Slashdot

So, the other day when I got on the train, there was the business section of the New York Times sitting on the seat.

The front page story? How Vonage went public with a very nicely high-priced IPO @ 17$/share.

The problem is that after only a couple days, the price plummeted 13% on its first day, and after only a couple of days, dipped below $12/share. Explanations for this include poor management of the shares (poor selection for customers who bought the initial offering of shares), customers who never intended to keep the shares (they hoped the price would rise, and they'd sell them off for a quick profit), and uneasiness among shareholders due to Vonage's competition and this whole net neutrality issue.

Now, this all got me thinking... You see, I worked on Vonage's banners which were used to market their IPO and the whole going public event at the New York Stock Exchange, so I feel a little attachment to them. Also, they're, to me, pioneers in the VoIP market and they're from my home state of New Jersey. My roommate is even a customer of theirs and uses them for his fax line for his business.

So what can save vonage?

their main problem seems to be that their primary competitors are the same people who provide the service that Vonage runs over. The cable/DSL companies. Why pay for vonage when you can get the exact same service, with less equipment (combined modem/router/phonejack), on one bill, for the same amount of $?

Vonage needs to come up with new services to offer. They need to leverage their technology and innovate (I hate that buzzword).

Personally, I think vonage could have alternative services. Services that don't require hardware leases. Services similar to skype. An all-software VoIP solution. maybe Vonage could supply a headset with the price of the service?

How about fax-over-email or web-based faxing? Vonage could save $ and increase their customer base by providing fax services without needing to supply extra hardware. They could also have a pay as you go service for sending faxes though the web.

Speaking of faxing, what about a vonage-branded fax machine with an ethernet hook up?

Although faxing is going the way of the dinosaurs, it's not dead yet, and many business depend on that old technology, still. Sometimes, it's the only way to send documents; especially contracts.

Unless vonage wakes up (and wakes up soon), they'll get destroyed by the competition who can offer more reliable service (since it's their own lines; although I'm not saying that verizon offers good DSL service by any stretch of the imagination), and, right now, seems to have the capability to limit the quality and access to vonage's service.

VoIP is the future of real-time communication.

that's just my rant.

*gets off soapbox*

...spike

I just noticed in the banner for ThinkGeek.com's PSP contest that the pictured unit has a yellow desktop...

I got my PSP back in january and it had a graphite-colored desktop, yet all the screenshots I had see up until that point had a red desktop. I realized once February rolled around, that every month the desktop changes, which makes for an interesting feature. February's color is yellow. I don't remember what march's is, since my battery died this morning as I was about to finally win a race in Ridge Racers that I've been trying to win for about a week, now.

Anyway, my point is that ThinkGeek must have taken the picture themselves and not used some stock photo...

Yeah, that's a pointless point. Sorry.

As you may or may not know, I am currently working on an OSX (and linux, POSIX, etc) utility for hax0ring gamecube games, and I must say that I've found a couple of very interesting things out.

Namely, I just discovered a secret video in the Prince of Persia: Sands of time game, named "VIS_622.int." In PoP, the .int video files are really bink video files, so I downloaded the OSX carbon bink player and viewed it only to find that it's a very interesting spoof on prince of persia entitled "Monk of Perlia." In the animation, there's this monk who gets locked up while his princess is being danced to death by some vile fiend. The story progresses through the monk finding the O'Reilly PERL book, coding up

$transport =~ /palace/;

and rescuing his princess.

i damn near died laughing, and this is the only place I could post such a find and actually have it appreciated. My roommates think I'm an idiot... What do you think? ;)

So, yeah, I've been wasting my life for the past couple weeks.

NESRomTool has become stagnant (I really need to get back to work on that). Living in the city is fun, though. Full of distractions. Eating too much. Enjoying everything too much.

I'm currently looking for a job, as the commute is killing me for this job. My last day is on wednesday, so SOMEONE, GET ME A JOB! Somewhere in manhatten would be great!

I'm a graphic artist and hobbiest programmer. I'm a master photoshop and illustrator user. Production artist by trade. Self taught. I can also code in Java, C, C++, and objC. Get me a job, eh?

Built my new computer:

http://www.sadistech.com/newbox/

now what? I'm gonna build a nice athlon system. I don't have a PC and this'll be something to do. fun fun. ok, me sleep now.

zzzz...

what!? fuck. I'm at work. oh well.