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This news this morning makes me really happy. Peter Csathy’s SightSpeed, a high quality video call/conferencing service, is going to be acquired by a very big name in the computer market, Logitech, very popular, among the other things, for their high quality webcams.

I blogged so many times about SightSpeed and I really love that service, reason why I’m very happy for Peter and his team in San Diego. This is a great deal for both, since Logitech can now provide an effective way to give more value to their webcams, for both the consumer and business market. And it seems that SightSpeed is the 3rd company Peter succesfully sold.

Moreover, I really would like to congratulate Andy “everything I touch becomes gold” Abramson, since SightSpeed is the Nth company he’s involved with in terms of PR or in terms of board of directors which has been sold recently. Wow.

Details of the deals are summarized below.

Logitech International (SIX: LOGN) (Nasdaq: LOGI) today announced that the company has agreed to acquire privately held SightSpeed Inc. of Berkeley, Calif. for approximately $30 million in cash. SightSpeed is an award-winning provider of high-quality Internet video communications services. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in early November.

The acquisition of SightSpeed will provide Logitech with video calling technology and a software and services development team that can be focused on future video calling initiatives that can enable cross-platform video communications with an intuitive, lifelike experience, for people sitting in front of a personal computer or with their family in a living room.

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• Logitech Coughs Up $30 Million To Acquire SightSpeed
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Technorati Tags: andy abramson, Business, Logitech, luca filigheddu, peter csathy, sightspeed, Video

Andy Abramson wrote an interesting blog post about Aircell, the new WiFi broadband internet service provided by American Airlines.

The point is that not all the applications over internet are allowed on that service and VoIP is one of them. Andy tried SightSpeed but the call was dropped after 10 seconds only, same story with Skype. I bet all other SIP-based services are blocked as well.

Andy then tried to use a service based on flash and… it worked perfectly. The service mentioned by Andy is Phweet, the TringMe-based VoIP service for any Twitter user (I already posted about Phweet last month) designed by Stuart Henshall and David Beckemeyer.

Andy points out that the interesting story here is about “thinking different”:

…all the attention was given to Skype. Skype and SIP based communications applications. There’s more to VoIP and real time communications out there, and we have to think about the best application for the situation. That’s called reasoning. Logic. Creative thinking. In my world that’s the start of Asymmetrical thinking. Look at a problem differently, and see different solutions that are already there.

In this specific case, Phweet was the solution to this problem. As an engineer, I can’t agree more. While at the University, I’ve been taught to think different if I wanted to quickly get to a solution of a problem and during my working experience I learnt that this is even more true than what I thought.

Good points Andy.

p.s. sometimes things work but you cannot really understand why. Flash VOIP is, actually, SIP based. In this perspective, it should have been blocked as well… I bet the reason is another one, that is how the call is setup on Phweet.

Technorati Tags: Aircell, andy abramson, David Beckemeyer, luca filigheddu, phweet, skype, stuart henshall, Untitled

For Andy.

Technorati Tags: andy abramson, coffee, espresso, luca filigheddu

Some thoughts of Andy Abramson about blogging and transparency. Worth a read.

Technorati Tags: andy abramson, Blogging, luca filigheddu

Andy Abramson wrote an interesting piece today about the just announced Jajah-Yahoo deal. He wrote some points I was thinking about while writing my post on the deal this morning.

Yahoo bought Dialpad a couple of years ago and let Jeff Bonforte, man behind Yahoo Messenger and former SIPPhone developer, leave the company very easily, part of the laid off which took place a couple of months ago.

I call it bad management. When you are not able to leverage your past investments in infrastructure, services and people, I call it bad management. I agree with Andy, big deal for Jajah but bad management on Yahoo’s side.

Technorati Tags: andy abramson, jajah, luca filigheddu, yahoo

I want to join the discussion between Phoneboy and Andy Abramson about the problem of configuring an IP phone. I agree with them, it’s mostly a geek thing even if it shouldn’t be. 

Months ago I posted this idea about IP Phones with a SIM card slot that would make everything easier and help VoIP providers to retain their subscribers too. Here is that post, that can surely be a reply to Andy’s concerns.

Technorati Tags: andy abramson, luca filigheddu, phoneboy, sim card, voip phones