May 08, 2008

VoIP Now - Am On Their "Top 100" Telecom Blogs

I'm having a good week. Yesterday, VoIP Now posted its list of Top 100 Telecom Industry Blogs.

Not sure why this list is coming out at this particular time, but it's always a good time be included in these things. Am happy to say that my blog made the list, and is in the group of 24 blogs categorized under VoIP. The blogs are listed alphabetically, so there's no rank-ordering here. They've wisely stayed away from that, so I guess they like us all, which is fine by me.

The top 100 blogs are spread out over 7 categories, of which VoIP is the largest. There are a few anomalies to the list and the groupings, which I've shared with VoIP Now, but I'll just leave it to you to make your own assessment. On the whole, the list includes just about everyone I can think of, but I have passed along a few who are conspicuous by their absence. By all means, have a look, and feel free to do the same.

If you follow my blog, you'll know that I also got a #1 rating the other day from Blogged.com, so I'm on a bit of a roll right now. No industry list is perfect, but it's great to get some recognition from more than one place. Good things often come in threes, so maybe there's another list coming around the bend...


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Posted by jonarnold at 08:57 AM | Comments (1)

May 07, 2008

IP Convergence TV Updates Posted

The latest major update for IP Convergence TV is out now, and I just wanted to draw attention to the new content that's being featured there.

- Comverse white paper on multi-play service bundles

- Intel technical paper on IMS performance benchmarks

- European video interviews with Blueslice Networks and Yankee Group

- US video interviews with SIP Forum, IMS Forum and other industry experts

- Guest Opinion pieces from 3 new contributors - Brough Turner, Peter Csathy and Luca Filigheddu

- my lastest Convergence Blog post about trends I'm seeing from recent conferences

We've also got a great Q&A interview coming very soon that I did with Ariel Barlaro from TVTelco Latam, where he provides an overview of what's happening in Latin America with video and IPTV.

As always, your input, comments and suggestions are welcome, either here or at the portal. Hope you like it!

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Posted by jonarnold at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2008

Blogged.com Rates My Blog #1 for Telecoms

I was contacted the other day by Blogged.com, saying that they've been following my blog, and it looks like they like it. So, I've got two pieces of good news to share on that front...

1. Blogs are rated out of 10, and mine rated 8.3. This puts it in the "Great" tier, which is the third highest tier, behind "Excellent" and "Superb".

Only the top, top blogs get the Superb rating, which is a perfect 10.0. How hard is that to get? Well, they've tracked and rated 17,149 blogs under the "Technology" banner, and only 2 rated Superb. One is TechCrunch, which should be pretty familiar to readers of this blog, and the other is WiredScience (from Wired magazine), which is a bit off-center from my day-to-day coverage. Following "Superb", anything between 9.0 and 9.9 is "Excellent", and "Great" covers blogs with a rating between 8.0 and 8.9.

2. My blog is rated #1 among all the Telecom blogs they're tracking. Telecom is a tiny subset of all the Technology blogs, and only includes 84 blogs. While there are roughly 550 "Technology" blogs with ratings higher than my 8.3 rating (hey, I'll take that among 17,000+ total blogs!!!), there aren't any rated higher among Telecom blogs - I'll definitely take that.

There are a few familiar blogs in this category for what it's worth, including VoIP News, Jajah's blog, Brough Turner and IP Business Magazine. These are all pretty good blogs, so I consider myself to be in good company, and it's great to get such a positive rating among this crowd.

So, what does this mean? Lots of ways to look at this. First, it's great to be recognized at all, and second, it's also great to get a solid rating amidst so many good blogs and bloggers. If you're curious, I urge you to scan through the top blogs, whether the Telecom blogs, or the massive list of over 17,000 Technology blogs. The list of Tech blogs is as interesting for who is there and who is not. I had a quick scan of the blogs with ratings of 8.3 or higher, and aside from TechCrunch, I really only found 3 that I follow regularly - Jeff Pulver (9.2), Ken Camp (8.7) and Tom Keating (8.3). Interesting, huh???

How do they rate these blogs? Well, I can only go by what the website says - the ratings are done by sector-specific editors, and they base these on four criteria: "frequency of updates, relevance of content, site design, and writing style". As you can see from the site, all readers are welcome to rate these blogs, but I'm not sure how much impact these ratings have on the editors.

You can also suggest other blogs for evaluation, which is great since I suspect they're missing quite a few very good blogs that we all follow regularly. I haven't explored the Tech blogs rated below mine, so there could well be many familiar blogs there, so I urge you to look for yours if you're wondering. Are there better telecom blogs out there than mine? Absolutely. Blogged.com is a work in progress, so by all means suggest other blogs you'd like to see them rate.

For someone like me, Blogged.com is a good story. As you may know, my blog is 100% content-driven - there are no banners, ads, sponsors or Google links. As such, my traffic is minuscule compared to most - if not all - the bloggers I follow, and I suspect my blog is invisible to a big swath of the market. I'll never generate the kind of traffic that most bloggers have, and I concede that my following will be small, but hopefully loyal.

Furthermore, I'm a writer at heart, and take a lot of care in what I say and how I say it. I'm at ease saying that most bloggers are not great writers, and their notoriety comes from other competencies. So, I like what I see with Blogger.com, as their criteria is based more on what the blogger is creating rather than how many people link to them, or how well their blog is search-optimized.

So, who is Blogged.com? Well, I've been asking the same question myself. Their site launched in February, so it's pretty new, and you can read a brief review about them here from Webware's Rafe Needleman.

For those of you into social media, what makes Blogged.com different from things like Technorati is that it's based on expert evaluation of the content itself as opposed to key words or tags embedded in the content. It's a bit like Digg in that it makes use of crowdsourcing - a big buzzword in social media - which draws on input from readers to gauge the importance and relevance of a blog within its peer group. So, it's very Web 2.0 by nature, building on sharing and mass collaboration, but with a judicious mix of editorial objectivity (or so we'd like to think)and collective input from readers and other bloggers.

I really can't say how much stock you should put in these ratings, but Blogged.com seems like a pretty good barometer to me. Sure, they're new, and their universe of blogs will continue to expand, and whether you agree or disagree, you have plenty of opportunity to speak your mind and recommend other blogs for them to evaluate.

And if nothing else, I love their website because it's a great collection of blogs, and I'll use this as a regular resource now when I need to drill down for granular industry research.


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Posted by jonarnold at 08:50 AM | Comments (2)

May 05, 2008

Is VON GON? - Reprise - Sure Looks That Way...

Microsoft and Yahoo may be the big headline story today, but down here closer to Earth, I'm thinking more about the latest updates on VON. In late March, I had a post about this titled Is VON GON?, and was one of several people commenting on the unhappy events that seemed to be unfolding then.

I'm not nearly as involved with Pulvermedia as I used to be, and fellow blogger Andy Abramson is much closer to their world these days. Andy's post yesterday about VON is the most conclusive I've seen to date, and just wanted to share it with you this morning.

His citation of Carl Ford's most recent blog post on Friday afternoon seems to say it all, and if that's not a sign-off, I don't know what is.

Ugh. What else to say? It sure looks done now, as Andy's post concludes. I sure feel for Jeff, Carl, Scott, Jason and all the Pulvermedia people I've worked with since 2001. Doesn't look good at all - I guess it's not 100% certain, but it's gotta be pretty close.

Not much else to say or add to Andy's post at this point, but I can only hope for the best. I certainly agree with Andy's comment that so much of the VON brand is in the people, and Jeff's public voice - his blog - is almost totally focused on video and social media now. Of course, Jeff is not really in a position to share his thoughts and vision with us now, and for that reason, all I can really do is share what's happening today. It's way too early to say what the future might hold for all those concerned, so beyond Carl's post and Andy's comments, I'll leave it to you to decide, and will revisit this when there's something tangible and new to talk about.

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Posted by jonarnold at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)