Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 at 6:38 AM EST

A friend of mine named James Whatley posted a question recently when he was home sick from work.  “When did sick days become work from home days?”  Is that even a question for entrepreneurs?  I can’t remember in my entire working career not working on a day I was sick.  But I think the question is, when did it become the norm?  Do CEO’s, bosses, supervisors, etc. expect you to stay on top of email or listen in on a conference call when you’re home sick?  

I think it was the release of BlackBerry in 2003 and the ability to have home wifi starting in the early 2000’s that were the downfall of sick days being days employees didn’t work.  Now you’re expected to work from home, answering email, updating reports and taking calls.  Wifi has made a large portion of this possible.  

I know when I’m sick and in bed I’m surrounded by my laptop and phone.  As a little compliment to Phone.com, when I’ve emailed our team saying I’m sick, I’ve gotten responses like, “We’ve got you covered for the day.”  It’s nice knowing I can actually take a day off to be sick and recuperate.  Though I still try to stay on top of my email and having the Phone.com app on my cell phone I’m able to make and receive work calls from bed.  As nice as it may be to take a day off to recuperate many small business owners and employees still need to work.  Maybe it’s our American work till you drop mentality but it is the way it is.  

How do you handle sick days in your company?  Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

–

Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 1:15 PM EST

VoIP in the air made the front pages this week when Delta airlines called the cops because one of their passengers was using a VoIP application over the WiFi-based airborne broadband service that Delta offers. The passenger, it turns out, was the founder and CEO of a VoIP company – Talmon Marco, the CEO of a company called Viber.

What’s particularly irksome about the incident was that one of the Delta flight crew told Marco that FAA regulations prohibit the use of VoIP while in flight. The fact is that there is no such FAA rule. Another crew member then said it was against Delta’s rules, and finally admitted the truth that it was against the terms of service of the broadband provider that Delta uses. And even though Marco immediately stopped his call, the Delta crew still radioed ahead to have the authorities waiting when the plane landed.

What I find really interesting is that, in all the coverage of this, I heard repeated over and over the old saw that most passengers don’t want others on the plane disturbing them by chatting on the phone. Both the FAA and the airlines keep this myth alive. Funny thing though – the airlines never seem to worry about that when they provide their own in-flight telephone service. Ah, but then the airlines get a big rake off of the absurd prices charged for in-flight phone service. Once a passenger has paid the fee for his broadband, there’s no additional revenue from a VoIP call. At least not yet – I do believe that if they figure out how to charge passengers, suddenly VoIP calls from 30,000 feet will be just fine, thank you … for a price.

Marco, I should note, was using a smartphone with a VoIP app that works over broadband. That made it obvious that he was making a phone call. I’ve also made calls from the air, but using VoIP apps on a laptop. In fact about a decade ago I made what was probably one of the very first such calls, since I was flying on the very first commercial jet to offer WiFi.

VoIP technology has come a long way since then, and I’m really looking forward to dedicated Wi-Fi based clients from Phone.com for both my laptop and smartphone, for general use, not specifically while airborne. Viber, without criticizing, is only of use to call others who also run Viber software, which I dare say doesn’t include anybody that I know. What I expect from Phone.com is software that will both let me access the entire range of business VoIP services – which I can do now over WiFi – AND make my voice call connections over WiFi, which is still something for the near future.

By the way, when Marco told the police what really happened, they immediately let him go on his way. It seems that New York Port Authority police have more sense than Delta flight attendants.

Stuart Zipper is currently a contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past Senior Editor of TelecomWeb news break.

Sunday, May 13th, 2012 at 1:50 PM EST

Investors and budding New Jersey startups flocked to NJIT’s Newark campus last week to participate in investor sessions, startup showcases, and pitches. Up for grabs was a one-on-one meeting with big-time New Jersey investors. Judges deliberated and Global Telematic Solutions took first place.

As an advocate for startups across New Jersey, Phone.com had the pleasure of sponsoring Startupalooza  at the NJIT, in addition to providing one lucky company with an entire year of free phone service. That lucky company happened to be runner-up in the healthcare category – Hilin Life Products, makers of a saliva fertility monitor. It’s true startups come in all shapes and sizes!

As the API guy here at Phone.com I’m always keeping an eye open for startups with products that communicate. It was exciting to find that a general theme amongst at least half of the digital startups at Startupalooza was the use of text messaging for notifications. These days it seems most apps have a reason to notify their users and text messaging has become one of the default methods. These are just a few examples I found intriguing.

Global Telematic Solutions developed a product which, among MANY features, has the capability of sending text notifications to parents about their children’s driving habits. HiLin Life Products can track a woman’s fertility and will notify couples via SMS when the time is optimal to conceive. Hopskoch has an impressive marketing oriented gaming platform which allows users to participate in real-world games via SMS. The list goes on…

It is a growing realization amongst startups that SMS can be one of the most effective ways for an application or service to notify its users – and I’m trilled to be working on a communication API which makes functionality like this, and many others, simple and easy for developers to build into their products.

So congratulations to the Startupalooza winners! All of us at Phone.com look forward to continue building products that empower NJ startups and businesses around the country with new and interesting ways to communicate efficiently.

Aaron Rosenthal,  Product Manager