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Cisco creates contest for your idea of the Connected Life

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cisco.jpgCisco is offering innovative people a sizable cash reward as part of a new contest to help shape its version of the connected life. The Connected Life Contest is open now and ends September 14.

The Connected Life, as defined by Cisco, “describes the unique, personalized experiences enabled by networked communications, whether at home, at work, or on the move. Cisco believes that the network is the platform for making daily life more entertaining, more productive and more convenient.” Cisco is looking for users to submit an entry (in 1,000 words or less) describing a new experience or capability they would like networking and communications technologies to help them do, whether at home, at work, or on the move. People are also invited to record a short video describing their idea.

Cisco will work with service providers around the world to select the top ideas, awarding one Grand Prize winner $10,000 and ten runner-up winners $1,000 each.

“We believe in continuous innovation and are always working to bring great ideas to reality,” said Jeff Spagnola, vice president of service provider marketing at Cisco. “We know that many of our customers, from the largest businesses to individual consumers, share our passion for innovation and we invite them to share their great ideas for experiences that they would like to enjoy in their Connected Life — enabled by Cisco and delivered by service providers around the world.”

Originally posted on June 14, 2007 @ 3:01 pm

Priceline removes booking fees for all flights

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priceline.jpg Priceline, a leading U.S. online travel service for value-conscious leisure travelers, eliminates booking fees for all domestic and international flights purchased by July 4th for travel up to 330 days from date of purchase. Every flight and itinerary is on sale, except for those purchased through priceline.com’s Name Your Own Price® service.

“Since this sale is good for last minute and advance purchase tickets, it will appeal to many different types of customers,” said Mark Koehler, priceline.com’s Senior Vice President, Airline Ticketing. “Travelers can use this sale to lower the cost of their upcoming summer vacation. They can purchase tickets for a fall getaway once the crowds thin out. Or, consumers who like planning ahead can buy their Thanksgiving and Christmas airline tickets now and lock in the additional savings.”

Priceline.com’s Summer Flights Sale applies only to published-price itineraries where travelers pick their exact carrier, flight times, routes and price. The sale does not apply to priceline.com’s Name Your Own Price® service, where consumers already can save up to 40% over the published prices found on major online travel reservation sites.

Originally posted on June 12, 2007 @ 10:07 am

CinemaNow seeks second chance on music videos

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watch.jpg CinemaNow, an Internet provider of premium on-demand, download and burn movies, and video content, will relive its initiatives on selling music videos through Watchmusichere.com. In support of this relaunch, the company will feature 1,600 videos from Warner Music Group and will add more record labels after July 21.

This online music video store was initially launched in 2005 but failed to catch fire partly due to lack of portable devices to play these videos. The boom of portable media devices and the recent success of Apple’s iTune music store induced CinemaNow to embark on this venture once again.

Each video costs $1.99 and transferable to 3 devices like laptop, desktop computer, or portable music device. However, it will not run on iPhone and iPods. Instead, only devices running Windows Media software can play these videos.

Originally posted on June 12, 2007 @ 9:51 am

Get that dollar under control, please

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So I’m looking at my Paypal account and realize I won’t be moving any money anytime soon. The dollar’s down, has been for quite some time, and that means us non-US people make less for the same work. Blogging is usually paid per post and when a fluctuating currency is used you can find yourself doing the same work for less money, without you adjusting your prices. Meanwhile, nothing much have changed for your American employer which means they won’t like it if you up your rates.

I lost equivalent of a grand (perhaps more when you read this, or less, depending on how the dollar moves compared to the Swedish crown) recently, just due to the dollar being down. That sucks.

The blogosphere is paying in dollars, but being a non-American blogger suddenly pays less. Will that change?

Originally posted on June 11, 2007 @ 4:45 am

Akamai offers to help you visualize real-time Internet performance

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akami-real-time.jpgYou’ve probably asked yourself at least once “why is the f’ing Internet so slow?” One way you may be able to get some answer going forward is Akamai Technologies’ new “Visualizing the Internet” tools.

These Visualizing the Internet tools, unveiled by Akamai today, let you see how healthy the Internet currently is. Akamai draws upon information from over 25,000 servers in more than 750 cities that are used by content providers to provide visual data of why some Web traffic may be slow, infected, or simply non-existent.

Three tools make up Akamai’s offering. A real-time web monitor “identifies the global regions with the greatest attack traffic, cities with the slowest Web connections (latency), and geographic areas with the most Web traffic (traffic density).” Network performance comparision “illustrates how Akamai identifies the fastest and most reliable path available between an Akamai edge server and an enterprise’s origin data center to retrieve dynamic content.”

The final tool, visualizing Akamai, “provides insight into the world’s online behavior at any given moment including how much rich media is on the move, the sheer volume of data being requested, the number and concentration of worldwide visitors, and average connection speeds worldwide.” This data is drawn upon the fact, Akamai said, that at times it handles 20 percent of the world’s total Web traffic.

Originally posted on June 7, 2007 @ 3:01 pm