ian andrew bell

Back in the ’90s, when I actually logged some time at a campus Apple reseller, the Apple supply chain was ridiculously poor, due to its unpredictability and the occasional ridiculous lack of availability of basic accessories. Often our academic customers would spend their hard-earned grant money on complete Apple systems only to receive them 3-4 months later; or they would receive CPUs without monitors or keyboards (or vise - versa).  This more often than not left us playing russian roulette with the Apple ordering system and them steaming at having disappointing out-of-box experiences.

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Well, today we lifted the veil (somewhat unexpectedly) on PubSub 2.0; or rather, the fact that there will soon be such a thing. We announced via TechCrunch and GigaOM that we have acquired a number of the assets of PubSub Concepts, Inc. from the asset holder and have raised a series A financing for our company, Something Simpler. Of course, that’s the real story for a lot of people, but what I found fascinating was the process of propagating the story. Read More

First this morning came the ominous report from El Reg at around 8AM that FaceBook was mis-serving pages and allowing users to browse the InBoxes of others. Then, at around 10:15AM, as I was happily surfing the pages of my friends and associates, FaceBook went down. CNET reported at around the same time the site was down for unspecified upgrades.

It would seem logical that these events are connected. Will update this story as it develops here

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Quite sadly, all of my friends are getting iPhones, it seems, and the iPhone Resistance soldiers are dropping like flies. There are rumors that even hardened technologists like Jeff Pulver, who’s made loud protestations to contradict the trend have been lured over to the dark side. I’m shattered.

But if there ever was cause for you to question your sanity for avoiding the first-generation iPhuss, then let this be an affirmation: buy an iPhone and you’ll be exactly as cool as Paris “Born Again” Hilton.

Here she is spotted by the paparazzi in her most conspicuous finery attending the “Sicko” premiere wearing sensitive green jungle attire and sporting the uber-trendy device, of course discussing things of great import with people of great influence. Either that, or she’s giving jailhouse tips to Lindsay Lohan.

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Baskin-Robbins oughtta be scared.  Easily the highlight for me while attending DEMO 2006 was sampling the wares of the Moobella Ice Cream vending machine.  Yesterday they announced their $25M Series A financing, which is an impressive indicator of how far along they are both in operationalizing their machines and deploying them out in the field.

I spent some time talking last February to Jim Baxter, their VP of Engineering, and there is considerable technology developed for the machine on the user interaction side (the device has one of the best touch-screen UIs I’ve ever seen) and for management of the device, not to mention making the ice cream.  Just so you’re clear:  the ice cream is made fresh while-you-wait, with a wide array of flavors and possible toppings.

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As GigaOM reported, Google announced the $625M acquisition of Postini this morning, which was not unforeseen. With Cisco’s $800M acquisition of Ironport (which was hardware-based), Symantec’s $300M acquisition of Brightmail (which channeled its services thru MessageLabs) and Microsoft’s acquisition of FrontBridge (which was service-based) there were only a view acquisition targets remaining in the email security marketplace: MXLogic, Postini, and UK-based MessageLabs.

These prices make Sophos’ acquisition of Vancouver’s Activestate (which, among its products, marketed an interesting anti-spam software solution) for $26M look like a bargain. And with all of these transactions coming in the multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, the number of sellers probably now exceeds the buyers by a 2:1 margin. That means that the remaining two will need to get down to the business of making money.

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Earlier this year GIZMODO announced the obvious, that Rogers Wireless would eventually launch the iPhone in Canada, based on the ever-reliable “confirmation from customer service” which took the form of an apparent email… this turned out to be a hoax. Rogers is, of course, the only GSM carrier in Canada, and since the iPhone is a GSM network device, is the obvious choice, so there was little to this story other than a tease (and possibly a GoogleTrawl) for desperate iPhone fanatics north of the 49th.

Despite vehement denials and warnings from Rogers spokespeople, I have it on slightly better authority from an unnameable closer-to-the-source Rogers employee that the date for launching the Rogers iPhone in Canada will land in December — making those overnight lineups outside the Apple Store so much more pleasant!

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I’ve been at home sick for a couple of days, which has involved a mix of work and killing time. I was in the latter mode when I was reading my friend Jeff’s blog where he announced he’d be broadcasting on BlogTV.. so naturally I decided to click the link to see what was goin’ on in Melville. The link was to blogtv.com which, if you live in Canada, redirects you to blogtv.ca. I had initially assumed this was some sort of load balancing technique, and is perfectly logical, since I’m in Canada. But no…

Then I remembered their commercials airing with monotonous frequency on Canadian TV … it occurred to me that someone is spending millions of dollars on an ad campaign driving people to a “Canadian Only” video sharing community. What? Why? What kind of startup would cripple themselves geographically right out of the starting gate? Then some GoOgling gave me the answer, and Matthew Ingram’s well-written article from last week…
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From RegHardware comes the scoop that Apple will announce the Euro iPhone on Monday. It’ll be available on multiple carriers (Vodafone and T-Mobile), sold unlocked at CarPhone Warehouse, and will sport 3G street cred. What does this really mean? Well, principally it means that being first in line for today’s AT&T iPhone is a complete waste of time and money, unless your only purpose for getting one is drawing a crowd every time your phone rings.

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Telus and Bell have confirmed they’re in merger talks, after BCE earlier announced it was mulling over its options earlier this Spring. Both companies are weakened by declining landline revenues as competition from Wireless and the Cable Guys and, to a lesser extent pure-play VoIP contenders, is heating up. This makes a lot of sense, but probably not for the reasons that your average reporter would think.

It has been known for some time that CableCos would move into the voice business, which thanks to VoIP and their co-ordinated efforts through PacketCable, was almost trivially easy to accomplish. Both of Canada’s major telecom service providers find themselves in a major uphill battle.

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