On Message with Ben Gross

Earlier today O’Reilly Media and StrikeIron took votes from ETel conference attendees for the finalists for their Telephony Mashup Contest.
The winning mashup was Thomas Howe’s After Hours Doctor’s Office. The mashup used TellMe VxML for inbound IVR, StrikeIron Global SMS, Amazon Web Services Mechanical Turk. The demo showed an automated service to take after hours [...]

Yesterday evening’s ETel Launch Pad showcased the following six new companies:

GrandCentral Communications
Peerant
Flat Planet Phone Company
Cellcrypt
mySay
Jive Software
Mig33

Launch Pad is part of the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony conference. The winner will be chosen by conference participants using and SMS voting mechanism from Mozes.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently released a new report on American wireless internet access that includes details on access on wireless access to email and news.
“Some 34% of internet users have logged onto the internet using a wireless connection
either around the house, at their workplace, or some place else.”

Those who have logged [...]

In MX Injection: Capturing and Exploiting Hidden Mail Servers, Vicente Aguilera Diaz of the Web Application Security Consortium describes MX Injection which is similar to SQL and XPath attacks.
This document presents a new attack technique against web applications that communicate with mail servers, generally webmail applications. Some of these applications are vulnerable to this new [...]

The weblog Spammers vs Free Speech has a recent post titled The new whack a mole describing the problem of data centers and large hosting providers becoming vectors for spammers via outdated end user software. It’s worth a read.
But a significant fraction of these spamming stations are low cost Web servers installed by the [...]

The Mayo Clinic has teamed up with Digital Cyclone (now part of Garmin) to deliver medical news and health information to subscriber’s mobile phones.
The Mayo Clinic will make it’s InTouch service available, which includes health news, first aid tips, a symptom checker, and health news videos. Location based health information such as nearest hospitals will [...]

Supernova 2007 will be held in San Francisco, CA June 20-22. Registration is now open. Early registration discounts will be available through May 11, 2007. Challenge Day tracks and opening reception will be held at Wharton West in San Francisco on June 20th. General sessions and networking gala will be held at Westin St. Francis [...]

Last week Lyris Technologies released an update to their ListManager email marketing product that extends the 9 series platform released mid last year. ListManager version 9.2 includes the following new features:

Our template and content building tools include a simplified interface with increased functionality, the ability to edit content and manipulate images and then “drag-and-drop” [...]

INBOX 2007 will run May 31 - June 1 at the San Jose Marriott in San Jose, CA. INBOX has been acquired by Jupitermedia. The conference team will remain the same.
A preview of the conference program is available. The Conference tracks have been reorganized and include the following:
TRACK 1: Messaging, Collaboration, Social Media
The majority of [...]