Walled Gardens... End of an Era?

The more I think about Google's acquisition of Grand Central, the more I see it as a watershed moment in telephony.  Unlike Yahoo!, AOL and nearly every other large telephony concern, Google now supports, at the same time, open Internet standards and connections to the PSTN.  This is truly valuable, and unique, and should be celebrated.

From the start of telephony, every major carrier has protected its network behind a series of barriers: technical, legal and financial. Although some of the reasons for keeping their networks closed have some credence, such as security and reliability, it's pretty clear that carriers hold the opinion that opening up their network does not benefit them.  As time has gone on, and technology has matured, the closed nature of networks is less and less about technical concerns, and more and more about carrier fear and an inability to present compelling business cases to customers.  

With the GrandCentral acquisition, this has now changed.  Google now owns a company that is a legitimate PSTN service with strong integration into open VoIP standards, and did it in a very Voice 2.0 way.  GrandCentral currently supports free and unfettered SIP connections to Gizmo accounts, unlocking the entirety of the SIP architecture, benefits and approaches.  And more so, GrandCentral has done this in a completely Web 2.0 manner, freeing itself from the chains of a technology play and firmly focusing on a valuable application that people will pay for.

Is this is the end of an era for closed telecom networks?  Yes, I think it's the beginning of the end.

And the winner is...

Remember the speed geeking post from Mashup Camp last week? I am now ready to reveal my favorite mashup. But first, the final FINAL results are in. The speed geeking winner of Mashup Camp 3 with 18 nickels is..... drum roll please..... The Hype Machine!

The Hype Machine (http://hypem.com) combines music blog discussion, tracks, youtube video, concert and sales data to create a unique music discovery experience. (Powered by a healthy mix of Perl & PHP). Congratulations to Anthony Vlodkin - geek of the day.

My favorite? GBlinker by John Herren. gBlinker takes a Google blinky pin, interfaces it to a laptop via serial port, and uses a hacked a Gmail widget (using the Yahoo! widget engine) to make the pin blink when you get new mail.


Why is it my favorite? Simple, the big deal behind mashups is re-purposing. As creators of technology, you simply don't know exactly how it will be used in the real world. Mashups recognize this fact by a clear delineation between the service and the application. In Voice Over IP, I think that's been traditionally seen as a 'bad thing', as business models are hard to see in that environment. However, in the 'Internet World', there's apparently more of a willingness to throw caution to the wind. That's why this was my favorite mashup. That and, I suppose, the complete and sheer geekiness of this one was too much to ignore. Serial port hacking? Very nice.