can go pure SIP if I wanted to.

Jeremy Elfering: Now, I understand that’s an important feature for you, but from the vast majority of people, they don’t need that, they need one number.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Do you have a home phone?

Jeremy Elfering: No.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Do you have you and Jill’s phone?

Jeremy Elfering: Yes.

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK, what if someone wanted to find you or Jill?

Jeremy Elfering: They call of the two of us, and we're usually together.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right.

Jeremy Elfering: We usually come as a pair, so…

Ed Kohler: There might be market for, I just don’t think it is a very big market.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I do. I think you mentioned a phone number at birth, why does that phone number have to be attached to a device? Why can’t that phone number be…

Jeremy Elfering: It doesn’t have to be attached to a device.

Benjamin Higginbotham: In Ed’s scenario is it attached to a cell phone or it attached to a hard phone, why can’t you make it a virtual number and then push that to whatever device you want, so you can have multiple devices. You can have a number in your office and a number here, number there, whatever it doesn’t matter, it is all attached to that virtual phone number and you just call that virtual phone number and then anything you ever get at anytime, you can change your phone number on your phone and you can do anything you want, it all goes to that device, you both are wrong, I am right.

Ed Kohler: I am still not seeing the value.

Jeremy Elfering: For someone who has one phone, that’s great, why should I pay extra for having another number?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Very simple, what was your old phone number, before you started here? Was it the same?

Jeremy Elfering: No.

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, it wasn’t. Now, what if you wanted to move companies and you wanted to say put that old company and it will restricted list of callers and immediately go to voice mail, or may be you want to say “this number is disconnected and give them the message like that” could you have done that.

Jeremy Elfering: I basically did  because I didn't give them any of my phone numbers…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly, you have to give all your family and friends, a brand new phone number, so you inconvenienced to your family and friends when you moved.

Jeremy Elfering: Why again do I care about my family and friends?

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, you do, it should be one universal phone number and as much as we say, OK well it can be my universal phone number portability on my cell phone or my landline, realistically I don’t think that’s going to work. I think you are going to need a virtual number like Grand Central, that’s going to let you push it to any device that you want, so that you don’t get that exact scenario, so I could push it to multiple devices, if I want to including a VOIP or landline and I can just use it wherever I want and I am right!

Jeremy Elfering: That always just wins, right there and I am right.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I am evangelizing this product, I really truly believe in that product, I think it has little ways to go yet, I think it has some issues, it needs to have SMS support, it needs to have a little more backend features, it needs to have better grouping support, things like that, but ultimately I think it is a great idea, fundamentally they are off to a fantastic start and being at the service base level service is free, I see no down side to it.

Ed Kohler: OK.

Jeremy Elfering: We will see what your story is when they start charging?

Ed Kohler: You just keep us posted on that, let me know when you have SMS support on it for one.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, that’s the big deal for me, actually.

Ed Kohler: OK, let’s just say one more thing here, Vinyl.

Jeremy Elfering: Vinyl sales.

Ed Kohler: What’s up?

Jeremy Elfering: CD sales are down, but Vinyl sales are up.

Ed Kohler: So, who is buying these records?

Benjamin Higginbotham: People who don’t want DRM?

Jeremy Elfering: People who don’t want DRM, there is no DRM on records, now they have USB ports on record players.

Ed Kohler: Really they do, is this older people who are buying classical music or is this younger people who are buying?

Jeremy Elfering: No, this is younger people who are buying new music.

Ed Kohler: Buying hip-hop and stuff? The kids these days the Facebook crowd?

Jeremy Elfering: The kids these days, they are looking for one a different sound, because records do have a different sound than a CD, but they are also looking for ways to get pass DRM and it is simple and easy to get passed DRM with the record.

Ed Kohler: I have hard time believing that there are people who would buy a record to get passed DRM, because it was like anyone who would do that could also get passed DRM.

Jeremy Elfering: It is one bonus, but it is an interesting trend, just with simple fact that record sales, everyone were saying records would die with CD and now they are going on back up.

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, here is a little secret, no old medium dies, paper is still here, e-paper is not going to get rid of paper books, radio is going to be here for a very long time XM was supposed to kill radio hasn’t killed radio. There have been Internet video supposed to kill television, it not going to kill television, these old mediums stay around for an extremely long time.

Jeremy Elfering: I agree that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: We even still have Mores code.

Jeremy Elfering: I agree that they do stay around for a long time, but they usually don’t go back up.

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK, fair enough, true.

Jeremy Elfering: When was last time VHS had more sales than the year before…

Benjamin Higginbotham: I haven’t this, I don’t, it is been a long time…

Jeremy Elfering: It has been a long time, so this is a different trend. It is just an interesting thing to look at.

Ed Kohler: Might be a market there, along that what you were just saying about e-paper replacing paper, Ben. I noticed that you were twittering about that the other day about how in five years from now, people riding on the bus or the subway system in New York city, are probably going to be using e-books, instead of paper. You are wrong.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I am wrong?

Jeremy Elfering: You know why you are wrong…

Benjamin Higginbotham: You are using my argument…

Jeremy Elfering: Ben, you know why you are wrong, because the hobos cannot sleep under e-paper.

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, e-paper is supposed to get cheaper, yes they can. E-paper is supposed to get cheaper than regular paper, eventually someday.

Ed Kohler: I am sure it will.

Jeremy Elfering: Once again how can the hobo sleep under e-paper.

Benjamin Higginbotham: It is just like, they can.

Ed Kohler: Web version of the news paper is cheaper than paper today. The cost of buying the New York Times everyday is about the cost of Internet connection.

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK.

Ed Kohler: So, but I don’t think New York Times is going to be gone in 5 years from now, even though everyone could just read it on their Treo’s by then.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but e-paper is a little bit different, e-paper is different beast in that, it is the same experience as paper. See the experience on a computer, experience on a cell phone is different than the experience on paper. The experience on e-paper is very-very similar to that of a regular paper, that’s the whole idea, that’s why it is called what’s that word again, e-paper.

Jeremy Elfering: I agree that it is very similar experience, but there still has to be more content for it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Right.

Ed Kohler: For news papers it has to be synched into the device overnight, so when you leave in the morning for the train it is already in there.

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, what it needs to do is the e-reader needs to have a wireless connection built into it, so I can sync my information in real time and just grab the information I need, so think of it as a mobile version of Google reader on e-paper that sucks very little power hardly ever requires recharging can be viewed in any light conditions, just like regular paper and it is very thin and easy to bring with me.

Jeremy Elfering: Here is one problem with that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I peaked your interest when I said Google reader, didn’t I…

Jeremy Elfering: I will agree that that would peak my interest and I am excited for that to happen, but the problem is the company is using the most e-paper products right now is Sony and they will screw it up.

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, I don’t think they are the largest e-paper guys.

Jeremy Elfering: I could be wrong, but right now, they are the most visible e-paper guys.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t think they are screwing it up, I think they have a chick and egg scenario and they are actually pushing forward with it, the big issue they have is their DRM, which always back of the Sony, but the e-reader, the guys who did the e-reader slapped Sony around and said “we are going to do it right” and they offer PDF support, they offer other formats as Sony is not a native Sony format supports, so I wouldn’t agree with that all, I think Sony needs to drive the price down which they will be able to do overtime, I think that it is a great start and I think that eventually I don’t if it is five years, but eventually we will see a lot more e-paper out there. Will it totally include to replace paper, no. No old medium dies.

Ed Kohler: OK, let’s wrap it up for the day and thanks for those of you who are in TalkShoe or on the Web or on Technology Evangelist tuning in today and tomorrow is Web 2.0 Wednesday, so tune in then and if you have a favorite a Web 2.0 site, send us a link, so we can check it out, particularly looking for sites that you think are built to last for they are not going to be just a big fad, there are sites that actually providing some value to people beyond coolness factor, if such a site exist, we will try to get into some of those tomorrow. So, well thanks a lot of tuning in and talk to you all tomorrow, thank you.